A brown-haired man walked into the inn. Of all the places in the world, there were few so smoky, warm, and crowded. There was a curious fellow in a long green robe sipping on a pint of butterbeer and another older women in a strange, black hat whispering quietly to another women in a grey, tight-fitting dress.
The brown-haired man looked around, sat at the bar, and stared at the blond barmaid.
"What shall I getcha?" the woman asked.
"A pint," the brown-haired man said simply.
"Don't be daft. A pint of what?"
"A pint of your best."
The woman stared at him annoyed.
"Could you please, if you be so kind, tell me what year it is?"
The woman looked at him baffled.
"You serious?"
"My dear, I've never been more serious in my life."
"2027."
The man seem satisfied with the answer.
"You often forget what year it is?"
"I have a nasty habit of doing so, yes."
"Memory charm?"
"No. Not quite so, I don't think. More like I sometimes lose my time and relative dimensions in space."
"Your relative what?" the woman now looked sideways at the man.
But the brown-haired man seemed preoccupied by something else. Something that vexed him.
"You've heard that Granger has been hired as the ambassador to Transylvania?" said the women in the grey dress.
"Yes, but blimey if'll do any good now," the woman in the black hat said. "You know the amount of wizard rights they are infringing on over there."
"I know what the historians say, but I think we were better under the strong man. At least everyone knew where they stood. Now we got little devils running around all over the place."
"Doesn't matter what the ministry does. Seems like once they put one fire out in Flanders, another one rises up in Ireland. And they don't organize the way you-know-who did. They're all separate organizations."
The brown-haired man listened for about another five minutes to the women's critique of current ministry laws. Until.
The door swung open and a tall, gangly-haired man walked in. He wore spectacles and carried a book in his hand titled *10 Easy Steps to Teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts*.
The spectacled man sat down right next to the brown-haired man and ordered a pint of butterbeer from the barmaid.
"Here you go, Professor."
"Thanks, Rosmerta," the man replied.
"A professor?" the brown-haired man said.
"Yes. My first year," the man said sheepishly.
He brushed back his hair to reveal a scar in the shape of lightning bolt.
"Are you quite nervous?"
"Hard to admit, but yes," the man looked up and smiled slightly.
"What do you find to be most nerve-racking?"
The man thought for a second before answering.
"I think it is the expectations. People expect something of me, something I'm not sure I can deliver. I sometimes wonder if it's all been...I don't know..."
"...Luck?" the brown-haired man said in response.
"Exactly."
"I sometime ask myself the same question."
The men sat in silence for a few minutes and the professor opened his book to chapter 7. The chapter was titled, "Show Confidence: Psyching Yourself to Psych Your Students Out." When the pint was gone, the professor got up, bowed quietly to the brown-haired man, and walked out the front door.
The brown-haired man listened a bit longer to the gossip of two women in the inn and then made his way out into the crisp, cool night.
A few days later, the professor was walking the grounds of the school when he noticed, far off in the distance of the forbidden forest, a blue box. He did not often make it back to London, but he did recognize it right away from his childhood. It was a blue police box.
Curious as to how the box had appeared, the professor walked up to it and stared at it from all directions. He pushed the door, but it would not budge. He tried all manner of spells, including the one Ms. Granger had taught him while he himself was at school, but none of them worked.
"Hello."
The voice startled the professor and he turned around to see the brown-haired man from the inn.
"Hello," the professor said. "I didn't see you there."
"Curious, isn't it?"
"Yes. I wonder how it got here. The school is protected against objects like this just appearing."
"You think it is magical?" the brown-haired man asked.
"Of course it must be," said the professor. "Anything to get through the school's defenses must be."
"Luckily," the brown-haired man said. "I have the key."
And much to the professor's surprise, he opened the door and walked in.
"Are you coming?" the brown-haired man asked.
The professor walked in and, much to his surprise, the box was much larger on the inside than the outside.
"I haven't seen something like this since I went camping with Ron during the Quidditch World Cup," the professor said.
"Yes," the brown-haired man said. "Wizards are one of the few not surprised by Time Lord magic."
"Time Lord?" The professor now stared at the man.
"I'm the Doctor."
And, with snap of his fingers, the door shut closed. The professor immediately drew his wand and lunged a disarming spell at The Doctor.
"Ah," the Doctor said, now on the floor from the disarming spell. "I should have said. We're on the same side here."
"Prove it," the professor said skeptically.
"I've just come from a very important point in time."
"A point in time?"
"Ah yes. TARDIS. This is a TARDIS. Travels to points in time. I've been looking for you for quite some time."
"A TARDIS?"
The professor was dumbfounded. He was not sure how to respond. His first thought was to talk him to Longbottom, the head of the Ministry's security detail, but his more curious urges overtook him.
"Why have you been looking for me?" the professor asked.
"There are certain points. Certain fixed points that cannot be changed and you are part of one of those points. And I've been told, by someone both of us trust utterly, of where you're to go."
"Who?" the professor asked, his skepticalness melting away.
"Dumbledore."
At that, the professor struck him with another jet of light. The professor now looked angry and tense. He held his wand more tightly.
"If you knew anything at all, you'd know that Albus Dumbledore has been dead for over 20 years."
"This may be hard to understand, but I don't experience time the way that the Wizards do. You know how Dumbledore used to be able to show you memories of your past and the past of others?"
The professor loosened his grip slightly on his wand. He was unsure how someone who did not know Dumbledore intimately would have known about this.
