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2019-06-22
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2020-06-29
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3/?
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phoenix (to rise from her own ashes, she must first burn)

Summary:

Hundreds and hundreds of years after her death, Morgana is reincarnated as a half-blood witch named Mara La Reine. But a life with no Uther does her more than just a little good, and when she finally remembers her past life, she is as sane as can be. And so she waits for Merlin, waits to apologize for everything, and it is then that she decides to owl Dumbledore about possibly teaching divination.

Or, in which a sane, reincarnated Morgana waits for Merlin from her position as Hogwarts Divination Professor.

AU of 5th year where Morgana becomes Harry's professor instead of Firenze.

Notes:

“In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix first must burn.”
― Octavia E. Butler

Chapter 1: in which mara is... not mara

Chapter Text

Mara La Reine is born on a cold Winter day in Paris to two loving parents. They are not perfect, but neither is she, so she doesn’t mind too much. Violet and Gabriel La Reine raise her to the best of their ability, but she can’t help but feel that sometimes, their best just isn’t enough. As long as she can remember, she’s been tormented by nightmares — visions, almost. At night, she sees… herself. But the strangest part is not that she’s dreaming about herself, no, she’s quite sure that’s pretty normal. The strange part is that it’s as if they’re almost linear, and always in an unusual medieval land. She dreams of herself, of a little girl her age with wild dark locks and eyes as green as the sea. Her mother is a witch while her father is happily muggle. Mara loves to revel in the best of both worlds, but not even her mother and her knowledge of magic can help her understand what’s happening to her. Soon enough she learns to lie, to deceive, to assure them that all is fine and perfect, that she is safe and normal, happy. Nonetheless, it never stops being a lie. Worst of all, though, once she starts lying, she realizes how horribly, horribly good at it she is.

Mara is 10 when the girl in her dreams’ father dies. For every tear that the girl cries, a tear slips down Mara’s face in turn. She has never known such grief. Eventually, though, the girl in her dreams moves on, she goes to live in a new home, a gorgeous castle out of a fairy tale. And, in turn, so does Mara. The next few years, though, are hectic for her as her parents split up, as she goes back and forth between them, as she starts at Beauxbatons, and as they both eventually die when she is 17— separately, but both somehow in the span of 6 months. She mourns her part but inside, she just feels broken. She feels… alone. She had excelled at the scholastic side of school, she always had, but she never seemed to be able to gain any good friends, certainly not any ones to last.

And so on the day she graduates from Beauxbatons, she graduates with perfect grades. With no friends, no parents, and no ties to anything.

As her dreams grow more and more violent she travels, trying to get as far away as she can from France. She’s almost made it to California when something… changes. In her dreams she sees a white, disfigured dragon, bright as the sun, guiding her way. She hops on a plane but instead of going back to France, she feels pulled in another direction. Her plane lands at the London Heathrow Airport where she rents a car and drives it. She hasn’t been to England in a good few years, but somehow she knows exactly where she’s going. Several strange hours later, she finds herself at a lake with a small island near the center. On the island, she sees a spire along with what looks like some older ruins.

The wind whistles loudly and blows her hair in her face. Entirely instinctually, she walks down to the lakeshore. She stands at the edge of the unknown. Mara sticks one foot in the water and a vision races through her head.

There's a man with raven hair wielding a sword, a man with blonde hair bleeding through his armor, and… the girl from her dreams, her hair wild like a lion’s mane. And she really is just a girl, she looks so young, so fragile. She recognizes all of them, of course. She’s seen them many, many times in her dreams but this is the first time their faces are so clear, it’s the first that she is able to recognize the girl as her self. Their mouths move and though she can’t hear them, she knows exactly what they’re saying.

 

“Hello, Emrys.”

 

“What a joy it is to see you, Arthur. Look at you, not so tall and mighty now. You may have won the battle, but you've lost the war. You're going to die by Mordred's hand. But don't worry, my dear brother, I won't let you die alone. I will stay and watch over you, until the wolves gorge on your carcass and bathe in your blood.”

 

“No, the time for all this bloodshed is over. I blame myself for what you've become...but this has to end.”

