“Do control yourself, Mr. Weasley,” Uther Smith-Smythe, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, said evenly, folding his hands.
Hadrian Bellowes gave him a smile that was not at all encouraging, nor was it trying to be. “Yes, Weasley, do control yourself,” he added in his horrible nasal voice, looking for all the world like a hungry crocodile.
“Control myself?” shouted Ron. “You want to lock me up in a bleeding prison, and you’re telling me to--”
“Language!” his wife hissed into his ear, grabbing his arm as she had done in vain so many times before to her husband and daughter.
“We assure you that your stay in prison will be short,” Mr. Smith-Smythe told him. And besides, this is merely hypothetical. It’s simply a precaution. If the diaries aren’t returned in one week…”
“I told you, the diaries were stolen!”
“”then you will have to serve a sentence in Azkaban.”
Ron’s eyes were desperate as he searched the faces in the room for one who could help him. They lit on his brother’s face… and not just his brother, but also the most powerful man in the wizarding world. “Percy,” he said, “you’re the Minister of Magic. Come on, tell him he can’t put me in jail!”
Percy looked extremely uncomfortable, and perspiration gleamed across his pale forehead. “I… I’m sorry, Ron,” he said, “but court orders are court orders, and if the diaries were stolen, you would need to have a piece of paper proving it. You never reported them missing until it was too late.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s the law, Ron. I can’t bend the law for you, even if I know you didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“This is mad!” exclaimed Ron, slamming his fist against the table. He looked mad as well. “My job is to throw people in Azkaban, not get penned myself! I mean… I work for the Ministry; I’m not about to try and defy them. I’m an Auror!”
“So was Sirius Black,” pointed out Bellowes.
“And he was innocent!” Ron yelled.
Hermione sighed. “It does seem drastic to me,” she said. “This case is over twenty years old, and Snape is dead. The Ministry only took interest because of Mr. Bellowes’s article.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s nothing we can do,” Smith-Smythe told her gravely. “Unless, of course, you can find the diaries in the next week.”
“We’re terribly sorry,” added Bellowes, not looking it at all.
Ron stood up. Being quite a tall man, this action came with considerable dramatic effect. “Right, then,” he said in a tight, strangled-sounding voice.
“Thank you. It’s very reassuring to know who’s running this country.” He gave the Ministry officials an extremely curt nod and placed his hand on Hermione’s shoulder.
Hermione turned to look at the men as she and Ron left the room. “It’s odd,” she said. “What say does Mr. Bellowes have in what happens to my husband?” Her voice was like an icicle, brittle and shaking slightly, but sufficiently cold and sharp to make a point. “I was under the impression that he’s under Ron’s employ? Why is he present at this meeting at all?”
Bellowes smiled. “Ah. Well, if it, er, occurs that Mr. Weasley is still unwilling--” Ron opened his mouth in protest and Bellowes gave him a condescending nod, “Yes, or unable to locate the diaries in one week, I will, of course, replace him as Deputy Head auror. And as the most experienced auror in the department, I can easily give, shall we say, guidance to Mr. Smith-Smythe about Mr. Weasley’s behaviour as well.”
“Amazing,” replied Hermione stiffly, her voice making it clear that this was not intended as a compliment. “Well, we won’t keep you. Goodbye.” And with that, she swept out of the office, clutching Ron’s arm as he marched out beside her.
As soon as the door had closed, Ron exploded, “The idiots!” He was very white, but his eyes were fierce, and his resemblance to his daughter was suddenly striking.
“I just don’t understand!” Hermione exclaimed. “How can they want to put you in prison? It’s absolutely insane. What are we going to do?”
Ron’s face was serious. “Well, maybe the diaries will turn up after all,” he said. His wife was not the only one he was trying to convince. “And if I do get put in prison for withholding information from the Ministry or whatever, well, it’ll only be a short sentence. And I’ll get my own cell… I won’t have to share the soap with a bunch of thugs that Harry and I chucked in there in the first place. Plus, now that they’ve ditched the Dementors… I’ll be fine.”
