Notes you might as well skip:

Hey All,

I make a spectacular Houdini, do I not? Sorry for disappearing on everyone. RL, and All That Jazz.

Truly though; I am sorry. And many thanks to all you awesome people who have not forgotten about me, and kept up the encouraging messages. I am grateful :) Also, odd as it may seem, I still hope to get back to my other stories sometime.

Now, before you start dreading getting into a story that I might leave hanging again; fear not! This one is only a few chapters short of done! It is a monster of a fic, too. I currently have over 100k of it waiting to be edited for posting, and I estimate the total to come up to a whooping 150k-ish.

Now, here go my most important warnings:

1) This story includes character death.

2) I will not really follow canon except in the broadest sense, since I barely remember LOTR, having read it, like, 15+ years ago? So, please do not go gaga over deviations. I did my best, though I have no time for extensive research. It will always make sense, I promise. In fact, I'd wager you yourself do not even need to know LOTR to get this fic.

3) That said, this story is not meant to be a retelling of events Mr. Tolkien cooked up. At all.

4) You will cry. But HEA awaits!

5) Finally: I still have no beta.

Reviews are welcome! And if you choose to flame, make a point, yeah?

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or LOTR.

(Cross-posted at AO3. Anything explicit you'll find there.)

Chapter 1

Harry had died. He remembered as much clearly. A pathetic kind of death it was, too, if he may say so himself. A boring death after a boring life. When he had been young, a starry-eyed youth fantasizing about an amazing, simple existence, with an amazingly simple family and equally simple work, he had not quite made the connection between simple and boring. Call it naivety, but after the war, Harry had really just wanted to settle down into the glorious quasi-anonymity of normalcy. So he had, for the longest time, refused to admit, even to himself, that there was nothing glorious about being "just-Harry". Just-Harry was a sad, bitter, pathetic man who took little joy in life, and whose obsession with making himself out to be nothing special had ruined many a life around him, including his ex-wife's and estranged kids'. Just-Harry had died alone in his bed with no-one to mourn his unremarkable passing.

In any case, long story short, Harry very, very clearly remembered dying. He had passed on. He had been no more. He had ceased to be. He had expired and gone to meet his maker.*

However which way one was to put it, Harry should be quite dead, all in all.

Alas, Harry, at that particular moment, was obviously not-so-dead. Why, for Morgana's sake, was he not dead? And, as for the rotten cherry upon the cake, why, pray tell, was he wriggling around, gurgling and slobbering all over himself in the body of an infant, while sitting on the lap of a cooing Lily Potter?

It had to be karma. Or perhaps Fate was collecting its dues. Maybe, since Harry had so stubbornly clung to simplicity in his life, even to the detriment of himself and his loved ones, Fate decided to take all the freakishness he had missed out on and heaped it on him at the last possible moment, tenfold. Well. Didn't Harry feel oh-so-special.

Fate was a bitch. Harry really hoped she could sense the gigantic middle finger he was mentally waving around in her direction amidst the internal temper tantrum he was throwing.

When was he, anyway? He had been a year old when Voldemort had come to kill him. Judging by the fact that he did have some measure of control over his tiny body, not to mention the itching gums in the places Harry could feel his baby teeth growing in, the day the Dark Lord would arrive could not be too far off.

While Harry had been trying to make sense of the situation, lost in thought, James Potter had appeared, standing behind the rocking chair his wife sat in with his hand on her shoulder. He smiled at his son, expression warm, and squeezed Lily's shoulder.

"Come, Lils, dinner is ready. Mimsy already set the table."

Lily nodded and stood. She followed the man out of Harry's blue bedroom into the kitchen that doubled as a dining room, carrying Harry to the table and depositing his slobbering self into a high chair by the table. Harry, having been too preoccupied by his oddly alive state of being to take proper note of his surroundings so far, now glanced around. His gaze rested on a small, female house-elf for a moment, likely the aforementioned Mimsy. Harry wondered what had become of her, since no one had mentioned the Potters having owned a house-elf. His eyes then darted around the spacious room, many of the kitchen appliances muggle-style – courtesy of Lily, no doubt – before coming to rest on his parents.

It was disconcerting, seeing them alive. Not that Harry didn't appreciate the chance to meet them, but, in all honesty, he had died at a hundred and twenty. While the idea of parents had been important when he had been a child, but after so many decades, anyone would distance themselves emotionally, especially from people they had never met, parents or no. However, Harry did enjoy being able to observe them for himself.

Lily was indeed as beautiful and radiant as people had always said, with long, flaming red hair that looked similar to Ginny's before she had begun graying. Harry winced at the thought of his ex-wife, and quickly turned his attention to James, the man who was supposed to be his spitting image. As far as Harry could see, that couldn't have been further from the truth. There were similarities between father and son, there was no denying that, but besides the bad eye-sight and a few prominent features, such as the hair, the high cheekbones and the shape of their jaws, they shared very little. Where James was tall and had shoulders a mile wide, Harry had been short and scrawny. James had tanned skin, strong-boned limbs, and a long, pointy nose, as opposed to Harry, who had had a paler constitution with a far more bird-like bone structure, and a small nose with a softly sloping bridge. Why everyone had insisted on comparing him to James, he would never understand. Harry guessed it had been more wishful thinking than anything else, a way for James' friends to connect with him after death. Still, he felt a twinge of disappointment that people he considered family had used him to project upon their image of James.

