Chapter Text
The memories arrived so slowly that at first Maeglin did not even notice them.
He was speaking to some difficult lord or lady at council, and they reminded him, quite suddenly, of Lord Malfoy as he first knew him – all white hair and pureblood arrogance – and he smiled almost before he knew why.
He was at the forge, designing a signet ring with a dark stone, and he had a strange impression of another ring, broken, on Dumbledore’s desk (“Headmaster Dumbledore, Harry,” Hermione had insisted, exasperated) and he blinked in confusion. When had that happened?
He was looking at himself in the mirror in his rooms, considering the Moriquendi pallor of his less-than-perfectly-brown skin, his black eyes (his mother’s) and the hooked sharpness of his nose (his baby fat had used to soften it, he thought, mournfully), and it occurred to him, with a rush of horror, that he looked like Snape.
Afterward, he tried to scowl less. He could not have said why the vision of the greasy-haired man in black (eyes wide and dying: Look at me!) made him flinch in such sudden revulsion, pity and reluctant admiration – but it did.
Then came the time he could not ignore. He was in the king’s study, passing him documents. Turgon looked over them with his lips thin (Aunt Petunia sniffed – ) and nodded stiffly, “It will do,” he said ( –“if that’s the best you can do, boy.”)
Maeglin was so caught by the strange recollection (Aunt Petunia’s hair, a harsh, chemical blonde; Uncle Vernon’s moustache, wriggling behind his newspaper like a caterpillar) that he could not breathe. He muttered some excuse, bowed his farewell, and left.
Turgon’s frown – which in the normal course of things he would have done much to avoid – seemed of little consequence in the face of the sudden overwhelming flood of realisation: he had memories of another life.
These memories were not, Lomion soon discovered, quite distinct enough to make his day-to-day doings much different.
If he found himself missing his friends (Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna), his ex-wife and his children (Ginny, James, Albus, Lily), his godson (Teddy), or his partner (oh, how could he have forgotten Draco?), it was only when he dwelt on the recollections; when he allowed that brash, likeable, so painfully different (so painfully familiar) self that was Harry James Potter overtake him.
For the most part, he did not dwell. (It hurt, for the most part, even to think of that life – so much like his and yet so different.) He let the memories blur into one another, as they seemed so naturally to do.
What difference there was, came in the things that did not blur. He had had a family, in this other life. Children, a partner, friends, even a godfather – however briefly – who loved him. He had never known his parents, but they had loved him too. (The rushing cold of the dementors. The sound of screaming. “Take Harry and go, I’ll hold him off”; “Not Harry, please, not Harry. Take me instead.”) Here, he had had no-one but his mother – and her not for long.
His two fathers never overlaid one another (how could they have?), but the deaths of his two mothers blurred constantly. A flash of red hair (or was it black?), a scream, her voice raised in protest, “Thou wouldst murder our son?” (“No, not Harry, not Harry!”), a flash of green, a body lying like dead meat on the floor. She was pierced by Eol’s spear; she was dead. “I love you,” his mother had said (“I love you, Harry,” “I love you, Lomion”) and then she was gone.
*
Despite his attempts to ignore them, it was not long after the memories came upon him that Lomion realised he had been going about his life in Gondolin in the wrong way entirely.
Maeglin had been terrified when he first arrived here: able to speak the language (a little) but not to read or write in it, unfamiliar with the customs of a people who assumed his mother had told him of them, lost among strangers without mother or father to guide him. Almost his first sight of Gondolin had been the cliffs over which Turgon had Glorfindel throw his father. Almost the first words he heard had been the death sentence.
After that – far too soon after that – had been the work. Turgon had appointed him to Aredhel’s place on the council within a year; Idril had invited him to the parties she hosted for the lords; Glorfindel and Ecthelion had offered to spar; Rog had offered to apprentice him. (He, at least, was gracious in accepting Maeglin’s refusal: on his skill at smithing, at least, Maeglin had refused to remain silent. He still liked Rog best of all the lords of Gondolin, but he refused to apprentice to anyone. He was a master smith already.)
All this had been their manner of showing welcome, Lomion realised now, but it had not felt like welcome at the time. It had felt like a series of ever more complicated tasks, such as the kind his father used to set him in the forge, but with no praise at the end of his accomplishments. It had felt like being judged and – as Maeglin failed, somehow, to respond in the right ways, do whatever it was that was wanted, settle in the manner that seemed to be expected – found wanting again and again.
