Chapter Text
There’s a hesitant knock at the door. The knocks are quiet, and too far apart. It’s barely audible over the sound of the rain pouring outside, so Arthur rushes to the door. He hadn’t heard a car come up his driveway; or seen the headlights through his window. He thinks he knows who it is.
He pulls the door open to find Merlin on the doorstep. He’s taller than he’d been when Arthur had seen him last, but he has the aspect of someone curled into themselves. He’s soaking wet, hair plastered to his face, mouth turned down into a frown.
“Mer-lin!” says Arthur as he pulls the younger boy inside. “What on earth do you think you’re doing? Shoes off,” he insists but Merlin looks out of it. His eyes are too blue, too wide for his face, and Arthur is afraid that the pallor on his skin isn’t from the cold. He’s certain, actually. Only something terrible could have driven Merlin to his flat mid-year when he should be in school. Arthur bends down and pulls off Merlin’s shoes.
“…Arthur,” says Merlin finally. “Morgana said…she said to come here,” Arthur nods encouragingly as he helps Merlin out of his sodden coat. “You’re welcome here, you know you are.” Not that he’d expected him now, but the idea remained. Ignoring the rest of his soaked clothes, Arthur walks him to the bathroom. Finally, Merlin looks straight into Arthur's eyes, still dripping onto the floor. “Arthur, I had to run away. Morgana said the wards here would keep me safe but I don’t…I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”
Merlin looks so lost, for a moment, that Arthur can’t resist. He pulls Merlin into a hug. “Merlin, it’s okay. It’s safe here. Just...take a shower, warm up. You don’t have to explain right now. It’s okay.” He takes a step back. I’ll bring you clothes.
Arthur is sure that his sister is okay, she must have been, to give Merlin Arthur’s address, but he asks just in case. “Morgana isn’t in any danger?”
“They’re not after her Arthur, just me.” He sounds exhausted. Defeated. Nothing like the sixteen-year-old he should be. Merlin steps into the shower and starts to unbutton his shirt though, so Arthur leaves to find clothes he’s grown out of.
He has set out Merlin’s clothes and a towel, changed his t-shirt (it had gotten damp from when he’d impulsively hugged Merlin) and started up a simple pasta on the stove before Merlin finishes and joins him in the kitchen. “Can I help?” he asks.
Arthur glances at him. Still pale, still exhausted. “You can sit here and watch,” Arthur says, tilting his head toward the barstools against his counter. “I’m almost done anyway.”
Merlin’s wearing the bathrobe he had left with the clothes over the t-shirt and tracks, as though he feels underdressed wearing just muggle clothes. Arthur slices three slices from a loaf of garlic bread and lets them toast in his toaster grill while the sauce simmers. The bread finishes first, so he sets it in front of Merlin. “Pasta needs a few more minutes,” he says. “Now, do you want to tell me what happened, or do you need some more time?”
“Why aren’t you afraid?” asks Merlin instead of answering. “I’m on the run from the wizarding authorities. You’re technically harboring a fugitive.”
“Because I trust Morgana, and I trust you, Mer-lin. Don’t ask dumb questions.” He sets a bowl of pasta in front of Merlin and takes one for himself. “Do you want to talk to your mother? Is she in trouble?”
Merlin shakes his head. “Mum will be fine. It’s just, they probably started watching her the moment I left Hogwarts. I can’t go there right now. Will said he’d get someone to tell Mum that I’m safe.”
Arthur nods. “So who does know you’re here?”
“Morgana, obviously. Will knows, and Lancelot.” Arthur can’t imagine any of them would betray Merlin. Then again, if this is what Arthur thinks it’s about, then pretty powerful people would be looking for him.
They finish the rest of the meal in silence. Merlin looks like he has too much on his mind, and Arthur doesn’t have the heart to stress him out anymore.
The bed in the guestroom has already been made up with clean linens, so Arthur sends Merlin to sleep. Nearly an hour later, Arthur hears the next odd sound over the rainfall. The sound is more familiar than it should be; a beak tapping on his window. He rushes over to the window to let the drenched owl into the room.
