Note:

This story begins 200+ years before the Lord of the Rings, diverging utterly and the focus being the rise of a witch in Middle-Earth's lowest point and her rebuilding the continent. I mean to put in considerable work into this and have it be a long-going fiction.

If the fem!Harry or whatever puts you off, give it a try. Lily is Harry in courage, good nature, daring, mental resilience; she's bold, snarky, brash, a little silly, yet kind above all. I'd argue she's more akin to Harry than most fanfictions depict him. If it's still not your thing then move on; I take constructive criticism, so long as it is explained sufficiently and something I can actually change.

First chapter is a prologue, mostly. More Q/As at the bottom.

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To Rekindle the Flame

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Chapter One

What Lies Unseen

In a fortress in Mirkwood there despaired a witch.

It was not a normal fortress, filled with knights and horses and swords and shields, nor yet an abandoned one with nothing but dust and dirt and remnants of the past. The name given to it was Dol Guldur, and darkness dwelled within.

Beneath the black stone, down in the deepest dungeon, shadowed and silent, there lay chained a source of magic unlike any before seen in Middle-Earth. Shackled and gaunt she had no longer the strength to stand nor repel the eldritch fingers of a terror unseen and unspoken, and of boundless patience. The exhaustion wrought of misery rid her mind of any clarity, and she wondered often what kind of hell this was and what she could have possibly done to deserve this.

In her haze of woe and dread there remained only a quiet fire, still burning in spite and spirit as the days blurred further and her memories darkened, but soon it should be smothered, and she become a slave of a nameless and shadowed horror. Already they made use of her, pulling from her protective magic when it burst in defense, and using the wrath of it to fuel the power and creation of things most sinister and altogether a disgrace to anything good in the world: orcs, trolls, wargs and wolves, great spiders and other beasts she had yet to learn the names of; their swords were warped and wicked, terrible to those they slew; nimble indeed were the fingers that could bind her wild magic so, for armours and instruments of war too were bespelled.

And then the Nameless Eye would turn to her, and seep into her very soul a kind of horror that shriveled her mind and tore her vocal cords. When she would wake later, she recalled nothing. The days would blur. Then the weeks, then the months. Her hope was diminished, and her sanity struggled to hold together her unstabilizing identity.

Calla Lily Potter was her name, yet the Eye wished it not so.

A siege was upon her mind, and respite would mean certain annihilation. Her body would remain, battered but alive, a vessel for the fragments of Lily and the malice of the Eye, come together to rise as another, and the world would behold a witch profane and wicked, a terror of their blackest nightmares.

Even now the orcs would falter and cower when presented to her, they and their swords; at times she recaptured authority over her magic in its frenzy, only briefly, but little would be left of the fiends and beasts butchered by the magic of her own malice. In time they learned nuance, and the threshold of pain she could endure before fire and death beset them.

Then the day came that she believed could be her last, when her will was at last broken. She was just so, so tired.

"Sûr!" said an orc. "Sûr, Lilith uth Mor!"

Lily could barely muster the strength to speak, much less lift her head to see the speaker. "That's not" — she took a breath — "my name..."

Boots sent sharp echoes across the stone — then pain streaked across her face, and she cried out, blood bursting from her lips like crushed cherries.

"Gashn tug amukh gashn-u, skessa!" The orc bent over, his face close, his breath putrid. "Agh gashn tug izubu Burz Laam!"

She gathered up the blood in her mouth, and spit it on the ground before him. He knew his limits, what would be too much, what could create magic outbursts.

"Daka lat," said Lily, the words foul on her tongue.

The orc threw his head back and laughed. It echoed through the room and into the dark hallway. Even their laughs were ugly and grating to the ears.

Then he held a stone bowl under her chin to collect her blood and said, "Uth Nazgûl ath katu."

Lily closed her eyes. If she had the strength left she would growl, cry, scream, but there was little hope in this wretched place. And none of that would ever stop these diabolical orcs or the infernal Nazgûl and their nameless master.

The orc cackled as he left. "Skriki, Lilith un Mor, skriki!" And other orcs beyond her walls laughed too, and all around echoed the words, "Skriki!" "Skriki!" "Skriki!"

Then her room was all dark again and quiet. She awaited the Nazgûl: black knights, black cloaks and black robes, the armor black, everything beneath their hoods black. Their gaze struck a gasping fear in her, and their voices made her shudder. Thoughts became only loosely coherent. Darkness gathered itself. Only evil existed.

Whatever these nine wraiths and one master were, they were ancient, sinister, something more of evil incarnate than dark wizards. Whenever the Nameless Eye came, her gut would scream, her eyes fail, her ears ring, and her courage falter. Voldemort would have been frightened.

(And how insignificant Voldemort seemed to her now.)

Whenever its presence descended, the hairs on her neck would stand and she would feel there was something in the shadows of her cell, lurking just out of sight; and if she turned her head too quickly she feared she would see it, a great and evil entity, tall and menacing, looming over her, staring without blinking.

And her will had been forged in fire, but under this terror her heart had grown faint as of late. And the flaming red of her hair was extinguished: now it was black like the deepest shadow, whence these evils must have warped themselves into existence.

Nothing of her time with Voldemort could compare to this torment. She wondered often why misery seemed so in love with her. A lifetime of blows against her and here she was in despair again, greater than ever before. She was just a normal kid not even a decade ago, unaware of magic and destiny.

At eighteen she finished a war, and now here she was dragged into another. The Hallows had opened her to an unseen realm, and from its grey curtains reached through a black hand. From the skies of Middle-earth she fell, into a world not hers, but with its own lore and history that she glimpsed only through vague hints and a touch of the mind arts.

And in the mind arts she sought refuge, forging for herself a quiet hope, until her strength was diminished, and in her wake was left only the remnants of a dying desperation. Against this rising power there was no victory, not now, not as the Nazgûl came again and the Nameless Eye bent his malice over her; and with their foul spellcraft her will was at long last broken utterly.

Then the deep dark trumpets and horns of Dol Guldur arose, and the shadow crowed. Black-hearted she became: a Hand of the Lidless Eye, wielding the greatest of sorcery the peoples of Middle-earth would ever witness.

Yet in their triumph the Nazgûl-lords and the Eye remained unaware of the thread upon which Lily's doom hung. The Deceiver he was named by some, but here now the Eye was the deceived; for in the depths of her mind she slept, beyond the darkest corner of thoughts, deep, deep, deep in naught but shadows of memories.

Note:

Few things to address:

- Why fem!Harry and not another female character? Because Harry's story and life works the best for the story I want to tell, by far. I don't care to write other characters. I like Harry and I like female protagonists. Bite me.

- I will be following the books. Some movie aspects may play a role. Sauron in the books had a body by the time the Hobbit happened, and he does have a body here, but it is weak from his effort in pulling Lily into his world.

- And not that it's much important, but here are the translations for the Black Speech parts:

Lilith uth Mor = Lilith the Black

Gashn tug amukh gashn-u, skessa! = Speak only when spoken to, woman!

Agh gashn tug izubu Burz Laam! = And speak only our Dark Tongue!

Daka lat = Kill you

Uth Nazgûl ath katu = The Nazul are here

Skriki, Lilith un Mor, skriki = Scream, Lilith the Black, scream!