I would like to thank Kuilin, my beta.

Chapter 35.

The True Return of Lord Salazar Slytherin

4:29 pm, July 14th, 1993

While packing his things for his upcoming trip for Ukraine the next morning in his suitcase-bedroom, a sudden sense of approaching danger prompted Severus to reach for his wand, and to activate the defensive magical items on himself. However, before Severus' bright blue Protego Vitamaxima shield was properly raised, a red bolt of light shattered the forming blue hemisphere and hit Severus.

"Better, but not enough." A comment came from an invisible old man.

With a wave of daze associated with memory charms, Severus began to recognize the speaker, for the eleventh time. The dark-haired wizard swayed a little bit, grunted inside, and remembered where he was planning to go this very afternoon: South Africa.

-Because even Lord Salazar Slytherin found it was almost impossible to sneak into the Room of Requirement and use the Stone without anyone knowing. Hooray, Mad-Eye!

"Am I passable for the role?" Salazar revealed himself in front of Severus, and asked.

Severus noticed that Salazar even managed to slip some Afrikaans accent into his South African English, and was secretly astonished by the ancient lord for his amazing speed at learning new languages.

-At the age of one hundred and fifty, yet he learned the simple verbal parts of a new language within two to three weeks! Well, perhaps this isn't particularly surprising for someone like Salazar Slytherin, or Albus Dumbledore. Those lords all master hundreds of languages. I have such a long way to go.

The linguistic question aside, Severus examined his ancient ancestor's appearance closely, and determined that Salazar's clothes tonight was passable for a dejected fifty-something South Africa wizard clinging desperately on old glories: outdated wizarding robes that were a bit too tight, made with fine material, yet the elegance of the robes was marred by signs of wear and tear; dragon-hide boots that had been fashionable some twenty years ago, now spotted with slouchy attempts to magically repair the patches of ruptured leather; an ancient-looking snake shaped brooch that was carefully cleaned, which could easily be considered as a family heirloom.

Severus silently commented: nowadays, what kind of wizard wears brooch besides one Lucius Malfoy? But this suits the snobbish character Salazar is going to play quite well. By the way, certain characteristics of Salazar suits his role quite well, too.

Severus hissed, "Yess."

Salazar nodded, grabbed Severus, applied concealing charms on both of them, and activated a portkey that could only be made by someone with higher security clearance level than the current headmistress.

A portkey and several Apparitions later, Severus and Salazar landed at the supposed residence of one Claudius Gamp, a laughingstock in the South African wizarding society after Severus sabotaged his final grand show in his haughty and pathetic life.

Around this time of 1992, the Ministry of Magic of South Africa welcomed its first black minister, plus eleven more black high-rank officials. A number of white wizards were quite unhappy about this change in the predominately white ministry, and about similar changes that was taking place in the Muggle side of the country. Amongst the racist wizards was one Claudius Gamp. Although the Gamp family began to go downhill over thirty years ago, the last Scion of the Gamp House still reasoned that his failure was entirely due to the rise of black wizards. After imbibing too much alcohol into his system in a bar with a dozen or so other white supremacists, Claudius announced to the cheering crowd that he would sacrifice his life in a ritual to bring South Africa back to its course. When Claudius staggered out of the bar, Severus secretly followed him, interrupted the sacrificial ritual which, according to Severus' estimation, would only blow up the Gamp House and things within a mile. Besides saving possibly several hundred Muggles in the nearby village, Severus mercifully helped Claudius to think that he had accomplished his plan, while he actually only managed to achieve part of it - which was, of course, the suicide part.

On the third day, Claudius returned to that bar in the form of a brown pebble in Severus' box, while polyjuiced Severus was mocked by Claudius' obnoxious friends, who were too cowardice to actually do anything themselves, yet felt perfectly entitled to jeer the one who had claimed to do something.

-Maybe they are just in need of a dark lord with passable motivation skills to actually start something.

Severus made a sarcastic mental note to himself, and staged a spectacular fist fight with Claudius' friends for being insulted. After Severus landed several of the highly incompetent wizards into Cape Town Magical Hospital for bruises, Severus successfully made sure that the poor brown pebble in his box lost his remaining social ties.

Nowadays, Severus just needed to occasionally sell some of Claudius' old clothes and family collections, and to place some large owl orders of Firewhiskey afterwards to make this identity alive in the eyes of the magical world.

