The Unlikely Visitor

Chapter 5.
In which there is a language barrier, Sauron gets his Hogwarts Letter, and a strange wand finds an owner.

He had been correct; engaging in local culture was indeed the best way to gain popularity. Sauron found that after the quidditch game the entire Weasley family had decided to like him. Popularity was power, so he didn’t complain… When they got to the Burrow however, something unexpected happened to thwart his mood… as usual. This unexpected something had a long beard and a pointy hat, and it came out of the hearth surrounded by green flames. The first thing it made Sauron think of was enough to make him curse something very ugly under his breath. It couldn’t be Olórin, it just couldn’t be… When the man looked his way, he almost sighed in relief; it wasn’t that particular wretched wizard. It was still a very Istari-like wizard though, and Sauron knew better than to trust those. Even the corruptible ones caused him trouble.
“Albus!”
Molly exclaimed as she saw the man.
“Ah, Molly… It appears I am just in time. I am sorry I didn’t find the time to come earlier; I had to take care of some things first. Is your husband around?”
“Yes, he is in the garage, putting away our quidditch things… Did you receive our letter?”
“Of course I did. I must say I am very curious after your guest…”
Sauron internally cursed. There you had it. Beards and pointy hats, nothing but trouble. A little later he found himself at the repaired dinner table together with Arthur, Molly and the wizard referred to as Albus. The Weasley children had been sent upstairs, but they were undoubtedly all listening in through the hole in the ceiling.
“I am sorry if this arrives a little sudden, Mr… Sauron, isn’t it?” Sauron nodded, and the wizard continued, “I am Professor Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts. ”
“The place where Ginny learns her magic.”
“Yes, although not just Ginny; all wizards in the United Kingdom receive their education there.”
“I see.”
Sauron wondered what this was all about… They could hardly expect him to go to school, could they?
“It has come to me that you are a wizard from another world, Mr. Sauron... Can you confirm this?”
He didn’t feel like explaining the difference between Istari in Middle-Earth and wizards here to this unpleasantly inquisitive man, so he just nodded.
“Yes.”
“I have also heard of your rather impressive sample of accidental magic. With such displays of power you risk breaching the Statute of Secrecy, and that could lead to an arrest by the Aurors. I believe you understand what that would mean.”
The history books had covered topics like the Statute of Secrecy and what happened to people who broke it, so he had a bit of an idea. Again he nodded.
“Your hosts were rightfully concerned about this, and I may have a solution to offer you.”
“Oh?”
“To be allowed a wand in the UK, one must follow or have followed magical education. If you would agree to follow lessons at Hogwarts, you would get an allowance for a wand, robes and schoolbooks, next to the education you need to control your magic properly. I believe it would be in your interest to agree to this.”
Sauron eyed him suspiciously, and Dumbledore stared back. His very Olórin-like twinkling eyes seemed to try and push their way into his mind… Sauron pictured the black gates of Mordor and gruffly denied Dumbledore access. If he thought he could try those mind tricks on him, the master deceiver… then he was painfully mistaken.
“What is in it for you?”
The harsh question made Arthur and Molly widen their eyes. Dumbledore just sent him a smile that would have been amiable if not for the suspicion in his eyes.
