swa ic modsefan : minne sceolde, : oft earmcearig, : eðle bidæled : freomægum feor : feterum sælan, : siþþan geara iu : goldwine minne : hrusan heolstre biwrah, : ond ic hean þonan : wod wintercearig : ofer waþema gebind, : sohte seledreorig : sinces bryttan, : hwær ic feor oþþe neah : findan meahte : þone þe in meoduhealle : mine wisse, : oþþe mec freondleasne

The Wanderer

I

They'd found him by the lake in the aftermath of a terrible battle, they tell him, and despite their strange inflections he understands their language perfectly. He has heard it change, unaware and yet aware, until now, for more than a thousand years.

"I am Salazar Slytherin," he says again, wondering if they have misunderstood.

"St Mungo's for this one, then?" one laughs, and the other nods.

"Looks like it. Someone's hit him with something weird… Thinks he's Salazar Slytherin, can you imagine?"

II

.

He'd always loved the water. His father's hall had sat where the fens met the sea, a small wooden structure that took the wicked sting of the East wind as it battered the Norfolk coast, the winter seas rising right up to lash against the rocks, so that he and his brothers had felt the salt-spray sting their skin and laughed, rejoicing in the power of the wind.

They'd been hailed by those who lived around them, protectors and defenders, healers. Revered.

He and his brothers had learnt to ride and fire bows and swordfight and hunt, together with the Muggle boys from nearby lands, fought with them side by side when invaders came from the sea and from the Western kingdoms.

Until the day the Christian priests came and built their stone churches, and taught the villagers how to hate.

He'd been thirteen, a man with three battles under his belt when they'd come with fire and pitchforks in the night and burnt their Hall to the ground.

He'd been with Her, out on his boat, upstream, kissing her and tasting the starlight on her skin.

"Run," she'd told him when the sun rose, but it was not the sun, it was his home alight, his family's pyre, burning bright against the dark night.

She had known, and if she had told him he could have saved them but she'd chosen to save only him.

And so he'd run from his lands, and wandered far and wide, learning how hate could follow you and bite bitterly at your heels, how it could wait until you stumbled upon it in the guise of kindness, learnt how kind words turned to fear and mistrust.

He'd wandered until he'd met Her with her sea blue eyes and hair as golden as the dawn and yes, he'd said, I'll follow you anywhere. Helga, Merlin's daughter with her soft voice and kind words, who knew magic he'd never imagined, and together they'd wandered and learned.

And he'd learned and learned until he'd been the greatest sorcerer in the land, as great as her father had been, and they crossed into the other Kingdoms searching for others like them. Others whose power went beyond the little spells passed down in families, whose power could create as well as learn.

And then they'd met Him, a brother anew, with red hair like fire and eyes as warm as his burning hearth, and a laugh that boomed and he'd said, I have heard tell of a dragon, let us seek it.

And smiling and merry and brave, they'd set their course for the further North, crossing the Wall and braving the harshness of the winter and those who hated them for what they were because, the rumours whispered the vicious beast was terrorising the lands… A great serpent with fire, people said. Help us.

And so, they'd gone to find the lake the dragon dwelled beside, where once there had been a village, and there She'd been, her hair like ebony and eyes like the midnight skies, the great dragon towering over her, held back by some magic, by the shore of a lake. And he, Salazar, had sent water to the dragon and quenched its fire so that it fell, defeated, and She had said with her soft voice,

Here. We will build a castle, and teach them. Here.

.

.

The stirring had been slow, the coming together of a thousand thousand particles of being, He'd seen the fool-boy, his heir a thousand years too late, make the ancient call to his beast, watched helpless and trapped as he'd abused it.

But finally, a thousand years after he'd expected, the wards had been breached, and with the basilisk dead and blood spilled, he'd woken; the castle's last resort.

Woken, but unneeded. Too late.

III

"Just try and remember," the Healer says. The fourth they'd tried.

"I can remember perfectly," he hisses.

"You are suffering a delusion," she tells him as they all have told him, but they are wrong.

She gives him a mirror and he stares at his face, restored to its prime, his own dark hair and green eyes, and he says again, "I am Salazar Slytherin."

They'd bound his magic, when he tried to free himself from the prison Mungo's. The very people he'd returned to help, though not those he'd expected when he'd willing submitted himself to a safeguard so powerful it took his life.

They will tell their families and then they will come and burn this castle. We can never be safe.

So he stops replying, and sits in silence.

And then she comes, burning and glorious and raging.

IV

"This is unconscionable," she hisses at the dumb-struck Healers. "I'm taking him to the Ministry. Has it occurred to any of you that he's telling the truth? Have you even researched the possibility?"

"Miss Granger," they protest, but she overrules them.

"Give me his wand, and take that bracelet off."

They obey her, and he wonders if she is Queen of this realm, to be so obeyed.

.

.

"I think he's telling the truth, Kingsley," the woman Granger tells the dark skinned man. This is their King, he has gathered, they call him thus, and she is his fierce lieutenant, a warrior woman who burns with magic. "He's been in there for two years."

"How can we tell? It's a fantastical story."

"Look," she says, opening a book. "This is a portrait of Salazar Slytherin. An uncanny resemblance. Salazar Slytherin who disappeared one night, never to be seen again, but whose heir was defeated the day this appeared. Don't you think that's a bit odd?"

And she asks him how it is possible, so he tells her, relieved and hopeful. Someone is listening.

