Chapter 7 - Revelations
A/N: So who saw it coming? Harry's still a Parselmouth for a reason after all...
It was Melkor who spied the rushing river, but Harry who shoved power into the spell. The waters had surged even higher than with the assistance they had already been given. The already magical waves gleefully pitched higher still on their approach. It was only towards the close that Harry felt speeding malevolence spring upon the spell. Before his eyes he watched the ice giant form, a familiar monstrosity which brought down its mace so brutally that it almost threw Harry from his horse from the resulting shockwave. Frodo had not fared as well, his head colliding painfully with Glorfindel's steed leaving him swaying blankly with Harry's hand in a death grip on his shoulder. The horse in turn, spooked and reared and Harry liberally splashed a Sticking spell onto the saddle. Its hooves hit the dirt moments after the destruction passed and Harry hesitated a brief glance back at the ruin Melkor had inflicted before he encouraged the horse back into a gallop. The ill feeling ebbed away and Harry slammed his mental gates shut. Water dripped from intangible walls as the horse raced away. Gotcha. Now doesn't that look familiar to what we saw in the elf's head? It wasn't so clear before with the crows. I know you were there; you just couldn't help yourself.
Indeed. Will I receive due apologies for your poor response to my warning? Smugness and pride traced the mental tones.
Nope. You didn't tell me anything I didn't already know when I made the arrangement. The only other person who tried that on before I ever opened my mouth was you, and look at how well that went.
Insolent as ever, I see. Amazing how he didn't receive the same response.
He was pretty obvious with his threats to be honest, none of this rubbish about me being given back my parents. It's also common sense not to piss off the ancient entity who can potentially mind rape me out of existence. I know this is news to you, but you can't threaten everyone into submission. I don't owe you anything and you know it. If anything, you owe me for your current state of being because I don't think you'd have very much enjoyed the alternative.
I shall remember this, Harry.
You do that, and keep in mind what happened last time you tried. Torturing me to death before murdering me can't really get any more creative on your part. Finding this out doesn't really change anything either. We're still in the arse end of nowhere with no prospect of leaving and I'm reduced to talking to you of all people. You. This bloke was around before his world was even made – there's not even a guarantee that this library will even have anything on a way to leave. Melkor spent Merlin knows how long imprisoned in that place. I'd be really surprised if he didn't know anything else about it. If anything, if he's as old as I think he is, the library will just confirm that he's the only accessible person who knows how to leave regardless of what he is.
Harry's mind went quiet, water streaming from the walls being the faint voice whispered again. So eager to return to a world neither of us favour...Have you considered that upon learning of our world he lost a great deal of interest in his own world?
Britain has stupid bureaucracy and functioning bathrooms, not irate gods who can think me out of existence. Ministry of Morons representatives I can handle. Demigods and gods less so. I'm just lucky that I have something that he wants enough to show some restraint otherwise I wouldn't have left there in one piece. Harry mentally shrugged. He won't be able to do anything in our world without a body. That's something you of all people should know from experience. With that, Harry punted the voice back into its solitary confinement on the second floor and sighed.
"I am surrounded by idiots."
Frodo turned and looked at Harry with bleary eyes, "I do hope that none of us are in such a category, Mister Harry."
"Not you. Strider though is a distinct possibility." Frodo's laughter was lost in the wind of the gallop.
"Feeling better, I hope? Those artefacts are hardly kind to the bearers."
"Somewhat. The Riders voices... you heard their speech. It was awful." Frodo shuddered at the memory of the pale men calling from across the stream. "You have seen such things before?"
"Unfortunately. I watched one strip the life out of a girl of eleven years once and walk away wearing her life force." Right before I stabbed the bloody thing out of existence with a giant snake fang. "I can only hope the one you bear has no such capacity." Because if it does, he thought into his own mind, I'll have no problem stabbing that one too. Frodo's face paled. "Attempt not to panic. I am hardly an expert and no doubt your companions can tell you more about its powers than me." Unless his wizard friend really is like Dumbledore thinks the "greater good" involves people running into heroics blind. Harry frowned. In his experience heroics tended to be more successful when the hero in question wasn't entirely clueless.
