Disclaimer: Those upstarts Rowling and Tolkien may own all those other weak-willed cowards, but not me! I'm my own dwarf through and through! Owning me *sniff*...how preposterous...*falls off computer chair due to the fact that his feet don't reach the floor* THAT WAS DELIBERATE!
A/N: Yeah, that was dumb. I seem to be running out of even remotely amusing disclaimers, but oh well, at least I'll never get sued. Guess what? This chapter still tells you absolutely nothing about what happened to poor dear Aragorn! But before we begin this singularly uninformative-as-regards-Aragorn chapter, I'll respond to some of the reviews I didn't last time (or any time before that):
kippinator: I'm sorry you're an Aragorn fangirl. Wait...I think I phrased that wrong...let me try again. I extend my deepest condolences to Aragorn on the subject of you being his fangirl. Sorry...wrong phrasing again. Okay, one more time: I am deeply sorry for what I did to Aragorn in Chapter 6 and hope that you, as a fangirl of his, can forgive me for making him fall for Trelawney. There. *satisfied nod*
technetium: I like your name. Thanks for the good reviews and all the help on abbreviations—I should have known it was Mystery Science Theater 3000! I love that show! Unfortunately the evil folks at DirecTV have conspired to eliminate the Scifi Channel from our package or whatever you call it, so it's anyone's guess whether I'll ever be able to see it again.
Fireblade: Thanks for all your great reviews! Please don't kill me, I'll try to update more quickly in the future.
Adrienne-Lillian/plushies: Yup, Aragorn and Legolas are in very deep trouble. Very, veeeeery deep trouble. And they're not the only ones, either...
Akira Gown: Thanks for your help with the abbreviations, do you know exactly what YAOI and YURI stand for?
Siri: Is being obsessive a good thing? Sorry, I will do my best to write faster from now on.
Mrs. Greenleaf: Cool name! Thanks, I was hoping to add at least a little originality to my story with Aragorn/Trelawney. Actually, it was my friend "A" who gave me the idea by constantly making fun of Arwen. Numerous reviews are good...numerous reviews are very good...
A: Why do I bother responding? Here's an update, are you happy now?
If you think you deserved a longer response, you probably did. If you didn't get one at all, I'm really sorry, but I'm working on it a little at a time. And yes, I know it's a little late to start responding, but I'm not in the habit of doing so regularly, so bear with me as I try to catch up. [Note: the more reviews you leave, the longer response you'll get. Am I being obvious enough?]
Visitors Can't be Choosers
"Curse that brainless Ranger," Gimli muttered as he was swept across the length of the enormous Great Hall by the flood of people trying to escape the word "divination." What had Aragorn been thinking? [Thinking? Aragorn?] the dwarf answered himself sardonically. [Why would he do a thing like that?]
Still, whether or not the Ranger could technically be held responsible for his actions, he had certainly put Gimli's life and sanity in danger. After all, trying to fight one's way through a crowd of panicked Hufflepuffs was hardly a walk in the park! Especially when one was so short that one kept getting trodden on by stampeding students...
A wave of relief swept over Gimli as he saw the doors of the Great Hall only yards ahead. Perhaps once he got out of this dread room he would have some room to breathe! O joyous prospect...
His reverie was interrupted by the last sound he wanted to hear at that or any other moment—the voice of Draco Mayfly or whatever the evil boy's name was. Although Gimli didn't even know him and had only heard him speak a few times, he was already absolutely convinced that the child was Sauron's most faithful servant, or at the very least a direct descendant of Saruman. What he heard next didn't improve his opinion in the least.
"MIDGET!" Mayfly yelled over the roar of the crowd, his voice cracking slightly with the intensity of his hatred. "YOU MAY RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE! I WILL FIND YOU!" Gimli gulped, too scared even to think of what he would do to Legolas for getting him into this if he ever saw him again, much less inform this brute yet again that he happened to be a dwarf. "I WILL GET YOU! I WILL PAY YOU BACK FOR THE...THE JAM!" The enraged voice was cut off abruptly, the owner apparently having been run over by a bunch of first years, but Gimli could have sworn he heard primitive grunts of agreement coming from the same general area.
