Chapter 157. Rowena Ravenclaw. Part 4. The Past.

The story was not particularly long, and Rowena did not go into excessive detail. It began with a young witch who had just turned thirty and decided to leave her teacher to strike out on her own, determined to learn more about magic. She had read every book in her teacher’s library by the age of twenty, and the ten years that followed were spent mastering her mentor’s combat skills while pursuing every other area of study available to her.

Her travels lasted another seventy years, taking her across nearly the entire continent and allowing her to build an extensive network of contacts. Among these were Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff. Beyond them, she had two other close friends who, after Hogwarts had already been founded, presented her with a book and several stone tablets etched with cryptic symbols.

At their request, and driven by her own genuine curiosity, she set about translating them. The tablets bore not only unknown script but also illustrations depicting various unusual movements. After spending another twenty years on the work, she managed to decipher the bulk of the content. She sent her findings to her two friends, who arrived at the school without delay.

That was the day of her first quarrel with Salazar. He took an immediate and sharp dislike to her guests, calling them "suspicious" without offering any justification. It infuriated Rowena, but Godric stepped in and tried to smooth things over. The seed of enmity had been planted, however, and it grew steadily after that, as the two of them went out of their way to make each other’s lives difficult at every opportunity.

Over the next twenty years, nothing remained of their old friendship. Only Gryffindor and Helga stood between them and an outright break. But listening to all of this, Severus saw something else entirely. It felt as though careful hands, perhaps more than one pair, had been working behind the scenes all along, deliberately driving away the one founder who thought both rationally and ruthlessly.

By Rowena’s own account, Godric and Salazar had been extremely close friends, and founding the school had been their idea. She and Helga had joined them later. Everyone had always known about Salazar’s eccentricities, but they had also known he had certain lines he would not cross. Over those twenty years, those lines were not merely crossed but vaulted. Beyond the Dark Magic he had begun practicing, his views on blood purity grew increasingly radical, and he threw himself into promoting them, starting with his own house.

That marked the end of the founders’ fellowship and the severing of every bond between them. Salazar, having ultimately lost a duel to his former friend, left the castle and never returned. He continued to spread his ideology, claiming that Muggle-born witches and wizards could not be trusted and needed to be restricted or eliminated. The aristocratic wizarding community embraced him, adopting his ideas about blood purity wholesale.

Once their research was concluded, the two friends simply left Hogwarts and took everything with them.

Fifteen years later, tragedy struck. Helga was found hanged in a Muggle village nearly a hundred kilometers from the castle. There were no signs of a struggle, making it appear as though she had taken her own life.

Neither of the two remaining founders believed it for a moment, but they had nothing to go on. Their suspicions pointed to Salazar, perhaps choosing this method to settle old scores, yet they found no proof. By that point, his influence over the entire aristocracy was enormous, and acting against him without direct evidence would have been outright suicide.

Ten years after that, however, every accusation against him fell apart. Salazar’s body was found in almost exactly the same position as Helga’s, but the ruined state of his manor and unmistakable signs of a fierce struggle indicated he had fought with everything he had.

Only then did the founders realize the truth. Someone had been hunting them. Within a single year, Rowena created her living portrait and placed all her knowledge in the book, fearing she would be the next to die. She knew nothing of what followed, nor could she understand why no one had ever found this place.

Severus understood that it was difficult to perceive events clearly when one was in the midst of them. However, anyone who listened to the story to the end could see that someone had deliberately turned them against one another. Those instigators were, in all likelihood, her two dear friends. After all, the adage "birds of a feather flock together" applied equally to those of a malevolent nature. Salazar had seen immediately that nothing good would come of those visitors, yet no one had believed him. That was the tragedy, and it was the reason the story concluded as it did.

It was no wonder that Severus had failed to find a single book on the runes and script of that world. After the remaining founders were almost certainly killed, the murderers had simply taken everything.

As for why no one had ever learned of this place, he had an answer for that as well. Rowena, realizing that her end was approaching, had very likely chosen to Obliviate her students’ memories. This was done to keep them safe and to conceal the truth for whoever might one day find this room.

He wasn’t entirely sure of his own reasoning, but that possibility couldn’t be dismissed. What genuinely troubled him was the question of who had taken such a deep interest in the script of his world, and more importantly, why. Was it possible that someone in the past millennium had already found the Architect’s tomb? Could there already be, somewhere in this world, at least one practitioner of Archimagus level? The questions gave him no peace, but he understood the odds were against it. The method of absorbing another’s core was a genuine secret. He had stolen it in his time from the Purgatory, the gathering of fire mages, and had nearly died for it. As for the possibility that someone in this world held one of the Architect’s artifacts, that didn’t particularly unsettle him either. Magical instruments of that rank possessed intelligence no less than a human mind, and a vast, staggering arrogance. His teacher had always maintained this. Ihiros despised lies and idle talk above all things, so the man simply couldn’t have been wrong. Even an Archimagus couldn’t activate an Architect’s artifact. It would simply drain dry anyone who tried, unless that person’s power had reached the absolute peak of the Grand Archimagus rank, which was impossible in this world.

