I don't own The Worst Witch or Doctor Who, but I do own this story. I hope you enjoy my Christmas present to you all.

Tempus Autem Domine.

The strange girl didn't wait for Maud to reply; instead, she just leapt to her feet and staggered around for a moment, wobbling as though her legs were made of jelly. "Ooh," the girl whispered as she struggled to stand upright, "new legs. Oh, it would have been nice if I could have been standing when it happened, that way I wouldn't have to adjust to a new centre of gravity."

The girl continued to wobble around in front of Maud's eyes. The shock had leaked out of the bespectacled girl and now she was looking at the stranger suspiciously as she wobbled about before she stabilised once she gained her centre of gravity. She looked around herself and blinked in surprise as though she was just registering the number of people around herself, but she ignored the curious and frightened expressions and focused on herself. "Let's see," she whispered aloud again as she examined her hands, "five fingers on each hand. Good, it would be odd if I had five fingers on one hand, and seven on the other. I think I've got toes, but they'll need to wait."

The girl weaved her fingers through her hair and dragged some of it in front of her eyes. What she saw made her groan. "Dark hair again!" she muttered. "I was blonde once, what happened? Oh yeah, I remember. Anyway," she pushed the hair back and focused on the rest of her body, and she wriggled her fingers and twirled her left wrist, "I think I've got a slight weakness in my wrist. Well, let's see about that, I don't want anything to go wrong this time around."

The girl closed her eyes for a second, lifted up the hand she'd just been examining, and she took a deep breath and flicked her hand, which began to glow with the same light they'd seen swirling around Mildred, and there was a snapping sound which made the girl wince before the glow faded and she re-examined the wrist. She was obviously satisfied with what she found out because she grinned and nodded.

"And…. there we go. That's the great thing about a nearly full regeneration cycle," she said, "even after the main change there is still enough residual energy to sort out any imperfections in the body before it wears off. Anyway," she grinned at her audience as if only just realising they were even there, "what do you think? How do I look?"

None of the witches and wizards in the crowd knew what to say. They were all stunned by what they'd seen, no-one could muster anything to say despite the questions on their mind. The girl suddenly lost her patience. "And I thought you lot could speak, what are you, deaf and mute?"

"Who are you?" Maud Spellbody whispered, at last, her concern for her friend, wherever she was while this weird girl in front of pranced around in Mildred's clothes, breaking through her speechlessness.

The girl's smile faded somewhat. "Maud….," she tried to say.

"And that's another thing," Maud interrupted, her voice rising in her hysteria. "How do you know my name? Just tell me, who are you?"

"You knew me as Mildred Hubble."

"What?!" Enid joined in. "You're lying." The other girls yelled in agreement, but the girl's face dropped into an impressive scowl.

"SHUT UP!" she snapped, and something in her voice, the sheer authority and power behind the order instantly shut everyone up, but she suddenly lost that authority just after she'd applied it. "I was dying, Maud. My entire body was shattered, I had no way of getting back up again. Don't you remember what I told you, that I was going to change? Well, this is the result. I'm the same, I just look different."

"But it's impossible," Miss Hardbroom said, but the girl immediately snapped at her.

"It may be impossible for you, but for me and others like me it isn't," the girl replied harshly before she sighed. "I'm tired," she whispered, "I've got to get to the Zero Room."

"What's that?"

"Complicated."

The girl turned and started to walk away, but before she could she suddenly cried out in agony that took everyone aback as she bent down. "Ow! These boots!" She turned and pointed a harsh glare towards the potions mistress. "You know something, Miss Hardbroom, if you really wanted me to not feel welcome, there are more subtle ways than making sure I received boots that are tight."

The girl ripped the boots off and threw them away before she left the scene, walking away barefoot except for her socks. Maud looked at Enid, her face uncertain.

"What do you think?" Enid asked.

Maud shook her head. "I don't know. But I know one thing, Mildred did have problems with her boots; they were tight, and what she said about changing makes some sense, but I don't know what to believe."

Enid nodded. "If she has changed she doesn't seem to act like Mildred, the real Mildred," she said.

"Yeah, and what in the name of Merlin is this Zero Room?" Maud asked, knowing her friend didn't have a clue.

"I dunno, but let's follow her," Enid said but before they could even move, Miss Hardbroom instantly blocked them.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded.

