*
He grew up in a desert, in stifling heat and crushing chill, and in sand and wind. The desert and Constantinople were the homes of his childhood; familiar to him as his hands and loved by him for that reason. They were a part of him, engraved and etched forever in his soul, and he loved them because of that. 

He wandered into the desert and the world when he was young, however; wanderlust driving him out of the city and its familiar streets, the only world he had ever really known at that point, and he never regretted it, per say. He never regretted his lust for more, his need to see more, his need to know more but he loved the desert. 

And though he came to love Briton and her rain and hills and forests, when the snow came, covering all in white and a deep coldness, Godric missed the desert.



He knew how to fight with fire, extending it, controlling it to the point that it practically became an extension of himself; he knew how to fight with swords and daggers (he was known to be an exceptional swordsman in his life); and he fought with his hands, striking quickly and with a great strength behind him but he also fought dirty.

There wasn’t a trick that was known to man (and a few that weren’t until he came along) that he didn’t use.

The legends don’t mention the last part. Godric, if he knew, would be quite disappointed.

 

Godric became famous for his fire spells, for the way he could manipulate flames and the way he could turn fire into the deadliest of weapons.

What no one ever knew was how he learned to manipulate fire so well. 

(It was cold in the desert, during the night. A small fire built on sticks was hardly enough and he would sit for hours, concentrating, as he tried to make the small sparks of warmth last longer)



Godric met Helga when he was seventeen. They were each other’s first friends. 

(They didn’t mention that to anyone else, not even to each other)



The history books don’t say that Godric loved dangerous creatures, that he loved to explore or that he once went gambling with seers.

(He cheated and won the game. In revenge, the seers pointed him and the other Founders in the direction of an old, abandoned Roman fort-a fort which would one day become Hogwarts, the most famous of schools)



Godric was very very good at cheating. It was a skill he picked up from a young thief lord he befriended in the streets of Constantinople

He fell in love with the ocean the first time he saw it. The endless blue, stretching across his vision, awed him into speechlessness. He had never seen so much water before in his life and so he took off his boots and socks and stood on the shore, letting the waves lap at him gently.

He stayed there for hours, lost in the motion of the waves, in the feel of the water and the sound, in the smell of the ocean, in everything.

He honestly would have been content to have stayed on that beach for the rest of his life

The first thing he noticed about Helga was her smile and the quiet strength it spoke of.

The first thing he noticed about Rowena was her voice; her voice was smooth and cultured and she spoke of puzzles and knowledge beyond Godric’s ken with it.

But the first thing he noticed about Salazar were his eyes, a dignified cool grey that looked as fine as silver in the early pre-dawn hours and as dark as the darkest of grey in the deep of the night.

Salazar’s eyes enchanted Godric right from the beginning and until the very end.

Godric met Salazar during a four month sojourn in one of England’s many moors. Godric had caught wind of a fearsome creature terrorizing the moor and, of course, set out to discover it.

Salazar had also heard rumors and, for reasons the Prince never went into, arrived three months after Godric, intent on also finding the creature. Instead, he found a blond moron who had already found and befriended the hellhound.

(Godric would admit, if pressed, that yes, it was his fault that their first meeting was not all that great but he would then claim that no one could blame him. Salazar had been just far too fun to tease)

 

Helga and Godric traveled together for years but also went their separate ways, from time to time. Helga would remain in dreary villages- always magical ones because they were both more liberated into their views of women but also because they would not burn her at the stake if something bad happened while she was staying there- attempting to better the lives of the villagers when she could. Whether it was through her talents in healing or potion brewing or agricultural knowledge just depended on the village.

Godric, on the other hand, would drift away with the wind, chasing after whatever rumor of adventure which had caught his attention now.



Helga met up with Rowena during the same time period of Godric meeting up with Salazar. The ensuring reunion/introduction was interesting.

(Salazar and Rowena were childhood friends; Helga, when she learned of this, smiled and said that the Four’s meeting was fate)



During the first meeting of all Four of them, the ensuring events occurred: Salazar insulted Helga; Godric accidentally implied that Rowena had all the sexual appeal of a goblin (he had, in fact, been implying nothing of the sorts; Rowena never believed him, not even twenty years later); Rowena turned Godric’s hair into snakes; Helga slapped Salazar; Rowena slapped Salazar; Salazar turned Rowena blue; and Godric shoved Salazar into a lake.

This all happened in the span of thirty minutes.

(They never ever spoke of it again. If anyone asked, their first meeting consisted of them talking like rational adults)

Rowena taught him how to read and write in Greek, Egyptian, and Sumerian and also improved his skills in Latin. He didn’t need her teachings to bespell a crowd (for even when his speech was rough and plain, the force of Godric’s personality drew all eyes to him) but the lines he spoke that history recalls are the products of her teachings.

(Coincidentally, this is the reason why the Wizarding World believes Godric was raised in a palace on the moor and that he was the most sophisticated of men. This is also why they would be scandalized to learn that Godric swore frequently and colorfully, that his favorite drink was mead, and that he once challenged a giant to a drinking contest)

(The Sorting Hat could enlighten them about the truth but it doesn’t. It thinks the legends about Godric are funny. Besides, no one ever asks so it says nothing at all)

 


He loved Helga without reservation and without any hesitation.

