Chapter Text
Celebrimbor, lord of Eregion, was hungry. Hungover, too — one day, he would learn to beware of dwarven beer. But, apparently, not today. Or yesterday. Whatever.
The terrifying bedroom was real enough. If one could ignore the moving pictures of his face upon the walls, it would even have qualified as comfortable, extremely so. A rapid search of the few dressers and cupboards told him little enough of this Gilderoy Lockhart person who, for some reason, looked like him. Well, he was a wizard, according to the posters. But he wasn’t him, of this Celebrimbor was sure; all the beer in the world wouldn’t have been enough to make him come up with such a detailed delusion.
The sight from the window was like none he had ever seen. It appeared to be winter, as snow covered some round mountains (or what was visible of them in between low clouds), and a lake of a steely hue could be glimpsed behind a faint mist. Yet, even as winters go, this one felt particularly drab, as if the world itself had gone grey.
After a slight hesitation, Celebrimbor got dressed in the other man’s clothes — robes and cape of fairly good taste, although it was hard to peg them as either everyday or ceremonial garments — and ventured to open the door. It gave on an empty corridor of stone, that seemed to belong to some sort of fort or keep. A smell of warm bread drifted to him, and was enough to coax him out of hiding.
Following the smell — no, heavenly perfume — of breakfast, Celebrimbor soon found himself in hallways and passages with much more people. Children, mostly, but what surprised him most was that these were Second Born children. He appeared to be the only elf in sight. Even more puzzling, most saluted him with a mumbly ‘morning, professor, and a few (mostly girls) even tried a more chirpy approach. He didn’t answer, because this certainly wasn’t any language he had ever learned, and yet he understood it to perfection, and that was extremely disturbing.
At last, he reached the promise of food as a youth — they were all clad in black, so somber and depressing, were they in mourning? — held open a great door for him.
Well, thought Celebrimbor, that is some piece of architecture.
Rafters of dark wood rose high in lofty vaults, and the sky danced over them. The real sky: a mess of grey and white clouds torn by a slow wind, great slashes of blue now hidden and now near blinding with morning light. Celebrimbor was more of a smith, of course, but he knew to appreciate other arts, too. He thought of the famed arches of Menegroth — but these only ever did show the twinkling stars. This was impressive.
Once he was done gaping at the ceiling, he inspected the rest of room, crowded with children and youths. Fortunately, no one seemed to have noticed his moment of absent admiration as all were busy eating, chatting, reading, and catching up on homework. Four great tables full of children. Celebrimbor had never seen so many Second Born children in the same place. At the place of honour, though, was another table where adults were seated, and Celebrimbor guessed they must be — what? Parents? Certainly not, there was not enough of them. Orphanage? Loremasters sitting before their pupils?
In any case, he walked to that table with the utmost courage and sat on the last empty chair. The woman to his left sneered. He was bad at estimating Second Born ages, but she was on the older side, and he felt that, for some reason, she was extremely displeased with him. Actually, she quite reminded him of Galadriel on a bad day, minus the golden hair and the athletic build.
“Good morning, Gilderoy,” she said.
“Good morning, lady,” he replied in that strange language that flowed so naturally.
The man to his right scoffed and asked in a cold voice: “Did you have a nice time yesterday in Hogsmeade, Gilderoy? Middle of the week, my, I hope your head doesn’t hurt too bad.”
That one had a greasy look on him, but also an aura natural authority that sent shivers down Celebrimbor’s spine. Before he could answer, however, the man unfolded a wide sheet of paper that acted as a screen between them — and Celebrimbor was once again confronted by a large moving picture of his own face over the title: LOCKHART VOWS TO DEFEAT SLYTHERIN’S MONSTER.
What monster, now?
Since people appeared to be done talking to him, he dug face first into breakfast.
While he was eating, however, his mind didn’t remain idle as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. This must be some kind of school, and all the adults at the table with him were teachers of sorts. It meant that he was a teacher, too. But what kind of lessons was he to give? And people acted as if he was this Gilderoy Lockhart man — the resemblance was uncanny, true. But this wasn’t Eregion. This wasn’t any place in Middle Earth he’d ever seen, and he’d travelled quite a bit. The logical conclusion was that this was, somehow, somewhere else entirely; a whole new world, where for some reason he already had a part to play in. And everyone but him had gotten the script.
Well, there was no way Celebrimbor would be able to find his way again in this castle with hidden passageways and moving staircases, so when he was done he just wandered away a bit from the dining hall and asked his way to his classroom to the closest student, who didn’t appear to be surprised. So this was really a school, then.
