Harry Potter and the One Ring of Power

Harry Potter and the One Ring of Power, Chapter 25

Death-March in Gorgoroth

Under Burzghash's guidance, the four friends moved off, on a path they hadn't really noticed before. The orc was quite clever at finding his way, leading them through the bush, always heading down toward the main plain of Gorgoroth below. Just behind Burzghash, Draco paced along, graceful as a cat, with Harry just behind him. From her vantage point at the rear of their little procession, Hermione kept turning and looking back. She never saw anything, but she couldn't shake the feeling that Gollum was there; she had a prickling, uneasy sensation all over her back, and any unusual noise all but had her jumping out of her boots. Just ahead of her, Ron peered left and right, keeping an eye open for any more nasty surprises.

At first, Burzghash set a fairly fast pace, but once they had gone a little way away from the main road, he slowed down somewhat, in deference to their lesser stamina. When they paused to rest, Hermione examined him in wonderment; she had not really realized just how tough and hardy orcs were. While she had gotten much tougher since coming to Middle-Earth, she, and her friends, were slightly winded and breathing hard. Burzghash looked fit and eager, ready for another long trek.

"They are awfully tough, aren't they, Hermione?" murmured Draco; he had come up behind her. "I can see why the Dark Lord loves using them as soldiers. If they were just smarter, they'd be a real threat---as things stand, I'm having a bit of a time keeping our friend under control, even with the Imperius Curse." He rubbed his forehead. "Keeping the Imperius up takes effort."

"What if Sauron takes over control?" asked Ron. "You've mentioned that he seems to be able to directly control some of his creatures."

Draco nodded. "He can. However, he'd have to have twigged just where we were to bother bending all his will to taking Burzghash back, and if he had done that, he's got a lot better ways to deal with the situation." Draco's face clouded for a second, and Hermione shuddered again at the thought of herself and her friends, cornered, facing off the hordes of the Dark Lord.

"That's right," Harry confirmed. "He could take Burzghash back in a second---if he knew what was going on. Right now, stealth and quiet are our best friends---those and sheer audacity. From what I can gather, Sauron's mainly concerned with an attack from, or on, Gondor---I don't dare get too close to his mind lest he figure out where I am and what I'm doing."

"Stealth, quiet, sheer audacity---and speed. The sooner we get to Mount Doom, the better." Ron peered off into the distance, through the murky air of Mordor. "So, let's get the lead out and let's get cracking!" With that, he got up and began marching again, and the others followed in his wake.

Hermione never could remember, afterward, how long it was that they marched. She had fallen almost into a trance state, her mind ranging over her past life, hardly aware of the weary miles she tramped. On one level, she knew that her legs and feet were aching, that the duct-tape patches she had improvised to hold her clothes together a little longer were chafing her skin, and that she was thirsty; the sulfur-laden air of Mordor dried her mouth so badly that the tissues clung together. Most of her consciousness, though, was far away; she went over the principles of Transfiguration, ran down lists of magical herbs and fungi, and reviewed the basics of casting charms.

An arrow zeeping past startled her out of her fog. She was throwing herself onto the ashy ground before she was even aware of what she was doing, noting in passing that her friends were doing the same thing. From around them, shouts of "Ya hoy! Ya hoy! Ya herry hoy!" echoed and re-echoed. Arrow after arrow zinged overhead.

"Bloody hell! It's a trap!" snarled Harry. He rolled over to Draco, grabbing him by the shoulder. "I thought you had that bloody Burzghash under control!" Raising up slightly, Harry raised his wand, aimed at several oncoming orcs, and shouted "Petrificus Totalus!" The orcs went over, stiff as boards.

"I did! I do!" screamed Draco, his face pale beneath the tan he'd picked up on their trip. "Burzghash didn't know these orcs were here! They're a colony of stragglers, it seems---they got out from under the control of their bosses, and holed up here!" As a large orc, braver than its friends, began to charge up close, Draco pointed his wand and yelled "Avada Kedavra!" In a flash of green light, the orc fell over dead, along with two others that had been getting ready to follow.

