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Note: Heavily inspired by one of esama's plotbunnies. I wasn't sure if she was planning on writing it, and I wanted to read it too badly to wait for her. It's a bit different in regards to a few of the arrivals' locations though.
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Story: [Scattered Over Middle Earth]
Summary: The Ministry Six run into the twins on the way to rescuing Sirius, and they join forces. However, an artifact activates at the Ministry, and suddenly everyone is scattered across Middle Earth.
Genre: Adventure, Humor
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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
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XXX Mountains (Ron) XXX
The magic was wrong.
The explosions were somehow too rough and too delicate at the same time.
Still, they carved a path through the violent little nasties that was wide enough for him to run through without risking his neck to their blades. So he certainly wasn't going to go complaining about it.
He wasn't entirely sure how he'd ended up here, considering that they'd been somewhere completely different not hours ago, or why he was alone when there had been eight of them back then. He supposed that he ought to try and find everyone, but for all he knew, they could be miles away, or just around the corner.
In that way, it was better to run for safety and make a bloody great ruckus about it, so that anyone who was in the area would know where he was going.
This attitude was greatly spurred on by the nasty creatures with various kinds of blades who were trying to carve him up, whilst shouting in a strange language, as well as the fact that he was growing a bit dizzy from all the twists and turns that this underground maze had.
He needed to get out, to find safety, and then he could try and figure out where to go from there.
And so it was, that Ron ran, and goblins died.
XXX Lake Town (Fred) XXX
It had been pure luck that they'd stumbled upon the reckless idiots who were trying to save Sirius, and they'd instantly agreed – as if either of them had even considered anything else – to join forces.
It was their two little siblings, the boy who was damn-near a little brother in his own right, a pleasant enough chap, and two girls that what little remained of their chivalry – as much of it that could survive amongst their countless pranks – couldn't let run into danger on their own.
Still, they were starting to suspect that it was less 'good luck' and more 'bad luck' that had led them into this newest fine mess of theirs.
Fred glanced over to where Hermione was trying to use charades to communicate with the locals, and wondered briefly if he should've studied more languages.
He quickly disregarded that thought, as George was the handsome one, and therefore the one who should be extra-charismatic. It was nice to be able to foist that responsibility off on someone else.
Fred's humor slipped slightly as he glanced over at the unsettling mountain in the distance.
It felt like something big, something sleeping, something waiting, something that could be woken. And Fred really really really didn't want to wake it up.
George met his eyes briefly, and they didn't need to nod to know that the other one felt it too.
"Hermione." George caught the girl's attention.
"Just a head's up-" Fred continued.
"- using magic is probably going to cause-" George tried to explain.
"- bad things to happen." Fred finished, with a wary glance towards the mountain and the horrible feeling of something hungry lingering just outside of perception.
Hermione stared at the two of them for a long moment, obviously trying to weigh just how serious they were being, before she nodded.
It was hesitant, and she'd probably grill them for a reason later on, but she trusted them enough not to scoff at their warning.
Clever girl.
XXX Trollshaws (Harry) XXX
Harry dodged around a tree, lungs burning from more than just exhaustion, and eyes perhaps a little bit wild.
If he'd had the breath to waste on it, he would be cursing loudly and foully enough that even Ron might try and chide him for his language.
Trolls.
Why did it have to be bloody trolls?
One of the trolls bellowed to its fellows in a language that Harry wasn't sure he was glad or frustrated that he didn't speak, and then another boulder was launched his way.
Why couldn't they at least have been as stupid as the troll from his First Year? This working-together-thing that they had going for them was horribly unfair.
Raising his wand against the boulder, Harry used a banishing charm to launch it backwards the way it came, hopefully hurting the troll who'd thrown it.
He didn't get a chance to stop and check, because a tree was suddenly falling towards him, and he had to go back to dodging frantically in order to avoid getting cornered by the magic-resistant bloody large buggers who were trying to eat him.
He'd expected his day to turn out bad even from the get-go – what with exams and all – but with Voldemort and Sirius and sudden weird magical transportation and three trolls trying to kill him, Harry felt like this day was really going a bit too far into the extreme.
