A/N: I actually enjoyed writing this chapter. It came much easier than the previous few, as the update time probably attests.


The Shadow of Angmar

Chapter 10: Until At Last the Light Kindled Anew

"You see, the stone wishes to be cut, to bear what burden it can. Formed at the beginning of all things its purpose is to hold up the world, the very bones of the earth. Men may simply pile stone upon stone and that gets the job done, more often than not, but a true Dwarvish mason can make the stone sing with a silent voice."

Harry sat in the untidy workshop of Lofar, the Master Mason of Ironhaunt. His eyes followed the the motions of the gray-haired Lofar and he listened with rapt attention as the Mason described some little of what he had learned in long years at his craft.

"There is a life in stone, as in all things, and it wishes to be part of something great, as all do," Lofar continued in his quiet, breathy voice. "A stone formed and shaped with care and appreciation, then placed into a great pillar within the tallest Hall of Ironhaunt will be stronger than any soulless brick made by Men."

"How is that possible?" asked Harry when Lofar returned to his careful chiselling of the milky white stone before him. Small clouds of dust rose from where the chisel smote the stone. "Surely stone is stone?"

"Stone is stone, this is true," accepted gnarled old Mason. "But a Dwarf is a Dwarf, and Man is Man yet you would not say that all Men, or Dwarves, are the same. Some among us are stronger, some wiser, some the greater craftsmen. Each is formed by experience and their home, their kin, into the Man or Dwarf they are. Should you wish to create a great Hall of Kings then you would not ask the Warrior to build it, would you? Each stone has a purpose, a place, and a meaning that escapes most Men."

Harry sat quietly for a time in the corner of the old Mason's workshop. There was something in his craftsmanship that spoke to Harry on a level he did not quite understand. The intensity, and the ability to see something invisible to anyone felt familiar to Harry, like he'd seen it before somewhere else, a world away.

He had found Lofar's workshop a few weeks previously as he had been walking the many halls of Ironhaunt lost in thought and reminiscence. He had found himself without much purpose since his coming to Ironhaunt. Though the Lord of Ub-khûn had marched upon some of the minor holds and quarries to the east of Ironhaunt the forces of the Dwarves, under the guidance of Saruman, had been more than a match for them. Never had Ironhaunt been threatened, and none had sought to call for Harry to aid them. It was for the best, for there was little aid he could give in his weakness, and his nature would not have allowed him to flee from such a request had it been made in earnest.

Perhaps it would have gone otherwise, had the plains of Rhûn not chewed up every army sent there in Khamûl's wrath, no battles had been fought and yet crows and vultures surely feasted upon those who had died upon the winter plains of Rhûn.

The rhythmic tapping and clanking sound of the workshop filtered through Harry's senses, and soothed his nerves, though he could not have explained why. It was akin to listening to the rain outside on a winter's day while he sat warm before the fire in the Gryffindor common room. More than that, though, Old Lofar was always interesting to listen to as he told old legends of the first origins of the Dwarves and other tales perhaps even older.

It was a large chamber with high, rough-cut ceiling. It was no great Hall like the great entry-way or the Dumu Zirin-Aklum where King Ginnar made his throne, it was a place of workmen and every feature spoke of a craftsman's eye for pragmatic design. The benches were made of worn wood; dark, heavy and deeply scored by the stones and varied tools that had come and gone across their surfaces. The room was lit by many oil lamps and two whole walls had been given to sturdy shelves upon which many fine examples of stonework rested. Milky white stones sat next to brooding black, each carved with such precision that they looked more like they'd been carefully grown in some strange garden rather than sculpted from formless rock.

At a few of the benches Lofar's apprentices worked. Some were young Dwarves, barely twenty years old and others were much older. Harry had not yet gained the eye to really differentiate between Dwarves based on their age, but the shorter beards of those younger ones was always a clear indication; the long waxed creations of the elder Dwarves was similarly telling.

"Is that true for other materials?" Harry asked after enjoying the busy hush for a few minutes.

The old Dwarf looked up from his work for a moment and shrugged. "Perhaps. But I do not have the experience to say. You would be best asking a smith that, my boy."

Harry wondered if perhaps it was true for all things. Perhaps that was what he'd been missing in his potion-craft, the personal touch. "So, what is it you look for that tells you what a stone is best suited to?"

