AN.: don't mind if this got a bit confusing. The whole plot for this third of The Renegades is to go deep down the rabbit hole. If you're patient, this will be explained at later chapters.

I've done some minor revisions on June, 2010. Enjoy!

Third piece of the Renegades Trilogy.

The Renegades: Double Jeopardy

By Elentari

Prologue: Time Paradox

To see a world in a grain of sand

and a heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour.

-William Blake

What has gone on before:

With the defeat of Sauron at the first War of the Ring, the peoples of Middle earth try to go back to normality. Galadriel, lady of Light, sends her sister Aredhel as an ambassador to the northern elven realms of Greenwood and Arton. However, when Aredhel leaves Greenwood to go to Arton, her party finds the elven realm destroyed by an expanding human empire from the north. She barely escapes, but her bodyguards are killed in the conquer battle where two mortal armies fought over the lands, they had the misfortune of stepping into, and she is later caught prisoner.

Aredhel keeps secret about the southern elven realms and guarantees that the Dorian empire would not invade south. With time, she fell in love with a general of Dorian, Glaucus Antonius, they got married and had two children, Andrea and Ariel. Their elven inheritance was kept secret with lies and isolation. However, Dorian was too corrupted and the emperor puts one minion against the other in order to keep them weak. In the games of power, Glaucus is unjustly charged for treachery and his family dies trying to escape, saving the youngest child, Arien.

Arien fled seeking the legendary haven of the half-elven. Aredhel believed her half elven offspring wouldn't be entirely welcome in either Men or Elf realms, as most of the peredhil crawled in the shadows to a secret kingdom of theirs in the First Age. With the help of Fangorn, she learns the localization of Antar, but when she was approaching the city, Arien crossed an interdimensional gate – a wide marble wall with huge marble gates- and was transported to Earth, a land of incredibly advanced technology, were non-magical folk (Muggles) live not knowing of the existence of with wizards and witches, unicorns, vampires and all kinds of magical creatures.

With the help of Dumbledore and the emotional support of the Weasley family, Arien is enrolled at Hogwarts, a great school of witchcraft and wizardry, where she first learns how to use magic and that not all wizards are good. Shortly after her arrival the Wizard World War erupts, when all wizards separate in two sides and fight fiercely for over seven years, and most the students of Hogwarts join the side of Light. Arien was separated from her Weasley friends and sent to the Mediterranean Resistance unity in France, serving there until the final battle in Phoenix, Texas. After the fall of Voldemort, wizards return to their lives as it once was, and the group of Ravenclaws known as The Eagles travel around the world writing two books on curiosities from both Muggle and wizarding society. Arien later marries Sirius Black, her former superior in the Intelligence department, and after his death goes to Hogwarts as the Charms Professor and Head of House of Ravenclaw. One hundred and fifty years later, Arithmancy experts from the Order of Phoenix point the exact time and place of the next gate opening, and Arien crosses it to go back to Middle earth – Only Interdimensional gates are not precise in its time/space delivery and the half-elven arrives at earth on what had been her homeland (Dorian), almost three thousand years after her departure, and one hundred and nine years before the Second War of the Ring.

All Arien wanted was to find a nice place for her to settle down, continue teaching magic and enjoy herself in peace.

Fate had a different agenda…

A hundred years later, Arien was called to protect her country against the western threat – The Easterlings had begun to attack their borders. For the first time ever, spies were sent to the outer world and the renegades – as the antarian sometimes like to call themselves – learned of Sauron. Arien went off to help in the war with her friend and ex-student Damon. However, the prejudices and old grudges between peredhil and Men and Elves were too strong to be put to rest so simply.

Stuck in the siege of Gondor, Arien falls in love with Legolas. But her friend Damon, who wants to sacrifice Gondor and the friendly nations to focus the defence in Antar, would not let the witch get involved with an elf. Arien, anticipating his attack and aware of the weakness of the resistance, plotted to turn back in time and re-set the events of history.

Only not everything worked out as she had planned. Something went wrong.