Slytherin shook himself free of Professor Binns's enthusiastic company and started up the grand entrance hall staircase, with Bryan and Dumbledore trailing some ten feet behind him, matching his pace.
Having largely recovered now from his initial astonishment at the whole experience, Dumbledore found he finally had the mental space to properly consider what this extraordinary journey might actually mean, beneath its surface wonder.
Without question, all of it had something to do with Bryan.
Dumbledore reached that particular conclusion easily enough, simply from observing the entirely unflustered calm sitting on Bryan's face throughout everything they'd witnessed so far.
Unless one had already lived through some similar experience beforehand, no Hogwarts-educated wizard alive could possibly maintain such easy, settled composure after coming face-to-face with one of the four great Founders in the flesh—not even Dumbledore himself.
"Gryffindor—"
He murmured the name with unconcealed curiosity as the two of them climbed the stairs together.
"What kind of wizard was he, really, in your estimation? Beyond the portraits and the legends."
"Impressive," said Bryan, the single word without elaboration.
Dumbledore's own brow rose a fraction at that particular, economical answer.
'So, my guess had been genuinely right, then—Bryan had indeed already been through something similar to this.'
And Bryan, being who he was, must have known perfectly well that a reply phrased quite like that would tip his hand to someone as observant as Dumbledore. Which meant, working through the logic, that he had chosen, deliberately, to let something small slip through on purpose.
Yet for now, at least, Bryan clearly had no intention of revealing the true purpose behind the Founders' evident decision to pass their preserved memories along to him.
Dumbledore's mind raced through all of this in a single instant. He glanced sidelong at Bryan's faintly solemn profile as they climbed, and the young man he had come to know so well over these past years suddenly seemed, once again, just a little inscrutable to him.
"Oh—Professor Slytherin."
They had just reached the second-floor landing together when two young wizards, coming from the opposite direction, startled at the unexpected sight of Slytherin approaching them.
But unlike the ancestors of the Malfoys and Greengrasses, who had gone entirely rigid as frightened rabbits before a circling hawk, these two students recovered their composure remarkably quickly.
After only a brief moment of surprise, they greeted Slytherin properly though there was, unmistakably, a distinct coolness threaded through their tone as they did so.
The two young wizards appeared to be roughly the age of graduating students, by the standards of the future both knew. Their faces carried strong similarities to one another; they were, quite clearly, brothers.
And both of them, notably, had that distinctive vivid red hair.
"I believe that must be—"
Dumbledore blinked and studied the pair with bright-eyed, instant interest.
"Some distant ancestor of the Weasley family, surely?"
Bryan gave a small, confirming nod at the observation.
Judging by the quality of the brothers' clothing, the Weasley family had not been nearly so hard up financially, a thousand years ago, as they currently were in the present day.
Slytherin gave an almost entirely unnoticeable nod of his own in return, his own expression was equally cool. His pale green eyes drifted briefly to the knightly longswords hanging prominently at each brother's hip, and a flash of contempt crossed them before he looked away.
Gryffindor's students all but worshipped the man openly, madly copying his every distinctive affectation—each of them had evidently gone and strapped on some ill-matched sword at his own waist in turn, exactly as Gryffindor himself apparently did, whatever the practical merit.
The two parties observed each other for a moment with mutual distaste, exchanged the briefest possible nods of acknowledgment, and continued on their separate ways without further exchange.
"Has a Weasley child, historically speaking, ever ended up Sorted into Slytherin House? The way Sirius was into Gryffindor, breaking his family's pattern?"
Bryan asked, almost as a passing afterthought as they continued climbing.
"Some of the more distant branches of the Weasley family—that's not so uncommon an outcome, historically," Dumbledore said with an easy smile, "but the main family line itself? I'm afraid not, not once in the recorded history I'm aware of."
"A magical legacy that refuses to bend, then," Bryan murmured, shaking his own head in a way that seemed to mean something considered or perhaps, on reflection, nothing especially significant at all.
"If the day ever came, Headmaster Dumbledore, that I considered abolishing the entire House system at Hogwarts—would you object to that?"
Abolishing the House system. A System that was a thousand years in the careful making!
If word of such an idea ever got out beyond this private conversation, it would send shockwaves through the entire wizarding world, touching every corner of it.
Every single Hogwarts alumnus, without exception, took pride in their particular House, carried it with them for the whole of their lives.
Even the people standing closest to Bryan personally might not support him in something this radical.
But Dumbledore wore an unbothered expression throughout, as if none of this particular suggestion surprised him in the least.
"The real question, is how would you propose teaching students, without the Houses providing their usual structure, Bryan?"
"Hmm."
Bryan considered the practical question carefully before answering.
"Perhaps I'd extend the total years of education somewhat—seven or eight years total, say, rather than the current arrangement. The first four or five years would properly cover core subjects for every student equally without division; then, following the O.W.L.s, another two or three years of specialised study, divided instead by academic discipline rather than House, rather more like a Muggle university's approach to advanced study—"
This was, evidently, something Bryan had already thought through with care, well before tonight's conversation brought it up.
If such a system were ever actually implemented, the upper years of schooling would expand enormously in both scope and depth. Hogwarts would become a comprehensive institution devoted both to the deepening of foundational knowledge and to the proper teaching of specialist, advanced skills, rather than simply providing the kind of general magical education it currently offered to every student regardless of aptitude or interest.