It took two more tries before he found his classroom — well, the other man’s classroom. There was no logical reason that explained why Celebrimbor would try and teach something he was probably wildly unqualified for, except that he wanted to understand what was happening, and that children of all races are notoriously chatty when given the chance.
*
The classroom was, well, a boring place. Not that Celebrimbor had any hope for it to compare to a forge or a battlefield, but the students looked extremely dejected, as if they wished to be anywhere in the universe but in this precise spot. He had asked where they had left off last time — quite a safe question, and had been rewarded by a forlorn chorus that had condensed to “chapter seven of Travels With Trolls.”
Trolls, uh? Celebrimbor had evaded a few in his time, during the wars of Beleriand. It had been a while since he had seen any, though: ever since he had settled in Eregion and devoted himself to rebuilding the House of Fëanor as a non-murderous, non-oath swearing, and quite certainly not prone to civil war, entity, he had led a rather sedate life. Oh, he did enjoy his work as the first smith of the Guild, since he had a creative mind that thrived in this multi-cultural setting. But lastly things hadn’t been the same: the tensions with Galadriel since he had welcomed Annatar, the tensions with Annatar since he flat-out refused to kick Galadriel back to the closest Sylvan realm, and all of his smiths who, for some reason, couldn’t follow the speed of his train of thought… All of this had contrived to stifle his imagination and make his life quite a drag, actually. Perhaps some time in an unfamiliar setting was everything he needed. Like a holiday.
Plastering a bright smile upon his face, Celebrimbor asked his pupils if any of them had ever faced a troll in real life. Three students raised their hands: a girl with bushy hair, whose hand shot up straight like an arrow, and two boys. One was a red-head who seemed quite hesitant to put himself forward. The other was a bespectacled dark haired, runtish, adolescent who was, it seemed, repressing a sigh.
“Fantastic,” said Celebrimbor. “Would you like to share how you did it with the class?”
The three looked at each other. The dark-haired boy said: “I threw stuff at it and accidentally put my wand deep in its nostril.”
The red-head said: “Then I knocked it out with its own club.”
The girl said nothing. Teenagers.
“So, ahem…”
“Ron, sir, Ron Weasley,” breathed the red-head.
“Thank you. So, Ron Weasley, how did you manage such a feat? The club must have been heavier than yourself.”
The boy turned bright pink; whether he was embarrassed from the potential praise or the fear of being thought a liar wasn’t clear. But he was obviously proud when he said that he had used a Levitation Charm, and prouder still when Celebrimbor asked him to show it to the class.
Ron, since such was his name, took out a small wooden wand from a case. Holding it carefully, he pointed it to his pen and said, with a careful flicker of the wrist: Wingardium leviosa. But something went wrong. An invisible force lifted him from his chair; he flailed like a fish out of water, and crashed down on his desk, mumbling that his wand was broken and did weird things. All the while, Celebrimbor was floored. He had never seen anything like it.
A ripple of laughter went through the classroom; Celebrimbor shut it down with a sharp gaze. “Silence,” he said. “Your friend here did very good. It was quite impressive.” Quite impossible too, particularly for both a child and a Second Born. The last time he had seen such magic had been at the hands of a Maia. In freaking Valinor. But no one seemed to find it scandalous here — and a quick inspection of the desks showed that all had similar wands. A shudder went down Celebrimbor’s spine: could these be servants of the Dark Lord? But Morgoth had been defeated, and besides, he had never shared his magic with mortal creatures, as far as Celebrimbor knew.
Still, he chose his words very carefully when he next walked to the boy’s — Ron’s — desk and asked to see his wand.
It was wood indeed. Ash, perhaps, or some other pale wood. Nothing but wood, but the tip was half-broken, and there seemed to be a single shining white hair in the middle.
“It got broken at the beginning of the year,” explained the boy. “I couldn’t get it fixed. So it works wonky now. The troll was before.”
“I could repair it for you, I think.”
The boy looked at Celebrimbor as if he was suddenly star-struck; he breathed out a half-garbled assent, and Celebrimbor slowly walked back to his pulpit. He couldn’t wait to examine that thing later on.
“Wands,” said Celebrimbor to the class. “Wonderful tools. They allow you to knock out a troll with his own club, and certainly many other things. And yet, they are nothing but tools, like a hammer or a sword. Tools obey the hand that wields them, for evil or for good. Tell me, how would you children go about your day if you suddenly had no wand?”
