Potestatem obscuri lateris nescis

Harry woke up in the same room as before, he moved to put his glasses on before he recollected that he did not need them anymore. His dreams seemed to have been underwritten by the estate of Lewis Carroll, because his subconscious must have gone through the looking glass a few hundred times for the dreams to be this weird.

His dream had started out the same as most of his others: with the pain and suffering of the innumerable multitudes at the hands of a sadistic lunatic and his men in tights. Then things became rather odd, for in walked several very beautiful naked women, none of whom paid the slightest attention to the carnage surrounding them, nor did they pay attention to the deer-in-headlights look sported by their host, Mr. Potter. For the next few minutes things became somewhat of a blur, although he did remember something about eating a pussyful of ice cream, which he found to be a rather unique taste, although an acquired one. Then something that looked like a creature from an American film he had once caught a glimpse of, Aliens, came in and started doing the cha-cha, from which point things quickly devolved into something vaguely resembling a Monty Python sketch made while all the crew were stoned, either that or it was made by the writers of Yellow Submarine. Moreover, to end the entire thing, a replica of John Cleese walked in, regaled in his signature sensible suit, and announced, “Now for something completely different…” At that point, Harry woke up, not in a sweat or screaming, as a regular nightmare would have caused, but just up, making for a very odd sensation, much like when one has too much sleep, and cannot bear to rest one moment longer.

Harry walked into the bathroom and moved under the natural waterfall that somehow ran through the very building itself, a thing that puzzled him to no end. He had not seen a single electric light in the whole place, the entire time he had been held captive here, nor had he seen indoor plumbing, save for the odd freshwater waterfall, that seemed to supply the chief means of washing. Shaking off these meanderings of the mind, Harry set about the morning ablutions that so often would escape him at #4 due to several reasons, although the chief amongst these were the two specimens of an unclassified species of Hippopotamus that somehow have a familial connection to him. He luxuriated in the feeling of the warm water washing away the troubles that lay on his shoulders on a daily basis, and found the longer he stayed in the more relaxed he became, although unknown to him this was due to a mild analgesic in the water. By the time he stepped out from under the water, he felt as limp as a boned fish, and he could barely remember what had troubled him so much earlier in the day, and he turned his mind to much more pleasant thoughts, such as the girls in that dream of his.

He could have sworn that he had seen them before, but every time he tried to focus in on a single trait, the entire picture blurred beyond recognition, frustrating him enough that he contemplated taking another shower. However, then it dawned on him, like the bright sunrise seen from an a ship lost in a storm, that he was trying to hard to see the girls, that he didn’t have to focus in on any particular trait, but just see what came to him. Just as he reached this epiphany, a woman, whom he believed they called Beriadanwe came in and greeted him in whatever language that they spoke in this region, and the soft lilting sounds made by her voice nearly made him forget where he was.

Harry responded with what he believed to be the appropriate response, “Bûbhosh!”

Beri’s response to this was a hard smack on the face. Harry, having little knowledge of precisely what the many strange pictographs of the rolls of parchment they gave him meant, had picked one of the transliterations at the top of the first parchment he could find. He had just called Beri ‘pig guts’, the equivalent of calling one’s enemy a swine, or some other form of lower life; this most understandably did not have the desired effect on relations between the two elves.

When Harry attempted to indicate an alternative message by pointing at the scroll, he pointed at “Glob kâl,” which brought about the same result as his previous attempt at communication, thus further discouraging him from attempting meaningful conversation without a translation. This time he had called her a woman of ill repute, although most know these persons as prostitutes, a thing that is universally offensive to those of the fairer sex.

This time, instead of attempting to communicate once more, Beri stalked hastily out of the room, passing her Lords on the way out, and fuming loudly enough for people at Osgiliath to hear her quite clearly.