Hermione looked up at him. “Yes, I know,” she replied, instinctively rubbing a smudge off her husband’s nose with her thumb. “But what about me?”
“Come on, Hermione,” Ron sighed, after a long pause, “this is completely mad. The kids are coming home for Easter holiday tomorrow and everything, and if we don’t know for sure that I’m going to jail, we shouldn’t upset them.”
She looked doubtful. “They’re hardly ‘kids’ anymore,” she pointed out. “And it’s very unlikely that we’ll be able to keep it from them. Emma and Haley get into everything, and Ivy will read anything she can reach, and Ted notices things, and Jordan… well, Jordan knows nearly everything. I think we’d do well to tell them, just in case.”
And as was nearly always the case, Hermione was right. The second her foot touched the carpet of the Potter house on the first day of Easter break, the first words out of Emma’s mouth were, “Dad, are you really going to jail?”
Ron blinked. “Where did you hear something like that?” he asked, looking carefully at his daughter.
“Charybdis Nott told us,” said Haley, supervising her twin as he disgruntledly set down her three suitcases. “Actually, she kind of more like laughed it in our faces.”
“Yeah, well, Charybdis Nott is a little berk,” muttered Ron, eager to change the subject.
“Ron!” his wife exclaimed, scandalized.
Harry smiled at her. “Look Hermione, we’ve both taught her. You have to admit that Charybdis is not a nice girl.” He paused thoughtfully. “Which is too bad, because I liked her parents a lot.”
This was a new one. Ivy blinked. “Isn’t she from one of the old pureblood Slytherin families? I thought I remembered someone named Nott who was a Death Eater.”
“You’re partly right,” her father said. “Her dad was a pureblooded Slytherin. His father was a Death Eater, and I guess he was supposed to be one, too, but he was never into that kind of thing. A bit like you, actually.”
“Oh yeah, he went to school with us,” supplied Ron. “We never talked to him, of course. He was kind of a loner, one of those kids who sits there glaring at people. And, I mean, he was in Slytherin, so making friends was out of the question.”
“And then he and his wife November”she was Muggle-born, I think”ended up joining the Order of the Phoenix,” Harry finished up. “They were actually pretty cool. Had kind of a strange sense of humour, but they were nice enough.”
“Were?” said Ted, ever-observant.
Hermione nodded gravely. “Yes, the Notts died when Draco Malfoy attacked St. Mungo’s. Mrs. Nott was going to have a baby delivered, but instead, she and her husband and their baby all died.” She sighed. “I sometimes feel sorry for Charybdis. I think she and her older sister were adopted by Muggles after that.”
“She doesn’t have a sister,” said Haley.
“Yes, she does,” said Hermione. “She’s a Squib. I think her name is Scylla.”
There was a silence. All that they had known about Charybdis before was that she was a nasty Slytherin Prefect who hated Muggles and part-humans and loved Ophidias Malfoy. They’d never dreamed that she, like Mr. Potter himself, was a half-blood orphan who had been raised by Muggles. And she had a sister who couldn’t do magic. It was a strange thing to think about.
It just didn’t match up. Why would she hate the people who had been kind enough to take her in, completely go against her parents’ memory, and weirdest of all, why would she constantly stalk the son of the man who had killed her parents? But then, Charybdis Nott was a strange, strange girl. That much, they already knew.
Besides, there were much more pressing matters on hand than Charybdis’s history, Emma realized. Her father had completely evaded her question about Azkaban, and had changed the subject to mean teenage girls. “But Dad, seriously, are you going to jail?”
Ron sighed, and he looked old and crumpled for a moment as he sat down. “If I don’t find the diaries in a week, I’m going to Azkaban,” he said in a voice flat enough to envy Jordan’s. “Not for too long, and I won’t have to share with anyone… my reputation’s pretty much sunk, though.”
