The Third Time is a Charm

Posted: 14 November 2009

Chapter 47: The Teachings of Salazar

All six of the men sat in their cushy chairs, Harry sitting next to Severus in an extended love seat with First Born in his lap, listening to the founder tell his tale of the beginnings of the magical world. It wasn't like anything they had every heard of, but now Harry understood some of the magnitude of what was going on. All of the contracts with other beings; helping with a second bank, Gringotts II, where all creatures could bank and do business without the wizarding laws interfering. All the help they provided to others while getting them to help with goods or services that were specifically designed for their magical powers; everything that had overwhelmed him in the beginning when he started learning the business. All of it finally came to a complete understanding of what they were trying to accomplish. They were creating the old world, the one in the beginning that had been lost. Harry was getting a headache and leaned against Severus. He didn't know how anyone was going to manage that.

As Salazar Slytherin sat in his portrait, he waited for what he had said to settle in. He knew there would be some trouble accepting this as it was so outside the realm of what they had now, but they had to start somewhere.

Lucius was, of course, was the first one to speak. "You mean you want us to live in peace with all creatures? We are to be friendly and help them? Are you out of your mind?" The blonde aristocrat was incensed with the idea of being nice to all those disgusting creatures. He barely tolerated goblins at the bank.

"Each creature has a certain aspect to their magic that is unique. Even though many species may manage to duplicate others magic, it is not as well as it could be. Goblins, for example can do warding and weapon making better than any other creature in the magical world, but wizards can ward also, just not as well as goblins and wizard weapons aren’t even close to the power of goblins. The only type of wizard that can do another species' magic as well as that species is an elemental wizard. That has only been given to those who need it at a crucial time in our world. Contrary to current beliefs, elemental wizards are chosen not born. They are not accidents at birth and they cannot be genetically created."

"The Dark Lord has some elemental power, and so does Dumbledore." Lucius felt he should inform him.

“Your Tom Riddle steals the power he uses from his followers. The mark on your arm is a variation of a slave brand that allows him to leach your magic for his own purposes. He steals power from many and appears to have a little elemental power." He watched as the two Death Eaters processed that little bit of information.

"You mean the book was true? Not just a hoax to get back at the Dark Lord?" Snape questioned.

"The book was written by us and yes, every word in that book is true." Severus replied.

Salazar continued from his interrupted lecture. "Dumbledore on the other hand, did not use slave brands, he learned how to pull magical energy from the school's wards and from the earth. He wanted to be Headmaster until he could find a child with elemental powers so he could exchange his essence with the child, using a voodoo ritual he found when traveling through Africa and some parts of the southern US. He does not have elemental powers, but he does have access to great power as everyone does if they study and find out how to access it."

"Can any one access this great power?" Lucius wanted to know. The Dark Lord had promised great power but if he didn't have it, was it an empty promise? How could he lie to them so effectively?

"Any one can access great power within reason. Magic was made to work together. It is like having two magnets. If you face them off, the polarization works to push them apart or works against itself. When they are put together correctly, they hold fast and become stronger. This was part of the old ways teaching. In working TOGETHER as a TEAM, you become stronger. In working on your own or forced to face evils BY YOURSELF" Salazar looked at Harry, who's cheeks were turning pink; “you are at your weakest point and cannot fully succeed." The others looked a little puzzled at the emphasis of his words, but Severus gave Harry a pointed look and a raised eyebrow. Salazar seemed to be getting a point across to him so the others assumed there was something they would find out later about the young man.

Harry however was in turmoil. If he was the prophesied child in his time line, why didn't anyone know about what he needed to complete his mission? Severus who was sitting next to Harry placed a finger on his chin to turn his head towards him. "The wrong people got to you first." He said quietly. "It was not as it was supposed to be. You have now been placed on the correct path and you never have to go through that again." Severus could see the tears start to form in his lover's eyes. He excused himself and Harry from the group and led him into their bedroom to hold onto the young man. He let Harry cry silently while standing there holding him until he got himself under control.

Salazar watched them as they left the room with a worried expression on his face.

"What just happened?" asked Snape.

