Fic: "Let go your hand from my shoulders" for rosefyre
Title: Let go your hand from my shoulders
Author: dbassassin
Recipient: rosefyre
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Helga Hufflepuff, other Founders
Summary: Thirty years after the founding of Hogwarts, there’s something funny going on in the dungeons. Helga Hufflepuff is bound and determined to find out what it is.
Author's Notes: For rosefyre, who requested a fic focusing on female characters, and "Not major angst, but not major fluff either." Well, er, the angst sort of happened, but I hope this stays on the right side of the line. (Minor angst, perhaps? Lets just call it drama, shall we?). Thanks again to the ever-lovely D for her always-fab assistance and eagle eye.
Let go your hand from my shoulders
Dear Hugo,
The new year approaches and we’re preparing for the annual spring departure of some of the Muggle-born students. No matter how often we explain to the parents that their children’s education must not be interrupted, they insist on pulling them out to help at home. I suppose I understand--for many families, they need as many hands in the fields as possible--but I can’t help thinking that it hurts the child’s adjustment to wizarding society. When those children grow up, chances are they won’t be going back to their families.
Perhaps Rowena’s right; we need to better prepare their families for the fact that--for all intents and purposes--once their children come to us, they’ve lost them. We’re not making the transition any easier for anyone by allowing the parents to pretend that everything will go back to "normal" when the child’s education is finished.
For once, though, this year we didn’t have to endure Salazar’s usual sarky attitude about the whole thing. Now that I think about it, he’s been absent a lot recently. It’s hard work getting him out of the dungeons for anything, these days. I can just imagine what kind of nonsense he’s getting up to down there.
Rowena reminded me a few days ago that in June it will have been thirty years since our first students arrived. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. No wonder my hair’s so grey: thirty years of trying to pound knowledge into the heads of illiterate Muggle-borns and snotty pureblood brats who think they know it all already. Not to mention thirty years of living under the same (admittedly capacious) roof as Salazar Slytherin and his Gorgon. Pardon me, wife.
As I’ve said before, you’d love her: the perfect example of pureblood hauteur and discrimination. And incompetence; Merlin, I don’t think the woman could boil water if her life depended on it, but she treats Rowena like garbage because one of her grandmothers was a Muggle. And the daughter of a butcher, at that, which is even more offensive to Her Imperial Majesty.
Well, that’s enough about those two, I’m sure.
To be honest, I’m just trying to put off working on the Almanac. My turn has come around again, and again every Saturday evening I find myself staring at blank parchment trying to figure out what might have happened that week that anyone in the future could possibly have any interest in.
Oh, pardon me, I do have some news: we had beets for dinner on Thursday, so I spent Friday in my classroom fighting an unholy case of wind. But I doubt scholars in the future will have much interest in my gas cramps. Rowena and Salazar always end up producing thick reams of parchment in their years; Godric always manages to fill his with the juicy school gossip that none of the rest of us teachers ever hear about. Why are my entries so boring? Maybe I need to get out more.
I can just see you rolling your eyes, but it’s boring. Admit it, Hugo, that last paragraph is the most boring thing imaginable. I’m not a boring woman; I refuse to accept that I’ve become boring in my old age.
I’m sorry. This is getting tedious, isn’t it? (there! boring again!) It’s just that this week has been hard on me, for some reason. I guess I’m starting to feel the cold in my bones and the school routine has become, well, routine. You know me and my short attention span. Perhaps I need to take some time away. But what would I do? Where would I go? My home and work are here.
I'm such an idiot. But then, you know that already. I guess I’m just in a funk. Things here are the same as always and I suppose I should be content with them as they are. Besides, excitement is over-rated, isn’t it?
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Salazar Slytherin is an idiot.
Helga smirked, then scratched out the line. She sighed and glanced at the pile of parchment Rowena had dumped on the corner of the table. The thought of ploughing through her colleague’s detailed remembrances of the construction of Hogwarts caused her shoulders to stoop a little bit more.
Helga Hufflepuff hates history.
She drew a crooked line through the pale ink.
She drummed her fingers on the desk.
She noticed that the candle near her right hand had burned down almost to the stub.
She jumped at the knock on her door.
It’s bloody late for a social call. "Yes?"
Faint muttering made its way through the heavy iron-bound oak as it jammed, then, after three shoves, scraped open with a groan of hinges. Rowena stood in the doorway, hair awry. "You plan on ever getting that fixed?"
Helga grinned. "Isn’t it after your bedtime, young lady?"
"Ha ha." Rowena paced to the front of the fire, stretching her hands out to the heat. "How can you stand this cold?"
"It’s not cold in here."
Rowena shuddered and rubbed her upper arms as she turned to warm her back. "Busy? You weren’t in the hall for dinner."
"I ate after you. I had some things to finish."
Helga watched her friend give the room a good once-over. A small grin started to curl up the corners of her mouth as she waited for Rowena to get to why she was there in the cold, damp dungeon so late at night.
"Anything new? Or are you still working on that shrinking potion?"
"Oh, that’s not going anywhere. I thought I’d putter around with a few things I’ve had rattling around in the old bean for a while."
"Oh. Really. Anything interesting?"
"Probably not to you."
"Nothing revolutionary?"
"Nope."
"Or earthshattering?"
Rowena’s tone gave Helga pause. "Noooo. Not even remotely. Why?"
Rowena walked over to the Cabinet of Catastrophes, where Helga kept the results of some of her more spectacular failed experiments. As she always did, Rowena tapped the glass front, and the trout skeleton turned its head to glare at her with its empty eye sockets before returning to its usual bored indifference to everything outside its tiny home. "Theodora’s in fine form."
"What’s on your mind, Rowena?"
The other woman sighed. "So. You’ve got nothing out of the ordinary on the go?"
"Well--"
"I mean more out of the ordinary than usual."
Helga frowned. "Why?" She pointed at a nearby chair. "Sit."
Rowena fiddled with a button on the cuff of her robe for a moment, then looked over. "Do you think Salazar has been acting strange lately?"
"Salazar?"
"Yes. I mean, more strangely than usual."
"Salazar?"
"Yes, Salazar. Salazar Slytherin. Tall fellow. Scowls a lot. Married to a Gorgon."
Helga couldn’t help herself. "That would explain the scowling."
"Helga, really!"
She pointed at the chair again."Sit. What makes you think Salazar’s being even stranger than his usual self?"
The woman finally sat, but immediately began to fidget, then made an effort to stop herself as she resolutely linked her hands in her lap. "He’s never around."
"Again, what makes you--?"
"He’s doing hardly any teaching outside his little--I don’t know--gang, club--"
"Coterie."
