La Revolución está Muerta. Viva la Revolución
Hermione bursts into tears. Draco slowly lowers into the chair Arthur set beside the bed in abject horror, looking… lost. Harry and Ron scramble forward, blinking disbelievingly at the occupant of the cot.
It’s true Merlin looks a bit… hollow. His limbs are locked in position solidly, just how he must’ve been standing. His blank eyes stare straight through the ceiling without so much as a flutter of his eyelashes. His chest doesn’t rise or fall. Only his scarf has remembered gravity, having not been touching his skin directly at the time. With how expressive he always is, it’s… stark.
“Petrified, but unharmed. They’re working on the cure now. He’ll recover once it’s administered, but that won’t be for a while yet. He’s going to be fine,” Arthur informs them almost casually.
“Oh, Em,” Harry breathes. It sends Hermione into another flurry of sobs, her head in her arms on the cot.
“Who found him?” Draco asks distantly.
“I did. Second floor bathroom, first period.”
“That’s why you left?” Harry asks, tearing his eyes with difficulty from Merlin to look at Arthur. “I was so worried.”
“How did you know?” Ron asks.
“That’s not the issue!” Hermione explodes. Arthur frowns at her. He’s starting to worry she’s figured something out about them, or thinks she has. She’s covering for them. He’ll have to keep an eye on that.
“He’ll stay here,” Arthur informs them, folding his arms, subtly keeping contact with Merlin’s pulse. If it slows, he’ll drag the kids out. “There are no other side-effects expected. Visiting hours are flexible, given his condition, but typically kept between three and five pm. Don’t spread it around, if you can help it. The mandrakes are estimated to be five weeks away from maturing. Factoring in recovery, he should be functioning at full capacity by exam time.”
“What about the suitcase?” Harry blurts. “Shouldn’t he… wouldn’t he be better off, if… at home?”
Arthur shakes his head. “He needs to keep an eye on you. He’d go out of his skull home alone for that long. Oh, he can hear you, by the way.”
You did that on purpose, you prat, Arthur can practically hear his husband snap. He smirks.
“He can? But victims of petrification are typically rendered catatonic,” Hermione rattles off wetly. “That would narrow down the possible causes quite drastically, it might help us figure out what did this…” she trails off as she looks with wide eyes at Arthur, asking him a silent right?
Arthur purses his lips. He doesn’t want to… confirm anything for her, but she’d definitely catch him out on a lie. The evidence just doesn’t support his narrative, and she’s smart enough to recognise it. Shit. Should’ve just kept his big mouth shut.
“Maybe he can’t hear us,” Arthur shrugs lamely, “But I like to think he can.” He definitely can.
“When I catch the heir of Slytherin,” Draco vows quietly in a glacial tone that has everyone snapping to attention and shivering in the ice of it, “I’m going to kill them.”
That’s the spirit, Arthur thinks, but I’m afraid the honour will be mine. He knows how much Merlin will have hated to hear that from Draco, though, so he gives his hand a squeeze.
🏥
“Fancy seeing you here,” Mariela says as the hangman settles the noose around her neck none too gently. Arthur- Alejo- turns to look at her.
“Really? I don’t fancy it much,” he says as his own rope is fastened.
It’s sweltering out here. No shade for the rebels. Alejo can feel his sweat slide down the back of his neck, such a contrast to the sharp bite of the coarse noose rubbing against his collar. Do they make them extra scratchy on purpose? They must, but Alejo doesn’t see the point. Then again, Alejo doesn’t see the point to much the Spanish Regime does.
“Hang on, be right with you,” Mariela hums, flicking her hair in the face of the priest chanting te deums in her ear. Alejo’s tiring of his own pretty quickly himself. Is sounding like a slab of rock with a mouth a prerequisite to pastoralism?
He finds Mariela a much more arresting focus. He listens as she calls out the people averting their gazes to face their eyes front, to look at them as they die. Look, and be struck by it. Let it remind them who they are.
“Indolent people! How diverse your luck would be today if you knew the price of freedom! God, will you shut up,” she adds to the priest beside her, who startles into silence. Alejo snorts. Finally. "Mestizo brothers and sisters," she announces proudly, addressing yet another crowd, "who are they to tell us that we are la sangre sucia, that we are the lowest rank in society when our Indian ancestors ruled this land and lived in complex communities? Who are they, those invaders, who come to our lands all the way from Europe and steal our timber, oil, gold, and silver? Be a proud Indo-mestizo because our people come from this land, too. The colonies might have liberated themselves from the Spanish crown, but we are still resisting and fighting for our Indigenous brothers and sisters who are under colonial power in new world orders. Believe it or not, we are also under that power. I am a proud mestiza because I am Indigenous and Spanish. I come from both worlds and we form the new mixed-race. This land is our land. This soil is our soil. This air is our air because it belongs to our people and to our ancestors. We are the mestizo pride!”
