Hello all! Next chapter will be up next Sunday!

Review Responses:

John, yeah, Frodo and Sam aren't exactly in the safest of places. I'm just surprised nobody thought of them landing there, everyone swore they were in the Forbidden Forest. As for Merry, it's just this quick little scene in the book that I didn't write, just mentioned. I'm doing that with several other scenes in the next few chapters. To actually write them would include more characters and I don't want to throw more at you guys when there's only ten chapters left in the fic.

Harmoni, hey girl. I'm glad you liked where I had dropped them out. I had to put them somewhere where it wouldn't be easy to find them and the last place they would think of looking. Thanks for the review!

Special thanks to my beta, PuNKyCoWGiRL!

Chapter Thirty-One

Corsairs and Strange Lights

Snape knew something was wrong the moment he walked into his quarters. Anya was curled up in one of the large chairs staring pensively into the fire. She didn't even look up when he entered.

Anya was not one to sit around and brood, that was his job. What was even more eerie was the fact that she was quiet. His Anya was never quiet. As a matter of fact, she usually talked his ear off. But at the moment she sat in the chair, saying nothing, with a worried look in her eyes.

He sighed to himself and headed into the bedroom. He took his robe off and hung it up so that it wouldn't wrinkle. Then he silently went back to the living room. Still she sat motionless and seemingly oblivious to his presence.

Despite his worry over the woman who managed to unfreeze his cold heart, a smirk appeared on his lips. It was time to give the woman a taste of her own medicine. Settling into his best glare, one that was known to make Neville faint just thinking about it, he moved to stand in front of her.

"What in the bloody hell do you think you are doing woman?" He bellowed, towering over her.

To his surprise, only her eyes moved to look up at him. Now he knew something was definitely wrong. This was not his Anya. His Anya would have jumped up and retorted that she wasn't a woman, but a demon. This one just continued to stare blankly up at him.

Fear gripped his heart. He was suddenly faced with the prospect that this was the point where she decided that while the time she had spent with the surly potions master had been fun, she was ready to move on to someone else. As much as she irritated him in the beginning, the thought of spending his future without her saddened him greatly.

Losing his glare, he dropped to his knees in front of her. "What's wrong?" He asked softly, scared of what her answer would be.

"What am I even here?" She asked back.

Relief flooded him for a minute as he realized that she wasn't leaving him, but it was quickly replaced by confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Why am I here?" She asked again. "I can't contribute anything. All I do is go from demon hideout to demon hideout and confirm that Frodo and the Ring aren't there. I'm even more useless in research than Xander. I'm not contributing to the good fight," she said, her voice increasing in volume. "And frankly, it upsets me!"
Snape couldn't help it, he laughed.

"This isn't funny broody britches. I'm in pain here, you're supposed to be comforting me. That's your job as my boyfriend."
"I'm sorry," he said after his laughter died down. He took her smaller hands into his large ones. "Did you ever think that your contribution is already happening?"

She opened her mouth to respond and then stopped. She looked at him in confusion.

"You're narrowing down the search faster than anyone else could. Without you, we'd probably still be searching England. The only thing that could stop you would be copious amounts of money lying around."

Anya grinned suddenly and threw her arms around him. "Sevie, you say the sweetest things."

Ron stifled a chuckle as Hermione let out a fairly loud snore. He knew his girlfriend would be mortified to learn that she wasn't exactly the quietest of sleepers. She shifted slightly in his arms and her snoring eased.

He returned his gaze to the fire in front of them in the living area that Hermione normally shared with Draco. So far, Dumbledore refused to allow anyone to replace Draco's position so as to not alert any of Voldemort's people that he had left the school. He knew talk was floating around, especially since there were others gone, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The redhead just wished he could find out if his sister and the others were alright. He knew that Tara said things were fine, but it wasn't the same as seeing his sister for himself.

He just knew he'd never forgive himself if something happened to Ginny while she was over there. Even though his mum and dad had given their blessings, he had always seemed closer to Ginny than any of their other brothers did. He was usually the one she looked to for protection and now he wasn't there to protect her. Intellectually he knew that Harry and Draco would, but it was still different. She was his baby sister. He was the one who should be protecting her and nobody else.

Ron wearily rubbed his eyes. He should probably be getting some sleep himself, but something was pulling at his brain and it wouldn't let him. Something told him that they weren't searching for Frodo and the Ring correctly, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what the right way was. There had to be an easier and faster way of searching than what they were doing. But every time he tried to explain it to Willow and Tara, they kept insisting that the scrying was the best way. He even tried to vocalize his opinions to Hermione, but her skills in Wicca were so minimal that she wasn't much help.

He only hoped that the solutions were somewhere in the Wiccan books that Willow and Tara had lent him. Ron was fairly certain that the answers were hidden somewhere in them, it was just taking him forever to find it.

His tired body began taking over and before he knew it, he had drifted off to sleep.

Dawn almost cried in relief when Legolas said he could smell fresh air. They had been walking through the tunnels for what seemed like forever, but had only been a few days. The oppressive darkness and the whispering of the ghosts had nearly driven her mad.

The group had been chased out of the large chamber where they had met the ghosts by an avalanche of human bones before they had received an answer. The whole thing felt like a surreal Indiana Jones moment and she kept waiting for a large boulder to come rolling down the passage towards them. Luckily, it never came, but it appeared that the ghosts were refusing to help the King of Gondor once more.