It was unbelievable. It was one thing to imagine some rogue Auror arrested and thrown in prison, but to imagine Ron, who was so staunchly loyal and determined, who made wisecracks and innocently overprotected his daughter, who was addicted to caffeine and perplexed by Magic Eye puzzles… he would not do well in captivity.
As his words sunk in, everyone clustered around Ron, looking stunned and horrified and protesting the unfairness of it all.
Except for Jordan. He was sitting apart from the group in a chair on the other side of the room and staring off into space in a detached, distant sort of way. One of the more disconcerting things about him now that he was a Seer was his tendency to do this.
“Jordan, didn’t you hear about Uncle Ron?” Ivy asked her brother, white-faced.
He shrugged absently. “Not exactly, no,” he replied in his serious, precise voice. “But I already knew about it.”
Ivy blinked. She was still getting used to her brother’s gifts, and she was sure that the same was true for him as well, probably even more so. She didn’t want to think about how it must feel to know about horrible things before they happened, so rationally, she didn’t. She kept her mind focused on her uncle.
“That’s not fair at all,” she said, not quite able to find the right words.
“Tell me about it,” replied Ron, sagging. “Better yet, tell Uther Smith-Smythe about it.” He sighed again. “I just never thought Charybdis Nott would be the one to tell you. That’s the thing about Slytherins, they just love to go out of their way to make people miserable. They’re so busy hating everyone else that you just have to hate them back.”
A sharp intake of breath came from the other side of the table, and all eyes swiveled toward Haley. “That’s a really horrible thing to say, though, don’t you think?” she said.
Eight pairs of bewildered eyes stared back at her.
“I mean, come on, if you hate Slytherins because you think they’re all prejudiced, doesn’t that make you the prejudiced one?” She let out an impatient sort of giggle. “If you expect them to be jerks, that’s what they’re going to be. All you need is love, you know?”
Her uncle shook his head in amazement. “Haley, is that really you in there?”
Haley rolled her eyes. Really, you’d think people would get used to the fact that she wasn’t a total idiot, wouldn’t you? Jordan may have gotten the lions’ share of brains in the family, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t left any for her. She was allowed to talk about things besides shoes and boys when she wanted to, wasn’t she?
“I mean,” she continued, “when people think about Gryffindors, they think about people like you, charging after the bad guys and kicking dark side backside. But most Gryffindors aren’t like that… everyone just thinks of them like that ‘cause you people are the most famous. So Voldemort and Grindelwald and Malfoy and stuff were the most famous Slytherins, but that’s just, like, a tiny bit out of the whole house.” She shrugged. “The kids who show off the most get noticed the most. You know, like me. No one notices the quiet kids in the back. Like what you said about Theo Nott.”
There was a silence as what she’d just said settled in.
“That was… really profound,” said Hermione at last, looking impressed.
“Really? Cool!” exclaimed Haley. “Awesome, I’m profound! Whatever that means!” She bounced up and down on her seat happily, but her smile slid off her face a moment later as she rememebered the issue at hand. “Uncle Ron, it’s like I just said, people like you and Uncle Harry are everyone’s idea of the ultimate good guy. You can’t go to jail.”
Ted nodded. “Yeah,” he said staunchly. “You’re like a living legend. They can’t put you in Azkaban.”
Ron smiled grimly. “I guess we’ll have to see in a week,” he said, “won’t we?” And with that, he got to his feet and wandered off to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. No one said anything about his addiction, or suggested that he drink pumpkin juice instead. They all knew he needed it.
Emma stayed at the table, pale and shaking, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. “It’s all my fault,” she whimpered softly, her pretty face twisted with self-disgust.
“What do you mean?” Ted asked gently, sitting down next to her and gently giving her a hug. “I bet your dad’s going to be okay. He’s a tough guy. And even if he does have to go to jail, that doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Emma snorted. “Shows how much you know.”
