Harry Potter and the One Ring of Power

Candlelight in Marshlands

by Technomad

After a while, Gollum, who had moved ahead, crouching low and using his hands almost as much as his feet, pointed forward. "Here it is, yess, the way to the marshess!" He had not tried to escape, but Ron remained very suspicious of him, and he could tell that Hermione and Draco felt very much the same way. They exchanged frequent glances eloquent of mistrust, and kept their wands at the ready.

The way turned out to be the bed of a river, leading down from the rocks to the marshes. Gollum splashed along in the shallow water, which seemed to please him greatly. Occasionally he would even sing what seemed to be a song, or recite a poem about fish. Ron knew that he had lived on little but fish and goblins' flesh for centuries in his cave home far below the Misty Mountains, and wondered how he had managed to keep himself fed since leaving there.

"That's a good question, Ron," murmured Draco; Ron jumped slightly, then thought that he must have been subvocalizing his thoughts, and Draco had heard. Elves, as he had learned in Lorien, had keen senses, and apparently this was another thing that was inherited, along with their language. "I doubt there's anything he's too good to eat, if it comes down to it, promises or no promises. Harry seems to trust him for now, but me, I don't, not half I don't. He reeks of treachery and double-dealing---and after growing up around Death Eaters, I should recognize that if anybody does!"

When they paused, weary from hours of tramping through the twisting gully, Ron brought the subject up. "What's to eat?" Hermione looked into her pack.

"We've got what's left of that jerked meat and dried fruit, as well as the lembas. I'd rather we left the lembas for later---for emergency rations. It'll keep you going for a long, long time, and a little goes a very long way. Who wants some dried meat and fruit?"

Gollum came padding up, his eyes alight with hunger. "Yess, yess, nice meatses! Pretty girl gives us, gives us nice food!" When Hermione handed Gollum a chunk of the meat, he fawned on her, all but wagging his tail. Ron looked away, feeling slightly sick at the way the creature was willing to abase himself.

"He reminds me of my father---sucking up to Voldemort." Draco shook his head, disgusted, as he gnawed on a dried pear. Gollum had passed on the fruit, expressing disgust at it, and had regarded the suggestion of eating lembas with horror. Ron wondered if he had a natural horror of elven things, or if the stuff just didn't suit his tastes. When he spoke of that to Draco, Draco expressed similar bafflement.

After the meal, they rested for a while. Harry and Hermione stretched out and went to sleep, and Gollum did likewise. By unspoken agreement, Draco and Ron stayed awake; neither of them trusted Gollum an inch. Ron thought it was strange to see Draco Malfoy as a trusted friend and comrade, but decided that it was all a matter of degree. Compared to Gollum, who Ron thought would eat any of them if he got the chance, Draco Malfoy was a harmless and friendly sort.

After a few hours, Hermione awoke, and Ron and Draco lay down and took their turn sleeping. At first, Ron thought that he would never, never be able to sleep so close to Gollum, at least as long as the creature was not tied securely, but when he opened his eyes, the change in the light and his own rested feeling told him that he had been asleep for hours. Gollum was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's that little wretch? Did he run off?" snapped Draco. Draco was always a little crabby about being awakened, even when he'd had enough rest. Ron had asked him why that was so, and been disconcerted by the answer. "Well, Weasley, it's like this: I lie there, caught up in a horrible nightmare. Then I awaken, and remember who I am, and where I am, and what I am---and I wish I had the nightmare back."

"I gave him leave to go. He said he was hungry." Hermione looked rather grim. "When we were figuring out how much food we had, we didn't figure on taking on a new member of our happy little group, so every bit of food Smeagol finds for himself is one less bit we'll have to give him." She smiled rather sardonically. "For that matter, he's probably a lot better-adapted to survival here than any of us. He'll eat anything---worms, insects, what-have-you." She shuddered slightly. "I'd bet on him surviving a nuclear holocaust."

Sure enough, in a little while Gollum came back in, gnawing on something that Ron decided very quickly not to investigate too closely. Thinking about what it might be made him feel slightly queasy, and not at all hungry. Harry finally woke up, stretching and yawning, looking as rested and refreshed as though he were back at Hogwarts, with nothing worse than double Potions to worry him. He smiled, and it was the old smile, the one that Ron had seen so seldom since this task had come to him.