"Well," The Doctor continued. "Where do you think Dumbledore learned how to use the Pensieve? Wizards are great and powerful beings, I will not deny, but looking through time and memory is something he would have had to learn from a man of Galifrey, of which I am the only one still living."
"You showed Dumbledore how to use the Pensieve?"
"Yes. And there is something I need to show you as well. Something very important. As I was saying, there are certain fixed points in time. Times when things cannot change and you are a part of one of those moments. Certainly you have seen many of them already, Professor. But there is still at least one more that you need to see. That Dumbledore swore I must take you to."
The professor finally put down his wand. The Doctor stood up and began moving levers and pressing buttons on his machine. Soon enough he felt the TARDIS moving and he fell on his head. He blacked out.
When the professor awoke, The Doctor was standing over him, examining him.
"You were out for a few hours," The Doctor said. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Besides the constant thumping in my head, I'm fine."
But the thumping soon stopped as the professor realized where he was. He had only felt so cold and so unloved on a very few occasions in his life. In fact, the ministry had banned their use for more humane forms of punishment about fifteen years ago. But there was no mistaking their presence now.
"What have you done?" the professor asked the The Doctor.
"I've brought you to Azkaban as it was," The Doctor replied. "Come, we must go quickly before the dementors realize that we are here."
"But that's not possible," the professor stammered. "We outlawed dementors so many years ago. How can they be here now?"
"I said Azkaban as it was, not as it is. Come, we must hurry, we don't have much time."
They passed the cells of all sorts of people in various states of consciousness. It was clear that the dementors had already taken many of their souls. After they passed about 50 cages, they reached the cage of a heavily bearded man who looked at them with hatred in his eyes.
The professor immediately broke down. He stood for a full minute before he could muster anything at all.
"Sirius?"
"Who're you? More people from the ministry to try and torture secrets from me? I'll only tell you that I comforted the murdering traitor! And now I'm stuck in here, forever. But'll tell you what. No more. Tonight, I'm finally doing it. It's time for the kiss of death."
"No. Sirius. You have too much to live for."
"They're dead. They're all dead," his eyes were those of a maniac. A desperate man. "And I did it. I killed them. It was my fault."
He tried to keep speaking, but Sirius could not. Finally the professor turned to The Doctor.
"Why?" The professor said. "Why after all these years would you make me relive this? Every day I hope, everyday I pray that, somewhere, beyond the veil, I would find him again. But not like this."
"But you must know," The Doctor replied. "No one could have gone all these years in Azkaban without hope. Even the strongest need some sign that things, maybe just maybe, will get better. You have to be that for Sirius."
Suddenly the professor unlocked the gate.
"We're getting out of here," The Professor said. "Come with me."
Sirius looked surprised at this and The Doctor did as well, but Sirius got up and they started walking down the hall they had just come from.
"No," The Doctor said. "This is how it ends. I've told you, some points are fixed."
"But he's innocent," The Professor said. "He's my godfather. Think of all those years I lived without him. Think of how different my life could have been being raised by someone who loved me instead of in a cupboard of shame."
"You can't," The Doctor looked deeply saddened to have to say this. "It's not how this works."
They were walking down the hall when suddenly the professor realized that he was back right where he had started. The hall had taken him right back to Sirius' opened cage.
"It's on a loop. Azkaban security. There is no way to undo it. Not until Sirius figures it out."
"I'll find a way," the professor said. "I've always found a way."
But suddenly, Sirius pulled away from him, closed the door to his cell, and started calling loudly for a dementor.
"I'm ready," Sirius said loudly. "Come and take it all. I can't bear it anymore."
"You don't have much time," The Doctor said to the professor. "You have to change his mind."
"But how?"
"I think you already know."
The professor turned to the mangled man who was now crying so heavily that he curled up into a ball in the middle of his cell.
"Sirius," the professor said. "You cannot do this."
Sirius did not respond, but the room was growing colder and Harry could feel the life draining from the room.
"What about their son? What about the Boy Who Lived? You have to be strong. You have to find a way out for him."
Sirius' eyes suddenly changed. The professor was not sure if it was the pupils dilating or the blood coming back to his face, but the professor saw him come to some kind of recognition.
"But they're all so evil. Every one of them. I don't have the strength anymore."
"They're not all the same," the professor said. "Like a man once told me, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are. And now I need you, more than you can possibly know, to be that person. Whether you know it or not, people are counting on you."
Sirius looked even more now like the color was coming back to his face. But the dementors were close, he could feel them. And finally one was close enough for the professor to feel. He held up his wand and a great white stag appeared out of it and soon the room did not feel so cold. The dementors had gone and it was just the professor, Sirius, and The Doctor.
There was a moment of silence before Sirius spoke.
"James?"
"No," the professor said. "But you need to remember him. You need to remember Lily. You need to remember all the good in the world because you have to escape. There is no other way for this to work."
Sirius' eyes were filled with tears.
"Thank you," was all Sirius could say.
"We have to go now," The Doctor said finally after they had stared at each other for a minute. "The dementors will be back soon."
The professor reached in and touched Sirius' hand and Sirius grabbed a hold of the professor. The professor had missed those hands. He knew he would never see them again. It would be impossible.
"And thank you," the professor said. "For everything."
The Doctor and the professor walked slowly out, but suddenly the professor turned around and shouted one last thing.
"A firebolt," he said. "It has to be a firebolt."
THE END.