If he’d been a wizard, he could have dried the owl with a flick of his wand. Instead, he fetches a towel and starts rubbing, settling the owl as close to the heating vent as possible. The owl gives Arthur a displeased hoot, but it doesn’t nip him so he leaves it be. Then it hops up, fluffs its feathers, and decides to settle on top of his bookshelf. “I’m not going to open the window for you later, I need to get to bed,” he tells it. The owl just gives him another dismissive hoot and closes its eyes.
The scroll that the owl brought is from Lancelot, and it’s addressed to Arthur. When he unrolls it, Arthur finds a repeat of Lancelot’s last letter to him from a few days before. It tells him exactly what the previous one did; a summary of recent goings-on in the Wizarding world (which Arthur was mostly caught up with from the Daily Prophet, except Lancelot at least did not resort to exaggeration or sensational storytelling), questions that wizards had submitted to their column, and Lancelot’s suggestions for what Arthur should be writing about next.
The contents are almost exactly what he said the last time, just more hurried in wording and appearance. Arthur pores over it, but he can’t detect any sort of code within the letter. He assumes that the key must be magical. He sticks a post-it to the letter, scrawls, ‘From Lancelot, couldn’t figure it out’ and leaves it on Merlin’s bedside table.
“Here,” says Merlin, handing Arthur the letter when he walks into the kitchen the next morning. In between the lines of Lancelot’s letter is a scrawled message,
Merlin, breathe. Trust me, it’ll be fine.
Morgana convinced aurors you’ll be heading for the continent. Maybe Spain. Could you manage a distraction or trail there…try if not dangerous. Arthur and I have safe system of communication, send messages through his. Will pass it on. Mr. Selwyn says that your emancipation papers are still on hold. He’s filed a complaint at DMLE. Will update if anything happens. I think professor Gaius suspects. Morgana and Will disagree. Set up emergency portkey to site C anyway, they’ll check B if they find you at Arthur’s.
Chin up, Merlin.
Arthur, keep him safe. Merlin’s a minor for the next seven months; His father can demand his return and accuse you of kidnapping. We’ll try to push Merlin’s papers through. His mum can’t testify before the W. because Muggle. You’ll see in the prophet. Take care.
“Why what’s in the prophet?” asks Arthur, looking up at Merlin. The other boy looks a little better, but not too well.
“There’s practically a manhunt going on trying to find me.” Merlin hands Arthur the paper, which has a frightened looking Merlin on the front page. The prophet, in its usual semi-accurate fashion, has described Merlin as a rags-to-riches story; Mr. Merlin Emrys was recently discovered to be the first-born son of Dragonlord Balinor Ambrosius. Merlin had been overwhelmed by his sudden change in circumstances and run away, leaving Balinor distraught.
There was a large picture of Balinor on page two, with an interview:
“I never even suspected that I had had a child with Hunith. We were a pleasant summer fling, and she never spoke to me again.”
“Nothing I had ever told her could have made it seem like I would not take responsibility for a child of my own blood. I can only assume she hid my son from me deliberately.”
“I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Merlin before, and I knew there was something special about him. I only want him back safely so that I may explain myself to him.”
Page four was marvelling at the fact that Merlin had managed to run away from Hogwarts, ‘Despite the formidable protections that the castle has against intruders, there have been instances of truancy before. The most well remembered being the flamboyant exit of Fred and George Weasley in early 1996, after an act of protest against the acting headmistress of the time, High Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge, while Headmaster Dumbledore was in hiding.’ The article continued to describe the Weasleys’, and several other escapes from the school.
There was also, as Lancelot had said, a section explaining how it was possible that Merlin had travelled to Spain, and who to contact if they found him.
Arthur can feel his mouth tightening as he reads through the nonsense that the Prophet has served up with its usual relish.
Finally, he looks up at Merlin. “I don’t understand. Wizarding Britain doesn’t have truancy laws, I’ve checked. Yes, you’re supposed to be in school, and you’re still underage unlike the examples mentioned…but I’m not following the legality of their attempt to find you. Your mother can say she’s given you permission to leave, and that you’re staying with a friend, right?”
