Disclaimer: Tragically, I do not own any part of the Elves, Middle-Earth,
or (less tragically) Harry Potter. All I own are Belegil, Sindahir, and
various extras I've stuck in to make life more interesting. Master Potter
belongs to J.K. Rowling, and all of Ea is the property of J.R.R. Tolkien
and his offspring. I am not making a penny from this.
Chapter 1: An Unlikely Encounter in the Woods
Legolas and his friend Belegil were on a routine patrol of northern Mirkwood and had expected it to be, well, routine, but that certainly not was what they were getting. Legolas himself had walked into a tiny clearing in the trees to find himself standing above a teenage human boy, who was fast asleep on the ground. He was dressed in dirty black robes, and had messy black hair. A polished wood stick was grasped tightly in one hand, and a pair of glasses were balanced precariously over his nose. What in Ea was a human, especially an immature and very strange-looking human such as this one, doing in his forest? "Belegil!" he shouted. "Come over here now!"
"What is it, my lord," the elf said, running over to where the Elven- prince was standing. He stopped suddenly, looking at the human. "Oh," he finished.
"Should we wake him up?"
However, it was too late. Apparently the Elves' talking had done the job for them. The human stirred, groaned, and opened his green eyes. He shook his head, knocking his glasses off. Legolas bent down over him.
"Who are you?" he said.
"Huh?" the human replied. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head again. As his vision filled with a blur of green, gold, white, and blue, he jolted fully awake and groped for his glasses. The boy shoved them on his face and the blur crystallized into a picture of a man leaning over him, a slender young man dressed in leafy green with fair skin, glowing gold hair and shockingly blue eyes. "Huh!" he cried and backed away.
"Who are you," Legolas repeated, this time firmer.
"My lord, he might not speak Elvish," Belegil suggested.
"You're right," the prince said. He addressed the human again, this time in the Common Tongue. "Who are you?"
"I won't tell you my name until you tell me who the bloody hell you are," the boy yelled. He jumped to his feet. It was obvious that he was very frightened. 'Please,' the human was thinking. 'Don't let him hurt me. Please, let Dumbledore show up and miraculously save me. And while you're at it, please make this guy stop staring at me with those freaky blue eyes.'
"Well," Legolas said. "Seeing as you are the stranger in my land, it would be proper for you to name yourself first."
"I don't care what's proper! Just leave me alone!"
"It also would be a very wise move on your part, seeing as you're alone and unarmed, and I have a bow and arrows, two knives, and reinforcements." He nodded towards Belegil, who was slowly reaching for his bow.
The boy started trembling even harder than ever, but he held his ground. "I'm not unarmed," he stammered. "I've got my wand." He held up his stick as the two Elves exchanged dubious looks. "Plus," the human continued. "I can call for Dumbledore any time I like."
"Call for a dumbledore?" Legolas said. "How can a bumblebee help you? Come on, what's your name."
"I'm not telling you!"
"Is that your final answer?" the elf said, coining a phrase that would later be used in a famous game show. He pulled out one of his white knives and fingered the blade threateningly.
"Okay! Okay!!" the boy moaned, nearly fainting in fear. "I am Harry Potter." He hung his head dramatically, waiting for the impact of his name to sink in. It never did.
"See?" Legolas said, sheathing his knife. "That wasn't so hard. And for my name, I am Legolas Greenleaf son of Thranduil, the king of Mirkwood. This is Belegil son of... um..."
" Nardol," Belegil reminded him.
"Oh, yeah, sorry. I knew that. So this is Belegil son of Nardol."
'Oh, %@&*,' Harry thought. 'Just listen to those exotic names. I must be in the territory of some weird tribe of primitive people. But where is their territory? How far from Hogwarts am I?'
"Where am I?" he said.
"You're in the forest of Mirkwood," Legolas said. He wondered what was going on with this human. Was he amnesiac or just as stupid as he looked? The elf glanced at his companion, and as he did, his beautiful hair parted and Harry caught sight of his finely pointed ear. The boy's eyes widened, and he took a few steps backward.
"And where's Mirkwood?" he asked, still staring at the ear.
"In the northeast of Middle-Earth." Now the two Elves were very concerned.
"Are you feeling alright?" Belegil asked. "Are you experiencing a headache? Any dizziness or nausea?"
"Middle-Earth," the boy mused. Suddenly, he remembered where he had heard the name. "Middle-Earth? Middle-Earth from The Lord of the Rings?!"
