(Author's Note: It occurred to me that I never specifically clarified at what points in each individual story this is all happening.  I did mention that Harry & company are 17 and nearly done with Hogwarts [but they are still in school!] The only issue with that is that I started writing this many months before Order of the Phoenix was published, so obviously I wasn't aware of several things… Harry's jerkishness included.  Please pardon any inconsistencies, and pretend he returned to his attitude of third and (all but the end of) fourth years when he turned 17.  The Holy Namers are all sophomores in high school (though, in real life, it has become juniors… I'm taking too long writing this), thus making them 15 or 16.  The Yoda we are speaking of is not the aging about-to-die Yoda of the original Star Wars trilogy, but rather the slightly younger one of Episodes I & II, because it also occurred to me that those characters are more fun than the originals, and poking fun at the new stuff is less likely to get you lynched by die-hard fanatics.  The time period of The Lord of the Rings is slightly trickier.  It is after the death of Gollum and destruction of the ring, but before everyone sails away.  Aragorn and Arwen would be married already if Arwen was in this story, but she's not.  So… we'll pretend that they all made their way back to Rivendell directly from Gondor after the great battle, okay?  I'm basing it mainly on the book, but the movies are clearer in my mind as they are more recent, so forgive that, too.  I hope that clarifies!  Review, review, review!  If you're reading this now, review!  Or else I'll never write again!  10 reviews for 20 chapters isn't too much to ask, is it?  IS IT?!)

White light flooded Sam's senses as he came to the next morning.  His initial worry at having been unconscious left him as he realized he was in one of the immensely comfortable beds of Rivendell, sunshine, music, and fluffy white blankets around him.  Also, his beloved rope was still at his side.  And then, too, he remembered the reason for his cataleptic state… Julianna.  His heart sang and his rope danced, and a bajillion little flowers blossomed in the garden of his heart.

The capable-looking (and rather cute-looking, as well) elf, the one whose horse, Asfaloth, had saved Frodo at the very beginning of that notorious adventure, walked over to his bed, leaving the table where he had been busy crushing some sweet-smelling herbs in a mortar.  "Are you feeling better, Samwise Gamgee?"

"I never felt better, my good elf!" Sam cried, popping out of bed with an unbelievably huge smile lighting his face.

"Well then, forgive the inhospitality, but you will want to relocate… We may be needing your bed very shortly… with this many guests staying, all the ailing have been relegated here.  Usually it is very manageable, but as always with these Engwar, when it rains, it pours…"  The elf, Glorfindel, so wise in the ways of healing, sighed and gestured around him, where lay Mrs. Tocci, Heathcliff and Cathy (those two were hovering slightly,) and Neville.  Apparently this was more than he was used to caring for at once.

Sam nodded rather confusedly.  "Where do I relocate to?" he asked.  "And how do I find Julianna again if so many people are staying here?" he thought, his little hobbity heart aflutter.

"Show you, I will…" said Yoda, stepping into the doorway.  "Attend a Council Meeting at the dinner bell, you must, Glorfindel."

"Acknowledged," responded the elf, "But I had thought the Council was to be started several hours ago?"

"Plagued by interruptions, it was…" Yoda nodded towards Sam.  "Best to wait until all are present, Elrond thought, for surprises in store there are."

"Until the Council, Master Yoda."

Yoda made one of his queer little grunting noises and started to hobble out the door, Sam skipping lightly after him.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but where might Master Frodo be?"

"Patience you must have… Patience."

Sam tried his hardest to be patient, though he was hard-pressed to reign in his happy-go-lucky grin.  His heart quite nearly beat out of his chest.  A song was fairly bursting from his lips.  His eyes sparkled.  Patience is not the forte of a hobbit in love.

Hobbling and skipping, the unusual couple whose only similarity appeared to be their height deficiency made their way through the wandering corridors of Elrond's stunning home.  They reached the door of a white marble room flooded with sunlight and smiling faces.

"Frodo!" Sam cried upon entering.

"Sam!"

"Frodo!"

"Sam!"

"Frodo!"