“Call it curiosity. After all, it doesn’t happen every day that we have a visitor from another world. I would be honored to welcome you at Hogwarts.”
“You must notice that I am hardly the age anymore to go to school.”
And then “hardly” was a generous euphemism…
“You wouldn’t be expected to stay in one age group; you would be allowed to follow classes that match your skill level in the different subjects, in combination with private lessons.”
It was a generous offer, that much Sauron knew… and from experience he knew that there was often a hidden motive for generous offers.
“What are the conditions to your offer?”
“You follow the school rules, behave yourself towards the other students… Nothing very strange or unusual, I’d think. As I said, I offer this out of curiosity.”
He didn’t trust it. But then, it wasn’t as if he could refuse, and having a wand like the others would certainly make things easier. What he had read about these people’s magic so far had made him honestly curious…
“Good. I accept.”
“Perfect! All I need is your full name, and then arrangements can be made.”
“My… full… name?”
Sauron was pretty sure that “Sauron” counted as a full name, it wasn’t as if he used abbreviations.
“Your first and last name.”
Right. Unfortunately he was a Maia and not a Hobbit, and Maiar didn’t do last names. Mentally he went over the entire list of names he had had over the ages, hoping to find at least one that had a last name. No such luck, of course.
“I’m afraid in my world we don’t use last names. Well, some do, but I have never been given one.”
“You are entirely free to make one up, in that case.”
Very well… He decided to go with a combination of his Quenya and Sindarin names.
“Sauron Gorthaur, then.”
“Very good.”
The reactions he received on his name were still both unsettling and amusing; he tended to forget that these people didn’t speak Middle-Earth languages… He didn’t think this Dumbledore would think his name “very good” if he knew what it meant…
“I am afraid I’ll have to cut the visit short now, there is lots to do at Hogwarts for the coming year and I find myself buried in work. A letter with further explanations will arrive soon.”
And with that, the wizard returned to the fireplace and disappeared in green flames again. Molly and Arthur looked at each other and then at Sauron.
“You were… rather rude to Dumbledore…”
“I tend to be careful when people offer me things. I meant no offense.”
“So, you’re going to Hogwarts… Excited?”
He sent Molly a slightly orange-tinged deathglare. No, he was not particularly excited. Not at all.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to retreat to my room.”
He left the Weasley couple at the table, and walked upstairs. As expected, he caught sight of several redheads scurrying away from the hole in the floor when he reached the first floor. Among those was Ginny, who sent him an obnoxious grin when he entered the room.
“So, you’re going to Hogwarts…”
Before she could finish her sentence he grumbled irritated,
“No, I’m not excited.”
Ginny raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t think you would be. I was going to ask if you want to read my copy of “Hogwarts: A History”… Since you like being informed and all.”
“Oh. That would be… helpful.”
“I’ll ask Bill to put the spell on it. By the way, how are you going to make your assignments? None of the professors knows Tengwar, I think… Or Black Speech, for that matter.”
Mentally, Sauron wished all the Valar to the deepest dung-pit of Barad-dûr. He really, really hated his life… Why couldn’t everything be a little less complicated? It wasn’t much to ask for, was it?

