Book 1 – Chapter 2

Chapter Two

“The Gnostic Impulse”

 

 

It was late. He was alone, sat by the fire with a book. Yet he’d ceased reading hours ago. Once again, he was the only person remaining in the common room. All was quiet, and he was thinking. He didn’t know why, but he felt somewhat reluctant to go to bed these days. Tiredness just didn’t seem to come much anymore. He’d always been a light sleeper.

Tonight, though, something was keeping him up, a little nagging in his head, as if some kind of parasitic thought had entered his mind and was attacking everything else in its path. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on his work tonight, or even on what his friends had been talking to him about when they had been here earlier. That was probably why they had left him here alone; he wasn’t the best company when he was in these deeply introverted moods.

What had he witnessed earlier that morning? An altercation between the Gryffindors and Severus Snape. Was that such an unusual thing? Of course not, it happened all the time. So much so that it had surely become boring by now. Yet something about this morning had got him thinking. Perhaps it was to do with the contemplative mood in which he had been at the time? But then, wasn’t he in such a mood most of the time? So what else could it have been? Even as he tried to think of something, he couldn’t escape the vision which forced its way into view, that of two bright, green eyes.

In that moment, earlier, when he’d briefly met those eyes, he’d really identified with her, this mysterious Gryffindor, and that was what had been bugging him all day. How could she be, in any way, like him? Yet he’d seen something in those eyes, a kind of frustration, which he knew he’d felt himself before. It was the frustration he felt at trying to understand the often perplexing actions of others. Other people, the strangest phenomenon he’d encountered thus far in his life. Their lives seemed so simple, so basic most of the time. There was little evidence that any of them ever spent any time in the introverted, contemplative moods in which he regularly found himself, as if their lives were too simple to require any kind of introspection or analysis.

He’d always felt this way, even as a young child before he’d started at Hogwarts. Then he’d met Bella and Caitlin and had experienced wondrous joy as he had realised that they were both like him. The three of them, an isolated island in a sea of…normality. But that was fine with them. If he was honest, the three of them all felt a sort of pride in it, that they were different, that they didn’t fit in. Perhaps it was arrogance, but they really did feel that they were better than most other people…

They were also proud Slytherins, the three of them, as if being Slytherin was somehow a signifier of their superiority. And yet, it couldn’t be could it? They felt like outsiders here, in Slytherin too, other Slytherins tended to be as perplexingly normal as anyone else, or at least they tended to act exactly as one might expect them to, rarely doing anything unusual, anything interesting. So why the Slytherin pride? Were members of the other houses really so inferior? Or rather, was Slytherin house in any way superior? It wasn’t as if there were any other Slytherins whom they felt were on their level. He guessed that the other houses were just a different kind of perplexing…

Was it possible then, that within the context of one of the other houses, say, Gryffindor, that there might be individuals there who felt as he and his friends did, that they were different, that they didn’t fit in? They wouldn’t necessarily be like him, or Bella or Caitlin, but they might feel different from their housemates. It was certainly possible. He’d honestly never given much thought to this idea in a non-Slytherin context. Perhaps he’d simply never had a good reason to, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that maybe his pride had blinded him to other possibilities. Didn’t all Slytherins feel that theirs was the superior house, that the other houses contained all of the boring, herd-like people? So why should he share that view, given that he was supposed to be so different even from other Slytherins?

He thought again of Lily Evans, railing against her housemates for the sake of Severus Snape. It wasn’t even as if Severus appreciated her interference, in fact he’d been downright horrible to her before, but then, he was downright horrible to most people. Could it be possible then, that this girl felt how he did, that she was different from other people? Was there, in her, that constant feeling of frustration just beneath the surface, as there was in him?

The nagging was increasing, like a wriggling in his head that was growing in intensity. He was beginning to feel restless, he’d been sitting still for too long. He needed to get up and walk around. He knew it was late, very late now, and he shouldn’t be walking around the castle at this time, but he now remembered something he’d thought earlier, about talking to Dumbledore. Experience told him that, regardless of the hour, the old man would almost certainly be up in his office, and he knew that he would wave the little transgression of being out at night, given the circumstances.

