Chapter Text
Fourth week, Friday afternoon
Merlin entered the headmaster’s office without knocking, closing the door behind himself with a flash of golden eyes as he strode forward, nodding his head at the Albus, who was sitting at his desk.
“Good afternoon,” the headmaster greeted him good naturedly.
“It really is, isn’t it?” Merlin agreed, conjuring two chairs in front of the fireplace and plopping down into one. “I invited myself for tea, I hope you don’t mind.”
“I would’ve been disappointed if you’ve done otherwise, old friend,” Albus replied with twinkling eyes. He stood from his chair and walked over to the one beside Merlin, accepting the silent invitation. After he sat, he levitated two cups over with a wave of his wand, then filled them with another. “I do hope that that life at Hogwarts is treating you well?”
Merlin took a sip from his steaming cup, then coughed a little when he found it to be blazing hot. Albus looked over at him with a small smile, looking wholly unsurprised.
“Everything’s going great, teaching is just as much fun as I remembered. Even if I have to correct loads of homework. Still better than writing it I suppose – not that I’ve ever needed to write homework.”
Albus hummed, nodding thoughtfully. “It is not pleasant, believe me. And I heard you’ve been busy. Making potions with Severus?”
“He’s fun,” Merlin shrugged, “A bit sour sometimes, but it just adds to his personality, really.”
“He’s had a rough life.”
“So I’ve gathered,” Merlin eyed his cup, debating whether he should wait for it to cool or use magic to do it. “I could feel the mark of dark magic on him.”
“He had made mistakes,” Albus nodded, waving his wand over his own cup before taking an elegant sip. “But that was a long time ago.”
Merlin hummed, turning his head towards the fire crackling in front of him. He knew what kind of allure dark magic could have on people, had witnessed first-hand more times than he could count. It was much rarer for someone to come back from it, however.
“There is something up with Quirrell,” he said thoughtfully. “I haven’t talked to him yet, but I think it’s because he’s been avoiding me.”
Albus frowned, looking over at Merlin. Then bemusement appeared in his eyes. “Maybe he’s been talking to Sybill. I heard she’s been doing the same thing.”
“That’s so not funny. When a seer is running at the sight of you, you should have the good sense to be afraid.”
“Oh, I’m terrified. However, Sybill has always been… peculiar, in her own way. It is perhaps wise to worry, but I wouldn’t have sleepless night because of it.”
“Duly noted.” Merlin only ever had sleepless nights, though.
They were both silent for a while.
“And what do you think of Harry Potter?”
Merlin thought back to the boy, nothing more than a child, then to the prophecy about him and the Riddle boy. He sighed, “He reminds me of the words Kilgarrah told me when he first saw me, below Camelot.”
Albus seemed to perk up at that, as he always did when Merlin talked about his past. “What did he say, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Merlin smiled to himself, recalling how the dragon looked at him back then. “How small you are for such a great destiny.”
Albus chuckled quietly. “Great words from a great being.”
“Truly wise indeed.”
“Flitwick asked about my necklace,” Merlin found himself saying, his face in a grimace. “He noticed it was charmed.”
“And did you tell him about it?”
Merlin ran his fingers over the inscriptions on the coin, the feel of each word familiar under his finger. For something made of metal, it was never cold, always humming with magic – magic that was now as familiar to Merlin as his own.
“No, I managed to get away. Maybe I should spell it better, so nobody would question it.”
Albus didn’t say anything, just looked at Merlin, his eyes, for once, unreadable under his half-moon glasses.
Fourth week, Saturday
Merlin was reading through the third roll of a first year Ravenclaw’s homework when there was a knock on his door, making Snappy’s head shoot up in curiosity.
Merlin sighed and put down his pen, then opened the door with a wave of his hand.
He blinked in surprise when he saw Malfoy standing there. He seemed uncertain, his eyes darting from Merlin to Snappy, then back to Merlin again.
“Mr. Malfoy,” Merlin greeted, “Come on in, don’t be shy.”
The boy obeyed, entering the room with the same caution as he did the first time, even though now he came here voluntarily. His eyes wandered over to Snappy again, but he seemed more curious than reproachful.
“Professor Emrys,” he said while taking a seat, frowning slightly. “I wanted to talk to you about my homework.”
Merlin tilted his head to the side. “What about it?”
“Have you read it?” he asked, his eyes darting over to the scrolls on Merlin’s desk.
“Not yet,” the warlock admitted, trying to hide his curiosity.