"Well, another fun day in Middle-earth, everyone! Don't you just feel glad to be alive?" His voice sounded cheerful, but with an undertone of sarcasm. Draco looked at him in reluctant admiration.

"Bloody hell, Harry, you've been hanging around with me for too long! You're starting to sound like me!" Hermione dissolved in giggles, and Ron snickered, before something struck him. Draco was absolutely right. What in the world was Harry Potter doing sounding like Draco at his most Malfoy-ish? "What's the matter, Harry? Is the 'Precious' getting to you?"

Harry sent Draco a look that wiped every bit of levity off his face, to be replaced by fear. "Never, never, never say that again, Draco Malfoy!" Ron felt a frisson of alarm at the change in Harry. Had Draco hit on something? Was the Ring beginning to alter Harry's mind? Ron had a moment's vision of Harry, centuries old, twisted and altered into a second Gollum, and felt slightly sick.

Draco raised his hands placatingly. "Okay, Harry! Okay! No offense meant!" Ron could see real fear on Draco's face, something he normally didn't see there. Had Draco figured out what Ron had? Ron made a mental note to ask him when they had a chance to talk.

At the end of the gully, they found themselves standing on the edges of the fenlands. In the distance, Ron could see the mountains of Mordor, hanging there like clouds. In front of them, the fens stretched out, gloomy in the gray light of day, with mist rising off them. The air was thick with the smell of decaying plant-life.

"Well, do we have to cross this lot, or is there a way around?" asked Hermione. She looked out at the marshes with distaste all over her face. "I'll tell you all the truth: I'd as soon not try going into that bloody bayou if there's any feasible way around."

"Hear, hear, Hermione," said Draco. He peered out into the mists. "I can't see anything that looks like a path, and it's awfully easy to get bogged in those places. This place puts me in mind of nothing so much as Dartmoor."

"I doesn't know about Dartmoor, no I doesn't." cackled Gollum, watching the four friends carefully. "All I knows is that you doesn't have to cross nassty marshes, no, you doesn't. You can go north, yes, north and find hard roadses, roadses that go right straight to the Enemy's country. His people are there, there all the time. They caught Smeagol long ago there." He shuddered. "Since then I've used eyes, yes, eyes and ears and nose, and I found ways in and out, ways the Enemy doesn't know about."

"So I suppose we've got our usual choice---Hobson's," sighed Harry. He tucked his thumbs into his belt and stared out across the marshes, his stance reminding Ron of his father, bracing himself before tucking into a big job of work back at the Burrow. A second's longing for home, for familiar faces and the knowledge of his parents' unconditional love surrounding him, ripped through him with an intensity that was physically painful. Stop it, you damned prat, he told himself sternly. Think of Harry---or Draco! They've got it far, far worse and you don't see them whinging!

The sky was getting brighter, and Gollum seemed anxious to be off, so they stepped out into the fens. The terrain turned out to be an endless cluster of stagnant pools separated by hummocks, and to Ron's surprise, it proved possible to cross, although the path meandered and wandered. Gollum led the way, and Ron could see that it took every bit of even his skill to find their way; he crouched low, sniffing and using his hands for balance as his head swiveled around, peering for the next bit of firm ground for them to use. Sometimes he would even listen, his ear pressed to the earth, although what he thought he would hear was a mystery to Ron.

It was dreadfully wearisome; the landscape would have depressed nearly anybody. "'Save the wetlands,' eh, Hermione?" Ron murmured into Hermione's ear. She snorted. Above them, the Sun was rising, and they could just see its outline through the layer of clouds. Gollum looked up, hissed and snarled. Ron, on the other hand, was glad to see the Sun.

They stopped at the borders of a great reed-thicket. All around them, the swamp stretched out, dead and grey, the only green the mold to be found on the surfaces of some of the slimy tarns. All of them were weary, and Ron, for one, was thoroughly fed up with the marshes. Between the dreary scenery and the apparent lack of life other than themselves, it was never going to be high on his list of holiday choices.