This was not good. This was really not good. In fact, this was quite possibly the worst situation of his life. Assuming both he and this Mayfly character survived the stampede, how could he escape from what would undoubtedly be a fate worse than death at the hands of the demented teenager? Maybe he could explain how he had been framed by that son of a wood-elf.
[What? Explain? Oh, I can just see it now. "Oh, no, not me. I wouldn't do something mean like that! It was the Elf, blame it all on the Elf, he shot the jam and then handed me the spoon, honest!" Yeah, that would go over really well,] Gimli thought sarcastically, racking his brains for another option. Aha! His trusty ax!...Which was currently in the Gryffindor sixth years' dormitory. Well, that ruled out fighting; somehow Gimli didn't think even he, the mightiest, bravest, strongest warrior ever to walk the face of Middle-earth, could handle those two Orcish-looking henchmen without his ax.
As he meditated morosely on his ever-decreasing chances of survival, the group of Hufflepuffs he had been trapped in the midst of suddenly evaporated with a figurative puff of smoke, leaving him free. Gimli couldn't quite believe that he had survived the riot so easily, but there it was—he was quite alone.
Wait...what was that? Apprehensively, he turned on the spot—and was bowled over by a fresh wave of screaming kids. Apparently some had tripped on their way out, distracted by the sheer horror of the word that had just shattered what was left of their mealtime peace, and were just now escaping at last. The dwarf lay helplessly on the cold stone floor, trying his best to avoid being trampled too badly.
"Ow...ow...THAT WAS DELIBERATE! I MEANT TO FALL FLAT ON MY FACE!" Gimli howled, startling a few of the more jumpy students into fleeing all the more quickly. By the time the doors ponderously slammed shut, he was alone in the entrance hall. Oh, sweet peace and quiet! He simply lay motionless for a moment, partly due to the fact that he didn't trust himself to stand up yet and partly to savor the wonderful feeling of not being trampled, knocked out, yelled at, or blamed for throwing fruit pulp at others.
Eventually he got up with some difficulty, muttering about "friends, who needs 'em anyway, never there when you can use 'em," and massaging his back. Well, he had achieved his first objective—living through breakfast and the disastrous ramifications thereof. The next item on the list was to somehow get back to the common room and get his ax, without which he was most certainly doomed. Now where was the staircase he'd come down with the Gryffindors? It had been right there on his left...
Not anymore. Gimli stared in horror at the place where the stairs had been. Aside from that landmark, he had no idea whatsoever how to get back to the dormitory. Or, for that matter, anywhere else in this darn castle, which was reminding him more and more of Orthanc every minute. The whole place had an indefinable aura of menace toward people who were dumb enough to get lost in its labyrinth of hallways and thus consequently were doomed to wander until they rotted, when their bones would serve as a warning to nervous first years...
With an effort, Gimli wrenched his thoughts away from such disturbing topics and instead tried to concentrate on more encouraging ones like how the heck he was going to make it all the way to the Gryffindor common room when he was utterly lost. Hmm...he could start by picking a random direction and setting off in hopes of finding someone willing to help a poor lost soul. This was really the best, indeed the only idea he could think of, so he decided to go for it.
The best way to go about choosing a course randomly was, of course, to simply spin around, stop abruptly, and head off in whichever direction he happened to be facing. Gimli was expert at this, having done it many times while trying to convince his companions Legolas and Aragorn that he actually knew where he was going, so he had no trouble. He closed his eyes, hoped he wouldn't bump into any walls, and began spinning.
Approximately 7.835 turns later, he stopped and sat down abruptly, more than a little out of breath from the unaccustomed exercise. Still, dwarves are natural spinners and it was only a matter of seconds before he struggled to his feet, gasping slightly and trying without success to uncross his eyes and make the hall stop whirling around him. When the dizziness abated, Gimli found himself facing a stairway on his right that wound its way down into the depths of the castle for as far as he could see. He wasn't quite sure how a staircase leading downwards could help him get to Gryffindor Tower, but at the moment he was game to try anything.