Maeglin had wanted to be seen as his mother’s son, and so he had introduced himself as her son: “Lomion Irrission.” And so he was called by all. But he had not felt like Lomion Irrission, he had felt like Maeglin, son of Eol. And so he had chafed against a thing he himself had done, and could not now change without making a statement in favour of his father of which Turgon would disapprove. But Eol had not been a devil, no matter what Turgon said in anger. He had taught Maeglin to work metal; he had a laugh like a kingfisher; he had given Maeglin his name (“sharp-glance”) in pride. Once Aredhel, Maeglin’s mother, had loved him. He had been a proud man, and even a bad one – he had been violent (and how violent Maeglin himself had had cause to know) and Maeglin knew his mother had been right to leave him. Lomion was happy never to have to see his face again. But he was not evil. He was no Morgoth. He had loved Maeglin, once.
Maeglin had tried to explain this to Turgon. (“It was not so – black and white as that, uncle. Mother would not have said so. Did she not beg you to show him mercy?”) But Turgon had been ill-pleased. Maeglin had not dared mention it again; more, he had stopped mentioning his father altogether. Even when Rog had offered to apprentice him, Maeglin had not said a word about Eol, only produced Anguriel, his father’s sword, and said: “The man who made this taught me all he knew.” And he had only dared that much because Turgon had not been present.
Over time, of course, Maeglin had learned to act in the right ways. But that was what it was – an act. He had no friends in Gondolin, Lomion now realised – with his memories of another life to compare it to – because he had acted his way into acceptance, without ever closing the distance between himself and others.
Yes, he had approached Idril, but with gifts, not words. And once she had misunderstood the gifts, he had said nothing – simply let her think… Well. Hermione would not have blamed him, he did not think, but she would have had his ears all the same.
Yes, he had agreed to smith at the Guild of Metalworkers, but when others had decried his use of his father’s Sindar techniques, he had not demonstrated their areas of superiority (as he well might have). He had smiled, agreed, conformed.
He had always agreed and always conformed – never letting his true thoughts be known. Thus, he was well-liked, but not well-loved; seldom alone but always lonely; accepted by all but close to none.
Once, knowing no other life, he might have tried to bear it and cracked under the strain. Now, he knew he could not.
So Lomion began to try.
He practised his smile. He practised openness, not just appropriate conversation. He wrote Idril another letter. (She returned it unopened, as she always did.) He visited Ecthelion. (It went badly.) He visited Glorfindel. (That went better.) He went to Rog with questions about combining Sindar and Noldor smithing. (Rog’s eyebrows lifted, but he answered them.)
All of it helped a little. None of it was enough.
Then, at last, word arrived that the High King Fingon was calling up his armies. (“The Alliance of Maedhros – or so my brother calls it,” Turgon had pronounced, with all the disdain he usually gave to matters involving the sons of Feanor.) Lomion had seen a chance for something new.
A fresh start, in a new place, was exactly what he needed. (And Maeglin had always desired escape from walls and cages. If there was one thing he had inherited from his mother, he thought wistfully, it was that.) He asked Turgon to take him with him.
Turgon had not wanted to do so, at first. He said that he would prefer to leave Lomion as regent in his place – though Lomion, wary of prison walls, half-disbelieved him – but Lomion begged. He spoke of his desire to serve in the capacity to which he was best suited, of Idril’s talent for rule, and then – desperate – invoked his uncle’s belief in his feelings for his cousin, with all the Slytherin subtlety of which his past self had eventually been capable. (“I need some time away from the city, Amilhano. It would do me good – I would come back with a clearer mind.”) At this, Turgon relented.
And so Lomion prepared to depart. But to properly depart – to depart as Hermione would have had him do, with a clear conscience behind him – he needed to speak to Idril.
*
It was hard to gain a private audience with his cousin. Lomion only managed it, at the last, by begging Turgon’s intervention.
(“I wish to – settle my affairs before I leave,” he had said, knowing Turgon would here the implied apologise to Idril in settle my affairs. “Should the worst happen – should we fail or I not return – I would not have unspoken words between my cousin and myself.”)
The disadvantage of this approach was that when Idril arrived, advised earnestly to attend the meeting by her father, she was already angry.
“What have you said to my father that he makes me meet you, cousin?” she said, sweeping into the room. “Have you claimed to have renounced your ill-fated obsession? I know not why he believes thee.”
The intonation on the last word made it clear that the informal second-person was no invitation to intimacy.
Lomion took a breath. He had known this would be difficult. The old Maeglin would have faltered here, he was sure. Would have spat accusations in reply, unable to hold his temper. Harry had more experience in such matters. He must be calm. Idril did have cause to be angry. It was Lomion who had offended – if by mistake – and then not pursued this audience and explanation for all the years it took for offence to build into a full-fuelled resentment.
