AN: It's been a while, but this has been an all consuming project. Brief note before we begin- this is set entirely in Middle Earth, is fem!Harry, and draws heavily from Lord of the Rings Online to flesh out Arnor/the North Kingdom. More book-compliant than movie compliant beyond that. Also Master of Death!Harry.

Chapter updates are aiming for weekly, and many thanks to my beta, NicholasFlamelFan, who has been instrumental in getting this out of my WIP folder and out into the world!

Chapter One:

"I think I'm going into Bree today."

"Mistress went last week," Kreacher commented from where he was washing the breakfast dishes and supervising the bread rising on the corner of the table. "Mistress doesn't have anything to sell."

Holly looked at the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. She had never managed to divine anything from them, not the way Trelawney always harped on about, but she had learned to trust her instincts and her dreams, and both of them were telling her to go to Bree that evening. "I'll just go for the evening, catch up on the news with Barliman. If I get the chores done early, I can probably make it with plenty of time, especially if I don't take the wagon."

"Mistress should know it's going to rain tonight," the house elf reminded her as the dishes shook off the excess water before the drying towel went to work. With a snap of his fingers, the milk pans floated gently off the shelf in the cool cupboard above the washbasin and he started skimming the cream off the surface.

With a smile, Holly floated her tea cup over to the washbasin and stood from the table. "I'll make sure to move the flock into the pen with the shed before I go then."

Kreacher didn't say anything more, but she heard him harrumph in reluctant approval. Pausing at the door, she briefly debated over whether or not she needed a cloak, but decided against it. It was almost oppressively hot, even for the end of September, and it probably meant Kreacher was right in claiming it was going to rain at night.

By the time she had herded her flock of sheep into the pen nearest the house, with its long, open shed to provide shelter from storms, it was nearly noon. Ignoring her hunger, she hurried through securing her garden against the weather, breaking in the early afternoon once everything was battened down.

"You'll be fine here tonight?" she asked as she bolted the sandwiches Kreacher had kept for her. "Remember, you can always come and get me if something goes wrong."

"Kreacher thinks Mistress forgets Kreacher has been alive longer than Mistress," the old elf muttered, topping up her cup of tea. "Kreacher is perfectly capable of tending a house like this."

Hiding her grin behind her hand, Holly nodded solemnly. "Of course," she replied. "How could I forget Kreacher's long service to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black?"

As the elf preened, Holly left him to clear her dishes and slipped into her bedroom to pack the few things she might need. Extra clothing, for if she was forced to spend the night in town, the stockings she was working to finish before winter came...enough money to cover any purchases she might make, all of it packed easily into her saddlebags, giving her plenty of room if something in the market caught her eye.

"I'm off now," she announced, rejoining Kracher in the front room. "Anything special you might want from the market?"

"Kreacher heard Mistress saying she wanted more colors," the elf replied as he sat down to work at the loom in the corner. "For the cloth."

"I could see if they've got any dye," she mused, glancing out the window at the approaching clouds and shrugging on her cloak. It would be stuffy, but she'd have to ride reasonably hard to reach the town by early evening with enough time to browse the market before the vendors started closing up shop. "Have a good evening Kreacher."

It was easy to saddle her riding horse, since she had put him in the pen with the sheep while she finished her pre-storm chores around her small farm. Scratching Snuffles, her loyal sheepdog, behind the ears before she mounted up, Holly left what had become her home and headed for Bree.

"Can I trade you a night's work for a spot in your stables Barliman?" she asked over the chatter of the early evening crowd and the drum of the rain on the roof above.

The innkeeper beamed at her as he filled a round of mugs. "Bless your heart Holly, I'm nearly overrun. This storm's keeping everyone in town, and it's just me and Nob tonight. Need a place for that horse of yours too?"

