WHY HELLO THERE! Sorry about the absence, but my roommate attempted to steal my laptop (biometric security is awesome), so i haven't been able so do much. Short chapter, and a time skip, which will be explained in Chapter 5. But more importantly, the next couple chapters feature a guest star that many people will know and love, The 11th Doctor! Not going to be there for more than 2 chapters, so putting it under "Crossover" didn't feel right, you know? But anywho, onto the story!

Chapter Four: Not Enough Lemon Drops (Or Fish Fingers)

Harry was having an odd day. He was pretty sure he'd somehow agreed to marry the witch that was sitting by his side, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper. The runes and symbols made his head spin, so he'd given up trying to understand what she was actually doing. Instead, he was pondering how different his life had become in just the course of a single day.

Ron, of course, was still being Ron. He refused to speak to either of them, instead choosing to affix a scowl to his face permanently. Harry wondered briefly if Snape gave lessons on that. Besides Ron, there was the obvious change- Hermione. She was spending all of her free time with him, even if (like right then) she was just near him. She had been more affectionate with him as well; brushing her hand across his, giving him little smiles here and there, and even kissing him on the check once. He wasn't complaining at all, though, and that surprised him the most. He was honestly enjoying it. Sure, he'd admitted to himself that Hermione was rather pretty more than once, especially since their fourth year. She'd grown quite a bit, and Harry blushed as he thought about just how much she'd grown. But he was sure he'd have known before now if he had feelings for her- it couldn't just come out of nowhere like that, right? "I'm bloody well going mad. I'm sitting here talking to myself about whether or not I'm doing the whacky and falling for my best friend. Well, at least I'm still sane enough enough to realize that I'm insane." Harry stopped for a second to try to work that last thought out, before giving it up as a lost cause and turning to Hermione. She chose that moment to jump up and yell, "I've got it!"

However, she was facing away from Harry, giving him just enough of a view to make him turn completely red. "Tomatoes have probably had less color than this," he thought. He figured he'd try and distract himself from the five-star view his seating offered before it got out of hand, however. "What, precisely, have you got? I mean, besides a rather confusing piece of parchment." Hermione crouched back down and showed him several symbols that meant nothing to him on said confusing parchment. "See these? I didn't write those- look at the ink! I've managed to create a responsive page. It'll try and complete a problem- and using that, we can try and figure out why a certain spell doesn't work with a set of variables. Only, I wonder why it looks like it was written in pen-"

The interruption came in a rhythmically rising and falling screeching sound, and a sudden flash of light. What they saw next, however, was almost as confusing as Harry thought Hermione's ridiculously smart paper was; A muggle police box, falling down from the sky. As it fell, it actually slowed down, and for lack of a better term, landed. Harry and Hermione were up immediately, wands drawn and trained on the source of the disturbance. They inched closer, casting Protego as they went, before the police box opened, and a distinctly strange man with a distinctly strange wand leapt out. A whining sound went out, and a burst of energy sprang from the wand, flowing around the shields the two teens had put up. The man yelled something distinctly strange, then: "Take that, you bloody overgrown salt-shakers! Oh hang on." The energy stopped, and Harry got his first good look at the man. If he had thought the man strange, or the police box, his wand was stranger still; from what Harry could see, it was made entirely of metal, which made very little sense, as Hermione had told him that metal didn't have inherent magical properties, and couldn't be used in a wand. The man looked them over a few times, looked back at his police box, and waved his wand a couple times. Looking at it, he began to speak.

"Well, that can't be right. Says it's Earth. Now wasn't I just on Praxis 9? Well, can't argue with Earth. Earth it is. Lot of weird energy flowing around here, though… seems almost targeted. I wonder if they have sonic tech yet? Looks like it, they're all carrying screwdrivers."

Hermione was close to breaking down at this point. A police box had fallen from the sky, slowed and landed, and spit out whatever this man was. Her logical mind was on the point of imploding. "EXCUSE ME, SIR! Would you mind explaining how your police box survived a fall from the sky, how it got there to begin with, and why you aren't a smear on the roof of it?" Harry and the strange man froze on the spot, waiting for her breathing to even out. "Well, young lady, I'd say you're at least semi-intelligent. (Hermione's face formed a mask of absolute shock here.) I'll make a deal. Explain this strange energy flow to me, and I'll explain how I got here." Hermione's eyes lit up, and she began talking at hypersonic speed. Hermione never turned down the chance to explain something, and nobody else was out and about, so she didn't hold back for fear of being laughed at.

"The energy flow you're picking up on- which I would assume you would know about, carrying a wand and all- is magical energy. This place has been the site of many powerful rituals for over a thousand years. The magical energy from those rituals, and from the wards surrounding the school, has saturated the ground, the air, and the stones of the castle itself. Most electronics won't work around here without being spelled to do so, because the magical energy acts as interference. Now, how on earth did you land a police box in the middle of the most heavily warded area in Europe?"

The man paused a moment. "So you call it Magic here, eh? Good a name as any, I guess. As for how the police box got in the sky, I do believe you just explained it. It hit some sort of energy field that it couldn't phase through, and the engine stopped. I just barely had enough temporal force left to slow down and land." Hermione looked even more confused now. "Engine? Temporal Force? It's a bloody police box you bloody psychopath!" The man jumped and pointed his wand again, and Hermione reacted instinctively; she cast two stunners in quick succession, and both hit him square in the torso. She squeaked, and brought her hands up to her face before responding logically, and sent a patronus off to Dumbledore with a message.

"Harry?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

"You'll cover for me if I ended up accidentally killing him, right?"

"Yes, Hermione."

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Albus Dumbledore was having a perfectly nice day. He had just restocked his lemon drops; nobody quite understood how excellent the muggle sweets were for relieving the headaches that so often came with his day to day life. Fawkes was mid-cycle, and wasn't going to be Burning anytime soon. And the earl gray tea he had ordered was absolutely perfect. However, as always, peace at Hogwarts was short-lived that day. A rather powerful patronus came crashing into his office, knocking down half his magical instruments from their tables. Not many knew it, but patroni could interact with magical objects, and the mess his office had just become was one of the more annoying cases. The patronus proceeded to speak in miss Granger's voice: "Professor, we're down by the lake. A crazy man with a metal wand in a police box crash landed out here and I may have stunned him a little too hard. Please send Madame Pomfrey. And maybe a few Aurors. Or a squadron."

As the silver mist dissolved, Albus Dumbledore was utterly bewildered. That may seem logical to most, but Albus Dumbledore had only ever been truly lost three times in his life; Once on the muggle Underground, another time with a rather aggressive fan of his in his younger days, and again more recently with the knowledge that Severus Snape actually washed his hair twice a day, and it was just naturally as greasy as it was.

"I do not have enough lemon drops."