Needless to say, it took Severus quite some efforts to find and obtain this convincing false identity, yet the powerful magic that Salazar already gave him hints on really paid off for Severus' best cover. Moreover, if it were not for the ancient-looking scrolls fabricated by the authentic medieval wizard, and the hints he left in Severus' mind, Severus and Mad-Eye might still be busy trying various wild ideas proposed by the Boy-Who-Lived in front of the Mirror this very day.

Severus did hold some small grudges toward Salazar over one of his hints. Severus knew that Salazar only left him the idea that he should try to probe the procedures of people being transported to the Hospital. Salazar had never indicated in any way or form that Severus should endanger Draco in doing so. However, Severus still ended up giving Mad-Eye a chance to do things to Draco. Severus knew the young Malfoy brat needed to encounter some real danger to get rid of his illusion and contempt of false safety created by pureblood security protocols, yet Severus should use one of his own "kill-a-pureblood-creatively" methods, instead of handing Mad-Eye the opportunity that the old Auror had definitely yearned for in the past one hundred years. Severus knew it was unfair to blame Salazar for the affair, which only proved what a horrible godfather Severus was, yet Severus couldn't help.

In front of his clear failure as a godfather, Severus didn't want to put too much emphasis on the bit of success he had. Severus managed to slip a note to his subconscious thoughts before Salazar temporarily blocked his memory by the end of their second meeting, in which he told himself that he needed to teach Draco how to become an animagus very quickly.

A few days later, although several hundred pieces of undisclosed gold donated to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement ensured that Draco would never be charged for the offense, the new Lord Malfoy had become a criminal in the eyes of magical Britain, for the offense of being an illegal animagus.

Severus amused himself each time he thought of his godson's animagus form: one can hardly believe how attached that boy is to his snake-ish Father - the boy with a name of dragon and wyvern symbols on his pajamas became a snakedragon, a hybrid between a wyvern and a snake! And the endless not-so-subtle gloats from Lucius, simply unbearable! I wonder, if I should thank Merlin that Draco's animagus form doesn't have blue stripes. True, this rare form of animagus did solve the problem of Parseltongue, snakedragon hide and scales are resistant to a lot of curses, its fangs contain deadly poisons similar to that of basilisks, the body is resistant to most poisons and infections, and it can fly pretty fast, yet the twenty-foot long creature with shining light-gold colored scales is hardly any form of hiding.

-Hopeless Malfoy show-offs!

Moreover, Severus could hardly suppress his smile each time he thought of the snakedragon's funny Parseltongue accent due to his dragon part, where a "yesss" would become a "yesshh", and "ssit" would turn into "sshhit".

It seemed that Salazar had not realized that neither the Malfoys nor Severus were natural Parselmouths, and Severus didn't plan to do anything that might lessen Lord Slytherin's grandfatherly thoughts on the younger Malfoy – after Salazar learned that Draco couldn't even master ancient Greek, the old lord blamed Lucius for Draco's poor accent and substandard linguistic education in general, and he had planned to teach Draco himself when he had time, which worked exactly according to Severus' plan. And for some strange reason that Severus didn't really want to ponder upon, after discovering that Severus was not a stutter in modern English, Salazar also blamed Lucius for not providing Severus proper private linguistic education, and began to teach Severus the correct ways to move his tongues and vocal cords in Parseltongue.

Severus was sure poor old Lucius would understand. To be honest, the imaginary scene of a teeth-gritting Lucius reluctantly thanking the unkempt half-blood for getting his son a great tutor offered Severus endless entertainment.

Entertainment and annoyance that were commonly associated with the Malfoys aside, Severus knew the advantages he gained from Salazar all required payment. And if Severus wanted Salazar to continue his grandfatherly feelings towards Draco, Severus probably needed to pay for Draco's share as well, in which providing Salazar with a proper false identity was the least he could do.

For their plan to work, Salazar needed more than a false identity, proper garments and phrasing in commonly used sentences. Salazar needed to be able to act the role of an obnoxious twentieth century wizard, and that had proved to be the difficult part.

The wizarding world had moved slower than the Muggle world during the past several hundred years, however, there was still no way that Severus and Plumpton's portrait could teach Salazar everything about the twentieth century within a few days. Severus could make sure that Salazar wasn't too surprised when he encountered a wizarding radio or a magical moving photo, and the ancient lord was quick in picking up the proper use of current dining utensils, yet it was impossible for Severus to introduce something such as toilet tissues that was so common for him that he didn't even consider the need for explanation.

"This rolled parchment is so soft and þynne. What skin is it made from? Why do you put such things in the toilet?" Salazar had once asked.