 

What is he thinking? He can’t kill her. He is nothing, but she… she is a god.

 

“I am a High Priestess. No mortal blade can kill me.”

 

And then the raven-haired man stabs the girl, stabs Mara . And she knows nothing but pain.

 

“This is no mortal blade. Like yours, it was forged in a dragon's breath.”

 

She grasps herself as she falls, falls, falls.

 

“Goodbye, Morgana.”

 

Distantly, she hears a splash and then, she thinks as falls into the water, a strong current appearing from nowhere sweeping her out into deeper water, everything finally makes sense.

She knows nothing but the peace of the infinite void.

 

-

 

Her eyes open.

Her name is Morgana.

Her mouth opens.

Her name is Morgana.

She is drowning.

Her name is Morgana .

 

Morgana shoots up from the dark, she emerges coughing, hacking up water on the sand. She is alive, and it is the 20th century. One thought darts across her mind. Where is Merlin?

Chapter 2: in which morgana secures a job

Summary:

morgana deals with the whole, you know, being a thousand-year-old evil witch from arthurian tales thing and some other stuff too

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Morgana doesn’t ever find Merlin. Eventually, though, she does come to be at peace with herself. She was the reincarnation of a witch who haunts the stories of children from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. In another life, she had killed and killed without remorse. In pain and in fear, she’d been driven to insanity, she’d burned. 

For a long time, she just felt sad. Sometimes, she wondered if she had just been Morgana with amnesia, or if she was still Mara, just with the memories of some long-dead homicidal maniac. She didn’t know if she’d ever decide. Still, she thought that she’d accepted it, the duality of her being, and accepted that she might never figure out who she really was, but she was okay with that,

The one thing she does know, though, is that in all honesty, she’s happy that Merlin killed her. The woman she’d been in another life? She was not going to stop, she was going to keep hurting and killing and furthering the cycle of hate. These two decades she’d had, though not always happy, had finally granted her peace. She was herself, nothing more or less, and the violent times of the past had driven her insane. The best thing for her, and especially for everyone else, may just have been Merlin killing her, and she would be forever grateful for that. She’d finally had time to just exist, to reflect, and she’d forgiven nearly all of them. Her friends, her family. There were some, of course, that she would never forgive. Some, like Uther, who she hoped she never meet again. She didn’t really know how this whole reincarnation thing worked, but she hoped that she might get to see them again, see Merlin, Arthur, and Gwen, see her friends. If she ever did see them again, though, God, she just hoped they could find it in them to forgive her. She thought that she’d understand if they didn’t.

Morgana didn’t ever end up going back to France. It holds nothing but bad memories. Instead, she stayed close to Avalon. If there was anywhere she’d find Merlin, this was it. She wanted answers… She wanted to apologize.

In her waiting, she visited Wizarding London and she caught up on politics. She’d already known about Harry Potter, but she found herself learning about his myriad misadventures and his horrid sense of self-preservation. Sorting through the Daily Prophet’s self-contradicting information was always entertaining.

Meanwhile, though, her abilities return. With her visions of the past all throughout childhood, she supposed they never really left, but either way, she started to dream not just of her past self, but of the future as well. More often than not, it was Harry Potter who occupied her dreams. She saw him and oh, Goddess help her, his sense of justice never failed to remind her of Arthur’s. It was not long, therefore, until he gained her sympathies. He and his two friends, Hermione and Ron, that was.

It was her dreams that showed her that awful woman Umbridge (Morgana hates her and all her resemblance to Uther right from the start, especially their mutual gods-damned righteousness, it was always the righteousness that she hated the most), and it was her dreams that showed her when Umbridge would fire Harry’s divination teacher. This was it.

Though she hadn’t quite known it yet, this was the moment she’d been waiting for. There was no doubt in her mind that Merlin would be found, at one point or another, at the center of all the action — which was, at this point in time, Hogwarts. Immediately, she sent a letter by owl to the headmaster. Though he may have been slyer than most, Dumbledore was still a man. And Morgana had always known how to charm a man. Trelawney wouldn’t be fired for another few weeks, so in preparation, she asked him to keep her on hand if he ever needed a divination teacher, told him that it had been her dream to work with kids since she was one herself, told him she was a natural Seer and all the experience she had on the subject. She put in a copy of her grades from Beauxbatons for good measure. And so she sent it off, never having been surer of anything.