To Hermione, the fight was a replay of the big fight in the Chamber of Mazarbul; a confused, terrifying chaos where she fired off spells left and right, as arrows whizzed uncomfortably close and ugly, leering, snarling faces loomed up to strike at her. More than once, she had to fight with her short sword in one hand and her wand in the other, alternating tricks like Summoning and then Repelling arrows with slashing at wounded orcs who had managed to crawl close enough to try to grab her.

Finally, after a time that could have been minutes but that had seemed like hours, the fight was over; the last orcs were running off, shrieking in fear, or lying on the ground bleeding to death. Hermione absently squatted down and took a dead orc's cloak to clean her sword with, wiping the black blood off the blade as coolly as if she were cleaning her cauldron after nothing worse than Double Potions. Then it hit her. What in the world's happened to me? How can I be so calm about this?

"You all right, Hermione?" asked Ron. He had finished cleaning off his sword---he had gotten to close quarters as well---and had come over to see how she was doing.

Hermione gave Ron a rather shaky-feeling smile. "I don't know, Ron...it just struck me how much I've changed since I got here. Back home, I'd probably have been throwing up after something like this. Now, it's all part of the day's work." She suddenly grabbed Ron, heedless of his start of surprise. "Has the Ring gotten to me? Am I going evil? Am I a monster?" She clutched him convulsively, burying her face in his chest. She didn't dare to look into his face; she was terrified of what she thought she'd see there---rejection, disgust, horror.

"No, Hermione, you're not a monster. None of us are. We've just had to adjust to what we found here. We knew the trip would be dangerous when we started out." Ron put a finger under Hermione's chin and gently tilted her head up, so that she had to look him in the eye. Instead of rejection and disgust, she saw trust, and total acceptance---and a wave of relief washed through her. "If you hadn't learned to kill, you'd be dead now. We all would be. I don't know about you, but I want to live. I want all of us to live, and live long lives. If the orcs had let us be, we'd have let them be as well, but they made the choice to attack us, and if we turned out to be tougher than they expected, it's their hard luck."

"That's two sensible speeches in a row from you, Ron," commented Harry, with a crooked grin that would have looked more at home on Draco. Behind him, Draco nodded. "All right, out with it. Where's the real Ron Weasley, and what did you do with him, you impostor?" At this, Hermione began to snicker, and soon all of them were laughing; relief at being alive and joy that their friends were also alive was like a tonic to them.

"I can't say the news was all good, though," said Draco, when they had calmed down. "Burzghash got it in the fighting---I lost control of him for a minute, he tried to join the other orcs, and they put four arrows into his throat and chest before I could stop them. We've lost our guide."

"Uh, I think we may have lost something worse," said Harry, in a low voice. "Check your water bottles, everybody. I know I landed on mine, and while they're flexible, they aren't completely invulnerable. I landed flat on mine when I hit the dirt, and the stopper came out." Harry pointed to the front of his clothes, which were soaked with mud.

"Oh, bugger," muttered Draco. "Mine stopped an arrow, I think." He held up the bottle, which had a hole right through it from one end to the other. Hermione checked her own water bottle, and was relieved to find that it was unharmed. So was Ron's, but they now only had half as much water as they'd set out with, and much of it had gone to waste.

"So now we're a lot lower on water than we had anticipated, and don't have a guide to where water can be found," muttered Harry. He looked off into the distance. Mount Doom loomed on the horizon, a black cone against the dark-gray skies of Mordor; its top was dimly lit from within as the fires within seethed. "I'll tell you all what. I'll take the water, and make a dash for it. I think I should be able to get to the Mountain in a couple of days. You all can turn back here. Get back to the tower of Cirith Ungol, and back up through the pass. Tell them---" his voice broke for a moment, and then became firm again---"tell them at Hogwarts, when you get back, that my time there was the best times of my life."

