Chapter 210: An Open-Minded Salazar
A room decorated in a distinctly classical style.
"Ancient Runes, or what you'd call Ancient Runes nowadays. You've got a solid grasp of them."
Salazar flipped through Leonardo's exam papers, commenting as he read.
He had already tested his knowledge across several fields, Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, and others. Leonardo's performance in every subject had left Salazar genuinely satisfied.
"It's clear you work hard. You've done your talent justice. Especially in Transfiguration…"
"Has Transfiguration in your era really advanced this far? Magical creature Transfiguration. Helga dabbled in that area back in our day…" He paused, brow furrowing slightly. "But I didn't see anything related to it in Lockhart's memories. Is it a recent breakthrough that hasn't spread yet?"
Helga. The founder of Hufflepuff? Had she experimented with magical creature Transfiguration as well?
Leonardo answered, "Headmaster Slytherin, magical creature Transfiguration is actually…"
As Leonardo spoke, Salazar's gaze slowly lifted from the papers to his face. Those green, serpentine pupils shifted from calm appraisal to something closer to disbelief.
For a fleeting instant, an impulse stirred.
Should he simply use Legilimency—force his way into the boy's memories?
Only one year… and he had already pushed Transfiguration to a new peak?
Could that kind of talent even be understood?
Or was this some ancient creature—one that had mastered strange magic—disguised as a young wizard, infiltrating Hogwarts with ill intent?
No… unlikely.
Salazar trusted the safeguards he and the other three founders had woven into the castle. And from Lockhart's memories, Hogwarts's current Headmaster was powerful—far from a fool.
Which left only one explanation.
Raw talent.
The wizarding world had never played by reasonable rules.
In the end, Salazar was not the sort to raise a hand against a child—least of all one who was both a prodigy and an ideal heir.
After a long silence, he spoke.
"You should become the Head of Slytherin House in the future. You'd suit it well. Actually, Headmaster would be even better. Easier to get things done."
Leonardo blinked, momentarily thrown. How had they arrived here? Did the ancients always leap this far between topics?
"Leonardo, when you were Sorted, the Sorting Hat had a hard time deciding, didn't it?"
Yet another shift in direction, but Leonardo answered honestly.
"Yes."
Salazar snapped his fingers. The scene changed again. A workstation appeared, complete with Potions ingredients and alchemical instruments.
"So you chose Ravenclaw yourself?"
As the one who had given the Sorting Hat the ability to read a young witch or wizard's qualities, Salazar understood better than anyone what the Sorting ceremony truly was. It simply identified which House best matched a student's dominant traits.
"Yes," Leonardo said. "I thought Ravenclaw would let me study in peace."
Salazar nodded.
"The atmosphere in Slytherin right now is poor."
Leonardo almost thought he'd misheard. The founder of Slytherin had just called his own House's atmosphere poor?
"Right then," Salazar continued, moving on as though he had said nothing unusual. "Let's test Potions and Alchemy next."
He had not originally planned to include Alchemy. From Lockhart's memories, Hogwarts did not offer an Alchemy course until the upper years.
But after a closer look through those same memories, Salazar had "seen" that Leonardo had already designed and built a considerable number of alchemical devices. So Alchemy was added to the exam.
Salazar was genuinely curious. At this age, how far could the boy have progressed?
Leonardo worked with the materialised ingredients, and after a moment's hesitation, he voiced the question that had been circling in his mind for some time.
"Headmaster Slytherin, when you chose your heir, you didn't seem to consider blood status?"
According to the historical records that had endured through the centuries, Salazar Slytherin had parted ways with the other three founders over his opposition to admitting Muggle-born students. He had insisted upon preserving the purity of wizarding blood, and in the end, left Hogwarts over the dispute.
Over the course of a thousand years, that belief had taken root and deepened, becoming almost foundational to Slytherin House.
And yet, when Salazar had laid out his criteria for an heir, he had not mentioned blood status at all. That had genuinely surprised Leonardo.
Something complex flickered through Salazar's slit pupils. When he spoke, his ancient voice carried a distant, echoing resonance.
"In my time, insistence on blood was a necessity. In that era, Muggles' fear and hatred of wizards ran bone-deep. The fires of witch-hunts burned across the land."
"Even Muggle parents could not accept the truth of their own child being a witch or wizard. They saw it as a temptation of the devil. Had the Muggle world discovered Hogwarts, the danger would have been immense."
"That is why I held that Muggle-born and half-blood wizards could not be trusted."
There was no hesitation in his tone—no regret. He did not believe the decision had been wrong.
Leonardo offered no judgement. A thousand years ago, the Muggle world's tolerance for magic had been virtually nonexistent; the relationship between the two had been openly hostile.
Salazar's stance was, if anything, one of uncompromising caution.
To safeguard Hogwarts's survival, admitting only pure-blood families had been the prudent course.
Then Salazar's voice shifted.
"But as the ages pass, the wall between wizard and Muggle cannot stand forever. Half-blood and Muggle-born wizards will only grow more numerous. It is an irreversible tide."
"And so, the pursuit of blood purity was never more than a measure of its time."
Hearing this, Leonardo felt a strong sense of dissonance.
Salazar's own views on blood status were this…
Open-minded?
It did not align with any record that had survived to the present. A thousand years of historical drift?
"Then," Leonardo pressed, following the thread, "the Chamber and the basilisk you left behind, their true purpose was never to purge those who were not pure-blood?"
"Of course not. The Chamber was a safeguard I left for Hogwarts. If the day ever came when the school faced a crisis, my heir could draw on the power within it and preserve Hogwarts itself."
Leonardo considered this for a moment, then pointed to the obvious contradiction.
"But the basilisk was used by Tom Riddle to attack students."
Salazar gave a slight nod.
"I anticipated the possibility of misuse. I placed a seal upon the basilisk's gaze—against Hogwarts staff and students, it was meant to petrify, to halt, not to kill."
"But a thousand years is a long time. Magic fades, and bindings weaken. Such safeguards depend on the nature of the magic itself. Reflections, indirect gazes… death can still slip through."
"If the creature had truly turned to slaughter, the binding within its soul would have awakened—and it would have perished."
So Tom Riddle's elaborate plan, his schemes to unleash the basilisk upon Hogwarts in a wave of slaughter, had been doomed from the very start?
Leonardo understood at once.
And then a flush of awkwardness followed.
He had already killed the school's thousand-year-old guardian.
Salazar seemed to read the thought. His expression remained utterly unbothered.
"It doesn't matter. The basilisk was only ever a tool. With your potential, once you've grown, leaving Hogwarts a defence far beyond a basilisk will hardly be difficult."
"And since it is dead, you may as well make use of its eyes."
Salazar gestured towards Leonardo's face.
"Those eyes of yours… not bad. But there is room for improvement."