Alright, so all that I have forgotten to say last time:
- French, but write in english. I apologize for any mistakes, as well as for typos, though those are more prompt to happen
- I will follow both the films and the book ( except for what will be changed, of course ), choosing what I like better when two events are contradictory between the two sources
- I have a tendency to save, if not all, at least some of the characters
- Sirius is the main charater, but that doesn't mean the others are unimportant.

Also, I hope this chapter will get as much of a welcome as the preceding one. If it does, this story will have gotten the best feedback of all my stories. You know wa to do (*shameless*)

Chapter 2: Witches

Gandalf stopped his horse as best as he could so that he wouldn't trample on the three teenagers who looked at him with wide eyes.

Correction, the teenager who looked at him with wide eyes, the one who looked merely surprised, and one last who had made all sorts of emotions disappear from his face.

The wizard had left his dwarvish and hobbitish companions behind to take a look at what had caused the magic disturbance from earlier this evening. Granted, it was also because Thorin was being annoyingly stubborn about not going to Imladris even when there simply was no other way to read the map than to ask Elrond.

Gandalf could understand that the dwarf was cautious of Thranduil. Truly, he could. People usually weren't cautious enough when it came to Thranduil. But Elrond wasn't Thranduil, and not all elves were as ireful as the Elvenking. And in fact, Elrond wasn't an elf, he was half-elven... or three-quarters-elven, to be accurate, but accuracy wasn't the point here.

Anyway.

The facts were, that now, Gandalf and his horse were in the forest, not far away from the road, and the wizard was looking at three youths who were staring right back at him, more or less suspicious.

What they were doing alone in the wild was surely an interesting question. But there were more important questions to be asked.

One of the teenagers was sitting on the ground, seemingly with a broken or sprained ankle. He was tall, very tall, taller than some adult elves, even, and Gandalf wondered if he was going to get over seven feet one of this days; if anything, he looked like he was well on the way to. The skin the old wizard could see was covered in scars of various natures, but none had been made by a blade. His hair was a light brown, and his eyes a yellowish green.

The young one seemed quite calm, or at least controlled, and he was holding a rather strange, carved stick that reminded Gandalf of something, but what exactly?

Another teenager stood a bit further away. He was tall, but not as much as the first one, with fair skin, elegant features, ink-black long hair and outstanding grey eyes, that looked more like liquid silver than anything else. If there hadn't been so much darkness in his gaze, Gandalf would have thought it was a young elf hiding his ears with his hair; but elves so young were rarely left to travel on their own, and none had usually experienced things so terrible they could match this teenager's gaze. For there was much suffering in the young one's heart, though not much wickedness.

It was the one who looked at him suspiciously.

The last one, however, was the one who caught the old wizard' attention. First of all, his mop of black hair was truly astounding, challenging the laws of gravity. Second, his hazel eyes were partly hidden by... things made of glass and metal. Third, he was holding a stick much like the first one's, and there was light emitted from it. Last, but not least, only two-third of the boy were visible, even if said boy wasn't hidden by anything.

It was the one who was looking at Gandalf wide-eyed.

As it was, James had forgotten, in his haste to hide from Sirius' anger, that he was still drapped / trapped in his invisibility cloak, that, after much effort, he had been unable to unfasten.

This was quite a sight, truly, to have a teenage boy before you, and not be able to see part of him, such as his chest, and half of his left leg, while you could still see what was actually behind the parts that you could not see.

James blinked once, twice, thrice, and eventually looked the old man up and down. The rider seemed to be in sheer astonishment at their being there, and the teenager wondered why. He followed the moving gaze of the old man, and shrieked in a manner that Sirius would surely use to taunt him later on.

His wand was still lit!

James whispered a quick nox, and tried to hid the wand behind his back, which was foolish unless the rider was blind or stupid, and wouldn't work anyway, because thanks to the invisibility cloak, his back wasn't in any state to hide anything.

That was when he noticed that, in fact, he was still drapped / trapped in his invisibility cloak. James paled, sure that this time there was no escaping it. He had been seen, not only practicing magic, but drapped into an obviously magic item. He was almost hearing the sound of a Ministry owl coming for him in his mind.

Behind James, Remus coughed loudly enough to get everyone's attention.

"James, there's no point in ridiculing yourself more than you already did. Sir, may we ask you where exactly we are? We... appear to be lost in this forest."

James sent a bemused look at his friend, who ignored him completely. He then searched for Sirius's eyes, who was still staring warily at the old man.