"What are you babbling about?" asked Hermione. Down inside, she knew just what he had said, but she was hoping against hope that she had misheard him, or misconstrued his words. "Do you want us to let you go on alone?"

Harry nodded, not looking at any of them. Hermione felt a fury grow inside her, a fury like nothing she had felt since Gollum's betrayal of them high in the passes of Torech Ungol. Striding forward, she grabbed Harry by the front of his tunic.

"Harry James Potter, if you think we're splitting up, here in Mordor of all places, you're barking mad! Do you hear me? I don't know about the boys, but I for one am not going to let you go on alone in this awful place!" She shoved her face up close to his, close enough that she could see her own eyes reflected in Harry's glasses. "You are not going on---we are going on! Do you understand me?"

"I see you remembered what I said earlier, when we split off from the Fellowship," commented Draco. "I'm flattered that you chose to borrow my phrasing. Of course, it's worth borrowing---and as true now as it was then." His voice acquired a very hard edge; Hermione was uncomfortably reminded of Professor Snape confronted with a bungled potion. "I said we had an errand, Harry. An errand in Mordor. I don't know about the others, but I'm not turning back until that errand is done."

"And if you think I'd abandon you, you've forgotten a few things, Harry," snarled Ron. "We've been best friends since we were eleven years old, and before our first school year was out, we'd faced up to the Dark Lord together. Remember that chess game?" His eyes blazed. "Hermione and I have faced danger with you again and again and again. I'd have gone on into the Chamber of Secrets with you, but for that rockfall. I haven't forgotten that I was the thing you'd most miss, back during the Triwizard Tournament." His expression suddenly went somber. "And, maybe---maybe I think I owe you for not believing you when you first told me you hadn't put your name into the Goblet of Fire. If nothing else, this can serve as penance."

Harry turned away, wiping at his face. When he turned back, his expression was haunted, and desperately unhappy. "You all don't know what this means to me. Can you please hear me out, though?" He looked from one of his companions to the other, not able to meet their eyes. "Hermione, you've held this---this burden I bear, even if just for a little while. You know just how magical it is." At Hermione's nod, he went on: "Okay, think about this. I've got to get close enough to throw this ring into that damned volcano. What do you think will happen then, when all that magical energy is released at once?" Ron and Draco's eyes widened, and Hermione felt an icy stab of fear down her back. Harry saw that he had made his point.

"My own guess is that the Ring's destruction is going to set off a magical backlash and explosion like nothing I've ever heard of. If it doesn't set off a volcanic eruption as well, I'll eat my boots." Harry looked off toward the Mountain again. "Can you now see why I don't want you to come along? I have a right to risk my own life---I've already had more life than I should have, by all rights---but you have the right to live your lives out. That includes not tossing them away on a suicide mission."

"Remember Trelawney's prophecy?" asked Draco. "It said we all were necessary for this to end successfully. 'The clayworker, the farmer, the dragon and the mustelid,' if I remember right. This hasn't ended yet. Besides"---Draco quirked his old snarky grin--- "as I said back in Rivendell, you need me. I said you were Gryffindors, which meant you were gallant fools. I was guilty of understatement, if anything. You need me, anyway. You don't know the Unforgivable Curses, or a lot of the other Dark Magic my father made sure I was taught. What do you think will happen to you if you get jumped again?"

"Not to mention, Gollum's still around. You may be able to handle the little creep, but I wouldn't feel right about leaving you to do it." Hermione reached out, and gently took Harry's glasses off. As softly as the touch of a butterfly, she patted his cheek with her right hand. "That's payback for slapping me, back outside Torech Ungol." As Harry's eyebrows lifted in surprise, Hermione swung her left hand, slapping Harry hard enough to rock his head back on the hinges. With a grunt of surprise, he stumbled backward and sat down. Bending down, Hermione replaced his glasses on his face, and hissed: "And that was for being idiotic enough, and thinking ill enough of us, to even suggest that we'd leave you! I ought to shake you good, to see if you've completely lost your mind, or if a tiny little piece of it is still rattling around somewhere in your skull!"

