"Whoa!  Paula!  You look like an elf!" Rachel exclaimed, having spotted her friend sporting an Arwenesque wavy 'do.

"Awesome!"  They high-fived.  "I'm really confused about this entire thing, but… let's go to the Council!!"  Paula said enthusiastically.

"Yesss!!"

And both girls skipped off to the hall, arm in arm.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What business have these girls in our affairs?" Gimli asked Legolas, rather grudgingly, as both folded their now-clean traveling cloaks in their room.

"Do not question Elrond, Gimli.  If it is his will that these daughters of man partake in this Council, let his will be done."

"Noooo… noooo…" God whimpered.  "My will be done!"

Gimli scratched his chin meditatively.

"There is no need to think so hard about it," Legolas said, smiling in jest.  "You do need to wash your beard."

"That is not what I was debating, and well you know it."

"What then?"

"I just do not understand any of it.  All these men suddenly appearing, a new council being called… it does not stand to reason."

Legolas nodded in agreement.  "Strange things are afoot…"

"Again."

"Yes.  Again."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I don't believe you, Ron!  Is it possible for me to be anything more to you than just someone to snog in between other more appealing girls?!" Hermione was raging as Harry walked quietly into the room where the elves had taken them.

"I don't know, Hermione!  Is it possible for you to realize that this is dead?  That we were better off just staying friends?"  Ron's freckled face was flushed.

"We were never just friends!  You and Harry were friends.  Harry and I were friends.  But you and I were not!  Ever!  If we'd just been friends, you wouldn't have been so intent to kill anything that might ever have happened between me and Viktor!"

"That was years ago!  Get over it already!  Or is it just too hard to get over the only boy who was desperate enough to overlook your stifling ways and like you?"

Hermione turned bright red.  "No, Ron.  This is not about me stifling anyone.  This is about you ruining my relationship with someone and then expecting me not to do the same."

"Hey, you chose not to spend all summer rotting away in his dungeon of a home, not me!"

"Okay… making a choice with a gun held to your head is not making a choice!"

"I don't even really know what a gun is except another one of your stupid muggle things, but I sure as hell never held one to your head!"

"It was a metaphor!"

"And a bloody stupid one at that!  Just for your information, I only ever 'cared' about you and Viktor because I wanted Harry to kick his sorry Bulgarian ass.  That's it."

"Neville's doing alright…" Harry said quietly.

"Well, good for Neville, then!" Ron snapped.  "Maybe if he'd watched where he was going in the first place, you wouldn't have to give us minute-to-minute updates on his health!"

"You bastard!  When did you get so self-centered?!" Hermione was livid still.

"I've always been like this, but maybe you never took the time to notice because you were so busy hogging the Hogwarts limelight and sucking up to professors and mooning over Vicky!"

"Oh don't start pulling all the poor-me-I'm-the-most-neglected-boy-in-the-world shit!  It got old in first year!"

"You know, Hermione, you never really cared about me… you never got properly jealous over Fleur!"

"So you were jealous of Viktor?"

"Even if I was, it doesn't matter now!  Things have changed!  It's dead, Hermione.  We're just no good for each other."

"We're off, then?"

"Like a light that's not even plugged in."

"Good.  I hope you enjoy yourself with all your future relationships that you'll eventually kill with your insecurities."

"I'm sure I will.  Good-bye, Hermione."

"Good-bye Ron."

They stood in silence for a few minutes.

"Crap.  Where do we go?" Ron finally sputtered.  There was only one door out of the room, and it led to one hallway in one house.  They were in a land they were unfamiliar with, and they were stuck with each other.

Though still very angry with each other, deep down neither Ron nor Hermione seemed very sorry to see the other stay.

"Clap on… clap off…" Harry whispered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Hee!  Hee!  Haw!  Haw!  Can we get you anything?" twittered the little elves as they pitter-pattered into Elrond's stables, where Joseph stood, contemplating his cow.

"Naw!  Un ay'll bay thainking 'ee t'jist lave may aloon waith may kaw!"

