Notes:
Hello, my friends!
I got really busy with midterms and just school in general, so that's my excuse lol.
Honestly, I got pretty burnt out writing all my fanfictions too fast. I know y'all enjoy it but I burn out fast when I do that and I end up taking longer breaks. It's my fault tho, I gotta pace myself better or something.
Anyway, this chapter is a lot, lots of stuff happens and it's a little fast if I'm honest, but I went through and added more dialogue and stuff, but I still feel like it's fast, maybe it's the time skip and stuff.
Also, I would like to mention that even tho I'm only following what's happening to Merlin. Harry Potter and friends are living out their shitty Umbridge year. Merlin will get involved in all that slightly towards the end of the year. This fanfic is Merlin-centric so stuff happens in the background.
Anyway, any questions just lemme know. But otherwise enjoy y'all!
(Also all y'all Americans who are old enough, Go Vote!)
/
After their swift escape from the Ministry of Magic and all those prying eyes, Merlin, Remus, Harry, and Dumbledore found themselves in Diagon Alley. Merlin had recommended that they apparate there and to celebrate. Once there, they were going to go out for drinks. But, Dumbledore said it would be better to inform everyone of the successful trial. He invited Merlin and Remus to join them at the Weasley house. Merlin agreed, seeing as he was somewhat eager to talk to Arthur Weasley about electronics. Remus was going to be dragged along either way, if not by Merlin then by Harry.
Once at the Weasley residence, Harry was mobbed by the extensive Weasley clan in congratulations for a surprisingly successful and swift trial. Harry was toppled to the floor by Ron and the twins. Merlin and Remus stood off to the side while everything was going on. Not that they weren't doing anything, Merlin pulled out the cell phone and was showing it to Remus. Remus was amazed as always. But that quickly drew the attention of Mr. Weasley, which attracted the attention of everyone who overlooked Merlin and Remus the first time.
"Oh, hello! I'm sorry I didn't notice you were there. Who are you?" Mrs. Weasley says to Merlin.
"Oh, sorry, right, let me introduce myself, Myridian Emrys, at your service," Merlin says with a deep, respectful bow.
"Oh, the boy from the paper?" Mrs. Weasley asks.
"Yes, ma'am," Merlin said respectfully.
"Oh, none of that, please call me Molly. I heard you know stuff about muggle … stuff, sorry I don't know much of that stuff; it's more my husband's area." Molly said while fixing her clothes and brushing dust off of her son's, Ron, nose.
"No worries, Molly, I do know about Muggle electronics. Like this cell phone." Merlin says as he hands it to her.
"You can use it to call anyone else who owns one from anywhere in the world." Mrs. Weasley held it upside down but acted like she was impressed.
Mr. Weasley, on the other hand, took it from her hands and started to inspect it.
"How does it work?" He asked Merlin.
Smiling, Merlin pulled out another phone. He dialed the phone number in Mr. Weasley's hand, and before he pressed the call button, he gave it to Remus.
"I showed you how to answer the phone. Once it starts ringing, answer it. I'm gonna be back in a moment." Merlin apparates to his house and calls.
"Hello?" He asks.
He hears a bunch of mumbling and murmuring, and finally, Remus' voice answers.
"Merlin? Where are you?"
And he can hear Mr. Weasley in the background exclaiming,
"He's put himself inside the phone! How marvelous!"
Merlin chuckles and apparates back.
"No, I went to my house; this lets you talk to anyone anywhere in the world. I'm not completely done with them. The one that Remus is holding is my first magic proof phone. It's an older model, but the newer ones take so much time. I'm not too caught up with modern stuff yet." Merlin says, discrediting himself slightly.
"But that's amazing. You're the first to ever combine magic and muggle technology!" Harry says after dislodging himself from the twin's grasp.
"Well, it's not that impressive but thank you, I am quite proud," Merlin says, taking back the phone from Remus and handing it off to Mr. Weasley.
"Well, from my standards, this is quite the feat, young man; I don't recognize you; which school did you go to?" Dumbledore asked Merlin.
Dumbledore knew Merlin was young, but he was almost certain he never saw him in Hogwarts.
"Oh, no, I'm self-taught. I learned everything myself from books and whatnot." Merlin said.
Merlin didn't see anything wrong with this because 500 years ago, many people were self-taught. Only the rich would go to school—both in the Muggle world and in the Wizarding world. There were a few exceptions like Hogwarts, but mainly people taught themselves or found a teacher. However, nowadays, there are not many children that are self-taught. Not to say that purebloods didn't teach their children ahead of time, but rarely anyone ever didn't go to school at all to learn magic. It was almost unheard of. So there were quite a few different reactions from the audience around Merlin.
