The Book

Merida and Fred waited in the cramped space between two trophy cases as the footsteps outside grew steadily closer. They barely breathed as the steps echoed right outside the door in fear even the sound of their breath would be heard by Filch. The sound stopped in front of the door for a moment before carrying on down the corridor, the sounds of footsteps now leading away from them.

The two redheads let out a long sigh of relief as they stepped out from their small hiding spot. Before Merida could say anything, Fred darted over to the door and opened it a crack to peek out.

'What are ye doin'?' Merida hissed at him as he looked out.

'I just want to see who's walking about after curfew,' he whispered back cheerily, the idea of getting in trouble never crossing his mind.

'You're goin' ta get us caught,' Merida told him as she surreptitiously joined him at the door to see who it was.

Walking down the corridor she could see two figures, one in a large red robe edged in white and the other with a robe covered in shiny bangles from head to foot, Professors North and Trelawney. Trelawney was talking animatedly to North who was nodding with a polite interest. Fred began to tiptoe after them, ignoring Merida's silent waves of protest and tugging her to follow him.

They sneaked through the shadows of the corridor, keeping close to the walls so as not to get attention, and soon they were close enough to hear what the teachers were discussing.

'I sensed it the moment she stepped into my room,' Trelawney was saying to North.

'Is that so?' North asked in the same kindly tone that people used when talking to a senile old grandmother.

'Her gift is so strong it may well outshine my own in time,' Trelawney continued as the two turned a corner and their voices faded away.

'What do you think that was about?' Fred whispered to Merida as they stepped away from the suit of armour they'd been hiding behind.

'I don't know what that woman's talkin' about half the time,' Merida shrugged as Fred began to look for something in his robe pockets.

'It's goin' ta take us ages to sneak back to the common room without gettin' caught,' she complained as realisation dawned on her that they were several flights below the floor where the Fat Lady hung. They would certainly end up running into a teacher or worse the Bloody Baron.

'Not to worry, I have this,' Fred said as he triumphantly pulled out a piece of brown parchment from his robes.

'Explain,' Merida demanded as she stared at the blank paper. She hadn't known Fred long but she doubted that he just carried unimportant pieces of parchment around with him unless it had some other purpose.

With a flourish and a look of mock seriousness on his face Fred tapped his wand against the paper and said, 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.' At once ink began to run down the paper, drawing themselves into what looked like a map where small markers moved about with a name listed below them. Merida looked closely and saw two with the names Merida Dunbroch and Fred Weasley standing in a perfectly accurate drawing of the corridor they were standing in, with two other markers heading away from them named Nicholas St. North and Sybil Trelawney. At the top of the page she read, The Marauders Map mark ll, drawn by Fred and George Weasley.

'My dad made it with his brother,' Fred told her as she continued to stare, 'They stole the original from Filch's office and memorized it before passing it on. They wrote this one with any additions that the original map didn't have.'

'So you're Fred the second?'

'Yeah, he was my dad's twin brother. He died during the battle of Hogwarts,' Fred answered a small amount of real solemnity edging his voice. 'Anyway, this thing can show us any secret passages so we won't get caught.'

'Let's get goin' then,' Merida said happily as they followed the map to the end of the corridor and opened a hidden door to reveal a tight spiral staircase. Soon they had arrived at the portrait of the Fat Lady without encountering any problem on the way.

'Lily sprouts,' Merida said to the Lady as Fred hid the map back in his robe pocket.

'I hear you're our new beater, well done,' The Lady congratulated as she swung open to reveal the entrance to the corridor.

'Thanks,' Merida replied as she crawled in.

The common room was still pretty full at this time of night and large groups of people stared when they saw Fred was with the house's social outcast. Several groups began to mutter curiously to each other, still staring unabashed at the two although Fred either didn't notice or ignored them

'So, I'll see you at practice then,' Fred said to her as he headed towards one group who were sitting by the fire.

'Yeah, thanks for showin' me all that, it was fun,' Merida returned as she began to walk up to the girls dormitories.

'No problem, don't forget to look up practice times, Alice turns into a real troll if you're late,' he called after her.

'I'll do what Fred?'

'Oh, hi Alice,'

Merida chuckled as she heard Fred unsuccessfully try to explain himself to a fuming Alice before opening the door to the third year dormitory and cutting off Alice's angry reply.

'No way, it's your turn to take her,' Jack complained to Hiccup as they stood waiting outside the potions classroom.