"Hee!  Hee!"  The elves then devoted about ten minutes to prancing around Joseph and mocking his speech.  Then one of them blurted out, "You have to come to the Council now!"  And they all ran away giggling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An old man, dressed in robes and a pointed hat, with a long white beard, walked into the sick room not five minutes before the Council.  Glorfindel was gone, and the sole occupants of the room were two ghosts, floating prone above their beds.  Looking around sneakily to make sure no one could possibly overhear him, the old man whispered "Restorus corpus" under his breath.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was great hustle and bustle that evening as the Council was about to begin.  Elrond, for reasons of order, had requested that those parties invited be led in according to a specific order.  He, of course, and Glorfindel were first.  Yoda and his party were to be second; Aragorn, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Legolas, and Gimli came third an awakened Mrs. Tocci and the Catholic schoolgirls followed; after which came Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Remus Lupin.  Last was Joseph and, yes…  the cow.

Before anyone could find a seat, however, Elrond demanded their attention.

Looking at Sam, he began slowly.  "It is my hope that this calling of the Council will go more smoothly than our previous attempt.  Before we officially begin, however, I believe that a few things must be cleared up.  As you are all for the most part, no doubt, well aware, I am Elrond and master of this house.  This," he gestured, "is Master Yoda.  He comes from a galaxy far, far away."

"What about the 'long time ago' part?" Julianna asked.

"I was coming to that in a moment.  You see, Yoda and I have found ourselves faced with a problem the likes of which has never been seen in all the history of all life anywhere."

"Wow," Paula said.

"An appropriate reaction.  Before I begin my long and tedious, yet pleasantly enlightening speech that would do well to be uninterrupted, however, I feel I must introduce you to the third leader of this Council… Mithrandir."

The old man with the long, white beard, wearing robes and a pointed hat, strode in quickly.

"Gandalf!" gasped Frodo.

At the exact same moment, Harry cried out, "Dumbledore!"

Mithrandir/Gandalf/Dumbledore simply chuckled as Harry and Frodo glared at each other mouthing, "Dumbledore!"  "Gandalf!"  "Dumbledore!"  "No!  Gandalf!"

"Well met," the old man with an apparent identity crisis chortled.  "Hello, Mr. Potter!  A pleasant surprise to see you lot here, to be sure… only it was not quite so surprising."

"I'm confused," said Paula.

"You're always confused," replied Emily.

"We would all do well to be a little confused these days…" Dumbledalf said cheerily.

"Mmm…" nodded Yoda.  "The dark side covers all."

"And something dark covers these mystery people with me, too!" Dumbledalf said.

"Seamless transition from one topic to the next, Mithrandir," Elrond complimented, rather sarcastically.

Dumbledalf just smiled.  "Shall I take it from here, Elrond, or would you like to?"

"You explain it," said Elrond, shaking his head wearily.  "I have a headache already."

Rachel tossed him an Advil.  He looked at it curiously for a moment before putting it in his goblet, watching it dissolve, drinking it, and then making an awful face.  Don't ever drink dissolved pills.  It's gross.

Dumbledalf watched this sequence of events with amusement, and then began speaking.  "I suppose that you are all wondering why you are here.  I am not going to pretend that I have the answers to all your questions, because I most certainly do not.  What I do know is that mysterious things are happening."

He paused his speech as Gimli began grumbling.  "Aye, well I could have told you that.  Argh.  Wizards.  Useless."

Dumbledalf resumed, a merry twinkle dancing in his eyes.  "Perhaps you would like to explain to all these different people with whom you are not acquainted why they are here, then?"

Gimli looked shocked, managing only to shake his head no.

"I would have found it quite extraordinary if a dwarf had had all the answers when I myself did not.  It would be, quite possibly, the most mysterious event to happen so far.  I am glad this is not the case and my world can keep on turning."

Gimli looked most unhappy.  "Gandalf, I nev-"

"It's Dumbledore," Hermione cut in sharply.

Ron glared at Hermione.  "Well, I think we should call him Gandalf."

"I think we should let me continue," Dumbledalf said, enjoying the little argument over his name very much.  "As I had been saying before we had to establish that I knew what I was saying as well as anyone except for Gimli son of Gloín, mysterious things are happening.  To some of you who fight the powers of evil on a daily basis, these mysterious things might seem as commonplace and easily dismissed as muffins.  To others of you," he looked pointedly at the Catholic schoolgirls now, "who do no more than fight the powers of homework on a daily basis, these events might not be as ordinary-seeming.  I will now pause for a moment to let you finish your impersonations of the Muffin Tree."

Paula giggled and finished pretending to kill Rachel with a poisonous muffin.  "We're done now!" she said.

"Good.  Now… to clarify about what exactly these 'mysterious events' are, I would like to point out the appearance of these six girls and their teacher in our midst.  They were pulled here by a time warp.  Time warps have been appearing all over the world at all different stages of history in apparently random places since teatime yesterday."

