Professor Merlin Emrys

Decisions and Revisions which a Minute will Reverse.

"Leave him!" Draco heard his father say, briskly walking after Harry and his friends. He had seen Hermione hesitate when Merlin had fallen but Ron had grabbed her arm and forced her to run. They were too far away to hear anything more and Draco held his breath and shrunk into the dark as best he could as his father walked towards him.

"Keep the boy alive, he is the Dark Lord's!" Lucius shouted as his henchmen apparated away. Finally, his father and everyone else had left and it was Draco and a prone Merlin who now remained. Draco ran from his cover, knees skidding on the marble floor as he reached Merlin's side. He let go of the sword in his hands and it clattered loudly in the otherwise silent room. Draco cringed but ignored it in favor of his still unconscious Professor.

"Don't be dead. Please, please, don't be dead," he muttered to himself, pulling Merlin towards himself and onto his back. He was pale and getting paler by the second and had not twitched at all as Draco had moved him. His shoulder was bloody, his robe to thanks to whatever spell that had hit him. Draco checked him for any other injuries and had found a rather large one on his back.

It was a burn, probably the spell that had incapacitated him; Draco did not want to think him dead. He did his best to heal with what little medical training he had, episkey the extent of it. Thankfully, he had pushed more magic into the spell than he probably should have, but in the end, it worked in his favor. Merlin's wound had shrunk significantly and circled around the bottom left of his rib cage. Not an ideal spot but it was better than his whole back being unusable.

He heard a soft groan and Draco breathed a sigh of relief. He was coming too. But not fast enough.

"Merlin! Merlin, I need your help. Harry and Hermione and Ron are in trouble. Please, I cannot do this on my own!" Draco shouted in frustration, slapping Merlin's face as he did so. It only resulted in Merlin slapping his hand away and then the air when he came in contact with nothing.

"Please, Merlin," Draco pleaded one last time. When Merlin did not respond he sat back, staring at his mentor and then at the sword to his right.

He saw Merlin glance up when he heard footsteps in the snow, a soft crunch too light to be anything but a boy hoping to soon be a man. He gave a smile as Draco came to sit beside him, the unnaturally perfect circle of green grass buffeting back the white powder. He turned back to the old Rowan tree, letting Draco make the first move.

"What are you doing?" He asked head tilted slightly to see Merlin out of the corner of his eye.

"Standing vigil or I suppose sitting vigil," Merlin sighed, breath coming out in smoky wisps as he exhaled.

Draco's brows furrowed and he opened his mouth to speak before cutting himself off and snapping it shut. Merlin, seeing his indecision on whether to ask what he was sitting vigil for, spoke up. "I do it to remember mostly, sometimes to reflect on mistakes passed... or on one memorable occasion to beg," the beg for Arthur to come back, to save him from himself, to make all his friends stop leaving him, silent but ever-present, even if Draco did not read into all its meaning.

Draco nodded distractingly, still having something on his mind. Merlin waited for him, glancing to the heavens that allowed the stars to shine brightly so far out in the country as they were.

"Why?" He uttered not ten minutes later, not knowing how to word his question still.

"Why what?" Merlin asked because for all his skills Draco knew he truly was not a mind reader and Merlin had done quite a few things that prompted an explanation.

"Why...why did you give it to me?" Draco asked, uncomfortable as he shifted his weight, the cold unreachable in Merlin's perfectly circular bubble of trapped heat.