death to capslock

I have those moments too. The more the narrative insists that some guy a thousand years ago was definitely evil based on very solid rumor which just so happens to match current prejudices, the more I want to think the opposite. But I'd also hate to think that the school was that nasty from the very beginning--it seems so unfair. A tragic accident, or even an argument between friends that got out of hand (whether it ended in manslaughter or just storming out), would at least be different from Harry's day.

But hey, if you want ambiguous evidence that might or might not support the idea of the other three as iffy, here's something: why did Rowena send a homicidal creep like the Baron to fetch her daughter home? The generous answer is that he was good at pretending to be an okay guy and she honestly didn't know. But you could always go for Bad Judgement Rowena (who didn't recognize the warning signs) or Negligent Rowena (who didn't particularly care). Or even Vengeful Rowena, who sent the Baron to kill her daughter for stealing the diadem.

From:

oryx_leucoryx

Well, an argument between friends that went horribly wrong would be a prequel to the Dumbles and Gellert parting, so still not completely original.

As for Rowena, I wonder how having that tiara of wisdom and then losing it affected her judgment. Did she come to depend on it too much? Was she more interested in her daughter or in her trinket?

Also, supposedly Rowena is responsible for the insane design of the castle. Why Rowena? What kind of wisdom is in that?

From:

arcanetrivia

Maybe she had a Luna Lovegood thing going on.

From:

Also, supposedly Rowena is responsible for the insane design of the castle. Why Rowena? What kind of wisdom is in that?

As much as I like Luna, I never got the sense the few known Ravenclaw characters in the books were wise as much as they were presented as either eccentric or bookish. The few Ravenclaw characters I can think of besides Luna are Cho, Flitwick, Lockhart, Quirrell, and Padma Patil. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but the strengths of Ravenclaws seemed even more ignored than Hufflepuffs in the books (with the exception of Luna, I suppose)

From:

oryx_leucoryx

Rowena however had the enhancing powers of the diadem (unless the castle design happened after she lost it, maybe experiencing withdrawal).

From:

Not completely, but if that's what happened, at least one of them died instead of a bystander.

From:

Maybe only Ravenclaws can figure out the pattern of the moving staircases, and everyone else gets stuck? It doesn't make much sense to me, but she also made answering riddles the only way to get into Ravenclaw Tower, so.

It could be just that it was a really neat intellectual puzzle, and she never got as far as "is this a good idea, though?"

I wonder a lot about exactly how her diadem worked. And why she didn't just make another one if her daughter wanted one so badly.

From:

I must admit that I have always considered Rowena to be proud and overconfident woman who loved to show off and had little regard for what is practical.
Let's take into consideration what little we learn about her from HP books.
She picked students that were intelligent. Additionally Ravenclaw students that attend Hogwarts with Harry tend to be good looking; it's possible that Hat is preprogrammed to take under consideration other factors than those stated in Hat's Songs. In situation where student fits well in Ravenclaw and other house the looks factor might be deciding factor. Intelligence and looks are much easier to show off than hardworking or cunning. Especially in academic setting.
So Rowena might be in this regard a little like Horace.
What next? Ah yes, her architectural legacy. Hogwarts looks like portfolio of insane architectural genius. There is a lot of flashy structures (the ceiling in the Great Hall, moving stairs) that are either impractical or outright dangerous. To make things even worse, her student's Common Room has the worst security system in the whole building. Sure it shows off Rowena's skill at enchanting and shows off her students' intelligence, but can end up in either letting in a dangerous intruder or keeping out a stressed out student during emergency.

From:

Oh, and your (j) makes me think: Beauxbatons students come from Spain as well as France, as far as we know. Maybe Salazar and his wife stayed home and did independent scholarship togehter, but maybe founded that school :-)

From:

mmmarcusz.livejournal.com

I like (b), kind of a Masonic group that investigated magical mysteries and lost arts and secrets

From:

It does sound fun! And I like the idea that he left some kind of (mostly positive?) legacy outside the school.

From:

kahran042

Personally, I'd go with (b) followed by (d).

Edited Date: 2019-02-14 07:58 pm (UTC)

From:

(b) and (e) sound like they could be interesting. I'd also go with (d) but maybe that wouldn't be exhilarating for an ambitious person like Salazar? Or maybe he did have enough of the craziness inherent in the Wizarding world and enjoyed going off the grid and chilling for the rest of his life.

(g) sounds like the type of poetic irony JKR would probably find fitting or amusing, but she already did that with Snape - the whole "Slytherin getting put down by their own house emblem" thing....

In a weird way, the story of the four Founders of Hogwarts reminds me a tiny bit of Avatar: The Last Airbender, especially the opening narration. "Long ago, the four ~~nations~~ founders lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when ~~the Fire Nation attacked~~ Salazar Slytherin distrusted Muggle-borns."

I'm being silly, but I do wonder what would drive a man like Salazar to disappear, especially after putting so much work in his Chamber and basilisk.

From:

I guess it would be hard to transport a basilisk? Maybe he wanted to leave it to protect his students? (Not that this is necessarily a rational reason, but maybe he had a Hagrid-like attitude toward "interesting creatures.")

But yes, it is an awful lot to just walk away from. Chamber, basilisk, and students. The Hat really didn't give us enough details.

From:

This is perhaps a sign of my priorities being out of order, but I'd be more worried about leaving the basilisk behind more than anything else. But I've always had questions about the basilisk in the Chamber. How can a gigantic creature survive on rats alone? Did it have nothing else to eat? Was it put to sleep temporarily until Tom Riddle awakened it? How big were the pipes in Hogwarts that a giant serpent could slither around? Why did it not eat any of the students or staff? Why is basilisk venom special enough to destroy horcruxes?

