Story Setup (if you haven't read parts 1 and 2 please read this):
I recommend reading the first two parts of this series before this one, however it is not necessary. For anyone starting with this one, here is a summary of the setup from the previous stories: The first story begins after season 4 episode 7 (The Secret Sharer) so the end of season 4 and season 5 from the show have not happened in this timeline. Arthur and Gwen know about Merlin. Everyone else in Camelot knows that a sorcerer named Emrys has a secret identity and lives in the castle and that he saved Arthur and Camelot twice. When Merlin appears as Emrys, he wears a cloak that is enchanted so that his face is always hidden in shadows, his voice is changed, and the cloak cannot be removed by anyone but himself.

Chapter 1 – The Laundry

Merlin looked at Arthur's nice clean socks that he had just spent the past hour washing. They were perfectly white. So clean. Too clean.

Merlin dumped them onto the floor and ground them around with the bottom of his boots until they were covered in dirt. He grinned and dumped the filthy socks back into the washing basin. That should keep him here for a while longer.

Merlin was halfway through washing the socks a second time when the door opened and a red-haired maid entered carrying a basket of clothes.

Finally, Merlin thought to himself. He was starting to think he would have to wash the socks a third time.

If he had known that she wouldn't be here until this late he would have spent more time in the library this morning. However, having completed his self-assigned work in the library, he had decided not to hang around in case he was questioned, as he so often was, as to what a servant was doing spending so much time looking at books. Still, it would have been better than repeatedly washing the same socks.

He had started doing the washing earlier than he had planned, considering that providing Arthur with clean socks was not his main objective for being here. His task in the library had taken less time than he had thought it would, since Geoffrey de Monmouth had been asleep at his desk so there had been no one around to observe as Merlin had magically inserted several new pages into several key history books.

"Hi, Lydia," he said casually.

"Hey, Merlin," she said, sitting next to him and piling some clothes from her basket into a washing basin beside his, "still washing King Arthur's socks? You're usually done by now."

"Yeah, he went trampling through the forest yesterday and took his boots off. It took me ages to do just that one pair. He's always so fussy about there being even a speck of dirt on them when I give them back to him and yet he doesn't care about walking around in socks caked in dirt when he's already wearing them."

Lydia leaned in towards Merlin, a gleam in her eyes, and asked, "And what was the king doing out in the forest with no boots on? Was the queen out there with him? You must have heard about Sir Ector and the lady Trianna. I daresay he came back to Camelot with dirty socks after that little escapade. You must know better than anyone what the king and queen get up to on their little jaunts into the forest."

Merlin suppressed a grin, she had given him the perfect segue into the topic that he had been hanging around to discuss. Lydia was the biggest gossip in the castle and anything she heard was certain to be general knowledge throughout Camelot within days. Merlin had used this to his advantage on several previous occasions. It was especially easy for him, since she was always so interested in everything he had to say given his proximity to the castle's favourite topics for gossip, including the king and queen themselves. This time he was going to have to be particularly cautious though, because he would rather not have this rumor traced back to him.

"No, Gwen wasn't there. He was out hunting with me and he took his boots off because he thought it would help him walk more quietly to sneak up on animals. It didn't help though, since he missed the deer by a mile. I'm pretty sure his no-boots thing backfired and the deer heard him sneaking around, but he claims that it was the sun gleaming off of the sword in the stone that blinded him and caused him to miss."

"The sword in the stone?" asked Lydia, sounding curious.

"Oh you know, the sword in the stone, everyone's been talking about it," Merlin said with a calculated air of casualness.

"Of course," said Lydia hurriedly, "I was just wondering why the king was hunting in that area."

Merlin concentrated on looking down at the socks he was scrubbing for a moment to make sure Lydia did not detect any sign of the victorious grin that was threatening to cross his face. Lydia prided herself on always being the first to know everything in Camelot. She would never admit now that this was the first time she was hearing about the sword in the stone.

