Fic: Foundations (HP: Rowena Ravenclaw/Helga Hufflepuff, PG)

[st_aurafina]

Title: Foundations
Pairing/characters: Helga Hufflepuff/Rowena Ravenclaw
Challenge: For lgbtfest
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Characters all belong to JKR, and not to me.
Prompt: #426. Harry Potter: Rowena Ravenclaw/Helga Hufflepuff. How do they handle having a relationship in such a restrictive time, and what happens when Godric and Salazar find out?
Summary: A thousand years or more ago, the first stones are being laid at Hogwarts and Rowena is determined that there will be no secrets between the four wizards.
Author's Notes: Thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you to my fab four betas: dolorous_ett, layangabi, lilacsigil and wizefics.



Spell casting of this scale had never been attempted before. More than that, wizards and witches capable of this kind of power had never gathered for any reason other than to make war. It was wondrous enough that the four of them were standing together in the mountains of Scotland united by a common purpose, even before the first incantation was spoken.

Helga brought a morning meal in a wide wicker basket. "What's well begun is half done," she said, handing out clay bowls heaped with honeyed gruel that steamed in the pre-dawn light. "We've work enough ahead of us, we should start with warm hands and full bellies."

They began as soon as there was enough light to see without magical illumination. The four of them gathered on the smooth turf of the gentle valley they had selected. Rowena held the northern-most point as the spell matrix was her design, though Salazar – by far the better mathematician – had crystallised her ideas in written formulae that clarified and focused their purpose. He stood now to her left, his body upright and arms extended in the attitude learned from Saracen sorcerers. To her right, Godric knelt before his sword, the tip planted firmly into the ground that they would soon be shaping. A giant man with a strong and certain magic; his strength would be needed today as they reached far into the earth. Opposite Rowena, seated cross-legged on the damp ground, oblivious to the green stains on her robes or the mud smeared across one cheek, Helga watched with a calm smile, her hands knuckle-deep in the sod already. More knowledgeable than any of them about the workings of soil and the things that grew in it, Helga's earth-sense would be there to greet Rowena's first venture below the surface.

Rowena began the incantation, drawing the threads of the spell matrix around her, balancing gesture and word with intent and inspiration, letting her awareness sink down through the green turf. The others fell in beside her, each of them reaching down through clammy earth and slick clay, past hidden streams and long-dead monsters to find living stone that still dreamed of fire and a fluid form. Then, each in their own way; coaxing or reasoning, luring or compelling by strength of will, the four of them brought living stone back to the surface again, a sentient platform on which to build a new world.

The binding was more complicated – the stone had been formed in magma and did not wish to be made fast in the pale afternoon sunlight of the Scottish Highlands. Rowena felt the plates of granite buck beneath her feet as she wove the binding spell tight enough to hold the bristling feldspar in place. She extended her will as far as she could, then waited for the others to match her, so they could entwine the edge of their own spells with hers, forming a united mesh of magic to hold the recalcitrant foundations still. The effort was telling – Rowena felt her concentration waver – then she caught the threads of Helga's familiar energy with relief. It was easy to interlace her own silvery net with the round, green threads of Helga's magic, flexible but strong like new ivy. It was harder not to sink into the welcoming aura and sleep for a year, folded into Helga like butter into fresh-baked bread. At the other end of the magical net, Helga's response was like a message tapped into a taut rope: laughter, bright and sunny and behind that, longing, salty-sweet. Rowena reached out to match that yearning, only for a moment, but long enough that the feeling overflowed into the awareness that was Salazar and Godric, waiting for Rowena to merge her magical net with theirs. She inhaled sharply, then took up the ends of their spells and began working the weft with the warp, smoothly and calmly, despite the surprise she could feel emanating down the fibres of magic.

When they finally broke the incantation, the four of them stood on a vast and solid floor of granite. Salazar, his face grey with fatigue despite his tanned skin, turned on his heel without a word and walked back towards their campsite. Godric made a small but courtly bow to the two women, then followed him. Rowena watched them disappear over the low hill, and worried briefly how much of her sentiment for Helga had overflowed into their common link, then put the thought aside, and knuckled her fist into the small of her back. She turned to look at Helga, who lay on her back with her arms splayed out to each side. All around them, the stone foundations ticked and creaked as they cooled and settled. Rowena folded her skirts beneath her, and sat down close to Helga's knees.

"Are you all right?" She rested one hand on Helga's belly, where the flesh was soft and round.

Helga sighed and covered Rowena's hand with her own. "Tired, in that way that comes from doing satisfying work. I will lie here a moment and scrape up some vitality."