"The Lord of the Rings? Certainly not," Legolas hissed. "The Lord of the Rings owns his dark land: nothing more. He has no claim on the rest of the world."
"What? No, I mean the movie. No wait, the book."
"I haven't heard of this book," the Elven-prince said. "But come on. You must come before the Elven-king Thranduil for judgment."
"Why can't you just let me go? I don't even know how I got here."
"That is not how the law goes. If the King takes a liking to you, you may go free to wander back to whatever sorry place you came from, but if he doesn't, things will not be so favorable," he said. Reaching into his pack, the elf pulled out a length of slender gray rope. "Turn around and let me tie your hands."
"Ohh no," Harry said. "Stay away from me or I'll blast you with my wand. I know some pretty good curses, you know." The boy was bluffing about knowing curses, and both he and the Elves knew it. But Harry was sure that a good hex would bring them down. After all, his captors were tall and had eerily bright eyes, but they were both slender, and didn't seem particularly strong.
"Right," Legolas said. "Belegil? Give me a hand."
"Certainly," replied the other elf. He grabbed the human's hands and pulled them together behind his back, but Harry wrenched himself free and pulled out his stick.
"Stunus nowus or-elseus!" he cried. Nothing happened. He shook the wand, tapped it a couple times, and re-pointed it to try again. "Stunus nowus or-elseus!" This time, a bolt of brown light shot out of his wand in the general direction of the Elves. They both hopped aside and the spell missed them by a yard or two. But before the boy could try again, both Legolas and Belegil were holding him tightly, and Legolas was binding his wrists.
"Come on," the Elf-prince said. "Cooperate with us and you'll get off easier."
"I'll never bow to you!" Harry said. "Dumbledore will come, and so will Sirius, if he's done being dead, and Lupin, and Tonks, and Ron and Hermione and Neville, and everyone else. You'll see!"
"Do we have a gag?" Legolas asked.
"Right here."
"Great." The elf forced a piece of gray cloth into the boy's mouth. He kept trying to talk, but his efforts were all in vain.
"That's much better," commented Belegil.
"I wish we didn't have to take him to the King to be judged," said Legolas with a sigh. "I'd much rather just dump him in a hole somewhere and be done with him."
"Me too," agreed the other elf.
The two Elves dragged their captive through a mile or so of forest before they finally reached their camp, where food, fire, sleeping rolls, and horses were waiting. On the way, Belegil shot a plump rabbit to go with their dinner of lembas. They tied Harry to a tree while they ate, and then took the gag off to try and feed him.
"Eat some rabbit," Legolas said, generously offering him the toughest part of the carcass.
"No thank you," Harry snapped. "It could be poisoned or bewitched or something even worse."
"How could it be poisoned?" asked the elf. "We're eating it."
"What's poisonous for me might be fine for you weird creatures," the boy retorted. "What species are you two, anyways?"
"We're Elves," said Legolas. "Sylvan Elves of Mirkwood."
"Funny," Harry said with an obnoxious snort. "Real funny. What a joke."
"Actually, it isn't," said the elf.
"You're not elves!" Harry said rudely. "I've seen elves. They don't look anything like you."
"They must have been Eldarin. The Eldar look very different from us," Legolas mocked. "They have dark hair, and gray eyes."
"No! The only real elves are House-elves. They're about two feet tall with big ears and brown skin. They're even uglier than you."
"Master Harry Potter," the elf sighed. "We are Elves, with a capital E when plural, if you will. We are the Quendi, and the Quendi are the Elves. There is no such creature as a House-elf."
"Is too," Harry mumbled under his breath. Unfortunately, Legolas's keen ears could hear him loud and clear.
"No, there isn't," he said from behind gritted teeth. He picked up the gag and pushed it back between the boy's teeth, tying it quickly but tightly around the back of his head.
"Okay kid," the elf said when he was done. "We should be patrolling more tonight, but there's nothing we can do with you, so we're taking the night of. Just be glad we're not leaving you here alone in the dark."
