Chapter 2.
In which Ginny is curious, Fred and George make a bomb, and Sauron just wants to be left alone.
Ginny came home to a complete mess... The Burrow was always messy, but this was simply complete destruction. She looked up with raised eyebrows. There was actually a hole in the house? Fred and George must have really gone too far this time… She heard her family, but didn't see them.
"Mom? Dad? Where are you?"
"They're upstairs, trying to ward the roof against the rain I think."
Ron was sitting on the couch, and Ginny opened her mouth in surprise.
"What happened? Did Fred and George do something? What did they do?"
Ron shook his head with a disbelieving grin.
"You won't believe it, but a naked dude fell straight through the house, right through our dinner table, and he barely had a scratch. He spoke some totally wacky language but Bill knew a translation spell for that. Oh, and apparently he's from another dimension, or something. He's also sleeping in your bed at the moment."
Ginny frowned at her brother.
"Ron, it's not funny!"
"I told you that you wouldn't believe it! It's true though. Mom had a bit of an interrogation session with him and we were all listening in through the hole, and that's what he said, more or less. And he's really sleeping in your bedroom, go check if you want to!"
Ginny ran to her room and threw the door open. She couldn't wait to have a reason to throw something at her annoyi… there was someone in her bed. There. Was. Someone. In. Her. Bed. She considered the possibility that Ron had spoken the truth after all. It was unlikely, but hey, there was someone in her bed, and there was a hole in the house, so maybe it wasn't entirely impossible. Carefully she approached the sleeping figure. He was somewhat curled up, and under a mop of thick black hair Ginny discerned a handsome but rather tormented looking face. He really looked as if he was most uncomfortable… She just wanted to step back when her eyes were drawn to the mysterious man's ear. It was pointy. Okay, so maybe Ron was telling the truth. She had never before seen anyone with ears like that… Instead of leaving the room, she went to sit on her desk chair and observed the sleeping man. After all, how many times did you find a guy from another dimension in your bed?
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The Weasley household was loud, but Sauron was exhausted enough to sleep in the middle of the ruckus… for a couple hours. His dreams were chaotic and filled with fire and pain and other unpleasant commodities, but it was rest, of some sort. Only when he relived being cast through the Door of Night and falling into the Void, he woke up with a start, a harsh curse escaping his lips.
Ginny had been watching the fitful sleep of the mystery visitor for a while already, when suddenly he shot up and yelled something foreign and quite possibly unpleasant, a haunted look in his eyes. He looked a bit like a threatened animal, she thought. The he caught sight of her, and the haunted-ness made place for suspicion and calculation.
"You must be Ginny."
He had a melodious voice with an accent she couldn't place, and under his scrutiny Ginny suddenly didn't know what to say.
"Err… Yeah. I'm Ginny. Who are you?"
"Sauron."
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It was bizarre to use that name and not see terror and fear in people's eyes, Sauron thought. He wasn't sure he liked it. The female named Ginny was young, although looks could be deceiving (he only needed a mirror to know that) and he had no idea of the longevity of these creatures. She stared at him with both curiosity and slight apprehension, and suddenly she blurted out,
"Ron said you're from another dimension."
"Another… dimension…" He hesitated a moment. "I suppose you could call it that."
Now her eyes widened.
"Oh… So it's true."
"Yes."
The girl obviously didn't really know what to say.
"Are… Are things very different in your world?"
What sort of question as that? Of course things were different! He was completely at loss with about three quarters of all things he had seen and heard of so far, and the things he did recognize were so warped that for all he knew they might have completely different purposes. He hadn't forgotten about the brooms… The irritation must be clear on his face, because Ginny looked a bit taken aback.
"I'm sorry if I offended you or something. I'm just curious. Are you a wizard?"
There was a strange and not entirely unamusing irony in the fact they kept asking him that. He slowly shook his head.
"It's difficult to explain. In my world "Wizard" is a title, a… job occupation of sorts. I am not a wizard among those terms. I am however of the same… species… as Wizards are. We are called Maiar."
"So… you can use magic?"
"I could. I don't know whether I can in this form. It's new to me."
The girl looked very excited now.
"You mean you can shift shapes, like an animagus?"
"What is an… animagus?"
"A wizard who can change himself into an animal."
