AN: Prompted by Harry Potter and the (insert favorite book here). While Harry Potter and the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would have been funny, I had to go with a long time favorite of mine, Hollow Kingdom by Clare Dunkle.

Important! This story features mythical races that are very different from the Harry Potter concepts for them. Don't let the names of the races skew your thoughts on how characters look. Most people will remain similar to their HP!Cannon appearance, but not all. If there is a significant difference in appearance it will be described in the story.

Warnings: Extreme AU, OOCness, Potential for odd pairings, Slash (potential for M but could forever remain T. Depends on the wants of the readers and whether or not I can write an M scene.)

Pairings: Main is LVTR/HP, Secondary and mainly implied LL/NL, Many others I will just choose cannon couples should I need a couple though if you leave a review with a pairing, I might show it happening in the background or use it for a needed couple. A few slash couples are okay though a majority have to be het as reproduction is a big point of the original work.

"It's so nice to see new faces at Hallow Hill, isn't it, Padma?"

Parvati Patil beamed across the dinner table at her great-niece and nephew. Harry gave a small smile and Luna smiled dreamily back. The two were grateful to find a friendly face at the end of their journey. It had been a hard two months. Their parents had died suddenly. By scrupulously legal tradition, their house and lands near Coventry now belonged to their father's nephew, the next adult male relative, and this man had refused to become their guardian. The Hallow Hill estate belonged to Harry from his late mother, but she had never visited it. It had been rented to another branch of the family for generations. Now Harry and his adopted sister were coming home to land and relatives they had never seen. Dolores Umbridge, an unmarried cousin of their mother's, had become their legal guardian, and the two great-aunts, Padma and Parvati, had agreed to raise the siblings.

Excited and exhausted, Harry and Luna tried to eat their meal. They had arrived only minutes before. Days of bouncing along in a carriage, nervous and bored, had carried them from their father's tame green meadows to this remote country. Last night they had stayed in a little village on the shore of Hollow Lake. The innkeeper had pointed across the great oval lake to the forested hills beyond. A tall jut of land faced them on the other side, and cliffs and bluffs tumbled haphazardly down to the smooth surface of the water.

"That's Hallow Hill land, son," he had said to Harry. "The tall rocks there, that's the Hill itself. But it'll take you all morning to get around the lake and the forest. No roads go through the woods by the Hill. They'd not dare to put a road there." My land, thought Harry in surprise. He hadn't expected it to be so wild.

"And what a handsome young man you are," Aunt Parvati said to Harry. "You favor your mother, doesn't he, Padma? She was slender and green-eyed, too, such a graceful woman. She had the pick of the men in her day. Of course your father was quite the charmer himself. You definitely have his hair."

Harry tried to smile at these kind remarks, but he found them rather embarrassing. He didn't think of himself as attractive, although he knew his father and mother had both been. In fact, Harry was uncommonly attractive. His messy black hair formed small curls around his face, and he had an intelligence and charm unusual for his age. Perhaps this was because he had spent so much time with his mother. That devoted and caring woman had lavished hours each day on his education. He saw a strength in her gentle nature that he openly admired, and this strength had carried the quiet Harry bravely through the last two months without his parents.

Dainty and quiet, Padma Patil didn't smile as often as her sister Parvati, but this didn't mean she was ill-tempered. She studied the embarrassed Harry, noting his fair skin and large, bright green eyes.

"Now, you know Harry's mother was bright, Parvati, with that red hair. I think you're like your mother in your build, though; such a little thing she was." Harry sighed. He hated being so short. No one but his parents and sister seemed to take him seriously.

"You obviously favor your birth-parents, dear." Aunt Parvati had turned to Luna. The younger sister smiled by way of answer. Thin and blond, Luna certainly possessed her brother's strength of will, but she didn't always use it quite as sensibly. Her usually dreamy face was very expressive, and her conduct often unexpected. Lively, intelligent, and quite immature, she usually burst out with declarations of imaginary creatures and what they were doing.

"Hallow means 'holy,' doesn't it?" asked Luna. "Why is this place called Hallow Hill? Is there a church nearby?"

"Oh, Dolores can tell you about that," Aunt Parvati said. "Dolores's quite a scholar, you know. She's writing a book of family history, all about Hallow Hill."

Their legal guardian was a chubby, rather toad like woman with a penchant for wearing pink. Luna kept staring at her because of the nargles she claimed always surrounding her. Except for the barest pleasantries, she had been silent since their arrival. She had brought a book to the table and was reading it as she ate. Now she raised her pale eyes from the pages and glanced dismissively at Luna.

"I don't suppose someone of your age and breeding is going to sit through a linguistic analysis," she remarked. Harry saw his sister's face darken and spoke quickly to prevent a catastrophe.