Three weeks and two days passed before she heard someone knocking at her door. She opened it to find Albus Dumbledore himself. It wasn’t hard to pretend to be surprised.

“Headmaster Dumbledore?! What— what are doing here?”

“Ms. Le Reine, is it?” He smiled kindly and his eyes twinkled behind old half-moon spectacles, “I’m afraid that I’ve received word that our High Inquisitor, Dolores Umbridge, I assume you’ve heard of her appointment to Hogwarts?” Here Dumbledore looked up at her for confirmation and she nodded slowly, feigning confusion as if she had no idea where this was headed.

“Well,” Dumbledore continued, “I’ve been informed that she has seen it fit to fire our current Divination professor on Monday and, after looking over your application, I think that you, Ms. Le Reine, would be a perfect fit as Professor Trelawney’s replacement. Do you accept this position?”

Dumbledore looked straight at her, meeting her eyes with an inquiring gaze. He was hiding something, some ulterior motive or hidden reason for hiring her, or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with her, maybe it was something about Umbridge who he had mentioned. Morgana would bet anything that he was a man with a dozen contingency plans each for any number of situations. Whatever it was, she was confident that if it affected her, she could find out easily. So she met his steady gaze with a shy smile and a tilt of her chin.

“I would be delighted to, Headmaster, and please, call me Mara,” Morgana replied easily, the perfect picture of innocence, complete with the slightest French accent. “So, when do I start?”

Dumbledore smiled and it seemed genuine, “If you could be there on hand Monday afternoon, that would be wonderful, Mara. Perhaps I could meet you at the Hog’s Head in Hogsmeade Monday afternoon and then we could take the Hogwarts Express from there?”

“Perfect,” Morgana said, and it really was. Soon enough she’d be at Hogwarts, and she didn’t know if it’d be weeks, months, or even years, but at some point, Merlin would be there, and that would make it all worth it. She’d protect Harry Potter in his stead, because she knew that was what he would want her to do, she would try to make up for all the horror she had caused in another life, and when she finally found Merlin, when she found Arthur and Gwen , oh gods how she missed Gwen, she would apologize like never before and hope that somehow, they could manage to forgive her.

“Shall we say four, then?” Morgana asked him, “At the Hog’s Head? I’ll bring all my luggage.”

“Wonderful,” Dumbledore said, “I’ll see you then, we can discuss your contract in full once we get to Hogwarts. Goodbye, Mara, I’ll see you soon.”

“Goodbye,” Morgana said.

And with that, Dumbledore turned on his heel and apparated away.

Morgana smiled, and for once she felt like herself, her true self. She felt like both the woman of today that Mara Le Reine had grown up to be and the woman she had been at her prime a thousand years ago. Sane, brilliant, and oh so powerful. She felt as if she could do anything. As if she could accomplish the impossible.

And so she would.

Notes:

tysm for reading! :)

Chapter 3: in which morgana makes her first enemy yay

Summary:

morgana heads to hogwarts and prepares for her first lesson

oh yeah, and she also scares the shit out of umbridge because it's fun

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

On Monday, March 8th, Morgana enters the Hog’s Head with two large muggle suitcases levitated behind her at exactly 3:58 pm. At one table to the far left of the room, she spots Albus Dumbledore sitting with a stern-looking woman with her hair pulled back into a tight bun.

 

“Ah, Ms. La Reine, how wonderful to see you again, this is the Deputy Headmistress Professor Minerva McGonagall, I’m sure you two will get along famously!” 

 

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled as he spoke and Morgana wanted nothing more than to shoot him a sharp suspicious look but nope, can’t do that. Not if she wanted to keep her cover. Instead, she smiles innocently at him.

 

“Oh it’s lovely to meet you, Professor,” Morgana intones, laying on the charm. “I’m Mara La Reine but please, call me Mara. Speaking of, Headmaster, I could have sworn I asked the same of you!”