“It should’ve been that easy, Arthur,” says Merlin. “Except for what he did this week. I’m sorry I couldn’t write to you sooner, once we found out I had to leave. That part’s not in the papers. I don’t know if no-one leaked the information, or if it’s because it makes Balinor seem incredibly creepy...” Merlin takes a deep breath, “Balinor petitioned that I be released from my mother’s care, saying that she hid my existence from him. Since he’s so powerful and he has abilities that are passed on only to his first-born son, he basically said my mother deprived him of his rights, and that she’s poisoned my mind against him. He convinced them to give him legal guardianship.”
“Which means if he says that you’re supposed to be in school, you don’t have a choice.”
“Yes. Even if mum had been a half-blood, and allowed to testify in court, they would probably give me to Balinor anyway because of the stronger magical claim. The Wizengamot still has so many shrivelled idiots who think children are some sort of property.”
Arthur skims through the paper again. “He can’t have thought this through. You’ve made it clear before that you don’t want to accept him as your father. Forcing the matter, especially this publicly can’t…Oh. So that’s why you ran? To blow it up?”
“Well, Lancelot did say it would help, and I trust him on this sort of thing. But really, I just needed to not go with him over the Christmas hols. There’s some sort of ritual, that’s all I gathered, to bind a dragonlord to a dragon. Balinor wanted me to bind myself to Aithusa.” Arthur remembered Aithusa, she was a three-year-old white dragon, that Merlin had met several times before.
“You think he would have forced it on you?”
“I’m almost certain he would have forced it. He visited last week, talking about how he was making ‘arrangements’ for the ceremony during Alban Arthan – which has nothing to do with dragons, Arthur, he just appropriated it because it was convenient – and I told him I didn’t want to do it. He looked really angry, but he just said okay and left. I received the papers yesterday about a change in guardianship, signed and sealed by the ministry.”
Arthur takes some time to think about it. “Is there anything I can do?” he asks, when he doesn’t quite come up with anything.
“You could think up a good reason for having a sixteen-year-old in your flat,” says Merlin. “I might be here a while, and people will notice.”
“You left your wand behind, right?” asks Arthur, and Merlin nods. “It was too dangerous. Even if I never used it, if I accidentally walked by a wizarding dwelling where someone was doing magic…it seemed like a risk.”
That was one less thing to worry about. But what was Arthur supposed to do with the kid for seven months? Not that Arthur couldn’t afford to have a house-guest, but keeping the kid locked up for several months can not be healthy. He wonders if he can send him to school. It takes him a while to consider the idea from every angle, then he finally asks, “Merlin? Do you want to go to school? The muggle one, here, not Hogwarts.”
Melrin’s eyes are wide. “I haven’t studied muggle maths and science since primary.”
Arthur waves his hand, “You’d catch up, I could tutor you. It’s just. Everyone knows Morgana is my half-sister who left to stay with her mum. If I introduce you as her half-brother, no one would even be surprised. You look rather similar.”
“I’m Welsh.”
“So your father was Welsh! How does it matter? I said half-sibling.”
Merlin seems to think it over. “I only have records from primary, and they’ll be looking for Merlin Emrys anyway, so I’d need a fake identity. Don’t you think it would be too much work? And more likely that I’ll get caught?”
“I don’t think so… you forget how vastly the non-magical population outnumbers the muggle one. If we do this right, they’ll probably never trace it. Do you think I could call my friends over? You can say no, but I trust them.”
“What are you going to tell them?” asks Merlin.
“Just that you’re Morgana’s half-brother, you’ve been living with your dad, and you were scared of him so you ran away.”
Merlin doesn’t look convinced.
“Okay, I’ll think of something else,” says Arthur.
“No, no it’s. It’s a good idea, because I would never think it’s safe. They know me well enough to expect me to be hiding somewhere, remote, like in the woods.” He pauses, and Arthur can see how terrified he is. How exhausted he is. “And I’ll trust anyone that you trust, Arthur.” The last is said seriously, Merlin’s blue eyes wide and solemn.