The words ‘tidy’ and ‘orderly’ did not do Jordan Potter’s bedroom justice. ‘Sterile’ would perhaps be a better word. Every surface was free of clutter, his clothes neatly folded and sorted according to type and colour (although nearly every garment was black, navy blue, or dark green), and the multitudinous books on the bookshelf lined up in much the same way. The bed was made, the desk was Spartan, and the windows were clean. A Beatles poster and a bulletin board full of awards and test scores were the only clues as to the person to whom this space belonged.
Jordan had always thought of his room as his sanctuary where he could be free from the mess and chaos outside of it and simply focus. But now, it felt stifling to him, almost a cell. The mess and the chaos weren’t just outside anymore. They were inside his mind as well, making him care too much about things that had never bothered him before. Why couldn’t he stop worrying about people he’d never know, places he’d never see, times that had no relevance to him? And why couldn’t there just be one thing in his room that could distract him from everything that was going on in his brain?
He hadn’t been to his room since winter holiday, only four months back in terms of time, but seemingly an eternity ago. At that point, he’d known he was a Seer, but hadn’t yet fully become one. He hadn’t had to “experience the past, predict the present, and remember the future.” He hadn’t had the burning urge to discover Telemency, hadn’t seen auras around everyone, hadn’t had to give up Quidditch. It was astonishing how quickly things changed.
There was a knock at the door, and Jordan let out a grudging, “Come in.” The door creaked open, and his father stepped into the room, taking a seat on the bed.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
“Hello,” Jordan replied, his voice tight. He hadn’t done anything wrong, so what could his father want?
Harry glanced around the dull bedroom. As it had nothing to spark interest in the way of interior decorating, the reason for these glances was probably just to avoid looking into his son’s eyes. They were such a dark, opaque green, and there was something unsettling about them, like bottomless pits.
“I just wanted to talk,” he said. “You wrote me letters about, er, being Merlin’s heir, and I haven’t seen you since before you turned seventeen. You can’t blame a dad for being curious about what you’re up to.” The person sitting next to him on the bed was his son. But lately, he was also a stranger, and that was an uncomfortable truth. Jordan and his father had never exactly been close, but things had been improving ever since Malfoy’s defeat… until now.
“I’ve gotten so weird, haven’t I?” Jordan said at last, turning to look at his father. “I know I have, because I can’t even tell the difference between what’s weird and what’s normal anymore.” He laughed humourlessly. “Ironic, isn’t it? I can remember places I’ve never been, people I’ve never met, but the one thing I can’t remember is how normal people think.”
Harry had to smile at this. “Jordan, you were never exactly normal before,” he said. “Or anything close to it.” If his son thought being normal meant having a pathologically clean bedroom, next to no imagination, and a total lack of interest in anyone but himself, then he must have had a seriously skewed perception of the world. But since when had anyone in the family been normal? They were wizards, for crying out loud.
“What is it like, being a Seer?” he asked. “I mean, no offense, but I never believed any of that stuff before, so I never paid any attention to it.”
“Neither did I,” Jordan said dryly. “It seems so...”
“Haley-ish?” supplied Harry with a smile.
“Yes! But… when it’s me, and I can feel all the pieces falling into place in my mind, it feels so perfect and everything makes so much sense. Visions… they’re not like normal thoughts. You can feel them, and...” He paused. How could he describe what it was like to be a Seer? It was confusing to grasp even for him, and he was one.
“It’s like my brain is full of files on everything. It’s a library card catalog. I don’t automatically know everything in those files, but if the time is right, it’s like I’m opening the file and reading it. If I didn’t know how to row a canoe and I was about to go over a waterfall, all of a sudden if I was lucky, I’d suddenly know things about canoeing that I’d never learned and remember canoeing trips that happened to other people as if I was here. And then sometimes I have visions, which are like having a dream, but it’s real and I’m there and… I can’t describe this at all.”
