Hi!

If you're a new reader, hello and welcome to the fic!

If you've read the other version of WLP, you haven't clicked wrong and this is the new version, only that this and the next chapter are still the same as the old one as the differences really begin in Chapter 2. It's entirely up to you if you want to skip to C2 or reread these chapters again.

Either way, same old disclaimers: owns nothing except the concept and most bits of the plot line. (Mine.) Enjoy the read and please do leave a review!

Thanks and have a good day.

Harry regretted uniting the Hallows. He regretted winning the Elder Wand from Draco. He regretted opening the snitch to gain the Resurrection Stone. He also regretted the time when he had been idiot enough to want the Hallows. (But he never regretted gaining the cloak. The cloak had been Potters', long before they were called that. It had been his father's, his grandfather's, his great-grandfather's and more, passed down from father to son before the Potters were Potters. The cloak was his.)

Their combined effects were subtle but undeniable—no sign of age touched his body, even as Ginny's fiery hair became silver strands, as Hermione's face became etched with wrinkles, as Ron's joins became stiff and inflamed. Being Master of the Hallows had all but stopped his physical aging and carved out a new, eternal position in the universe. (And wasn't that funny? His role was trivial, mattering little in the grand scheme of things, created only when the Hallows were brought together by his desperate, idiot seventeen year old self, and yet once created it could not be destroyed. He gave up everything for nothing and eternity.)

When his children were gone and Teddy breathed his last, Harry gave up his wretched semblance of a normal wizarding life and turned to his Animagus form. He fell, caught the wind, and soared.

A golden eagle could be seen circling above what once was Godric's Hollow, now turned into glass skyscrapers. In Scotland, tourists pointed out the bird flying between crumbling towers and stone walls.

As a bird he was free, detached from his memories, limited only by the sky and his whims.

It was in the air that he remembered Sirius, who was tossed into Azkaban so soon after his world had shattered, hurting and angry from Pettigrew's betrayal but stayed sane even as dementors ate away any happiness and brought up every memory that caused pain and anguish, and was abruptly taken aback by his godfather's resilience.

Harry had it better. He could survive this and leave with his mind and sanity intact. He had all of time and nothing to stop him. (Nothing could stop him.)

Then the world crumbled around him.

The short version: he flew across barren land and sea and molten lava until he met life in this new world.

The long version: he could not have flown forever, and there was no place to land save molten rocks and poisonous wastelands. Death does not accept him, and Kings Cross was only for the dead, not for him, whatever he was. So as his body burned and choked, he drifted in the void between worlds, where horrors live and there is no light.

Inhale darkness exhale darkness blink darkness pain darkness burning darkness please stop darkness no darkness no darkness stop darkness why darkness darkness darkness gone.

Somewhere beyond, comprehensible only to the part of his mind that managed eternity, a greater power remoulded the world and rewrote its destiny. In themes beyond mortal minds, a new order was created and the Valar became its heralds and guardians.

Harry cannot remember this part of his life. He had been told that he was Nienna and Estë's first patient, and that shortly after Námo created the Halls of Mandos, so souls had a place to reside after their bodies could sustain them no longer.

(He's more grateful towards the Ainur than they know, but that was something he'll never speak of.)

Harry can remember, though, the moment when Aulë unveiled his new form, so similar to his Animagus form and yet countless times bigger, and when Manwë gave him the title of Wind Lord. It was the first moments of happiness—of anything, really—that he had felt for such a very long time.

Thus Gwaihir was born, and the shadows of his wings were oft seen upon the new green earth.

As to the age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, Harry solved it when he found a handful of people-sized chicks in his living area. It was not an easy task, bringing up giant sentient birds (for one thing, the appetites of huge, wingspan-larger-than-trees-are-tall eagles could not possibly be overestimated), but one day the feathered menaces grew up and became adults, seeking their own mates and having their own young. Thorondor, the largest in Harry's brood of menaces, eventually took over as king of the eyrie to serve the Breath of Arda.

Life continued.

Elves came onto the scene, bickering and separating on their long westward march. Harry watched them from afar, too preoccupied with working out his magic to be involved with the clans. The remaking of the world had changed the magic from something calm and tame into a thrumming, rampaging beast. Without the force behind them, spells were nothing more than flashy lights.

Back then, he had been loath to use the Deathstick, holly-and-phoenix-feather having been buried and burned beneath shifting continents.

So Harry did what he does best: adapt.

Between battles that broke mountains and sank whole lands, he recreated runes. Between the hubris that reshaped the earth and the final greatest alliance of the races, he completed the warding of the eyries.

With Sauron gone for little over a thousand years, Harry had grown careless. He'd flown over an orc camp without realising it, too lost in thoughts. Then the arrows came, and he crash-landed into the desert. The orcs were only too happy to have brought down a Great Eagle and came to him with the intentions of finishing the job.

They didn't.

Not directly, at least.

It was Extremely Not Fun lying out in the Harad desert, resembling a feathered pincushion, filled with enough poison to kill an Oliphaunt's lesser cousin but not enough to kill an Eagle, and unwilling to shift back to human-shapes because the arrows were going to hurt. So when a wizened old man in grey came across him and managed to remove both poison and arrows, Harry was very happy indeed. Happy enough to give Olórin-turned-Gandalf three open favours.

Let it not be said that wizards did not know when to seek help.

Years passed. Amon Lanc became Dol Guldur, Greenwood became Mirkwood.

After a particularly memorable party under the Blue Mountains, Harry was passing above Minas Tirith when he decided on a whim that he would allow the first person who found him to 'tame' him. It wasn't his best decision, but it was also extremely far from his worst. The lucky finder turned out to be a scruffy young man called Thorongil, who served Steward Ecthelion II as army captain.

Thorongil was a nice guy, great at elven medicine and inspiring trust in his men. Harry witnessed many victories by the man and provided aid whenever it was desperately needed. (Only a little aid, mind you. Nothing too big or too outrageous. Certainly he had nothing to do with the stone statues of orcs just outside the camp.) He liked to think that he had played the part of a loyal bird very well, even taking an arrow to the wing (again) (there was a lot of pain and bleeding fingers).

To everyone's surprise, Thorongil decided to leave after his astounding victory at Umbar. His human leaving, Harry concluded that his time was also up and left.

He needed a little change in scenery. He'd been to the far east once and it had seemed interesting, so that was where he headed and where he stayed for the next few decades. Then an insistent westerly wind blew him all the way back to Middle Earth and led him right onto the trails of the Nazgûl.

Holiday's over. Back to work it was.

Aaaand I'm still not satisfied by this chapter. Gah. If this one's not quite to your tastes, try the next one. It's better, I promise.

See you in the chapter after next!