Harry Potter and the One Ring of Power

Hermione Granger looked carefully at the opening of the tunnel. It seemed to stretch for a long, long way back into the mountain, and from it came a horrid, carrion stench; her stomach twisted and knotted as she inhaled, and she breathed through her mouth, very shallowly.

She wondered how it had come to be there. It did not look like the work of men, or of any other race; no dwarf or elf would have left it looking so unfinished. But if it were merely a natural cave, then why, she wondered, had Sauron not either guarded it or destroyed it, so that nobody could use it to come into his lands? Leaving it unguarded did not sound like the Sauron that she had learned so much about, digging through records at Rivendell and Lorien. One of her main assets in her eternal quest to satiate her curiosity was a near-perfect photographic memory for anything she read, and she had studied every bit of information she could find about Mordor and the Dark Lord, Sauron.

"Phew, what an awful pong!" exclaimed Ron, wrinkling his nose. "I'd bet there's orcs in there---that smell's worse than anything I've smelled since Moria!" He turned a suspicious gaze on Gollum, who stared back sulkily. "You were in Moria, weren't you, Smeagol?"

"Yess, we was in the great pitses, the mineses the dwarvess dug," muttered Gollum, not meeting Ron's eyes. "We ssaw you there, didn't we, gollum? We ssaw your big fight with the orcses."

"From a nice safe place, I daresay," sneered Draco. "Not," he added, "that I can blame you for that lot. If I could have watched that fight from somewhere safe, I'd have been delighted."

Hermione shuddered. She couldn't remember much of the big fight in Moria---her memory fuzzed out sometime after she had found the Book of Mazarbul---but what she did remember gave her dreadful nightmares sometimes. She sometimes dreamed that she, or worse, one of the others, was standing on King Durin's Bridge instead of Gandalf, facing the Balrog alone, with no spell they could cast having enough of an effect on the creature to do more than slow it down.

Tearing her mind away from thoughts of the Balrog, and of Moria, she concentrated on Gollum. The skinny creature was watching them, not meeting any of their eyes. When he thought nobody was looking at him, he gave Ron an Avada Kedavra look. Hermione had thought Ron's prank was pretty funny, but apparently Gollum Was Not Amused. "You've been through this, have you? Tell me, did it smell that bad when you were there before---or do you mind bad smells?"

Gollum gave Hermione an unreadable look. "Pretty girl doesn't know what we minds, does she, preciouss? No, she doessn't know what we minds. But that'ss the only way into the Black Land. If masster and pretty girl and their friendses wants to go into the Black Land, they has to go through the tunnel." More than that he would not say, muttering to himself in a language none of them could follow. Hermione wondered for a second if it was his native tongue.

"At least we'll have light, if we want it," said Harry. Pulling out his Everlight torch, he switched it on experimentally, smiling for a second at the pool of light it cast into the mouth of the tunnel. "And, if these things give out---we used them pretty heavily in Moria---we do have our wands, and we all know how to do the Light charm."

Hermione pulled out her own torch and shone it into the tunnel. It stretched out for a long way, farther than the beams reached, and did not show any sign of anybody inhabiting it. "I don't think that orcs live here. They'd have littered the place with their trash, I think. Also, that smell doesn't smell much like Moria."

"We've got no choice, anyway," sighed Ron. "If we want to go to Mordor, this is the only way that's open. I remember those Black Gates, and don't fancy trying to bang them open with anything less than Gandalf, and the entire armies of the West, and a whole herd of those huge elephants, behind me."

That summed up the situation pretty well, Hermione thought. She shone her torch around, and couldn't see any sign of danger. No orcs or other creatures could be seen, and no sign of them was visible. The dust on the floor was thick, and unmarked. With a small mental shrug, she went inside. Nothing happened, so she turned to her companions and said: "Well, come on, you lot. This tunnel won't get any shorter for us standing around gawping here, will it?"

