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Chapter Text

Two Hearts Are Better Than One

Prologue

A blue box floated in the vastness of space. Within her four exterior walls was impressive technology that could shake any human’s perspective on reality and space, and an ability to travel through time and space. Even more impressive than the technology and the boxes capabilities though was the lonely man that the box had stolen.

He was alone again. He often was alone, even though he sometimes had companions.

He was the last of his kind. The very last of the once great race known as the Time Lords. Anyone else would break under the all of the loss that this man had gone through, but the Doctor was stronger than his loss. Still, some moments the loss and loneliness was overwhelming and overpowering and he wanted only to succumb to his sorrow. He often wished for a more permanent companion who would not leave him as all of his companions in the past had.

“Where to now?” the Doctor asked the TARDIS as he stroked her console.
The TARDIS hummed, seemingly trying to come up with a time and place to cheer up her Time Lord. They were connected, her and her Time Lord, and she could feel his pain. It was nearing the level of pain that he felt directly after the Time War. The pink and yellow human known as both Rose Tyler and Bad Wolf had saved the Doctor when the Doctor saved her from mannequins in the shop Rose worked in. She gave him a reason to show off and see the happy things in life. They once again saved each other when Rose absorbed the time vortex into herself to save him and he did the same to save her, but now Rose was gone.

The loud red human called Donna came to the Doctor suddenly. She appeared within the TARDIS and pulled the Doctor out of his sadness of losing Rose by distracting the lonely Time Lord. The distraction did not last long though, as Donna declined his offer for her to travel with him. The Doctor was once again alone.

Before the TARDIS could pinpoint a destination, the Doctor stumbled backwards with a shocked cry. Another presence brushed against his mind. It wasn’t just the presence of any mind though, it was a distinctly Gallifreyan. It was the mind of a juvenile male Gallifreyan to be more precise. It was strangely familiar, yet somehow different. Before the Doctor could try to properly contact the young Time Lord, however, the Doctor was forcibly thrown away from the younger’s mind. The only thing left from the brief contact was a strong sense of fear and panic.

“What? How? What?” He exclaimed as he ran around the console of the TARDIS trying to lock onto the traces of the mental signal before it was gone.

“It can’t be possible,” The Doctor said, hoping he was wrong. It had to be some sort of trap or a cruel lie, but it couldn’t be. Nothing could so accurately imitate the mental call of a young Gallifreyan in such distress.

“No, no, no!” The Doctor hit the control panel. “How can we not track the signal?”

The Doctor began wildly typing in coordinates with only the vaguest idea of where the boy could be. Even if his search took years, he would find him. The you Time Lord was in trouble and here was a possibility that the Doctor wasn’t the last anymore.

“Maybe I’ve just finally lost the last of my sanity,” The Doctor said. Only a few seconds after saying those words, he threw the lever to set him on his search. “But I have to try.”

Chapter One

It had been a progression of many things that led to thirteen-year-old Harry Potter flying on the back of a Hippogriff with Hermione in an attempt to save his innocent godfather. So many things had went wrong that year, just like they had in the two years before it, but everything in the rescue seemed to be going well.

The two teenagers had managed to save Buckbeak the Hippogriff from an unjust execution. The only things that the two friends had left to do of their plan was to first pass the Hippogriff off to Sirius and then return to the hospital wing before they were found missing. Harry was saddened that Sirius would have to go on the run, but without Pettigrew as evidence they would be unable to clear Sirius’ name. At least with Sirius away and alive they would have a chance to find a way to clear his name later.

Buckbeak was flying high into the air as they soared over the forbidden forest towards the direction of the tower that Sirius was being held in when the plan went askew. Hermione was sitting behind Harry, holding onto his back tightly to try to still her racing heart, when her fear of flying was proven logical. A strong gust of wind picked up causing the large Hippogriff to tip sideways. Buckbeak quickly righted himself, but not before the two riders slipped off.
Hermione screamed and almost lost her grip on Harry entirely before Buckbeak grabbed her in his strong talons. The only thing that was keeping Harry from falling to his death was his too large shirt which Hermione had clutched in her hands.

“Harry!” Hermione shrieked. “I can’t hold on to you! You’re slipping!”

Harry tried to swing around and grab onto Hermione’s arm, but his blind grab missed and he was only able to grab the time turner which had fallen out of Hermione’s shirt during the fall. Harry’s sudden movement only managed to make the situation worse. Hermione lost her grip on Harry’s shirt. The chain of the time turner snapped and Harry went plummeting, possibly to his death, for the second time that year. This time, however, there was no headmaster there to save Harry. All that he had was a small time turner that he held against his chest as he fell into the forest below.

Harry tumbled as he fell and slammed into many tree branches. The thinner branches gave way with loud cracks as he hit them, but the larger ones were not as kind. When Harry hit one of the large branches, the impact was enough to shatter the time turner in his hand. The glass from it was driven into his chest dangerously close to his heart. The time sand entered with the glass and made its way into his bloodstream.

Harry fell around ten more feet before he finally hit the ground. He laid on his back, breathing shallowly. The pain in his body was intense. He figured that he must have multiple broken bones and possibly a concussion. Just as Harry began to try to take in the full scope of his injuries, a pain greater than all of the injuries combined tore through his chest.

The golden time sand had reached Harry’s heart and was being pumped all throughout his body. Every cell in his body was being destroyed and rewritten. The pain was intolerable and Harry was no stranger to pain. The worst pain of all ripped through his chest. It felt like his heart was being ripped in two.

As Harry slowly awoke the sound of running water filled his ears along with other sounds of the night. Harry inhaled sharply. His lungs didn’t inflate, but he still felt something in his body fill with air. His pulse quickened to a rate which should have killed him and he felt beating coming from both sides of his chest.
Harry’s eyes fluttered open and although he knew that he lost his glasses in the fall, he was able to see and take in more details than he ever had before. He could see every vein in every leaf on every branch on every tree. Looking past the trees, he could see the stars in the sky brighter and clearer than ever before. Names that he couldn’t recall learning floated through his head for them.

In a state of near panic, Harry tried to bring his focus back to his current location on Earth. He quickly found that that was the wrong decision. Figures and knowledge flooded his mind. He suddenly knew his exact location in not only Scotland, or the Earth, but the entire solar system. He registered how fast the Earth was spinning and revolving and exactly how many seconds it had been since he had passed out.
It was all too much for the teenager. He called out, both vocally and subconsciously in his mind, for help. Although the cry from his mouth went unanswered, he quickly felt another mind brush up against his own.

It was ancient and powerful, full of loss and rage. But it was also kind and held a promise of help. The brush of the other mind against Harry’s own felt both comforting and foreign. After only a few seconds of being connected, Harry yanked himself away from its touch in fear.

Harry sat up and tried to focus on the reason that he was in the forest to begin with instead of anything that had happened since his fall. He managed to block out the overload of information as he pulled himself to his feet, using a small tree for support.
Harry tried to take a step forward, but instead fell to his knees. He pulled himself back up and tried again, this time managing to get a few feet away from where he had landed from the fall.

Harry walked through the forest in the direction he knew that Hogwarts would be. A nagging feeling in the back of his mind was telling him that something was wrong, but he didn’t register what it was until he heard the howl come from his Defence professor. Harry had gone back in his own timeline again during the fall.

Harry came to a clearing and saw his past self standing with Hermione, Ron, and Professor Snape as Lupin turned into a wolf. He quickly hid behind a large tree, knowing instinctively that his past self seeing him there would be disastrous. From his position behind the tree, Harry was still able to see Lupin and the rat.

The rat.

Suddenly Harry had an idea. He saw Pettigrew take off in the distraction of Lupin’s transformation. Harry took off after him, his veins and mind full of adrenaline.
The teenager reached for his wand but decided not to test it yet at the last moment. He instead bolted ahead of Pettigrew, managing to get ahead of the rat without being seen.

“Got’cha,” Harry said as he grabbed the rat off of the ground.

Pettigrew started squealing and screeching in Harry’s grasp, but with a quick thought, Harry willed him to be silent and still.
Harry tried not to spend too much time wondering about what he tried to reason away as wandless magic. He instead stuffed the rat in his pocket and made his way back through the forest towards Hogwarts. He stopped just within the forest and waited until he knew for certain that he had passed the point that his past self had fallen.

During the time that he waited, Harry tried to take in what had happened to him. The fall should have killed him. Even if he had managed to survive it, he should have died of the injuries that he had sustained before anyone could find him. What he should most definitely not have been able to do was walk away on his own.

Harry turned his focus inside. He found that he had more control of both his respiratory and circulatory system then he ever had before. Harry tried to take his pulse but found not the rhythm that he was used to, but a strange new one.

Harry began to panic once again. He swiftly veered his mind away from his present line of thought. Those thoughts were stored away for a later time, almost successfully dammed up in the back of his brain.

Once Harry knew that exactly enough time had passed, he continued on to the castle. He made his way to the top of the tower where he and Hermione had planned to land and say goodbye to Sirius. Both his godfather and his best friend were already there. Hermione was shakily trying to tell Sirius what had happened.

“Hermione,” Sirius said as he tried to both calm the panicking girl and understand what she was telling him. “I need for you to calm down and tell me again what happened.”

“It’s Harry,” Hermione said between sobs. “He was coming with me and he fell. Merlin! Mr. Black, he couldn’t have survived a fall from that height. He’s dead!”

“No,” Sirius said in disbelief. “I just got back to him. He couldn’t have died.”

Harry heard the end of the conversation as he came up the stairs.

“Who couldn’t have died?” Harry asked as he walked up to them from behind.

“Harry!” Hermione slammed into him for a hug causing Harry to grunt in pain. “How are you alive?”

“Careful Hermione,” Harry said as he slightly pulled away. “I’m a little sore.”

“Don’t think that you’re going to get out of answering me, Harry,” Hermione’s voice was stern, but there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.

“The time turner broke when I hit a tree branch,” Harry shrugged. “I got sent earlier in the night and just landed on the forest floor.”

Although the story was partially true, it didn’t answer Hermione’s question. She was too relieved to notice the logical flaws in the explanation though. Harry was thankful for that.

“Are you ok?” Sirius asked.

“Just a bit bruised,” Harry said looking down. He then noticed the blood on his shirt. “I also got a bit scratched from the glass of the time turner breaking.”
Harry didn’t know what had happened to him. He did know that he wasn’t ok though, but he was alive and if they waited too long he wouldn’t be able to say the same about Sirius. Harry pushed his problems to the side once again that night. They could wait.

“Mr. Black,” Hermione said.

“Please call me Sirius,” Sirius interrupted. “Mr. Black makes me feel old.”

“Sirius,” Hermione started again. “You need to go. Harry and I have to be back in the hospital wing soon and you can’t be here when they come to give you the kiss.”

Sirius looked apprehensive about leaving.

“You really don’t have to leave,” Harry stuck his hands in the pockets of his oversized jeans.

“What do you mean?” Hermione asked.

Harry pulled the stunned rat out of his pocket and held it up by its tail.

“I can’t believe it!” Sirius exclaimed. His grey eyes widened in his skeletal face.

At the same time Hermione looked at Harry in shock. “You aren’t supposed to meddle with time.”

“This was ok to change,” Harry said, and somehow, he knew that it was true. “We should probably bring the rat to Dumbledore before the aurors come for Sirius.”
Sirius transformed and followed the two teens to the hospital wing, leaving the hippogriff hidden on the roof. They arrived just before Dumbledore locked the door.

“I take it that you were successful?” The old headmaster asked before he saw the black dog following behind them. “What’s this?”

“Sir,” Hermione said. “We need to go to your office.”

Harry once again held up the rat.

“It seems that we do,” Dumbledore said as he led the way to his office. “It also seems that I have some aurors to call.”

Events moved swiftly after the aurors were called. The head of the department, Amelia Bones, showed up on the case first. Minister Fudge came as soon as he found out. The minister spent the rest of the time both trying to cover his rear and insisting that Black was guilty. Sadly, for Fudge, with Pettigrew in custody, there was little to no doubt about Sirius’ innocence to any of the aurors. Harry and Hermione were questioned in-depthly and Sirius’s name was cleared of all charges within an hour.

“Could you inform Mr. Black that the charges against him have been dropped and the kiss order has been called off?” Bones asked. “We’ll just need him to come in so that he can be officially exonerated.”

After she said that, Sirius came out from under Dumbledore’s desk where he had been hiding as Padfoot. He transformed back.

Fudge was outraged that Sirius had been there the entire time. He tried to say that he should be arrested for being an illegal animagus and any other crime that he could accuse Sirius of. His accusations, of course, fell on deaf ears and Bones simply told Sirius to register when St. Mungo’s declared him healthy enough.
Sirius flooed to the ministry with Bones, Fudge, and Dumbledore. Harry and Hermione were reluctantly left behind.

“You should go to the hospital wing and let Madame Pomfrey check you,” Hermione’s words barely registered to Harry.

“I’m fine ‘Mione,” Harry assured her. “I’m just really tired. I think I’m just going to go up to the dorm and sleep for a while.”

It took a few more minutes of insisting that he was just tired for Hermione to let him go. During that time, Harry’s focus began to slip. The parts of his mind that he had suppressed started to slip past their bindings. Thoughts and theorems and things that he shouldn’t know began rushing through his head.

Hermione said that she was going to go and check on Ron. After she left for the hospital wing, Harry somehow managed to make his way back to Gryffindor tower and up to his bed. He kicked his shoes off and climbed in.

As soon as Harry’s head hit the pillow, he was asleep, but even in sleep, Harry couldn’t escape what had happened to him. His time of rest was filled with dreams that seemed more like memories.

He saw burnt orange skies and silver trees. Domed cities, and academies. People in silly hats, and otherworldly creatures. All of that, however, was just the beginning.

Chapter Text

Two Hearts Are Better Than One
Chapter Two

Harry woke up peacefully the next day. He stretched and looked around the dorm, noticing that it was empty. He wondered briefly how long he was asleep before the exact amount of time became aware to him.

Fifteen hours, seven minutes, forty-five seconds.

It was odd for him to sleep that long. He was used to getting up early to make the Dursleys breakfast in the summer. At school he was accustomed to getting up for class on week days and being woken up by his year mates on weekends. The other boys must have let him sleep that day.

Harry got out of bed and looked down at his clothes. His shirt still had blood on it from the night before and his pants were ripped and dirty from his trek through the forest. He grabbed some clean clothes out of his trunk and went into the dorm bathroom to shower.

The shower was long and hot. When Harry got out he dried himself off and got dressed. He went over to the mirror, planning to try to do something with his hair, when he caught his reflection’s eyes. He once again realized that he could see perfectly without his glasses.

Suddenly, the events of the previous night all came rushing back. Sirius, the rat, the werewolf. Hippogriffs, and time turners, and falling. He began once again panicking as he remembered what had happened to him.

Harry grabbed onto the sink to steady himself. His too fast pulse sped up even more. He needed to find out what had happened and why. First, however, he needed to check on Ron and Hermione.

Harry grabbed his bag and shoved his invisibility cloak inside before leaving the dorm.

Neville and Ginny were sitting in the common room playing exploding snap.

“Hi Harry,” Ginny said quietly, barely looking up from her game.

“You’re up!” Neville said with a smile. “Are you ok?”

Harry considered saying no but changed his mind at the last moment.

“I’m fine,” he finally answered. “Where are Ron and Hermione?”

“They're both still in the hospital wing,” Ginny said. “I heard that Madam Pomfrey’s upset that you didn’t show up.”
Harry nodded and continued on to the door of the common room.

“Thanks for the warning, Ginny,” Harry said as the portrait of the fat lady swung open. “I’m actually going there now.”

Harry heard whispers from the other students about what had happened last night. He gathered that Sirius’ capture and innocence was on the front page of the daily prophet. Rumors were going all around the school. Some of the rumors about the capture and release of Sirius Black were amazingly wrong. One student was saying that he heard that Harry stabbed Sirius with a sword and Sirius ripped it out and swore on his magic that he was innocent in front of the aurors. Another one was swearing that she saw Sirius battle Professor Snape in an all-out magic duel before the hated professor himself declared Black’s innocence. Harry had only heard one rumor anywhere close to the truth, but it was considered one of the more insane ones.

As Harry neared the hospital wing, he slipped into a short empty corridor. He put on his invisibility cloak and made certain that he was completely hidden before coming back out. He then continued to the wing.

Hermione was arguing with Madam Pomfrey when Harry entered. She was insisting that she was fine and that finishing her homework was more important than staying in the hospital wing when she was completely fine for continued observation. Ron was just lying in his bed relaxing.

“I have to write my history of magic essay soon or I’ll be off schedule,” Hermione said. “Right, Ron?”

“Huh?” Ron looked up. “Hermione, we’re done for this year. The summer homework was just assigned. Take a break.”

“Ronald!” Hermione exclaimed.

Seeing that her young, female patient was too preoccupied bickering with her red-headed patient to try to sneak in homework, Madame Pomfrey exited the room to go to her office.

“You always put your homework off until the last possible second!” Hermione continued to lecture.

“But you won’t help me with it if I don’t!” Ron made the fatal mistake of saying.

“Honestly!” Hermione threw up her arms into the air.

“Hi guys,” Harry’s disembodied voice interrupted Hermione before Ron could get himself into even more trouble.

“Harry, mate,” Ron said, taking the excuse to change the subject. “Where were you?”

“Just had to sleep for a bit,” Harry assured him as he pulled off his cloak. “I guess the sudden loss of adrenaline got to me.”
Harry went and sat in a chair between his two friend’s beds.

“Why are you two still in here?” he asked. “Madame Pomfrey can heal a broken bone overnight.”

“She’s keeping us for observation,” Hermione said. “Both for our mental wellbeing, but also our physical. She wants to make sure that we’re still completely human after what happened last night.”

“Completely human?” Harry began to fear that the mediwitch suspected something.

“She’s making sure that we didn’t get bit or infected by our wolfish professor,” Ron explained.

Harry calmed down when he heard that. She was just checking for signs of lycanthropy. She wasn’t checking for two hearts or new memories.

“And how does she do that?” Harry asked.

“There’s no completely accurate way to find out until the next full moon, of course,” Hermione said. “But she’s able to check for bite and scratch marks that resemble that of a werewolf.”

“She was worried about the bites Black gave me so she had to take some blood from them before she could heal them,” Ron said.
Harry heard movement coming from the healer’s office. He quickly threw his cloak back on and disappeared before she came out.

“The results came back negative,” Madame Pomfrey said. “You are both free to go. Stay off of your leg as much as possible Mr. Weasley. And if either of you see Mr. Potter, please inform him that he can either submit to an evaluation now or be under observation during the next full moon.”

“I’ll go with the second option Madam Pomfrey,” The invisible boy said as he ran through the door. “Thank you!”

“He runs away from here more than his father did,” The healer chuckled.

________________________________________

Harry spent the rest of the day in the library. He started his search by looking for medical books and books on time turners. He only found a few that weren’t in the restricted section. Harry considered going to Professor Lupin for a note but didn’t want to bother the man the day after a full moon. He also figured that the books he had were fairly lengthy and he might as well read them first. When Harry opened the book to the first page, however, he realized that his reading may not take nearly as long as he had anticipated.

With only a look at the first page, Harry had already taken in all of the words on it. He was surprised at his new discovery, to say the least, and tried again on the next page with the same results. Harry slowly flipped through the book page by page. When he got to the end, he found that he could quote it from memory. He then flipped through the second book at an even faster speed and found that his memory of it was the same as the first. Harry finished all of the books that he had available in around ten minutes. None of them contained any information that he was looking for.

Harry was putting the books back in their proper places when he ran into Professor Lupin.

“Professor,” Harry was surprised to see the man out of his quarters. “How are you?”

“As well as can be expected,” the tired professor answered. “I just have a few books to return before leaving. Would you like to come into my office for some tea?”
Harry accepted Lupin’s offer and the two walked to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. The classroom was different than it had been even a few days prior. Many personal items that Professor Lupin had brought with him were taken down and the classroom looked empty and bare.

“Are you going to redecorate for next year?” Harry asked, although deep down he already knew the answer.

“I’m afraid that I won’t be coming back next year,” Lupin said as he made his way through the door to his office. “Our dear Professor Snape may have let it slip out that I’m a werewolf. There are some parents that aren’t very fond of the idea that their children are being taught by a monster.”

“But you aren’t a monster!” Harry insisted. “You’re the best defense teacher that I’ve ever had. So, what if you turn into a wolf once a month? Out of our last two teachers, one was a scam who tried to obliviate me and Ron, and the other one was possessed and tried to kill me.”

Lupin finished packing his case with a flick of his wand before retrieving a familiar piece of parchment.

“Thank you, Harry,” Remus said. “But I’m afraid that some parents, especially the ones on the board, don’t feel the same way that you do.”

“I guess that people just don’t like anything that’s different,” Harry said. “It’s kind of hypocritical from a bunch of people who wave wands around and say the right string of words as converters and channels for psychic energy.” Harry trailed off as he realized that although he knew that he had said them, he didn’t know where his words were coming from.

“Pardon?” Professor Lupin asked.

“Sorry, sir,” Harry shook his head and tried to shrug off what he had said. “I guess I’m still just a bit out of it from last night.”

“That’s all right,” Lupin said. He then held out the piece of parchment. “Since I’m no longer your teacher, I don’t feel as guilty about letting you keep this. I would tell you not to get into trouble with it, but Sirius will probably tell you the opposite anyway.”

Harry took the marauder’s map from his old professor and put it into his pocket. The two said their goodbyes and Harry headed up to the dorm to pack for his departure from Hogwarts.

All too soon, it was time to board the train. Harry had been informed before boarding that he would have to spend a couple of weeks with his relatives until Sirius was released from St. Mungo’s. The healers wanted to keep Sirius for longer, but one can only argue with the lord of an ancient house and notorious prankster for so long before giving up.

Dumbledore tried to insist that Harry had to stay with the Dursleys all summer. Sirius was hearing none of that so even the great Albus Dumbledore couldn’t win an argument with the Black Lord. Sirius was given custody of Harry without much fuss due to Sirius being Harry’s godfather. That meant that he had full control of where Harry would live and he swore that it wouldn’t be with the Dursleys.

Harry spent his train ride talking with Hermione. Ron soon realized that what Harry and Hermione were talking about was both boring and over his head. He instructed Harry what he wanted from the trolley and fell asleep.

Harry tried to question Hermione about time turners but she didn’t know much. Almost all that she had been told was a strict warning about how to properly use it. She knew that they were only used for school and work and that nothing important could be changed with them, partially because they could only go back a day. She said that only the highest level unspeakables might know how they were created.
They then began talking about magically changing species.

“Why do you ask?” was of course Hermione’s first response after Harry asked.

“I’m just curious after Professor Lupin,” Harry tried to explain. “It seems a bit weird that just a bite can permanently affect someone like that.”

“Oh,” Hermione said, delighted that her friend had finally shown interest in something academic instead of just quidditch. “Well, it doesn’t really change a person’s species. They’re still human, which is something the ministry tends to forget. It’s kind of just like a different branch of humans. Almost like muggles and wizards. They still have the same basic biology even though they’re slightly different.”

“So,” Harry said. “Almost like different blood types?”

“Exactly!” Hermione agreed. “People have different blood types, but their blood is still pumped by the same heart.”

“Oh,” Harry said without as much enthusiasm as his friend.

“And it isn’t actually caused by the bite itself,” Hermione continued to explain how the bite only served to open the skin and let the saliva, which actually carried the disease, into the body. “I think that it’s horrible that it’s classified as a disease, but I also can’t think of anything better to call it. What do you think Harry?”

“I agree,” Harry nodded. He honestly was only putting forth part of his thoughts to listening. The rest of his mind was deep in thought.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Harry said as soon as he found an opening in Hermione’s speech.

“If you’re thinking about getting into trouble,” Hermione’s stern warning was loud enough to rouse Ron.

“He’s probably just going to the loo,” Ron mumbled before going back to sleep.

Harry did, in fact, go to the bathroom on the train. He wanted to try out some of the diagnosis charms he had found from the healing books before he wasn’t allowed to use magic for the rest of the summer.

Harry pulled his wand out of his pocket. He hadn’t used it since the fall. Harry had a brief panic-laced thought go through his mind. What if he couldn’t use it anymore? The wand, seemingly sensing the boy’s line of thought, heated up in his hand as if it were encouraging him to try.
Harry cast a core temperature-revealing spell first. Its results were troubling. His internal temperature was now at around fifteen degrees Celsius in comparison to the average human core temperature at thirty-seven degrees.

The rest of his results from other spells that he tried were just as troubling. His spells revealed that he had two hearts along with other major internal changes. He also thought that he had an extra set of ribs but wasn’t entirely sure.
Harry leaned against the bathroom wall. He tried to steady his breathing as he took it all in. It’s one thing to have suspicions about something being wrong, but another thing entirely to have them confirmed.

Once Harry was able to compose himself, he returned to the compartment where his friends were. Ron had woken up and was arguing with Hermione about something. Harry just wondered how long it would be before they’d admit that they fancied one another.

When the train finally arrived at King’s Cross, the students disembarked and said their goodbyes.

“I know you’re going to be living with Sirius this summer,” Ron said. But if you still want to come over, you can anytime. I mean, you should probably let mum know first. She’s scary when company comes over unannounced”

“Sounds brilliant,” Harry assured his best mate. “We’ll have to talk about it later.”
When Harry had finished saying his goodbyes, he walked through the wall to the muggle part of the station. His uncle was waiting on him. The car ride back was nearly silent and Harry took that as a sign that he would be left alone that summer.

When they arrived at Privet Drive, Harry was allowed to take his trunk with all of his books up to his small room. Harry’s suspicion that he would be left alone that month was proven true within the first day. The only time that any of the Dursleys even talked to him was when Petunia called him to supper. That was an occurrence that continued throughout his time at Privet Drive. Harry was for the most part left alone with his thoughts.

Harry was gaining more and more information and memories almost constantly. He had never been interested in science in primary school and once he arrived at Hogwarts, there was no need to study science as he thought that everything was done with magic. He now realized that magic was just an advanced form of science. Just psychic energy that certain people could channel.

Harry found himself itching to learn as much as he could. His search for knowledge led him to the public library on the second day of his summer vacation. The librarians were helpful to any guest that they received and were especially thrilled to see “such a bright young man” interested in learning. They gave him access to the ancient computers and pointed him in the direction of the most advanced textbooks they had.
Harry read every textbook on the shelves. The librarians offered to order more for him, but he didn’t want the library to spend money on information that he could probably find elsewhere.

Harry moved on to the computers. They were as slow as they were outdated. Harry spent the first day that he used one of them just trying to figure out how it worked. Some of the memories that he was having included computers, but they were all far more advanced than what he currently had to work with and less earthly. Harry chose to focus on a computer tucked away in the back of the library. He tampered with it and upgraded it until it would work well enough to do some research on it.

Harry visited the library nearly every day. He looked up different things on what he had come to call “his computer”. He searched for legitimate information on aliens, randomly receiving memories, and any other research that he thought would pertain to his changes. His search led him to very little credible information. The only thing that he found that might give him any answers were some top-secret files filed under a place called Torchwood. Harry wasn’t yet confident enough in his hacking abilities to try and break into their security system, no matter how desperate he was for answers. What Harry didn’t realize was that just by stumbling into the files, he’d gotten the attention of someone from it.

Harry had temporarily given up his internet search by a week before he was supposed to leave to live with Sirius. He was instead slowly perusing a book on Latin grammatical form near the back of the library to pass time. He was sitting in the middle of a large pile of books so he didn’t see the man who entered through the front of the library. He just heard the man ask the librarians in an American accent if there was anyone who regularly used the computers. The ever-helpful librarians, who knew Harry quite well by that point, happily told the random man his name and pointed him in Harry’s general direction.
Harry looked up from his pile of books when he heard the man get close. The man was tall, with a broad athletic build. His short dark hair contrasted with his bright blue eyes. He wore a military coat, which Harry thought was from World War Two, in spite of the summer heat. Harry barely had to look at the man before he got an inherent, visceral sense of wrongness about him. It was if every nerve and muscle in Harry’s body was screaming at him to get away. Harry pushed the feeling away the best that he could and met the man’s eyes.