"We'd like to hear about Hallow Hill's name," he protested with a slight smile. "Place-name etymology is so fascinating. The words come out of Old English, don't they, so the name can't date back to the Roman times, but it could certainly predate the Norman Conquest."

Dolores Umbridge fixed Harry with a critical stare. He noticed a bit of food in her teeth and hoped his sister wouldn't mention it.

"So we've read a book or two," she commented overly sweetly. "Yes, the word hallow is Old English, but we don't know that hallow, or holy, is what was intended at all. Perhaps hollow is what was meant. Some early documents call the bald peak behind this house Hollow Hill, and there certainly are caves throughout the area. And 'Hollow Lake' may just be a short way of saying the 'lake by Hollow Hill.'

"However, we aren't even positive that is the original Hallow Hill. Near the Lodge house is a smaller hill with a flat, circular crown, and around this crown is a double circle of ancient oak trees. The site was obviously an important druidic center. There are those who say that is the real Hallow Hill, but probably to the early inhabitants this whole region was sacred. It has never been mined, the forests haven't been logged, and the locals retain to this day a tremendous superstitious lore about the area. Calling something hallow for hundreds of years has a way of making people treat it as holy whether it really is or not." She picked up her book again. "It's a fascinating human phenomenon, the tenacious preservation of ignorance," she remarked caustically and ignored the conversation around her for the remainder of the meal.

In another half hour, Luna and Harry found themselves back out in the sunshine, facing another carriage ride. Their guardian lived in this large estate house, the Hall, but the siblings were not to live here with her. They were to go on to the smaller house, the Lodge, where their great-aunts lived.

The Hall faced a large, open green that was not in the least interesting. It contained rigidly geometric pebbled walks, square garden beds, and bench seats set primly by the straight, tree-lined borders. But the ground to the sides and back of the house began rising at once into small, tumbled hills, and through the windows of the dining room the siblings had seen tantalizing views of a shady terrace, moss-covered rock walls, and paths disappearing into the dim forest that reached down and enclosed the Hall on three sides. Harry and Luna were wild with delight at the thought of those secret paths winding through primeval woodland. They could hardly bear to climb into the carriage for the sedate jog over to the Lodge.

The ride proved more satisfying than they had expected. The gravel track passed the front of the Hall and rapidly left the depressing tidiness of the green behind. It skirted the very edge of the forest and rose and fell with the unevenness of the landscape, providing a view on the one side of windblown meadows full of wildflowers and on the other of those gloomy, green-dappled forest depths that they already longed to explore. The track passed through a grassy orchard as it climbed a steady slope, and the Lodge house stood before them, shaded by large, well-trimmed trees.

Harry and Luna stared up at the big white house. Luna was surprised by its size; hearing that she was to live in the "small Lodge house," she had expected to see a two-room hut. The Lodge had three stories, the top one peeking out through small dormer windows tucked under a steep gray roof. The front door was exactly in the middle, and all the tall windows up and down were perfectly matched and symmetrical. Over their heads and over the house swung the thick boughs of the great shade trees, casting an ever-changing net of shadow and sun on the ground below. Harry listened to the gentle rush of the wind whispering through leaves and branches. He felt it settle into his soul and fill some lonely place there.

Harry and Luna trailed through the house after their great-aunts and saw everything there was to see, from the kitchen by the back door to the upstairs bedrooms. Padma and Parvati had the two bedrooms on the left side of the upstairs hall, and the siblings were given ones on the right.

Harry's room faced the front. "We did think this would be a nice view for a young man like you," said Aunt Parvati.

Luna had the back bedroom. "You'll never believe how many storms we have here, dear," cautioned Aunt Padma. "Such wild country! If you wake in the night, my room is right across the hall. No need to dodge around the stairs when you're in a fright."

The next several days saw the siblings settle in and become a part of the rhythm of life at Hallow Hill. Some demands were placed on them, but they were free to roam their new surroundings for hours every day. It must be admitted that the two older women found their new charges quite exhausting. Whenever the siblings burst out the door with a picnic basket to go off on a day trip, it is hard to say who of the four felt most relieved.

It took the siblings a week to find the druids' circle that their guardian had spoken of. They discovered it after supper one evening, quite close behind the Lodge. The forest path they were following began climbing a steep slope. As they looked upward, they saw an evenly planted row of ancient oaks set in thick green turf. In the gaps between they could see a further row of trees, but so massive were the specimens in this double ring that they could not see past the two rows together. The enormous trunks, wider than the two could span with their arms, formed a perfect barrier, protecting whatever lay beyond from careless eyes.