"You're right, I suppose," sighed Draco. With a martyred look, he followed Hermione, and behind him came Harry and Ron. Behind all of them crept Gollum, shielding his eyes from the beams of their torches.

As they travelled deeper and deeper into the mountain, side-tunnels began opening up on either side of the main tunnel. None of them looked anything like ways through the mountains; when Ron, Harry, Draco or Hermione would shine their torches into the side tunnels, they usually were shown to be too narrow to pass through. In the few cases where there was doubt, they asked Gollum, who always pointed down the biggest tunnel, snuffling and whispering to himself.

As they marched, they separated into two groups, slowly but surely. Draco and Harry ended up taking the lead; Harry seemed to be feeling better than he had for quite a while, and he moved on ahead with Draco, the two of them chatting in low voices about their lives in England.

Behind them, Ron and Hermione looked at each other speculatively. Hermione felt a huge rush of affection for Ron as she looked carefully at him. His sunburnt skin made her long to rub ointment into it to soothe it, and the stoic way in which he bore that torment filled her with pride that he was her friend. She had never expected to feel so close to anybody as she did to her companions, but after all the dangers and hardships they had shared, and the times they had saved each others' lives, she didn't think that she could be closer to anybody, even if she were married to them. The thought that her friends would likely not all survive their journey wrenched her heart with sorrow; she didn't care that much about herself, but cared more deeply than she would have believed possible about the others.

Ron looked at her narrowly. She wondered if he wanted to kiss her, and what she should do if he did---Harry and Draco were far enough ahead up the tunnel that they had a little privacy, for about the first time since they'd come to Arda. But instead of leaning toward her for a kiss---a kiss she had decided to cooperate with---he asked: "Is it my imagination, or do you feel like something's watching us?"

Startled out of her reverie, Hermione thought about it. Now that Ron mentioned it, she did have the feeling of something watching them. A feeling of poised malice, gathering itself to pounce. Flashing her torch around, she gasped at the sight of dried and mummified orcish corpses, tangled up in some sort of cords. Some of them were hanging from the tunnel's ceiling, far above them, while others were lying along the sides of the tunnel.

"Smeagol? What are those doing here, Smeagol? Smeagol, where are you?" she called. Just then, a stone flew out of the darkness and caught Ron in the back of the head, knocking him flat forward on his face. A second later, she was knocked off her feet, and a pair of clammy hands were running all over her body, with a familiar, hateful voice hissing in her ear.

"Ach, sss, we has you, we has you now, pretty girl! We wants you, yess, we does! We won't hurt masster, not at all! We promised that we wouldn't hurt masster, didn't we? When She gets done with him, we'll have the Precious again, a nice little reward for poor Smeagol! Nassty elf-looking mage and masster are for Her, and pretty girl and nassty ssneaky red-haired mage are for uss!" Gollum's breath was in her face, foul-smelling as anything she had ever encountered, and his grip was incredibly strong.

Hermione felt rage such as she had never known in her life. To be betrayed, after all this time and all those weary miles, by this wretched creature whose life she had saved several times over---it was too much! The thought of him eating Ron, and abandoning Harry and Draco to some awful fate or other, kindled a fury in her. The indignity of him pawing and slavering over her body merely added kindling to the fire.

Instinctively, Hermione lashed out with her knee, catching Gollum just where she wanted to. With a whistling shriek, he flopped off her, curling around his belly where her knee had caught him. She yanked him to his feet and slapped him, back and forth, wondering in some distant part of her mind what had happened to her that she could do such things. Mostly, though, she was preoccupied with rage at Gollum for his betrayal. "Damn you, Gollum, you filthy little wretch! What have you done to us?" she shrieked.

Gollum twisted and writhed in her grip, and managed to tear free. Before she could stop him, he leaped to the ground and ran away up the tunnel. Hermione yanked out her wand, but he was out of sight before she could get a spell off. At that moment, Ron groaned, and Hermione forgot all about Gollum. Kneeling over Ron, she peered at him closely. He was semi-conscious, but when she pulled his eyelids open and looked, his pupils were the same size. That, at least, was a relief; she hadn't forgotten how much trouble she'd had after her head injury in Moria.

