Merlin/Harry Potter: Voldemort's Miss-Understanding (7.1/?)
Title Voldemort's Miss-Understanding
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).
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 7: In Which Arthur Doubts His Maidservant (But Only For A Moment!)
Gwaine still wasn’t entirely sure how he had ended up on a train to a school for wizards and witches, but he supposed it had started the morning after his night with Merlin.
Not long after being woken up that morning by Ron, Arthur had woken up Gwaine and Merlin and the three had trekked downstairs, lured by the smell of Mrs. Weasley’s cooking. When they entered the kitchen and found everybody there, Merlin had stammered out a small apology for worrying everybody.
At first, it seemed as though the matter had been forgotten. Everybody was sat around the kitchen table, eating and making small conversation. Then, Gwaine noticed that Mrs. Weasley was quieter than usual, occasionally looking at Merlin and Gwaine out of the corner of her eye and pursing her lips. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she looked so disapproving about.
Since joining the knights, Gwaine had learnt a thing or two about chivalry (although not all of the lessons stuck). And while he knew that confronting Mrs. Weasley was wrong, he felt as though it would be more wrong to let her think disparaging things about him and Merlin (Merlin in particular).
“Do you have a problem with mine and Merlin’s sleeping arrangement last night?” Gwaine asked bluntly.
“Gwaine!” Merlin and Arthur protested simultaneously
Neither of them should’ve been concerned about affecting Mrs. Weasley’s delicate sensibilities, however. She was a mother of seven and, as Gwaine had rightly guessed, it took a bit more than bluntness to unsettle her.
“Yes,” she said, she said simply as she unthinkingly handed to Harry, who was already incredibly full, another large stack of bacon. His eyes, widened and he looked helplessly as his godfather, but Sirius seemed just as determined to feed him to death, since he just nodded and said, quietly, “Eat what you can, pup.”
Mrs. Weasley didn’t notice this. She was still talking to Gwaine. “You’re far too young to be up to that sort of thing.”
Gwaine was now offended on several levels. The first being that he was too young: he wasn’t. He might’ve been younger in body, but his mind was no younger than when he had left Camelot. And even by seventeen, he had done “that sort of thing” quite a few times, if he admitted it to himself. The second was that Mrs. Weasley immediately assumed that whatever he and Merlin were up to was inappropriate.
It wasn’t.
He didn’t really know which of these points to address first, and he was going to try to be reasonable, both for Merlin and because Arthur would not be happy if he was anything otherwise
Sirius settled part of the problem for him by saying, “Molly, I think you’re overreacting.”
“Oh, am I?” she said waspishly. “I suppose if Harry was living with you, you’d let him have girls spend the night left and right, wouldn’t you, Sirius Black?”
Next to Harry, Ron snickered at the thought of Harry bringing women over and even Hermione looked horribly amused. The twins in particular seemed to find this hilarious.
“Of course,” one of them said said nodding. “Harry has girls all over him at Hogwarts.”
“Last year,” the other said, “He had to turn them all down for the Yule Ball so he wouldn’t start a riot. The only reason Parvati Patil got to go with him was because she won a lottery!”
“Shut up!” Harry hissed.
Sirius remained calm. “Of course not. But Harry is fifteen. Merlin and Gwaine are seventeen, of age in the Wizarding World, and that’s if you choose to ignore the fact that they were de-aged on the way here.”
“They’re too young to understand-”
“I understand perfectly,” Gwaine said sharply. He took a deep breath to calm himself down. “Merlin and I weren’t doing anything inappropriate. She had a nightmare. She came to me because she didn’t want to be alone. That’s all it was.”
“Thank the gods that’s all it was,” Arthur muttered. There were some things he never wanted to be privy to. The things his maidservant and his knight got up to in their spare time was one of them.
“And even if anything else had happened,” Gwaine continued, ignoring Merlin’s surprised squeak, “I hardly see why there would be any objections. As Sirius said, we’re both old enough to make decisions for ourselves.”
“There are consequences to those sorts of things!” Mrs. Weasley protested.
Gwaine shook his head. “Then Merlin and I would deal with them together.”
“You-”
“You’re just going to have to come to to terms with the fact that I love her!”
Merlin, who was sitting next to him, stuffing her face with waffles (she seemed to really like them, Gwaine noticed) almost choked and the rest of the kitchen went quiet. It was then that Gwaine realized what he had actually said.
Huh.
