Standard Disclaimer: I own nothing in regards to Harry Potter or the Hobbit. All properties therein are those of their creators. I am just a simple writer working on my skills with worlds and characters that I love.

Note: Been a pretty awesome response to this piece so far, and thank you for all the awesome reviews and PM's regarding it. It's always amazing to see how you all like the work I put out there. It makes it all the more motivational to keep making content like this.

Note: Been watching the Rings of Power on Amazon. I find if I don't think of it as a direct Lord of the Rings show, and instead view it as a new fantasy epic, it's actually pretty enjoyable. It's visually stunning and episode three was actually cool as hell. I especially don't think about Galadriel as actually being Galadriel, but hey, Numenor looks fricking fantastic! Also, am I the only one that thinks Halbrand is most likely Sauron in disguise, or perhaps the Witch King?

Chapter Three: The Battle For Moria

It had been a long day to say the least. Harry had promptly left Thorin and his soldiers to do his own thing the moment they made it back to the main army, knowing the somewhat surly (and surprisingly sarcastic) dwarf had to report on the events of the day to his father and king. He figured as long as he didn't cause any problems for anyone he'd be fine. And what an army it was. In all his life the wizard could never have imagined the pure spectacle of thousands of dwarves in armor and without, managing a camp, smithing new weapons and materials while on the move… and carting around in a massive caravan perhaps his new favorite substance in all of creation.

He was just sitting back casually before a fire as the sun began to fall behind the horizon, and gently sipping on said substance when Thorin found him again. The dwarf simply stared for several seconds at his act before asking with a tone of amusement, "Has the big bad vampire gotten drunk off of good dwarven mead?"

Harry, who was indeed feeling quite toasted, sat forward, noted the sun was safely out of range, and removed his hat before happily replying, "Drunk? Not at all, just a bit tipsy. This stuff is amazing."

"Aye it is." The black bearded dwarf made his way over to the fire and took a seat beside the strange man before snatching the small barrel out of his hands and chugging a healthy amount himself. It had been a long walk to find this stranger and he'd developed a healthy thirst. "Where ever did you get it? Dwalin guards this substance with a fierce jealousy."

"Oh believe me, I noticed. But I cast a few repair charms on broken wheels throughout the camp and lifted some heavy objects when needed. I got that as a reward as well as these clothes."

Thorin eyed the garments, and shook his head in confusion. "Those be the same clothes I did see you create in the tunnels."

"You might wanna take another sip there, Thorin, as I'm about to explain the intricacies of conjuration and transfiguration. You see, in the tunnels I conjured my outfit, creating it out of nothing, but the universe has laws that, while able to be bent by some, cannot be outright broken. One of those is the conservation of matter. You see, that law says that the mass of the system must remain constant over time, as the system's mass cannot change, so quantity can neither be added nor be removed. In this case, the system is this world and I cannot outright make a permanent new object out of nothing."

His keen mind easily tracking the trajectory of this explanation, the dwarf said, "So you bend the laws of creation by making something new, but since it had no weight or heft beforehand it was only temporary?"

"Precisely. The more outrageous the conjuration the faster the universe sets itself to rights and erases it. So I was living on borrowed time before streaking through your camp as it were. Luckily I helped out, as I said, and earned that absolutely delicious mead as well as two pairs of fine leather outfits to transfigure into what you see now."

"Why would you need two pairs of outfits? And why would this transfiguration be permanent when your last act was not?" Though Thorin knew his new companion to be a creature of the darkness, it was also beyond dispute that he was a wizard of keen magic as well, and he had never known one such person to be so open about their craft and abilities. He remembered meeting old Gandalf once many decades ago when he came to meet his grandfather, and that man had been a steel trap as far as magic secrets went. He couldn't help but be incredibly interested, even if he had not originally come this way to ask about it.

"Well that comes back to the conservation of matter, same as before. You see, I needed two pairs of clothing for the very simple reason that one regular dwarf outfit would not fit me. I am considerably taller than you after all. Thus with two I had all the necessary material I could want, and thus was able to change them both from one style of outfit to another."

"And since you did it out of materials that already existed…"

"Then the end product remains permanent. Yes. I must say you are quite good picking up my tricks of the trade."