Rowena lay down beside her, and they both watched the sky darken to indigo. "I fear the others may know that we are..." Her voice trailed off, lacking the words, despite all the books she'd read. She and Helga talked of many things in bed, had built and rebuilt this school in their imagination, but they had never discussed the specifics of what they were to each other.

"Lovers." Helga said, reaching up to touch the place where Rowena's lips were pressed together in a frown. "We are lovers."

***

"Why does it matter what they think?" Helga waved her wand, and another acre of pasture collapsed in on itself. Water rushed into fill the empty space, and the loch expanded outwards a little further. "We're building a new world in this place. The rules are up to us to determine."

Rowena followed behind a little way, each sweep of her wand easing the incline of the earth as Helga cut it away, so that the water lapped up on gentle shores. Helga spoke her mind easily without fear of reprisal, but such certainty had been hard-won. It had not been easy for a common-born woman to claim standing among great and noble sorcerers, and Rowena knew from Salazar's snide comments and Godric's unintentionally dismissive remarks that both men considered Helga by far the least sophisticated of the four, for all that she had great power. It stung Rowena, even though Helga sailed calmly through each rebuttal with grace and composure. It was disappointing that the men would not see beyond Helga's coarse-woven robes – that they held Rowena's formal education to be more valuable than Helga's self-taught skills.

"We must work in concert with them; I think it is important to know their feelings." Rowena had paused at the apogee of a broad sweep, and now a small isthmus folded out of the shoreline where Helga had moved ahead. "I must know what their thoughts are, even if they despise us for unnatural beasts."

"This is what you think of us? That we are unnatural and bestial?" Helga's voice was uncharacteristically sharp, and she cut through the air with a slicing movement, sending a swathe of earth tumbling into the water with a thunderous splash.

"Never!" Rowena was shocked at the notes of fear and anger in Helga's voice, and reached out, but Helga had moved out of reach. Rowena held her hand up to her eyes: Helga's body was a dark silhouette against the bright afternoon sun. She shut her eyes – the glare was too much to bear. "No, never." She stumbled forward with her eyes closed until she felt Helga's body against hers, then wrapped her arms around her, pressed her cheek against Helga's. "Nothing we have done could be anything but good. Anyone who says otherwise is blind."

"You care for their opinions overmuch." Helga's voice was tight. "Especially that snake, Slytherin. Everything is fine as it is – we're busy enough building the school. Why tell them anything at all?" Her hand closed around Rowena's. "They won't see us as lovers. For them, lovers are men and women. They could never comprehend that love could be any other way. They will see it as a challenge, and I don't want things to change because they are frightened of a new idea."

Rowena spoke with her mouth against Helga's cheek. "I won't let them change us. But I won't hide either. It matters not what they think. It matters much that their thoughts are unknown. Secrets are poisonous, Helga. I don't want our new beginning to be undermined from the outset."

***

Unexpectedly, Godric proposed.

Rowena had been working beside him all day, balancing a basket of ensorcelled seedlings on one hip, passing them down to where he knelt on the ground. He took each young plant in his broad palm and with unexpected gentleness, planted it in the soil. His hands did not seem made for such delicate work, and yet he did not snap a single stem as he pressed the earth back into place. When the last row was planted, she and Godric stepped away together, and in counterpoint, completed the charm that siphoned life from sun and soil. As the tiny trees erupted into fountains of greenery, Rowena put her hand on Godric's muscled forearm.

"Helga and I are lovers." She had selected the words carefully, wanting to make a forthright statement, impossible to misinterpret. There would be no place for secrets to fester in their new world.

Godric brushed earth from his hands with a thoughtful expression, then dropped to one knee in a fluid motion. Rowena didn't realise what his intentions were, until he took her hand, and pressed it to his lips.

"Good lady, I understand your dilemma. I know well enough what rash choices may be made in times of desperate passion. I would not think less of you for paths you have taken to alleviate your loneliness, for I have walked those paths myself. The things we do in times of despair should not be as weights hung around our necks. Let us both be alone no longer – I am, myself, as yet unwed, and I would be honoured to take my place beside you, to make you my wife in the eyes of the world. I may not love you yet, as a husband loves a wife, but I see no reason why I should not, for you are very dear to me. I hope that I am dear to you also."

