Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or The Hobbit. They belong to J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien, respectively. This is an amateur attempt. One which I am not making any profit over.

A/N: Thanks so much for all your reviews. I got asked a question recently as to whether or not this story will continue for a great length of time: unfortunately, I never planned for Little Harry to be a long story. As a matter of fact there are only a few more chapters to go. I estimate between two to four.

Thank you.

Hope you enjoy.

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Chapter Twelve: Bilbo’s Gone and Harry’s in Trouble

“Because you ventured where you were not supposed to, Draedan very almost died. We debated long and hard whether or not to give you punishment, and decided the grief you felt when you assumed he had would be almost sufficient enough,” Mr Legolas had said, placing gentle hands on Harry’s shoulders and smiling a little. “You know now what you did was wrong, pen dithen; but we would not be very good guardians if we did not teach you some sort of a lesson.”

So they taught him a lesson, in the elvish way.

Harry took his punishment well considering it wasn’t really a punishment to begin with, and Mr Legolas and Mirdhel had seemed very reluctant to punish him at all so Harry had taken to feeling happy about that — and not a little smug. He spent a couple of days cleaning leathers and quivers in the archery forest and the rest of the week helping out at odd tasks in the kitchen. Harry was too little to hold a knife, so he was not permitted to do any peeling. He was allowed to hold a broom (a miniature one), and his job was to sweep the leftover crumbs from under the cooks’ feet and out the door. He would also help knead the bread (by his own choice), but because Harry was so little this turned more into him beating the stuffing out of it with his fists rather than doing any actual kneading.

Harry was used to harsher punishments at the Dursleys so, to him, this was the equivalent of taking a pleasant stroll through the park. Mirdhel and Mr Legolas were also pleased because they had begun to feel somewhat guilty; but Harry’s obvious enjoyment of his punishment (plus the fact that he had willingly hugged them to show that he didn’t blame them in the least) made them feel much better.

Mr Baggins and the dwarves had made their dramatic escape about four days into Harry’s punishment. Nearly everyone had gone into the great hall for an important feast (Mirdhel bravely trying some of Harry’s lumpy bread) and they’d come back to an empty dungeon. The cry had gone up and the whole palace had spent the rest of the night searching the Halls, for the dwarf party were somewhere in the caves it had to be true; no one could venture out of the magic gates except Thranduil and Legolas. This opinion was quickly changed when it became obvious that the dwarves had done just that. This produced much awe. But how? How could it be possible? They must have had some sort of magic to help them escape, surely? Some heads turned in Harry’s direction then, but Mirdhel glared until, abashed, they looked away. Harry, his head on Mirdhel’s shoulder, ignored this as best he could. He had pretended to be asleep as soon as they heard about the escape. Out of the entire palace he was the only one who knew what had really happened. He wasn’t about to tell, though. He tried very hard to keep from giving himself away out of guilt.

King Thranduil was livid.

His own personal butler, Galion, and the chief of the guards, Calaglin — an elf whom Harry had gotten to know only vaguely — were in disgrace. King Thranduil was very, very angry at them. Harry even overheard Mr Legolas saying to Mirdhel the next day that he had never seen his father this aggravated in a long time.

But what had they done?

Harry had asked and got told by Urúvion that Calaglin had fallen asleep while on guard duty because both he and the butler had borrowed some of the king’s personal Dorwinion wine — they had been found snoring happily in the stockroom by a group of confused elves. It seemed the dwarves had escaped by locking themselves inside barrels, and waiting for the group of elves to roll them through the trapped doors that led to the underground river where Draedan had almost drowned. Then the elves had opened the portcullis and the barrels had rolled downriver. King Thranduil, upon finding out this information, had immediately sent scouts to look for the dwarves, despite not knowing how exactly they escaped out of their separate dungeon cells in the first place. That had been this morning. They were still not back yet.

“I don’t think they’ll find them.” Harry stood on tiptoe to look over the kitchen bench and observe the dusty kneading of the head cook. Flour made its lazy way up his nose and Harry sneezed a little.

