Chapter One: Prologue

Title: Lord of the Forest

Rating: T

Pairings: Harry/Legolas

Warnings: Slash, mild gore, language, some angst, a touch of depression, and OOCness. A bit hard to avoid with an immortal Harry, though.

Summary: The grief after Harry's friends' deaths threatens to overcome him. With nothing and no one left, he slips into a new world, where he can start over. There he discovers he plays quite an important part... Harry/Legolas; powerful!Harry; Harry centric. Written for CasheyHooray1.00's challenge.

AN: Finally. Sorry it took so long, CasheyHooray! So, dear readers, this is for CasheyHooray's "Lord of the Forest" challenge. It's a short prologue, I might add more later, but this is all I have time for now.

DISCLAIMER:I own neither the original works (HP and LotR belong to JK Rowling and JRR Tolkien respectively) nor the plot idea (thanks again, CasheyHooray!).

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The halls of Hogwarts were lonely and still, the air stale with dust and the faint stench of old, unused places. No students wandered the corridors. The castle remained empty while survivors struggled to organize rebuilding efforts– for the time being, only one wizard took residence here. He much preferred it that way.

The sole inhabitant of Hogwarts was currently beyond reach even had anyone desired to seek him out. Hidden deep in the castle's foundations, he was slowly and steadily tracing minute runes into a ritual circle three times as wide as he was tall.

On the inner lining of the circle, a rim of black earth. On the outer edge, a thin line of white sand, soaked in a full cycle of the waxing moon. Each of the cardinal directions had a small urn filled with something absolutely definitive to him– essence of gladiolus, for strength, opals, for passion, the scale of a dragon (willingly given), for magic, and a stone from Hogwarts' walls, for the only home he had ever known.

Harry finished the last rune and sat back on his haunches. He hadn't wanted to do this on the grounds, but the ambient magic here would both fuel the ritual and absorb any backlash, should anything go wrong.

He hoped it wouldn't, but he supposed he didn't care much either way. He'd felt rather… empty, since everything had happened.

Harry closed his eyes and leaned back. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the boy he'd been once was screaming a high, wailing note for everything they'd lost, and everything they'd never had.

His dear friends, the other parts of his very self, had perished. He'd been so lost since they'd left him. It felt like parts of him had died with them. Sometimes he cursed them, when the fiercest of his demons grabbed hold of him. Why couldn't they have been just a little more careful? A little more skilled, more selfish, more logical? He always hated himself afterwards. Ron, loyal to the end, had jumped in front of an unblockable slashing curse that would have sliced Harry to ribbons. His last gasping words (he had been lying on the bloody ground and clenching Harry's hand and the only things Harry had been able to say were oh god oh god not you, anyone but you-) were I'm sorry.

It had driven Hermione mad, in the end. He wondered if she had blamed him sometimes, like he blamed them for leaving him. His poor, sweet bookworm, turned rabid by grief, blew apart a group of some fifty-odd Death Eaters with the strongest blasting curse Harry ever witnessed. The letter she left him in her will pressed against his chest from its permanent spot in his shirt pocket.

The war had been harsher to them than they had expected. No one is really ever prepared for the horrors of war, he thought grimly, they teach us that there is glory to be found there, and courage, but in the end there is only death, and the War. He couldn't go on as he was. Beloved ghosts lurked everywhere he turned, and they haunted him. The wizarding world had been his home, but the people within it were what made it that way. If he couldn't escape the memories of those he had lost, he would never be able to move on, and to live.

That's why he was doing this. This ritual– an old, powerful bit of earth magic lifted from an ancestral Black tome– was meant to take him to a new world. He didn't understand most of the theory, but anything offering a way out was a glimmering hope he was desperate to grasp.

Hopefully, the combined strength of his magical power, Hogwarts, and the conjured earth magic would be able to transport him to a new world. One where he was free.

He had no remaining ties. His affairs were settled, his few goodbyes made. He was ready. Harry stepped into the circle. The runes caught fire, and the magic of the ritual stirred, and seemed to raise an ancient, powerful head. In his mind's eye, it took the shape of a great, earthen colossus. Its eyes opened. A cycle, the germination of the seed, the felling of the great trees, the death of a lamb, the birth of a lion, a thousand eons and fifty thousand eons and he attends his own birth as the sun dies, he sees strange creatures crawl out of the sea and feels as mankind screws holes into his back and drains his lifeblood– not an eternity, but a lifetime later, but a moment later, he blinked, and the colossus's eyes were closed. He gained approval. Harry took a deep, shaky breath, and began to chant.

Magic rushed through Harry's veins, warming his blood and bringing a sense of breath-taking power and strength. With a horrid, grating shriek and a terrible crack, the Earth relinquished its hold on Harry Potter, and sent him Somewhere Else.

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Meanwhile, Somewhere Else, an echo of the first scream resounded through a deep, black forest.

Harry rolled over and groaned. He stilled for a minute to gasp for breath- his trip through the weird limbo-like dimension had felt like drowning- before shooting up into a sitting position. His hair was tangled with sticks and leaves and his face was gaunt and sunken from sleepless nights. He looked like Death.

But as he gazed around and into the living, moving undergrowth, a brokenly beautiful smile made its way onto his chapped lips, and magical energy seemed to flow once again into his bright green eyes, making them glitter as they never had in his other life.

Because, for the first time since the battle, he didn't feel haunted by ghosts of the past.

He felt alive and unburdened.

Had anyone seen him then, they would not have seen the shadow of Death about him, but rather the golden sheen of Triumph.

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Too short. Needs to be longer. Oh well.

Thanks for reading!

-MC

EDITED 3/9/18 Ohhhh boy are y'all in for a ride. Buckle up cause this is going to get a full rewrite fueled by caffeine and a desire to avoid my ochem homework. Let's go!