"In a great cave some miles within the edge of Mirkwood on its eastern side there lived at this time their greatest king." ~The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Chapter 4:
Harry wasn't above admitting he was wrong, particularly since he tended to be wrong rather frequently, as Hermione often liked to point out to him. But did the fates have to feed him a dose of humble pie so early in the day? He hadn't had any caffeine in over 24 hours, he needed some kind of break, here.
Mirkwood really was the most tremendous place he'd ever seen. And considering he'd gone to school in the most exceptional castle in all of Scotland, with ghosts, a lake and moving staircases, that was saying something. There was nothing prehistoric about this place. It looked like a fairytale. Like some kind of priceless impressionist painting right out of a dusty, crusty museum.
Admittedly, when Legolas had led him to the entrance of a cave, Harry had been a bit skeptical. Point of fact, he expected to enter the cave and find people dressed in animal skins, drawing hieroglyphs on the walls, and dancing around a campfire chanting 'ooga booga'.
Instead what greeted him was beauty. Marble arches and columns, brightly tiled walkways, amazingly detailed sculptures, and flowered plants that grew vibrantly and filled the palace with a pleasing fragrance. The sounds of music filled the air, and the voice of angels, well, angelic-like elves, sang out into stillness. He'd left cricket-chirping, thingamabob-wielding, tree-growing hell and entered a little slice of heaven.
Harry didn't understand why Legolas ever went outside. Honestly.
If he had had this kind of option, daily, to stay here and listen to music, or go outside and commune with nature, he knew he'd lose any semblance of a tan by staying indoors.
Why couldn't the portal have dropped him off here, directly? The damn thing had to have been an object built by the Blacks if it preferred to drop innocent people off in dirt, leaves and bugs, rather than in warmth and beauty. If it wasn't confirmed before, it was confirmed now… Sirius' family had been composed of some truly fucked up individuals.
Harry turned from his inspection to find Legolas watching his face closely, monitoring his reaction, and Harry couldn't help but flash him a grin, lost in his enthusiasm and relieved to be in some place clean.
"Your home is brilliant!" he exclaimed, and felt that familiar warmth spread from his heart to his limbs when Legolas answered with a returning smile.
"I'm glad you like it," the elf replied.
In that moment something passed between, something heady and startling. It was almost close to the feeling Harry got whenever Legolas touched him, only less pronounced, and Harry was forced to look away, briefly, to break their eye contact, because the feeling was just as daunting as every other experience he'd ever felt with Legolas.
This thing between them was truly intimidating if it no longer required touch to activate it, if simply meeting each others gaze could effect Harry almost as diligently.
He instantly hated himself for looking away. He didn't know why, couldn't understand why the familiarity and electrical current he felt with Legolas scared him quite so profoundly. But it did.
He really must be the biggest chicken to have ever come out of Gryffindor house… aside from Peter Pettigrew. The elf made him feel things. Made him want things. Made him want to lose himself...
Losing himself was not something Harry would take sitting down. Ever.
Legolas turned away from him with a sigh, a look of frustration building in his eyes. It was the first look of impatience Harry had received from the elf, and he didn't like it. It gave his heart a solid jolt.
He didn't want to intentionally hurt Legolas, he'd never want that. But he didn't like hurting himself either, and giving in to the elf's odd fascination with him only boded heartbreak.
'Home, home, home.'
He had his own house to go home to. One not nearly as fancy as this, but his nonetheless. With a crackling fire, his invisibility cloak hanging on a coat rack, and his shoes piled neatly by the door. After a childhood of owning nothing, it was the best thing Harry could have asked for.
"Come this way," Legolas requested, his voice so very obviously struggling to remain neutral and unaffected by Harry's slight, while turning and leading him down a series of paths until they reached a great hall, with a throne in the middle. Harry wondered idly if he had just reached the elven equivalent of King Authur's court. The bows and arrows that Legolas carried on his back were certainly fitting of that image. Though asking Legolas if he had some knights and a round table would be a joke that would undoubtedly go over the elf's head.