Malfoy didn’t seem too disappointed as he nodded. “It made me think about a few things. I was wondering if… If you could tell me a bit more about Slytherin? Because the books kept saying that he lost all his friends and died alone. But he couldn’t have been a bad person, right? He was a founder too.”
Merlin fought back a wince, understanding the problem. The kid just realized that his idol might not have been perfect, and even worse, he was drawing parallels between himself and Slytherin.
Malfoy must have misinterpreted his wince because his face went cold and stony, turning his nose up as he stood.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” he snapped. “My father never would’ve…”
“Stop,” Merlin interrupted, holding up a placating hand, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to react like that, but you are misunderstanding. Please sit down, I’ll tell you about Salazar. Slytherin.”
Malfoy seemed reluctant, his expression still closed off as he sat down.
“Slytherin wasn’t a bad person,” Merlin began, staring at his pen. “He was actually surprisingly kind-hearted,” Merlin shrugged. “And a prankster. Ask the third portrait beside the charm’s classroom’s door if you don’t believe me.” He gave Malfoy a small smile. “But he wasn’t without his faults, it’s true. His belief that he was better than others -- stemmed from fear and hatred -- was what led him to his inevitable fate. But I’m guessing you already know that, seeing that you are here.”
Malfoy nodded uncertainly.
Merlin found himself talking about Salazar for longer than he cared to admit. All through his tales, the Malfoy boy sat at the edge of his seat, eyes glistening with curiosity. Meanwhile, Snappy in the background, also listening, made appropriate noises, as if swishing his feathers around would make the tale more interesting -- though Merlin had to admit, it was still better than the chewing sounds.
It was only a bit later when Merlin realized he was going into too many details – details he shouldn’t know, even as a history professor.
He backtracked.
“You know, The Grey Lady is actually the daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw. She can tell you all about Slytherin, considering she saw him as an uncle of sorts. I heard all of this from her, actually. Just tell her that I sent you, I’m sure she’ll be glad to tell you more stories.”
The boy stared at him with something akin to amazement, before realizing what he was doing and schooling his features back into the same cold dislike he kept on at all times. “Alright. Uh, thank you, sir.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
As Malfoy left, Merlin couldn’t help the small smile that appeared on his face. He was getting somewhere.
Eight week, Wednesday
The last three weeks flew by for Merlin as he settled into the quiet rhythm of his new life. Malfoy hadn’t visited him since, but Merlin refused to take that as a bad sign.
He had brewed a few more potions with Snape, finding that when he wasn’t acting like a prat, the Potions Professor was actually pleasant company to have. He had also spent some time with McGonagall, as the Transfiguration Professor was surprisingly fun to talk to. They compared notes, drawing parallels between cats and dragons, and as it turned out, they were scarily similar. He hadn’t spent much time with any other teachers, though. Flitwick hadn’t asked him about his necklace since, which was a relief, and Quirrell kept avoiding him, and of course, Trelawney kept shooting him weird looks.
So, all in all, not much of significance happened in the last three weeks. Until today.
Merlin stared at the boys in front of him, who stared back with innocent expressions on their faces. They kept glancing over his shoulder, where Snappy was hovering, but they hardly even paled at the sight, just seemed a bit uneasy.
“So, run that by me again. You are saying that it was an accident?” Merlin said slowly, lifting one eyebrow. The Gaius look.
“Yes!” One of the twins, Fred, replied immediately. “George is very clumsy, Professor.”
“Indeed I am,” George agreed right away. “Incredibly clumsy. It’s a tragedy, really.”
Merlin felt the edges of his mouth twitch upwards. He fought it, of course, not wanting to enable their behaviour. “And you just carry around dungbombs with you.”
The twins looked at each other, communicating without words.
“Yes!”
“Absolutely!”
Merlin hummed and nodded. “Alright, I understand. It was an accident, and we wouldn’t want you to get into any real trouble for accidently throwing a dungbomb on the corridor.”
The twins smiled at the same time.
“But then again, somebody has to clean it up,” Merlin continued, taking on a thoughtful expression. “Mr. Filch is ever so busy, I wouldn’t want to bother him. I’m sure you can understand?”
The boys paled.
“And I’m afraid I cannot allow you to use magic for it, as it’s on the corridor, and we all know you shouldn’t be using magic there, especially between classes.” Merlin grinned at them.