“Mok-izg slaium-izub...” (I hate my life)
Ginny recognized that phrase as Sauron’s favorite lament. He hated his life… again.
“It’s not so bad… English really isn’t hard.”
Sauron sent her an angry glare.
“No, really. English is relatively easy to learn. With some books and stuff you’d manage in no time. I could help you, if you’d like.”
It was clear to her that he wanted to give her a harsh No, followed by something incomprehensible and probably rude. He didn’t, however.
“If you think you can manage that, I wouldn’t oppose to it.”
Seeing that Sauron wasn’t about to have a lightning bolt fry her, Ginny decided to ask something bold.
“If I teach you English… do you think you could try to teach me this Black Speech of yours?”
He looked rather disbelieving at her.
“You… want to learn Black Speech?”
He put the emphasis on “want” as if it was highly unlikely to want to learn this language.
“Err… yeah. It sounds cool. Complicated, though. I don’t know if I could learn it, but I would like to try.”
“I suppose I can give it a try.”
Internally, Ginny cheered. Usually she wasn’t so excited about learning things, but hey, who wouldn’t want to learn a strange alien language?
“When do we start?”
“I want to finish my book first. We can start tomorrow.”

No one, no one at all, had ever volunteered to learn the Black Speech. Sauron knew well enough that this was a different world, where his name and his language were simply curiosities from a foreign place… but still it was a bit of a shock. Ginny seemed very eager to start, and the next day she had some kind of writing board, a few notebooks, quills, and a couple books with her.
“What have you brought?”
“Just some things we might need. Bill explained me something about the translation spell, by the way. The person on who it is cast is only understandable to his surroundings when he wants to be understood. So that’s why I sometimes don’t understand you. Also, it only works with one language. If I would start speaking French you wouldn’t understand me anymore either. It’s like a screen between you and the world, whatever comes through from your side sounds English to us if you want it to, and our English sounds as your native language to you.”
Sauron frowned.
“That is… informative.”
“I just thought you might like to know.”
He pensively nodded.
“Will you start with English?”
“Okay. No problem.”
Ginny was actually kind of nervous. She had never taught anyone anything before, and Sauron really didn’t seem like the easiest student to start with. He was rather intimidating most of the time, even when he wasn’t cursing or causing thunderstorms.
“So… Let’s begin with the alphabet. I think it’s somewhat similar to your Tengwar, it’s the characters we use to write the language down.”
“I see.”
And so their language classes started. Ginny didn’t have to actually teach as much as she had feared; explaining the alphabet turned out to be enough to get started. Sauron read the grammar books himself, and apparently got himself over his dislike of asking for things; he asked Bill to occasionally remove the translation spell, so he could get used to the sound of English. Ginny knew that he must be a very intelligent person, but she was still baffled by how quickly he managed to get the basics. He did have the urge to paste all words together a bit, somewhat making a phrase sound like one long word, and he was far from speaking and writing proper English… but Ginny estimated it would only take him a few months to master the language. Her own language classes on the other hand… She found that she admired Sauron for how quickly he had gotten the hang of the English alphabet, because her own attempts at Tengwar were clumsy at best…

In the following weeks, an unusual companionship was formed between Ginny and Sauron. Ginny often wondered why she liked him, because he was harsh in his best moments and downright antipathetic in all the others… but she did. It was very much like the hole in the house. It had been an uncomfortable nuisance at first, but they had slowly began to see and appreciate the advantages of the thing, up to the point where they were actually reluctant to have it repaired completely. Sauron was just like that; even though he was still largely the same grumpy, gloomy person, the whole family had come to somewhat like him. Ron found in Sauron his superior when it came to wizard chess –a game Ginny had added to her slowly growing mental list of Things Sauron Liked- Fred and George admired him for his apparently brilliant Beater skills, he and Bill got to an understanding with the translation spell, and even Percy appreciated him for his –rather obsessive- neatness.
However, the better Ginny got to know Sauron, the more she realized that she knew nothing about him at all. There were bits and pieces of information of course, but she found that the Maia was very good at avoiding questions, be it by being generally threatening or simply talking his way around them. A major bit of information hit her however when she went over her Black Speech vocabulary list.
“War. Mazauk. Hatred. Mokum. Ally. Narish. Pain. Nûl…”
Most of the words were… either unpleasant or related to warfare. The list grew every day, but there was so far no word for love, or happiness, or even friends. Ginny thought it was unlikely that there would be no word for those things, but… well, it was possible that pleasant words were as blatantly absent from Black Speech as the letter E.
“You were involved in a war, no?”
“What?”
Ginny shrugged.
“All your vocabulary is related to war. So, am I right?”
“I don’t want to…”
“Ah come on, just yes or no!”
His eyes flared dangerously red and his voice got that threatening edge when he hissed,
“What about “I don’t want to talk about it” is so hard to understand? Leave me.”
The answer, Ginny decided, was definitely yes. However, she soon noticed that inconspicuous words like Cat, Dress, Table, Egg and Hair started to appear on the vocabulary list rather than descriptions of weapons and torture devices. Tsss…

He had to watch out for this Ginny. She was unusually perceptive, especially in comparison to her family members. Of course, he had been stupid with the vocabulary list. It was a force of habit to write down the words he used most first. He had corrected his mistake, but she would probably not let it go…
Sauron was still at loss of how to behave exactly, not something he was used to. The first weeks had been so confusing that he had been unable to set up an amiable act, and now that act would be seen through rather easily, he suspected, especially by Ginny… He would have to work on that; having her around him so much was a disadvantage, but he could try to turn it in his favor.
He learned English easily –although the overabundance of E’s annoyed him to no end- and he suspected to master it soon enough to avoid trouble at Hogwarts. Not that he liked to think about that; going to the illustrious wizard school was not exactly something he looked forward to. Although, his strategic mind provided him- it was the way to gaining power and insight, and in the end perhaps a victory that would put him in a ruling position. And if that wasn’t possible, he could devise a way to return to Middle-Earth and bring what he had learned to practice. What he had read so far about the Wizarding world and its warfare had made him curious; this brand of magic was unheard of in Middle-Earth, and he already saw countless ways in which he could profit from it. Especially the mentions of Dark Magic had sparked his interest…

