FIC: In Pursuit of Magic (Merlin/Gwaine - 2043 - G)

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Title: In Pursuit of Magic

Author/Artist: ANON

Pairing: Merlin/Gwaine

Prompt: #14 – obligatory Hogwarts AU

Word Count: 2043

Rating: G

Disclaimer: Merlin characters are the property of Shine and BBC. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

Notes: Huge thanks to E for the beta and C for her help with the title. Also, thanks to the lovely isisanubis for the fabulous prompt… I saw this one and couldn’t resist!

Summary His first Christmas at Hogwarts is everything Merlin had imagined and more.


Read it on AO3


Merlin yelped as his foot tried to find a step that was no longer where it should be and, closing his eyes, braced himself for the inevitable fall and subsequent impact. He had hoped that, after four months as a Hogwarts student, he was finally getting used to the whole moving staircases and trick steps concept. Obviously, to his annoyance, he hadn’t, thus he was stuck looking like an awestruck and rather inept first year rather than the sixth year student that he actually was. It was rather embarrassing and he hoped no one was watching. Fortunately, a hand grabbed the back of his robes and hauled him back to safety before he had to find out how many others had watched him making a fool of himself. Once he was securely back on two feet, Merlin took a deep breath and turned around to thank his rescuer, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw that it was Gwaine.

“I thought we’d cured you of the habit of wandering around with your head in the clouds, Merlin.”

Merlin scowled, feeling his face heat up. He was more thankful than he could say that Gwaine had been the one to find him, but it was still humiliating. He tried to duck out of the way as Gwaine went to ruffle his hair. “Get off!”

“Is that any way to treat your rescuer? Your knight in shining armour? What happened to saying thank you? Or a grateful kiss?” Gwaine’s words were accompanied by a cheeky wink and that rather roguish smile which had drawn Merlin’s attention in the first place.

Merlin tried not to think too much about kissing Gwaine, knowing that his traitorous capillaries would give him away. Because he really wanted to kiss Gwaine - he had done ever since he started at Hogwarts. Gwaine was everything that Merlin wasn’t; popular, good-looking, sociable. He had friends in all of the houses and could have a date – or two – every night if he wanted which was Merlin’s biggest problem when it came to Gwaine. Gwaine was a huge flirt and completely incorrigible. He’d even been known to flirt with their Transfiguration professor, for Merlin’s sake!

Because Gwaine flirted with everyone, Merlin could never quite muster the courage to flirt back or express his interest at all. What if he did and Gwaine hadn’t meant any of his flirting at all? What if he did and Gwaine was horrified? What if Merlin lost his only real friend at Hogwarts? No, it didn’t bear thinking about. So, instead of kissing Gwaine as he really wanted to, Merlin plastered a look of mock-outrage on his face.

“Hey! I could have saved myself!” Merlin sputtered, trying to defend himself. As Gwaine’s eyebrow raised and a smirk played on his lips, Merlin gave a sheepish smile. “Okay, maybe not but let me think that I could have saved myself?”

“Sure mate, whatever you want.” Gwaine swung an arm around Merlin’s shoulders and guided him safely over the trick step and down the rest of the stairs. “What had you so distracted anyway? You haven’t fallen for a trick step since Halloween.”

“When did the decorations appear?” Merlin’s change of subject was hardly subtle but he didn’t really care.

“What?”

“When did the decorations appear? They weren’t there last night…”

“The decorations? Oh, yeah, right. The house elves probably put them up overnight. Why?” Gwaine didn’t give Merlin a chance to respond before enlightenment dawned. “Oh, I’d forgotten this was your? first Hogwarts Christmas. You just wait, you’ve seen nothing yet.”

Merlin didn’t doubt that in the slightest. Hogwarts had been one wonderful surprise after the other since he had arrived … five years after he was supposed to.

He’d had a letter when he was eleven, just as everyone else in his year had, but his dad had just been killed by poachers on the dragon reserve where he worked and Merlin’s mum hadn’t wanted to lose him as well. So, Merlin had been home schooled by his mum, Uncle Gaius, Aunt Alice and just about every witch and wizard on the reserve. Every year, around the time that Merlin knew letters were being sent to students across the country, Merlin had begged his mum to let him go to Hogwarts and every year she had refused until, finally, Gaius had admitted that none of them had anything left to teach Merlin and that it would be best for him to go to Hogwarts, where they would be able to challenge him.

With every member of the reserve supporting Gaius, Hunith finally relented and, at last, Merlin had been able to follow in the footsteps of his parents and start his Hogwarts career.

Thus far, it had been everything he had ever imagined and more.

~*~

Gwaine was right. By the time that Christmas was almost upon them, Merlin had lost track of the number of times that he’d had to visit Madam Pomfrey because he’d been distracted and managed to hurt himself. He’d been doing so well in the first few weeks after the Halloween celebrations and then the house elves had decorated for Christmas and it seemed like every time he ventured out into the corridors there was something new to see. It had actually got to the point that Gwaine had actually enlisted his Gryffindor friends – Arthur Pendragon and his self-dubbed knights – to keep an eye on Merlin in between classes to try and prevent him from doing too much damage to himself.

Just after he’d arrived at Hogwarts, Merlin had ended up partnered with Gwaine – a Hufflepuff - in Charms. Curious, Merlin had asked his partner how he had ended up in Hufflepuff as he didn’t seem like the typical badger. Gwaine had informed Merlin that the Sorting Hat had told him he had traits of three houses – Slytherin, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff – but since Gwaine liked the easy life he had chosen Hufflepuff.