“Hi,” the man said with a lopsided smile, holding out his hand. “Captain Jack Harkness.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Harry stared at the man who introduced himself as Captain Jack Harkness for a second before shaking the offered hand.
“Harry,” he said, not giving a last name in case Jack knew of the wizarding world. “But I think the librarians already told you that.”
Jack held the handshake for a few seconds longer than necessary before releasing Harry’s hand. The captain looked at him like he had just had a suspicion confirmed.
Harry was debating making a run to the back emergency exit just a few feet away from him when Jack once again smiled.
“Could I take you out to lunch?” Jack asked.
“Thanks for the offer, sir,” Harry said. “But I’m pretty sure that you’re too old for me.”
Jack laughed at Harry’s words before he was shushed by the librarians.
“You have no idea, kid,” Jack said. “But it’s not a date. I just noticed that someone in this library has been looking in to classified information and it seems to be you. I thought that you might want to talk about it.”
Harry once again pulled back into his pile of books. If this man was from the government it would be a bad day for Harry. It didn’t look like he would be able to escape either. The man was taller and more athletically built than Harry was. If it ended in a chase, he didn’t think he would win.
“What place did you have in mind for lunch?” Harry finally asked.
In the next ten minutes, Harry found himself sitting in a small, comfortable diner. The place was nearly empty. Harry and Jack sat in a booth near the back looking at their menus with an almost awkward silence between them. A television on the wall behind them was displaying a debate between Harold Saxon and his political opponent. The opponent was losing by a lot and seemed to just be agreeing with Saxon’s points. The election in about a year would be won by a landslide.
Harry noticed how carefree Jack seemed on the surface. He was slouched slightly to one side and was examining his menu as if nothing else in the world mattered for that moment. Harry could not claim the same thing about himself. He had been glancing between Captain Harkness and the door since they entered. Harry still felt a sense of wrongness even just being in the man’s presence, but it wasn’t as noticeable as when he first saw him.
“Um, sir,” Harry said.
“Let’s not talk about the serious stuff just yet,” Jack cut him off. “I don’t want it to spoil our lunch if something goes wrong.”
They both fell quiet once again until a waitress arrived to take their orders. Harry said that he wasn’t ordering anything because he didn’t have any money. Jack informed the waitress that he was paying for both of them. Harry’s protests to the contrary fell on deaf ears as Jack ordered each of them a meal.
Harry picked at his food when it arrived. Being in an unfamiliar situation with a stranger tends to kill one’s appetite.
Jack was not having the same problem.
All too soon, the waitress came back to collect Jack’s empty plate. She left Harry’s where it was and laid the bill on the table with the instructions to pay at the register when they were ready.
“So,” Jack finally began to bring up the reason he had contacted Harry. “How long have you been working with computers? You did a lot to one of the ones in the library.”
“Just this summer,” Harry picked up a soggy chip with a small shrug. “It really wasn’t that difficult to work on after I figured out what I was looking at. I really didn’t do that much. Just enough to make it usable for a bit of research.”
“What you did to that computer is ahead of anything currently on the market,” Jack said.
Harry said nothing in return, so Jack continued on.
“Why were you doing research online? Doesn’t a kid your age have better things to do with their summer vacation?”
“It’s a small library,” Harry once again tried to put forth an air of nonchalance. “I’ve already read through the books that they had on what I was researching.”
“So, a kid goes into a library during his summer vacation, reads all of the books that they have on a given topic, makes major changes to a computer, and looks into aliens and advanced biology?” Jack said in a way that made Harry unsure if he was asking him to confirm what he said or was just stating facts.
“Yes?”
“Why?” Jack’s question was unsurprising.
“Well,” Harry tried to come up with a convincing lie on the spot. “My family really likes to watch the telly. I mean, they watch it all the time and barely do anything else. I don’t like it all that much. But at the beginning of summer holiday, I wanted to spend some time with them so I sat with them and watched a few things. They were watching a couple of documentaries back to back and I wanted to learn more about the topics that they were on so I came to the library and started doing some research. I guess one thing just led to another.”
Jack nodded but Harry was fairly certain that he didn’t entirely believe him. Jack was staring at Harry as if he were weighing his options before making a large decision.
“How about you come with me and I can provide you with some answers to your research questions that you won’t find in a public library?” Jack offered.
Harry’s initial reaction was to find a way out of going with Jack. The initial words of denial died before they reached his lips though. Jack could give him the answers he had been looking for. Maybe he could finally find out what had happened to him. But was the risk of going with someone he had just met worth the answers Harry was seeking? For once, Harry’s survival instinct won over his curiosity. He had to find a way out.
“I’m not sure that my family would be too happy about me suddenly leaving,” that was an even bigger lie than Harry’s explanation for his research. The Dursleys would be more than happy to get rid of Harry nearly an entire week early. “They might worry.”
“We’ll stop by your house first and let them know where you’re going, of course,” Jack said. “We’d just hate to make them worry.”
Harry nodded, seeing no other options at that point but to agree.
“I’ll go and pay for the meal and we’ll head to your house after that,” seeing Harry once again nod, Jack turned his back to the teen to walk to the register and pay.
Harry took that as his sign to leave. He slipped away from the table and tried to walk to the door without drawing attention to himself. Once he was out of the door, Harry took off towards Number 4 Privet Drive.
Harry ran faster than he ever had before. He reached the house and barreled through the door and up the stairs to his room.
Harry pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill and quickly scribbled down a note.
Sirius,
I need you to come and get me right now. I don’t have time to explain.
-Harry
“Hedwig,” Harry called to his snowy owl.
She hooted in disapproval of being woke up but flew over to her wizard when he saw how distressed he looked.
“Do you remember my godfather?” Harry asked the bird. “Sirius Black. I need you to take this note straight to him, girl. He should be at St. Mungo’s. Get it to him as fast as you can.”
Hedwig grabbed the note with a determined hoot and flew out the window.
Harry briefly wondered how long it would take the owl to get there before the time came into his head. Even flying at top speed, Hedwig wouldn’t reach the hospital before the captain would be able to find out his address from the library and make it back to Privet Drive.
Harry looked around his room for something to get him out of the situation that he was in. He couldn’t leave the house or Sirius would take longer to find him, but all that Jack would have to do was pose as a government official and Aunt Petunia would tell him that Harry was in the house. Heck, Aunt Petunia would probably tell Jack where Harry was at without him even having to impersonate an officer.
Harry’s frantic search around the room ended with him locating his invisibility cloak. Harry cursed, in a language he shouldn’t know, both for not keeping the cloak on him and not thinking of it earlier. He decided then that he would keep it on him at all times from then on.
Harry grabbed his wand, pulled the cloak over himself, and sat in the corner for around fifteen minutes, waiting for the knock at the door that he was sure to come. The inactivity was frustrating, but Harry knew that it was the best option.
The knock sounded seventeen minutes after Harry had begun hiding under his invisibility cloak. From what Harry could hear, Jack was doing exactly what Harry had anticipated and Aunt Petunia was giving the man exactly the information that he wanted.
“What did the boy do this time?” Harry could make out Petunia saying.
“Nothing bad,” Harry recognized the voice of the captain. “I just talked to him in the local library. He has a gift,”
“Whatever freakishness he did is not associated with us,” Petunia cut him off.
“I was going to say that he has a gift with technology,” Jack said.
Harry sat as still as possible. Aunt Petunia had informed Jack where Harry was at after he had spun a story about scholarships and government property. Harry heard the captain walking up the stairs. He gripped his wand tighter but hoped that it wouldn’t come to using it.
Harry had left the door slightly cracked to make his room look less like someone was hiding in it. Through the crack, Harry could see Jack approaching.
The door swung open without even making a squeak. Harry tried not to breathe as worry shot through his hearts. His wand warmed slightly in his hand in response.
“Harry?” Jack asked, waiting to hear a response before walking into the small room. When no such response came, he entered without it.
Jack looked around the room. His eyes drifted over Harry’s hiding spot without giving it a second thought. Harry wanted to sigh in relief but managed to contain himself.
“His Aunt said he was up here,” Jack walked over to the window to check and see if Harry might have climbed out of the second story window to escape. He paused while examining the place that Harry knew the bars were attached the summer before. Seeing nothing suggesting the window was an escape route, Jack turned his attention back to the inside of the room.
“I’m going to assume that you’re hiding in here somewhere,” Jack said. “I just want you to know that I do just want to help you.”
The words didn’t inspire Harry to come out of hiding.
Jack walked over to Harry’s bed and seemed to pick something off of the pillow.
“I’m going to leave this cell phone on your desk here,” Jack sat down a small device on the desk. “You can do what you want with it. Also, it has my number in it. If you need anything, call me.”
Jack left the room after taking one last look around. Harry heard him tell his Aunt that he would keep in touch about the scholarship. Aunt Petunia tried to convince him that Harry wouldn’t be good enough for it and Jack should instead look at what her little Dudley could do. Jack somehow managed to get out of hearing about Dudley’s “great accomplishments” and get out of the door.
Harry waited until he was sure Jack was gone before he came out from under the cloak. After folding the magical piece of fabric up and laying it on his bed, Harry went over to examine the mobile phone on his small desk.
The phone was a small flip phone with a camera on it. Harry flipped it open and saw that it revealed the time and date on top of the watery looking background. Harry messed around with it until he found the contact list. It only had one entry. The name “Jack Harkness” was highlighted blue. Harry knew that if he pressed the green button, it would call the man.
Harry flipped the phone shut and began examining the outside of it. He figured that Jack could probably use it to track him. He’d have to find a way to make sure that that wouldn’t happen. Harry spent the next few hours messing with and making small changes to the phone. He wished that he had access to his computer in the library but knew that it wouldn’t be a good idea to go back there.
When Harry had almost finished altering the mobile, he heard a commotion downstairs.
“Let me in or Merlin help me, Petunia,” Sirius’ growling voice could be heard throughout the house.
“I won’t have anymore freaks in my house,” Petunia was just as loud.
Harry grabbed his wand and shoved the phone in his pocket before running downstairs to break the two very different people apart before a fight could start.
“Sirius!” Harry shouted.
Sirius pushed past Petunia upon hearing his godson’s voice. That allowed Harry to get his first good look at the man since the night that they had met.
St. Mungo’s had really worked wonders with the man. Gone was the skeletal face and the wild matted hair. Sirius now looked like the aristocratic lord that he was. Harry could imagine Sirius as being a flirtatious prankster. The man honestly looked good. Or at least his face looked good, his clothing choice was another matter entirely. Sirius was wearing a pair of dark jeans. He, however ruined his entire look with the fact that he had a hospital gown tucked into those jeans. Not even the leather jacket that he wore overtop of the gown could save his look.
“You didn’t break out of St. Mungo’s,” Harry asked hesitantly. “Did you?”
Sirius’ barking laughter filled to room.
“No Pup,” Sirius said. “One time breaking out of somewhere was enough for me.”
Harry smiled and led Sirius up to his room.
“Are you ok?” Sirius asked after Harry motioned for him to sit on the bed.
“I think so,” Harry told Sirius as much as he could without mentioning the change that happened in the forest.
Sirius took it all in without much hesitation.
“Well,” Sirius said. “Even though you’re not in mortal danger anymore, I still managed to convince the healers to let me out a week early. Do you want to come and live with me now? I mean, you’re still able to wait. My family home is going to need a lot of cleaning and,”
“Going now sounds great,” Harry cut Sirius’ ramblings off before he could go any farther. “Let me just get my things and tell Aunt Petunia that I’m leaving.”
“You don’t want to wait for your uncle and cousin to return home to say goodbye to them?” Sirius asked.
“No,” Harry said without even pausing. “They won’t miss me.”
Within the next thirty minutes, Harry and Sirius arrived at a house that Sirius told Harry was called Number 12, Grimmauld Place. The house was, as Sirius had earlier mentioned, very dirty.
An old house elf met the two of them at the door.
“Filthy blood traitor master has returned,” The house elf said. “Kreacher watched him leave all those years ago saying he wouldn't come back. Bad master upset good mistress with his words. But bad master comes back. Probably brought filthy mood bloods into the ancient house of Black.”
Here Kreacher turned his attention to Harry. Whatever foul things that Kreacher was going to say we’re never heard though. Upon looking at Harry, the small creacher shrieked in fear and disappeared with a pop.
“He always was a strange house elf,” Sirius said. “Sorry about how awful this place is. We’ll only stay here until we find somewhere else.”
“It’s fine,” Harry said.
The two cleaned up two rooms in the house for them to stay in until they left. When the rooms were livable they both said goodnight and turned in for the night.
That night, Harry had another dream.
He found himself in what he knew was a classroom, but it didn’t look like one that he had ever been in. Swirling circular symbols floated in the air along with pictures.
“Today,” a voice sounded from the center of the room. “You will learn about the different forms of time travel that other species have come up with. None of them are as advanced as ours, of course, but it is still something that you need to be aware of.”
Harry looked at the pictures around the room and recognized one. It was a device that belonged on a wrist. The circular writing beside of it informed Harry that it was a vortex manipulator. Captain Jack Harkness had been wearing one.
Surprisingly, time turners weren’t shown.
Harry woke up the next day with the memory from the dream still fresh in his mind. He was more determined than ever to find out the origin of time turners. He considered telling Sirius about what happened to him. His godfather might be able to help.
It would be something that Harry would have to think about.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

Scarlet and orange, green and brown, heliotrope, and other colors moved through hallways as the students wearing the robes of those colors went towards their destinations. Certain colors stayed with their like colors while others split up. The rainbow of students would have been only vaguely similar to something far more familiar to Harry if he hadn’t seen this before.
Harry’s dreams and memories were coming back at a more frequent pace. Almost every night he would find himself inside of memories of the planet with the orange sky. Twice, he had even been awake when a new memory appeared. Needless to say, it was becoming problematic.
Harry woke up from his dream to the smell of something burning. The new information that he had received that night would have to wait to be catalogued until later. Harry raced down stairs and hoped, on whatever order was left in the universe, that Sirius wasn’t trying to cook again.
Harry and Sirius had only been living in the small two-story house that they had bought for two weeks, and they had already had to magically put out fires four times. Rather, Sirius had to magically put out fires. Harry hadn’t used any non-wandless magic since break and had instead made himself a fire extinguisher to use in times like this.
“Sirius!” Harry called into the kitchen doorway, almost afraid of what he’d find when he entered. “Please tell me that you’re just sending some sort of smoke signal to someone.”
Sirius’ barking laugh was the only answer that Harry needed to confirm his worst suspicion. Sirius was at it again.
“I’m going to get this recipe perfect, Pup,” Sirius said with a gesture to the black thing on the top of the stove. “When Moony moves in we’ll have to be able to give him something to eat.”
“I didn’t know that you wanted to kill him!” Harry said as he pulled the charred remains of what was once food off of the stove. “I’ll cook and you can find invite Moony and him to move in with us.”
Sirius had brought up the tentative idea to Harry about Remus moving in with them. Harry immediately agreed. The werewolf, however, had been elusive all summer and neither Sirius nor Harry could get in contact with him despite the multiple letters that they sent him.
“The quidditch world cup is this Monday,” Sirius said, changing the subject.
“Really? You’ve only brought it up multiple times a day for the last week,” Harry began making eggs and Sirius tried to help before Harry swatted his hand away with a fake glare. “I’ll do the cooking, you get the drinks.”
Sirius pouted as he poured Harry a glass of pumpkin juice before he got a fire whiskey out of the cabinet for himself.
“No alcohol this early!” Harry shouted. “I honestly don’t know who’s taking care of who.”
“You’re too much like your mother,” Sirius said. “I just wanted to celebrate the good news.”
“What good new?”
“I got us tickets,” Sirius said taking the time clearly pronounce each word. “To the Quidditch world cup!”
“Really?” Harry asked.
“Box seats,” Sirius said. “Old Lucius was trying to buy them but was too late. You should have seen the look on his face when he complained that his little Draco wouldn’t get to be in the best seats. Well, he was complaining in the way that Lords of Ancient and Noble Houses are supposed to complain, which is with his nose in the air and a snobby voice.”
“That’s brilliant!” Harry said.
“We’re going to side along apperate there for the tournament and then come back when it’s over.” Sirius said. “I’ve already had to deal with quidditch campgrounds once and I don’t plan on doing it again.”
Harry cut up some fruit and put it in a bowl before he finished cooking breakfast. He sat both things on the table. Sirius dug into the food with gusto, putting even Ron to shame. He had listened to Harry and put the fire whiskey away for a later time.
Harry waited for Sirius to eat a bit before he started eating his own food. It was an old habit from his time with the Dursleys that he still hadn’t broken. He spooned some fruit out on the side of his plate and picked a piece of it up on his fork. The fruit had barely passed his lips before he gagged and spit it out into a napkin.
“Ugh!” Harry said as he wiped his mouth and gulped down pumpkin juice. “That was disgusting. What was that?”
“I believe that it was a piece of pear,” Sirius picked up a piece of similar looking fruit and ate it. “It tastes fine to me. Maybe you just got a bad piece?”
Harry tried another piece and had similar results to the first one. He shook his head.
“You used to love pears as a baby,” Sirius said.
“I used to love pears earlier this year,” Harry said. “I guess it’s just another change.” He mumbled the last part under his breath.
“What?” Sirius hadn’t been able to make out what Harry had said.
“Nothing,” Was Harry’s too fast reply. “Can we go flying after breakfast?”
“I don’t see why not,”
That was one of the things that Harry loved most about his and Sirius’ new house. The house may have been relatively small, but it was on a huge plot of land. Sirius had been making plans to put in a quidditch pitch, but for the time being, it was fun to just fly around.
Thirty minutes after breakfast, one could find Sirius and Harry high in the air if one cared to look for them.
Sirius zoomed through the air on the fire bolt he bought for himself. Harry practiced feints and tricks near his godfather. They both kept an eye out for the snitch that they had released but it was neither of their main concerns.
Harry began circling the clearing in laps, pushing his broom to the limit. He closed his eyes and felt the wind in his hair. When he reopened them, however, he was no longer where he had been before.
He saw the now familiar orange sky surrounding him. He was sailing through the sky on a device whose name was just out of the reach of his memory. Before he could think any more about the vehicle that he was on, however, he pitched to the side in an uncontrolled tumble. He scrunched his eyes shut for a moment as he began to free fall, but quickly reopened them to find a way to stop.
When his eyes reopened, the first thing he saw was the blue sky of Earth. The second thing that he saw was Sirius’ hand reaching down to catch him.
Harry grabbed ahold of Sirius with one hand and drew his wand out of his back pocket with the other.
“Accio firebolt!” Harry had only read about the summoning spell once in one of the books that he had absorbed before he left the school. He wasn’t even sure if it would work or if he had even pronounced the spell right.
Somehow, whether it was from correct spell pronunciation, increased magical talent, or pure desperation, the spell worked and Harry’s firebolt arched through the air straight towards Harry. Harry let go of Sirius’ arm and grabbed the broom, hoisting himself back on.
The two wizards wasted no time in getting back to the ground. Harry collapsed into a sitting position. Sirius just stood tense with his eyes wide.
“Sirius,” Harry looked up at his godfather through his messy hair. “I need to tell you something. Now might be a good time to get out the fire whiskey.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” Sirius was too shocked to even touch the fire whiskey.
“I,” Harry struggled to find an explanation. “I just didn’t,” Harry paused again and bit his lip in thought.
“Didn’t what?” Sirius tried to force an explanation out of his godson. “Didn’t think it was a big deal? Didn’t think at all? Didn’t trust me?”
“I didn’t want to admit that it actually happened!” Harry yelled. “If I could just find a reasonable answer to it through magic or science or anything I could explain I might have been able to try to change it back. But I can’t! I can’t find anything. Hogwarts doesn’t have anything but the basics on time turners and Hermione used one all year but knows almost nothing about them. Anything I tried to find online about it was classified and I even had some sort of captain from a government organization or something find me and, and. I’m sorry. I, I can leave if you don’t want me here.”
Harry made to stand up and run up to his room to grab his things and get out but was stopped by Sirius before he could even make it a foot from the couch.
“Sit back down,” Sirius barked. “Don’t even think about leaving. I didn’t rot in a prison for twelve years under false accusations without a trial just to let you run off when I finally got out.”
“But Sirius,” Harry said. “There’s something wrong with me.”
“Don’t you dare,” Sirius said. “Don’t you dare even start thinking that. If you think that I’m going to make you leave just because you’re different, then you really don’t get what it means to be a godfather. My family practically kicked me out because my magic is too light for a Black. There’s no way that I’d do the same to you. And damn it, pup, we’re going to do everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened, but even if we can’t, you’re not going anywhere.”
“Thanks Sirius,” Harry sniffed
“Of course, pup,”
“Sirius?”
“Yes, pup?”
“Shouldn’t I have gotten a letter from the ministry about using my wand?”
“I,” Sirius paused, not expecting the change in topic. “Yes, actually. Looks like we have another thing to research. I wish Moony were here. He reads a lot faster than I do.”
“Well,” Harry shrugged. “I can read a book by pretty much just looking at it.”
Sirius looked at Harry for a few seconds before pouring himself a glass of fire whiskey. He tipped back the glass and downed it in one gulp.
“Well, let’s get started,”
The morning of the Quidditch World Cup dawned clear and bright. Harry was, at that particular moment, very glad that he no longer required as much sleep as he once did as he had stayed up a good portion of the night reading through books acquired from the Black Library.
Sirius was not as lucky.
Harry watched in mild amusement as his godfather tripped over the kitchen table leg for the fourth time that morning. The coffee was still percolating in the coffee maker which meant that Sirius was still about as coherent as a zombie.
The coffee pot shut off with one last gurgle. Sirius jumped forward to get to the life giving black liquid but didn’t even make it halfway to the pot before he once again tripped over the table leg. Before he could get back up, Harry had already poured him a mug and put it in front of the chair that Sirius always sat in.
“Cream or sugar?” Harry asked, already knowing the answer.
“Nooooo,” Sirius groaned as he hoisted himself into his chair. “I want it as black and bitter as my family.”
Harry made himself a cup of tea while he waited for the caffeine to work its magic on his dogfather. Sirius grey eyes began to clear of the traces of sleep before he spoke again.
“You know, Harry,” He said. “This was the best thing that I ever did to spite my mother. She always hated coffee. Said it was common and below the Ancient and Noble Black Family. She was wrong. It’s amazing and wonderful.”
Harry had already heard Sirius’ speech praising coffee every morning Sirius had to wake up early, but he nodded along anyway. One of Sirius’ main goals as a teenager seemed to have been rebelling against his family in every way possible. He had gotten tattoos, a motorbike, and muggle clothes. He made friends, and had even done a blood brother ritual, with the heir of a light house. He even consorted with muggle borns. In the end, Harry thought, Sirius might have been a better person because of his teenage rebellion.
“What time are we leaving?” Harry already knew the answer and was asking more of a way to prompt Sirius to get moving than to actually learn anything.
“In about,” Sirius looked at the clock on the wall. “Oh, crap! We need to get ready now!”
Harry nodded as he watched Sirius down the rest of his coffee and run around the kitchen.
“Harry, why aren’t you getting ready?” Sirius then looked at Harry who was still sitting at the table, already dressed for the day. “Oh, never mind, you brat.”
Sirius and Harry made it to the quidditch stadium with plenty of time to spare. People from all over were already flooding into the stadium wearing memorabilia from both teams despite the fact that the doors hadn’t been open for more than five minutes.
“Stay close, Harry,” Sirius laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder. He had become even more protective of Harry since the flying accident.
“Is the campground this bad?” Harry asked, having to yell to be heard over the crowd.
“It’s worse,” Sirius shuttered. “While people are walking in it’s harder to get alcohol, make bets, and get into fights. They’re doing that all the time in the campground. Me and your father actually tried fire whisky for the first time at a quidditch campground.”
“Sirius,” Harry said with a laugh. “I don’t mean to offend you, but I think you have a drinking problem!”
“Not yet I don’t,” Sirius said. “But I might after a few years of having to be the head of house.”
The two wizards continued their banter as they made their way to their seats. The Weasley family, along with Hermione and a small dirty blonde-haired girl that Harry didn’t know, also had box seats. Ron had invited Harry to come with his family, but when he learned that Harry was going with Sirius, Ginny took the opportunity to invite one of her friends.
“Hello,” the blonde girl came up to Harry before Ron even noticed that he was there. “The nargles don’t like the way that time flows around you.”
“Is that a good thing?” Harry asked.
“It is for you,” The blonde said with a nod.
“Luna!” Ginny noticed her friend’s absence from the rest of the group and ran up to her when she spotted her. “Oh, hi Harry. I didn’t see you there.”
“Hello, Ginny,” Harry noticed that the youngest Weasley was far less timid than she was last year.
“I see you’ve met Luna,” Ginny gestured to the girl Harry had been talking to. “Luna Lovegood, this is Harry Potter. Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood. Now that that’s out of the way, how’s your summer been?”
Harry, Ginny, and Luna talked for a bit before they were joined by Ron and Hermione. The friends conversed together for a while longer before the game started, all of them ignoring the minister when he entered the booth. Harry noticed that Sirius was glaring daggers at Minister Fudge as if he was planning on shoving him over the side of the railing. Harry left him to it. The marauder had enough sense to know how to make it look like an accident.
The game went on without much of a fuss and without the minister meeting an untimely demise. Harry and Sirius returned home. They only read about the possible death eater disturbance in the paper the next day. Both hoped that it was just some cruel prank.
All too soon, it was time for Harry to return to school. Harry and Sirius’ research had yielded little fruit as of yet as a good amount of their research time was spent trying to avoid different curses set by members of the Black family to protect their favorite books. Harry had some books packed in his trunk to take to Hogwarts and Sirius promised to continue his research and send books to Harry while he was at school.
Sirius sent Harry off on the Hogwarts express making him promise not to do anything stupider than pranks and to not sign up for trouble.
Harry of course said that he’d try his best but wondered what Sirius could be talking about.
The meaning behind Sirius’ words was revealed at the opening feast when Dumbledore gave his annual speech.
“This year,” Dumbledore tried to salvage the situation after announcing that he had cancelled quidditch. “Hogwarts will be hosting the triwizard tournament!”
“Why do I have an awful feeling about this?” Harry said, wishing that Dumbledore could have waited until after he had finished eating to make the announcement. Harry’s appetite was killed and his piece of cake would now go to waste.
Halloween was, in Harry’s humble opinion, the absolute worst day of the entire year. Something bad always happened and he was somehow always involved in it. He didn’t expect that Halloween to be any different.
The other two schools had shown up earlier in the year. Students from all three schools had been putting their names into the goblet responsible for choosing champions.
Harry had been too focused on study and research to pay much attention to the goblet. He had decided to take up arithmancy and ancient ruins on top of his other electives. Professor McGonagall was leery about him taking extra classes at first because of Harry’s less than stellar performance in his other classes in the past. It wasn’t that he was a horrible student. He just didn’t apply himself in any class except Defense Against the Dark Arts. It took much begging and promises that he would prove himself to McGonagall before she gave in and allowed Harry to take the classes. Harry was hoping that he would receive a time turner for the classes so that he could study it, but while he was on a trial basis he had to prove that he could handle the classes by himself.
Despite the full time table, Harry excelled in almost all of his classes including divination. Professor Trelawney was thrilled to find a gifted student with the “inner eye”. Harry just wanted to pass the class. The only class that he struggled in was astronomy. Arguing with the teacher about the proper names of stars and the placement of planets was, apparently, frowned upon.
The only time that Harry took notice of the people entering their names in the goblet was when Fred and George tried to enter theirs with disastrous consequences. Beards didn’t suit either of them.
Because of Harry’s lack of interest in the tournament, he wasn’t paying much attention when the names were being selected from the goblet. In hindsight, he wished that he had been.
He absent mindedly noted the names of the three champions as he finished his piece of cake. Victor Krum, Fleur Delacour, and Cedric Diggory. Those three, he thought, would be interesting to watch.
“Now we have our three champions,” Harry heard Dumbledore say. “I hope that you’ll all give your champions every bit of support that you can! Even if you weren’t chosen to participate directly in the tournament you have no idea how much your support and encouragement really helps the-,”
Whatever Dumbledore was going to say was interrupted by the goblet spitting out a piece of parchment for the fourth time that night.
“Harry Potter,” Dumbledore after a long pause.
“Of course,” Harry said as the hall seemed to all become angry at him at once. At least he had finished eating before this announcement was made so that his cake wouldn’t go to waste this time. Harry stood up. Every eye in the great hall was on him, anticipating what he said next. “I didn’t put my name in.” He said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I have to contact my legal guardian before anything else regarding myself and the tournament occurs.” All of the reading and researching in the Black Library had led to him learning more about wizarding laws and no one in the ministry would willingly cross a Black heir. Sirius might hate his title, but it did have perks.
People scrambled to act. McGonagall had the sanity to attempt to contact Sirius. Dumbledore had to calm down the heads of the other schools. Snape had the audacity to attempt to force Harry into the room with the other champions but was stopped by Sprout. The students erupted into shouts and chattering.
In the confusion, Harry slipped on his invisibility cloak and sprinted out to the owlery.
He scribbled out a quick note to Sirius telling him in as few words as possible what had happened.
“Get this to Sirius as fast as you can,” Harry told Hedwig as he handed her the letter. Hedwig took off.
Harry spent the rest of the night in the owlery under his invisibility cloak. He slept a few hours before he was woken up by Hedwig who was carrying a letter from Sirius.
Get what you need and meet me outside the shrieking shack as soon as you can. Don’t expect to be back for a while.
-Padfoot
The sun had yet to rise and illuminate the grounds, but it was the ideal time for Harry to sneak back into his dorms. He took care to avoid professors and prefects making rounds as he expertly navigated the castle corridors. He was afraid that the portrait of The Fat Lady would give him trouble getting in, but when he arrived at her frame, still hidden under his invisibility cloak, he did the same thing that he had done with Pettigrew and willed her to quietly open. To his surprise, it worked.
Harry creeped up the stairs to the boys’ dorms and grabbed his fire bolt and a couple changes of muggle clothing and threw them into the bag Sirius had bought him for his birthday that had expansion charms in the interior of it. He then retraced his steps back out of the castle and to the path by the whomping willow.
Harry threw a rock and hit the knot on the tree that immobilized it before zipping down the passage. He emerged on the other side and made his way out of the shrieking shack to find Sirius waiting on him.
“We need to go,” Sirius said. “I’ll explain when we’re someplace safer.”
Harry nodded and grabbed onto Sirius. They side along apperated to a place a short distance away.
“They’re going to make you compete and I’m not having it,” Sirius said. “People have died in this competition and you didn’t enter and I know you didn’t because since you’re my heir and I’m the head of house, I get made aware of any magical contracts that you make and I didn’t know about this until ministry people floo called to say that if you didn’t show up you can lose your magic and be expelled.” Sirius said all of that in one breath.
“What are we going to do then?” Harry asked. Although he was scared, he was far calmer than Sirius.
“We are going to get to a place where we can lay low until all of this passes,” Sirius said. “But first, we need to get anyone who might be looking for us off of our trail. Especially Dumbledore. He’s worse than useless when it comes to situations of innocence.”
Sirius then once again grabbed Harry and apperated to many different locations before he let out a cry of pain. Sirius’ shirt began to turn red as blood soaked into it. Sirius lifted up his shirt to reveal a large portion of skin on his side was missing. He had splinched himself.
“Sirius!” Harry yelled. “You need to get to a healer.”
“No!” Sirius managed to say through the pain. “No one from our world. Not when you’re life’s at risk.”
Harry groaned and looked around his surroundings before he let out a cry of relief.
“A hospital,” Harry thanked whatever luck had let the accident happen that close to a place of help occur. “Sirius, can you make it across the road?”
Harry ended up having to have help getting Sirius into the hospital, but within thirty minutes, Sirius was checked in and Harry was left to wander around the hospital with only his thoughts of the previous night’s events as company.
Not much was happening that early in the morning. There were a few patients coming in to be treated, but the hospital was, overall, quiet. Harry felt that something was off in the air but dismissed it as worry for Sirius and stress from the results of the goblet.
He passed a man with sticky uppy hair in a pin striped suit in the hallway who asked him directions on where to check in. Harry pointed the man in the correct direction before continuing his wandering. Outside of the man he talked to, the most interesting thing that Harry found was a little hospital shop. It was still closed but he decided to check it out when it opened.
Harry, though still worried, was content just waiting for Sirius to be allowed visitors. He should have known that things wouldn’t stay quiet for long.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5
Harry walked into Sirius’ hospital room. The animagus was asleep. Harry sat himself down in the chair by the bed to wait for him to wake up. While he was waiting a nurse came in.
“You’re the kid who brought him in?” She asked, gesturing to Sirius.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “He’s my godfather.”
“What happened?” The nurse asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that on a person. There was no damage to the surrounding skin. It was like it just disappeared.”
“I don’t know,” Harry shrugged. “We were just walking down the street and I turned around and he was clutching his side and,” Harry paused to try to sell the fact that he didn’t know what had happened. “And there was so much blood. Will he be ok?” Despite Harry knowing that Sirius had splinched himself, his concern and worry were genuine.
The nurse looked at the clipboard on the end of Sirius’ bed before answering Harry.
“He should be fine,” she said. “He’ll be down for a little while, but he’ll be fine with time.”
“When do you think that he’ll wake up?”
“I’d say it will be within a few hours,” she said. “I’ve got to go check on another patient. Just push that button if you need me. You’re welcome to walk around while you’re here.”
“Thanks,” Harry said as she walked out of the room.
Harry tried to sit still in the chair and wait for Sirius to wake up. He really did. But the feeling of anticipation just wouldn’t go away. After only about thirty minutes, he jumped out of the chair and with one last look at Sirius, he went to open the door. As soon as he touched the door handle, a strong jolt of static electricity shocked him. He pulled his hand back with a small hiss and continued out of the room.
He had two things on his mind when he noticed the rain. The first was a debate about whether to go to the cafeteria for lunch or the little shop first. The other was trying to identify why he felt so apprehensive. He was walking by a window when it started raining despite the fact that there didn’t seem to be any clouds anywhere around the hospital.
He stared out of the window at the rain while he continued to walk, trying to think of what the rain could mean. The answer was on the tip of his tongue and he knew that somewhere inside of the memories he was receiving, he had the answer. He was so distracted by the rain, he didn’t even notice where he was going until he slammed into someone who was also walking through the hallway knocking them both down.
“Sorry,” the person that he slammed into said, jumping up within a few seconds and offering his hand to help Harry up.
“No, it was my fault,” Harry said. When he grasped the offered hand and looked at the man that it belonged to, he realized that the person he slammed into was the man with the sticky-uppy hair he had given directions to earlier in the morning. “Are you feeling better?”
“Feeling better?” the man asked before looking down at his dressing gown as if he had just remembered that he was in a hospital as a patient. “Oh. Oh! Yes! Just wanted to take a look around. I was thinking about taking a walk out on a balcony if I could find one, but, well, the rain kind of ruined that plan, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “There’s something off about it. There’s a little shop inside. It should be open by now if you’re still looking for somewhere to go.”
“Oh!” The man smiled. “I like a little shop! I’ll have to go look at it.”
“I was about to head there. It was closed earlier but,” Harry’s attention was once again taken by the rain outside. “H2O Scoop,” Harry said under his breath, the words finally coming to him from a memory that wasn’t his even a year ago.
“What?” the man said before he saw what Harry was looking at. “Oh. Sorry, I’ve got to go.” The man took off in the opposite direction that Harry was going before he ran into him.
With one last look at the rain which was falling upwards, Harry ran in the same direction that the man had gone with the intention of checking on Sirius.
Before he was able to reach Sirius’ room he was thrown to the floor. The building rocked multiple times and came to a stop. When Harry looked back up, it was darker than it had been before. He ran to the window and saw that he was no longer on the earth. He thought for a second that he might be reliving another memory but threw the thought away because he had never been aware that the memories weren’t reality during them.
Harry sprinted to Sirius’ room only to find…
“How could he have slept through that?” Harry exclaimed. “Sirius,” Harry shook his godfather’s shoulder. “Sirius! You’ve got t get up.”
Harry’s attempts of waking Sirius up were useless. Sirius wouldn’t awaken until his magic had healed all of the damage that it could.
Harry groaned and after seeing that Sirius wasn’t going anywhere, ran out of the room to look for anyone who knew anything about the situation. He was running down a hallway when he saw a young medical student trying to calm people down in the situation.
“Everyone needs to get back to bed,” She was saying. “We’re going to get this emergency sorted out. There’s no need to worry.”
Seeing no one else attempting to work with the situation, Harry followed her into a room.
She and another woman were standing at a window discussing how they were still breathing.
“Maybe it’s a force field,” Harry’s voice caused the two women to turn and look at him. “Keeping all of the air in that’s already inside of it.”
After he said that, the curtain that divided the room was thrown open and the man with the sticky-uppy hair walked out.
“That’s a very good point!” he said, bouncing up to them. “Both of you. Brilliant! Wonderful running into you again.” He looked at Harry. “Glad to see that you’re alright after that. I don’t think that I got your name.”
“Harry Potter,” Harry said.
“And you are?” He turned to face the woman that Harry had followed into the room.
“Martha,” she said.
“Jones, wasn’t it?” At the woman’s nod, he continued on. “So, do either of you fancy testing Harry’s force field theory about why we’re still breathing?”
“We can’t be breathing,” the other woman said.
“But we are,” Harry looked at her. “So, there’s got to be a reason for it.”
“Good,” The man said. “I like the way that you think. Now, is there somewhere where we can go outside around here?”
“There’s a balcony,” Martha said.
“Oh brilliant!” The man clasped his hands together before looking at Harry. “It looks like I’ll get to have my walk on the balcony after all! Come on you two!” He then looked at the other woman who was still sobbing. “Not her, she’ll slow us down.”
The three people ran through the hallway before they stopped right outside the doors of the balcony. The sky was still as dark as it had been when they looked out of the window.
“Let’s hope that whatever’s keeping the air in is around the hospital like a bubble and not like shrink wrap,” Harry said.
“What?” Martha asked.
“We might die if it doesn’t extend out around the building,” the man said.
“Oh,” Martha understood.
“I think it’s best if I go first,” the man said but before he was finished saying it, Harry had already pushed open the door.
Harry stepped outside and took in a deep breath. Air filled his chest. Seeing that he wasn’t going to die right then, he took the opportunity to look around. The stars were more visible there than they were on Earth. Even the telescopes Harry used in astronomy couldn’t give him a view like the one from the hospital balcony.
“Wow,” he said as the other two stepped outside. He heard one of them take a deep breath but didn’t turn to look at them. He was too preoccupied looking at the stars.
“I was just trying to break up a family argument,” Martha said. “It’s my brother’s twenty-first birthday and my parents aren’t getting along but they’re both going to be worried. Maybe they’ll agree on something.”
“You ok?” the man asked her.
“Yeah,” Martha said.
“Are you, Harry?” The man asked.
Harry nodded. “It’s beautiful out here,” He said.
“So many people want to go to the moon,” Martha said. “They train for years. And we just end up here! It’s got to be extraterrestrial.”
Martha went on to explain how she lost family in the Battle of Canary Wharf. The man said something back to her but Harry was too preoccupied looking at the stars too pay much attention to the conversation until he heard his name.
“Harry, Mr. Smith, I promise you that we’ll find a way out of this,” It was obvious that Martha was more scared than Harry and the other man were, but Harry appreciated that she managed to stay professional.
“Smith isn’t my real name,” the man said.
“I didn’t even know that Smith was your fake name,” Harry said with a shrug, not caring too much about a person’s name when he had just been unwillingly taken to the moon.
“Then who are you?” Martha didn’t share Harry’s nonchalance about the man’s name.
“The Doctor,” the man said.
“Dr. Smith?” Martha asked.
“No just-”
before the man could finish his sentence, Harry picked up a rock off of the ground and threw it as hard as he could away from the building. It bounced off of a force field.
“-The Doctor,” The newly named Doctor said. “Well, that confirms your theory, doesn’t it, Harry?”
“This is all the air that we have,” Martha said.
“How many people are here?” Harry asked Martha.
“About a thousand,” Martha sounded uncertain.
“One thousand people suffocating from lack of fresh air,” The Doctor said.
“What’s the purpose?” Harry asked.
“Who would do that?” Martha asked in disgust at the same time.
Their words were almost lost when three ships docked down on the moon.
“You two can ask them if you want to,” the Doctor said with a nod towards the ships.
The occupants of the ships filed out in uniform lines as the doors to the ships opened.
“My god,” Martha said. “Those are, those are,-”
“Judoon,” the Doctor finished her sentence for her. “But what are they doing here?”
“We could go find out,” Harry suggested.
Martha turned to Harry. “Where are your parents at?” She asked as if she hadn’t noticed before that a young teenage boy was wandering a hospital alone without parental supervision in the middle of an alien abduction. “I’m sure that they’re worried about you.” It was obvious to Harry that she didn’t want a random kid that she just met to get hurt.
“They’re not here,” Harry said with a pause. “I live with my godfather. He’s recovering from an injury. He’ll only be annoyed with me running after trouble after he wakes up.”
“You can come with me,” the Doctor said. Harry could see in the man’s eyes that he understood the meaning of his words. Harry was thankful that he didn’t apologize, he just headed to the doors to go back into the hospital.
“Hold up a second, mister,” Martha said. “I’m coming too.”
The three people headed through the halls of the hospital. People were running around and yelling. The three of them had to push through it. They didn’t have time to deal with people in their way.
“So,” Martha said as they ran. “People just call you the Doctor?”
“Most people do,” the Doctor said.
“You don’t have another name that you go by?” she asked again.
“Nope,” the Doctor popped the p.
“Where are the Judoon from?” Harry asked, stopping Martha in her line of questioning.
“Where they’re from isn’t as important as who they were sent by and who they’re sent by isn’t as important as what they’re sent for” The Doctor answered without answering.
The three of them came out of one of the hallways to a section that overlooked the reception area. They ducked down to avoid being seen.
In the reception area below, the Judoon were filing into the hospital. One man wearing a lab coat walked up to them with false bravado as the rest of the room either cowered or screamed in fear. The man’s introduction turned to a plea for his life when one Judoon pushed him against the wall and shined a light in his face.
“Language assimilated, Earth English. You will be cataloged,” The Judoon once again shined a light on the man’s face before declaring him human.
“Oh!” the Doctor said. “There’s the little shop you told me about!”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “I never did get to go.”
“Maybe you’ll make it there after this is over,” The Doctor said.
“I hope so,” Harry agreed. “That and someplace to get food.”
“Could you two focus?” Marth snapped their attention back to the people being cataloged on the floor below.
“Right,” The Doctor said.
“What are they doing here?” Harry asked.
“The Judoon are intergalactic police for hire, so I’d assume that they’re looking for someone,” The Doctor explained. “They brought us to the moon because they aren’t allowed on Earth under galactic law. The moon’s neutral territory though and judging by the fact that they’re cataloging people, I’d guess that the person they’re looking for isn’t human. Which isn’t good news for me.”
Harry’s blood seemed to freeze in his veins when he heard that. He was almost positive that he wouldn’t register as a human on any scans. Heck, Sirius might not even register as completely human just because he was a wizard. He was so preoccupied worrying about himself and his godfather that it took him a moment to register what the Doctor said.
“You’re not human?” Harry almost said the word “either” at the end of his question but stopped himself just in time.
“Really?” Martha asked.
“Come on, you two,” The Doctor took off down the hallway, expecting them to follow him.
Harry found himself in a room with a computer after a run through a few floors of the hospital. The room was only lit by the light from the hallway and the computer monitor. On the back wall, there was a whiteboard.
Martha informed the Doctor and Harry that the Judoon were on the third floor while the Doctor pointed a glowing buzzing cylinder at the computer.
“What is that thing?” Martha asked.
“A sonic screwdriver,” the Doctor said, still pointing the sonic at the computer.
“What’s it do?” Harry asked, cutting off whatever Martha was about to say. “Sorry.” Harry apologize for interrupting her.
“It’s fine,” Martha said before the Doctor answered Harry’s question.
“It works best with electronics,” the Doctor explained. “Goes through files and codes. It also has a scanning function. Works on everything. Well, just about everything. I still can’t get it to work on wood.”
“I could have used one of those earlier this summer,” Harry said.
Harry jumped as the Doctor slammed his hand against the computer.
“The Judoon locked down the system,” the Doctor said as he rubbed his hand through his hair, making it stick up even more.
“You didn’t come here because you felt ill, did you?” Harry asked the Doctor, remembering the man’s confusion about how he felt.
“No,” The Doctor admitted. “I was just passing through. I mean, I’ve been looking for, well, that’s not important, but it wasn’t for trouble. But I just noticed plasma coils around the hospital so I thought I’d see if it was coming from inside and checked myself in. It ended up being the Judoon.”
“So they’re looking for someone like you?” Martha asked. “An alien that can pass as a human?”
“Yes,” The Doctor said. “Good job putting things together! It’s not me, but I’ll still be on the suspect list if I’m scanned.”
“Don’t they know what the alien looks like?” Martha asked.
“They might know what they looked like when they committed a crime,” The Doctor said. “But if they’re a shapechanger it won’t do much good.” He once again changed topics. “Oh, they’re thick! The Judoon didn’t just lock the system, they completely wiped it!”
“What were you scanning for in it?” Harry asked.
“Anything abnormal,” The Doctor said. “Someone who came in within the past week with strange symptoms or injuries.”
“There was a man admitted this morning,” Martha said. “He was missing a large portion of skin on his side without any surrounding skin damage. One of the nurses was talking about him. Something Black.”
“It’s not him,” Harry jumped up from the desk he was leaning against. “That’s just Sirius, my godfather. The only thing he’s doing right now is laying around like a pile of bricks and sleeping.”
“It was only a suggestion,” Martha put her hands out in front of her. “I can go talk to Mr. Stoker and see if he knows of anyone else.”
Martha left the room leaving Harry and the Doctor together in it. Harry stared at the man who was typing on the computer and periodically using the sonic screwdriver on it.
“If I could just find a backup file,” The Doctor mumbled under his breath.
“You could try to see if the system has a recently deleted section,” Harry suggested as he walked back over to the computer. If he had learned anything from using the library computers it was to never rule out an obvious solution just because it seems too easy.
“That would be nice, but it would never be that simple,” Despite his words, the Doctor began doing what Harry suggested anyway. “There’s no way that the Judoon would forget to delete it off of- Oh. Oh! Harry, you’re right! There it is.”
The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the screen as names and files flashed by.
Harry read and absorbed the information as it appeared. He guessed that the Doctor must be able to read about the same speed that he could because no human would be able to read that fast.
“Come on, Harry,” The Doctor said as he ran out of the door.
Harry ran after him. He wasn’t sure where they were headed, but he could assume that it was after Martha. Even if it wasn’t, the Doctor hadn’t steered him wrong yet.
After running for about a minute, Harry’s assumption turned out correct. The Doctor stopped without warning as Martha came out of a room. Harry had to stop before he slammed into the tall man for the second time that day.
“We found the files,” The Doctor said.
“There’s no need for that now,” Martha’s eyes were wide. “I found her.”
Before any of them could share any more information about the alien the Judoon were looking for, the door that they were standing next to was broken open from the other side. A humanoid creature wearing all leather and a motorcycle helmet came through.
“Run!” The Doctor yelled.
Harry had to agree that getting away from the leatherman was a good idea and sprinted down the hall like his life depended on it. In all actuality, his life most likely did depend on it.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six