As the day wore on into evening, their progress slowed. The firm bits became harder and harder to find, and even Gollum, the expert, was sometimes at a loss for a while. The waning of daylight didn't help much; Ron liked the swamps even less as darkness fell than he had when he could see them clearly. He pulled his cloak close around him as he shivered, and not from the cold.

They moved forward slowly, the mud clinging to their boots. If they had been full-grown adults, they wouldn't have been able to make it, and even so, they had more than one nasty turn. Again and again, they linked hands to pull one of them out of the mire as the darkness thickened. After one bout of pulling, with Draco's feet back on relatively firm ground, Ron stopped to wipe sweat from his face, and let out a shout of terror. Out around them, he saw what looked like distant candle-lights.

"Gods! We're caught!" Instinctively, the Hogwarts students went back-to-back, their wands out and at the ready. Gollum squeaked, startled, then cackled at the sight.

"Yess, they're out there. Candles of corpses, they are! Don't bother about them! Don't follow them!" He went back to snuffling around for a trail to follow. After a few minutes, when no attack came, Ron and the others put their wands back and went back to following Gollum.

A few minutes later, Hermione tripped over something and went down into the muck, face-first. It wasn't deep, but she had her face under water for a second. She reared back, screaming, and scrambled to her feet. "There are faces in the water!" Harry, Ron and Draco whirled, their wands out. Shaking, Hermione pointed at the fen. "I saw faces in there----dead faces!"

Harry bent over and peered in. "Yes, I see them too. Noble-looking men, and elves, and orcs. All of them dead, though." He looked drawn, and very tired. "There is a light in their eyes---a light I don't like."

Gollum cackled, highly amused. "Yes, yes, those faces are why they calls this the Dead Marshes. There was a battle here, long long ago, I heard it when I was young. Before the Precious came, I heard about it. Fierce elves with bright eyes, and Men with long swords, and Orcses, all fought here. For days they fought. Then the swamps came, creeping, creeping, swallowing the graves."

"How long ago was that?" asked Hermione, her lust for facts conquering her fear. She bent over, in her turn, looking carefully at the faces. "That kind of armor hasn't been used for centuries! How can they be visible? Is this some trick of the Enemy?" At Ron's questioning look, she snapped: "Oh, don't be so surprised, Ronald Weasley! There were books of the history of this place at Rivendell and Lorien, and lots of them had illustrations. I can recognize that armor, and it's not armor that's been used for many centuries."

"How? Smeagol doesn't know, pretty girl," admitted Gollum. He looked down at the faces. "We tried to reach them once, I tried, but it can't be done, no it can't." Ron shuddered. He figured he knew perfectly well what Gollum had tried to reach them for. Gollum turned and beckoned. "Come on! We doesn't want to go down there and light candles! Follow Smeagol! Don't look at nassty lightses!"

When they finally reached firm ground, Ron noticed that Gollum himself was happier. He led them off down what seemed to be a path among high reeds, whispering "Must take pretty girl and nice mages away from nassty lights, yes I must," as they followed him. All of them were slimed with mud; they had all fallen in the mire more than once, and they stank to high heaven.

After a bit, Gollum stopped, sniffing and peering around. "The air is moving, it's changing. Smeagol doesn't like it, no he doesn't."

Draco murmured "I'd be glad of a change myself, if only to get away from this smell. We all pong something horrid."

As they progressed on, Gollum got twitchier and twitchier, reminding Ron of the way Ginny had acted before disappearing into the Chamber of Secrets, three years previously. He wondered for a second how his baby sis was doing, and if she'd gotten over that crush on Harry Potter. He'd talked with Harry about it, and Harry had explained why he had been at pains to discourage her:

"It's simple, Ron. I'm sitting on the bulls-eye of a target, no matter what. The least I can do is to try to keep Ginny out of the line of fire." A shadow had passed over Harry's face. "I can face this by myself, but I'd never forgive myself if I got anybody else killed." Ron shook his head, remembering; he had wanted both to hug Harry and to shake him till his teeth rattled for being so stupid. How he could be both so noble and such a prat was beyond Ron. He was just Harry Potter, whom Ron loved like a brother.