A fire-spell sent one of the troll's hair up in smoke, which was a fairly decent way to distract pretty much anything. Even if the only thing he could gain from the distraction was a few more moments to dodge around a few more trees.
He really hated his luck sometimes.
XXX Mirkwood (Ginny) XXX
Radagast frowned suspiciously at the two young women who'd suddenly appeared in his forest.
"Are you sure you're not evil, somehow?" He asked again, just to be sure.
"Well, no. It's always hard to tell with these things." Luna admitted. "But it's highly unlikely that we're Evil evil. Though I suppose we might be a bit selfish evil, depending on your perspective."
Ginny made a pained face, trying to pretend that she was somewhere else, and not stuck in between a loony and Loony. She might love the girl dearly as a friend, but the blonde girl could drive anyone to drink.
And even if the odd man was seemingly very good and reasonable in regards to animals, the way that he talked reminded her an awful lot of Mr Lovegood at his most bizarre.
There was only so much of the Lovegood family that a sane person could take without resorting to finding their 'happy place'.
Still, staying with this guy was looking a lot better than spending another night out in the misty forests, with spiders hunting everywhere.
She was starting to revise her opinion on her brother's silly phobia of spiders. It was hard to think it 'silly' when the spiders she was currently growing 'used to' dealing with were large enough to drag you away and eat you, and hunted in packs.
Suppressing a shiver at the thought, Ginny glanced out through the window.
At least the two symmetrically eccentric people weren't discussing Snorkacks. Yet.
XXX The Shire (Bilbo) XXX
Bilbo stared at the young Man in front of him, not entirely sure what to do.
He must've tried half a dozen languages – though he'd be the first to admit that his accents in them were atrocious – and yet it was clear that the boy didn't even recognize them. And he was a boy, goodness gracious, he'd barely started growing out of his baby-fat, what was he doing so far away from his home?
Of course he'd been called in when it became apparent that the odd Man who'd suddenly appeared out of nowhere didn't speak the local language, so he'd been expecting some difficulties with communication, but he really didn't know what to do.
It wasn't like he knew a place that didn't teach at least one of these languages, and what did he know about dealing with Men-folk anyway? It was all very befuddling.
But still... it wasn't like they could just not communicate with him.
Sighing heavily, Bilbo settled in for what was sure to be quite the task.
Teaching someone an entirely new language, when you didn't speak theirs, was certainly not a task to be sniffed at.
XXX Mountains (Ron) XXX
The air was crisp, fresh, free of rot and dirt and mold and stone and blood and goblin.
It was the sweetest thing that he could ever remember smelling.
Staring up at the blue sky with its cheerfully blazing sun and large white puffy clouds, Ron couldn't help but smile.
He'd survived, he'd found a way out, the sunlight was warm against his skin, the breeze flooded his lungs with delightful air, and he couldn't hear any goblins yammering and screeching as they tried to gut him like a fish.
Life was fantastic, Ron decided with a hopelessly pleased feeling.
Beginning to hum a merry tune under his breath, Ron set off down the mountainside. He wasn't entirely sure where he was or how he'd gotten there, but he wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and his exit out of the endless tunnels. He got the feeling that the nasty little buggers inside would be more than happy to drag him back in there, should he give them a chance.
Magic was still weird, but he was getting used to it, even if he wasn't happy that it seemed he'd lost the Point Me spell. He really hoped that it wasn't just his wand acting up. He liked his new wand, and it'd be awful to have to buy another new one, in so little time.
XXX Lake Town (Fred) XXX
Fred exchanged a wary glance with his brother.
Of course they'd seen the girl get worked up about a great many things over the years, but there'd always been... 'distance' in between Hermione's most recent crusade, and themselves.
And they were fully willing to admit that the reason for this distance was that they generally hid behind the bullheaded girl's two friends – who'd obviously signed up for the role of makeshift barricades in regards to the ferocious girl, or they would've done the clever thing and run and hid like everyone else did whenever she got something new into her head.