They approached this awesome barricade and slipped between the giant sentinels. The tops of these giant trees, so close together for so many ages, had grown into one dense, continuous ring. No sunlight pierced it to fall on the intruders beneath, and yet the green turf continued underfoot, right up to the great trunks.

Inside the ring, the broad crown of the hill was almost flat. They could not see beyond the trees either to the distant hills or to the woods outside. They were in a huge room walled by living plants. Above them, past the tangled branches of the oaks, stretched a perfect circle of darkening twilight sky about seventy feet across. The lush turf formed a dense, soft carpet underneath, and small white field lilies sprang above it on long, thin stalks.

Speechless, Harry and Luna stood and looked around. This was a silent place. No birds sang in the branches of the great trees, and Luna found no bugs crawling in the grass beneath. Slowly they wandered to the very middle of the twilit circle and dropped down onto the inviting ground.

"Do you think the druids built this place?" asked Luna.

"No." Harry knew that this was no ruined monument to a dead religion. The circle was alive and aware. It exerted a magical force that welcomed and comforted him, as if good people had arranged a place for his security and care.

"But if the druids didn't make it, who did?"

"I don't know, Luna," Harry said thoughtfully. "Perhaps our ancestors did. I feel so much more at home here than I do up at the Hall. And just imagine how the stars must look from here! Let's stay a little while longer and watch them come out."

As night fell on the tree circle, the stars shone in the round ceiling of sky over their heads. Harry gazed, enchanted, at the brilliant lights hanging above him. He had always had a deep love of the stars. He sometimes felt that if it hadn't been for them, he never could have stood the loss of his parents. As long as he had the stars, he would never be alone. Even when he wasn't looking at them, he could feel their gentle radiance in his mind. They had never seemed as beautiful as they did tonight. One by one they emerged until the ebony sky was full, and the glittering net shimmered over their heads.

"We'd better go back," warned Luna, thinking about what her worried aunts would say. They crossed to the enormous trees, now black in their own deep shadows, and slipped between them to find the forest path again. It took some time before they hit upon it in the meager, dappled starlight. As they walked slowly homeward in the darkness, Harry tried to remember the beauty of the stars, but a vague presence intruded on her thoughts. He began to peer into the shadows. He couldn't hear or see anyone, but he was sure someone was there. Harry was out in the late twilight as often as he was allowed, and he had never been afraid before, but now he held his sister's hand tightly.

"What's wrong with you?" demanded Luna. "You're pinching me. We're not lost, you know. I can find the way home."

Harry stared desperately back into the forest. "Luna, something's watching us!" he whispered.

"Oh?" asked Luna, very interested. "What? Where? Is it a Crumple-Horned Snorkack" She turned around and peered unsuccessfully into the deep gloom.

"I don't know," murmured her brother though he was pretty sure it wasn't that. "It followed us down the path. I can't see it, but it can see us. Can't you feel it?"

"No," replied Luna with a shrug. "It's probably just a blibbering humdinger. Come on, Harry, we'll get in trouble." And she towed her preoccupied brother across the Lodge lawn. At the door, Harry stopped and looked back. The heavy shadows under every tree seemed full of menace. Once he was in the house, the feeling left him, but it came back a little later as they talked in the parlor. The great-aunts never drew the heavy curtains. Harry stared suspiciously at one gauze-covered window after another. He even rose and looked out into the dark night, but there was nothing there that his eyes could see. After a few minutes of this restlessness, his great-aunts began to watch him in some surprise. Embarrassed, he excused himself and went up to bed.

Nighttime became an ordeal for Harry after this. Sometimes he would be free of the feeling until bedtime, when he would begin to pace and fret under the conviction that something was watching him. He, who had always loved the stars, began to avoid looking out the windows after dark. Even in his bedroom on the second floor, he would wake in the night, uneasy. He would lie as still as he could under the covers, peering around the room at the darkness, and he began to have exhausting nightmares. When Harry tried to explain his feeling to his great-aunts, they laughed at first and then looked puzzled. Hallow Hill was so remote that no one ever came or went across its grounds. The aunts never even locked the doors.

Padma watched Harry with concern and decided that both children needed more to do. They had been through a great deal, and they had too much time to dwell on it.

Padma began teaching the siblings practical skills, such as how to plan meals, keep household accounts, and manage servants. Over time, she and Parvati observed with satisfaction that Harry was settling down. It is true that Harry slept more soundly at night because he was busier during the day, but he continued to be haunted by the powerful feeling that something was watching him. He couldn't avoid it or ignore it, so he just kept his worry a secret from his aunts. He could tell that it did nothing but upset them.

