"Remember that fellow the Daily Prophet reported showed up out of nowhere in Azkaban a while back? I went to the Ministry today. He's gone mad, I'm sorry to say, but through Legilimency I still managed to piece together a few things."
Dumbledore fell silent for a moment, and his gaze took on an odd quality.
"That fellow is called Gollum. He's a Hobbit, the very same Hobbit mentioned in Gandalf's parchment."
"He's lived close to six hundred years now. No Philosopher's Stone, no Elixir of Life, just a terrible ring. Gollum held onto that ring for five hundred years, and its power let him slip past death itself all that time."
"Later, the ring was stolen from him by a Hobbit named Baggins. Does that name sound familiar?"
Dumbledore opened his drawer and took out the rolled parchment diary.
He ran his fingers along it, stopped on a line, and read aloud:
"That thing carries a power that bends the mind to its will, one even I could not resist. Only Bilbo Baggins, pure of heart and strong of will, that Hobbit, could hold it for so long without falling under its spell...still, I believe wholeheartedly that we can cast that cursed thing into the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor."
Dumbledore set the parchment down and looked at Snape and McGonagall, both of them lost in thought.
Neither spoke, still working through everything Dumbledore had just laid out.
After a long pause, Snape finally spoke, slowly.
"So the thing mentioned in Gandalf's diary, that's actually this ring. A ring that grants immortality?"
"I believe so, Severus. And it's plain the ring holds powers we don't yet understand, or Gandalf wouldn't have gone to such lengths to destroy it. The pity is that the Hobbit has already lost his mind, so I have no way of drawing out anything more."
A trace of pity crossed Dumbledore's face.
"That poor creature was tormented past recognition in Azkaban by that madwoman Bellatrix. She'd smuggled in some old wand, and before anyone else discovered the Hobbit, he'd already been put through dozens of rounds of the Cruciatus Curse."
Beside him, Professor McGonagall's brow furrowed tightly, and she shook her head.
"But it's simply unbelievable, isn't it? Man-eating creatures, Hobbits, Mordor, Mount Doom..."
"Before this parchment diary turned up, we'd never so much as heard of any of it! If it were only a few people or magical creatures, well, that I could accept, since they might have stayed hidden somewhere far from prying eyes all along. But Mordor, Mount Doom, places like that? How is it possible we'd never heard a whisper of them?"
Snape considered this, then said:
"Could the old place names simply differ from what we call things now? Judging by how ancient this parchment looks, it could well be a thousand years old or more. Perhaps it's an Icelandic volcano. Or Tambora..."
"So let's lay out what we actually know. From what we have so far... Gandalf and the others never succeeded in destroying the ring. It later came into the possession of this Hobbit called Gollum, who lived for centuries on the strength of it, until quite recently, when another one, this Baggins fellow, stole it from him."
"This Baggins is very likely a descendant of the very Baggins who meant to destroy the ring in the first place."
Snape said this, then suddenly gave a cold little laugh.
"Of course, there's another possibility we shouldn't rule out. That the information on this parchment was fabricated from the start... or rather, part true and part false, with the real elements, the Hymn of Light, the man-eating creatures, the Hobbits, and so on, all woven in to lend credibility to whatever's false."
"It's strange, isn't it? Before this parchment appeared, we'd never heard of any of it. Man-eating creatures, Dwarves, Hobbits. And now they're all surfacing one after another, almost as if someone were handing us the evidence themselves."
Dumbledore nodded. His thinking ran along the same lines as Snape's.
"There's someone behind all this, pulling the strings, and whoever it is certainly has some purpose they'd rather keep hidden. I suspect it's the same group lurking somewhere in the shadows of Hogwarts."
"Severus, Minerva, Hogwarts isn't at peace anymore. The only way to keep the children safe is for all of us to be more careful, more vigilant."
Dumbledore looked between the two of them, his tone firm.
"Minerva, find a moment to have a word with Madam Pince. Have her go through all the old books in the library and see if there's any more parchment like this to be found."
"And notify the ghosts to sweep through the castle again. We cannot have a repeat of what happened on Halloween night. I'll need to go take a look in the Forbidden Forest myself. I keep feeling something's happened in there, something not good."
Altair put away the Ithil-stone and lay back on his bed, letting his mind go blank.
What Dumbledore actually knew wasn't all that much in the end. The main thing was that Gollum had been driven mad by that woman Bellatrix, his mind likely shattered beyond repair, his memories along with it, blurred past any real use.
Still, this worked out well enough. It had stirred up Dumbledore and the others' curiosity, and whatever conclusions they reached through their own investigation would always be far easier to believe than anything simply handed to them.
That way, the world's acceptance of Gandalf and everything tied to him would only grow faster.
"Voldemort's return is still a good while off. Might as well lie low for now..."
Altair drifted off to sleep, hazy and half formed.