Fanfic / Ouroboros Novus Ars

Ouroboros is a Harry Potter fanfiction written by NovusArs on Archive of Our Own.

In which Salazar Slytherin awakes more than nine centuries in the future, an orphan with a runic scar carved into his forehead and far too much questions about what in the unholy hell the Wizarding World has done between his demise and rebirth.

So far, he's not impressed.

Contains the following tropes

• Abusive Parents:
  • The Dursleys, need we to say more? They actually throw their preteen nephew out of the house for having magic in spite of their best efforts to bully him into losing his power.
  • The Longbottoms were completely awful towards Neville, trying to terrify him into showing some magic, berating him for not taking after his father and ultimately disowning him at eleven years old for lacking promise, on the Christmas holidays.
  • Nimue's mother murdered her oldest daughter by drowning her in the tub for not getting a letter of admission to Hogwarts, revealing her as a squib.
• Adaptational Villainy: The Dursleys and the Longbottoms, see above.
• Adult Adoptee: After getting the Gryffindor seat in the Wizengamot, Godric formally adds Nimue Weasley — who's physically older than him and working as a waitress — to his household.
• Angsty Surviving Twin: Courtesy of Twin Telepathy, losing a bonded sibling tends to hurt. Godric and Salazar bonded through a druidic ritual, and Salazar dying in an ambush traumatized Godric to the point he spent what was left of his lifespan wallowing in depression.
• Arranged Marriage: Arcturus Black agrees to serve as Salazar and Godric's mentor and protector as long as he gets an Heir for his bloodline, which involves finding a suitable bride to bear Sirius' children. If she's offered the opportunity to refuse, nobody even thinks about asking for Sirius to consent to the deal.
• Artificial Family Member: Hogwarts actually developed a consciousness and views the Founders as her daddies and mommies. Salazar and Godric roll with it.
• Burn the Witch!: Salazar's mother and toddler sister were burned at the stake, and he barely escaped the same fate. Then when he visited years later, the village still was bent on discriminating so he slaughtered them all.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Salazar doesn't actually register the Dursleys' abuse since child-raising in the eleventh century wasn't exactly gentle.
• Control Freak: Dumbledore has very defined plans for what kind of person Harry Potter should grow up to be. When Salazar being Sorted in Slytherin threatens to upend his preparations, the guy actually instructs Snape to drive a wedge between Salazar and the other kids in Slytherin, hoping to drive the boy to make friends with "the right sort" in the other Houses.
• Disinherited Child: When a squib child isn't outright murdered by their family, they're traditionally dumped in the streets with nothing but the clothes on their back. It happens to Neville on the Christmas holidays for his unconvincing performance at Hogwarts.
• Druid: Britain's magic tradition before the Normans invaded and insisted on everyone using wands. Salazar's rebirth might cause a revival.
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • "Sally" for Salazar. Godric is unrepentant.
  • The Black surname actually originated from the Old English word for "sickly".
• Exact Words: As Arcturus is quizzing his ancestor's portrait for info about Harry Potter, Phineas Nigellus cheerfully declares the boy couldn't more Slytherin if he tried. After all, it's harder to be more yourself than you already are.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Both Salazar and Godric have a lot to say about the Wizarding World in the twentieth century. Most of it isn't positive.
• Future Imperfect: A great deal of ritual and druidic knowledge has been willingly destroyed by the Normans purging anything they deemed an obstacle to their supremacy over the Britain isles and lost to the time and the separation from the mundane world.
• Green Thumb: To be a druid, one needs a grove. It's also the Longbottom familia's magick.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Salazar Slytherin was thoroughly demonized by Wizarding Britain for the nine centuries following his demise. He's not exactly happy to learn that, and Godric is flat-out horror-struck to hear people casually slandering his bonded sibling as evil incarnate.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Salazar and Godric are pretty infuriated by several decisions taken by Hogwarts' former directors, and Dumbledore is slowly moving towards the head of their shitlist.
• Introverted Cat Person: Salazar and his pet kneazle Omorose. He still doesn't understand why she decided to tag him as her human.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Pater Longbottom formally disowns the eleven years old Neville for not showing sufficient magic prowess, basically throwing him to the streets. Godric retaliates by setting fire to their estate and cutting the bond with their familial spirit, ensuring the Longbottoms will be left homeless and bereft of their ancestral magick.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Dumbledore doesn't have the slightest idea of what his chosen pawn Harry Potter is currently doing under his nose, and how much he lost control over the boy.
• Manipulative Bastard: Dumbledore does his best to control Harry Potter's growth and orient it as he wishes.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Part of the Weasley family magicks ensure a lot of offspring. Arcturus Black agrees for Nimue Weasley to become his heir's mother because she's liable to bear multiple children and safeguard his bloodline.
• Minor Living Alone: Alright, Salazar is mentally a grown up, but that doesn't change the fact that he's physically a preteen and started squatting in a grove rather than go back to the Dursleys right before getting his letter for Hogwarts.
• Momma's Boy: Since Neville quietly resents his father Frank for being the impossible standard he cannot reach in his relatives' eyes, he longs more for a bond with his mother Alice, especially with the other Longbottoms neglecting her.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Discussed, with Salazar coming to the astounding conclusion that "squibs" as the Wizarding World know them actually have magic, they're merely unable to access it because the lack of cleansing rituals caused impurities to pile up in the bloodlines until it clogged the children's cores.
• Mystical Pregnancy: With Arcturus fretting about Sirius being too unhealthy to do his duty and produce an heir, Salazar offers to craft a fertility ritual allowing for a woman to conceive without physical intercourse, as long as she's in the same room as the chosen sire.
• Phony Psychic: Mater Moon likes to believe she's the closet thing to a genuine druid from before the Norman conquest. To Salazar, she's so obviously out of her depths and silly that he's left speechless.
• Single Line of Descent:
  • Averted with Herpo the Foul's lineage, as one branch stayed in England and produced the Evans family and the Gaunts, while another left for India and became the Patil family.
  • The Malfoy family is suspected from being cursed because they're unable to have more than one child in each generation. They only managed to defy it once, when the Heir at the time took a Weasley bride — since it's implied the Weasley magicks are heavily centered around fertility.
• Single Sex Offspring: Part of the Weasley family magicks apparently ensure the birth of a son. Female Weasleys can and do exist, but they're implied to be quite the rarity — little Ginny and her removed cousin Nimue are hinted to be the only ones to be currently alive.
• Spanner in the Works: Salazar really enjoys being one to Dumbledore's plans to turn him in a picture-perfect Gryffindor who will martyr himself to cause Voldemort's definitive downfall.
• There Is Another: The runic ritual that bonded Salazar and Godric as close as twins ensured they would be reborn together in the modern era.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: A ritual allows Salazar to be present when the Slytherin familia is created, more than nine centuries in the past.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dumbledore genuinely wishes to protect Britain from Voldemort's comeback and isn't happy about sacrificing Harry Potter, but he will do anything to force the boy to accept his role as a sacrificial pawn, even turning his school house against the eleven-years-old.