But what would he say to the old man? He could hardly imagine himself going to see Dumbledore this late at night simply to tell him that he’d been unable to stop thinking about a girl all day. No, he’d have to come at it from some other angle. How had it all started? The altercation, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, that age old conflict. He could ask about that, couldn’t he?

Regardless, the nagging was now too much. Snapping his book shut, he leapt up out of his chair and marched right out of the common room.

 

 

The dungeon corridor was almost pitch black, lit only by the dying embers of a solitary wall torch midway along its length. Walking about the castle at this time was a dangerous endeavour, but he had all sort of tricks up his sleeve, after all, he’d lived in this castle far longer than any other student.

At the very end of the corridor, just before the staircase that led up into the entrance hall to the right, he turned left instead, right towards the dark corner of the end wall of the corridor. Pulling out his wand, he touched it right into the corner, feeling in the dark for the little crack he knew to be there. Upon finding it, he gave a little, short jab with his wand, causing a spark to emerge from its end. This was enough to open up the secret door.

He’d been let in to this secret many years ago when, as a child, he’d followed Dumbledore from his office and seen him disappear behind a wall hanging. Upon investigation, he’d discovered a secret staircase leading downwards, into the dark. Later, when his courage had grown (or, at least, his curiosity), he’d headed down these stairs and had emerged into the corner of the dungeon corridor from behind a part of the wall which opened outwards. When closed, even in the light, it was impossible to tell that this opening was there and, upon experimenting, he’d found that a little spark from his wand was enough to open it just a crack, enough for him to slip inside.

Thus it was that he’d always been able to pass quickly, from the dungeons to Dumbledore’s office, without detection. He wasn’t sure who else, other than Dumbledore, knew about this secret, but it certainly wasn’t the only such secret he’d discovered in the castle.

The secret staircase was deathly quiet, a void punctured only by the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. As he ascended, this sound became a mantra in his mind, calming him, as he thought about what he was going to say to the old man. In the end, however, his mantra proved to be too much of a distraction and, before he knew it, his footsteps had taken him right to the entrance of Dumbledore’s office.

He was experienced enough by now to know that the raising of the staircase into the office, although loud, wouldn’t have been the thing that alerted Dumbledore to his coming. No, somehow the old man had ways of knowing in advance of his coming, he always did. Sure enough, when he emerged into the office, Dumbledore was standing behind his desk, looking across the room at him over the top of his half moon spectacles, blue eyes a-twinkling.

“It’s very late, you know,” was all he said, with a flicker of a smile.

“I can’t sleep.” He answered, simply.

Gesturing towards a chair, clearly resigned to allowing a conversation to take place, Dumbledore said, “What’s on your mind, then?”

Taking a seat on the other side of the desk, full of all of its bizarre instruments, he simply blurted out, “Why do Gryffindors hate Slytherins?”

Taking a seat himself, Dumbledore took a moment to compose himself, clearing a few of the objects on his desk out of the way, smoothing down his robes and pushing his glasses further up his nose. When he was ready, he calmly answered with his own question.

“What makes you think they do?”

“Well,” he replied, “I mean, they all seem to look down on us, don’t they…the other houses, I mean. They all just assume that we’re all evil.”

“And do you think that?” Dumbledore asked.

“No, obviously. Well, maybe some of us go bad, sure, but so must some of them, right?”

After a pause it was clear that Dumbledore was waiting for him to further the conversation himself, it was an old technique he’d become used to by now.

“I just mean, how did it all start? I know the story of the founding, Salazar and Godric and all of that, but is that really where it all comes from?”

The old man fixed his sparkling blue eyes on his own dark ones.

“What is the symbol of your house?”

“The serpent.” He answered promptly.

“And why do you think that is?”

He pondered for a moment.

“Because Salazar Slytherin had an affinity for snakes. He could speak to them, couldn’t he?”

“So the story goes.” But the old man continued, “Think about the more general symbolism of the serpent.”

“They’re supposed to be evil, aren’t they? The Fall of Man and all that.”

“What do you know of…all that?” the old man asked, pleasantly.