 

“Of course, my apologies Mara,” Dumbledore says, and Morgana could swear he was looking into her head, divining all her deepest, darkest secrets. An eccentric old man, wasn’t he?

 

“A pleasure,” McGonagall says, smiling at her. “I’ll be showing you around this afternoon. Shall we head to Hogwarts?”

 

“Ah yes, let’s go, I think I may have overpacked a bit and I’ll need as much time as I can get to unpack and sort everything.”

 

The conversation continues from there and, after the usual niceties, they move onto general coursework expectations and markings. Morgana participates when she can, but she finds her mind drifting as she walks. How long will it be, she wonders, until Merlin rejoins the world, until Arthur, until Gwen?

 

She’ll wait, even if it takes years, she’ll wait.

 

And in the meantime, she supposes that she might as well try and help out with the whole Voldemort crisis thing they’ve got going on. It’s what Merlin would do, after all. And she has to begin making it up to him somehow, doesn’t she?

 

She sighs at the thought of the mad man. Distantly, it registers that McGonagall is lambasting about two twins by the name of Weasley? She nods along but continues to ponder on Voldemort. From what she had read (as well as Seen) of the first war, he’d been after immortality and had gone insane in the pursuit of it. She shudders to think that she had ever been as far gone as he was in her past life. Those final few months had… not been pleasant. 

 

No matter. She would redeem herself. Morgana had made up her mind and nothing would stop her from achieving her goals. She was a high priestess of the Old Religion. Hogwarts was hers.

 

-

 

After they reach the castle, McGonagall leads her on a short tour of the places she’ll need to know how to get to. Among them being the North Tower, where Morgana would be teaching, the Great Hall where meals were held, and the dorm she would be staying in — a comfortable if cold seeming room near the Slytherin Common Room. Morgana smiles at that, she rather thinks that had she gone to Hogwarts and not Beauxbatons, she would have been a Slytherin, so it is rather fitting in that way.

 

Just before she leaves, McGonagall hands Morgana her schedule.

 

“Your first class is on Wednesday, feel free to take tomorrow to plan your lesson, good luck!”

 

Morgana smiles at her and bids goodbye. McGonagall turns to leave but just before she does, she turns back and says, “My dear, a bit of friendly advice? You do seem to be quite kind and knowledgeable and I’d hate for you to go the way Professor Trewlawney. It may do you some good to be wary of the High Inquisitor.”

 

The scowl on McGonagall’s face leads Morgana to think that whatever the Inquisitor is like, McGonagall does not like her very much, if at all. 

 

“Er, thank you for the warning, Professor, I’ll be sure to be careful,” Morgana smiles and nods in thanks. “Have a good evening!”

 

“You too, dear, goodbye.”

 

And just like that, Morgana is a professor of divination at Hogwarts.

 

-

 

Morgana heads to bed early that night as she finds herself strangely exhausted. She dreams of a pale faced man with slits for a nose. The look in his eyes scares her, not because of him, necessarily, but because they remind her of what she had seen when she looked in the mirror hundreds of years ago. It’s a driven look. One that says he will do anything and everything to accomplish his ambitions, no matter how horrific or twisted. She sees him raise his wand, cast Avada Kedavra — and then the dream shifts to a scene at a graveyard. 

 

Morgana sees a trembling young wizard with messy black hair and coppery skin. There is a jagged scar on his forehead. Harry Potter , she recognizes him distantly. She sees him open his mouth to speak and the dream shifts again. 

 

There, she sees, is the Forbidden Forest. A man, taller and wider than any she has seen before, is heading through it calling a strange word — Grawp , she thinks he says. Unlike the other visions she has seen that night, this one continues on for quite a bit. It seems that the man is harboring what looks to be a giant in the woods, trying to teach him the Queen’s English among other things. He doesn’t seem to have any ill intentions, but whatever he’s doing, Morgana doubts it will end well.

 

That last segment ended up being the last of her dreams for that night and Morgana felt almost thankful they hadn’t been worse. She awoke early that Tuesday and began planning her first lessons for tomorrow. According to her schedule, she had one group of 5th years just after breakfast and then two groups of 1st years in the afternoon after lunch. Very well then.