"You didn't go to school?" Was Remus' surprised question considering Merlin was one of the smartest people he knew, at least with creating spells, at least what he knew that Merlin could create.
From Ron, there was a very silent, "Merlin, you're so lucky."
Which Merlin heard and sort of twitched at the swearing.
Mrs. Weasley was the loudest of the bunch, "What were your parents thinking not sending you to school? Every wizard and witch needs to go to school; how hard it must've been for you without anyone guiding you? What a poor child."
Merlin didn't really have an answer to that one. Considering he wished there was a school for wizards when he was younger and an actual child.
Like Ron Dumbledore also was pretty quiet when he also questioned Merlin, he whispered, "Self-taught? How amazing."
But in Dumbledore's mind, he knew that Merlin was pureblood, so he guessed that some pure-blood families could choose not to bring their children to school. Even though he was amazed that Merlin was self-taught, he could see it as a possibility that his family taught him everything he needed. But that also led him to question, what pureblood family knows about Muggle technology?
In the corner of the room, slowly inching closer and closer towards Merlin, was the twins, both with enormous grins on their faces. They were trying to take the other phone out of Merlin's pocket without him noticing it. But Merlin knew they were there. Through his many years of life, Merlin became very observant of his surroundings. Having bandits run up on you 24/7 was kind of an annoying experience that leaves you scarred with new awareness skills. So the twins sneaking up behind him was not a surprise; he noticed them five minutes ago as they were slowly walking, while the commotion towards him was happening.
He wasn't the only one who caught them. Remus also noticed them but didn't say anything because he wasn't sure what they were doing. Merlin let the twins take the phone, but it was sort of useless because it wasn't magic proof yet, it was just a regular cell phone, and the moment they tried to do anything to it, it blew up in their face. It wasn't a big explosion or anything, but it was a loud enough sound that it stopped all of the voices, and everyone turned around to see the twins with their faces covered in black soot.
Merlin couldn't help it, and he burst out laughing; Remus was chuckling at the surprise on their faces. While Mrs. Weasley tried to apologize on her son's behalf for breaking what she thought was one of the new cell phones.
"Oh, don't worry, that was just a normal phone. I didn't get the chance to change it yet. Oh, and don't worry, there is nothing that they could do that would break the new phone. It's basically indestructible." Merlin said, pulling out his wand and wordlessly cleaning the twins up while vanishing the now destroyed phone.
The children who thought nothing of the wordless casting said nothing, yet the adults in the room were more impressed by Merlin by the second. To clarify, casting spells without using words is not something unique and not an impossible feat, but it is quite rare for someone so young.
And no matter how old Merlin actually is, he looks like he's 26 years old. So he looks a few years out of schooling, and it's impressive to the " adults " around him.
But in a polite British way, nobody said anything. They kept their awe's and ahh's to themselves because they already noticed that Merlin did not like compliments. Or at least they presumed he didn't like compliments.
Moving on, then, after everyone settled down, they went over the case. Harry Potter re-counted everything that happened from getting a little letter from Merlin that told him that he would be late, to how Merlin stood up for him in the courtroom, and to how quickly the trial went by after that.
They poked fun at the ministry of magic for a little while, and they poked fun at the minister, and they talked about the horrible pink-clad woman who was apparently the minister's secretary. Though as they got off into making fun of the important figures in the ministry, some people broke off from the children talking about it. Merlin and Mr. Weasley went off into his garage to talk about Muggles technology.
Merlin was quite fascinated by all of the different inventions that he had in his garage. And for a long time during the night, Mr. Weasley told him about his flying car, which she unfortunately lost. But Merlin had a good time hearing about the story and getting to know precisely how troublesome the Wizarding world's hero was.
Remus was going to join them, but he got pulled into a conversation with Dumbledore, and it was about the order, so they walked away so the kids couldn't hear. And the day went by reasonably dull after that, there was a round of drinks for everyone. Mrs. Weasley made a delicious dinner, according to Merlin, which he told her that it was 'excellent food' multiple times.
It was quite a while since Merlin had a home-cooked meal. Actually, it was 500 years since he had a home-cooked meal. It was really nice, and the crowd was genuinely happy to be there and it kind of reminded him of a feast from back when he was younger. Made him genuinely happy to spend time with other people. Merlin was sociable, generally.