'You know the rules, I won the race and I get to decide your punishment,' Hiccup laughed as Jack glared angrily at him. Jack had become increasingly frustrated during their race that no matter how fast his Nimbus moved it just couldn't outpace a nightfury at full speed. He'd eventually made a bet with Hiccup that whoever won their last race would get to decide a punishment for the other in the hopes that it would give him the incentive to win. Unfortunately it hadn't been enough, he'd got so close to outpacing Toothless but the black dragon simply flapped his wings a few more times and sped away even faster than before, so he lost the bet and now he was paying the price.

'But you can't put me with Merida, she's awful at potions,' he moaned at the unfairness of the situation.

'Hey, I had the worst of it,' Hiccup reminded him, 'It took days after that first lesson for my freckles to stop glowing.'

'Suck it up Jack, you're just going to have to deal with it,' Rapunzel told him as Pascal giggled on her shoulder.

'I am standin' right here guys,' Merida reminded them angrily as the doors opened and the class began to file in.

As usual only the front tables were left when the four walked in, forcing them to walk between lines of the usual glaring or uninterested students until they reached their cauldrons.

'Well if it isn't our new seeker,' Professor Whittler said as Jack sat resignedly next to Merida. 'Well done laddie, I expect to see that house cup on my mantelpiece this year.'

'Thanks professor, it's a real honour,' Jack said, grinning as he knew some of Mulcaster's cronies would be scowling at him from across the room for saying that.

'Well you've all done the homework for brewin' the cure for a manticore bite,' Whittler continued, addressing the whole class now.

'Some better than others,' the raven on her desk croaked as it looked at Jack, Merida and a few other students.

'So now all ye have ta do is brew it,' Whittler stated after swatting at the bird with her hand, 'chop, chop. Get on with it.'

There was the usual rush as students went to gather the necessary supplies and returned with their arms full of interesting looking roots and powders. Everyone returned to their desks and began looking through their textbooks for the recipe except for Rapunzel who had already directed Hiccup to dice several roots while she organised the first splashes of potion.

Merida set to work with a purposeful look on her face. They didn't think she could cook up a potion? Well she'd show them. If the book says tear up the mandrake root then you tear the mandrake root which she began to do with a ferocity that suggested the roots had committed a great wrong against her.

Jack had already begun to pour a few potions into the cauldron and was stirring them energetically. Merida grabbed the torn up mandrake roots and pushed Jack out the way and began to fling the roots in the liquid with one hand while she stirred it with a large metal spoon in the other.

'Merida what are you doing?' Jack asked in surprise.

'We're supposed to put in torn mandrake's roots next,' Merida explained angrily.

'Those aren't Mandrake…!'

The rest of what Jack was going to say was lost when a loud BANG boomed out of the cauldron and much of the contents spewed up in a geyser of potion. When it was over Merida was standing in front of a smoking cauldron with the handle of a melted spoon still in her hand. The rest of the class were getting on with their work, the minor explosions that Merida caused every now and then had stopped being surprising after a while.

'Merida Dunbroch! That is the fifth time this term!' Whittler yelled in exasperation as Merida dropped the remains of the spoon into the cauldron. 'Just go get another spoon and whatever you've used up from the store room and start again, this time with the right ingredients.'

Merida nodded and stomped angrily over to the open store room. Alright, so who cared if she wasn't any good at potions, it was a stupid subject anyway and she was doing great in Transfiguration and, thanks to their weekly extra lessons with Professor Maximus, she and Jack were top of every Defence Against the Dark Arts class.

She rifled through the supplies in the store until she found a new stirring spoon and grabbed the replacement ingredients; she turned to leave when her eye caught something. It was a small book that had been wedged between two old textbooks, almost hidden amongst the larger tomes. What had caught her eye was that the cover was decorated with drawings of bears which in itself was not particularly strange, Professor Whittler's strange obsession with making bear shaped carvings was well known. These were different to her usual work though because on closer inspection the bears didn't look like bears at all but rather the shadows of bears cast on a cave wall by a fire, twisted and gnarled into more terrible and nightmarish shapes than anything natural could look.

She pulled the book out from its place and looked at the cover, unlike the spine the cover only had the drawing of one bear shadow, much larger than the others with its claws scratching down the edge of the book as if the image was trying to cut its way out. She opened the book and read the title written in large messy letters – The path to becoming the True King.

It looked interesting so Merida snuck it into her robes and walked back out into the classroom. In the few minutes she'd been gone Rapunzel and Hiccup had already nearly completed their final ingredients and were just preparing the potion already in the cauldron.

'How come you're so good at this Rapunzel?' Hiccup asked in amazement as Merida passed by while Rapunzel finely cut the newt legs into perfect strips. Her brow, sweating from concentration, was being mopped by Pascal with a tissue as if they were in a surgery rather than a classroom.