Arthur smiles faintly. “Okay, I’ll call them then.” He pulls out his phone and dials Leon, then Gwen, asking them if they were busy, and if not, to please come over. Please don’t look suspicious,” he insists.
Gwen turns up in fifteen minutes, dressed like she was heading for a yoga class, her warm brown eyes worried as she asks, “Arthur what’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry to steal your Saturday, but I need your help,” he tells her. “This is Merlin, Merlin, Gwen.”
“Oh my god, Merlin!” says Gwen, and Merlin actually smiles faintly and says, “Elyan’s Gwen?” and then Gwen’s hugging Merlin.
“Elyan told me you were missing, and that he hoped you were safe but he wasn’t sure. Said Lancelot seemed to know where you were, and that he would usually trust him, but he wished it hadn’t been a pureblood who got you out because they wouldn’t know how to help.”
Wait, Elyan’s elite boarding school was Hogwarts? How had he not noticed for so long?
Merlin doesn’t seem to care, says, “Lancelot helped, but it was actually.” He freezes, glancing at Arthur.
“Oh, if Morgana planned it, then yes, that makes sense,” says Gwen.
“It’s fine Merlin, Gwen knows Morgana. They used to be friends. Although you have never told me your brother was at Hogwarts.”
“In his third year,” says Gwen, apologetically.
“And I suppose Morgana knows?” Gwen nods and Arthur rolls his eyes. He’ll ask her about it later when Merlin doesn’t look so worried. He lets the pair of them talk until the doorbell rings.
Leon appears then, apologizing for taking so long. He’s brought bagels and donuts and smiles happily on spotting Merlin. “I’m so glad I brought extra!” he says, setting the box down on Arthur’s coffee table. Arthur makes the introductions, and then just dives right in. No point in wasting time.
“I need to hide Merlin for a couple of months. Custody argument between his parents except his father is a really dangerous man who hasn’t actually broken any laws so he can’t be put away.”
He explains that they want to pretend he’s family, and put him in school.
Leon stares at Merlin, who shrinks in on himself under the stare. Then he pulls a notebook out of his pocket. “You can introduce him around as Morgana’s half-brother, I think, but since we know so little about her mum, it’ll be risky for it to be like that on paper. Do you have any preferences for a name?”
Merlin looks startled, but Arthur grins. “Leon’s family is one of the few who can actually rewrite a person’s existence, be grateful Merlin. I think you should make it William, he’ll be likely to turn around for that. Anything too new and it might not register as his name.”
“Okay, and how deep does this have to be? Something that’ll hold together under mild scrutiny for about a year or two should be enough, right? Or might you want to keep it for longer?”
“Uh, I don’t think so?”
“The difference would be that I’ll have to set you up with enough background that you can work and pay your taxes on this identity. Otherwise it’ll just be for school,” Leon explains.
“Oh, just school is fine. Once I’m seventeen, I can go back to my mum.”
Leon nods, scribbles away some more, and then says, “Arthur, I need your printer. The three of you figure out what school Merlin wants to join, and if there are vacancies,” and he strides out.
“This is why Leon’s usually our DM for DnD,” Gwen confides, and Merlin laughs. Arthur passes him his phone. “Keep browsing here, I’ll fetch my laptop.”
The browser is already open to a list of local schools.
It’s a strangely fun morning, Merlin thinks, afterwards. Gwen and Arthur had bickered like he and Will do, over the merits of the last two schools on their list. Leon had wandered back out of Arthur’s office with a huge set of weird forms that he hands to Merlin. Arthur looks over his shoulder and asks, “Oh my god, did you just modify your character sheets?”
Leon turns pink. “It’s not like there are real forms for, ‘So you want to pick a new identity’ Arthur! And I needed to be thorough.”
The forms are very thorough, and filling them out takes a significant amount of time. They have to consider everything. What birth date would be believable; it had to fit Merlin’s age, without being too close to or too far from his actual birthday (we can’t just add six months to his birthday, that would be so easy to track down!).
They check maps, they decide what localities he’s lived in, when he got emancipated from his parents (that’s your best bet, unless you want my parents to have custody of you for a short while?), the train and bus lines that he would’ve become familiar with, and how he’s been supporting himself financially.