"Well of course a prince must be knowledgable about many things." Thorin chuckled lightly before taking another sip of the sweet mead and handing the barrel back. "It's actually why I came to find you tonight. The king is not sure what to do with you, where you would be best suited in the battle this coming morn. So I convinced him I should take you with me and my unit."

"You have my thanks, Thorin son of Thrain." Harry bowed his head with respect. He'd noticed in his life a distinct lack of care for those in positions of power, but he'd read this dwarf's memories and he knew him to be perhaps that one rare exception to that practice, a being of singular honor.

The prince raised a hand, "You need not thank me. Indeed I should be thanking you. Without your aid in the tunnels I and many of my men, if not all, would surely have fallen before the goblin hoard. But this posting presents a problem for me as I do not know that much about you. If we are to fight side by side I would know the person I spill blood with. The man for whom I would trust the safety of myself and others under my command."

"Seems fair enough." Harry mused.

"Also, why are you so far from the camp? There were fires closer."

Harry shrugged. "I got the feeling I wasn't exactly welcomed and I didn't want to make things awkward for anyone."

The dwarf grunted his annoyance. This man was his guest and should not have been made to feel unwelcome. "You have my apologies for that."

"It makes sense." Harry took another drink. "I'm a stranger to you all, and my appetites have not exactly been made a secret if the looks I've been getting are any indication. It just means the praise I'll get after tomorrow will be all the sweeter." He set the barrel down. "You asked to know more of me. What exactly do you want to know?"

"Everything. To stand shoulder to shoulder before the enemy is an intimate thing after all."

"Yeah." Harry thought back on his final battle in his old world and new the sentiment to be true. By the end he'd known every member of his DA almost as well as they knew themselves. "That I know to be true. I guess the first thing to let you know is that I am not originally of this world. My home was called Earth, and I was born to parents just as magical as I. Then a war broke out over something stupid and a madman came to my home…" he told it all, every detail of his life, struggles, the eventual transition to his current state, the loss of his love, and eventual arrival in the land he now knew was called Middle Earth. By the time he finished the sun was well and truly down, the mead was half gone from the barrel, and the fire had been reduced to embers.

Thorin spoke not a word as he retrieved some fresh logs, tendered the fire back to greater heights, and sat back down. Then he commented, "You have experienced much pain and loss for one so young."

"So have you." The dwarf's head shot up.

"You say nothing, but your bearing answers my questions for me, as do your memories. When I first met you I needed to know if I could trust this stranger who came out of nowhere, so I looked into your mind. For that violation I am sorry, but because of it I know that you are someone who can understand what I have been through, as you have suffered just as much as me, if not more. We are men of pain, Thorin, and of loss and survival. And because of this you can trust me to stand with you tomorrow as well as any dwarf would. I want those goblins and orcs dead the same as you."

The prince shoved his irritation about the mind reading down with a force of will. It rankled his pride to know something like that was done without his knowledge, but he couldn't fault the wizard over much as he would have done the same had he been in his position. "Help me to take Azog's head and we'll call it even."

"Gladly." Taking a second to glance at the stars overhead, Harry said, "You know, it's so strange, seeing an unfamiliar sky without constellations I can recognize or name. I am utterly lost, but I feel so free. It makes no sense to me."

"Sure it does." Thorin was honestly starting to like this man as he retrieved his pipe from his vest pocket, took a stick from the fire, and puffed it to life. "You are seeing a true adventure before you for the first time. It makes sense to feel as you do."

Still looking to the sky Harry asked, "Were you able to convince your grandfather to postpone the attack a few hours? My abilities, and thus my chances of impacting the battle in a meaningful way, are going to be very limited in the daylight."

"No. He sees our goal before us and cannot conceive of waiting after coming this far. He is bound and determined to attack in the morning."

"Then shouldn't we be getting to sleep?"

"Do you even need to sleep?"

"Not especially, but it is fun to do so sometimes. My dreams are kind of crazy these days. It's actually a pretty common story on my home world that vampires sleep in coffins. Maybe I should start doing that?"

"Seems like a good way to get buried alive by accident. And nay, I don't feel like sleeping now. We can sleep when we're dead. Instead, tell me more of this Luna. You seem a complicated sort and I would be much interested in hearing how anyone could tame you as she seems to have."

