The Unlikely Visitor

Chapter 10.
In which mirrors, speeches and memories all serve a common purpose.

Sauron was escaping Precious Nibelungen again, when he found himself in a room he hadn’t been in before. It was empty… apart from a mirror. Suddenly remembering the prophecy, he walked closer to it for inspection. When he looked into it, he audibly gasped. It wasn’t reflecting him; it seemed to be a window in Barad-dûr, looking out over a battlefield. Orcs were everywhere, feasting on dead warriors, the sky was darkened, and there, on some kind of balcony… Sauron saw himself. Black hair blown in the wind, a triumphant look on his face, and on his right hand (that still had all fingers)… the Ring. He couldn’t help but gawk at the strange imagery. Was this a mirror like Galadriel’s, showing images of what was, will be, and could have been? Above the magical glass there was an inscription. Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. Sauron stared at it, but didn’t recognize a single word.
“I see you have discovered Erised.”
The voice made him startle and turn. Dumbledore stood in the room as well, eyes twinkling as always. Sauron immediately felt trapped.
“I did not hear you enter.”
“That is possible. Tell me, Mr. Gorthaur, what does the Mirror show you?”
Sauron didn’t like the situation, so slightly mocking he reused the headmaster’s sentence.
“My home land. Tell me, Professor Dumbledore… what does this mirror do?”
“I show not your face but your heart's desire.” He glanced at the looking glass. “That is its mirrored inscription, and that is what it does. It shows what you desire over everything else.”
Sauron realized now that indeed, when read in reverse the inscription was simple English, albeit with strange spacing between the words. He looked again at the image of himself surveying the remains of a victorious battle. It stung, seeing what might have happened had he done things right…
“The Mirror of Erised is a dangerous thing, Mr Gorthaur. It holds no prophetic value and shows nothing but empty illusion, yet men and women have spent their lives in front of it in longing.”
“No such thing will happen to me. I am aware enough that its reflection holds no truth. In my world there are objects too that can fool one with false images.”
Dumbledore slowly nodded.
“Erised may be treacherous, but she isn’t entirely useless. She holds many secrets, old magic we don’t even know about anymore. Her foremost use, however…” Dumbledore gave Sauron a piercing look. “Its foremost use is showing the confused or deluded what is truly in their heart. Not all people know that equally well.”
Sauron kept a straight face, but secretly wished the man would stop speaking in riddles. He bluntly asked,
“What does it show you?”
“Myself, holding a new pair of socks. I love socks, but no one ever gives me some.”
Sauron wanted to roll his eyes. The man was lying, he could see and feel it. He didn’t know what the bearded professor did see, but it definitely weren’t socks. Probably himself in a position of power, or something like that; in that aspect all Men were equal…
“You should get going, Mr. Gorthaur. If I’m not mistaken, you have class with Professor Binns now.”
Sauron nodded as politely as he managed, and made his way to the History of Magic classroom, hoping that he wouldn’t run into Precious. He didn’t remember having History so it was probably a ruse from Dumbledore to get him out of the mirror room, but he didn’t really mind leaving there anyway.