It was getting very dark. As soon as Anar set in the West, the forest was plunged into total shadow. As the stars were hidden by the thick trees, the only light was from the glowing embers of the Elves' fire, and from the glow and flicker of their blue eyes. Though Legolas and Belegil could see almost perfectly at night, Harry was blinded. He shuddered as he looked at all the things he couldn't see, and shuddered more at the eerie dancing of what light there was. The boy tried desperately not to listen to the sounds of the forest. But no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn't keep them out. The creaking of branches, the cries of night birds and other nocturnal creatures, the shifting of the two ghost-gray Elf-horses, and even the soft talking of the Elves worked their way into his fear-filled brain and wouldn't leave. 'This is going to be a long night,' he thought miserably.
Harry's captors had thought it would be a long night too, but since the gag was keeping him pleasantly quiet, they now felt free to enjoy themselves. Legolas and Belegil chatted quietly in their obscure Avarin dialect, and planned to treat themselves to a bit of sleep later in the night, something they hadn't bothered to take for more than an hour every day ever since they had left Thranduil's halls.
"What do you think your father will do to him?" Belegil said eventually.
"Harry Potter?" said Legolas. "I'm not sure. Judging by his age and apparent lack of information as to where and what he is, the King might go easy on him, but judging by his rudeness and really irritating aura, he might give him something tough. Maybe he'll have him locked up for awhile before they boot him out of the forest. What do you think?"
"I don't know," his companion replied.
"Of course," the Elven-prince continued with a wry smile. "I'm not even sure what to hope for. I mean, personally I hope he gets a hard sentence, but I've barely met him and I already hate him. I can't stand even the thought of spending a long time with him in the same palace!" Both the Elves laughed, though they groaned inwardly. After that, they talked for awhile longer before rolling out their beds and falling asleep.
Harry Potter leaned against the tree and tried to drift away, but he couldn't. 'What's going on,' he thought. 'Those freaks are lying down and should be sleeping, but their eyes are still open. I wonder if they never close them. I hope they can't see while their sleeping. If they can't, I have a chance to escape.' The boy shifted his position as much as he could to test them. Unfortunately, he abruptly stopped in fear as the pair of eyes that was looking in his direction lit up with new light and focused on him. 'Oh, bloody hell,' he thought, biting his tongue to keep the thoughts from sounding. 'Just my luck to get captured by things that sleep with their eyes open. If only I could reach my wand!'
Finally, however, he stopped thinking about making a bold escape and half-willingly wandered towards quieter ideas. He wondered how he had fallen asleep in Hogwarts to wake up in Middle-earth, then thought about what people would think about his adventures once he got back, and before the boy knew it he was staring into stunning blue eyes that were yelling at him to wake up and shaking him violently.
Chapter 1: An Unlikely Encounter in the Woods
Legolas and his friend Belegil were on a routine patrol of northern Mirkwood and had expected it to be, well, routine, but that certainly not was what they were getting. Legolas himself had walked into a tiny clearing in the trees to find himself standing above a teenage human boy, who was fast asleep on the ground. He was dressed in dirty black robes, and had messy black hair. A polished wood stick was grasped tightly in one hand, and a pair of glasses were balanced precariously over his nose. What in Ea was a human, especially an immature and very strange-looking human such as this one, doing in his forest? "Belegil!" he shouted. "Come over here now!"
"What is it, my lord," the elf said, running over to where the Elven- prince was standing. He stopped suddenly, looking at the human. "Oh," he finished.
"Should we wake him up?"
However, it was too late. Apparently the Elves' talking had done the job for them. The human stirred, groaned, and opened his green eyes. He shook his head, knocking his glasses off. Legolas bent down over him.
"Who are you?" he said.
"Huh?" the human replied. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head again. As his vision filled with a blur of green, gold, white, and blue, he jolted fully awake and groped for his glasses. The boy shoved them on his face and the blur crystallized into a picture of a man leaning over him, a slender young man dressed in leafy green with fair skin, glowing gold hair and shockingly blue eyes. "Huh!" he cried and backed away.
"Who are you," Legolas repeated, this time firmer.
"My lord, he might not speak Elvish," Belegil suggested.
"You're right," the prince said. He addressed the human again, this time in the Common Tongue. "Who are you?"
"I won't tell you my name until you tell me who the bloody hell you are," the boy yelled. He jumped to his feet. It was obvious that he was very frightened. 'Please,' the human was thinking. 'Don't let him hurt me. Please, let Dumbledore show up and miraculously save me. And while you're at it, please make this guy stop staring at me with those freaky blue eyes.'
"Well," Legolas said. "Seeing as you are the stranger in my land, it would be proper for you to name yourself first."
"I don't care what's proper! Just leave me alone!"