Previously:
“So many people want to go to the moon,” Martha said. “They train for years. And we just end up here! It’s got to be extraterrestrial.”
“Judoon,” the Doctor said, identifying the aliens walking towards the hospital.
“So,” Martha said as they ran. “People just call you the Doctor?”
“Most people do,” the Doctor said.
“Where are your parents at?” Martha asked Harry as if she had just realized that the boy was without parental supervision in the middle of an alien abduction.
“They’re not here,” Harry said after a brief pause.
“You can come with me,” the Doctor said.
“The Judoon are intergalactic police for hire, so I’d assume that they’re looking for someone,” The Doctor explained. “They brought us to the moon because they aren’t allowed on Earth under galactic law. The moon’s neutral territory though and judging by the fact that they’re cataloging people, I’d guess that the person they’re looking for isn’t human. Which isn’t good news for me.”
“We found the files,” The Doctor said.
“There’s no need for that now,” Martha’s eyes were wide. “I found her.”
Before any of them could share any more information about the alien the Judoon were looking for, the door that they were standing next to was broken open from the other side. A humanoid creature wearing all leather and a motorcycle helmet came through.
“Run!” The Doctor yelled.
Harry had to agree that getting away from the leatherman was a good idea and sprinted down the hall like his life depended on it and in all actuality, it likely did.
Now:
The three people ran down the hallway away from the man covered in leather. They barreled into a stairway and turned the corner headed down the stairs only to run into the Jadoon coming up the stairs. The three of them pivoted in their tracks and ran through the nearest door. Harry was in the back of the group.
The man in leather followed them through the door.
They ran down a long hallway. About three doors down from where they started, Harry looked back to see how close their pursuer was. In the process of looking back, Harry failed to watch where he was going. The first thing he saw as he turned back around was a medical cart, which would have been fine if he had seen it before the exact moment he fell over it.
Harry tumbled to the floor and rolled head over heels. The leather man was even closer then than it was when Harry had looked behind him the moment before. Harry jumped up with the intent of running after the Doctor and Martha but when he turned around they were already gone. Harry saw the stairwell open on the other side of the hallway and feared that it was another group of Judoon. Caught between a rock and a hard place with no visible escape route, Harry darted into the closest unlocked door.
Once inside, Harry slammed the door shut and locked it from the inside. He summoned his wand from the holster that Sirius had bought him for his birthday that year and then reached to the side where he always wore the small bottomless bag that held his invisibility cloak. He let out a string of curse words when his hand grasped nothing but air. He had left his bag in Sirius’ room.
Harry got to the back of the room before the banging started against the door. The door splintered open and the leather covered man made his way through. With a yell, Harry began firing off spell after spell. Most of the spells were considered light, but when they weren’t working, Harry started to use more neutral ones. Harry bit his lip in concentration and put all the power that he could into the spells. The man just continued to come forward through the spell fire.
Harry debated using some dark spells he learned from the Black library, but before it came to that, a sickly lime green ray of light shot through the door and connected directly with the leather man. Branches of electricity ran over the man’s body, causing him to seize up before falling to the ground completely stiff.
“Harry?” Harry pried his eyes away from the, now motionless, hunk of leather on the ground to look at the person who spoke to him. He couldn’t see anyone else in the room, but he’d recognize the voice anywhere.
“Sirius?”
“Are you ok?” Sirius asked as he pulled off Harry’s invisibility cloak and rushed forward.
Sirius was already looking better than before but he was still paler than he should have been. At least, this time, he decided to get fully dressed before he ran out of his hospital room.
“Am I ok?” Harry asked, taking the cloak from Sirius. “You’re still supposed to be in bed!”
“Harry!” another voice sounded from the door and the Doctor and Martha ran in.
“Oh my god,” Martha gasped as she looked at the leather humanoid lying motionless on the ground. “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” Harry said.
“Oh,” Sirius said, crossing his arms across his chest. “So you’ll answer the pretty woman and not me.”
“Can we talk about the thing that Sirius just electrocuted instead of arguing about how I am?” Harry snapped. This was almost as intense as the worry he received from Mrs. Weasley. While it was nice to know that people cared; it was all a little overwhelming.
The Doctor seemed to agree with Harry about focusing on the unmoving leather man because he was already kneeling down beside it examining it.
“Just what I thought,” he said as he stood up and took off a pair of glasses that Harry hadn’t seen him wear before. “Just a Slab.”
“Like a golem?” Sirius asked.
“Gollum?” Martha asked. “Like, Lord of the Rings?
“No,” Sirius said. “It’s a clay figure that’s given life through magic.”
“It’s not actually brought to life,” Harry added. “Just animated.”
“Close to that, well, I wouldn’t exactly call it magic. More of a jolt of energy mixed with a key set of programing, but still very similar.” The Doctor said. “But these are solid leather, not clay, and they never travel alone. We need to locate the plasmavore, but before that, what are you two?”
Harry’s back stiffened at the Doctor’s words. “He’s a dog sometimes,” Harry blurted out.
“And my godson here is grounded,” Sirius said, not even trying to deny his animagus form.
“What?” Harry exclaimed.
“I told you not to go looking for trouble other than pulling pranks. I get hurt and when I wake up, I find you about to be killed. What would you have done if I hadn’t shown up?”
“I guess I would have used more lethal spells!” Harry said.
“You should have started with more lethal spells!”
“You still haven’t answered the question,” Martha pointed out.
Harry looked at Sirius, trying to convey his question and the importance of answering the medical student with that one look. Sirius picked up on the message and nodded.
“We’re wizards,” Sirius said. “We have wands and ride brooms and occasionally wear pointy hats.”
“The hats are stupid,” Harry mumbled before he added. “We are from Earth, though.”
“Are there very many of you?” The Doctor asked.
“A whole society all around the world,” Sirius confirmed.
“A whole society living right on Earth and I’ve never even noticed them! And from the talk of golems you all must have a similar system to other magic and psychic energy wielders in the universe. I wonder if there’s a similar cause for it.” The Doctor seemed to be getting excited over his new discovery. Before he could start interrogating Harry and Sirius on everything they knew about the wizarding world, Martha intervened.
“As interesting as this is,” Martha said. “Shouldn’t we focus on Miss Finnegan?”
“Right!” the Doctor was put back on track. “Which way to Stoker’s office?”
“That way,” Martha said.
The four people began to head down the hallway, but ducked into a room when they saw another Slab walking down the hallway. They all kneeled down.
“And there’s the other one,” The Doctor said.
Sirius pulled out his wand and aimed it at the Slab walking down the hallway.
“Wait,” The Doctor hissed “It might lead us to the plasmavore.”
“The what?” Sirius mumbled as he lowered his wand, looking like he had just sucked on a lemon. The slab continued out of the hallway.
“So are all four of you aliens then?” Martha asked.
“I’m from Earth,” Sirius said. “Aren’t we all?”
“Apparently he’s not,” Martha gestured towards the Doctor.
“You’re not?” Sirius asked. “Well, that’s–”
The Doctor jumped up before Sirius could finish whatever remark he was about to make. He turned to head to the stairwell, fully expecting his three companions to follow him, when he nearly ran face first into a Judoon. He took a step back his body tensing in preparation for the running that he anticipated he would soon have to do.
The Judoon raised his device and scanned the Doctor. The device made a disagreeable sound before the Judoon grumbled out, “Not human.” The aliens raised their guns and prepared to fire.
“Run!” Harry yelled as he jumped up, pulling Martha along with him.
The Doctor was right on their heels and Sirius brought up the rear.
“What are those things? And why is there so much running?” Sirius asked as they all barreled through the stair door and up a flight of stairs. “I’ve been on the run for the past year. I’m actually on the run again! I need a vacation.”
“Somewhere tropical and sunny,” Harry agreed as they kept running.
“Yes,” Sirius agreed. “With no wizarding society at all associated with the Ministry of Magic.”
“Great!” Harry said. “We’ve got that planned out. Now we only need to find a way to get there.”
“I suppose that I can give you a lift,” the Doctor said. “Once I get back to my ship, that is.”
“You have a ship?” Martha asked.
“What sort of an alien would I be without one?” The Doctor said as the four people came out into a hallway. People were sitting and kneeling on the ground, sharing oxygen. “They’ve already done this floor. Come on.”
As the Doctor started to head off down the hallway, talking about the thickness of the Judoon as he walked, Martha paused and the two wizards stopped with her.
“How much more do we have?” Martha asked her fellow medical student who was kneeling with a patient administering oxygen.
The student shook her head with a quiet, “Not enough.”
“Can we do anything to help them?” Harry asked Sirius.
“A bubble head charm might work if they’re running out of air,” Sirius said. “But it would break the statute of secrecy. Why are we running out of air?”
“Padfoot,” Harry started in a patronizing tone, “We’re on the moon.”
“The what?” Sirius asked.
“The big round bright thing that you see in the sky at night,” Harry said. “Gosh, Sirius. You told me that you slept through astronomy but I didn’t know that you missed this much of it.”
“You aren’t helping your chances of being ungrounded, pup,” Sirius said. “I know what the moon is. The part that I’m confused about is the ‘on’.”
“Well,” Harry said with a grim expression on his face. “If you don’t know what the word ‘on,’ means, I don’t think that I can help you any.”
“To answer your question Mr.-”
“Black,” Sirius said. “Sirius Black. And might I know your name, fair lady?”
“Martha Jones,” Martha said with more dignity than Harry would have thought possible with Sirius’ awful flirting. “And to answer your question, Mr. Black, Harry is right. We have been taken to the moon by aliens, called the Judoon, that are looking for someone that can change their shape. The- what did you call it?”
“Plasmavore,” Harry filled in before the Doctor could answer.
“Right,” Martha continued. “The plasmavore has already killed one person so we’re trying to locate it before either it kills again or the Judoon kill everyone. I think that that’s everything.”
“Yup,” the Doctor chimed in. “That pretty much sums it up.
“But do you really think that the ministry of magic will find out what we do on the moon?” Harry asked.
“Probably not,” Sirius conceded. “But we’ll only do it if there are no other choices. Merlin, we’re on the damn moon. Why are we going to this person’s office again?”
“It’s where I saw the plasmavore,” Martha said.
“And we need to get to it,” The Doctor cut in. “Where is it?”
“This way,” Martha sounded breathless in her reply as she stood up from the floor.
“Hold on a second,” The Doctor said. “How are you three doing on air.”
“I’m just running on adrenaline,” Martha said with a smile.
“I’m the same,” Sirius seconded.
Harry knew what running on adrenaline felt like. It seemed like half of his school career was adrenaline fueled; but he was actually doing a bit better than barely getting by. In fact, he felt no different than how he usually did. He didn’t voice all of that, though. He instead just let out a short, “I’m fine.”
Sirius gave him a look that let Harry know exactly what he thought about Harry’s state. It made Harry slightly regret saying that he was fine in the past when he wasn’t because this time he really was fine but Sirius wasn’t going to believe that.
“Good,” The Doctor said. “Well, come on.”
Martha took the lead and the four of them went around the corner into to Stoker’s office. They found the owner of the office lying on the floor, pale, drained of blood, and very much dead.
The Doctor mentioned that his suspicions were confirmed and turned to leave, Sirius following behind him but Martha and Harry both paused over the dead man.
Martha knelt down and closed Stoker’s eyes. She met Harry’s eyes as she looked up and he gave her a nod of respect.
The four people left the office. The Doctor was thinking out loud trying to figure out where the plasmavore could have gone. Harry was attempting to figure out the same thing silently.
The Doctor let out an “Oh,” of understanding and Harry realized why when an MRI sign caught his attention a second after the Doctor had seen it.
“That makes sense,” Harry said to himself.
“What makes sense?” Sirius asked.
Before either the Doctor or Harry could explain their reasoning, the Judoon burst through the door that the Doctor had locked when they entered the floor.
“No time,” The Doctor said as his eyes scanned over the faces of his three companions. His gaze landed on Martha. “You’re probably the safest.”
He then started to say something else to Martha but Harry ran off in the direction of the MRI lab before he heard it.
He followed the signs to a door marked MRI. Through the window he could see the MRI machine sparking with electricity. Harry figured that this electricity had nothing to do with the dark spell that Sirius had used earlier. So, like the fourteen-year-old Gryffindor that he was, he decided to go into the room to investigate.
As he began opening the door he heard the Doctor yell his name. He continued inside anyway, figuring that the alien would catch up.
As soon as he entered, he saw an older woman that he assumed was the Plasmavore. She was messing with some of the controls for the MRI that Harry was pretty sure she should not be messing with. Channeling his best concerned voice, Harry decided to alert her to his presence.
“What is even going on out there?” Harry asked. “I came in after getting hit in the head during a football game. I must have passed out but when I woke up, everything was knocked over and it’s dark out and there’s these rhino things in space suits. I think, I mean, I know it’s stupid, but are we on the moon?”
“Harry!” The Doctor ran in. As soon as he entered he noticed that he had caught the attention of not only the teenage wizard, but also the plasmavore. He ended up doing the same thing that Harry already was doing, lying through his teeth in an attempt to bull crap his way through the situation. “Thank goodness I found you. I was worried sick when I got back to the room and saw that you weren’t there.”
“I just hit my head while playing football,” Harry caught on to what the Doctor was doing and started to fill him in with what he had already said for consistency.
“That can be a dangerous injury!” The Doctor said with false concern.
“Or I could be fine,” Harry countered.
“Teenagers,” The Doctor sighed. “Every parents joy and dread. They always seem to be running into trouble. But this time I don’t think it’s his fault! I mean, what’s even going on here? There are space rhinos with laser guns out there! And we’re on the moon!”
“I was just asking the same thing,” Harry said.
The plasmavore, who had up to that point been watching them quietly, finally decided to talk. She said two words.
“Hold them,”
A slab emerged from behind a curtain and grabbed both of them by the shoulder, forcing them together. Escape could have been possible, if difficult, but neither of them would have gotten far before they would likely be grabbed again.
“Am I supposed to go in that thing for my head injury?” Harry asked gesturing with his head to the still sparking MRI machine.
“If you don’t stop getting hurt you will,” The Doctor said. “But maybe not that one in particular. Is it supposed to be making that noise?”
Harry and the Doctor pretended to be a very dumb pair of father and son to keep the plasmavore talking and managed to get her to reveal that she planned on frying the brainstems of half of the Earth.
Harry shot the Doctor a worried look. He hoped that the man had a plan because Harry doubted that his usual blind luck would get him out of this situation.
He nodded along and agreed when the Doctor talked about the Judoon increasing their scans.
“I must assimilate again to appear to be human,” The plasmavore walked around the wall and grabbed her bag.
“You could come over to our house for dinner,” The Doctor said.
“Yeah. Mum’s always happy to have people over to try out her recipes on. She actually makes really great tarts!” Harry was proud that he managed to keep his voice from shaking. He’d seen what this woman had done to Stoker and now he and the Doctor were laid out like an all you can eat buffet in front of her.
“I don’t need tarts when I have my straw,” The Plasmavore approached them.
“Straws are bad for the environment,” Harry said. “Plus, Mum’s smoothies aren’t as good as her tarts.”
“But I make a good banana one,” Even the Doctor sounded nervous.
“Steady the boy,” The Plasmavore said.
The slab obeyed her and tilted Harry’s head to the side at an awkward angle exposing his neck.
Harry’s breath hitched as he body tensed.
“No!” The Doctor yelled as he tried to get free. “Don’t hurt him! Don’t kill Harry. Take me instead!”
The Doctor’s words caused Harry to react. The words were so similar to what his mother said to Voldemort on that night. Harry started to struggle.
In response, the slab yanked his head even farther down. His neck made a popping noise and Harry stopped struggling in fear of his neck being snapped.
He strained his eyes to look up at the Plasmavore and watched as she pulled back her wrist to shove her straw into his neck. Harry let out a grunt as she pierced his skin.
After about thirty seconds of the plasmavore’s energetic drinking, Harry’s head was starting to get cloudy. He could still feel the Doctor struggling next to him but he doubted that his struggle would actually do anything to save him. Just as the world was starting to go black, the Plasmavore took her straw away and let Harry drop to the floor.
“I think that I’ll leave him alive since I have some to spare. Consider it a gift. You two can die together. Steady him.”
Harry slid his eyes over to the Doctor just in time to see the Plasmavore shove her straw into the Doctor’s neck.
His initial alarm turned to amusement as he realized what the Doctor’s plan was all along. He just hoped that her injesting his blood first wouldn’t mess up the plan.
“I guess it will still work,” he mumbled to himself. “After what happened last year.” Then he did what many others would have done is his situation and passed out from blood loss.
Harry awoke to the lovely sight of the plasmavore being vaporized by the Judoon. He closed his eyes for a few minutes and listened to the Judoon say that they were leaving them to die from the MRI machine.
Harry decided that that didn’t sound very good and somebody should do something about that. He opened his eyes to see who would handle the situation and saw Martha run out of the room after the Judoon.
“She’d be safer demanding help from a wall,” Harry mumbled. “Judoon never care after they’re done with their assignment.” He wondered briefly where the information about the Judoon had come from much like he wondered where the rest of his strange new memories came from. He didn’t spend much time pondering the topic, though, because as soon as he sat up his hand bumped against something that he was familiar with.
“Is that a sonic device?” In the future, Harry would be very glad that no one was in the room to hear him talking to himself. In the present moment, however, he couldn’t care less. “I haven’t seen a sonic in years! And it’s a skrewdriver! I could have used one of these this summer in the library. Wait, the Doctor used this earlier to search the computers. It must have fallen out of his pocket. I doubt that he’d care if I used it though.”
Harry pulled himself off of the floor onto his feet. He stumbled a bit as the world swayed around him but managed to stay standing. He made his way over to the control panel and lurched forward to lean against it as he once again lost his balance.
A part of his brain noticed that Martha had returned to the room and was trying to say something to him but his attention was on stopping the machine from killing half of the Earth’s population. He attempted to push some buttons to shut down the machine. When that failed, he pointed the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver at it. The screwdriver came on with a quiet whir and, after a few seconds of pointing it at the MRI machine, the machine went off with a hum.
Harry lowered his arm from the machine, put the screwdriver on his pocket, and turned to face Martha and the Doctor. Martha was doing CPR on the Doctor. Well, it was similar to CPR but not quite right. Actually, it seemed like a type that Harry had learned.
“What are you doing?” Harry asked in a still weak voice as he walked over to where Martha was trying to save the Doctor.
“CPR,” Martha said between frantic breaths.
“Like that?” Harry gave a small gesture with his head to indicate the way that Martha was doing it.
“He’s got two hearts,” Martha continued with her CPR.
Two hearts.
“Oh,” Harry said.
Two hearts. That could mean–no.
Harry leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor. He stared blankly at the other side of the room taking in everything that the Doctor also having two hearts could mean. He might finally have a lead on what happened. After searching all summer he finally had a lead.
The only problem was that said ‘lead’ was still lying dead on the floor.
“Move your hands down a bit on the left,” Harry said from his position against the wall.
Martha gave Harry an odd look but did what he told her anyways. Within about thirty seconds the Doctor drew in a rasping breath followed by a fit of coughing.
“Harry,” the Doctor gasped out once his breathing was strong enough. “Is he–,”
“Here,” Harry said. “And alive. Hey Martha, where’s Sirius?”
Before Martha could answer the question she collapsed to the floor from lack of oxygen. It seemed that adrenaline really wasn’t enough to keep a human alive.
The Doctor hoisted himself to his feet, struggling to stand up the first few times.
Harry also stood.
“I have to find Sirius,” Harry said.
At the Doctor’s nod, Harry left the room.
In the hallway outside people were slumped unconscious against the wall. If there was anyone left awake, they were so close to passing out that Harry couldn’t tell the difference by looking at them. Harry located Sirius with a quick glance around the hall. His wand was out in his hand and was pointed towards one of the patients. It appeared that Sirius had decided to perform bubble head charms too late.
“Sirius!” Harry ran over to his godfather’s side.
Sirius was just passed out for the time being but if he didn’t get more oxygen soon he would die. Everyone in the hospital would die. The Judoon had to do something because Harry doubted that anyone else could. The feeling of helplessness moved in on Harry as he stared at his godfather.
“Why couldn’t you have taught me the bubble head charm before this happened?” Harry addressed Sirius before returning to talking to himself. “Why couldn’t I have read about it before?”
Harry’s regretting time was interrupted by labored breathing coming down the hallway. He turned to see the Doctor carrying Martha down the hallway. The Doctor gave him a look that said to follow him.
Harry glanced at Sirius and decided that he would still be in the exact same condition whether Harry followed the Doctor or not. He got up and walked after the Doctor.
They stood near a window and watched as the hospital was returned to its home.
——— Line Break ———

