Sorry I haven't updated for a couple of days, it's just that these people who call themselves teachers keep following me around giving me homework. You'd think I was at school or something… Anyway, I think this'll be the last chapter of this particular fanfic, but don't worry. I have more ideas. Very evil ideas.

AN: This is the epilogue chapter in which I sort everything out (almost) and you finally get to read about the Fellowship being drunk! There's other stuff too of course. But to find out, read on and get ready for the gripping finale of How to teach a Dwarf to Swim…And other things. Oh and there's a bit of suggested slash in this chapter. Sorry, it wouldn't have been funny otherwise.

Cheers! enelya

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"Breaking up is never easy I know but I haaaaaaaaaaaave tooooooooo goooooooooo…"

Aragorn was singing ABBA, with Gandalf on harmonies and both of them doing very…interesting dance moves. Frodo and Sam were sitting in a small ocean of dippy birds, laughing hysterically with phrases in between along the lines of "Bird gosup, bird gosdown, bird gosup…" etc. Legolas was sprawled on the couch with a bucket of dippy bird vodka, dipping the TV remote control into the vodka and then licking it to catch the drops. Which was a very stupid thing to do, even considering how drunk he was. But then again, Legolas was an elf. Gimli was sitting in front of the TV, sobbing and laughing appropriately at the soapie he was watching. 'Days of Our Lives', to be more specific.

And Merry and Pippin. What can I say about Merry and Pippin? (Except the obvious, quite a lot of which is meaningless fangirl jabber.) They could still be under the pile of steadily-decreasing plastic One Rings for all the rest of the Fellowship cared (steadily-decreasing because Frodo had a strong craving for gum). They were in fact still under the pile of plastic rings, although quite a lot of boxes had been shoved off them when Aragorn pushed through the mess to get at his beer.

Several hours passed, in which the singing got steadily worse, the talking less intelligible, and the dippy bird supplies lower. By then they were all sitting on the floor (with the exception of Frodo— you'll understand once you read the next bit), swaying quite a lot and singing, although 'strangling cats' would have been a better description.

"Stand by yooooooouur maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan…"

"Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii want caaaaaaaaaaaanndy…"

"Ain't no mountain hiiiiiiiiiigh enooooough…"

"Cos I'm strooooooonger than yesterdaaaaaaay…"

And so on.

Frodo suddenly appeared out of the hobbits' bedroom, trailing a quilt behind him. "Hey Aragorn, come'n taste t'quilt, s'nice!" He giggled insanely.

Aragorn licked it. "Mmmmmm, quilt!" He and Frodo looked at each other and started laughing very, very hard. Swaying slightly, they both disappeared back into the bedroom, trailing the quilt behind them.

Gandalf watched them go, and in a moment of near-soberness remembered that he'd soaked that particular quilt in aphrodisiacs a while back. He almost thought he should tell them, but then went back to being his perverted and evil self, and thought that it would be very interesting to see how things turned out for them.

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The Morning After the Night Before:

Legolas woke up very slowly, and wished he hadn't. The TV was blaring and the sound was giving him a splitting headache. He groped around for the remote, found it, and pressed the off button. The noise thankfully stopped.

It was understandable that he felt like shit. Elves and alcohol have never mixed well, and the amount of vodka he'd consumed had turned him into something very un-Elvish. He hoped desperately that Galadriel, Haldir, Glorfindel, any other elves or anyone else for that matter didn't choose today to renew old ties and come to visit. What he needed was some nice herbal tea. He lurched to his feet, stepped shakily over Sam, Gandalf and Gimli who were fast asleep on the floor, pushed open the door to the kitchen and was confronted with the sight of what had once been the kitchen table. The damage had been bad enough last night, but it was somehow made quite a lot worse in the relative morning light. It didn't make it any better for Legolas when he heard groans and saw movement under the boxes that told the elf that Merry and Pippin were still alive.

A burst of swearing echoed through the house.

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After a few days the Fellowship recovered enough to consider themselves fully functional, well, to be more specific the most functional they got while they were all still part of the Fellowship. Physically at least. Being mentally functional was another matter altogether.

Gimli, Sam and Frodo now viewed swimming as the best invention since food and air, and as a result they talked about swimming non-stop. Many of these discussions took place around the dinner table, where after the first three nights Aragorn, Legolas, Merry and Pippin were careful not to mention the words 'water', 'swimming', 'pool' and possibly 'lifeguard' (Gandalf ate in the lounge room so he could watch the TV, and soon they felt like joining him even though it meant having to put up with endless repeats of various cop shows). Needless to say this arrangement had interesting results whenever they had curry in the next few weeks. Which, since Frodo had spent a lot of time in India over the course of history, was quite often. This went on for a few weeks until the rest of the household thought if they ever heard the word 'swimming' again they were going to go crazy.

Legolas was in deep psychological torment. In trying to get away from water in all shapes, words and forms he hadn't had a bath or shower for three days, as well as not washing his hair for a week. Such an act was absolute torture for the Elvish part of his brain, which argued that not having a shower at least once a day was absolute suicide, while the other part refused to discuss water or anything to do with the stuff. He wished profusely that swimming had never been invented.