The rhythmic tapping stopped once again and Lofar straightened up, a frown over his features. "Now, that is a question I've never been called upon to answer," he admitted as he leaned back against the stone he'd been working on. "I haven't thought on such things since I was a journeyman. It would be like trying to explain the feeling of air on my skin, or the taste of water upon my tongue. It just is. As you may recognise the brave or the cowardly by the sight of them alone, by the light in their eyes or the set of their stance, so too can I see the same in any stone brought before me."

Lofar turned a calculating eye towards the white stone he's been working on and tipped his head to the side. "When I look at this I see the pure white of the limestone; it lends the stone purpose, but makes it fragile, hard but prone to shatter in stress. I see the unbroken seam of quartz that runs through it like a back-bone; strong if used well, but a source of weakness if ignored, and beautiful if coaxed to the surface. There are tiny darker flecks deeper within the stone, small creatures from ages past locked in time; a temperament well suited to detail and intricate carvings. Then I also know where this stone came from, within the core of an ancient stalagmite in one of the deepest caves of these mountains; it is a living stone, the heart of something that once grew and so it yearns to be again."

He looked back at Harry and he caressed the stone with his free hand, sending up another small cloud of pale white powder, he rubbed the fine talc between his fingers thoughtfully. "And so it will become a grand keystone, there is much work yet to be done but it will be the most integral and more intricate part of the entry-arch of the new halls being opened up below the twenty-third level."

Lofar returned to his work then, and Harry did not question him further. Instead, Harry thought upon the words and thoughts that the old craftsman had spoken.

It was, in its own way, a little like the lessons Uda had tried to teach him, months ago when he'd been travelling with the Rethlapa. After spending much time deep in thought surrounded by the comforting industriousness of the workshop, he bid Lofar an absent-minded farewell and drifted through the corridors of Ironhaunt in the direction of his room.

He tried to remember Uda's words. He hadn't thought of them much since he'd left the Rethlapa, they had seemed a wisdom for which he had little need. He had still been clinging to the hope that he'd be able to return home quickly. It was now clear that that was a fool's hope.

She had said that things were unimportant; that it was people who truly decided the importance of things. Yet here was Lofar saying something that was almost the exact opposite; that even rock had a personality of sorts, and that all he was doing was seeing through to that when he formed the stone.

He paused in his wandering, and he heard an annoyed grumble from a Dwarf who'd been walking behind him and been caught unawares by his sudden halt. Harry ignored him and turned around, his new destination was another one that had become familiar to him.

The Sakdîth Bazzun had become another home away from home. The huge chamber was filled with the quiet sounds of life; the faint rustle of trees, the subtle buzzing of insects and the distant bubble of streams. It reminded Harry just a little of the times at Hogwarts when he and Hermione and Ron would sit upon the banks of the Lake and talk about childish nothings.

It helped him think. Sometimes, if he listened very carefully, he could even hear Hermione's suggestions and Ron's joking quips, nearly lost against the busy hush of nature.

He sat beside one of the streams that criss-crossed the cavern and trailed one hand through the water, and his eyes looked out sightlessly across the gardens of Ironhaunt.

There was something in Lofar's words that rang true, yet still what Uda had said to him of her view of things seemed to him to be just as truthful. Was it Lofar's impression of the stone that gave it its personality? He felt that was what Uda would have said. Or was Lofar really seeing the truth of things, that a personality existed within even rock and that only an old stonemason like Lofar was able to read it?

He remembered who Lofar had reminded him of in that moment as he had lovingly caressed the stone and explained its origins. Ollivander had had the ability to see more in his wands than Harry had ever thought possible; he had been able to see not just personality but emotion. He had listened to the wands and heard their voice, the lightest of caresses had told him their mood. He could even read some vague impression of the future in the matching of a wand and a wizard.

Harry lay back upon the sandy shore of the stream and looked upwards at the streams of light cascading through the mirrored skylights above. Great tunnels through the stone to the sky above, lined with silvered steel and iron to channel the light towards the Gardens.

He did not doubt that there was something more than met the eye in a wand, some magic that could masquerade as life in the right circumstances. He smiled briefly as he remembered Mr. Weasleys old Ford Anglia and the seeming sentience gifted it by the combined magic of the charms that had granted it flight and so many other things.