"It also would be a very wise move on your part, seeing as you're alone and unarmed, and I have a bow and arrows, two knives, and reinforcements." He nodded towards Belegil, who was slowly reaching for his bow.
The boy started trembling even harder than ever, but he held his ground. "I'm not unarmed," he stammered. "I've got my wand." He held up his stick as the two Elves exchanged dubious looks. "Plus," the human continued. "I can call for Dumbledore any time I like."
"Call for a dumbledore?" Legolas said. "How can a bumblebee help you? Come on, what's your name."
"I'm not telling you!"
"Is that your final answer?" the elf said, coining a phrase that would later be used in a famous game show. He pulled out one of his white knives and fingered the blade threateningly.
"Okay! Okay!!" the boy moaned, nearly fainting in fear. "I am Harry Potter." He hung his head dramatically, waiting for the impact of his name to sink in. It never did.
"See?" Legolas said, sheathing his knife. "That wasn't so hard. And for my name, I am Legolas Greenleaf son of Thranduil, the king of Mirkwood. This is Belegil son of... um..."
" Nardol," Belegil reminded him.
"Oh, yeah, sorry. I knew that. So this is Belegil son of Nardol."
'Oh, %@&*,' Harry thought. 'Just listen to those exotic names. I must be in the territory of some weird tribe of primitive people. But where is their territory? How far from Hogwarts am I?'
"Where am I?" he said.
"You're in the forest of Mirkwood," Legolas said. He wondered what was going on with this human. Was he amnesiac or just as stupid as he looked? The elf glanced at his companion, and as he did, his beautiful hair parted and Harry caught sight of his finely pointed ear. The boy's eyes widened, and he took a few steps backward.
"And where's Mirkwood?" he asked, still staring at the ear.
"In the northeast of Middle-Earth." Now the two Elves were very concerned.
"Are you feeling alright?" Belegil asked. "Are you experiencing a headache? Any dizziness or nausea?"
"Middle-Earth," the boy mused. Suddenly, he remembered where he had heard the name. "Middle-Earth? Middle-Earth from The Lord of the Rings?!"
"The Lord of the Rings? Certainly not," Legolas hissed. "The Lord of the Rings owns his dark land: nothing more. He has no claim on the rest of the world."
"What? No, I mean the movie. No wait, the book."
"I haven't heard of this book," the Elven-prince said. "But come on. You must come before the Elven-king Thranduil for judgment."
"Why can't you just let me go? I don't even know how I got here."
"That is not how the law goes. If the King takes a liking to you, you may go free to wander back to whatever sorry place you came from, but if he doesn't, things will not be so favorable," he said. Reaching into his pack, the elf pulled out a length of slender gray rope. "Turn around and let me tie your hands."
"Ohh no," Harry said. "Stay away from me or I'll blast you with my wand. I know some pretty good curses, you know." The boy was bluffing about knowing curses, and both he and the Elves knew it. But Harry was sure that a good hex would bring them down. After all, his captors were tall and had eerily bright eyes, but they were both slender, and didn't seem particularly strong.
"Right," Legolas said. "Belegil? Give me a hand."
"Certainly," replied the other elf. He grabbed the human's hands and pulled them together behind his back, but Harry wrenched himself free and pulled out his stick.
"Stunus nowus or-elseus!" he cried. Nothing happened. He shook the wand, tapped it a couple times, and re-pointed it to try again. "Stunus nowus or-elseus!" This time, a bolt of brown light shot out of his wand in the general direction of the Elves. They both hopped aside and the spell missed them by a yard or two. But before the boy could try again, both Legolas and Belegil were holding him tightly, and Legolas was binding his wrists.
"Come on," the Elf-prince said. "Cooperate with us and you'll get off easier."
"I'll never bow to you!" Harry said. "Dumbledore will come, and so will Sirius, if he's done being dead, and Lupin, and Tonks, and Ron and Hermione and Neville, and everyone else. You'll see!"
"Do we have a gag?" Legolas asked.
"Right here."
"Great." The elf forced a piece of gray cloth into the boy's mouth. He kept trying to talk, but his efforts were all in vain.
"That's much better," commented Belegil.
"I wish we didn't have to take him to the King to be judged," said Legolas with a sigh. "I'd much rather just dump him in a hole somewhere and be done with him."
"Me too," agreed the other elf.