Rowena had to bite on her tongue to stop herself from exclaiming her refusal, for Godric's upturned face was honest and kind, and she was loath to say a hurtful word to the man who had treated herself and Helga with nothing but respect. She brushed his cheek with her free hand. "Oh, my dear, dear friend. I could never take advantage of your kindness." Godric opened his mouth to protest, and she pressed her fingers against his mouth. "I am your friend, and here, in this place, we are comrades and equals, yes?" Godric nodded. "Then I can tell you that I am in love with Helga. I cannot promise myself to you, when I am in love with someone else."

Godric's face showed equal parts of chagrin and relief, as he pressed Rowena's hand to his lips one more time. "Then it was wrong of me to ask it of you." He rose to his feet, brushing the day-old leaves from his breeches."Instead, I offer you both my protection," His expression was pensive as he made his elegant bow.

Rowena bowed her head in a curtsy as she had been taught from birth, but as a gesture of respect, not a mere formality.

They walked along the new line of trees back towards the cluster of tents where followers were gathering to watch the stone walls of the castle grow a little each day. Rowena rested her hand on Godric's arm – the ground was littered with twigs and pinecones cast off by the new trees as they compressed many seasons of growth into minutes.

"This is no girlish fancy, then?" Godric still wore his thoughtful expression. "You intend to continue with this affair?"

Rowena nodded. "I think that this will be a place where new ideas can take root and grow, independent of what the rest of the world may think. And if I am to be one responsible for creating such a place, it would be wrong to hide something so important to me. I love Helga, not because I have no husband, not because I am lonely and she is the only person near to me. She is my lover because she is the person I have chosen to love."

Godric put his hands on her waist, to lift her over a fallen log, and her skirts swirled around her feet as he placed her down on the ground again. He laughed, and offered his arm again. "Lady, your courage puts me to shame. I have not been near as gallant with my affairs as you." He sobered, as they began walking again. "You will need courage, though. The world is not made up of great and innovative thinkers in the main, and I suspect that you are more sensitive to the opinions of your peers than Madam Hufflepuff."

Rowena touched his cheek again, touched by the great-heartedness of the man. "Dear friend, if there is one thing that I have learned in the days since we came to this place, it is that we have no peers. And that is both a thing of wonder, and a thing to fear."

***

"Yes, yes, of course." Salazar waved his hand dismissively in response to Rowena's heartfelt statement. "There's no need to go into details." His eyes narrowed, wand poised, waiting for movement in the gathering darkness. "If you would care to resume your duties? I would rather not be crushed by a slab of angry masonry."

Rowena turned and put her back to Salazar's, raising her wand to match his. They stood in the cavernous hall of their new castle, where the walls shifted and rearranged nightly, rendering their carefully detailed floor-plans useless. Salazar hypothesised that the phenomenon was due to accumulation of unsettled energies from the living foundations, and Rowena had agreed to help him test the theory this evening.

"There is a science in Cathay," Salazar's voice had a pompous note, and Rowena hid her smile. He was already lecturing, before they even had a class of students. "It teaches the most auspicious arrangement of one's surroundings, according to the movement of certain energies. Not a stone is laid in any of their great temples and palaces until the finest practitioners have been consulted." A slow grating noise was building up in the far western corner of the hall, and Salazar made a sharp gesture. "Arktikos! "

The temperature in the hall plummeted, but the grating noise stopped. Rowena dabbed her nose delicately; the drop in temperature had been accompanied by a rising mist. "And you are not troubled by what I told you?"

Salazar made an impatient noise with his tongue. "What does it matter? Choose whomever you wish to bed, as long as you do not let your potential go to waste."

Rowena peered over the blanket of mist that surrounded them. Was there an archway hovering in just ahead of her? "What do you mean, my potential?"

"Children, you fool. I'm talking about progeny. You have too much magical talent to let yourself go to seed in the arms of a muddy peasant."

Rowena blushed to her toes. "That really is no business of yours, Salazar. Arktikos!" Her spell shot off into the gloom with unintentional force, and the lurking archway crumbled silently in front of her, the living stone made dry and brittle as old wood.

"Oh, dear," Salazar said, drily. "It's dead. Quick, call Helga, perhaps she can nurse it back to life with a bowl of milk and breadcrumbs."

His acerbic tongue was no disguise – by now Rowena knew him well enough to know he would never bother to mock unless he were unsettled. "You are disturbed by the idea. Helga's magic bothers you, doesn't it?"

"It bothers me that a hedge-wizard such as her should have amassed so much power, yes. That you are consorting with her? No, I am more concerned that she will corrupt your excellent powers of reason with, shall we say, more earthy ideas. We shall need to be ruthless when we open this school. We won't be able to take every homeless creature that scrabbles at the door."