A wand was magical, so having some semblance of a personality shouldn't be of any surprise, really. But what of a stone? What of the plants, the earth, even the air he breathed? Could those be granted the same qualities, even in the absence of magic?

There had been a constricting evil to all things in Carn Dûm. Even after his release the leaden sky had turned over a land thick with suffering and pain. It was hard to imagine that such things could not have an effect on the earth or the air of such a place.

The great wood into which he had briefly ventured in the early days of his travels had contained a seething malice. The very trees themselves had seemed to reach towards the sky, the sun, in the hope of snuffing it out and of plunging the earth below into an eternal dusk.

And the woods of the Elves had held a sorrow and a beauty beyond anything he'd known. Merely sitting out at night and gazing up at the stars had left him touched by the exquisite melancholy, a wistfulness shared in by those Elves who lived there. In truth, Harry could not work out which had come first. Had the long years of loss and woe brought the Elves to the very precipice of despair, and so too brought low their home or had their home felt each loss as keenly as any Man might? Could a place really have that kind of connection with the people who inhabited it?

He remembered other places: Hogwarts, the Burrow, Grimmauld Place, even Privet Drive. Some had delighted in being full, while others had railed against it. There was no doubt in his mind that it had been Grimmauld Place that had imposed such dark thoughts upon those who'd been forced to stay there; for how could it not? How many centuries had it been the home of the Black family, so joyless and arrogant? For how long had that seeped into the very bricks and mortar of the building?

Hogwarts had been built for children, and to the soul purpose of learning. The love of it, and the love of childish curiosity was as old as the castle itself. Surely it had been the founders themselves that had instilled that into its very fabric. Or perhaps they were merely a part of the whole. Experience was, after-all, as much formation as was creation.

He sat up again and found himself gazing blindly into the ever-shifting waters. Then what of his own creations, what would he instill within them?

Fear, self-loathing, weakness. Rage. The weight of the wand at his wrist seemed to increase and he pulled it out. Dark red and brown and black, all colours he did not doubt would fit him now.

Perhaps Lofar was right, and Uda too. Objects did have a personality imbued within them by the manner of their creation and the wear imposed upon them across their existence. The wand he'd made would surely have disgusted Ollivander for far more reasons than the crude attempt at craftsmanship. He would have been able to see Harry at his lowest in the wood, and he would have been able to hear his distant tortured screams in its voice. He would have felt the scars that covered Harry's body as he touched the wood.

Slowly, Harry held his wand between his two hands and stared at it. He'd said to Saruman that he wouldn't look in the mirror until his wounds were healed but looking at his wand was little different, he realised. They were born of the same suffering, the same need, and the same dread. His own blood gave it power and it remembered all the times it had been spilled. Saruman had been right in his assessment of the wand.

How stupid had he been? How blinded by desperation and hubris? Ollivander would surely have told him that a wand was no mere tool, indeed Harry himself had known it, once. He could remember the feeling when he'd first grasped his holly wand, the unshakeable knowledge that he had found some part of himself long lost. A wand was not a hammer, or any other implement. It had chosen him, and if he was to create any wand that would be useful he must listen to the old wandcrafter's words. The wand chooses the Wizard, and that choice cannot be rushed.

In a moment he grasped the wood and heaved, it snapped easily and with the brittle crack of dead wood. He dropped the two halves into the stream and watched as they flowed away.

His eyes refocused on the smooth waters of the stream and he saw there his reflection, blurred by the imperfect surface. In that face, faded and obscured, he could almost believe he saw himself whole again.

o-o

Romestámo stroked his beard thoughtfully as he looked at Harry. Harry and he were sitting outside the upper gates of Ironhaunt, looking out over the woods to the south-west. The sun descended slowly below the distant horizon and shades of red and orange spilled across all the land before them. Summer was coming again to Middle-earth after a long and cold winter.

"Perhaps in your deep research of Saruman's lore you have read of the Elvish legend of the Music?" he asked at last, his dark eyes bright as he considered Harry's words. "Their myth describing the creation of the world and all things within it?"

It was vaguely familiar to Harry but he could not place the memory. He shook his head, and the pleased light faded just slightly from Romestámo's eyes in disappointment. "It is a long tale," Romestámo said. "And not one you should be told by me, it is something you should experience for yourself. But there is perhaps something of that tale in what you say; a fire that burns in the heart of all things, but which is that much brighter in the heart that beats the tune of life."