That was not how this was supposed to go. He had known he’d loved Merlin for quite a while now, but he had yet to ever say anything to her. And when he finally worked up the nerve to do it, he had been planning on taking her somewhere nice and being all romantic and everything.
This was certainly not romantic
Judging by the way she was staring at him wide-eyed, mouth still full of waffles and syrup dripping down her chin, she had heard him. Merlin managed to swallow everything down, thankfully, but her lips were still covered in the sweet, sticky, maple syrup that Merlin had drenched her waffles in.
Before Merlin had a chance to reach for a napkin to clean her face off, Gwaine swooped in and planted a firm kiss on her. This was partially to spite Mrs. Weasley, but also because Gwaine liked syrup, too, and mixing it with Merlin was just too strong a temptation for him to resist. Merlin stiffened in surprise, but then relaxed, smiling into it and tangling a hand in his hair. After another second of enjoying the lovely taste of Merlin and syrup (both so sweet), she tugged lightly at his hair, pulling him away.
She didn’t say anything at first and Gwaine grew a bit worried.
“Ah, Merlin? This is the part where you say something, too.”
“Oh!” Merlin said, surprised. “I love you, too,” she said after a moment.
Gwaine grinned back at her and for a moment neither of them said anything. Arthur, growing distinctly uncomfortable, made a noise in the back of his throat.
“Do you have to do that at the table?” He scowled. Before Merlin could point out that they weren’t nearly as bad as he and Gwen had been, somebody interrupted them.
“Love is a wonderful thing.” It was Dumbledore. Gwaine turned around to stare at him. When had he shown up? “I offer you my congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Merlin said, unsure, but unwilling to be impolite.
“Professor Dumbledore,” Arthur said firmly. “I was hoping you would stop by today. I have something I wish to discuss with you. Namely your earlier offer.”
“And what offer would that be?” Dumbledore said. His eyes continued to twinkle brightly and Merlin got the distinct impression that he was only toying with Arthur. “You must forgive me. I am an old man, and prone to forgetfulness.”
“Your offer regarding Hogwarts,” Arthur said. “Merlin, Gwaine, and I have been discussing it-”
“We have?” Merlin asked. She felt as though she had missed something very important here. Arthur glared at her.
“Yes, Merlin, we have.” He turned back to Dumbledore. “We would like to take you up on it.”
“We would?” Merlin gasped. When Arthur shot her another look, Merlin hastily corrected herself. “I mean: we would.”
“I see,” Dumbledore said, his hands clasping serenely in front of him. Unlike just about everybody else in the room, Dumbledore displayed no surprise whatsoever. “In that case, there are many details we need to discuss, along with preparations that need to be made-”
“And you can do them later,” Mrs. Weasley said firmly. “The children are helping me clean today.”
It seemed as though Mrs. Weasley was still smarting from her earlier loss against Gwaine and Merlin and refused to lose this battle. Merlin sensed that Dumbledore, for all his power, was not stupid enough to take on the Weasley matriarch and agreed that he would come back later, mentioning that he had some business in London anyway. He bid everybody a goodbye and, within moments of him leaving, Mrs.
Weasley was ushering everybody upstairs to get ready and meet her back downstairs.
When they returned, she lined them all up as though they were soldiers awaiting inspection and gave them supplies: rags, brooms, mops, buckets
“You are not allowed to use magic,” was the first thing she said. The twins, the only two actually old enough to use magic, protested, but Sirius was the one who silenced them by reminding them that many of the things in the house could be dangerous when exposed to certain spells.
For once, it seemed as though Mrs. Weasley and Sirius were in agreement. Mrs. Weasley then divided the children into teams and gave them designated areas to work on: Merlin and Gwaine were separated. Gwaine with Arthur, and Merlin with Harry. Ron and Hermione, the twins, and Sirius and Remus made up the other teams. She shoed them off and then went into kitchen to clean up from breakfast and prepare for lunch.
For a while, Merlin and Harry, who had been assigned to clean up one of the spare bedrooms, worked in silence. Merlin was not accustomed to being quiet for long, though, and soon she fell back on her old habit of humming while she worked-- although rather off-tune. When she finished, Harry laughed and then took up the task, humming a more modern song. Soon, they found themselves trying to outdo each other in humming or singing the most ridiculous songs they could. Merlin had just finished singing a bawdy tavern song that she had once heard a very drunk Leon sing when they noticed, amidst their laughs, that they had finished.