Then Severus began to explain that "þynne" was pronounced as "thin" these days, and since current Muggles and wizards used chopped wood to make paper, paper became so cheap that people even used paper for bathroom needs.

"Interesting. I have heard -" Salazar paused, then hissed, "what iss the current pronunciation for Chinesse?"

Here was when Severus drew out a map and named every major country in the world to Salazar. Then one question led to another, and Severus ended up explaining the prominent wizarding schools founded after Salazar's time, drew out his collection of Uagadou, A History, and showed Salazar the moving pictures of the headmaster and professors during Claudius' school years in Uagadou School of Magic.

"Oh, and the admission letters to the school are by a dream messenger. As far as I have heard, the dream messenger put a token into your hand while you were sleeping some night between your eleventh birthday and the start date of the school year." Severus showed Salazar the well-kept token he found at the Gamp House. "Moreover, both English and French were used as teaching languages in Uagadou, and blacks and whites were separated into different classes back when you were a student."

Severus twisted his lips in disapproval, and continued, "Culture wise, it is noteworthy that although we British abolished slavery almost two hundred years ago, and Shacklebolt is even considered as a Noble and Most Ancient House, it is not the case in every part of the world, especially, not in Africa. I suppose, the adoption of Muggle racism among the white wizards migrating to Africa was somewhat understandable, because they needed some kind of moral justifications for colonialism, and few people wanted to consider themselves as the bad guys. Going back to your education, since you were educated in the White-English House, in which the majority of your classmates were white, - except one Japanese and two Indians, who were honorary whites, - the majority of your supposedly classmates were descendants of British colonists. The majority of them were only racist, not blood purists; since you were both a racist and a blood purist, and never hesitated before voicing your viewpoints, you were not that popular at school. Here is Claudius' school yearbook - lucky that they have these in Uagadou, otherwise, it's hard to find the names and faces. Oh, and this girl, Claudius still kept some love letters from her, let me get the letter..."

It took Severus four five-hour time-turned sessions to cover the basics that Salazar might encounter en route to the Hospital as Claudius Gamp.

Then, the two ex-Heads of Slytherin House spent quite some time in and around Cape Town Magical Hospital to observe how patients were diagnosed and transported to the only real Hospital in the world. Things there appeared to be quite similar to what Severus observed one year ago: the hostility between whites and blacks, and the rift between wizards of British descendance and that of Dutch descendance, had made South African wizarding society extremely convenient for outside wizards with unspeakable motives. The safety rules were intentionally badly made, and even more poorly observed; communication between different departments in the hospital and the ministry was somewhere between highly ineffective and nonexistence; English-speaking wizards and Afrikaans-speaking wizards stabbed each other's back even if the very act might result in their own injuries as well; white officials who thought they were soon to be replaced by blacks could be easily bought, while the newly elected black officials didn't hold any better ethics than their white colleagues.

Two five-hour sessions later, Lord Slytherin announced his conclusion: "A nation so divided can easily be conquered, even by you, Severus."

Severus wasn't so sure this was meant to be a compliment. However, there was something quite worrisome that he needed to tell Salazar: "Be warned, Muggless in thiss nation have masss-ssacrifice v-weaponss, ass you call them."

"What?!" The aged lord hissed in utter disbelief. "If the Muggless run their government like thiss, we sshall all be desstroyed by the weaponss!"

Severus then explained a piece of good news: "Other Muggle nations, such as the United States and Russia, are doing one good thing: they are pressuring South Africa to give up their nuclear weapons. From what I recently read, the South Africans are cooperating, or at least, they seem so."

"We should make them so. From what we know, the wizards protecting the Muggle officials should be easily bought or deceived." Lord Slytherin decided. "Is there any other Muggle nation that can be easily disarmed?"

Severus smiled a sly smile: "Ukraine, and some other former Soviet states."

Salazar raised one eyebrow, and smirked, "Sseveruss, you are truly my desscendant."

Hence, Severus gained himself a very powerful ally for his trip to the former Soviet states, that was, of course, if their plan for today would be successful.

Severus eyed his ancient ancestor, and nervously watched as the aged lord downed several bottles of age-reducing potion that made him look as if he was in his early thirties. Although the age-reducing potion couldn't really put youth back to organs and joints that had deteriorated over time, it could safely change one's appearances. And since this was one of the most commonly used potions among the idiots who transfigured themselves, it was OK for Salazar to have some as well.