"So you say I am right in my thoughts?" Harry said, a rare broad and triumphant smile spreading across his features.

Romestámo waved his hands quellingly, "I can say no such thing, as you know, for it is not for me to pass on such secrets to the minds of mortals. But there is perhaps something in them, an aspect, perhaps, of the truth of which the myth of the Music is but another."

Harry's smile faded only slightly, "So you say that I have some part of the truth, an edge or a corner, but I have not yet seen it in full."

Romestámo laughed suddenly and joyously. "I had forgotten how clear-sighted you could be when talking of the nature of things," he admitted. "You must present Saruman with an unusual challenge in your conversations."

"In truth we talk rarely," Harry admitted. "He is often busy in council with King Ginnar or the Lords of the lesser holds and when he comes to me to speak I fear that I do little more than bore him. He offers few words that are of real use, in any case; all riddles, smoke and mirrors."

"Saruman sees much and hears more," said Romestámo as he ran worn fingers through his heavy beard. "I have a love of words, as you may have noticed, but Saruman is a little different. He sees to the core of things much clearer than I, or even Morinehtar. I would not doubt that he knows what you wish to say before you have finished offering him greeting."

"It seems a lonely life," Harry said suddenly. "Sorry, I do not know where that came from."

"Do not apologise," said Romestámo as he leaned across to pat Harry on the shoulder. "Do I fear it is only the truth you speak. Even among our order, Saruman is Wise, the solitude of responsibility is a great burden to bear. I am glad I have Morinehtar, and he me, it is too easy to lose your way when you walk a path alone."

Romestámo shook his head, as if to drive such thoughts away, and stood and the deepening gloom. "But listen to me, an old man's fears I think. Of all of us, it was Saruman who was best suited to our task for he knows the designs of the Enemy better than any other could hope. Worry not for him, my boy, instead worry for yourself and do not forget the goal which you set yourself."

"I fear that as the days and months pass me by that my goal becomes ever more distant, " Harry admitted as he pushed himself to his feet and they both began walking towards the narrow door from which they'd come.

"That is because you look always to the past," said Romestámo as he led the way through the high tunnels of Ironhaunt. "Even when looking forward you see only a past that is older than it is now. When you think on your quest you do not see only how far you have come, not how far you have yet to travel. If you did, I think you would find yourself closer than you were when first I met you."

"It eases my mind to hear you say that," Harry said quietly. "Even if I am not sure I am ready to believe it."

"Then prove it," said Romestámo firmly. "Apply what you have learned in the last months to your craft, fix that which you have so long desired to fix. I think you now have the understanding to do so, if you but take the time that it will require."

o-o

Harry stared steadily at the potion before him. It was a strange concoction; one he never would have thought possible. Another winter had come and gone, and the new summer even now waned towards autumn. He had lost count of the ingredients he had added, and the steps he had taken in their preparation.

The effort had surely been worth it though. He could feel the nature of the potion before him as surely as Lofar could sense the nature of a stone; Uda, a Man; or Ollivander, a wand.

He smiled, and it was a true smile, for he knew that it would be the last smile that would display his suffering openly to the world.

Saruman sat in the room, his gaze sharp as he leaned heavily upon his dark staff. He had not spoken for some time, but Harry could sense the naked interest and even excitement in seeing the fruition of Harry's labours.

For Harry's labours had been long indeed. It was a potion unlike any he had before created or even read of during his time at Hogwarts.

While he had been able to find a great number of possible ingredients within the subterranean gardens of Ironhaunt he had soon found them to be much too singular in essence; each had been cultivated in the same place and in the same conditions and so even though they had different qualities due to the nature of their species their individual 'personalities', such as they were, were too similar to work with. That had, perhaps, been one of the problems he'd encountered with his last such attempt so many months ago.

So he had looked further afield. Romestámo and Morinehtar had brought him a few items which he had assayed for some time before incorporating but a few into his final brew. The true prize, though, had been a single tooth from a fire-drake of the north which Harry had immediately seized upon. He had sensed in it power and majesty long lost, something that was achingly familiar.