“My Lords, your son is impossible!” Even though Sauron was supposed to be the most powerful being within ten thousand leagues, the vision of Beriadanwe in a foul mood was something one generally tried to steer clear from, for health reasons. As such, he flattened himself up against the wall as much as possible to dissuade the raven-haired woman from committing grievous bodily injury upon him, something she would have no compunction about upon later reflection.

The blonde elf directly on his right hid behind a nearby statue that fairly concealed and shielded his body from most angles of attack, and as he did so, he hoped that at least this time she would be gentle. He still had bruises from the time he had accidentally had her mother transported to the palace dungeons for an ‘assassination attempt’ against both himself and his husband. In all fairness, the puppy and bouquet of flowers could have been booby trapped with an explosive, and Legolas had just woken up from a war flashback about an incident with explosives at Helm’s Deep.

“Legolas, do have any idea what that was about?”

“Not a clue, neither do I really want to know. Knowledge of what pisses her off dwarfs the great library at Minas Tirith, and remembering it is too much hard work.”

“What say we go in and have a talk with our son, eh?”

“I don’t know; we have no idea about whether he will even want to be with us.”

“I love you, but sometimes you give dumb blondes a bad name. He was covered in bruises, his energy felt half-dead, and on top of all that, he was badly malnourished when we found him. Do you honestly think that he would voluntarily choose to return to the place we picked him up?”

“Oh, yeah. You are somewhat right.” This response only served to raise the darker man’s eyes heavenward in a silent plea for the virtues of tolerance and patience, even though he knew this to be fruitless.

The pair moved to the doors that separated them from their child, all the while rehearsing the meaning of some of the more colloquial of the many lingua franca expressions of the English language.

The pair of fathers had taken it upon themselves to learn a fair amount of English; in a give and take situation such as this, they had thought it advisable. Maybe now they could explain to their child the changes that had come over his body, and reveal the truth of his heritage and peel back the layers of lies surrounding the truth.

“Hello Harry.” Sauron started off, trying out a simple sentence, which he believed to be the correct way of speaking this bizarre tongue called English.

“You can speak? Great! Here I am making a fool of my self and you can speak! Why didn’t you...” Legolas cut him off with a hand over his mouth, stopping the stream of fast paced ranting before a full head of steam could develop.

“Calm down, Harry. We could not always speak English; we learned it just so we could communicate with you.”

“What we are going to tell you will most likely shock and confuse you. We are your parents, Harry; you are our son.”

When Harry heard the blonde one say this, he thought, ‘Wow, it is true what they say about blondes’. Aloud he replied with, “Do you have any idea how utterly fucking stupid that sounds? I can’t be your kid, you’re both men and men lack many things necessary to the process of reproduction, most notably the other set of chromosomes and the egg, along with some of the more fun parts of the anatomy.”

“I don’t know what a chromosome is, but I do know that you are my son. I had the swollen ankles and backache from Hell for five months, and it is very hard to forget the day you came into the world at two in the morning, by the Valar.” The fair-haired Legolas told the disbelieving youthful istari, although this ardent assertion did almost nothing to assuage the misgivings of the adolescent man.

“You carried me? Exactly how did you do this rather remarkable feat? How was I conceived?” The fact that the blonde had persisted in this particular line of expression forced Harry to ask some of the more uncomfortable questions that found themselves as part of a working arsenal meant to either trip up or incriminate those believed to be lying.

The entire tête-à-tête had taken a left turn at weird; gone a few miles past creepy and they suddenly arrived at surreal, complete with a three-ring circus featuring artwork by Salvador Dali and a partially anthropomorphized elephant-scorpion hybrid directing traffic while signing ‘God Save the Queen’.

“Well… I am sure I can get you a book that will explain it all to you in detail, son. Come on let’s go look in the lib…” Sauron was most definitely uncomfortable with the current subject matter, something that amused the blonde-haired elf to no end, for the big bad Leader of Middle Earth was deathly afraid of the ‘talk’.