The head cook was almost smiling. “What makes you think that?”

“I think they have a secret weapon,” said Harry innocently.

The head cook stopped kneading and looked at Harry very gravely indeed. “You think they have a secret weapon?” he asked.

“Yes. Otherwise how else could they have escaped?”

The head cook seemed to unstiffen. “Ah, very true. Although, if they do have one, we surely would have found it when first we captured them.” He bit his lip, long pale hair swaying forward with the movement of his kneading. “You know the dwarves well, do you not, Harry?”

“Oh no,” said Harry. “I met them in the forest and they saved me. That was only for a day.”

“But they are your friends?”

“They are. You have very pretty eyes,” said Harry suddenly. Then ducked his head.

Violet eyes blinked slowly. “I forget, oftimes, how children can be captured by such trifling things.” He smiled and leaned down a little, hands still wrist deep in dough. “Thank you. I like them very well indeed. Your eyes hold beauty in them, too. Do not tell me no one has ever told you that?”

“Well,” Harry licked his lips. “Legolas and Mirdhel call me Galenmir. So I suppose I get told a lot, then.”

“I suppose you do.”

The kneading continued for a while longer. The head cook then put the ball of large dough into a baking pot for rising. It would sit there next to the warm stone oven until it ballooned enormously, and then an elf would put it in. The head cook now moved for Harry so that Harry could sweep the flour out from under his feet.

“And where is Draedan this noon?” asked the head cook.

Harry followed him around the kitchen and to a middle isle. There were knifes and all sorts of pots and utensils hanging from the ceiling over it. The head cook selected a particularly sharp looking knife and began slicing a bread with it. Harry stared with his chin resting heavily on the wooden counter. “I left him in the garden to keep Mirdhel company. He likes it there better than in the kitchen.”

“I should say so. For one thing it is quieter.” He glared disapprovingly at an elf who had just knocked over a large plate full of roasted mushrooms. The elf had managed to catch it very quickly, though, but with his foot; this was because he was also holding two jugs in both hands.

“Wow,” Harry said.

The elf, hearing this, grinned at him. Harry grinned back. Then the elf quickly scuttled away, holding aloft the water-filled jugs to escape the glowering eye of the cook. A short while later Harry saw him loading up more pitchers onto a small cart. These would later be rolled into the great hall and placed along the tables.

Harry sneaked out of the kitchen under the direction of the head cook’s sly wink and wandered about the corridors for something to do. He could not go into the garden and fetch Draedan because Mirdhel would see him there and ask why he wasn’t in the kitchen, so Harry decided to go to the treasury. There were no elves standing guard at the door when he arrived — Wood-elves were trusting creatures, but only to their own kind — so Harry was able to slip in quite easily. He knew he wasn’t allowed in here, but he didn’t want to steal anything except his stick, which belonged to Harry anyway.

Once he was inside, looking at all the many no doubt treasure-filled chests, he paused.

It isn’t very nice of me to come here, Harry thought, biting his lip. Mr Legolas and Mirdhel wouldn’t be at all pleased if they found out — and hadn’t he already gotten in trouble for being where he wasn’t supposed to be? With a small sigh, Harry stepped back out, closing the door gently behind him. He would not look for his stick. Perhaps King Thranduil would give it to him when Harry asked for it, and Harry would.

That night another feast was in progress, but the atmosphere was full of hushed whispers. No one wanted to anger the king by saying how maybe, slightly impressive the dwarves’ escape had been. Especially as the raft-elves downriver had also missed the party of twelve —thirteen, by Harry’s count — when King Thranduil’s scouts had caught up with them. It seemed the previous night the raft-elves and raft-men had tied off the very barrels in which the dwarves were snuggled inside, but hadn’t thought to look in them because it was so dark. They also reported some rather mysterious behaviour, ghostly behaviour (Mr Legolas had looked curiously at Harry then), with sneezes being heard, and water dripping from nowhere, and things being stolen — namely a pie, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine. This was to have been part of an elf’s supper.

