Disclaimer: I do not own Tolkien's Middle-earth or any part of it or inhabitant of it. Neither do I own Hogwarts or any other part of Rowling's creations. My thanks to both authors for their work.
Kara woke up to her shrieking alarm clock at half past six in the morning. She groaned and hit the snooze button. Last night she and her best friend Ruth had been up late watching The Lord of the Rings, so she was feeling pretty groggy. She drifted back to sleep as the morning sunlight started filtering through her closed Venetian blinds. Too soon her alarm went off again. This time she dragged herself out of bed and started getting ready for another day of school.
Forty minutes later she headed out the front door. As she ran down the front steps she missed her footing and tripped, twisting in midair as she fell. Although she tried to put her hands out to break her fall she hit the ground hard on her side and smacked her head on the ground. She saw a bright flash of light and everything went black for a second. When her vision cleared, she was no longer in her front yard.
All around her stately trees grew tall and thick. The ground was covered with a cushion-like layer of dead leaves. Kara sat up and picked up one of the leaves. It was ovate, rather like an elm leaf, and soft, not like the crinkly oak leaves she was used to at home. Holding the leaf, she stood and looked up towards the sky. A canopy of green leaves arched over her, with shafts of dancing sunlight piercing through as the branches swayed in the breeze. A red and black bird darted from tree to tree.
She had no idea where she was. Looking around, she saw no sign of civilization. She listened for a minute, but all she could hear was the wind through the leaves and countless unfamiliar birdsongs. With no clue which direction to go, she started wandering through the trees.
Soon she began to get the eerie feeling that she was being watched. In spite of the beauty of the forest she felt uneasy, and found herself checking behind her for someone following. When she looked back again a man stood before her. She started back, but he was smiling, and his face was so gentle that she knew he meant no harm—in spite of the longbow he held. Once she got over her fright she saw that he wasn't really a man. . . He was tall, thin, and muscular, and had oddly pointed ears. His facial features weren't unusually beautiful, but he had such an aura of austere nobility combined with a quiet joyfulness that she felt quite awed.
The man beckoned to her and she found herself wordlessly following him through the trees. After a few minutes she thought of speaking to him, but it felt wrong to break the silence. A moment later they reached a grassy glade. Two mares wearing light saddles and saddle-bags grazed companionably by the tree line. In the center of the glade a woman knelt collecting some sort of plant. She was dressed similarly to the man, with boots, leggings, and a tunic, but she lacked the unnamable inhuman quality of her companion.
The man called to her something that Kara couldn't understand. The woman looked up in surprise, and then stood up and walked rapidly over to Kara. Kara felt rather unnerved as the woman examined her intently. She had strong features and warm, intelligent eyes. It was the warmth in her eyes that prompted Kara to speak.
"Where am I?"
The woman grinned and said, "That makes things easier. I was just about to ask if you spoke English."
Kara felt a rush of relief. "Please, I don't know where I am or how I got here. Can you help me?"
"Yes, I can. I'm Dr. Gray—Madeline Gray." She held out her hand and Kara shook it.
"I'm Kara."
"Well, Kara, you're in the place you would call Middle-earth. Lothlorien, to be specific."
Kara gasped. "What, like with Aragorn and Legolas and Frodo?"
"Yes. But they're nowhere near here. Sauron was defeated about seventy years ago. King Aragorn and Queen Arwen are still ruling, and Legolas has gone back to Mirkwood. But Frodo went over the Sea long ago." She waved a handful of herbs in the air. "I was curious myself how the tale of the Ring made it to our world, so I did some research. Tolkien wrote those books after he fell into the Shire and heard Frodo's tale. Samwise Gamgee told it to him—he told me so himself."
"I must be dreaming. I must be still passed out." Kara rubbed her bruised temple.
"No, you're not. I myself came to Middle-earth about eight years ago. I was living in Virginia when I fell off a ladder while cleaning the gutters and woke up here. Since then several others have fallen in just like you and I did. Once I figured out what was happening I started sending them back, but it was too late for me to return. But that's all right. My training is in biology, so I've made it my goal to write up a compendium of as many plant and animal species that I can here." Dr. Gray looked at the handful of herbs that she held and crossed to the nearest mare. She pulled a cloth bag out of the saddle-bag and carefully placed the herbs inside.
"Wait—you know how I got here? What happened?"
Dr. Gray got a faraway look in her eye, similar to the look Kara's English teacher got before she went off on some spiel about 17th century English literature. "Well, it seems that for each of us our planet is rather like an energy minimum, so our location is stable unless we receive enough energy to send us to a new planet. However, if that happens once the person reaches that new energy maximum their location is fluxional and they quickly return to their minimum energy location—unless they end up dead, of course, which is what happens most of the time for such an energetic process. But for some reason some people sometimes have a change in their potential energy surface that makes their current location metastable. Then it just takes a little prod of energy and they fall to a new energy minimum. The good news is that most of the time their new location is metastable and with a little energy addition they can be sent back to their place of origin. Interestingly, certain places in Middle-earth seem to be local energy minimums, such as Rivendell, the Shire, and here at Lothlorien." Turning back to the horse she pulled a leather flask out of the saddlebag and said, "This should do."
Kara was completely befuddled. "So, you mean you can send me back?"
"Certainly! At least, that's the theory!" She smiled brightly. "Now, look at Galás," she said, pointing over Kara's shoulder at the man she now knew must be an elf.
Kara looked over her shoulder to see Galás' apologetic smile as Dr. Gray whacked her on the head with the full flask of water. She crumpled to the ground once again.
When she awoke she knew that she was no longer in Lothlorien. She lay on cold, hard stone. Rubbing her head, she slowly stood, placing a hand on the wall to steady herself. She stood in a dim stone hallway. She had just begun to gather herself and take a step forward when suddenly someone yelled, "Boo!" A cat screeched and its gray shape bolted around the corner and shot between her legs, tripping her. She caught a glimpse of pudgy ghostly shape floating at the end of the hall as she fell. Before she got knocked out again she heard an elderly man's voice angrily howling, "Peeves!"
Once more she awoke, but this time when she opened her eyes she saw her familiar yard. She slowly stood. Had she just dreamed what had happened? Rubbing her head, she found three distinct sore spots. Could it be true?
Whether it had actually happened or was a dream Kara knew she couldn't take any more whacks on the head that day. She slowly climbed the front steps and went back inside.
Her mother was in the kitchen packing lunch for her little brother. She stepped out into the hall when she heard the door close. "Honey? Did you forget something?"
"I fell down the steps and hit my head," Kara answered. For the first time she felt tears welling up in her eyes.
"Oh honey! Are you ok? Go lie down and I'll bring a bag of ice. You don't have to go anywhere else today."
As Kara went to lie down on the sofa she thought, "I certainly hope not!"