Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

A/N: This is an AU, set during the events in Order of the Phoenix. Also, the Lord of the Rings storyline is based on the movie version.

Chapter 1: The Time Portal

One March evening, Harry Potter and his best friend Ron Weasley were walking down a corridor to the library. Normally they didn't go there, but their other best friend, Hermione Granger, had been missing since dinner, and as they had already looked in the Gryffindor common room, they couldn't think of anywhere else she could be.

"Harry! Ron! There you are!" cried a voice. It was Ron's younger sister, Ginny. She came dashing towards them. "I've been looking for you everywhere! Hermione needs to show you something in the Room of Requirement!"

"The Room of Requirement?" asked Harry, puzzled, "What is it? Something for the DA?"

"No, it's something else. She's been working on it all this time and she said she simply had to show you! Now come on! She said to hurry; it's almost finished!"

"Are you going to even bother telling us what "it" is?" asked Ron.

"There's no time, and anyway, Hermione could explain it better than I could. So come on already!" And with that, Ginny dragged the two boys down to the Room of Requirement.

They stepped in rather cautiously. "Hermione?" asked Harry tentatively, "What'sthis all about?" Then he saw what was in there and gasped.

Inside the room looked fairly normal, except that in the center there was a golden haze that looked a lot like what Harry had run through in the maze during the Triwizard Tournament only last year. Next to it stood Hermione, whose cheeks were flushed as they normally looked when she was very excited. "Hermione?" asked Ron, "What IS that?!"

"It's a time portal!" said Hermione, "I made it myself!"

"YOU made that?!" said Harry incredulously, "But what does it do?"

"Well," replied Hermione, "if all goes well, it will take us to a different dimension!"

"Come again?" said Ron.

"It will take us to a different world!"

"There are different worlds?"

"Yes Harry! I found that out after I got that old Time-Turner. I was so fascinated by it; I decided to do a bit of background reading."

"No surprise there," Ron muttered.

Hermione ignored him. "Anyway, as soon as I found out there were other worlds not so different from our own, I thought it would be interesting to find them and see them for myself. And then last year, when you saw Voldemort come back Harry, I thought my invention, if I ever created it, would serve another purpose: We could get help when Voldemort attacks!"

"If he ever does attack."

"He will Harry, don't talk nonsense," said Hermione seriously. "Anyway, after we decided to move the DA here, you don't know how much trouble it was to hide it! Eventually, Ginny did. She walked in on me one day when I was working on it."

"Yeah, and she made me swear not to tell!"

"How come?"

"Because Ron, I was afraid it might not work. It could still go horribly wrong, even after I've made it. But I think it's safe enough that we can test it."

"Well, I'll be glad to test it," said Harry.

"Me too!" said Ron.

"Me three!" said Ginny.

"Thanks guys!" said Hermione, smiling. "I knew I could count on you! If we do go though, it should be now. If my calculations are correct, no time will have passed once we come back."

"That's wicked!" said Ron.

"Yeah, well, let's go!" she replied, and started to walk towards the portal. But just before she stepped in, the door banged open.

"What are you all doing here?" asked Fred.

"How did you know we were even here?" asked Harry.

"Now, now, young Harry. What did we tell you about wiping that map so that no one else could read it?" said George mockingly, waving the map around. Harry groaned. How could he have been so careless?!

"What is THAT?" asked Fred, pointing at the time portal.

"It's a time portal," said Hermione, and she quickly explained the whole thing to the twins. When she finished, there mouths were hanging open for a split second. Then they recovered.

"Cool!" yelled Fred.

"I want to try it!" said George. The two of them raced towards the portal.

"Wait, Fred, George, no! Stop!" cried Hermione, but it was too late. The boys were gone.

"Oh no!" said Hermione, and she raced in after them.

"Hermione! Wait!" cried Ginny.

"Ginny! Come back!" said Ron.

Before he knew it, Harry was all alone. "Oh boy," he said, "Here I come!" He ran in and was immediately sucked into a whirlwind of color. Then suddenly, he was falling from the sky, screaming before he made impact with the grass.

When he finally came to, Harry groaned and opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back, with two people bending over him. One looked unfamiliar, a little man with thick brown hair and wide blue eyes. But the other, Harry felt he had definitely seen before. "Professor Dumbledore?" he asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Dumbledore?" asked the old man slowly, "Who is Dumbledore?"

"Ohhhhh," groaned Harry, "You're not Dumbledore are you?"

"No," said the man, "I am Gandalf. Who is this Dumbledore?"

"He's…well, Hermione can explain it better than I can. Or is she still unconscious?"

"Who is Hermione?"

"She's the girl with the bushy brown hair," said Harry.

"There's no girl here."

"There's not?" said Harry. Oh no, he thought, Please don't tell me they're not here! "But there were two girls with me, and three boys! Two of them are twins, and then there's their younger brother, that's my friend Ron, and their younger sister, Ginny. They all have red hair and freckles. There's also Hermione. Please tell me they're here!" he begged.

Both men shook their heads no. "I'm all alone?" Harry asked.

"I'm afraid so," said Gandalf.

"Oh no," said Harry, "Where are they?"

"I don't know, but you'd better come with us and explain who you are. Do you think you can stand, or do you want me to carry you?"

"I'm fine," said Harry and he got up. As he looked around, he saw that he was in a green wooded area. Nearby was a wagon pulled by a horse. "Where am I, exactly, and who are you again?"

"You're in the Shire. Like I said before, my name is Gandalf. This is Frodo. He's a hobbit, in case you didn't realize."

"What's a hobbit?" asked Harry.

"They are little people. Frodo can tell you about them better than I can. Let's get in the wagon first, and then we can talk more."

So Harry climbed into the wagon, with a sinking feeling that he was in for another strange adventure. Little did he know just how strange this one would get.

A/N: Please review!! If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!