Those are all rhetorical and random questions. Maybe I'm too big of a worrier, but I can't imagine leaving such a creature behind without an urgent reason. I don't think Salazar would've left after one or two squabbles with the other founders; I think it would've had to be something substantial for him to walk away by choice (if he did choose to walk away in the first place and wasn't forcibly kicked out or killed).

From:

arcanetrivia

"Temporarily until Tom Riddle awakened it"? Wouldn't that have to be like 900 years?

From:

Ha, true. :D It lived longer than the average basilisk, so it either spent hundreds of years sleeping in the Chamber until Riddle commanded it in the 1940s, or it spent hundreds of years doing...something. Eating and slithering around? I can't remember if it could leave the Chamber without being commanded to do so.

I know a gigantic serpent is far from a harmless and helpless pet, but I can't imagine Salazar leaving it behind without a good enough reason. There's also the chance he didn't care about the serpent as a living creature and saw it more as a weapon to use.

Maybe I'm thinking too much over this. Perhaps JKR just wanted a big scary snake for Harry to battle in a foreboding secret dungeon and didn't think too much about the basilisk beyond that.

From:

I'm almost positive that there is secondary entrance to CoS that leads to Forbidden Forest.

When Harry enters tunnels leading to CoS he notices rat bones and snake molts. Considering that the tunnel's walls are wet, those must be recent.
This means that over 6 meters long snake ate well enough to grow, but there is no way that this big boy would be satisfied with just rats and we don't hear any reports of missing pets. So what the Basilisk eats?

About 50 years ago Hagrid released an invasive specie of spiders into forest. Spiders that grow to size of elephant. Students are forbidden from entering the forest so aside from occasional rule breaker spiders must prey on some other big animals.
And yet the forest isn't overrun by Aragog's spawn and in the first book not only there is enough unicorns for herd, but also centaurs aren't afraid of travelling on their own.
So something must act as population control for Acromantulas.
I believe that after Acromantulas ate all animals that Basilisk normally ate, it moved to eating younger Acromantulas.

From:

Now there's a thought. Spiders are also naturally afraid of basilisks--maybe Acromantulae are something like like to eat when they get a chance, and all the little spiders are afraid because of the stories from their giant cousins?

It's also possible that the basilisk can get out into the lake. Maybe it eats baby giant squid, and that's why we only ever see one. (Otherwise, we have to ask whether it's an immortal giant squid, or do they re-stock it every so often when the old one dies, or what.) Maybe it's only because Harry killed it that they could hold one of the Triwizard tasks in the lake at all without risking the students getting Petrified by the basilisk's gaze through the water.

The rat bones are puzzling. Snakes don't actually rip the meat off and leave the bones, unless I'm wildly mistaken. Are basilisks different? Or did something else eat those rats--and if so, what?

From:

The bones are bit puzzling, but there might be explanation for this. While normally bones are digested by snakes, that would not be the case if the prey is vomited. Usually snakes vomit if they are too stressed out, are too cold (since their digestive system depends on environmental temperatures) or are sick. It's possible that since Diarycrux stopped the Basilisk from hibernating during winter, the poor thing had problems with keeping food down. Damp environment would speed up decay of soft tissues so only bones are left (though I wouldn't be surprised if adrenaline pumped Harry failed to spot fur laying nearby). When Harry enters CoS it's... June(?) so the snake had enough time to eat enough to shed molt.

It's kinda scary to think what will happen now that Basilisk is dead.

From:

All very good questions. I would hope it was magically hibernating at lot of the time, and that Salazar put it into a magical sleep in the first place as a precaution.

On the other hand, do we know for certain that this is his basilisk? Maybe he just had a normal big snake for a pet, someone else made the basilisk over the many centuries since, and the legend got a little muddled.

From:

Salazar's retirement plan? Alright let's take a crack on this.
Well considering that he was petty and skilled enough to secretly build CoS under existing castle without weakening it's structural integrity he most probably stayed in UK a few more years creating a political body that was precursor to the Ministry (I'll have the last word, Godric!) while on side starting his own business: designing and building magical buildings! Quickly Salazar became very popular among purebloods. Rowena became jealous. The rivalry between two old colleagues resulted in A)Hogwarts becoming Murder Castle TM and B)Salazar being covered in so much of political mud that he had to emigrate back to his homeland: Iberian peninsula.
Sadly that didn't end well for Sal. A few years after he came back he was murdered to death by good Allah fearing Saracen.

Edited Date: 2019-02-16 10:28 pm (UTC)

From:

Ah, dueling magical architects! That would be hilarious.

I wonder just how far under the castle the CoS is in the first place? And how much of the castle had they built when he built his chamber? What kind of soil and stone was he digging into? Where's the water table? So many questions.

Someone who helped found an international (at the time) pan-British magical school sounds like a good candidate for also starting a pan-British magical government.

If he did go back to the Iberian Peninsula, he could have gotten killed in one of the many little civil wars and Reconquista-related fights.

From:

seductivedark.livejournal.com

I'll go with (d) but am also attracted to (h) and (g) in that order.

Reason for (d): If Salazar had spent little time at Hogwarts, say just a couple of decades given the supposedly long lifespan of a wizard, I think the other founders would have said, 'Good riddance to bad rubbish' and gotten rid of Slytherin House, tweaking the Sorting Hat to just assign to the three houses and redistributing the then-current Slytherin students to the other houses. Since they didn't, I'll say that he stayed a good many years and the split came when they were all nearing retirement age so Salazar's ambitions channeled into a more sedentary post-Hogwarts occupation of scholarship with the aim of writing amazing and oft-cited theses on the various magical arts.

(g) is just wild. Love it! Blood on all those good, pure hands.

(h) hoist by one's own petard? Lovely.

From: