Harry Potter and the One Ring of Power

Chapter Fifteen---The Battle With the Southrons

Drawing his friends aside, Harry muttered: "I think that we may have stumbled into something we weren't meant to. If Gandalf were only here, he'd be able to sort this situation out quickly. What do you think we should do?"

Hermione tilted her head to one side, considering Faramir as though he were some new problem in a book. "He sounds like he's telling the truth---his accent's a lot like Boromir's, and I can see the family resemblance."

Draco snickered. "Are you sure that's all you see, Hermione?" Hermione swatted at him playfully as Draco continued: "I also think he's trustworthy. How he plans to attack a whole column of enemy soldiers with so few men of his own is beyond me, but he may have a few tricks up his sleeve." He grinned at Ron. "After all, Weasel, you did!"

"So I did." Ron rubbed his chin. He, himself, was of two minds. On the one hand, he could see that Faramir was kin to Boromir, and that argued for him actually being a friend. On the other hand, Ron could remember Boromir's treason all too clearly. The terror of the fight with a man he had counted as a friend and comrade had left its own mark.

After a few minutes' visible wrestling with his own fears, Harry came to a decision. Raising his wand, he pointed it at the Gondorians, and released them with a quick "Finite Incantatem." Faramir stood up, rubbing himself. "I'm going to take you at your word, Lord Faramir. Boromir was a friend of mine, up till we parted company, and if you're his brother, I think I can trust you."

Faramir looked down at Harry, smiling rather ruefully. "In any case, I'd be mad to try conclusions with you. Wizards and witches are rare; the only one I ever met was Mithrandir, and I would no more have tried to challenge him than I would have challenged Morgoth, the Black Enemy." Ron did not reveal that the name of Morgoth meant nothing to him, but he made a mental note to ask Hermione as soon as they could.

Faramir turned, beckoning. "In any case, we've got an ambush to set. Come and meet my men!" The other Gondorians went along after him, single-file and noiselessly, and after them came the four from Hogwarts; not as silently as the Gondorians, but very quietly.

As they passed through the woods, they began to accrete more and more green-clad Gondorian warriors. Ron was suddenly very glad that he hadn't tried to seriously harm Faramir; although he could have done it easily enough, he hadn't known that they were so outnumbered, and most of the Gondorians carried big bows and looked as though they knew how to use them. These weren't the fairly-inept orcs that Harry and his friends were now used to facing.

Walking just ahead of Ron, Hermione murmured: "I'd love to get my hands on one of those bows. I wonder if I could pull one?"

Ron looked at her, slightly startled. "I didn't know you were an archer, Hermione."

Hermione nodded emphatically. "I was one of the best girls at archery in my old school, before I went to Hogwarts. When I go home over the summer, I still keep up. If you'd ever visited me at home, Ron---" an edge of impatience came into her voice for a second---"you'd have seen my prizes and trophies."

"Well, I wish you had brought your bow---or had picked one up in Rivendell or Lorien," grumbled Ron. Hermione looked slightly abashed.

"I considered it at Rivendell. However, I didn't know whether they'd just give me one, and I didn't know how to ask without possibly giving offense. In Lorien, you may remember, I had other things on my mind." Hermione brushed a lock of hair back out of her face irritably. "I didn't have my bow at Hogwarts---as far as I've ever known, the only sport they do there is Quidditch."

* * * * * * * * * *

By the time they got to where they were going, a place where the main road cut through a deep, forested valley, Ron was glad of a chance to sit down and rest for a few minutes. Although he and his companions were hardened to marching by now, the Gondorians set a pace that was faster than they were used to.

Faramir sat down beside them, looking obnoxiously fresh and unruffled. "You said that Boromir was your friend up until you parted ways with him. Where was that?" He looked at Harry anxiously. "I have reasons for wanting to know."

"That was up above the Rauros Falls," supplied Hermione. "We last saw him there." She gave Faramir a searching look. "Is he all right?"

At her question, a shadow of sorrow passed across Faramir's face. "No. He's dead. I heard his horn blowing, some days off, far and faint. The horn itself was recovered, cut in two pieces, floating in the Anduin River. Our father Denethor now has the pieces."

"That doesn't mean that he's dead, Lord Faramir," pointed out Hermione, relentlessly logical. Faramir shook his head, covering his face with his hands.

"I saw him. He was dead---lying in a strange boat floating down the River. All his gear was there, save his sword and horn, and he also had a strange cloak and belt, like the ones you have." He went on, in a choked voice: "I called out to him:'Boromir! Where is thy horn? Whither goest thou? O Boromir!' But there was no answer, and he floated on past." His face worked as he struggled with remembered grief. Ron felt a stab of pity for him, and suppressed a shudder at the thought of how he would have felt, seeing one of his own brothers---even Percy---lying dead. And he only has the one brother, thought Ron, with a rush of compassion for Faramir's sorrow.

"Yes, that would be Boromir," said Harry quietly. "The cloak and belt he got in Lorien, from the Lady of the Wood herself."

"The Lady of the Wood?" Alarm and fear chased each other across Faramir's face. "How did he happen to go into the wood of Laurelindorenan? Was the boat from there? No mortal boat could have traversed the rapids from where you say you left him. The Lady who dies not has many strange powers, and very few things go into that land and come out unchanged." At this, he looked up, nonplused, as Ron, Harry and Draco grinned.

"You never said a truer word, Lord Faramir," said Draco. Hermione giggled. Faramir looked very puzzled, but visibly decided to let the question lie.

Below them, on the road, they heard horn-calls, of the sort that Ron had heard before, outside the Great Gates of Mordor. "The Southrons!" snapped Faramir. "Lie here, still and quiet, while we deal with them---the filth! They think the mere shadow of their master's mountains will protect them, do they? They shall be surprised!"

At Harry's nod, the four from Hogwarts took cover under some brush, where they could see the road below them. Looking around, Ron could see no sign of the waiting ambush; the men of Gondor were very good at concealing themselves. The horn-calls sounded again, and Ron could hear the tramp of many marching feet.

Up the road came the men of the Southlands, ahorse and afoot, brilliantly garbed in gold and red. Ron thought, rather irrelevantly, that they were wearing Gryffindor colors, and wondered what Professor McGonagall would have said. Each company of them marched behind a banner borne proudly before them, and they sounded their horns every so often. Ron wondered if the horn-calls meant anything in particular, and if the Gondorians could tell him what they meant. I bet even Hermione doesn't know that, he thought, wondering when the Gondorians would make their move, or if this was too large a group of enemy soldiers for them to deal with.

A loud whistle sounded, and arrows began arcing through the air, landing among the surprised Southrons. Ron knew little of warfare as Muggles practiced it, but the shouts of horror that came to his ears told him that the Gondorians had achieved the surprise they had sought. At first, the men of Gondor seemed to have things very much their own way, with their arrows throwing the Southron marching formations into dismay. Horses reared and plunged, maddened by the pain of the arrows that knifed out of nowhere to stick in their vulnerable flanks and hindquarters, defying their riders' attempts to bring them under control. Men milled around, unable to fight back against foes they could not see.

On the one hand, Ron was pleased to see that this formation of Southrons would not be swelling the armies of the Dark Lord. On the other, he could not but feel for them, in their panic, as they were lashed by the Gondorians' archery. After all, he thought to himself, how do I know whether or not they wanted to come? For all I know, they would have been perfectly happy to stay where they were, at their homes. Shouts and screams drifted up to his ears, and he shuddered. The distance was a little too great for him to see the details of the ambush, and for that he was thankful.

Down on the road, some of the Southrons' officers seemed to have regained control of their men. As Ron watched, they went into a different formation, and charged off the road, having apparently located where the main body of the Gondorians was hidden. Meanwhile, the other Southrons had brought up something that made Ron gasp and stare. Several war-elephants, or what seemed to be elephants, only much larger, armored and bearing Southron warriors in fortified howdahs on their backs, came up the road, and turned into the bush toward where Ron knew the Gondorians were waiting.

"'Ware! 'Ware! They have mumakil! May the Valar turn them aside!" Keeping their formation, the war-elephants led the Southrons through the Gondorians' positions, driving them back in terror. Soon the elephants were getting very close to where the Hogwarts students were hidden. Behind them, the Southrons roared a battle-cry, eager to avenge the loss of their fallen comrades.

"We'd better take a hand here," said Harry quietly. "I don't know if our friend Faramir had anticipated this, but it looks like this was more than he bargained for." White-faced, Hermione and Draco nodded their agreement, and Ron found himself nodding, for all that he wanted nothing more than to hug the earth and hope the Southrons missed him. He was terrified at the thought of facing the Southrons and their elephants, but even more fearful of letting his friends down---or of being seen as a coward by them.

At Harry's signal, the four stood up, wands ready. The Southrons shouted and let loose a hail of arrows, which Hermione Summoned and then Repelled, sending them back to land among their senders. Draco screamed "Serpensortia Maxima!" and a huge snake appeared, much bigger than the one he had summoned at the only meeting of Gilderoy Lockhart's abortive Duelling Club; rearing up, it regarded the nearest war-elephant with cold impassive eyes, before lunging forward and grabbing the mahout from his perch on the beast's neck. Startled, the elephant panicked, turning and trumpeting as it fled through the oncoming Southrons, sending them running in terror to avoid being trampled.

Ron concentrated on disarming the Southrons, pointing his wand at them and chanting "Expelliarmus!" to send their weapons flying from their hands. Finding themselves defenseless, the Southrons he Disarmed turned and fled as well, knowing that weaponlessness on a battlefield was a death sentence. Seeing the Hogwarts students' magic, the Gondorians took heart, shouting "Gondor! Gondor! Gondor!" and feathering the fleeing Southrons with arrow-shafts.

Not all the Southrons were running, though, and neither were their elephants. Draco's huge serpent was in trouble; two of the elephants were manouvering to bring their riders' weapons to bear on it, and it was unable to figure out which was the greater danger. As Ron watched, the Southrons in the elephants' howdahs began to pepper the great snake with arrows, most of which bounced off its scales.

"Expelliarmus!" cried Hermione, pointing her wand at the Southrons mounted on the elephants, and their bows flew from their hands. Relieved of the danger of the arrows, Draco's snake reared back, opened its jaws, and snapped up another Southron, hauling him into the air, screaming. The other Southrons turned their beasts toward where the Hogwarts students were waiting, and urged them forward, eager to come to grips with their spell-wielding tormentors.

As the elephants got closer, Ron could feel the earth itself shaking under their tread. The pachyderms raised their trunks, trumpeting defiance, as their riders shouted, waving swords and axes. Closer, and yet closer, they came. Behind them, the Southron soldiers charged up, ignoring the Gondorian arrows that rained down on them,

Harry began shouting in a strange, hissing language that Ron suddenly remembered him using before, in Gilderoy Lockhart's duelling club and when they were faced with the problem of how to get into the Chamber of Secrets. Draco's snake apparently heard him, since it nodded its head, threw the dead Southron aside with a flick of its neck, and squirmed after the elephants. When it caught up to the rearmost elephant, it raised its head and sank its fangs into the great beast's leg. The elephant trumpeted yet again, its flesh seeming to sag as the serpent's venom entered its bloodstream. It slowed down, despite its mahout's frantic efforts to urge it back to speed.

Hermione pointed her wand at the nearest elephant and shrieked "Tarantallegra!" At this, the elephant began to do a clumsy dance, shaking the soldiers on its back about as its feet moved in a shuffling parody of a human quickstep. This still left one, whose approach was beginning to seriously worry Ron. On and on it came, looking more and more like the inexorable approach of doom.

Harry Potter raised his wand and pointed it at the remaining elephant. "Reducto!" A hole appeared in the elephant's head, big enough, Ron thought, for him to put his whole head into. Dead on its feet, the last elephant slumped, spilling its riders onto the ground as its legs collapsed under it. Blood fountained from the hole and soaked the ground, steaming as it hit the cooler outside air.

At this, the heart seemed to go out of the remaining Southron soldiers. They turned and fled, abandoning their weapons and stripping off their armor to flee the faster. When the riders of the elephant that Hermione had hexed managed to get their animal under control, it was clear that they, too, had had enough of the fight. They turned the beast, which seemed extremely glad to go itself, and headed back down the road to their distant homeland.

Faramir came up to the four, his eyes wide with admiration. "Mithrandir sent you?" he asked, his voice low and filled with awe. "He chose very well! I would not have believed what I saw, had I not seen it!"

Ron managed to smile, having forced his heart back down out of his throat. "We're not even fully-trained wizards, either. Real wizards and witches from our world would be able to do much, much more." At this, Faramir gave them an even more awed look.

"I hate to ask even more of you---but could you help us deal with our wounded comrades?" Cries and moans of pain could be heard, as the Gondorians looked for their comrades and put their wounded enemies out of their misery. Faramir noticed the look of distaste that crossed Hermione's face when she noticed. "We do not do that out of cruelty, but necessity---we can't take prisoners." Hermione nodded, her face a grim mask. She had accepted that it was necessary, but Ron knew that it went against her deepest beliefs. And his, he decided.

Quite a few of the Gondorians were wounded, and there was a great deal of work to do. Some of the Gondorians themselves were good at battlefield first aid, and the Hogwarts students pitched in, using their magic to make things easier. With Stunning Spells to provide a sort of anesthesia, it was much easier to sew up sword cuts and extract arrows. For things that had gotten stuck in wounds, the Summoning Charm worked miracles. Harry smiled in triumph as he Summoned an arrowhead out of a wound. Under the direction of Draco Malfoy, some of the Gondorians boiled water to sterilize things in; Ron thought that Madam Pomfrey would have been proud of them

Ron felt rather queasy, but much less than he would have done before he came to Arda. This place is changing all of us, he thought once, when he was able to pause for a second. He looked at Hermione, her sleeves rolled back and her hands soaked with blood up to her elbows, speaking soothingly to a horribly wounded Gondorian while Ron held him in place and Harry carefully Summoned the pieces of an arrow that had gone into the man's side and broken. Before this journey, he had merely thought she was pretty and pleasant and a reliable friend. Now, he saw a truly great sorceress, despite grime and circles under her eyes. He wondered what she'd be like when---if---she got to be as old as Professor McGonagall.

Draco Malfoy worked steadily, his face a set, grim mask, over the most severely wounded Gondorians. One of the patients they brought to him had had his arm shattered by a war-elephant, and he shook his head slightly. "Bring me my pack," he said, "I've some potions in there that might help out on this."

When Ron handed Draco his pack, Draco rooted around in it until he came up with a brown bottle labeled"Skele-Gro." He unstopped the bottle, and sniffed it, nodding his head in satisfaction. "Good," he muttered, "the stuff hasn't gone off yet. This potion wants careful keeping, and I wasn't sure about bringing it."

Under Draco's direction, Ron and Faramir splinted the man's arm, making sure that the shattered bits of bone inside his arm were properly aligned. "Without that Stunning Spell, we'd never be able to do this," murmured Draco. "The pain would be too much for this poor chap. It could be worse, though."

"How could it be worse?" asked Faramir. He was obviously very impressed with the Hogwarts students' skills; he had watched them Summon arrowheads from the bodies of Gondorian soldiers with wide eyes.

"This man could have sustained a compound fracture---with bone sticking through his skin," Draco explained. "As it is, I think that between this splint and this dose of Skele-Gro," he dropped a few drops from his precious bottle into the man's mouth, and then massaged his throat to make sure that he got the drops down, "he's got a decentish chance of keeping that arm, and even using it again."

Finally, the wounded were all seen to. The Gondorians, their wounded borne upon litters, led the four Hogwarts students off into the woods, away from the place of slaughter. Hermione was marching alongside Ron. "I feel sick," she murmured to Ron, making sure that none of the Gondorians could hear her. "I was all keyed-up during the fighting, but when we had to go in and succor those wounded soldiers, it was all I could do to keep from throwing up." She covered her face. "Not to mention what happened to those poor wounded Southrons."

"Don't feel bad about yourself," said Draco, who was close enough to hear her. "Not feeling anything about that sort of thing's a really bad sign, as I ought to know." He gave them a slightly haunted grin; for a second the old Draco Malfoy could be seen, leering out at them. "My dad and his chums could have done everything we've done, and thought nothing of it."

"Even healing afterward?" asked Hermione.

"Even that, Hermione." Draco looked very grim. "Face it---a lot of the Death Eaters' victims were not easy targets, and it was common for Death Eaters to be wounded. Can you imagine one of them going to St. Mungo's after an attack, not knowing if the Aurors had been warned to be on the lookout for someone with his particular injuries?"

"Was that all the Death Eaters used healing magic for, Draco?" asked Harry quietly. Draco looked very shamefaced, and would not meet Harry's gaze.

"No. Quite often they would use it to heal up people they'd tortured, to make it possible to torture them again." He raised his eyes, and gave his friends a haunted look. "I saw things---I saw things in that house---things you can't begin to imagine. Sometimes they'd catch Muggles, and just torment them for sport. They'd place bets on how long a Muggle would last, and which spell would be the one to do him most injury." Hermione looked sick, and Harry went pale under his tan. He gestured them to silence as Faramir came up.

"Would you do us the honor of guesting with us tonight? We have a secret base near here, and we'd be delighted to have you as our guests. We're comrades-in-arms, after all." He looked at them eagerly; Ron was reminded of Colin Creevey looking at Harry Potter.

"Let us confer on this---privately," said Harry. Gathering his companions with a gesture, he led them off to one side. "Well? What do you think? Should we trust him that far?" he asked in a low tone.

Draco looked very thoughtful. "I don't know for sure, myself. He seems to be all right, and he doesn't know about---your burden. Still, he could be up to something, and I haven't forgotten Boromir." Draco rubbed the side of his neck; an arrow had grazed him there, leaving a nasty scratch. "He also doesn't seem to have too good an opinion of the Lady of Lorien, and we know she's on our side."

"Keep in mind, everybody, that not everybody on our side likes each other; Boromir didn't trust the Lady until he met her, either. When I was in Rivendell, I read that the Galadrim don't leave their wood much, which makes rumors about them easy to start and hard to stop," murmured Hermione. "While Gondor and Lorien are both enemies of Sauron, that doesn't mean they understand or like each other much. Rather like Professor Snape and your godfather, Harry."

"Your godfather? You don't have a godfather---do you, Harry?" asked Draco.

"It's quite a long story, Draco. I say we go with Faramir for now. I don't think he'd dare try anything too stupid, and we haven't shown him all we can do, have we?" opined Ron. "I'd rather fancy a night spent under cover. This sleeping in the open is not much fun."

"Then we trust Faramir---for now. If nothing else, I think he's too much in awe of what we can do to try anything underhanded---and, as you say, he doesn't know about It." Having made his decision, Harry turned to Faramir, who was waiting patiently to hear what they would say. "We'll go with you, Lord Faramir. As you say, we're comrades-in-arms."

As they walked along, Faramir stayed with them; he seemed to be full of questions about them. At first, he was very interested in the world they had come from. Before Ron quite knew it, he found himself telling Faramir about his family. "There's seven of us children---I'm next-to-youngest, just above Virginia, who's the youngest and the only girl. Virginia---Ginny, as we call her---is a year or so younger than I am, and goes to the same school we do."

"What fun you must have!" exclaimed Faramir. "Boromir is---was---my only brother. Now I'm the only one---the only son our father has left." His face twisted with grief; Ron thought again about Faramir's loss, and imagined how he'd feel, being the only Weasley child left. Imagining the Burrow without Fred and George making everybody laugh with their endless antics, or Percy with his pompous exterior and kindly, loyal heart, or Charlie or Bill dropping in for a visit, ever again---not to mention no more Ginny---filled him with horror. He could just see his parents, sitting in their lonely, empty house, their faces haunted, listening to the silence. The thought of their pain made him shudder. He felt a stab of guilt at having put himself into such a dangerous situation.

To take his mind off that thought, Ron told Faramir about Bill, Charlie and Percy and described some of the stunts Fred and George had pulled off. Faramir laughed and laughed at the description of the Ton-Tongue Toffee Incident, and admitted that he knew a few people that could have done with the twins' acquaintance. He told them an improbable story about his own younger years, when he and Boromir and several of their young friends had abstracted the favorite charger of a pompous nobleman, and led it to the topmost floor of that nobleman's mansion. "Getting him down again---that was the tricky part!" Faramir grinned, reminiscently. Ron made a mental note to tell Fred and George that story sometime. Or, on second thought, not to---it wasn't as though they needed more ideas.