"Yes."
"Yes. So?"
"Helga! Damn it!" Rowena leapt to her feet and began pacing in front of the fireplace. "Stop being so bloody unflappable about this."
Helga chuckled. "That’s a new one." She hadn’t seen Rowena waving her arms about like that in fifteen years, at least.
Rowena stopped mid-flail and gave her friend a rueful smile. "Yes, well. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed."
"Hmm. Salazar behaving strangely." She drawled. "What exactly is it that makes you think he’s being even more Salazar-ish than normal?"
"He and Godric are fighting--"
"And how is that--?"
"No, really fighting. Not sniping or bickering like an old married couple--"
"I’ve always wondered--"
"Helga! Let me finish!"
Rowena was almost crying. Chastened by her friend’s distress, Helga gestured for her to continue.
"I think." Rowena smoothed her hair back with a shaking hand and took a deep breath. "I think he’s doing something in the dungeons."
Helga opened her mouth to say, "He’s been doing things in the dungeons for nigh on thirty years," but the left the words unsaid at Rowena’s raised hand.
"I mean, doing things to the dungeons."
"Doing things, as in, what? Rearranging the furniture? Painting moustaches on the gargoyles?"
"Doing things, as in, making new ones."
Leaning back in her chair, Helga whistled. "No. Really?" She absently grabbed a quill and picked at the nib, avoiding Rowena’s solemn eyes. "Why?"
"I don’t know."
"He doesn’t need the space. He has fewer students than any of us."
"I know."
"Can’t be a classroom."
"I don’t think so."
Rowena sunk back into the hard chair across from Helga’s desk, and the two women sat in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts.
Eventually, Helga broke the silence. "Is the school in danger?"
"Structurally? I don’t know. But something’s happening to the protective enchantments around the west perimeter of the dungeons."
Helga felt a groan rumble in her chest. "Do you think his students are involved?"
"Who knows? I hope not."
"It could be something perfectly innocuous, you know." But I doubt it.
"Why be so secretive about it? He knows there’s not supposed to be any tampering with the building unless we all agree."
"You know Salazar; secrecy’s a habit with him."
"That’s another matter entirely. We’ve let him get away with too much in the last few years. It’s as if he’s not really one of us any more. We never see him; we never know what he’s doing. How long has it been since he’s been involved in anything outside his group? Three years?" Rowena paused. "No, five. Honestly, how could we allow that to happen?"
"We’re all busy. Time passes." Helga shrugged. "He hardly takes on any new students."
"One in December and two last spring."
With a sigh and a twinge in the centre of her back that took her breath away for a moment, Helga stood and shuffled over to the huge oak cabinet on the other side of the room. A muttered spell later, and she was withdrawing a large crystal decanter and two glasses. "I can’t believe we never noticed anything." She plopped the glasses on the desk and filled them.
"Unwatered wine, Helga?" Rowena made a valiant attempt to tease, which cheered the older woman somewhat, but the effort was belied by the frown lines crossing her friend’s forehead.
"Shush. Medicinal use. You’re distraught." She forced a mischievous grin she didn’t feel onto her face. Rowena chuckled.
They sat, sipping their wine, staring into the fire. Helga felt the knot of tension in the centre of her stomach ease a bit. "It’s a pity the Gorgon’s not back from London yet," she muttered into her half-full glass.
Rowena suppressed a snort behind a small hand. "Never thought I’d hear you say that."
"Well, if she’d been here we could ask her. You know he doesn’t so much as fart without her leave."
Rowena snickered, then looked contrite. "Oh, dear. It’s unfair of us to make fun of him, poor man."
Helga made a tsk of annoyance. "Poor Salazar, my eye. He got exactly what he wanted: access to her father’s friends and money. I doubt he’d change a thing if he had to live his life over again." She took another drink. "Prat."
The two women watched a burst of sparks fly up the chimney as Helga added a log from the pile next to the hearth.
"What are we going to do?"
Helga shifted in her chair and studied the fire’s light refracted by the chiselled decoration of her glass.
"Helga?"
She didn’t reply for a few moments. "Let’s try to find out if there’s anything going on we need to worry about, first." She looked over to her friend’s concerned eyes. "Leave it with me."
Rowena turned back to the fire. "Okay."
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Hugo,
What the hell have I gotten myself into? Honestly, sometimes I think you were right all those years ago when you used to say what an idiot I was, letting my mouth run away with me before my brain could catch up.
I am such a moron. I can’t believe what I’m doing, skulking around the dungeons like a naughty child raiding the kitchens. How old am I? I think you were right, all those times you told me I was too gullible for my own good. Not that I think Rowena’s wrong; she’s a clever girl. Well, not a girl any more. How old is she now? Fifty-four? No. Not a girl any more, not by a long shot.
But she’s always been the clever one. If you’d known her, I think even you would have had to admit that, you old woman-hater. But she’s still got that damnable curiosity that won’t let her leave anything alone once it catches her interest.
Now she’s got me convinced that Salazar is up to something. The thing is--and you know this about Salazar as well as anyone, Hugo--he probably is up to something, I don’t know, unsavoury.
He’s been acting so strange for a while now. I can’t believe none of us noticed until now. And it’s only because Rowena caught something going on with the building. What does that say about us? We’ve all been so wrapped up in our own work and students we haven’t noticed the changes. But looking back over the last few years, the signs have been there that he’s been withdrawing from the rest of "our little village" as Rowena insists on calling the school. Loathing that expression is one of the few things that Salazar and Godric agree on, these days.
Of course, nitwit that I am, I volunteered to find out what was going on. And after six weeks of sneaking around like a horny teenaged boy prowling around after curfew, I’ve come up with nothing.
My instincts are all yelling that something’s going on. I can always tell with Salazar, no matter how sneaky he is, no matter how good a liar he is with the others. Well, when I pay attention, that is.
Now I’m curious, damn Rowena and her bloody monitoring spells and obsessive protectiveness. Before I just thought she was over-reacting, but now I’m starting to think she may be on to something. What, exactly, I’m not sure. But I’m damned well not going to stop until I find out.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
"That man is driving me crazy!"
"What man?"
Godric spun around, a startled look on his face. "You have to ask?"
Helga carefully placed the ladle back on the work bench and turned. "He’s been driving you crazy since you were ten. And vice versa."
The man gave a dismissive wave as he began to pace in front of her, his stumpy legs stomping on the freshly-washed flagstones. "You agree with me then, don’t you?"
"Of course I do. It’s been the plan from the beginning." Her cool tone seemed to have penetrated Godric’s anger, as he sent her an apologetic half-smile.
