Author's Note: This story is the first I've ever written and the brainchild of excessive amounts of boredom and the subsequent rereading of LOTR for the 5th time. I have always wanted to try a crossover with Legolas/Hermione as there is a lack of stories of this type. This pairing is interesting enough to deserve a full length fic, but this may just end up a short story. I don't really have a clear layout quite yet, so please leave critiques/comments. Enjoy?

Disclaimer: The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are the works of two fabulous authors, J.R.R Tolkien and J.K. Rowling.

Prologue:

Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... death is not... It's the absence of presence, nothing more... the endless time of never coming back... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...

Hogwarts was taken on a clear, cold day. With every gust of wind, umber and orange drifted down from the trees to ay a scant carpet of leaves over the fallen.

Hermione would be the first and the last to leave this world.

Malfoy stalked her through the decimated corridors of Hogwarts, calling out her name in a manner that would have been considered teasing between lovers had it not been for the insanity subtly coloring his tone. They had gone at this little game of cat and mouse for hours. She was the last of the preconditioned light side. Her comrades had gone down valiantly, but no amount of fearlessness could defeat the sheer numbers on the opposing side.

Hermione crouched behind a collapsed column, disillusioning herself, listening to his soft footsteps echo across the hall, stray dust in the air aggravating her eyes. Her heart beat out of her chest, grief and fatigue fighting a battle for control. Such petty nuances. She clung to her vinewood wand in her scuffed hands with an unwavering intensity.

Tear tracks stained her begrimed face, her clothing torn, bloodied and unlaundered. So many had perished in the Final Battle. Remus, Tonks, Ginny, Ron, Harry... The pain of their falling was insurmountable to any other heart fall she had ever experienced. She was unfathomably fatigued, both mentally and physically. Hermione was so tired. Tired of conflict, death, desperation...

"Mudblood", he spat out. How Malfoy managed to find her escaped all possible comprehension. He looked akin to her condition, if not worse. His platinum blond hair was matted with grease and blood. His eyes held a slightly deranged and pained look she had never seen before, his wand aimed at her throat.

"Malfoy, please don't-", she pleaded. She saw the person he had become, and saw the person he could be.

"Tempus Itinerantur", he shouted, a spell she had only read of in books.

Her world folded in on itself until it was but a bleak blackness.

This is not the end, it is the beginning.

P.S.- The spell "Tempus Itinerantur" literally translates to something along the lines of "time are being walked" in Latin.