“Sit down, both of you! You, my gracious husband, are not going anywhere; you are going to sit down on this long chair [read couch, sofa, etc.] and support me through this you bonehead. Yes, sit there- no not there, sit there - and do not stand up again. I will be watching you, and I see all.”

Harry had originally pegged the dark haired elf as the most dangerous of the pair, although now he was reassessing the blonde’s combat abilities, which must be formidable for the lissome elf to scare the other so badly.

“Harry, when two people really love each –“

“FORGET IT! I am sorry I asked, now please move onto a more pleasant topic!”

“It appears he inherited your squeamishness about the elfin anatomy and relationships in general, and judging how he is trying to hide under the chair pillows [read couch/sofa cushions] he also inherited your abilities at hide and find [hide and seek]. Would be so good as to pull your son out from under the pillows so we may resume our discussion? Thank you so very much.

“Harry, now I am a submissive male elf, and as such, I have several things which human males and dominant elves do not, namely a full functional set of female reproductive organs, which I believe Mr. Tolkien said made me a hermaphrodite. You were created from the union of my husband and me, ten months before your birth; nearly the same time it takes a human child to mature in the womb. If you require further proof I will show the aforementioned organs to you during a private show, I only ask that you not stare excessively at my breasts.”

Harry was close to catatonic, repeating in his head that this could not be happening, that all of this was yet another part of his extremely strange dream, although deep under his denial he knew that all he heard was true. He would not even go within ten kilometers of the apparent fact that his evidently male mother, in essence, was offering to give him a private peep show, with a couple of provisos. He decided that when he escaped, the first thing he would do would be to find a therapist, some powerful anti-deliriants and sort through all of this; either that or attempt to drown his problems at the bottom of a bottle of his associates, Mr. Daniels or Mr. Beem.

“Honey, I think we need to continue this particular conversation another time, as he seems to be attempting to block out all that you are saying.”

“Right you are, let’s get to work on teaching him the language of his fathers.”

“Which language do you mean for us to school him in, dear? There are Westron, Sindarin, Quenya, Valarin, and your own language of Black Speech, so which do you propose to teach him? We are both fluent in at least a variation from all of the above so we communally have a quite impressive linguistic gamut from which to choose.”

“Yes, I know all that. However, neither of us are very good teachers in anything other than warfare, a very limited use subject to say the least. I am sure you remember the one time I tried to teach Beri that game I made up.”

“Ah yes, it is actually a rather fond memory for me, however, you did not invent that game, sir. Mr. Tolkien showed you how to play that infernal game and you have not stopped since in seventy-three years. Anyway, I remember you had taken Beri into the recreation room, and about twenty minutes later, she ran out in tears screaming about how it was dodge ball all over again.”

“Well excuse me for attempting to teach her the sport of champions.”

“Ping Pong is not the sport of champions. Archery is the sport of champions, a game of skill and determination.”

The other man took great offense at this slander against the noble game of lords. “You only say that because you really suck at Ping Pong.”

“You took away my paddle-“

“You kept spanking me with it, trying to get me in the sack.”

“You hit that hard little ball at my head-“

“You were not supposed to head-butt the damned thing like in football.”

“- and you wouldn’t even let me love you later that night.”

“You showed up to the conference I was having between the northern Dwarves and the Mirkwood Elves in only a thong –which concealed nothing- with the words ‘Love Slave’ painted on your chest in big red letters.”

“… I was drunk.”

“Understatement. That is an utter unadulterated understatement on your part. You must have drunk half the booze from here to Hobbiton, and it certainly smelled like you had bathed in gin. You could barely walk in a straight line for more than a fathom, when you breathed on the dwarf ambassador he nearly passed out and then you started composing lewd poetry on the spot, most of it involving body parts rhyming with rock, grass and eight occurrences of the word vagina, and all in explicit detail. Now out of all of that, what do you think made me decide not to pleasure you, hmm?”

“I’m going to say every part of it.”

“Smart man.”

The two left to prepare their lessons for their son, who as far as they knew could also use some work on his interpersonal skills.