Salazar Slytherin

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## Biographical Information

### Born

* 10th Century (Great Britain, Age Unknown)

### Occupation

* Teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
* Founder of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

### Loyalty

* Slytherin Family
* Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
	+ Slytherin

## Family Information

### Family Members

* Slytherin Family
* Gaunt Family (Descendants)
* Isolt Sayre † (Descendant)
* Lord Voldemort † (Descendant)
* Ava Riddle † (Descendant)
* Mattheo Riddle (Descendant)
* Nova Riddle (Descendant)
* Aurora Riddle (Descendant)
* Link Riddle-Ravenclaw (Descendant)
* Loki Riddle-Ravenclaw (Descendant)
* London Riddle-Ravenclaw (Descendant)
* Apollo Riddle (Descendant)
* Artemis Riddle (Descendant)
* Nik Mikaelson-Malfoy  (Descendant)
* Ava Mikaelson-Malfoy  (Descendant)
* Ares Mikaelson-Malfoy (Descendant)
* Athena Mikaelson-Malfoy (Descendant)

## Supernatural Information

### Wand

* Unknown Length, Snakewood, Basilisk Horn

## Physical Appearance

### Eye Color

* Grey

**Salazar Slytherin** was a British pure-blood wizard, noted for his cunning and determination. He was regarded as one of the greatest wizards of the age, regarded for his abilities as a Parselmouth and as a skilled Legilimens. Slytherin was one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry along with Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, and Rowena Ravenclaw. He was also the namesake of Slytherin House.

He mistrusted Muggle-born students to the point of proposing that they should not be accepted at Hogwarts. When he expressed his opinion to the other Hogwarts founders, they did not agree with him. In response, he left the school, never to return, and constructed the Chamber of Secrets to house a Basilisk, so that one day, the Heir of Slytherin could purge the school of Muggle-borns in his name.

## History

### Early Life

Salazar Slytherin was raised into a pure-blood family in either England or Ireland, where he was either born or raised in a fen-land area. He and his family had the rare magical gift of speaking Parseltongue. During his youth, he was best friends with Godric Gryffindor.

At some point, Slytherin created his own wand, made of Snakewood with a core of Basilisk horn. He taught it the unique ability to "sleep" when commanded in parseltongue.

### Hogwarts Founder

During his adulthood, in 993, Salazar Slytherin founded Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, with Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, and Rowena Ravenclaw. He appeared to have carefully selected the members of his own House.

The qualities which Slytherin prized in his "*handpicked students*" included resourcefulness, determination, and a certain disregard for the rules, along with the ability to speak Parseltongue. He also selected his students according to their cunning, ambition, and blood purity. His house within Hogwarts was symbolised by a serpent, with house colours of green and silver.

As a professor, he was in favour of teaching the Dark Arts. He sent one student on a task to study a Dark relic in the nearby Feldcroft Catacomb, which had the power to summon Inferi, which Slytherin recorded in his Spellbook. He also taught the Unforgivable Curses, such as the Imperius Curse, which were not illegal at the time.

He constructed a secret Scriptorium, which could only be accessed by those who spoke Parseltongue and had the willingness to cast the Cruciatus Curse on somebody else to enter. There, he kept his Spellbook, a tome that recorded his life and gave further insight into the Dark Arts. The secret of the Scriptorium passed through his descendants, the House of Gaunt, for generations, until it was eventually opened by Ominis Gaunt, along with Sebastian Sallow and their mutual friend, in the 1890–1891 school year.

Finally, and most famously, Salazar Slytherin was responsible for the construction of the Chamber of Secrets beneath the Dungeons of Hogwarts Castle. The Chamber contained a Basilisk which could only be controlled by his own descendant, the "*Heir of Slytherin*", to be used to purge the school of all Muggle-borns. In 1943, Tom Riddle, the Heir of Slytherin, opened the Chamber and used the Basilisk to attack Muggle-borns, resulting in the death of Myrtle Warren. It was opened again in 1992, by Ginny Weasley under the influence of Tom Riddle's Diary, which contained a fragment of his soul.

