A/N: Thank you for all the reviews, they keep me going! Sorry for the long hiatus, I have had a lot of exams and my muse was nowhere to be seen. As ever, I do not either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Please Read & Review.

Reply to Go home J.K. you witch: I never compared HP to LOTR, merely put the two worlds together. It's a bit of fun, live with it, I don't care if you hate JK, please judge the story on its own merits. It's in the crossover section for a reason. Thanks for the review.

RE: The point on the number of wizards. Dumbledore was stating the actual number of active wizards, not general magic users of which there are admittedly many.

Aragorn stood in the late evening shadows, watching Harry and Boromir talk amiably and then walk into the feasting hall. Aragorn sighed almost imperceptibly. He liked the Boromir, as he had liked Boromir's father, Denethor when he had served Gondor and Rohan under the assumed name of Thorongil. The man was passionate about Gondor and its people, any fool could see that, stiffly honourable to from head to toe.

Just as any fool could see that Boromir would not take Aragorn attempting to bring about his destiny very well, considering that Aragorn had been most remiss in his duty to protect Gondor all those years he had spent wandering in the wild, something that Aragorn suspected himself in his more melancholic moments.

As for Harry, Aragorn was still unsure of how powerful he was, how old he was, where precisely he was from. Harry had been evasive about all three. Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond almost certainly knew, as might King Theoden of Rohan, whose lands for some reason Harry visited frequently, whenever he was not hunting Ringwraith's, and as the young man had once grimly described it on one of the few occasions he actually chose to speak, "Putting the fear of me into them."

For some reason Aragorn could not fathom, the man openly sought them, hunting them with such fervour that it made Aragorn wonder if the experiences in Harry's past had driven him slightly mad.

Indeed, he had long since become accustomed to hearing tales half whispered around fires of an evening, strange, furtively told stories, told as if they expected the main character to appear beside them, of a tall young man with unworldly cold green eyes hunting the terrors of the night, whether they be orc, troll or wraith.

Many Young drunks had tried to test their strength against him and all were found in a gibbering heap come morning, often with a couple of broken bones as a warning. Once, they said, agents of Mordor had incited a mob to attack him in his bedchamber when he was staying in an inn one night.

Screams and mysterious flashes of red light filled the night, and dawn shed its light upon the mob, half of whom were out cold, the other half hit by the first halves haphazardly thrown weapons. The innkeeper found a bag of gold coins and a politely scrawled note of apology attached to one of the more unfortunate men. When he returned two months later, it was to the delight of an apologetic populace who had been plagued by Wargs. When they tried to apologize, he nodded a couple of times, then swept off without a word.

Young ladies who tried to flirt with him were invariably met with a kind smile and a polite rebuttal, hinting that he had a sweetheart at home, and those bold enough, not to mention foolish enough, to continue flirting were met with colder and colder rebuttals, though interestingly enough it was very rare that he would actually harm a lady, and it was rumoured, usually whenever she said something along the lines of, 'your sweetheart, whoever she is, doesn't deserve someone like you', and the injury only extended to a brief outbreak of hives.

Aragorn himself had had similar problems, though less regularly, the unkind and ill-founded rumours that surrounded the rangers doing their work, though when the situation arose, he usually excused himself before it got out of hand.

The Wizard in the Shadows, or The Black Istar or The Shadowy Wizard or indeed any number of names that he picked up, the former being the most common, on the other hand, was notorious for taking violent exception to any attempt to displace him from his beer while he was drinking it.

Aragorn remembered one time when he had witnessed Harry conduct a bar fight with his tankard in one hand, always meticulously balanced so not a drop fell out, and that wand of his in the other. While Harry was not a heavy drinker, he guarded what drink he did have with an unusual obsession. Having seen Gandalf exhibit similar behaviour when pipe weed was involved, Aragorn put it down to a general all-pervading wizarding strangeness.

For these reasons and many others he was rumoured to be a greater spirit or a Maia, another Wizard sent to help against the forces of darkness, something which villagers throughout Arda were grateful for. However, this didn't mean they had to like him very much, especially those who had been on the wrong end of his wrath. Unlike Gandalf, he was not one who encouraged conversation. When engaged in conversation, he answered shortly but politely and soon excused himself, with a slightly wistful and mournful expression as if he missed the conversations he had had with long lost friends.

As Aragorn was brooding on this subject, he noticed Legolas had come to stand beside him, using the knack of elves to be infuriatingly quiet with very little effort.

"You were thinking of Harry." Legolas said a statement not a question.

Aragorn inclined his head in acknowledgement.

Legolas continued, "You also wonder no doubt, why he hunts the Nine with such fervour."

This astonished Aragorn, and as he turned to Legolas who caught his expression of utter disbelief and laughed, "Nay Estel, I did not read your mind, for we all wonder why he acts as he does. I once spoke to him and he was most reticent on the subject, but I managed to get him to tell me that he had met similar creatures, Dee-meant-ors he called them, weaker but far more common, that he hated even more than I and my kin hate the yrch. When I asked him he mumbled something about his guardian and bad memories and swept off. Truly, I have never seen him speak as much as he did just now."