Slowly and uncertainly, he began to descend the winding staircase. The whole thing reminded him unpleasantly of both the events that had led to him being in this Eru-forsaken place and the trip to see Professor—what was his name, Snipe? Snap? Now there was an experience he didn't want to repeat...
Unfortunately for Gimli, the word "trip" was singularly appropriate at the moment. As he made his way downstairs, his preoccupation with the horrors he had bravely endured the previous day blinded him to the fact that an anonymous poltergeist had quite "accidentally" spilled a large puddle of water directly in his path where some student—or dwarf, as the case might be—could slip on it and provide him with some entertainment. Of course, the dwarf didn't stand a chance against that unstoppable force of nature, clumsiness, and as a result found himself tobogganing down the stairs beard first in a most undignified and decidedly undwarvish way.
"Ow! Ouch! Ai! Oh, if I ever—aah!—get home alive the—ow!—WRATH OF THE DWARVES will descend on this place!" he bellowed, tumbling down the hard stone steps. The place in question apparently didn't care much about the wrath of the dwarves, because the steps seemed to get harder every second, if such a thing were possible. Gimli had the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that the castle was, in fact, retaliating deliberately for some injudicious remarks he'd made last night comparing it unfavorably with the Glittering Caves of Aglarond.
As he reached the bottom of the staircase at last, his dignity in shreds, Gimli heard a voice he'd hoped never to hear again. "And what have we here, boys?" Slowly and with a definite sinking feeling, he raised his head and looked directly into the pale, pointed face of his newest nemesis, Draco Malfoy.
"Ohhhh, did the poor little midget fall down the stairs and hurt himself?" Malfoy asked with mock concern, bending over him and making the sappiest face Gimli had ever seen, even in Rivendell and Lórien. Looking over Malfoy's shoulder in horror, Gimli saw the large, vacant faces of his henchmen, Crabbe and Goyle. He was in for it now, he thought resignedly, trying to remember some of those Elvish relaxation techniques Legolas had taught him. It didn't work.
"Boys," Malfoy suggested evilly, "maybe the midget needs help getting up. Shall we help him?" Gimli decided he didn't like the sound of this at all and began struggling to his feet, silently cursing himself for not bringing his ax to breakfast with him. It reminded him of an old dwarvish saying that, translated, went something like "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we at home our weapons leave." If he ever got back to the dormitory alive, he vowed, his beloved ax would never be out of his sight again.
Drawing himself up proudly, Gimli began to stride purposefully down the corridor—or tried to. Ten centimeters later, he bumped into the all-too-solid bulk of Crabbe and fell backward with a cry of indignation. He opened his mouth to salvage what was left of his pride, but Malfoy beat him to it.
A mischievous glitter in his eyes, he said sympathetically, "Of course that was deliberate. Wasn't it, midget?" Malfoy smiled coldly at him, a smile that said very clearly, You're dead meat.
Gimli knew he was in grave danger, but he could stand it no longer. He simply had to say something. "I, you disrespectful young man," he cried, making himself as tall as possible under the circumstances, "happen to be a dwarf. Not a midget, but a dwarf! Is this understood?" Gimli fixed Malfoy with an intimidating glare, but it seemed to have no effect. The boy just smirked some more and gestured to Crabbe and Goyle to come closer.
No longer smiling, Malfoy said in a voice that made Gimli's blood run cold, "I told you I would have my revenge for what you did to my perfectly arranged blond hair. How do you expect me to get fangirls if I have...jam...in my hair?" He automatically ran his hand through said perfectly arranged blond hair as if checking to make sure no vestiges of strawberry remained. Gimli saw a large clump right above his left ear, but if Malfoy hadn't noticed he certainly wasn't going to tell him.
All thoughts of jam were banished from his mind as Malfoy drew his wand slowly, obviously enjoying the terror of his victim. Crabbe and Goyle followed suit, also slowly—apparently they had forgotten which end to hold the wand by. "Well, boys," Malfoy drawled, "it's time to get down to business. I think our midget friend here has a bit of an attitude. A big head, one might say. Don't you think we ought to trim it down to size?" Gimli gulped. Unless he was very much mistaken—and he never was—they were talking about...