Ron stirred and groaned. Raising a hand to the back of his head, he muttered: "What in Hades hit me? The last thing I remember was walking down this tunnel, and now I find myself here." He looked at Hermione. Suspicion was written across his face as he asked: "Where is Our Dear Little Friend? My head hurts, and I knew he wasn't too happy with me. Did he try something?"

"Yeah, he did." By this time, Harry and Draco had come back to see what was wrong. Concern on his face, Draco bent and examined Ron's head, turning it one way and another, letting the light from Hermione's torch play over the spot Gollum had hit.

Looking up, Draco caught Hermione's eye for a second, and she thought that she had never seen him look so grim before. "We were lucky that the little wretch didn't pick a bigger stone---or that Ron has a good hard head. You've got an ugly cut on the back of your head, Weasel, but I don't think you're concussed. You'll probably have a nasty headache for quite a bit, but other than that, you'll be all right." Draco scowled. "Damn it, I knew I should have insisted that Gollum stay where I could keep an eye on him, I just knew it! What kind of Slytherin am I, to trust him or relax near him for a second?"

"A preoccupied Slytherin, Draco," murmured Harry. He gently patted Draco's shoulder to pull him out of his fit of self-reproach. "We all were overconfident, and I thought that he wouldn't try anything till we were in Mordor. Guess I was wrong. Can you forgive me, Ron?"

Ron nodded. "Right now, the sooner we're out of this bloody tunnel, the happier I'll be. I don't know about you, but I think there's something in here. I feel like we're being watched. I don't think it's orcs---orcs are not the subtle, waiting type, at least that I've seen. This is something else, or I'm a Squib!"

Hermione thought about it. Now that Ron had mentioned it, she did feel a brooding presence in the tunnel, more strongly than she had before. From their expressions, Harry and Draco could feel it too. "Come on," groaned Ron, tottering to his feet. "Give me an Ennervate charm if you need to, but let's get out of this place! Even bloody Mordor couldn't be worse!"

As it happened, Ron didn't need to be Ennervated. The four friends stumbled forward, using only one torch at a time to conserve the magical energies in them. Harry had pointed out that the Everlight torches were getting suspiciously dim, and ordered that all but one be put out. "After all, if we stay together, one at a time will do us, and we don't know how long this bloody tunnel is, do we?"

Hermione felt even more uneasy as they went on their way, and kept her wand in her hand, ready for use at an instant's notice. Again and again, they saw corpses, long-dried and covered with dust, many of them wrapped in the same sort of cords as the ones Hermione had noticed earlier. The four friends looked at them uneasily.

"I don't know what killed those orcs, but whatever it is, it can stay away from me and I'll be perfectly happy," muttered Draco.

"I keep thinking I've seen cords like those before. And when I say 'before,' I mean 'before we came to Middle-Earth,' answered Harry. "It's on the tip of my tongue, but I just can't place it." Ron didn't say anything, but his eyes grew wider and wider, until Hermione started worrying about his mental state. Had Gollum's treacherously thrown rock done more damage than Draco could identify? Draco was good at first aid, as Hermione could testify, but he was still no mediwizard. Hermione wondered what Madam Pomfrey would have said about his injuries.

After a while, the four passed in front of the biggest side-passage of all. Shining the light down it showed no sign of life, and they paused. "Do you think that it's a shorter way out of this place?" whispered Hermione. The feeling that they were being watched was stronger than it had ever been, and she trembled with fear and eagerness to get out of where they were. She had remembered what "Cirith Ungol" meant, and hoped desperately that she had come to the wrong conclusion.