"Sorry. It’s just, he’s being so obnoxious about this one."
"What’s so special about this girl?"
With a sigh, he dropped onto one of the benches drawn up in a tidy row behind the student work tables. "Nothing. It’s the same old--. Well, no, not really. She’s, I don’t know, different."
"Her family are--"
"The absolute lowest of the low. Bound serfs. Little better than house elves, in the Muggle world."
Helga watched as her hands, apparently having developed a will of their own, began to drift back to her brewing. "Perhaps that’s what Salazar--"
"It doesn’t help, I know. But that’s not it, and you know it."
"Why this girl, though? Why’s he decided to make such an issue of this one?"
"Well, if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be talking to you, would I?"
Helga’s head jerked up.
"Sorry." He ducked his chin and picked with a ferocious intensity at a splinter lifting from the edge of the table in front of him. In that moment Helga was reminded of a dark-haired boy, small for his age, sitting in the corner of her kitchen while Hugo’s other students argued, fighting for supremacy in the nightly dinner-table battles, each vying for a word of praise from their master and mentor.
Fifty years. She wondered if she was destined to spend the rest of her life trying to keep Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin from sniping each other to death. With a sigh, she picked up a cloth and began polishing the chopping knives in their perfectly ordered rows in front of her. "Maybe we should, I don’t know, let this one go."
"Helga," he growled and the wizard at the peak of his power reappeared.
"I know. It’s wrong. But how far are you willing to push him on this? He’s been acting very strange for a while now--"
"As far as it takes. And I’m surprised at you suggesting that."
She huffed and rolled her eyes. "Merlin, you two will be the death of us all. Why don’t I get a ruler and the two of you drop your drawers and we’ll settle this once and for all?"
"Helga!" He grinned and she could feel the tension in the room dissipate a little. "I never suspected you wanted in Slytherin’s pants. You dirty old woman."
"Yes, I used to leer out my kitchen window at the two of you bathing in the pond behind the cottage when you were boys." She gave a melodramatic sigh. "But the world won’t accept our love, so we must take our dark secret to our graves," she drawled, crossing her arms over her patched, stained work robes. "And I notice no protestations against the idea of me getting in your pants."
"I put out for anyone; everyone knows that." She snorted, while Godric snickered, then became solemn again. "The girl needs to come here."
"I know."
"She’s--Merlin, she’s powerful. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it in forty years. She’ll never be able to cope out there on her own. Leaving her with the Muggles is a death sentence. She’s only nine and she’s generating spontaneous magic almost every day." He jumped up and resumed pacing, then stopped halfway across the room, just outside the circle of light from the torches around her work table. "She’s afraid, Helga. All the time. The idiot Muggles have convinced her she’s possessed. If we leave her there, she won’t see fifteen; they’ll try to burn her and gods only know what’ll happen then."
"I know, I know." She paused and forced her hands to stay away from the implements arrayed on the table. "Have you spoken to Rowena?"
"Yes. Has she told you her cockeyed story about expanding the dungeons, or something?"
"Yes, she said something in the winter."
"Thanks for sharing."
"We don’t know what he’s doing, and until we do there was no point in telling you something that’d just send you flying off the handle. The two of you at each others’ throats all the time stopped being amusing about twenty years ago."
"Very funny."
"I wasn’t trying to be."
"Point taken, mother. But if he’s damaging--"
"Leave it, Godric. I’m dealing with it." She regretted her whipcrack tones as soon as the words left her mouth.
"Okay, okay." He paused and turned his wandering fingers to an acid burn on the surface of the table. "What are we going to do about--?"
"Same as we’ve done every other time; she’ll become your student, or mine. I don’t care about her family. I don’t see her fitting into Rowena’s group, though." Helga shrugged. "If her family allows it, bring her in, see how she copes. I’d like to meet her, at least. By the sounds of it, she’ll need a lot of work." She picked up one of her more merciless cleavers and began whacking a pile of decapitated mandrake roots into submission. "Bloody priests," she muttered in time with her arm swings. "I’d like to wring a few of their scrawny necks, the illiterate, superstitious, brainless oafs. Telling a nine-year old that she’s possessed--"
Preoccupied, she didn’t hear Godric’s chuckle as he left, closing the door behind him as quietly as the massive slab would allow.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Hugo,
I swear to all the gods living and dead that those two idiots are driving me to drink. Well, you know. More than usual.
Now more than ever I wish you were here to smack their fat heads together and yell at them to shut up and get to work, like you did when they were boys scrabbling and bickering in our back workroom. Sometimes I think they’re still fourteen years old, deep down. But they’re not anymore and Salazar’s a man long grown, so swift boots up the arse probably aren’t appropriate, regardless of how tempting they might be. Who knows; he probably wouldn’t listen to you any more than he listens to me, now, no matter how much he looked up to you when he was one of your spotty apprentices with dreams of glory.
When Rowena brought this to me, I didn’t want to believe it. I thought she was over-reacting (clever as she is, she’s prone to it). But now that I’ve thought about it, she’s right. It’s been going on for at least a couple of years.
Of course, he found out I was snooping on him. As you know, subtlety has never been my strong suit. In the 57 years I’ve known him, man and boy, I’ve never seen him so angry. Completely beyond himself. If he were a weaker wizard, I’d think he was under a curse, and if I was a Muggle I’d think he was possessed. Really, Hugo. It was different from anger, even from rage. Those are --I don’t know--hot emotions. He was so cold, so hateful. That’s what it was: hate. I can’t imagine what would bring that on, but Rowena’s right: something has changed here, and very much for the worse. I just wish I knew why.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
"You’re insane."
"Helga, I do not need a lecture from you right now."
"Oh, yes you do. Damn it, Salazar! Do you have any idea what this will mean for the school? For the rest of us?"
"Thank you very much for thinking of me as some sort of idiot. Unlike some people who shall remain nameless, I do not act without understanding the full implications of my actions."
"Don’t go over all pedantic with me, Salazar Slytherin. I’ve known you too long for that."
He gave her the look that always set her blood boiling; the one that signalled that its owner felt put-upon for being required to refrain from hexing everything and anyone around him for the foul crime of not being him. "I’m sorry. I’ve given this much consideration and I’ve made my decision."
"All because of one girl? Honestly, that is the stupidest--"
"No, it is not about one girl, despite what Godric thinks. It is about the future of our world. We four have a responsibility to ensure--"
"That magical children receive a proper education. Or don’t you remember?"
"I remember very well the terms of our charter. I also remember agreeing that each of us would have control over the choosing of our own students, without interference from the other--"
"And you’re interfering in Godric’s choice of his students. How is this girl imposing on you? How? How is this one girl different from the others?"