It wasn't too long before Harry saw the thin bridge and a sprawling house that vaguely reminded him of a place he had visited in Switzerland whilst on the run. Frodo's gasp of delight hearkened back to Harry's only crossing of the Black Lake. The house could hardly be called a house, but resembled more a mead hall from ages past crossed with a Muggle designer exclusive resort cottage. Walls of white stone gleamed warmly, with remarkably modern roof times emitting a sort of dull spark. Harry didn't need any sort of spectacular eyesight to pay attention to the far shinier armour of the elven guards who stood at attention at the end of the bridge they were now crossing. The elven steed ploughed clean across and came to a rest before a number of rather grim looking figures, pointed, smooth, short and tall and all covered in a haze of suspiciousness. Harry took special note of a grumpy old man in rough-spun grey robes and a floppy wizard hat who held out his staff is a most threatening way. Close by to him and flanking a dark haired elf was a familiar elven figure that almost made Harry jump. Harry sighed again, his stomach growling somewhat irritably. Frodo once again laughed at him before turning to the welcome party.
"Gandalf!" Frodo cried joyously. Harry dismounted smoothly and, resisting the urge to cringe at the ache in his rear, lifted Frodo from the saddle and placed him upon the ground. Frodo positively bounced up the path and threw himself into the old man's arms. "You are well! We feared the worst upon Weathertop, but it is so good to see you safe."
Harry approached with far more caution, this time not bothering with any attempt at dignity. "Would a pint be available at this current point in time? Having fled for our lives from a swath of the undead I think a drink at this point in time is well warranted." Two of the stouter figures openly wielding axes guffawed at his suggestion.
A rather lordly dark haired elf blinked at Harry while Frodo turned to Gandalf. "Gandalf, this is Harry. He prevented my wounding upon Weathertop and ensured that I reached here safely. He offered to ride with me."
"Did he now?" Gandalf and the elf exchanged looks of significance. In the immediate aftermath Harry felt a presence lurk towards his mental gate and quite cheerfully provided what he had felt for the first and last time he and Ron had gone on a pub crawl.
"Yes. He is also standing before you and would like to request that any suspicions of less than pure intent be dealt with swiftly so he may closer inspect the elven wine stores." Harry rose an eyebrow.
Wine, honestly?
Did I ask for your opinion? I'll take disapproval for being drunk over suspicion for being too alert.
"Well, at least you are open about your desires. This way if you will, Harry." Harry snorted, watched another elf pull away the horse and hobbled along after the rest of Frodo's new found and rather quiet entourage.
Much to Harry's lack of surprise there was no aftermath where he was left dangling from a ceiling while clapped in irons. They would wait for Strider and the rest of the hobbits to arrive and question them on his trustworthiness all the while Harry was tailed by the guards. He had instead been led to a hall where a respectable amount of roast game and salad had been set out along what was a generous amount of wine. Harry ate little, the food rubbing coarsely along his tongue. With some difficulty he swallowed the small amount he had loaded onto his plate. He practically inhaled the wine, but only a portion of it reached his stomach for the rest had Vanished while being rolled around his mouth. He supposed that some with more refined palates who regularly had their taste buds seared off with alcohol would call it fruity, but after his seventh goblet he was starting to think his would never recover. He steadfastly ignored the looks and laughter he heard from the down the table, staring intently into his goblet. It was also while drinking the seventh that the goblet happily enough slipped from his hand and doused his robes. Seventh time lucky, Harry staggered magnificently back out the hall, singing drunkenly the entire time with a pair of frazzled looking guards hurriedly chasing after him. As they helped him towards a room Harry latched on, met one's eyes and allowed himself to be led away all the while the library's location etched itself into his mind. An hour after they had set him down he disappeared as surely as his wine.
Convincing. It's almost as though you drew upon years of experience.
Yeah, yours. The only gem out of your head that I'll ever truly treasure.