"We're following her," Enid replied before she moved around the strict potions mistress with Maud, who followed a bit more sedately since she was still learning how to be disrespectful, but she had good teachers even if one of the teachers seemed to have….. disappeared.

The problem with my lifestyle nowadays is I'm here today, gone next week, Romana thought to herself as she walked through the corridors of the school - luckily the school was practically empty; everyone had been watching the disastrous display earlier, so she had little trouble moving through the school towards the bedroom. The hard part was getting to the bedroom. Her mind was still recovering from the regeneration, and though she'd had the chance for some last minute preparation, she was still shaken up.

The residual regeneration energy that was still present acted like a high powered adrenaline, and while it had repaired her weakened wrist, it shook up the braincells and it made it very hard for her to concentrate, but all she wanted to do was return to the bedroom, say a quick hello to her cat, and more importantly get to her TARDIS. Romana had no intention of leaving Earth just yet, though it was tempting to just leave the planet behind and travel around for a bit before she came back, she was just too tired.

Besides she didn't want to just leave for an uncertain amount of time, not without telling Maud and Enid.

Thinking about the two girls made Romana lean against the wall and sigh tiredly before she just shook her head and went on her way to the bedroom. Romana knew the two girls didn't believe her, but then again humans never did - they simply didn't have the means of identifying Time Lords before and after regeneration, the only way to get through to them both was to persuade them she was who she was, but she was not sure how to go about that.

The only other Time Lord she knew of who went through this kind of aggravation was the Doctor, but Romana had no idea what had happened to her old friend; she didn't know if he had managed to escape in that confusion when she'd come up with that idea to lock Gallifrey away in that pocket universe when she'd discovered he'd been pushed the edge by the other Time Lords who had degenerated into warlike savages after centuries of being indifferent to everyone else in the universe for millennia, but all she knew was she couldn't hear him.

She couldn't hear anybody else.

Romana was alone. She didn't know if her old friend was alive or dead, but she hoped Rassilon was, the corrupt bastard. All she knew was the rest of her people were sealed away, somewhere and somewhen, and she had no idea where they were.

So much to do, so little time, the Time Lady thought to herself tiredly as she walked to the bedroom. She smiled when she saw Tabby lying on the bed. She'd gotten a bit of flak from the other girls in the school for having a cat they called useless, but the cat was actually extremely sweet and she didn't really care if he didn't act like the other familiars. She walked over to the cat, who looked at her in confusion.

"It's okay, Tabby," Romana whispered, instinctively falling into cat, relying on her races' ability to speak to any kind of lifeform. She stroked the tabby cat and let him take in a sniff of her, and he quickly recognised her scent.

The cat meowed and Romana chuckled. "You've got more sense than the others put together," she chortled as she stroked the cat, "I'm glad I don't have to spend ages telling you about my ability to regenerate, with your sense of smell you can tell who I am easily."

Tabby batted her hand playfully, and she smiled. Cats, she thought to herself, they were so cute.

"Anyway, I need to recover," Romana said, "I'll be back soon."

The cat meowed and she sighed as she forced herself to pull away and move towards the wardrobe. "Doors," she whispered, and the wardrobe opened up, revealing the TARDIS inside.

Romana was just about to walk inside the TARDIS only to pause when her senses picked up something, a kind of tingle…. And she closed her eyes and leaned on the outside of the TARDIS and turned in the general direction of where the distortion was coming from. She wasn't surprised in the least when she saw Miss Cackle arrive in the room followed by Hardbroom, and the Great Wizard himself (Romana still wasn't sure what to think about him, but she was willing to give him the chance), but what surprised her was before anyone had the chance to speak Maud and Enid arrive in the room.

"Hi guys," Romana greeted them before she turned to face the older magicians. "Miss Cackle, Miss Hardbroom, Your Greatness. How did you know I was coming here?"

"You were heading inside this school, and if you really are Mildred Hubble where else would you go?" Miss Hardbroom reasoned.

Romana lifted an eyebrow. "An intelligent if flawed piece of reasoning. This school is large," she pointed, "I could have been anywhere. Why are you following me?"

"Who are you? What happened to Mildred?"

Romana closed her eyes. "How many times do I need to tell you before you get it into your primitive skulls I am Mildred Hubble? More or less. You see, the name was an identity I took."

"So Mildred was never real?" Maud whispered sadly. To everyones' surprise, the girl turned around and walked over to her. "That's where you're wrong, Maud. Mildred was real."