The two Elves dragged their captive through a mile or so of forest before they finally reached their camp, where food, fire, sleeping rolls, and horses were waiting. On the way, Belegil shot a plump rabbit to go with their dinner of lembas. They tied Harry to a tree while they ate, and then took the gag off to try and feed him.
"Eat some rabbit," Legolas said, generously offering him the toughest part of the carcass.
"No thank you," Harry snapped. "It could be poisoned or bewitched or something even worse."
"How could it be poisoned?" asked the elf. "We're eating it."
"What's poisonous for me might be fine for you weird creatures," the boy retorted. "What species are you two, anyways?"
"We're Elves," said Legolas. "Sylvan Elves of Mirkwood."
"Funny," Harry said with an obnoxious snort. "Real funny. What a joke."
"Actually, it isn't," said the elf.
"You're not elves!" Harry said rudely. "I've seen elves. They don't look anything like you."
"They must have been Eldarin. The Eldar look very different from us," Legolas mocked. "They have dark hair, and gray eyes."
"No! The only real elves are House-elves. They're about two feet tall with big ears and brown skin. They're even uglier than you."
"Master Harry Potter," the elf sighed. "We are Elves, with a capital E when plural, if you will. We are the Quendi, and the Quendi are the Elves. There is no such creature as a House-elf."
"Is too," Harry mumbled under his breath. Unfortunately, Legolas's keen ears could hear him loud and clear.
"No, there isn't," he said from behind gritted teeth. He picked up the gag and pushed it back between the boy's teeth, tying it quickly but tightly around the back of his head.
"Okay kid," the elf said when he was done. "We should be patrolling more tonight, but there's nothing we can do with you, so we're taking the night of. Just be glad we're not leaving you here alone in the dark."
It was getting very dark. As soon as Anar set in the West, the forest was plunged into total shadow. As the stars were hidden by the thick trees, the only light was from the glowing embers of the Elves' fire, and from the glow and flicker of their blue eyes. Though Legolas and Belegil could see almost perfectly at night, Harry was blinded. He shuddered as he looked at all the things he couldn't see, and shuddered more at the eerie dancing of what light there was. The boy tried desperately not to listen to the sounds of the forest. But no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn't keep them out. The creaking of branches, the cries of night birds and other nocturnal creatures, the shifting of the two ghost-gray Elf-horses, and even the soft talking of the Elves worked their way into his fear-filled brain and wouldn't leave. 'This is going to be a long night,' he thought miserably.
Harry's captors had thought it would be a long night too, but since the gag was keeping him pleasantly quiet, they now felt free to enjoy themselves. Legolas and Belegil chatted quietly in their obscure Avarin dialect, and planned to treat themselves to a bit of sleep later in the night, something they hadn't bothered to take for more than an hour every day ever since they had left Thranduil's halls.
"What do you think your father will do to him?" Belegil said eventually.
"Harry Potter?" said Legolas. "I'm not sure. Judging by his age and apparent lack of information as to where and what he is, the King might go easy on him, but judging by his rudeness and really irritating aura, he might give him something tough. Maybe he'll have him locked up for awhile before they boot him out of the forest. What do you think?"
"I don't know," his companion replied.
"Of course," the Elven-prince continued with a wry smile. "I'm not even sure what to hope for. I mean, personally I hope he gets a hard sentence, but I've barely met him and I already hate him. I can't stand even the thought of spending a long time with him in the same palace!" Both the Elves laughed, though they groaned inwardly. After that, they talked for awhile longer before rolling out their beds and falling asleep.
Harry Potter leaned against the tree and tried to drift away, but he couldn't. 'What's going on,' he thought. 'Those freaks are lying down and should be sleeping, but their eyes are still open. I wonder if they never close them. I hope they can't see while their sleeping. If they can't, I have a chance to escape.' The boy shifted his position as much as he could to test them. Unfortunately, he abruptly stopped in fear as the pair of eyes that was looking in his direction lit up with new light and focused on him. 'Oh, bloody hell,' he thought, biting his tongue to keep the thoughts from sounding. 'Just my luck to get captured by things that sleep with their eyes open. If only I could reach my wand!'
Finally, however, he stopped thinking about making a bold escape and half-willingly wandered towards quieter ideas. He wondered how he had fallen asleep in Hogwarts to wake up in Middle-earth, then thought about what people would think about his adventures once he got back, and before the boy knew it he was staring into stunning blue eyes that were yelling at him to wake up and shaking him violently.