The human cocked his head, as if listening to a voice in the distance and smiled in a way that Thorin had often seen his father do for his mother when she was still amongst the living. "Well the thing about Luna was, she never took anything at face value. She insisted on getting to the heart of things, studying the unseen, and discovering that which others could not believe truly existed. So when I was clearly struggling and telling everyone I was fine, she didn't believe it. She insisted on getting to the bottom of it and helping me in the best way she could. She-"

The two talked late into the night, and contrary to Thorin's previous words, they did manage to get at least a couple hours of sleep before the final march.

The Next Day

"I thought the whole point of you all attacking the outposts was for no one to know we were coming." Harry mused to an enraged looking Thorin.

Said dwarf was standing beside him in full armor and chain mail, an octagonal shield in his left hand and a heavy one handed sword in his right. His reply was a snarl of rage directed against their foes who stood waiting for them before the great doors of Moria in the thousands. "It was. And our sentries were all vigilant through the night for spies, I checked on them myself before coming to see you and again when we awoke. This makes no sense. How could they have known?"

Harry shook himself and flexed the clawed nails of his fingers to ready them for their bloody work. "Perhaps they were camouflaged, or dug tunnels that your scouts were unaware of. There could be a hundred different ways for them to have learned of this army, but the point stands now that they are here, as are we, what is the plan?" It was as he was speaking, of course, that a shout of "Du Bekar!" split the air and the right segment of the army, led by King Thror himself, charged forth, making the plan clear for all to see.

"Well I guess that answers that." Harry bumped his shoulder into his new friend, and after last night he did indeed consider Thorin his friend, and asked, "Are you going to call it then?"

At once the rage bled away from the Dwarf's face and a look of bloodthirsty anticipation replaced it as he raised his sword high and screamed a refrain of, "Du Bekar!" and charged, Harry and his men following.

Screams of rage, anticipation, fear, and frenzy followed their charge and for several moments that, along with the pounding of their boots, was all there was as they crossed the field separating them from their eternal foes. Then the orcs screamed out their own challenge and the enemy too broke ranks to meet them. The clash as the two armies met in the middle was beyond words.

Now Harry was no stranger to combat, but this was something beyond anything his experiences could have prepared him for. Bodies flew, heads and limbs were chopped clean from bodies, and no individual calls or cries could be heard over the tumult of blade and shield. It all became one senseless roar. Even the faces started to blur together as lines crumbled, formations ended, and the well organized divisions of soldiers turned into small groups fighting back to back. Literally in the case of Harry and Thorin.

It seemed like everywhere the wizard looked another goblin was waiting, jumping, slashing, clawing, and he responded by ducking, weaving, and driving his hands point first through chests, throats, and lungs with equal measure while his shorter partner took an unholy delight in removing limbs with that sword of his.

For a time Harry even assisted where he could with magic. Sending countless cutting and blasting hexes into the hoard facing down his new allies, along with a healthy helping of avada kedavras for their trouble. (He never thought he'd end up using that curse but here he was.) The only problem was that the more magic he used, the faster he tired, and knowing he'd likely be there all day he resolved to stick to his physical and vampiric (and so far very effective) tactics.

For the next three hours this pattern continued. No forward momentum, no ground gained, but no ground lost either. The two forces, no matter how many fell, were measuring each other too equally to gain an advantage. The goblins were more numerous true, but the dwarves were armored and of much greater martial skill. It was a good thing Harry had drank his entire flask of goblin blood the night before or he'd have been dead on his feet.

Things began to change at last, and not for the better, when the enemy commander took the field. Azog the Defiler, the white orc, a being sworn to end the famed Line of Durin, and someone Harry desperately wanted to spear through the heart. He came through the open gates of Moria and charged into the fray with his massive mace swinging, and everywhere he went, dwarves died.

Thorin, seeing this travesty, grabbed his partner's attention, and together they redoubled their efforts, pushing ever deeper into the fray to reach the white enemy. Judging both that they could save more lives that way, and that killing the commander would horribly destabilize their foes.

Sadly, Azog had had the same thought. The vampire and dwarf had just reached the crest of a small hill to get a better lay of the land, when they caught sight of the white orc again, but at that time they found themselves desperately wishing they hadn't. For there Azog stood, not thirty feet away, surrounded by dozens of cheering goblins, and holding the king's head high in his hand.