It sucked not being able to use random bits of pop culture to break tension.
In the throne sat the elf who Harry assumed was Legolas' father.
The elder elf stood upon seeing his son enter, and he approached Legolas with a hug, and an obvious look of fondness that had Harry flinching with a slight pang of jealousy, but also filled his heart with warmth. He was glad that Legolas was so clearly loved. It must be nice to be able to come home to someone who greeted you like that - with obvious affection. He wondered if he would ever have something like that for himself. A family to come home to…
Harry was startled out of his reverie by the faint sound of Legolas and his father quietly conversing in elvish tongue, and then both turned towards him suddenly, one eyeing him with open longing, and the other with burning curiosity - less than subtly assessing.
He was too nervous to be put out by the fact that they had been obviously talking about him behind his back. He was meeting a king, after all. Not an everyday experience.
The elder of the two strode forward to approach Harry, and he finally got a good look at the man Legolas had been so longing for him to meet…
The tall, blonde, good-looking man that Legolas had wanted him to meet.
This was Legolas' father?! The guy couldn't have been over forty, and even that was stretching it. No wonder Ponce de Leon had never found the fountain of youth, he had obviously been looking in the wrong bloody world. What, did the king have Legolas as a teenager?
Harry could definitely see where Legolas got his looks from, his father had the same shiny sun-kissed hair, the same brilliant blue eyes, and the same smile that could kill with kindness or fierceness.
By Merlin this family had some good genes.
"Harry, my fine Istari, it's wonderful to finally meet you! I've been waiting nearly 3000 years after all. I was beginning to think I'd never see the day. Legolas is infamously selective about who receives his attention," the king announced boisterously.
"Ada, stop!" Legolas yelled in a panic, clearly anxious. But Harry could only put Legolas' protest in the back of his mind, as his thoughts were preoccupied by what the king had said.
Had the elder elf just said three thousand years? As in three, zero, zero, zero? Was that some kind of weird elven euphemism for 'I've wanted to meet you for a great long while'? And if so, how in the hell had the king known that Harry had been coming?
"It's nice to meet you, sir, but I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by waiting three thousand years or why my arrival would be expected. I didn't even know I was coming to Middle Earth, it was quite by accident," Harry replied uncertainly.
This was, bar none, the strangest conversation he had ever been a part of. Even weirder than anything Luna could come up with on her good days.
Was this some kind of test? Call out some outrageous phrases and see if the stranger caught on to them? Were they trying to assess his intelligence or something? Or was this the common introductory process in elven courts?
Middle Earth kept getting stranger and stranger.
Harry almost, but not quite, wished for the hieroglyphs and Neanderthals he had previously thought he'd find here. At least then he would have felt a little more secure in his place on the evolutionary chart.
"He doesn't know, Ada, I haven't had the chance to tell him," Legolas informed his father quietly, his eyes pleading with his father to shut-up. Harry recognized that look, it was a look that Hermione often gave Ron when he was running himself off of the mouth, as Ron was prone to do.
"Well, why not? It is a great honor that the Valar has bestowed upon the two of you. A remarkable honor. Quite rare. This young Istari should feel privileged," the king replied, decidedly not quieting his voice, and either purposely ignoring his son's discomfort, or truly baffled by Legolas' distress, Harry couldn't tell which. All he knew was that he had a sinking feeling growing and expanding in the pit of his belly.
Nothing involving great honors, or rareness, or bestowment could ever be considered good in regards to Harry's notorious penchant for bad luck.
Legolas must have sense he wasn't going to quiet his father, because he interjected the conversation with something he obviously knew would distract the king from his current talkativeness. Bless him. In that moment Harry could have kissed him, because he had the feeling he really wouldn't have liked what the king was about to reveal.
Ignorance was bliss. He'd learned that the hard way during the war.
He'd get home, have some left over beef stew with curry and a pint or three of firewhiskey and none of this would matter. It would all be a dream.
"Elves are immortal, Harry, my father was hinting that I am roughly 2930 years old," Legolas said.
Fountain of youth, indeed.
