Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor The Hobbit and I don't earn any money with this story.
Author's note: Sooo… there're probably two more chapters for The way is the Goal, woo-hoo!
Rating: T
Warning: none really
"Pfff, w-what happened to you? Did Eiri do that?" Harry spluttered, trying and failing not to laugh. His daughter being the culprit was actually the only plausible explanation why Elrond was currently sporting fluffy, tawny bunny ears, which contrasted starkly with his dark hair.
Despite the new additions to his head, the elf radiated calmness and eyed the dozing toddler in his arms with pride. It was a secret to exactly no one in Imladris that Elrond adored his granddaughter and was prone to spend copious amounts of time with her. "The book I read to her has a drawing of a hare in it and Eirien apparently took a liking to it."
Smiling widely, Harry stepped closer to gently smooth down his daughter's wild, black hair, even though he knew it was a lost cause. Potter hair was stubborn like that. "My clever, little girl. I'll have to teach her, when she gets older. She should be able to do at least easier spells wandlessly." It was probably easier to start out without a wand than to learn wandless magic after being reliant on a wand for years or even decades like in the brunet's case. It was most likely a case of turning accidental magic into a conscious action.
"We-"
"Are you looking at them again, Harry?"
The brunet had already heard the advancing steps, thus wasn't particularly surprised, when Elrohir appeared next to him and dropped a kiss on his temple. The wizard hummed in agreement and put the moving photograph of Elrond with bunny ears to the side to take a look at the next picture. It showed his daughter as a prospective hairstylist, testing her (non-existent) braiding skills on her poor victim Arwen, who had sat through the train-wreck in the making with a sweet smile on her lips.
Instead of spending his time with music, art or crafting, like elves were wont to do, Harry experimented with magic. He no longer had books or people to teach him things, after all. Not to mention magical artefacts, except those he had brought to Middle Earth.
One of his earlier projects had been to find a way to preserve memories. At first the brunet had tried his hand at creating a pensive, but that plan had quickly been scrapped. He just didn't have the potion or rune knowledge for such an endeavour. After another couple of failures, the wizard had created a method for copying a snippet of memory to paper; like magical photographs, just without the camera. Unfortunately the transfer only worked for him, but it was a step forward nonetheless.
"Oh, I remember this," Elrohir exclaimed with a nostalgic smile on his lips, after fishing one of the photographs out of the pile. It depicted two children on a meadow.
With a lazy flick of his hand, Harry directed the small, colour-changing ball of light to the left and chuckled softly, when Eirien blinked twice, before giving chase again. Estel, having decided that he was a big boy now and much too old for such games, was observing her attentively from a few feet away.
As children were wont to do, the dark-haired girl stumbled over something, probably her own feet, a few minutes later and fell on her knee. The crying was imminent, but before one of the adults had the chance to get up, Estel was already next to her, kissing the 'boo-boo' better and patting her head. Eirien giggled and hugged the boy, before jumping up and running after the hovering ball like nothing had happened.
"It's always heart-warming to see them like this," Gilraen, Estel's mother, commented softly. She and her son had come to Imladris after her husband Arathorn, the son of Harry's late friend Arador, had been killed by orcs. Despite being a year younger, the boy had quickly assumed the role of affectionate older brother, primarily due to Eirien's much slower growth-speed. At eleven years old, she wasn't even out of toddlerhood. Estel, on the other hand, was about to learn sword fighting soon.
"We probably won't even have to take action, when she is old enough to have suitors. Estel will singlehandedly dispose of them."
Harry snorted and shot an unimpressed look in his husband's general direction.
"'Dispose of', huh? Well, you'll most likely have fun intimidating them anyway and demand the moon from them, before giving your blessing."
Elrohir cocked his head to the side and hummed in agreement. "I will still be the lesser evil, though. You, my dear, won't hesitate to curse them into the next age, if they are stepping one toe out of line."
Harry's only answer was a razor-sharp smirk.
For a long, silent moment, Elrohir traced the contours of his daughter's face with his fingertip, before another photograph was pushed atop the one in front of him.
"I still love this one." Without even looking at Harry, the brunet knew there was a wicked grin firmly fixed on the wizard's face. One that didn't surprise him in the least.
"Who am I?"
Giggling loudly, the little girl, currently residing in her uncle's arms, clapped her hands.
"Ada, ada!"
Elrohir smiled proudly and pulled his daughter into a hug. "Such a clever girl." The elf rubbed his nose against Eirien's, before turning her around and pointing at his brother.
"And who is this?"
The girl's face tuned comically serious. "Dan."
"Wha-" The twins exchanged startled glances, not having expected a correct guess.
"How can she tell?" "I don't know. Perhaps it was a fluke? Let us try again! Who am I?"
Elrohir and Elladan repeated their guessing game twice more, but always got the same result.
At the same time, Harry was sitting on the sidelines, barely containing his laughter. Due to the wedding ring and bracelet people now had a way to tell his husband and brother-in-law apart. Therefore, the two of them hadn't been able to confuse anyone with their identical appearances for decades.
But as soon as Eirien had been capable of speaking and recognising people, the twins had begun their little game anew. She knew there were two of them, her father and her uncle, but not knowing better at her age, she always defaulted back to 'ada', when only seeing one of them.
One day, without the twin's knowledge, Harry had tried to teach her that the one with the glittering things on his hand was 'Ada' and the other one 'Dan'. Harry hadn't been sure if she had understood, but apparently she had and the best part was that she refused to tell the two elves anything.
In the end, the brunet couldn't hold the laughter in anymore. The flummoxed looks and his daughter's stubborn "Nu-uh." were just too much for him.
"I'm still fascinated that she kept it a secret like you told her to," Elrohir mused, while shuffling through a few more photographs – Eirien riding a horse for the first time, Gandalf with a lilac flower crown, Lindir with pink hair and whiskers and finally part of a sword fighting lesson.
Now that had been a nightmare.
Not so much the lessons themselves, those had been brilliant, but the time leading up to them. As soon as Estel had started with his lessons, his baby girl, who had been fascinated by swords since the beginning, had begged them to teach her, as well. They had tried to explain to her the need to wait a few more years and she had reluctantly accepted the postponement. For all of two months.
By month five Elrohir no longer had had the strength to refuse the pleading glint in Eirien's emerald eyes and had taught her a few moves with a practice short sword.
And of course Harry had caught him red-handed, exploded into a rage that cost a tree its life and then ignored his very existence for almost two weeks.
Those hadn't been fun times…
Then, on Eirien's twenty-first birthday (she had been about ten or eleven in human years), Harry had finally given his blessing for the lessons to start and it had quickly turned out that their daughter was a little prodigy, when it came to bladed weapons. Bows, on the other hand…
"I miss her so much…"
Elrohir looked up, and was confronted with his husband's dejected expression, which broke his heart every time he saw it. "I do as well," he admitted, entwining their fingers. "But it has been seventy years, so it was bound to happen. It will become easier in time."
"I know… it's just… hard," Harry murmured, pulling their connected hands to his lips and pressing a soft kiss to the elf's knuckles.
After a moment of gloomy silence, the older brunet straightened up suddenly.
"Oh, I almost forgot." Elrohir pulled a scroll from beneath his belt and held it out to the wizard. "This came by raven. The king under the mountain calls for a council. Apparently they have found Sauron's ring."
Rule number 7: You can't avoid the passage of time