'Brewing potions is just like cooking,' Rapunzel told him as she tossed the leg strips into the boiling liquid which immediately turned into the expected silver colour, 'and I used to do a lot of cooking when I was…when I was younger.'

Jack meanwhile had been trying to salvage as much of their potion as he could. When he saw her coming back he smiled and asked, 'Are you alright? Whittler was kind of harsh back there.'

'Eh, I don't care,' Merida replied, sneaking the book into her bag as she dropped the replacement ingredients on the table, 'I've just got a natural flare for explosions is all.'

'You're telling me, the ceiling got charred from that one,' Jack agreed happily as he pointed to a patch of ceiling that was indeed smouldering gently, the stones of the dungeon making plinking noises as they cooled.

'Alright so what she we put in next,' Merida said as they stopped laughing, hoping to get the lesson back on track and prove she had at least some capability to brew a potion.

'It says here we're supposed to use a cup of crushed firewort seeds,' Jack told her as he consulted the book.

'You mean these,' Merida replied as she picked up a bag.

'I don't think those are even seeds Merida,'

The first quidditch match of the season was between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw this year which meant Alice Change piled as many practice sessions on the team as she could every week. She didn't care what the weather was doing and would force them all out even in the wettest storms and push them all to the brink of their skill and ability before calling it a day and sending them off.

Merida and the rest of the team would return from each one hobbling on tired legs with eyes already closing in attempts at sleep which meant Merida had not yet had a chance to read the book of the True King. It waited hidden under her bed for after the match when Merida would be freed for a short time from practice and had the time to read it.

'Seriously, she's so much fun when we're just watching a game,' Fred had gasped as he and Merida supported one another up the last flight of stairs to the common room after one particularly stressful session.

'It's like she gets possessed or somethin',' Merida agreed as they staggered the last few feet together. Although she complained with the others, Merida found she was really enjoying herself playing with the team. Even though some of them still gave her dirty looks Alice would come down on anyone like a ton of bricks if she thought they would damage the team's performance by ostracising a member too much.

Eventually, of course she would have to prove herself to the more sceptical teammates and that time came on the day of the match. It had lasted for an hour and a half before Alice finally found and caught the snitch to wild cheers from the Gryffindor stadium, winning the game at 240-0. Merida and Fred had been zooming around the pitch non-stop, hitting bludgers to knock down enemy chasers and beaters, and intercepting ones hit towards their own chasers. It had been tiring work but worth it when she landed with the others and had raised Alice on their shoulders in victory as part of the team, everybody forgetting to give her dirty looks for the moment.

She saw the other three too, standing at the edge of one of the platforms and waving small red and gold flags as well as having the same colours smeared across their cheeks as promised. They waved and cheered in front of the crowds and stood out to Merida like three small beacons of joy, making her smile and wave back.

The team had got changed in record time to hurry out and up the Grand Staircase until they reached the common room; there the Gryffindor's had already prepared a small party for them where Alice held the winning snitch in the air like a trophy. Everybody was loud and happy and all were clamouring to give congratulations to the team, some even to Merida although she still got less than the rest of the team.

Suddenly Alice stood up on a table and waved for everyone to quiet down, which they did eventually although there were always small murmurings around the room.

'I'd just like to congratulate the team for our first big win of the season,' she started, yelling to be heard by the entire room as people began to cheer loudly. 'And most of all I'd like to thank the efforts of our beaters Fred and Merida who made sure the Ravenclaws didn't score a single point!'

At that there was an even greater roar of appreciation and Merida felt someone grab her hand and lift it up like she was the winner of a boxing match. She looked around and saw Fred beside her, basking in the attention as people turned to look at them and clapped when they realised who they were. For the first time since her arrival at the school people had forgotten their dislike of Merida although she could see Susan Nix and her gang all sneering at her as usual so it wasn't too different. The cheering died down after Alice stepped off the table and the party resumed.

'That was good work out there,' Fred yelled over to her, giving a thumbs up.

'Thanks, you too,' Merida said as she looked at her watch and realised it was nearly seven. 'Damn! I've got ta go.'

'What? How come?' Fred asked disappointedly.

'I promised the others I'd meet them at seven after the match,' Merida told him as she began to head for the exit.

'Why not stay for one celebration drink,' Fred offered, holding out a glass of pumpkin juice to her, 'just for a toast.'

'Alright, just one,' Merida said as she took the glass, the others wouldn't mind her being a little late.