"Well, we were in the forest of Ascetir and Arthur was determined to get off the trails and start shooting things as fast as possible. And if you leave the trail after the first thicket and stick to the low ground so the animals can't see you, you're pretty much guaranteed to stumble through the sword's clearing at some point."

"Naturally," she said as though she had been there herself. "I just thought it was unusual to be hunting in a clearing. Especially that clearing."

Merlin had to give credit to her acting skills and her ability to pick up on details and probe for more without sounding like she wasn't privy to the information herself.

"Yeah it does rather ruin the sense of ceremony," he said, enjoying the look on her face as she drank in his every word, "but he probably hasn't even read the legends. History never was his strong point."

"Have you read them?"

"I went to the library and skimmed through the version in The History of the Kings of Camelot when I heard people talking about it just to see what it was all about. Pretty neat stuff."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I was just saying to Mildred," replied Lydia happily.

Merlin could practically hear her mentally planning her own covert trip to the library. Lydia was one of the few servants in the castle who could read, although she kept that particular talent a secret from almost everyone. It was very advantageous to a gossip if nobles took no pains to hide confidential papers while she was around because they were under the assumption that she couldn't read them. Merlin was pretty sure she had picked up the skill so quickly simply due to the time she spent snooping through her mistress' papers.

He tossed the last sock into the pile of clean clothes and said, "Looks like I'm done. Have fun with your washing."

As he left the room he finally allowed a grin to spread across his face. It was nice to occasionally plan ahead and he had just planted a seed that he was certain would be invaluable one day.

For now, Merlin returned to Arthur's chambers, dumped the basket of socks on the table and sat down to write Arthur's speech for an upcoming feast.

He had only gotten through the introduction when Arthur came in covered in sweat and panting.

"Hard training session was it?" Merlin asked.

"The knights needed it. They're getting lazy," Arthur said as he dumped his armor in a pile on the floor.

Then he saw the basket of clean socks sitting on the table.

"Oh good, you did my socks. These ones are disgusting."

Arthur pulled off the socks he was wearing and chucked them at Merlin, who had glanced down at the speech at just the wrong moment and received a face full of sweaty sock.

"Uck," Arthur cried, as he picked up a sock from the pile and dropped it immediately. "These are all wet!"

Merlin, who was currently wiping Arthur's foot-sweat off of his face with his sleeve, was less than sympathetic.

"Well I just washed them!"

"And you couldn't have dried them?!"

"I was going to do it later."

"Well do it now! I need socks!"

"Well you'll just have to do without for a while. It will be several hours until they are dry even after I hang them out."

"Then just dry them using…" Arthur paused to look round to make sure that they were alone before finishing that sentence, but instead of saying the word he had been intending to, he gave a surprised yelp of, "Guinevere!"

Merlin looked over. Gwen was standing in the doorway, giving Arthur a rather disapproving look.

She shut the door.

"Were you about to ask Merlin to use magic to dry your socks?"

"Uhm," said Arthur, looking like he didn't know what the right answer to that question was.

Gwen sighed, "Really Arthur, don't you think that it is unfair?"

Arthur looked really confused and Merlin was glad because that meant that he wasn't the only one who didn't know what she was talking about. He didn't understand why Gwen was suddenly averse to him drying Arthur's socks with magic. Sure it was illegal and most people were terrified of sorcery, but Gwen had accepted Merlin for who he was and what he could do. It wouldn't be the first time he had used magic in front of her and she had never objected before. Besides, she had called it "unfair", which was a strange word to use. Did she think it was unfair to other people who had to wait for their socks to dry the slow way?

"How is it unfair?" asked Arthur, mirroring Merlin's thoughts.

"Well he is a powerful sorcerer, and you just have him washing your socks."

Merlin blinked. She thought it was unfair to him?

Arthur looked at Merlin, who looked back and shook his head slightly to indicate that he didn't understand what Gwen was on about either.

"Well that is his job," Arthur said reasonably.

"Don't you think that maybe he deserves better than being a servant?"

