Jacob almost danced across the battlefield shooting sparks of magic across the field nonstop. He found himself holding back the group of centaurs that had focused on him, and every once and a while either Mal or Cat would hit one or two of his that he couldn't cover, and he did the same for them. After their time fighting together in Middle Earth, Jacob found that their synergy in a fight had improved significantly. Unfortunately, the centaurs seemed to realize this and began to separate them, pushing into the spaces between them. He soon found himself without his partners and being overwhelmed. He could see both of them through the mass of centaurs, and saw that both were in his same predicament. He was faced with a choice, He could help Mal, his best friend, or he could help Cat, who was... well... She was Cat. He glanced right and saw Mal struggling to stay on her broom, to his left he could see Cat shifting between her cat form and her regular self. Unfortunately, he had been to busy thinking to put his entire focus into defending himself. A centaur's fist slammed into his chest and he toppled. His vision was blurry, but he could see the grass and hooves stampeding around him, along with a downed centaur next to him. He looked at the empty sheath on the centaur's back, and he could swear it seemed to shimmer.

He blinked and there in the sheath was a silver sword with writing engraved on the blade and impressive red stones on its pommel and guard. He crawled toward it and drew the sword out of the open back sheath. He felt the courage of Gryffindor surging through him, so he stood. He found that his original wand had been trampled and was now in several pieces, but his new wand was gripped firmly in his left hand. He had made it in secret. He had used a branch from a spruce tree in the forbidden forest, and a small piece of the centaur's arrowhead that he had kept as its core. it was a wand especially useful for the new earth spells he had developed during Flitwick's private tutoring.

He stood, a crazy idea forming in his mind. He decided to follow it, shouting, "Who leads this herd? Who dares to attack my friends and I? Who would threaten the innocents within this school? Who is this coward?" Suddenly, all the centaurs stopped and looked at him, dumbfounded. Jacob remembered that were quite the prideful creatures, so he knew his insult had struck true with the centaurs' leader. They parted and a centaur with several impressive scars across his muscular chest and his grim face strode toward him. Cat and Mal had stopped fighting, realizing he was trying to buy them time.

"You would call me a coward?" the centaur said to him, though it came out more as a growl. "You will pay for your insolence!" he bellowed, brandishing a blade that must have been at twice as heavy as the light, balanced blade Jacob held in his hand. Jacob nodded back to him.

"Then face me in honor!" he called back, "No magic, no bows. Only swords. Neither of our kin will interfere I assume." He glanced at Mal with those last words. The centaurs backed out to create a circle and their leader grunted his agreement and trotted the far side of the circle, then turned to face Jacob. Both held their swords at the ready, then they charged. and the duel began.

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Cat wasn't sure to how to feel about what Jacob had just done. She knew that he was decent with a sword, but she doubted she could outdo a centaur captain. Just before the duel started, she saw him glance at her, then turn away, a darkness in his eyes. She wasn't quite sure what it was that had made him do this, but she was almost certain that it had something to do with her and Ariana. While he might have been a Gryffindor, he was just as caring as any Hufflepuff, as wise as a Ravenclaw, and as determined to succeed as a Slytherin. He had taken a sword through the chest to save the rest of them, and now he might do just that again. It wasn't until the duel had been going for almost a minute that she noticed that Cedric was nowhere to be seen. She thought back on Jacob's words. Who leads this herd? Who is this coward? It was then that she knew where Cedric was. Jacob had called the leader a coward. Would a coward be fighting with their soldiers? no, they wouldn't be. The real leader was no doubt still laying petrified on the quidditch pitch. Lyndsey. Cat whispered this all into Ariana's ear as they watched Jacob holding his own thanks to the extra training from Aragorn. The sword of Godric Gryffindor held between his hands, Jacob seemed almost as heroic as he had when he had charged Ryan at the black gate. Almost. Mal slipped away to go aid Cedric in retrieving Lyndsey, but Cat wondered if she was going to miss something actually fairly impressive. She was right. the duel was swiftly ended when Jacob quickly deflected a blow and caught the captain's arm and used the momentum to swing up on the centaur's back and brought his blade up to his foes throat.

