Disclaimer: Hello my lovely readers! Please note that I do not own Doctor Who or Harry Potter! (Trust me, you would all know about it if I did) Heck, I only half-own this storyline, but we're get to that in the authors note! I hope you all enjoy this! let's go!
It happened with no warning, what began as midnight stargazing on a seemingly quiet, yet beautiful planet had turned into a midnight mad dash away from a war zone.
The Doctor ran through the energized air, narrowly avoiding the brightly colored blasts fired from gunmen crouched in the shadows. He made it to the safety of his TARDIS with not a second to spare, skillfully unlocking the door and sliding inside. But as he went to shut the door, he was met with a nasty surprise. An energy blast caught him in the back, knocking him to the grated floor. He gasped and twisted to look out the threshold. Three masked figures, all clutching guns, were advancing on him. He had to leave now.
With effort he managed to kick the door close and stumble to his feet.
"Someplace safe." He spoke to himself, something he'd been doing a lot of since he had begun traveling alone. "England, twentieth century!" He decided, beginning to push buttons and flip switches, ignoring the electric pain that was shooting through him.
As the TARDIS dematerialized, the Doctor's entire body convulsed. When the spasm passed, the Doctor leaned heavily on the wall and reached for his back to assess the damage as best as possible. To his surprise, his back felt fine. A bit tingly and a bit achy, but lack of any blemish or blood. Odd. He pulled off his long coat and checked himself over. There was no damage at all.
However, he did find himself squirming as he tried to move, was his suit too tight?
He reached up to start unbuttoning his coat. As he fumbled with the buttons, he chanced to glance at his hands. They were not his. Sure, they were attached to his arms, but they were much too big to be his. But why did they feel so familiar? He turned them over, frowning, trying to figure out what was happening. Then it struck him. They were not his hands now, but they used to be, exactly one regeneration ago.
Baffled, he reached up to his face and ran his too-big hands over his features. Balding head, big ears, considerably older...it was his last face, the one he had worn when he met Rose. Well that was weird, and rather troubling. He felt another spasm coming on. Before it could start, he was running out of the consol room, heading for his favorite lab.
"Some kind of de-aging gun," he muttered to himself. "It was in the Kastrovinian system, so that means…" he was cut off as the spasm hit, hard enough to throw him to the ground. There was another loud pop, and the Doctor pulled himself to his feet, ignoring how his now longer hair kept flopping in his face. "Okay, okay, think Doctor" He spoke to himself in a voice he hadn't heard in several centuries, "De-aging Rays...de-aging guns? Tool used by assassins. Effects persist until the target dies of youth, but both memories and personality are preserved until the brain is too immature to hold them," he finished dragging the information from his mind, wishing he had a companion to explain this all too, but settling for the shadows of his ship. He was a little bit relieved that he would not be changing his personality every time he changed his body.
There was another pop, and suddenly, his suit was ridiculously tight around the waste, and way too long in the arms and legs. At least the spasms seem to be going away, it would certainly make creating a treatment easier.
He reached the lab and started hastily mixing chemicals together, bent on creating an antidote to his situation. The process took a while, and he was already in his original body by the time it was done. The treatment was not pure, though. There was not enough time to let it distill, and the somewhat gross liquid reeked of chemicals, but it was the best he could manage. He steeled himself before gulping the revolting medicine. But he didn't stop de-aging, he felt himself drop about a foot and began to really panic. What if the antidote didn't work? What if he was too late?
Nervous, he searched the lab for something reflective. He had to stand on a near-by bench and gaze down into a petri dish sitting up on a counter. The dish was filled with mercury and worked well as a make-shift mirror. He peered at himself and watched as years faded away from his face, and, much to his alarm, he continued to shrink in size.
"Come on, come on, work!" he pleaded with his reflection, and finally, the de-aging stopped. Hesitantly, the Doctor observed his new, or rather, very old, face . A Young child peered back at him from the mercury.
The child pursed his lips as the Doctor tried to figure out how old he was. "Eleven," he finally stated, "or there about." He carefully climed down from the lab bench and set out calculating why he was not re-aging. Eventually, he concluded that it was due to the impurities of the treatment. Had he distilled it, he would have been back to normal already, shooting up in age the second the antidote hit his system.
"On the other hand," he was speaking to himself again, pacing the lonely lab in his too-big suit, a notepad clutched in his left hand and a pen quickly jotting calculations in his right, "I very likely would have died had I let the solution distill." He flinched at his voice it was almost girl-like and cracked when it raised in pitch. He cleared his throat and spoke lowly, "The antidote I consumed would become deadly quickly if I tried to drink a more pure version, the impurities will give it a sort of delayed effect, and an unpredictable one at that. Eventually it will take full effect, and I'll return to my normal age, but that won't occure for a year at least, maybe longer. Until then I'm stuck as a child." He hummed the words, very much wishing that he had someone there to hum them to.
He sighed and placed the scribbled on note pad on a lab bench, deciding to make his way to the consol room to consider his next move. There was no way he was going to sit in the TARDIS for a whole year by himself. But going on adventures like he usually did was out of the question. He was far too young to wander places alone, heck, he was even too short to operate the controls on the TARDIS. He was entertaining the idea of calling Sarah Jane to see if she'd be willing to take him in for an indeterminate amount of time when there was a scratching at the door.
The Doctor started, then gracefully walked across the control room to investigate. At least, that was the plan, but he had not changed out of his pinstripe suit, and he tripped on the long pant legs before tumbling to the floor. There was another scratch at the door, and with a growl of frustration, the Doctor hitched up his pants and marched ahead to answer it.
There was a large owl, in broad daylight sitting in front of the TARDIS, proffering him a letter.
The Doctor stepped back, his eyes glued to the bird, his mouth hanging open in surprise. "What?" He stuttered.
The bird let out an annoyed sound and dropped the letter at the baffled boy's feet. Hesitantly, the boy made a careful move to grab the letter, his eyes never leaving the animal. Once in his hands, he spared a glance down at the adress printed on the envelope.
Mr. J. Smith
Consol Room
TARDIS
London
"What?" He asked again, a childish sort of curiosity distracting him from the bird. He slit the envelope open and pulled out the letter it read:
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Smith,
We are please to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress.
"What?" He asked again, the bird flew off with no further explanation, and this left the young Doctor alone and confused.
Woo hoo! First chapter formatted, and edited and posted! Doing all that on an iPad is needlessly complicated but I think I handled it well!
Now, on to the technical stuff! I actually didn't write most of this chapter. I added a lot to it, yes, but the idea and most of the text itself was dreamt by my good friend The Bibliomaniac. You see, The Bibliomaniac wrote two versions of the amazing fic De-Aged (which I highly recommend), but quickly decided against one version and put it up for adoption. I adopted it. The next chapter will be written the same way, with more of the Bibliomaniac's words than my own. But come chapter three, I assure you, the rest of the story will be all my own.
So I hope that you stick with me on this! Also, thank you to the Bibliomaniac for letting me adopt this fic!
As always, any reveiws left will be responded to at the end of the next chapter! So hit that review button my lovely readers!
With love, MissShadowBolt