Hello and welcome to Year Two of Merlin's Terrible, No Good, Stressful time at Hogwarts.
By popular consensus I've decided to split the series more or less by book/each year at Hogwarts to avoid the fics getting too long. If you're new and you haven't read the first installment in the series: "Merlin, Trouble, and the Third Floor", then I suggest you go and read it first. You don't have to, but you might get a bit confused by some of the sideplots that were introduced there, and who some of the characters are and how they're friends.
A few quick reminders:
- Any events from the HP books that I don't mention/describe in the narrative can be assumed to have gone more or less per canon
- If someone's speech is written in italics then they're communicating telepathically, as we see Merlin, Mordred, and Kilgarrah doing in BBC Merlin
- Most of the BBC Merlin characters you see are reincarnations (Merlin not included obviously) and most of them have their memories, and have for at least a few years by this point, although none of them know how or why their memories came back when they did
- As a rule I update the tags as they become relevant to avoid spoilers, excluding general (platonic) relationship tags and character tags (if you ever spot a missing tag please let me know), which will become more important as the series goes on and we diverge more from canon
- I'll include any trigger warnings at the start of relevant chapters and list any non-canon spells at the end of the first chapter they're included in (I'll also do this for any spells that appear in the fic for the first time, even if I've used them before)
I'm so excited to finally be on book 2 and I raced through writingmost of the prologue and first chapter of MatMA so that I could post them at the same time as the last chapter of MTTF, so please enjoy this triple update.
Helga is ten the first time that she meets the witch that lives up on the hill. She's been hearing stories about her, her whole life long but none of the local children dare wander too far up the hill for fear they'll get too close to where she lives. But her younger sister is ill, has been ill for years, and three nights ago her father knocked on the witch's door and begged for help.
Helga isn't supposed to be there. Her mother sent her brothers down the road to help out Old Man Alun and gave Helga chicken eggs to take to the neighbours, but Helga is curious and worried.
The witch looks younger than Helga thought she would. Her face isn't lined the way the faces of the older neighbours and even her parents are, and her hair is dark and shiny. Helga watches from below the window as she comes in, speaks briefly to her parents, and then walks over to Tegan's bed. She does something magical, she holds her hand over Tegan's chest and says something and her eyes flash gold. Then she takes a bottle out of the bag slung over her shoulder and gently encourages Tegan to drink it.
Within minutes Tegan looks better. She sits up on her own, colour has come back to her cheeks and she looks livelier than she has in days.
Helga barely pays attention to her parents profusely thanking the witch. She wants to learn how to do that. She's done magic by accident before, she knows that, and she's hidden it from her parents because they have enough to worry about. But if magic can help Tegan like that, then Helga wants to learn how. She watches the witch leave and carefully mentally marks down which way she goes when she leaves, and which side of the hill she lives on. She's taking the flock out to graze tomorrow. She'll take them to where the witch lives and ask her to teach her then.
Helga will not be taking 'no' for an answer.
Rowena Ravenclaw is twelve when her parents try to blackmail a man into becoming her tutor. He's famous for being magically powerful and exceedingly capable. Rowena's sisters have had their own famous tutors. But Rowena is fast outstripping what the household children's tutor can teach her and is considered too much of a handful for her sister's tutors to teach on the side. She just wants to know why things work the way they do and none of them can answer her. So, her parents decide that she should have a tutor of her own. They have the money and the power required. It should be simple.
It's not. The man is unwilling to be blackmailed or bribed into taking her on. He's very matter of fact, says that he has a home and a student already. He has no desire to move and no need for another student. Her parents shout and threaten but he will not be moved.
Rowena stands up from where she has been sitting in the corner, quiet and unobserved like her parents require. She asks him what she can do to prove that she's willing to learn, what she can do that will persuade him to take her on.
He purses his lips and tells her that if she wants to learn from him then she will go back to his house with him and learn there. That she will study alongside the student he already has and prove that she deserves to be there.