The brief conversation she had shared with Tara the day before had done little to alleviate the depression caused by the Paths of the Dead.

Before long, a breeze touched her face and tension began to leave her body. It took her several moments to realize that they had exited the caves expecting to see daylight, only to find that a great darkness covered the land.

"Umm, isn't it the middle of the day?" Dawn asked Elrohir.

"Aye," he answered, his grey eyes taking everything in.

"Then what's up with the sky?"

"Tis not natural," the elf simply replied.

To their right, Aragorn dropped to his knees and uttered a soft, "No." His voice was filled with such despair that it made her want to cry. She followed his gaze and saw ten ships in the river below them, their lights twinkling in the strange darkness.

"What's that?" She asked.

"Corsairs," Elladan explained. "They are vicious fighters and are sailing to Minas Tirith to aid the invasion."

"There's not enough of us to stop them," she whispered. The thirty Rangers and the remnants of the Fellowship stood no chance against the ten ships loaded with Corsairs. "It's not fair."

The future king looked out in defeat as Legolas placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. They knew they were staring at their deaths in the river below. For even though they knew that they could not stop them, they would do what they could to cut back on their numbers.

A chilled wind suddenly whipped around them causing Aragorn to jump to his feet and anxiously look around. Out of the sheer rock of the mountain face, the ghost king stepped through and stood before Aragorn. With a proud tilt of his decaying chin, he proclaimed, "We will fight."

Relief shone in Aragorn's eyes as he grimly smiled and nodded his acceptance of the new pledge.

It took them the rest of the day to ride down the mountainside. The dead could not be seen, but Dawn could feel them pressing around them whispering to each other. Only Gimli seemed to be blithely ignorant of their presence.

They stood on the shore of the river and waited for the first of the ships to reach them. Aragorn stood in front, proud and resolute. Dawn could see that once he had accepted that he was a leader of men, he no longer seemed to be the shabbily dressed Ranger, but a king coming into his own.

When the first ship was in hailing distance, Aragorn called out, "You may go no further."
The Corsairs who had been bustling about on the ships only moments before, looked out to see a small band of Rangers on the beach. They let out a scornful laugh.

"You will not enter Gondor," Aragorn told them.

Above the new round of laughter from the ship, one man spoke out. "Who are you to deny us passage?"
Without looking away from the ships, Aragorn said softly, "Legolas, fire a warning shot passed the bosun's ear."
"See, this is where bows and arrows are appropriate," Dawn said with a smirk.

Legolas ignored her and pulled an arrow out of his quiver and lined up his shot.

"Mind your aim, elf," Gimli cautioned him.

Legolas pulled back and just before he released the arrow, Gimli tapped the bottom of the bow with his axe, causing the arrow to hit the man behind the bosun.

Gimli let out a surprised, innocent little, "Oh," while Aragorn and Legolas shot him scathing looks. The dwarf yelled. "That's right, we warned you! Prepare to be boarded."

The silence that had fallen over the Corsairs erupted into laughter once more. "Boarded? By you and whose army?" The bosun bellowed.

"This army," Aragorn said, steel in his voice. The dead suddenly appeared from behind them and rushed forward. The dead walked across water as easily as land and swarmed over the ships. While the dead could harm the living, the living could not harm them and before long the ships were devoid of any living being.

Aragorn passed out orders for the Rangers to split up among the ships. They would continue to sail the ships to Minas Tirith to fool the enemy into thinking that more backup was coming and to hide their new army.

Harry wandered the halls of Citadel by himself. While he was glad of the reprieve from the road that Minas Tirith had brought, he was finding himself growing bored. His friends were either in a different part of Middle Earth or were left back at Hogwarts and attending their classes. Pippin was off fulfilling his duties as one of the guards of the city and Gandalf was brooding about the direction of the war.

There had been some brief excitement the day before when the garrison that had been stationed at Osgiliath had been chased out of the city and across the fields of Pelennor to the White City. They were being pursued by the Nazgûl and only with Gandalf's timely assistance were they able to escape.

Denethor's son, Faramir, was the captain of the garrison at Osgiliath. His father had been most displeased of his abandonment of the city and was quite vocal about it. As a result, Faramir had formed a larger company to try and retake the city. They had left a short time ago, and Buffy had gone with them.

He couldn't help but wish that he had a job to do like the rest of them. The sitting around and waiting was maddening. If he had been at Hogwarts, he would have grabbed his invisibility cloak and the Marauder's Map and found a way to help. But he had neither object here to help him. Here, he was just a young man with no ties to any nationality.

Moving onto a balcony, he looked out over the dark world. He had read about how there were places on earth that several months out of the year in the darkness. After spending just a few days in the magically imposed cloud cover, he knew that he would never live in any of those places.

An orangish flashing light caught his eye and he looked up to see it coming from a room high in the tower of Ecthelion. It flickered for a few minutes and then winked out. He continued to stare, but it never returned.

Shrugging to himself, he turned and went back inside to continue his wanderings. What he wouldn't give to have someone to talk to at that moment. Hell, even Draco would have been a nice change of pace. Although, admittedly, he and the young Malfoy had become friends as of late, rather than rivals. It was amazing how times of strife and danger could even make once enemies become friends.

Harry's stomach grumbled and he went off in search of something to eat.