Fanfic co-written by: The Inquisition (fanfiction dot net/~Inquisition)
Summary: The Doctor encounters an anomaly in history. Faces from his past are returned to him, even through death. An impossible society of magic flourishes, defying causality with every breath. History has been transformed into fantasy, but can the Doctor discover the truth, when fiction's lies entrap his every move?
AN: So The Inquisition and I have been hatching a Doctor Who/Harry Potter story in an effort to prove that the crossover can actually work, and actually work well.
This fic is basically going to follow the format of an old Doctor Who serial, taking place within the Wizarding World, featuring the Eleventh Doctor. The fic will be largely Doctor-centric, with a few chapters and interludes from Harry's point of view.
From a Doctor Who standpoint, the fic will take place after the Doctor has saved the world from the Atraxi in The Eleventh Hour, during the 'short hop to the Moon' he goes on before he invites Amy to come along with him. HP-wise, this will be Post-OotP. It won't be absolutely crucial to know, but there will be significant references to Classic Doctor Who. Any characters, items, or situations that we choose to include however, will be explained so that you can enjoy a (hopefully) seamless reading experience.
Without any further ado, here's the prologue. We'll have the next chapter up sometime soon. I think.
THE PARADOX SOCIETY - Prologue
"Hello, I'm the Doctor."
The eyeball swirled from left to right, electricity buzzing about its crystalline chassis.
"Basically… run."
The Doctor grinned as the Atraxi ship sped away into the distant sky, as if it couldn't get away from him fast enough.
He straightened his bowtie. He couldn't help but feel a bit proud of himself. Twenty minutes, a smart phone, and a little computer virus were all it took for him to save the world this time.
Well. That wasn't true. There was that fire emergency vehicle. And little Amelia Pond, not so little anymore, as well as her two friends: the rather drab looking one and then that other good looking one. It was strange though, he thought, that Rory had a girlfriend while Jeff had to stick to his computer for romantic company.
Still, he did feel proud of himself. After all, it had only been just about an hour or two since he had regenerated from his past incarnation. He still hadn't gotten used to his new teeth, and his appetite was still unpredictable. Had it really been less than an hour since Fish Custard?
There was a tickling sensation in his stomach at the thought. Either he was hungry, or there were still after-effects of his regeneration. He really hoped it wasn't some regeneration energy stuck in his stomach. He didn't fancy a trip to a human bathroom to take care of it, with his TARDIS out of commission.
Tailwind from the Atraxi ship suddenly ruffled the Doctor's hair, but his tie stayed put, without flapping about or slapping him in the face. He liked that, he decided. His previous incarnation had enjoyed the flapping about of his ties on windy days.
He, on the other hand,liked things to stay right where he put them, he thought. The Doctor squinted as wind whipped up a bit of dust into his eyes. Yes, he reflected.
Bowties are cool.
A scalding sensation over his left heart shocked him out of his wandering thoughts. A faint squealing was ringing in the background: the sound of his TARDIS. He frowned as he reached into his inner breast pocket, before pulling out a golden key, hot to the touch. A smile crossed his face. The TARDIS must have remotely re-forged it, he thought, as it lay rapidly cooling in the palm of his hand.
"Is that it? Are they gone?" Amy interjected, still in her policewoman costume. "They're gone for good?"
He could have responded, had he been listening. But the Doctor couldn't hear her. Excitement consumed his entire being, as he breathed heavy gulps of air with growing anticipation. His TARDIS had sent him a new key, and that could only mean that it was done repairing itself.
A brand new TARDIS.
The Doctor bolted. He dashed as fast as his new legs would carry him (they were a bit shorter than before, and though would take some getting used to, he'd adjusted well enough the last nine times he had changed), and thoughts of the TARDIS filled his mind as he leapt down flights of stairs, several steps at a time.
His brand new TARDIS!