So being isolated for 500 years was hard. But he really enjoyed being with everyone there even though it was to celebrate something that he really didn't do much for. But he had a fun evening, and when he went home with seven Tupperware containers full of leftover food, he was quite content for the first time in a very long time.
5 days later…
Merlin was currently in Diagon alley in his shop. It was definitely not open for business yet, but he was setting things up. Unfortunately, he would not be able to catch the crowd of new students going to Hogwarts this year, but hopefully, by Christmas, they could all get this present for Christmas. And since Christmas was his goal, he had a lot of time now to get his business going. He had a lot of money so getting the parts for computers and everything from the Muggle world was not a trouble at all because apparently, gallons transferred into pounds was a huge markup.
So he had tons of Muggle money. There was no problem with getting the parts he needed to put the spells on to make the computers and other technology indestructible. The problem he was running into now was he needed help. He crafted the spells so that wizards and witches of this day and age could use them. But he required wizards and witches who wanted to work for him.
There wasn't so much a problem of finding wizards and witches that would work, but he needed people capable of casting new magic. And he didn't really know how to get the word out there either because there's no platform to spread information. Which is why computers and the internet in itself will be such a great tool.
While looking on the computer, he was so jealous that there were websites that you could post what you are looking for, and people actually responded to you. Unfortunately, though, this is a wizarding world, and none of that exists yet. So his first step of business was even though he had enough products at the moment, he needed workers. And so began Merlin's hunt for people to work with him.
The first person he hired was no surprise to anyone; he walked into the old storage facility with a big box and put all his remaining stuff into the box. Remus was looking at him with a weird look, but he didn't really understand what Merlin was doing. He felt a little hurt by how quickly Merlin was taking all his things. He kind of took it as Merlin wanted to leave and not talk to him anymore. But how wrong could he have been? The answer is very wrong.
Merlin put down the box that was magically expanding on the inside and slammed it pretty hard on the desk.
He looked directly at Remus and then told Remus, "You should really quit this job. It seems like you don't really like it, and well, you're getting a job offer for the new exciting job in Diagon alley. I really think you should take the offer."
Remus was confused because he did not get an offer for any new job. So he asks, "What job?"
"Well, of course, working in my new muggle technology shop and for me!" Merlin says excitedly.
Now, although Remus isn't really super excited about technology, he's really good at spells. Anything is better than a job currently has, plus he gets to work with Merlin, who is now a good friend of his.
Also, no matter what, Merlin wants to work with him, so eventually, it would happen even if he said no for some reason. And Remus really can't say no to Merlin, and so he ended up quitting his job a week later. So now they could both figure out who to hire next.
It took a whole month before they found anybody. Basically, Merlin had no contacts. And nobody wanted to associate with Remus after the whole "werewolf" thing. They found a girl who was two years out of schooling. She went by the nickname of Sam. She had short straight black hair and was coincidentally a half-blood who was interested in Muggle technology.
The funny way they found her was that she was actually not living in Britain. She was living in Russia, but by going on the internet, they found her selling art of mythical creatures that were "fake" and just from her "imagination," but from first glance, you could tell they were monsters and creatures that existed in the magical world.
After connecting online and talking for a while, they convinced her to come over for a job. She wasn't exactly what they were looking for at the moment, but the design is important as well. Because after talking to her, Merlin realized that they needed to figure out a website just for witches and wizards. And they had no idea what to do for the design or for any aspect of it yet.
Just a Wizarding version of what Google is, and he was trying to think of a name, but he had no idea what to call it. So, for now, they were thrilled to have someone who was young and actually grew up with technology, unlike Merlin, who basically crammed everything that he could fit into his brain in five months.
As a three-man team, they eventually found two more people to join. And a part-timer… *cough* Mr. Weasley *cough cough* and things were starting to happen. The other two people that Merlin employed were a young man who, like Sam, was a half-blood interested in muggle tech and muggle culture in general.
Yet unlike her, he graduated from school with top marks in his spell work and his understanding of spells. His name is Gideon. Unlike the last two, the last employee was an older gentleman named Julius Goshawk, the great great grandson of Miranda Goshawk, who invented the Bat-Bogey Hex.
Like many in his family, he went down the path of creating spells, yet he has yet to create one himself as he's a bit scared of if it all went wrong. So with this team, Merlin was ready to open two months early. Now all that was left was to finish their own search engine.
By mid-November, most of the work was done. They had created their own search engine. Merlin ahead actually went to a Muggle college. He snuck himself into a few classes to try to understand how to make a website. He spent a few weeks doing that and working with the others. And lo and behold, on the 18th of November search engine was born.
