Tolkien is a genius. I am not. Therefore, I am not Tolkien. Therefore, I do not own any characters that you may recognize, and am not making any money from this, so there's no point suing me anyway.

The scenario starts from a line in a film called 'The Santa Clause'. We watched it, and I reacted rather badly to the statement that elves were little people, so my mum joked, "Enter some number between one and seven inclusive of the howling sons of Feanor.' This started from that.

Enjoy!

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Jayne scowled to herself. What a waste of her time! None of these children would want to do her job; she had been reliably informed by her son, Alfred, that they all thought she was nuts. There was a doctor up at the front talking now, all about the rewarding career of medicine. Jayne had a Dr. in front of her name, which sometimes led to confusion, but she simply had a PhD in History and its Influence on Literature. She wrote stories in her spare time, but mostly she just worked up at the university, researching, teaching and tutoring the students.

She became aware that the conversation had shifted.

"Does Santa make the toys?" a little girl asked shyly.

"No, stupid! The elves do!" cried a boy.

Jayne gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Stupid children! But she had promised Alfie that she wouldn't make a scene about this. The teacher's remark, however, was something that she didn't intend to stand for.

"Bobby, we don't say 'stupid', and we don't say 'elves'; they're 'little people'."

Jayne started to get up in order to reorganize the teacher's ideas a bit, ignoring Alfie's pleading look.

She never got her chance, however, for at that moment the door burst open under a sturdy kick, and seven figures poured into the room.

Several children screamed, as did, to Jayne's disgust, a few of the adults. She simply bit her lip and went to stand by Alfie's desk. He grabbed her hand.

"Who are you?" asked the teacher, facing the leader of the group. He was very tall and imposing, with bright red hair. She looked him up and down and added, rather rudely, "What are you?"

He looked at her a little oddly. "We are Elves."

"We don't say elves," she replied, sticking to what she knew. "They're little people!"

"Little people?" He smiled and patted her on the head, using his left hand. He was about two feet taller than her. "Little people, brief mortal?"

"Well… we don't say elves."

"Very well… Quendi."

"Quendi?" breathed Jayne in great surprise. She looked sharply at the seven men, looking to see if maybe some of her students were playing a prank on her. She didn't recognize any of them.

"Calaquendi, to be precise," said one of the others, one with black hair and a slightly less belligerent expression than his fellows. She found herself smiling at the sound of his voice. It was a nice, musical voice.

"Noldor, to be even more precise," added another.

"The Elder Children Undying of Eru Illuvatar, if you want to be longwinded about it." Red-head looked around for a moment, taking in the crowded classroom. "You… wouldn't happen to have seen our Silmarils, would you?"

Jayne dived over towards the teacher before she could say anything stupid. She noticed with a shudder that the leader's right arm, which had been hidden before, ended in a stump.

"Just say no," she hissed in the teacher's ear. "Then they might go away!" She was seriously alarmed now. She didn't see how the seven sons of Feanor could be standing in her son's classroom, but she was taking no chances.

Her warning was ignored.

"Perhaps you'd like to share your Silmarils with the rest of the class?" suggested the teacher, sweetly.

Jayne smacked herself on the forehead. This could not be dealt with like a playground squabble! "The sons of Feanor do not share their Silmarils!" she hissed, still more urgently.

"Well, they should. Perhaps we could all sit down and discuss this."

"Nor do they discuss. Well… except Maedhros there. He makes an effort."

Thankfully, she seemed to have diverted the teacher's attention onto herself. She took her arm and drew her a little way away.

"They seem to have had a very strange upbringing. Did they come from a broken home?"

Jayne considered this. "Yes. And if you knew their father, you'd understand why."

"Why? What was wrong with him?"

"Well… how can I put this with all seven of his sons here and armed to the teeth? Uh… he was a genius and a brilliant leader, I'll grant you that, but he was also obsessive, compulsive, rebellious and ill-tempered."

"Oh dear," was the only response. Jayne rolled her eyes. "Did he come from a broken home?"

Clearly, the light at the end of the tunnel was the headlights of an approaching train.

"Well, his mother died when he was a baby, and his father remarried, and he didn't get on with her –"

"Ah! So he had stepmother issues!"

" – or her two sons."

"Ah! Sibling rivalry issues! Perhaps he felt that his father had abandoned him?"

"He had no justification if he did; he was always very much his father's favorite. Mind you, he did once threaten to kill Fingolfin: one of his half-brothers. He chased him out of a council and pointed a sword at him, and said that 'This is sharper than thy tongue. If you try but once more to usurp my place and the love of my father it will rid the Noldor of one who seeks to be the master of thralls.' Yes, I think that's a correct quote."

The teacher eyed the security intercom, then clearly decided against it.

"But what about this lot? What happened to their parents?"

Jayne rolled her eyes again. "Well, their father left Valinor, and their mother didn't."

"So she abandoned them?"

"No! they left her to follow their father!"

"How old were they at the time?"

"Oh, all grown up."

"So this was quite recent?"

"No."

"But they aren't all that old now!"

"I don't have time for this," muttered Jayne, then told the teacher, "The Elder Children Undying of Eru Illuvatar. They're practically immortal; it takes a long time for them to look any older. Believe you me, if they'd left Valinor recently, you'd have heard about it."

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TBC