Secreted between filled shelves Harry prised open the nearest thing he could find to a summarised world history. He hummed his way through through the opening pages on Eä and its inception and it wasn't long before Harry saw Melkor's name glinting darkly on the page, numerous elegant notes cramped strategically into the corners of the tome. The volume reminded him of Hermione's manuscripts before her work for the Ministry ate away at whatever time she had left. The greatest of the Ainur, stronger than the rest combined... with loner tendencies, resourcefulness, a need to create, pride and a complete disregard for the established order of things. Isn't that familiar. The Ainulindalë spelt out the world's inception and following it Melkor's desire to see it end after railing against his assigned purpose. The book continued and before too long Melkor had been renamed Morgoth and claimed his role as enemy of all existence after almost being eaten by what was undoubtably an Acromantula.
He's Satan.
Indeed.
We don't know how much juice he has apart from him having less than before. Explains why he denied Morgoth's existence though. He didn't exactly agree to the name change.
Yes.
He's pissed off.
No doubt.
Goody.
Harry continued skimming through the great tome, lingering on another name, Sauron servant of Aulë the Smith, constructor of the vessels which carried the sun and moon uninterrupted around the world through the Void after Morgoth had flattened the Trees. Harry groaned, his head dropping to the table.
Oh, you're bloody kidding me.
You flew directly past your salvation. How skilful.
I don't think Melkor knows about it either otherwise he probably would've offered to make one.
This means that Mairon is the new Dark Lord and is theoretically the only one capable of constructing the vessel as of yet. This was hissed with some distaste.
You're just jealous because he's running the place and you're not. Harry mentally flicked the other voice. But, just about. The meeting they're having in the next couple of days is about the ring. The Council of Elrond is where they're going to talk about Sauron and presumably the piece of him that's wedged in the thing. What is it with Dark Lords and rings? Couldn't you just take a pebble and drop it into the ocean somewhere? Harry's comment was met with a sneer followed by silence. Harry concluded his reading and set about achieving his main objective for the wee hours of the morning.
"Caw."
"Come out of hiding have you?" Harry glared at the jet black raven which was hunched over on the stone counter of the Homely House's kitchen. Harry's stomach twinged when he thought of the foods offered by the elves in the feasting halls. His taste buds had just about rebelled at the flavourless food offered after having spent many a day prancing through the wilderness with a pack of murderous wraiths chasing him. Harry shuddered as an image of unseasoned meat roasted to charcoal appeared over a camp fire while two hobbits sheepishly looked on. All the while he thought his hands darted across the counter for more coarse flour which he threw across the bench as he continued to knead.
"Caw."
"Are you going to say something or not?" Harry slapped down the dough a little too vigorously and it began to take shape the shape of a circle.
"Caw." Harry glared at the Melkor as the ex-Dark Lord's mind was shut behind foreboding gates of black steel.
"Fine. No Earth food for you then."
"Caw?" Harry snorted and reached for his bowl of tomato sauce which had been haphazardly flung together using a number of the kitchen's stores as well as some herbs he had pilfered from a garden. The cheese had been similarly sourced and whatever fish he had managed to snatch from the nearby water with liberal Summoning Charms had tasted edible enough on his dry run of roasting it with salt. Without caring for placement he piled toppings generously onto his base, before turning and roughly shoving it into the nearby wood fired oven. He cleaned off his hands with a Vanishing Charm and flicked his wand in the direction of the oven.
Melkor twitched and Harry pointed sharply at the bird. "If you burn that, you can kiss our deal goodbye and go back to languishing on your rock for another few thousand years."
"For a pastry?" Melkor deadpanned.
"I've done stranger things for worse reasons." Harry shrugged. "Nice of you to start speaking again."
"The guards are watching us." The bird shifted from foot to foot.
"There's a Muffling Charm on the room. The only thing they'll hear is some indistinct bird noises followed by me apparently abusing a brain dead chicken."
Melkor snorted. "So you know."
"The library was informative in more ways than one." Harry reached for another set of ingredients. "I'm amazed that you really were meant to be the bringer of sunshine and fun times. I thought you were joking."
"And the attempted destruction of the world and its Peoples?"
"You already told me about it when we first met, remember? Not really surprising, but it's not like I had a pile of options of people to ask about it until I got here. The scale is more than I thought it would be, puts you about equal with Satan." Melkor quirked an invisible eyebrow. "Originator of all evil, basically turned the world into a steaming dung pile and made people like Rita Skeeter. Great bloke, you'd love him."