"Okay!  That's enough!" Frodo carefully removed Sam's arms from where they had been locked in a tight embrace, looking around self-consciously to make sure no one had seen.  They all had, but no one stared for long, especially none of the surviving members of the Fellowship.  They had seen all this many times.

"Mmmm…" Yoda said.  "Remember, younglings… Tonight an important Council there will be…"

"Alright, dude!" Paula said, lifting her hand in farewell.

"Rock on, Yoda, rock on!" Emily said, carefully rising from her comfy straight-back chair, all the weight still off her leg.  She hobbled over to Julianna.  "Isn't that your admirer?" she whispered.

"Eeee!"  Julianna smiled.  Sam still had not seen her.

"Are you all right, Sam?" Frodo asked, looking him up and down.  "You passed out so suddenly back there… and then when everyone realized, Elrond stopped the Council meeting and delayed it until this evening and we were all so worried!"

"Do not worry about me, Master Frodo!" Sam grinned.  "I have so much to tell you!  The reason I fainted… oh I met the most wonderful girl in the world!  I feel like I am floating… like some magic has been worked upon me!  Frodo, oh Frodo!  I have never felt like this before!"

Julianna gasped.

Sam turned.

Suddenly, everything went into slow motion as God turned up the volume on the sappy love music.

"Julianna!  You were here?  You heard that?"

"Oh love!" Julianna said.

Love was, indeed, in the air… like some sort of lethal spore released upon a brawn-before-brain nation by a radical terrorist organization as a form of biological warfare.  It had invaded all their senses, and no lockdown, lockout, or duck and cover drill in the world could stop it!

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"Emily… you should really go have that cute elf who carried off Julianna's lover fix your ankle…" Laura said as the two of them made their way to freshen up before the Council, which promised to be packed with cute boys/elves/whatever.  They weren't too picky… or too concerned with urgent matters of ancient Middle-earth either.

Emily had just fallen against the wall yet again, her limping becoming more pronounced as they went along.  Still, she smiled and said teasingly, "You just want to talk to the cute elf, Laura!

"You got it!"

Emily smiled still further.  "Jeez… we've been here, what, three hours?  And already you're moving in on the locals?  Tsk tsk!  You know we're only stuck here as long as no one knows a way back, and at this point, anything is possible.  We could be sucked back home by a swirling vortex at any minute… and yet you're still faking concern for my health so you can flirt with someone!  I'm truly touched."

Laura laughed.  "Come on, he's like a doctor… sort of.  And he might have an accent!  And you really are hurt, so there's no better excuse!"

"No need for a better excuse… I wanted to talk to him too!"  Emily winked and tried to hobble faster, racing Laura around the many twists and turns it took to find Glorfindel.  He was their trophy at the center of a maze.

"Hey!  I called him first, gimp!"  Laura raced ahead.

"Arrghhh!  Damn these slippery floors!" Emily cursed as she fell painfully just before the door of "the sick room," assisted down by her club-sized ankle.

"Haha!  I win!" Laura said in triumph as she set her foot inside first.

"You'd think it was the Quidditch World Cup or something…" Emily muttered, straining to get to her feet before Laura gave her a hand up.

"Quidditch?" asked a voice from inside the room.

They craned their necks to see who had spoken, for he had a lovely English accent, and found themselves face-to-face with a fairly tall boy with messy black hair and bright green eyes, not hidden in the least by his glasses.

"Whoa…" Laura murmured.

"Beg your pardon?" he said, making a motion as though he were hard of hearing.

"She didn't say anything!" Emily said, smiling and covering for her friend.

Laura giggled apologetically.

"What are you here for?" the boy asked the two of them.

"Oh… my ankle… I think I sprained it back there…" Emily said, gesturing down.

The boy winced as he looked at it.  "That's got to hurt.  Have this Garfunkel fellow look at it.  He seems to know what he's about."

"It is Glorfindel to you, young Engwar," said the elf as he knelt at Emily's feet and removed the knee sock from her bad leg.  Laura looked only fleetingly jealous, for she was rather enthralled with this new boy.

"This new boy" looked sheepish.  "Oh… sorry then!  I would try to mend it for you magically, but I seem to have dropped my wand somewhere…"

"Wand?" Emily and Laura asked together.