 

Morgana starts up a draft for her lesson and notes. If she’s going to be a teacher, she is going to do this right. Eventually, she heads down for breakfast but doesn’t stay long — she is busy, after all. She catches students as well as some of the other professors looking inquisitively at her but she doesn’t pay them much notice. She’ll meet most of the students in the hall over the next week or so and she would have plenty of time to get to know her fellow teachers. It is much the same for lunch and dinner.

 

The lesson planning goes smooth enough until just after dinner when there is a knock at her door. She opens it to find a stout-looking woman who rather reminds her of a toad dressed in all pink.

 

The High Inquisitor herself. Morgana has seen her at meal times but hasn’t actually spoken with her yet — she is not excited to finally have the opportunity. Morgana plasters a false smile on her face and steps aside, gestures for Umbridge to come in.

 

“High Inquisitor Umbridge,” Morgana says, “to what do I owe this absolute pleasure?”

 

As she speaks, Morgana looks down at the woman — she has at least half a foot on Umbridge — and smiles cruelly. She has long since perfected the art of intimidation. McGonagall had warned Morgana about Umbridge, yes, but the Morgana she knew — the Mara she had met — was a woman who smiled demurely and giggled prettily. That facet of Mara was an act, an act that Morgana does not particularly care to bother with for Umbridge. In this life, Morgana does not want to be feared and hated the way she had been before, but she thinks she can make an exception for this awful woman.

 

“ Hem, hem ,” Umbridge clears her throat. She looks almost uncomfortable under Morgana’s hard gaze. Good. “Yes, Professor Mara Le Reine, is it? I just wanted to come and see how you were settling in and meet you for myself. I will be formally evaluating you for the ministry in two weeks, of course. Now, did you not attend Hogwarts? I could not find your school records.” 

 

A formal evaluation? With this toad of a woman? Well, that would either be the longest class of her life or the most hilarious. Could go either way.

 

Morgana gazes disdainfully down at her. “How… delightful. I would welcome you any day, of course, Inquisitor. And yes, I am French by birth, and as such I attended Beauxbatons, will that be a problem ?”

 

Umbridge gulps and Morgana wants to cackle. No , Morgana reminds herself, we do not cackle in polite company. Then again, she thinks, Umbridge hardly counts as polite company. If Morgana wants to cackle and appear insane to scare Umbridge, she should damn well do as she pleases. But perhaps not today. Instead, Morgana settles for a glare. This really is fun.

 

The glare is certainly effective. Under her gaze, Umbridge appears to backtrack. “No, no, of course not. I just- as long as your English is— It’s no problem, no problem at all,” Umbridge amends at last.

 

Morgana smiles then, but says nothing. Umbridge waits awkwardly, and when it’s clear Morgana isn’t going to say anything else, she backs away to the door.

 

“Well,” Umbridge starts, attempting to regain some of her original arrogant haughtiness and failing miserably. “I suppose I shall take my leave then.”

 

Morgana raises her eyebrows. “I suppose you shall.”

 

Umbridge takes the hint. In only a few seconds Umbridge has left Morgana’s dorm and is waddling back down the hallway, no doubt getting as far away from Morgana as possible.

 

Morgana smirks as the door closes.

 

“Still got it,” she says, and breaks out into laughs.

 

Tomorrow held a decent chance of being at least a bit hectic, but for now, her lesson plans for the next few weeks are near complete and she’s made her first enemy of her new teaching career. All in all a productive day, Morgana thinks as she heads to retire for the evening and wonders what tomorrow will bring.

Notes:

fuck i shall try to never to go so long without an update again, sorry guys T-T

(oh also note if you care, i sort of hinted at it here but it wasnt explicit but anyway, the harry i write and am picturing is definitely indian and hermione is black)

thanks for reading yall, if you like, come yell at me on tumblr @nokreli or on my new discord server which i swear no one is gonna join so come prove me wrong and yell at me to update faster lmao -
https://discord.gg/v2r2FXC

anyway please review it warms my heart to hear from yall!
black lives matter
trans rights are human rights
stay safe yall and goodbye, hopefully it wont be another near year until the next update