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Tempus Autem Domine.

The moment Romana woke up, she realised the regeneration was over. Yeah, her brain still felt like it had been transformed into a mound of jelly and shaken so fast she could barely think, but she could tell there was only a small amount of residual regeneration energy left in her system. She moved as slowly as she could, knowing if she moved too quickly she might feel worse.

Once she was sitting upright, Romana looked around, and she wasn't particularly surprised to find herself in the sick ward, and she wondered idly about the weird mysteries that bound the universe; prisons were the same, libraries were the same, and sick bays and hospitals were virtually identical. It was one of those weird facts of life she had never worked, and she could not help but wonder if that bastard Rassilon had something to do with it, given he had messed with universal evolution...

Seeing she was still dressed in her previous self's clothes but paying it no mind since she was rethinking her idea of staying on Earth while she stayed on the planet and learnt about magic and was wondering if she should just leave the planet and go back to travelling the universe, Romana wondered what was going to happen now. Her past self had been tempted once or twice to just get out and travel the stars once more, though truthfully being at the Academy had distracted her from the memories of her time in the presidency over those intellectual giants on the High Council who had fought her left, right and centre before the Time War had started.

She closed her eyes as her mind was attacked by the memories…Romana shook her head and got off the bed, only for her to stumble around, and curse both Ethel Hallow and Agatha Cackle for their parts in her regeneration. She cursed the school, she cursed Agatha's plan to get her killed while she made her sister look bad. Romana ground her teeth together, mentally planning to kill the stupid human when she saw her again. No more games.

Pushing the anger out of her mind since it wasn't going to completely help her now, especially if she decided to deal with Agatha on another occasion. There was no doubt the human would try to come back. As she stood up Romana took a few experimental walks about the sick ward for her to get used to her body now it had 'gelled' since her regeneration.

While she was walking around, getting used to her new body properly, thankful that the brief time she'd had before she'd put herself into the coma to recover had been time enough to get some control over her new self.

Romana sighed at the thought of the loss of her past life. The problem with being away from Gallifrey, she thought, is it sometimes makes you careless.

Still, she had liked being her previous self. Being in the body of a child once more had been liberating, though she had always known she could have regenerated herself into such a youthful form, though she knew it wasn't practical.

She had only regenerated into a child in her last incarnation out of memory and respect for the real Mildred Hubble, and she had become so enthralled with being in a body that was so young she had decided her next incarnation would be as young. But now she wasn't so sure because Romana had no idea what was going to happen.

There was no doubt in her mind the teachers, the Great Wizard, and the other girls were going to ask her questions about her identity. Romana knew thanks to stories told by the Doctor about his own regenerations how stubborn humans could be. She remembered how he had told her about how his companions, Ben and Polly, had been so taken aback by his first regeneration, mostly because the Doctor had not really bothered to tell them about it, and it had taken a Dalek of all things to make Ben believe that the second Doctor was still the same person, he just looked and acted different, that was all -

Well, I didn't tell Maud or Enid about regeneration either, did I? Romana rebuked herself as she paced up and down in the sickbay, thinking back to those moments where they had been both so close to her TARDIS. She could have effortlessly shown them inside, told them the truth…

She sighed. It was impossible for her to change the past, it had happened so there was nothing she could do about it…

Just as she was busy thinking about the past, Romana looked up when the door opened and Miss Cackle walked in. Romana instantly noticed the teacher was unsurprised to see her up; it made her wonder if the teachers had placed some kind of spell on her to alert them she was awake or not, but she didn't think it mattered.

In truth, it probably wasn't so bad, Romana thought to herself if she could persuade Miss Cackle she was who she said she was, then perhaps with the support of one of the teachers, particularly one of the more reasonable ones, she might be able to persuade the others...

Alright, granted, she had her doubts about the woman, and how 'Julie' had been forced to endure meeting after meeting after meeting to discuss how her 'daughter' was just not focusing, but maybe Miss Cackle could still be persuaded...

"Hello Miss Cackle," she greeted, knowing from her past experiences both as a TARDIS traveller and as a politician on the High Council that the best thing to do was to keep the greetings short and sweet.

The older looking woman sent her a smile, but Romana winced at how awkward it was. This might not be as simple as she'd hoped.

"Hello," the woman replied back, but she looked like she wanted to say more but she didn't know where to begin. Romana did not blame her.

"I know this is confusing for you," she began diplomatically, "but maybe we can try again?"

Miss Cackle smiled happily then, clearly trying hard to not seem out of her depth. "Yes! That sounds good!"

Romana gestured for the bed next to her own, remembering all too well how the woman liked to take control by pointing out the different chairs. She wasn't going to play the same game now. This time she was going to be the one in control.

Miss Cackle looked a bit miffed, but she accepted the terms and so she sat down. "Thank you," she said with some irony.

Romana decided to be blunt. "Let's get to basics, you don't know who I am and you don't believe I am who I say I am?" she asked.

"You could say that," Miss Cackle remarked dryly.