"Not… really." Sauron remembered his animal transformations rather well… They also reminded him of another painful defeat. In a moment of dramatics he wondered if there was there anything left in the world that didn't somehow remind him of a painful defeat… He cleared his throat and said,
"It doesn't always happen entirely voluntary, and not all my forms have the same qualities. I don't always choose how I come to look."
This time he had gotten lucky concerning appearance… He hadn't thought that after Númenor he would ever get his good looks back… Not that looks were very important if you had power, but here in this unknown world not looking like a giant flaming eyeball was definitely a plus. Ginny was obviously confused. Good, Sauron thought, now I'm not the only one who's puzzled anymore.
"So, you're a Maiar?"
"Maia. Maiar is the plural."
"Oh. Right. What species live on your world?"
"Many. Too many to explain."
He didn't feel like talking about the species of Middle-Earth, because that would undoubtedly bring him on the subject of the Valar, or Eru forbid, Hobbits. The unexplainable anger was coming up again and he gritted his teeth…
"Your eyes become red when you're angry. You're angry, no?"
Sauron looked at Ginny and frowned. Such a telltale sign was no good; he had always liked to keep a stoic façade despite inner rage.
"Yes. Let's just say that not all species of my world are equally agreeable. I would prefer not to speak about them."
"Oh, okay. Sorry. Here the species thing isn't really complicated. We have Muggles, those are people who can't do magic, and Wizards, those are the people who can. And there are other creatures as well, like Merpeople, Centaurs, Goblins and House Elves and so on, but they're not that important."
"House Elves?"
"Really friendly little creatures who like to do house work and often work for a family to keep their house clean. Only very rich families have them though, and they're often not treated very well, a bit like slaves actually…"
Sauron tried to picture Elves doing housework. Elrond in an apron, trying to clean the halls of Barad-dûr, and Orcs tracking mud everywhere time after time again. It was a ridiculous notion… slightly amusing as well.
"How is your world ruled?"
He wanted to strangle Ginny, all of a sudden. His world should be ruled by him, would be ruled by him if not for those Hobbits!
"I do not want to talk about it. Speaking of my world brings back unpleasant memories."
"Oh… sorry again. I'm just curious, I don't mean to offend."
Sauron nodded and hoped she would leave. It wasn't that he didn't want to learn more about this new world, he did, but at the moment he required solitude. The little sleep he had gotten had helped against the worst exhaustion, but hadn't done anything for the general state of his mind. His head was a complete chaos and he didn't want to be around anyone until he had his thoughts under control again…
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Ginny decided that if Sauron's eyes only flamed red when he got angry, the guy definitely had an anger issue going on. They had barely spoken and he had already thrown her more than once a truly murderous look! She found him fascinating…
"You know; if you've slept enough you should meet the rest of the family."
"How large is this family of yours?"
"Well, there's me, I'm the youngest, and then Ron, Fred and George, Percy, Charlie and Bill. And our parents of course. Charlie isn't here, he's breeding and taming dragons in Romania."
She couldn't quite read the man's expression. It was a mix of surprise, despair, and the face you make when you smell something disgusting. Apparently he didn't exactly look forward to meeting her family… Trying not to feel insulted, Ginny said,
"You don't have to meet them now, you know. If you're still tired introductions surely can wait."
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Sauron wanted to moan… Nine red-haired, loud, chatty and Hobbit-like wizards in one rather small house? What a nightmare… Although one of them was apparently out taming dragons. He wondered whether dragons here were anything like dragons in Middle-Earth, but doubted it; somehow he couldn't really imagine one of the scrawny red-haired wizards taming a creature like Glaurung… He broke from his musings and addressed Ginny.
"I would like to rest a little longer."
"Sure, no problem. I'll be off."
And then, finally, Ginny left the room. Sauron lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, where a woman on a broom flew around in a large picture. He listened to the noises outside the room, and wondered how long his reprieve from these people would last…
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The reprieve didn't last long, as was to be expected. You couldn't really fall into someone's house, say you were coming from another world and then expect to be ignored completely until you've pulled your mind together again… Even though Sauron thought that a decade of non-Void-like solitude would probably do his messed up brain some good. Instead he got to meet the entire Weasley family, and they all wanted to know countless inane details about Middle-Earth, from food and sports to job opportunities and clothing. They were practically always around him, and when they did leave him alone for a moment there was always something or someone making a lot of noise to spoil the silence. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the house –or Burrow, as they called it- was dirty. Cluttered. Messy. Chaotic. Any adjective that described a state of complete disorder would do, and it irked him to no end.
