Late during the night on that fateful 22nd of September, Johnbo Baggins awoke from his sleep. His little ears were strong, and the small Hobbit was sure he could hear something or someone rooting around outside his home. John gave Smauglock a kiss on the cheek and wiggled out of the dragon's embrace, picking up his blanket and heading out to explore. Having been raised by dragons, John feared absolutely nothing at this stage in his life, and he believed all the creatures of Middle Earth to be his friends. The only race in all of Arda that John had been taught were not his equal were the Dwarves, and even at three years old he knew better than to think any Dwarves would be stupid enough to lurk around his Smau-Smau's mountain.

The young hobbit slid as quietly as he could down the mountain of gold and peeked his head outside of their den, looking around curiously as he attempted to make his way outside. Smauglock always used a shortcut when taking John out for fresh air, preventing a long adventure through Erebor's winding tunnels, but the child couldn't exactly remember his way. He followed the voices he heard until he finally came to a small landing that he could easily climb down, leading to the pass where he made out a distinct male voice.

"I think the mountain is clear, if Smauglock is here then he slumbers greatly, otherwise there wouldn't have been such a drop off in activity. Do you think it wise to check deeper into the caverns?" Fíli had asked this, and Gandalf was about to respond when he was cut off by a tiny bubbly voice.

"Don't wake Smau-Smau, I out of bed, he be angwee." All three men were absolutely gob smacked. They exchanged alarmed glances with each other before Kíli reached out and attempted to comfort the child. John flinched and shook his head wildly.

"Uh-uh, Dwarf bad! You hurt my Smau…not nice!" Kíli looked to Gandalf for answers, who knelt before the toddler. His aged eyes looked Johnbo up and down thoroughly, shaking his head as he did so.

"Unbelievable…a Halfling…this little one is a Hobbit. You're pretty far from home aren't you, child?" John looked confused and shook his head, his springy ginger curls falling into is eyes.

"No, I wive here." Gandalf didn't want to argue with the hobbit, smiling at him and sitting down cross legged on the ground.

"Okay then. Nice to meet you, what is your name?"

"Johnbo, but Smau-Smau and Myoff jus call me John." He replied innocently, pulling a corner of his blanket to his mouth and beginning to suck on it. It was then that Gandalf could read the embroidery on it and his heart filled with dread.

"Oh Bilbo…Bilbo Baggins, I had so hoped Belladonna and Bungo were somewhere safe…though I feared this to be the outcome. I'm surprised Smauglock kept you alive." It was clear to the wizard that John did not understand and as he stood he extended his hand to the young lad.

"Come along, Bilbo, I'm going to take you back to your family. You've got an Aunt Belba who's been looking forward to your return." John didn't budge.

"My name is John and my family is here." He stated matter-of-factly, staring in an almost challenging manner at the two Dwarves standing before him. Kíli turned pitiful eyes to Gandalf.

"Maybe we should let him be, Smaug seems to care for him, otherwise he'd be dead right now. I feel it may be wrong to rob him of the only family he knows." Fíli opened his mouth to agree with his brother but shut it again as he took notice of the look on the old man's face.

"Do not mistake your sympathy for the dragons plight as the moral high ground. This child belongs with the family who is mourning his loss, not the inferno who stole him away. We will take Master Bilbo back to the Shire, that is where he belongs." John turned to run back up the pass, but Gandalf was quick at work and slung the child over his shoulder. John screamed as loud as his little lungs could manage for his Smau-Smau, but a quick spell from Gandalf made his cries impossible to hear. Johnbo Baggins would live to hate his curiosity for the rest of his childhood.

When Smauglock woke the next morning without John securely in his grasp, he panicked. Smauglock and Mycroft scoured the mountains for days, tore entire county sides apart.

"John! John please, come back!" He wept, curling into a ball in his den, inconsolable in his sorrow by even the warmth of his brothers embrace. John had been the light in the darkness, he was what made Smauglock's life livable again after the loss of his family. He didn't know what he had ever done to deserve this sort of pain. Mycroft lay down with his brother, gently petting the other dragon's obsidian curls.

"I'm so sorry, brother. I knew I smelled Dwarves the morning John vanished, I know they must have stolen him away…Johnbo would have never just up and ran away. I could see it in his eyes, Smauglock, he loved you. You were all he had." Smauglock only wept harder and shook his head no.

"You're wrong….he was all I had…and I was stupid enough to believe taking him in and opening my heart up would be enough to make up for all the wrong I've done. The world is still punishing me, Mycroft. That's why I can't take this out on the Dwarves…I'm already paying for that mistake three fold."

As Smauglock fell into a deep depression, John was forced to live with Belba Baggins back at Bag End, who told him over and over that "Smau-Smau" didn't really exist and that he'd made him up to cope after his parents death, very fortunate that Gandalf had found him when he did. Years and years of hearing this and of being shunned by the other young Hobbits of Hobbiton eventually had John believing most of the lie, though he still refused to go by Bilbo, believing deep in his heart that he remembered his name being John for a reason.