The strangeness of the potion came from the last set of ingredients, though. He had taken to spending even more time in Lofar's workshop and had questioned the Dwarf and his apprentices on every little thing. He had collected a few offcuts, some dust and even one or two discarded experiments and they had found their way into the potion.

Harry would be hard pressed to explain his thought process to anyone who asked. Much like Lofar found it hard to explain what he saw in the stones he worked on from morning until evening. There had been few words involved in his thoughts, instead it had been more like impression and emotion given voice within his mind. Each ingredient spoke to him in a language he could not fathom which nonetheless gifted him an understanding of the meaning, like a parent interpreting the babblings of a child. Each item had brought some new aspect to the potion though he might not know now what it was, and now that all had at last been taken together there was but one final thing to do.

Harry met Saruman's eyes one final time. "Well, I think I have delayed enough. It is time at last," he said with a grin, then he threw his head back and swallowed the potion in a single gulp.

As was so often the case it tasted foul. But there was just the slightest hint there of the hope he had for it; a slight taste and texture of toothpaste.

He sat down across from Saruman and waited.

"Fascinating," said Saruman, his heavy-lidded eyes still not leaving Harry's face.

"What is it?" Harry asked warily. "What is it you see?"

"Do you not feel anything?" Saruman said as he leaned even further forward. "Do you not see it?" He stood up and walked across to where Harry was sitting and looked him up and down. He raised his hand and mumbled quietly to himself in the language Harry had heard before from Morinehtar and him.

"I don't feel any different," said Harry. He remembered the sensation of regrowing the bones in his arm, he'd felt nothing. He ran his tongue over his broken teeth. He stilled.

Saruman smiled thinly behind his dark, silver-flecked beard. "Then you have noticed the meanest of the changes wrought. It will be some time, I think, before you understand what else you have done."

Harry jumped to his feet and darted across the room to where the mirror hung still concealed by a lint-covered sheet. He whipped the sheet off in a cloud of dust and stared at the face he'd long hidden away from.

His hair was as he remembered it from before his coming to Middle-earth. The scars so faded that had he not known of them he would probably have missed them completely. The gaunt look that he had never quite completely shaken was gone completely, replaced by an old familiar face.

Most strikingly, though, his teeth were returned, and he hadn't even felt it. He'd imagined before taking the potion that it would feel strange, that being without so many for so long would make his mouth feel insufferably full when they returned, but it was not. Everything simply felt right.

He looked to Saruman, who was now standing in the middle of the room, still smiling at Harry in a way that was almost grandfatherly.

"How?" Harry managed to ask.

Saruman chuckled, a rare sound and all the more valued for its scarcity. "You would ask me, when it was you who created that concoction?"

"My teeth, I understand. But my hair, my face? How is this possible?"

Saruman shook his head and his long dark hair rippled in the lamp-light. "Those are as they have been for months," he said. "Did I not tell you that you would not find that which you feared in a mere mirror?"

"I did not see it before," said Saruman as he looked Harry over again, his eyes glittered in calculation. "Blinded, perhaps, by the shade that hung across you. Now though, it is lifted at least in part, though there is yet more to be found."

But Harry paid his words little heed, and he was instead overjoyed by the results of his long labour. He did not notice Saruman leave.

o-o

"It is time for me to leave," said Harry as he stood before the throne of King Ginnar of Ironhaunt. Beside the king Saruman stood silent as he watched Harry from behind dark eyes. "Thanks to you and your people I have found much which I thought lost, but there is still more to find. It is time that I took my search abroad and into the world."

"It is yet late winter," said Ginnar, his thick brows bent in a frown. "The plains of Rhûn are treacherous for a man alone at this time of year. Would you not consider staying a while longer?"

"You are kind to offer me this," he said, but he knew that the relationship he and Ginnar had shared was distant at best, it had been rarely indeed that Harry had been called to his presence. In truth, Harry felt Ginnar would be glad to see him gone from his halls. "But as homely as your halls are, they are not my home; and as friendly as your people are, they are not the friends of my old life."

"To be parted from your people and your home for so long is no small torture," Ginnar allowed. "Yet still I find myself uneasy with this course of action. Though the armies of Ub-khun have broken themselves against the teeth of those plains there are still those who would do you harm."

"I will not travel West," said Harry. "I will travel North."

