Merlin/Harry Potter: Voldemort's Miss-Understanding (1/?)
Title: Voldemort’s Miss-Understanding
Author: tinyrose65
Summary: In which Voldemort’s plan goes a bit wrong (again.) and Merlin, along with Gwaine and Arthur, finds herself in a world where everybody is convinced that she has a beard. Huh? (Gwaine/fem!Merlin; Arthur/Gwen).
Note: This was a request from crazyredhead to write a sequel to “The Miss-Adventures of Gwaine,” but set in Harry Potter. I had hoped to finish the story before I began posting, but that didn't happen and this story is late enough as it is. So here ya' go!
(Alternate link here)
Chapter 1: In Which Voldemort Meets a Kindred Spirit
Personally, Voldemort thought that his plans for complete-and-utter world domination were going quite smoothly. Nobody -save that blasted Potter, damn it- knew that he had successfully returned from the dead, as it were, and he was currently free to recruit all of his incredibly loyal (Voldemort snorted to himself at this) followers.
Even the entire Potter problem was working itself out: most of the country was convinced that he was a lying, thieving, conniving little brat.
However, he was a little brat that knew just how to get under his skin, so Voldemort knew that he would need to do something about Potter soon.
Still, he couldn’t do something about Potter, find the Prophecy, and keep his followers from staging some sort of coup (he had to
make sure that the proper fear had been instilled in them, even after all of these years) by himself.
He was only one evil, Dark Lord of All, after all.
There may still be a way to solve all his problems at once, though. When he was younger (back during Hogwarts, when he had been snooping around in the Forbidden section of the library), he had heard rumors of a spell that had the ability to call forth an ancient evil from the past.
The spell would be incredibly simple for a wizard of his calibre and he had spent the past several weeks gathering all the supplies he would need to perform it.
Naturally, he would do it in secret. If he were to fail (although he doubted it), it would not be good for his followers to know. Or, if he succeeded, his followers should not know that he needed help managing his agenda.
So yes, in secret.
There were some risks involved, according to the inventor of the spell, but Voldemort cast them aside. All the man really mentioned was some sort of warning against temporal backlash, or whatever that meant.
Voldemort didn’t care.
In fact, he was just about ready to call forth this massive evil. To be fair, he was a bit concerned about calling forth an evil to help him, since he hardly considered what he was doing to be evil.
He was simply trying to restore the Wizarding World to its proper state.
And anyway, he was more than powerful enough to tame any evil thing that might arise from this situation.
With that thought, he began the long and arduous process of summoning this ancient-- thing.
The spell was a long and complicated one, even for him, and, by the time he was done several hours later, he was incredibly drained. It was all worth it, though, as he watched black smoke begin to curl about the room, until slowly but surely it began to form some sort of shape.
He gave an evil laugh, even though nobody was around to hear it, as the enchantment reached a crescendo, the smoke looking as though it had been lit on fire.
There was an enormous amount of energy in the air and, almost as soon as it had started, it was gone.
As the smoke cleared away, Voldemort, much to his surprise, was left with a young woman who was dressed in incredibly dark clothes, an incredibly confused look on her face.
Before he could even comprehend what she was doing here, she saw him and gave a shriek, her hand whipping out and words (words that Voldemort had never heard) tumbling from her lips. Her eyes flashed gold and Voldemort, completely unprepared, was sent flying backwards by an invisible force.
That’s when he understood everything.
Brilliant.
“Who’re you?” she demanded, her hand held out in front of her, as though to defend herself. Voldemort made to stand up, but she again went to mutter some sort of incantation. Voldemort was prepared this time, though, and had a body-bind spell cast on her in less than a moment.
“Come, now,” Voldemort said, standing up slowly. She looked at him in alarm. “We are all friends here.”
He had allowed her movement of her head, so she said, “Oh really, now? And who exactly are you?”
“I am Lord Voldemort,” Voldemort smirked. She didn’t seem impressed.
“Where am I?” she demanded.
“That’s hardly important,” Voldemort denied. He said silkily, “What is important is that I’m having a bit of a problem. A pest control problem, you might say.”
“What does that have to do with me?” the young woman asked.
Voldemort said, “I used a spell to call forth a great and ancient power to help me. They sent me you.”
The young woman looked flattered, as he had hoped, “A great power, you said?”
Voldemort nodded. “Oh, yes, Miss-”
“Lady,” the young woman stressed. “I am the Lady Morgana Pendragon.”
“Well, milady,” Voldemort said, recognizing her name immediately, “I believe we may be of some use to each other.”
“You have told me- vaguely- how I may be of some use to you,” Morgana said suspiciously. “I have yet to see how you may be of
use to me.”
So, slowly, Voldemort began to explain.
Morgana’s smirk grew with every word.
Unbeknownst to either one of them, Voldemort’s spell had had an unusual side-effect. Of course, the spell’s creator, Tim Porary, had warned about possible problems, but hadn’t been able to elaborate, since the spell was far too unstable for him to test himself.
Anything he warned against was possible conjecture.