They did not grin back.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Run along, you have a long afternoon ahead of you.” Merlin made a shooing motion with his hands. “Oh and don’t even think about slacking off, or using magic. Believe me, I’ll know.” He looked each of them in the eye. “And I will be less forgiving then.”
“Yes, sir,” the two said at the same time, but their eyes gained a mischievous glint as they stood from their respective chairs.
Merlin had a feeling this wasn’t the last time they would meet like this.
George held the mop in his hand, staring at his work with a sort of proudness he had never felt before. There was something satisfying about the fact he did that, the cleaning up, with his hands, and now it actually looked good.
He looked over at Fred, and grinned.
“We did a nice work, considering.”
“I still can’t believe Emrys made us do this,” Fred pointed out, shaking his head. “And without magic. This calls for another prank.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
“What do you boys think you are doing?” Filch interrupted, shouting across the corridor from where he had been sitting for the last half hour, eating some sort of muggle snack out of a bag. “That’s hardly finished yet! Do it again! I want the floors to be sparkling clean!”
“Yes sir,” the twins groaned, and started again.
Ninth week, Halloween feast
Merlin was frowning at his plate. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t quite tell what the problem was, but it felt as if there was something… off about the castle.
It was trying to tell Merlin something, the warlock was sure of it, but he just didn’t know what, and it frustrated him to no end. He shouldn’t have put off reconnecting with the castle for so long. If he hadn’t, he would know what was happening now.
He put down his fork, his appetite gone. He needed to investigate.
“Is something wrong, Myrddin?” Albus asked politely, looking over to him with unreadable eyes.
Merlin looked up to find that some of the teachers had been eyeing him with worried eyes. Huh. Was he that transparent?
“Something is up,” Merlin said, deciding that if something truly was off with the school, the teachers should probably know about it. “With the castle. The wards are shifting.”
He got some puzzled looks, but Albus nodded thoughtfully. “Do you think it’s-”
He was interrupted by the doors of the Great Hall being torn open, and Quirrell rushing inside with a panicked look on his face. He ran right up to the High Table, leaning against it as he panted tiredly.
"Troll -- in the dungeons -- thought you ought to know,” he gasped, before he fell to the floor dead faint.
“Ah,” Merlin said thoughtfully in the ensuing silence. “That explains it.”
One second ticked by, before the students jumped up, shouting and screaming, ignoring everything completely as they panicked.
Albus acted swiftly, pointing his wand toward the ceiling, and shooting up purple firecrackers, trying to get the attention of the student body. It took several tries before they quieted, turning towards the High Table with pure fear in their eyes.
"Prefects," he rumbled, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"
As if a switch was flipped, several students jumped into action, shouting orders and directing their houses like professionals. It was actually sort of impressive. Meanwhile, Albus turned towards them, his face serious.
“We are going to go to the basement, find the troll.”
His eyes wandered over Merlin, but he only shook his head. He didn’t know if it was really there, he just couldn’t tell. It was all fuzzy and distorted.
The teachers hurried towards the Great Hall’s door, but as soon as they exited, Merlin noticed Snape breaking off from the others, but before he could think about it, he got the first true impression of the changes in the castle, and he realized they were going the wrong way. The troll wasn’t in the basement – but he couldn’t tell them that without telling them how he knew. But that was okay, Merlin was more useful if he didn’t have a dozen eyes watching his every move.
His eyes briefly met Albus’, who nodded.
Merlin broke off from the team, making his way down the corridors in a half-run. He couldn’t exactly hurry – only guided by brief inspirations provided by the magic of the castle. But then, there was another shift. It was sharp and painful, as if a sword had been thrust right into Merlin’s heart. The castle wasn’t guiding him anymore, it was screaming at him.
HELP! HELP! THE STUDENTS, HELP!
Merlin ran.
He stopped, panting, in front of the girl’s bathroom – the door was right open, revealing three students and a troll. The latter was waving his club around, wand in his nose, while Potter hung off the creature like some kind of bizarre scarf. Granger was doing weird hand motions under a sink, and the Weasley boy was trying to cast a spell.
Well, probably.
Looking around, Merlin wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or not.
He shook his head and moved, lifting his hand, his eyes flashing gold. It was a simple spell to knock the troll out. Unfortunately, trolls had a strong resistance to magic, so the effect wasn’t immediate, so Merlin followed up by a quick protection charm on Potter. Before he could do anything else, the strangest thing happened, enough to halt Merlin from doing anything more.
The club lifted out of the troll’s hand and rose up high, before dropping down onto its owner’s head with a sickening crack. And at the same time, Merlin’s spell took effect, so poor troll got knocked out twice over.