"Harry's parents were killed when he was barely a toddler. He was given certain gifts from the ancient magiks to be able to stop this war. The wrong people finagled their way into being 'placed in trust' to care for him. When others tried to stop what was going on they were deterred at every move, some even threatened with imprisonment. He lived a life of servitude, being beaten and starved most of his childhood and preadolescent life. He didn't even know he was a wizard until he was eleven. He was always called a freak for the accidental magic that happened around him.”

“His appointed magical guardian blocked his magic as much as he could. The people who were in charge of his care tried to beat the magic out of him. He has almost died a few times, the last being a few weeks before Christmas. In the magical world he was always forced to fight his battles alone and told he could win because he was special but was given no training or information. When he couldn't get a complete victory, he was ridiculed by the media because he was supposed to save them. Like the magnets trying to fuse together using polar opposites, he had nothing to work with. He was expected to single-handedly save the world with no training and no help. He took his responsibilities very seriously. He is just beginning to understand the atrocities that have been done to him."

"I have never heard of him, so how could he have been in the media or have these responsibilities?" Lucius felt if the young man was that important they should have heard of him somehow.

"He is not from here. This happened at the other place he fled from. That is why the other founders and I are here, to train him and set things right and to keep our heritage from destroying itself in this senseless war." Salazar was not going to tell them anything about time travel or Time Sprits at this time. It was up to Severus and Harry to divulge that information. They were the ones who had to live with the consequences.

"How were we chosen to be here? What do we contribute to the situation? I know I don't have elemental powers." Regulus said.

"You gentlemen were not specifically chosen by the ancient magiks, you were chosen by the men in the other room." Salazar paused to get his thoughts together so he didn't say too much to these men. "You all have something to give to this situation. We know that the dark mark will wipe out all the Death Eater factions as soon as Riddle dies. Is that what you want?"

"You keep calling him Riddle. Why is that?" Lucius asked.

"Didn't you read the whole book?" Regulus asked his two former compatriots. "Tom Marvolo Riddle is the Dark Lord's true name. If you scramble the letters it reads 'I am Lord Voldemort'. He gave himself a new name to keep his muggle father hidden. He didn't want anyone to know he was a half-blood or was raised in a muggle orphanage."

Lucius looked at his wife's cousin and blinked... Then he blinked again... He was following a man who spouted blood purity and was only a half blood raised by muggles. Lucius sat very still and then said with narrowed eyes, "That is not possible."

"Sure it's possible and it's true. Just ask a goblin. They would have done the inheritance test on him." Regulus replied, wondering if there was something wrong with the aristocrat. He looked to be in shock and was not handling it with his usual aplomb. “It was the Dark Lord’s mother that was a witch and claimed to be a descendent of Slytherin, but they lived very poorly in a shack in Little Haggleton, very close to the muggle village. That house that he likes so much, he procured after killing his muggle family so he couldn’t be linked to them.”

“How did you learn all of this?” Lucius asked the younger man.

Regulus smirked, rolled his eyes, and then said, “It’s in the book!”

Remus, who had been staying out of the conversation completely, was still working on the information Salazar had given him about Harry. If he wasn’t from here, where was he from? Why did he have Lily’s eyes? Was it just a coincidence or was there something else going on? The baby Lily was carrying was going to be named Harry. He knew Severus was from the future, but he wasn’t really sure about his fiancé. Regulus also knew that Severus was from the future, but the other two men, still sitting in the room, did not so they couldn’t say anything about it. He hoped they would be told soon. It was hard trying to keep secrets from a select few.

Just as he was about to join the conversation between the three former Voldemort followers, their hosts entered back into the room. “We apologize for leaving you alone; I believe it is past time for tea. How about we take a break and have some refreshments?” Severus said as he entered the room with a slightly red eyed Harry.

After everyone excused themselves to freshen up, they ordered tea to be served on the low table in front of the chairs so Salazar could continue his lesson. It wasn’t as if they had to take notes, just pay attention to what he was saying.

When everyone was settled again, Salazar asked, “Does anyone have any questions, so far?”

“Yes.” was the answer from Snape. “Why are we here now?” He didn’t understand why these men chose him to be here learning this. Not that he was repulsed by the idea; he just wanted to know why.

“I think I can answer that question.” Severus spoke up. He wasn’t really ready for this to be out, but his younger version needed to be told.