He vaulted over the duck pond, still strangely without ducks, and ran down the sleepy streets of the village of Leadworth, until he finally came to Amy Pond's house. He turned the corner and ran through a wiry, white archway, and skidded to a stop in front of his beloved blue box.
"Okay," he said as he caught his breath, "What have you got for me this time?"
He hurriedly unlocked the door, impatient to see the changes his TARDIS had made to itself.
"Look at you. Oh, you sexy thing." He breathed, taking in the new décor of his TARDIS. Copper plating covered the walls, and the main chamber seemed much more spacious than before. The coral he'd installed some years ago had vanished completely, leaving a sleek and metallic design behind. It was new and different. And he loved it.
"Look at you!" the Doctor cried in ecstatic joy, and he almost dove into the TARDIS in his excitement.
"What do you think, honey? Do you fancy a test drive?" he called out to his ship, lovingly running his hands along the TARDIS' new control console. It seemed to hum vibrantly in reply, sending tingles down his spine.
"All right then!" The Doctor exclaimed, pulling on a myriad of levers and pushing a number of buttons almost nonsensically. "Here goes nothing!"
The TARDIS emitted its distinct, groaning sounds as it dematerialized from Amy Pond's front garden, a gust blowing about as air rushed into fill the empty space it had occupied several moments ago.
"First stop, the Moon!"
The TARDIS materialized about thirty meters off the surface of the Moon an instant later, hovering over a large crater. The Doctor activated the scanner, now returned to its place on the wall, and happily cried out at his surroundings.
It was the Lunar Landing site from the Apollo mission.
It really was a marvel of human engineering, the Doctor thought, this Lunar Lander. It marked one of the first significant steps for the progress of humankind into the stars- and had been there for the coining of one his most favorite human quotes.
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
He'd heard it himself, during his fourth incarnation. He had built himself an air-corridor to observe the event up close and in person - much to his later regret. The light gust that the corridor generated must have caused the flag to flutter about in an unseen wind, and he'd unwittingly provided fuel for a blaze of silly conspiracy theorists for centuries to come.
My bad, really. The Doctor thought. I did invent the banana daiquiri back in the 18h Century. Can't say I haven't changed things before.
He hadn't grown up even a bit in the last few decades, in some ways, and the thought filled him with hope that he could continue to enjoy the small things in life, whether outwitting K-9 at chess, visiting the Brigadier at tea time or managing to somehow have a fling with a teenager one fourty-fifth his age.
The Doctor whistled a nonsensical tune to himself, and looked out of the open doors of the TARDIS at the Lunar Lander below. Grinning, he enlarged the air-corridor to encompass the entire area, and prepared to jump out of the doorway into low gravity and onto the dusty surface of the Moon below.
He had excitedly kicked off of the floor, when disaster struck.
"Geroni… whoa!"
A huge force slammed the newly reborn TARDIS in its side, forcibly disengaging the air corridor and sending the time machine careening wildly out of the Moon's orbit. The Doctor frantically grabbed hold of a door handle, narrowly avoiding being tossed out into space.
The TARDIS spun uncontrollably, twirling about like a poorly thrown American football. The Doctor held on for dear life; even a Time Lord couldn't survive being left out in the vacuum of space without oxygen, and in these forces, the air corridor was sure to have disengaged. The thought of dying again this soon after his regeneration angered him, and gave him strength.
"Aaaaaaagh!" The Doctor groaned, as he struggled to pull himself up into the TARDIS. His feet were dangling into empty space, and he forced his torso up and onto the TARDIS floor. He crawled forwards, pulling his legs onboard with some difficulty, and used his new screwdriver to force the doors shut.
"What was that?" The Doctor muttered, when another wave of force slammed into the TARDIS, sending him sprawling on the ground. Grunting in surprise more than pain, the he pulled himself upright. He hurried to the control console, and immediately stabilized the ship's trajectory.
Look outside, the TARDIS seemed to direct him, and he gazed at the scanner again. An invisible wave of something was rippling across the surface of the Earth, spreading from a single location on the globe.