Perhaps he was being ungrateful, after all he was out of the Void and back in a rather attractive body… but Sauron was slowly starting to think that this whole situation was just another punishment the Valar had thought out for him. He wouldn't put it past Námo to come up with something like this… Everything was strange and unusual, from their food to their brand of magic, and he couldn't even go to the toilet without being baffled by how they did things here. Most of the time he felt so confused that he couldn't sleep. The messiness of the house only made everything worse…
Most people wouldn't associate the likes of Sauron with orderliness, but they were wrong there. He was an organizational freak; nitpicking over details and making sure every single tiny microscopic little thing went according to plan was simply in his nature. Those skills had always served him well while planning for world domination...
He didn't care about esthetics too much, that was true, but he was partial to order and neatness. Sauron liked it when there was a plan. Preferably his plan, but on some occasions any plan would do. Living in the Burrow, which was inside and out a place without a plan, was even more of a nightmare than the Weasley family itself…
It didn't take long (only a week) before it got on his nerves too much and he decided to do something about it. Not being able to sleep, being surrounded by noise all the time and being cooped up in a small messy space with too many people had its effects after all, even on immortal Dark Lords… He began in Ginny's room; removing all the clutter from her floor, putting her clothes in the laundry basket, making her bed, placing all the papers on her desk in neat heaps, hanging all her posters straight, and ordering all the books in her bookcase according to the cover's color. He disliked the room, he disliked how cheery and light it was, but when it was orderly, being there was less unbearable.
From Ginny's room he went to the only other rooms he used in the house, the living and dining room. While the boys were upstairs, Arthur outside, Ginny at her friend's place and Molly in the kitchen, Sauron cleaned the house. He tried not to think about the humiliation of that, right now being in an orderly place was worth it. He didn't come close to tackling all of the clutter, but after three hours of shifting through stuff he had no idea what it was for, the living room looked less like a bomb had exploded there. Given its previous state, that was almost worth a little pride. Almost.
Unfortunately, Sauron had no idea that right above his head two redheads were actually working on a bomb. Technically it was just a potion for one of their joke products… until George decided to add a little too much erumpent horn powder to it. Sauron had just finished cleaning and was admiring his work when he heard yelling above him.
"WATCH OUT! IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE!"
Before he knew it, something that looked suspiciously much like one of Saruman's explosive devices tumbled through the hole in the ceiling. He jumped away behind the couch, right in time because the mysterious thing exploded and sent a magical shockwave through the ground floor, messing up everything including the shelves Sauron had so diligently sorted out. When he got up from his hiding place and saw what had been done, his already frayed nerves decided to short-circuit. A string of extremely foul expletives in Black Speech left his mouth at a volume that could contest with the Weasley Family as a whole. In a way it was worse than his punishment after losing Tol Sirion, it was worse than Númenor… Perhaps it was even worse than the Void. It was the ultimate proof that whatever he did, be it trying to rule a world or trying to clean a living room, there would always be something or someone thwarting his plans. He wasn't allowed even a single success; no matter what he undertook it would fail per definition. At that point, Sauron decided that there was nothing, nothing at all in the entire universe that he hated more than his own life...
(Author's Apologies)
To begin with: I am very sorry to whoever is offended at my canon mangling. Please express your harsh (yet very welcomed!) critics in a polite manner...
So, we have the first look at Sauron's messed up mind. He's a bit of a dramaqueen (A BIT? *coughs*). And... he's a little OCD. Just a little. Let's say that being around nothing at all for a hundred years has made him slightly oversensitive to clutter. Poor, poor Sauron, he doesn't know yet that cleaning up the Burrow is like Sisyphus pushing his rock up a hill; right when you think you're done, it all starts over... xD Oh, and before you ask, Sauron yelling in Black Speech means nothing good. (But you'll find out in the next chapter what exactly it does)
PLEASE REVIEW! I really, really want to know what you people think of this story... Any questions WILL be answered!