Jordan was not one to carry on lengthy conversations, but even if he didn’t want to admit it, he’d hoped to explain how it felt to be him to someone else. Words didn’t come close. He was so used to keeping everything inside him, convinced that emotions got in the way of rational thought, but since he’d turned seventeen, rational thinking might as well have gone out the window.
“It must be terrific, being a Seer,” stated Harry, looking somewhat out of his depth. “Half the time, I feel like I barely know anything. You’re lucky.”
“Oh, yes, it’s fantastic,” snapped Jordan, his voice cold and emotionless. His fingernails dug into his palms. “Ted talks about Superman sometimes… being a Seer is the opposite.” His young face contorted into a hardened, bitter mask, and he stared off into the air at nothing. “I can see so much, but I can’t do anything about it.”
If possible, his voice went even flatter and more expressionless, although if Harry didn’t know better, he would have sworn that Jordan sounded like he was dangerously close to tears. “Just today, a man in Bangladesh was eaten by a tiger. A woman from Hungary accidentally drove her car over the edge of a bridge. People in Darfur are being slaughtered everyday. A little three-year-old boy in Iowa was bludgeoned to death by his mentally disturbed mother. And I couldn’t do anything but watch.”
His eyes bored into Harry’s with almost painful intensity. Harry almost though he could see flames behind those eyes, that his son was burning from within. But the ageless knowledge in those eyes contrasted sharply with the rest of his expression. Frightened and helpless, he looked like a confused little boy.
“I see horrible things every day,” he whispered, looking away from his father at last and staring down at his knees. “It’s wonderful being a Seer, isn’t it, hearing people scream for help until they die while I can’t do anything about it at all. Just lovely.” He sighed. “And I thought the Pensieve was bad.”
Harry was truly, absolutely shocked. Being a father meant protecting his children from the terrifying, gruesome parts of life, shielding them from harm. The thought had never even crossed his mind that being a Seer meant that his already dark-minded and pessimistic son saw violence and atrocities everyday. He’d been through enough unpleasant experiences to know that they never left you, not really.
His first instinct was to hug his son and tell him that it was all right, just as he had done when Jordan was small and stubbed his toe or dropped his ice cream cone or had a bad dream, but he knew that it wouldn’t help. Jordan hated being touched; if anything, it would make him feel even more ill at ease. And it would be ridiculous to tell him that everything would be all right. Jordan was older and wiser now”wiser, as a matter of fact, than Harry in many ways”and he’d seen enough of the world to know that it was not an ‘all right’ place.
One of the boy’s sentences had stuck with him, though, and he turned to him and asked, “What do you mean, you thought the Pensieve was bad?”
Jordan was silent for a moment, lost in thought. Then at last, he said quietly, “You might as well know. You always told me never to go near the Pensieve you keep on your desk, but I was ten and hideously stupid, and I saw the final battle against Voldemort. Well, most of it, at least, right up until just after you defeated Voldemort.”
Harry gaped at his son. “You did this when you were ten?” he exclaimed, his voice breaking. “Of all the memories in there, you saw the Final Battle? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was the good one,” Jordan replied stiffly. “I didn’t break rules. If you found out I’d touched your Pensieve, you wouldn’t trust me anyore.”
“I told you not to go near the Pensieve because I didn’t want you to see anything that might disturb you. I… I can’t even talk about the Final Battle now, and it’s been over twenty years, not to mention I was already a fully grown wizard who had faced all kinds of awful situations by the time of the battle.” He shook his head in horrified awe. “You were just an innocent ten-year-old… I don’t even want to think about what something like that would do to you.”
He vaguely recollected the sudden change in his son in the year or so before he’d started at Hogwarts. One day, he was a bright and friendly, if rather socially inept, child, and the next, he was lashing out at everyone and hiding away in his room, talking in that flat monotone voice. At the time, he’d thought that his boy was suffering an early onset of adolescence, but now he knew better.
