I do not own Doctor Who or the Harry Potter series. They belong to BBC and J.K. Rowling respectively. I do think it would be fun to go off in the TARDIS or fly on a broom though. Anyone know a way for me to? Obviously this takes place after Snakedance (5th Doctor, still have Nyssa and Adric) and after the CoS.
"I don't think this is a good idea Doc! What do I know about the inner workings of a twelve year old's mind?"
"Eleven. Tegan, just try to be kind and you'll be fine."
"I'm not exactly known for kindness. Stubbornness and bluntness yes, but not kindness."
"You'll do fine. You're the only one of us that can do this you know."
"What do you mean?" Worried brown eyes looked into the Doctor's blue.
"Well, the rest of us haven't been possessed. I mean, you're even doubly qualified as it happened twice."
Blood drained from Tegan's face and she couldn't find the voice to protest anymore as the Doctor slowly walked her into the Headmaster's office.
"I don't need someone to talk to. I'm fine as I am." The red head tried to act defiant, but lacked the hardness necessary.
Watery blue eyes gazed into brown ones that could not disguise the hurt no matter how they tried, "Miss Weasley, this person, Miss Jovanka, will be able to relate to you in ways that others here cannot. It will help."
"I won't talk to her."
"And I won't make you." The wizard and witch turned to the door, "I'm Tegan Jovanka."
"I'm the Doctor. You must be Miss Ginny Weasley. Pleasure to meet you."
"I'm afraid the sentiment is not returned." Ginny walked out the door without another word.
"I told you this was a bad idea. She doesn't want to speak to me."
"Are you saying that out of concern for her welfare or your own?"
"Rabbits!" Tegan walked out the door in much the same manner as Miss Weasley leaving the Time Lord and the Headmaster alone.
"Lemon drop?" The Doctor smiled and reached out for one.
Tegan stepped out of the circular staircase and walked away from the Headmaster's office. She didn't really care where she was going as long as it was away from those two meddling bastards. She didn't even realize that she had started to cry until she noticed the strange looks the students around were giving her. Her feet started to ache so she sat on a ledge overlooking a courtyard.
"What are you doing here?"
Tegan looked up into a tired, angry set of brown eyes. "Afraid I was bit peeved with my friend, so I went for a walk. Didn't mean to follow you to your hidey-hole, no worries. Like I said before, I wouldn't try to make you talk to me."
"Good, cause I won't." Tegan just nodded and looked out into the courtyard again.
"Well, could you tell me one thing? Dumbledore said you would be able to help me in a way that others here can't. What did he mean?"
"It's a bit of a long story, and not one I enjoy. In fact, it tends to give me nightmares."
"Why don't you just take some Dreamless Sleep then?"
"What? I don't know what drug that is, but some of the things the Doctor has given me do tend to knock me out and let me sleep without any dreams for at least a couple hours."
Ginny looked at her harder. "You're a Muggle?"
"A what?"
"A non magical person."
"I like to think I'm pretty special."
"That's not what I meant. I mean you can't actually perform any magic."
"Magic? That's all tricks and illusions."
Ginny pulled out her wand. "Not entirely," was directed at Tegan a little too smugly. Ginny looked around, and saw the hall starting to fill with more students. She grabbed Tegan's sleeve.
"Come on."
They headed toward a lower portion of the castle. Tegan thought they had walked past the same painting at least three times when a door suddenly appeared. Ginny pulled her through to a room where a roaring fire blazed in the fireplace and two couches with plenty of cushions faced one another. Ginny sat on the burgundy couch and Tegan moved to the purple.
"Where are you from?"
Tegan looked up and smiled. "When is more appropriate. I was going to become an air stewardess. I was heading to Heathrow in early 1981. My auntie Vanessa was taking me to the airport when the car got a flat. She wanted me to wait for a man to come along and 'rescue' us. I've never been very patient I'm afraid. So I tried to change the tire, but the spare was flat as well. I started walking down the road to find a petrol station or something when I came across the TARDIS. I went into it thinking it was just a police box and was going to use the phone inside it. When I got in, I was astonished. Not only was the inside bigger, but I couldn't keep myself from exploring. I got lost until the Doctor decided to take off. I had just found the console room again when he had."
Ginny looked at her, "What's a police box?"
"A blue box. Rather like a phone box really."
"What happened to your aunt? Surely she isn't still by the road waiting for you."
"No," Tegan smiled bitter sweetly, "Auntie Vanessa is dead I'm afraid. An enemy of the Doctor's, known as the Master, killed her. It seemed rather pointless to stick around for a bit."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"How could you?"
"Why did they think talking to you would help me?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Tegan avoided looking at her, "I don't know what's happened to you recently."
Ginny's eyes narrowed. "You're lying to me. What do you know?"
Tegan licked her lips, "The Doctor said something about being possessed."
They stared at one another. "Like I said, I won't make you talk to me about it. I still have nightmares about what the Mara made me do. It's frightening to be under the control of something that only wants to rule over all it surveys, even though everyone around is fighting it and fears it terribly. Or worse, they believe in it and are trying to make its dreams become reality."
