Never Let Me Go~Bagginshield

The High Wizard.

He was high. He was literally fucking high! I stared at Radagast, a dumbfounded look on my face. He was literally high on some kind of herb, and secretly I wanted some. But I had a task to complete. However, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Some Days Earlier...

"You are leaving?" Bofur asked.

"I am. But I will return." I was trying to get the huge book inside my pack. It wasn't working, and I was getting frustrated.

"You are going alone?"

"I think that would be wiser. One Hobbit traveling alone would attract less attention than a Hobbit and a Dwarf." I finally had enough of the book, and just ripped out the page with the spell.

"Let Fili accompany you. He can keep you safe."

"Fili has his own things to worry about. I don't, and I don't mind going alone." I stuffed the page into my pack along with some bread and a canteen. "I'm just going to find Radagast, get his help, and return."

Bofur chuckled. "Good luck, Bilbo Baggins. He is the high wizard."

I didn't get the reason for his smirk. So what if he was the high wizard? Didn't that make him more powerful than the others?

Present Day.
So now I understood why they called him the high wizard. What a joke.

"Can you tell me what these say?" I asked, showing him the page.

He stared at the paper, but his eyes looked as if he was staring right through it. He ran a finger down the page, his eyes rolling back and he was making some weird ass humming noise.

He uttered some nonsense in a guttural language, then turned and began rifling through his potions, talking excitedly to himself. I caught only snippets of his conversation.

"At last...using this...I can save someone!'

He came to me and pushed a vial of some kind of liquid into my hands. "Here. This potion. It will cure his mind of the sickness."

"Just like that?" I asked, staring at the liquid. "What's the catch?"

"Thorin needs to voluntarily drink it. If not him, then someone who holds his heart. Then the spell will be broken, his mind restored, and he will be himself again."

I stared at the small vial in my hand. Would Thorin take it? Fat chance of that. He was too worried about his precious Arkenstone.

"What if he doesn't take it?"

"Then someone who owns his heart must drink. Love will break the spell, and he will be cured." He folded my hand over the vial.

I sighed. "That sounds too easy. There has to be something bad that happens."

He stared at me, and then slowly began to rock back and forth. "Take it...under the light of the moon..." He was mumbling other shit, but I managed to catch those words.

"You aren't making sense."

"The light of the moon...love...only love and light can save him now." He took a long drag off his pipe.

"No disrespect, Radagast...but that is the cringiest thing I have ever heard." I sighed. This was getting nowhere. "What you are telling me is that if I own his heart, and I take this, it will free him from the dragon sickness?"

Radagast nodded. "It sounds so easy, doesn't it?"

I stared at him. "I literally just said that. There is a catch, isn't there?"

"Talk to Gandalf." Before he could say more, he literally took a hit off the pipe so hard he fell down. I grabbed the potion and his undecipherable notes and left the house. Useless. Fucking useless.

All I wanted was Thorin back. I wanted him again, and he didn't love me. This potion, in my hand, had to help him. I had to believe it would bring him back to me.

I returned to Mirkwood and sought out Gandalf's old ass. I told him everything Radagast had said...well, everything that I had been able to comprehend. "So I have to take the potion under the light of the moon, if Thorin won't. And this is all considering that I am the one who owns his heart."

It made me sick to think anyone else did. "I kept asking what the catch was, and he wouldn't tell me."

"The catch, as you say, is the possibility that you or Thorin could lose your memory of the other. You will forget everything. The things you two did in the past and the love you two had for each other...but he will be cured. He will be himself again."

I stood there, shocked. Of course it had to be something like that, something to make me want to throw down the damn bottle and return back to Mirkwood. But I couldn't run forever, could I?

"He would be free..." I nearly whispered the words.

"Yes. You will remember him, and the journey, but you will forget that you ever loved him."

"Is there a chance that it may not work?" I searched Gandalf's face, trying hard to read between the lines.

"If he does not love you, then your memory shall remain."

So it was basically a test. I nearly cried at the weight of responsibility crashing down on me. I loved him enough to do this for him, but to forget how it felt...to have to learn to love him again...

What if I didn't? What if I didn't love him? What if I returned to the Shire and found another man to spend my lonely days with, and Thorin ended up as nothing more than a passing daydream?

"I can't, Gandalf. I can't take it. I can't risk losing him. I can't risk loving someone else." I fell against the wall, heaving, trying to catch my breath that had suddenly left me.

"Bilbo." Gandalf put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Go rest. Talk to Bofur. No decision needs to be made tonight. Dwell on it. Soon you will decide the right thing to do."

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I trudged off to find Bofur.