Romana sighed, "That's the problem with regeneration. It can extend life, heal injuries, and it can even put a temporary stopper on death…. but it does come with so many problems." She looked down at her hands and then lifted her head up, looking solemnly up at the physically older woman. "The biggest, especially when you regenerate in front of humans, is stubborn disbelief."

"Can you blame us? You appear out of nowhere, and we do not know where one of our students happens to be, and you claim to be her."

Romana smiled, thankful she was dealing with Miss Cackle and not her arrogant deputy. At least with Cackle, you had someone diplomatic and tactful rather than annoyingly blunt. "No, I suppose not," she admitted.

Miss Cackle was silent for a moment as she studied the girl in front of her, still dressed in what was left of Mildred's uniform. She was not sure what to think, but after everything that had happened, coupled with her life experience of being a witch… Miss Cackle was just not sure.

She had been around for a long time, but she had seen quite a bit in her life and she knew there were things out there that not even magic itself could explain.

"You keep saying human," Miss Cackle commented, deciding to change the subject, "and you called us lesser races-."

"I was just stating a fact known to my race, Miss Cackle. And if you are wondering if I am not human, you would be right. I don't come from this planet," Romana replied. "I come from an infinitely more advanced race than yours, and if you think I am here to invade, don't worry."

"Who are you? What are you?" Miss Cackle asked, clearly not planning on dwelling on that matter.

Romana was about to answer when she paused, feeling something her temporal senses picked up on, followed by something she could feel and see at the same time. She sighed mentally when she saw, just behind Miss Cackle the forms of the Great Wizard and Miss Hardbroom appear, the light rippling around their bodies.

"If I am to tell you," Romana replied archly, putting on some of her ice queen persona, "then why don't we all chat, isn't that right Miss Hardbroom, Your Greatness? Stop playing these infantile games, they make you look more inferior."

Romana almost laughed when the two humans looked gobsmacked by her revelation. "I can see you both, yes," said, "as a Time Lord I can see through the light aura; your magic may be able to make you both invisible, but even magic has to obey the laws of physics. You may as well appear. I know you are standing…. there," she theatrically pointed at them both.

Miss Hardbroom and the Great Wizard appeared, both of them looked annoyed and frustrated they'd been found so easily. Miss Cackle looked genuinely frustrated and Romana realised there and then the headmistress had not known about this.

"Hecate!" she chided, glaring at her deputy in frustration, but the deputy headmistress did not look abashed. In fact, she looked annoyed they had been found so easily.

"Ada, we had to come, but we decided to cast an invisibility spell to learn what we could about her," the Great Wizard answered for the pair of them, but Romana studied them both with a smirk.

"You could have just asked," the young looking Time Lady pointed out amicably, "my regeneration is pretty much over, and since we here in the sick ward, and nowhere near my TARDIS so you'd try to vanish it again. Don't look at me like that, Miss Hardbroom," she added when she saw the look of surprise on the witch's face, "I had put myself into a self-induced coma to heal from my regeneration, I was not completely asleep. I was aware of everything going on around me. Trying to vanish my ship…. if I had any more proof of how stupid humans are, well I've got it spades. How dare you try to vanish my ship, you stupid little monkey!"

The shift from amiable to hostile surprised the humans, but Romana was not finished. She reached inside a pocket in her gymslip and pulled out a rectangular black object. "Remember this?" Romana taunted the deputy headmistress as she waved the mobile in front of her before the potions mistress could say anything angry back in response to the insult.

Hecate gaped at it, remembering the first day of term when Mildred had called her mother on it. Hecate was not ignorant of the non-magical world, so she knew about mobile phones, the internet, and computers, but she didn't like the devices since they were inferior to magic. "It cannot be the same one!"

Romana smirked and turned the phone on and she swiped the screen and held up the phone so it showed a selfie of her former self wearing her Cackles uniform. "Yes, it is," she pointed out unnecessarily. "It is."

"But I vanished it!" Miss Hardbroom whispered in disbelief. "It should be in vanishment."

"Do you know what vanishment is in a universal manner? I mean, is it a pocket dimension separated sideways in time?" Romana asked curiously, her voice making it clear she wanted an answer.

Miss Hardbroom wasn't sure what compelled her to reply, but when she did she cringed inwardly. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" Romana repeated, glaring at the woman with mocking dislike. "I know you don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if none of you do. That's the problem with you humans, you're so stupid it isn't funny. Do you want to enlighten you? Vanishment is a small bubble in the Time Vortex, the space my TARDIS and others like it travel through. As a result, it wasn't difficult to find the phone and bring it back."

She was lying. It had taken her a short while to find vanishment, even with the TARDIS. After a few days of being exposed to the magical world at Cackles where Miss Hardbroom frequently used the spell to get rid of anything she did not like, it was easy for her to pin down where they went. Romana had made it easier for the teacher. She had shown her friend Maud a few non-magical things like games, pieces of technology, stuff like that and while Maud had the same technophobic attitude HB had, she was a little bit more open-minded than the potions mistress. Romana had staged those moments so she could scan the spell.

