Appearing suddenly behind Bryan and Dumbledore was a middle-aged wizard of extraordinary air, one who, by outward appearance alone, looked to be not yet forty years of age.
He was dressed in deep green robes of evident refinement—the cuffs embroidered with silver thread worked into a floral pattern, the front edges trimmed with two inch-wide bands of golden silk ribbon.
The middle-aged wizard possessed a proud, upturned nose and eyes that seemed to miss nothing, and thin, precisely composed lips; his sharply defined facial features were, taken together, genuinely handsome, yet touched throughout with a certain experienced quality.
The one unlovely thing about him, on close observation, was the cold light sitting in his pale green eyes, which lent his entire presence a faint air of menace.
"Professor Slytherin."
Dumbledore repeated the name softly.
His own gaze drifted downward as he spoke, lingering for a few breaths on the exquisite locket hanging at the man's chest, before finally settling with sharpened attention on the Resurrection Stone ring encircling his right thumb.
"Astonishing, isn't it, Bryan—"
As though fearful of disturbing the middle-aged wizard standing before them, Dumbledore spoke in the barest murmur of a whisper.
"—discussing homework, of all mundane things, at a moment like this."
Slytherin's own face seemed frozen throughout, incapable of much visible expression beyond its composure, yet a trace of clear mockery glinted in his pale green eyes as he stared at the two trembling students before him.
Bryan and Dumbledore, moving together with ease, stepped aside in unison and leaned back against the corridor wall, clearing a path directly from Slytherin's own chilling, assessing gaze—though of course, both men knew perfectly well that Salazar Slytherin could not actually see them at all.
The boy standing directly under that terrible gaze was drenched thoroughly in cold sweat, his already ashen face was now gone utterly bloodless—he was, plainly and thoroughly terrified of Salazar Slytherin.
"Have you a different answer to offer, Miss Greengrass?"
Slytherin's eyes shifted toward the girl standing beside the trembling boy—pretty and delicate in her general appearance, though looking faintly sickly.
"We were discussing Professor Gryffindor, Professor Slytherin!"
It took only the faintest flicker of his sharp glance to shatter whatever remaining defences this ancestor of the Greengrass family had left standing; her voice turned dense with unshed tears as she blurted the truth out all at once.
"You seem to possess rather more courage than Mr. Malfoy here, Miss Greengrass—"
Slytherin's lips curled coldly at this, and upon hearing those words, this ancestor of the Malfoy family hung his own head low, as though a death sentence had just been formally passed upon him, his complexion was growing more ashen.
"Tell me, then. What, exactly, were the two of you discussing about Godric?"
"It—"
Greengrass's shoulders trembled as she fixed her own eyes on the toes of her small black shoes, the ones with several decorative cutouts worked into the leather near the ankle.
She knew that what she was about to say might well anger the great Professor Slytherin further. But she did not dare, even so, to actually lie to him.
"It's that Professor Gryffindor brought back two more boys just last Friday and pushed them into his own House—he rescued them, apparently from the Church. We've heard that neither boy has a single magical ancestor anywhere in their family line."
Greengrass's eyelashes fluttered faintly as she stole a careful, sidelong glance at Professor Slytherin's own expression; seeing that his handsome face showed no further sign of slipping toward outright loss of control, she let out a small breath of relief, and her own voice found a measure of steadier ground.
"Malfoy and I both think that Professor Gryffindor is debasing himself with such choices. If this pattern continues, Hogwarts will one day be overrun everywhere with foul-smelling magic-thieves!"
Greengrass declared this final part with righteous indignation.
"I've coined a new word for it myself, Professor Slytherin—"
Seeing that the cold ice in Professor Slytherin's eyes seemed, perhaps, to be thawing slightly at this display, this ancestor of the Malfoy family looked at him now with a distinct hint of eager anticipation, hoping to earn some credit of his own for the observation.
"These little thieves, who steal magic that was never rightfully theirs to begin with—I call them Mudbloods."
"Ah."
A soft sigh came from Dumbledore, standing quietly beside Bryan, who shook his head slowly in a way that gave nothing away of his meaning.
He wondered, whether Lucius, knowing this fragment of history, would feel any pride in it.
Bryan cast a sidelong glance at the cunning looking, grey-eyed boy standing before them, his own private thoughts were tinged with mockery and a certain wicked amusement at the whole scene.
"Mudblood."
Slytherin turned the word over in his mouth. His expression remained cold and composed throughout, but there was underneath that surface, a faint stir of emotion.
"An interesting word, Malfoy—"
But before Malfoy and Greengrass's hopeful faces could brighten at the apparent approval, Salazar Slytherin's gaze suddenly surged with force.
Even Bryan and Dumbledore, leaning safely against the corridor wall as mere unseen observers, felt for one dazed, disorienting moment as though some crushing weight had descended directly upon them both—and Malfoy and Greengrass, who bore the full brunt of that gaze directly, swayed badly on their feet, clinging desperately to one another just to keep themselves from collapsing to the floor.
"I want the two of you to remember what I am about to say now, Malfoy, Greengrass—"
Salazar Slytherin said it softly.
"You have no right to pass judgment on Godric's actions—not unless you happen to be considerably stronger than Godric himself, which, I promise you both, you are not.
