Summary: The greatest hobbit secret was actually the mathoms. Those curious bits of shiny that passed from hobbit hands without value or sense. Hobbit Culture , AU , Portrayal of 'Durin the Deathless' that is less than complimentary and not in standing with Canon. some Neo-Khuzdhul (with translations). Sorta Dark? Rated for vague fantasy type genocide (and Filicide)[no blood].

A/N: *Since I'm peppering Khuzdhul in here, I'm just going to write the meaning according to Dwarrow Scholar in parenthesis to the right.

The Mithril Origin Story

Belladona had been made into a pipe- a beautiful thing with a motif carved in of her namesake and a cherrywood mouthpiece; he'd had enough left over for a matching pipe-weed box . Bilbo had found the designs in his mother's glory box the day she passed.

Bungo Baggins had become the frame of Bilbo's favorite lantern. Bilbo lit it on the coldest nights of winter to help people find their way.

Terribly sentimental turnings; everybody said- but Bilbo didn't care one whit.

Mathoms were mathoms, made from the bones of hobbits after they turned back to the earth, and sentimental or not, they'd change hands eventually. The Valar knew Bilbo'd finally been rid of a roomful of mathoms when he hit his Majority. It'd been a grand Birthday that year- he'd even freed up a whole guest bedroom!

Getting on in age, Bilbo didn't collect many mathoms these days- being a confirmed bachelor of almost 50, he wasn't invited to the parties for the young ones a 'courting anymore. He was glad of it; mathoms could be a terrible bother with the dusting (you had to pay respect to your elders after all).

Sitting on the bench outside his smial while contemplating possibly emptying out a few more bedrooms this coming birthday, a wizard came by. There were many 'Good Mornings' and a few 'No thank you's' and a little bit of vandalism to one newly painted green door, and our Bilbo Baggins retreated to the sanctuary of his home, only to be disturbed just as he was sitting down to his fish.

"Dwalin at your service."

His night made chaos, twelve dwarves tumbled through his door. They pilfered his pantry, desecrated his front bathroom pipes, and trampled mud all through his carpets.

Then one toasted to Durin. And just- what? Was he mental?

"NO!" interrupted a furious Bilbo Baggins as he marched up to a behatted dwarf and forced his drink to the table.

"To Durin! In all my years!"

"Ah- My dear Bilbo-"

"No Gandalf! Nobody shall toast to that –that pretender, that kidnapper, that graverobber in my SMIAL!" Bilbo screamed, turning on one big hairy foot, and smashing the drink in his hands across the room into the sink. It shattered dramatically, ale splattering all over the backwash.

The dwarves looked on in shock at the creature that had replaced the soft grocer that had been flitting around them the last couple of hours.

"I would have you take back your words against my ancestor." Grumbled Dwalin, as he stood from the table.

Bilbo whirled around to stare intensely at Gandalf with wide eyes.

"You brought sons of Durin the pretender into my Smial?!" he asked incredulous-"Into the Shire?! ARE YOU MAD!?"

Bilbo rushed forward to his closest mathoms box, making to shuffle the contents to one of the closer bedrooms.

By now the dwarves were awash with confusion- which only increased as he began to draw mithril in droves into what looked like a pillowcase.

"Mithril.." whispered Balin in awe- for it was more than he had ever seen in his life.

Bilbo snorted. "Mithril Indeed! For that is what that scourge Durin called it!" He ran a hand into the corners to make sure he hadn't left anything behind before gathering up the edges of his makeshift sack over one shoulder and running swiftly down the hallway.

He reappeared before the members of the company without the sack before they could do much more than look at each other uneasily.

"You have to get them out of here Gandalf. None here shall suffer the kin of Mabashshakûn (He who excessively removes bones*) upon our lands."

The dwarves drew in a breath collectively in surprise. For indeed, a Halfling had just cursed out one of the Seven in Khuzdhul, the most treasured of the Dwarrow secrets (for only the blood of those that called Aulë their maker had rights to that language).

"Where did you learn that word laddie?" asked Balin, "Why do you call Durin that?"

Bilbo snorted again.

Gandalf rose from his seat as he interjected- " You owe them an explanation Bilbo Baggins. And it is not like you, I think, to blame the Gamgees for the Stoor." In that insufferable grandfatherly voice of reason (Of course referencing Trahald Stoor, A.K.A. Gollum, that foul creature that killed his cousin for a bit of gold one birthday long ago).