"Yield," he said quietly in the beasts ear. He knelt, Jacob still on his back.

"I yield, young wizard, for I have seen the stars. I know you will fail in the end like it was foretold. We will have what was promised to us," he said, trying to avoid losing his head. Jacob drew his blade back and held it high above his head, claiming victory. It was then that one of the other centaurs broke into the circle and barreled toward him, for greed can overcome even the most honorable of beasts and beings.

Cat watched as he roared, "I still fight for my reward, not until you defeat the one who will give it will I stop. There was nothing she could have done about it, but then a call came from behind the herd. it was Cedric's voice.

"Here they are, defeated long before this battle even began," Cedric called, as he and Mal dropped Lyndsey to the ground. She would not be rewarding them with anything. Mal walked over to Jacob and the two high fived. She was after all, his best friend. Mal and Cedric had saved the day for now, but the words that the captain still nagged at the back of her mind. I know you will fail in the end.

She couldn't shake the feeling that all this wasn't over, especially since they didn't know any way to get home like they had in their previous adventure. Winter came and passed, the four of them hadn't gone 'home' for the break, instead they opted to stay at hogwarts over the holidays. Cat enjoyed spending Christmas with them. She had woken up Christmas morning as the sun crept into her window. all the other girls in her dormitory had gone home, so she woke and silently got ready. She went down to the common room and found Jacob sitting in one of the large armchairs, his feet stretched out and a book in his hand. He glanced up at her and smiled.

"Merry Christmas, it's good to see you up," he said, closing the book and standing. She noticed that the small tree that she had transfigured now had several presents beneath it.

"We have presents?" she noted, "What did you get?" She had expected him to open all his presents right when he had gotten up. It turned out he hadn't opened a single one of them, as he had been waiting for her to share the joy with, and it was sort of a tradition for him to wait for others before he opened his gifts.

She looked to the gifts and noticed a few, one from each of the other travelers, as well as one from Cedric, and an unknown person, though she suspected that was also one of them. She had also found gifts for each of the others, and she had given Cedric his gift before he left for the holidays with instructions not to open it until Christmas. She opened the gift from Ariana first and found a small handbag that was clearly from the middle east. She opened her next gift, Jacob's, and found two items: a small package of kitten treats, and small globe that seemed to be moving on it's own. upon removing the first item, she gave Jacob a sarcastic glare and then scoffed as she returned his smile, shaking her head. She picked up the globe for closer inspection, and Jacob explained that it was special, magical. She pulled out her wand and he instructed her to place the tip on a place on the globe. She placed it back home, generally over their hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. Suddenly, she found her vision filled with a scene, a scene of the downtown streets of their city. She pulled her wand away, and the sight faded. She could see anywhere on the planet. She thanked him and opened the other gifts. She looked in the gift again and found one last item that she hadn't been able to see at first. She reached in and felt a wooden handle and many metal wires. She pulled the whisk out of the bag, finding a label around the top of the handle with the word tool on it, and laughed. She shook her head with disbelief.

"You still remember that? I had totally forgotten that," She said when she stopped laughing.

He laughed a little as well, then said, "Of course, I got a pretty sweet squirt gun out of that. If the judge hadn't thought that a whisk wasn't a tool you probably would have won that. Not to mention it was the first time I realized that someone could be as smart I am." He laughed again, and she began to open her other presents. Finally she peeled the wrapping off the present from no one. Inside she found something that changed everything. There she found a small seal. It was purely white, but etched into the surface was a tree. The white tree.

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Mal didn't have anyone to open her gifts with, so she opened them in silence, making a mental record of who gave her what, that way she could thank them later. She left her common room and headed to the great hall where she ate breakfast with the others, sitting next Cat with Richard and Jacob on the other side of the table. Jacob and Cat were both unusually quiet, but Richard continued to talk on and on.