So now the barrels were still rushing downriver. Likely, Mr Legolas pondered, they would end up in Lake Town. This would be the best time and place to apprehend them. Unless the Master of Lake Town disallowed it, or the barrels got smashed on the way and all the dwarves died, or the barrels somehow caught on an embankment and rolled into the forest before smashing, or they filled up with water and sunk to the bottom of the river — Mr Legolas stopped abruptly upon seeing Harry’s white face, then leaned down and planted a kiss on his head.

“Ai, you are so little and quiet, Galenmir,” said Mirdhel, smoothing back Harry’s hair. “Legolas meant nothing by his words. He simply forgot you were there.”

Of course, this did not make Harry feel better in the least.

When Mr Legolas saw this his shoulders stiffened. Then he picked Harry up and put him in his lap. His large hand cradled the back of Harry’s head as he brought his face in extra close. The scent of spring and happiness invaded Harry’s nostrils, and he fought the urge to turn his head and bury his face into Mr Legolas’s hair. He lost. “I must explain something to you, Harry, before you think me too callous.”

Harry nodded. He was very aware of Urúvion’s inquisitive stare and, beside him, Wilwarin’s.

“I am a prince. More than that, I am a warrior prince. It is natural for me to look at a situation from all angles.”

Harry nodded. The group of elves sitting around them weren’t even pretending to mind their own business anymore. Clearly they thought it odd that Harry liked dwarves so much.

“Hither and thither the dwarves may go, and the barrels with them; whether they make it to safety is yet to be determined. All I wanted was to say that, my little Harry. Nothing more. Nor did I mean to imply many a foul fate upon your friends. Nay, never that. Please forgive me.”

Harry hugged him. Of course Harry forgave him. This was Mr Legolas. Mr Legolas was never mean. He was one of the kindest elves ever. “Don’t worry Legolas.” Harry patted him on the shoulder. “You don’t need to be sad anymore. I forgive you.”

Mr Legolas grinned and the whole room lit up.

Harry ate. Sweet potatoes and mushrooms and all sorts of things Dudley would hate, but that tasted delicious all the same. When it was time for Harry to go to bed (Draedan complaining grumpily about the lack of heat from Harry’s wrist) a group of elves wandered in through doors of the great hall and made their way immediately to the king’s table, bowed a little, and spoke softly. They looked slightly waterlogged, one even had bits of twig in his hair, but other than that they were still very pretty. An elf at the far table started whispering, and all others followed instantly. Elves were nosy creatures, like Harry, and were wondering aloud what was going on. Harry heard Wilwarin commenting to an elf beside her about the king’s scouts. This must have been them.

With a wave of his hand King Thranduil then summoned Mr Legolas. Harry, who was holding Mr Legolas’s hand at the time, was forced to go with him.

“Very well! We shall see!” They heard the king saying to the scout-elves as they came up to the table. “No treasure will come back through Mirkwood without my having something to say in the matter. But I expect they will all come to a bad end, and serve them right!”

The scout-elves bowed and left; one even ruffling Harry’s hair affectionately on his way past.

“My Lord.”

Harry looked up at Mr Legolas, surprised. There was annoyance in those words.

“Legolas,” said the king, raising a moonlight brow.

Mr Legolas looked on steadily. “You wished to see me father.”

“Walk with me. You may bring the little one.” The king gestured for them to follow, but not before giving Harry a quiet sort of look. Harry, stupid though he felt to admit it, wanted to press himself against Mr Legolas’s leg again; he suddenly felt as though he had done something. Why else would the king stare at him like that? And as they walked silently through the corridors it occurred to Harry that he had never been this near to Thranduil before.

He was even prettier up close, and looked so much like Mr Legolas that Harry paused for a few seconds to stare at his face, almost tripping over his feet.

King Thranduil’s room did not look anything different than Harry’s room, except that it was much bigger. He led them over to his GIANT writing table. It was made of white wood and looked very impressive: Uncle Vernon certainly would have thought so. Harry looked about but could not find any other chairs to sit in so Mr Legolas lifted him into his lap.

