Actions

Work Header

This is Your Heart

Summary:

For Merlin's seventh year at Hogwarts, he would like some peace, quiet, and copious amounts of butterbeer. Arthur Pendragon interferes.

Notes:

I am attempting another Harry Potter AU - Just the prologue posted for now, to garner some interest. I haven't entirely decided on the direction I'm taking this (one is super fluffy, one is angsty), so I'm not tagging it too heavily yet. I just know there will be a rather large cast. Which is also why I'm choosing not to put warnings on yet - There might be some possible rape/non-con just so everyone's aware. But I just want to get this out first before I make any of the hard decisions! I hope you like it.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

Bright lights, bustling public, trains whistling in every direction, Merlin was lost, so, so lost, he couldn’t even find Platform Nine let alone Platform Nine and Three Quarters, his mother had dropped him off over an hour ago and he still hadn’t found the train to Hogwarts, and obviously couldn’t ask one of the workers, they would just think he was crazy, and it was nearly a quarter to eleven, he was going to miss his train and never get to school, he’d never become a wizard –

“Do you know how to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters?” A loud, brash, young voice asked. Merlin, relief seeping through his body, spun around to see a boy about his age, blond and a little taller than him with a lift to his head and lugging an overlarge suitcase behind him.

“No,” Merlin told him, but a smile grew on his face nonetheless. “But – you know what it is?”

“Of course I do,” the boy scoffed. “I got the letter. Professor Nimueh even came and visited and explained to my parents what magic was. But she never told me how to get on the train.”

“No one told me either,” Merlin said, a sinking feeling in his stomach when he thought of his dad. His dad would have told him if he had been here. “Do you –what do you think we should do?”

“Well, we can’t stay here,” the boy proclaimed with a scowl. “We have to make it to Hogwarts or we’ll get kicked out.”

“At least we’d be kicked out together,” Merlin pointed out brightly but received only a dirty look in return.

“How’s that a good thing?”

“Because if I have to live on the street corners of Hogsmeade that at least I’d have a neighbor living in the gutter.”

The boy laughed, big and loud, and Merlin couldn’t help but grin because he made it happen.

“I’m Arthur,” the boy told him, and without giving Merlin time to say his own name back, he continued with “Let’s go find somebody that can help us.”

That somebody was a woman in patched robes and a crooked hat, pointing them to a brick wall to “just run through, loves, it’s not as difficult as it seems.”

“Wanna go through together?” Arthur asked Merlin with a friendly smile to which Merlin nodded vigorously in response.

Shoving their carts out on front of them, they rushed through at the exact same time, Arthur flinching just a bit before they headed through. Merlin knew though, he knew that it would be okay.

The other side of the wall contained a huge, shining train emblazoned with “Hogwarts Express”. Merlin, gaping, turned around to see if Arthur was as awed as he was – but the terminal was so crowded, too many people, children, carts, hooting owls, and Merlin lost sight of him.

He wouldn’t gain that sight back until the Sorting Hat sitting on Arthur’s head screamed “Gryffindor!” after only a few seconds of deliberation, and an older student at the Slytherin table hissed “Filthy little mudblood,” in Merlin’s ear.


 

“Snobby, elitist, good for nothing, I bet you think all Muggleborns are scum – don’t you, you sick bastard?”

Merlin closed his eyes and let his head thump backward against the door the of the train compartment as Arthur Pendragon hurled insults at him one by one with a crowd congregating around his obnoxious, grating tone.

His seventh year was off to a smashing success.

“Look, Pendragon –” Merlin began, defense lacing into his otherwise calm, cool, and collected tone. Or at least he thought it was calm, cool, and collected. From the looks he received from those glad in scarlet and gold, you would guess it was bordering on insane and homicidal.

“No, you look, Emrys,” Arthur said hotly, abuse spewing from his tongue. This was how all of their interactions went, for the most part, with Merlin doing absolutely nothing wrong and Arthur taking a horrific offense for no reason at all.

Well, okay maybe Merlin had called him a stuck up prat under his breath when Arthur had sneered derisively at him when he tripped over Arthur’s luggage, but the point remained that Merlin was not to blame for the spectacle.

“Are we done?” Merlin cut Arthur off with a tired sigh, met with a look of surprise and slight shock, as if he couldn’t comprehend Merlin’s utter lack of interest. “It’s the first day of school, and I’m just generally not ready to deal with you yet. Can we postpone this for next week? I promise we can scream bloody murder at each other then. Maybe even have a duel. But can I please just get to my compartment?”

Arthur, it seemed, was so shocked by this statement that he just said “Fine,” briskly, and with that word, the crowd around them dispersed with sullen, disappointed murmurs. Merlin couldn’t blame them, his and Arthur’s hatred for each other – or rather, Arthur’s hatred for him, Merlin was just indifferent – was quite legendary around the school.

Merlin was about to thank – well, Merlin – in relief that he was getting away scotch-free without having to curse Arthur or anything, but when Arthur hissed “Pureblood supremacist,” behind his retreating back, Merlin’s hackles raised.

He didn’t even have to think of a jinx, his magic reacting instinctively – and he pretended not to notice when Arthur’s legs started dancing the tango behind him accompanied by a loud yelp, he just hurried as fast as he could down the hallway.

Couldn’t let anyone know that Merlin could pull of wandless magic even at seventeen years old – that was utterly unheard of, and he had no interest in being the Ministry of Magic’s experimental specimen.

“What took you so long?” Isolde barely raised her head from Tristan’s shoulder when Merlin shoved the compartment door open with unneeded violence, and throwing himself into the seat across from the pair of them dramatically.

“I’m glad you asked,” Merlin replied, voice heavy with sarcasm. “Arthur bloody Pendragon, that’s what.”

Isolde twisted her lips derisively as Tristan let out a snort of air through his nose. “Who cares what that Mudblood thinks?”

Merlin gave him a level look. “Tris.”

“Right, right, sorry, nasty, offensive word, won’t use it again,” Tristan lifted his hands in mock defense. “Honestly, I don’t know why you defend him when you can’t stand the sight of him.”

“I’m not defending him,” Merlin snapped, making a childish face at him as Isolde rolled her eyes. “I’m defending Muggleborns in general. Not him.”

“I don’t know how he can get away with calling you a blood elitist when your favorite hobby is telling off any Slytherin that uses the word ‘Mudblood’,” Isolde shook her head fondly at Merlin, lacing her fingers with Tristan’s, who gave a contended hum. Merlin felt a stab of bitterness, but swallowed the feeling immediately. He had no right to it, not anymore.

“Because he’s the Gryffindor golden boy,” Merlin raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you know that if you wear a red scarf you can get away with murder?”

“You’ll have to remember that when you finally snap and go on a murder spree,” Tristan kicked his legs up against the empty seat to Merlin’s right that would most likely go unoccupied unless Leon or someone stopped by to say hello. Merlin didn’t actually have very many friends. He was wildly unpopular, mainly due to Arthur’s ceaseless interference and slandering of his reputation.

Sometimes Merlin wondered if Arthur even remembered their first day of school when they had run through the barrier together. He highly doubted it.

“So, do tell me about your summers,” Merlin decided that a subject change was in everyone’s best interest. “What have you been up to you without me? Or, rather, what sexual exploits have you been up to without me?”

With his friends’ laughter ringing in his ears, Merlin let himself relax comfortably into his seat. Maybe this year, things would finally go according to plan.

Or maybe not.

It was Hogwarts, after all.