Harry shook his head, wiping up a little blood that dripped from the corner of his mouth. Hermione turned to face Ron and Draco, who were staring at her, eyes round with surprise---and, she noted with satisfaction, reluctant respect. She felt a rather nasty grin spreading across her face. "Like I said, that was payback. Come on, Harry, I didn't hit you that hard. On your feet, boy---we've got miles to make!"

Looking slightly dizzy, Harry got to his feet, using his staff to help himself up. When he had gotten back up, Hermione turned toward the Mountain, and they set out again. Hermione had caught Ron and Draco looking at each other in surprise at this new side of her personality, and one part of her felt a guilty thrill of satisfaction.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The last leg of their journey to the Mountain was harder than any part of their trip so far, Hermione thought. If they'd been able to travel openly, they could have done it in a couple of days. As it was, though, they had to creep from one sheltered place to another, always on the alert for orcs, or Gollum. If they slept at all, it was fitfully, and never all at once; one of them always had to be awake and on watch under the Invisibility Cloak, ready to awaken the others if enemies drew near.

More than once, they had to lie doggo for hours, hiding as huge forces of orcs, or sometimes men, marched by. From their vantage-points, they could hear the cracks of the orc-drivers' whips, and hear the shouts of the commanders driving and leading their soldiers to war for the glory of Mordor and the power of its Dark Lord.

Their water didn't last too long, although they were deliberately stretching it as far as they could. Hermione found herself dreaming of water, thinking longingly of the well-appointed baths of Hogwarts, or the flowing rivers and streams of her English home. If I ever get back out of this, she promised herself silently, I'll never, never take water for granted again!

The others were suffering, too. They stumbled forward, eyes glazed, and unless they sensed danger, seemed to be almost running on autopilot. She could hear Draco murmuring the words of a poem she remembered from her time in Muggle primary school; she wondered absently where he had heard it:

"Here there is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water"

He paused for a moment, gasping in the fetid air, then went on:

"This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images are raised,

Here they receive the supplication

Of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star..."

Even through her own haze of suffering, Hermione shook her head in wonder. First Dante, she thought, now T.S. Eliot! Do we ever really know another person? At least the poems---The Waste Land and The Hollow Men---couldn't be more appropriate! She smiled to herself, heedless of the pain from her dried and chapped lips. It faded into the haze of pain from her legs and feet, after all---she hadn't had her boots off in days, and even though her socks and boots fit her quite well, she knew that her feet were masses of blisters.

Ahead of her and Draco, Harry stumbled along dazedly, leaning on Ron and on his staff. His head was held low, and she could hear him panting for air, wheezing with every breath he took. In between wheezes, she heard him muttering, and could occasionally catch a word: "No, I won't...not even for that..." Even through her own pain, she pitied Harry. Poor Harry, the world's weight does seem to descend on your shoulders, doesn't it? At the same time, she was awed by his devotion. Even though she could see that the Ring was steadily sucking the vitality from him, he was never the first to suggest stopping, and he did his full share of keeping watch when they stopped.

One of the worst things about their water shortage was how it affected their eating. About all they had was lembas and the hard dry biscuit they had picked up at Cirith Ungol. The lembas went down well, needing very little water to wash it down with, but the biscuit proved to be a dreadful trial. Some of it proved to be infested with weevil larvae and had to be thrown out, while the uninfested portion was hard as rock and difficult to choke down.

"This isn't working, boys," said Hermione as they sat together, gnawing at the stony biscuit. "I don't care if it's dangerous. I am going to go looking for water." As she looked from face to face, she saw how weary and drained they all were. In the distance, the Mountain rumbled, deep and low like the snoring of a mad earth-god, the vibrations resounding through her bones. Overhead, the endless overcast of Mordor, dark as a thunderstorm's darkest cloud, cut the daylight down to a dimness like an English winter evening.

"Do you want us to come with you?" asked Ron. His sunburn, at least, was healing; without the sun burning his skin again and again, it had a chance to heal. In that, if in nothing else, Mordor was a good land, thought Hermione. She had long since become inured to her own suffering, but it still hurt her to think of her friends in pain.