Only, now the Golden Trio appeared to be scattered across... well, maybe the world, maybe several worlds, maybe some other places that they were probably better off not thinking about. Regardless, the male two-thirds of the Golden Trio weren't present to hide behind, so they had to deal with her on their own.
Without backup.
It wasn't that they disliked her. She was a good friend of their ickle little brother, brave and daring in a very admirable way, loyal, and fully capable of tossing the rules – that she otherwise followed with such passionate dedication – out the nearest window if it would help one of her friends. In that way, she was quite likeable.
The problem was... it was quite easy to get an overdose of her various crusades for the betterment of the world. In fact, generally even the most patient of individual would have issues with not thinking up a slew of excuses to be elsewhere within the first five minutes of her passionate speeches.
And now they were stuck together, with the two of them – and what little of the local language they'd been able to pick up – being the only thing that kept their socially awkward little lady from accidentally convincing the citizens of Lake Town that they should all be tossed out on their noses into the wild.
Still, they found themselves kind of definitely on her side of the matter, because even if they sometimes skipped out on showers – when they were reasonably certain that nobody would notice – hygiene was a thing, and it was a lot more important than the way that Lake Town was built would have you believe.
But that didn't mean they could just let the girl charge onwards without pause. From what little they'd seen, this would basically surmount to a hygienic revolution of sorts, and people needed to be... 'carefully convinced' that it was a good idea, because people were kind of resistant to change, and Hermione was planning on shaking the boat.
The irony of said metaphorical boat-shaking being something that was taking place in a town built like a raft in the middle of a lake, didn't escape either of them.
XXX Trollshaws (Harry) XXX
Harry felt his jaw slowly begin to drop.
This-... This he hadn't expected.
Where before there had stood three trolls who were more than happy to kill and eat him – unless he'd misunderstood their motivations, which was possible considering that he didn't speak their language – now stood three gigantic and fascinatingly ugly stone statues.
Trolls apparently couldn't handle sunlight.
Harry briefly wondered if he should be feeling guilty over the creatures' deaths, before dismissing that idea with a 'better them than me', as well as a 'they started it' thrown in for good measure.
However, the very much statue-ified trolls – whilst of great academical interest, as he'd never heard of sunlight being lethal to much of anything at all – left him with a different problem.
He was no longer hunted by monsters, he was no longer running and fighting for his life. But he still didn't have the faintest clue as to where he was, or which direction he ought to travel in.
Interestingly enough, this was actually one of the very few things that Harry could honestly admit to having never happened to him before.
He'd had all kinds of creatures and people trying to kill him, maim him, 'help' him, or otherwise put his health in jeopardy. But he'd never actually gotten lost before.
It was kind of embarrassing, actually.
Harry made a mental note that, should he survive and later on have anyone ask him how he'd made it back to civilization, he would lie and say that it hadn't been completely dependent on luck. He wasn't sure how convincing his lying would be though, since he had absolutely no idea where to even start looking for clues that would aim him towards human habitation.
XXX Mirkwood (Ginny) XXX
Luna and Radagast continued with their discussions of a whole slew of different – and sometimes downright bizarre – subjects.
Interestingly enough, beyond a brief 'hello, your world is a bit different than ours' there had been no talk at all about how they'd landed themselves in the forest, or how they were supposed to get home.
A part of her wanted to yell at the two eccentrics for seemingly not caring at all about any of that, but Luna seemed to be enjoying herself enough that Ginny would feel a bit guilty if she 'ruined the mood' so to speak.
A different part of her wondered if Luna might have a thing for older men. But that part was generally stomped to death whenever it reared its head, so it could easily be ignored.
Magic in this new world was strange. Not bad, not good, just different.
Light spells tended to shed shadows as much as they illuminated, which Ginny imagined meant that Dementors could be burned by a simple Lumos, rather than needing to use an actual Patronus. It also dealt with force – such as explosions – in a way more related to pushing than exploding. And the various finicky things such as transfiguration – which technically included her long time favorite 'bat-boogie' hex – would always misfire, though generally in a fairly subtle manner.