Harry leaned forward, sniffing the air. "Remember what Gandalf said, back in Moria?" The other three shook their heads. "He said 'The left-hand way smells like there's bad air down there.' In tunnels like these, gasses and such can build up over centuries, and they can asphyxiate you quicker than you could imagine." He pointed up the main tunnel. "I think this is still the main path, here. We'll follow it."

Hermione was very glad to leave the side-tunnel behind. She had fought the urge to scream while they stopped and peered down the side-tunnel, since the feeling that something was watching them had become overwhelmingly strong---strong enough that she wished that she was back in Moria, instead of where they were. After they left the side-tunnel, though, the feeling abated for a while, but did not completely go away.

Some time later, Hermione thought she heard a low scraping sound behind them. At first, she ignored it, thinking it was just her imagination, but it got louder and louder. The others heard it too; halting in the middle of the tunnel, they turned slowly, and Harry shone the torch down in the direction they had come, as they readied their wands.

At first, they could see nothing, but then a cluster of reflecting lights appeared, seemingly far away at first, but coming closer and closer. At this sight, Ron gasped, and Hermione saw him start to shudder convulsively. He whimpered something, low down in his throat, that Hermione couldn't understand.

:"What is it, Ron?" asked Harry tensely. He raised his wand and roared "Lumos!" flooding the tunnel with light as bright as an arc-light. After so long in the dark, Hermione found it slightly painful, and she shaded her eyes to look down the tunnel and see whatever it was that was pursuing them.

At the sudden blaze of light, whatever it was seemed daunted. Hermione remembered that Sauron's creatures generally hated bright light; most of them had been originated by Morgoth in the dark fortresses he had built, ages and ages ago, and light was painful to them at best and fatal at worst. In any case, the answering lights shrank and went away. Then the Everlight torch and Harry's wand went out together.

"What happened, Harry?" asked Draco, his voice shaky with fear. "Damn it, we need light in here! This place is bloody well dangerous!"

"Don't bleeding well ask me! Try your wands! All of them at once!" But the Lumos spell did no good, and the Everlight torches would not light. "May the gods damn that bloody Gollum to the hottest pits in Tartarus! After we spared his life, again and again and again!" Harry's voice was bitter. "I wish Gandalf was here---or the Lady of Lorien!"

An idea struck Hermione. "The Lady of Lorien! Didn't she give you a gift when we left Lorien, Harry?" As if in a dream, she remembered the scene---Harry protesting that with friends and companions such as he had, he needed no gifts, and the Lady praising his courtesy and modesty, and pressing something on him nonetheless. "She said it was light---a bit of Earendil's light! Why didn't we think of that before?"

"We haven't been anywhere this dark before, Hermione, and we also could use our magic everywhere else. Let's see, it was down my shirt-front..." As Harry fished for the phial the Lady had given him, Hermione saw it begin to give off light, a sweet, pure light very different from the sickly phosphorescent glow of their usual Lumos charms, or the yellowish light cast by their Everlight torches. It felt almost like a bit of warm English sunlight, and she felt as though she had never really seen light before. It illuminated the tunnel nearly as brightly as day, but did not dazzle the travellers.

In the new light, which Harry held aloft in his hand, Hermione saw something more horrible than almost anything she had ever seen. It looked like a spider, and reminded her of Harry's description of Hagrid's former pet, Aragog, but it was even bigger than Aragog, at least as Harry had described him. She had never felt fear of spiders before, but this was to any ordinary spider what Hogwarts Castle was to Hagrid's hut. Terror slashed through her mind, freezing her to the spot for what seemed like an eternity, as the loathsome beast moved closer and closer on its eight claw-ended legs. The lights they had seen earlier turned out to be reflections from its constellation of eyes, mounted on all sides of its be-fanged head. She could hear Ron beside her, all but sobbing, but it was as though he were a hundred miles away. Her mind was consumed by fear and loathing of the awful apparition that was coming toward them.

But the sight of the light given off by the Lady's gift seemed to daunt the creature. As the light grew brighter and brighter, it slowed its approach, and then began to backtrack. Slowly, so slowly, it came to a halt, then began to retreat, moving backward up the tunnel away from the terrible brightness of Harry's phial.