In the second step, the original Lord Salazar Slytherin needed to look like a stupid wizard who wanted his looks to resemble Salazar Slytherin. Since polyjuice potion would definitely be one of the first things Mad-Eye might check for in the Hospital, the two ex-Heads of Slytherin House didn't plan to use polyjuice potion to make Salazar resemble Claudius. Instead, they used non-free human transfiguration, and they needed to intentionally make the work sloppy, such as changing Salazar's hair color to somewhere between brown and black, his face unevenly pointed, and several scars and moles on the original Claudius' body badly masked. With the combined efforts of Salazar and Severus, this was easily done.

Third, since neither Salazar nor Severus trusted the healers in the emergency room in Cape Town Magical Hospital, they agreed that free transfigurations on the vital organs and joints should be only conducted by themselves. After practicing free human transfiguration extensively on Lucius, Severus was relatively good at this. Unfortunately, they needed to make the work sloppy in the eyes of the inexperienced. Therefore, during their previous five-hour session, Severus taught everything he knew about free human transfiguration to Salazar, and left the practice to be "sloppy" part to the aged lord. For what was worse, since they couldn't appear to be too powerful, the time span that the free transfigurations could sustain was limited to one and a half hours.

Severus glanced at his mechanical watch, which showed "4: 58", and nodded to Salazar. The two ex-Heads of Slytherin House quickly started their free transfigurations, with Severus doing the first round of transfiguration, while Salazar checking Severus' work, and making modifications.

About fifteen minutes later, they were ready to move to the Cape Town Magical Hospital.

Severus disillusioned himself, pulled on Salazar's invisibility cloak, applied several one-sided sound and smell concealing charms, then Apparated to Cape Town Magical Hospital, where Salazar would separately Apparate to.

In front of the hospital's recipient desk, Salazar proudly announced to the waiting crowd in lines: "Today, the world will witness the return of Lord Salazar Slytherin, the greatest wizard after Merlin."

Everyone looked at Salazar as if he was mad.

Then, Salazar waved a page he teared from Hogwarts, A History, which showed the sculpture of Salazar Slytherin in the Slytherin dungeons. "Don't I look exactly like the great wizard?"

The crowd sniggered, and started not-exactly whispering to each other.

"Another standard idiot."

"Oh, Merlin, is this what we get after they announced that nobody can look exactly as any other living person? So they choose the dead ones?"

"Yeah, I heard quite some witches wanted to look like some woman named Marilyn Monroe - is the original Ms. Monroe a member of the House of Monroe?"

"Mom, look at his hair. Is Salazar Slytherin's hair half black, half brown?"

"Ah, this one is entertaining, at least."

The receptionist rolled her eyes, and asked, "What is your name, sir?"

"Salazar Slytherin." The ancient lord told the truth that nobody believed.

"What is your legal name, and how long will your transfiguration last, sir?" The receptionist couldn't help but rolled her eyes again.

Salazar answered: "Well, you can temporarily call me Claudius Gamp," and he quickly added, "I would soon change the names on all the papers to Salazar Slytherin. And, a great wizard such as I can make my free transfiguration last longer than any other living wizard in the world! "

The receptionist noted down "Claudius Gamp" on the register book, and signaled for the emergency room. This surely wasn't the first self-transfigured idiot she had seen, and the transfiguration skills of those dimwits usually didn't last long.

A few minutes later, Salazar was rushed into the emergency room, and the chuckling healers there began to apply free transfiguration per Salazar's request.

"Here, my hair needs to be all black, and my skin should be fair." Salazar demanded. "Oh, and my face should be more pointed in my jaw."

In the whole while that Salazar pretended to be an idiot, Severus invisibly patched up all the imperfect transfigurations the healers didn't observe, or were too lazy to correct.

Fifteen minutes later, the head healer announced: "You are good to go, Mr., ha, Salazar Slytherin."

Salazar was then handed a portkey to Azkaban.

Severus observed that the healers didn't obtain any biological samples from Salazar, or any other patient sent to Azkaban. Since the International Regulations Against Abuse of Healing Powers was yet to pass, and this worked temporarily to Severus' advantage, Severus wasn't going to complain.

Severus knew that hair and blood would be collected by healers in Azkaban, and again by healers in Hogwarts. Severus had heard something about Muggle DNA identification technology. Moreover, even Severus knew a ton of evil things that you could do with willingly donated blood, not to mention Lord Salazar Slytherin. Therefore, both ex-Heads of Slytherin House had decided to go safe, and to only submit Claudius' samples to the people in the Hospital.

