"Good Lord. Reading again, Sal? Tell me, do you ever go outdoors?"

The dark curly head did not look up. "Good morning, Godric. Must you swear when you are inside the castle? You know Helga does not like it."

If there was one fault of Salazar's that stuck out like a sore thumb, Godric thought irritably, it was his misplaced sense of the importance of things. "You care about what Helga thinks? Since when did you ever - and about my choice of language - "

"Since she developed the notion that I had the ability to curb your tongue." Salazar extended one long-nailed finger; turned over an old, yellowed and an luxuriously-illuminated page. He looked at Godric critically, pursing his lips. "I have a tremendous respect for Helga's mental powers; but where she got this idea I have no inkling. The idea that anything or anyone could keep your abysmal temper under control-"

"You-" He threw his friend a death look - which had no effect whatsoever on Sal, master of the art of glaring. "Of all the-"

Salazar was smiling the smile that would have been endearing on anyone else and wasn't because it was, well, Sal. "Go on; what were you about to say?"

"Nothing." The extraordinary thing, he thought as he stepped through the doorway and entered the warm, verdant room, was that people were so very afraid of Helga Hufflepuff - himself included, unfortunately. "Mind if I sit down?"

His friend's eyes flickered. "This is a chair for one."

"Oh? We'll just have to - make room-"

"Do not touch the manuscript!" Salazar snarled.

"All right, all right!" Godric swept his wand arm outwards. "I wouldn't have hurt your precious book anyway," he muttered, settling cross-legged by Salazar's feet.

"Do you realise there are only five copies of the Aeneid in the whole of the Isles? Have you any idea how difficult it was persuading the abbot to lend me his copy?" Pause for breath. "And Rowena wouldn't let me cast Imperio on him either," he said, slightly sulky.

"Good on her," Godric said decisively. "Using Imperio just for a book - really-"

"The Aeneid is not a commonplace book. There are only-"

"-Five copies in Britain. I know, I know." If there were no better rationale to hate books, Salazar's unnatural obsession with them would have been reason enough. "Although why anyone would want to read," he squinted, "Roman poetry, is completely beyond me,"

Salazar made a little gesture with his fingers, startled. "You've read Virgil?"

"No; I'm trying to read the Aeneid upside-down, although it would be easier if you took your hands off your lap so I could see the bottom of the page."

Salazar removed said hands; said: "Is the day so quiet you can find no better occupation than sitting in my chambers?"

"Now that you call my attention to it, it's been rather quiet." No one would ever be able to accuse Sal of possessing a flair for hospitality. "What's all this Aeneas Pius business?"

"Aeneas. The protagonist of the poem. He was one of the heroes of Troy."

"Ah - I see. Is he the one where his best friend dies and he goes mad and rides around in a chariot killing everyone?"

"No, that's Achilles in the Iliad. You would like that one," Salazar said in an accusing tone. "Aeneas is the one who sails to Africa and falls in love with the Queen of Carthage, and she wants him to stay with her but he can't because he has a predestined fate in Rome, and he leaves her and she kills herself by burning."

"Hmm. But he did love her? He wouldn't have left her if it weren't for the predestined fate?"

"Yes, apparently."

"Then he did the right thing," Godric said decisively. "You can't go against prophecies."

Salazar rolled his eyes. "Prophecy or not, he was an idiot. Half the people in the story are idiots," he said savagely.

"You're still reading it," Godric pointed out.

"That's because it's interesting comparing it with the Odyssey." He smirked. "Now Odysseus, he was clever. "

"Isn't he the one who put out a Cyclops' eye with a hot poker and fooled around with a witch and then abandoned her; and had an affair with a princess and made his wife stay chaste and wait for him for twenty years? You would like that one," Godric said accusingly.

Salazar gave him a strange look. "You've read Homer?"

"Uh, no; I think you might have told me about him once."

"Ah," said Salazar.