"Oh, gods, so that was his little plan," murmured Draco. Poor Ron seemed to be all but paralyzed; Hermione could hear him as his teeth chattered convulsively. "Gollum, if we get out of this alive, and I get my hands on you, you are dead!" screamed Draco, his face a mask of rage. "Do you hear me, Gollum? You are dead, dead, dead! I'm going to kill you myself until you're sorry!" Pointing his wand at the spider-thing, he shrieked "Serpensortia Maxima!"

At Draco's words, a huge serpent appeared, coiled up in the tunnel right in front of the spider. Rearing its head up, it regarded the spider with cold, disdainful eyes, and hissed a long, low hiss. Harry called out to the snake, his Parseltongue incomprehensible to Hermione, but the snake seemed to understand. Lashing out with its head, it struck at the spider, sinking its fangs into the spider's body just behind its head.

At this, the spider stopped its retreat. Rearing up on its back four legs, it wrapped the front four around Draco's snake, and sank its poison-dripping fangs into the sides of the great reptile. The snake let out a sound like nothing Hermione had ever heard, a high-pitched whistling cry of agony, as it reared its head back and struck, again and again.

"It can't get through the spider's skin! We've got to help it!" yelled Harry. His words startled Hermione into action; yelling something she herself didn't understand, she charged down the tunnel, aiming her wand at the spider's body and shrieking a Reductor Charm, blasting a hole in the spider's loathsome integument. The spider jerked in agony, and one of its legs reached out, yanking Hermione into the air. Draco and Harry shouted in rage and terror as they ran down the tunnel to help her.

"Hermione! Oh, Hermione!" came Ron's voice, as he snapped out of his state of terror-induced paralysis. To Hermione, he sounded as though he was on the verge of hysteria, screaming: "Die, you horrible thing! Die! Die!" With that, Ron leaped into the fray, hitting the spider with a fire spell. As its outer shell began to burn, it released Draco's snake, which lay dying on the floor of the tunnel, to concentrate on the four friends.

As the agonized creature lifted her high, bringing her closer and closer to its poisonous fangs, Hermione grasped her wand carefully, readying her next spell. She had always been good at lighting magical fires, and she had never needed one more before in her whole life. When she cast her spell, it went just where she had wanted it to; the spider's whole head burst into flames, and it forgot her completely, throwing her to the tunnel floor to beat its head with its front two legs and try to extinguish the flames. Hermione hit the ground hard, and for a second or two, all she could do was gasp and try to get her breath back, as Ron hauled her back up the tunnel out of the way.

As the spider was reeling, distracted by the agonies of Hermione's fire and Ron's magical blasts, Harry and Draco went on the attack in their turn. Leveling his wand, Draco shrieked "Crucio!" as Harry cast a Patronus. The spells both worked; the horrid creature began convulsing uncontrollably under the lash of the Cruciatus Curse, as Harry's stag-like Patronus lowered its antlers and charged.

Despite the Cruciatus and Patronus, the spider was far from out of the fight. It managed to beat Hermione's fire out against the wall, and advanced again to the attack as the Patronus faded. Rearing up on its forelegs, it aimed its spinnerets at the four friends. Hermione pointed her wand and yelled another fire-spell as the spider took aim, hitting it just at the right moment and in the right place. The rear of the spider began to burn, and when it shot out silk, the silk burned too, falling to the ground harmlessly between the four from Hogwarts and the spider.

"Good job, Hermione!" yelled Draco, patting her on the shoulder as he knelt down beside her. "Can you stand?" At her nod, he hauled her roughly to her feet. "We've got to coordinate our fire! I think that thing's not as tough as the Balrog was, and I think we can beat it!"

Nodding numbly, Hermione took her place beside her friends. Ron looked gray and shaky, but very determined. Harry, still holding aloft the phial of Galadriel, was grimly ready to see this through. Draco had a strange, fey smile twisting his face as they readied their next spells.

