Chapter 419: Farewell
After Aragorn was crowned King of Gondor, he strengthened the bond between the two kingdoms further still by taking Éowyn of Rohan as his queen. Éowyn was the niece of King Théoden — raised by him from childhood and treated as a daughter in all but name. The marriage drew Gondor and Rohan closer than any treaty alone could have managed.
Aragorn proved himself a capable and ambitious king. Under his rule, Gondor grew steadily in strength. Lost territories were reclaimed, and the kingdom's reach extended further: southward into the Harad region, and westward across vast stretches of land, including the region of Enedwaith to the west of Gondor, and most of Eriador beyond — with the exception of Hogwarts' own domain.
He even had Annúminas rebuilt — the ancient capital of the former Kingdom of Arnor — restoring it as a royal seat in the north, settled by the Dúnedain of the North who had long been without a home of their own. Aragorn became the High King of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, dividing his time between Minas Tirith and Annúminas as the seasons turned.
When it came to reclaiming Eriador and re-establishing Arnor, Aragorn came to Hogwarts in person to seek Kael's counsel. He gave his oath that the territory centred on Hogwarts Castle — stretching north to the North Downs, south to the South Downs, west to the Old Home Hills, and east to the Last Bridge — would remain permanently independent, subject to no crown.
And so Hogwarts' domain came to exist as a realm within a realm, entirely enclosed by the Kingdom of Arnor. It had no formal name as a nation, but because so many wizards made their home there, it was spoken of as the Wizarding Kingdom, or simply the Wizarding World. In the long ages that followed, it became something else as well — a haven for free folk who had no wish to live under the rule of any king.
Among the Fellowship, the achievements did not stop with Aragorn. Gimli, after returning to Erebor following the war's end, found his thoughts turning elsewhere. He gathered a company of Dwarves and led them south from the Lonely Mountain all the way to the White Mountains, where they settled in the Glittering Caves and began carving out a new Dwarven kingdom in the rock. Gimli became its first King of the Glittering Caves.
The other members of the Fellowship found their own paths home.
Frodo and Bilbo were a separate matter — both had been granted the right of passage to Valinor, and would become the first Hobbits in all of history to set foot in the Undying Lands.
Merry and Pippin returned to the Shire, where the duties of their families were waiting. Merry succeeded to the position of Master of Buckland; Pippin inherited his father's title and became the 32nd Thain of the Shire. Aragorn appointed both of them as advisors to the Northern Kingdom, and they maintained regular contact with Hogwarts, Rohan, Gondor, and Ando alike. Their bond with Boromir — forged when they had been placed in the same company during the journey and had fought side by side — made their correspondence with Ando particularly warm, letters passing back and forth with an easy, affectionate frequency.
Sam, who had begun as nothing more than a gardener at Bag End, had walked with Frodo all the way to the foot of Mount Doom and never once turned back. For his loyalty and steadfast companionship throughout, Frodo gave him a portion of the inheritance he was set to receive from Bilbo. It was a modest share by Bilbo's standards — but Bilbo's standards were extraordinary, and even a modest share was enough to make Sam one of the wealthiest Hobbits in the Shire overnight.
Before they left Lothlórien, Galadriel had also pressed into Sam's hands a mallorn seed and a small box of earth from her own garden. Back in the Shire, Sam planted the seed beside the Party Field near Bag End. Nourished by Galadriel's gifted soil and whatever blessing and quiet magic she had woven into the seed itself, the sapling took hold and grew.
It was not as large as the great mallorns of Lothlórien, but it was the only mallorn growing outside of Lothlórien and Hogwarts anywhere in Middle-earth. Its silver trunk and gold-bright leaves caught the sunlight and threw it back in a soft blaze that lit up the whole of Hobbiton — a singular, beautiful thing that had no equal for miles in any direction.
Sam married the woman he loved. He was elected Mayor of the Shire and went on being elected for as long as he wished to hold the position.
Frodo, for his part, did not sail immediately. The ship was not departing straight away, and so he returned to the Shire first to settle his affairs at Bag End and attend to everything he was leaving behind. Bilbo, however, declined to go back. He chose to remain at Hogwarts and spend what remained of his time in Middle-earth there.
When Frodo reached the Shire, he turned his mind to Bilbo's vast fortune. A portion had already gone to Sam. The rest he put to use: bridges and roads were built, an orphanage and a home for the elderly were founded, and families in hardship received assistance. It was a sum large enough to reshape the Shire entirely — one-fourteenth of the treasure of Erebor, sufficient to purchase the whole of the Shire and still have change to spare.
Frodo placed the administration of it in the hands of Sam, Merry, and Pippin jointly, with instructions to see it used rightly after he was gone.
Both Gandalf and Kael expressed their admiration for this openly. Kael went a step further and offered his assistance: he provided a magical contract scroll — the sort where whatever terms were written down and signed could not be broken by anyone, no matter their intent. Given the scale of what was involved, the precaution was not unnecessary. Even the most honest-natured of Hobbits might find their resolve tested by that much wealth over time.
The years passed quickly.
Before long, it was the twenty-ninth day of September, Third Age 3021.
At the harbour of the Grey Havens, a great ship lay at anchor.
It was enormous — broad enough to fill the mouth of the harbour almost entirely. Its hull was wrought from mithril fused with steel, its lines clean and sweeping, its surfaces engraved with intricate patterns and runes. A great smokestack rose amidships, breathing out a steady column of steam into the grey sky.
It was a vast, magnificent steam vessel — something like a fortress on the water, built to carry thousands. Círdan the Shipwright had made it, with the help of countless Telerin Elves, and it was the finest thing he had ever built: stronger than any ship that had come before it, faster than any that had crossed those waters, able to hold steady through seas that would have broken lesser craft. It halved the crossing time to Valinor.
Along the quayside, Elves from Rivendell, Lothlórien, and other regions were making their way up the gangplanks and aboard.
Kael and Arwen stood together at the water's edge with Elthir and Elríen beside them, saying their farewells to Elrond, Galadriel, Celeborn, Glorfindel, and Gandalf.
Arwen embraced each of them in turn — her father Elrond, her grandparents Celeborn and Galadriel — and did not hurry it. Her face was composed, but the emotion in it was plain.
Kael held Gandalf for a moment.
The old Wizard was in fine spirits. He had exchanged his grey robes for white, and his hair and beard had gone white to match — the image, at last, of Gandalf the White in full. There was a lightness about him that had nothing to do with his clothing. Since Sauron's fall he had carried himself like a man who had set down a burden he had been carrying for so long he had almost forgotten what it weighed.
And something else was shifting in him. As the hour of his departure drew closer, the constraints on his power were visibly loosening. A quality that was difficult to name — divine was perhaps the nearest word — had begun to surface in him, seeping through in the way he stood, in the depth of his gaze.
Kael could feel it clearly. The presence Gandalf was giving off now was not far short of his own — and that was before the last of those constraints had fully lifted.