All in all, the magic of this place was... a bit more 'primitive' perhaps, than their own. But it was also more powerful, more beautiful, and more terrifying.
If their magic were water-hoses, this world's magic was a rainstorm. It didn't translate perfectly like that, obviously, because their own world's magic had a tendency to backfire in ways that would leave scholars everywhere scratching their heads, whilst this world's magic tended to simply ignore things when it went wrong.
If you didn't know how to use magic in this world, then magic wouldn't care to follow your orders.
This also applied to things that magic simply didn't want to do, which made it very frustrating when Ginny realized that many of the various 'personal grooming' charms were not on the list. Sure, she could do without magic – she'd spent her summers at the Burrow, with her mother's keen eye keeping them from using it – but it would've made living in the semi-wilderness like this a great deal less complicated.
Frowning a little to herself, Ginny blasted away another spider.
Merlin, if these were all the kids of one spider, said spider must be getting laid all the time.
Ginny made a disgusted face as her traitorous mind began trying to picture how gigantic spiders had sex. It wasn't a pleasant image by any stretch of the word.
She blasted another spider into gooey mess in retaliation for the dirtying of her poor poor innocent mind.
At least things weren't as bad as they could've been.
XXX The Shire (Bilbo) XXX
Neville Longbottom was a bit of an odd fellow – though, as he was one of the Big Folk, that was partially to be expected.
Ignoring that his name sounded almost hobbitish, the boy also had a clear interest in plant-life, and was unfalteringly polite. It was enough that Bilbo might've wondered if he actually had hobbit blood in him somewhere, had it not been for the steely glint in his eyes whenever his thoughts returned to his arrival in the Shire.
The boy was definitely still a boy, but if Bilbo had understood it correctly, he and several others his own age had been in the middle of attacking a group of bandits – really nasty bandits – when one of them must've accidentally triggered some kind of magical artifact in the area, because suddenly he wasn't in 'London' anymore.
Still, he got along well with the hobbits that he was introduced to, took being gawped at by the fauntlings in stride – though he seemed a bit embarrassed about the attention – and seemed to generally enjoy life in the Shire.
Though he sometimes seemed... well, disappointed really, in their plants lack of 'personality'. Bilbo was fairly certain that calling a poisonous man-eating plant 'exciting' was not properly sensible behavior regardless of if you were one of the Big Folk or not. He was also entirely convinced that whatever place Neville came from, it must be a Fell place indeed, to both allow and even encourage a tween to care for such a terrifying plant.
Neville kept insisting that it was really not as dangerous as it sounded, and that there were only a very few number of plants that would actively strangle a human to death, and that most of them just had a bit of a bad reputation because they were often mishandled.
Considering that at least one of the plants' defense-mechanism was 'scream the human to death', Bilbo didn't entirely trust his judgment in the matter.
XXX Mountains (Ron) XXX
His first reaction to seeing the man with long blond hair had been 'gah, a Malfoy' and going for his wand.
Then he'd actually noticed that the man had pointed ears, was carrying a bow – which was all kinds of weird, because he hadn't seen anything like that outside of Hagrid's old crossbow – and spoke a language that he'd never heard before.
Thus, he degraded his alert-status down to 'potential hostile' rather than 'hex on sight'.
The blond man seemed equally suspicious of his presence, but managed to mime guiding him back to someone in charge, when it became obvious that Ron had no clue what the hell he was talking about.
Now, if only he could figure out a way to reach everyone else, then maybe things would start looking up.
XXX Lake Town (Fred) XXX
Fred allowed himself a moment to marvel at just how much encyclopedic knowledge of muggle-mechanics that the bookworm was in possession of.
Sure, he knew that she liked to read, and got good grades. But none of them could've expected her to have a perfect schematic for a steam engine hidden away underneath all of that bushy hair.
It was enough to leave both him and his brother rather incredulous at her.
Shaking his head in bewildered exasperation, Fred reflected that it would've been nice if things could've stayed... 'simple'.