Rowena's mouth twitched. "I think she must have already corrupted my mind, since I have no intention of turning anyone away for having an inferior pedigree. This will be a place of learning."

Salazar made an irritated huffing noise, and blasted another wall. "In that case, I am relieved you have a woman for a lover. If you must dally with the ill-bred, at least she won't be getting a bastard on you."

"Really, Salazar. If you truly believe that we are nothing more than our descendents, I wonder why you bothered to write so many treatises." Rowena pondered his words while the walls ground their way closer in the darkness. "That Helga is a woman matters less to you than the station of her birth?" She was surprised; Salazar was such an advocate of tradition and heritage, she thought his views on coupling would be as rigid.

"Rowena, I have travelled the world. I've seen lands where women's love would be reviled and others where it is lauded. I came to the conclusion long ago that – provided one does not have spectacularly bizarre appetites – what we do for pleasure has little importance." Salazar turned a full circle with his wand outstretched. "I do believe we are surrounded."

"Lumos!" Rowena held her wand ablaze in the darkness, to find a ring of grey stone wall towering over the two of them, closing off any means of escape. "I'll summon the others."

Salazar gripped her wrist before she could send a message. "Oh, no. We are the mental giants here. I will choke on my own tongue before I have Helga Hufflepuff galloping to my rescue." He shook one hand free from its leather glove, and ran it across the stone surface. "Do you feel it? Warmed, as though by fire."

Rowena pressed her hand against the stone: warm, and slightly giving. "It remembers the fire and fluidity of its creation." She turned a full circle with her wand outstretched, the walls rose up and up, until they disappeared outside the sphere of cool blue light. "We need to find a way to release the energy, to allow it to drain it away each time it accumulates."

"I agree." Salazar turned to face her, with his arms crossed. "A channel of some sort would seem to be required. A duct, perhaps, let the energy be snuffed by the lake waters?"

"Heat is volatile, it seeks to rise. All we must do is provide a path." Rowena pictured the heat drawing upwards, like smoke from a fire. "A stair. Stairways will carry the energy upwards, without degrading the integrity of the stone."

Salazar frowned. "They'll be rather volatile themselves, these carriageways. But the idea serves. I think we should execute it. Ascendio, you think? Staegarum?"

Rowena drew back her arm in preparation. "Ascendio, definitely. We want the action."

"Oh, my dear." Salazar sounded almost wistful. "Your mind really is superb. If only I'd met you a hundred years ago."

***

Rowena awoke with her face pressed to the hollow of Helga's shoulder, and Helga's fingers combing through her hair. Sunlight was already creeping under the edge of their tent, which meant that Helga had been awake for some time. She stretched beneath the blankets, reaching her arm across Helga's belly, letting her hand rest on the curl of a hip.

"Do you miss your farm? All the chickens and cows and sheep to tend in the morning?" It had been a point of contention between them; Helga the early riser, and Rowena the bookworm, working into the night then sleeping most of the morning away.

Helga pressed her lips against the crown of Rowena's head. "Not so much that I would ever leave this place."

Rowena traced her finger from Helga's hip, the back of her hand brushing against the curve of breasts. "Will we share dwellings, when we move into the castle? I rather like the western tower, it has the best aspect for astronomy."

Helga laughed, her fingers still caught in Rowena's hair. "Me? Live in a castle? That's far too rich for me. No, I think I'd quite like to build a little cabin by the woods. Catch a rabbit now and then, or maybe a fish, grow some vegetables."

Rowena slid one leg across Helga's body, and raised herself up on her hands, letting her hair spill down around them, closing off the rest of the world like a curtain. "May I visit you, a time or two, in this cabin?"

"I insist on it. In fact, we may have to make it a rule." Helga put on her sternest face, and Rowena laughed.

"That's not at all convincing. Your students will be terrible hooligans, with no sense of propriety."

"And yours will be dreadfully short-sighted, spend all their time with their noses in books, and never see a shred of daylight." Helga kissed her.

Rowena sighed. "Salazar was wrong. What we are to each other is not a thing of little importance."

Helga snorted. "That old parselmouth? He'll be lucky if his students don't knife him in the back on the first night."

"They will be happy here, I think."

"His students? Yes, I imagine so." Helga pushed Rowena's hair back with one hand, and drew her down to kiss her again.

Rowena shook her head. "All of the students. We have built strong walls, I hope that is enough. Strong walls offer shelter and safety from the world outside, but will not hold long against division within. I hope that they will see strength in the differences between them."

Helga's face was fierce with passion. "These walls are more than stone and mortar. As long as there are people who seek their protection, these walls will hold forever."