milliways_bar | (no subject)

Ron tapped Hermione on the arm and when she turns around she'll notice that Ron was white as a sheet.

"Hermione, something's wrong."

Val wanders by, doing a bit of a doubletake at the book. Leaning on a chair, she shakes her head. "Don't listen to him. I am so not a weakling like he made me out to be, and Peter's not someone you want to identify with. Granted, I don't know that much about battleschool to tell you..." She trails off, catching sight of Ron. "Ron, what's wrong?"

"I'll keep that in mind," Hermione says, closing the book. "What's happened now, Ron?"

Ron suddenly looked affronted. "Why are you assuming I've gotten myself in trouble again?" he said petulantly.

"I did not ask if you were in trouble, I asked what has happened now," Hermione clarifies patiently. "What, Ron, has happened now?"

The anger faded and he held up his arm, which was very obviously covered with finger-tip-sized bruises.

Val's eyes flash, paniced. "Force, Ron, what the frell happened?" She looks at him, concerned. "Who the heck has been squeezing at you?" She bites back her next comment of 'and who do I have to smack upside of the head?'

Hermione pulls out her wand and starts casting a healing charm on Ron's arm. "Did you get into a fight?"

"No, I did not, Hermione," Ron said irritably, carefully pronouncing each syllable of her name in his annoyance. "Smeagol was looking out of sorts and we were playing chess, and he went all barmy on me when I went to knock over his king and nearly broke my bloody arm. There's something wrong with him."

Val blinks for a moment, processing this. Suddenly she really wishes she had been paying a bit more attention that semester they read fantasy literature. "That's strange, Ron. He doesn't just lash out at things generally. In fact, he's rather shy."

Hermione, however, stares at Ron in abject shock.

"Smeagol? Ron, did you say Smeagol?"

She blinks a few times.

"You played chess with Gollum?"

Ron raised his eyebrows. "Gollum? Who's that?" he asked. "I played with Smeagol, titchy little midget with big feet and curly hair." He joked, "Kinda looks like the first-years. Anyway, he's been acting strange and he was mentioning someone he called 'Him' and I think he's possessed..."

Val facepalms. "Great, just great." She turns to Hermione. "Ok, so Gollum was here. Then Moiraine healed him, and he went back to being Smeagol, like he was before he got the Ring." Val wrinkles her nose, trying to remember plot. "And, well, this is making me a bit nervous. If he's now acting strange, he could be going back to being Gollum. Or worse, just going crazy. The ring can't be around here, can it? What could be making him do this?"

Hermione shakes her head. "You played chess. With Smeagol. Possibly the most mentally disturbed person in fantastic literature. I'm surprised you're still alive."

Hermione pales at the thought. "I hope the Ring isn't here. Of all the things that could destroy the bar . . . Ron, do you know if Smeagol is dead?"

"Okay, what is this bloody Ring you're all on about and what's this have to do with books?" Ron asked them, his eyes narrowing. "And yeah, I think he's bit it."

Hermione breathes a sigh of relief.

“If he’s dead, the Ring was destroyed, too. And if it had come here with him, we would know about it by now.”

She turns to Ron.

“The Ring is . . . well, think of a dark lord, Ron. Something like Voldemort, only worse, because instead of being a wizard, he’s more like a god. He tricked the leaders of his world into accepting magic rings that they thought would make them more powerful, and they did. But he also made a ring for himself, in secret. He put all of himself into this Ring, all his cruelty, all his hatred, everything that made him evil and horrible, and in making the Ring he gained power over the other rings, which gave him enough power to wage war on Middle-earth and take it over."

She paused for breath, and a glass of water appeared on the bar. She drank from it gratefully.

There was a very pregnant pause.

"What?"

Why had this turned into storytime?

"What does all this have to do with Smeagol?"

Hermione looks a little sad.

"Sauron lost a very important battle when a human prince cut the Ring off his hand, leaving him bodiless and without power. Much like Voldemort after he tried to kill Harry the first time. And the prince, Isildur, could have destroyed the Ring, then - he was in the Dark Lord's country, by the volcano where the Ring had been forged, the only place it could be destroyed. He could have saved countless people's lives from being ruined . . . but that's what made the Ring so terrible. He didn't destroy it. He kept it. The Ring began to take over his mind the minute he saw it. It was insidious like that. No one, no one at all, could look at it and not immediately desire it.

Well, Isildur was attacked and killed, and the Ring fell into a river. For years, everyone thought it was lost forever . . . but then Smeagol's cousin Deagol found it, when the two of them were out fishing, and the first thing they did once it had been established that both of them wanted the Ring was try to kill each other for it. Smeagol won."

Ron's eyebrows nearly disappeared under his hair. "He...he killed his cousin?"

"In his defense, his cousin tried to kill him, too. And they were supposed to be great friends, before the Ring," Hermione says softly. "And really, considering what happened after that, Deagol got the better end of the bargain."

"He said he'd killed his friend," Ron said after a moment. "He seemed to feel so horrid about it though...I mean, the Ring thing makes sense then." Ron scratched at his templed. "But why's he acting this way? It's gone now, right? Shouldn't he be better?"

Hermione shakes her head. "The Ring doesn't just let go, Ron. It ruined him. It brought out everything bad in him and made it grow, until he had gotten so nasty and cruel that his family had no choice but to kick him out into the wild. By then, sunlight and moonlight caused him pain, and the Ring was beginning to speak to him in his head. He wandered through the wilderness until he found his way into a cave under a mountain, where there was no light to hurt him . . . and he stayed there for five hundred years.”

She takes a sip of water. She’s always pitied Sméagol, though she never actually thought about him much. She liked thinking about Faramir more, but that’s a different story entirely.

“The Ring doesn’t let its bearers die,” she explains. “And in all that time, it kept on changing him, driving him mad. It’s easy to go mad when you live alone in darkness, with only a voice in your head for company. The Ring turned him into a horrible little thing, barely recognizable as a hobbit anymore, all skin and bones and nastiness. That was Gollum.” She shakes her head. “He wasn’t pleasant.”

Ron held a hand over his mouth to keep himself from shrieking.

"You mean that nasty little goblin running around here before was him?" HE looked disgusted. "He was talking about eating baby birds in front of me. Bloody hell!"

Hermione grimaces.

"He ate much worse than birds," she says grimly.

"Anyway, after a few years a hobbit came along and stole the Ring. Gollum followed him. A whole other adventure started happening, and it would take hours for me to explain it all. Suffice to say the thief had left the Ring to his nephew, who was going to destroy it, and Gollum followed him, almost made friends with him, tried to kill him more than once, and died.”

She turns to Val. “And I suppose he came here afterwards, right?”

Val, who has been listening to all of this silently, nods. "I'm fairly certain he's from after all of that." She ponders for a moment. "He got here, and was very scared of everything, and wandered around as Gollum for a while. Moiraine healed him, then, and he went back to being Smeagol. However, I think he still has the mental scarring of Gollum." She shakes her head.