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"Did you see de Valence today?" Godric says to Salazar. In a perfect universe, where both God and Godric were kind, they would be staring out at the miles of desolate, lonely land from atop the battlements, looking for new worlds to conquer. Instead it is raining and they are inside, only pretending to gaze at the sky on the ceiling. "Her Freezing Charms are getting better."
"Good," Salazar replies sharply. "They should be. She's too slow with her magic; I give her three weeks after she falls in with enough Muggles to make a mob."
"She's just a girl, Salazar." Godric is well-content to rule his little quarter of a tiny teacherdom. It has always been Salazar who has the visions and the life beyond his corner.
"She's thirteen." Old enough to marry, old enough to breed, more than old enough to die. "The Muggles burnt her mother."
"Still, she's safe here." Godric is peaceable tonight; he purrs like an old cat by the fire. "Rowena claims that this is the soundest place in the country and I've never seen a battering ram that could so much as splinter our doors."
"She won't always be here."
"But she will learn everything you have to teach her before she goes."
"And if I leave before she does?"
Godric has been looking at Salazar steadily, but the pointed words make him blink. "Is there a reason you say that? Or more of your Greek rhetoric? For if you do not teach her, the rest of us will, of course."
"I never learnt rhetoric in my life," Salazar tells him. "I did not have a French tutor." His mother was a Pamplonese heiress, stripped of her estates for treasonous plotting with the Moors and exiled on pain of fiery death, sans wand, should she dare return. She took flight into France and, from there, to England, but the memory of her tired eyes and white knuckles still sent frissons of fury through Salazar's chest.
Godric does not respond with his usual cheerfulness, however. "You're planning to leave us?"
"Not forever, I'm sure."
"Make up your mind!"
"And not soon, either." Salazar's mouth twitches. Godric is easy to bait and as serious as he is, any heart would delight to watch a fish jump.
"That is quite typical of you." On a man who professed to love Salazar less, Godric's expression might be called disgusted; on Godric, it is merely exasperated. "You have no patience at all, do you?"
"That's rather a case of pot and kettle, don't you think?" Salazar's smile thins. "I remember a proverb about fools and angels, too."
"Why do you want to leave?" Godric's tone is plaintive and out of place on a cat, especially a big one.
"That's the one. You told me yourself, just now."
"I don't understand you." Godric shakes his tawny head. "You don't mean to say that you are bored here?"
"A little ennui; it will pass, I'm sure."
"But you want to leave?"
"It comes and goes." Salazar refills his goblet from the flagon and swallows half of it in one gulp. "As you say, I have no patience with anything."
"I have no patience with you, that's for certes. And what has all this to do with de Valence?"
"What? Nothing, of course, only that watching a thirteen year old girl – " old enough for everything important in life, but not for the simplest spells – "struggle with a Freezing Charm merely recalls to me how sluggishly life is passing."
Godric's astonishment is real and Salazar laughs into the rim of his goblet. "You truly think that?"
"I truly think that."
"That is quite typical of you, Salazar."
"As you say. Quite typical."
"If things don't come easily to you, you will not suffer them to come at all, is that it? Why don't you understand that teaching takes time and dedication?" Godric's frustration dissolves for a moment; he smiles. "And patience."
"I understand everything you say, Godric. But see matters how others see them, how I see them. Hogwarts is running well, if I died this very moment then there would be a score of clever, powerful men and women clamouring to take my place. Some of them may even be better teachers than I." Salazar pauses, waiting for Godric's assent.
Instead, Godric replies, "Be careful, Salazar, that was almost humble. Have you spent some time in the sun?" without a glimmer of a grin.
"What sun? And that's another thing, I despise the Caledonian weather."
Godric does smile then and takes another sip of wine. "But what of us?"
"I would have you come with me."
Godric shakes his head again, an unhappy lion. "I can't."
"You shan't, you mean. You won't."
"I mean I can't."
"A man without ambition is dead, Godric," Salazar whispers. "If you want nothing more than what you have, why do you live at all?"
"I want – " Godric pauses. "I want our school to be great. Our school, Salazar. I want our pupils to grow up to be good, noble men and women. Is that not enough ambition for you?"
"You used to want to travel," Salazar says softly.
"I still do, but not now. Not when Hogwarts is still so young. It needs us, Salazar. Both of us. I would not have our vision balked by callow youths who cannot see past their own – "
"Ambition?"
"Yes." Godric would tell the truth were he safer to put his head in a dragon's mouth. "Of what use is ambition, Salazar, if one has not the bravery to carry it out despite boredom? The patience to carry it through?"
"And the cleverness to carry it at all, I suppose." Salazar's smile has turned slightly sardonic. "How very moralistic of you, Godric. One also requires a certain cunning to give courage a coat of finesse."
"If you say so," and Godric's expression has turned warmer. "Nobility is also vital, you know, for once you have your ambition, you must know what to do with it."
"Not vital. Desirable, perhaps, for your servants – but not essential." Salazar reaches out and touches his arm. "Godric, I will stay for as long as you do."
"That will be forever, at this rate," Godric declares, his smile blinding. He has always been childishly happy in victory. He stands and takes Salazar's hands in his own.
"Then we will be forever," Salazar responds. Lesser men will call such a bond Unbreakable, but a word, their word, is all that is necessary. Godric squeezes his hands once before turning away to make for his bedchamber. Salazar watches him go.
He smiles. For once, there is little sinister about it.