Author's Note: Hi everyone! This is a plot bunny that's been floating around my head for awhile that I finally got the inspiration to write. I'm playing around with a mix of myth, history, Google Translate, show, books, and a whole bunch of my imagination so let me know what you think. As always I own nothing, anything familiar belongs to the lovely JK Rowling and the creators of Merlin.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Chapter One: The Crystal Prison

Morgana glared at the crystal walls that had encircled her for the last millennia. Merlin had done his warding well, too well for her tastes. He'd spelled her in the Crystal Caves until there came a time where she felt true remorse for her actions and repented. Forced to watch her past over and over again as she stayed trapped in the cave, all the years of the world passing her by, leaving her untouched, a frozen memory in a glass case. She'd long since repented for her actions that caused the fall of Camelot and Arthur's death, but Merlin was trickier than she had imagined.

Running a hand along her current scrying crystal she remembered that moment when she'd fallen to her knees watching her brethren persecuted by muggles, burned at the stake and chased into hiding in the 1600's. She'd begged whoever was listening to let her out, so she could help. Not by killing, but by using her skills to enshroud the magical community in wards so tight they would never be hurt again. But even as she felt that desire to help, felt her old self, the self that had befriended a young serving boy and fought beside him and her brother and her servant for the love of Camelot return, she couldn't break free from her prison. Realization settled in then, that Merlin had been pushed too far to hope for her redemption alone, he never expected her to succeed, he never expected her to be able to leave.

Sorrow gripped her, and she wept for ages, the world's progress a minor footnote amongst her grief. She lived a half life even more than before as she drifted as a shade along her cage barely cognizant of the changes happening in the outside world until one night in 1938, when the present finally gripped her tight. She'd been going through the motions of preparing a sleeping draught for her nightmares when images of violent persecution, so reminiscent of the Purge during her childhood in Camelot shocked her out of her stupor. Windows were shattered as people were hustled into the streets, their faces wan and drawn out in terror as they were ushered into lines. Businesses were ransacked, and family homes demolished, all for the issue of race, of religion, of something so strange, so alien and yet so familiar. Morgana glared at the images of this night and the subsequent acts of terror, this Kristallnacht led by the words of a man so like Uther in his vehement hatred that she couldn't ignore the world anymore.

When she turned to the magical world, to the communities that had been slowly flourishing and failing in their isolated bubbles she was again disgusted. Gellert Grindelwald had a good idea, to bring about an age of no fear, of no persecution, but his rampant violence and idealized subjugation of the muggles made her heart break. It was like looking into a mirror, a male counterpart a thousand years after her, making all the same mistakes she made, but without the Merlin there to stop him at every turn. She was on the edge, teetering between that line between madness and sanity she'd ridden so hard in her times at Camelot before she ran off with Morgause and sealed her fate, her inability to aid those dying in pain from persecution of those who had no real reason to do so beyond arrogance making her mind ache.

Watching Grindelwald burn his way through Europe she alternated her watch between his path of destruction and the slow rise of Albus Dumbledore, his former lover, to fame and glory. Once she might have equated Dumbledore to Merlin, his power and thirst for knowledge much like her former rival, but his manipulations and unwillingness to see people as they were, flaws and all, made him too dangerous. Merlin for all his faults, cared about the small people and cared about how his actions affected those around him. Though she still held anger in her heart for his betrayal in not confiding his powers to her when she needed him most, she knew he did it out of fear, not out of a desire to use her ignorance. Seeing Dumbledore skirt around the political field, teach his students with heavy prejudice against Slytherin's, and frown upon Tom Riddle she knew he could never be the Merlin to Grindelwald' s Morgana, not truly anyway.

On the fateful day when the former lovers battled it out and Dumbledore succeeded in winning the Deathstick, Morgana swore. Her colorful vocabulary gained from spending so much time with Arthur in her youth wide and vast. Dumbledore was cemented as a saint and hero amongst the magical world, and with the Deathstick in his grasp he was nearly as powerful as her or Merlin. Though he couldn't practice the Old Religion, his power was immense, though his young rival Tom Riddle was quickly reaching his level through a deep immersion in the 'dark arts'. She let herself breathe for a bit after Grindelwald' s defeat as the world began to stabilize, magic creeping back into the physical realm.

Morgana scoffed at Dumbledore's disdain for what he labeled dark. Magic was about intent, the Old Religion was sentient as it was magic itself, life everlasting, but this new form that wizards and witches possessed was so watered down and filtered through their little sticks that their minds were the main focus of power, making intent so important for their spell work. Though she did agree with his disgust on Riddle's methods, horcruxes were incredibly unstable pieces of magic, chipping away at the soul, the source of magic and balance in nature was not only ridiculously dangerous, but also absurd, there were other, easier paths of immortality he could have taken. Watching the newly minted Order of the Phoenix fight Riddle's Death Eaters, she felt the urge to act consume her again.

And on October 31, 1981 when Riddle went to Godric's Hollow to fulfill his pathetic little prophecy by killing Harry James Potter, something changed. Watching the red-eyed wizard stalk through the house after quickly killing James Potter, Morgana felt her magic bubble and writhe within her, that pathetic excuse for a wizard she'd once pitied was going to kill a child, a baby, an innocent. As Lily Potter begged for her son's life, Morgana pushed at the boundaries of her prison, begging it to let her magic out if it couldn't let her out to save the woman, to save her son. A flash of green flushed across the crystal and Lily Potter fell. Snarling Morgana let loose a torrent of fire as Riddle turned towards the defenseless child. Flames curled and licked at the translucent crystals surrounding her, cracking the fragile rocks into shards, melting them down with their heat. Another flash of blinding green crossed the surface of the crystal before her. Riddle fell to the ground, leaving a crying and scarred, but alive Harry Potter. A bleeding lightning bolt, the ancient rune Sowilo cut into his forehead. Morgana felt something shudder through her as the crying child seemed to look up and catch her gaze with his, deep, killing curse emerald eyes met pale jade, and something deep within the Crystal Caves began to crack open.