She looked down at her feet. "The Hubbles were real. I met them shortly….. shortly after….. it was a bad day," her eyes turned downwards with genuine sorrow that was terrible to see, "a lot of terrible things happened. I was injured, badly injured. Every cell in my body was dying. I arrived in the second world war. Julie and Mildred Hubble were trying to survive in London, the German bombs falling on the city…. and yet they took a dying stranger in. They tried to take care of me, but I was dying. I knew I would regenerate… In the end, they both died, but I swore to honour their memories. So when I did regenerate, I would take on this sweet little girls' appearance, and keep her memory alive. So, she was real. I adapted some traits of her personality, and for the last two hundred years I'd kept that appearance."

"Two hundred years?" Miss Hardbroom scoffed even as the Great Wizard growled. "I don't know what you're playing at, but you cannot be two hundred years old?"

Romana couldn't help it; she burst out laughing. "Who said anything about me being two hundred years old? I said I lived for two hundred years in that form, didn't I?" she got out. "You humans, when you are going to see your understanding of time is so limited? Must you be so linear? You're so finite, locked in a single lifetime bound to a dull little world."

Everyone was so taken aback by her annoyance they were silent, so Romana had plenty of time to shrug and remark, "Besides, what's two hundred years when you've lived for nearly a thousand?"

"What?!" Hardbroom barked, glaring at the girl and she stormed over to her, trying to intimidate her with her glare, but Enid and Maud were almost amused when they both saw the girl looked indifferent like she had seen worse. "Now I know you're lying; I don't know who you are, or what you did to Mildred Hubble, but I know you are lying. Now, tell us the truth, or,"

"Or you'll do what?" the girl asked in a solemn manner that took them aback because she had said it so quietly it was almost a whisper. "Threatening me is not going to help, even your little minds cannot deny that. Why is it so hard for you to believe I am who I say I am? I mean, you lot use a form of energy my people pioneered, and yet you're surrounded by broomsticks, cauldrons, mirrors that can be used to communicate over large distances. Why is it so hard for you to believe I am not just nearly a thousand years old, but I have the power to change my physical appearance when I am injured and dying?"

"What do you mean we use a form of energy your people pioneered?" the Great Wizard asked darkly, his gaze turning furious as he glared at her. "What are you talking about, girl?"

The girl closed her eyes and looked down for a second before she looked up, suddenly looking much older than she appeared. "Come with me," she said, coming to a sudden decision. She turned around and walked towards the open wardrobe in the bedroom. But before she reached it, the girl turned towards Tabby.

"C'mon Tabs," she smiled at the cat, who instantly jumped off of the bed and rubbed against her legs. The girl gestured to the cat as she looked at the magicians in the room with her. "And people out there say there's not a trace of intelligent life on this planet," she said mockingly before she walked into the wardrobe.

Everyone in the bedroom looked at each other, wondering what in the name of Merlin and Morgana was going on, and why the girl had walked inside the wardrobe with the cat. Suddenly they heard a whirring, groaning, wheezing sound and suddenly they found themselves….somewhere else. The Great Wizard and the teachers looked at each other in fear and worry. They knew instinctively whatever they had just experienced was not any form of magical transportation they knew of.

"Where are we?" the Great Wizard demanded as he looked around the room.

Maud meanwhile was studying the room with great interest and caution. The room was large, even larger than Mildred's bedroom. The walls were a gleaming dark blue, which gave the interior a warm feeling. There were circular indentations in the room while the blue walls met a jet black floor.

Along the walls were a number of bookcases laden with books, and there were objects Maud recognised while there were some things she didn't.

Dominating the room was a massive mushroom shaped….thing. It stood in the centre of the room. It was formed of hexagonal panels covered in controls that Maud knew were non-magical. Running through the thing was a long glass tube filled with weird objects.

The girl who claimed she was Mildred Hubble, dressed still in Mildreds' tattered uniform, was standing next to the thing in the centre of the room, holding and stroking Tabby without a care in the world.

Suddenly Maud became angry. She was angry because of what this girl was saying and what she was doing, but before she could say anything, demand to know where they were, the girl looked up from the cat. It bothered Maud that Tabby, who was supposed to be Mildred's familiar, was not scratching this stranger, and yet it gave her nagging doubt. What if the girl was Mildred? What if she was telling the truth?