Merlin did not feel bad for it the slightest.
As the troll fell over onto its face he ran inside.
“Are you all alright?”
Potter was definitely fine, protected by luck and Merlin’s charm. Merlin’s eyes moved onto Weasley, who seemed fine as well, if a bit shaken, still holding his wand in the air, trembling.
Granger was, however, still on the ground, her eyes open wide as she stared at where the troll was lying unconscious. Merlin hurried over to her, crouching down to check for any sign of injury.
“I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head. “Is it – dead?”
Merlin looked back at the troll. He knew it wasn’t, could feel it, but just for their sake he stood, walked over and held his hand in front of the troll’s face - now free of Potter’s wand - to detect its breath.
A sudden slamming and loud footsteps made all of them look up. A moment later, Professor McGonagall had come bursting into the room, closely followed by Snape, with Quirrell bringing up the rear. Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a faint whimper and sat quickly down on a toilet, clutching his heart.
“Not dead, just unconscious,” Merlin said, before anyone could speak. “I’d wager you caused some serious damage to its head, though, so I wouldn’t be worried about it waking up any time soon.”
Mostly because I put him to sleep, but they don’t need to know that.
Snape joined Merlin in looking over the troll, while the warlock looked up to see Professor McGonagall staring at the kids with fury written all over her face.
“Somebody care to tell me what happened here?” McGonagall asked slowly, her eyes looking around before landing on Merlin.
He debated whether he should come to the defence of the kids or not – but decided not to. This was the second life threatening situation he found them in, and they needed to learn that it was not okay to do things like this. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so lenient the first time, then this wouldn’t have happened. If any of the kids died now, or got hurt even, it would be on him.
“Don’t look at me,” he shrugged, “they were already done with the troll by the time I got here.”
"Please, Professor McGonagall - they were looking for me."
"Miss Granger!"
Granger stood up, though she still seemed pale. “I went looking for the troll because I - I thought I could deal with it on my own -- you know, because I've read all about them."
Merlin frowned, almost entirely sure that she was lying. He looked over to the two boys, only to see surprise evident on their faces.
"If they hadn't found me, I'd be dead now,” Granger continued, “Harry stuck his wand up its nose and Ron knocked it out with its own club. They didn't have time to go and fetch anyone. It was about to finish me off when they arrived."
Merlin looked over to McGonagall, and he knew immediately that she didn’t completely believe the story either.
"Well -- in that case..." said the teacher, staring at the three of kids, "Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?"
When no answer came, McGonagall sighed.
"Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this, I'm very disappointed in you. If you're not hurt at all, you'd better get off to Gryffindor tower. Students are finishing the feast in their houses."
As Granger passed by him, Merlin gave her an encouraging smile. He didn’t know why she lied, or why McGonagall went along with it, but he was almost sure they both had a good reason.
Professor McGonagall turned to Potter and Weasley.
"Well, I still say you were lucky, but not many first years could have taken on a full-grown mountain troll. You each win Gryffindor five points. Professor Dumbledore will be informed of this. You may go."
As the two boys left, Merlin turned to the Transfiguration Professor curiously.
“You didn’t call them out on the lie.”
McGonagall sighed. “Poor girl hadn’t been to classes, or at the feast, there is no way she could have known about the troll. Besides, if she wanted to confront it, why would she come to the girls’ bathroom? And her eyes were puffy.”
“She had been hiding out here, crying,” Merlin realized. “You wanted to preserve her dignity, so you didn’t call her out on it.”
“Yes,” McGonagall sighed. “The boys probably realized and came to warn her, stumbling upon the troll as well, and we are lucky that they did. Goodness knows what would have happened to Miss Granger otherwise.”
Merlin made a face. He really didn’t want to think about that, and how right McGonagall was.
“But she still lied to my face, which is why I deducted the points.” McGonagall looked over to the troll, distaste evident on her face. “And I can’t just start awarding big amounts of houspoints for children who run headfirst into danger. Even if they are from my own house.”
Merlin nodded understandingly, before he walked over to the Transfiguration Professor, putting a hand on her shoulder, and squeezing slightly. “They are alright. None of them was hurt and that’s what matters.”
McGonagall looked over at him sadly, before nodding. “You are quite right. I just wish children wouldn’t be so quick to rush into danger. I have a feeling these three will cause a lot of trouble in the future.”
Merlin frowned at the sudden ominous feeling that encompassed him.