“Cousin,” Lomion hoped his tone was even. “I do not now nor have I ever truly loved you or sought to pursue you in the fashion of which you are accusing me. It has long been clear to me that something I did, in my early days here, led you to believe so, but whatever it was – in whatever manner I have offended you – it was ignorance that led me to it. I wish to apologise for my ignorance, and for the long years during which I have quailed at the prospect of speaking to you on it. I wished to do so before –”
Here, Lomion had been about to explain that he was soon to depart Gondolin, but Idril interrupted.
“How can you claim to be ignorant?” her tone was stern. “Did you not continue to present me with the gifts of such a suit, after I had refused them – gently, it is true, and then more forcefully as your pursuit did not lessen? Is it your father who taught you ignorance of the signs of a lady’s refusal, or that relentless pursuit is of no offence to her?”
Lomion flinched. To bring his father into this was harsh indeed. He had not known for sure that it was the gifts, though he had long suspected it – ever since he learned that gift-giving was a custom the Noldor held dear. He had stopped years ago, now, but still too late, it seemed. He was glad to know it now. Perhaps with Idril this angry, he should stop. He had said what was most important, at least.
“I am sorry that I have offended you so badly – more badly than I had thought. Please, be content. I intend to trouble you no further.”
He turned, then, thinking to go. But Idril stopped him.
“No,” she said. “You will tell me more than that. You owe me some explanation of your words, after all this trouble you’ve put me to. Tell me what you meant.”
Lomion turned back, but moved a step away from her, out of reach.
(“You’re nothing but trouble –” Aunt Petunia’s voice, her slap on his hand, as he held out a child’s drawing, echoed in his head. But he was not there, and Idril was not Petunia.)
“I –” he began, then changed tack. “You were right to blame my father for my ignorance, cousin, but not in the way you think. It is true, Eol thought little of mother’s no, by the end. I know not how they were before I was born, but from the time of my earliest memories, she desired escape from him. I had never thought to be compared to him in that way. I have never wanted to be. He was a cruel man.”
Lomion stopped. He did not know where to go on from here – how to put events as they had been to him into a story that would not sound like excuse-making.
Idril titled her head.
“In what way, then, if you already know better than to follow your father’s example, is your ignorance his fault? Are you under a fantastical curse, to stem your words and twist your meanings?”
Lomion should have known that the baying of his cousin’s temper would not last long. He took a breath and went on.
“My father hated the Noldor. He forbade this tongue, he forbade all discussion of my mother’s family and all practice of the customs of her people. What little I knew before I came here, I learned in secret of her, at high noon, while he slept. I was ignorant of the Noldor’s customs. Indeed,” Lomion felt his voice turn bitter here, but he could not stop it. “I thought, at the time, that this was clear to all. I was not fluent in your tongue or your ways and I made many misteps, I am sure – and with more than you alone, cousin.”
Idril’s face had gone still. Lomion wished that she would say something to make this confession easier. She had demanded it, after all.
“Why did you not ask me, or my father, or any other in the city for counsel, when you saw your gifts were not accepted? I can accept ignorance at first, but you need not have remained so.”
Lomion felt a surge of anger at that. It was entirely unproductive, he knew, but –
“Ask my father’s execution for counsel? Ask one of these great lords of the Noldor, who spoke to me in those days like a strange wild beast? Ask you, when you were so angry with me you refused all speech? If you had read even one of my letters, from the first, you would have learned long since that I had no notion how I had offended you.
“I came here willingly enough, but I thought Gondolin a haven then, not a prison. I thought its people my kin, I thought its king my uncle, I thought I might turn to you, an older cousin, for friendship. I thought my mother would be here with me.”
If Lomion had not been so angry, he might have wept on those last words. But Idril’s expression had darkened as Maeglin’s voice grew louder. Her response was low, but full of repressed frustration.
“Have we not acted as kin to you? Have you not honour here, and a position in the city, and people who will one day form a house under you for you to rule? Have you not a voice on our counsels? Where come these accusations, cousin? In what manner do you say my father’s house has wronged you?”
Lomion turned and walked to the side of the room. He began to count his breaths. Idril did not know, he told himself – that helped a little. She ought to have known. The part of him that was still young and desperate for a parent replied. She ought to have read my letters. She ought to have asked!
What would Hermione say? Your cousin can’t read your mind, probably. That was a common piece of Muggle psychology wisdom. At least, if you tell her, you’ll know she knows. No matter what she does after, it will not be because you did not do everything you could to tell her.