Wow. Immortal. Now that was something you didn't hear everyday. Voldemort would have loved to be an elf.
How in the hell was he to respond to that? 'Um, that's great. How's that working out for you? Boy, you must have a lot of free time.'
Was there even etiquette for someone telling you they are immortal? That would certainly make an interesting handbook.
"Um, that's great. I mean, wow. 2930. No wonder you're so handy with that bow and arrow. Must have put in a lot of practice, huh?"
Which yes, admittedly, sounded lame to Harry's own ears, but he was severely out of his depth here, they were lucky he remembered how to speak at all.
"As an Istari aren't you immortal as well?" the king asked, confused.
To be fair to the king, Harry was also confused, he still didn't know what in the hell an Istari was. He had assumed, when Legolas had called him one, that it meant wizard, but now he wasn't so sure. Last time Harry checked he was certainly not immortal. He would have definitely remembered that.
"I'm not sure about Istaries, but wizards aren't immortal. I mean, wizards live longer than non-magical people, yes, but we're not immortal," Harry explained.
Yup, definitely the weirdest conversation he had ever had. Bar none.
"The magic users of this world are immortal," Legolas explained, turning to Harry, a look of worry in his eyes, "if you are here by the grace of the Valar, and I feel you are since they are the only ones who can create portals like the one you spoke of, then you may be too, even if you were not in the world you came from. But this would just be a guess, Gandalf would be able to shed more light on the subject."
If Harry was speechless before, he really was now.
Truly, the immortality issue wasn't important anyway. Harry was going to see Gandalf to go home, not discuss the pros and cons of Earth versus Middle Earth, and the life span of the people who resided here.
But there was something in all of this truly bothering him…
Who the fuck where the Valar supposed to be?
Were they some kind of wizarding government here?
He'd like to have a few words with these Valar if they were the ones responsible for the portal that had brought him here. Perhaps he'd been premature in cursing Sirius' odd relations.
"Yes, yes, time will tell, Gandalf should be of great help, he always is," the king agreed, obviously eager to get on with subject. "But before you journey to Rivendell we should announce the betrothal."
"Ada!" Legolas shouted, looking completely panicked.
"Um, who's getting betrothed?" Harry asked, only halfway paying attention, his mind was still on the Valar and how assuming they must be to create portals between worlds to begin with. What if someone was perfectly fine with the world they had been in? Had the Valar thought of that? True, it was Harry's own fault for entering the portal on his side, but the fact that someone had deliberately created it, making it possible for him to enter it, alleviated a lot of his earlier self-chastisement. The Valar were clearly equally responsible.
Besides of which, they shouldn't just go around opening portals. What if someone evil had come through, like Voldemort searching for immortality? They were lucky it was Harry, and not someone more menacing. Legolas was lucky it was Harry and not someone more menacing. It broke Harry's heart to think of a Death Eater being the one to stumble across the handsome, stalwart Legolas in the woods with only his bow and arrow set to protect him.
"My dear Istari," the king replied, "you are. You're my son's soulmate, they are rare, it is a truly blessing to find such a union. There hasn't been such a pair in centuries. Naturally you will be betrothed."
Silence wracked the great hall they resided in, Legolas looking pleadingly at Harry, silently begging him for something Harry couldn't quite comprehend, but Harry wasn't comprehending much of anything.
The bottom of Harry's world had just fallen out.
With blood pounding in his ears, and his instincts screaming at him to fight or fly, Harry did the only thing he could think to do, he drew his wand and apparated himself out of the cave, into the woods beyond it, and then he ran.
'There is no such thing as soulmates, and I don't want or need one. I don't need anybody. I just want to go home.'
Not even the memory of Legolas' sizzling touch could lessen the diligence in which Harry wanted to believe his own thoughts.
To be continued...
Notes: Since there were a lot of questions centered on the last chapter, I created a forum. Please click the forum link in my profile for fic discussion. Everyone is welcome, in fact, more than welcome - I'd love to get questions or discuss this fic and my others. I will try to respond and answer all questions, as long as they don't give away future events for the story. :-)