“It’s still better than my family,” Sirius gave an apologetic look to Martha.
Once the hospital had returned and the people in it had woken up, Martha invited Harry and Sirius to her brother’s party. They accepted after they realized that the Doctor had left without giving them a ride to their vacation spot. It was a fun evening until Martha’s scheduling didn’t work out and her parents and Annalise got into it again.
“Your’s must be pretty bad then,” Martha seemed resigned but not surprised at the arguments.
The fighting family took their argument across the street leaving Martha, Sirius, and Harry standing near an alleyway with no one else around.
No one else, that is, except for the Doctor who decided that that was a good time to return. He smirked and made an obvious display of walking into an alley. It was clear that he wanted them to follow him.
Harry looked at the other two still standing by the street and then followed the Doctor. Martha and Sirius followed him.
As soon as he rounded the first corner Harry could feel a connection to something. Something small and big and important. When Harry rounded the second corner he saw what that something was. A blue police box sat in the middle of the alley, the Doctor leaning lazily against it.
Harry walked up to the box and gently rubbed his hand against it. In the corner of his eye he could see the Doctor giving him a curious look.
“She’s beautiful,” Harry wasn’t sure if he was addressing the Doctor or the box with that statement.
“Yes, she is,” the Doctor agreed. “It’s called a TARDIS. T A R D I S. It stands for time and relative dimensions in space.”
Harry nodded and backed away from the TARDIS.
“I never did ask while we were on the moon,” Martha said. “But what species are you?”
“I’m a time lord,” the Doctor said.
“Okay then,” Sirius said. “Sounds about as stuck up as some of the pure blood lords on the wizengamot.”
The Doctor smiled like he had thought that the title was stuck up too but wasn’t going to admit it at that moment.
“I promised you two a trip,” he said, addressing Harry and Sirius. “And I thought that you’d like to come along for one as well?” The last part was said to Martha.
“Into space?” The medical student asked.
“If that’s what you want,” the Doctor said.
Martha began to make excuses but they were all quickly shut down after the Doctor demonstrated the TARDIS’s ability to travel through time.
Finally, all four people entered the ship, which turned out to be bigger on the inside.
“How is this even possible?” Martha asked after running around the outside of the TARDIS to confirm that there were no fake walls or any other tricks to make it bigger on the inside.
“You two don’t look very surprised,” the Doctor said to Harry and Sirius.
“We have something really similar in the wizarding world,” Harry explained.
Sirius agreed.
“Well, that’s strange,” the Doctor said. “Things being bigger on the inside is time lord technology. I mean, sure, other civilizations have it but they got it from the time lords. You all shouldn’t have been able to just come up with it. You wouldn’t have happened to have fun into a time lord around the time your expanding spell was made?”
Harry and Sirius both voiced that they didn’t know so the Doctor let the matter drop. Well, he let the matter drop for the time being.
“So, where do you all want to go?” The Doctor asked. “I’ll take you all on one fun trip and then drop Harry and Sirius off at their warm island and Martha back off here.”
“What will you do then?” Sirius asked.
“Travel some more,” the Doctor relied.
“Alone?” Martha asked.
“I prefer it that way,” the Doctor said. “You all get one trip and that’s all.”
He would soon find out how wrong he was. Maybe, however, being wrong about that was a good thing.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7
The interior of the TARDIS glowed with an almost golden light, illuminating the four people inside of it. Coral like structures stretched out towards the control panel. The column in the center of the panel was stationary. It hummed, so obviously alive, as it awaited a time and destination.
Harry decided that it was one of the most beautiful things that he had ever seen.
“So,” The Doctor interrupted Harry’s fascinated staring at the TARDIS. “Do you all have any place in mind? Forwards in time, backwards in time, anywhere in space?”
“You know when you were younger and they asked you in school who in history you’d like to meet?” Martha asked.
“No,” Sirius said. “No one never asked me that.”
“That’s because your family thought that it was the best in history and therefore didn’t need to talk to anyone else,” Harry grinned at his godfather. “My school before I started at Hogwarts did that.”
“Well,” Martha said. “I’ve always wanted to meet Shakespeare!”
The Doctor ran around the console and began flipping switches.
“That’s a good one,” Harry said before adding quietly, “I always just wanted to meet my parents. Not to change what happened or anything because that would cause a paradox. I just wanted to know what they were like and if they loved me.”
The Doctor paused in his flipping of switches and turning of knobs to give Harry a sad look.
“I’m sorry,” He said. “It might interfere with your timeline. You can’t do it.”
“I know,” Harry nodded. He then let a halfhearted smile stretch across his face. “But getting to meet Shakespeare is definitely on my top ten list!”
“Who’s Shakespeare?” Sirius’ statement had Harry once again questioning how the wizarding world had made it that long.
The Doctor returned to his mad fiddling at the console. Seeing all of the technology being messed with reminded Harry of what he still had in his pocket.
“Doctor,” Harry caught the older Time Lord’s attention. “I forgot to give this back to you.”
Harry held out the sonic screwdriver that he had used to shut down the MRI machine.
“I thought the Judoon must have taken that!” The Doctor’s face lit up. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a nearly identical looking sonic and flipped it in the air. “But I’ve already gotten another one. You might as well keep that. You’ve already shown that you know how to use it. And you never know, it could come in handy again.”
The smile that lit up Harry’s face was very much real as he thanked the Doctor and put the sonic back in his pocket. He watched in fascination as the Doctor once again returned to his piloting.
With one last pull of a lever, the center column began moving and the TARDIS let out a wheezing sound. Within seconds, Harry felt a sense of comfortableness that he had only ever felt in his memories. He fell to the floor as new memory barged its way to the front of his mind.
________ Line Break _________

“This way children,” A teacher led the group of eight-year-old time tots to the place that they had all been both looking forward to and dreading. “Remember, what you see today will dictate the rest of your lives, so please take it as serious as it is.”
The teacher had no need to tell the time tots that. They all knew exactly what they were doing. Looking into the Untempered Schism was an honor that they all wanted.
All too soon yet not soon enough the group reached the area that housed the Schism. The group would wait outside the circle of torches as each would enter alone. They went in based on age. The oldest went first. Then the next oldest and so on.
Harry, except he wasn’t quite Harry, found himself to be towards the back. He was the second youngest in his group. He watched in fear and excitement as his friends and fellow time tots went in and came back out in a different state.
Some came out with wide eyes and heavy breathing. Others grinned as if a piece clicked into place inside of them. Two ran out of the room and behind the teacher and the rest of the group, but both looked pleased after the panic wore off. Others yet came out more determined than when they went in.
The time came for Not-Quite-Harry to go into the circle of torches. He walked at a slow pace, his gait even and his breathing slow. The Schism was impossible to ignore. As soon as he got near it, it called out to his very being. It beckoned him forward, enticing him to look inside.
Not-Quite-Harry was all too happy to agree. He walked up to it, almost in a trance. Its swirling depths greeted him as he got within two feet of it.
The first thing that he felt when he looked into it was contentment. A sense the he had always had yet never used before awoke and took in the beauty of it with his other senses. It was then that Not-Quite-Harry realized what he was sensing in it. Time.
With his new-found awareness, he looked closer into the schism.
NO.
He took a step back as absolute fear assaulted him. Before he could turn and run, though, a sense of calm and rightness completely filled him. It started in his hearts and spread up to his head and down to his toes. He knew then that everything would be alright. He pushed a strand of his ginger hair out of his face, turned, and walked out of the circle with a small smile and a confident air.
Yes. Everything would be alright.
_____ Line Break _____
“-alright? Harry? Harry, answer me! Are you alright?”
“Huh?” Harry opened one bleary eye and saw three people standing around him. Sirius, who Harry realized had been the one that was talking, was close to shaking Harry to death. “Yeah. Where are we?”
“In my TARDIS,” The Doctor said as Sirius leaned back with an overexaggerated sigh of relief. “In the time stream. Are you time sensitive somehow?”
Harry’s gaze drifted to the one person who hadn’t said anything yet. Martha was looking at him with a mix of curiosity and shock.
“I think that I just need to eat something,” Harry said. “The fight broke out before I could really enjoy any of the food at the party.”
“Right!” The Doctor jumped up. “Food. We can go into the kitchen and get you something. Definitely better than anything that they’re serving in England around Shakespeare’s time.”
“You have a kitchen here too?” Sirius was thoroughly in love with the TARDIS and Harry could see his brain working at trying to come up with ways to incorporate some of it into a wizard’s tent. “I mean we have kitchens too, but this is a time machine.”
Sirius made to follow the Doctor before stopping mid step and looking back at Harry.
“You two go ahead,” Martha said. “We’ll catch up. If anything happens again, I’m the most qualified to help him.”
Sirius accepted that answer and he and the Doctor started towards the kitchen. As soon as they rounded the corner Martha addressed Harry.
“I am most certainly not the most qualified to help you,” She said.
“Why not?” Harry asked. “You’re a great medical student.”
“I took your pulse to make sure that you were still alive when you passed out,” Martha said in a low voice. “You have two separate pulses! Is that normal for wizards?”
For some reason, both of Harry’s hearts seemed to skip a beat when he heard Martha say that.
“No,” Harry gulped. “As far as Sirius and I can tell, I’m the only wizard like this.”
“What if you’re not a wizard at all?” Martha asked.
“Don’t say that!” Harry begged.
“What if you’re a Time Lord like the Doctor?” Martha said. “Does he know that you have two hearts?”
Harry shook his head.
“Are you planning on telling him?”
“I-,” Harry paused in thought. “I don’t know.”
Martha sighed. “Sirius knows?”
Harry nodded.
“Then I won’t say anything,” Martha said. “Patient confidentiality means that I only have to tell the parent or guardian and since your guardian already knows about it-,”
“Thanks, Martha,” Harry said. “We should probably catch up with them. Do you know where the kitchen is?”
“No. Do you?”
“Nope,”
“Great.”
_____ Line Break _____
The TARDIS must have really liked Harry. As soon as he took the lead and started walking through a hallway it took him and Martha, who was following him, straight to the kitchen.
“I was wondering when you two would get here!” The Doctor said.
“We would have been here faster if we knew where we were going,” Harry pointed out.
“Aww,” The Doctor shrugged off the comment. “You made it. Now! I’ve got just about everything in here. At least I should. But don’t think for a second that I believe that you’re only hungry. You’re going to get a full examination once we get back from meeting Shakespeare.”
“Ok,” Harry had no choice but to agree. This would be an interesting doctor’s checkup.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8
Well fed and full of excitement, the four time travelers walked out of the TARDIS doors into a London that wasn’t theirs.
No paved streets greeted Harry as he put his foot down for the first time in a different time. No tall buildings towered over him. No cars zoomed by. Instead, people walked along dirt roads seeming to be in no hurry to get anywhere. The town seemed smaller but still busy. If Harry had to compare it to something he would say that it looked like a larger version of Hogsmeade.
“Move, Pup,” Sirius tapped Harry’s shoulder. “You’re blocking the exit.”
“Sorry,” Harry stepped to the side.
Harry heard a snippet of Martha and the Doctor’s conversation.
“But what if I end up killing my grandfather?”
“Do you plan to?”
“No,”
“Well then,” the Doctor said. “Just don’t step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you?”
Harry smiled at the Doctor’s response. Don’t step on any butterflies indeed. That was a thing easier said than done.
“So,” Sirius said, facing the Doctor. “Where is this Shakespeare?”
As it turns out, Shakespeare was in the Globe Theater. The original Globe Theater, that is. And not only was Shakespeare there, a large audience and a full cast of actors inhabited the Globe as well. That was common for when the Globe had a play.
If Sirius’ jaw could open any wider it would be lying on the ground. The four time travelers had stood and watched the entirety of Love’s Labour's Lost, and Sirius was enthralled.
“I always knew that there was something I was lacking in my life,” Sirius said. “When we get back home, I’m joining the theater.”
“You could play one of the women, Padfoot,” Harry said. “Your hair’s already almost long enough.”
“Not yet it’s not,” Sirius grumbled. “The nurses at St. Mungos made me cut it.”
“You’ll get back to your past awesomeness, Sirius,” Harry gave his godfather’s arm a pat.
Sirius grumbled something under his breath before turning his attention elsewhere.
“Will we get to see Shakespeare or does he just hide backstage the entire time?” Sirius asked.
“Author! Author!” Martha started a cheer.
The crowd followed suit and soon almost everyone in the theater screamed for the author of the play to come out on stage.
Harry felt a small shift around him. It was barely noticeable but still there.
“Did Martha just put an event into time that didn’t happen before?” Harry turned to the Doctor and asked.
“Looks like it,” The Doctor seemed unbothered yet slightly amused.
“How’s that work?”
Before the Doctor could answer Harry ‘s question, the audience’s chant turned to cheers and whistles.
The Doctor and Harry turned to look at the stage and saw what the commotion was about. There, waving from down stage center, stood William Shakespeare.
“He looks way different than how I pictured him when I read his works,” Martha said.
The excitement built in the audience. Even the Doctor gushed about what the famous play write would say. The noise got to the point that William Shakespeare silenced the crowd himself with five wise, well timed words.
“Shut your big fat mouths!” Shakespeare yelled into the audience eliciting a laugh.
“That’s a disappointment,” the Doctor mumbled.
Harry had to agree, but the excitement of being in another time was enough to keep him happy. He took the time to properly look around the theater. The tetradecagon walls of the theater allowed for many seats along the edges plus standing room in the center. The play they had just watched was wonderful from the ground. Harry wondered what it would be like up in the seats along the walls.
As he looked at the seats, he noticed a strange woman up in one of them. She sat there staring at Shakespeare and stroking a small doll. She kissed the doll and smiled.
Harry didn’t have long to ponder over the woman’s actions because the crowd began to once again cheer. Harry returned his attention to the stage in time to see the literary genius saunter off.
“Did I miss something?” Harry asked, hoping that someone would fill him in.
“If this play gets written and performed,” The Doctor said. “Then everyone in the future missed something.”
“What?” Harry definitely missed something. “What play?”
“Love’s Labour’s Won,” The Doctor informed him. “I’ve only ever heard about it in rumors. It’s the lost play.”
“And we’re going to get to see it!” Martha said as they began to make their way out of the theater.
“I can’t wait,” Sirius said. “Any chance we could just get in your ship and go to tomorrow so that we don’t have to?”
“Ah,” The Doctor waved Sirius off. “Waiting a day won’t kill you. We’ll just find some place to stay for the night. If I’m not mistaken, the inn that Shakespeare stays at is right around here.”
The group strolled through the street managing to avoid any ill thrown chamber pots. They made their way to a small inn with a wooden sign out front reading ‘The Elephant Inn’. The Doctor walked up to the desk and asked for one nights lodging for the four of them. He passed over the correct currency. Harry wasn’t sure where he had gotten the money from. The Doctor left no time for Harry to ponder about it, though, because as soon as their accommodations were secure, he was off up the stairs. Harry headed after the Doctor, Sirius followed Harry, and Martha brought up the rear.
About a third of the way up the stairs, Harry could make out the voices of people arguing.
“Wait a minute,” Harry said right before the Doctor pushed open the door. “Is that him?“
“Who?” Sirius did not follow what Harry who implying.
The Doctor just grinned, pushed the door open, and walked in with a ridiculous amount of self confidence.
“Excuse me,” The Doctor said. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
The Doctor might not have intended to interrupt but as soon as Sirius saw who the “who” Harry mentioned was he certainly was interrupting.
“It’s Shakespeare,” Sirius gasped.
“No, no, no, no,” Shakespeare’s voice dripped with exasperation. “I can’t have any of that tonight. I’m not signing any autographs, I didn’t sell my soul to the devil for my ideas, and I won’t write you as a character in my next show. Now, please go away. I have an entire play to write tonight and it’s far too important to be interrupted by some- “
Shakespeare’s rant was cut short as soon as he saw Martha enter the room.
“Oh,” Shakespeare’s voice lost all of its annoyance as he put on a flirtatious lilt. “Hello there. Come right on in and sit down here by me.”
Shakespeare dismissed his two cast members and the maid to instead focused his full attention on flirting with Martha.
The Doctor took that opportunity to introduce the four of them. He pulled something out of his coat pocket and flipped it open. He held it out to Shakespeare.
“I’m Sir Doctor of Tardis and you’re talking to my companion Miss Martha Jones. My other two companions are-“
“There’s nothing on that paper,” Shakespeare cut the Doctor off.
“But it says it right there,” Martha pointed at the paper. “It’s just what the Doctor said.”
“It’s psychic paper,” The Doctor said with a promise to explain it later.
“Here’s something a bit more real for you then,” Sirius stepped forward and held out the hand that he wore his house lordship ring on. “I am Sirius Black, Lord of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. This is my godson, Harry Potter, heir to houses Black and Potter.”
“Ah, so it appears that I’m in the company of nobility and a beautiful blackamoor lady,” Shakespeare said.
“What did you just call me?”
Before Shakespeare could do a poor job of justifying his word choice, an enraged looking man burst into the room.
“This is unacceptable, Mr. Shakespeare,” The man declared. “I am Master of the Revels and every script must be approved through me before it is performed. You can’t just go off promising the crowds new plays before I’ve seen or even heard about them.”
“You’ll have the script first thing tomorrow morning,” Shakespeare promised. “You’ll be the first one to see it. I’ll personally see that it gets delivered straight to your desk.”
“I don’t work on your schedule, you work on mine,” the man said. “The script, now.”
“It isn’t even done yet.”
“Then you can cancel your performance tomorrow night. I’ll see to it that this play is never performed!”
“No!” Sirius shouted.
“I beg your pardon,” the Master of the Revels was not expecting Sirius’ shout.
“It has to be performed tomorrow,” Sirius said. “We’re leaving after that and I need to know what happens. I need more!”
“Well, you’ll have to take that up with Mr. Shakespeare because I’m returning to my office to write up a banning order,” With that the Master of the Revels stomped out of the room.
“But, but, no,” was all that Sirius could muster out in his dejected state.
“I guess that that’s that then,” Martha said.
“A bit less mysterious than you expected?” Harry asked.
“Yeah,” Martha said. “But this was still great!”
“Excuse me, Mr. Shakespeare,” Harry said. “Would you mind if Sirius read what you have of the script? I won’t hear the end of it if he doesn’t find out what happens.”
“I don’t see why not,” Shakespeare said. “Someone might as well enjoy it.”
Sirius cheered up at those words but his good mood was cut short by screaming in the street.
The four time travelers rushed outside to see the Master of the Revels choking on nothing. The Doctor and Martha pushed their way through to examine him, Harry and Sirius close behind.
“It’s like he’s drowning,” Sirius said.
“I’ve got to start his heart,” Martha began CPR but it was too late. He was dead and not coming back.
Water gushed from the man’s mouth.
“Somebody call a constable and tell them that this man has died of an imbalance of the humors,” The Doctor said.
Harry saw a familiar looking woman run off to follow the Doctor’s command.
“Why did you tell them it’s an imbalance of the humors?” Martha asked.
“I’ve got enough to deal with hear without a witch hunt on top of it,” The Doctor said. “And if I told them anything else then they’ll think that it’s witchcraft.”
“So what is it really?” Harry was prepared for a scientific explanation, not for what the Doctor said.
“It’s witchcraft.”
Harry met Sirius eyes in a panic. Martha was looking at the two of them as well.
“It wasn’t me,” Sirius defended himself. “I was content to just read the script.”
“I know,” The Doctor said. “Normally I’d say that this isn’t from a human but now I don’t know. We’ll have to look into both human and extraterrestrial meddling.”
“Should we go to Diagon Alley?” Harry asked Sirius.
“We could start there,” Sirius said. “But this is more similar to something that would come from Knockturn Alley.”
“We’ll have to look into all of our options,” the Doctor said. “But first we need a plan.”
The four decided to get some sleep first and begin their investigations first thing in the morning.