John's room was filled to the brim with drawings and sketches of his human looking dragon, and even some of Mycroft, though John no longer remembered what the purple dragon of his dreams was even called. Year after year passed, John becoming more and more boring as he sought to suppress everything that made him weird, everything even remotely Tookish. He put away his beautiful detailed drawings of "Smau-Smau" and took up gardening with some of his relatives. The Gamgee family had been particularly kind to him, and it was Roper Gamgee that helped Bilbo cultivate the nice little garden out back that Samwise Gamgee would later come to love so.

John tried very, very hard to lead a normal life, and as he leapt the threshold from boy to man it seemed to everyone in the Shire that it had worked. Johnbo Baggins was a normal Hobbit now, who would have thought? But John knew the truth. He could hide behind his books and his planted trees all the wanted, but there wasn't a night that went by that he didn't dream of dragons.

In T.A. 2941 Johnbo Baggins was a grand fifty years old, still young in adulthood for a Hobbit, though his neighbors were now under the solid impression that he was just as unadventurous and respectable as his father. It had been a good long while now since Smauglock had crossed the Hobbit's mind, which was now mainly filled with wondering what he was going to have for second breakfast and how long it would be before he ran out of this months supply of Pipe-Weed.

John woke up feeling particularly good one March morning of this year, having himself a nice long stretch and skipping breakfast to sit outside on his porch and have a good smoke. It was a beautiful day, and he longed to watch the Shire wake up and hear the calls of far off animals. It was while he was basking in the early rays of the morning sun that quite the peculiar man passed by. He was a Big Person, and you didn't see many of them pass through the Shire. He was wearing a pointy blue hat and long grey robes…looking oddly familiar to John for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"Good morning." John said cheerily to the stranger, not thinking very much of this formality and continuing to puff his pipe. That is, until he noticed that the elderly gentleman had now stopped to stare at him.

"What do you mean?" He asked, putting his own pipe in his mouth and taking a long drag.

"Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it nor not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?" John's eyebrows furrowed in a perplexed comportment and he just sort of sat with his mouth ajar for a moment before replying.

"All of them at once I suppose…" An awkward silence followed as they just sort of stared at one another. The large man was beginning to make our young Hobbit quite uncomfortable, and as if he could sense it the old man spoke at once.

"I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it is very difficult to find anyone." John almost laughed in his face, vague memories of the Lonely Mountain filling his mind for the first time in a long time.

"I should think so¾in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! Good morning!" He paused to take a breath and rise from where he sat, preparing to retreat indoors.

"We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." The old man almost looked insulted.

"To think I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door! Come now Bilbo Baggins, you know my name though you don't remember that I belong to it. I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!" John's face fell and his jaw set at the very sound of being called Bilbo.

"My name is John, Gandalf the Grey, I've told you this before." The sudden coldness of the Hobbit's tone caught Gandalf quite off guard and both of his eyebrows rose in surprise.

"So you do remember me?" John didn't answer, but he didn't have to and the old wizard sighed.

"What I did, I did for your own good."

"And what exactly did you do, hmm, wandering wizard? All my life they've made me feel mad, telling me I'd made the dragon up and that you saved my life…but why do I feel like that's a load of codswallop?" Gandalf met John's eyes with a warm look and shrugged his shoulders.

"That is for you to decide."

Meanwhile, the years had not been kind to Smauglock, who was still withering away in his mountain with his head buried under an enormous pile of gold. Mycroft had stayed with him a good long while, but even the drakes loving older brother eventually tired of the eternal melancholy his brother was immersed in and retreated back to the Withered Heath in defeat. Smauglock tried his best to sleep the days away, no longer caring if Moriarty and his troops tried anything, however at this point it appeared as if that had been nothing more than mere rumor.

Mycroft, who had been spying on the Dwarves all these years was unconvinced that they had just dropped their entire plan at the drop of a hat, if anything Gandalf's visit to Dáin had only prolonged the inevitable. However he knew more than anyone that there was no point in trying to prove any of this to his brother, who had already given up and had been wishing for death for a good forty seven or so years.

Though perhaps it could be said that the real threat they should have been worrying about was one that was completely unbeknown to either brother, and involved the very wizard who had ruined the last four decades of the drakes lives.

The key that Mycroft had warned Smauglock of earlier had finally been passed along from Gandalf to Lestrade Oakenshield, rightful King Under the Mountain. Lestrade was planning something, something terrible, and chances were likely that if he got his way, Smauglock wasn't going to survive it. But lucky for the dragon, fate was destined to involve a certain little Hobbit on this last adventure, a Hobbit who could change the course of history with the answer to one little question: Should he ask Gandalf over for tea?

A/N: Some of this chapters dialogue is directly from The Hobbit