The students all looked at one another; it seemed this wasn’t the way that class was supposed to go. But a sassy smart-ass on the last row cried out that they wouldn’t have lessons at all, and it opened metaphorical valves that flooded the room with outlandish propositions. Most could indeed be summed up as a perpetual holiday of some kind — so this wasn’t just a school where students happened to possess strange magic. This was a school that taught magic, using these very wands. Celebrimbor had to sit before he collected himself. He had never heard of such a thing, and he was pretty sure no one in Middle Earth or beyond had either. Where, in Ilúvatar’s name, was he? And what was he doing there? What was that mention of a monster along with his picture?
The children were now bickering about whether flying brooms required wands or not. Two factions had formed: one that purported that, since wands were already forbidden as per the rules, they could indeed fly and play a sport with an awful name, and the other that maintained that, since wands were necessary to enchant aforesaid brooms, that game of Quidditch would be out of the picture for good.
“Enough,” said Celebrimbor with a calm voice that was always heard even in the noisiest forge. His pupils shut up instantly, looking quite puzzled. Was his look-alike that usually bad at authority? Anyway.
“Let us get back to the point, shall we? Could you remind me what I am meant to teach you here?”
Through the new silence, the girl with the bushy hair lifted her hand again.
“Yes, miss…”
“Hermione Granger, sir. You are teaching us Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
“Excellent,” replied Celebrimbor in earnest. Now that was a lesson he felt quite capable of teaching, provided the name was as straightforward as it seemed. The fact that Annatar, who lived in Eregion and counseled him almost daily, was unbeknownst to him the Dark Lord Sauron in disguise may have shattered a teeny tiny bit that confidence — but Celebrimbor didn’t know, and that was all that was needed for him to continue.
“Defense Against the Dark Arts. Tell me, miss Granger: what do you know about it?”
The girl seemed ready to launch herself in a verbose tirade, but she caught herself in time. With a lost expression, she avowed: “Not much, professor. I’ve read all the books, of course, but I’ve never… And, last year, professor Quirrell, well, he wasn’t quite himself was he? So I don’t know if I’ve learned anything practical.” Still, she perked up as she added: “But I’ve read all about it. And I’ve read all of your books.”
“Reading, in this case, might not be enough. Class, tell me, all of you: how do you recognise evil? For it seems to me this should be the first and most important lesson of all.”
Due to Celebrimbor’s aforesaid ignorance, the truthful irony of this statement was quite lost to him.
Several suggestions came from the students. Killing was evil, they said — killing innocents, replied others, because sometimes Aurors had to kill dark mages in self-defense, didn’t they? But the burgeoning debate on death penalty was cut short when another added that torturing and doing harm to people in general was evil. And what about animals? A brown-skinned girl pronounced the word vegetarism, and nearly all hell broke loose before Celebrimbor managed to calm the class.
“Evil,” he said, “always stems from a wish to control and coerce. Nothing is born evil, for malice is not an instinct such as seeking shelter or food. It is a choice — a choice made before each action, a choice that can be born of selfishness, fear, or even a misguided wish to do good. But evil always boils down to this: to impose one’s will to a free creature, be it to restrain, maim, enslave, or kill them. The reasons matter not, for some good intentions can later change to ill effects.”
Somewhere deep in the castle, a bell rang. It seemed to signal the end of the class, for students began to pack up. Celebrimbor signaled for them to go, but the red-haired boy came to him and, embarrassed, asked when he would get his wand back. “You see, we have Charms coming up next, and Professor Flitwick’ll tear me a new one — sorry, I mean, I’ll end up in detention if I don’t have a wand,” he explained in an apologetic tone. “I could do without for Herbology after lunch, but then Transfiguration will be the same.”
The boy’s plight was evident, and it tugged at Celebrimbor’s heartstrings. There was no spare wand around his desk here, but he suddenly remembered that he had seen one on the nightstand in his bedroom. So he asked the boy — Ron: “Do you know where my quarters are?”
“Yes, sir.”
Well, that was good news, because he himself didn’t. So, Celebrimbor dragged the boy away, got him to navigate through the castle winding ways, and when they got to the teachers’ quarters he gave Ron that stray wand with a promise to return his own soon enough.