As time advanced, however, the Chamber turned into legend, as recounted by Professor Cuthbert Binns to his students one-thousand years later.

### Leaving Hogwarts

After founding Hogwarts and co-existing for years, a rift began to grow between Slytherin and the other founders. Slytherin disliked taking students from Muggle families, seeing them as untrustworthy and unworthy of being taught magic, and tried to persuade the other founders to only take students from pure-blood families. However, the other founders didn't agree with Slytherin, particularly Godric Gryffindor.

Eventually, Slytherin and Gryffindor had a bitter argument over the subject. Slytherin chose to leave the school completely, but he had left the Chamber of Secrets and his Basilisk behind.

### Post-Mortem

#### Artistic Representations

There were portraits of Slytherin hung at Hogwarts Castle, one guarding a secret shortcut between the Dungeon's antechamber and the Entrance Hall side room. The password required to gain access to said shortcut was *Mortal Dread*. The other was hung at the Headmaster's office, part of the Headmaster portraits gallery. Slytherin featured on various Chocolate Frog Cards.

#### Lord Voldemort

In 1943, Tom Riddle, the "*Heir of Slytherin*", opened the Chamber of Secrets to conduct a purge on Muggle-born students. This resulted in the death of Myrtle Warren, who eventually returned as a ghost. Riddle opened the Chamber again in 1993 through the use of one of his seven Horcruxes, his diary. Using the fragment of his soul within the diary, he possessed Ginny Weasley and forced her to do his bidding. While he still attacked Muggle-born students (none of whom died, and were simply petrified), his ultimate goal was to lure Harry Potter into the Chamber and kill him.

Salazar Slytherin owned a locket emblazoned with the letter "*S*", which became an heirloom of his last known line of descendants, the Gaunts. Merope Gaunt sold the locket to Caractacus Burke. It was then bought up by Hepzibah Smith, who had a love for antiques. It was subsequently stolen from her by Tom Riddle, later known as Lord Voldemort. Riddle would later turn the locket into a Horcrux and conceal it in a seaside cave he had visited in his youth. The same locket was removed from the cave by Regulus Black with the aid of his house-elf, Kreacher. Kreacher was ordered to destroy the locket, but was unable to do so.

It was later stolen from the Black family home at 12 Grimmauld Place by Mundungus Fletcher, and found its way into the hands of the Ministry of Magic bureaucrat, Dolores Umbridge. Umbridge claiming the "*S*" stood for Selwyn, a pure-blood family line. She either did not know better or wanted to conceal its real meaning from the public.

The locket was recovered by Harry Potter, and was later destroyed in the winter of 1997 by Ron Weasley with Godric Gryffindor's sword. This act of destruction removed all of the Horcrux's power.

In 1997, Riddle, now known as Lord Voldemort, realised his ancestor's wish of purging the school of Muggle-borns by another method: by taking over the British Ministry of Magic and using falsified propaganda to ostracise and eradicate Muggle-borns in the British wizarding population. Voldemort managed to have Muggle-borns evicted from the wizarding world, and at the end of the year, Voldemort even claimed that Hogwarts no longer needed sorting, and that Slytherin's symbols, shields and colours would suffice. After Voldemort's Last Stand, where he was defeated by Harry Potter and Hope Mikaelson, all of this was repealed, and Slytherin's ultimate desire ended in failure.

However, even after Voldemort's death, Salazar Slytherin's bloodline goes through Mattheo and Nova Riddle, and Delphini. Mattheo's children Apollo and Artemis Riddle; Artemis' children Ares and Athena Mikaelson-Malfoy, Nova's children Link, Loki, and London Riddle-Ravenclaw; London's children Nik and Ava Mikaelson-Malfoy. Now the Slytherin bloodline merged with the Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Malfoy bloodline.

#### Theories

While it is true that Slytherin constructed the Chamber, a popular historical theory mentioned on the Wizards' Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptitude Test was that towards the end of his life Salazar reconciled with the other founders and returned to the school, where he eventually died