Rowena hesitates. But his reputation precedes him, and she needs to learn. Her sisters are older and more beautiful and more powerful than she is. But Rowena knows that she is smart. She just has to prove it. So, she accepts.
Rowena is from a long line of witches and wizards and she will not be the first to fail at a magical education just because the tutors she has are incapable of teaching her.
Godric is fourteen when the man he calls 'Uncle' takes him away from the village so that he can learn to control his magic properly. He's been trying to control it, he has, but it's just so difficult. Things keep catching fire when he gets upset or excited, and it's too much for the other magic users in the village to keep chasing him and putting out the fires he leaves in his wake. They have their own chores to do and can't be spared to follow him around.
The breaking point is when he accidentally sets the barn on fire. Its lucky that it's the middle of the day, and none of the animals are in. Luckier still that it's summer and there was little stored in there or he could have wiped out their supplies for the winter.
His mother cries, and his father hugs him tightly, but Uncle Piran just waits impassively for him to be done.
The trip is longer than he thought it would be. They ride on horseback for the first week, but when they get close, Uncle Piran leaves the horses with a friend and they go the last two days on foot. The closer they are, the more nervous Godric gets.
But he promised. He doesn't want to be a danger to his family anymore. No more accidents. He needs to learn control and he's too powerful for the techniques his father uses to work.
Uncle Piran tells him a little as they travel. They're going to see the man that taught him. This man used to travel, share his knowledge everywhere, but in recent times he's kept to himself. There is yet to be a person that he can't teach. He will be able to help Godric.
The garden full of herbs and flowers, lining the path to a front door that at first glance seems embedded in the side of the mountain, is not what Godric expected. It's quaint and seems too domestic for someone knowledgeable enough to teach control of the uncontrollable. But it doesn't matter.
Godric will not endanger the people he cares about with his lack of control, no matter what challenges come his way.
Salazar is eleven when he gets kidnapped and dumped on a stranger's doorstep. He's been on the streets for as long as he can remember, doing whatever it takes to survive. But then he makes a mistake, he gets too greedy. The man is rich and well dressed, the purse hanging from his belt is full and Salazar is too hungry to be as careful as he should be. There is only so much Therin can do, no matter how kind he is. Salazar cannot be in his debt forever.
He follows the rich man into an alley, ready to snatch his purse and run, but something goes wrong. The man takes a turn and Salazar follows and suddenly they are somewhere new, somewhere Salazar doesn't recognise. He knows every nook and cranny of this town, he has to, to survive. Except apparently, he doesn't.
He slips away from the man, no longer focussed on taking his money, and starts looking for somewhere safe he can hide if he needs to.
He manages to spend nearly a week in the strange place undetected before he gets spotted. It's a woman, short and broad in the way of the women that hang around on street corners trying to tempt rich merchants and sailors come in off long voyages.
He tries to hide himself – he can do that sometimes, make it so that hostile eyes slip past him and don't see. But it doesn't work.
She grabs him by the arm and tells him that he doesn't belong here and that little magic tricks like that don't work on her before dragging him back towards the exit. Her grip is like iron and he can't escape no matter how much he twists and squirms.
They step back out of the strange place but it's not the alley he was in before. They're in front of a house – Salazar thinks this is what 'countryside' looks like, and a woman comes hurrying out demanding to know what's going on.
The woman grabbing him throws him to the ground in front of her and says he's a gift. He stiffens and gets ready to run. He's heard what happens to the kids that aren't careful enough and he's not going to become one of them.
The other woman scolds her and says that people aren't gifts. The first woman shrugs, calls him 'sly little orphan boy' and says that he's the other woman's problem now, before vanishing into thin air.
The stranger offers Salazar her hand and tells him that she can teach him if he likes. No catch, and he can leave whenever he likes, but won't he stay a little first?
Salazar accepts her help, already plotting how to get away – he's not going to be a victim, no matter how nice she seems.