"If you've got room to spare." Holly reached for the apron hanging on the hook behind the bar. It was one of Barliman's spares, and frankly swamped her, but it was better than the hobbit sized ones the rest of the regular staff it tightly around her waist, she picked up the tray Barliman had finished filling and stepped out from behind the bar.

"I'll have Bob put your horse up for the night then," he said, pointing out the table waiting for her tray. "You left him out there?"

"I was hoping you'd need me," she replied, lifting the tray above the head of a patron who brushed by her in a rush. "But Bob took him in out of the rain, so it should be just a matter of stabling him."

It was easy to fall into the routine in the common room of the inn. Holly had worked there before, helping out after a long day at the market in exchange for room and board, and she liked Barliman. He reminded her of Hagrid, somewhat so in stature, but more so in character. She did raise an eyebrow at the sight of the Ranger occupying the back corner of the common room, but chose not to make a big deal of it. Usually the dunedain didn't come into Bree proper, choosing instead to stop at Saeradan's cabin for news, or meeting her on the edge of the Midgewater Marshes. To see one in Barliman's common room, even stowed away in the corner like this one was, it was strange.

"That 'un's Strider, 'cause of his longshanks," Barliman grunted when she asked after the Ranger as they filled tankards behind the bar. "Decent sort, I suppose. Never makes any trouble. Why, has he given you problems?"

"No, no, he just doesn't seem like our usual fare," she answered with a laugh, waving away his concern as she lifted her refilled tray. "What can I say? I'm just a bit nosy about newcomers."

Barliman laughed, and she moved through the common room, distributing orders. The innkeeper had been right; the inn was full up for the night. Holly recognized a number of merchants from the market, likely driven indoors by the rain, as well as townsfolk, who had followed the merchants likely hoping for news or stories, and a handful of men that she suspected had come up the Greenway from the south that had an unsavory air. Taking note of their numbers and faces, and who they were conversing with, she started planning her ride up to Saeradan's cabin with news when she could get away from her work on the farm.

More and more men had come up the Greenway from the south, their very presence causing friction amongst those who lived in and around Bree. Part of it was that they were simply outsiders in a very insular community, but beyond that, they showed no interest in cooperating and becoming part of that community. Already Amdir, and the other dunedain posted in Southern Bree-Land, had cautiously sorted through some conflicts, careful not to let the Bree-folk know exactly how much they had intervened on their behalf.

While the Bree-folk were not openly antagonistic, it was clear that they thought very little of the dunedain, unaware of how much northern blood was shed in their defense. However, when it came to the southern strangers, the dunedain were practically neighbors, at least in the estimation of most residents.

The door swung open as she passed it, admitting a cluster of bedraggled hobbits. Lifting her tray over their heads, she sidestepped them quickly, looking for Barliman and tipping her head towards the new party. Holly only caught snippets of their conversation with Barliman, but she noted the strange accents and Barliman's comment about the Shire. She'd never been that far west, but she knew enough about the region to know that it was inhabited by hobbits who rarely stepped outside its borders. Once or twice in the years she'd been settled in Bree-land, she'd come across a hobbit claiming to be from Buckland, on the eastern shores of the Brandywine River, but not any from inside the Shire.

Strider seemed very interested in the hobbits, and she noticed him arguing with Barliman about something in a low voice. When she and the innkeeper were next behind the counter, she asked what that had been about.

"He wanted to speak with those hobbits, but I wouldn't have none of it," the man declared quietly, preparing a tray for the group's supper. "Gentle-hobbits, come up out of the Shire, they know nothing about folk like him that scrap around in the wilderness. Likely they're out on a pleasure stroll or summat, and don't need to be bothered by the likes of him. But there's summat about that one hobbit, Underhill, that makes me think of something I've forgotten…"

Nob came to take the tray away, and Holly ventured back out into the common room from behind the bar, keeping an eye on the dunadan in the corner. They usually didn't come into Bree, they usually paid little attention to hobbits, except to help in keeping the borders of the Shire secure, yet here one was, lurking at the Pony, trying to get an audience with a quartet of hobbits come up from the Shire.

