Keeping The Dark Lord (on his toes)

Chapter - 38. What Really Happened In The Past ( 27 September 1996 )

~Harry~

The next morning they found themselves in the Malfoy dining hall, watching with a mixture of suppressed laughter and horror as Godric Gryffindor, dressed in expensive dress robes, sat next to Rowena Ravenclaw drinking tea with his pinkie in the air, and whenever someone tried to talk to him, he would answer them in such a high version of Olde-English that they could barely comprehend what he was talking about.

Godric clearly hated every second of it, but a glance from Rowena had him sitting up straight and smiling again. At first, Harry was quite worried that Rowena had cast some kind of spell on Godric, but Voldemort soon took pity on him and informed him that Godric had a crush on Rowena, so he was trying to impress her despite hating every moment of it.

Harry felt a poke in his side and turned to see that Salazar had claimed the seat next to him, “If there’s anyone that could get Godric to behave, then it would be Rowena. She was a part of the reason why Godric haunted the castle as Peeves.”

Harry fully turned to the Slytherin Founder, “I still don’t get it. Why did all of you leave the castle then in the first place? You apparently knew that you wouldn’t die, so why didn’t you just carry on teaching?”

Salazar looked thoughtful as he nodded, “We could have, but how do you think other witches and wizards reacted when they grew old and died while we stayed the same? And it wasn’t as if we didn’t try. We ran the school for close to 500 years before rumors reached us that a small group believed that we were practicing Black Magic and sacrificing the students’ life energies to stay young.”

Harry could only gape at him, with Voldemort now paying close attention to their discussion from Harry’s other side, and Salazar nodded, “They couldn’t prove anything, but the fear that the rumors caused almost closed the school as parents stopped their children from coming to school. It was around that time that Godric and I traveled about to try and soothe the people’s fears that the school was attacked. Rowena and Helga managed to drive the attackers away, but the barrier they threw up to protect the school, sapped their magic.”

Harry looked up as he heard footsteps and he saw Rowena and Godric pull up chairs in front of them. Rowena then took over from Salazar’s tale, “Helga and I split up to each shield half of the school, she was a nature Sprite so she took the side of the forest while I chose to draw strength from the lake, seeing as it was the only source of water nearby. We held off the attack, but I was wounded and my body forced me into a deep slumber. With the last of my consciousness, I managed to send a short message to Godric, saying that I would be entering a healing sleep, but I wasn’t able to say where, as the squid, who is actually a baby Kraken named Poseidon, that I received from my older sister the day before I left, brought my body to a cave and guarded it until I woke up about a month ago.”

Harry saw Godric lightly squeeze her hand, “It took her the entire month to regain enough of her strength to swim to the surface and I only sensed her magic early yesterday morning. I of course found her message once Salazar and I returned from our trip, and I searched everywhere, but the Kraken was smart, he hid her in a cave with magic-suppressing rocks that would ensure that she didn’t overuse her magic any more than it already was, unfortunately, it also slowed down her healing and made her lose track of time.”

Harry frowned, “What happened then?”

Salazar spoke up once more, “When Godric and I got back and saw that there had been an attack, he told me about Rowena’s message and we searched for both Rowena and Helga, but couldn’t find a trace of either of them. We decided to start applying charms to make it seem as if we were growing older, but that didn’t help much because the damage had already been done. Godric decided to take on the form of a ghost after that as he mostly locked his magic away until he needed it again and I decided to help Death out a bit after he’d given me the suggestion. The ghostly form allowed Godric to stay at Hogwarts and to search for Rowena.”