Merlin had laughed at that because it was so true. Gwaine was so laid-back that Merlin was frequently amazed that he wasn’t horizontal. Besides, it had made Merlin feel better that he wasn’t the only person that the Sorting Hat had had difficulty placing somewhere. The Hat had sworn blind that Merlin would do well in either Gryffindor or Slytherin but, well, Merlin had had a run in with Arthur Pendragon on the Express and couldn’t think of anything worse than having to share a dorm with him for two years and the Slytherin’s looked utterly terrifying so he had ended up in Ravenclaw.

Of course, he’d ended up being drawn into Arthur Pendragon’s circle anyway courtesy of his friendship with Gwaine and while he didn’t think of the blond Gryffindor was a complete clotpole anymore, he could still be a prat more often than not. He infinitely preferred the company of either Leon or Lance – the quieter and more bookish of Arthur’s Gryffindor companions – but if he had to put up with Arthur to spend time with Gwaine, then he would willingly do so.

~*~

The weather had turned bitterly cold during the last week of term and everything was now blanketed in white. Having grown up on the reserve in North Wales, Merlin was accustomed to snow, but this cold was a little different to what he knew. Merlin and the cold weren’t the best of friends, so Merlin was hugely grateful for a care package of thick, hand-knitted jumpers from his mum and Aunt Alice. The Sytherin’s could make fun of them all they wanted. At least Merlin was warm, which was a good thing as Gwaine had insisted on dragging Merlin out of the warmth of Ravenclaw Tower and out to the lake. Merlin had agreed, but not without protest.

As pretty as the snow was and as much as the idea of spending time with Gwaine appealed to him, Merlin would have much preferred the day from indoors, where he was warm. He’d had big plans for today which mostly consisted of devouring the new book of obscure spells that Uncle Gaius had sent him and mentally preparing himself for the Yule Ball that evening and the likelihood that he was going to have to watch Gwaine kissing someone else.

He was jerked out of his thoughts as he tripped over something that had been buried in the snow. He went flying forward only to be saved at the last minute by a quick-thinking – and moving – Leon. Not that Leon’s actions stopped Arthur from bursting into gales of laughter.

“Smooth, Merlin.”

Merlin rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored Arthur and addressed Gwaine instead. “Please tell me that you dragged me out here for a good reason.”

“Course I did. We’re going skating.”

“Where?” Merlin knew that it was a stupid question - that the answer was obvious - but he needed to hear it from Gwaine’s lips.

“On the lake, of course!”

“On the lake. We’re going to go skating on the lake? And what about skates?” Merlin fiddled with the end of his scarf in an attempt to hide the fact that his hands had started to shake with terror.
“Transfigure our shoes. Arthur found the spell in the library.”

“Oh great, so we’re going to go ice-skating on a frozen lake that has a giant squid in it on shoes that we’ve transfigured using a spell that Arthur found. Am I the only person who can see the problems with this?”

“Merlin, Merlin, Merlin, where’s your sense of adventure? It’ll be absolutely fine.”

(~*~)

Merlin couldn’t help but shiver, even after a long shower, a hot chocolate, goblet of pepper-up potion and several warming charms having been cast on his dress robes. With any luck, he wouldn’t catch a cold but luck seemed to have abandoned him since he arrived at Hogwarts. Still, the Great Hall looked pretty.

Actually, pretty was an understatement. It looked beautiful. Scores of trees festooned in a myriad of small glittering decorations lined the hall, and Merlin was genuinely amazed that the tables that lined one wall weren’t groaning under the weight of the food that they bore. Meal times at Hogwarts were always impressive, but the house-elves seemed to have gone all out tonight. The centre of the room had been left empty for the inevitable dancing with a multitude of smaller tables and chairs set around the outskirts for when people grew tired of dancing. Casting his gaze upwards, Merlin could see that the ceiling of the Great Hall depicted the stars outside with the addition of thousands of tiny floating candles. When he managed to drag his eyes away, it was to find Gwaine stood almost nose to nose with him and Merlin couldn’t help but yelp in surprise.

“Gwaine! What are you doing?” Even as he spoke, Merlin couldn’t help but notice how good Gwaine looked in his dress robes, wearing them with a suitably rakish air rather than the buttoned-up formality of most of the other students.

“Asking you to dance?” Merlin couldn’t quite believe it but, despite the hope in his voice, Gwaine actually looked nervous. Merlin hadn’t thought that Gwaine did nerves.

“Seriously? Me?” Merlin needed someone to wake him up from this dream. Or, you know, not. “That seventh year Ravenclaw, Mithian, has been giving you eyes for the last month not to mention those three scary sixth years in Slytherin and you want to dance with me. Are you completely mad?”

“Probably. What I do know is that, lovely as Mithian is, I’m not interested, and those Slytherin girls are all Pureblood bitches and I don’t want to go anywhere near them. You, on the other hand, I’ve wanted to kiss since you tripped over the Sorting Hat at the Opening Feast. How about it? Few dances, a couple of drinks spiked with a splash of Old Ogden’s and then a nice romantic stroll outside in the snow. If you’re lucky, you might even get a snog. So, what do you say?”

Merlin could barely get his answer out around his laughter (and more than a little surprise), but he managed to place his hand in Gwaine’s outstretched one. “Well, with an offer like that, how can I say no?”