Her instincts were telling her that something big was happening, and she didn't like it.

Barliman seemed to share her sentiment, and when they met again behind the bar, his face showed unusual concern. "There's summat odd going on, make no mistake," he murmured as they filled their orders. "First those black men, now hobbits coming out of the Shire, and Strider turning up and deciding to get all nosy. All we need is Gandalf…Gandalf, now that's what I'd forgotten. I'll have to see if I can't dig that up…"

"Black men?" Holly asked, trying to fish for more information. The innkeeper was usually willing to recite chapter and verse on the goings-on in Bree, but he was being surprisingly tight-lipped.

"Ah, summat's looking out for you, they came down the Greenway, according to what I've heard. They were in town...Monday. Nob comes running in, all in a tizzy, saying some strange black men are at the gate, looking for a hobbit called Baggins. I sent 'em straight on, wouldn't have none of them folk here with good people, they gave me the shivers. But they've been up and down, east to west, all the way up into Archet, and out towards Buckland. Nasty business. I'll be right glad when we stop getting strange folk coming from hither and yon."

He bustled off, leaving Holly to man the taps for a while as she mulled over the information he had given her.

There wasn't a lot of racial variation amongst the Bree-folk, so it could have been possible that Barliman's black man could have been just a dark skinned man, but the way he said it suggested that black was less a description of the man's skin color and more a comment on his character. If he came down the Greenway, the man had to have passed both Saeradan's cabin and her own farm without being noticed, or without approaching them, which suggested that he was not coming from the dunedain encamped in the North Downs.

The only other option was that he came from Angmar, and that was enough to put her on edge.

Her feeling of uneasiness grew as the night wore on and three of the four hobbits from the Shire entered the common room. They were received jovially enough, practically adopted by the local hobbits, but Mr. Underhill seemed uneasy, and Strider's focus was fixed on him.

She wanted to throw a tankard at the hobbit when he eventually ventured over to Strider's corner. Strider was probably not a danger, since the dunedain were committed to protection and defense, not destruction, but most of the time they left the hobbits alone and committed themselves to pushing back the enemy. Either way, it was foolish and entirely Gryffindor of the hobbit to march right over to the man and start a conversation.

They spoke briefly, and then Mr. Underhill jumped up onto a table and began a rousing song, to much applause and many calls for an encore. Holly watched, wishing she could cause some sort of fuss without it looking intentional, just something to distract attention from the hobbit. Her instincts were screaming that something was about to happen, that there was something wrong in the common room, and it was starting to drive her mad, like an itch left unscratched.

When the feeling peaked, the hobbit slipped on a tray of drinks that Barliman had carried over at the beginning of the hobbit's performance, and sent the entire contents, and himself along with it, to the floor. Snatching up a dishrag, Holly moved to go clean the mess, but before she could move more than a step, she swayed sideways, feeling as if she'd been hit by a hammer. Something, something powerful, was magically active in the common room, and she'd bet every penny to her name that Underhill was responsible, and this was what she'd been picking up on ever since she'd woken up that morning.

Gathering herself, she headed for the spot of the incident, only to find Underhill nowhere in sight and his companions suddenly shunned by all and sundry. Mopping up the spilled ale and gathering the tankards, she braced herself using her hand, trying to feel for the source of the magical disturbance she had felt.

To her displeasure, it felt rotten, fetid magic like slime against her senses. Even Number Twelve, when she had first set to cleaning it out after the war, hadn't felt like this. Only the drawing room cabinet had felt even remotely similar…

A frisson of ice ran down her spine. That cabinet had been where Kreacher had stored the locket horcrux. After years of the horcrux's absence, not much remained in the way of magical traces, but she had been able to sense it, even before she had learned to properly sense magic. This felt like that cabinet, but stronger.