“Until then, I never actually realized what it meant when people called you a hero. I read to much for my own good, and I always imaged some kind of dramatic, strategic battle, not a… mad free-for-all.” He looked Harry in the eye again with that new intensity of his. “That was when I realized that I am never going to be like you. You’re the bravest person alive. I barely even made it into Gryffindor.”
Harry blinked. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I can see the Slytherin in you, too. You’re ambitious, and you do best alone. It’s not a crime.”
“How did you know I was almost put in Slytherin?” Jordan exclaimed, looking astonished and flustered. “I never said that!”
Harry laughed. There was something satisfying in catching Jordan off guard. “You might be the only Seer here, but I’m not completely dense. I’m your dad. I know you well enough to know that you’d do well in Slytherin.” He paused and added, “Of course, the hat wanted to put me there, too, you know.”
Jordan almost fell off of the bed, and it was a nice change to see the boy with all the answers so unnerved. “You? Slytherin?” he spluttered. “But you… how can… what?”
“The Sorting Hat saw that I had part of Voldemort in me,” he answered incredibly nonchalantly. Jordan felt quite certain that the name ‘Voldemort’ was never intended to be spoken so offhandedly. “But that wasn’t it. I do have Slytherin traits”let’s just say I’ve been called crafty before, and Snape was right about me…I’ve always seen rules as something for other people to worry about, I’m sorry to say. You should have seen me in school, I don’t think anyone’s ever managed to wriggle out of deserved punishment as much as I did… but I think both of us do better as Gryffindors, though.”
His voice became layered with significance. “That does mean you, too. You don’t need to have a half-suicidal saving people complex like I do”or like Ted does”to be brave.”
Jordan raised an eyebrow, ducking by habit just in case Haley was lurking behind him. “Dad, I don’t even know what I wanted when I was younger. Now that I think back, it seems… paradoxical. I wanted to be like you, to be brave and famous and successful, and I wanted to be as unlike you as possible and forge all of my own trails. I was just confused.” He paused. “I’m not like that anymore. Now all I want is to be normal.”
He seemed to have a knack for knowing all about everything except for himself. It always amazed Harry to hear how Jordan thought of himself. “You want to be normal? You don’t want to be Quidditch captain and have perfect pitch and a flawless memory and be on top of every class?” Harry asked gently.
“Those things are normal,” Jordan replied stiffly.
“Normal is what you make it,” said his dad, standing up. “I used to think it was normal to live in a cupboard and get beaten up everyday. Then I thought it was normal to wave around a stick and do magic and have everyone stare at my forehead all the time. I thought it was normal to be the only one to have the power to defeat Voldemort, for Godric’s sake. Now I think it’s normal to command Aurors and fight dark wizards every day and come home every night to sing the Happy Hippogriff song for Holly and Jonathan, with gestures. Seeing is just another talent. You’ll adjust to it.”
And with that, he closed the door and made his way back down to the kitchen. He had just coaxed more words and emotions out of Jordan in one go than he probably had in the last seven years combined. Feeling very accomplished, he went to make himself some tea.
Jordan might be immeasurably intelligent, he thought, but he still had so much to learn.
Meanwhile, Jordan leaned back on his bed and let his eyes close. He could feel a dream coming on, ‘that’ kind of dream, as he thought of them, and he knew by now that these things weren’t worth fighting against.
The public square was dirty, disease-ridden, and incomprehensibly smelly, and the same could be said of the people lining it. But as miserable and disgusting as they seemed, they clapped and cheered with such joy on their faces that it almost didn’t matter.
And standing in the middle of the ragged peasants was a tall, strapping boy in his mid-teens, holding a sword and wearing a truly bewildered expression. He sported a shaggy halo of fair curls, the tanned and muscular look of someone used to working many hours in the hot sun, and fluffy peach fuzz on his face that would make Tyrone Thomas proud.