Alejo reflects that they are, too. Mariela- Merlin- is no longer a scrawny white boy from Ealdor. She is not even simply Camelotian. She is everything she has ever seen, heard, taken, given, trusted, loved, and hated. She never played a part out of convenience, and Alejo thinks that's why neither of them have tired of life yet. Every place they go and thing they do, they absorb. When he looks at Mariela, he sees all those colours and flavours refracted as though through a kaleidoscope, splashing out from her like wings, like her owned stained-glass halo, more beautiful and intricate than any other thing on this earth can claim to be. She is the mestizo pride, and she is the albatross of the ancient Mariner, the Angel of the 336th Kunsan Fighter Squadron, Champion of the Maasai, Quartermaster of the Fulbright, owner of the (second) Rising Sun, bane of the Ottomans, landsknecht, mother, diplomat, midwife, prophet, advisor, soldier, and she is every movement, revolution, assassination, miracle, new day, and sunset in between. Every day she astounds him by being more beautiful, more unconquerable, more staggeringly great than she was yesterday, despite the impossibility of such a thing. But Merlin always thrived on the impossible.
Her wild black hair flies vivaciously around her as she whips her head heatedly around through her speech. The New Grenada sun peeks through her endless curls as they dance in the wind, roaring its defiance right alongside her. She doesn’t spit or curse or cry, though Alejo knows she can. She condemns. She rouses. She blooms.
"Even though I am young, and a woman, I have more than enough valour to suffer this death and a thousand more deaths. Long live liberty!"
Alejo vaguely registers that the guards are talking, and they’ll probably pull the lever soon, but Mariela’s turned to look at him and he lets it fall away, inconsequential. She really is the only thing of any consequence in all this world, in all of Time, and he marvels once again that no one else knows that. She’s his. No one knows just how much she is but him. Her eyes sparkle with well-worn love- old love- the kind you trust to live in, rather than feel the need to squirrel away. The kind you bask in. The kind they have.
Merlin winks.
The gallows open.
They go to their deaths holding hands.
Arthur wakes quickly with a sharp inhale, blinking away memory moths. Colombia, 18-something or other. He hasn’t had that dream before, but he supposes it is rather a recent memory, if he’s correct about what year it is now.
This is a small cot. Medical grade, like a hospital’s, but the sheets are too soft. A high end hospital. Not military. Arthur shifts his head gently to look at Merlin for clues.
Right. Unresponsive. Hogwarts. The infirmary.
He tilts his head back to the window. Judging by the sun it’s about six-thirty in the afternoon. He slept through dinner.
Arthur returns his attention to the love of his every life, playing with the black curls splashed over the pillow sleepily. He finds his other hand is ahead of his brain, already nestled against Merlin’s wrist, keeping steady time with his pulse. Arthur takes the opportunity to just lie and breathe and watch for a while.
He gets up soon. He has council at seven, doesn’t he? Things to clean up.
“I’ll be back soon,” Arthur says out loud in a voice low from sleep (more for his sake than Merlin’s), kissing his stiff hand. “I’ll just settle this blood war, and I’ll be back. Shouldn’t take long. I’ll tell you everything then.”
🗺🗽
On his way to the Gryffindor dorm, he gets someone to check on the founders. They’re in position, standing by. Good. It’s about time to get this underway.
When he returns, people are filtering in from walking off their dinner, looking curious. Some have taken to lounging over the armchairs or leaning against the mantelpiece. Fred and George appear to have done their part admirably, judging by the anticipatory whispers hissed around the room.
“It starts at seven.”
“They always do.”
“Yeah, but this time it’s different, I don’t know. They say McGonagall didn’t call it.”
“What? Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course she called it, there’d be no meeting otherwise.”
“But she didn’t say anything. I heard from Lee.”
“Maybe she’s busy?”
“Yeah, ‘cause she’d slip up like that.”
“It’s more likely than someone else calling a meeting. That’s never even happened. You’re gonna look real stupid come seven o’clock.”
Sure enough, everyone is present when the time comes around, minus McGonagall. Her having never been anything short of five minutes early to a meeting, this has caused quite the reaction among the ranks. Debates break out among the populous as Arthur watches, leaning back in a shaded corner where he can see it all go down. Harry, Ron and Hermione are present as well, but they haven’t noticed him, and clearly expect him to still be with Merlin. That’s good. He needs the attention elsewhere tonight.
Finally, when Fred and George show up a couple minutes late, they’re bombarded with questions which they take admirably well considering they don’t have any answers. So well, in fact, that the figure taking up post in the portrait behind them goes mostly unnoticed until he speaks in his arresting voice. The fire leaps in delighted support.
“Thank you boys. Let’s get started,” booms Godric Gryffindor.
In the Slytherin common room, Salazar addresses his crowd quite unmistakably.
In Hufflepuff, Helga has a chat with her own.
In Ravenclaw, Rowena enchants a rapt audience with stern but objective truths and a unique brand of condescension that, rather than instilling shame, reminds the listeners that values only hold up if they’re defended.
At Arthur’s behest, the founders put things into perspective, which is all one really needs to avoid a war.
It’s going on nine by the time it wraps up. Arthur begrudgingly allows the high five the twins insist upon before slipping back out the door, exchanging pleasantries with Liz as he goes and mentally filing away the reports the portraits on his way back to the infirmary provide him with. That’s one problem down, but he’ll need to keep an eye on it. Wars do not die quietly.
For now though, he thinks he’ll content himself with giving his husband the rundown of the night’s events, and who knows, maybe even getting a decent night’s sleep.