Chapter Text

Two Hearts Chapter 9

The Doctor had only booked two rooms at the Elephant Inn. That left the hard task of deciding roommates. It was an unspoken rule that the Doctor had lost his room picking privileges that night due to it being his decision to only get two rooms for the four travelers. So, Sirius and Martha took it upon themselves to evaluate the rooming situation.
“This room has two beds,” Sirius said as he poked his head into one room.
“This one’s only got one,” Martha said, doing the same in the second room.
Harry’s first thought was that he and Sirius should share a room since they were already used to living together. But then he realized that that would leave Martha and the Doctor together as well and although Harry doubted the Doctor would care who he was with, Marth might.
The four time travelers stood awkwardly in the hallway until Harry finally asked Martha what she wanted.
“Do you want to stay in the room with two beds, Martha?”
Harry asked.
“Yeah,” Martha said.
One person down, three to go.
With some deliberation and a bit of back and forth, Harry ended up in the room with Martha, and Sirius shared a room with the Doctor.
They had no luggage with them to carry in minus Harry’s bigger on the inside bag so they bid each other goodnight and went into their assigned rooms.
“So,” Martha settled into one of the uncomfortable beds. “How are you liking all of this? Time travel, magic; it’s all pretty great, isn’t it? Well, despite the man dying part. Of course, you’re used to the magic.”
Harry leaned back on the lumpy bed and took a second to gather his thoughts.
“I’m not sure that I’ll ever be used to the magic,” Harry said. “I’ve only known about it for just over three years. That’s when I started Hogwarts. That place was my home until I went to live with Sirius. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back.”
“Why?” Martha asked. “Why are you running away? What for?”
“The ministry organized this competition,” Harry said. “Adult witches and wizards from three different schools compete in it. They haven’t held it in years. I got entered in it and chosen against my will.”
“Why don’t you just compete and get it over with?”
“Sirius won’t let me.”
“Why?”
“Because of the reason it was canceled for so many years,” Harry paused. “The fatality rate got too high.”
“Oh,” Martha went quiet.
Harry thought that that might be the end of the conversation until Martha asked, “So why are you running away? Can’t you and Sirius just say that you’re not going to do it?””
“I wish,” Harry grumbled. “The ministry’s making me compete because it’s a magically binding contract. Sirius thought that if we got out of the country then I’d be able to get out of it. He splinched himself while we were apparating.”
Harry noticed Martha giving him an odd look. He realized that she had no idea what his last sentence meant.
“Er, he lost a piece of his body while magically teleporting,” Harry tried again. “That’s how we ended up in your hospital. You know the rest.”
“You can magically teleport?” Martha asked.
“I can’t,” Harry said. “Not yet anyway. I’ve got to be seventeen before I can test for my license. Hermione and Ron will actually be able to get theirs before me.”
“Who are Hermione and Ron?” Martha asked. “Is Hermione your girlfriend?”
Harry, like any fourteen-year-old asked to defend his friendship with a female, jumped to his defense.
“Hermione my girlfriend? No! She’s my best friend! Both of them are.” Harry calmed down by the end of it. “They’re probably really worried about me.”
“Couldn’t you just return when the competition’s over?”
“Hopefully,” Harry said. “It depends on how upset the ministry is at me and Sirius.”
“Are they really that bad,” Martha asked but before Harry could respond she answered her own question. “Well, they’d have to be bad to force a fourteen-year-old to compete in deadly tournament, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “They also locked Sirius in prison without a trial for twelve years.”
“They what?”
While Harry told that story and about other things that happened during his time in the wizarding world, Sirius sat in the other room with the Doctor.
The combination of a nine hundred something year old (or so he claimed) time lord and a self-declared light Black wizard left together in Elizabethan London could very well lead to a lot of trouble. It was a good thing that said time lord was distracted by what he saw as his new walking encyclopedia of the Wizarding World.
Well, it was a good thing for Elizabethan London. It wasn’t quite so good for the wizard that was deemed an encyclopedia.
The Doctor, never one to waste time unless he didn’t have any began to pick Sirius’ brain almost as soon as they got in the room.
The Doctor asked a question.
Sirius thought for a moment and gave an answer.
The Doctor asked another question.
Sirius, again, gave an answer.
The Doctor theorized in strange words that Sirius didn’t understand.
The cycle continued for thirty minutes, Sirius’ answers getting more sarcastic by the question.
“So, there’s dark and light magic?” The Doctor asked although Sirius was certain that he’d already said that in his last answer.
“Yes.”
“And all wizards can channel both?”
“Most are better at one than the other but all witches and wizards could cast at least a low-level spell of both.”
“There’s got to be something in a your all’s DNA for that to happen. Maybe it’s something hereditary. Are certain families predisposed to either light or dark magic?”
“Yes.”
“And which does your family mostly use?”
Sirius stared at the Doctor for a few moments before answering.
“My last name is Black,” he said. “I think that you can figure it out.”
“So, you know a lot about this ‘dark magic’?” The Doctor asked.
“I’m probably one of the wizards classified as a light wizard that casually knows the most about dark magic,” Sirius said. “Of course, Dumbledore knows a lot but he doesn’t have access to the Black library.”
“Do you know if there’s any spell that could do what happened to the Master of the Revels?” The Doctor asked.
“I know ones that could do parts of it, but it looked like multiple spells put together,” Sirius said. “I couldn’t see the Ministry allowing it though. If I remember anything that my mother told me it’s the horror stories that she passed off as bedtime stories about the witch hunts. The Ministry is extra strict about casting magic in front of muggles around this time because of them. The Ministry records all magic performed in muggle areas. At least, they do in my time. I’d assume that they still do now.”
“You said that your family has a library of dark magic?”
“Yes,” Sirius said. “They also have an ugly umbrella stand.”
The Doctor paused for a second in thought.
Sirius hoped that the time lord’s pause meant that the Doctor had given up his interrogation and would let Sirius get to sleep. With the way the Doctor squinted an eye and pulled his lips into a thin line in thought, though, Sirius didn’t think his self imposed bed time would work out.
“We need to get into the Ministry to get ahold of the records of magic cast in muggle areas,” The Doctor said after his pause.
So much for Sirius’s beauty sleep.
“It would also be good to find out exactly what spells it could be,” The Doctor continued. “Someone should also stay here to be around Shakespeare.”
“So, you have a plan?” It was Sirius’ turn to ask a question.
“I have the start of one,” The Doctor replied.
After a bit more talking, mostly on the Doctor’s part, the Doctor and Sirius squished onto the tiny bed together and went to sleep.
Harry woke up to the sound of a scream so loud it could wake the dead. He looked over at Martha and saw that she had also been startled awake. The two of them jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway where they met up with Sirius and the Doctor.
The Doctor took off towards the room where Shakespeare was writing earlier that night and the other three followed after him.
Shakespeare’s writing room felt completely different than earlier in the night. Earlier it was full of joking and arguing. Now it was quiet. The body of the maid lie unmoving on the floor.
William Shakespeare jolted awake from his awkward sleeping position against his desk. Without his head holding them down the papers on his desk rustled from the slight breeze blowing through the open window.
“What happened?” Shakespeare asked, his voice still hoarse from sleep and his mind still partially in the land of nod.
Harry saw something moving outside the window. He ran over to it to get a better look. Martha followed at his side. The almost familiar sight caused Harry to gasp.
There in the sky, heading away from them, was a witch on a broomstick.
“No way,” Martha mumbled.
“Sirius,” Harry called over to his godfather. “Whoever it is is on a broom. Should we go after her?”
“No,” The Doctor answered before Sirius could. “We still need to go into the wizarding community and judging from what Sirius said, I don’t think that they’d be too fond of you riding a broom over London.”
Harry thought back to the trouble that he was in the summer before second year. If the ministry was anything now like it was in his time then the Doctor’s statement was true.
“Can somebody tell me what’s going on?” Shakespeare demanded from where he still sat behind his desk. “What’s happened to Dolly Baily?”
“I do know a spell that could do this,” Sirius said.
“I don’t think it was a spell,” The Doctor said. “She just died of fright. Her heart gave out.”
“Just died of fright?” Shakespeare said. “Sweet Dolly Baily was braver than all the men that stay here. What could have frightened her so?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Harry said. “Most witches and wizards just look like any other human. Even if she was casting a spell when Dolly Baily walked in, it shouldn’t have scared her to death.”
“I still think it was a spell,” Sirius said but everyone else in the room ignored him.
Two deaths in such a short amount of time wasn’t common. They had to have had a connecting force and the only thing they had in common other than a witch was...
“The thing that the two deaths tonight have in common is Shakespeare,” Martha realized.
“Are you accusing me of witchcraft?”
“No, but the witch certainly has an interest in you,” Harry said.
“I suppose that Peter Streete isn’t as mad as everyone thought, then,” Shakespeare seemed to say out of nowhere.
The four time travelers were unsure what a man named Peter not being mad had to do with anything.
Martha asked the obvious question on everyone’s minds. “Who’s that?”
“The architect and builder of the Globe,” Shakespeare said.
“Oh!” Something must have clicked in the Doctor’s head. He ran a hand through his floofy hair, making it stick up in even more directions.
“The Globe!” the Doctor yelled. “We need to go to the Globe!”
“Alright,” Shakespeare agreed.
And, though no one but the Doctor knew the exact reason why they were going, off the five of them went.

“This place is iconic!” The Doctor said as he paced around the floor of the theater.
“Can I go on stage?” Sirius wasn’t listening to the Doctor. He instead was fully engrossed with the thought of acting.
Shakespeare waved a hand to indicate for him to go on up.
Sirius ran up and jumped on the stage. Harry followed him to the front of the stage.
“Having fun, Sirius?” Harry asked.
“This is great!” Sirius said. “I might not like the name of the architect of this place but he did a great job.” Sirius then shouted out, “Hello!”
“Wow,” Harry said. “The sound really carries in here.”
“That’s what Peter said,” Shakespeare said as he walked up behind Harry. “He said that fourteen sides would help the sound carry well. Lord Black, you have an excellent stage presence. Have you ever considered acting?”
“I have recently,” Sirius said.
“You could be an extra in my show tomorrow night,” Shakespeare said. “If you’d like.”
“You two can talk about that later,” The Doctor said. “Right now, we have two murders to solve. I need to talk to Peter Streete.”
“You can but he isn’t likely to respond,” Shakespeare said and then added after seeing their questioning looks, “He went mad as soon as he finished this place. It started with him hearing voices and then he began speaking nonsense. He’s in Bethlam now. He shows no sign of improving.”
“Bethlam?” Sirius asked.
“Bethlam Hospital,” Shakespeare said. “It’s a mental hospital.”
Sirius sneered at the word hospital.
“We’ll need to split up,” The Doctor said. “Sirius, you and Martha need to go and see if you can find any records in your ministry and see if there’s any gosip of a rogue witch going about killing people. Harry and I are going with Shakespeare to the hospital.”
The group split up but before they did, Shakespeare gave Sirius a copy of the last scene of the script.
“It’s a party scene,” he explained. “Just give it a read through so that you’ll know when to come in.”
And so the group split into two.
“Why didn’t you have Martha come with you instead?” Harry asked the Doctor as they walked through the city. On the way to the hospital.
“I don’t think that she’d like this hospital much,” The Doctor said. What he didn’t add was that he thought that Harry would be safer coming with him to talk to someone than going into a world a murder could be lurking. He wasn’t in the mood to lose another companion that day, especially not one so young.
Once they arrived, Harry could safely say that he didn’t like Bethlam hospital. Screams echoed down the corridors, whether they were out of torture or madness, Harry couldn’t tell. The whole place smelled musty and it was poorly lit.
“Would my lords care for some entertainment while they’re here?” The keeper asked them. “I can whip some of these madmen. They’d put on a show.”
“Whip them?” Harry was appalled.
“We do not want any entertainment here,” The Doctor said in a voice more harsh than Harry had ever heard him use before.
“I’ll just go prepare the patient for you then,” The keeper walked off.
“Patient my arse,” Harry grumbled. “Prisoner is more accurate. How could this place help anyone?”
“It helped me when I went mad,” Shakespeare said. “Scared my wits back into me.”
Harry wasn’t sure whether it was wise to ask about the reason for Shakespeare’s madness, but never one for thinking things through, Harry asked anyway. The answer was devastating.
“I lost my only son,” Shakespeare said. “The Black Death took him and I wasn’t even there. I started questioning the futility of existence. To be or not to be. Makes me wonder what type of man I am, what type of father I am if I couldn’t even be there.”
“I understand,” The Doctor said.
From the look in his eyes, Harry could see that, yes, the Doctor did understand.
The sad moment was interrupted by the keeper returning to inform them that the patient was ready to be seen and leading them to his cell. The keeper left them there and locked the door as he walked out.
The sight in front of them was as sad as the rest of the hospital. Peter Streete sat huddled in a ball on the filthy ground, breathing through his black teeth and rocking back and forth. It was a sad sight to see anyone in, even a stranger.
“He’s still no different,” Shakespeare sounded resigned.
“Peter,” The Doctor squatted down to speak with him. After getting no response out of him, the Doctor put his fingers to the man’s forehead and began talking to him again.
Harry watched in fascination as the Doctor managed to manipulate Peter’s mind to before whatever traumatic event fractured it.
Peter told his tale in whispered words. Witches speaking to him, controlling him, manipulating him to do their bidding. He kept repeating the number fourteen. It was the number of the witches. And there location? All Hallows Street.
“How did you do that?” Harry asked. “Can you heal his mind completely? And can you teach me how to do it?”
“I’m afraid that I’m not gifted enough in the psychic field to heal his mind,” The Doctor said. “Some time lords could. I’ve just never been that great at it. And you couldn’t learn it. Not like this at least. You’d have to be a time lord to be able to do it.”
“Oh,” the back of Harry’s mind reminded him that there was still the possibility that he, in fact, could learn it. He promptly told that part of his brain to shut up. “Maybe there’s a branch of magic like that.”
Harry turned back to look at Peter and jumped back in shock. A stereotypical witch stood in the cell with them, her nose long and her hair ratty.
“The architect says too much,” The witch said. “But with just a touch of my finger.”
“No!” The Doctor tried to stop the witch, but it was too late.
Peter let out a yell as the witch touched his chest and then went silent. He was dead.
“Which of you mortals is next to meat your fate?” The witch asked.
“It is a witch,” Shakespeare said as though he couldn’t trust his eyes.
Harry reached into his pocket for his wand but grabbed his new sonic screwdriver by accident. Making the best of his mistake he turned around to unlock the cell door but paused in his escape plan as he heard the Doctor volunteer himself to die next.
“Doctor?” Harry was not used to someone else acting like a self sacrificing idiot.
“Can you stop her, Doctor?” Shakespeare asked.
“I could if I could just figure out where she’s from,” The Doctor began hitting his head and rambling about the number fourteen. “Oh! Fourteen! The fourteen stars in the Rexel Planetary Configuration. Creature, I name you Carrionite!”
The witch screamed in agony and disappeared.
“That was a witch,” Shakespeare mumbled.
“Well I guess that Sirius and Martha aren’t going to find much then,” Harry said.
“An actual witch,” Shakespeare said again.
“I’d say that they won’t,” The Doctor agreed.
While Shakespeare, Harry, and the Doctor visited the mental hospital, Martha and Sirius were having a small adventure of their own.
“So what should I expect?” Martha asked as she and Sirius found their way to the Leaky Cauldron.
“Well,” Sirius tried to think of a good way to explain the wizarding world. “It’s a lot like everything else in this time. Blood purity is a very big deal. You won’t want to mention that you’re a muggle.”
“That’s non magical, right?” Martha asked.
“Right,” Sirius said.
The two of them walked through different streets until Sirius came to a stop in front of a building with an old looking exterior.
“Why are we stopping?” Martha asked. “There’s nothing here.”
Sirius grabbed Martha’s hand. She tried to pull away at first but stopped herself as soon as she saw the reason that Sirius had done it. Now, as if it had been there all along, Martha saw a sign reading ‘The Leaky Cauldron’.
“Magic?” Martha asked.
“Magic,” Sirius confirmed.
They walked inside.
“Two time travelers walk into a pub,” Martha said. “It sounds like the start of a bad joke.”
Sirius laughed.
The Leaky Cauldron had not changed much over the years, Sirius reflected. If anything it just looked older and more worn in in his time.
“Now what?” Martha asked.
“Now we take a seat and listen for any unusual gossip,” Sirius lead Martha to a table. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t see why not,” Martha agreed.
Sirius ordered two butter beers and brought them back to the table. He and Martha sat back and listened, making small talk to appear unassuming to the other patrons of the bar. Eventually, Martha brought up the topic that had been troubling her.
“So,” she said. “You know about Harry’s- uh, condition?”
“His condition?” Sirius asked.
“Yeah,” Martha continued. “His heart condition.”
“Ah,” Sirius said. “Yes. And you do too?”
“Yes,” Martha said.
The two sat quietly for a moment.
“You know that the Doctor has the same condition, right?” Martha asked.
“He does?” Sirius responded with a question.
“Yeah,” Martha said.
“You don’t think that Harry could be, you know, like the Doctor, do you?” Sirius tried to continue to allude to the situation without alerting anyone who may be listening to what it was.
“Maybe,” was Martha’s unhelpful response.
Sirius didn’t know what to say about that.
“I’m going to look over this script,” the conversation could not get anymore awkward. “We can talk about that later.”
Martha sipped her butter beer while Sirius flipped through the script. Both kept an ear open for the conversations going on around them.
“This is weird,” Sirius said as he got to the end of the script.
“I know,” Martha agreed. “I see some of these people talking but I don’t hear anything.”
“No, no,” Sirius waved away her concern. “Those are just silencing spells. They’re common. I even have one up around us. I mean this last speech in the script.”
“Wizards can use silencing spells?” Martha asked. “Then why are we even trying to listen for anything suspicious? Wouldn’t they know to cast one of those?”
“Yes, but wizards aren’t always the brightest,” Sirius said. “They tend to draw attention to themselves whether they mean to or not.”
“This is amazing!”
Multiple patrons of the pub turned their attention to the man that had said that.
“It’s just like a high level perception filter!” The Doctor swaggered over to Sirius and Martha’s table and pulled himself a chair up to it. He sat down in it backwards.
Harry and William Shakespeare followed behind him.
Harry looked around at the patrons of the pub. He hoped that there was no aurors there. Otherwise, he, Sirius, and possibly the Doctor would be locked up while Martha and Shakespeare would be obliviated.
“Alright, you two,” The Doctor addressed Sirius and Martha. “I hope you haven’t found anything suspicious here because we’ve already figured out what caused it.”
“The only weird thing that I’ve seen is this last line in the script,” Sirius held up the paper with the script on it. “It makes no sense. What were you thinking when you wrote it, Will?”
William Shakespeare, who was up to that point looking around to take in every magical thing he could about the pub, turned and looked at Sirius. He walked over and took the script out of Sirius’ hand and read the last line. His eyes squinted in confusion as he did.
“I don’t know,” Shakespeare said. “I don’t even remember writing it.”
The Doctor grabbed the script out of Shakespeare’s hand and looked it over. Harry read it over his shoulder.
“Of course,” The Doctor said. “She was in the room with him when he was writing this. Don’t you all see? The most genius writer in the world and,”
“They controlled him,” Harry said. “They’re using his words and his theater as a beacon for one of their spells.”
“Very good, Harry,” The Doctor said. “Shakespeare, you have to stop the play.”
“I’ll barely make it back on time to stop the last scene from here,” Shakespeare said.
“Can you apparate with other people?” Martha asked Harry and Sirius.
Sirius smiled seeing where Martha was going with this.
“Side along,” Sirius said. “I’ll take him. I was going to apparate back to make it in time for my scene anyway.”
“Great!” Harry said. “So, while they’re stopping the play, what will we be doing?”
“The three of us are going to take a trip to All Hallows Street,” The Doctor said. “If we can find it.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Harry said. “Sirius, can I borrow a galleon?”
Sirius and Shakespeare left for the Globe leaving Martha the Doctor and Harry in the pub.
Harry walked up to the bar and ordered three bottles of butter beers. While he was there, he casually asked the bartender for directions to All Hallow’s Street.
Harry handed the Doctor and Martha a bottle with the instructions that they had to try it. The three of them then left the Leaky Cauldron and headed to confront the Carrionites.

All Hallow’s Street:

The house that contained the deadly aliens didn’t look out of place on the outside. It looked close to identical to every other house on the street. In fact, Harry, Martha, and the Doctor might not even have found it if it wasn’t for a door creaking open on its own accord.
“I think they’re expecting us,” Harry said.
“Well, that’s not very encouraging,” Martha said.
The Doctor was silent until they entered the upper room of the house. True to what Harry suspected, the youngest looking witch stood waiting for them.
“I hope you didn’t have to wait long for us,” The Doctor’s sarcasm was obvious.
“Not as long as death has been waiting on you,” The Carionite gave a wicked smirk.
“Well, that was ominous,” Harry said. He then turned to the Doctor and asked, “Are you going to name her?”
“No,” The Doctor said. “Naming them will only work once.”
“Name them?” Martha asked.
“Quiet girl,” The Carionite said. “This fight is not with you or the boy. I gaze upon this bag of bones and hereby name thee Martha Jones.”
Martha would have fallen to the ground if the Doctor had not caught her.
“What did you do?” Harry stepped forward as though he planned to fight the Carrionite.
“I see the flame in you is hotter and so I name thee Harry Potter,”
The Carionite’s words seemed to rush through Harry setting all of his hair on end. He fell to his knees, dizzy and gasping for breath. He didn’t faint.
“Odd,” The Carrionite reflected. “It’s as if it’s not all there.”
While Harry, Martha, and the Doctor faced down a Carionite, Shakespeare and Sirius were at the globe.
Shakespeare held down his lunch after apparating. That was a good thing. Sirius didn’t splinch himself while apparating that time. That was also a good thing.
“How do you plan to stop the play?” Sirius asked Shakespeare.
“Easy,” Shakespeare said. “I’ll just go on stage and tell them to stop. I’m the author. They’ll have to listen to me.”
Sirius stood in the wing of stage right, watching Shakespeare run out on stage. The plan went downhill as Shakespeare fainted on stage.
“Oh dear,” Sirius said.
That was not a good thing.
The Doctor faced down the Carionite. He told her what her plan was and informed her that she wouldn’t get away with it.
“Come, Doctor,” The witch taunted the Doctor. “Surely a man of such handsome face could not deny a lady her victory.”
“I fail to see how you’re a lad- Ow!” The Doctor said as the carrionite pulled a piece of hair from his head. “What’s that for?”
“It’s for a spell,” Harry said from his spot on the floor.
“The boy is right,” The carrionite wound the hair around a doll. She took a pin and stabbed the doll in it’s chest.
“Ahh!” The Doctor fell to the ground clutching his chest.
Seeing her job as being done, the witch left the building.
“Doctor!” Harry and Martha both yelled.
“Oh, it’s a good thing that she only stabbed that doll on the left side,” Harry said.
“What? Oh!” Martha understood what Harry meant.
“Doesn’t make it hurt any less when a heart goes out,” The Doctor said in pain. “How do you people cope with just one?”
“Sit up straight,” Harry instructed the Doctor.
“You’ve got to hit me on the-”
Before the Doctor could finish his instructions Harry had already thumbed him on the chest and back.
“Oh,” The Doctor said in relief. “You’re good at that.” He jumped up. “Come on!”
Sirius stood offstage right in full costume. It was time for improv.
“My lords,” Sirius walked onstage with an air of importance. “An urgent message has arrived from a neighboring kingdom.”
The actors gave a brief pause but recovered quickly to respond to Sirius’s words.
“One of good tidings and well wishes, I’m sure,” one actor said.
The banter only went on for a few seconds before Sirius was hauled offstage and thrown outside with barely any in the audience being the wiser.
The play continued despite the interruption.
The other three time travelers found William Shakespeare nursing a head injury in a haystack.
“What happened to stopping the play?” The Doctor asked him.
“Your actors have no respect for true talent,” Sirius limped up to them. “I couldn’t stop it either.”
What sounded like a rushing wind kicked up from inside the theater. The five outside could hear cackling within it.
“It’s too late,” Martha said.
“Not if I can help it,” The Doctor ran towards the stage. “Come on!”
Harry ran onstage with the Doctor. The sight that greeted him wasn’t pretty. A red funnel filled the room. Black hags flew through it, joyous in the chaos it caused.
“We need another set of words to shut it down,” The Doctor said to Shakespeare over the noise.
“I have nothing prepared!” Shakespeare said.
The Doctor encouraged Shakespeare to overcome his ill timed writer’s block.
William Shakespeare began to make a spell up on the spot. Harry assumed that it was working due to the worried looks on the Carrionites’ faces.
After saying the location of the Carrionite’s world, Shakespeare paused, looking for a word that rhymes with cuss.
“Expeliarmus!” Harry said the first spell that always came to his mind.
“Expeliarmus!” Shakespeare finished strong.
The funnel reversed direction, sucking the flying Carrionites back into it. The change in direction also cause the stage door to be thrown open. Almost every copy of Love’s Labour's Won came flying out were sucked up into the portal. The portal closed with one last whoosh and plunged the theater into an uncomfortable silence.
The audience stared at the stage for a few seconds before one person began clapping. Then another. Soon, the entire audience was on their feet in applause.
Harry saw the Doctor leave the stage in the excitement. Sirius and Martha, who had come onstage just after Harry and the Doctor had, stepped forward with Shakespeare, Harry, and the two lead actors to take a bow.
That night the four time travellers returned to the Elephant Inn where the Doctor booked a third room. To say that Martha and Sirius slept well that night is an understatement. They almost didn’t want to get up the next morning, but the news that they were going back to the globe before leaving roused them from their beds.
With everyone out of bed, they made their way to the globe for the last time before leaving.
“Look at this!” The Doctor pulled out a large skull from a storage bin.
He and Harry were engaging in every theater kid’s favorite past time, rooting through the costume and prop storage for fun things.
Harry put on a crown from the crate of hats he found.
“Do you think that gold’s my color?” Harry asked.
“It compliments your eyes well,” The Doctor said.
Harry returned the crown to where it was originally stored and the two went out on stage to talk with Shakespeare before they left the time.
The Doctor handed Shakespeare a ruffled collar and instructed him to wear it until his head felt better.
“Sir!” One of the actors ran in, interrupting the conversation. “She’s here!”
“Who’s here?” Sirius asked.
“The queen!”
What should have been an exciting moment turned into once again running for their lives as queen Elizabeth's guards chased them through the streets.
At last, they were safely back in the TARDIS ready for whatever came next.

Chapter Text

"Now," The Doctor stated once the TARDIS was in flight. "I think that you are due for a checkup. Right, Harry?"
"Um," Harry's hearts were beating at a speed that he knew they shouldn't be. He tried to focus on calming them and they mercifully listened.
"I know that I told you all that you could have one trip before I dropped you off at your destinations," The Doctor started with his word babble that probably had a point hidden somewhere amongst the rambling. "But I know this great hospital, well– it's great now. It wasn't so great the last time I went. Almost got killed that time. Second day with this face too, but anyway. The hospital is great now. I figured that you'd be interested in seeing how far medicine's come in the future, Martha and Harry can get his check up while we're there. Sound good?"
"Sounds great to me," Martha agreed.
Sirius was indifferent so Harry had little choice but to agree.
Off the four travelers went. The TARDIS shook as they hurtled towards their desination.
Luckily Harry didn't pass out or receive any new memories that time but everyone still kept a close eye on him, especially the Doctor.
"Here we are!" The Doctor threw a switch on the consol and the TARDIS came to a shuttering halt.
"Martha, Harry, Sirius, welcome to New New York."
The Doctor ran around to the door and threw it open. Sunlight streamed into the TARDIS illuminating the alien craft in a warm, natural glow.
Harry gave Sirius a brief glance before heading outside. He stepped through the fresh hold into a gorgeous green field. Wispy clouds floated through the bright blue sky above him. Grey buildings cut through the horizon, outlined against the sky. The thing that stood out to Harry the most, though, was the utter quietness.
Harry's hearing had improved tremendously since the accident. He was able to clearly hear conversations most of the way across the great hall. But here, there was nothing other than the grass rustling in the slight breeze and the people behind him talking about the walk into the city.
"Couldn't you have landed closer?" Sirius was asking the Doctor as Harry tuned back in to what was happening around him.
"And miss these beautiful views?" The Doctor responded. "Nah! And anyway parking in town is ridiculous. I don't want to have the TARDIS towed today."
The Doctor stuck his hands in his coat pockets, tilted his head, plastered a bright smile that didn't quite reach his eyes on his face, and began walking towards town.
Harry took off after him at a brisk pace to catch up to the long legged time lord.
The Doctor was right about the view. It couldn't have been more picturesque. Even the temperature was perfect for a walk. Despite all of that, the quietness still sat heavy in the front of Harry's mind.
He ran ahead of Sirius and Martha. He caught up the the Doctor and matched his pace.
"Does it seem kind of… quiet to you?" Harry asked.
The Doctor slowed slightly, listening for a sound that Harry knew wasn't there.
"It does," The Doctor's voice sounded like he was questioning his own observation. He then brushed off his concern. "I'm sure it's nothing. The city's probably just installed a sound blocker of some type. Nothing to worry about!"
Harry didn't know if the Doctor was trying to convince him or if the Doctor was trying to convince himself.
They walked a little ways more in silence before the Doctor decided to make small talk.
"You're not nervous about the examination," he asked. "Are you?"
Harry debated lying and saying that no, of course he wasn't. Why would he be nervous about the examination? But he instead decided to be a little more truthful.
"A little bit," Harry said. "The only times that I've been to see someone that practices medicine are when I end up hurt in the medical wing at Hogwarts. And I'm usually stuck on bed rest for days when that happens."
"Do you get hurt a lot then?"
"More than I'd like to," Harry responded. "Me and my friends always seem to find trouble. We don't even go looking for it. Well, we usually don't."
"So Sirius has never taken you in for yearly check ups?" The Doctor asked, judgment towards Sirius' parenting skills slipping into his voice.
"Oh no," Harry tried to defend Sirius. "I've only lived with Sirius for about half a year. I lived with my aunt and uncle before that. They didn't like me much. They did take me to the eye doctor when my primary teachers noticed that I had trouble seeing the board."
Harry didn't mention that he had gotten a strict warning to not say anything about the cupboard or being punished by going without meals to anyone in the doctor's office. Some warnings lasted longer than others.
"Did the wizards magically fix your vision then?" Asked the Doctor.
Harry again debated how to answer another one of the Doctor's questions. He again decided on a partial truth.
"No," Harry said. "I don't think that there's a way for wizards to purposely fix vision. If there were then my headmaster wouldn't wear glasses."
Harry paused for a second, choosing his next words with care.
"I had an accident at the end of last year," he said. "My friend Hermione and I were flying on the back of a hipogriff and I fell off. I hit the ground hard enough to knock me out and when I woke up I could see fine without my glasses. It was probably just accidental magic making sure I didn't die from the fall and fixing my vision in the process."
Harry didn't think that the Doctor thought that that was all that happened but he also didn't know enough about magic to say otherwise.
The rest of the walk to town was spent in light conversation. The Doctor took it as his opportunity to quiz Harry and Sirius a bit more about magic. Martha also asked an occasional question.
After the seventeenth question about animagus transformations, Sirius was reaching the end of his patience.
"When I went into Minnie's office for my career advice," Sirius snapped. "I told her, Professor McGonagal, I won't be a professor. And you know what? This is why. People asking me questions about-"
The four people walked through the front gates of the city only to be greeted with-
"-Nothing," Sirius trailed off.
"Is it supposed to be this empty?" Martha asked.
The Doctor ran forward into an opening between the towering buildings. He spun in a circle, his head raised and mouth slightly agape.
"What?" He asked, his eyes squinting. "How?"
"I'm going to assume that's a no," Sirius helpfully supplied an answer to Martha's question.
There are times in everyone's lives when they're right. Sometimes being right is an amazing thing. It's something to be celebrated and shouted to all that would listen. Other times it's still an accomplishment, just one that someone should keep to themselves. That instance most commonly happens among individuals that are married or in relationships. There is a middle ground where being right is treated with indifference. Then, there is the final stage of being right. The stage of being right where you wish you were wrong. The stage where your worst suspicions are confirmed and you wish you could just go back to ignorance.
The quietness wasn't nothing. Harry was right, and I'm sure you can tell what stage of right he was.
"This is bad," The Doctor lightly jogged back to his three companions, his coat flapping behind him. "This should be a bustling city, especially this part, and there's just no one!"
"So, are we going to leave?" Martha asked.
A selfish part of Harry hoped that they'd just look the other way, ignore everything strange going on, and just leave. That way he wouldn't have to find out the truth of what was wrong with him. He imidiatly mentally berated himself. People could be in serious trouble and there he stood thinking about abandoning them to their own devices because he was scared. Some Gryffindor he was.
"I've got to figure out what's wrong," The Doctor said. "You three can go back to the TARDIS and wait for me. I'm not sure what's here and I don't you all to get hurt."
"Go back?" Martha asked. "No way! We're on an alien planet. I'm not just going to go and wait somewhere now."
"I agree," Sirius said. "Plus, you might need backup."
"It could be dangerous," The Doctor made sure Sirius was looking at him as he gave a glance at Harry.
Harry screwed up his courage and said something he hoped he wouldn't later regret.
"I'll be fine. Let's go."