Merlin had never thought of that. And from the look of it neither had Arthur. Merlin was Arthur's servant. He just was.

Arthur was looking at Merlin as though he was seeing him for the first time.

"Um, I don't mind," said Merlin sheepishly. He was a little unnerved by the look Arthur was giving him.

"I could make him one of my councillors," suggested Arthur.

That did not sound like much of a promotion to Merlin.

"What?! I don't want to have to sit through all your council sessions and discuss regulations and taxes and other bureaucracy with old men!"

"Not even if you were appointed Court Sorcerer?" Arthur asked shrewdly.

That gave Merlin pause. The idea of doing magic being his actual job was thrilling, even if the thought of being widely known as a sorcerer made the part of him that had been taught secrecy since birth want to run and hide. It wasn't as if he had never imagined such a thing before, but it had always been a far off dream. To hear Arthur actually say it filled him with excitement. However, there was one rather major thing that Arthur seemed to be forgetting.

"You should probably legalize magic first," Merlin pointed out.

Arthur did not look dissuaded. In fact he was looking suddenly quite excited about something.

"I've just had an idea," he said.

Arthur started pacing back and forth, clearly thinking very hard about something.

"Well," prodded Merlin, wondering if Arthur was actually planning to share this idea of his.

When Arthur did not immediately reply and continued pacing and thinking, Merlin had to suppress the urge to point out how long it was taking for Arthur to have a single idea. It was tempting, but they were talking about legalizing magic and Merlin didn't want to distract Arthur from the topic.

There had been a time when Merlin had hardly dared to hope that Arthur would still consider him a friend when he found out who he really was. And now, not only had Arthur accepted him in spite of his magic, he had fully embraced that side of Merlin and was nearly as enthusiastic as Merlin himself in the cause of ending the persecution of magic users. Merlin couldn't help smiling as he remembered how much things had changed.

"We need to make people see that magic is not evil," Arthur said at last.

Merlin would have thought that much was obvious. Was that Arthur's brilliant breakthrough? Changing the laws was only made difficult by the hatred and fear of magic that plagued the kingdom. Changing the laws suddenly in the current climate would cause panic and possibly rebellion. If they could make people learn to trust magic, legalizing it would be simple. It was doing it that was the problem.

"We need to give them an example of a good sorcerer," Arthur continued.

"Like who?"

Arthur and Gwen both stared at Merlin and he suddenly understood what Arthur was implying.

"What?" Merlin choked. "You can't tell them about me!"

"Not you," Arthur said, "Emrys. The people already know that there is a sorcerer in disguise living in the castle. And they know that you saved me from Rothgard and broke Morgana's curse. If Emrys was to appear again and people started to realize that he is on our side, they might not be so frightened of magic as a whole."

"It is a good idea," Gwen said, catching on to Arthur's excitement. "People are afraid of the unknown. If they see Emrys and get to know him it would change everything."

Merlin stared at his two friends. He could not deny that it was a good idea, but the thought of playing such a public role was currently making his stomach turn. He would never have thought of such a plan himself – he was too used to working under the assumption that his involvement would be only in the shadows. But he had always had faith in Arthur's ability to rule Camelot however he wanted, including legalizing magic. And here he was, offering Merlin the opportunity to help make that possible.

"Can you do it?" asked Arthur.

This was probably his best chance to make people see that magic can be used for good. He simply couldn't refuse.

"I'll get the cloak," he said cheekily.

Notes

This story features a wider range of POVs than my previous ones with only just over half of the chapters being Arthur's POV. It just worked out better for this story that way. I love using Arthur to react to everything but this time the story I wanted to tell would have been impossible to write entirely from Arthur's POV.

I'm so sorry that it took well over 3 years for me to finally finish this story. It got shelved a lot of the time but I was determined to never abandon it. I feel bad for any original readers of my story for making you all wait so long. Everything is written now and I'm just doing a final read-through chapter by chapter. I'll try to get it all uploaded quickly. This story is the conclusion to my trilogy so I promise there will be no more waiting.