He tells her how he'd feared the Muggles would follow their children, people who'd burn their own children for the magic they held. Tells her how the other Founders had believed the caste too well warded, that such a thing was impossible. Tells her that even the knowledge of it, the confirmation of their world was a terrible danger to all of their kind. How he'd tried, tells her of the students who never returned, year after year until,

Enough, he'd said. This madness must end – we must be better hidden.

And they'd said, Leave.

He tells her how he could not bring himself to leave, how he'd sacrificed himself to the school, to reappear if its wards should ever be breached.

Merlin taught me, he says, and her eyes light up. She is fascinated and fascinating.

"The once and future king," she murmurs.

He tells her how he'd tied his bloodline to protect, how he'd watched them fail over and over again, how its end had called him forth.

He tells her everything, because she listens and believes.

"What about your basilisk?" she asks.

"She was the defender of the castle, enchanted to sleep until she was called to protect us – not… not to harm my students. Never that. I swear it."

.

.

He learns again. Learns that they had listened, six hundred years later, and hidden their world at last. Learns that this burning witch helped to save their world.

Learns that his basilisk almost killed her. Learns that she is dead, neglected and misused and unloved for a thousand years and now dead.

V

"Are you ready to see it?" she asks him.

"I believe so," he says and offers her his arm. She takes it without a thought, this girl born to Muggles who is filled with the love of magic, who has risked her life again and again to keep them all safe.

She takes him to the school and he revels that it is still there, still standing, bigger than ever it had been. Let me show you the real Chamber, he tells her, and she takes him to the entrance.

"And this is where girls piss?" he asks, baffled.

"Yes, when they installed modern plumbing… I suppose it was an unfortunate coincidence."

"I saw them, my heirs, I saw what they tried to do… I wasn't conscious until I was formed again but when I was I remembered everything I'd seen. I am truly sorry, Hermione."

"Don't be," she said. "You setting the record straight about your true beliefs has completely destabilised any lingering support for Pureblood supremacy. And they've finally agreed to let me set up a support system so it's not a tremendous shock to Muggleborns and their families when they turn eleven. I mean, do you know how many children were still being harmed for accidental magic because their parents didn't understand? Ridiculous. Now they can be prepared and if there are signs they are uncomfortable with magic it can be dealt with."

She was as brave as Godric, as brilliant as Rowena, as kind as Helga, and when he took her hand, and not her arm, she let him.

"This is not the entrance," he says. "There is another. This… this was the back door, I think. Perhaps we can find the proper way out."

And he takes her down there, and it is filthy and woe begotten until he unleashes his magic and she cries out as the water rises up so the walls run with it and become clean, and there is suddenly life again, as the great lights glow and she sees it is beautiful, and a boat comes at his call.

"Come, Hermione." he says. "Let me show you my library."

VI

Her friends do not like him. The red-headed boy, who looks nothing like Godric but for his hair, says so quite bluntly.

"He's the Slytherin, Hermione! How can you possibly trust him?"

"I do," she tells him. "And I personally think it's a very good thing that a thousand years of misinformation have been undone."

"He's a Dark Wizard!" the other says, and he sighs.

"Actually, he's not. Or – not really. Salazar – would you explain?" she asks.

And so he does. Magic is about balance. You must confront your darkness. Dark Magic can corrupt, but so can Light. Wielded together they are as day and night, as the moon and the sun. That is true Magic, he tells them.

.

.

The 'autobiography' she has helped him write has sold out in days, and he is rich.

The boys, her brothers, she has told him, grow used to him. They call him Sal. He does not mind; they are young and filled with humour and it is a sign of affection, or so she says. He believes her.

He has not kissed her yet.

VI

"What do you think?" he asks, and she smiles, her eyes alight.

"I think it's beautiful," she says, gazing at the stone house that gazes out in solitude over a vast lake and all of it is his. Theirs, he hopes. "Won't you be lonely, here?"

"It's just for holidays; I will not be able to spend a great deal of time here."

He is allowed to teach again.

Slytherin's class, they have called it. He can teach whatever he likes: lost magics, history, ethics, all the scattered aspects of magic that ought to be taught together as they were in the old days. He will teach them how to face the darkness in themselves and conquer it, as he once did. The Dark Arts, they call them, when mistaught are dangerous: he will teach them to resist the seduction, to balance their magic.

She says it's about time.

VII

It has been a year since she rescued him, and he takes her to dinner. To thank you, he says.

He has grown accustomed to this luxurious world of comforts and ease, and she has promised to teach him about the Muggle world when he is fully adapted to the modern magical one.

"Hermione," he says, afterwards, and takes her hand. "I love you."

"I know," she replies. "I love you too. I was just waiting you were ready."

VIII

They marry eventually, when he has helped restore her parents' memories, and her friends are there and the new friends he has made, smaller in number but there, are gathered, and it is perfect.

IX

She bears him a new heir, a black haired daughter with his green eyes and her fire, and he knows even when she is five she will be in her Mother's house, and he thinks somewhere Godric is laughing at him.

The boy (We are not calling him Godric, she says. That's so cheesy!) that follows soon after, with brown hair and brown eyes, is quieter, more like him and he thinks at least one of them, but Rowena claims him for her own in time and he laughs.

X

"I saw a programme on the telly vision," he tells her. "About Oxford University."

"Yes," she says, understanding what he doesn't need to ask. "Let's build a University together. The first in the Magical world. Yes."

They have asked her to be Minister, but she says no. No, this is what she wants, this matters.

.

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GUYS I REALLY ENJOYED WRITING THIS. It was fun to try something so stylistically different from S.P.E.

This is for the wonderful LilithiaRW, who wanted a Salazar/Hermione story. I hope you like it!