Before she could get a proper lock on its location, the magical trace...stopped. Frowning, she noticed that most of the strange southerners had departed, and Underhill was once again in the corner of the common room occupied by Strider.

Barliman bustled over, blocking her view of the pair. "I think we're just about done for the night," he said to the remaining crowd at large, and the crowd murmured its agreement. Slowly, in small groups or pairs, they wandered out, either to their homes, or to their rooms. Holly hurried through wiping down the tables and washing the pile of tankards, wishing she had the convenience of her enchanted dish tub from home to help speed the process along. Barliman had disappeared after the last patron had left the common room, so there was no way she could beg off for a breath of fresh air. At some point in the evening, the rain had stopped, and it seemed like a pleasant early fall night.

A horcrux, she thought, scrubbing tankards furiously and upending them on the shelf to dry. All the years I've been in these lands, and the first magical artifact I come across is a horcrux.

Finally, Barliman returned, looking ashen pale under the usual ruddy hue of his skin. "I know you meant to bed down outside in the loft," he said as he barred the main door with short, jerky movements, "but I think it'd be best if you stayed in here for the night. There's a bit o' space up in the attic, if you don't mind, or you could kip down here on one of the benches."

"Something wrong, Barliman?" Holly asked, wondering what he could have heard or seen to frighten him like this.

"Mr. Brandybuck was attacked taking a walk outside," the innkeeper said hoarsely, pushing a heavy table up against the door. "And there's talk of those black men again. Best you stay indoors, and close to other folks."

"Brandybuck? One of the hobbits with Mr. Underhill?"

"That's th' one," he agreed, mopping his brow with a corner of his apron. "Seems like there's trouble about, and they're well in the middle of it."

He shooed her off to bed, and Holly hung up her borrowed apron and picked up her saddlebags and cloak from where she had left them behind the bar. Saying her goodnights to Barliman, who was retiring to his own quarters off the kitchen, she headed for the guest rooms.

On her way, she bumped into Nob, who was looking grimly cheerful. "I hear you're to stay the night at the Pony," the hobbit said with a smile. "It's a shame; we've a set of hobbit size rooms vacant that you could've used, but only since it's not safe for 'em to be used tonight, at least according to that Strider."

"The Shire hobbits aren't in their rooms?" Holly asked, ignoring his quip about her height. Just because she was shorter than most, even here, didn't mean she was hobbit height.

"They're in with the Ranger," Nob confided lowly, after checking to make sure they were alone. "According to Mr. Butterbur, there's dark folk about, and it's best that Mr. Underhill ain't where he was planning on being tonight. Brr," he shivered. "An' with what happened to Mr. Brandybuck, lying out on the cobblestones like he was, I don't blame them for being a bit unnerved, no I don't. Strider seems spooky, but he's always been decent sort to us hobbits, when he deals with us at all."

Bidding him a goodnight, Holly headed further towards the guest quarters, but making sure she headed for the man sized hallway, instead of the hobbit rooms she had intended to visit. While Barliman had been out, leaving her with the washing up, she had stolen a look at the guest ledger to see where Strider was, in case she needed to speak with him later.

Arriving at the door, tucked away at the far side of the building, she rapped lightly, not wanting to alert any of the other guests to her presence. When no answer came, she rapped again, slightly louder.

This time, she heard a chair shift, and the door opened a crack. Strider glanced out at her. "No thank you," he said, preparing to close the door, but she wedged her foot in the gap between the door and frame and refused to let him shut it in her face. "I am not interested in company for the night," he repeated more firmly, applying pressure on the door, but she refused to remove her foot.

"I'm not here for you," she murmured quietly, ignoring his insinuation that she had come to his room to offer to warm his bed. He was certainly attractive enough, but she wasn't looking for a partner right now. "I'm here for the company you already have. I need to speak with Mr. Underhill."

"There's no Underhill here," the man said flatly. "You have the wrong room. Try the hobbit wing."