But sometimes he wondered if she would have been happier if they had never met.

Salazar annoyed and vexed Godric like no one else could; he also made Godric happy in a way no one else could.

Helga was always fond of saying that Salazar was the only one who could break Godric’s heart. Ruefully, Godric agreed with her.

He found Salazar speaking Parsletongue more erotic than he probably should have.

Hogwarts was one of the best things that ever happened to him. Building Hogwarts gave him a deep sense of satisfaction and he fell in love with teaching during his very first class.



He took great pride in his Gryffindors, though not as great as Salazar did in his Slytherins. But while Salazar’s Slytherins returned Salazar’s quite, consuming pride with a fierce and deep pride of their own, Godric showered his children with love and they whole heartedly returned that love.

Salazar never bothered to hide his arrogance and disdaining nature, the disgust he felt for those who had no magic or his passion for the Dark Arts and his willingness to use what he had learned on others.

Godric loved him anyway.

It just wasn’t enough. No calm can last forever. 




The quarrel was bitter and painful. Salazar left after he and Godric drew each other’s blood (well, actually, they drew more than just a couple drops of blood. Both of them had deep and shallow cuts and multiple bruises. Godric also had a shattered knee and a punctured lung and Salazar was bleeding heavily from a shoulder wound and had multiple first degree burns). He never looked back and Godric was left kneeling in the mud as blood pooled around him, staring at the departing back of his best friend. 

It was raining that night.

 

Rowena left next, drawn away from Hogwarts and its shadows, the memories of a failed friendship and a thousand other failures choking her, to Egypt, a place which was bright and beautiful and full of new magic and knowledge.

Godric would have been more devastated by this but his heart was already shattered by Salazar’s leaving and he couldn’t summon up more than a weary acceptance.

(Helga, however, more than made up for Godric’s lack of feelings on the matter of Rowena’s departure)

 

After Salazar and Rowena left, Helga became obsessed with thinking back, searching her memory for that one moment that hindsight could point to and say, ‘Here. Here is when everything began to change’.

Godric, on the other hand, found this practice to be far too morbid and depressing and so refused to indulge Helga in this; often, he would leave the room when she started upon this. In his view, to search his memory so, asking himself ‘Is this the moment when Rowena stopped believing? Is this when Salazar began to hate me?’ would be to forever tarnish the only things he had left.

For, after all, his memories of them were the only things Rowena and Salazar left behind upon their departures.

 

They heard rumors of Awiergan and his army for a full year before he attacked and toppled the magical kingdom of Briton, destroying the royal line-one of the oldest lines in the entire magical world. It was a line that, coincidentally, both he and Salazar were descended from

(It is this fact that damns Salazar further, causing him to be remembered in history as a monstrous man to all but his Slytherins—the only ones left who remember that Awiergan and Salazar were, in fact, two separate people)

(His Slytherins do nothing to ensure that historians become interested in discovering the truth. And so history is lost and distorted into false legends and myths and the Founders are never accurately remembered)

 

In less than six months from the day of Awiergan’s first attack on British soil (he had already laid waste to several other countries, leaving a trail of destruction behind him, but he paid no mind to those countries. He wasn’t interested in them; they were just in his way), Hogwarts is the only structure of significant size and strength left in magical Briton that could be considered a threat to Awiergan.

It does not take him long to realize this. Nor does he take long in setting out to right this.

He never believed in any deity, and especially not in the Almighty God whose church rejected his mother when she revealed a talent for magic, but the night before he challenged Awiergan and won, he prayed, kneeling before his sword, hands tightly grasping the hilt and his sword upheld him.

He prayed for hope, for salvation, for victory and for a chance to speak with Rowena and Salazar again.

The walk to where Awiergan awaited him was long and the night air chilled him. Awiergan’s army formed a path for him, two lines of snarling, jeering murderers and monsters, and he walked between them, head held high. They closed the way behind him, circling him, and their laughs echoed loudly in the night. Their torches were the only light, for heavy storm clouds had hidden away the stars and the moon that night.

They wrote poems, songs and papers on that last walk, many of which debated the matter of whether or not he had been afraid.

This is the only time that those who idealized him, who shouted how he was more courageous and noble and wonderful than anyone else who had ever lived, were correct: Godric Gryffindor was not afraid that night.

By the time he took that first step, Hogwarts’s heavy doors closing behind him, he had mastered himself and left such emotions behind.



He died in Helga’s arms, just as the sun was rising. The blood stained her hands and dress and the ground was soaked with it.

A part of him, as he lay dying in her arms, took consolation in the fact that Awiergan had died first.



The last thing Godric Gryffindor ever saw was Helga Hufflepuff’s tear stricken face.

He couldn’t say anything to comfort her (he was choking on his blood) but, as the world grew dark and he wished Salazar and Rowena were there too (it wasn’t suppose to end like this), this is what he wishes he could have said: If I could have given you another ending, my friend, I would have.

But he couldn’t so he smiled at her instead.

(That smile broke something inside of Helga and it haunted her for the rest of her life)

There was no one else in the world that Godric loved more than Salazar.

(The problem was that Salazar didn’t feel the same)