“A Time Spirit brought me back from the future. My name is now Severs Masterson Prince, but my former name was Severus Tobias Snape. I left my time on August 1, 1996”

Complete and total silence followed that statement.

Salazar was watching the reactions of the group before him. He could see that Severus hadn’t wanted to reveal this information yet, but had no other way to explain everything going on. Remus and Regulus did not seem to be effected by the information and he surmised that they already knew or at least suspected. However, Snape and Malfoy were totally flummoxed. They had no clue that something like that would be said.

“Prove it.” Snape said. He knew he had a resemblance to this man, but not that much.

“How would you like me to do that?” Severus asked

“Show me your arm.” Snape demanded

“It won’t do any good, the mark is gone. It was removed before Harry and I used sex magic to bond his core to mine.”

“So your magical signature has changed.” Snape stated. “That’s dark magic and against the Ministry rules. Why did you do that?”

“Harry’s core had been completely depleted and Voldemort was draining him. He couldn’t regenerate it fast enough so it was the only thing anyone could come up with to save him quickly. We were not in the Ministry’s jurisdiction so they couldn’t say anything about it.”

“You did it to save his life?” Snape snarled, he really didn’t like the other man, and such a dangerous ritual could have been the end of them both. The boy was not much younger than him, but his counterpart was about twenty years older than his fiancé.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he is my soulmate.”

“Doesn’t that make him my soulmate too?”

“No, he is from my timeline, not yours. We are here to fix a grave injustice. When we came back, we changed the outcome of certain aspects of this time. We cannot say for sure who your soulmate is.”

Snape nodded as he thought about what the man had said. He didn’t feel any kind of attraction or pull to Harry so the older man must be correct in his assessment, or perhaps lying. He wasn’t sure at this point.

“What of my family?” Lucius asked.

“If the chain of events had remained unchanged, you family would all be wiped out about the year 2015.”

“How is that possible? There have always been Malfoys. We always survive.”

“It won’t do any good to tell you what happened. We have already changed the course of history and it is irrelevant. This I will tell you, Narcissa has the mark on her arm also. Vol…” he watched them cringe, “alright 'what’s his name'” he said impatiently, “drained her power when she was pregnant with your twin girls. As soon as you told that mad man you were having girls, he took it upon himself to drain their power as twins. He can do that to any pregnant woman with the mark and he has little respect for women except to use them as broodmares. Your twins show no significant power because he drained their core before birth. Now she is pregnant again but this time it is a son and you will name him Draco. The mad man will not drain Draco, because he is a male and an heir.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I was Godfather to the Draco of my time line.”

Lucius slumped back into his seat, completely defeated. He didn’t know where to go from here. The man in front of him was correct. His twin girls had no significant magical signature which usually showed a few weeks after birth. That was why he and Narcissa were trying again. They just assumed the girls were squibs, now he wasn’t so sure. Prince was also correct about the other thing. He and Narcissa had spoken and agreed to name Severus Snape the Godfather of their unborn son.

“My daughters are going to have to live in the muggle world, because I didn’t protect them.” Lucius muttered to himself, although everyone heard what he said. It was Salazar that responded.

“No they will NOT!” Sal fussed vehemently. “That is another reason we are having so much trouble!” He got their attention again. “This is what caused the argument I had with Godric and Helga. If you keep throwing your squibs into the other world, you lose track of them and then generations later someone shows up as muggle born. You are throwing away your heritage!”

Sal sat back down in his portrait and huffed and mumbled to get his temper back under control. The others heard something about stupidity and wastefulness and idiotic behavior. After a fashion, he sat up in his chair and started to address the group again.

“When our school first opened, the wizarding world was already sending squibs into the muggle world. Every now and then a muggle would have some kind of strange ability and the others were curious. Sometimes we would come across a squib born that the magic would appear in, but at other times we would come across a muggle that had one special talent with no magical core. The others thought we could cultivate them if we brought them into the school. I disagreed. You cannot ‘create’ a magical core where none exists. Genetics doesn’t work that way.”

“So how do you filter out the muggles from the squib born?” Asked Harry.