"To what purpose would you travel there?" asked Saruman from his place beside Ginnar. "The mountains to the North of here are no kind foes. You have found some portion of your old strength here, but your seed is but barely germinated into newest green shoots, and even the hardiest of late winter flowers may be killed by a heavy frost."

"I will travel the trade-road north to the Stiffbeard holds where I hope to learn more of the fire-drakes that troubled them in years past," said Harry and a hush fell over the crowd of dwarves who had until then been paying Harry's audience with the king little heed.

"You would seek out the fire-drakes?" asked Ginnar in poorly masked horror. "Those beasts have so ravaged the Dwarven holds since the elder days and yet you would go willingly in search of their fiery maws?"

"No." Harry shook his head firmly. "For I know I have not the power to contest with such creatures, but I wish to learn more of them as theirs is a power that may aid me in my bid to return to my true home."

"A quest for power is a dangerous thing, only to be undertaken by those wise of the pitfalls a mind may take in its pursuit," said Saruman, his eyes sharp. "Even so, I will not argue against it in this instance for what you seek in truth is knowledge, I think. For the power that you see in them is your own already, if still out of your reach."

Ginnar looked at Saruman for a long moment before returning his gaze to Harry. "Then I also will not speak against this folly," he said reluctantly. "Though I should ask that you at least await the next trading convoy and travel to the northern holds among them. The mountains in winter are no safe place, even now that Ub-khûn writhes in its last throes."

Harry bowed to the king and decided to accept the logic of his request. "Then I shall await the next convoy," he allowed. "Then I shall travel North, and when I leave I will leave behind my blessing for all you have done for me here."

With a nod from Ginnar, the audience was over. Harry made his way through the crowds of Dwarves towards the outer tunnels where his cell could be found. There was much preparation to be done, and many farewells to make. Before he got far, however, he was halted by Saruman's melodious voice.

"Do you recall what I told you when first we met?"

"I recall you saying a great many things," Harry said as he turned to greet the elder Wizard. "Which of those would you want me to remember?"

"I told you that fear was no crime, nor was it any shame," said Saruman as he stood in front of Harry. "Now I will tell you that bravery is no glory by itself. Blind bravery is as destructive as blind fear."

"I do not plan to do anything stupid," Harry said firmly. "I won't go hunting for dragons, of that you may be assured."

"Do not try to pull the wool over my eyes with your words, carefully crafted as they may be," said Saruman, and Harry was reminded of the power that Saruman wielded as the White Wizard. "You will not hunt them, but you hope, perhaps, that they will find you. That by some twisted happy accident you will come into conflict with one, that the dragon will choose to come to you."

During the months Harry had spent in Ironhaunt he had occasionally discussed what little he knew of wandlore with Saruman, it should have been no surprise that he had made the connection.

"It will happen," said Harry deliberately, "or it will not. Such things as these I cannot control, nor will I even try, I have learned that much from you at least. You know, even better than I, that the drakes of the north have slumbered for long years. I am no more likely to meet one in the north than I am to meet an eastern worm should I stay here."

"If that is what you have learned then it was not from me," said Saruman. "Instead, I think you learned something else from me, but you must remember that no words, no matter how careful or powerful can blind my sight, for in this I am the master. You may lie to yourself if you would wish, but you cannot lie so easily to me."

Harry bit down on the retort that he knew would otherwise have come, he stepped back. "Perhaps you are right. I would not have our parting be on a sour note, you have helped me much in these lasts months."

As suddenly as it had appeared, Saruman's wroth subsided. "I do not know how you came to be here, nor why it was allowed, but for what little such mere words are worth, I think I will in time be glad that you and I have met."

It was a statement that was so very unlike Saruman that for a moment Harry did not comprehend his meaning, and by the time he had Saruman has swept off, back towards his familiar spot at the side of King Ginnar. A small smile grew upon Harry's face and remained there throughout his walk back to his cell.

o-o

By a happy coincidence Buri's son, Onar was to travel north with the next caravan too, so Harry would not be entirely without familiar company, even if he did not know the young Dwarf as well as some others. It was not uncommon for young Dwarves to wander for a time between the clans of the eastern mountains, before returning home to make use of all they had learned.

Harry was checking his pack, for Lofar had gifted him a collection of small vials of flawless quartz glass and he wished to ensure that no harm would befall them during their journey northwards.