Bilbo deflated – just a bit – and swept a gimlet eye across his audience, and began his tale.

"It would make sense, I suppose- that that id-uhfar (betrayer*) would erase us from your histories, so that you would not know the depth of his madness."

"Indeed." Agreed Gandalf in a grave voice, as he settled back into his seat.

Bilbo rolled his eyes, barely holding back the tookish response of sticking out his tongue as he continued.

He reached behind the cabinet behind the door, and plucked his Mathom-Lantern from a hook on the wall. He lit it quickly, so that they could see it was a shining Mithril Lantern, if of some crude workmanship.

"Your people call it Mithril, or Sanzigil (Mithril*), But we call it ib-beshek (Bone*); for that is what it is. To us. It is our bone. That particular lantern…"

and here Bilbo gestured to emphasize it, "is the bone of my father, Bungo Baggins."

Ori's eyes went wide, though he continued to write shorthand in his journal using a pencil. Bilbo decided to allow it.

"For Hobbits, or Zantulbasân as your people call us, are children of Yavanna. Not just mere creations as are the other races, but true children of blood and loin."

And here- Oin took in a hissed breath. Being a physician he understood the implications faster. For where there was a flesh mother, there was a flesh father, and the husband of Yavanna was-

"Aulë carried the first of us from the halls of the Valar to Durin the first as he wandered alone in the wilderness. To him, the son for whom he had not carved a wife, Aulë gifted the match of his first born, a Daughter named Shargûna (Horizon-Lady*)."

"They settled in Khazad-Dum (the Misty Mountains/Moria*) and she bore him 30 children ."

Several dwarves choked at that number-

"When his name, death-less had him outlive the first of his daughters, then only 40 years old."

Bilbo took a breath, and seamed to sigh.

"And there he witnessed his first daughter turn to dirt and dust, leaving behind shining metal bones."

Gandalf puffed in the corner, while Bilbo beheld true sorrow in his guests.

"In his grief, or in madness; I know not- he ravaged all of his children till their bones lay at his feet. He gave life to the ambition to make his wife bare him more children, so that he had more of the precious Mithril to decorate himself in."

"In her sorrow, his wife Shargûna laid a curse upon her blood so that she would not bare more children. Yet, not 5 months later she did."

Oin shared a look with Balin. A curse would explain their current birthrates.

"She hid him from her husbands glazed eyes, and in his madness, he starved himself to death. Shargûna raised her son alone, and he was a just king, though his name is lost to time."

"Shargûna eventually left to the Hobbit settlement on the Anduin, full of her brothers and sisters."

"For the love of Yavanna is Bountiful" quoted Gandalf, smirking around his pipe; and Bilbo smirked back, all teeth.

"Indeed. And there she took up a new husband, and had many more children."

"but he was born again. Finding that his new sons and daughters lacked the mineral he craved in their bones, he took to abducting Hobbits as they made the great journey from the Anduin settlement to our new home in the Shire, during the wandering. "

Bilbo shook his head.

"We left to escape the growing evil, only to fall into the sights of our greatest enemy, long thought dead."

"That kin-slayer took hundreds, shepherding them to great heights within the mountain only to throw them to their deaths. He melted their bones down into beads and trinkets, and filled cracks in the mountain with their melted bone. And when it set, he gave his people want to mine in those areas, so that when they dug up the bones of my people, it appeared as if it was a natural vein of precious metal that they had unearthed. And he named it Mithril."

"these days we pass the bones of our forefathers as simple trinkets to keep them from the hands of others. They have not been safe in the ground for many generations, and so you will find no graveyard in these lands."

Three heavy knocks sounded.

"Ah," spoke Gandalf- "He is here."

A/N: if it wasn't obvious, the curse passed from Shargûna to her unborn child instead. Bit of trivia- the rude word for Hobbits according to Dwarrow scholar is Sharbragân, which is why I named Durin's wife Shargûna. I just thought it would be funny.

I didn't get to work it in, but in my story the mithril is kinda like unicorn blood- but Tolkien style- it's starlight and song made whole in the blood of the Valar, calcified in their children. I thought it would make some sense of why they were so short, if their bones were so dense (that's why it's oddly light as a metal- so hobbits could still expand their rib cages to breath! Also, starlight and song isn't that heavy, even when combined to make the perfect metal).

P.p.s. Yes. Trahald is actually Smeagol/Gollum's Name in Westron. Boo-yah Wiki.