“ | We'll teach just those whose ancestry's purest. | „ |
~ Slytherin's opinion regarding the running of Hogwarts. |
Salazar Slytherin is the overarching antagonist of the Wizarding World franchise. He was one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry who founded the House of Slytherin and the ancestor of Lord Voldemort.
Slytherin wanted Hogwarts to only accept pure blood students; when this proposal was rejected by the other founders he became estranged and resorted to an extreme method to secure his vision for the school; murder all Muggle-borns in Hogwarts to keep the blood purity from Pure-blood wizards intact. Slytherin's scheme to purge Hogwarts and his world views directly influenced the actions of Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters hundreds of years later.
Biography[]
Beginnings[]
Salazar Slytherin was born a pure-blood wizard during Medieval times in either England or Ireland, making him of English or Irish origin. In his youth, he met Godric Gryffindor and the two would form a strong friendship. Salazar is one of the first recorded Parselmouths (wizards that have the extremely rare ability to speak Parseltongue). He and Godric are amongst the four founders, the other two being Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw, who founded the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
He founded the house of Slytherin, his namesake, with its symbol being a serpent and green and silver being the associated colors of the house. Salazar appears to have chosen students whom he carefully selected, usually those who displayed the qualities of resourcefulness, leadership, ambition, cunning, shrewdness and determination. This also includes students who have a certain disregard for the rules, the ability to speak Parseltongue, and those according to their cunning, ambition, and blood purity.
During his time as a Hogwarts professor, he valued in teaching the Dark Arts and even taught the Unforgivable Curses, the most powerful and sinister spells in the entire world, as they were not illegal at that time. At some point, he constructed a secret Scriptorium chamber in the dungeons of Hogwarts. It is where he kept his spell book, which records his life and holds his insight into dark magic. Salazar Slytherin's scriptorium can only be accessible to students who speak Parseltongue and the former was even willing to cast the Cruciatus Curse, one of the three Unforgivable Curses, on anybody else who entered.
Disillusionment, Construction of the Chamber of Secrets and Departure from Hogwarts[]
Though Salazar had a friendly and harmonious relation with the other three founders, and all four coexisted peacefully, however, despite everything, he became disillusioned with Muggle-born students being accepted into Hogwarts, as he sees muggles as being distrustful and unworthy of studying magic, possibly because of the great conflict between Wizards and Muggles. He believed that the school should only accept pure blood witches and wizards and tried to sway the other founders to agree with him but they refused, especially Godric Gryffindor.
This caused a rift in Slytherin's relationship with Godric, where the two got into a bitter argument over the subject which resulted in Salazar to end his friendship and leaving Hogwarts. However, prior to his departure, he built a secret chamber deep underneath the dungeons of the school. There he placed a dreaded creature called the Basilisk within a giant statue of himself, which was a testament of his ego.
Having placed his Basilisk under a deep slumber, Salazar planned to have his "heir" find the chamber and awaken the beast in order to purge Hogwarts of all Muggle-born students. This secret room came to be known as "The Chamber of Secrets" after the other founders heard rumours of its existence but were unable to find it.
Legacy[]
Future headmasters of Hogwarts conducted multiple attempts to find the Chamber of Secrets, but all proved to be futile, leading the Chamber to be dismissed as mere myth. As time passed and the castle was expanded, the Chamber was flooded by the addition of plumbing systems while a girl's bathroom was built over the original secret entrance, making said bathroom the new entrance.
It is unknown when or how Salazar Slytherin died, but it is known that his portrait is still at Hogwarts and his locket was made into a horcrux by Voldemort. While there is little evidence to support it, there is a popular historical theory that Salazar reconciled with the other founders and returned to Hogwarts in his later years, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Slytherin's wand was passed down by his descendants, the Gaunt family. While under the possession of Gormlaith Gaunt, it was stolen by her niece, Isolt Sayre when she fled to America, where she used it following her founding of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, inspired by her wishes to attend Hogwarts during her youth that went unfulfilled due to Gormlaith's descision to homeschool her. When Gormlaith tracked down Isolt to seek revenge, she deactivated the wand with a single word of Parseltongue; unable to speak the language herself, Isolt was unable to reactivate the wand and buried it. The wand would grow into a snakewood tree and it continues to stand to this day, with its leaves being found to contain powerful medical properties.
Bloodline[]
Slytherin's bloodline was passed down through the female line for generations. The Gaunt family, who practised inbreeding by marrying their own cousins, in order to keep their bloodline pure and their ability to speak Parseltounge, were the last known family to possess Salazar Slytherin's blood. Among the last of the Gaunts included Marvolo Gaunt and his two children Morfin and Merope. Merope fell in love with a Muggle named Tom Riddle and eloped with him, while her father and brother were in Azkaban. Eventually Tom and Merope's marriage resulted in the birth of Tom Marvolo Riddle, later known as Lord Voldemort.
Riddle discovered that he was the heir of Slytherin during his time as a Hogwarts student, as such he found the Chamber of Secrets and initially followed Slytherin's plan. However, after the Basilisk killed Myrtle Warren, the school was threatened to be shut down. As such, Riddle was forced to stop accessing the Chamber and instead left one of his Horcruxes behind so that he could continue using the Basilisk through someone else in the future.
After Voldemort's death, everyone thought that Slytherin's bloodline had ended.
However, in The Cursed Child, it was revealed more than 20 years after Voldemort's death that the Dark Lord had a daughter with Bellatrix Lestrange, her name was Delphini. As of 2020, Delphini is the last known survivor of the Slytherin bloodline.
Trivia[]
- As stated previously, it was Salazar's belief in blood purity — which is fiercely opposed by Godric Gryffindor who wanted every young Wizard-kind to attend Hogwarts regardless of their blood status — that sparked the rivalry between Hogwarts houses they represented. That, coupled with his action of breeding a Basilisk called the Serpent of Slytherin for his heir (who was later revealed to be Lord Voldemort), and many villains in the franchise came from the very Hogwarts house Salazar represented saw Slytherin attained unfair reputation as the most untrustworthy of four. The fact that heroes and protagonists of the series came from Gryffindor by contrast and rivalry in question more than often akin to the conflict between good and evil on the first glance didn't help either.
- It must be stressed that Slytherin harbored good people such as Slughorn and, to Harry's shock, Severus Snape beneath his vengeful nature. As the two demonstrated, Slytherins have the choice to reject the belief in blood purity and importantly, capable of channeling their ambition, resourcefulness, determination, and cleverness for a noble cause as much as Gryffindor with daring, nerve, and chivalry. But the social stigma resulted by actions of pure-blood elitists among Slytherins made it hard for others to trust them.
- To further drive such point, Harry Potter decreed Slytherin to be excluded from ever joining Dumbledore's Army despite the fact that some of them chose to be neutral to Death Eaters and their allies from the corrupt Ministry of Magic. Rionach Steward, one of Slytherin's descendants, deemed the gift of Parseltongue she inherited from Salazar as an abomination and vowed to never marry to end her bloodline, unaware with the existence of her kin at Great Britain.