For Camp Potter (History - write about Salazar Slytherin); Fanfiction, School of Imagination and creativity (Sport and Physical Activity - write a fic within a 90 minute stretch); the Angst challenge of Epic Proportions (FREE RANGED CHICKEN with godricsalazar); the If You Dare Challenge (488. Love, Death and Immortality); the Character Diversity Bootcamp (6. Banner); the Legendary Gods and Goddesses Competition (Hades) and the Fantastic Beasts Challenge (Troll)
NOTE: Before you guys bombard me with factual correction, I am perfectly aware that I've basically destroyed everything canon tells us about Salazar in this fic, but that's part of the fun! Besides, I've been dying to write a fic about how the legends of the Founders were told and retold and the truth became completely unrecognisable, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so! Enjoy :)
i.
"I'm so sorry," Rowena whispers to him as he passes by her.
Godric ignores her. He knows it isn't fair – Helga and Rowena had loved Salazar too, in their own way– but he's lost the love of his life, and they've only lost a friend.
He's the one who has to make the final decisions, not them. He thinks he can afford to be a bit unfair.
ii.
It's Dragon Pox that causes it all.
Who would have ever thought that the great Salazar Slytherin would be brought low by a common disease?
But it happens, and it rips Godric's heart into two.
iii.
Godric buries his heart in a glass coffin.
It's extravagant and over the top, but it's also for Salazar. He deserves the best, and Godric refuses to give him anything less than that.
He places the coffin in a little cave in Avalon.
Salazar, the most private of people, doesn't deserve to have the entire world trample over his grave, and this way, Godric has the privacy he needs to visit the man he loves.
iv.
It takes nearly a week for the news of Salazar's demise to reach the ears of the students.
Rowena and Helga have been too wracked by their own grief to notify the children, and Godric couldn't care less about anyone.
The black robes never disappear from the school.
v.
It is hard for Godric, returning to the school. He built it with Salazar by his side, and it never again feels the same without his smile and his sharp wit – without him.
The simplest things nearly have him breaking down into tears – Salazar's Potions classroom, the Room of Requirement they built to help all the pranksters of Hogwarts, past, present and future.
And when he goes into the Chamber that Sal had built just for the two of them, he cannot control himself any longer.
It's the first time he cries after Salazar's death.
vi.
It takes a year or two of running the school without Salazar that he notices it.
For some reason, the Sorting Hat never sends a child who hasn't grown up at least partly in the magical world into Slytherin. When he questions it, it says that those children who come from completely non-magical families are usually too preoccupied with adapting to magical life to have the ambition and cunning needed to be Sorted under the banner of Slytherin.
Maybe he should have protested, dug a little deeper, but Godric is slightly relieved. Salazar will remain one of a kind, the only magical child born of non-magical parents to have had the ambition, cunning and drive that will land him in the history books.
vii.
Slowly, the world moves on.
Godric, however, never does. He loved and lost Salazar, and he knows that he will never love again.
Rowena and Helga never say a word, knowing how deeply he loved, but the rest of the world has no such qualms. They urge and urge him to marry and love again, but he knows he never will.
Salazar Slytherin was his soulmate. It wouldn't be right, or fair, to marry someone he will never love, someone who will never be able to live up to Salazar for no fault of theirs.
When Salazar was still alive, they had entertained the thought of adopting orphans who had lost their parents to the death and disease that ravished their world, one to carry on each of their names.
But Salazar is gone, and the continuation of the Slytherin line rests in the hand of his younger sister, the sister who is so much braver than Godric will ever be. Had there been Houses when they had taught her, he has no doubt that she would have been in his own.
As for the Gryffindor name, Godric knows it will die out with him.
viii.
He finds it ironic, the fact that he is the one who created the house of the brave.
His students are brave; the Sorting Hat does its job well.
But he?
He is anything but brave or courageous.
If he was, he would be able to find a way to truly live again.
He knows Salazar would never have wanted this for him, this awful limbo of devastation he finds himself in. He knows that Salazar would have wanted him to move on. After all, had their positions been reversed, he would have felt the same.
But he cannot. Salazar is gone from his life, and with him, he has taken all the courage that had once upon a time propelled Godric to do the things that had made him famous.
He just doesn't have the bravery left to face the world without Salazar by his side.
ix.
Godric dies with Salazar's name on his lips.
He's young, too young for his death to come as anything less than a shock to the world. Salazar had died of Dragon Pox. Godric joins him just over two and half decades later, with no plausible cause for his death.
Rowena and Helga don't say anything, but they know that he died of a broken heart.
Because Godric without Salazar was only a shell of a man, and there was only so long he could have gone on living with only half of his heart.
x.
In the future, the school Godric and Salazar had lovingly built goes crazy.
Their Chamber becomes the home for a basilisk bred by a vengeful, pureblood supremacist, and the house that Salazar had hoped would help form the leaders of the wizarding world became a breeding ground for Dark Lords and power-hungry maniacs.
In the future, the stories would claim that Salazar was one the greatest bigots to ever live, the man who abandoned the school he had built with a final vow to cleanse it of children from non-magical families.
Godric and Salazar's story would be lost in the sands of time as retellings by wizards and witches intent on shaping the past to further their ambitions would render it unfathomable to someone who knew the truth.
In the future, Godric and Salazar would be known as nothing more than friends turned lifelong enemies.
But these are things Godric couldn't care less about. Because the pain he feels is all consuming, and the only thing he can think about anymore is SalazarSalazarSalazar.
epilogue
Sometimes the greatest love stories aren't the ones that reach the history books, they're the ones that are untold or have been lost to the memories of the dead.
In a cave in Avalon lies a glass coffin and a metal plaque bearing a simple inscription.
Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin
Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori
Not even time can heal the wound of a soulmate lost
Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur
Translations:
Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori: Love conquers all; let us yield to love
Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur: We choose to love, we do not choose to cease loving
I hope you guys liked this! As always, please drop a review on your way out :)