"Bringing someone of her background into this school will affect the other students."
"Heaven forbid any of your students be required to pass someone like her in the corridor. Or sit twenty feet away from her in the Great Hall, or--"
"This is about the very future of our society. You know this."
"Yes. You’re right. I do know that. I also know that that girl belongs in it, regardless of what you and your idiot wife think!"
He drew himself up. "I thought you of all people understood. You have always supported--"
"Salazar, I’ve always understood how important this issue is to you. I’ve always believed that our four houses needed to be independent. But I’ve never agreed with you. Not about this." She paused and gave him what she hoped he’d recognise as a commiserating smile. "We’ve known each other a long time. I like to think we’re friends. But I have to think of the school first. And I think what you’re trying to do is wrong. You can’t dictate who Godric or I take as students, just as we can’t force you to take a student you don’t want."
He snorted. "This is a bigger issue than that. It’s--" He paused and moved off to stare into the fireplace. Helga waited while he gathered his thoughts. After a minute, he turned, his face with the strained, haughty expression she hated but had become accustomed to over the years. "I cannot, in all conscience, remain in a place where my beliefs are ridiculed and my work sabotaged."
She sighed and scrubbed at her tired eyes. "Oh, get over yourself, Salazar. The future of wizarding society does not rest on your shoulders."
"I beg your pardon?"
She recognised that tone. The one that spoke of heels well dug in; the one that he knew got up her nose. For a minute or so the only sound was the pop and crackle of the incongruous, cheery fire in the grate behind her.
Forcing her tone as neutral as possible, she eventually replied. "You heard me." Suddenly exhausted, she rubbed a hand over her brow. Looking back at him, Helga saw no change in his expression, as if he were alone in the room, waiting for a tiresome undertaking to begin.
Well, in for a penny, she thought, marshalling her resolve before it abandoned her for friendlier climes. "Salazar," she began in tones she realised were the ones she usually reserved for calming enraged parents and the occasional well-armed child. He turned very slowly to face her, though to her growing unease his expression was still frozen. "What exactly have you been doing to the dungeons?"
In all the years Helga had known him Salazar Slytherin had never smiled. He’d smirked, and occasionally chuckled, but in more decades than she cared to count, she’d never seen a genuine smile on his face. But now, as if lit from within, his face seemed to glow, radiant in her dark office; his pale skin stretched over the bones of his thin, ascetic face, with a toothy, skull-like grin like one of the gargoyles that graced his students’ common room.
After a long moment the smile faded, though the light in his grey eyes remained. Helga feared for her belongings; it was as if he’d set afire anything his eyes lit upon.
"Something beautiful."
She swallowed, then cleared her throat. "What?"
The smile flickered back, just for a momemt. "You will see. When the time comes."
The conversation was getting away from her, and she almost didn’t want to know what was waiting for them in the deepest recesses of the dungeons. She pressed the heel of a hand to her forehead in an attempt to push back the headache beginning to bloom at the front of her brain. "Salazar." Those tones again, she noticed. "I need to know--"
"With all due respect, Helga, I am no longer required to have any interest in what you think, feel or need."
Her head snapped back just as if he’d struck her. "And you’re no longer required to have any interest in those children you’ve taken responsibility for? That you’ve isolated from the rest of the school, teaching them Merlin only knows what?" The blistering tone surprised her--she didn’t think she was capable of that kind of passion for anything any more--but the man didn’t appear to notice. He’d turned to the cabinet along the wall across from her desk and was taking a token interest in its contents. "I can’t believe you’re going to do this."
He slowly turned to her, his face back to its more familiar barely restrained disdain. "You really don’t understand."
She grit her teeth and took a deep breath. "No. You’re right. I don’t. Did you think about your students? You chose them. And now you’re abandoning them. They’re your responsibility. Throw away thirty years’ work; I don’t care. You put years of blood, sweat and tears into this school, same as the rest of us, and you can just walk away from it without a glance back?" She paused, surprised to realise she was breathing heavily, as if she’d run up the three flights to the great hall. "I don’t undersand it, turning your back on your students. You claim to be so concerned about the future of wizarding society, but leaving those children shows us what you really are, Salazar Slytherin. You’re a hypocrite, and I don’t think I know you at all, not any more." She turned away before she said something she’d regret and paced over to the hearth.
Helga expected an explosion, a battle-grade Slytherin meltdown. But nothing came. Silence. She turned and saw the room behind her empty. With a sob, she dropped into the nearest chair and clutched her head in her hands.
With no regard for the encroaching cold, she watched the candle at the corner of her desk burn down the hours and gutter out.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Hugo,
The longer I stay here, the more I realise that I have no idea what the hell is going on.
In thirty years we’ve had only one child die, and that was due to illness. Now another one has, and I have no idea what to make of it. Regardless of what’s been going on the last few months, it would be a mystery and we’d be trying our damnedest to figure it out. But under the circumstances, and with Salazar leaving the way he did--well, it just seems like too much of a coincidence.
Maybe I’m just paranoid. Maybe it was a complete coincidence that the boy was found near the dungeons where Salazar had been messing around. Maybe dropping dead for no apparent reason without a mark on you is all the craze with kids these days. Who knows?
And it’s not like we don’t have other things to worry about. Who will take care of Salazar’s students? We never thought to prepare for this when we set up the school. Bloody stupid, of course; it’s not like any of us are going to live forever. Thinking on it, I realise now that who we choose to take on Slytherin’s students could end up being one of the most important decisions we make. They’ll be charged with trying to bring those children back into the community of the school. If we choose wrong it could jeopardise the school’s survival. And Merlin only knows what the snake-talking bastard's been teaching them all these years.
We can’t continue with things the way they are, that’s for sure. We can’t survive another blow like this one. And we still don’t know what he left behind.
I wish I could afford to be afraid, but I don’t have the time. But I can’t help it. I can’t help but sense that something awful’s going to happen (something else awful), and I don’t know what it’ll be, so how can we prepare for it? How do you prepare for what you can’t even imagine?
I suppose we wait. Wait and carry on and hope for the best. My affection for letting things drift along has faded over the years. Perhaps Rowena’s fussiness has worn off on me. But I suppose that’s all we can do: get up, eat breakfast, teach lessons, hope that the little beasts learn something useful, then send them on their way and start from scratch with the next bunch. And try to forget about the demon in the closet. Prepare for the day he decides to come out. Give him a good hard bash on the head when he does.
It’s not much of a solution, but I suppose it’s a start.
With much love, as always,
Helga
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further --Let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down, and depart on your way.