At first, she had believed the vanishing spell sent them to a realm she could not access, but it would not have fitted in with the general impression Romana had already of the school and their 'magic.' She had learnt the magical world used artron energy, though in a manner she had not managed to grasp at that moment since she was still learning the ins and the outs while using her TARDIS to study the emissions from the spells so she could work out how they'd done it so she could duplicate it for herself. That type of knowledge could prove useful for her, and it might even help her find her people.

Sure, she had gone through a few detentions because HB was annoyed more "non-magical rubbish" was being brought into the school, but Romana did not care. She had managed to find vanishment and she had opened it up and found her things with her TARDIS. Romana didn't care about lying to the humans in the room with her. She wanted them to wake up and realise she could do things they couldn't.

"In fact, you people use the Time Vortex for a lot of things. You use it for transporting yourself from one place to another in the blink of an eye," Romana went on, "I'm actually starting to think about calling up the rent."

The Great Wizard interjected, snorting in that pompous manner that was clear to Romana, who had centuries over them all, especially in the field of politics that the human did not believe it. "We do not pass through this Time Vortex, girl-," he began, but Romana immediately interrupted him.

"Prove it," she said in a rather agreeable manner that took them all by surprise.

The Great Wizard took a step back, looking at her in surprise. "What do you mean?" he asked cautiously, wondering what the girl was going to get at.

Romana stared at him for a moment and then smiled at him, in a challenging and almost cheeky manner. "I'm going to prove you and every witch and wizard that transfers passes through the Time Vortex," she said, amplifying her Time Lord psychic empathy field slightly to make the Great Wizard do what he was told. "I want you to transfer from where are you are now, to….," Romana looked around for inspiration, and she grinned and pointed at the far wall behind herself and Miss Cackle, and she pointed her finger to it, "to that fall wall."

Once she was finished she mentally strengthened her psychic field to make sure the Great Wizard did what he was told. She mentally smirked with glee and if it wasn't for the people in the room with her, she would have begun jumping up and down with glee around the room.

The Great Wizard nodded, accepting the challenge and believing it was his own decision. "Very well," he replied and made a gesture with both hands like he was an angry football player, but because of her exposure to this world, Romana was certain the gesture had a different meaning.

She grinned when the Great Wizard looked down at his feet as though surprised to find they were still rooted to the same floor as before, and one glance at both Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom showed they were both surprised.

The Great Wizard tried to transfer again, but he was still rooted to the ground. Still astonished, the wizard began to shake and he turned to Romana.

The Time Lady tried to school her face into a more dignified and serious manner, but she couldn't resist the temptation to smirk smugly at the human.

"What did you do?" he demanded furiously.

Romana could not resist the urge to smirk cheekily at the wizard. "Time Lady," she reminded him, "I stopped your little transfer ability into the vortex. My people have a close relationship with the Time Vortex, well I mean we should, we created the Vortex to enable time travel in the first place. Oh, and you can transfer now, I've removed the block," she finished when she'd finished speaking.

Glaring at the Time Lady though Romana could see in the humans' eye the gleam of fear which was understandable since she had basically shown that she could, and would, block off one of his powers without any effort, the Great Wizard immediately tried to transfer…. and materialised in the part of the room Romana had challenged him to transfer to.

Reassured his transfer ability had returned, the Great Wizard stormed over to Romana. "Never do that again!"

Romana shrugged indifferently. There was no chance she was going to throw away an ability simply because the humans did not like it. But she had already made plans to make sure none of the teachers caused her problems. It might make them wake up and spend a few days in the real world after all walking was good for the human body, right?

She sat back down on the bed without a word and looks up at the humans around her without any kind of fear. "Don't you want to know more about me?" she asked. "That's one of the reasons why you are here, Miss Cackle, and why you two came in here to spy on this, right?"

Romana didn't care if she was being rude because it was right, but more than that she had long since wanted to put the humans in their place. She had spent the last few months being told she was worthless by them, and now she had lost one of her regenerations because of the power-hungry ambitions of Miss Cackle's sister. She wasn't likely to forgive and forget in a hurry. No, if she ever met Agatha again she would likely kill her or do something so unpleasant to her the human would never recover from it.

Hardbroom glowered at her, but Miss Cackle quickly interjected. "Why, yes. You were telling me more about yourself."

You mean before your colleague and the Great Wizard interrupted, you mean, she thought scornfully, but she nodded, keeping her irritation from making itself clear and plain on her face. "Yes," she replied simply.

"You called yourself a Time Lord, what are they? Who are they?" Cackle corrected herself.

Romana scratched her head as she tried to think about the best, and the simplest means of answering that question the humans could understand. She wasn't sure if she should tell them about the Time War, but it was bound to crop up at some point, so she decided to get to that painful part of the topic when she got to that point.

But she wasn't looking forward to getting to it.

She sighed when she realised this was going to take a while.

Until the next time...