What had started out as a quest to improve the hygiene of the inhabitants of Lake Town, and quickly derailed into the importance of providing the place with clean drinking water, which in turn had led to a rather hostile confrontation with the Master of Lake Town, before escalating into some kind of money-making arm's race to pay for the various improvements, was by now making good process on kicking off an industrial revolution.
The Master himself... well, he'd made a lot of loud noises, complained and shouted, and after a while the people had finally just kind of shrugged and ignored him. Nowadays, he mostly kept himself shut away in his house, trying desperately to keep hold of the commerce even as Hermione ruthlessly undermined his every effort through the application of muggle technology.
There was something to be said for a young woman who'd without hesitation perform a semi-hostile takeover of an entire town. That she'd use this to make life healthier and generally better for those living there... well, that at least kept her out of the potential role of 'heartless dictator', but she'd on at least one occasion mutter something along the lines of how the best way to rule was to be loved to the point of idolization and worship.
Apparently, somehow, the girl in question had gotten her hands on some muggle madman's teachings on how to create a cult, and how to turn strangers into passionate fanatics for your cause.
Neither of the twins were entirely comforted by the fact that Hermione had promised them that she wouldn't 'do anything bad with it'. But would also admit that the girl was herself a bit of a fanatic supporter of free will, so the odds of her turning into a horrible dictator was probably fairly low.
Except, they didn't know how dictators generally cropped up in history, or what their personalities were like when they started out, and the only one who might be able to tell them any of that, was the woman who might or might not be very much inclined to be driven mad by power, one of these days.
So they kept their mouths shut, and they kept any of the thugs that the Master hired from killing off their bushy-haired little potential-dictator-in-the-making.
George shrugged at him, and Fred had to fight a grin. At least they didn't have to worry about drinking dirty water anymore.
XXX Trollshaws (Harry) XXX
It had nearly been two days, and the only thing that Harry had found that might technically be classified as a physical necessity, was a small stream whose water hadn't tasted poisonous. Not that Harry had any clue as to what that might taste like.
So, when Harry first saw the group of dark-haired men suddenly appearing out of near-thin-air in between the trees of wherever the hell he was, he was actually more relieved than worried.
Yeah, they might be Death Eaters or something, but at least he knew how to deal with torture and imprisonment. All you had to do was grit your teeth, insult their parentage a bit, and plot your escape. In comparison, starving to death out in the middle of nowhere was a lot more complicated to figure out.
Thankfully, neither of his friends were there to point out that that was both fatalistic and insanely reckless to the point where it was probably not so much 'reckless' as it was suicidal.
Still, just because he welcomed their presence didn't mean he had to go without a fight. And if these guys truly were Death Eater in disguise, then he would make sure that they wouldn't risk ruining anyone else's life.
Which was the point at which they came close enough that he could see their pointed ears.
That kept him staring for long enough that – once he figured out that they were asking him to come with them – he kind of just shrugged and followed.
He kind of seriously doubted that Voldemort would've had non-humans in his employment that weren't immediately classifiable as Dark creatures.
XXX Mirkwood (Ginny) XXX
Ginny stared up at the blond man with a bow and arrow, then she very carefully raised an eyebrow at him.
"I'm covered in spider-goo, some undead thing just tried to steal my pants, and I missed breakfast today. Do you really want to do this?" She asked him.
Admittedly, missing breakfast had been a very calculated move on her part, as Luna and Radagast seemed to have cheerfully begun... 'experimenting' in the small house's kitchen by combining the various recipes of their worlds – and families, Merlin save all sensible folk from Mr Lovegood's idea of cooking – and the results sometimes touched upon the Voldemort-side of terrifying.
It took a few moments, but then he apparently decided that he did, so Ginny blasted him off his tree-branch and made the deliberate choice that punching him in the face would probably relieve her stress more than splattering him across the ground as a fine red paste with her wand, would.
Said and done, his nose made a very satisfying crack as it broke under her knuckles.
XXX The Shire (Bilbo) XXX
Bilbo sighed as he was once again treated to Hamfast Gamgee voicing his horror at what Neville was doing to his garden. Because yes, Bilbo had given the boy free reign of the garden in an effort to keep him from going comatose from boredom.