King Thranduil poured some wine for himself and Mr Legolas, and water for Harry. When at last the three were settled comfortably the king leaned back in his chair and spoke. “I find myself in a quandary, Legolas.”

“You do?” said Mr Legolas.

“Perhaps only our little friend here can help.”

Harry blinked. The king had nodded at—at him. “Me, sir?”

The jewelled ring on the king’s finger — the exact colour of the berries on his crown — glinted red in the candlelight as he lifted his goblet for a small sip. “Indeed. My scouts reported seeing the dwarves in Lake Town, even going so far as to feast with them, but they also reported something else. Another creature sat with the dwarves that was no dwarf — hardly a dwarf — and I am now wondering why we never managed to capture it, for plainly it has been with the dwarves all along, even in Mirkwood! It was this creature that helped the dwarves escape. And it occurred to me that you must have known of this creature, little Maia. Indeed, must have spoken with it at some point.”

A cold swooping enveloped Harry’s stomach. Looking into the king’s face, Harry knew. Harry knew that the king knew that he knew, and no amount of talking and looking innocent would get him out of this one.

From his position around Harry’s wrist Draedan licked Harry’s pulse gently, smelling his nervousness.

Harry looked down at a particularly odd groove in the king’s desk, pushing at it slowly with his fingers. “He’s not a creature, Your Majesty, sir. He’s my friend.”

Mr Legolas tightened his arm about Harry’s stomach. Harry squeezed his fingers back.

King Thranduil raised a brow. “Your friend?”

Harry thought it would be better to tell the truth. He didn’t normally lie and was not about to start now. After all, it was King Thranduil who had allowed him to stay in Mirkwood with Mr Legolas and Mirdhel. It was King Thranduil who had given him a home among the elves. “Yes, sir, he’s my friend. He helped rescue me from the forest, too. And I didn’t help the dwarves escape, sir, if that’s what you want to know. I did talk to Mr Baggins for a bit, but I didn’t help him.”

The king stared at him, resting his curved chin on interlocked fingers. “I believe you, Harry.”

“Oh,” said Harry.

“But that does not rule out the fact that you neglected to mention his presence to your guardians or myself —”

“Forgive me, Father, but he did,” said Mr Legolas.

“Oh?” the king said.

“He mentioned to me a while ago of a ghostly presence in the Halls, stealing food from the tables —” At this point Harry looked quickly at Mr Legolas. Harry had not told him that! “— and that presence could easily have been this Mr Baggins creature.”

“Hobbit,” Harry corrected.

Mr Legolas smiled. “Hobbit.”

The king sighed and leaned back in his chair, still graceful. “I like it not, but there is naught I can do for the present. Though how a — hobbit, did you say? — has managed to pass under the gaze of my elves, including my son, and creep into the palace like some sort of slippery thing I shall never know.”

“What do you know of the dwarves now?” asked Mr Legolas, shifting Harry so that he was cuddled against his chest.

Thranduil observed this but didn’t comment. “The folk of Lake Town think the dwarves will be fighting Smaug to get their treasure back.” The king, very oddly, snorted. “I doubt that. In fact I strongly suspect attempted burglary or something like it. No doubt that is what this Mr Baggins is for. And if he has managed to spend a month in my Halls with no one the wiser, I can easily imagine him sneaking into the Lonely Mountain under Smaug’s sleepy eye.

“But dragons have very good noses, so I don’t know what will be the outcome,” he finished.

“The dwarves are very brave,” Harry put in shyly. They had rescued him after all. And Dudley.

The king’s sharp gaze collided with his own. “I very much doubt so, young Harry,” he said, coldly. “Dwarves care for nothing but digging and darkness. Likely they were kind to you simply because you are a child.”

That made Harry angry. It seemed to him that the elves only liked him because he was a child, too. “Does that mean you would have thrown me in the dungeons if I wasn’t a child?” Harry asked tersely.

King Thranduil stared at him, at loss for words.

“Father!” said Mr Legolas sharply.

“Of course not!” The king’s cheeks were a little pink.