"Don't worry, shrunken heads are all the rage," Malfoy sneered pitilessly, pointing his wand at Gimli as Crabbe and Goyle closed in to prevent his escape. He opened his mouth to utter some horrible curse—
And was knocked over backwards, a stunned expression on his pale, pointed face. On either side of Gimli, Goyle and Crabbe grunted and went down similarly, hitting their thick skulls on the stone floor. Gimli, however, noticed none of this, having had the rotten luck to be directly in the path of the figure that had just tumbled down the stairs at top speed. He lay still for a moment, somewhat dazed.
"What the...?" said Neville Longbottom weakly.
By the time Gimli had recovered, the boy had gotten up and was surveying the three unconscious Slytherins with some surprise. For a minute, Gimli couldn't remember where he had seen him. Then he remembered—he was one of the Gryffindor boys in the dormitory. What was his name...oh yes, Neville! From his few hours at Hogwarts, he gathered that Neville had been unanimously voted "Most Likely to Succeed as a Circus Clown" by his class. Apparently with good reason...
"Um...uh..." Neville stammered, staring at Gimli. "Er...sorry?" He glanced once more at Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, then back to Gimli. "I really didn't mean to, I was just—"
"Sorry? Sorry?" cried Gimli. At that moment, he thought he had never been happier to see another person in his life. "Sorry? You saved me from a horrible fate! You have rescued me! You have...Wait a minute." A thought struck him. "You're a Gryffindor, aren't you? So...you know the way to the common room! You could even take me there, right? Right?" He got to his feet excitedly.
Neville backed away a little, disconcerted by Gimli's enthusiasm. "Um, sure, I guess," he replied hesitantly.
"And you know your way all over the castle?" Gimli asked, feeling that for the first time in twenty-four hours something was going right. If he had a guide, no matter how klutzy, he might be able to survive the wrath of Malfoy unscathed.
"Uh...yeah, most of the time." Gimli smiled cheerfully at Neville and slapped him on the back, causing him to choke and splutter a little.
"You know, Neville," he said genially, "I can already tell that you and I are going to get along just fine. Just fine." Neville gulped and led the way to the common room.
A/N: Okay, I am officially annoyed. I was trying to find the first chapter so I could fix the Sauron/Saruman error once and for all and—guess what?—I apparently deleted it. I have a feeling that that mistake may be losing me readers…Oh well. Thanks to all you dedicated folks who kept reading this story even though I depicted Sauron as a flesh-and-blood person in the beginning. Do any of you have any suggestions as to how I could explain that I really do know better now before the readers give up in disgust? I was thinking maybe if I put it in a review it would work, but I'm not sure...so I need feedback on that. Do you guys read the reviews on a story before you review it yourself? I often do so I can get a feel for what people are saying (i.e. if the story has flames coming out the ears I usually try to be nice), but I don't know how many other people do.
Second order of business: I keep telling my friend, who reviews this story as "A", to work on an original story she started during school and publish it on FictionPress.com. One problem: she doesn't have her own e-mail address, her parents won't let her give theirs out, and I'm reasonably sure e-mail is necessary for an account. If you know differently, please tell me. Also, I need many reviews urging her to beg her parents for a free address on Yahoo! or someplace like that and pestering her to keep writing.
Third order of business: the title of this story. It's by far the lamest title I've ever come up with, and I'm trying my best to think of something else that fits the plot. I'm not sure why this particular one is giving me so much trouble, since I usually have no trouble thinking of titles. Maybe that's why—I normally think of the title before the story.
Anyway, forgive the ridiculously long note and give me feedback on the three topics above and I will be very pleased. Also, I know YAOI and YURI are both basically the same as slash, but I do want exactly what they stand for if possible. More rambling: do you ever get tired of the fact that every single time J.K. Rowling describes Malfoy she uses the phrase "pale, pointed face"? I do. It's right up there with Dumbledore and "mild". Coming Pretty Soon: Chapter Nine.