“Well it’s a muggle religious thing. Their bible says that Satan appeared to Eve in the Garden of Eden and persuaded her to eat the forbidden fruit. She did, and she persuaded Adam to as well, so God banished them from the garden and condemned them to death and suffering. So the snake is seen as evil and vindictive. Is that why everyone hates us?”

The old man smiled. “Snakes certainly have gained a bad reputation over the years, at least in mainstream society. But this is muggle religion. Do you really think that Salazar Slytherin would have chosen the serpent to be his house mascot if he agreed with this interpretation?”

“I suppose not.”

“Of course not. That story of the Fall, as told in the muggle bible, was not well known to most magical people at the time of the founding, just as it isn’t now. Muggle religions were viewed as bizarre by those magical people who gained any knowledge of them. Unfortunately, religion has all but died out in the magical world, but in the time of the founders, it was a major concern. Of course, their’s was quite different from those of the muggles.”

At this he sat back in his chair, feeling another one of Albus’s history lessons coming up.

“Let me tell you an alternate version of the story. Muggle religions tell that that a supreme, perfect God created the Earth, Man, Woman and the Garden of Eden. In the centre of this garden was the Tree of Knowledge, upon which grew the fruit that was forbidden to Adam and Eve. As you have described, Satan, in the form of the serpent, convinced them to break God’s commandment and they were punished. This story would have sounded absurd to learned magical people at the time of the founding. They understood the story quite differently.”

This was getting interesting now. Albus was in full swing now, and wisdom was sure to follow.

“Wizards privy to the ancient Wisdom, and Salazar Slytherin certainly was, knew that it was wrong to say that the serpent was Satan, but right to suggest that the serpent was Lucifer.”

“Aren’t they the same?” He asked, frowning.

“They couldn’t be more different.” Eyebrows now raised, he awaited an explanation.

“Lucifer and Satan are the two sons of God, the True God. Lucifer is a being of pure light, the highest magic you can imagine. Satan, on the other hand, is darkness. He is inferior to his elder brother, and, deep down, he knows it. This was why he rebelled. He surrounded himself with deep delusions of grandeur and convinced himself that he was God. It was Satan that created this material universe we inhabit, he that lured all of our souls here, to dwell within these crude bodies of ours. This was the deception we all fell for. The story of the Garden of Eden is merely a metaphor explaining how we began to break free from Satan’s evil creation. It wasn’t Satan who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, but Lucifer. He broke into his brother’s world and revealed the Truth to Eve. Now, it is important to understand why he went to Eve rather than Adam. There are some fundamental differences between men and women that cannot be ignored. In the story, Adam was completely subservient to Satan, whom Adam believed to be God, his almighty and perfect creator. Adam didn’t even think to question what his god told him. In the blissful ignorance of the Garden, Adam’s every desire was granted, but these desires were merely basic, food to eat, beauty to look at, a woman for company. The man wanted things, simple things, and did what he had to do to get them – he obeyed his god. The simple life of a simple man. Eve, however, was different. Her desires were deeper and more profound than those of Adam. She wanted to understand things as well as just to have them, to possess them. She wanted to understand why Adam was the way he was, why she was different. Having simple desires fulfilled was not enough for her. Lucifer noticed this and went to her rather than Adam. Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit from the tree is, of course, just a metaphor. What really happened was that Lucifer revealed some of the Truth to Eve, and she, in turn, imparted what she had learned to Adam. It was the first act of rebellion against their god, once they learned that he was not all he said he was, hence their punishment.”

“Why didn’t Lucifer take on his brother directly?” He interjected.

“Lucifer and Satan are, fundamentally, two completely different beings. Lucifer has no place in Satan’s material world, but he wanted to help save the souls of those trapped there. Ultimately, it is our job to save ourselves, and this story shows us how…by following Eve’s example rather than Adam’s. Lucifer helped Eve to realise that her deeper desires meant something. Adam was merely concerned with the obvious, the things he could see before him, the things that satisfied his baser desires. Eve was concerned more with what lay beneath, the secret, hidden Truths that their god had forbidden.”

“But what does this have to do with snakes?” He asked, after a pause.

