Okay, this is a story I have had for a while. It's going to be long, but there may not be a regular update schedule on this thing. I have roughly 50 chapters plotted out (I said it was going to be long) but I only have 6 completely finished at this moment. And I am working on my Senior Thesis in college, so the majority of my creative and academic efforts will be directed at that. Rest assured that after May 14th (graduation) I will have more time to work on it. It will be a matter of negotiating with my muse then.

I just wanted to get this out there and see if there was any interest in it.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own either Merlin or Harry Potter. If I did, I wouldn't have student loans to worry about...


Merlin woke before dawn with a start, gold shimmering in his eyes. The air was thick and it felt like the centuries-old warlock was trying to breathe cloth instead of air. It took him a moment to realize that the feeling was magic.

Not the paltry tricks that had evolved since the fall of Camelot, not the kind exercised by the Ministry of Magic and the witches and wizards living under it. No, this was magic—world-shaping, destiny-changing magic—magic so potent it required a capital M.

Old Magic.

Merlin stumbled out of the house and into the grey pre-dawn light. He was only steps from the lakeshore, waiting as he had been for Arthur's return.

And it seemed that he was still waiting. He could feel Arthur beyond the veil in Avalon, still waiting for the proper time for his return.

But if it wasn't Arthur's return, what was that surge of Old Magic? It could mean that Morgana had been reborn in the world, heralding the need for Arthur in the world again.

Merlin went back inside the house, hunting down the spell book he hadn't used in years. He didn't have much use for tracking spells, especially while he was living beside the only objective he'd had for more than a millennia. He had modified it many years ago for Arthur, though Merlin wasn't actually conscious of doing that. Poison eating its way through one's body tended not to leave many coherent memories. Gaius had told him that he used it, and that he modified it.

This time, he would put the spell to its proper use: tracking down the caster who was using Old Magic.

At first, Merlin was having a little trouble with the spell. It would return to him or to the lake, the largest sources of Old Magic left in the world. For the fourth time, the little blue orb of light sank through the window and bounced above the spell book in Merlin's lap.

"Damn it, you stupid little wisp. I know I have Old Magic. I know that Avalon contains Old Magic, too! I need you to find the one that isn't here!"

Up in the rafters, an undersized grey owl hooted softly.

"You think that's funny, Freidle? How about I send you after it instead of this stupid spell?" The owl hooted again and disappeared behind a cross-beam. "Don't want to? Then keep your opinions to yourself! Bloody pigeon."

He sent the spell off again, searching for a dormant source of Old Magic. He just needed to find it once, then he could track it. The stupid spell only needed to work once…

After a week, Merlin thought that this spell had failed too and he began to brainstorm another way of finding the caster. While searching his library for other tracking spells, the little blue orb appeared twelve days after it had been sent out.

It hung in the air expectantly like a cat that wanted attention but was too proud to sniff at the hand it wanted petting from.

Merlin touched the little blue orb and it grew into a large transparent globe. Inside the bubble, mist formed into shapes and colors until a scene appeared in a bright nursery decorated in silver and green.

In the crib stood a bright eyed child who couldn't have been more than two years old.

It was a girl. She was pretty, even for a baby, with her dark hair curling around her ears and her eyes—almost black—held steady on the little blue spell orb that drifted ever closer.

She grabbed at it, but it drifted farther away. The little girl sat down with a bump on a silvery-blue blanket in the crib.

"K'm heehr," she demanded, and the little orb drifted closer again, but nowhere near within her reach. "Khm heer," she repeated. Her voice now sounded angry and her eyes, if it was possible, grew darker.

When the orb still wouldn't come, she began to whine and kick in frustration.

So she knows how to throw a tantrum. There's nothing of Old Magic in that…

Suddenly there was a flash of gold and a wind-up merry-go-round on the chest of drawers began to spin and play its little melody.

The little girl stood again and held out her hands to the musical merry-go-round. Her eyes flashed gold again and the wind-up toy floated off of the bureau and into her waiting hands. She sat down again with another little thump and watched the dragons, hippogriffs, and unicorns spin around and around.

"Well, she doesn't quite look like Morgana," Merlin told Freidle who had come to perch on his shoulder and watch. "But I should probably keep an eye on her anyway."

For the next few weeks, the warlock watched the girl carefully. Other than small outbursts of Old Magic, she was a perfectly normal girl. He even knew her family.

Okay, not her actual family, but he remembered the founder of their family line: Darius Kyddle. They had added a few letters over the years—Kyndltry—but it was hard to hide the family birthmark. Merlin noted that the nine-pointed star just inside the toddler's wrist. It had migrated a bit since Darius—it had been on the druid's breast, right above his heart.

The warlock started looking in on her less as the weeks wore on and he busied himself with preparations to re-enter magical society. He had not been part of wizarding society for many years—not quite as long as people thought—and he needed to make a name for himself again. Not as Merlin, there were too many complications that would arise using his real name. Not that many people would actually believe him.

No, he was setting himself up as a magical historian under the name E. Balinor. Might as well put all those years of experience and memories to use.

The first book he wrote was entitled The Rise and Fall of Camelot and he explained the ban of magic in Camelot as started by Uther and continued by Arthur. Merlin explained the role magic still played in the kingdom in spite of the ban, especially where Morgana was concerned. Of all his books, it was the most controversial, even though it was written with the most truth.

Much to the anger and chagrin of the other Merlin scholars, he kept writing about Camelot and upsetting a lot of what was thought to be fact. Merlin never dared to write his autobiography, but he examined the period in a way that touched on his role in history and much of what he presented was contrary to the wealth of legend that the others spoke of. Eventually, the warlock began to delve into the way that magic itself changed in response to the changing world, and his books grew in popularity. He was, after all, trying to make a name for himself. What better way to do that than to redefine the greatest era in magic?


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