"And how does this concern us?" Aragorn asked, his arms folded.  "Though I do take joy in being King and saving Middle-earth and all that, I did that last week.  I do not believe that I should be required to participate in battles against these 'time warps,' which do not threaten me.  Sauron has fallen.  My kingdom needs to rebuild.  The army of Gondor needs a great deal of reconstruction.  I need to be there.  I see no telltale traces of evil in these occurrences in other times and other places.  The Fellowship should be permitted to disband and go home.  I should be permitted to discover the pleasures found in real ordinary life, not life where evil eyeballs conquering the world has become ordinary."

Dumbledalf shook his head wearily.  "How do you plan to discover the pleasures found in real ordinary life when you have so clearly been given the life of a hero, Aragorn?"

"Let me spend time with my wife whom I love and for whom I have waited years and years just to be with…"

"Your wife is not going to be in this story, Aragorn.  You are.  I suggest you get over it!"  Dumbledalf was beginning to get slightly angry.  Not like fighting-the-Balrog-or-Cornelius-Fudge-over-the-return-of-Voldemort-angry, but angry.  "Now I do not know why you think that you are all here, but I think it's high time we all figured out!  The truth is this: that we, Elrond, Yoda, and myself, are not behind any of this.  Those here at our call are only the remaining members of the Fellowship, Glorfindel, and those in Yoda's company.  They are not here because we know what needs to be done to set the world right and we want them to do it, for, as King Elessar pointed out, they did that last week.  We have called them here to try to help us figure something out.  Because do you, the Fellowship, know who else is here?  Can you even begin to comprehend the repercussions of what is going on right now?"  He whipped off one of the "dark things" that was shrouding one of the figures.  There stood Boromir.

The Fellowship gasped.

Merry and Pippin shook their heads in confusion, remembering his arrow-riddled body vividly.  "It can't be…"

Yoda, eyes closed, responded, "Can be, and is.  Returned, Boromir has.  For what purpose?  Yet to see we have."

"But why are we here?  Why am I here?" asked Emily.

"Why are any of us anywhere?" Dumbledalf asked philosophically, leaving Emily to ponder this in great detail.  "You," he said, pointing to Laura, "do you believe in free will?"

"Um… sure…" Laura said, confused.  God gave her a thumbs-up.

"But did you choose to be here?"

"No… not exactly… I mean… we chose to jump in the ravine.  But I guess we just figured we'd climb out on the other side and run away through the development."

"So it is not by your own free will that you are here at this Council, faced with what is almost certainly an evil, the likes of which has never been seen in any time or place, and, if we defeat, will never be seen again?"

Laura looked a little overwhelmed.  "Noooo…"

"There is no free will," Kathleen said, yawning in boredom.  God frowned down upon her.

Dumbledalf, however, smiled.  "Really?  Why are you here then?"

"It's all just completely random," Kathleen said.  "Us being here, Harry Potter being here.  The odds are a million to one against it, but just because there's no precedent doesn't mean it couldn't happen."

"A wise answer, and yet wrong."  Dumbledalf said.  "Though I regret dragging you all into a discussion of philosophy, these questions were bound to be raised when someone analyzed this situation.  You see, while it would seem possible, even likely, that all this is random because of its very randomness, it cannot be so.  How random is it that one, and only one, of the search parties that the school has sent out for you girls in lieu of calling the police or your parents was also sucked through the time warp?  That all of you, and your teacher, were pulled through?  Every person in each of your groups was chosen, and the fact that all of you chosen ones found yourselves together, without anyone who was not chosen, at the appointed time, by chance is inconceivable.  The time warps are not appearing in random places and sucking in random people, only to deposit them at random destinations.  They are appearing sometimes for only one person, and they will not go away until all the people they want have been taken and placed here.  Against odds so great that they can not possibly exist, the stars lined up and you all found yourselves here, in Elrond's lovely home, together.  This was not random; this is your fate.  What it is and where it ends, I cannot say, because I am not in charge of it, but this much I know: your fate rests here, be it life or death, damnation or salvation, ruin or glory."

The sound of soft rain falling on the roof of the hall began as God brushed the tears from his eye and started applauding for Dumbledalf's speech.

Dumbledalf then began to pull off all the dark cloaks from the people he had brought in with him.  "These are the people from the search party who came here but recently.  It is best that all of you," he glared especially at Aragorn, who had grown rather surly now that he knew that Arwen was not going to be in this story, "behave friendlily, for none of us knows what is ahead."