He finally reached a happy medium, which was to have a bath blindfolded with cotton wool stuck in his ears. What was terribly unfortunate was that Aragorn had arrived at the same conclusion and by pure coincidence they both chose the same day and time to have a bath. (AN: don't ask me how they managed to turn the taps on and off, move around the bathroom and get undressed without bumping into each other. I have no idea myself.)

Two inhuman shrieks of surprise and horror echoed through the house.

"What the hell was that?" Gimli and the hobbits stopped what they were doing and went to investigate. Halfway down the hall they were confronted with the sight of Aragorn and Legolas, stark naked except for a towel and a bathmat (upon realizing what had happened, they had both grabbed the closest thing they could reach for modesty), who they ran in opposite directions down and up the hall, until they collided in the kitchen and both landed on the kitchen floor.

"Awww, that's so sweet, we had no idea you two were a couple." Notice Merry's complete and utter thick-headedness at this point. Oooooooooh, if looks could kill…

"Shut up. We are going to forget this incident and never speak of it again."

"Yeah, and if you tell anyone we will kill you in the most painful way possible. That is, we will make you watch 'Flipper' and 'The Faculty' several times."

The hobbits gulped. "YesLegolasandAragorn. Never speak of it again."

"Exactly." Legolas turned to Aragorn. "Now that we've got that settled, do you want to have a bath first or shall I?"

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Several weeks passed. It was now three months after that fateful day at the pool and The Incident concerning the bath, as the hobbits referred to it, and even then only in fearful whispers. They were taking the threat of being made to watch 'Flipper' seriously.

And so, as was relatively normal with the Fellowship, they stumbled upon another dilemma. Fate aimed for the Fellowship to have at least one dilemma per month, but this time she'd cooked up an absolute whopper. This dilemma was mainly directed at Frodo, since once he found out he was most definitely screwed. In every sense of the word.

"Aragorn, I think I'm…um…" Frodo searched desperately for another word to describe 'pregnant' without it being blatantly obvious, and settled for the politically correct one, "Fat!"

"Oh don't worry Frodo, if you're fat then you just go on a diet. Now you wait here and I'll just pop down to the chemist's to get a fat tester so we can work out what sort of diet you need." Aragorn might not have been the brightest monarch Gondor and Arnor had ever had, but you'd think that he would have some sense of foreboding. Apparently not. That's rangers for you.

So Aragorn went to the chemist's and stood in front of the shelf that held testers, but since he'd needed glasses before they'd even been invented and being a ranger he'd never been able to read that well anyway, so he grabbed a box that said 'tester' without even looking at the actual instructions. He also failed to notice the strange look the salesperson gave him when he went to pay for it. (AN: Aragorn is most definitely not with it today.)

Frodo couldn't bear to watch the actual tester, so he sat with his back towards it while Legolas, Sam and Aragorn watched the results.

"What colour does it go if it's…er…positive?"

"Blue, I think."

"I thought it was red."

"Sam, I'm positive it's blue."

"You only think that because the whole box is blue!"

"Well it'd be pretty stupid if the box was blue but it was actually red if it's positive."

"Aragorn, give me the box." The box was duly handed over to Legolas, who like most modern people can actually read. Then he saw the label of the box, beginning with 'pregnancy', as clear as day. He quickly turned the box over before Aragorn noticed. He didn't even want to consider the consequences if the test was positive.

"Ah, it says right here that it's red if it's positive and blue if it's negative." Sam mouthed 'I told you so' at Aragorn, who stuck his tongue out as an answer.

Several minutes passed.

"I think it's ready now." Everyone with the exception of Frodo and Gandalf gathered around the little tester.

"Well? What is it?" Frodo asked impatiently. Nobody responded. Aragorn looked confused. Legolas and Sam appeared to be frozen with either disbelief or horror or both.

"Well?" Frodo was becoming increasingly agitated.

Pippin finally spoke. "Um…it's good news Frodo, very, very good news."

"Oh thank god I'm not…fat."

"No." Pippin suddenly grinned. "I'm going to be a second cousin."

*Hear the sound of an apparently pregnant hobbit faint and fall on the floor*.

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Ha ha! That's all! I got the last bit off an episode of Red Dwarf where Lister, Rimmer and the Cat go into a parallel universe and meet their female counterparts and Lister gets pregnant. It's a very funny episode. And for those of you who are confused about Pippin's comment, Pippin and Frodo are cousins.

However, just because this is the end of How to teach a Dwarf to Swim…And other things doesn't mean that we'll be saying goodbye to this particular fanfiction forever. Son-of-Durotan is busy writing the next story, called How to teach an Elf to Rock Climb. At least, he will be once I've got off the computer.

And now, one last reviewing song! (Based on I'm With You by Avril Lavigne.)

It's a damn cold night,

Trying to figure out this life,

Won't you take me by the hand, take me somewhere new,

I don't know who you are, but I'll, I'll revieeeeew,

I'll revieeeeeeeew, yeeeeaaaahh!

So review! A big thankyou to everybody who reviewed my story! Luv you all!

enelya