Sighing, she played her trump card. "Somewhere in the north is hid/A hope for all to see."

He stared at her for a long moment, and sighed. Muttering something about obscure poetry, he opened the door just enough for her to slip inside.

The hobbits were bedded down by the fire, and she headed straight for Underhill, but a firm grip on her arm prevented her from taking more than a few steps into the room. "Not so quickly," Strider said shortly, pulling her back towards the door, which he had closed, and placed a chair against. Motioning her towards the chair, he refused to let her go until she sat down. "Where did that verse come from?"

"Two trees begat three gems/Sky, fire, sea/The choice of a single man/Birthed a line of kings/May the seven stars yet shine/Above the white tree." The words rolled off her tongue easily; she'd been drilled in them until she could recite the verse at the drop of a hat. They were used between the dunedain in the North Downs to establish identity, and she'd used it fairly often, riding between outposts as a messenger.

"How did you learn it?" Strider asked, eyes fixed on her, even as the hobbits shifted and sat up behind him.

"From my handler," she said shortly, not willing to possibly compromise the hidden outpost in the North Downs. "You can confirm my identity with Saeradan, Amdir, or Mundol."

Strider looked grimmer than before. "Amdir and Mundol are dead."

"Dead?" she whispered. She had checked in with Mundol a week before, since Amdir was supposed to be out on an errand. He and the other dunedain at the outpost near the Midgewater Pass were healthy and the outpost undiscovered. "How?"

"That's not your concern at the moment," Strider motioned the hobbits to stay back as one of them tried to venture forward. "How do you know them?"

She grimaced, knowing that she'd have to give up her cover story, at least to the occupants of the room. Stalling for a moment, she got her hand placed against the door and wove a silencing charm around the room. Once she was certain she couldn't be overheard, she looked at the man standing in front of her and said: "I rode messages between encampments of the Dunedain for a time. They called me Thuri."

He looked startled. "A woman? No, never mind that. I thought Thuri had been killed in the fields of Fornost?"

"Angmar was starting to pay too much attention to me," Holly admitted with a grimace. "They knew that messages were getting passed between the garrisons in Evendim and the North Downs, and started to hunt down anyone riding across the Fields with a particular vengeance. Combining that with the fact that I'd made a bit of a name for myself further north meant that I had to disappear for a while. I was relocated to Bree-land, to help keep watch on things here."

"But you're not one of the dunedain?" Strider asked, eyes sweeping over her frame.

"No, I'm not of the blood of Numenor," she said with a roll of her eyes. "It's obvious, what with my height. I worked as a go-between for the northern clansmen and the dunedain before I had to move south."

He seemed as if he had more questions for her, but her patience was wearing thin. "I need to speak with Underhill. You've verified my identity, now do you trust me?"

"Thuri was reported dead in the Fields," Strider repeated firmly. "You could very well be an imposter, sent by the Enemy to seek the hobbits. If you truly are who you say you are, you can bring word from your handler to Imladris. Someone there will be able to verify what you say, and the folk who dwell in Imladris will be able to get a message to me."

"Well, I had best be off then," Holly snapped, moving to rise from the chair, but Strider's hand on her shoulder pushed her back down into it. "What now?"

"You can leave in the morning," Strider said pleasantly, though his eyes were cool. "In the meantime, I prefer to have you where I can keep my eyes on you. Why don't you sleep over on the bed, and the four of you can move over to the other side of the fireplace?"

The hobbits shuffled over, placing the fireplace between them and the bed, and Holly rolled her eyes and headed for the bed. Ignoring the bedding already on it, she draped her saddlebags over the footboard and wrapped herself in her cloak, propping herself up against the wall. Pointedly, she didn't take her boots off, and Strider studied her for a long moment before taking her former place in the chair. Ignoring him, and the hobbits, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. Between her time in the north, and all the way back to the Voldemort War, she had learned how to sleep when she could, regardless of the circumstances.