Gandalf went down his horse, to be at the right level when looking at the teenagers.

"You, young sirs, are in the Trollshaws. Now, what I would like to know, is how you got lost in such a place, when the nearest settlements are miles away, and the farms are being deserted because of the trolls that are descending from the mountains."

This time, it was Sirius who responded, seemingly less wary of the stranger, though with Sirius, what was and what seemed to be rarely were the same things.

"We comes from a group of farms to the North. Our families were killed by the trolls."

By that time, James had finally understood that the old man was more than seemingly an old wizard. He surely didn't dress like a muggle, and he gave off a Dumbledore-vibe. And he knew about trolls. Or maybe he was simply jesting with them.

It wasn't that James was slow to understand things, it was just that... well... he had no freaking idea as to where they were, why there was an old wizard on a horse that had almost trampled them, why there were trolls attack in the neighborhood, and why the hell neither Sirius nor Remus seemed disturbed by any of this!

Gandalf looked over the three teenagers, and smiled genially.

He had had doubts before, and he still didn't know how the three had come to travel together, but the way the long-haired one kept his head lowered and the panic of the mop of hair had finally revealed a part of their secret.

"Oh, are you, now? Then I guess the semi-visible boy over there with a lighted stick is a farmer boy, the one with all the scars has been repeatedly attacked by a rabbit, and you, young elf, are no elf at all."

James, who was getting calmer by the second, squinted at his best friend, as if expecting him to suddenly transform into a house-elf. Sadly, this never happened, and Sirius remained as handsomely perfect as ever. Pity, that.

Remus saw the looks on his friend's face, sighed, and gestured for him to come over. James obliged, and sat down next to the werewolf, who then gestured to Sirius to come too. The old wizard respectfully, though he seemed to find all that very fun too, stayed next to his horse.

The scarred youth looked back at Gandalf. His manner of speech seemed soothing in more than one way; the mop of hair was becoming less excited, and the young elf looked less tense than before, though still cautious.

"Sir, if you would give us your name, we could do as much?"

Gandalf smiled again.

"Ah, names! I have many of those. East from here, I am known as both Mithrandir and Gandalf. Some calls me the Grey Pilgrim, but I have also other names that aren't as flattering. My true name, however, I keep to myself, for I do not wish to influence the Free People in other ways than by the sturdiness of my advice. Gandalf would do, nonetheless."

Remus and James shared a troubled look, that Sirius totally refused to let appear in his eyes, too used to control everything, and to keep his reactions to himself when with strangers or dubious people. He wasn't sure if the old wizard before them fell in both categories, but he still wasn't one he would confide in mindlessly.

Fortunately, Remus wasn't as paranoid, if he could still be called cautious, and Gandalf wasn't a bad person.

"I am Remus Lupin. This is James Potter. And the one who is trying to read your mind without actually reading your mind but only by the power of his intellect is Sirius Black."

Sirius growled something rude to his friend, who simply ignored him, and went on.

"Would we be wrong to believe you a wizard, Sir Gandalf?"

"Forget the 'Sir', young one. But you are right, I am, if not only that, a wizard. Now, would I be wrong to guess that you have yourselves some aptitude at magic?"

Remus ignored that question for the time being.

"You have called my friend an elf, Gandalf, but I am afraid to say he wasn't one only a few hours ago. Also, you walk, or should I say ride? around in a very obvious garb. You have trolls on the loose. As for us, we woke up in this forest after Sirius did something reckless involving accidental bleeding upon a cursed stone. From this, I believe we have been somehow pulled out of our world and into yours. Would you, perhaps, have any idea as to how we could go back home?"

Hearing this, Gandalf's eyes lit up in wonder, and he sat on the ground, not too far from the youngsters, but not to close either. He didn't want to make them too suspicious of him.

"Not from this world, you say?"

James piped up before Remus could say a thing, earning a death glare from Sirius, who, if he had been asked beforehand, would have vehemently argued against revealing this particular piece of information so soon.

"Exactly. We were at school, a school for witches and wizards, that is, and if I may say, you remind me much of our Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Gandalf. And he has many names, just like you! Anyway, we were at school, and Sirius had brought this family heirloom with him, he cut himself on it, and when he picked it up... well... here we are."

Sirius looked askance, but also with surprise in his eyes, at his best friend. Even if James was somewhat of an airhead from time to time, he wasn't completely stupid either. Actually, when James was an airhead, it was more in the bragging department. Not this... carelessness.