Merlin hesitantly asks if they could also figure out how he’s actually going to work and pay for himself. Arthur tells him it doesn’t matter and Merlin glares him down. It’s Gwen who figures it out for him. “Your mom runs a bakery, right? The cake and coffee place I frequent by the university is hiring! My friend Mithian actually knows the owners so you can talk to them. And even if they won’t need you for the after-school times you can manage, I’m sure we can find you some place else.
As long as it’s not too similar to Merlin’s mum’s bakery, says Arthur, and Gwen assures him it’s more of a coffee place.
It should have been terrifying, Merlin thinks. Yesterday, when Morgana had handed him the little piece of paper with Arthur’s address, when Lancelot had slipped him out of the castle under his invisibility cloak… everything had seemed terrifying.
Here it’s okay; with Arthur’s familiar brash confidence, Gwen’s smile and warm eyes, so like Elyan’s, and the friendly Leon. All of them are young but they have a certain steadiness to them that Merlin could have envied if they weren’t sharing it with him.
Gwen has to leave after lunch, but Leon stays over until dinner. They’ve hammered out all of the details. Arthur reads it over one more time, blue eyes sharp, and then says, “It looks okay to me. How soon do you think you can get it done?”
“I’ll try to get it done by Tuesday, depends on how busy my parents are and how convincing I can be. I’ll let you guys know!” he stuffs the papers into his bag, and leaves with a polite but distracted goodbye.
It’s ridiculous how fast everything comes together. Leon comes back with a packet of information for Merlin, all the details about his fake life that they had put together the other day, with a lot of additional information. It has notes scrawled over it in Leon’s small neat handwriting. Arthur hands Merlin half of the packet to read while he reads the rest, and then they swap.
“It’ll be two more days until your IDs will be available, and Mum thinks you should start school next week. She’s already started the school-transfer documentation,” he says cheerfully before he leaves. Merlin doesn’t even get up to say goodbye, just tries to keep from throwing up because this was really happening.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” says Arthur, and Merlin frowns at him.
“It’s going to be okay, Merlin,” he says. “You’re going to be safe, the wizards won’t find you. Of course, you might still flunk in school, but that’s to be expected-”
Merlin tosses the throw-pillow in Arthur’s face.
Arthur did have to tutor Merlin. Hogwarts’ curriculum didn’t match with the muggle one at all, but fortunately, Arthur had all his textbooks and notebooks carefully boxed away from three years ago, so he fetches them for Merlin.
It’s…it’s not too hard. Merlin is used to Gaius’ impossible standards, had started learning Welsh and Celtic magic even before Hogwarts and Gaius had never let him slack on that even with all of his Hogwarts coursework to complete. At least this stuff was in English and not Ogham.
There’s just a lot to cover, and Merlin spends the rest of his week cramming on science and history and math, choosing to skip English and French and hope that would sort itself later.
If Merlin hadn’t been a muggle-born, this would have been impossible. Since he was, it’s only bloody difficult. If Balinor tracks Merlin down after all this effort Merlin’s afraid he’ll set the man on fire.
It’s really strange how quickly Merlin falls into his life. It’s not like he’s a stranger; Arthur knows the boy already; from that one summer vacation where he’d stayed with Gaius, and also from all the letters they had exchanged over the years as a cover for exchanging letters with Morgana.
And yet, not two weeks in Arthur finds himself stopping by at Mithian’s café (and why had Gwen been hiding this place from him? It was gorgeous! He needed to talk to that girl about secrets.) and doing his work there while Merlin finished up his shift. Then he’d drive them both home.
Sometimes Mithian sent them home with leftovers, and Arthur would cook dinner. He always refused Merlin’s help, insisting he take the time to complete his homework, and then they’d eat together.
It’s...it’s really nice having a house-mate. Arthur had never really realized that he had been missing the experience, but since Morgana left he’s been more or less just taking care of himself. It’s nice to have someone else to care for.
Also, it’s just so fun demanding that Merlin do some of the chores; listening to the boy’s irreverent complaining.