When she woke in the morning, the hobbits were slowly waking and Strider was still sitting in the chair, looking as if he'd been there all night. Picking up her saddlebags, and fastening her cloak around her, Holly moved to stand in front of him. "Might I leave now? It's a long ride to the North Downs."

Silently, he moved aside, turning his attention to the hobbits clustered in the corner. Irritated by the delay, and his overprotectiveness of Underhill, she headed for the common room.

Barlimin was already there, getting things ready for the morning service, looking shaken. "The stable doors were opened during the night," he told her lowly as Holly approached the bar. "All the beasts stabled inside are gone, even yours."

If she hadn't been in Strider's room, she might have suspected him of setting the horses loose during the night in an attempt to buy himself some time. As it was, she knew she slept lightly enough to hear if he had tried to leave the room, and nothing had woken her during the night. Running her hand through her hair, still pinned up into its bun, but parts were beginning to escape after the long night, Holly sighed in exasperation. She would have a long walk back to the farm, and a ride made longer by the fact that the lost horse was her riding mount, not the horse she had to haul her wagon.

"Your ponies are missing," Barliman informed a group that had come into the common room behind her, and Holly turned to see Strider and the four hobbits enter the room. The hobbits broke out into low chatter behind the man, and the Ranger scowled.

"We'll need a beast for the provisions at the very least; the paths I mean to walk would not be faster on pony."

"You won't find many beasts for sale in Bree," the innkeeper said mournfully. "And what there is, will be mighty expensive after a night like tonight."

"I've got a spare mount back on my farm," Holly offered impulsively, already regretting it. She would have to walk even further to Saeradan's cabin to see if she couldn't borrow his mount to make the ride to Esteldin. "If you're willing to walk up the Greenway a bit, you're welcome to him."

Strider eyed her warily, but the hobbits seemed eager. Barliman was beaming at her, and Holly was stuck trying to work out why she had even made the offer in the first place. Glancing at Underhill, she wished Strider had allowed her to question him, but she suspected that they were heading for Rivendell, and from what she had heard, it was one of the last great repositories of knowledge. Hopefully, if the hobbit was truly carrying a horcrux, they would be able to at least stave off any attempts at possession until she got there. In that case, it was in her best interest to get him there quickly, since she had no idea how long it would take her to track down Halbarad, who was more often in and out of Esteldin as need demanded.

"Well, you'd best be off then," Barliman said cheerfully, smiling at them. "I'll send a runner if your horse comes back Holly. Don't fret, he can't have gone too far."

"You can stock up on supplies at my farm as well," Holly muttered to Strider as they headed for the inn's door, no longer barred and blocked by a heavy table. "If I'm going up north, you'll have more need of things than me."

"And this is supposed to make me trust you more?" he replied as they headed through the west gate, the hobbits trailing behind them like ducklings.

"If I'm reading you right, the only thing that will make me trust you is assurances from my handler, and I can't get those without going north," she retorted, emphasizing the word as he had the night previously. "But I have a vested interest in getting Underhill to Imladris, so chalk it up to me wanting to make sure he actually gets there."

"What's your interest in the hobbit?"

"If you're not willing to share, I'm not willing to share," she said primly, and they walked up the Greenway in silence. The hobbits grizzled a bit about breakfast, but Strider passed back apples and told them that they wouldn't be stopping until they had reached the farm.

Kreacher must have let the sheep out to the larger pasture that morning, because they weren't in the pen with the shed. He was thankfully out of sight for the moment, but Snuffles came bounding up, stopping short and growling at Strider and the hobbits until she signalled they were friends. Then he came in for pets and ear scratches, first from her, then from the hobbits, before warily accepting them from Strider.

"Make a list of what you need in the way of supplies while I go find Pebbles," she announced, and the hobbits immediately camped out by the side of the sheep shed, opening their packs and talking about breakfast, all while Strider leaned disapprovingly against the fence.