Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following piece of extreme silliness originated in the hours between staring hopelessly at some rewrite or other of the seventh chapter of 'Alternate Scene by the Lake 4'. Whilst this particular piece bares no relationship to that story, having now finally completed and posted aforementioned chapter, I can now put this particular one-shot out there without feeling guilty. This piece is (I must assume) alternate universe.

The problem with a wizard as renowned for his cunning and ambition as Salazar Slytherin is that he has a habit of showing up in places where other people were supposed to be – and where in fact he certainly wasn't.

Well that and his passion for scrabble.

On the latter count, take a game he played with Godric Gryffindor, a couple of dozen years after the founding of Hogwarts. (No, muggles hadn't 'invented' scrabble at that point; Europe was only just emerging from the 'Dark Ages', but Salazar and Godric were both wizards, and wizards back then played scrabble.) Salazar had nicely set things up to get out by playing all his letters in combination with letters already in place on the board and getting 'muggle-borns' across two triple letter scores, and Godric told him he couldn't do that because 'muggle-borns' was two words.

Well Salazar wasn't taking that and swore he would leave Hogwarts forever (or at least until it was treated as one word) and that was it.

Yes, the big row about 'muggle-borns' between Salazar and Godric – which was to later inspire centuries of mutual misunderstanding and bigotry between two of the Hogwarts houses – was actually over a word game, but Salazar was fond of his triple word scores. Even if they weren't always the highest points scoring options available.

Anyway, after leaving Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin wandered the lands incognito (he did this by pretending to be a succession of 'crazy wizards' who very vocally claimed to be Salazar Slytherin, on the basis that nobody would expect him to pretend to pretend to be himself) and the centuries zipped past.

Part of the reason that Salazar Slytherin managed to occasionally show up in places where other people were supposed to be was that by bending the laws of reality (in a suitably cunning fashion) he sometimes managed to get hold of prophecies before the seers who made them had even delivered them. This was one of those habits he had which annoyed the heck out of the Department of Mysteries (or at least it would have done so if they'd known he was still around and doing it). Quite how he did it was one of those mysteries on a par with how he managed to obtain the recipe for the elixir of life, why he remained singularly uninterested in the Deathly Hallows, or what he did with the Ark of the Covenant after preventing the National Socialists from getting their hands on it in the 1930's? It was just one of those things, and it resulted, in the late 1970's, in Salazar Slytherin entering the life of one Petunia Evans, with the highly specific goal of displacing Vernon Dursley as the object of her affections.

To be frank, Vernon Dursley never stood a chance in the lists of romance once Salazar Slytherin sashayed onto the scene. Vernon Dursley was a muggle with moderately good prospects in a drill firm. Salazar Slytherin was a wizard of tremendous cunning and a thousand years' experience of wooing various ladies. (Nobody in either the magical or normal world ever had the sense to ask why there always seemed to be 'heirs of Slytherin' around, even after it was thought that the line had gone extinct, yet again.) So Petunia Evans married a charming half-Spanish businessman (who never explained what his business exactly was or actually that he was rather more British than Spanish) and became Petunia Lionheart.

Salazar loved a good joke, and styling himself 'Salazar Lionheart' was a dig at Godric, without doing anything that might arouse the attention or interest of Petunia's soon-to-be-dead sister, Lily, or moderately-sooner-to-be-dead brother-in-law, James.

At least Salazar was reasonably sure that they would very soon be dead, at the hands of one of his errant distant 'heirs'. He might not have put himself through the bother of wooing and marrying Petunia if they hadn't (been due to be dead), although then again, given the sheer perversity of it, it was possible he might have gone through with it anyway.

When, at the tender age of six months, Salazar and Petunia's daughter, Audrey, proceeded to levitate herself out of her cot one evening, glowing brightly, Petunia assumed that it was 'her fault'. This was, in Salazar's view, a not unreasonable assumption for Petunia to make, given that Petunia's sister had turned out to be a witch, and that there was thus a history of magic in her family, whereas Salazar had never considered it necessary to disclose to Petunia that he was one of the greatest British wizards of the past thousand years.

Salazar expressed mild fascination with what Petunia reluctantly disclosed to him of what she thought that she knew about magic (which actually was rather more accurate than many genuine adult witches and wizards 'knew') and said that he would care for their children regardless of any peculiar talents that they might turn out to have. He used the word 'children', since Petunia was by this point with child again (on the occasions Salazar was married to someone, he saw no reason not to indulge himself in 'the bedroom department' at every reasonable opportunity – hence all those 'heirs') and he was to some extent extending this to cover the moment he anticipated that his nephew, Harry Potter, would arrive on the doorstep.

Several years later, Petunia was still wrestling with her conscience and the issue of whether to inform her sister, Lily, about Audrey, or Dudley, or Fred, (she had something of a fascination for the names of film-stars) or the as-yet unborn bundle of joy (should he/she turn out to be 'talented') when Hallowe'en of 1981 rolled around and Lily and James Potter expired.

Whilst Salazar had been expecting Harry Potter to end up turning up on Petunia's doorstep, he had to admit that Albus Dumbedore did surprise him by literally dumping Harry on the doorstep overnight, without even bothering to ring the doorbell. That was to prove a costly mistake by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. He had just made this whole thing personal in a manner which Tom Marvolo Riddle being an embarrassment to Salazar's bloodline by being a crazy would-be toddler-slayer had never done. Albus Dumbledore, Salazar swore, was going to pay for being such a poor specimen of wizardkind. At least the ancient Spartans (before, admittedly, even Salazar's time) had historically had motives for abandoning children to the elements and hazards of wild beasts. (Not that there were likely to be many wild bears, boars, or wolves roaming current day Surrey suburbuia, although the possibility of the odd stray dog, fox, or feral cat was not to be dismissed.) It was barbaric and the worst possible form of manners to just dump a toddler like that – hadn't the boy already suffered enough in recent hours with one deranged maniac (who at least had the excuse of believing him a prophecy-heralded rival) trying to kill him and at least managing to off his parents? And had Harry Potter's aunt not married a specimen of the very finest that humanity had to offer (such as Salazar Slytherin) but instead become connubially allied to some much grosser life-form such as the Vernon Dursley she had been fated to marry, the method of deposition would hardly have helped endear Harry to the household either.

Fortunately, Albus Dumbledore's manner of abandonment did have its upside – Albus Dumbledore had included a letter full of obfustications and attempts to hide the truth about Harry, and thus Salazar now had a sample of Albus Dumbledore's handwriting (and most importantly a specimen of his signature) with which to plot ways to amuse himself at the young whipper-snapper's expense in future years. It would, after all, have been highly remiss for a wizard of Salazar's longevity and reputation for cunning not to have familiarised himself with the arts of forgery over the years…

Author Notes:

In the weird and wonderful realms of fanfiction, someone with a mind more twisted than mine must surely have done a Salazar marries Petunia piece before, right?

As noted in the opening notes, this is a rather silly piece. At least one of the things Salazar is hinted to have been involved with, whilst generally messing around with fate/destiny, implies a crossover with a story which originated with cinema and the director Steven Spielberg.

Salazar interferes with destiny in the case of Petunia Dursley, since he feels embarrassed by Tom Marvolo Riddle being a wizard who tries to kill a toddler because he's scared of him (or something) and whilst he's not going to go so far as to confront Tom directly, he is going to darn well make up for Tom's idiocies by making sure that Harry gets a halfway decent childhood. Assume Salazar doesn't bother to try and save Lily/James or otherwise prevent the attack because whatever he does to find out about things in advance means that there are some things which even he can't change.

This story is a one-shot.