"You didn't come in," the girl said simply, "so I decided to bring you inside."

"Inside, inside what?" Cackle asked, her voice curious but there was underlying anger at the constant riddles.

The girl didn't seem bothered. "Welcome to my TARDIS," she said, smiling instead.

"Your what?" Maud asked.

"My TARDIS," the girl repeated. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space. This is a time and space machine."

Miss Hardbroom scoffed, but the girl quickly touched a control on one of the panels and suddenly two halves of the wall on the far side opposite the mushroom thing split open. A doorway?

"Go outside if you don't believe me," the girl challenged.

Something…. in her voice…. was compelling, and suddenly Miss Hardbroom followed closely by the Great Wizard himself walked through the door.

The girl turned and winked at Maud and Enid. "Wait for it," she said gleefully. She was enjoying this too much.

Miss Hardbroom and the Great Wizard came back inside, their faces slack with shock. It was even more ridiculous on the Wizards' face.

"Hecate, whatever is the matter?" Miss Cackle asked in concern.

The Potion mistress looked at her friend in shock. "The outside….. myself and his Greatness…. we just….," her voice trailed off unable to complete her sentence.

"What?" Miss Cackle prodded.

The prompt from the elderly Headmistress did the trick. Miss Hardbroom's voice returned to its original brisk tone. "We just stepped out of Mildred's wardrobe, Ada," she said, her tone steely but there was an undercurrent of surprise as if her mind was still trying to think of a way to work out what she'd just experienced. "It is clearly some kind of portal in Mildred's room-," she went on, but she was interrupted.

The girl began to laugh. "You're almost right, Miss Hardbroom," she giggled, "you did step through a doorway, but only a doorway through my TARDIS. You see, my people created ships capable of moving through space and time. But when we did that, we quickly realised our ships were evoking….myths and legends around the lesser races - that's you, by the way - and so we developed the means of camouflaging our ships."

The Great Wizard bristled at the idea of being considered a lesser individual, though he didn't realise at the time Romana was simply addressing his entire race. "We are not lesser, girl!:"

"Oh no?" the girl challenged him, her eyes piercing him like a spear. "Tell me, have you humans encountered intelligent life on other planets yet? Have you joined the interstellar community? No. You haven't. At this point, the lot of you are content with turning your planet, your own world, into a graveyard; plastic littering the ocean, toxic waste burnt into the atmosphere. Don't stand here in my own TARDIS and insult me. As far as I am concerned, the whole human race is nothing more than a bunch of self-righteous, arrogant apes. If you don't believe me, let me show what is out there!"

With that, the girl moved quickly to the controls and the tube lit up brighter as that strange wheezing, groaning sound filled the air and the….. ship….. began to vibrate slightly.

"What are you doing?" Miss Cackle asked, agitated as she looked around the room.

The girl ignored her. Miss Hardbroom flicked her fingers - Maud had no idea what she planned to do - but whatever was supposed to happen didn't happen. The Great Wizard tried to use his own considerable magic, but nothing worked.

The girl turned to face them with a laugh. "Worked out you can't perform magic?" she mocked, her eyes dancing with sadistic glee (Maud was now convinced she wasn't Mildred; Mildred didn't mock anybody). "This is a Type 70 TARDIS. We are separated by the normal laws of physics while we are inside this ship, and now we are in the Time Vortex, we're even further removed. You are in a state of temporal grace; your magic will not work in here."

There was that wheezing groaning sound once more and then the - TARDIS - stopped.

"I demand you let us out," the Great Wizard ordered, glaring at the girl.

Strangely, the girl shrugged her shoulders.

"Doors," she called out. The two halves that led outside suddenly opened. The Great Wizard still maintained his glare on the girl, and he moved for the entrance-

Only to shout in surprise and used his hands to quickly stop himself falling. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" he roared.

The teachers and Maud and Enid looked at the girl, who was laughing again, hiccuping some of those golden particles out of her mouth while her hands glowed dully with golden light for a moment.

"ANSWER ME; WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

The witches in the TARDIS console room - the eldest and the youngest - went to the doorway. The moment Maud saw it, she nearly fell through the air. Except it wasn't air.

It was space. It was the same black space with distant stars in the nights' sky, only now she was in that sky. Below her, glowing green and blue with life, was Earth.

Her planet.

Merry Christmas.