Two months passed, and at the end of the summer the Hogwarts letters arrived by owl. Sauron also got one, and he frowned at the list of items he would need. Gloves of dragon hide? A pointed hat for day wear? Would he really have to dress like an Istar? The irony wasn’t lost on him. Molly caught his frown.
“Don’t worry, we can find all these things on Diagon Alley! I say we go today, if we’re lucky we can get there before the crowds!”
Crowds. Great. There was no escaping it however, Molly took on her army commander persona again –she wouldn’t have done bad leading a regiment of Orcs, he thought- and gathered the Weasley troops for what was going to be a very extensive shopping trip. They used the Floo –a horrible but inventive device in his opinion- and arrived at Diagon Alley, a rather busy street full of shops with signs he couldn’t entirely decipher. Molly led them skillfully through the masses of people, from shop to shop. Books, a cauldron, a potions kit, all the things on the list were bought until only robes and a wand for Sauron were still missing.
In a shop called Madam Malkins’ he got black Hogwarts robes, and also two pairs of “normal” robes to wear at home. All were black, and to his surprise Sauron found he didn’t dislike them. Only that hat he didn’t plan on ever wearing. Rationally he knew that no creature of Middle-Earth could see him here… but the thought of the Valar amusing themselves at the sight of him in Istari-garb was enough to make him instantly hate the hat.
And then, at last, they went to the store that apparently sold the wands. When they entered, Sauron could feel he was in a room filled with objects of power. He couldn’t place the nature of the power, whether it was dark or light… but it made his skin crawl anyway. Power that wasn’t his to rule always had that effect on him. The owner of the shop was an elderly man named Ollivander, and once again Sauron was reminded of Olórin. There was no physical likeness, but those eyes… Far too piercing for his taste. Ollivander immediately appeared to know that out of all the people in the group he was the one in need of a wand.
“Well, well… Aren’t you a little old, to still be in need of your first wand?”
You have no idea, Sauron thought.
“How do you know it’s my first?”
“Easily. I remember every single wand I have ever crafted, Mr…”
“Sauron. Just Sauron.”
Never thought there would be a time he would have to specify that…
“Let’s measure you up, and I’ll see what I can do…”
A little later, Sauron had tried about twenty wands, and he had still not found one that “fit”, whatever that was supposed to mean. He was growing a little desperate, the shop got on his nerves and the Weasleys who impatiently stared at him didn’t really help either. At long last, Ollivander had an idea.
“There is one other wand I would like you to try. I didn’t think I would ever sell it, it was meant as an experiment more than anything else…” He took out a dusty box from under his desk and handed it to Sauron. “I wanted to do something not done before… 13 inches, Yew, with a core of Thestral tail hair…” Ollivander seemed lost in thought for a moment. “It is the only wand I ever made like that, and I didn’t think it would ever find its match…” Then he sent Sauron a piercing gaze. “But perhaps you…”
The moment Sauron took the wand in his hand bright fiery sparks escaped from it and lit up the entire room with their glow. He understood now what the wandmaker had meant with a wand that “fit”… He could feel the dark wood tremble in his hand with power, rejoicing almost because it had found its match. It felt… strange. It was an object of Power, so different from the Ring… and yet… holding the wand made his hand feel whole again. Sauron stared at it in unhidden wonder.
“It seems I was right… Your eyes must have seen more than you show, for such a wand to choose you…”
He didn’t know what to say. Molly paid for the wand, and they left the shop. The other Weasleys were noisy as usual, but he didn’t give it much notice. He did notice the suspicious looks Arthur sent him…