Everyone was basically falling asleep sitting in the shop, a little bit overworked but completely happy. It was done, and it was finally created. Of course, it would take some time before it would get popular and before other Wizarding websites were created, but at the moment, they had done what no other wizard or witch had done.
There were celebratory rounds of fire whiskey and for the lightweights, celebratory rounds of butterbeer.
After quite a bit of drinking on everyone's part, they were trying to figure out a name for the search engine. They were deciding to name it after famous wizards and witches.
"What aboooout Mirandaaaa Goooshawk, or maybe just Goshawkkkk?" Julius tried again after the multiple times he already tried in his drunken stupor; he wanted to have it named after his great great grandmother.
"Noooo!" Was the chorus of yells by everybody else in the room who were tired of hearing this.
Every single time Julius brought it up, it was denied.
And the name hadn't been figured out for a while after that. It wasn't until Sam stubbed her toe while trying to grab her computer, a new indestructible computer, that she let out a normal Wizarding swearword.
"Merlin! That hurt!" Sam quietly yelled.
Suddenly, like time stopped, everyone just looked at each other, and Gideon said it first,
"What about Merlin?"
"Oh, that's brilliant!" Remus said, joining in looking at Merlin; he expected a goofy smile.
The same goofy smile was on everyone else's face. But he didn't find the goofy smile; instead, it was a weird face of annoyance and embarrassment. Remus has never seen that face on Merlin before.
"No. No, no, no, no, that's not happening." Is what Merlin was slowly saying while looking into his cup.
As immortal as Merlin was, he was not immune to the effects of drinking too much alcohol. He knows how to limit himself, but the problem was that after a few drinks, he forgets what his limit is and then continues to drink. So Merlin was slightly drunk. But was still in his right mind enough to know that this is not what he wanted.
However, he could not argue against four other drunk people, and he lost the battle of trying to change the name. And that was how that happened. The new search engine is called Merlin; like Google, it can do everything Google can do, but it's called Merlin, and it's strictly for wizards and witches.
Sadly( well sadly to Merlin ), he lost in the endeavor to change it. He was already upset that it was a swearword, now it was the face of his new computer.
All too soon, December was coming in, and the shop was going to be open. They had quite the stockpile of magic proof technology ranging from cell phones to computers to printers to newer televisions and some other household appliances. And even though some of the employees wanted to raise the price so that they could make a lot of money, Merlin put his foot down because he wanted everyone to be able to have it.
Not that everyone in the company wanted just profit, but Merlin made the price cheaper than it should be. And he was planning to make deals because he wanted everyone to have one, and he had money to spare. It was generally a nice thing for him to do, and he had the money, and he had enough money.
However, even after opening his shop and hiring all these people, he still had enough money, so what's the problem with giving a little. At least that's what he thought.
The last thing left to do was to come up with a name for the shop. Because the whole inside of the shop was decked out exactly how Merlin wanted it, he based it off of a Muggle technology store, with glass everywhere, and all the tech is sitting out and displayed. Except the colors are a bit wacky with like purple, and of course, he has some red and gold around.
With the help of Sam, Merlin designed a few house colors for screensavers and cases to go along with the purchase of a laptop. Depending on what house they're in, they could get a case with the crest either Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw. Of course, he produced other cases for the other schools just if someone was visiting Britain and wanted to buy something for their child who was not from Britain and didn't go to Hogwarts.
He tried to cover all corners for opening day. He wanted something special to surprise the people who were buying this product so that they would come back with happy faces.
And for the next release, he had created some digital cameras that worked just like the regular Wizarding cameras where they took pictures that were moving except you could put them on the internet.
They will be moving on the internet sort of like a gif, but that's not invented yet, so Merlin was the creator of that too.
Before Christmas started, most of December was used to fill up Merlin, the new search engine with as much Wizarding information that they could copy you on it. So now, if you asked Merlin,a question you would get an answer.
Just like Google. Except there were so many Wizarding books that were not yet on there that they were having trouble trying to cram it all in like a week's time. Merlin wanted by the summer to have almost every textbook on there, they tried as best as they could, but they were no way going to get it by the time Christmas happened.
But they got a lot of books on there and a lot of school books because they know the children are probably the people who want to use this the most.
Two days before Christmas, a new shop was opened in Diagon alley; the first-ever Magical technology shop ever, called: Techno Mage, was created.
/
Notes:
Soooo How was it? Good? Bad? Meh? lol
I think this was good to get the story moving a little bit, but let me know what y'all think.
:)
*Editing this story is a nightmare, it takes longer to edit than to freaking write it?*