*
When midday arrived, Celebrimbor was more than happy to follow packs of students back to the Great Hall. Teaching was hard. He had dealt with three different classes so far, and he was exhausted. The fact that he had to bluff his way through everything wasn’t the only reason: Celebrimbor was quite an introvert, and so many people at once made him feel drained. When he settled down for lunch, it was with the expectation to eat in peace, and then find out whether he would have time for a nap before heading back to class. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans for him, as he was barely two bites into a fantastic pie when an old man took a seat by his side.
Now, that one was old — very much so, and with a white beard to make any Dwarf jealous. Half-moon spectacles were perched precariously on his nose; he wore colourful robes and a pointy hat to match.
“May I speak with you for a minute, Gilderoy?”
Celebrimbor was a ruling lord of the Noldor. He knew when such a question was only the polite way to say sit your sorry ass down and listen to me, will you? So, he straightened himself, wiped his lips on a napkin, and readily agreed. Perhaps this would give him some idea of what was going on.
“I must confess, Gilderoy, I read the interview you gave the Daily Prophet yesterday — I usually do their crosswords, see, and it was on the same page. You do have some interesting ideas about the best way to tackle Slytherin’s monster.”
That bad? Perhaps he ought to have read that paper instead of teaching class, thought Celebrimbor, because the last time he had opened a friendly chat with an underling that way had gone extremely bad for that person. Since he had absolutely no idea of what he was meant to have said in that interview, Celebrimbor replied with a vague, non-committal, noise.
“I won’t hide from you that the rest of the Hogwarts staff isn’t exactly enthused. Professor Snape even came to my office to complain, although I do grant you this has been at least a weekly occurrence since term began. Only Professor Sprout seemed more or less on your side, despite what you implied about her students. Pomona, as I, found some merit in the idea of teaching self defense to our students and, after all, isn’t you chair already about that? So this is less of a, shall I say, infringement on your colleagues’ abilities than your other suggestions of letting you comb the castle in search of this creature. Which, honesty compels me to say, Professor Snape was quite insistent on letting you do, probably in the hope that the monster might have its way with you.”
Very slowly, Celebrimbor said: “I suppose I am the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Where could I find more information about that monster, to better prepare the students against it? Who would know more? Are there loremasters, or mistresses, with a particular interest in such creatures?”
The old man’s beard moved as if he were smiling. “Magical creatures,” he said, “are of the greatest interest to Hagrid. As groundskeeper, he may have noticed anything unusual about the beasts that roam the Hogwarts enclave. But I would rather start with Madam Pince in the library.”
The library (which Celebrimbor found with the help of several students once his day lessons were done) was another overwhelming thing, perhaps even more so than the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall. The Noldor kept archives, true, but relatively few as most of their history was remembered in songs and tales. Celebrimbor had once been awed by the chamber of Mazarbul in Khazad Dûm, where the Dwarves kept meticulous records of all events since the first Durin reigned, and, well, he found that the Hogwarts library came close second with row after row of old tomes and new scrolls.
Finding the librarian was like searching for a king in his castle. Her throne stood behind a great desk at the center of the room, piles of paper acting as guardians by her side, and she was crowned with a small hat whose primary function was to hold two quills. Celebrimbor found it difficult to give her an age — but there was wisdom in her sharp eyes. He gave a small, but respectful salute.
“Madam Pince, loremistress of Hogwarts. I come to you with a plea for help.”
The librarian looked rather surprised to see him; her thin face lit up with the beginning of a wry smile as she said: “Professor Lockhart, I thought you wrote books instead of reading them. How can I be of use?”
“I am looking for information about that Slytherin monster, if I got the name right?”
“Straight to the point,” said Madam Pince. “Well, I would lie if I said I hadn’t done some bibliographical research since the first attack, and only the headmaster has been interested to look at it so far — although some students did, too, but this is not the kind of knowledge appropriate to such young minds. Come with me, please? Isobel MacDougall, did you just dog-ear a page? Use a bookmark, you fiend!”
A blond girl with freckles became red as a Beleriand sunset (when Beleriand was on fire) and hurriedly moved her wand over the book she had been reading so that the page became pristine again.As Celebrimbor followed the librarian, he listened to her summarize the legends surrounding the Chamber of Secrets and the monster it contained. There were quite a few notions he didn’t understand, but the term pureblood was rather self-explanatory, and from it most things made sense. Some people believed themselves better born than others, and that their birth gave them the right to oppress others, going as far as justifying the killing of children. Celebrimbor, by virtue of his family history, was quite an expert on murder, and he didn’t like a bit what he was hearing. While his uncles had (mostly) not belonged to the rabid-murderer category that many saw fit to inflict to them, some of their followers had been less than savory. The fate of the children of Doriath, in particular, had always stuck to Celebrimbor’s mind.