Draco told a tale, which Ron noticed had been edited, of life at Malfoy Manor. "I was the only child of our house; it was a large, ancient mansion, with endless nooks and crannies. I was mainly raised by servants, although my mother and I were as close as we were allowed to be. My father was mainly interested in advancing our family's interests, and everything else had to take second place to that. He mainly spoke to me if I hadn't come up to his expectations."

Faramir looked long and searchingly at Draco, who returned his gaze unafraid. "Your life sounds like those of many noble scions in Minas Tirith. They seldom see their fathers, and few of them have many sibs." A shadow passed over his face. "Some of them envied me, that I had Boromir." With a slight shudder, he visibly controlled his sorrow over his brother, and turned to Harry. "You've been very quiet. Have you no stories of your home?"

Ron gave Faramir a searching look. In the Gondorian's face, he only saw friendliness and curiosity; a curiosity that he had to admit was not unjustified. "I lived with my aunt---my mother's sister, my Aunt Petunia---and her husband, my Uncle Vernon Dursley, and their son, Dudley, my first cousin. My parents died when I was a year old." He smiled rather grimly. "To put it bluntly, Lord Faramir, it wasn't a good life. My uncle and aunt treated me as an unwanted guest, while spoiling their son. I don't have good memories of my time at their home, and I'd just as soon not discuss it."

Hermione jumped in: "My parents are both dentists---healers who specialize in broken or infected teeth. We live in the outskirts of London, the capital of our home kingdom, and I'm their only child. Finding out that I was able to do magic was quite a surprise; there's no other magical people in our family. Instead of Roedean---a school my parents had planned to send me to---I got sent to Hogwarts, where we all met."

"So not everybody in your world can do magic?" asked Faramir. The four nodded in unison.

"My uncle and aunt not only can't do it---my parents both could---but they hated it and anything to do with it," explained Harry, the evening sunlight flashing off his glasses as he turned his head. "Draco and Ron both came from families where everybody's been magical for a long way back. Hermione, as she says, didn't know about magic until she was notified that she had been accepted at our school."

As they marched along among the Gondorians, up into the hills, Ron wished that they could have an opportunity to talk in private. He wondered what the men of Gondor knew of the One Ring, and how they would react if they knew that Harry bore it. He remembered Boromir's half-witted idea of using it and its power against the Dark Lord all too well, and didn't fancy fighting off another attempt to steal the Ring, particularly since they were so far outnumbered.

Leaving the subject of their homes, Faramir began another line of questioning, one that sent a chill down Ron's spine. "The rhyme you quoted---the one about 'Seek for the Sword that is Broken,'---that rhyme mentions Isildur's Bane. What do you know about it?"

"Isildur's Bane?" answered Draco; the others had fallen silent. "Isildur died---how long ago was it?" He cocked his head on one side, pondering. "Near to a thousand years or more. And Isildur, or so I have heard, died of an orc-arrow. Perhaps an orcish archer is what is mentioned."

"Perhaps." Faramir looked at them skeptically. "But orc-arrows and orcish archers there are in plenty---well I know it! Isildur's Bane would have to be something else entirely---something less common." He gave them a searching look.

Hermione, behind Faramir's back, looked very cunning for a second, before piping up: "But, Lord Faramir, I have read that orcs, like elves, do not die naturally as men do. Instead, they live until they are killed." She sounded puzzled, and went on: "So isn't it possible, at least, that the archer that killed Isildur is still alive today, somewhere?"

Ron and Draco exchanged glances; Draco looked slightly gobsmacked, and mouthed soundlessly I never would have known she was capable of that! Ron nodded, feeling new respect for Hermione. He was so used to thinking of her as bookish and rather unworldly, he tended to forget that she had a streak of real deviousness. He shook his head, angry at himself---hadn't Hermione done most of the work, including sneaking into Professor Snape's office and purloining the things they couldn't get out of the students' stores, when they were brewing their illicit Polyjuice Potion? I'm just glad she's on my side! thought Ron.