As Salazar swirled and disappeared, Severus could only hope that Salazar could really use his so-called magician's tricks to swap the samples from Salazar's own hair and blood to what they got from Claudius' body. Otherwise, well, they would have quite some busy work to do with the security system of the temporary storage room in Azkaban - if you were one of the Founders of Hogwarts, the security system in Hogwarts was relatively easy to tamper with, which Salazar had already done.

If what Severus and Salazar learned about the securities in Azkaban were right, everything on Salazar would be taken away, and he needed to change into something Muggles would recognize as restrictive clothing for the insane. Then, Salazar had to drink some sleeping potions, and would be hit several times with multiple versions of sleep and binding hexes. To counter this problem, Salazar showed Severus a Version 2.0 of the animagus transfiguration, where he could transfigure any part of his body into his animagus form. The digestive system of a basilisk could handle most potions like a breeze, and the scales of the monster snake were resistant to most hexes that were not intended to cause permanent harm. In case that the sleep hexes were to hit Salazar's head, the old lord would have to use pure magic to absorb the hexes, and made it seem like the hexes had been effective. Severus and Salazar had tried this part several times, and it proved that the all the sleep hexes the two ex-Heads of Slytherin knew could be absorbed by Salazar's magic alone. Since non wizard in Azkaban and in the Hospital was known to be much stronger than Severus - to be honest, there weren't that many in this fading age of magic in the whole world, - they were relatively safe in this regard.

Next, it would come to the question that whether Salazar's disguise would fool the diagnostic spells and artefacts used by wizards in Azkaban - they had tried the ones people used in the Room of Requirement, and the answer was yes. Severus had tried everything he knew, and everything Salazar taught him, including two spells that Severus could barely managed to cast, and the most likely result was there was nothing that couldn't be explained by "the standard idiot" statement.

Then, Salazar would be portkeyed to the Room of Requirement, checked, sampled, treated with the Stone, and sampled again.

If what Severus heard was right, anyone with malignant purposes to the Stone were to be found out at any point in Azkaban or Hogwarts, the standard protocol was to knock him or her down and arrest him immediately, and then use the Stone to fix the perpetrator in a greatly weaken state, such as a quadruple amputee without a tongue. Severus supposed that the last part was a rumor intentionally spread by Mad-Eye, for such treatment was clearly against the Boy-Who-Lived's moral standards.

Anyway, if Salazar's disguise was ever revealed, the ancient lord planned to escape with some Version 2.0 of conjured Floo fire - which the ancient lord chose not to explain it to Severus, nor had he revealed any other escape plans which he surely had. Salazar told Severus, he would then directly enter the Room of Requirement through some loophole the ancient lord would fix soon after, rob the Stone, and publicly announce his return. The only problem that Salazar saw with this alternative approach was that it might put Severus into a difficult position, while Severus had the bad feeling that the public announcement might somehow lead to a world-ending catastrophe.

Now, all Severus could do was to wait and pray in one of his secret fall-back locations in Florida. Severus dearly hoped that he wouldn't have to initiate the final back-up plan, which involved a lock of Salazar's hair, and a very special locket. Salazar claimed that he made the locket with the sacrifice of an enchanted hat, but his statement was made in English, instead of Parseltongue. Severus didn't have any immediate plan to figure out whether there was a person under the hat, for example, a certain Italian dark wizard named Giuliani. For this reason, although Salazar had said in Parseltongue that the "bad luck for offspringss" side effect was a rumor he himself made up, Severus wasn't that high on the promise the aged lord made that he would make Severus a really improved horcrux as reward.

As Severus was counting the seconds on his mechanical watch, when the watch said 6:14:05, a popping sound of a portkey announced the true return of Lord Salazar Slytherin.

Fifteen minutes later, or one hour and fourty-five minutes ago, in his suitcase-bedroom, Severus was packing his stuff for his upcoming trip for Ukraine the next morning. Somehow, he had a strange sense of true triumph, as if he had outsmarted Mad-Eye, or maybe someone or something even greater.

Author's note:

Has anyone figured out what my Horcrux Version 3.0 requires?

As I was writing this chapter, I heard the sad news that Alan Rickman, the actor who played the role of Professor Severus Snape brilliantly, had passed away. RIP, Alan. I hope someone has made a Version 3.0 Horcrux for you, so that we can still hear your unmistakable voices and watch your excellent performances after we figure out how to make a Stone.