He ran a hand through his hair nervously, looking as though he were debating something.  Then, shrugging as if to say, "What the hell?" he extended it to them, Laura first.

"Harry Potter.  I'm a wizard."

"Oh my God!" Laura gasped.  "Oh my God!  Oh my God!"

"What?" asked God from the sky.

"This is so cool!"  Laura said, though not necessarily in reply to God, who seems to be ignored quite frequently.

"Not as cool as this!" said God as He smote Eminem with a lightning bolt.  "Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?"  And, lo, Eminem did stand, though death's cold hand had touched him but moments before.  And God was pleased.  The rest of the population wasn't.

"Laura… this is beyond so cool!" Emily said, also ignoring God's miracle, which had happened in another time and place.

"What?" Harry looked confused.

"Harry Potter?!  The Harry Potter?  With Hogwarts?  You're real?!"

"Naturally…" Harry was starting to back away slowly.

"We cut class, jumped into a huge ravine, and fell on top of Harry Potter?  How much cooler does it get?" Emily asked.

"Actually… no one landed on me."  Harry squinted.  "You're the one that fell on the rock though, aren't you?"

"Harry Potter knows who you are!" Laura squealed to Emily.  "Now guess who I am!"

"One of the ones who didn't fall on a rock?"  Harry finally said hesitantly.

"Oh my God!  Emily!  He knows me!" Laura said.

Glorfindel had a faint smile on his face as he listened.  Humans were so absurd in their joys!

"How did we not see it, Em?  Of course he's Harry Potter!"

"I don't know Laura… I don't know…"

"I kind of stuck with my friends," Harry offered.  "Only Ron introduced himself to that creepy friend of yours.

Laura laughed.  "Paula!"

"Right, right." Harry said, smiling a little.

"Elitist bitch…" Emily whispered jokingly to herself.  Glorfindel looked up and smiled knowingly at her as he finished massaging the area just to the side of the swelling.

"I guess I figured I could keep even more to myself with the unconscious people, once I got word that Neville was here.  Ron and Hermione have some issues to work out."  That was an understatement.  "But it was nice to have formally met you both.  I've got to go make sure Ron and Hermione's muzzles are both secure before they attempt to be in the same room for the Council.  I'll see you then?"  He smiled charmingly.

"Definitely!" Laura said.

"Right then… see you!"  He walked out.

After a few seconds of silence in the room, interrupted only by Laura's sighs, Glorfindel patted Emily's newly bandaged and almost normal-sized ankle.  "There you are."  He gave her a hand up.  "I suppose I will see both of you giddy young ladies tonight as well…"  His eyes sparkled, though his face stayed serious.

Emily nodded and followed Laura out.  Once in the hall again, both girls burst out laughing.

"Dark hair, light eyes, and an accent…" Laura said, her stomach aflutter with butterflies.  "We likes!"

"Good, good…" Emily said, laughing on the outside, but secretly wondering on the inside why she seemed immune to biological love attacks.  Oh those emoments!

(That is So Last Disclaimer!:  Okay… sorry for not including the vast majority of the hundred characters in this chapter, but I'll make it up to you all in the next chapter!  I promise!  It will be pivotal, because it's the end of Part 1 [download the soundtrack now!  Revised playlist will be posted with the next chapter!]  Only in this case "pivotal" means "taking more than a month to write."  But lots of people will be in it!  And I'm sorry for just randomly landing Neville in the hospital there and skipping from Sam passing out to Sam waking up the next day, but the details will be filled in slowly!  Anyway… things to disclaim… I don't own Sam's rope, because he would certainly miss it too much; Elrond's décor; God's way-cool stereo system; or the word "Engwar" which means "the sickly" and which really is an elven term for men.  You can check The Silmarillion if you don't believe me, but you might die of boredom before you get to that part.  It would be in your best interest, then, to just trust me that Engwar is an elven term for men, and run around and pretend to be an ULTRA Tolkienian who knew that on their own and respects my endurance, which rivals that of Aragorn, having made it through the doom that is The Silmarillion.  So there you have it.  I also apologize to God for having His creations ignore him.  He rocks my socks, as He should yours.)