A breeze sprung up, blowing the clouds away and revealing the Moon. As one, Harry, Ron, Draco and Hermione turned their faces to the sky, glad of the extra light, but Gollum hid his eyes and cursed. "Ach, sss, the White Face, gollum! It shows us, shows us, doesn't it?"

Ron was breathing deeply of the purer air, glad of the way the breeze was blowing away the marsh-fetor, when he saw it. A dark shape, darker than any cloud, was flying out of Mordor. It crossed the moon, letting out a cry that they could hear even far below, and wheeled, heading back to Mordor. Gollum grovelled on the ground, gibbering, and Ron, himself, was terrified as he had not been since Moria. "Wraiths!" wailed Gollum. "Wraiths on wings! They sees everything, tells their masster!" He shook his fist at the moon. "Curse the White Face! It shows them everything! Nothing can hide, gollum, gollum, gollum!"

After that, Ron began to note a change in Gollum. He began to slip back into his old way of speaking, and eyed Harry oddly sometimes. Harry himself began to slow, and to tire. Frequently, Ron, Draco or Hermione had to tell Gollum to slow up and wait for Harry.

"Are you all right, Harry?" asked Hermione during one pause. Harry wiped sweat from his forehead, shaking his head rather dazedly. At a snapped command from Draco, Gollum came back, fawning and servile, but with a look in his eye that Ron didn't trust for a second. It put him in mind of Quirrell, back in their first year at Hogwarts, when he thought about it.

"No. I sense the Dark Lord, off in the distance. My scar's not hurting, but that only happens when Voldemort's near or feeling murderous about me. This is different--- more like an eye looking for me." He looked off toward Mordor, and shuddered. "Right now, I'm still hidden from it, but the veils are getting thinner all the time. It's like knowing where the sun is on a sunny day with my eyes shut." Hermione touched his face tenderly, running her finger along his scar as gently as the mother he had never known. Ron could see tears running down her face.

"Oh, Harry, I'd give anything to make it easier on you," she whispered. Gollum sidled up, smiling a rather evil smile. Draco stared down at him with a very Snape-ish expression on his face, fingering his wand ominously, and Gollum leaped backwards as though he had been scalded.

For the rest of that night they pressed on, and dawn caught them on the far side of the marshes, in a land that sloped away up to the mountains of Mordor. The air was clear and cold in Ron's lungs, and he didn't like the taste of it---it had a sulfur reek, somehow. During daylight, they took cover beneath a big black stone, taking turns to sleep and keep an eye on Gollum.

For two days, they struggled onward, the air itself growing fouler and fouler with the sulfur fumes from distant Mount Doom. Finally, they came to an utter, total wasteland. It put Ron in mind of the ash-heaps he had seen on a trip into Wales, the mountains of slag and rubble from the coal mines there. There was nothing growing, nothing at all; spring would never, ever come to this place, even when it came to the Dead Marshes behind them. There were pools here and there of stagnant water, but it was thick with ashes and worse.

"This makes the worst pollution I ever heard of back home look like nothing," murmured Hermione. Harry put his arm around her to comfort her.

After a little while, they moved on, finally finding shelter in a round hole where, Ron hoped, the Eye that Harry had mentioned would not be able to see them easily. The daylight itself seemed tainted, and designed to show them their utter insignificance next to the power and puissance of the Dark Lord of Mordor and his creations. As had become their custom, they took turns to sleep, and Ron drifted off gracefully, hoping to dream of home.

When Ron woke up, the others were sleeping a sleep of exhaustion, but as he slowly opened his eyes, he heard two voices. One sounded like Gollum-as-Smeagol, and the other sounded like Gollum's old self. Cautiously, he peered around, not letting on that he was awake, and he saw Gollum having an argument with himself. As his voice switched back and forth, his eyes changed color, going from a pale light to a green light in the gathering dusk.