"I wonder if you haven't hit your head somewhere when we got here..."

Remus, still looking at Gandalf, interrupted James before the mop of hair could say anything.

"Don't be silly, Sirius. James has been knocked on the head so many times by Lily that he must have lost half of his neurons. It's just starting to show after all this time, that's all."

James looked indignantly at the werewolf, but said nothing, realizing that yes, he had behaved a bit out of character just now, even if he wasn't close to admitting he was losing any kind of neurons from being hit by Lily. Lily was too perfect to do anything that bad, as rendering him stupid.

Gandalf smiled indulgently at the three youths, more amused than anything else by their bantering.

After a while, though, his gaze went to the one who had apparently "become" an elf as he had entered Middle-Earth.

If he had been a man, Gandalf would have guessed him fifteen or sixteen. As the other ones looked the same age, he supposed the teenager had kept an equivalent body with his transformation, rather than being given a body corresponding to his age in elven years. If not, he would have looked like a six or seven years old mortal, for elves took around fifty years to fully mature.

"Do you have this stone of yours?"

Sirius reluctantly handed the old wizard the said stone.

Gandalf turned the black diamond between his hands for a good minute, then sighed.

"I really don't know. It reminds me of something, but I don't know what. It is linked to anoth... Wait a minute. It was your blood, and your blood only, that activated it?"

Sirius nodded, surprised by Gandalf's outburst.

"Then, pray tell me, how did your two friends end up with you here?"

"We grabbed him when we saw the gem glow, and then, all the lights in the room disappeared."

"Did something else happen?"

Remus and James exchanged a glance, and shrugged. Sirius, on the other hand, finally decided he would tell. After all, with all that had happened, he didn't have much of a choice.

"When I picked up the diamond, I heard a... voice. It greeted me by my name, and said that one of my ancestors had called for their help to escape from home. Then it asked if I wanted to go home, and I just..."

Gandalf brandished triumphantly a pipe that had apparently been hiding in his cloak all along, and that none of the teenagers had seen being taken out, so busy they were with their current problem. Sirius inwardly scolded himself for being so careless.

"Ah ah! You, young elf, have not been taken to this world by chance. I would say your ancestor was an elf who ran away from Arda by pleading the Valar for their help, though I have no idea of who it was. You are now an elf, but you weren't before, because there is no such people as elves in your world, and so the trait was dormant."

Seeing James try to say something with a big grin on his face, and Sirius silencing him with his hand, Gandalf frowned, and corrected.

"Or, nothing such as our kind of elves, anyway. You couldn't be one back there, but since you are here now, you have become one. Speaking of which, I suppose you have tried to use magic since your arrival in Arda, you three?"

And the old wizard glanced at the burnt bush three feet away. Sirius glared unabashedly at James, who looked somewhere else, seemingly very interested in the leaves of the tree above them.

"And it didn't go exactly as you expected, did it?"

Remus, who was obviously the calmer of the three, nodded.

"Yes. James said something stupid, and Sirius tried to hex him with a minor spell, but it put the bush on fire. Which is odd, by the way, because when I tried to water it down, and when James tried a lumos, a spell that create light at the tip of one's wand, it was very weak. For Sirius, it seemed to be overpowered."

Gandalf looked at the presented wand in Remus' hand.

"Your friend is an elf, but he couldn't be one where you come from. Your magic doesn't work the same way here than it did there either. I guess these wands are the vector that you use when you want to do precise magic, or simply to spell something that is not yourself?"

The three young wizards nodded. They did not need their wands to turn into their animagus form, and apparition didn't need them either. But when they needed to aim, it was better to have a wand, or else they ended up affecting the whole area around them, or worse, themselves.

"Here, men and women with magic need a staff, such as mine. They aren't numerous, and there is a clear distinction between witches and wizards, and it has nothing to do with gender. I am a wizard, but you would classify as witches."

James spluttered his indignation, while Sirius frowned, and Remus couldn't hide his amusement.

"Your wands aren't sufficient to channel your magic, in a way. As for Sirius, he is an elf. Elves don't use staffs. They just do magic, and if they tried to use a staff, they might drown a village instead of making the rain fall upon it. Moreover, it could possibly kill them, for too much power would go out of their body without control. I recommend that you put this wand of yours aside, young elf."

Sirius paled once again, making him look more like a ghost in the incipient night.

That was when James noticed that his friend was glowing a bit in the dark. Not enough for it to be obvious, but certainly enough for the mop of hair to tease his perfect friend; a little more, and he might start to sparkle!