He considered it a needed sacrifice, if still a somewhat painful one.
On the plus side, his relatives no longer dared to visit him by knocking on his front door, as some of the plants that Neville had somehow managed to breed tended to be fairly 'aware' of people, and that – with their eerily shifting movements and their somewhat overbearing size – they were not something that a sensible hobbit would want at their backs as they waited for whatever time it might take for Bilbo to answer the door.
Oh, but the whimpering that some of them had made was like music to his ears.
If he'd have known that having a terrifying garden would keep his annoying relatives at bay in such a beautifully efficient manner, he might've very well found someone who could do this years before.
As it was, he tried to sympathize with the man who'd spent so many years keeping his garden clean and properly hobbit-like, and otherwise enjoyed the peace and quiet of having his relatives kept at bay, and having Neville outside where he wouldn't look so hopelessly glum.
It was a good way to live, Bilbo decided, even if it perhaps wasn't seen as the most 'proper' of ways in which to do so.
XXX Rivendell (Ron) XXX
"So... you're elves?" Ron tried after having spent an awful long time trying to figure out what he'd been saying. The blond man nodded, and Ron was left feeling uncomfortable out of his depth.
He'd never heard of elves outside of house elves, and they didn't look like they were even remotely related to the tall blond guy.
Fortunately, he'd already guessed that he wasn't in London anymore, and it wasn't really that big of a stretch to have him being dumped into a completely different world. Though it did make him worry about the rest of the group.
Had they landed in this same world, and if they had, were they in some kind of danger? Or where they somewhere completely different? And how was he supposed to know, was there some kind of way to track them?
"This just gets better and better." He muttered to himself, and then lost his voice, because they'd just rounded a cliff.
And Rivendell was quite possibly the single most beautiful place that he'd ever seen.
XXX Lake Town (Fred) XXX
Fred desperately suppressed the urge to double-over laughing.
Hermione's face was just so absolutely perfectly hilarious.
It should've occurred to the three of them that rumors would run about them, and about their living arrangements. Because they'd been sharing a room since the first night in this world – due to budget concerns – and people would've obviously drawn their own conclusions about it.
And now they were being confronted by the fact that everyone was absolutely convinced that polygamy was legally allowed, since the woman in charge of Lake Town was married to two men.
George cleared his throat in a way that was most likely him trying to keep himself from laughing whilst at the same time actually speaking. "The difference is that we've both agreed-"
Fred felt a sudden rush of madness as he realized that he was absolutely getting involved in this. Because this was too much of a prank for him to not fall into old habits. "-to share her between us."
Hermione's head snapped between the two of them as they slid up next to her with identical smirks.
Fred watched their supposed wife as her eye began to twitch in an absolutely adorable way. It almost looked as if she was planning on punching their lights out. Except then her face smoothed out, even as it remained unusually reddish.
With a gentle smile that would've looked sweet, had it not been for the promise of horrific and painful violence that was glimmering in her eyes, Hermione leaned into their arms before turning back to the woman who'd been dragged before them for judgment.
"Yes. Regardless of the relationship preferred between you, it has to be mutual." Hermione explained to the woman who'd been caught with leading two different men into her bed. "And if they should decide to share, then that shall be that. However, if I understand correctly, this isn't the case."
The woman bowed her head, understanding.
Fred shared a glance with his brother.
Yeah, this prank of theirs was going to backfire horribly, wasn't it?
XXX Rivendell (Harry) XXX
Thankfully, the place that they were walking to weren't horribly far off, and the 'elves' had food enough to share as they traveled.
Still, the actual arrival at Rivendell took his breath away.
The feeling of it reminded him a bit of Hogwarts, only where Hogwarts looked like it could weather a siege without being overly concerned, Rivendell looked like it'd invite any invaders inside and then leave them too awed by its beauty to attack.
Harry felt like Hogwarts was an awful lot more sensible, in that aspect.
Then, of course, came the point where he expected to be interrogated by the owner of the place for how he'd ended up wherever it was that he'd ended up.
