Chapter 9: Refuge:

Clara was starting to realise that she hadn't eaten since whatever passed for the previous day in this bizarre dimension. Their trek through the BBC quarry was even more exhausting as a result. Its similarity to so many alien worlds was screwing with her mind too.

"Focus on what your eyes see." Said River. "Not what your mind sees. Think of things you knew from before the memories came. They were just a story you saw."

"Ok." Said Clara. "Thinking." She'd been going through these exercises with the girl for as long as they'd been walking. It kept her from flashing back again. She tried to picture her home, her first home. It was hard to do, since it had been so long ago. It was part of the reason the Doctor had never just left her behind to recover. She felt like a stranger in her own time whenever she tried to stay.

But fragments of her childhood had clung on and the more she thought about them, the clearer they became. She thought about the house she'd lived in. The park she'd walked through to get to school. The times playing doctors and nurses with Martha...

River whacked her on the back of the head again. Even with all the effort, her mind kept straying to one of the other Clara's. And it was starting to drain her, whenever these exercises went wrong. She needed to rest.

"Time for a break." Said River, as though she'd read her mind. (Which, Clara reminded herself, she had.) "Play a game."

"River, we're trying to find the Doctor and the others. There's villains and things after us. Now's probably not a good time to..."

"I spy with my little eye..." Said River. "Something beginning with r."

Clara sighed. Couldn't hurt, she supposed. "Rocks. Same as we've been surrounded by for ages."

River smiled. "Your turn."

"Ok." She looked around for anything that didn't begin with R "I spy, something beginning with... F."

"Fox." Said River, squinting at a desert fox scampering through the rocks. "I hate them."

"You would."

River wandered round the end of a cliff ahead of Clara. "I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with... B."

"B? What begins with B round here?" But then she spotted it up ahead. "Building! Civilisation!"

It looked as though it had once been a school, but abandoned for some time. The sign had been knocked down so Clara couldn't tell whether it was a school from any particular TV series. But it seemed life had returned to it recently. There were people walking around, clearing the overgrown grounds. People who could help them on their way. The thought sent a relived shiver through Clara.

But somehow it kept getting colder, unnaturally cold given the heat from before. And a mist was descending on them...

"Dementors!" Shouted River.

"Where?" Clara looked around wildly, but spotted nothing. She remembered that muggles couldn't see them. Nor could they cast patroni...

"Once again, run." Said Clara.

They ran, trying hard to ignore the feeling of despair that spread rapidly through themselves.

Clara also felt the memories she most hated being forcibly dragged to the surface. "YOU WILL SUBMIT TO THE CONDITIONING! YOU WILL BE PURIFIED!"

"I am Oswin Oswald! I am not a Dalek! I am not a Dalek!"

"River!" She called for help, only to see that the girl was clutching her head and screaming. "No! I don't want to go back to that place! Please don't make me!"

"You've chosen a fine time to turn helpless!" Clara groaned and tried to drag her along. But she was getting weaker and darkness was spreading round her mind.

She didn't see the dementor, but she felt pressure on her arm as the creature grabbed her. And she heard a rattling breath drawing closer.

But she never got a chance to feel the kiss. A brilliant white light erupted from nowhere and the coldness lifted. The dementor had been driven back.

Clara fell to the ground, but pulled her head up to look at her rescuer. A familiar figure was aproaching.

"Tell Mr Wonka that these two are in need of some chocolate." Dumbledore said to someone stood behind him.


The main column was in a similar state of exhaustion, but the Doctor seemed unaffected. He'd had the map held in front of him for most of the time he'd been walking along, though he still seemed to be able to negotiate all the obstacles in front of him, trying to work out where his companion would be.

"Think like Clara, think like Clara." He muttered. "What would she think about? What do humans think about? Must be very boring in their heads... Give up thinking like Clara. Getting me nowhere. Blimey! How do they get anything done?"

"Really keen on rescuing her isn't he?" Said Faith.

"It's natural." Said the terminator. "Her image fulfils 78.656% of the parameters considered attractive by males."

"That," said the Doctor, "is very much not why I'd trying to find her. Probably. It's a bit... This is not constructive! Where am I supposed to find her?"

"I'm not going to the Neutral Capital!" He heard Villa shouting.

"The Neutral Capital!" The Doctor rushed over to him. "Thank you Villa. If she's got across the river and hit this road here and gone that way, that's where she'll end up. If she's not, she's probably suffered a horrible death. But no thinking about that. If that's where you're going, I'm coming along."

"It's not where I'm going." Said Villa. "The Neutrals fight to keep the war out. And now Sharpe wants me to requisition transport from them. Send the Doctor instead. He wants to go."

"Well since you know about the Neutrals, and about liberating things from people. That about makes you right for the job." Sharp grinned. "Doctor, you can go with him if you like."

"I should go too." Faith added. "Else these two are probably getting killed."

"Look, if you wanted to take me for a night on the town, you only had to ask." Villa smiled at her."

The slayer looked him up and down. Even she had her limits. "I'd sooner take the Doctor out."

"Wait, I wanna come too." Said Guy. "In case something ironic happens to the main column while these guys are gone."

"Suit yourselves." Said Sharpe. "Stea... Salvage a bunch of cars from the town and join us at the rendezvous. Scotland and Solo should be there already."

"Why are they called the Neutrals?" The Doctor asked, once Sharp had gone.