Lomion turned to speak again, trying desperately to keep his voice soft and his posture relaxed and unthreatening.
“Do you know how old I was, the year Mother died?”
“I –” Idril’s speech faltered, for the first time since she had arrived, with guns blazing. “I suppose I do not – not exactly.”
Lomion nodded. He had not thought so. His begetting day was hardly considered cause of celebration among his mother’s kin. That Aredhel had sworn in her youth that she would never bear children was one of the first things he had learnt about her in this strange place. (“I never thought I would see a child of thine walk these halls, sister,” Turgon had said, when they had arrived.) There had, of course, been gossip over what Eol had done to change her mind; over how great her regard for him must have been; how cruelly that regard had been betrayed.
The bitterness that swelled at the memory of that time, of the knowledge that this gossip was wrong, that Eol had seen even a child as another rope by which to bind his wife to him in loyalty led Lomion to slip into familiar speech.
"Thou didst not think to ask. I was but eighty— mature of body and mind, I know, but not yet of age. I know not what thy life was like, when thou wert of like age, cousin — but I thinkst thou wert not yet given a charge beyond thee — or if thou wert, that thou hadst kinsfolk about thee to help thee when thy strength failed. I had none. Thou and thy father have given me honour, yes, and a place in this city as your kin. I would not have ye think me ungrateful to receive it. But thou, at least, hadst said thou wishst to understand my mind, at that time — for me to tell thee more, at least, of why I have behaved as I have. I do owe thee that, thou art right. This is all there is. I was young and foolish, grieving and alone, burdened beyond my strength, without an elder I trusted to counsel me, and trapped in — trapped in this city with the kin that slew my father. I trusted ye not— indeed, I trusted no-one but myself, and had no-one to give me other wisdom. From this come all those misdeeds of which thou accuseth me."
He could feel a surge of his other Harry-self, at those words— green eyed and black haired, hollow and desperate, on a foolish quest to save the world, heaped with the expectations of his elders. That boy, at least, had had two friends to aid him — alone as they all had felt.
He could not meet Idril’s eyes or look at her face. What if all this explaining were for nothing? He had not wanted to explain. He had not thought Idril would understand. It would have been enough if she had accepted his apology and sent him on his way. He did not need her aid or help now. It was much too late for that.
There was a soft sound of cloth moving on cloth. Lomion turned and met Idril’s eyes. Her face was quiet. She did not look angry anymore.
"I see my father and I have erred more than we thought, cousin. Dost thou still feel so— overburdened? Dost thou still—" she stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished.
Her return of the familiar address he had used made Lomion tense. It was — better, he thought, than if she had not returned it. Nonetheless, he turned his face away, letting his braids fall over it, and picked at the leather about his wrist.
"I do not," he said. "It has been many years now since I felt that my duties were beyond my strength."
"And dost thou hate Gondolin so much? Thou callst it a prison."
Lomion bit his lip. Idril’s voice had become — almost tender. But he needed some distance now. He had said all he could say. He drew himself up from the hunched posture he had slipped into and took a breath.
"I have been permitted by the king to speak with — you — now, my lady, because I shall ride out with him to King Fingon’s battle. Mayhap we shall win the day. Mayhap we shall not. Mayhap I shall live. Mayhap I shall not. Whatever befalls, however— I do not intend to return. "This city is Dor-Daen to me."[1]
Lomion looked up just at the right time to see Idril’s flinch. He wondered whether her osanwe were powerful enough to see, beneath the formal declaration, his long-held memory of Turgon’s words to Eol ("The choice is to abide in Gondolin or die in Gondolin — for thyself and thy son") and the way they had echoed in his mind, on long walks on the cliffs by the Sea, where just a step would have brought his father Eol’s curse to pass, and himself to an end more peaceful than any other he could foresee.
Idril was, at last, lost for words, but — Maeglin thought with sharp amusement — only briefly. Her face smoothed out, and so did her voice.
"It seems, then, there is little I can do but give you my blessings for the road, cousin. I am sorry for those misunderstandings that have plagued us. I wish I had been better family to you, while there was time."
Lomion nodded, briskly— and bowed a little, from the waist.
"Go well, cousin," he said. "For my part, I too am sorry for the distress I have caused you. Thank you for hearing me."
The he turned and walked quickly through the door. He could not bear to stay a moment longer.
(He told himself he could not feel the thin weight that was his familial osanwe bond with Idril lighten and then vanish as he left. It had been necessary to leave. He had needed a new beginning.)
[1] The place of corpses. A word coined by dorkangel in The House of His Enemies and Slayers of his Kin.