History of Magic, taught by Professor Cuthbert Binns, was a subject that never ceased to amaze Sauron. Not only was it taught by a bodiless fëa, it was also exceptionally boring. From what Sauron had read in Ginny’s history books, he would have thought it would be fascinating. He had worked his way through the books all the way up to recent history by now, and he had agreed to follow classes simply out of interest. Needless to say, they had been a grave disappointment. When he entered the History of Magic classroom, he noticed it was Ginny’s year. The ghost looked up and remarked.
“I don’t recall you being in this class, Mr. Gorthaur.”
“Dumbledore told me to follow this class.”
“Have a seat then.”
He wanted to sit down in the back, but Luna got up and pointed him to her now vacant seat next to Ginny. The professor didn’t comment on the exchange, and Ginny seemed happily surprised, waking up from the daze induced by Binns’ monotonous voice. She scribbled something on a piece of parchment and slipped it to him. Using the English alphabet she had phonetically written.
“Dumbledore dargat-lat? Kul push-ishi?”
Despite her butchering of Black Speech with those strange English letters of her, the note made Sauron smirk. Literally it asked whether he “was in shit” because Dumbledore had sent him there, a not very polite –but grammatically correct- way of asking if everything was okay. He wrote an answer in flowing Tengwar script under it, telling her that no he wasn’t “in shit”, but that she had to stop being lazy and practice her Tengwar. He watched how she struggled to read his handwriting, and eventually answered.
“Za kulat blagh. Mok-izg History of Magic”
In English characters, which earned her a frown… and another one, when he read the note itself. He didn’t write on the parchment anymore, just answered her out loud.
“History isn’t boring, Ginny. It is important. Your kind does not live long enough to see and remember, so you have to pass on the knowledge of what has happened on to the next generations so they can learn from it.”
“But…”
“No buts. I’m right and you know it.”
Sauron turned to the professor and coughed loudly. The ghost seemed annoyed that he got interrupted again.
“Yes, Mr. Gorthaur?”
“Can I ask the students something?”
“Err…” The ghost looked uncertainly at Sauron… yet, like all ghosts he had a certain insight in things the living wouldn’t understand, which led him to nod. “Go ahead.”
Now the whole class, including Ginny, looked in amazement at Sauron, who got up from his chair and stood in front of the class.
“Who in this classroom thinks History is boring?”
All hands rose.
“Does anyone know what history is about?”
Significantly lesser hands… but still, enough. Sauron nodded at a Gryffindor boy.
“Tell me.”
“Err… History is… err… learning facts, and dates?”
“And what is it useful for?”
The boy shrugged, slightly intimidated by Sauron’s suddenly rather ominous presence.
“I… I don’t really know... Just for our OWL’s, I think.”
Sauron didn’t really know why he had decided to get up and say what he was saying, but he still did.
“History is not facts and figures. History is about people, about wars, about anguish and torture and unexpected strategies. About hope and mistakes and tiny little insignificant details that turn out to be important in the big picture. History is not memorizing dates, it is foremost telling and retelling a story.”
He stopped for a moment, watching the effects of his words on the class. They all seemed both intrigued and dumbstruck by his performance… It made him smirk again; so far so good, he still had it.
“The things that happened in the past determine and make your present and future. Only by knowing and understanding the past, you can understand and control that future. After all, how can you tell where you’re going when you don’t know where you came from?”
He waited just long enough to let it sink in, and then continued.
“The answer is not, because you can’t. Without knowledge of the past, you are all mindless pieces of driftwood in the stream of time, prone to repeat the mistakes of those that went before you.”
With an understanding look at the class, he pointed at Professor Binns.
“I’m not saying you should be interested in his classes. I’m saying that you should be interested in the history of your world. Don’t call it boring…” At that he gave Ginny a pointed look, “Or discard it as only useful to pass tests, because it is the key to understanding life.”
The class was dumbfounded, and no one made a sound. Even after a couple centuries of no practice he was still capable of giving demagogic speeches, apparently. The silence was broken by Ginny, who had gotten up and started clappeing for him. The whole class eventually followed her example, and Sauron left the class with a standing ovation. It was rather comical, and… well, awkward. Very awkward. Outside, Sauron wondered why he had felt the need to speech in front of a bunch of mortals about the importance of history lessons… It had been completely useless and out of character for him. Maybe he was losing his mind. No, more likely he had lost his mind already a while ago, and was this whole world the work of his delirious fëa. Disconcertingly possible, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. Grumbling, he returned to the Ravenclaw Commonroom, vainly wondering why his sick mind couldn’t just have thrown him into a world where he was the almighty despot.

Later at night, Sauron lay awake and pondered over his little speech. There was certainly truth in what he had said; one like him didn’t have to learn history because he had been in the middle of everything throughout the ages, but a mortal had no other option than to rely on the knowledge the previous generation passed on. And knowledge of past events was important, after all history had a tendency of repeating itself. He used to think that was because in Middle-Earth, history tended to feature the same people every time, but judging from what he had seen of this world’s history, it was a general trait. That didn’t explain why he had felt the need to spread this opinion in the middle of the class, though. Hadn’t he purposefully kept himself out of most things here at Hogwarts?
Why had he done it? He went over the various possibilities, including him being crazy in the Void and imagining everything, this new world being an illusion the Valar used to punish him, and simply him going crazy from all the unexplainable and bizarre things this world had to offer. None of the options was very attractive… Sauron knew that he had no way to find out for sure which one it was, so he discarded the thought. Instead, he started thinking about his own past.
As always when he thought about his past, the memories of Númenor returned. This time he wasn’t going to just sit there and relive them, though. He wanted to know why it was always that memory, always that scene that came to mind. He had a fair share of painful defeats for his subconscious to pick from, why always Númenor?
His own words came to mind. To control the future one has to understand the past. And so, Sauron thought long and deeply about the Drowning and his role in it, suppressing inadvertent shudders at the memory of the great wave. The greater part of the night had already passed in unpleasant reminiscence, when all of a sudden the words of that blasted Hat came to mind.
“Mairon is a beautiful name, by the way. Too bad you don’t use it anymore…”
And that was it, Sauron suddenly realized. All the way up to Númenor he had still somewhat thought of himself as Mairon, although he didn’t use the name anymore. No matter what alias he used, that had been how he defined himself. After losing his fair disguise however, he had never again thought of himself as “Admirable”. Sauron still didn’t quite grasp the real importance of said event, though. Why did he keep remembering it? A name couldn’t be that important, could it? It was nearing dawn when he finally fell asleep, dreaming of unpleasant things he couldn’t remember the next morning…

TRANSLATIONS:
“Dumbledore dargat-lat? Kul push-ishi?” (Dumbledore sends you? Are you in shit/trouble?)
“Za kulat blagh. Mok-izg History of Magic” (This is boring. I hate History of Magic)