"Harry!"
Blinking dumbly at the sight of ginger amidst the otherwise dark hair of these people, Harry felt his eyes grow even wider once he recognized the voice. "Ron!"
Harry was sure that the elves were talking about their reactions, but the relief of seeing his best friend alive and well was more than enough to keep Harry from focusing on them. Breathing was much more important to focus on, Ron had inherited his mother's hugging-arms, and suffocation was looking like an uncomfortably likely danger.
XXX Mirkwood (Ginny) XXX
"No, Luna. I haven't had a sexual awakening and decided to slake my wanton lusts on some poor innocent bystander." Ginny deadpanned at her friend.
Luna again looked down at the unconscious male on the floor. "I see." She nodded in understanding. "But then where did you find such a realistic-looking sex-toy?"
Finally giving in and making an audible noise of frustration, Ginny glared at the other girl. "Do you have to make jokes about this?"
"No." Luna admitted readily enough. "But I don't see why I shouldn't, either."
Ginny hung her head, resigning herself to listening to Luna's peculiar sense of humor being waved in front of her face for the next few days. She might love the girl dearly, but sometimes she found herself wishing for the wonders of solitary confinement. To slowly drive herself mad through boredom and sheer loneliness. Oh, but how wonderful such a thing would be.
"Do you think we should wake him up now, or undress him first?" Luna wondered absently.
Ginny sighed, but asked despite not being sure that she wanted to hear the answer. "Why would we be undressing him?"
"Well, clothing is as good a place as any when it comes to hiding weapons." Luna admitted.
Ginny felt her mouth drop open. She was actually being sensible all of a sudden. Did that mean that the girl had finally figured out the definition of 'restraint'? Could this perhaps mean that Ginny would never again have to listen to Luna cracking variations of the same damn joke for a week straight?
"And I don't quite see how he'd be any use as a sex toy if he kept his clothes on." Luna finished, tapping her chin thoughtfully with a finger.
Ginny made a groan of crushed dreams.
She really should've known better.
XXX The Shire (Bilbo) XXX
Bilbo suppressed his mirth as well as he could, but a small chuckle still made it past his lips.
He never would've imagined it, and Hamfast was despairing at how it could ever have happened, but it seemed as if Neville Longbottom and his heavily disturbing plants had actually become rather popular.
Bilbo personally believed that this was in no small part due to how the flowers worked wonders with keeping Lobelia and her ilk out of his hair.
No hobbit worth their salt would refuse a guest, and to imagine doing so would be the height of impropriety. But the idea of having certain guests not dropping by to visit... well, that had its attractions to anyone.
It wasn't so much that hobbits would be afraid of walking into their homes, as it was that no hobbit would willingly grace the garden in order to sneak peeks through their windows. And that nobody wanted to be left standing outside of an un-opening door for too long, when the plants were slowly making their way towards them.
Yes, they weren't exactly likely to hurt anyone – Bilbo should know, he'd become rather fond of the plants and could sometimes be seen eating picnics in his own garden – but they had a tendency to creep up on the unsuspecting in a way that could startle them rather badly.
So they worked as a much better deterrent than rosebushes, whose thorns could only do so much against a determined hobbit's attempts to peer inside places that they should keep their nosy noses out of. The plants weren't perfect protectors, and would certainly not stand up to a hobbit with an ax, but no hobbit would be so horribly rude as to damage another one's garden.
Thus, it really shouldn't have been as surprising as both himself and Hamfast had found it, when they realized that people were willing to pay quite a tidy sum of money to Neville in order to acquire the plants for their own gardens.
Bilbo smiled. It certainly didn't hurt that the flowers were quite pretty to look at when they bloomed.
XXX Mirkwood (Ginny) XXX
"I aimed to miss." Legolas argued against her claim that he fired the first shot, and that that meant that she wasn't responsible for 'assaulting' him.
"What? Why would you do that? That's just stupid." Ginny frowned at him. "If you're going to shoot at someone, you should make sure you hit them. In fact, you should be making sure that they stay down."