"Yet you are still in my presence and do not appear overly perturbed."
"Technically, you're in my presence; I was in this kitchen long before you flew in regardless of you literally being in everything." Harry gestured sharply at Melkor with his spoon. "Secondly, I've had a maniac Dark Lord just about stalking me since I was a year old. He might not have been quite at your level, but he was every bit as capable of blasting me out of existence as you were." Harry watched Melkor freeze, his eyes marginally widening. "Oh yes, I mean were because you already had most of your powers torn out from you when you bled them into this dump to begin with. Not only that but your spirit was sealed on that rock, nothing else. You're just a wraith. Even Sauron has more meat to him at the moment than you do."
Melkor hissed, "I am more than capable of-"
"-No you're not. If you did you would've kicked in his front door and kicked him off the throne that he stole out from under you the moment I showed you what was in that elf's head. You're literally a shadow of what you used to be because you shoved your soul into everything not nailed down. I'd flatten you at the moment and you know it. You realised as much as I did that Fiendfyre burns through souls just as easily as it does metal." Melkor had inflated, his feathers ruffling outwards. "Plus, most importantly, I have something that you want which means that even if you did have your powers that you can't do anything unless you want to damage the goods. Emphasis on you, as in you're screwed if you try it on."
The crow deflated abruptly and looked away. "Indeed."
"Yeah, so here's what we're going to do – you're going to shut up, you're going to eat the pizza and you're going to enjoy it. While you do that, I'll be trying to convince you that helping these guys blow Sauron off the face of the planet is a bad idea and how we need his help for the foreseeable future." Melkor's sigh was decidedly uncrow-like. "Tell me about it. I had just about the same response when I realised that we should've just stolen the ship we flew past, conked the spirit with a Stunner, and Charmed the fruit to keep going."
"Truly."
"Pretty much, minus actual ship stealing. Duplication Charm would've worked just as well."
"This is undignified."
"You're sitting in an elvish kitchen, eating a recipe from another planet while in the form of a crow. I really don't think recruiting someone else to do the heavy lifting for us is undignified in comparison to everything else going on. We haven't had dignity since we arrived." Harry was again pointing his favoured spoon at the resident crow.
"Requesting assistance from a being far my inferior is beyond insulting."
"Requesting? You're the incarnation of Satan, how many times did people request that you do anything exactly?"
"They did not. They chained me into place and forced me into action."
"So what makes you think that Mairon will be getting off any easier?" The new-found gleam in Melkor's eyes told Harry everything he needed to know. "You want him to suffer for what he did, you know, taking your job-"Melkor twitched "-taking your army, trying to take your identity and pretend that he's actually you reborn."
Melkor squawked indignantly. "He did what?!"
"See, you're agreeing and we haven't even touched the pizza yet."
Melkor was again ruffling his feathers. "You still seem to not care a whit about this world and what will happen with my exposure."
"I'm taking out two Dark Lords for the price of one. I normally charge for this service you know. I get the feeling that I'm actually helping the situation already."
"How many Dark Lords does your world contain for it be a service?"
"Not enough to incentivize competent politicians otherwise they wouldn't need to pay me." Melkor beat his wings and sailed back onto Harry's shoulder.
"So you intend to do what now?"
"Find out what they're doing with Mairon first at the meeting they're having. We can work out how we can strong-arm him from there, but that ring is probably going to be the feature piece if I know my Dark Lords."
"Ah, I see. You had best scout the most appealing shrub at the meeting and make it comfortable for an extended duration. I need no such thing."
"Cushioning Charms were made for bush reconnaissance, just like Invisibility Cloaks. I'm guessing that they can't see you?"
"Not with the body you bestowed upon me. The Cloak offers much the same protection."
Harry smirked. "Great, then you get to camp in the garden with me." Melkor's glare burnt into Harry's back right up until the moment where Harry pried open his beak and stuffed a slice of his cookery clean into it. Gagging, Melkor fell from his perch and with some effort managed to swallow. Without further ado, he blew past Harry's face, collected what was left and sailed clean out the window into the night sky. Harry shrugged and shoved his next creation into the oven. I'll take that as a yes.
Were you not the one who said that you cannot force every issue?
I didn't ask for your commentary.