"I have been remiss," said a deep and familiar voice. Harry looked up to see Saruman standing close-by, flanked by Lofar and another Dwarf Harry recognised as one of the apprentice smiths alongside Onar.

Harry looked between the towering figure of Saruman and the two Dwarves. Saruman was clad as he always was, all in pure white and with his dark staff in hand. The apprentice, though, was carrying a long object wrapped in heavy fabric.

"A Wizard you are, though perhaps Istari you are not," said Saruman before Harry could frame his question. "And, as the leader of our order, it falls to me to recognise your nature."

The Dwarf stepped forward and held out the object in both his hands. Harry reached out and took it as realisation slowly dawned.

"A gift?" Harry asked as he felt the hard body of a staff beneath the fabric.

"You are a Wizard, and yet you have no staff," said Saruman simply. "Such craft is not the way of the Dwarves, despite their mastery of most."

Harry slowly unwrapped the gift in his hands until he revealed a staff unlike any he had before seen.

"It is made of stone?" he asked as he looked over it. Surely it should be too heavy and too fragile; it was no thicker than his wrist and was near as tall as he was. Thin strands of metal weaved around the smooth black stone, as if it had been captured in a spider's web. It as not straight, and in places curved and bulged like warped glass. Points of light shone like stars in the dark stone.

He hefted it in his hands and realised that it weighed less even than the wooden staff he'd carried during his time upon the plains of Rhûn. "How is this possible?"

Lofar had a proud glint in his eye as he spoke. "I have told you that stone has a purpose only it knows until it is formed by the stonemason," he said. "When I first laid eyes upon this I saw a strange purpose indeed. It is an old lava-pipe and the stone of its core is pumice; light, but brittle. The outer surface is the pipe itself, basalt, though I have worked it to be much thinner to save the weight."

"But will it not break and shatter as soon as I am forced to employ it in my defence?" Harry asked as he turned the object over in his hands again and again. Something in the mixture of rough stone and smooth metal felt more like magic than his own failed attempt at a wand.

"It would," said Saruman. "Had only Dwarves had a hand in its craft. But I think you will find that it will be as strong and unyielding as the mountains from which it was birthed."

Harry looked up. "But I cannot accept this," he said as he tried to hand it back to the apprentice who'd passed it to him. "I am no Wizard, I am still but a shadow of what I once was, for me to carry this, it is an insult to your order."

"Any man may carry a staff," said Saruman and Harry almost immediately felt a child for his attempt to turn down such a simple gift. He looked back at the beautiful inlaying.

"But this is no simple staff," he contested. "It is a work of craft and beauty and you yourself said it was a Wizard's staff."

"If it is a Wizard's staff then that is only because it is a Wizard that bears it," Saruman reminded him. "There is no power in it, save the knowledge of craft that will keep it from breaking when pressed to use."

It was always difficult to wrangle at words with Saruman, for he'd been a master of them longer than Harry thought he would ever know. He decided to accept defeat gracefully.

"You have my thanks," he said as he set the staff at his side, the metal-clad base ringing upon the stone like a clear bell. He grasped each Dwarf firmly in the way of their people, and bowed his head to Saruman.

"You have learned our lessons, I think," said Saruman as the leader of the Dwarvish caravan called out for everyone to make ready to leave and the gates began to sweep slowly open. "I trust you will remember them."

"I will," said Harry as he brushed his hand up and down the smooth surface. He nodded one final time then turned to leave. He stepped out into the late winter snows and felt the winds swirl about him, but he did not feel the cold.


A/N: Well, as I said, I rather enjoyed writing this chapter. I've seen a few reviews complaining about the amount of introspective 'crap' in the story. Sadly, this portion of the story is a very interior one, and Harry has not really been in a position to take part in any exciting action set-pieces. My concern with this chapter was the beginning of the slightly larger timeskips that are going to be a necessity in a story that is to span more than 1000 years (though the first portion of the story will only span about 6-7 years).

Also, thanks to everyone who told me about the chap who decided to post the first chapter of this story. Seems a strange choice to me, but there you go. He was disappeared fairly toot-sweet and so I probably have all of you who reported him to thank for that.

I don't think there's anything here that needs to be explained that hasn't already been mentioned in my notes. So, until next time.