~ Walt Whitman, Whoever You are, Leading Me now in Hand
Author: dbassassin
Recipient: rosefyre
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Helga Hufflepuff, other Founders
Summary: Thirty years after the founding of Hogwarts, there’s something funny going on in the dungeons. Helga Hufflepuff is bound and determined to find out what it is.
Author's Notes: For rosefyre, who requested a fic focusing on female characters, and "Not major angst, but not major fluff either." Well, er, the angst sort of happened, but I hope this stays on the right side of the line. (Minor angst, perhaps? Lets just call it drama, shall we?). Thanks again to the ever-lovely D for her always-fab assistance and eagle eye.
Let go your hand from my shoulders
Dear Hugo,
The new year approaches and we’re preparing for the annual spring departure of some of the Muggle-born students. No matter how often we explain to the parents that their children’s education must not be interrupted, they insist on pulling them out to help at home. I suppose I understand--for many families, they need as many hands in the fields as possible--but I can’t help thinking that it hurts the child’s adjustment to wizarding society. When those children grow up, chances are they won’t be going back to their families.
Perhaps Rowena’s right; we need to better prepare their families for the fact that--for all intents and purposes--once their children come to us, they’ve lost them. We’re not making the transition any easier for anyone by allowing the parents to pretend that everything will go back to "normal" when the child’s education is finished.
For once, though, this year we didn’t have to endure Salazar’s usual sarky attitude about the whole thing. Now that I think about it, he’s been absent a lot recently. It’s hard work getting him out of the dungeons for anything, these days. I can just imagine what kind of nonsense he’s getting up to down there.
Rowena reminded me a few days ago that in June it will have been thirty years since our first students arrived. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. No wonder my hair’s so grey: thirty years of trying to pound knowledge into the heads of illiterate Muggle-borns and snotty pureblood brats who think they know it all already. Not to mention thirty years of living under the same (admittedly capacious) roof as Salazar Slytherin and his Gorgon. Pardon me, wife.
As I’ve said before, you’d love her: the perfect example of pureblood hauteur and discrimination. And incompetence; Merlin, I don’t think the woman could boil water if her life depended on it, but she treats Rowena like garbage because one of her grandmothers was a Muggle. And the daughter of a butcher, at that, which is even more offensive to Her Imperial Majesty.
Well, that’s enough about those two, I’m sure.
To be honest, I’m just trying to put off working on the Almanac. My turn has come around again, and again every Saturday evening I find myself staring at blank parchment trying to figure out what might have happened that week that anyone in the future could possibly have any interest in.
Oh, pardon me, I do have some news: we had beets for dinner on Thursday, so I spent Friday in my classroom fighting an unholy case of wind. But I doubt scholars in the future will have much interest in my gas cramps. Rowena and Salazar always end up producing thick reams of parchment in their years; Godric always manages to fill his with the juicy school gossip that none of the rest of us teachers ever hear about. Why are my entries so boring? Maybe I need to get out more.
I can just see you rolling your eyes, but it’s boring. Admit it, Hugo, that last paragraph is the most boring thing imaginable. I’m not a boring woman; I refuse to accept that I’ve become boring in my old age.
I’m sorry. This is getting tedious, isn’t it? (there! boring again!) It’s just that this week has been hard on me, for some reason. I guess I’m starting to feel the cold in my bones and the school routine has become, well, routine. You know me and my short attention span. Perhaps I need to take some time away. But what would I do? Where would I go? My home and work are here.
I'm such an idiot. But then, you know that already. I guess I’m just in a funk. Things here are the same as always and I suppose I should be content with them as they are. Besides, excitement is over-rated, isn’t it?
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Salazar Slytherin is an idiot.
Helga smirked, then scratched out the line. She sighed and glanced at the pile of parchment Rowena had dumped on the corner of the table. The thought of ploughing through her colleague’s detailed remembrances of the construction of Hogwarts caused her shoulders to stoop a little bit more.
Helga Hufflepuff hates history.
She drew a crooked line through the pale ink.
She drummed her fingers on the desk.
She noticed that the candle near her right hand had burned down almost to the stub.
She jumped at the knock on her door.
It’s bloody late for a social call. "Yes?"
Faint muttering made its way through the heavy iron-bound oak as it jammed, then, after three shoves, scraped open with a groan of hinges. Rowena stood in the doorway, hair awry. "You plan on ever getting that fixed?"
Helga grinned. "Isn’t it after your bedtime, young lady?"
"Ha ha." Rowena paced to the front of the fire, stretching her hands out to the heat. "How can you stand this cold?"
"It’s not cold in here."
Rowena shuddered and rubbed her upper arms as she turned to warm her back. "Busy? You weren’t in the hall for dinner."
"I ate after you. I had some things to finish."
Helga watched her friend give the room a good once-over. A small grin started to curl up the corners of her mouth as she waited for Rowena to get to why she was there in the cold, damp dungeon so late at night.
"Anything new? Or are you still working on that shrinking potion?"
"Oh, that’s not going anywhere. I thought I’d putter around with a few things I’ve had rattling around in the old bean for a while."
"Oh. Really. Anything interesting?"
"Probably not to you."
"Nothing revolutionary?"
"Nope."
"Or earthshattering?"
Rowena’s tone gave Helga pause. "Noooo. Not even remotely. Why?"
Rowena walked over to the Cabinet of Catastrophes, where Helga kept the results of some of her more spectacular failed experiments. As she always did, Rowena tapped the glass front, and the trout skeleton turned its head to glare at her with its empty eye sockets before returning to its usual bored indifference to everything outside its tiny home. "Theodora’s in fine form."
"What’s on your mind, Rowena?"
The other woman sighed. "So. You’ve got nothing out of the ordinary on the go?"
"Well--"
"I mean more out of the ordinary than usual."
Helga frowned. "Why?" She pointed at a nearby chair. "Sit."
Rowena fiddled with a button on the cuff of her robe for a moment, then looked over. "Do you think Salazar has been acting strange lately?"
"Salazar?"
"Yes. I mean, more strangely than usual."
"Salazar?"
"Yes, Salazar. Salazar Slytherin. Tall fellow. Scowls a lot. Married to a Gorgon."
Helga couldn’t help herself. "That would explain the scowling."
"Helga, really!"
She pointed at the chair again."Sit. What makes you think Salazar’s being even stranger than his usual self?"
The woman finally sat, but immediately began to fidget, then made an effort to stop herself as she resolutely linked her hands in her lap. "He’s never around."
"Again, what makes you--?"
"He’s doing hardly any teaching outside his little--I don’t know--gang, club--"
"Coterie."
"Yes."
"Yes. So?"