The family had an uneventful dinner. Harry watched his parents interact and was almost jealous of the comfortable dynamic they shared, their love for each other quiet but plain to see. The way their eyes met, the small smiles, the soft, unconscious touches, everything about them attested to the depth of their feelings for each other. Harry had never had this. He and Ginny had never been in love. Well, perhaps there had been love on Ginny's part, but Harry had certainly never been in love with her. Love her, yes. But he had not been in love. He had realized it after a few years, of course, but by that time they had already had kids and a life together, and Harry had never even considered the possibility of a divorce until out of the blue, Ginny had presented the papers well over two decades later.

Harry had had his nice, normal life all planned out; finish school, marry, work, have kids, have grandkids, retire, die. After the war, he had wasted no time. He and Ginny had been married within a year, and the kids had followed right after, as was expected of a proper family. He had not noticed, or perhaps had not cared to notice, that Ginny was growing more distant and depressed, that her idea of a family was not one of preconceived images but one of mutual understanding and comfort. Harry didn't understand comfort, however. He only knew what normal was supposed to be, and so he lived by that, without considering that his clinging to the idea of a proper, happy life was ruining his actual reality. In the end, after Ginny had left, Harry had grown bitter, and had found remedy for his self-loathing at the bottom of the bottle. His kids and friends eventually grew tired of trying to help him, and, slowly, they all disappeared from his life.

By the time he hit ninety, Harry had gotten somewhat better. He had started to write, published journals and did some research on spell-crafting, and lived out the remainder of his years in the solitude of his home. Sober, to be clear.

By this time, Harry of course realized that the Dursleys had done more damage than what met the eye. His years spent under their loving care had stunted him, he knew. When he had been younger, Harry had never considered his treatment there as abuse, but with age came some amount of wisdom, and he realized that what that family had done to him was more than a little horrific. The fact that everyone he knew reinforced the idea that living there had been a bearable necessity for his own good hadn't helped matters either. Thinking about it made him quite angry, to be honest. His friends, who had been just as young and gullible as him had been one thing, but the adults? Sirius, Remus, the Weasleys to name a few. Instead of turning to the authorities, Molly had thought sending the occasional meal by owl was the appropriate action to take when dealing with a kid obviously being starved and imprisoned by his abusive family. Harry had never heard more about the issue than a passing remark about his weight every now and then. And then there was Dumbledore himself, who had truly been in a position to help, what with being Harry's official guardian in the magical world, yet not only had he left Harry in that household in the first place without checking on him, but had also repeatedly reasoned that Harry's life there was nowhere near bad enough to warrant any action on his part, except maybe a grandfatherly pat on Harry's shoulder.

In any case, Harry spending his youth with his dear aunt and uncle had far-reaching consequences. Harry had grown up as a slave, in the truest sense of the word. The times he hadn't been on the receiving end of degrading speeches about his own worthlessness and freakishness, Harry had been locked away in a dark little cupboard and had been entirely ignored, as if he hadn't existed at all. That is, until the Dursleys had found use for him by making him do the housework. Harry had cooked for them, cleaned for them, washed for them, weeded for them, and all he had got as thanks were glares and hateful comments. Though only on the rarest occasions had his punishments gotten physical, he had been regularly deprived of food. Those damned people starved a child with deliberate intent to harm, for Merlin's sake Those people had deprived their charge of both of sustenance and any positive human contact whatsoever, all the while living their amazingly normal, lovely life. Was it any wonder that Harry turned out a bit wonky in the head? As a young boy, Harry had wanted nothing more than to be included in the family. He had craved love and acceptance but had only been able to watch from the outside how a perfect, normal family was supposed to work. Harry had equated that with happiness, since he had no other reference point. He wanted to be happy, so he had wanted a normal family. And that was what he had gotten later in life. Except, Harry hadn't realized that he had never been happy, nor had he made anyone else happy either, at least not until it was too late to fix.

And so, the effortless happiness Harry's parents were displaying really just made Harry want to cry. He was a part of it too; baby Harry was obviously dearly loved. But Harry couldn't see it like that. He was an adult, and not the person his parents were cooing at. He was just as much an outsider here as he had been with the Dursleys. This… this was what could have been, the life that had been snatched away from him before he could ever experience it.

And it would be taken from him again. Harry was only a toddler. The most he would be able to contribute to the impending fight against the Dark Lord would be blowing a raspberry or two.