Legolas paused then asked, "Maybe Boromir will bring the man he once was to the fore?"

Aragorn shrugged and said, "We can only hope." Then he asked, "When have you spoken with him? When he is not here, I believe he is either in the wilds of the North, Lorien or most often, Rohan, but never Mirkwood." Aragorn paused and added wryly, "I believe he doesn't like spiders much."

Legolas half smiled and stared at the setting sun for a while, then said, "3 years ago, he pursued one of the Nine into Mirkwood as it was fleeing towards DolGuldur."

He paused for a moment, as if wondering at how a young edain, albeit a powerful one, could force a Nazgul to flee in outright terror, then continued his tale.

"He was incautious and reckless, getting too close to it and it ran him through the shoulder with its sword. He chased it away with a silver apparition before collapsing. A patrol had been watching from a distance and had been running to assist, and brought him to the infirmary. He spent many weeks healing, for the wound was poisoned, though he managed to remove much of the poison with a spell, but enough remained to slow his healing. I spoke with him many times while he was there, and was very polite in thanking us for helping him." Legolas grinned "He is also one of the few people I have ever seen who were not intimidated by my father."

"I have heard that very little intimidates him these days. He throws himself into war with an almost reckless enthusiasm, and does not fear the Nine, for any fear he had turned into hatred long ago."

"Thankfully the hatred has not totally consumed him." Legolas said, looking troubled as if there was something else on his mind.

"What else is there Legolas?" Aragorn asked curiously. Legolas responded by glancing around to make sure no one could hear, then spoke quietly, "Shortly after I arrived here, Mithrandir told me of his imprisonment in Isengard. He told me that deep in its dungeons there was another prisoner, one who could and did shift his shape into that of a large black dog. He said that this wizard matched Harry's description of his guardian."

"Elbereth!" Aragorn exclaimed. "Are you certain Legolas?"

Legolas nodded. "Yes. He said he heard the man scream Harry's name as he was taken past. Apparently Saruman was trying to learn how to control the sort of power Harry wields, by torturing the man into revealing the secrets of his power. Gandalf said he could hear the man's mind continually screaming for help."

Aragorn bowed his head. Who knew how such news would affect his young friend? For all his power and battle experience, he was still young, and such a blow could break him, especially, considering Harry's character, his guilt over not finding him sooner. And what might come out of the wreckage Aragorn shuddered to think.

The Fellowship sent out in the soft grey light of the early morning, the hobbits disguising yawns as the company was addressed by Elrond and set on its way. Harry and Boromir brought up the rear, discreetly taking the hobbit's packs when they were flagging to let them recover, despite their impressive stoicism and determination. Aragorn and Gandalf led the way, occasionally pausing to confer, and speaking in hushed tones. This annoyed Boromir, though you would not tell unless you looked carefully, noting the narrowed eyes and some protruding veins in his temple.

After a particularly long conversation, Boromir opened his mouth to say something loud and rude, likely the Middle Earth equivalent of "Do the rest of us not exist or something?", when Harry, recognizing the ominous and obvious signs from his long friendship with Ron, elbowed him hard in stomach. As Boromir wheezed and staggered, Harry took his weight, bringing Boromir's ear close to his mouth and whispered, "Calm down Boromir, the presence of the Ring makes all of us short tempered. To divide and conquer is its method. I've seen it before, in something much the same yet thankfully much weaker, and it very nearly killed me. I am equally certain that Aragorn and Gandalf have good reasons for what they do."

Boromir hesitated, and then nodded reluctantly, as Gandalf turned and raised his impressive eyebrows in mute enquiry only to be met by a pair of carefully blank faces. Gandalf turned away and shared a brief look with Aragorn whose expression had taken a grim cast. The Ring was making its presence felt.

Sirius was in agony. This wasn't Azkaban, where he could at least focus on the fact he was innocent. This was physical torture of the most depraved kind that even the death eaters- no scratch that, the sort of torture that even death eaters minus Bellatrix would hesitate before performing.

And all the time, there was that silky voice in the back of his mind, smoother than the smoothest honey, offering to release him from his torment, if he gave up the secrets of his magic. Unfortunately, the mysterious voice hadn't counted on two things. 1) Sirius had pretty good mental defences, otherwise he would never have been able to prank Snivellus and 2) He was a Gryffindor, and by default, stubborn as a mule. Neither, however, precluded him from physically and mentally screaming in agony when one of his torturers stroked a red hot blade down his bleeding and sensitive back.

"HARRY!" The scream was heard for miles around, birds flew from the trees and animals bolted, their minds crazed with abject terror. Many miles away, Eomer was leading a patrol, and heard it in his mind, the shock of it nearly causing him to fall off his horse which was snorting and making a few small anxious steps. Isengard grows too dangerous, he thought as he calmed his horse, and he recognised the name amidst the nameless scream. He had to warn the King, and his enigmatic young friend whose name it was that had been screamed. He turned the patrol about and made with all haste for Edoras.