A/N: Yeah yeah, I know, I really need to be working on TLoS, but I started this a while ago in response to a prompt to make someone outside of the HP universe interact with the Resurrection Stone, so…. Here it is! I promise I'm working on Ch. 3 of TLoS, but I have so many events going on despite it being summer, that honestly, I was lucky to get this out. I'm also having a bit of writer's block of TLoS; I have general idea of where I want to go with it, but no real plan yet. Anyway, if you've read this far, just a couple more things: this happens right after Amy's and Rory's deaths in the episode The Angels Take Manhattan, so the Doctor is Matt Smith in this fic. Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: …...still not mine, neither HP nor Doctor Who…. *tears*
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The Best Medicine
The Doctor stumbled back into the TARDIS, desperate tears falling from his face, clutching tightly to the last page of Melody Malone: Private Detective in Old New York Town in his left hand.
Or, more specifically, the afterward. Written by Amelia Williams.
Falling to his knees, he began to run calculations through his head.
'Maybe, if I can just - but no it won't work, it can't work, it has to'
"WORK," he ended up shouting into the empty T.A.R.D.I.S., "why won't it work?" he finished, whispering.
No matter how he arranged and rearranged them, the numbers just would not fit. They seemed to stare at him, spitefully, always telling him the one thing he knew, deep down - he couldn't save the Ponds (and they were the Ponds, no matter how often they tried, they could never convince the Doctor that they were the Williams).
Little Amelia Pond, the Girl Who Waited, and Rory Pond, the Plastic Centurion, gone forever.
"You would think," he mused aloud, "that it would get easier, but it doesn't, it never, ever, does." Never, in all of his 1200 some-odd years, did it hurt less to lose someone.
The TARDIS flickered reassuringly.
The Ponds. He'd brought himself higher than he had ever been before, and had gone to his lowest point - all for them. Hell, he even married their daughter!
He rocked back on his heels, wiping the tears from his eyes with his free hand, he pulled out the afterward to read again:
Afterword by Amelia Pond*
Hello, old friend.
And here we are. You and me on the last page.
By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone, so know that we lived well and we're very happy. And above all else, know that we will love you always.
Sometimes I do worry about you, though. I think once we're gone, you won't be coming back here for a while and you might be alone, which you should never be.
Don't be alone, Doctor.
And do one more thing for me: There's a little girl waiting in a garden. She's going to wait a long while so she's going to need a lot of hope.
Go to her. Tell her a story.
Tell her that if she's patient, the days are coming that she will never forget. Tell her she will go to see and fight pirates, she'll fall in love with a man who will wait 2000 years to keep her safe. Tell her she'll give hope to the greatest painter who ever lived, and save a whale in outer space.
Tell her this is the story of Amelia Pond.
And this is how it ends.
When suddenly, the TARDIS began to quake with that tell-tale feeling and noise assigned to its travel.
WhooOOOOoooosh whooooOOOOOooooosh whoooooOOOOOoooosh
The Doctor quickly stood up, shocked. Even though the TARDIS sometimes veered off course, she rarely ever took the initiative to just send him somewhere. The last time she did that, well… let's just say it was an… interesting few weeks.
He pulled out his trusty sonic screwdriver and edged his way out the door, immediately on guard. What he first saw surprised him, but was relieving all the same. The TARDIS appeared to have dropped him in a tranquil forest, a little before sunset. He wasn't sure he would've been able to handle a battlefield in his current state.
After taking a few steps, he heard the doors to the TARDIS swing shut and lock behind him, and when he whirled around, she flickered her top light at him.
"Alright, alright, I get it," he muttered, a tad disgruntled, "there's clearly something you want me to do here"
He took a couple more steps before tripping on one of the roots poking up from the green-covered ground, and land on his hands and knees.
Grumbling under his breath, and wishing for nothing more than to be back in the TARDIS, where he could yell and cry and throw a few more things, he was about to get up when an unusual stone caught his attention. In all his years travelling, he had never seen one quite like this - or, at least not on the ground in the middle of nowhere instead of on some vendor's stand on a distant planet.
A black, triangular, multifaceted gem with an unusual golden symbol floating in the middle - a circle ensconced by a triangle, with a line bisecting both.
Curious, he plucked it from the ground and stood up. Tossing it up and down a few times, he turned around and was about to look around for whatever the TARDIS wanted him to find again, when he was shocked into silence by the two people he wanted to see the most - Amy and Rory.
"Hello Doctor," sounded Amy's familiar scottish voice, "It's been awhile - well, for us at least."
He continued staring at the two apparitions (hallucinations? They had to be. They were dead, after all), his mouth having fallen open at some point, tears beginning to trek down his face again.
"I don't think it's been as long for him," Rory said to his wife, his arm around her shoulders.
"No, no i-it has not," the Doctor eventually replied, "It hasn't even been a day, BUT I think a better use of my time would be finding out who, precisely, you are, and how you have the sheer AUDACITY to wear the bodies of my DEAD FRIENDS."
As he spoke, he took on the countenance of the Doctor who terrified the worst species in all known and unknown universes, the menacing glare that earned him names such as The Oncoming Storm. So that's why it was all the more shocking to him when Amy (or whoever was pretending to be her) threw back her head and laughed.
He watched, incredulously, as he once more heard the musical laugh of his best friend from the imposter's body.
"So that's what it looks like from the other side of that," the redhead said when she'd finished, "I'd always wondered."
"What she's trying to tell you," Rory said with a fond, but exasperated glance at his wife, "is that it's actually us, not some weird alien or tech thing, like those Gangers at the acid mining plant."
"That stone you just picked up is called the Resurrection Stone. It allows the dead to be called back to interact with the living," Amy continued in her scottish brogue, "It can't make us alive again or give us a physical body, but while you have that, we can talk to you."