"Helga! Damn it!" Rowena leapt to her feet and began pacing in front of the fireplace. "Stop being so bloody unflappable about this."
Helga chuckled. "That’s a new one." She hadn’t seen Rowena waving her arms about like that in fifteen years, at least.
Rowena stopped mid-flail and gave her friend a rueful smile. "Yes, well. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed."
"Hmm. Salazar behaving strangely." She drawled. "What exactly is it that makes you think he’s being even more Salazar-ish than normal?"
"He and Godric are fighting--"
"And how is that--?"
"No, really fighting. Not sniping or bickering like an old married couple--"
"I’ve always wondered--"
"Helga! Let me finish!"
Rowena was almost crying. Chastened by her friend’s distress, Helga gestured for her to continue.
"I think." Rowena smoothed her hair back with a shaking hand and took a deep breath. "I think he’s doing something in the dungeons."
Helga opened her mouth to say, "He’s been doing things in the dungeons for nigh on thirty years," but the left the words unsaid at Rowena’s raised hand.
"I mean, doing things to the dungeons."
"Doing things, as in, what? Rearranging the furniture? Painting moustaches on the gargoyles?"
"Doing things, as in, making new ones."
Leaning back in her chair, Helga whistled. "No. Really?" She absently grabbed a quill and picked at the nib, avoiding Rowena’s solemn eyes. "Why?"
"I don’t know."
"He doesn’t need the space. He has fewer students than any of us."
"I know."
"Can’t be a classroom."
"I don’t think so."
Rowena sunk back into the hard chair across from Helga’s desk, and the two women sat in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts.
Eventually, Helga broke the silence. "Is the school in danger?"
"Structurally? I don’t know. But something’s happening to the protective enchantments around the west perimeter of the dungeons."
Helga felt a groan rumble in her chest. "Do you think his students are involved?"
"Who knows? I hope not."
"It could be something perfectly innocuous, you know." But I doubt it.
"Why be so secretive about it? He knows there’s not supposed to be any tampering with the building unless we all agree."
"You know Salazar; secrecy’s a habit with him."
"That’s another matter entirely. We’ve let him get away with too much in the last few years. It’s as if he’s not really one of us any more. We never see him; we never know what he’s doing. How long has it been since he’s been involved in anything outside his group? Three years?" Rowena paused. "No, five. Honestly, how could we allow that to happen?"
"We’re all busy. Time passes." Helga shrugged. "He hardly takes on any new students."
"One in December and two last spring."
With a sigh and a twinge in the centre of her back that took her breath away for a moment, Helga stood and shuffled over to the huge oak cabinet on the other side of the room. A muttered spell later, and she was withdrawing a large crystal decanter and two glasses. "I can’t believe we never noticed anything." She plopped the glasses on the desk and filled them.
"Unwatered wine, Helga?" Rowena made a valiant attempt to tease, which cheered the older woman somewhat, but the effort was belied by the frown lines crossing her friend’s forehead.
"Shush. Medicinal use. You’re distraught." She forced a mischievous grin she didn’t feel onto her face. Rowena chuckled.
They sat, sipping their wine, staring into the fire. Helga felt the knot of tension in the centre of her stomach ease a bit. "It’s a pity the Gorgon’s not back from London yet," she muttered into her half-full glass.
Rowena suppressed a snort behind a small hand. "Never thought I’d hear you say that."
"Well, if she’d been here we could ask her. You know he doesn’t so much as fart without her leave."
Rowena snickered, then looked contrite. "Oh, dear. It’s unfair of us to make fun of him, poor man."
Helga made a tsk of annoyance. "Poor Salazar, my eye. He got exactly what he wanted: access to her father’s friends and money. I doubt he’d change a thing if he had to live his life over again." She took another drink. "Prat."
The two women watched a burst of sparks fly up the chimney as Helga added a log from the pile next to the hearth.
"What are we going to do?"
Helga shifted in her chair and studied the fire’s light refracted by the chiselled decoration of her glass.
"Helga?"
She didn’t reply for a few moments. "Let’s try to find out if there’s anything going on we need to worry about, first." She looked over to her friend’s concerned eyes. "Leave it with me."
Rowena turned back to the fire. "Okay."
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Hugo,
What the hell have I gotten myself into? Honestly, sometimes I think you were right all those years ago when you used to say what an idiot I was, letting my mouth run away with me before my brain could catch up.
I am such a moron. I can’t believe what I’m doing, skulking around the dungeons like a naughty child raiding the kitchens. How old am I? I think you were right, all those times you told me I was too gullible for my own good. Not that I think Rowena’s wrong; she’s a clever girl. Well, not a girl any more. How old is she now? Fifty-four? No. Not a girl any more, not by a long shot.
But she’s always been the clever one. If you’d known her, I think even you would have had to admit that, you old woman-hater. But she’s still got that damnable curiosity that won’t let her leave anything alone once it catches her interest.
Now she’s got me convinced that Salazar is up to something. The thing is--and you know this about Salazar as well as anyone, Hugo--he probably is up to something, I don’t know, unsavoury.
He’s been acting so strange for a while now. I can’t believe none of us noticed until now. And it’s only because Rowena caught something going on with the building. What does that say about us? We’ve all been so wrapped up in our own work and students we haven’t noticed the changes. But looking back over the last few years, the signs have been there that he’s been withdrawing from the rest of "our little village" as Rowena insists on calling the school. Loathing that expression is one of the few things that Salazar and Godric agree on, these days.
Of course, nitwit that I am, I volunteered to find out what was going on. And after six weeks of sneaking around like a horny teenaged boy prowling around after curfew, I’ve come up with nothing.
My instincts are all yelling that something’s going on. I can always tell with Salazar, no matter how sneaky he is, no matter how good a liar he is with the others. Well, when I pay attention, that is.
Now I’m curious, damn Rowena and her bloody monitoring spells and obsessive protectiveness. Before I just thought she was over-reacting, but now I’m starting to think she may be on to something. What, exactly, I’m not sure. But I’m damned well not going to stop until I find out.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
"That man is driving me crazy!"
"What man?"
Godric spun around, a startled look on his face. "You have to ask?"
Helga carefully placed the ladle back on the work bench and turned. "He’s been driving you crazy since you were ten. And vice versa."
The man gave a dismissive wave as he began to pace in front of her, his stumpy legs stomping on the freshly-washed flagstones. "You agree with me then, don’t you?"
"Of course I do. It’s been the plan from the beginning." Her cool tone seemed to have penetrated Godric’s anger, as he sent her an apologetic half-smile.
"Sorry. It’s just, he’s being so obnoxious about this one."