Finally she cut him off, "Be quiet for a second, what is, Gryffindors?" Cat held up the white tree, and said nothing more. Richard didn't understand the meaning of the small symbol. Finally, Mal silenced Richard and began to explain, "That is the White Tree of Gondor. It came from a world that we had previously visited, Middle Earth. I believe this specific seal belonged to Drinian, am I right on that one Cat?" Cat nodded and Mal continued, "This must mean that that world is bleeding together with this one. I think we might have been the cause of that, once again. Is that what you guys figured?" Jacob and Cat nodded, almost in unison.

"That's not all," Jacob noted. The focus shifted to him. "One of my gifts was this," he said, holding up an arrowhead, "and at first I thought it was another centaur head, but this one is different. It's elven."

"We think that Middle Earth still needs us," Cat continued, not waiting for him, "either that or maybe the worlds are blurring together somehow. We need to go back into that forest after the holidays." Mal gave them a questioning look, and Richard looked as if they were telling him that a purple unicorn was walking on a rainbow. He clearly didn't see the point here. Mal nodded her head in agreement. If they were going to get their answers, there was only one way to get them. They would have to ask someone who could see beyond this world, and there were two people who had recognized them as not from this world. One of them was up in the headmaster's office, and the other was the centaur Captain. She didn't want to explain to yet another person that they were actually travelers from another world, so it was the centaurs. Though, she did have to admit that seeing her old friend Mendon would be nice, she didn't want worlds that were so different colliding.

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The rest of the holidays passed quickly for Richard. He didn't have many good friends in his house to begin with, and those that he had connected with even a little were all gone. He and the others could often be seen sitting and talking, planning. He spent a good deal of his time with Hagrid, caring for the creatures of Hogwarts. He seemed at peace whenever he was feeding some creature, from Fire Crabs to Murtlaps. He had heard Mal describe riding or flying and the peace she found during her time moving. He knew that Jacob thrived in battle, from a duel with wands to swords. Cat had apparently always been the defender or the peacekeeper.

He felt like he knew what they all meant when they described using their talents. He handed a small coin to a niffler, which greedily stuffed it into his seemingly infinite stomach. He laughed at the niffler's look, asking for something else shiny. He knew they would going into the forest the next day, so he had wanted to be as calm as he could. He finished his classes for that day, and was ready the next. They all met after breakfast, ready to go talk to their old foes.

They stalked into the forest, which only Mal seemed to know how to navigate. They had left Cedric behind, not wanting to alarm him by allowing him to know that danger was still present, possibly even more present. They neared the camp, striding confidently, but as they drew closer, something seemed wrong. Jacob drew his wand, ready for a fight, but it wasn't a centaur that approached them. It was a spider, or rather, several dozen spiders. Nate drew his wand as well, and used the one spell he knew worked on spiders. "Arania Exumai!" He shouted. The nearest spider flew backwards, but the others just kept advancing. Suddenly, an arrow sprouted from the head of the nearest spider. Then another two fell dead from the arrows. A figure in green leapt from a branch above them, a white bow in hand. He fired another arrow in mid air, piercing another spider's skull. He landed in a roll and drew a dagger from his side. Driving an unfired arrow into one spiders eyes, he slashed another through its face. Sheathing his dagger, he spun and fired another arrow at point blank into another spider. He gracefully dispatched each of the arachnids, until the only ones left were those skittering away. He turned and Jacob greeted him strangely.

"Alla, Melon," he said to the stranger, "I would recognize the talents of an elf anywhere. I had them myself for a time. Would I be correct in guessing that you are the elf prince Legolas?"

"I am. But who are you, that you speak elven, and would claim to be my equal for sometime?" Legolas asked. It hit Richard what this meant. The worlds were closer to merging.