"No!" The prince screamed before charging off once more, butting past dwarf and goblin alike in his mad quest to reach his grandfather's killer.

"Thorin!" Harry tried to reach out, to stop him, but he was already out of reach by the time he'd reacted. This was undoubtedly an attempt to make his new friend sloppy with rage, hell the orc had tossed the head right at them, and he couldn't let the dwarf face such a threat alone. Especially not when the sight of the dead king had caused so many nearby dwarves to clearly lose heart. The death of the prince would remove it entirely, turning this battle into a rout.

So the wizard followed. A pair of goblins got in his way, they were promptly speared through their throats. An orc rushed him from the side, Harry killed him with his own sword. A line of shields closed before him, and he promptly barged right through them. Then he saw Thorin again, and it was bad.

He and Azog were locked in deadly combat, sword and mace swinging back and forth in a deadly dance of death, yet one that his shorter friend was ill equipped to partake in. Either due to his late arrival at the battle, or perhaps a trick of his race, the white orc was not even winded by the effort of swinging his massive weapon around his body, whereas Thorin, who had been fighting nonstop all that day, was huffing for air and shaking on his last legs.

"Thorin!" His friend did not hear him and at that very moment Azog knocked the shield from his arm, and then his sword. "Thorin!" He moved to leap the remaining distance over the heads of his remaining foes, but at that very moment a nearby warg leapt from his blindspot and tackled him in the opposite direction. It snapped repeatedly at his face, and only his lightning quick reflexes allowed him to dodge the strikes long enough to get his hands on either side of its head and snap the beast's neck.

Then he was running again, and a good thing too. Thorin was on the ground, Azog swinging his mace at him repeatedly and only what looked like an oaken branch in his hand to ward off the blows.

At this rate he wouldn't reach him before the prince's strength failed. He could see his friend staggering, there was only one option. One very painful option. He could've tried apparition, but he wasn't near practiced enough to land in this swell of bodies without splinching himself. Swallowing deeply to steady his nerves he focused on where he wanted to be, and willed his body forward. One second later his form shifted into a cloud of bats. Two seconds and he was nearly to his target and the light was burning his flesh all over. Three seconds and he rematerialized in the air and fell right into the white orc, knocking him off balance and sending them both tumbling away from the shaken dwarf prince.

Azog got his bearings first and stared cruelly down at the horribly burned humanoid before him. "Even now I recognize you well, human." The orc spoke in his sickening Gundabad growl, stood, and raised his mace high overhead, "You should have served." He brought the weapon down. Then he did it again, and again, but the fourth time he went to swing, nothing happened. That was strange. He looked up to where his arm should have been and felt something wet falling on his face. Blood.

Three things happened next. First, he noticed the stump beginning at his elbow where his arm had just been a second ago. Second, the pain hit him like freight train, practically knocking all sense from his mind. Third, he noticed the dwarven prince he'd meant to kill standing next to him and bringing his sword around for another swing. Out of sheer instinct Azog lurched back out of the way of the strike, allowing his troops to close ranks behind him and hold the monster busy as he made his escape. If he was not helped soon he could bleed out, and then who would end the cursed line of Durin?

Meanwhile Thorin had just enough time to wonder how he was going to hold off the now charging goblins when a line of infantry dwarves took off past him, Dwalin at their head. "Take care of your friend, lad." He called before his hammer met flesh, "We'll handle this."

Ever grateful for the assist, Thorin did just that, turning his attention to his clearly very wounded comrade, and indeed by now they were true comrades, as he'd born full witness to this man's bravery in driving Azog away from him, thus providing a chance to gain his second wind and deal his deadly blow. He'd seen Harry burning alive, willingly accepting the pain necessary to save his life, and it was a debt he promised himself to gladly repay. But he wasn't sure he'd get the chance.

Harry's skin was steadily healing the burns, but his head. His head was practically caved in from the mace strikes to his skull. Could his bone heal the same way the burns had? Would it do so in the limited time Dwalin could provide them cover? It was as these questions were permeating his mind that a female voice, as if from the ether itself, began to whisper in his mind.