"No, Ron. I think I can go alone. The way the land lies, I think there's water not too far off---and we're not far from one of Sauron's roads. There have to be cisterns along those, if only because a lot of his soldiers come through here," Hermione replied. The thought of her friends' pain drew her eyes to Harry. Harry was sitting there, staring at nothing. He had developed an odd tic in his mouth over the last couple of days, and did not usually respond the first time someone spoke to him. "Draco---you and Ron stay here. I think one of you should take the Invisibility Cloak and keep watch from up higher, and the other should stay with Harry. We need to let him sleep if he can."

"That sounds like an excellent plan, Hermione," Draco said. He gave Harry a long, appraising look, and then looked up, into Hermione's eyes. She could see that Draco was quite worried about their friend. "Let's let Harry sleep. Do you want to sleep, Harry?"

Harry slipped over to one side and flopped out on the ground, his eyes shut. As tenderly as his own mother, Ron lifted him enough to slip a cloak under him, to cushion him from the ground, and then let him lie back down, slipping his glasses off and pulling another cloak over him. Draco opened Harry's pack and took out the silvery Invisibility Cloak, pulling it over himself. A scattering of small stones rolling down the slope told Hermione that Draco was climbing up to the top of the hill, to watch for trouble. She took the surviving water-bottles and went toward the road, keeping in cover as best she could.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Wakey, wakey." Ron stirred Harry with his foot, bringing him from sleep to a slightly confused awakening. At first he gasped and reached up to shield his face, but as comprehension of where he was dawned, he put his arm down and sat up. The loose soil they had been sleeping on was softer than rock, but not by a great deal. "You all right, Harry?" Ron leaned forward, concerned.

Harry put his hand on his chest, over where the Ring rode on a chain around his neck. "I---I was dreaming." He shook his head at Ron's expression. "No, not the wheel of fire again, although I rather think I'll be seeing it more and more, awake and asleep." He peered off through the gloom of Mordor, toward the distant glow that was the top of Mount Oroduin. "I was dreaming that I was back---back with the Dursleys." As if reluctant to let go, his hand slowly dropped to his side, and he took his glasses out of his battered pouch, wiped them on the front of his ragged tunic, and put them on.

"That bad, mate?" Concern edged Ron's voice.

"Yeah. You know, after dreams like that---" Harry gestured, indicating the Land of Mordor all around them, from the grim mountains they had had to pass to get in, on to the desert they had to cross---"this doesn't look half-bad." He brushed his hair back out of his eyes; it was a lot longer than it had ever been and Hermione had tied all the boys' hair into pony-tails to keep it out of the way.

"It was that bad for you?"

"Worse. Infinitely worse. When you're a little child, you accept the world pretty much as it is, even if it is pretty horrible. I do wish the Dursleys were here, suffering along with us, but I rather think they'd be on Sauron's side pretty quick. They were always awfully fast to suck up to anybody who had anything they wanted."

"Like---" Ron was cut off as Draco Malfoy slid down the slope in a shower of pebbles, ending up near them as he took off the Invisibility Cloak. Ron gazed carefully at his old rival. Like all of them, he had been changed greatly by their weeks of hard travel. Always thin, Malfoy was now almost emaciated; his formerly pale skin was tanned and roughened by the weather, and like them all, his clothes were in dreadful shape.

"Have a good rest, Potter?" he asked. "Nothing's stirring that I could see or hear, and I used a Keensense Charm---my mother taught me about them---to make certain. Granger's taken the water-bottles; she thinks there's water not far away."

"Good. We've got lembas aplenty. Still and all, without water, we can't go much farther." Ron rubbed his cheek; he still had skin peeling off from sunburn. If nothing else about Mordor agreed with him, the lack of sunshine did.

A crunching noise near them sent them all diving for cover, wands out and ready to fight. Ron peered out, wondering whether they had been discovered.