One thing he was fairly confident in, though, was the theory of temporal backlash, which had already been widely document with other spells of a similar nature.
The mechanics of the spell, when simply put, brought a person out of their own time period and brought them forward, sucking them through as though a vacuum. As it happened, this vacuum was not particularly good at discerning between the people it was supposed to bring forward and anybody else from that particular time period.
So, as a result, it wasn’t uncommon for a few extra people to show up in the future. These people were often one that the intended target had spent considerable amounts of time with or harbored strong feelings toward. Unlike the target of the spell, the men or women caught in the crossfire (so to speak) were not protected against the dangers of time travel and were known to appear in random locations and to suffer some very strange affects.
Voldemort had not known this.
Or rather, he had, but simply hadn’t cared.
If he had cared, he would have saved Merlin a lot of trouble.
Of course, Merlin had no idea the time she’d be in for. Instead, at the moment, she was currently whistling to herself as she walked to Arthur’s bedchambers, carrying some fresh linens to make his bed.
She was in a particularly good mood after the night she and Gwaine had had (not like that!). Things were going particularly well with Gwaine, and she was glad. It would’ve been a shame for things to go completely and utterly wrong, only for Merlin to loose one of her closest friends.
But no, things were going well and Merlin was quite pleased.
Merlin had progressed from whistling to humming by the time she opened Arthur’s door. Her hum (which was incredibly off tune, if she was honest) died in her throat as embarrassment overtook her. Not only was Arthur in the room, but Gwaine.
He smiled at her as she squeaked in surprise. They had both been leaning over a piece of parchment on Arthur’s desk. At Merlin’s arrival, though, they stopped talking. Gwaine greeted her politely, but Arthur tutted.
“Well, it’s about time you showed up with those sheets, Merlin,” Arthur snapped. “The ones on my bed now are filthy.”
Merlin took it all in her stride and said, without missing a beat, “I really don’t want to know what you and Gwen get up to in that bed, Arthur.”
Arthur sputtered incomprehensibly. “You- You, Merlin, have a dirty mind!” Then, angrily, he turned to a laughing Gwaine. “And you can be quiet, Sir Gwaine! I’ll have you know that this isn’t-”
Suddenly, the Merlin, Gwaine, and Arthur felt an odd tug in their stomachs, just underneath their navels. Before Arthur could think to yell at Merlin for bringing him bad food and making him sick, before Gwaine could think to crack a joke about drinking too much, and before Merlin could think to complain about being overworked, the tugging suddenly turned into a yank, almost pulling them off
of their feet.
Merlin stumbled and tried to catch herself, but found that there was no purchase for her feet. The ground had disappeared. In fact, everything had disappeared- Arthur’s chambers, the light, air. She was falling, falling for a very long time, trying to breath, but
failing, yet still somehow not dying.
She tried to reach out with her magic. Merlin didn’t use a spell or incantation this time. It was pure instinct. Her fear overrode anything else and her magic surged to protect her. It sought out anything-anybody- and found Gwaine and Arthur.
Protect Arthur!
Protect Gwaine!
Merlin’s soul screamed, her own safety put aside for the time being. She felt her magic hold them, but that wasn’t quite the right word for it, she supposed. Still, Merlin got the same feeling she always felt when she used her magic: a safe, warm, feeling, deep inside herself.
As soon as it had started, it was over, and Merlin felt herself hit the floor with a thud. Next to her, she heard Arthur and Gwaine both groan.
“-funny,” Arthur wheezed, out of breath, but his voice sounded strange. When Merlin managed to muster up enough energy to look at him, she realized why.
He was several years younger- seventeen years old or so. Next to him, Gwaine also looked younger. Merlin had a feeling (partially because of the strange looks that Gwaine and Arthur were both giving her and each other) that she hadn’t escaped the de-aging process or whatever it was either, since she felt that distinctly awkward feeling that only teenagers had.
Merlin hadn’t exactly escaped that feeling as she got older, just learned to live with it. But now she felt as lanky and strange as a newborn colt. That’s when she noticed something else: something important. She, Arthur, and Gwaine were no longer in Camelot.
They were in a strange looking room.
And they weren’t alone.
They were surrounded by several adults in different colored cloaks and, in the case of some, hats. They all had small, thin, wooden sticks pointed at them. Behind a red-headed woman, stood a cluster of younger kids, peering curiously over the woman’s shoulders, but she continued to hold them back as best she could.
Merlin blinked, her vision still a bit blurry and her mind still incredibly hazy. Her magic felt funny, too--
Arthur noticed this last bit (about all of the people, not about her magic) around the same time Merlin did. Trying to sound as dignified as is possible when you’re stuck on the floor and too drained to move, Arthur demanded (in his best, seventeen year-old, royal voice), “Who are you? Declare yourselves.”
“Merlin’s beard,” breathed one of the kids. Merlin touched her chin self-consciously. She didn’t have a beard.
Gwaine decided to ask a different question.
“Why are you all pointing sticks at us?”
(Next chapter here)