The Stone did sound familiar, but the Doctor was not a fool.
"Prove it."
"Oh my Raggedy Man," Amy sighed, "just as paranoid as ever. Am I going to have to pull the mother-in-law card?"
The Doctor stared at the Ponds, shell-shocked. River Song was the only other person who knew about their legal relationship, since she was of course the bride, and the Doctor knew she would never do something this cruel to him. Tears began to stream down his face once more as he fell to his knees on the uneven ground before the spirits of his dead friends, finally allowing himself to believe it was truly them.
"I'm sorry, s-so sorry, so so sorry, I wasn't quick enough, I couldn't get you out, I wasn't smart enough and now you're… you're…." the Doctor pleaded quietly between sobs, until he felt something like a warm wind on his face. Looking up, he saw Amy's spirit had knelt down in front of him and raised a hand to his cheek, trying to wipe away his tears with a sad, gentle smile on her face.
"Oh you daft man. We never blamed you for that, you know. The Angels were just too quick for Rory, and it was my choice to go join him, as you well know," Amy said in response to his guilt-ridden apology.
"But-" he tried to protest before being cut off, this time by Rory.
"Doctor, I would've thought by now you would know that Amy's always right," he said with a smile.
"Thanks love," Amy said glancing back at him.
"But I let you die." the Doctor finished regardless of their words, in a whispered voice.
"Oi! We'll have none of that, now will we?" Amy chastised him, standing back up. "Now come on, stand back up and spend an evening with us talking about all our old adventures," she finished with a gleam in her eyes.
The Doctor, still on the ground looked up at Amy with a slight smile on his face. Huh. He hadn't been sure how long it would take for him to smile again. "Never change Amelia, do you understand me?" he almost whispered, that familiar twinkle starting to return to his ancient eyes.
Amy returned the smile with suspiciously damp eyes as she grabbed Rory's hand and gestured for the Doctor to follow her. Knowing better than to start ignoring the feisty redhead now, the Doctor staggered to his feet and followed the Ponds.
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A little while later, they emerged at a small clearing on a cliff overlooking a large lake. On the other side of the lake was a great castle, and in the clearing was a rather large fallen log, which promised to be perfect for sitting on. The Ponds and the Doctor sat down just as the sun slipped below the horizon, and all through the night the denizens of the forest were driven off by the raucous laughter of the three companions as they spoke of times long past and times yet to come. They reminisced on everything from Prisoner Zero, to the crack in the universe; from Van Gogh, to when River Song broke the world, to saving Hitler, until they reached the very end - the Angels in Manhattan.
As dawn broke, the mood turned somber once again.
"Why so melancholic suddenly, Doctor?" Amy teased, but knowing full well the reason.
The Doctor glanced down at the stone still entrapped in his hand, before looking back to the Ponds.
"You know why. I have to leave it here. If I brought it with me… with the amount of people I've lost throughout my life… well, I wouldn't get much done now would I?" the Doctor finished with a sad smile on his face. "Who knows if I'll ever see you again…"
"Doctor…" Amy said with warning, "You're being daft again. We told you it's been a while for us since we died, yeah? Well, where do you think we've been the whole time?"
The Doctor glanced at the Ponds, hope in his eyes as Rory completed Amy's thought.
"It's a lovely place you know. We've got our own little cottage near all of our family and friends who have already died. When you join us, I expect we'll see the T.A.R.D.I.S. pop up somewhere… Although that had better not be for a long, long time. We can wait millenia if we have to." Rory said, somewhat sternly.
A genuine smile broke across the Doctor's face, and without thinking, he got up and tried to enfold them all in the same three person hug he'd already given them so many times… only to trip through their insubstantial bodies and land face-first in the grass behind them.
"Oh Doctor…" Amy said trying not to laugh as she and Rory twisted around to look at him.
"Right, well!" The Doctor exclaimed as he popped up from the ground, a light blush dusting his cheeks as he stared at two of his best friends.
"I guess… this is goodbye." he finished sadly.
"Only for now, Doctor," Rory replied.
"And besides," Amy's scottish brogue chimed in, "you should know we'll definitely be watching when we can. You won't ever be alone, Doctor, so please, try not to stay that way down here for too long."
"Yeah, yeah, I got your note…" he grumbled, embarrassed. He took one last look at the married couple, entrenching their image firmly in his memory - and then.
"Goodbye."
And the stone toppled slowly from his hand, seeming to fall in almost slow motion before landing gently in the long grass of the clearing, disappearing from sight.
The Doctor took one last look around this oh so special clearing, where his dead friends had started to put his spirit back together, before turning back to the forest and retracing his steps and emerging near the T.A.R.D.I.S.
He walked back through her doors, stopping near the center console. He walked around it, flipping toggles and pressing buttons in a sequence that seems random to anyone that watches it before stopping at the final lever.
As he looked around the interior of his ship, his one permanent companion, he smiled, knowing it was her actions that had stopped his dark spiralling earlier. He reached over towards that last lever, and just before he pulled it, the Doctor thanked his constant courier -
"Thanks, Sexy."
And the T.A.R.D.I.S. spun away, hurtling through the valleys of space and time.
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A/N 2: Thanks for sticking with this guys, I know I take forever to update. Hopefully this little oneshot will help until I can finish and upload ch 3. Anywho, much love to my amazing beta, tjwillow (sorry sorry sorry, but - Spoilers), you're the best, my friend! Please follow/favorite, and if you feel so inclined, drop a review! I love you all, but now, I must sleep!
*I took the afterward off the internet, I can't remember the site, but I just looked it up and copied it over
Arrivederci,
RoyalAdvisor13