“The book in the headmaster’s office was created to detect magical cores in children so they could be invited to Hogwarts. It would not include muggle children. But then there was another argument. I wanted to bring squibs into the school so they could learn about their heritage and be surrounded by magic, even if they couldn’t perform it. The others disagreed and refused. That was when I blew up at them and the argument escalated into what you are told today. I never wanted muggles in the school, there is no such thing as true muggleborn and the squib born should never have been sent away from our world to begin with. It was too much risk for exposure.”

“So how do we make our squibs stay? What can they contribute to our society?” Lucius now had a vested interest in this answer, thinking about his daughters.

“Squibs are born when great powers of magic collide. It is unknown why but the magic sort of short-circuits and nullifies. It is a way of clearing the field for a new level of magic.” Salazar paused to think then said. “Let me put it this way. A good farmer knows that he must rotate his fields; he will plant his fields for six years and then the seventh year leave the field fallow. When he plants his crop the next year in the fallow ground, it bares better and bigger produce. It has been that way since the beginning of time.”

So far the men seemed to be following what he was saying, so he continued. “In a pureblood family, a marriage contract is sometimes made to put together two powerful mates. It is so the family can continue to grow in power and the line can continue. Sometimes a squib is born because the power cancels itself out. We have never determined why, and it has not been studied enough be predicted. This squib, instead of being treated as the rare treasure he or she is, is treated as a sub-human; as someone who doesn’t fit in, someone who can’t function in our world and is subsequently thrown out or sent away.”

You could see the guilty looks flow across the faces of a few of the men, those that had grown up pureblood supremacists.

“Instead, they should be treated as the fallow ground, ready to create the best fruit of all. In the few cases where some weaker wizard married a squib, they produced children of great power. The genetic makeup of the powerful witch and wizard that created the squib, did not go away, it just got buried within the genetics of the child so that the ground could rest and be fruitful.”

“But what about the muggles?” Regulus asked.

“Muggles cannot create magical children. A true muggle does not have the genetic makeup to create a magical core. That is why I say there is no such thing as a muggle born witch or wizard, only a squib born. The only time a muggle can create a witch or wizard is if they mate with a squib, then it is not the muggle that creates a magical person but the squib. Sometimes you will come across a very powerful so called muggleborn; this is a person that was begat from two squibs and not a muggle at all. When the genetics of the two squibs combine, it is like two powerful wizardkind mating and having a powerful child.”

"So if that is what creates a muggleborn. How do we bring all the squibs back into our society? Snape asked.

Salazar answered as best he could. "You can't. The problem is that many of the squibs have mated with muggles. It is not a given that just because a parent is a squib, they will produce another squib or a witch or wizard. Many times they will produce a muggle child and the genetics are lost. That is why I say squibs need to stay in our world. They are the missing piece to expanding our population. We are dying off because we are sending away part of our society. If they stayed and married magical people, there would most definitely be a magical child produced."

“So how do we adjust to squibs staying in our world? How can they cope?” Lucius asked.

Severus answered this one. “You do what Becca does. She has a goblin crafted necklace, with several predestined locations in the links, she uses as a permanent portkey. It is spelled not to come off and cannot be removed. She has a special cloak she wears that is resistant to spells, and she has more knowledge of both worlds than you can imagine. She is also assigned a personal house elf that sees to her needs. She helps us write books and run the business and is smarter than you can possibly imagine.”

“Becca? Are you talking about the young woman that was here the night of the attack? But she spoke parsletongue! How is she a squib?” Lucius was full of questions now.

“She is not a squib, but she is an underpowered witch. She has learned to ‘borrow’ magic temporarily from the ground and other people and she has learned to cope with who she is. Her core was drained before birth just like your daughters’. She is a remarkable young woman. You will have to meet her properly if you are willing to continue a relationship with our family.” Severus actually said more than he wanted to, but he wanted to give Lucius hope for his daughters.

“Who is she and where did she come from?” Lucius was being nosy now but he was really interested in meeting her to learn more about how she coped in this world.

Severus gave him a pensive look and turned to Salazar who nodded his head. He sighed and then tried to gauge the other’s reactions. “She is mine and Harry’s great granddaughter and our Time Spirit.”




A/N Thank you to kaasan and nari-chan for the nice words in your review. Encouragement always helps. We are over 12,700 hits. So thanks to all my readers as well.

Next Chapter will be up by Wednesday.