Salazar's retirement career

[sunnyskywalker]

It's interesting that we never hear what happened to Salazar Slytherin after he "departed" that fateful morning. Jodel suggested a couple of possibilities (included below). As a slightly tongue-in-cheek exercise, here's a quiz on his possible post-Hogwarts activities.

(a) He founded Durmstrang.
(b) He founded the Department of Mysteries (whatever it was called pre-Ministry).
(c) He started a war (maybe with pureblood supremacist ideology, maybe something else).
(d) He retired and lived a quiet life of scholarship and contemplation.
(e) He served on the Wizards' Council.
(f) He started a pet shop specializing in exotic snakes.
(g) He accidentally got killed by his own basilisk. The other Founders covered it up out of respect for his memory.
(h) The other Founders killed him and buried him under the foundations of their new Astronomy Tower.
(i) Other, explained in comments.

Comments

[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.

[sunnyskywalker]

The Sorting Hat is one of the few surviving witnesses from that time (or maybe the only witness, if the split happened when Helena was too young to know what happened and the Baron not yet on the scene)... but it was Godric's hat. If the last three standing gave it an "official version," well, what else could it do but repeat it for the next thousand years? That leaves the field wide open XD

But I do like the idea of Sal's scholarship (before or after the split, or both) being oft-cited foundational texts. If "Slytherin" was a nickname rather than a surname, and Salazar his family name or the name of his father's or grandfather's hometown, his works could be cited in all the kids' textbooks and they might not even realize!