"Relax, boys, it's just me," came a familiar voice, and Hermione Granger came into view, flitting carefully from one sheltered spot to the next. Like all of them, she did not like the idea of being caught in the open in this place. She had the water-bottles festooned around her, carefully padded with cloth so that they wouldn't clink or rustle together and betray her. When she reached the others, she set down her burden with a sigh. "Gods and goddesses, that stuff's heavy, but I daresay we'll be wishing it was heavier before this trip's over." She peered off toward Mount Doom, and Ron took the opportunity to take a long look at her.

Like all of them, the trip had told on her. She had lost weight, as they all had, and her clothes were bedraggled and filthy. Her hair was what she called "a fright wig," and she was smeared with the volcanic-ash soil of Mordor. Ron didn't pay any of that any attention; he knew they were all filthy and ragged. What he noticed was changes that she probably wouldn't have even agreed existed. She was consumed with the determination to see this thing through, and get the Ring to Mount Doom. Behind the smudges and sunburned cheeks, her eyes reflected an unshakable resolve, her will subordinating her body and making it a mere instrument in the service of their terrible quest.

Ron thought that she had never been more truly beautiful. He knew that if he said any such thing, she'd loudly deny it and insist that she looked hideous. Still, she reminded him of a finely-crafted, honed, polished Japanese sword-blade, such as they all carried, made for one mission and one mission only.

Taking a water-bottle from her, he swigged deeply. The sulfur fumes from Mount Doom dried the mouth quickly. "At least it isn't as hot here as I'd expected it to be in a desert," Harry muttered, gulping water from his own bottle.

"Of course not, Harry," said Hermione, handing out the water bottles and bags so that everybody got to carry a roughly equal share. "We're behind the mountains here, and some way from the sea, according to those maps I saw in Lorien. Also, that cloud-cover over us keeps the worst of the sun off." She hunched, hissed, and snarled: "Ach, sss, the Yellow Face! We hates it, we does, doesn't we, my precious? Gollum!" She shivered. "His voice in my ear, and his hands all over me---gods, what a nightmare! At least we haven't seen him lately!"

Ron grinned rather crookedly. "He wasn't expecting you to be so strong, Hermione. Kicking him just where you did was perfect."

Hermione shook her head grimly. "He was useful enough, guiding us to that pass. I'd bet Hogwarts Castle that he always had something underhanded in mind, though---like getting his "precious" back after that creature was done with us. She didn't strike me as interested in rings."

"The only female I've ever met of whom that statement can be made,:" drawled Draco. Hermione aimed a playful punch at his bicep. "Ouch! Come and see the violence inherent in the system---help, help, I'm being repressed!"

"How much farther do you think it is, Draco?" asked Harry. The water had revived him considerably; Ron wondered how much of his troubles had just been from being dehydrated. He knew the water had perked him up considerably; his feet and legs were still sore and aching, and he could feel the biscuit he had been gnawing like a lump of cement in his stomach, but he felt better than he had for a while.

"I'd say about ten miles, Harry." Draco peered off toward the Mountain; as they had travelled, it had become larger and larger, a huge black humped triangle that swelled until it filled a large part of the horizon. Ever and anon it rumbled, deep and low enough that it was as much perceived as heard.

Harry seemed to come to a decision. "Very well. Let's get as much rest as we can while we're here, and tomorrow, try to make a dash for the Mountain. Does it look like there's any chance of running into soldiers of the Enemy on the way, Draco?"

Draco cogitated. "Highly unlikely. From where I was, I could see almost to the base of the Mountain, and there didn't look like anything alive. It's ash plain all the way, and the nearest roads I could see are a long ways to either side."

"Good. Before we go, though---I'm going to suggest that we shed any extra encumbrances. We'll keep our wands, the clothes we're wearing, our water-bottles, our swords, the Invisibility Cloak, and nothing more. If we have to, we'll use the Ennervate Charm." Harry grinned a haunted grin. "It won't burn us out before we get there, I'm thinking."