{Blood.} It said. {To heal the one who has saved your life requires blood freely given.}

Thorin didn't even question it then, (though later he'd end up thanking Luna and questioning how she spoke to him at all) he simply sliced his sword over his hand and held the flowing crimson substance over Harry's mouth. A moment later he felt the man's soft tongue lapping it up and nearly laughed with relief as his skull quickly reformed itself, his face following mere moments later.

Harry, however, felt something strange inside him. Something new. In his mind he questioned, "Luna, what is this?"

{Thorin gave his blood willingly to heal you. You probably would have recovered on your own anyway but it would have taken longer. I think… the blood of a dwarf is different from anything you've ingested before, and it seems to have given you something new. I have heard tales of this but always thought it mere legend.}

"Could you be more specific, Luna? You're inside me so you'd understand it better than I would."

When she did as asked and told him what he needed to know, the vampire hopped to his feet and clasped his arm to that of the dwarf. "My thanks, Thorin."

"And mine." The prince glanced around at their surroundings, and at the suddenly large number of dwarves that had fought their way to them. Each whispering the name, "Oakenshield." He knew what this was. The king was dead, his father was missing if the last scout he met could be believed, and he'd just maimed and likely killed the enemy commander. His men were looking to him to decide what to do next.

Meanwhile Harry was slowly reaching to the sky, feeling the new energy inside him writhing, raging, and begging to be set free. He let it, and all around them the sky darkened and filled with loud claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. As the storm's shadow came over them all he removed his retrieved hat and threw it aside, baring his skin openly to the world. He took position beside his friend at the head of the line and then the sky filled also with the chittering of thousands of bats, the same ones he'd escaped the tunnels with, just waiting for his call, and following his trail the moment the light had disappeared.

He flexed his claws, felt his swarm above them all and said, "Make the call, Thorin."

The dwarf nodded, adjusted the oaken branch on his arm, and raised his sword high so that it could be seen by all. "Du Bekar!"

"Du Bekar!" The army screamed back and once more they charged, new energy, new purpose, and hatred practically falling with their blades to cleave the enemy before them. As their lines met for the last time, the bats fell as well, swarming the goblin hoard wherever it could and bearing foes to the ground with teeth and claw on a much grander scale than had ever been seen by mortal eyes. Even the sky rained down suffering on the fell creatures. Lightning striking the earth at random intervals, yet always seeming to land on an orc commander. The goblins only lasted twenty minutes. Under assault from the dwarves, the vampire, the bats, and weather itself, they broke and fled, but it was to no avail.

The moment they turned from the fight the great doors of Moria slammed closed, and due to the enchantment of their make, all sign of them disappeared from view. With fresh cries the dwarves pushed on, slamming their enemies against the rock face of the mountain. There was no escape, no surrender, and they butchered every goblin to the last.

It was a long, bloody, task and by the time they were finally done it was dark enough for Harry to no longer need his cloud cover to be safe from the rays of the sun. But even then, with the bodies of thousands of goblins and orcs littering the ground, there were no cheers, no songs of victory. Though the intervention of Harry's bats and Thorin rallying the dwarves to greater heights of courage had drastically lowered the potential dead, many fallen still littered the ground.

So while the living saw to their dead, the wizard sought out his friend. He was kneeling on the ground, leaning on his sword, and staring up at the now blank face of the mountain range that housed the kingdom of Moria, firmly closed to them.

Harry didn't say anything. He merely sat down beside the dwarf, pulled out his transfigured flask of mead, and offered it to him. Then he waited as his friend chugged several mouthfuls, seemed surprised by the depth of the liquid, and then went back drinking. Finally he said, "What was this for, Harry?"

The wizard shrugged in response. "Your the prince, Thorin. This is a dwarven army and a dwarven kingdom. You'd know more than me. I fight for you, and to end every goblin I can get my hands on. Tell me what bothers you."

Thorin sighed and nodded, accepting that his odd friend was perhaps not the best of persons to have asked that question. Needless to say, he was here, and he needed to vent. "These are dwarven gates, enchanted to the highest degree. As long as a goblin inside is actively holding the doors closed we cannot enter even with the correct password. For forty days and forty nights our army could hammer against them and yet no progress would be made. We sacrificed hundreds," He shuddered at the thought of the many more that would have died had not Harry been there to add his bats to their forces, "our king is dead, my father missing, and now… we have nothing to show for it. No new kingdom, no riches or spoils of war, nothing. What was it for?"

