The Founders

Chapter 42

"Most people know that, when Hogwarts was first founded, the founders gradually became more and more selective about which type of students they wanted in their house. Godric Gryffindor wanted the brave ones, Rowena Ravenclaw wanted the clever ones, and Salazar Slytherin only wanted pure-bloods. Helga Hufflepuff was the only one who just accepted students, whoever they were.

"Slytherin felt that muggleborns shouldn't even be allowed into the school, let alone be educated there. What started as a belief which the other founders could mostly ignore quickly became an obsession with him.

"He wanted to purge the school of muggleborns, and when the other founders refused to support him, he decided to do it himself, secretly. That's when he first built his Chamber of Secrets.

"However, the other founders had by this point become suspicious enough of his actions that they didn't want him in the school anymore. Before he could unleash his monster on any muggleborns, he was driven from the school.

"Steeped in his own obsession and prejudices, he became more and more convinced of his idea that the magical world was being tainted by inferior muggleborns. He started learning the Dark Arts, which he saw as the only effective method against them.

"In the process of learning the Dark Arts, he started using muggleborns as subjects, torturing them to death. Becoming more and more deeply entrenched in the Dark Arts, his mind slowly deteriorated and he became increasingly single-minded; remove the taint of muggleborns." Alexander's voice took on a text-book tone, as though he read this a thousand times.

"Dozens of muggleborns had died before the other founders finally realised that they needed to step in. Godric Gryffindor, who was now married to a muggleborn woman named Evelyn, had been the most vehement in his insistence that Slytherin needed to be stopped.

"When Slytherin heard about Godric's marriage, he was completely disgusted. He killed Godric's wife, Evelyn, and their child. He thought that he had done Godric a favour by removing the taint from his family. The amount of hatred that he had directed towards Evelyn during her death meant that he inadvertently created the first ever horcrux that the world had seen.

"Godric never recovered from the pain of his family being destroyed, but he vowed to use his remaining strength to prevent Slytherin from killing any more muggleborns. He, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tried to kill him, using their joint power to bring him down.

"However, all their spells glanced off him as if he had a permanent shield. They couldn't understand why, because they had never encountered a horcrux before and didn't realise that it was protecting him.

"They realised that their only choice was to somehow contain him in a magical stupor. They therefore gathered the objects that were most magically linked to themselves; Gryffindor chose his sword, Ravenclaw chose her wand, and Hufflepuff chose her cloak. Magically combining these in a ritual, they imbued them even further with their magic.

"Slytherin had now been trying to re-enter Hogwarts for a while, in an attempt to open the Chamber of Secrets. When Slytherin tried to advance on the castle, a cloud of dark magic surrounding him, the three founders used all their magic to temporarily incapacitate him. They performed a ritual over him, in which their three objects were used as magical anchors to keep his soul contained. Gryffindor, who had been severely wounded during the battle, died soon after.

"Then Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw decided that each of their successive heirs would inherit a duty; to guard the secret of the founders and to prevent the objects from ever being fused together again, and used to release Slytherin.