Then, Gandalf proposed for them to ride with him to Rivendell, also called Imladris, a city of elves and knowledge where he was headed to with a reluctant company of dwarves, and one hobbit. There, maybe they would find something to help them out and send them back to their own world.

Of course, the mention of a library, of elves, dwarves and hobbits lit a growing interest in Remus, who was also very happy to learn that since he was injured, it'd be better if he was the one riding Gandalf's horse. James was more than a little curious about what exactly a dwarf and a hobbit could look like. Sirius at least agreed that it was better than to stay in the wild with no furnitures and failing magic.

On the way to the wizard's camp, Gandalf was walking next to his horse, holding the reins. He warned them that the dwarves were a suspicious bunch, and not very fonds of elves. Sirius grumbled something about him being just as suspicious, and not very fond of his family himself, and that maybe they could try to do a contest on the matter.

Soon, the conversation turned to how they couldn't go around and tell everyone that they literally came from another world.

"I wouldn't have told you, if I had had a choice."

Gandalf acted as if he hadn't heard the comment by the young elf. He found it alarming, how a sixteen years old teenager could be so paranoid of his surroundings, especially if he was, deep down, an elf. Elves were a cautious bunch, that was sure, but there was something more at work there. And besides, it wasn't as if the youth had a difficult personality. With his friends, he seemed to relax a bit, and be able to laugh easily, even if a layer of control still remained.

"You, for example, Sirius. If someone ask how old you are, and they have identified you as an elf, you should say you are forty instead of sixteen."

The three teenagers looked at the wizard with a bewildered look on their face. Well, it was mostly James, but Sirius would have if he hadn't been so secretive, and Remus was surprised alright, just not completely astonished.

The werewolf had been wondering about what being in another world could mean for him. After all, Sirius could not be an elf back home... What if he couldn't be a werewolf here? Was he human, right now, or was he something else?

This, however, was more interesting for now.

"Do the elves live longer than we do?"

Gandalf smirked a bit, but it wasn't visible in the dark of the night, and under the brim of his hat.

"They are immortal."

Only his good control of himself stopped Sirius from gasping.

As if to add another layer to their surprise, Gandalf smiled broadly, though it could still not be seen.

"As I am."

And maybe the two seemingly mortals in their group were too, in a way at least, he mused, because from what they had told him, they came from generations and generations of witches. And wizards, if he was to abide by their classification of magic users, of course. Sirius and James were apparently "pure-bloods", meaning they came from families with only witches for centuries, perhaps millenia. They had been elusive on that point, as if there was something bothering them about it, but they had still pointed out that the term was a bit deceptive, and they surely had one or two "muggle" ancestors here and there in their family tree, just, not as many as others. Remus himself, if he had a few more non-magic users ancestors, still came from an old family.

Gandalf had already pointed out that Middle-Earth didn't work like their own world. He had not told them that he was a Maia, for he didn't tell that to just anyone, but he still was one, and so knew a bit more things about the way this world worked than many. With all the magic that had been accumulated in their ancestry and their blood, it was more than possible that James and Remus were in fact immortal as long as they stayed in Arda. It was also probably the reason why, when Sirius' ancestor had come to that other world millenia before, and so his dormant but still elven blood had been diluted many times before the teenager was born, he was still an elf, and not the equivalent of a dúnadan.

Gandalf wouldn't have gone so far as to say that, if the two died while in Arda, they would stay in the Halls of Mandos before being released in Valinor as an elf would be, but he was positive enough that their lifespan in Arda would be much more than that of the average mortal.

Now, he hoped that he could get them home before they got old, and, preferably, without them being killed by anything on the way.

Returning to the conversation, he told them that it was because he was immortal that he wasn't a "witch", but a "wizard". He wasn't exactly a man, though he looked like one.

After that, they spoke of what they should know about Middle-Earth, for example how to distinguish a dwarf from a hobbit, not that it was difficult, but someone who simply didn't know could get it wrong without mixing the two groups for all that. Just, saying that the dwarves were hobbits, or the hobbits, dwarves, not mistaking the individuals. The wizard told them of each race's peculiarities, and a bit about their customs, too. He also managed to get James out of his cloak.

Finally, they arrived at the place where Gandalf had left his thirteen dwarves and a hobbit, not so long before. The camp was empty of all living beings, though not of furnitures and poneys.

Gandalf noticed a light a bit further away, and cursed under his breath.

"Those idiots managed to get caught by a group of trolls!"