"I cannot say, Thorin. But dwelling on what has been done cannot help. I too have lost comrades in war, and I know that pain well. There will be time to grieve later, but right now your people need you to take command, there is no other who could. So what will you do?"

Thorin sighed, and handed the flask back, giving a bit of a surprised side-eye at how long he saw Harry chugging it. "Before I answer, I have to ask, do you actually get anything out of that? Or was the whole 'being tipsy' thing the other night a big joke?"

Harry capped his flask and returned it to his coat. "Oh it definitely works. I can eat and drink and enjoy regular food and alcohol, I simply do not need them to survive. Food is enjoyable, blood is life."

"Hm." Filing that away for later, Thorin answered the question that had been posed. "There is nothing left for us here but eventual starvation when our supplies run out. I'll need to take the army back to the Iron Hills and disband it. Return the living to their families, make my apologies to the loved ones of the dead, and trust my cousin Dain to see things to rights with the rest of my people for a while. Until we have a plan for how our people can carry on from here they deserve at least a temporary measure of peace in the Hills."

"Then what?"

"Then… I will seek out my father. I cannot believe he is dead as I have not yet been able to find his body. And until one is found that makes him the true king of our people. I must know one way or another."

Harry nodded. "Sounds like a good plan to me. Where are we searching first?"

"We?" Thorin couldn't believe it. Harry still wanted to travel with him? Without the prospect of killing goblins? "You would help me in this task? Just like that?"

A strange look came into Harry's eyes for a moment and he replied, "Thorin, when I was injured how did you know to feed me your blood?"

The dwarf shrugged, "I heard a voice saying it would help you. I knew you consumed blood to stay alive so it made sense."

"That was my Luna. The fact that you heard her at all is impressive and carries implications that I'd like to experiment with over time. Also, though I am not an expert on what I am, Luna is. And she mentioned that you provided me with blood willingly given. According to her, such a thing has a very deep meaning and forms a connection of sorts between the giver and recipient. We are bound you and I. For what purpose and for how long I do not know, but I will see it through, if you would have me on your travels that is."

Thorin couldn't help but be touched by what he was hearing. He clapped his friend on the shoulder and said, "I will take any aid that I can get, and for this boon I swear to you that you shall always have a place at my table and a room in my hall. Once I have a hall that is."

"Considering I'm technically homeless that sounds great. Now where to, oh wandering prince of the mountain?"

Thorin's eye twitched a bit at the moniker before he somehow managed a smirk and replied, "As I said, Darktide, we will march the army to the Iron Hills and then wander out into the wilds. Without an idea where to look our best bet is to pick the nearest settlement and look for clues before moving on."

Harry blinked at that name with confusion. "Darktide?"

The prince chuckled, "It's what the men are calling you now after that little spectacle with the storm and bats. Harry Darktide. The bringer of dark tidings."

"Well at least it's better than Thorin Oakenshield. Seriously, you've been named for a tree, man."

"I'll have you know that oaks are quite the distinguished trees. Why, when I was but a lad-"

Unseen to both of the lightly bickering men, Balin watched their interaction from a distance, a tired and warm smile on his face. After the battle he'd sought his prince out to make sure he was dealing with the loss of both the battle and his grandfather in the right way. It seemed he needn't have worried, as what he had found was Thorin talking through his pain and then even managing laughter with the mysterious stranger that, it was no small exaggeration to say, had turned the tide of the battle in their favor. Though he'd had his doubts before, the old dwarf could no longer doubt that it had been a miracle for them all when they'd found the vampire in the tunnels of the goblin outpost. For the deeds of this day such a man was bound to have an open stool before every dwarven fire from this day forth, as well as open offer of mead and hearth. And he honestly could not wait to see what the clear friendship between such a man and his prince would lead to next for his people.

Next Time: A meeting with a wizard, and the quest begins.

Stories I'm currently working on updates for:

-Lord of Night - Chapter Four

-Criminal Consultant - Chapter Three

-Magic in the BPRD - Book Two

-Black Prince of the Enchanted Forest - Chapter Four