Chapter Text

There are places in the universe that are meant to be full and busy. The very air of those places seems to call for activity. New New York was one of those places and without the hustle and bustle, it felt dead.
Harry glanced behind him every few feet, expecting to find, well, anything. All four travelers did. And all were greeted only with nothing but more quiet and empty streets. After a while they stopped expecting to find anything but that didn’t stop them from looking.
“This isn’t right,” the Doctor said again. “The last time I was here this place was full of life.”
“Are you sure you got the time right?” Martha asked.
“Yes I’m sure I got the time right!” The Doctor’s voice rose higher as he answered. “I didn’t want to come right after the last time I was here but I also didn’t want to go too far forward from that either. There’s still a successful living breathing society here years after this!”
“So where are they now?” Harry asked.
“Exactly,” The Doctor responded.
They walked further into the city. Skyscrapers and motorways stretched into the air, both completely abandoned.
“Let’s take a look in here,” The Doctor walked up to the door of a skyscraper. He tried to pull it open and upon finding it locked, pulled out the sonic.
The device let out a soft whir and the lock clicked open.
The Doctor took a step inside without holding the door, expecting the others to follow him.
Harry caught the door before it closed, unsure whether it would stay unlocked, and held it until Sirius and Martha were through.
They walked into a large room lit only by the sunlight that came through the dusty windows. Harry assumed the room was the lobby of the building and it was probably once very nice. Harry could imagine it before it fell into disarray. It likely had shiny, tall, sloping ceilings, rounded grey chairs, and a large front desk. Harry could imagine a decorative plant on that desk and receptionists sitting behind it looking either annoyed at life or overly happy. Now though, all the metallic surfaces were dull, the chairs were scuffed and torn, and a good portion of the desk had a thick layer of dust on it. Needless to say, there were no receptionists in sight.
“I need you all to stay close,” the Doctor said. “This is probably dangerous so I won’t have any of you wandering off. And I mean it. I refuse to lose track of a single one of you.”
“Do you lose track of people a lot?” Sirius asked.
“More often than I’d like,” the Doctor responded.
The four people walked past one group of the torn up chairs. The Doctor took a second to glance at them as they walked by but didn’t stop. The four travelers entered a hallway just past the chairs. It only took them a few feet to come across a door.
The Doctor once again pulled out his sonic and unlocked the door. He grasped the small groove that acted as a handle and slid it open.
His eyebrows slightly rose and the corners of his mouth fell as he shook his head a miniscule amount and let out a slight, “Oh,”.
“What is it?” Harry went to move around the Doctor to get a look into the room only to be stopped by the Doctor putting his arm out to block his path.
“Don’t go in there,” The Doctor warned.
While The Doctor cautioned Harry, Martha got a view of what had made the Doctor pause.
“Oh my god,” she exclaimed, her mouth falling open. “What happened to them?”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor said. “But it would be best for you to avoid contact with them until we know if it’s something contagious.”
Harry managed to peak around the Doctors arm only to get a glimpse of the most macabre sight he had ever laid eyes on. There, in the room, were skeletons. Many of them were humanoid in shape. Harry did a quick count. Twenty one. There were twenty one skeletons. Two of them were the size of children.
“It should be completely fine now to examine them,” Martha argued. “They look like they’ve been there for ages bacteria doesn’t stick around that long. We owe it to them to at least discover what killed them.”
“Are you training to be a detective now as well as a doctor?” The Doctor asked. Before she could answer he stepped out of the way to let her in and said, “Well then, go on in.”
Martha looked at the Doctor for a second before doing what he said.
Sirius went into the room after her with a comment about being trained as an auror.
Harry, without thinking another moment about it, went in after Sirius.
The Doctor entered last.
“Well, that’s weird,” Martha commented as she stared at something on one of the skeleton’s neck. “Doctor, come look at this.”
The Doctor walked over from his spot near the door and squatted down. Harry came close too to see what Martha had found.
There was a small plastic looking patch on the skeleton. It was about three centimeters long and didn’t appear to be thick at all.
The Doctor pulled it off of the skeleton and examined it.
“Go see if there’s one of these on any others of them,” He instructed.
Sirius and Martha both moved to look, but Harry stayed next to the Doctor.
“What is it?” Harry asked.
“Bliss,” the Doctor said. “At least, that’s what it says on it. I’d say it’s like some sort of drug. Put it on and you can change how you feel.”
A patch that could change how you feel. Harry could think of many times in his life where that could come in useful, especially one to calm down anger. Then again, there were probably potions that could accomplish the same thing.
“There’s four over here with them on,” Sirius called over.
“I’ve counted seven on this side,” Martha said from the other side of the room.
Half of the room.
“What do they say on them?” The Doctor asked.
“Bliss,” Sirius answered.
“Same here,” Martha said. “Except for one. One said ‘Happy’.”
The Doctor nodded and stood up.
“Come on,” the Doctor said, walking back out into the hallway.
Casting one last look back at the skeletons, Harry followed him out of the room.
“Now what?” Harry asked once all four of them had left the room.
“There’s something wrong here,” The Doctor said.
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the fact that all of those people were dead,” Sirius helpfully supplied.
Harry took that moment to really look at Sirius. His godfather looked fine. He was wearing his leather jacket and dark pants and looked every part the rebellious white sheep of the black family he was, but Sirius always had a look in his eyes now that he didn’t have in pictures. His grey irises looked like thin winter ice, just a wayward step away from cracking. And then there were the comments like Sirius had just made. He seemed to be hyper concerned and emotionally invested in some things but seperated from things that he should find concerning.
Maybe Sirius could have his mental state evaluated when Harry had his health checked. He wouldn’t want to, of course, but Harry had a plan about how to convince him.
“We need to find a computer system,” The Doctor’s voice pulled Harry out of his thoughts. “See what the last news story was before whatever it was that happened happened.”
“That would probably be back out in the lobby, wouldn’t it?” Harry asked.
“Good thinking,” The Doctor said. “Of course, there are probably plenty of computers that will have what we need in this building.”
“Why’s that?” Martha asked.
“Because if this is the right building, and I’m pretty sure it is, then this is the headquarters for the main news station in New New York,” the Doctor started back towards the lobby. “Come on.”

The Doctor and Harry sat behind a computer behind the reception desk. Harry was surprised it still worked with all of the other power in the building off but the Doctor had pulled a spare battery out of his pocket and somehow hooked it to the computer. Sirius and Martha had been given instructions to look for anything suspicious in the lobby, with the strict additional warning of “and don’t wander off” while the Doctor and Harry checked the computer.
Whether the Doctor wanted to keep Harry close to him because he was concerned about the literal child travelling with him or if he had Harry at the computer with him because Harry was useful before when dealing with the hospital computer, Harry didn’t know. Nevertheless, Harry was trying to be as useful as he could.
It took less time to get into the New New York computers than it did to get into the hospital ones, which would be shocking if one didn’t know anything about the almost complete thoroughness of the Judoon.
“There it is,” the Doctor said. “The last universal broadcast sent out.”
The Doctor opened it and played it and what they discovered answered one question.
Two holographic reporters sat behind a desk, talking about the emotion market. Apparently the newest in the line of emotions was to be released to the above ground New New York that day. They either didn’t know or refuse to say what it was but they did say it would be the best yet. At the end of their segment they put up a list of emotions currently on the market and it was obvious which one was missing. Bliss.
They watched the rest of the news, but nothing else stood out.
“So everyone died right after Bliss came out?” Harry asked. “Do you think it’s related?”
Before the Doctor could answer, the doors of the building were thrown open. A man sauntered through.
“I don’t think you all are supposed to be here,” was all that he said before he pulled a gun and pointed it towards Sirius, who was standing closest to the door. “You all are going to tell me how you got here,” he said. “Or I’ll shoot him. I’d start talking if I were you.”

Chapter Text

Confrontation

Sirius, to his credit, did not freak out. He didn’t do anything helpful either, but he didn’t move or do anything stupid.

“I’m going to ask one more time,” the man said as his gun hummed to life. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Well,” the Doctor started, but before he could answer, a woman ran out of the hallway the four travelers had explored. Three other people came out of the hallway on the other side.

“Boss!” The woman’s yell pulled the man’s attention away from Sirius.

“What is it, Trist?” the man asked.

“My team’s been following them and listening in.” She said. “They said that the girl’s training to be a doctor.”

“Is that right?” the man turned to Martha.

“Uh,” Martha hesitated for a brief moment before giving the honest answer of, “yes.”

“We need a new doctor,” Trist said.

The man with the gun looked thoughtful, but not convinced.

“Plus,” Trist decided to add. “If the chief gets wind that we had a healer so close and didn’t bring them in he’d be furious. And she could be helpful for- “Trist didn’t need to finish her sentence. The boss had already made up his mind.

He allowed his gun to power down but didn’t lower it from Sirius’s chest. “Alright,” he said. He turned his attention to Martha.

He gave her two choices. Neither were favorable. Come willingly or be taken by force.

“Where are you planning on taking us?” the Doctor managed to ask.

“Us?” Trist parroted. “Not you three, just her.”

“We don’t need any more people involved than necessary,” the man with the gun said. “All of our other positions are filled. And you three don’t look like you’ll offer much in terms of help anyway.”

“What about the boy?” Trist’s words pulled her boss’s attention to Harry.

The Doctor pushed Harry behind him and shifted to block him from both view and gun sight as much as possible.

“He’s young enough that we could train him to be useful,” Trist continued. “Maybe he could work in surveillance. I could use an extra hand.”

The Doctor’s “I am not letting that happen,” was said at the same time of Sirius’s threat of “I’ll kill both of you if you even think about touching him.”

“Fair enough,” Trist said. “Only the girl is necessary.”

Harry might have once been offended at being protected and stood in front of. He could fight for himself after all. Harry was a little bit offended, but he didn’t spend long dwelling on it because the Doctor just gave him the perfect opportunity by pushing him out of sight. Harry had no plans of wasting that opportunity either. He opened his internally expanded bag and pulled out his invisibility cloak. He threw it over himself and began making his way around the counter. His wand slid to his hand with a thought.

As easy as it would be to just disarm the man holding the gun, Harry had to be more discreet. All of the others in the room were likely armed and if anything obvious happened they would draw their own weapons. Harry would have to take care of them first.
Harry slinked over to the first of the three people on Trist’s team. He got behind him and poked the tip of his wand through the front of his cloak. With a silent, silencing silencio, the first of Trist’s team members was unable to make a sound, though the silenced man was not aware of that.
Throughout Harry’s actions the conversation continued, but the Doctor’s words against taking Martha fell flat. Not even his plea to take him instead was able to change their minds.

Keeping in mind that he couldn’t draw attention to what he was doing, Harry opted against doing anything that would knock the man out. He instead stuck the first team member to the spot he stood and cast a petrificus totalus. He made sure that he didn’t fall over and went to the next person to repeat the process.

“Grab her,”

Trist grabbed Martha’s arms and twisted them behind her back.

Martha squirmed and struggled to get free. She stomped on Trist’s foot. Trist let go a fraction of a second and Martha maneuvered out of her hold– and right into the arms of the two guards that had run across the room to assist Trist in her kidnapping.

Both Sirius and the Doctor moved to stop the guards before they reached Martha, but the boss had other ideas. The gun pointed at Sirius powered back up.

“Any of you try to stop us and the man dies,”

The threat was enough to hold the Doctor and Sirius in place.

Trist pressed a small patch on Martha’s neck. Martha slumped over into her captors’ arms.

“Time to leave,” the boss said.

Trist and the other two activated a device and they disappeared from the spot with Martha in tow.

The boss lowered his gun to activate an identical device.

Sirius drew his wand and fired a spell at the boss, but the pink light went straight through the spot he’d been standing and connected harmlessly with the door.
Harry pulled off his invisibility cloak and looked back and forth between the Doctor and Sirius.

“Did you petrify him?” Sirius asked Harry.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I wasn’t fast enough to make it to the other two though.”

“It’s ok,” The Doctor said. “As long as this one has a teleport, we only need one.”

Sirius bounded over to the petrified man and found that he did have one.

“Harry, stay with the Doctor. I’m going after her,” Sirius said.

“No!” The Doctor’s warning was too late. Sirius had already activated the teleport and was gone.

“Did I not tell all of you to not wander off?” the Doctor asked. “Now, Martha’s couldn’t be helped but that was just impulsive.”

“He’s a Gryffindor,” Harry answered without thinking. How could he think about a response to that? His thoughts were occupied. Martha was gone. His godfather almost died again. Then, after managing to not die, Sirius decided to disappear in front of them and follow the man that threatened to kill him. That was supposed to be Harry’s thing.

“We need to know where they are,” the Doctor’s words pulled Harry out of his spiral. “Can you release him enough for us to question?”

It was obvious what the Doctor meant. The only chance they had at the moment to get Martha and Sirius back was to get their location out of the man Harry had petrified.

Harry canceled the silencing spell and released the man’s head from the bind.

The man found it in himself to spit at Harry.

That didn’t make anyone in that room like each other.

It didn’t take long for the Doctor and Harry to realize that the man was as uncooperative as they came. Every question was followed with either silence or a smart answer that revealed nothing. Finally, they got something out of him the fourth time they asked the end location of the teleports.

“Where did they teleport to?”

“Not to the same place,” that didn’t reveal much, but it was something. “They would have rerouted my teleport after they realized I didn’t come back on time. You’d have to search the entirety of the undercity to find him. It’s random. But he won’t be in the same place as the girl.”
That’s what they needed. Sirius and Martha were in separate places in the undercity. The first thing that they’d have to do was go there. Then would come the search.

But of course, it wasn’t that easy.

“Are you both thick?” the man asked.

“What?” Harry asked.

“We’re stuck up here,” the man said. “All three of us. The motorway is closed off and we’re stuck.”

That could be a problem.

Meanwhile, Sirius

Teleport, Sirius must admit, was not the worst form of travel he’d used.

Being a wizard, Sirius had a list of horrible forms of travel. Teleportation ranked fifth. The only real bad part about it was the sudden jerk and the fact that he ended up right above what appeared to be a dumpster. A dirty, grimy, smelly dumpster.

At least the landing was soft when gravity did what gravity does and Sirius fell the remaining two and a half feet into that dumpster.
It didn’t take much time for Sirius to regain his bearings. Having an apparation license and a good amount of auror training was to his advantage. His wand was on him in one piece, he wasn’t injured and he only slightly felt the urge to barf.

When Sirius was certain he wasn’t about to hurl anymore, or at least he wasn’t about to hurl from the teleportation (the smell was a different story), he took stock of his surroundings.

He heard movement and voices before he climbed out. They weren’t close but they were loud. It was like the buzz of Diagon Alley during back-to-school shopping minus the whining kids. Sirius decided that the sound of a crowd wasn’t an instant threat and crawled out of the dumpster.
A wall and more dumpsters were all that graced Sirius’s sight after he climbed out. The wall had some sort of bluish-green slime on it in parts. Sirius decided it was best to not know what the slime was. He had seen enough disgusting stuff in Azkaban to last him a lifetime. The sound of the crowd seemed to be coming from his left. He could use that to his advantage if he needed by blending into it, but he doubted that whoever took Martha took her to a crowded area. More than likely this was some sort of entrance to their base. All he had to do was find the door.
Sirius looked to the right and found that one side of where he was at was closed off by an equally slimy brick wall. He walked over to it, poked it, prodded it, tried revealing and unlocking spells on it, and even glared at it for good measure. After his intense scrutiny, Sirius came to the conclusion that the wall was, in fact, just a wall.

So were the other two walls. And the ground was just ground. And the dumpsters, just dumpsters.

All that the dumpsters had in them was smelly rotten food. And, of course, as he was searching through them, Lord Sirius Black.

“Damn,” Sirius swore as he climbed out of the last dumpster. It would appear that his hypothesis of where he was being a hidden entrance was wrong. That left only one option.

Sirius walked out to the left of the dumpster he initially landed in. It was time to face the crowd. At least his search had informed him of something, there were restaurants nearby. Not that he felt well enough to eat.

The alleyway that Sirius landed in was connected to a somewhat large, well, Sirius didn’t know whether it should be called a marketplace or a food court.
The primary function of the area appeared to be food. Old tables and chairs were set up throughout the center and food carts and restaurants made up the walls. Woven in amongst the tables were peddler’s carts hoping to sell their merchandise.

Smells wafted around from every direction. Most of them were good, some of them were horrible. Sirius probably had some of the worst smells clinging to him from his dumpster diving experience. For that reason, the patrons of the market square gave Sirius his space as he wandered around the area.
There was no sign of Martha amongst the people. No sign of any of her kidnappers either. There was, however, one person that caught Sirius’s eye.
Off to one side of the food court, a brown-haired woman sat at an old picnic table. It wasn’t her brown hair that caught Sirius’s attention. It wasn’t that she was eating what looked like chips either. What caught Sirius’s attention was the fact that she was wearing what appeared to be a police uniform.
Sirius wasn’t a big fan of the police after being wrongfully imprisoned by Aurors after the war, but this policewoman might be his only chance at finding Martha. And, if he was arrested, he could always just apparate back to the last place he saw Harry and the Doctor. Magic was a wonderful backup plan.

Sirius walked through the spaces between the tables until he reached where the officer sat.

She looked up before Sirius spoke to her. Whether she knew he was there from her police training or if she just smelled him coming is debatable.

“Listen sir,” The woman said. “If you’re here to cause trouble I’d appreciate you taking it somewhere else because I’m on break.”

Her words were accompanied by a look that he’d only see four people master in his life. The first was Professor McGonagall. She used The Look anytime she thought the marauders were scheming. The second was James’s mum who used the look anytime she saw her boys getting into something. The most notable use of The Look from Mrs. Potter was when she caught Sirius and James climbing out of a window at two in the morning with their brooms. The third was Lily Potter when she caught Sirius attempting to teach baby Harry a curse word. The fourth was this woman.
Sirius was almost tempted to tell the officer that nothing was wrong and to wish her a nice day, but Martha was in serious trouble. For that reason, he screwed up his Gryffindor courage and got on with why he approached her.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Sirius stressed the word cause. “I’ve just found myself in it. Again.”

“Sit,” the officer nodded at the empty bench across from her. After Sirius sat, she said, “Go on. What’s your trouble?”

So, Sirius told her exactly what had happened. All that he left out was the parts about time travel and magic. Throughout Sirius’s tale, the officer finished her chips.

“So, you teleported down from the city using the teleport of the people that kidnapped your friend and, in the process, left your godson alone with a man that you met less than a week ago?” The officer asked once Sirius finished his story and she finished her chips.

“When you put it that way,” Sirius said, though he wasn’t that concerned about Harry. Nothing was in the upper city and Sirius could always apparate back to them. Plus, how much trouble could they get in?

“You’re in luck Mr.- “

“Black,” Sirius filled in. “Sirius Black.”

“Well, Mr. Black,” the officer continued. “I just happen to be on the team investigating supposed gang activity in town. You just gave me a lead. Me and you can head back to the station and see if we can do a bit of meddling with your teleport and see if it can tell us where you were supposed to go.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” Sirius agreed.
He needed to find out where that teleport was supposed to go ASAP. Sirius might not know where Martha was, but one thing he did know was that she was in trouble.

Meanwhile, Martha

Martha woke up in bed more comfortable than the one in the Elephant Inn. That’s not to say the bed she was in was the height of luxury, but it was an improvement. Martha would have preferred a firmer pillow but you can’t be overly picky when you’re kidnapped.

Wait.

Martha bolted upright, her eyes snapping open. She regretted that decision as soon as a harsh artificial light assaulted her eyes and her head swam. She snapped her eyes back shut.

“Easy there,” A male voice sounded from close to where she sat. “The patch is still just wearing off.”

Martha opened one eye and then the other. Then, squinting, she turned to find out who the voice belonged to.

A man with curly black hair sat at a chair next to her bed. Upon seeing her squinting he raised his eyebrows, got up, and dimmed the lights, and then returned to his chair.

“I’m sorry that you were brought in like that,” the man said. “Finn can get a little overzealous on missions.”

“Finn?” Martha asked.

“The man that made the call to bring you here.”

Martha then knew exactly who he was talking about.

“Overzealous?” Martha repeated the word the man used. “He threatened to shoot my friend!”

“That part was left out of the mission report,” the man said. “I’ll have to have words with him.”

“Who are you?” Martha asked.

“Logan,” the man said. “I’m what you’d call the leader of this organization and I’m afraid I’m partially responsible for why you were brought in. As soon as you’re feeling better, I’ll explain more. Can I get you anything to eat or drink now?”

The food Martha was brought was much like the bed. Not amazing, but not bad either. She and Logan talked while she ate.

It turned out that she wasn’t kidnapped by a gang, but rather, as Logan explained it, a small society that staffed a small number of people that excelled in their fields and were committed to uncovering a large government coverup and freeing the people of the undercity from that coverup. What was the coverup, one might ask? The motorway being inescapable and the upper city being blocked off. And what was Martha’s place in all of this?

“Our last doctor died in a shooting around a week ago. We’re not a gang, but there are a good number of them around,” Logan explained. “Finn is head of security, but he showed up too late to save Dr. Herring. At least he took out his killer. Dr. Herring couldn’t have died at a worse time though.”

“What’s wrong?” Martha asked.

Logan paused for a second. He ran a hand through his hair and took a long breath before continuing.

“It’s my wife, Elizabeth,” Logan said. “We’re expecting twins and she’s close to the due date and she’s not doing too well. We can’t just take her to a hospital because we both have the police after us for what we’re doing here. Not that there are any good hospitals anymore. The undercity was never known for its medical care and, well, you saw what the upper city looks like.”

So that was why Martha was there. To take care of this man’s wife until she delivered.

“So,” Martha said. “Where’s my patient?”

Logan took Martha a few doors down to another white room.

A young woman lay on top of the covers of the bed. Her blonde hair fanned out against the pillows and her large belly stuck up in the air. She wiggled her swollen toes as she talked to a man sitting in one of the chairs beside her bed.

That must be Elizabeth, Martha thought. And she knew who the man Elizabeth was talking to was.

“You’re not going to threaten anyone in here, are you?” Martha asked Finn.

“Finn!” Elizabeth smacked Finn’s leg. “What did you do this time?”

Finn didn’t even have the decency to look guilty. Instead, his face took on a serious look.

“You know that I’d do anything for you,” he said. “I’ve already put you in danger once I won’t do it again. I promised you that I’d kill anyone that stood in the way of your safety and I meant it.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“I believe you have a job to do, Mr. Key,” Logan said.

Finn left the room after a promise to Elizabeth that he’d be back.

“I hope my brother didn’t stress you out too much,” Elizabeth said. “He’s always been overprotective of me and I’ve been telling Logan that making him head of security isn’t a good idea, but did he listen to me?”

“Finn is the best person we have for the job,” Logan said.

“He’s too impulsive and full of himself,” Elizabeth argued then she turned to Martha. “I love him, but sometimes I just can’t stand him.”

“Sounds like my family,” Martha said.

“I hate to run off,” Logan said. “But I have to send Trist out on another mission. Finn will have to sit out going anywhere until I get a more accurate report for him. Maybe some paperwork will help him learn how to write down more accurate details.”

Logan told Martha that all of Elizabeth’s files were on the computer, kissed his wife, and left the two women alone.

Martha walked around the small room and looked at all of the futuristic medical equipment. There were scanners and computers and machines Martha couldn’t even guess the function of.

“I’ve got to be honest with you Elizabeth,” Martha said. “I don’t know what any of this stuff does.”

“I thought you’re training to be a doctor,” Elizabeth sounded confused.

“I am!” Martha said. “It’s just, well, I’m not exactly from around here.”

“We figured that,” Elizabeth said. “Without teleports, there would be no way for you to get to the city if you were. Plus, if you were from the city, you’d be dead. You’re from some outpost or neighboring planet, then?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Martha weighed whether or not she should tell Elizabeth the truth and decided that it would be for Elizabeth’s own safety for her to know how underqualified her doctor, or rather doctor in training, was.

“I’m actually a time traveler,”

“Really?” Elizabeth’s eyes lit up. “You’ll have to tell me all about it!”

And so, Martha did. She told Elizabeth she was from the past. Elizabeth asked her questions about what it was like back on Earth and Martha was happy to answer. The conversation turned to how Martha began to time travel and from there it went from the Judoon to meeting Shakespeare and actual witches.
Elizabeth was enthralled. She asked questions at all the right points and made sure to never interrupt Martha while she was in the middle of speaking.
Martha had just gotten to the part about finding the skeletons in the city when Elizabeth let out a gasp that was not a reaction to the story.

“You ok?” Martha asked.

“They’re three weeks early,” Elizabeth said. “My water just broke.”

How Many Time Lords Does It Take to Open a Tunnel? Hopefully, No More Than Two Because the Rest are Dead.

A mix of emotions weighed on Harry as he and the Doctor once again walked through the city, this time with just the two of them. Martha and Sirius were gone. One was kidnapped while the other threw himself into danger.

Harry’s worry was primarily due to Martha. Sirius wasn’t with the people that threatened to shoot him and he had magic. Martha could still be unconscious with no way to defend herself. At least Sirius could always apparate back up. Martha was stuck unless one of her kidnappers decided to give her a teleport. Or unless she stole one. But then she probably wouldn’t know how to program it.

Upon further thought, Harry realized that Sirius might not be as safe as he initially thought. The man wasn’t known for thinking things through or for going away from danger. He might even get in worse trouble than Martha. After all, Martha’s kidnappers said they needed her as a doctor, so she shouldn’t be hurt as long as she was helpful. But what if she wasn’t helpful? What if she couldn’t treat whatever was wrong with whoever had something wrong with them.

“How do you handle the stress of traveling with other people?” Harry asked the Doctor.

They had only left the building forty-five seconds ago and Harry was about to panic with overthinking. On top of worrying about the other two travelers, Harry also stressed over whether either of his and the Doctor’s plans would work.

“It’s all part of it,” the Doctor answered Harry’s question. “Plus, it gets boring traveling alone. You humans tend to keep things interesting, especially with your tendency to wander off.”

Don’t wander off. That was the biggest thing the Doctor stressed to Harry as they made their plans for how to rescue Martha. Don’t wander off and don’t get hurt.
The initial plan was a long shot. The two travelers were on their way to see if they could get into a tunnel to the undercity. If the man they interrogated was to be believed, the initial plan would fail. Of course, both Harry and the Doctor thought that they could get the tunnel open. It had to be locked with technology after all and the Doctor was fully confident in his hacking skills. If they couldn’t, which was a high possibility, though neither of their egos would allow them to admit it that plainly, they would head back to the TARDIS and try to get to the undercity in it.

The second was a foolproof plan IF one doesn’t take into account the Doctor’s piloting.

“It’s too bad I just can’t make a portkey to get us down,” Harry said.

“I’m guessing that that’s some sort of magical teleportation?” The Doctor asked.

“Pretty much. I never learned how to make one though, not that it’s taught in school yet. I could have studied it on my own, though, but I’m not what anyone would call a great student.”

“That’s all right,” the Doctor said. “I’m pretty sure my teachers at the Academy hated me most of the time. I was always more concerned with making trouble with my friends.”

“Why don’t you travel with some of them?” Harry asked.

The Doctor was silent for a moment.

“I have traveled with some of them in the past,” The Doctor said. “But they’ve all left for one reason or another. One of them even went insane and tried to kill me and destroy the Earth. On multiple occasions!”

“I’ve never had a friend try to kill me,” Harry said. “But a sentient diary had it out for me two years ago.”

“A sentient diary?” the Doctor asked.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “It had a teenage version of the dark lord that killed my parents in it. He possessed my best mate’s sister and released a Basilisk into the school!”

The Doctor prompted Harry to tell him the whole story, and the boy did. If Harry had taken the time to think about why the Doctor wanted him to tell it, beyond just being interested in how a twelve-year-old took down a giant snake, he would have realized what the Time Lord was doing. But it didn’t matter that Harry didn’t realize it, because the Doctor accomplished his goal. Harry was at least a little distracted from his stress.

“Look up there,” the Doctor pointed up to a large white tower that cut the sky.

“What is it?”

“It’s the senate building,” the Doctor said before he gestured directly in front of them. “And this is our stop.”

In front of them, the road forked. One ramp led up onto the overpass while the other lead down into the entrance of a large tunnel. Just like the interrogated man said, it was closed completely off.

“So, what happens if this is someone’s stop,” Harry asked.