As for the matter of allowing those outside the noble pureblood families whose magic has awakened to enter Hogwarts—that was never my own personal preference or wish. But since I have already agreed to Godric's, Ravenclaw's, and Hufflepuff's proposal on the matter, then you two—"
Salazar Slytherin leaned in slightly as he spoke this final portion, and Malfoy and Greengrass suddenly felt as though they stood beneath the looming shadow of some vast and savage dragon.
"—have no right to pass your own judgment on it either."
Slytherin said it with absolute finality, and with that, his robes swept out behind him as he turned decisively away, moving toward the entrance hall beyond.
"Miss Greengrass—one month's detention. Mr. Malfoy, the same. And since you seem to have taken such particular, unusual interest in the essay I assigned this week, I expect to see a three-foot paper properly completed on my desk before the week is out."
"Hssss."
'Three feet!'
Bryan clicked his tongue quietly at that, watching the pair's faces fall. That was brutal.
They'd survived, at least.
The two ancient ancestors of the Malfoy and Greengrass families staggered against the stone archway together, exchanging looks between themselves that spoke of nothing but sheer, overwhelming relief at having escaped with nothing worse than detention and an essay.
"Professor Slytherin is probably the most powerful wizard among all our families."
Malfoy swallowed hard, gasping for breath as he spoke aloud—though he had just been thoroughly dressed down by the man, the look in his eyes as he watched Slytherin's retreating back was one of absolute reverence.
Greengrass said nothing in response, but nodded silently, deeply moved in agreement with the sentiment.
"I think we'd best keep up with Slytherin now, Headmaster Dumbledore—"
Bryan said, and set off walking briskly after the retreating figure without further delay.
"What an extraordinary experience this has proven to be, Bryan—"
Dumbledore fell into step easily beside him, speaking quickly, his own excitement was plainly audible.
"I never once imagined I would live to actually glimpse a memory belonging to Salazar Slytherin himself. Do you suppose Tom might have already seen this very same memory before us?"
Bryan hesitated at the question, then shook his head slowly. "I can't say for certain either way, Headmaster Dumbledore. Both possibilities seem equally plausible to me."
They followed quickly after Slytherin's retreating figure into the entrance hall beyond.
The walls of the entrance hall here were adorned throughout with paintings, exquisite and evidently quite new in their execution—paintings that, a full thousand years later, would no longer exist anywhere within Hogwarts' walls.
Perhaps, Bryan reflected, they had simply been worn away by the accumulation of time, or lost to some later renovation neither of them would ever properly learn the details of.
Beyond that observation, the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling of the Great Hall itself gleamed with a brilliant golden lustre, as though crafted from pure gold rather than mere gilded metal—this too was unmistakably unlike the more familiar Hogwarts of later ages that both men knew closely.
Though none of this was especially strange, when one considered it.
After the four founders had, one by one eventually departed, and well before any formal Board of Governors had stepped in to manage its affairs, Hogwarts had passed through a long, difficult stretch of years during which funds ran desperately short.
The castle's various caretakers during that particular period, in order to simply keep the school running and its students fed and taught, had likely been forced out of necessity to sell off some portion of its accumulated possessions and treasures.
Bryan remained more preoccupied with tracking Slytherin himself through the corridors than with the surrounding architecture.
But Dumbledore found the Hogwarts of a full thousand years past genuinely fascinating in its own right; he looked eagerly this way and that as they walked, taking in the castle's appearance in its youth with interest.
Slytherin was stopped in the entrance hall by someone approaching, it was an elderly wizard who, even in this particular season falling between spring and summer, was still wearing a thick woollen sweater, apparently unbothered by the warmer weather.
"Look at this, Salazar!"
By the time Bryan and Dumbledore had drawn close enough to properly observe the exchange, the old wizard had already greeted Slytherin warmly and was busy showing off with evident pride, a stack of parchment manuscripts several inches thick that he held clutched in both hands.
"I went through every single book I could find—corrected and revised the whole thing myself, line by line. I can promise you, Salazar, every single passage of history recorded in here is genuinely true and thoroughly reliable!"
"Professor Binns—"
Never mind Dumbledore's own reaction—even Bryan, who had personally passed through the preserved memories of the four founders more times than he could count, stared at the scene with his own eyes gone wide open.
"I really can't get used to seeing him like this," Bryan said, honestly astonished at the sight.
"I quite agree with you there, Bryan—"
Dumbledore, too, could not help clicking his own tongue in matching wonder at the spectacle.
Dumbledore, who had personally lived through a long and legendary life of his own by any measure, still found himself unable to resist his considerable curiosity at the sight of a fully living, breathing Professor Binns; he circled the small, enthusiastic old wizard slowly, studying with fascination this particular professor who had "served" continuously at Hogwarts longer than any other member of staff in the school's entire history.
The otherwise thoroughly aloof Slytherin was, by his own standards, actually rather warm and friendly toward Professor Binns. He took the offered manuscript without hesitation and flipped through a few of its pages.
"You've done something truly meaningful here, Binns. To forget one's history is as shameful as betraying one's own bloodline. I would very much like to properly take the time to read your work in detail—but not quite just now, I'm afraid—"
Slytherin returned the thick manuscript back into Professor Binns's hands.
"There is a pressing matter I must discuss with Godric at once. I hope you'll forgive the delay—"
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