“That went by quickly,” Merlin said cheerfully, throwing her now dirty rag into the bucket of soapy water. Harry nodded and threw his rag in with hers.
“The Dursleys made me clean a lot,” Harry said, “But I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun doing it.”
“Arthur’s chores for me were never this much fun either,” Merlin informed him as they made their way downstairs to the kitchen for lunch. Mrs. Weasley looked surprised to see them.
“Are you done already?” She asked. When they nodded, she ushered them into chairs and began scooping out food for them. Harry and Merlin ate in comparative silence, now, waiting for the others to show up. Sirius and Remus came next, covered in dust, but otherwise looking alright. Sirius ruffled Harry’s hair as he sat down. Then, Ron and Hermione, both very frustrated looking, sat down, not looking at each other. Then came the twins.
Finally, Arthur and Gwaine showed up. When Merlin saw them, she couldn’t resist saying, “What happened to you?”
They both looked as though they had come from battle, not from cleaning a room. Gwaine’s shirt was ripped and he was covered in dirt and soapy water. Arthur’s hair was a mess and his fingers were wrinkled like prunes.
“I slipped over his Highness’s wet floor,” Gwaine said with a roll of his eyes.
“I am never washing a floor again,” Arthur said darkly.
Merlin said as innocently as she could, “Honestly, Arthur, how hard could it be? All you have to do is wipe it!”
“Shut up, Merlin.”
“So you really want to go to Hogwarts?” It was Remus who decided to jump in before the inevitable argument could break out. Merlin, Arthur, and Gwaine all looked at each other, until Arthur finally nodded.
“Yes, we do.”
“You’ll need to work harder during your lessons,” Remus warned, “If you wish to be up to standard to attend classes.”
“We understand,” Arthur said, once again answering for them.
Looking back, Gwaine wondered if Arthur had really understood what he was getting them all into. If Remus’s exercises had been difficult before, they were even harder afterwards, and over the next few weeks, they were all pushed to their limits.
The one day they had gotten a slight reprieve was on the day of Harry’s hearing, when they had all waited anxiously to hear the verdict. Much to everybody’s relief (including Merlin’s and Gwaine’s and Arthur’s, since they had taken quite a liking to Harry), thanks to Dumbledore, the hearing had gone in Harry’s favor.
(Part 2 here)
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).
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 7: In Which Arthur Doubts His Maidservant (But Only For A Moment!)
Gwaine still wasn’t entirely sure how he had ended up on a train to a school for wizards and witches, but he supposed it had started the morning after his night with Merlin.
Not long after being woken up that morning by Ron, Arthur had woken up Gwaine and Merlin and the three had trekked downstairs, lured by the smell of Mrs. Weasley’s cooking. When they entered the kitchen and found everybody there, Merlin had stammered out a small apology for worrying everybody.
At first, it seemed as though the matter had been forgotten. Everybody was sat around the kitchen table, eating and making small conversation. Then, Gwaine noticed that Mrs. Weasley was quieter than usual, occasionally looking at Merlin and Gwaine out of the corner of her eye and pursing her lips. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she looked so disapproving about.
Since joining the knights, Gwaine had learnt a thing or two about chivalry (although not all of the lessons stuck). And while he knew that confronting Mrs. Weasley was wrong, he felt as though it would be more wrong to let her think disparaging things about him and Merlin (Merlin in particular).
“Do you have a problem with mine and Merlin’s sleeping arrangement last night?” Gwaine asked bluntly.
“Gwaine!” Merlin and Arthur protested simultaneously
Neither of them should’ve been concerned about affecting Mrs. Weasley’s delicate sensibilities, however. She was a mother of seven and, as Gwaine had rightly guessed, it took a bit more than bluntness to unsettle her.
“Yes,” she said, she said simply as she unthinkingly handed to Harry, who was already incredibly full, another large stack of bacon. His eyes, widened and he looked helplessly as his godfather, but Sirius seemed just as determined to feed him to death, since he just nodded and said, quietly, “Eat what you can, pup.”
Mrs. Weasley didn’t notice this. She was still talking to Gwaine. “You’re far too young to be up to that sort of thing.”
Gwaine was now offended on several levels. The first being that he was too young: he wasn’t. He might’ve been younger in body, but his mind was no younger than when he had left Camelot. And even by seventeen, he had done “that sort of thing” quite a few times, if he admitted it to himself. The second was that Mrs. Weasley immediately assumed that whatever he and Merlin were up to was inappropriate.