As high summer came, Aunt Parvati took Harry to pay a call on his guardian. The call, he discovered, concerned him deeply. Padma wanted Dolores to take Harry into town for the winter season. It was time, she said, for the boy to be out in society. So much had to be arranged first. Harry's guardian would have to fulfill her responsibilities.

Umbridge didn't take the call at all well. She had no patience with townsfolk and parties. She didn't see any good reason why the important pursuits of the mature should be set aside to allow the young a chance to make fools of themselves. She paced up and down the room as she and Parvati argued. At one point Umbridge turned angrily on Harry himself.

"Are you tired of country life already?" she demanded. "You can't wait to go off skipping and galavanting with a whole bevy of brainless hooligans?" Harry wasn't in the least tired of country life, though he did find the thought of visiting the town a bit thrilling. He didn't say this to his angry guardian, but maybe she saw it in his face. If so, it did nothing to improve her temper.

After the unpleasant interview, Aunt Parvati hurried off to speak to Mrs. Figg, the housekeeper, leaving Harry to wander the Hall alone. This activity never failed to fill Harry with uneasiness. The Hall might belong to him, but it never seemed to want him. He was nothing but an intruder here.

Harry did what he often did when he was at the Hall and had time to himself. He went to the huge fireplace in the upstairs parlor to study the picture that hung above it. Two girls, both around thirteen years old, stood hand in hand before a forest landscape and looked out at him. One, black-haired and blue-eyed, had a red rose tucked into the waist of her old-fashioned dress. She met Harry's gaze as if she were about to tell a funny secret, and she looked as if she were trying not to giggle. The other, pale and brown-haired, gazed down at Harry with solemn green eyes. She did not smile. Perhaps she had learned already those lessons in life that make smiling difficult. Harry stared back at the brunette girl thoughtfully. He felt, as he always did, that there was something familiar about her.

"She looks very like you, don't you think?"

Dolores Umbridge stood a few feet behind Harry. She met his surprised glance a little sharply, but she walked up beside him to study the picture, hands behind her back. "I mean the one on the left, the brunette girl, Elizabeth. The resemblance is quite startling. I've thought so ever since you came here."

She paused, but Harry said nothing. He was staring at the picture. Of course! How had he not seen it before?

"Adele is the girl on the right, Dentwood Umbridge's child. Her father and my great-grandfather were brothers. I am the last of an old and proud family, Mister Potter."

Harry turned to her, thoroughly puzzled. She caught his confused look and nodded.

"Oh, yes, Elizabeth on the left is indeed your great-grandmother, but Elizabeth is related to no one in the family. For all we know, she might have fallen from the moon.

"The story goes that one spring night old Dentwood went walking with his daughter. Adele was about three then. Her mother had died soon after she was born, and old Dentwood doted on his only child. They paused at the druids' circle. Have you been there? A lovely spot at twilight. There Dentwood sat while his little daughter ran about picking flowers. He listened to her happy prattle. He fell to dreaming and thinking of his dead wife for a few minutes. And when he rose to call his daughter to him—what do you think he saw, Mister Potter? Not just his Adele. Now there were two little girls playing in the moonlight."

Harry felt his hair prickle and goose bumps rise on his arms. He couldn't say a word.

"And that's where Elizabeth came from," said Dolores with a shrug. "No one knows who she really was. No one even knew her name. She appeared just like a fairy child in the old tales, like the changeling that she was." Bitterness crept into her voice. "Because the two girls did not both survive, Mister Potter. When they were about sixteen, Adele died suddenly. No one knows how. But old Dentwood took Elizabeth and left Hallow Hill that very night, and neither of them ever came back.

"Dentwood Umbridge had adopted Elizabeth. Now she was all he had. When she died in childbirth, he took her son to raise. He left everything he had to that son when he died: Hallow Hill and all it contained. It went to a man who had never seen it, who could never appreciate it—who never even visited it once. My family, Dentwood Umbridge's brother's family, has leased the house ever since. Elizabeth's son was your grandfather, and Hallow Hill now belongs to you. Oh, we call each other cousins, Mister Potter," she said sweetly. "But you're no relation, really.

"I wonder how the founders of this house would feel if they could learn about this strange turn of events," she mused, "that their own flesh and blood would have to pay rent just to live in their own home. Pay rent to strangers, who didn't even care about the land. Yes," she added smugly, rubbing her hands, "I'm the last of a proud line."

I'm unwanted, thought Harry in a rush of despair. Unwanted, with no family left. And my land belongs to me almost through fraud. It's worse than having nothing at all. He couldn't say a word. He turned and left the room as quickly as he could, hurrying down the stairs. Dolores Umbridge watched his disorganized retreat, and her smile widened. Then she walked back to her study, whistling cheerfully.