Arthur sits down to write about the mess three weeks later, after Merlin has had time to settle in and he can stop worrying about that. He had enough old material already to send to Lancelot, so it hadn’t been pressing. And delaying had meant that Will had had time to obtain a letter from Hunith herself. Lancelot was going to put them both together for his next piece.
Dears, (this had been his salutation from the very beginning. He had expected Lancelot to fill it in with the right term, since Arthur hadn’t been sure if it was supposed to address it to the editor, or the general wizarding public, but now it was one of their things, starting every letter with ‘Dears,’ and Lancelot said it made him sound like a prissy old muggle lady)
Dears,
It is with great confusion and incredulity that I would like to address the events of last month, involving the escape of an underage child from Hogwarts. I have followed the news in the Prophet, but I have also written to Lancelot, and more importantly, I have written and heard from Ms. Hunith Emrys, the heartbroken muggle mother of the missing child.
It has been awhile since I felt so betrayed by the bizarre and cruel practices of wizard-kind, but you have surprised me once again. Taking the guardianship of a child away from the loving mother who raised him, without his permission, or her permission seems ridiculous. Cruel, even. Perhaps it does not seem so to you. Perhaps you, like the Prophet, think that Balinor Ambrosius deserves to have a chance to be a father to his son because of the Inheritance his firstborn would receive from him. Perhaps you think that it’s just a misunderstanding.
Let me describe how such a conflict (known as a custody hearing) occurs in muggle court. If the parents have come to an accord, they merely inform the court that they shall be separating, and which parent the child will remain with.
But if they do not agree, then they each make their case to an impartial judge, who takes into account the parents’ financial status, their suitability to raise a child, and whether there’s anything that should disqualify one of them from having custody. For older children, they always take into account the child’s own preference, before they decide.
If something similar had taken place after young Mr. Emrys’ father was suddenly discovered, perhaps the child would still be safe within Hogwarts. But I doubt you can comprehend such a thing. Let a muggle woman into the Wizengamot to plead her case before taking her child away from her? I’m sure that’s too sensible for the wizarding world.
Lancelot has promised me that Ms. Emrys’ letter will be published in full. I truly hope that all of you read it. It does not matter if you think Balinor had the stronger claim, it matters that this heartbroken mother was not even given a choice once someone powerful decided her son was talented enough to be valuable.
All of this is difficult enough, but I am afraid that sometimes, sometimes I fear something far darker could have befallen the child. How likely is it, really, that the most powerful wizards in the country could not locate a single truant child who did not even take his wand with him? Am I alone in wondering, if just perhaps, Merlin Emrys is dead?
I do not know if Balinor’s powers would be inherited by the next child he sires if Mr. Emrys was to die before he attained his majority. But I’m sure some of you do. Since that seems to be all that matters to the lot of you.
-The Muggle
“Gosh, did you read what the Muggle wrote?” is pretty much the only thing on everyone’s lips the next day. Two students actually burst into tears over breakfast once the Prophet is delivered, and the staff had not seemed much happier.
Lancelot glances over at Morgana at the Slytherin table but she appears entirely unaffected. Will and Gwaine, however, seemed to have put aside their differences and were grinning quite evilly at the paper.
“The Princess is really good at what he does isn’t he,” Gwaine whispers to him, after casting a muffliato around them. “I’d think he was dead too. But is that bit true, about the inheritance?”
“It depends on the specific Inheritance…but there are several where you do have to be of-age for it to truly settle into your magic. And that’s not fixed until you’re seventeen,” he says.
Lance knows that for certain. He hadn’t been able to ask the professors as he usually would, but he had found examples to send Arthur when he’d asked for them. Lance had known Arthur was planning something with the information, but he hadn’t known it would be this...brutal.
Brutal is good though. Arthur’s letter would definitely push Balinor onto the defensive, and that would make an excellent opening for what Lancelot has planned. No one tries to hurt their Merlin and gets away with it. He can tell from the almost bloodthirst grin on Gwaine and Will's faces that he's not alone in this.
Balinor will pay.