The days after his arrival passed slowly. Harry was bored out of his mind most of the time and had nothing better to do than count the passing seconds. Exciting. It all came to an end soon enough, however. Harry knew that their time together was drawing to a close when he spotted the first Halloween decorations popping up around the small house in Godric's Hallow. He was prepared for it. When the inevitable time of the attack came, Lily had just taken the homemade pumpkin pie out of the fridge and had immediately dropped it when she heard Mimsy's pained squeak followed by a quiet thud.

Harry's parents burst into action. James moved towards the front door while shouting at his wife to take Harry and run. Lily thundered up the stairs with tears pooling in her eyes, and Harry winced when she squeezed him a bit too tight after she heard James' body hitting the floor. The following silence was unnerving, broken only by Lily's panicked pants and Harry's muffled sniffling. They burst into Harry's bedroom, and he was quickly placed in his crib, Lily whirling around with her wand pointing at the door. She drew sobbing breaths, staring ahead with tears streaming down her cheeks.

As she stood there, quivering, she started fumbling with the collar of her robes using her free hand. Despite her trembling, she managed to tug a chain free, and fingered the pendant that hung on it, murmuring under her breath before kissing it. Harry couldn't see what kind of pendant it was, but as soon as it touched Lily's mouth, it lit up, emitting a beautiful golden glow. Drawing a shaking breath, Lily tore the chain from her neck with a harsh tug, and threw it behind her, hitting Harry's round tummy with it.

"…you must touch it, please touch it, please Harry, please…" she chanted under her breath as Voldemort's unnaturally tall form appeared in the doorway.

Harry stared in gobsmacked surprise at the glowing necklace, the shape of the pendant vaguely reminding him of a rune, but there wasn't any time to puzzle through this unexpected occurrence. A sibilant, sinister voice drew his attention back to the pair, and Harry turned his gaze to stare at the monster that still haunted his dreams on occasion. Voldemort was, frankly speaking, uglier than any creature Harry had ever seen. And Harry had seen acromantulas and basilisks, so that was saying something. The sickly pale thing had a flat, bony face with thin, vertical slits to function as a nose, and Harry watched them flare with every inhaled breath in disgust.

Harry heard his mother's pleas and watched as Voldemort lost his patience in resignation. He killed the brave witch with a hissed killing curse. Averting his eyes from Lily's dead body, Harry turned his hateful glare on the Dark Lord, focused on the monster. Harry hoped it unnerved the bastard. He was – very seriously – contemplating blowing that raspberry he had cooked up earlier, if only to see the ugly sod's reaction, when the muted glow by his feet caught his attention again. Darting a glance at the advancing Dark Lord, Harry quickly bent down and scooped up the necklace with clumsy, chubby little fingers. It was warm, painfully so, and his magic reacted to it at once, as if called to come out and play. Harry wondered if this had happened last time? He couldn't recall hearing anything about a strange necklace. No one had mentioned such a thing, not even Dumbledore. Had Lily been unable to get the necklace off in time? Or had it been the original Harry who had failed to touch it? After all, he was supposed to be a mere toddler, he likely wouldn't have followed instructions whispered by his distressed mother if he was only a year old, right?

Whatever the case, this time, Harry held the necklace in a secure grip, and shuddered as the magic swelled around him. Voldemort paused, but lifted his wand to aim at Harry after a moment of hesitation. Magic was swirling around the room, and Harry was the center of it. Him and the pendant. It was getting painful. A normal baby's body did not have a core large enough to hold as much power as Harry's was forced to expel. Even with his larger reserves, he was barely holding out as it was. The necklace kept drawing out more and more magic, and Harry collapsed in his crib a moment later. Voldemort eyed him in confusion, and Harry tried to let go of the pendant, but he couldn't. His magic was nearly gone. The damn thing was going to turn him into a squib if this didn't stop!

Voldemort hummed thoughtfully, then scoffed. "Silly mudblood, did she think I would leave you be if she took your magic?" he muttered disdainfully.

Harry was in too much pain to think. He sobbed as his magic was torn from him, tears, snot and sweat staining his face. He barely noticed Voldemort stepping closer, examining him a gleeful smirk. Harry caught the movement of a wand, and clenched his eyelids shut when a green light streaked towards him.

Harry felt it. He could sense the curse colliding with the edge of the compressed magical storm around him, and instead of bypassing it as any properly cast Unforgivable was meant to, he could feel it getting sucked in to combine with the pendant's and his own swirling powers, adding the destructive nature of dark magic to the mix. A bubble formed around Harry, the color an acidic green, and the magic continued to spin dizzyingly around him, the pain never ceasing.

Harry had no idea how long it took, it felt like eons to him, but eventually, everything came to a sudden halt. It was as if time had stopped. Harry's exhausted, tiny body floated around in the green glow, and just as Harry began losing consciousness, the bubble – that had at some point become solid – shattered. Harry curled into a ball on reflex, and the last thing he knew was sudden, sharp agony flaring up all over his back and legs, sending him over the edge into blissful unconsciousness.

* Kudos to anyone who recognized Monty Python! :P