“I like dwarves,” said Harry.

“And I am not stopping you from liking them. You can like them if you wish,” said King Thranduil, calming down some. “It is just that elves . . . are not so fond of them.”

“But why?” asked Harry. He wasn’t trying to be annoying, he just didn’t understand. “They haven’t done anything. They just walked where they weren’t supposed to.”

“Oh no,” said the king. “This dislike goes back a long while. And it is not just we elves that dislike dwarves; dwarves dislike us, too. I say good riddance to them, but I am going to get some of that treasure! It is not fair that only dwarves should have it!”

This angered Harry so much — who, in his brain, thought the king was being very unfair — that it took him a while to notice all the candles had gone out and the pretty white writing table was now hopping up and down on its own, as though trying to get away from the king. King Thranduil and Mr Legolas jumped out of their seats in terror, Mr Legolas’s hand still wrapped tightly about Harry’s stomach, and Harry’s feet swinging like a pendulum in the open air.

As soon as they had done this the table, giving a small, excited, creaking sort of grunt (like doors scraping against their hinges) jumped once more, this time quite high and, in a series of small fast hops, jerked away from them and out the open doors and down the corridor. The elves who had been walking past gave little cries of terror or shock. Harry heard the echoing thumpity-tap of the table’s legs as it hopped and skipped down the hall.

The king, snapping out of his daze, rushed out of the room, his robes flying behind him. Mr Legolas ran after him, Harry still dangling from his arm.

“Catch it!” King Thranduil shouted, running swiftly down the hall past the still shocked and bemused elves. “That table is priceless, do you hear me! Let nothing happen to it!”

But something did happen to it.

After an hour of chasing the table — once cornering it in the West Corridor (a dead end) — it finally dove into the gardens, startling Mirdhel and Company, and smashed against a particularly fat tree, where it broke its leg. There it lay, groaning and creaking, until, with one final jerk (where it spat out a few hundred splinters as a sort of last defence) it stilled.

“Is it dead?” asked an elf.

“Don’t be a fool,” said another at once. “How can a table be dead?” But he didn’t look so sure.

King Thranduil was the first to approach it, though he toed it a little before deigning to touch it. Soon it was packed up and carried back into the Halls to the Wood Room, the elves carrying it already having composed a song about the incident; their voices rising and lowering prettily, and fading the deeper they ventured.

“That table was a gift from your mother,” said King Thranduil finally, staring at nothing.

“I know,” said Mr Legolas.

“Perhaps you were trying to teach me a lesson, little Harry.” The king faced him very quickly. “Taking something from me, as I would take something from the dwarves?”

Harry, who was now on the verge of crying, tried to stick out his chest bravely. He groped for Mr Legolas’s hand behind him but only encountered his thigh. He gripped that instead. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered.

He was very surprised when the king smiled at him. “I know. And the damage is not unrepairable. Perhaps I did deserve it, perhaps I did not. Nonetheless, the matter stands thus: we cannot go on like this anymore.”

A tear rolled down Harry’s cheek. “We can’t?” he whispered. His voice shook. Where’s Mr Legolas’s hand?

The king shook his head. “Nay, we cannot. You must learn control of your magic, at the soonest possible opportunity.”

Harry felt relief rush over him so completely that he almost fell over. Mr Legolas caught him from behind and held him to his chest.

“We, none of us, have never before witnessed what happened today.” The surrounding group of elves all nodded and murmured at the king’s words. “It is clear to all of us that you are special even amongst the special. You will be something some day, Harry Potter, and I shall help you achieve that milestone. Come.” The king held out a strong hand to Harry who, with a slight nudge from Mr Legolas, accepted it. “We shall talk, you and me, and decide which wizard would be best suited to your purpose. Although, I can think of only one. What is this?”

King Thranduil was staring at Harry’s wrist, where a small green head had poked out from under his sleeve.

“Draedan,” said Harry.

The resulting look he got from the king was blank.

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A/N: I borrowed about two quotes from The Hobbit. One was directly quoted, one not directly. They are not mine.