Draco tried another Cruciatus Curse, as Harry, Ron and Hermione simultaneously cast Reductor Charms. All their spells hit the target, which would have been hard to miss in any event; Hermione could see more holes appearing in the spider's thick, horny outer integument, dripping a horrible gooey liquid over the floor, as the spider began to writhe under the lash of the Cruciatus.

That seemed to be about as much as their enemy could take. Suddenly, it began to retreat, heading down the tunnel as fast as it could. They saw it squeeze into a crack in the wall that Hermione would not have believed it could enter, and disappear. As soon as it was out of sight, their wands began giving off light again.

Draco stared after the spider, his fine-featured face twisted by pure hate. "So, Gollum, you thought you'd feed me to a spider?" he murmured, his voice low and even, as it only was when he was in a real rage. "And you, spider---you dared to think you could eat a Malfoy, did you? Did you, you misborn creature?" As he spoke, his rage grew and grew, palpable as something solid.

"I've an idea, people!" said Harry. "Follow me!" He led them down the tunnel, keeping a sharp eye out for more enemies, holding the phial of Galadriel up high. When he got to the crack the spider had entered, he peered in carefully, ready to leap back in a second. "Yes! I can see it!" He turned to his friends, his normal smile seeming to twist into an evil leer. "Watch!" He set down the phial of Galadriel, which went out, reached into his shirt---and disappeared.

"Harry! Are you mad? Don't you know that thing's dangerous?" yelled Hermione as she ran down to where he had to be. "What in Tartarus do you think you're doing?" Beside her, Ron and Draco ran down to the crack, holding their wands aloft to provide light.

As they got to the edge of the crack, they heard Harry's voice. "Engorgio! Engorgio! Engorgio!" Hermione looked into the crack, and saw the spider begin to swell and swell, its wounds bleeding more and more freely as it became hopelessly jammed inside its hidey-hole. New splits and wounds opened in its hideous hide as it began to be crushed by the unyielding rock. Its legs twitched convulsively as it grew, and grew, and grew some more. From its burnt abdomen, goo came spewing out of its fire-ruined spinnerets.

Harry became visible again, shaking. "If I ever try putting that thing on again, for the gods' sake knock me out right then!" he muttered. "I feel all in, like I'd run a hundred miles or played Quidditch for seven days straight!" He glanced down the crack, smiling grimly. "That should take care of our friend, I think---I used the Ring to soup up my own spell, and you know what the Engorgement Charm does!"

"Even if it does wear off, it won't be soon, and we'll be miles away with any luck," said Draco. He bowed to Harry, only slightly mockingly. "You're a worthy Ringbearer, Harry Potter, and I don't mind saying so." He looked around. "In any case, why don't we get out of here? The scenery here doesn't appeal to me at all---it makes Moria look like the Costa Brava!"

Ron was in a very bad way. Once the fight was over, he went to his knees, breathing hard and staring at nothing in particular, his face working convulsively. Hermione knelt beside him, trying to get him to acknowledge her presence, but he was off in some realm of his own mind, beyond where she could reach him. Harry and Draco looked at him in concern.

"I don't fancy the way he looks, Harry," muttered Draco. "Doesn't he have some sort of fear of spiders?"

"He does," answered Harry, "and we had a very bad run-in with giant spiders our second year---the year the Chamber of Secrets was opened. It wasn't fun for either of us, but it was far worse for him, I think." He turned to Hermione. "Can you conjure him up a stretcher, the way Snape did after we were in the Shrieking Shack?"

"Yeah, I think so," answered Hermione. She raised her wand and made a few passes, and a stretcher appeared, floating in the air. Gently, she urged Ron to lie down on it, and it followed them as they turned and headed out, back to the light. Behind them, the great spider continued to twitch and bleed, unable to extricate itself from the crack it had thought would provide it with a refuge.