The Legacy of Salazar

The Turquoise Peacock

"Never saw that one coming."

"Wait—but I thought he failed his first year?"

Merlin couldn't escape the whispers. They clung to his robes as he walked to breakfast, tainting his eggs and kippers. A pervasive cloud of questions, all of which seemed too nervous to ask. The curiosity from the end of last term had only magnified during the summer events.

Merlin pushed one of his fried tomatoes along the rim of his plate, unable to block out the discussion drifting over from the Ravenclaw table.

"Statistically, Slytherin produces more dark wizards than any other house," a girl was saying.

"Yeah, but c'mon—Merlin? He doesn't have it in him," another girl replied. "He's a huge muggle lover."

"Not all dark wizards form anti-muggle régimes. Take Grindelwald for example. And if Merlin could hide the fact he's powerful enough to defeat Professor Quirrell, there's no knowing what other tricks he's got up his sleeve. I mean, just look at what happened in Flourish and Blots—"

Merlin let his fork fall onto his plate with a clatter, stopping the conversation as heads swivelled in his direction. It restarted within seconds, however, in softer tones that still none-the-less carried and Merlin slouched in his seat, massaging his temples.

Get used to it, he told himself. It isn't going away anytime soon.

If anything, all the whispers, speculation, and even anxiety surrounding his person would just get worse. His fellow Slytherins were more aware of his intentions, as he had a feeling his "room for only one dark lord" statement had been taken exactly as he'd meant it—joking but not really. On the train, he'd thought he had made himself pretty clear: amass a following and defeat Lord Voldemort. And he couldn't exactly do that by keeping his head down and twiddling his thumbs.

But the whispers burned his ears worse than shouting.

Draco looked at him. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Merlin pushed his still full plate away from him and went back to massaging his temples. "Spectacular." He could feel the headache building again.

"It's not too late to change your mind."

Merlin had a feeling he wasn't talking about breakfast. He'd told Draco late last night about his coreless wand, eager to bring him up to speed. Draco had taken it a little better than Hermione—before more seriously asking when Merlin planned on becoming the next Dark Lord. Which was fine. Totally fine. He just needed to know the deadline for convincing his father to jump the Death Eater ship.

It'd had the same, joking-but-not feel to it.

"Yeah—it is," Merlin said, meeting his eyes.

Draco swallowed. "Right." He looked away for a moment, staring at his breakfast before sighing. "Right—you're doing this all wrong."

Merlin stared at him. "I'm what?"

"This celebrity spotlight thing—you're not handling it well."

"Thanks, Mr Obvious."

"I mean," Draco said exasperated, "you're not enjoying it. You're letting what everyone says about it—true or not—get to you because you care too much about what people think. I mean," and he dropped his tone, slinging his arm around Merlin's shoulder so he could whisper, "that kid who killed the troll? I've never met that person—that wasn't you. You're so paranoid that you can't even enjoy being in the paper. Look—" he started to laugh and nodded behind him. "That girl has been staring at you since last night and you haven't even noticed."