It wasn’t.
He didn’t really know which of these points to address first, and he was going to try to be reasonable, both for Merlin and because Arthur would not be happy if he was anything otherwise
Sirius settled part of the problem for him by saying, “Molly, I think you’re overreacting.”
“Oh, am I?” she said waspishly. “I suppose if Harry was living with you, you’d let him have girls spend the night left and right, wouldn’t you, Sirius Black?”
Next to Harry, Ron snickered at the thought of Harry bringing women over and even Hermione looked horribly amused. The twins in particular seemed to find this hilarious.
“Of course,” one of them said said nodding. “Harry has girls all over him at Hogwarts.”
“Last year,” the other said, “He had to turn them all down for the Yule Ball so he wouldn’t start a riot. The only reason Parvati Patil got to go with him was because she won a lottery!”
“Shut up!” Harry hissed.
Sirius remained calm. “Of course not. But Harry is fifteen. Merlin and Gwaine are seventeen, of age in the Wizarding World, and that’s if you choose to ignore the fact that they were de-aged on the way here.”
“They’re too young to understand-”
“I understand perfectly,” Gwaine said sharply. He took a deep breath to calm himself down. “Merlin and I weren’t doing anything inappropriate. She had a nightmare. She came to me because she didn’t want to be alone. That’s all it was.”
“Thank the gods that’s all it was,” Arthur muttered. There were some things he never wanted to be privy to. The things his maidservant and his knight got up to in their spare time was one of them.
“And even if anything else had happened,” Gwaine continued, ignoring Merlin’s surprised squeak, “I hardly see why there would be any objections. As Sirius said, we’re both old enough to make decisions for ourselves.”
“There are consequences to those sorts of things!” Mrs. Weasley protested.
Gwaine shook his head. “Then Merlin and I would deal with them together.”
“You-”
“You’re just going to have to come to to terms with the fact that I love her!”
Merlin, who was sitting next to him, stuffing her face with waffles (she seemed to really like them, Gwaine noticed) almost choked and the rest of the kitchen went quiet. It was then that Gwaine realized what he had actually said.
Huh.
That was not how this was supposed to go. He had known he’d loved Merlin for quite a while now, but he had yet to ever say anything to her. And when he finally worked up the nerve to do it, he had been planning on taking her somewhere nice and being all romantic and everything.
This was certainly not romantic
Judging by the way she was staring at him wide-eyed, mouth still full of waffles and syrup dripping down her chin, she had heard him. Merlin managed to swallow everything down, thankfully, but her lips were still covered in the sweet, sticky, maple syrup that Merlin had drenched her waffles in.
Before Merlin had a chance to reach for a napkin to clean her face off, Gwaine swooped in and planted a firm kiss on her. This was partially to spite Mrs. Weasley, but also because Gwaine liked syrup, too, and mixing it with Merlin was just too strong a temptation for him to resist. Merlin stiffened in surprise, but then relaxed, smiling into it and tangling a hand in his hair. After another second of enjoying the lovely taste of Merlin and syrup (both so sweet), she tugged lightly at his hair, pulling him away.
She didn’t say anything at first and Gwaine grew a bit worried.
“Ah, Merlin? This is the part where you say something, too.”
“Oh!” Merlin said, surprised. “I love you, too,” she said after a moment.
Gwaine grinned back at her and for a moment neither of them said anything. Arthur, growing distinctly uncomfortable, made a noise in the back of his throat.
“Do you have to do that at the table?” He scowled. Before Merlin could point out that they weren’t nearly as bad as he and Gwen had been, somebody interrupted them.
“Love is a wonderful thing.” It was Dumbledore. Gwaine turned around to stare at him. When had he shown up? “I offer you my congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Merlin said, unsure, but unwilling to be impolite.
“Professor Dumbledore,” Arthur said firmly. “I was hoping you would stop by today. I have something I wish to discuss with you. Namely your earlier offer.”
“And what offer would that be?” Dumbledore said. His eyes continued to twinkle brightly and Merlin got the distinct impression that he was only toying with Arthur. “You must forgive me. I am an old man, and prone to forgetfulness.”
“Your offer regarding Hogwarts,” Arthur said. “Merlin, Gwaine, and I have been discussing it-”
“We have?” Merlin asked. She felt as though she had missed something very important here. Arthur glared at her.
“Yes, Merlin, we have.” He turned back to Dumbledore. “We would like to take you up on it.”