Legolas glared at her over his broken nose. "I didn't know if using lethal force was appropriate." He argued.
Ginny made a frustrated noise. "Then don't shoot at people at all. It's very simple. If you shoot at people, they're going to assume that you're hostile towards them. So, if you do shoot at someone, never miss, because that doesn't say 'I could've hit you but decided not to' to people, it says 'I tried hitting you but I suck at this so you can probably beat me up instead'."
Legolas continued to glare at her, obviously not convinced by her extremely sensible arguments.
Ginny narrowed her eyes at his silent criticism. "Fine. Be that way. You want illogical arguments, you've got them. Hey Luna, come over here and talk to the pansy-arsed elf." Ginny called out to her friend.
It was perhaps the single most heartless thing that she could imagine doing to someone.
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Omake that was turned into a semi-awkward oneshot of sorts
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Story: [Life and Love]
Summary: Love is complicated, life is even more so. But it's probably a bit more complicated than usual, when you can't imagine separating from your twin.
Genre: Romance
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It's not so much that they're in love with each other, but rather that they're part of each other, and it feels horrifying to even begin to imagine living their own separate lives.
They can see it, how others might imagine them, with two houses right next door to each other, where they both live with their own wonderful wife and kids. To greet each other as they fetch the newspaper in the morning, grinning widely.
It sounds like the kind of life that their mother not-so-secretly hopes that they'll find for themselves.
But they don't want to live in separate houses, to live with separate kitchens, and to have to come over in order to meet what should always be right there.
So they consider getting a house to share in between them, and greeting each other in the corridors and everything is home, and that's kind of exactly what they want. But they also know that that's probably not going to be the lives that other people might want, and how would their respective girlfriends or what-not react to walking into the identical twin of their boyfriend in the shower?
It complicates things, they decide morosely.
Because they want to live together, and they know that finding a woman – let alone two of them – who wouldn't make that kind of living arrangement into a horribly awkward situation is going to be terrifyingly close to impossible.
Also, they're kind of iffy on if they want to hear each other getting lucky through the thin walls of their rooms whenever either of them forgets silencing charms.
They date girls, sure. But the more they do so, the more they begin to realize that they might very well end up spending their lives in that shared house of theirs alone. Alone and together, because anything else would just get so complicated and awkward and-... and sometimes they wonder if things wouldn't be so much easier if they were just one person, instead of two.
But they're not, and the idea of leaving, of separating, feels so wrong that it's almost a physical ache that makes them wish for the comforting misery of a truly awful hangover.
Because at least hangovers passes with time.
So when she frowns at them until they scoot over; when she locks herself in her room and misses meals until they have to break down the door and force-feed her because she's too caught up in books to remember anything else; when she wrinkles her nose at them because she spent too much of the night reading instead of sleeping and wants them to shut up; when she glares at them because she loathes pink with an irrational passion and they should stop trying to dye her hair anyway; when she laughs at their redecorating skills until her face starts turning blue; when she looks at them and hums and accidentally-on-purpose fumbles their names because she knows that correcting people about who's who is half the fun.
When all of this happens, they trade glances, and then they smile.
Because the sex is going to be so awkward it'll be unbelievable. But at least this won't screw up anything else in their lives.
They fall for the same girl, she falls for both of them, and it's even worse than hearing each other getting lucky through thin walls, but it's an awkwardness that they're allowed to share equally amongst the lot of them and that makes all the difference.
And if their mother is bound to be scandalized to high-heavens if she ever hears of it... well, it wouldn't be the first time, and it's probably not going to be the last.
They're happy, she's happy, things flow so impossibly smoothly that sometimes they wonder if it could even be real, but the sex is so hilariously awkward that they have to admit that it couldn't possibly happen in a dream. Or they would've long since woken up by now.
So they share a grin, and mumble 'good morning' from either side of the bed, and she groans and bats at them and tells them that she needs to sleep for at least another six hours, even if they know she's really just waiting for them to bribe her out from underneath the covers with breakfast and a good book.
And this too, is love.
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