“All hail the king! All hail the king!” someone began chanting, and before long, the chant spread throughout the crowd, growing louder and louder and stronger and stronger. “All hail the king! All hail the king!” As the chanting continued and the boy holding the sword’s pale blue eyes grew wider and wider, a figure made its way through the crowd.
It was a smallish and slightly-built young man in his twenties, and even in a crowd as large as this one, he stood out. While everyone else was dressed in dirty and dull-coloured tunics and tights, this man looked clean and healthy, and his tanned olive-coloured skin was smooth and clear. He wore immaculate floor-length deep purple robes, and his long dark hair was shiny and well-cared for.
“Arthur,” he said in a soft, low voice, stepping into the center of the square.
“I don’t know what happened!” exclaimed the boy holding the sword. “I needed to fetch a sword, and I saw one sticking out of a stone, so I pulled it out, and now everyone’s calling me the king. Merlin, I just don’t understand.”
Merlin shook his head slowly. “It’s destiny,” he said quietly. “No one but the future king could pull that sword out of the stone. You’re Arthur Pendragon!” His face split into a wide smile. He really was good-looking, especially for someone of his time, but the effect was rather spoiled by his eyes. They were full of battles and ghosts and mysteries, and they seemed not just to belong to him, but to all of history and things to come.
“Wait… I’m supposed to be the king now?” Arthur looked as though he’d just been told he was the Queen of Sheba. “Me?”
“Come with me,” Merlin said kindly, eyeing the crowds as he pulled the boy after him. Once they were out of earshot, he said, “I’ve known for ages that I’m meant to mentor and advise the future king, the one who will bring together all of Britain into the perfect kingdom, the one who would be a household name for millennia after his death and have stories and plays and songs and art made all about him. I just didn’t know it would be you!” He paused. “And from the look of things, you didn’t, either.”
“Of course I didn’t!” exclaimed Arthur, looking really confused. “How would I? I mean, you always talk about how it’s your job to help out the king… but I don’t know how to be king. I don’t even know what kings do! I’d be a nightmare!”
He sat down, cross-legged on the ground, and Merlin joined him, though he elected to sit on a rock rather than a patch of muddy, manure-strewn earth.
“Arthur, listen to me. You will be a phenomenal king. You’re brave, you’re open-minded, you don’t just think about yourself, and most important, you’re a good listener. You’d be surprised by how rare that is among people in power. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, just remember that I can always help you out.”
The boy scuffed his foot on the ground, kicking up dust and coating his foot with mud simultaneously. “But I’m not even a knight or anything. I don’t even have a horse. What am I supposed to do, skip around bashing two rocks together making ‘clop clop’ noises like all the little kids pretending to be knights?”
Merlin chuckled at the image of a king skipping around miming horseback riding. “Very dignified, that,” he said. “But listen to me.” His eyes turned even more serious than before, and he said, “A wise man once said, some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
“Who said that?” asked Arthur. “Other than you, I mean.”
“Someone from the future,” Merlin replied, shrugging. “But what it means is, you’ve got to adapt. And if you do well with what you’re given, you’ll be great.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to be king,” said Arthur, although his tone sounded more joking than sullen.
Merlin gave him a half-smile. “I haven’t always been a wizard, you know,” he told the boy. “Or a Seer. You can imagine my reaction when I found out I was.” His expression was reminiscent and faraway. “Everything we can do, we had to learn. Life’s about adapting. I haven’t always been able to walk or talk or read or milk goats or juggle five apples at once with my eyes closed.”
“You’re still kind of bad at that last one,” Arthur pointed out.
“Thank you for your support,” Merlin said dryly. “But listen, Arthur, you learn to get used to different things as you get older. Not everyone gets the chance to be great. You’ve just had greatness thrust upon you. I’m supposed to be your advisor and…” he grinned, “my advice is, go for it.”
Jordan’s eyes flew open, and the vision of Merlin melted away. But even if he could no longer see his face, he could still hear his quiet, encouraging voice ringing in his ears: Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Well, he reflected, there were worse things he could have thrust upon him.