What is that? The Doctor thought, touching the screen in front of him to run diagnostics to analyze the phenomenon.
A third crash slammed into the TARDIS, but the Doctor held onto the control console, and only stumbled. He quickly pulled on a few knobs and levers, stabilizing the ship as best he could.
He looked into the screen again, and he couldn't hide the surprise that covered his face. He saw the entire planet Earth shift somehow, as if somebody had replaced it with a holographic copy of some sort. The Doctor looked back at the Moon - it seemed to be unaffected by whatever was causing the Earth to shift and was buffeting his TARDIS.
Even the Lunar Lander wasn't affected in the slightest – the changes seemed only to affect the Earth and his TARDIS, both arguably complex machines of time.
Whatever causing this must be emitting extraordinary amounts of temporal energy, he thought to himself. It was the most likely reason that the Moon and Lunar Lander would remain intact after that monstrous energy wave, while he and his TARDIS were so battered.
"Something's not right – this is bad. Very, very bad." The Doctor muttered to himself, and dashed from the control console, and down the stairs to the deck below, when a fourth crash blasted the TARDIS into another spin.
Caught unprepared by the sudden force, the Doctor smashed into the railing; he cried out as he felt several of his ribs fracture against the metal framework, and yelped in surprise as the force still pushed against the TARDIS. It forced him over the rails, and he fell several metres to the metal deck below.
With a loud crack, the Doctor fell into black unconsciousness as he hit his head on the cold, metal grating, his last thoughts of confusion and pain.
"Doctor, Doctor! Can you hear me, Doctor?"
A woman's voice reverberated in his ears; was it the long-range communicator?
"Doctor, please respond! Doctor!"
That voice sounded extremely familiar… whose voice was it?
"Doctor!"
The Doctor's eyes snapped open. It seemed that he had fallen, the fall knocking him out. Shaking the cobwebs from his head, he tried to push himself upright – but cried out in pain from his broken ribs.
"Doctor!"
There it was again, that mysterious voice. Grunting, the Doctor pulled himself up from the floor, biting down on his cheek as he ignored the stabbing pain in his side. He limped up the stairs, slowly climbing to the upper deck.
"Doctor!" The voice crackled again. It was the time-zone-free communicator, the Doctor saw. He stared thoughtfully at the controls, and he flicked the Receive Transmission switch.
The scanner flashed with snow and static, before slowly coalescing into a coherent, humanoid shape.
"Doctor! Thank goodness. You're alive!" A beautiful female face was displayed front and center in the view screen, dressed in crimson and orange robes, which seemed to ripple as light danced across its surface. A decorative sash only amplified the effect. From what little he could see of the woman's surroundings, the room she occupied was dark and foreboding - and eerily familiar.
"…I'm sorry, do I know you?" The Doctor questioned uncertainly, mentally going over all of the races that had the ability to communicate via time-zone-free transmissions. The list was abysmally short.
"How hard were you knocked around? I told you that your old Type 40 needed an overhaul on those stabilizers three of your bodies ago."
No, it couldn't be. Impossible.
"…Romana?" The woman smiled maddeningly. It was that same old superior smile he'd seen countless times a lifetime ago – seven lifetimes to be accurate.
But it can't be. She died with the rest of the Time Lords during the war. So then how…?
"Romana?"
"Now, now, Doctor. Madam President Romana, if you please."
to be continued...
Authors' Note: Please leave a review if you liked this tidbit. Or if you feel that it's the worst thing in the entirety of the universe. We'd like to know what you think.
We're also in need of a beta with good grammar skills, so if you'd like to help us out, please PM either myself or Inq. Contact information can be found in our profiles, or you can find us over at DLP. Anybody who's up for some hardcore brainstorming can usually reach either one of us through the DLP IRC, over at DarkLordPotter dot net. Hope to hear from you soon!
~Lutris