"What’s so special about this girl?"
With a sigh, he dropped onto one of the benches drawn up in a tidy row behind the student work tables. "Nothing. It’s the same old--. Well, no, not really. She’s, I don’t know, different."
"Her family are--"
"The absolute lowest of the low. Bound serfs. Little better than house elves, in the Muggle world."
Helga watched as her hands, apparently having developed a will of their own, began to drift back to her brewing. "Perhaps that’s what Salazar--"
"It doesn’t help, I know. But that’s not it, and you know it."
"Why this girl, though? Why’s he decided to make such an issue of this one?"
"Well, if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be talking to you, would I?"
Helga’s head jerked up.
"Sorry." He ducked his chin and picked with a ferocious intensity at a splinter lifting from the edge of the table in front of him. In that moment Helga was reminded of a dark-haired boy, small for his age, sitting in the corner of her kitchen while Hugo’s other students argued, fighting for supremacy in the nightly dinner-table battles, each vying for a word of praise from their master and mentor.
Fifty years. She wondered if she was destined to spend the rest of her life trying to keep Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin from sniping each other to death. With a sigh, she picked up a cloth and began polishing the chopping knives in their perfectly ordered rows in front of her. "Maybe we should, I don’t know, let this one go."
"Helga," he growled and the wizard at the peak of his power reappeared.
"I know. It’s wrong. But how far are you willing to push him on this? He’s been acting very strange for a while now--"
"As far as it takes. And I’m surprised at you suggesting that."
She huffed and rolled her eyes. "Merlin, you two will be the death of us all. Why don’t I get a ruler and the two of you drop your drawers and we’ll settle this once and for all?"
"Helga!" He grinned and she could feel the tension in the room dissipate a little. "I never suspected you wanted in Slytherin’s pants. You dirty old woman."
"Yes, I used to leer out my kitchen window at the two of you bathing in the pond behind the cottage when you were boys." She gave a melodramatic sigh. "But the world won’t accept our love, so we must take our dark secret to our graves," she drawled, crossing her arms over her patched, stained work robes. "And I notice no protestations against the idea of me getting in your pants."
"I put out for anyone; everyone knows that." She snorted, while Godric snickered, then became solemn again. "The girl needs to come here."
"I know."
"She’s--Merlin, she’s powerful. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it in forty years. She’ll never be able to cope out there on her own. Leaving her with the Muggles is a death sentence. She’s only nine and she’s generating spontaneous magic almost every day." He jumped up and resumed pacing, then stopped halfway across the room, just outside the circle of light from the torches around her work table. "She’s afraid, Helga. All the time. The idiot Muggles have convinced her she’s possessed. If we leave her there, she won’t see fifteen; they’ll try to burn her and gods only know what’ll happen then."
"I know, I know." She paused and forced her hands to stay away from the implements arrayed on the table. "Have you spoken to Rowena?"
"Yes. Has she told you her cockeyed story about expanding the dungeons, or something?"
"Yes, she said something in the winter."
"Thanks for sharing."
"We don’t know what he’s doing, and until we do there was no point in telling you something that’d just send you flying off the handle. The two of you at each others’ throats all the time stopped being amusing about twenty years ago."
"Very funny."
"I wasn’t trying to be."
"Point taken, mother. But if he’s damaging--"
"Leave it, Godric. I’m dealing with it." She regretted her whipcrack tones as soon as the words left her mouth.
"Okay, okay." He paused and turned his wandering fingers to an acid burn on the surface of the table. "What are we going to do about--?"
"Same as we’ve done every other time; she’ll become your student, or mine. I don’t care about her family. I don’t see her fitting into Rowena’s group, though." Helga shrugged. "If her family allows it, bring her in, see how she copes. I’d like to meet her, at least. By the sounds of it, she’ll need a lot of work." She picked up one of her more merciless cleavers and began whacking a pile of decapitated mandrake roots into submission. "Bloody priests," she muttered in time with her arm swings. "I’d like to wring a few of their scrawny necks, the illiterate, superstitious, brainless oafs. Telling a nine-year old that she’s possessed--"
Preoccupied, she didn’t hear Godric’s chuckle as he left, closing the door behind him as quietly as the massive slab would allow.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Hugo,
I swear to all the gods living and dead that those two idiots are driving me to drink. Well, you know. More than usual.
Now more than ever I wish you were here to smack their fat heads together and yell at them to shut up and get to work, like you did when they were boys scrabbling and bickering in our back workroom. Sometimes I think they’re still fourteen years old, deep down. But they’re not anymore and Salazar’s a man long grown, so swift boots up the arse probably aren’t appropriate, regardless of how tempting they might be. Who knows; he probably wouldn’t listen to you any more than he listens to me, now, no matter how much he looked up to you when he was one of your spotty apprentices with dreams of glory.
When Rowena brought this to me, I didn’t want to believe it. I thought she was over-reacting (clever as she is, she’s prone to it). But now that I’ve thought about it, she’s right. It’s been going on for at least a couple of years.
Of course, he found out I was snooping on him. As you know, subtlety has never been my strong suit. In the 57 years I’ve known him, man and boy, I’ve never seen him so angry. Completely beyond himself. If he were a weaker wizard, I’d think he was under a curse, and if I was a Muggle I’d think he was possessed. Really, Hugo. It was different from anger, even from rage. Those are --I don’t know--hot emotions. He was so cold, so hateful. That’s what it was: hate. I can’t imagine what would bring that on, but Rowena’s right: something has changed here, and very much for the worse. I just wish I knew why.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
"You’re insane."
"Helga, I do not need a lecture from you right now."
"Oh, yes you do. Damn it, Salazar! Do you have any idea what this will mean for the school? For the rest of us?"
"Thank you very much for thinking of me as some sort of idiot. Unlike some people who shall remain nameless, I do not act without understanding the full implications of my actions."
"Don’t go over all pedantic with me, Salazar Slytherin. I’ve known you too long for that."
He gave her the look that always set her blood boiling; the one that signalled that its owner felt put-upon for being required to refrain from hexing everything and anyone around him for the foul crime of not being him. "I’m sorry. I’ve given this much consideration and I’ve made my decision."
"All because of one girl? Honestly, that is the stupidest--"
"No, it is not about one girl, despite what Godric thinks. It is about the future of our world. We four have a responsibility to ensure--"
"That magical children receive a proper education. Or don’t you remember?"
"I remember very well the terms of our charter. I also remember agreeing that each of us would have control over the choosing of our own students, without interference from the other--"
"And you’re interfering in Godric’s choice of his students. How is this girl imposing on you? How? How is this one girl different from the others?"