"You do know, don't you? What it's like I mean. I found a book and started using it as a diary. It started to answer me."
"I fell asleep and it trapped me in my own mind. I wasn't sure I existed to be honest. Started wondering if I was just an insane man's fantasy."
"And when you are yourself, you wonder if it will take over again. If it's simply toying with you. Waiting and watching. Growing stronger with every move you make to fight."
"When it is finally gone, or when you think it's finally gone, you start to wonder. How much longer would I have lasted?"
"Would I have been able to get rid of it on my own if I had just known what to do?"
"You wonder if it'll ever happen again. If it will take you over like that once more."
"And you almost wish it would. You wouldn't be dealing with those looks from everyone around you who knows what has happened."
"Wouldn't have to deal with the constant questions of how you're feeling."
"How you felt when it happened."
"You wouldn't have to deal with the sideways glances when they think you're not looking. And you know they wonder if it is really gone."
"And you can't blame them, because you're left wondering that too."
"There are spots in your own mind where you're afraid to go. Afraid to think even, because is it really something that you think and believe, or was it just leftover from them."
"And it shocks you. Sometimes, you agree with the way they thought."
"You end up disgusted with yourself. You feel unclean and dirty."
"No amount of showering and scrubbing can make the feeling go away."
"And even though you know it isn't something that can be seen, you feel as if it is staining your very existence."
"That you're tainted."
"No matter what everyone says, you can't shake that out of your head either."
"How could they understand without being possessed as well?"
"It's very like rape, even if only mentally."
"He would have allowed his followers to rape me. After he had finished using me here."
"At least I didn't have to worry about that with the Mara. What is a giant telepathic alien snake going to want with a human woman?"
"A giant telepathic alien snake?"
"Did I forget to mention that bit? Yes, the Mara was a giant telepathic alien snake. It was trapped in the dark parts of the mind according to the Doctor. I fell asleep beneath the crystals; the natives called it the Place of Dreaming. It was apparently forbidden for one to dream alone there because the natives were afraid of the Mara crossing over. The Doctor didn't even realize that he had left me there sleeping. He can be quite unobservant sometimes."
"What happened once you fell asleep?"
"It came…. I was in nothingness. It was just black. Then not too far away, I saw a man and a woman in some sort of courtly garb playing chess. The woman noticed me first. She decided to pretend I wasn't there. Then the man looked over, and he pretended I wasn't there as well. They had a lengthy discussion about it. Asking each other if what they thought they saw was what the other had thought they saw. Deliberately making things harder. Each had a snake design on their forearm. Then they disappeared."
"Then?"
"Well, a young man in the same sort of fashion came walking towards me. He was very dismissive of the older couple. He had a snake design on his arm too. He made an image of me appear. She wasn't evil. She didn't act mean or hateful. She was just as scared as me. So was each version of me that he had appear. I don't know if he grew tired of the game or if I actually managed to pull myself together, but there was just one of me again. Then he left alone in the darkness of my mind. That's when I really broke. I told him that he could use my body for a brief span."
"What did he do with it?" Ginny couldn't take her eyes off Tegan. The young woman who had seemed so confident was in just as many pieces as herself. She didn't realize that they had both been walking around broken.
"All that I remember him doing is climbing a tree to drop apples on a native man's head. I know he spoke to the man, but I don't know what was said. I can't really remember to be honest. Which frightens me more. I don't know if I hurt anyone."
"I know I hurt people. Can it really be blamed on me if I was possessed though? Especially by someone that my entire culture identifies as being evil? I killed animals. Wringed the necks of chickens and used their blood to leave messages for the rest of the school. When I'm feeling particularly macabre, I sometimes imagine that I can still feel the blood on my fingertips. A few of my friends ended up in the Hospital Wing, Petrified by the basilisk that I let run loose in the school. It almost killed the boy I love while the man possessing me tried to completely drain the life out of me."
"Even though neither the Mara nor your possessor succeeded in their aims, it's almost as if they managed to succeed in a small way anyway. It's not like either one of us will ever be able to trust ourselves or our own thinking again."
"I've had to stop myself from being cruel to people."
"I get so irritable because I can't control the thinking in my head. They don't seem to realize that anything is really different though."
"But everything has changed."
"Everyone around just expects me to forget about it and carry on, like I did nothing."
"Like what they did to break me free from it was nothing."
"I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a snake again without wanting to scream," they said in stereo.
Two smiles were garnered. Neither one of them realized it, but a little part of them no longer seemed quite so cracked.
"So Tegan, how are you feeling?"
"Doctor, you can stop asking me that any time now."
The Headmaster looked over at Ginny.
"Headmaster Dumbledore, you can stop the sideways glances any time now."
Two sets of brown eyes that belonged to two very different females went to bed that night (relatively, time travel does tend to confuse things like night and day) and when they were closed, the nightmares did not appear for the first time.
Two sets of blue eyes did not go to bed that night, as they found they needed less sleep with age, however, they found that even though they could not spy on the girls' earlier, they were not nearly as concerned with how the possessions had affected them.