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“I know I’m pretty, but if you keep staring at me like that, you might leave a mark on my face.”
Salazar Slytherin, founder of Hogwarts, Expert Legilimens, Skilled Parselmouth, Breeder of Basilisks, and a man quite put out to be recently resurrected under the auspices of a ‘soul mate bond,’ offered the nuisance at his side a scathing glare.
“You are quite insolent for a puny mortal,” he stated with a signature sneer, smoothing down his Dragonskin robes and tearing his eyes away from where he had (he admitted privately) been admiring the way the light sparked crimson and gold across the strands of her hair. The girl rolled her eyes at his continued assertion that his resurrection did, in fact, make it impossible for him to be considered mortal any longer, but deigned not to comment for once.
“Whatever you say, dude,” Ginny Weasley murmured with a distinct air of dismissal, lazily turning another page of one of the many tomes provided by her bushy-haired friend. She was casually slumped over the table right outside the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library, thumbing through the resource with very little care as Salazar himself watched and willed her to find an answer to their current state of affairs. He’d have rather read the books himself of course, but while an oral translation spell existed, a written one had yet to be located; he’d be remedying that shortcoming as soon as he could manage the spell work and a few hours alone.
“Just don’t fall for me. I’ll break your heart,” she said on a sigh, slamming the book shut carelessly and pushing it away from her as she summoned a new one.
He cringed, appalled by her treatment of precious knowledge before he managed to smooth the expression. Her slight smirk as she flipped open to the first page of the new work hinted that her complete lack of care for the written word was deliberate in an attempt to annoy him and he felt his spine tighten as he bristled.
Running a hand through his newly-returned darkened, jet black hair, Salazar regarded his alleged soulmate with a distinctly suspicious eye. When he had been spat out of the veil at the Department of Mysteries, suddenly corporeal in his twenty-five-year-old body and surrounded by rather befuddled Unspeakables, he hadn’t immediately been infuriated.
After all, a second chance at life was nothing to sneeze at and a soulmate, while somewhat cliché, could be a nice distraction between research and work. No, even as the ministry workers had sputtered about bloodline testing and the attempted salvation of the famous Prewett line, he’d considered that a magically superior, pureblooded witch whom he had accidently been resurrected to bond with was more of a boon than an albatross. He had expected an intellectual equal, a demure but clever witch of good breeding, calm temperament, and discernment.
What he got was a foul-mouthed, Quidditch-obsessed muggle-lover with a number of tattoos and a temper fiery enough to light an entire block ablaze with her rage. Salazar doubted very much the little brat had any idea how to properly perform a tea service or what wine to pair with roast mutton or any number of other necessary pieces of information for a pureblooded witch to possess. And most disturbingly and beyond his comprehension, SHE had been furious that HE was her resurrected soulmate.
Ginevra had hexed the Unspeakable herself in a fit of pique and called Salazar a ‘bigot’ and an ‘all around giant arsehole’ before summoning a fully corporeal patronus and sending off a message to a number of people with what he now knew was a ridiculous amount of clout. They showed up in droves to try to sooth her, try to aide her, but ultimately the search for how to extricate herself from a required bonding with Salazar Slytherin had led the pair of them here.
Not that HE was at all eager for their upcoming, mandatory nuptials, but still. He was SALAZAR SLYTHERIN. The little chit should have been beside herself with excitement.
“There is no chance what-so-ever that I will ever find myself infatuated with you, Ginevra Weasley,” Salazar stated firmly, summoning the book she had recently abandoned from the spot where it had carelessly fallen to the floor and checking it over for damage.
The girl’s laughter rang through the library like bells, the sound clear and enticing as she tossed her glossy red hair over her shoulder and offered him a pitying look.
“Oh Sal,” she said with a slowly blooming sensual grin. She brought a hand up and, much to his fury, lightly patted his cheek with an air of utmost condescension.
“Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.”