“Again, this is just a metaphor; Lucifer didn’t really appear as a snake, this is just a symbol used to describe him in that moment. As I said, Salazar Slytherin was well acquainted with this type of ancient Wisdom, which is called Gnosticism, from the Greek for Knowledge. Slytherin was obsessed with knowledge, one of the reasons he wished to found a school to impart it to others.”

“I thought Ravenclaw was the house of knowledge.”

“Think about the story I have just told you. There are two different types of knowledge. Ravenclaw is symbolised by the eagle and Slytherin by the serpent. Both are symbols of knowledge, but of different kinds. The eagle represents a simpler kind of knowledge. The sort that Adam was concerned with, the here and now, the physical world around us, knowledge for knowledge’s sake. The serpent, however, represents Eve’s knowledge, that of those secret, hidden Truths that lie beneath. This is the essence of Slytherin house, or at least, of Salazar Slytherin’s original vision for it.”

Here Albus paused and surveyed him once again over the top of his half-moon spectacles. He was familiar enough with Albus’s lectures to know that this pause signified that the old man thought he had said enough and it was now up to him to draw his own conclusions on the matter.

This was all very typical of his relationship with Albus. A simple question answered by a deep, philosophical lecture on gnosticism. He’d only wanted to know why his house was looked down on by the others, and, more specifically, why a certain group of Gryffindors insisted on perpetually hating a certain Slytherin. Albus hadn’t answered this question at all, but he knew the old man’s techniques well enough by now. Albus had imparted some wisdom onto him and now he was expected to answer his own question using this wisdom.

Of course, the answer wasn’t immediately apparent to him, and what’s more, Albus’s lecture had got him thinking of all sorts of other questions, many not even remotely related to his original one.

Yet somehow, he felt as though he’d had something important revealed to him tonight, as if Albus had finally decided that tonight, the time had been right, he was ready, and had delivered this little lesson, containing so much more subtext than anything else, specifically to get him to ask yet more questions, to pursue a certain path of enquiry which would lead him to…

Well, what? He wasn’t sure, yet he felt as though a door had been opened to him, a door he hadn’t even been aware had been blocking his path. He knew he was on a path, but which path, and where did it lead? At least now he felt, after tonight, that it was the right path.

 

 

The sun was coming up as he re-entered the Slytherin common room, causing the torches on the walls to activate again filling the room with a low light for the morning. As the room brightened, his eye was drawn to the large emblem of the Slytherin Serpent on the wall, an S-shape of green and silver, with a fire in its eye. He thought of the serpent in the garden, he thought of Eve, taking the first bite of the fruit of knowledge. Was that the path of the Slytherin, to plunge head first into the darkness of ignorance in order to bathe it in the light of knowledge? What courage she must have had, what bravery! Yet weren’t those Gryffindor characteristics? Were they then so different?

Looking at the green of the Slytherin Serpent then reminded him of the green of Lily Evans’s eyes, and the complex emotions he’d seen there. The idea of such emotions intimidated him, being as he was calm and rational, rarely allowing the world to see what he was feeling. Yet he realised now it was simply his own ignorance of those things. Those green eyes were the dark abyss into which he must delve in order to gain the knowledge. Was Gryffindor the forbidden fruit? Was this girl, Lily Evans, the serpent who would reveal all to him?

It was a strange thought. He’d always been very comfortable with the idea that he was fine in his little Slytherin bubble, he, Bella and Caitlin, the three of them were all that they each needed. He’d felt sure that all he could learn he could learn with them, could learn from them. But now, he wondered whether that was just an excuse, an excuse to play it easy, to shy away from a more difficult path. He realised, however, that surely the difficult path contained far more rewards, precisely why it was the difficult path. The pleasure of the garden was easy, but taking the first bite of forbidden knowledge, that was the difficult path, but the right path, the true path.