One voice argued for keeping to the spirit of Smeagol's promise to Harry and the others, while the other---the Gollum-voice---urged that the Ring was his "precious" and that he could keep the promise to keep it from Sauron just as easily, if not more so, with the Ring in his own possession. After all, wheedled the Gollum-voice, Harry and his friends were going nearer and nearer to Mordor, where the Enemy himself was in residence.

Finally, the Gollum-voice seemed to win, and Gollum's fingers went toward Harry's neck. A dry "A-hem" froze Gollum in his tracks, and he whirled, to see Draco and Ron both pointing their wands at him.

Harry stirred, yawning. "What time is it, everybody?" At this, Hermione came awake, muttering something uncomplimentary about people who woke decent folk up. The Gollum-personality disappeared, and "Smeagol" came back, fawning and grinning with dog-like delight. Harry apparently took it nearly at face-value, but Ron, Hermione and Draco, catching each others' eyes for a second, shook their heads slightly.

"Yess, masster and pretty girl has had sleep, beautiful sleep," croaked Gollum. "Now it's eveningses, night is creeping, and time to go! Where does we go now, masster?" Harry took off his glasses and wiped them thoughtfully with his handkerchief.

"How's this sound, Smeagol? You head off and see if you can't find something to eat---you can eat stuff we can't. We'll wait for you here. Be back in, say, an hour or so, and then take us to the Gate. When we're there, you're free to go, as long as you don't go to the Enemy."

"Yess, Smeagol is famisshed, famisshed!" With a bound, Gollum turned and left. After he was gone, Draco squatted down low, gesturing Harry, Ron and Hermione to join him.

"Look, Harry," began Draco, his narrow, clever face grim under its coating of half-dried grime, "you can't trust that creature as far as you could throw him. He was having a little argument with himself just now, and the part of him that wants to take the Ring away was winning."

"He seems to like me," said Hermione, doubtfully. She shuddered slightly. "I'd rather drink one of Professor Snape's potions without asking what it was than have him slobbering over me, but, let's face it, boys---we couldn't have passed through those awful marshes without him."

Harry smiled rather sardonically. Ron was struck, in that moment, how very much like the old Draco Malfoy he had become. "As long as we keep a sharp eye on him, I think he'll be useful for a while, yet. If only Gandalf were here, he might be able to tell us what's in Smeagol's heartÂ…" Harry's voice trailed off, and they all sighed. "What a waste that was, to have him go down in Moria. What a bloody, stupid waste! If I'd known what awaited us in that damned ruin, we'd have gone on over Caradhras, blizzards or no blizzards!" Ron and the others nodded agreement, regret on their faces.

A rustling noise near them had them all whirling, their wands in their hands. It was Smeagol, looking seriously disgruntled. "We couldn't find nothing to eat, no we couldn't," he muttered. Ron gave him a sharp look, as he generally did when Gollum relapsed into his old way of talking. "We goes to the Gate now, doesn't we?" Harry nodded, and they scrambled out of the pit and went on their way.

Before long, they felt the same fear they had before, when the dark shadow flew over them again. It reminded Ron, and the others, of a dementor's passing. Gollum squeaked and gibbered for a while when it was gone. They pressed on, and an hour or so before midnight, they felt the fear again, although this time it seemed less intense; Ron thought that the Nazgul, or whatever it was, must be flying past far above the clouds. This third time all but unhinged Gollum, though.

"Wraiths on wings," he whimpered. "They sees us, sees us! The Precious is their master! We can't go this way! They feels us here! It's no use!" Harry and Hermione pleaded with Gollum, but to no avail. "Three times! Three times is a threat!" was all they got.

Finally, Harry had had enough. "Come, Smeagol!" he commanded, one hand on his wand and the other clutching his shirt, over where the Ring rode on its chain. "Guide us, as you promised you would!" In that second, Ron saw him with other eyes---a mighty wizard indeed, who chose to veil his power and majesty, stared from the green eyes in the pinched, familiar face under its shock of black hair. Beside him, Hermione stood, her wand in her hand and a look in her eye that would have intimidated Professor McGonagall. Before them, Gollum quailed, and went on before them, unwillingness radiating from every inch of his wasted frame. On they went, their weary way seeming endless, and the wind whistling in their ears.