Of course, the day when Bryan would begin implementing such sweeping reforms to Hogwarts itself remained still a considerable way off yet. That particular conversation would have to wait until everything else currently in motion had first been settled.
For now, what concerned him more was working out what Slytherin was actually trying to convey to him through this memory—what vital, actionable information it held, buried somewhere beneath its surface events.
Of the four Founders whose memories Bryan had explored over these past years, the most reticent by far had proven to be this one: the man who had lent his own name to Slytherin House, and whose legacy had been so thoroughly twisted in the centuries since.
Separated by a thousand years of history, Bryan and Slytherin had, of course, never actually spoken directly to one another in any sense. Yet Bryan always had the nagging feeling that the man held him in a kind of unspoken contempt.
They followed Slytherin steadily up to the fourth floor of the castle, winding together through complicated, unfamiliar corridors for a long while before finally arriving at a stretch of passage that, in the memory of both visitors from the future, had been completely abandoned.
Along the way, they had glimpsed through Slytherin's particular perspective, some of the students and lecturers populating this thousand-year-past version of the school but too little accompanying context or detail travelled with those brief glimpses for either Bryan or Dumbledore to properly identify who any of them actually were.
They also witnessed, in passing, a small bullying incident unfold.
Two Slytherin students had cornered a frightened, chestnut-haired boy in the doorway of the lavatory.
Slytherin cast one light glance in their general direction and the matter resolved itself.
"It seems the surviving historical record carries some bias in how it portrays Salazar Slytherin," Dumbledore said, watching the students disperse rapidly from the lavatory doorway, his own voice had a distinct touch of genuine, considered reflection.
For all that Slytherin had, evidently, he made no secret of his disdain for Muggle-born students throughout, as both a Founder and a working professor, he had still been willing to protect them when it mattered.
"I would expect it's simply because most of the wizards who eventually wrote the surviving history books, and who went on to serve as Headmaster of Hogwarts over the centuries, came predominantly from the other three Houses," Bryan said, his own tone was perfectly matter-of-fact.
Dumbledore could only manage a slightly regretful smile at that.
They stopped together before a set of imposing double doors carved with a magnificent lion rearing up in full, roaring majesty across their entire surface.
Knock, knock, knock—
"It's me, Godric. I need to see you about something."
Slytherin's voice was low.
"Come in, then—"
The voice that riddled back through the door was rough-edged in its texture, yet unmistakably courteous in its tone and even Bryan found himself faintly surprised by the combination.
He had already accompanied Godric Gryffindor through two journeys, and had, over that time, formed some reasonably clear working sense of the legendary wizard's character.
That genteel, careful, well-mannered tone was nothing at all like the boisterous, hearty way Gryffindor usually greeted his own close friends.
"Oh, this should be something to see—"
Compared to Sirius's own feverish, barely-contained excitement upon first encountering Gryffindor's memory, Dumbledore appeared, by comparison, considerably more composed throughout—though his bright blue eyes still shone with increasing anticipation.
The very corner of Slytherin's own mouth twitched barely noticeably. He said nothing further in response, simply raised one hand and pushed the door open.
Gryffindor's private office opened up before Bryan and Dumbledore as they stepped through.
'A room built for training,' Bryan found himself thinking immediately—the description suited the actual space they'd entered far better than any word so mundane as "office" ever could.
A space easily three or four ordinary classrooms wide in its total extent, the desk and private bookcase and their similar furnishings occupied perhaps only a fifth of the entire room's floor; the rest of the vast, open space beyond was lined thoroughly with wooden weapon racks, every available surface was crowded densely with cold weapons of every style and provenance from Gryffindor's collection.
Swords of every shape and historical era made up the considerable bulk of it. There were also long, wickedly balanced spears mounted on the walls, and complete suits of gleaming armour arranged like silent sentries—most of it, on close inspection was goblin-made judging by the distinctive craftsmanship.
Dumbledore, too, stood momentarily halted in his tracks by the sheer scope of Gryffindor's remarkable arms collection. Then he swept his gaze carefully across the bright, spacious room and found it, somewhat puzzlingly, empty of any occupant.
"Godric Gryffindor doesn't appear to be here—so who was it that just spoke?"
Dumbledore asked with faint puzzlement; within a memory, his magical senses were of no use to him.
BOOM!
A thunderous, genuinely violent roar shook the very air around them without warning carrying the raw, cascading violence of a sudden flash flood breaking loose and both Bryan and Dumbledore spun around sharply in matching shock.
The entire office before them expanded suddenly to more than ten times its original size in a single, disorienting instant.
It was as if some thin, obscuring veil of white gauze had been abruptly drawn directly across both their eyes at once; everything within their combined field of vision warped and blurred violently in response.
Vast, overwhelming magical power flooded the entire suddenly-expanded space, visibly ionising the very air around them. Tens of thousands of individual crimson lightning bolts writhed and coiled through that air like a nest of angry, striking serpents.
'Someone was impersonating Godric Gryffindor's voice—using that deception to ambush Slytherin unprepared.'
That was Dumbledore's own instant conjecture, forming rapidly even amid the chaos.
And in the very next instant, somewhere above and to the right of where Salazar Slytherin stood, the hazy, distorted void suddenly boiled violently and a blade, immense and imperious as an entire mountain peak given terrible edge, tore straight through the fabric of space and came cleaving down with tremendous force toward Slytherin's forehead.
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