“Normally I’d suggest getting off at the next one and circling back around, but I have a feeling it’s blocked off too.”

“Merlin’s beard, that traffic must be awful.”

“Well,” the Doctor ran over to the small maintenance computer, pulling out his sonic screwdriver on the way over. “Let’s see if we can relieve a bit of it, eh?”

The Doctor pointed the screwdriver at the screen. It let out a whir and the screen powered on.

“Now then,” the Doctor said with a small smile. “All we’ve got to do is reroute some power to here and it should open right up.” He fiddled with the screen for a few moments to do just that, but his enthusiasm didn’t last long.

The screen went black.

“What?” the Doctor pulled back out his screwdriver and tried to get the screen back on. No luck.

“I guess there’s no power,” Harry said.

“Well I got that much,” the Doctor said. “You don’t have a spell that could power this back on, do you?”

“I wish,” Harry said. “But technology and magic don’t mix. The tech tends to- blow up.”

The Doctor and Harry stood there for a moment in silence.

“Do you think that explosion would be big enough to blow a hole through this tunnel door?”

“Probably not,” Harry said. “But I know a few spells that might.”

The Doctor stepped back away from the computer and the door. He made sure to be behind Harry as the young wizard pulled out his wand.
Harry took aim and fired a medium-powered blasting curse at the door. It did nothing. He fired a high-powered one at it. Still nothing. Then, just to make sure he’d exhausted all of his options, he tried an unlocking spell. The tunnel remained blocked off.
Harry tried to think of something else to try. Sure, there were more powerful and more destructive spells, but Harry either didn’t know them or had no experience using them. Both were an issue when one wants to cast a spell.

“We could always try prying it open,” Harry was joking, an attempt to pry the tunnel open would end the same way as their other attempts of opening it. “Or we could just go back to the TARDIS. Could you use it to power the tunnel system?”

The Doctor thought about Harry’s question. Maybe it could work. It should work. There shouldn’t be any reason why it wouldn’t work.

“Wonderful idea, Harry!” the Doctor applauded. “We’ll go get the TARDIS now. Alonsy!”

The Doctor pivoted on his toes and headed off at a fast speed. Harry put away his wand and followed after the long-legged time lord.

They made it about ten feet from the tunnel when another obstacle appeared and blocked their path. The obstacle had two legs, a furry face, and a large gun.

The Doctor had to stop short to not run into the armed cat woman and Harry had to stop to not run into the Doctor.

“Doctor,” the cat said.

“Novice Hame,” the Doctor almost smiled. “Is that you? What are you doing here?”

“I have served penance for my crimes by caring for the Face of Boe,” Hame said. “He is dying, Doctor, and he asks for you.”

The Doctor gave Hame a considering look. He was torn. His old almost friend was dying, so Hame claimed. It was said that the Face of Boe would say his last words to him. The Doctor should go to him.

But he heard Harry shuffle on the pavement behind him and could almost feel Harry’s stress and fear.

The Doctor looked back at Harry.

The Doctor knew that he was responsible for bringing Harry, Sirius, and Martha here. If something were to happen to any of them it would be his fault. If something were to happen to Sirius, Harry would be alone. The Doctor knew how that felt and he didn’t wish it on anyone, especially Harry. He’d been through enough as it was.

“I have to save my companions,” the Doctor said to Hame. “I’m the reason they’re here, and now they could be in danger.”

A bit of Harry’s fear went away, and the Doctor was certain he’d made the right choice.

“The Face of Boe is dying in the senate building and you will come with me,” Hame pulled out a teleport almost identical to the ones Martha’s kidnappers had. She took a step toward the Doctor.

The Doctor took a step back.

“Maybe you should go with her,” Harry said. He didn’t want to see the last person with him on New New York disappear like the others.

“Ok,” the Doctor agreed, knowing what Harry was thinking. “But we’ll walk there. We’re close enough.”
Hame looked as if she was about to object but thought otherwise in the end. She nodded and put her teleport back away.

“We must be quick,” Hame said. “He won’t last much longer.”

Chapter Text

Sirius
Scourgify is the favorite charm of messy and clumsy witches and wizards everywhere. With a simple incantation and flick of the wand, the grimiest messes and smelliest smells are magically eliminated! It’s like Febreze but better! Sirius just wished he could get away with using it. He couldn’t risk it though because he was pretty sure that the officer, who introduced herself as Officer Reeves at the start of the walk to the station, had no idea about the existence of magic.
Then again, Sirius saw some different-looking beings in the marketplace that were definitely not human so maybe she would just attribute his magic to him being a different species than her?

No, Sirius thought. It was best not to risk it. No magic until he got into a dangerous situation. Wait, unless he got into a dangerous situation, not until. No. He was right the first time. Sirius knew his luck; he would be in a dangerous situation. Sirius just hoped that he wouldn’t drag anyone else into it. He just needed to get Martha and get back to Harry and if he had to stop a few bullets with a shield charm or knock out a few people with a stupify along the way then so be it, but he didn’t need to involve anyone else in the dangerous part.

Sirius looked over at Reeves. He hadn’t noticed at first how tired she looked. Her curly hair stuck up out of her ponytail and dark circles hung under her eyes. She didn’t need the extra stress of dealing with Sirius. After he got the coordinates from the teleporter at the station, he’d leave Reeves be, get Martha, and get back as quickly as possible.

Speaking of the station…

“How far is the station from here?” Sirius asked.

“We’re almost there,” Reeves said. “Why? You get tired from your time above?”

“No,” Sirius said. “I just need to get Martha and get back to my godson as fast as possible.”

Reeves huffed.

“Well, you’re lucky that you ended up close to the main hub,” Reeves said. “There are only three outstations left other than the one stationed inside the motorway. If you would have landed anywhere else you might not have gotten an officer to respond to any call you made. Even if you did, it could have been a few hours to get to a station. Plus, only our station has the tech left to track the history of a teleporter.”

That didn’t sound right to Sirius. Only four police stations for the entirety of the undercity when it could take hours to get to one of them? Even the auror office was more organized than that and that was a low bar to meet.

Sirius tried to think of a way to ask about the lack of local stations without sounding rude. It would be beneficial for him to know about the local law enforcement while he was there but it wouldn’t be worth it if he angered his only lead to finding Martha.

“Do you all get help from other stations?” Sirius asked.

“We haven’t in years,” Reeves said. “Old case files have reports of big shots from the main police hub in the upper city coming down and using our facilities to run their cases. There hasn’t been anyone from other stations since I’ve been here though. Not that we haven’t asked for help.” Reeves mumbled the last part under her breath.

That’s when it hit Sirius.

Reeves didn’t know. She didn’t know about the upper city. She didn’t know about the skeletons.

Sirius wished he didn’t know about them either. As soon as he saw them back in the upper city, he felt his chest tighten. His brain acted on its own and gave the skeletons familiar faces. Old classmates, old friends, James and Lily, all gone. All dead. All of them nothing but skeletons in a grave. All his fault somehow. No. Not his fault. But of course, convincing your brain that you aren’t guilty can be harder than convincing a jury of your innocence.

Instead of dealing with his emotions then, Sirius blocked them off and plastered on his trademarked cocky attitude that had gotten him through his falling out with his family, the death of his friends, and his unjust imprisonment. He was still riding that attitude in the undercity which is why he responded “They’ve probably got their own issues,” to Officer Reeves.

The station, Sirius thought once they arrived, could use a scourgify as badly as he could. Or maybe just some organizing. The need for organization applied to both the station itself and the officers in it.

Most officers ran around answering phone calls and running out. Others that seemed to be higher up sat behind their desks sipping coffee. It looked like New New York took their police model from the Auror department.

“This way,” Reeves directed Sirius into a room filled with loud music and scattered with enough tools and computers to make Arthur Weasley faint from excitement. Sirius wondered if he ought to steal some to bring back to the man.

“I’ve finally got a lead and I need you to reverse a teleporter ASAP, Mitch,” Reeves yelled over the music.
The music shut off and a large pair of glasses worn by a grease-smeared face popped out from behind a workbench.

“Heh?” The owner of the glasses asked, wiping a hand across their forehead to try to remove some of the grease but only smearing more on.

“This man gave me a massive lead on my case,” Reeves repeated slowly. “And I need you to track his teleporter’s last programmed locations so that I can find the gang’s location.”

“A new lead, huh?” Mitch asked. “This lead isn’t going to result in me having to go undercover as a performer, is it Angie?”

“That was once, Mitch. One time and we would have gotten farther if you had been a little bit better.”

“Oh, yes,” Mitch touched their hand lightly to their chest over their overalls as they widened their eyes. “Next time I’ll wear the glitter instead of the feathers.” They then rolled their eyes.

Sirius chuckled. Mitch already seemed like a person to befriend.

“Hello, Lead,” Mitch said. “I’m Mitch. Officer, mechanic, tech person, and failed performer. Stay in school, kids, and one day you too can be overworked and underpaid! I would shake your hand but then we’d both be covered in grease and whatever it is you’re covered in.”

“Oh no,” Sirius said. “No need for a handshake. I couldn’t take grease on me. I’m on a strict garbage-only skincare routine. Sirius Black. I could use your help with finding my friend that’s been kidnapped.”

“By Angie’s gang?”

“No, Mitch, by ghosts.” Angie snapped back.

“Someone’s got an attitude,” Mitch sang. “How ‘bout this, Black. I’ll take your teleporter for a bit so I can get into its last few programmed locations and you can go get cleaned up in our bathrooms. I’m sure Angie wouldn’t mind showing you how to get a change of clothes.”

Sirius looked to Officer Reeves for approval. The teleporter was his only link to Martha. Maybe handing it off to a person that the only form of help he had hated wasn’t in his best interests. Upon Reeves nod, Sirius took off the teleporter and handed it over to Mitch.

“Thank you kindly,” Mitch said. “I’ll drop the other twenty-nine projects I have to get this worked on, Ange.”

“That would be great since this is time-sensitive.”

“I know. I know.” Mitch waved her away. “Now get out of my office. Your lead is stinking it up.”

It was on the way out of the room that Sirius noticed that Mitch’s hair was made out of feathers. Interesting.

“Mitch does some amazing work and is one of my best friends,” Reeves said. “But sometimes I’d like to strangle them.”

“I've got a few friends that would say that about me,” Sirius smiled.

“Well,” Reeves said. “Here’s the bathroom. Showers are in the back to the right. Push the button on the wall in the changing room outside the shower to get a fresh set of clothes. You’d probably be best just binning your current ones. They’ve got enough junk on them to be a biohazard. I’ll be in Mitch’s office when you’re done. Got all that?”

Sirius nodded and went into the bathroom. Sterile metal walls and tiled floor. It seemed like no matter how far into the future someone went muggles still liked simplicity in their public bathroom designs.

Just like Reeves said, Sirius found three showers with changing room in the fronts of them on the back right of the bathroom. All three were unoccupied so Sirius went into the one in the very back of the room. He made sure the door was locked before allowing his leather jacket to fall to the ground with a mix of a plop and a thump. He then peeled the gooey clothes off of his body, shivering as the cold sterile air of the bathroom hit his still wet skin.

He didn’t know what liquid he was swimming in in the third dumpster he searched. He hoped he’d never have to find out.

Sirius opened the container on the wall marked “trash” and let his shirt, pants, and undergarments fall into a shoot. Then he stared at his jacket, still lying in a heap on the floor.

Maybe it could be cleaned?

He picked it up by the collar, pinched between his finger and his thumb. He brought it up to his face to examine it. As soon as it was eye level he gagged. The lining was soaked through with the same goo that had covered him.

“Goodbye dear friend,” Sirius said in all his melodramatic glory as he let his favorite leather jacket he bought since being released from prison slide down the garbage shoot. “Gone too soon.”

His boots and socks followed the jacket. He laid his wand down on the bench in the changing area.

Still shivering, Sirius stepped into the shower stall. It didn’t look entirely like a shower stall he was used to but it didn’t look entirely foreign either. Instead of a singular shower head there were four large openings at the tops of the four walls of the stall. There wasn’t a knob to turn on the water.

As Sirius fully entered the shower the door sealed shut behind him with a hiss.

“Commencing first rinse.” A feminine robotic voice echoed through the stall.

“Who said tha- ahck!”

Before Sirius could finish his sentence, lukewarm water blasted out of the four openings soaking him.

“Commencing disinfecting wash.”

Another stream of something shot out at Sirius.

“Commencing second rinse.”

“Drying. Drying. Drying.”

Sirius though he might be dying, dying, dying, as warm air gusted in circles around him so violently that he could barely keep his balance.

“Shower complete. Please rate your experience on a scale of one to ten.”

“One!” Sirius shouted.

“What can we do to improve your next experience? Please state your response clearly. To skip the survey, simply say skip.”

“Skip! I’m standing here naked of course I don’t want to take a fu- “

“Thank you for your feedback. Please exit.”

The shower door hissed open again and Sirius didn’t have to be told twice to get out.

“I should have just used a scourgify,” Sirius said as he put his wand into the pocket of the badgeless uniform that had come out of the compartment on the changing room wall.

He caught his reflection on the way out of the main area of the bathroom and almost cried when he saw his hair. It was wilder than Harry’s. And he didn’t even have a brush. Oh, how the beautiful must suffer.

“Please tell me you know where my friend is,” Sirius said, walking into Mitch’s office. “Before I destroy your violent shower.”

Reeves doubled over laughing louder than the quieter music when she saw the sight of Sirius’s hair.

“You selected the deep wash for him?” Mitch asked Reeves. “Did you at least warn him about it?”

Reeves continued laughing and shook her head.

“You chose it?” Sirius glared at Reeves.

“Angela Ruth Reeves,” Mitch scolded as if they were Angie’s mother. “You’re a terrible person.”

“Please tell me you have access to the shower’s audio!”

“I’m a busy avian, Angie,” Mitch said.

“Whooo,” Reeves stood up and wiped a tear from her eye, trying to catch her breath. “That was the best laugh I’ve had in years.”

If Sirius wasn’t in such a rush to find Martha, he’d initiate a full-on prank war, but as it was-

“The teleporter?” Sirius prompted again.

“I got past the protections a few minutes ago,” Mitch said. “The location it was supposed to go to is fully wiped. But! It’s loading all the past locations from the past month and I’m getting data from other teleporters on the same network! I’m wading through them to find what location keeps reoccurring. That ought to be the base.”

Just then the ringing of a phone cut through the office.

“Could you check that?” Mitch asked Reeves.

Reeves moved aside some papers on Mitch’s desk to reveal what must have been a phone. She looked down at the display before silencing the phone and walking away.

“Aren’t you going to see if those people need help?” Sirius asked.

“It’s from the motorway,” Reeves said as if that explained everything.

“And,” Sirius prompted.

“The motorway isn’t out division,” Reeves said. “Or even our jurisdiction. We just keep getting calls from people there. I sent it over to the station inside the motorway. They have little outposts throughout the bottom of the motorway that are always staffed. They’ll be able to handle it faster than we ever could.”

That was a reasonable explanation, Sirius supposed. Officer Reeves followed the correct protocol and it would be handled. Probably.

“So, the teleporter?”

The phone rang again.

Reeves sighed as she walked over to it.

“The same number again,” she said. “They probably got put on hold and got impatient and called us again.” She pushed the same button as before and walked back over to Mitch and Sirius.

Just as Reeves made it back across the room the phone rang again.

“I’m answering it,” Sirius said, running in front of Reeves to grab the phone. He picked it up and said “You’ve reached the police station. How can we help you?”

“You’ve got to come quick!” A woman on the other end yelled. “It’s going to get us. It’s already gotten the car ahead of us!”

“You’re going to have to explain,” Sirius said, utilizing his training to stay composed. “What got the car in front of you?”

That got Reeve’s and Mitch’s attention.

“Give it here,” Mitch said as they put the phone on speaker.

“I- I don’t really know,” the woman’s voice shook. Panicked voices could be heard yelling behind her. “They’re like- crabs. Giant crabs. They’re covering the entire bottom of the motorway and they’re going to get us. I don’t want to die. I just wanted a better life for my baby. That’s all I wanted. Ahhh!”

Metal crunched, people screamed, and the line went dead.

Womp. Womp. Womp. Womp.

The phone chimed until Mitch laid it back down on the receiver.

The three people in the office stood there, Mitch’s music the only sound until Reeves said, “What’s happening on the motorway?”

Mitch ran over to a computer and typed faster than Sirius could follow.

“They’re gone, Angie,” Mitch finally said.

“I knew that after I heard the line go dead.”

“Not just those people, Ange,” Mitch said. “The police department down there and everyone that entered the carpool lane are gone. Something is killing people on the bottom of the motorway. And it’s been happening.”

“But the upper levels would have responded by now,” Reeves said. “Right?”

“Er,” Sirius said.

“What do you know, Black?”

The conversation was hard. It took Mitch digging into encrypted files to confirm that the upper city was gone before either Mitch or Reeves would believe it.

“No wonder we haven’t gotten help,” Reeves said. “We’re on our own.”

A moment passed before Reeves said, “We’ve got to help the people on the motorway. If the upper city is dead then all those people on the motorway are trapped in there in complete gridlock, just waiting to be picked off by whatever got that woman’s car.”

“That’s a breach in policy,” Mitch said. “I know how much of a stickler for the rules you are, Ange.”

“Screw the rules,” Reeves said. “How many of those calls have we ignored because it’s protocol not to answer? How many people have died because we’re following the rules? I got into this profession to help people and all that I’ve accomplished is making myself jaded. Now, I’m going to need all the help I can get. Are you in?”

“Of course,” Mitch quickly responded. “Black?”

“How close are you to tracking that teleporter?” Sirius asked.

“It will at least be another hour,” Mitch said. “It takes time to convert space data into a written form.”

“Then I’ll help while I’m here,” Sirius told Reeves. “What do we need to do, Officer Reeves.”

“We’re going to take a car down to where the motorway station is and see if we can get the gates to the upper city open,” Reeves said. “Mitch, can you change the signal on the car to let us through to the fast lane and to get the other cars to let us through?”

“That’s the easiest thing you’ve asked me to do in weeks,” Mitch said.

“Black, you’re riding with me,” Reeves said. “And since we’re working together, feel free to call me Angie.”

“Only if you’ll call me Sirius,” Sirius smirked.

~Line Break~

The police car was surprisingly nice. The interior was made of the same sterile metal as the station’s bathroom. It had two chairs up front and one closer to the middle of the car. In the back, there was a set of bunk beds.

“Where would you put the people you take into custody?” Sirius asked as they zoomed to the nearest entrance to the motorway.

“A force field can form around the chair,” Reeves explained. “You ready with the codes to let us in?”

“I had those loaded five minutes ago,” Mitch said through the communicator on the dash.

“We’re headed in. Stay on the line, Mitch.”

If Sirius thought the undercity was gloomy, the motorway was straight up full of despair. Cars lined up bumper to bumper, leaving no space in between each other. Though the cars might have once been another color, they were now all an almost identical shade of beige. Sad beige cars for sad beige drivers. The cars were likely stained that color by the thick brown smog wafting through every millimeter of the motorway.

“Put us on autopilot and take us to the station, Mitch,” Angie said.

The cars moved out of the way as the police car cut through in a diagonal line.

“How do all the drivers know to move out of the way?” Sirius asked.

“They don’t,” Mitch’s voice came through the com. “All the cars are connected to each other to prevent accidents and allow for easy passage of carpool and emergency vehicles.”

“They’re also all linked to the same power source once they’re in here,” Angie said. “One of the biggest benefits of traveling the motorway has always been that the cars link together and continue producing fuel. No clue how it works but it’s convenient. Especially in a standstill like this.”

“You’ll reach the station in thirty-two minutes,” Mitch said. “Until then, please enjoy your ride on ground Mitch.”

“Maybe later,” Angie said.

“Is that a promise?”

“Officer’s honor.”

~Line Break~

Harry and the Doctor

The best thing Harry could say about the senate was that at least the ridiculously tall stairway didn’t move.

The elevator was out with the rest of the power in the building which meant that that unmoving stairwell was the only way to get to the top floor where the mysterious Face of Bo was.

“Who is the Face of Bo?” Harry asked. The unasked part was why is this person so important. Why were they more important than Sirius and Martha? Why was this person more important than him?

“No one really knows,” The Doctor said. “I mean, sure I know him. I’ve met him a couple of times. Once at a very nice party. Almost died at that party. But no one knows the entirety of his history. A bit strange if you ask me.”

“You are being hypocritical, Doctor,” Hame said. “After all, no one fully knows who you are. You simply come in and leave chaos and healing in your wake.”

“Well, can’t argue that,” The Doctor said. “The Face of Bo is known for his wisdom though. Often offers advice to those that seek him out. And apparently, we’re old friends. Isn’t that right, Hame?”

“He often asks for you.”

“Time travel is tricky like that. You can meet a person once at one point and again at another and suddenly find that you’re married. Not that that’s happened to me. Well, at least not that often. There was that one time with Cleopatra though.”

Harry laughed a bit at that.

“How are you holding up Harry?” The Doctor asked. “Do you need to slow down a bit?”

They were practically sprinting up the stairs. Harry wasn’t sure how Hame, who had grey showing around her muzzle, was able to continue at this speed. He suspected that a human would be winded by now but maybe the Doctor would chalk Harry being fine up to magic.

“There is no time for breaks, Doctor,” Hame said. “If the child cannot keep up, he will be left behind.”

“That won’t be happening,” The Doctor said in a tone that let Hame know that if she even suggested something like that again, the Face of Bo would be dying alone.
Harry felt something well up inside him at the Doctor’s words. No one other than Ron and Hermione had ever stood up for him like that. And despite being the boy-who-lived, he’d never felt more like an important person genuinely cared about his well-being more than he did at that moment. Because Harry was sure that the Doctor could and would protect him.

“It’s alright,” Harry said with a small smile. “I’m fine anyways.”

“Then we shall continue on,” Hame said.

~Line Break~

The floor of the senate was in the same shape as the building Martha had been taken from. That is to say, full of skeletons.

Surely the senators weren’t high on those patches while they were working, Harry thought.

“What happened?” Harry asked Hame. “I know that bliss caused this somehow, but how did it take out everyone?”

“Bliss created a virus,” Hame said. “It spread within a day and killed just as fast. The last act of the senate was to close the motorway to protect the undercity and to put the planet into quarantine.”

So maybe the senators did try their best.

“Come,” Hame said. “The Face of Bo waits.”

“Coming, Harry?” The Doctor asked.

“The Face of Bo only requested you, Doctor.”

“Harry didn’t walk up all those steps to not at least get to meet him,” The Doctor said.

Hame looked resigned for the third time that day.

The Face of Bo appeared to be sleeping when Hame led The Doctor and Harry into the antechamber.

Harry’s eyebrows slightly rose at the sight of the giant floating head residing in the tank. It wasn’t the strangest thing that Harry had seen, but it was up there.
“The Doctor has arrived,” Hame said to the face after she laid down her gun.

The Face of Bo opened his eyes and The Doctor walked in front of him with Harry following.

“Ah, Doctor, Harry, I have been expecting the two of you,” The Face of Bo said.

The Doctor diverted his gaze from the Face of Bo to Harry. He looked at the boy. Properly looked at him for a few seconds. His brown eyes cut into Harry’s green.
“Ah,” The Face of Bo said. “You are not there yet old friend. Regardless, we must talk. I do not have much time left.”

“I’ll wait in the other room,” Harry said. “It was an honor to meet you, sir.”

“You have great things ahead of you, Harry Potter,” the Face of Bo said. “Be strong.”

Harry didn’t like the sound of that at all but just nodded and thanked the Face of Bo. He then walked into the main room of the senate to allow the Doctor to have a conversation with the Face of Bo.

Was it wrong to hope that an ancient giant head would die quicker, Harry wondered? He was sure that this moment was important for the Doctor. Although he met the Time Lord less than a week ago, Harry knew that he wouldn’t leave people in danger for things that weren’t important. But Martha was still kidnapped and Sirius was still gone. Anything could have happened to them by now. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to walk amongst skeletons while he worried about the safety of people he cared about.

Harry decided that he would go back into the antechamber to see if he could at least talk to Hame. She had a teleporter. Maybe she could get Martha and Sirius back while the Doctor had his conversation.

When Harry got close to the doorway, he heard the Face of Bo’s words ring out. Although they were directed at the Doctor, they held seemed to cut right through Harry.

“You are not alone.”

Harry stumbled back into the antechamber.

~Line Break~

Martha

“You aren’t fully human, are you,” Martha asked after only a little while.

“Not fully,” Elizabeth gasped out.

It wasn’t looking good, Martha hated to admit. Twins were tricky enough. Twins coming early, while not uncommon, was worse. Add on top of that that Elizabeth wasn’t fully human and had internal anatomy that Martha couldn’t be sure about and you were heading towards disaster. Martha had already learned from dealing with Time Lords that just because someone looks human, it doesn’t mean that they are. It wouldn’t even help to ask what other species was in Elizabeth’s family tree because Martha wouldn’t know what it was.

Martha had so many questions she ought to have the answers to before continuing. The point of being a doctor is to do no harm but she could easily do more harm than good if she proceeded with her current knowledge level.

Before Martha could do anything else, Elizabeth started shaking. One of the machines went off. Then, to make a bad situation worse, Finn came in.
“Why aren’t you helping my sister, healer?” Finn demanded.

“I can’t,” Martha said. “I tried to tell you before you even kidnapped me that I wasn’t the best choice. The Doctor was. Hell, his name is literally the Doctor.”
Finn glared at her for a second before swerving around to the door.

“Find where there’s been movement in the upper city!” Martha heard Finn yell.
Not even a moment later, Finn returned carrying a gun.

Martha flinched back.

“You better be right about this, healer,” Finn said. Then he turned to Elizabeth who had fallen unconscious. “Don’t you worry, Lizzy. This Doctor fellow’s in the senate building. I’m gonna bring him right back to you.” Then he patted his gun. “And I’ll kill anyone that gets in my way.”
Then he activated his teleporter and left.

Everyone would be fine, Martha tried to comfort herself. They needed the Doctor alive and the Doctor and Sirius would be with Harry. None of them would let him get hurt. Then the Doctor could come and help Elizabeth. It would be ok.

After calming her mind, Martha turned back to Elizabeth.

“It’ll be fine, Elizabeth,” Martha said. “Everything will be fine.”

~Line Break~

Sirius

When Sirius returned to Earth and was able to take his vacation, he was going someplace that served crabs. He was going to crack them open, rip them limb from limb, and eat them. All of that still might not be enough vengeance for the trouble the giant crab monsters had put him and Angie through on the way to the station in the motorway.

Their police car sat outside the station with a chunk missing from it. Sirius hoped that the motorway had a cabbie service because they certainly wouldn’t be able to take the car anywhere again.

“There’s got to be a way to get the doors to the upper city open,” Angie said to Mitch through the communicator.
“The doors are powered from the city side,” Mitch explained. “I doubt there’s been enough power generated up there to open these doors for years.”
A sound beeped from somewhere on Mitch’s end.

“Ope, let me check that real quick,” Mitch said.

They weren’t going to find the power to power open the doors in the station. The whole place was lit up by the red lights of an emergency power generator. The only things that seemed to work were those lights and the air filtration system. The computer wouldn’t even power on after the inch of thick dust was brushed off.
“How long could these people have been on their own down here?” Angie wondered. “I can’t believe we’ve been letting this happen. The head of my station must have known.”

Corruption in the name of keeping the peace ran deep everywhere, Sirius thought. Once they got those doors open and the people out of the motorway and back into society, he could see major changes happening in the system. Speaking of the motorway...

“What about the motorway?” Sirius asked.

“What about it?”

“You said that all the cars are linked and gather power through that link and their own movement, right? What if you pulled all that power into the doors?”
“That could work!” Mitch’s voice came through the communicator. “Give me two minutes!”

“I haven’t heard them this excited in a while,” Angie said.

A quiet “vwirp” sounded behind Angie and Sirius. The two turned around in time to see Mitch appear out of thin air with a bag on their shoulder and a generator at their feet. The feathers on their head were standing up straight.

“Pew,” Mitch said. “Teleporting will get you when you’re not used to it. Help me hook this stuff up.”

As the three of them hooked up the generator and small computer Mitch pulled out of their bag, the avian explained what they were planning.

“I’m plugging into this station’s access to the motorway power system. Wonderful idea on your part, by the way, Lead. I’m going to pull power from every car on the motorway and direct it towards the doors. As soon as they’re open, I’ll lock them in place. Easy peasy!”

“That’s brilliant!” Angie said.

“Oh!” Mitch added, looking at Sirius. “This is your teleporter. I got the information on the other teleporter on the same network. One just left for the base of the senate building. I’ve got this one locked onto the same location.”

Mitch handed the teleporter to Sirius with a nod.

“Give me your comm, Mitch,” Angie said.

“What?”

“Your communicator.”

Mitch did as they were told.

“Take this and call me as soon as you find out more,” Angie gave the communicator to Sirius. “As soon as I’m done freeing all these people, I intend to finish my first assignment and find the people that have had access to the upper city and have caused chaos down here. Also, you might need some help.”
Sirius thanked both of them as he activated the teleporter.

Sirius squinted as his eyes attempted to adjust to the bright sunlight of the upper city. A tall building rose above him. Sirius walked to the door and was thankful to find it unlocked. He walked in and was greeted with…

“Stairs. Of course.”

So, Sirius started up.

~Line Break~

Harry

Harry paced between the skeletons lost in thought.

What could the Face of Bo have meant by his message, Harry wondered.

Of course the Doctor wasn’t alone. He could go back to his planet at any time. Plus, he was traveling with three people at the moment. That couldn’t have been what the Face of Bo meant though. There had to be something more.