Severus shared his reasoning with Rowena. She nearly fell apart the moment she heard it, immediately denying the possibility outright. She simply couldn’t accept that the two friends with whom she had spent twenty years at Hogwarts, and another ten years prior to that, could have done such a thing to them.

But the louder she protested, the quieter her voice became, as if she were trying to convince herself rather than him. Still, Rowena had not earned the title of the most brilliant witch of her age for nothing. She was not naturally inclined toward political machinations, yet even she was beginning to suspect that something about the situation was amiss. It was the way her friends had always spoken of Salazar, their subtly negative tones nudging her toward the conclusion that he was not a good person without ever placing themselves in a compromising position. It was the persistent efforts to widen the distance between him and the others, efforts always framed as innocent observations of his peculiarities. It was the countless similar moments when they worked, quite successfully, to tarnish his reputation. This included the specific incident that had cemented their mutual enmity. Salazar had attacked one of them, accusing her of provoking him first. But who would have been believed? A dark wizard slandered for years and practically regarded as the embodiment of evil, or an innocent friend bleeding on the floor?

As the full weight of the realization settled upon her, Rowena’s pale face turned ashen. Her lips trembled as the light faded from her eyes, replaced by guilt and grief. Through her own foolishness, she had lost a friend. He had not been a perfect one, but he had been a friend. She had accused him of the worst and driven him down a dark path herself, having been manipulated into planting doubt in the hearts of the others.

"I... I always believed I was the most rational person alive, that no one could deceive me. But..." She let out a short, strained laugh. "...I fell for it like some foolish girl. And I spent years teaching my daughter not to be naive, to verify everything and to see the world clearly..."

"Everyone makes mistakes," Severus said with an indifferent shrug. Their fate was genuinely tragic, but he had seen far worse in his own world. The story of the founders did not affect him deeply. Nagini, however, listened with sincere sympathy.

The portrait let out a few more short, humorless laughs.

"A Slytherin student has just opened my eyes to the truth. Fate has a truly terrible sense of humor."

"Hard to argue with that, though it’s a shame you don’t know what happened afterward. Yet another headache to deal with..." He sighed wearily as he rose from the table. "Well, thank you for an interesting story." A pair of golden pocket watches appeared in his hand, and he flipped one open to check the time. "Nearly one in the morning. I’ve stayed far longer than I intended."

"Wait!" The blank expression that had settled on Rowena’s face vanished the moment she saw the watches. "Those are Godric’s watches! How do you have them?"

"I gathered all the pieces of the artifact, and afterward it chose to reassemble itself and give itself to me in exchange for a service," he answered calmly, stifling a yawn. The past few days had been like every other stretch lately: almost no sleep. In addition to tracking down this place, Severus had been preparing to push his core to the peak of the Magister rank, and he planned to do exactly that over the coming weekend. He had already arranged with Dumbledore to be absent the following week. A surge in power of that magnitude could have adverse effects on the body, and he would need time to confirm everything had gone smoothly.

"He entrusted a Gryffindor family heirloom to you...?" Rowena said with disbelief, shifting her gaze to his face.

"A family heirloom? I assumed it was school property, but no matter." He shook his head and tucked it into his bag. "Do you think I could have assembled it myself?" The sword materialized at his side in its true form, and Rowena stared at him in genuine, speechless shock. "As for your diadem, I regret to tell you that it has been destroyed. A rather unpleasant descendant of Salazar turned it into a Horcrux, along with Helga’s cup and Salazar’s locket. I have not yet located the locket. The rest I have already destroyed." At that, Rowena’s face went completely blank. Too much had been heaped upon her in the space of two short hours, and she needed time to absorb it all. Severus understood that without being told. He turned quietly toward the exit. At the door, he added, "I will come back tomorrow, once you have had time to think it all over."

The click of the door closing behind him brought Rowena back to herself. She fixed her gaze on the exit, her expression a storm of conflicting emotions. She felt rage at the betrayal of two people she had loved, and at her own blindness. She felt grief and self-reproach for what she had done to a friend, for pushing him toward the dark with her own hands without even knowing it.

"If he trusted him, perhaps I could have too." She offered a strained smile and shook her head. "Look at what it’s come to. Wanting to ask a Slytherin student for help. Salazar..." The moment his name passed her lips, her throat tightened. "If only I could..."

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1. Harry Potter: Satan? Nah, Just My Family Crest = Chapter 277

2.Marvel: Cosmic Forger of Infinity = Chapter 193

3.Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World = Chapter 278

4.Harry Potter: Reborn as Draco Black = Chapter 120

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