“We would?” Merlin gasped. When Arthur shot her another look, Merlin hastily corrected herself. “I mean: we would.”
“I see,” Dumbledore said, his hands clasping serenely in front of him. Unlike just about everybody else in the room, Dumbledore displayed no surprise whatsoever. “In that case, there are many details we need to discuss, along with preparations that need to be made-”
“And you can do them later,” Mrs. Weasley said firmly. “The children are helping me clean today.”
It seemed as though Mrs. Weasley was still smarting from her earlier loss against Gwaine and Merlin and refused to lose this battle. Merlin sensed that Dumbledore, for all his power, was not stupid enough to take on the Weasley matriarch and agreed that he would come back later, mentioning that he had some business in London anyway. He bid everybody a goodbye and, within moments of him leaving, Mrs.
Weasley was ushering everybody upstairs to get ready and meet her back downstairs.
When they returned, she lined them all up as though they were soldiers awaiting inspection and gave them supplies: rags, brooms, mops, buckets
“You are not allowed to use magic,” was the first thing she said. The twins, the only two actually old enough to use magic, protested, but Sirius was the one who silenced them by reminding them that many of the things in the house could be dangerous when exposed to certain spells.
For once, it seemed as though Mrs. Weasley and Sirius were in agreement. Mrs. Weasley then divided the children into teams and gave them designated areas to work on: Merlin and Gwaine were separated. Gwaine with Arthur, and Merlin with Harry. Ron and Hermione, the twins, and Sirius and Remus made up the other teams. She shoed them off and then went into kitchen to clean up from breakfast and prepare for lunch.
For a while, Merlin and Harry, who had been assigned to clean up one of the spare bedrooms, worked in silence. Merlin was not accustomed to being quiet for long, though, and soon she fell back on her old habit of humming while she worked-- although rather off-tune. When she finished, Harry laughed and then took up the task, humming a more modern song. Soon, they found themselves trying to outdo each other in humming or singing the most ridiculous songs they could. Merlin had just finished singing a bawdy tavern song that she had once heard a very drunk Leon sing when they noticed, amidst their laughs, that they had finished.
“That went by quickly,” Merlin said cheerfully, throwing her now dirty rag into the bucket of soapy water. Harry nodded and threw his rag in with hers.
“The Dursleys made me clean a lot,” Harry said, “But I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun doing it.”
“Arthur’s chores for me were never this much fun either,” Merlin informed him as they made their way downstairs to the kitchen for lunch. Mrs. Weasley looked surprised to see them.
“Are you done already?” She asked. When they nodded, she ushered them into chairs and began scooping out food for them. Harry and Merlin ate in comparative silence, now, waiting for the others to show up. Sirius and Remus came next, covered in dust, but otherwise looking alright. Sirius ruffled Harry’s hair as he sat down. Then, Ron and Hermione, both very frustrated looking, sat down, not looking at each other. Then came the twins.
Finally, Arthur and Gwaine showed up. When Merlin saw them, she couldn’t resist saying, “What happened to you?”
They both looked as though they had come from battle, not from cleaning a room. Gwaine’s shirt was ripped and he was covered in dirt and soapy water. Arthur’s hair was a mess and his fingers were wrinkled like prunes.
“I slipped over his Highness’s wet floor,” Gwaine said with a roll of his eyes.
“I am never washing a floor again,” Arthur said darkly.
Merlin said as innocently as she could, “Honestly, Arthur, how hard could it be? All you have to do is wipe it!”
“Shut up, Merlin.”
“So you really want to go to Hogwarts?” It was Remus who decided to jump in before the inevitable argument could break out. Merlin, Arthur, and Gwaine all looked at each other, until Arthur finally nodded.
“Yes, we do.”
“You’ll need to work harder during your lessons,” Remus warned, “If you wish to be up to standard to attend classes.”
“We understand,” Arthur said, once again answering for them.
Looking back, Gwaine wondered if Arthur had really understood what he was getting them all into. If Remus’s exercises had been difficult before, they were even harder afterwards, and over the next few weeks, they were all pushed to their limits.
The one day they had gotten a slight reprieve was on the day of Harry’s hearing, when they had all waited anxiously to hear the verdict. Much to everybody’s relief (including Merlin’s and Gwaine’s and Arthur’s, since they had taken quite a liking to Harry), thanks to Dumbledore, the hearing had gone in Harry’s favor.
(Part 2 here)