"Bringing someone of her background into this school will affect the other students."
"Heaven forbid any of your students be required to pass someone like her in the corridor. Or sit twenty feet away from her in the Great Hall, or--"
"This is about the very future of our society. You know this."
"Yes. You’re right. I do know that. I also know that that girl belongs in it, regardless of what you and your idiot wife think!"
He drew himself up. "I thought you of all people understood. You have always supported--"
"Salazar, I’ve always understood how important this issue is to you. I’ve always believed that our four houses needed to be independent. But I’ve never agreed with you. Not about this." She paused and gave him what she hoped he’d recognise as a commiserating smile. "We’ve known each other a long time. I like to think we’re friends. But I have to think of the school first. And I think what you’re trying to do is wrong. You can’t dictate who Godric or I take as students, just as we can’t force you to take a student you don’t want."
He snorted. "This is a bigger issue than that. It’s--" He paused and moved off to stare into the fireplace. Helga waited while he gathered his thoughts. After a minute, he turned, his face with the strained, haughty expression she hated but had become accustomed to over the years. "I cannot, in all conscience, remain in a place where my beliefs are ridiculed and my work sabotaged."
She sighed and scrubbed at her tired eyes. "Oh, get over yourself, Salazar. The future of wizarding society does not rest on your shoulders."
"I beg your pardon?"
She recognised that tone. The one that spoke of heels well dug in; the one that he knew got up her nose. For a minute or so the only sound was the pop and crackle of the incongruous, cheery fire in the grate behind her.
Forcing her tone as neutral as possible, she eventually replied. "You heard me." Suddenly exhausted, she rubbed a hand over her brow. Looking back at him, Helga saw no change in his expression, as if he were alone in the room, waiting for a tiresome undertaking to begin.
Well, in for a penny, she thought, marshalling her resolve before it abandoned her for friendlier climes. "Salazar," she began in tones she realised were the ones she usually reserved for calming enraged parents and the occasional well-armed child. He turned very slowly to face her, though to her growing unease his expression was still frozen. "What exactly have you been doing to the dungeons?"
In all the years Helga had known him Salazar Slytherin had never smiled. He’d smirked, and occasionally chuckled, but in more decades than she cared to count, she’d never seen a genuine smile on his face. But now, as if lit from within, his face seemed to glow, radiant in her dark office; his pale skin stretched over the bones of his thin, ascetic face, with a toothy, skull-like grin like one of the gargoyles that graced his students’ common room.
After a long moment the smile faded, though the light in his grey eyes remained. Helga feared for her belongings; it was as if he’d set afire anything his eyes lit upon.
"Something beautiful."
She swallowed, then cleared her throat. "What?"
The smile flickered back, just for a momemt. "You will see. When the time comes."
The conversation was getting away from her, and she almost didn’t want to know what was waiting for them in the deepest recesses of the dungeons. She pressed the heel of a hand to her forehead in an attempt to push back the headache beginning to bloom at the front of her brain. "Salazar." Those tones again, she noticed. "I need to know--"
"With all due respect, Helga, I am no longer required to have any interest in what you think, feel or need."
Her head snapped back just as if he’d struck her. "And you’re no longer required to have any interest in those children you’ve taken responsibility for? That you’ve isolated from the rest of the school, teaching them Merlin only knows what?" The blistering tone surprised her--she didn’t think she was capable of that kind of passion for anything any more--but the man didn’t appear to notice. He’d turned to the cabinet along the wall across from her desk and was taking a token interest in its contents. "I can’t believe you’re going to do this."
He slowly turned to her, his face back to its more familiar barely restrained disdain. "You really don’t understand."
She grit her teeth and took a deep breath. "No. You’re right. I don’t. Did you think about your students? You chose them. And now you’re abandoning them. They’re your responsibility. Throw away thirty years’ work; I don’t care. You put years of blood, sweat and tears into this school, same as the rest of us, and you can just walk away from it without a glance back?" She paused, surprised to realise she was breathing heavily, as if she’d run up the three flights to the great hall. "I don’t undersand it, turning your back on your students. You claim to be so concerned about the future of wizarding society, but leaving those children shows us what you really are, Salazar Slytherin. You’re a hypocrite, and I don’t think I know you at all, not any more." She turned away before she said something she’d regret and paced over to the hearth.
Helga expected an explosion, a battle-grade Slytherin meltdown. But nothing came. Silence. She turned and saw the room behind her empty. With a sob, she dropped into the nearest chair and clutched her head in her hands.
With no regard for the encroaching cold, she watched the candle at the corner of her desk burn down the hours and gutter out.
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Hugo,
The longer I stay here, the more I realise that I have no idea what the hell is going on.
In thirty years we’ve had only one child die, and that was due to illness. Now another one has, and I have no idea what to make of it. Regardless of what’s been going on the last few months, it would be a mystery and we’d be trying our damnedest to figure it out. But under the circumstances, and with Salazar leaving the way he did--well, it just seems like too much of a coincidence.
Maybe I’m just paranoid. Maybe it was a complete coincidence that the boy was found near the dungeons where Salazar had been messing around. Maybe dropping dead for no apparent reason without a mark on you is all the craze with kids these days. Who knows?
And it’s not like we don’t have other things to worry about. Who will take care of Salazar’s students? We never thought to prepare for this when we set up the school. Bloody stupid, of course; it’s not like any of us are going to live forever. Thinking on it, I realise now that who we choose to take on Slytherin’s students could end up being one of the most important decisions we make. They’ll be charged with trying to bring those children back into the community of the school. If we choose wrong it could jeopardise the school’s survival. And Merlin only knows what the snake-talking bastard's been teaching them all these years.
We can’t continue with things the way they are, that’s for sure. We can’t survive another blow like this one. And we still don’t know what he left behind.
I wish I could afford to be afraid, but I don’t have the time. But I can’t help it. I can’t help but sense that something awful’s going to happen (something else awful), and I don’t know what it’ll be, so how can we prepare for it? How do you prepare for what you can’t even imagine?
I suppose we wait. Wait and carry on and hope for the best. My affection for letting things drift along has faded over the years. Perhaps Rowena’s fussiness has worn off on me. But I suppose that’s all we can do: get up, eat breakfast, teach lessons, hope that the little beasts learn something useful, then send them on their way and start from scratch with the next bunch. And try to forget about the demon in the closet. Prepare for the day he decides to come out. Give him a good hard bash on the head when he does.
It’s not much of a solution, but I suppose it’s a start.
With much love, as always,
Helga
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Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further --Let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down, and depart on your way.
~ Walt Whitman, Whoever You are, Leading Me now in Hand