He thought first of Caitlin; fierce warrior, permanent scowl on her face, daughter of Medea Tyler, the legendary vigilante hunter of dark wizards, heir to a long line of mighty warrior witches; Caitlin, who’d hospitalised a sixth year when she’d been a first year, just because he’d mildly teased her; Caitlin, who knew more combative magic than many of the teachers, who’d been training herself out of a vast library of texts on duelling and wizarding warfare, many of dubious morality. Caitlin, who seemed to despise everyone, all except him and Bella, who relentlessly strove to better herself, to rise above the mass of stupidity in which she found herself, and readying herself to fight against the darkness that was out there, waiting for them all. He always felt safe around Caitlin, people feared her and kept their distance, yet he knew also that her tough exterior was but a thin shell, defending and also hiding the fragility which lay beneath, which only he and Bella saw from time to time. How much had she informed the person he had become? How much had he learned about the world simply by being her friend? No, they were closer than friends, she was as close to a sister as he would ever have.

Then he thought of Bella; lost daughter of a great family, who’d cast them aside with indifference as she sought to create her own identity from scratch; Bella, the public face of their little group who would fearlessly wade out into the unknown waters of ‘other people’, taking great pleasure in leading them on with tantalising glimpses of all manner of trinkets, before snatching them away at the last minute, though not before taking from them what she needed; Bella, great protector, who would fight to the death to protect him and Caitlin (who didn’t even need protection!), who also strove to be better than the hoards of the ignorant, to study and learn all she could to build up her arsenal of knowledge and use it to keep them at bay. What an inspiration she’d always been to him, and something more, something just under the surface, something in the way she looked at him from behind long, raven hair and out of deep violet eyes. He’d always known what she was feeling, what she was thinking, as she had him; they’d grown together, matured together, and had taken the obvious path and experienced raw, teenage pleasure together. That had felt like the natural course, but then…she’d stopped it…as if she’d thought that it was too obvious, too safe. He’d seen what she meant, objectively, yet it had still hurt him, somewhere underneath everything. So they’d taken a few steps back, to how it had been before, she’d gone back to her games with ‘other people’ while he’d been left, outwardly showing apathy, inwardly feeling….

This led him to think of Lily Evans again. She was the unknown now, the great mystery he wished to solve. All that he’d learned from Bella and Caitlin, yet none of it shed any light on this new puzzle. He knew now that if he wished to understand the great ongoing struggle between their two houses, then he’d have to leave his little bubble of safety and dive into the unknown. Knowledge can not come only from one perspective. One must be prepared to leave comfort and embrace a darker path of struggle and suffering.

He barely noticed as people began to enter from their dormitories, passing through the common room on their way to the great hall for breakfast. He was jolted out of his thoughts only by a call from the doorway.

“Hey! You coming?”

Bella was looking quizzically at him, eyebrow raised, while Caitlin held the door. Smiling, he rose to his feet and followed them out. Whatever path he may be on, despite everything, he knew for certain that they’d be on it with him.

 

 

The two girls had been chatting animatedly at breakfast, they both always seemed most alive when in each other’s company. They were fine, he thought, they had each other. He just felt now as though he needed to do something for himself, if only for a while. Surely they knew him well enough to understand, and they’d be waiting for him afterwards, on that path the three of them were traversing.

He’d excused himself from the table and had walked out, through the entrance hall and out into the grounds. After walking down the path, he turned and looked up at the wonder that was Hogwarts castle. He thought of Salazar Slytherin and the other founders, all those centuries ago. What a vision they had had, and such powerful will to realise it!

Where was that will now? Who now, in his time, had such vision? The world felt dead to him, as if people had given up, or as if they didn’t know any better than to just take each day as it came, with no grand vision, no sacred cause to follow. Sure there was a war raging out there, in the real world, but that just seemed to be nothing other than an relentless procession of one violent atrocity after another, neither side seeming to have any grand vision, both lacking the will to bring it all to an end.

He remembered what Albus had said about the founders having been privy to ancient wisdom and this alternate version of a Muggle religious story. There was next to no religion in the magical world, but that had not always been the case. Perhaps that was what was missing. He’d learned about Muggle religions, of course, and, for the most part, he found them to be baffling and, frankly terrifying, with their threats of eternal damnation for unbelievers and the endless violence and war done in their name. But at least there was some kind of vision there, something to inspire great will in people. If the founders had been privy to ancient wisdom which served this purpose, wasn’t it time to rediscover such things?

For without it, how bleak looked the world, how empty, how desolate…how pointless.