"The Neutrals from Futurama run the place." Said Faith. "But they let anyone in who wants out of the war."

"So I'm rescuing the impossible girl from a city full of people who hate violence." The Doctor smiled. "This should be nice and simple."

"Why did he have to say that?" Muttered Guy.


Roald Dahl hadn't been wrong when he'd said that Mr Wonka's chocolate was the most delicious in all the world. Clara chomped it down happily, feeling the cold dread the dementors had brought evaporating as she did so.

Dumbledore had taken them to a room he was using as an office, where they were sat in a pair of armchairs, a mountain of chocolate on the coffee table in front of them.

"We lost most of our transport when we were driven out of our last place." Said Dumbledore. But I'm sure we can find you something. We haven't looked in the bike sheds here yet."

As he sent one of his aides to look into that, Clara asked him something she was very curious about. "Why are you here?"

"42." Dumbledore smiled. "But I imagine you want to know how I came to be in this place."

"Well yes. I know Hogwarts is under siege. Shouldn't you be helping."

"So I should." Said Dumbledore. "But fate, it seems has trapped me outside it."

"Why were you outside when the villains showed up?"

"It's necessary, sometimes, to take refuge from the Dumbledore bashing fics." He sighed.

"What?"

"There are certain fans who believe that I did a poor job helping Harry in the books. And they waste no time telling this world so. I sometimes take breaks to escape from these stories for a while."

"Well that's hardly fair." Said Clara. "Everything you did was for the good of the cause. Sometimes there are no easy answers."

"Although repeatedly sending Harry to live with the Dursleys probably constitutes child abuse." Said River.

"That was to keep a magical protection over him." Said Clara.

"Didn't stop the dementors finding him. And also..."

"River." Clara interrupted. "Why don't you help them find those bikes?"

River shrugged and left.

"Look." Said Clara. "We can debate these things till the cows come home. But you were the one who had to make the hard decisions. We can only hope they were the right ones. You haven't just given up have you?"

"Of course not." Said Dumbledore. "This place you staggered into is a refuge I set up for regular victims of fan bashing. We had Scrappy Doo and Jar Jar Binks join us yesterday. Since this war, I've been keeping them safe until they can prove themselves. Last week, we had to evacuate the last place we'd been staying. There was a girl who can start fires at will who came to visit. Now there's nothing but ashes. It's a shame. I'd just opened a new packet of jelly babies."

"The Doctor used to love them." Said Clara.

"Yes. His tenth persona was very sad that his stomach disagreed with them."

"Wait. When did you meet him?"

"There were creatures in your world hoping to bring miss Rowling's creations to life. I was drawn there and ended up helping him. I seem to recall, you were there too."

"Yeah, but I've been trying to bury those memories." Clara said. She explained to him about her fragments, scattered throughout time and space and how much difficulty she was having dealing with the aftershock.

"Your memories may hurt, but they may also be of help to you." Dumbledore said when she'd finished. "These fragments were you Clara. And I'm sure things will get better with time. You may even learn to keep the memories you need for when you need them."

Clara smiled. It was good to hear Dumbledore give her some vague advice, which would probably be of use to her later.

"Now." Said the wizard. "I think we should see how your friend's getting along in the bike sheds."

"The good news is, we have bikes." Said River. "The bad news... You know anyway."

When the previous owners of the bikes had moved out, they'd taken all the bikes that were in working condition. The only ones left behind were the battered and broken ones piled against the far wall, which had been kept as a useful source of spare parts. As such, they'd been dismantled beyond recognition.

"Alright." Said Clara. "We gather all the parts that work and put them together to make two whole bikes."

"Not all parts work with all bikes." River pointed out.

"We'll work it out."

"It would help if one of us had the expertise." Said River. "Or knowledge of how to mend bikes. Or even some tools would help."

"I suppose we could just go on foot."

"The dementors will move in again once they see you." Said Dawn Summers, who'd been helping them look. "If you're fast enough and we distract them, you might just go unnoticed. But you'll need bikes."

Clara stamped in frustration. "If only Bicycle Repair Man was here!"

"You called?" Said Bicycle Repair Man.

"Wait, how did you get here so quickly?" Said Dawn.

"I sensed that I'd be needed here today, so I broke off from the column this morning."

"So you have some sort of bicycle repairey sense?"

"Something like that. Now let's have a look."

He worked incredibly quickly. Soon identifying the parts that would fit together best and spending twenty minutes or so testing each combination. From there it was a simple case of bolting this, inflating that, banging very hard on the other. And in well under an hour, he'd produced two bikes that were rickety but serviceable.

"Credit where credit's due." Said Clara.

"She's sorry she made fun of you." Said River. "She's sorry a lot."

"No, no. It's fine." Said Bicycle Repair Man. "Thing is, I never wanted to be a superhero anyway. I always wanted to be... A lumberjack!" He waved his arms out as the music swelled, only for a humourless Colonel to grab his shoulder.

"Stop that. Stop that." Said the Colonel. "This whole thing is getting silly enough as it is. Musical numbers make very little sense in prose anyway and River and Clara need to get on with things." He turned to them. "Well? Get on with it!"

The girls did as he said, cycling out onto the road and past a sign reading Neutral Capital 10 Kilometrons.


Author's Notes: The creatures trying to bring J K Rowling's creations to life is a reference to a Christmas special which (sadly) never got made.