"Yes, it is true---orcs do live a long time, or would, if they did not hate each other as fiercely as they do everybody else," answered Faramir. "I suppose it could happen; an orc could conceivably have lived so long, but it is most unlikely. Orcs breed fast, and if they did not kill each other so readily, they would have overrun Middle-earth long ago through sheer force of numbers."

He gave the Hogwarts students a long, searching look. "Still, I think there is more to this story than you are telling me. What concerned Boromir concerns me, and I do not think that he would be particularly excited at the sight of an orcish archer." Harry gave him back the same sort of blank look Ron had seen him use often before, when Professor Snape would accuse him of some venial wrongdoing.

By this time, the Gondorians had brought them to a place where the woods thinned out, and they could see down and a long way away. In the distance, Ron could make out a gleam of sunlight on the waters of the great Anduin, as it rolled on toward the sea. Faramir gave them an apologetic look.

"I have already violated my orders, by not killing or capturing you. To bring you to where we're going, I must ask that you allow me to blindfold you. We will lead you carefully, and not let harm come to you, but even one of the men of Rohan, though they are our allies, would be allowed to walk this path un-blindfolded."

"Sounds reasonable," said Draco. He quirked a sardonic smile. "You and the elves of Lorien have that much in common---they wanted to blindfold us before they let us into the heart of the Golden Wood." Some of the Gondorians looked nonplused at being compared to and equated with the elves of Lorien.

Muttering apologies, the Gondorians blindfolded the Hogwarts students; Harry went first, then Draco, and Ron. Hermione was last, and Ron heard her say, in tones of mingled impatience and understanding: "I forgive everything in advance, Mablung---is your name Mablung? Just get on with it; I'm not so fragile that the first touch will shatter me." Once the blindfolds were in place, the Gondorians raised the hoods of the Hogwarts students' cloaks and pulled them over their faces. Then, Ron felt his hand being gently placed on a shoulder, and they set off again, slowly and carefully.

It seemed to Ron that they were going down an incline. To his right, he thought he could hear water. Sometimes it was louder than the other times, but it was always there. After a bit, he thought that they were passing through a narrow place; at least, if he deviated from the straight path even by a little, his shoulders brushed what felt like smooth stone walls. The Gondorians guided him along with a firm hand on his shoulder and his own hand on the shoulder of the Gondorian ahead of him.

Suddenly, he felt himself lifted into the air, and carried forward for a little way, and set on his feet again. Behind him, he heard a startled squeak and recognized it as Hermione. Before he could think, his hand snaked for his wand. "No!" said the Gondorian behind him. "She's come to no harm."

"He's telling the truth," came Hermione's voice. "I was just startled a little, that's all." She chuckled. "Whichever of you moved to defend me, though---thanks. That was very gallant of you."

"All three of them did." That voice sounded like Mablung. "I must say, their reaction was remarkably swift." Ron smiled slightly behind his blindfold. Shared hardship and shared peril had forged a team from the disparate foursome that had set out from Hogwarts. He knew that if he, or Harry---or Draco---had been the one to be audibly startled, Hermione would have gone for her wand as quickly as he had. All for one and one for all, he thought, remembering a Muggle "movie" Harry had described to him once---the "Three Moustaches," or something like that.

Suddenly Ron felt himself being spun round and round, so that he lost track of which direction he had come. Then he was climbing what felt like a flight of stairs, as the sound of water became faint, before being picked up and carried what felt like a long way down. Then he heard the water again, close and loud. He couldn't tell which direction it was; the noise was all around him. Then he felt water, as though he were outside in the rain.

When he was set back on his feet, he wondered if they were where they were going, or if there was more walking blindfold to be done. Faramir's voice rang out: "Let them see!" The blindfold was removed from Ron's eyes, and he gave a gasp of wonder, for before him, with the sun shining through it in a thousand and one hues at once, was a curtain of water. He was standing with his friends on a floor of stone behind it, looking out over the lands below through a waterfall. The light playing through the ever-changing water made beauty such as Ron had never seen.