"Darkness covers all," Yoda said in agreement.  "Troubling, it is."

"Why don't you just get a nightlight then?" asked Stefanie, who stood there alongside Ali, Nellie, Jocelyn, and Mrs. Farrell.  Behind them stood a solidified Heathcliff and Cathy.

Yoda appeared to be considering the suggestion as Dumbledalf suppressed a laugh.  "These," he said, "are the members of the search party, and these are the two ghosts that you came with, only...  Well, as you can see, they have changed."

"Actually," Stefanie said, "Je was playing lacrosse, not searching, only je screwed up and left the balls in the ravine and so Coach was like attacking moi, so je…"

"Stevie!" Paula interrupted, leaping up and assailing her happily.

Harry took advantage of the moment to get up, smile at Laura, and toss a piece of parchment into her lap.

Ron took advantage of Harry's absence and scrambled towards Paula, who was still with Stefanie, after having made sure Hermione was watching.

Hermione took advantage of Ron's blatant attempt to make her jealous by seizing the nearest male (Neville) and making out with him.

Chaos then proceeded to ensue as everyone began to take advantage of all the different opportunities that lay before them, consisting mostly of getting to know each other.

Elrond dropped his head to his hands, the effects of Rachel's Advil having begun to wear off.  "Why could not the time warps have come out somewhere else?"

(Yo, Yo, Yoooo:  K, hea'z the deal: there ain't a lot 2 disclaim in this chapter [or as we in da ghettoz of white-collar suburbia like 2 say: dizzisclaim,] but there's a hella lot 2 apologize 4, yo.  So here'z the dilly-yo, homiez.  First off, I gotta shout out my apologiez 2 all u in da hood who w8ed a long time 4 this chapter which ain't worth shit.  Much luv!  I wuz hoping it'd b trippin', but, man, it suckz ballz fo sho.  Wut can u do?  N 2 all u homiez who wanted 2 c Gimli get clean, we still b workin' on that scene.  It'll be climactic, yo.  N sorry 2 ne1 who thought I wuz hatin' on the Bulgarianz.  We don't playa hate up in hea, n racism mos def ain't fly.  Rock on Eastern Europe, rock on!  Sorry 2 all u purist bitchez who don't like 2 c a brotha make up spellz 2 restore my man H. Cliffy n hiz ho Cathy 2 their bodiez.  That shit be impossible 2 find, fo sho yo, n I gotta have a lil artistic license.  Sorry 4 losing y'all in phizzilosophy n shit, n 4 not answering like half of all them questionz that y'all b askin 'bout how every1 got 2 Rivendell.  Man, I don't know!  They just there!  1 last apology 2 all u fine ppl I alienated wid dis hea dizzisclaimer.  Shout outs 2 all my brothaz keepin' it real n makin' Advil n dem fiiiiine clap on, clap off lightz… u boyz r chill!  Nex chapta goes out 2 all u reviewed n r gonna review 4 this piece a shit!  Y'all r wacked, but I lizzove u!  Pz!

And on that rather frightening note, I would like to present you with the official, authorized soundtrack [meaning any copies you find on the street ain't real fo sho] with a few small changes from the initial release:

HELL Yes! The Official Hell is an Emily Brontë Novel Soundtrack, Volume 1: The Young and the Plotless

1) "Two Step" by Dave Matthews Band

2) "An American Classic" by Hidden in Plain View

3) "Damnit" by Blink182

4) "Burning Man" by Third Eye Blind

5) "Coming Clean" by Green Day

6) "Sesame Street [Techno Remix]"

7) "The Time Warp" (from the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack)

8) "Shine Like Stars" by Holland

9) "Dreams" by The Cranberries

10) "Like a Stone" by Audioslave

11) "Free Falling" by Tom Petty

12) "Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" by Harry Belafonte

13) "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by REM

14) "Pages" by Slow Coming Day

15) "Swing Swing" by All-American Rejects

16) "Either Way" by Guster

17) "C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips" by OK Go

18) "Camouflage" by Allister

19) "Never Let You Down" by The Verve Pipe

20) "Sorrow" by Bad Religion

And that is all, my friends!  I promise the next chapter will come faster, be better, and actually include some people, unlike this one.  And I promise I'll never do a ghetto Holy Namer disclaimer [haha, good times, good rhymes, yo!] ever again.)