'I promise I won't keep you away for too long,' Fred reassured her sincerely as he took a swig of his pumpkin juice.

She arrived in the kitchens just half an hour late as the school bells chimed seven-thirty, Fred had surprisingly kept his promise and almost ushered her out so she wouldn't be too late. She stepped through the painting of the fruit bowl and was greeted by Jack, Hiccup and Rapunzel, as well as all the house-elves, standing in front of a large red and gold banner that read – Merida #1 Beater.

They all cheered when she entered and clapped their hands in congratulations as she was guided to a large stack of food that the house-elves had prepared.

'Good job Merida,' Hiccup told her happily.

'Yeah well done,' Rapunzel cheered as Pascal flashed alternatingly between red and gold.

'Thanks guys,' Merida told them as she and the others all began to take helpings of the food.

'James says you're the new one to watch,' Jack informed her as they all ate, some of the house-elves leaving to complete duties elsewhere in the castle while others, including Grindl and Elise, remained to share the food. 'He said with a swing like yours we're going to have to watch out for you in a match. Then Mulcaster tried to say something witty but I stopped paying attention.'

'Sorry I'm so late,' Merida apologised, feeling a little guilty now for making the others wait. 'It's just that some of my team wanted a celebration drink before I left.'

'You're making friends outside our group now?' Hiccup asked, pretending to look hurt in betrayal which made Merida laugh with relief.

'So, how was the Gryffindor party?' Rapunzel asked curiously.

'Pretty cool actually, people clapped for me and they seemed ta mean it,' Merida replied, her words causing mock shock from the three.

'Wow, maybe our quidditch positions are going to lift our social status above scum,' Jack joked as the others laughed.

Merida returned to the common room three hours later, after curfew had started. It would have been earlier if she had Fred's magic map but as it was she had to take her time sneaking through the corridors until she got to the Lady's portrait.

When she got into the common room she was exhausted, the day's events had pretty much drained all her energy. Even so when she went up to the dormitory and tip-toed past the sleeping figures to her own bed she couldn't help but reach down under it and pull out the mysterious book, she'd left it for too long and now she wanted to know what it said.

She opened it to reveal the title page again – The path to becoming the True King – the words illuminated into spidery glyphs by her bedside light. She turned the page to reveal pages crammed with formulas and theories written so tightly together that the whole thing was almost black with ink with barely enough white of the page to distinguish between the words.

She didn't understand most of the equations; they looked similar to ones that Whittler sometimes left on the board after a lesson with sixth or seventh years but far more complicated. She turned another page to reveal multiple sketches, some again of horrific shadowy bears but many more of different flowers, herbs, tinctures and other potions equipment. Whatever this book was it was clearly designed to create a powerful potion and Merida was suddenly worried that this book was more important than it looked. What if Whittler came looking for it? She'd get a detention for sure, maybe even suspension.

But then again, the damage was already done and the book had been missing for a few weeks now; she could always return the book tomorrow with Whittler being none the wiser. She read on, or at least flicked through more pages. Every page became more detailed with more drawings or equations the further in she got, clearly whatever the writer had been working towards they had been getting closer. As she flicked through Merida realised that the pages each shared one similar feature, a sentence written at the bottom right edge of each one like a chant.

She looked closely and read – The strength of ten men, the power of ten wizards. She continued to flick through the pages and stopped as she found something more interesting than the scrawled potions notes. It was more like a diary entry than anything else which read:

With the strength of ten men, no warrior could defeat you.

With the power of ten wizards, no spell could harm you.

These are the two traits a king should strive towards, that should be proof of their right to rule, not some long forgotten blood-link to the land!

This potion will be proof of my right as the True King and when it is complete, no one will stop me.

Merida shuddered as she read it; she could almost feel the malice leaking from the ink on the page. She turned to the last pages that were mainly empty except for a final few equations and ingredients, refined and perfected from their predecessors in the beginning of the book. Underneath them a last message had been written, very hastily by the look of it as if the writer had been hurrying in their excitement.

My potion is complete, years' worth of work and research finally succeeding.

With this, I shall regain my family's ancient right and ascend to the true power that I deserve.

I shall become the True King Mordu.

Merida gasped and threw the book away to the end of her bed as if it had bitten her hand. She sat, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the book as if it would move. In her head thoughts raged like a tempest. That was why they couldn't find a reference to Mordu in all those bestiaries from the library, because the Demon-bear Mordu had once been a human.

Phew, another chapter written in less than 24 hours. It's all because I love you guys (Don't get used to it :P)

Thanks as ever for the great reviews and thanks for reading. :)