Why wasn’t the Doctor traveling with his own people? Harry wondered. He had said that they left for one reason or another. He’d also said that one of his old friends had tried to kill him. Maybe that was it. Maybe the Face of Bo was telling the Doctor that one of his old friends was looking for him.
But that still didn’t sit right. It was something deeper.

Harry reached the end of his circle and stood by the antechamber door again. He could hear the Doctor and the Face of Bo still talking. The Doctor was questioning him about the meaning behind his words.

So the Doctor didn’t fully know either.

At least Harry wasn’t the only one in the dark.

Harry turned back around to make a second lap and worry about another problem when a man burst through the other end of the senate chamber brandishing a gun. It wasn’t just any man either. It was the man that took Martha and threatened to kill Sirius.

“Where is the Doctor?” The man yelled as he sprinted towards the other door.

Martha must have failed, Harry thought. Martha must have failed and knowing how the furious man was, Harry was certain that she must be dead. Which meant that Sirius either didn’t reach her in time or had failed to save her when he got there which meant…

No.

No no no no.
This same man was now on his way to do Rassilon knows what to the last person left with Harry on this trip. If he took the Doctor or if he, schism forbid, killed the Doctor…

Harry would be alone.

He had had enough of being alone.

So, without thinking, Harry drew his wand and ran in front of the man.

He pointed his wand towards the man but before Harry could get past the first syllable of a “stupefy,” the man fired his gun.

Harry saw the blast come towards him in what seemed to him slow motion. The silvery-blue beam from the gun hurtling straight towards his chest. Despite seeing it coming, there was no way to move out of its way enough to not get hit. But maybe if he could avoid a hit to the chest…

Harry jumped and as time returned to normal, he felt the blast connect on the left side of his body, just below his left hearth. It felt like a fire ripped through him tearing through skin, bone, organ, and skin again.

“Harry!” He heard someone yell before he hit the ground. The world went black.

~Line Break~

The Doctor gasped out Harry’s name as he saw him go down. The shock turned to anger as he turned his attention to Finn.

“How could you?” The temperature in the room dropped as the Doctor’s eyes narrowed.

“First you threaten to kill one of my friends.”

The Doctor took a step towards Finn.

“Then you kidnap one of my friends.”

He moved forward again.

“And now,” The Doctor was closing the distance between himself and Finn. Finn was too frightened to move. “Now you killed someone I care about. You killed that child. He did nothing to you and you shot him dead!”

The Doctor may have forgiven Finn before that moment, but this version of the Doctor didn’t believe in second chances. He ripped the gun from Finn’s hands and aimed it at him with the practiced ease of a soldier. The Doctor slightly lowered his head, still glaring at Finn, preparing to shoot.

Finn raised his hands and tried to take a step back.

“Doctor!” Hame called out to get the Doctor’s attention.

“He is not dead,” The Face of Bo’s voice rung through the chamber. “He can heal and is starting to already.”

“What do you mean?” The Doctor asked, his gaze not leaving Finn. “It doesn’t matter how magical he is, that shot would kill any human.”

“Human?” The Face of Bo asked. “Look at him, Doctor.”

The Doctor pulled his attention away from Finn and looked at Harry’s body, lying on the floor.

Harry didn’t look good. He wasn’t moving and blood was already pooling around his abdomen. It hurt the Doctor to look at the teen that he had grown protective of in that state. When an ancient and wise head tells you to look though, you look.

And, as the Doctor looked, he noticed something more than just the injury and the blood. Golden curls of light drifted around the spot Harry had been shot. Golden curls of light that looked just like…

“What?” In his shock, the Doctor lowered his gun.

“Don’t tell me you do not recognize a healing comma of your own species, Doctor,” the Face of Bo said.

The gun slammed to the ground as the Doctor’s arms went limp. His mouth fell open as his jaw and shoulders shook.

“No,” He whispered. “I thought… no.”

The Doctor covered the short distance to Harry’s side and slid down into the floor next to him. He hovered his hand over Harry’s wound and felt the light reach out to caress his hand. His own energy came to the surface in response, recognizing Harry’s.

“It’s him,” the Doctor breathed. “It’s the young Gallifreyan I felt in the TARDIS.”

Seeing that he was no longer in immediate danger, Finn reached for his gun off of the ground.

“Not so fast,” Hame was quicker, drawing her gun and aiming at Finn.

“Please,” Finn raised his hands again. “I just need help for my sister. She’s about to die.”

Hame threw a glance at the Face of Bo who said, “Go. You have served me well all of these years. Your penance is repaid.”

Hame nodded but didn’t lower her gun as she walked over to Finn.

“Take us there then,” Hame pointed the gun at his head. “Best be fast before the Doctor decides to kill you again before I do.”

Finn nodded as much as he dared before activating his teleporter and disappearing with Hame.

“I can’t believe it,” the Doctor whispered, stroking a hand through Harry’s hair. “I have to get him back to a healing room in the TARDIS. He may not be stable enough to move, though. What do you think…”

The Doctor turned to look at the Face of Bo, but the head had gone quiet and still.

He was gone, but at least the Doctor wasn’t alone.

“Best to leave him here and help him along,” the Doctor said mostly to himself. “Being this young, he probably hasn’t done this before.”

The Doctor put his hands to Harry’s temples and closed his eyes. Harry had the energy to heal himself. The Doctor would simply offer him mental guidance.

Chapter Text

Harry
Harry noticed the sunlight shining on his face before anything else. He groaned a little bit and shifted in the bed before the sharp pain in his side stopped him from moving. He wrinkled his nose and squinted his eyes against the bright sunlight coming through the window. He was in the hospital wing at Hogwarts.
Harry racked his brain trying to remember how he got there. He was in a building with skeletons and somebody shot him after he talked to a giant floating head.

That couldn’t be right. Must have been a weird dream. But Harry couldn’t remember anything else and his side definitely hurt right where he dreamed he was shot.

“I must’ve taken a bludger to the head and got skewered on something in the fall,” Harry said to himself. That definitely made more sense than giant floating heads.

Harry tried to move again and found that he could sit up.

He was in some sort of hospital gown and he wished that he could wear his school uniform since he was at school.

Harry was in his school uniform sitting on the edge of a bed in the hospital wing.

“I’m probably late for class,” Harry said to himself as he stood up and walked to the door.

He opened the door to the infirmary and found that it led directly to Hogwarts’ moving staircases. Well, that is if Hogwarts’ moving staircases went seemingly infinitely both up and down with a dark abyss around them.

“I don’t think I’m actually in Hogwarts.”

That was the first correct thing Harry had said since waking up. If he was even awake at all.

The Doctor

The Doctor was no stranger to the mental arts. All time lords are able to access a mental space within their own minds and some could even communicate with each other and walk together in each other’s minds. He had learned about this art at the Academy like all young time tots did.

This particular body of the Doctor’s seemed to be especially adept at using the mental arts. So, the Doctor mentally closed his eyes and followed his training. He focused in on Harry’s emotions and searched for feelings of pain and fear. Ideally, that would lead the Doctor to where Harry was. It might be in a memory or it might be in an empty room. The Doctor just needed to locate him.

When the Doctor opened his eyes, he found himself squatting in a small space with just a bit of light coming in. He stood up from the squatted position his physical body was in only to whack his head on something. He hissed and bent back over a bit and found a cord leading to a light. He pulled it and examined his surroundings.

Cleaning products, cobwebs, and a small mattress that looked like it had once belonged in a crib with a pile of threadbare blankets on top of it. This was a cupboard. And it appeared that some animal was occasionally locked in here.

“Why would this be so clear in your mind, Harry?” the Doctor asked, not fully expecting a reply.

The Doctor went for the handle on the little door on one side of the cupboard and was about to try it when he heard yelling. He paused.

“Do you think that we just buy this food so that it can be thrown in the bin after you ruin it?” a woman’s shrill voice asked.

“No Aunt Petunia.” The small voice of a child responded.

“But you still thought that you’d go and burn the sausage now, didn’t you?”

“It’s not like I meant to.” The child’s voice said so quietly the Doctor could barely hear it.

“What was that?” The woman snapped.

“Nothing Aunt Petunia.”

“No. I want you to repeat what you said.”

The Doctor heard the child take a breath in before saying with more boldness than the Doctor expected,

“I said it’s not like I meant to burn Dudley’s stupid sausage.”

Then there was a thump, a yell, and some soft crying.

“Oh, don’t go crying to me.” The woman said. “You got what you deserved being such an ungrateful little brat. Go to your cupboard. Your uncle will sort you out further when he gets back from work. Thanks to you I’ve got to figure out what my little Dudlykins is going to have for lunch on top of everything else I have to do.”

The cupboard door creaked open and a dark-haired child no older than five or six slipped inside. He was rubbing at a knot that was already forming on his forehead and trying to stifle his sobs.

“Oh Harry,” the Doctor reached out to try to get a better look at Harry’s forehead but his hand passed right through the child. This was only a memory.

Harry plopped down on the old mattress and hugged his knees in close to his chest.

“I can’t do anything right,” Harry said through hiccups. “Stupid Harry just had to mess up stupid Dudley’s stupid lunch.”

The Doctor knelt down next to the memory of the child.

“I’ve been making sausage for a month now. I should know not to turn the heat up that much. Aunt Petunia just said to get it done fast.”

Harry then looked up and seemed to stare directly at the Doctor.

“Do you ever try to make things better but only make them worse?”

“Too often.” The Doctor replied. “But this wasn’t your fault. Your Aunt shouldn’t be letting you cook when you’re this little.”

“I didn’t figure you ever did,” Harry said after a brief pause. “I mean what’s a spider got to mess up?”

The Doctor turned and saw that directly behind him was a little house spider in a web. Ah. That was who Harry was talking to.

“Well, I’m going to sleep for a little while Mr. Spider.” Harry curled up on the little mattress. “Hopefully my uncle doesn’t kill you when he comes to punish me later. It would be sad to lose my only friend.”

As Harry fell asleep the memory faded out and the Doctor found himself kneeling in front of a set of stairs.

The Doctor rose to his feet and found that his own eyes were slightly damp. He wished that he could go back and help Harry when he was hurting back then but he couldn’t cross the time stream like that. What he could do though was find present Harry and help him now.

With that in mind, the Doctor turned to examine the stairs and found that it wasn’t just one staircase but rather an infinite void of moving stairs.

“This might be harder than I thought.” The Doctor said as he started up the stairs in front of him.

Harry

Harry reached the top of the staircase he was on. It led to a single door. Harry opened it and found himself in the tunnel leading from the Gryffindor locker rooms onto the quidditch pitch.

“Nice!” Harry said, his practice uniform forming around him where his school uniform just was.

He ran out onto the pitch and saw the Gryffindor team from his third-year running drills.

“Sorry I’m late guys!” He yelled as his firebolt jumped into his hand and he took off. “I’ve been having the weirdest day.”
Nobody on the team looked at him. Instead, they seemed to be looking at something higher up in the sky. Harry looked up in the direction the team was staring and saw…

Himself. Flying on his old Nimbus Two Thousand and being chased by the twins as they tried to hit him with the bludger.

“Huh?” Harry flew up to the him higher in the air to get a better look.

“Is that the best you can do?” The Harry in the air taunted the twin that had just whacked a bludger towards him. “Here I thought you two were the best beaters to ever fly through Hogwarts.”

“Wood told us that we can’t hurt you before our first game,” George yelled back. “So, we’ve been going easy on you.”

“But if it’s a challenge you want!” Fred called back.

“Do your worst!” Harry mouthed at the same time the other Harry riding the Nimbus yelled at the twins.

“I remember this,” Harry said as he flew beside the past version of himself keeping time.

The twins knocked the bludger back and forth as both Harrys flew perfectly in sync doing avoidance maneuvers. When they were close to the ground one of the twins whacked the bludger straight at Harry. It went through him as if he wasn’t even there but past Harry wasn’t so lucky. The bludger collided with his side sending him crashing off his broom and falling the short distance to the ground.

Although Harry wasn’t hit, when the bludger hit past Harry, the injury on Harry’s own side burst into pain again, forcing him to land. He kneeled on the ground gasping for air.

“You’ve got to get up mate.” Harry heard one of his teammates say.

“You’ll be alright but you’ve got to get up and get better fast.”

“You’re not going to have us lose tomorrow over a reckless move like that!” That was Wood.

“Nah, Harry’ll be fine,” one twin said.

“He’s tough.” the other added on.

They were right, Harry thought. He is tough. He will heal and he will be fine. With those thoughts in mind, Harry felt the pain in his side lessen and the wound start to itch. He looked down and saw a golden light located just around his side.

Huh, that was new.

Harry got up and walked back through the doors leading to the locker room and found himself back on the staircase with a new set of stairs leading to another door.

“I guess these are my memories,” Harry said to himself, “but how do I get out of them?”

The Doctor

The Doctor was not having a great time. He had already seen three bad memories from Harry’s childhood that involved him being hurt and in pain. As soon as the Doctor found Harry again he was determined that the teen would not be leaving his side for the next hundred years. If anything else wanted to hurt Harry they would have to get through him.

In the midst of his planning on how to bubble wrap a young Gallifreyan, the Doctor felt Harry’s presence stronger than he had since he entered his mind. The Doctor looked up and saw a soft golden glow and when he looked closer-

“Harry!” The Doctor called out, jumping and grabbing onto the railings of other staircases to try to reach him.

The Doctor wasn’t fast enough because by the time he reached where he had last seen Harry, the teen was already gone and the Doctor couldn’t feel him enough to pinpoint him.

The Doctor slammed his fist into the door that Harry was standing in front of when the Doctor last saw him. The door creaked open.
Inside was a locker room. The Doctor followed it out onto a large field and saw people flying around on brooms.

“Brilliant!” the Doctor said. “I love humans. Wonder what the first one was thinking when they decided to enchant a broom to fly? Probably some kid slacking on their housework and trying to find a way to get to their friends!”

The Doctor focused back on the field and saw that the seats around it were full of people. Upon closer inspection, the Doctor saw that there seemed to be two teams playing. And there up above almost everyone else was Harry, flying in circles.

He was older than what he was in the last memory the Doctor was in but still younger than the Harry the Doctor knew. While the Doctor was thinking about how much smaller Harry looked than the other players, Harry’s broom began to try to shake him off.

Harry, for his part, was holding on tight and though the Doctor knew that Harry would come out of this situation just fine since it was only a memory, he still grabbed his sonic to see if there was anything he could do to stop it. Finally, the shaking stopped and Harry continued on with the game as if nothing happened.

The Doctor closed his eyes and sighed in relief and when he opened them again, everything had shifted.

People were still playing the same game and Harry was still up in the sky, but he looked a little older. He was also being chased by a very violent ball.

The Doctor watched as the ball slammed into Harry.

Harry let out a little yell but kept going until he held up a small gold ball. The crowd burst into cheers and it looked like Harry would receive the medical attention he needed until a smug-looking dandy of a man came up and-

“Did he just fully erase his bones?” The Doctor squawked. “Where did he even send them to? Do they have a graveyard just for random disappearing bones?”

The Doctor never got his answer before the scene shifted again to another game.

The sky became overcast and a sense of depression filled the air. The Doctor looked up and was barely able to make out Harry in the clouds before the sound of a woman’s screams filled the air. Harry fell off of his broom, plummeting towards the ground.
The Doctor ran forward as if he’d be able to catch Harry but only made it a meter or two when the scene faded around him and he was back at the foot of some stairs.

Harry

Herbology was never Harry’s favorite class but he had learned that it went a bit better when he partnered up with Neville. The pudgy blonde boy’s skill with plants couldn’t be called anything other than magic.

In this particular memory, Harry remembered why Neville was at the top of this class instead of him.

Harry stood behind a past version of himself from around a year ago.

“Now, be very careful while taking your cuttings of these.” Professor Sprout said. “They can get a little temperamental when they’re in danger.”

Past Harry picked up the pot with a steady hand and lifted it up to his workstation. He grasped a branch in one hand and started to cut the branch off with the knife in his other hand when the plant decided to fight back.

A spine grew out of the branch past Harry held and pierced right through his hand.

Past Harry jerked the knife down in pain, severing the branch from the rest of the tree, and was left holding a branch in his hand that was equal parts holding him.

“Gah!” Harry huffed at the same time the past version of him let out a hiss through his teeth.
Just like on the quidditch pitch, Harry’s current injury hurt again at the same time a past version of him got hurt.

“Oh, Harry!” Neville gasped when he saw the branch. “Arbus Constro really grew on you huh?”

“More like grew through me,” Past Harry pulled the spike out of his hand and set the branch down next to the plant.

Neville darted over to the side of the greenhouse and cut a long thick leaf off of a plant.

“Let me see your hand,” Neville sliced up the leaf and pulled some of its sticky sap off of the inside of it. He smeared the sap on Harry’s hand and the cut went numb as the sap crusted over.

“Is that some sort of aloe?” Past Harry asked.

“A type,” Neville responded. “It’s really good for temporarily stopping bleeding and numbing injuries but it doesn’t work as an antiseptic so you’ll still want to go to the hospital wing to get a potion for that.”

“You’re absolutely brilliant, Neville!”

“It’s really nothing,” Neville looked down and blushed a bit from the uncommon praise. “I grow this all over my room because I get hurt so much. I always figured that if you’re going to be clumsy you’ve at least got to know how to heal yourself. That way is just different for everyone.”

As he heard Neville’s words, Harry’s side once again glowed and itched a bit more.

“Maybe I’ve got to fully heal before I can get out,” Harry said to himself. “That makes sense. Sort of. I’ve just got to find a memory where I heal a little faster.”

The Doctor

Who would allow a giant snake to live in a school?

And on top of that, who would allow a child to fight it with a damn sword?

The Doctor watched as the memory of Harry fought the basilisk with only a sword and a bird there to help him. The bird tried its best to help Harry, swooping in and blinding the snake. With the opening he had, Harry lunged forward and jammed the sword into the roof of the snake’s mouth. Then the child fell back with a fang through his shoulder.

The Doctor then saw why Harry hadn’t run away.

On the other side of the chamber from the Doctor, a young girl lay at the foot of an apparition. The girl's skin paled as the apparition became more solid.

The Doctor was reminded of when his old enemy the Master tried to steal the Doctor’s own regenerations to bring himself back to life after a failed execution. Only, there was no playful banter here between either of the children or the real monster in the room. There was no past friendship and there was no equal footing. There were only two children laying on the ground dying while a monster got stronger.

So subtly the Doctor almost didn’t notice due to focusing on the injustice of the situation, Harry thrust the fang through the diary.

The apparition let out a horrible scream as it disappeared. A bit of life came back to the girl.

Harry was not so lucky.

The Doctor saw the kindness of the child as Harry tried to comfort the bird that helped him fight the snake. Even as he died a painful and slow death, Harry couldn’t allow his own pain to be shared.

Then, the bird glowed a slight gold and began to cry. Harry’s wound healed and the memory faded.

The Doctor once again stood on the staircase.

Harry

The next room Harry entered; he didn’t recognize. He stood in the doorway of a small cottage. Harry looked around. He saw a kitchen in one corner that looked even older than the ones he typically saw in the wizarding world. Actually, everything looked older.

That’s not to say that everything was in disrepair. No, in fact, the cauldron set up at the brewing station in the back looked nicer than what Harry could typically find for sale on Diagon Alley. It was the technology or lack thereof, that was old.

“What am I doing here?” Harry asked himself as he walked over to look closer at the brewing station. “This has got to be even earlier than Shakespeare.”

Harry closed his eyes and tried to pinpoint the date. No luck. It seemed that whatever sense of time Harry gained after his fall didn’t apply within memories.

Slam!

Harry jumped away from the brewing station as the door leading into the cottage slammed open.

Two dark-haired teenagers, one with a beard, came in supporting a younger ginger one between the two of them.

“I’m completely fine!” The ginger objected. “I honestly don’t know why you two get so worried all the time.”

“Sit down, idiot,” The oldest looking one with a beard shoved the ginger one into a chair at the table.

Then, Harry saw the ginger’s arm. One of the bones stuck out a bit through the skin.

“Could you hurry up with that potion?” The oldest asked.

The other dark-haired teen dug through a cabinet near where Harry was standing.

“I’m trying!”

“Honestly, considering how brilliant you are as an alchemist and potions master, I’d expect you’d also have a top-notch organization system.” The ginger teased.

“Just for that you’re getting the bad tasting one,” the younger of the dark-haired teens came over to the table carrying three potions vials. “Give him something to bite down on, Antioch.”

The oldest, Antioch, handed the ginger a rag.

He took it with his good arm, wadded it up, and stuck it between his teeth.

“Hold him steady.”

Antioch grasped the ginger's shoulders.

“Ready?” The younger dark-haired one asked as he uncorked the vials.

The ginger nodded and then let out a scream as the young potions master set his arm.

Harry screamed with him as his side burst into more pain than he had felt since he woke up in the mental hospital wing.

“GAH!” The ginger spit out the towel.

“Drink, drink, drink,” the potions master poured the vials into the ginger's mouth.

“Merlin, Cadmus! With brothers like you two who needs enemies!”

“I wouldn’t need to patch you up so much if you’d just stop taking that old path through the woods,” Cadmus said. “There, already healing.”

Sure enough, the two pieces of the bone were solidifying together and the skin around where it had stuck through closed.

Harry let out a breath as his side healed more than it had in the other memories.

“There’s something out there, Cad!”

“There sure is,” Antioch squeezed his shoulders before letting go. “There’s a wolf that chased you up the tree you fell out of. Do you need to go find him to give him an apology kiss for intruding on his den last time?”

The ginger whacked Antioch with his uninjured arm.

“Joking aside,” Cadmus put the empty vials in the water basin. “You have to be careful Ignotus.”

“Hard to fulfill mom’s dying request that I look out for the two of you when one of you keeps trying to get himself killed,” Antioch said.

“I seem to remember mom specifically telling you to look out for your little brother,” Cadmus said.

“Brothers,” Antioch argued. “But we all know that Ignotus has been mom’s favorite since she found him wandering as a little boy near the tree line with no knowledge of anything.”

“What can I say?” Ignotus asked from his seat. “I drew her in with my charming looks and amazing personality.”

“More like she took you in like one of her stray kittens.”

Ignotus whacked Antioch again.

“Can I hit him back yet?” Antioch asked.

“Give him a day to heal.” Cadmus rolled his eyes. “Then maybe you can knock some sense into our favorite little mamma’s boy.”

For the first time since he started going through his memories, this one faded around Harry leaving him standing at the foot of another set of steps.

“Why did I see that?” Harry asked himself. “And how am I connected to them?”

He didn’t receive any answer.

Chapter Text

The Doctor

The Doctor paced around the small stairwell, every step echoing out across the endless staircases until the sound drifted into nothingness only to be replaced with his next step.

He needed a new plan. He couldn’t pinpoint Harry by locking onto Harry’s feelings of pain. Harry had too much pain in his past for the Doctor to find Harry in his present.

“If these are Harry’s memories then there has to be an end to them,” the Doctor said, still pacing. “But I can’t take the time to review all of them while Harry might be bleeding out in his own mind. I just need a –“ the Doctor stopped mid-step.

A child stared up at him with gold-flecked green eyes. Assuming the kid was human, the Doctor would place his age around seven or eight, but he wasn’t sure if he should use human standards as a baseline with anything having to do with Harry anymore.

“Hello there,” the Doctor got down on a knee to be at the kid’s level. “What are you doing out on these stairs?”

The kid tilted his head to the side and his curly red hair flopped over with the movement. The kid gave no verbal response.

“You’re not a normal part of the memories I’ve been watching, are you?” asked the Doctor.

Instead of answering, the kid grabbed ahold of the Doctor’s jacket and tugged him towards the stairs.

“Now hold on,” the Doctor said as the kid tugged on his jacket again. “Where are you taking me?”

The kid let go of the Doctor’s jacket and gave him a flat look as if he was asking “You wanted to know how to navigate in here and now you’re asking questions?” The look turned to a smirk as the kid pivoted and sprinted down the stairs.

“Wait a second!” the Doctor jumped up and bolted after the kid down and down and down.

Harry

Harry spun around. No new doors greeted him, only stairs going up and down. Harry took a deep breath. The air filled his chest. He let out the air in a stutter puff. He could feel his heartrates increase.

His knees buckled and he plopped down on the stairs.

Why did it have to be me? Harry wondered as he tried to breath. What did I do to deserve the life that I have?

Even as Harry thought that he wondered if this was how it would end for him. No more weird events. No more adventures with friends. No more random people trying to kill him. Just an eternity of his life and a life that didn’t seem to belong to him replaying itself for all of eternity.

A tear pricked his eye as he gasped in air.

What would Ron and Hermione think happened to him? Would they run off to find him? Would they search for years only to give up when it was obvious that he was gone for good?

And what about Sirius? Sirius disappeared and Harry wouldn’t know if he at least got out of this mess. Harry hoped he was ok. With all the years that Sirius spent in prison, he deserved to live more free. Even if Harry wouldn’t.

Harry spiraled more and more until he ended up numb to the world around him.

Then- a growl.

Harry snapped out of his spiral. His green eyes refocused on his surroundings. He looked behind himself and jumped up in fright at what he saw.

A mass of shadows stood at the top of the staircase Harry just jumped up from. The shadows twisted and formed legs. It began stalking down the stairs, with slow precision like a wolf sneaking up on its prey before it pounces.

The shadows twisted into a muzzle. The creature snarled, showing more teeth than any animal Harry had seen before. Then, it opened its eyes. Glowing gold orbs locked onto Harry’s own green.

Harry knew he had to run.

Harry sprinted towards the stairs leading down and away from the creature. Every step jerked at the wound on his side.

Harry’s feet pounded on the steps as he took two at a time attempting to cover more ground. The growling increased. He took a second to look behind him. The creature was gaining.

Harry went to look forward again just in time to watch his foot connect with nothing. The stairs ran out. Harry didn’t have enough time to stop himself before he tumbled over the edge.

He screamed and flipped around in the air. The creature stopped at the top of the stairs, watching Harry fall.

Chapter Text

Two Hearts Chapter 16

Harry

Harry squeezed his eyes shut as he fell. He hit the ground face first and let out a puff of air. Something dug into his side and he groaned, eyes still shut.

“You know, Vri,” a voice near him said. “You take in more information when you actually read the material than when you fall off the couch face first onto the tablet.”

“Shut up Elpis.” The muffled voice that came out of Harry’s mouth wasn’t his own.

Harry rolled on his side and squinted open his eyes.

He laid on the floor of a well-lit room. Red and gold walls and furniture surrounded him, but it wasn’t the Gryffindor red and gold he was used to. The reds here were more a vibrant scarlet color than the rich red of his house’s common room at Hogwarts. The furniture he laid beside also wasn’t one of the plush couches he was used to.

Something hit his stomach again. Harry let out an “Ouch.”

“Stop kicking me,” Harry said to the girl he somehow knew was Elpis.

“Then get off my notes,” Elpis kicked him again.

“Vri!”

Harry looked up to see what looked like an older teenager run over to him. The boy grabbed his shoulders and helped him sit up.

“Are you ok?” the teen asked. “Headache? Blurry vision? Signs of fatigue?”

“I’m fine, Enen,” Harry said as he brushed the older boy off him. “It’s not like I’m in a healing coma or anything.”

Harry stood the rest of the way up and sat on the couch. Although his body was moving, Harry wasn’t the one moving it. It was like he was looking through the eyes of a stranger.

“Oh, Rassilon, Vri!” Elpis put a hand over her mouth. “Your face! It’s- it’s- oh, never mind, it’s just as stupid looking as it always is. Maybe you’ll have better luck after your first regeneration.”

“I’ll be the cause of your first regeneration!” Harry pounced on Elpis, and they tousled across the floor, neither actually trying to hurt the other.

“I’ll be the cause of both of your first regenerations if you don’t stop distracting me,” someone grumbled across the room.

Elpis broke apart from Harry and sat up.

“Just take your sculpture to a study room and work on it, Vainen,” She said. “The two of you can have some quality time alooooone.”

Splat!

Elpis fell back as a piece of wet clay Vainen threw at her hit her square in the forehead. She sprung back up with fury glistening in her eyes.

“You little creep!” She started towards Vainen with the intention of smashing his sculpture to mush until Enen grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around to face him.

“If you plan to go into politics after you graduate you have to start solving your disagreements like a politician and not like a soldier,” Enen said to her. “Now, go wash off while you plot your revenge.”

Elpis pouted as she stalked out of the room, shooting a glare at Vainen as she passed.

With the first half of his mischievous duo seen to, Enan turned to Harry.

“You have a cut above your eyebrow,” Enan said.

Harry reached up and hissed as his hand touched his skin. Sure enough, a little bit of blood dotted Harry’s finger when he brought it back down to look at it.

“Oops?” Harry said.

That wasn’t a good enough answer for Enan. The older boy pulled Harry back to his feet and toward the door on the opposite side of the room as the one Elpis exited through.

“Come on,” Enan said. “Let’s get you patched up before I have to listen to another complaint from one of your teachers about me not taking care of you.”

Harry let Enan lead him to the door with little more protest than an eye roll and a “yes mother.”

Once he walked through the door, Harry was alone. The door slammed shut behind him and Harry found himself once again in control of his own body as he jumped at the sound.

He spun around to take in his surroundings.

He found himself in a large hexagonal room. A staircase stood in the center of the room and Harry knew that if he followed it up far enough he’d be back in the maze he started in. The door he just exited took up one wall and hallways filled with orange light branched off the other five. The only light illuminating the room he stood in came from the hallways, giving the room an eerie ambiance.

Harry’s shoulders shook as he felt warm prickling fear climb up his body. He was lost in his own mind and for the second time since he entered he fell down and cried.