At last, they reached a portion of the library that was cordoned off, presumably to keep students from it. Madam Pince explained, with a smirk, that it contained both some shorter works by Gilderoy Lockhart (written under a pen name), and volumes that were about and made of dangerous magic. A shiver ran down Celebrimbor’s spine: he thought he could hear whispers coming from the shelves, and see dark intentions pool like oil in the worst-lit corners. He closely followed the librarian, who startled him by hitting a book that was moving from its place, before she unlocked a small door half-hidden behind a shelf.
“Come,” she said. “This is where I store my research.”
The room was surprisingly cosy. It was small, true, and overrun with books, as was to be expected. Two lecterns held tomes bound in leather and gold; bookmarks of many colours marked pages in them, and parchment filled with references in a neat writing waited by their side. There was one armchair that looked the very definition of comfort, a wooden chair by a desk, and a great many cups that had once been filled with tea. A golden light, restful to the eyes, came from a lamp that gave off neither smoke nor heat, and was therefore safe to handle around so much paper. If the main library room was whence Madam Pince reigned, this was where the heart of her realm was kept. Celebrimbor suddenly greatly liked Madam Pince.
“Here, make yourself at home, Professor Lockhart, while I show you how my index system works.”
Several hours later, which must mean about the middle of the night, Celebrimbor understood why no one, save the headmaster (who he believed to be the old man from lunchtime), had asked Madam Pince for help. Hadn’t he boasted the near perfect memory of the elves, Celebrimbor would have begged for mercy about an hour in — but he was able to cross-reference with ease and had avoided loosing himself in a sea of trivia.
Several things were known as cold, hard, facts, and there were many wild theories too. But, if one was to assume there was indeed a hidden chamber where a monster had loitered for the last thousand years, only a few remained.
First, the Heir of Slytherin was — had to be, if prophecies worked the same here as in Middle Earth — the very last of that line. Allowing twenty years on average for a generation, and allowing for average population growth between the Middle Ages and the present time, Celebrimbor quickly did the math as to how many potential heirs there could be, and winced. The Second Born did breed like rabbits. Finding out a single descendant, or even locating a bloodline, would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
“Are there trustworthy genealogical records of the main wizarding families, Madam Pince?”
“Genealogical records, yes,” replied the librarian. “Trustworthy… very much less. Many old families feel that an air of legend suits them, and things tend to get quite muddy about three hundred years back. You can find plenty who would claim to descend from the Hogwarts founders, and very little proof to go with that. Besides, there has been plenty of intermarriage between families through time, which makes these less family trees and more spider’s web.”
Celebrimbor groaned. Would a self-proclaimed heir fit the deal?
Second, the monster itself would have to be very long-lived, which did help remove plenty of candidates. Unless there was a magic strong enough to put him in an enchanted sleep when not called for — a sleep that would consume no energy so as to literally suspend it in time. Celebrimbor had some experience with that, but rings of power didn’t suspend existence and didn’t fully avoid senescence, and he couldn’t bring himself to imagine mere mortals could do better than him and Annatar who had, after all, been trained by Aulë himself.
All in all, Celebrimbor felt he had learnt nothing apart from a trove of background information and local culture that would, hopefully, help him survive in that strange place. He wasn’t one step closer to a way for the students to escape the monster. So he left, carrying a few books of general history “so that he could see what the students learned about these things”, and wandered through corridors lined with moving portraits until he somehow found again his rooms. He was so tired that the sudden appearance of several ghosts did very little to spook him, but he still forced himself to a more throughout search of professor Lockhart’s rooms before tucking in for the night.
Celebrimbor found nothing more than in the morning, apart from copious amounts of hair lotion, and put aside Gilderoy Lockhart’s own books to read later. Before he went to bed, though, he removed all the creepy moving pictures from the walls and stuffed them in a drawer. The pictures, who eyed him with distrust, didn’t protest.
He would have had a very restorative night’s sleep if, in the small hours of the morning, he hadn’t been suddenly awoken by several small creatures with big ears, who were looking at him reverently. Was this a nightmare? But one of them stepped forward and, with a shrill voice, said: “The master is here! The legends are true! The High Elves exist!”
With a very un-lordly groan, Celebrimbor fell back to his pillow as the house elves of Hogwarts bowed very low to him. His second morning there wasn’t going to be any better than his first one.