A/N Wow, thanks for all the reviews! :D Congrats to PhoenixRe for being the 100th reviewer!

Enjoy the chapter!

CHAPTER TWELVE

Harry pushed the door of the Astronomy classroom. This was the last day of classes before school let out for the winter holidays. Astronomy was really the only class he had actually been enjoying recently. Every other class was loading him down with mountains of homework. Astronomy so far had been fairly easy going. Thank goodness for that – Harry didn't think he'd be able to handle another class as difficult as Transfiguration.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron were the first ones in the classroom. They had left lunch a little early; none of them had had much of an appetite after watching what had happened to Katie Bell a few days previously.

"Hello, Professor," Hermione said. The Doctor was standing on a tall ladder, fiddling with something along the high windowsills.

"Hmm?" the Doctor said, looking down. "Oh, hello kids. Is it time for class already?"

"Er, yes," Harry said. "Um…Professor, I have a question for you." Harry had had a question for the Doctor for quite a while now, ever since he had seen that memory in Dumbledore's pensieve, but hadn't found an appropriate time before now.

"Fire away, Harry," the Doctor said, still buzzing at the windows with his screwdriver.

"All right…um…who's Rose Tyler? And where is she if she's not with you?"

The Doctor started so violently that his foot slipped off the top rung of the ladder and he fell five meters before crashing to the ground.

"Professor!" Hermione half-screamed. She, Harry, and Ron ran over to where the Doctor had fallen, but he was already standing up and brushing off his shoulders.

"Where did you hear that name?" the Doctor said, staring deeply into Harry's eyes. He didn't seem to care that he had just fallen far enough to break his ankles.

"Sir, are you oka-" Harry started to speak, but the Doctor cut him off.

"Never mind that, Harry, where did you hear about Rose Tyler?" The Doctor's voice was urgent, as though the matter was of the utmost importance to him. He put his hands on Harry's shoulders. "Where, Harry? Is she here?"

"I don't know if she's here, I just…um…heard someone talking about her and you, and I was just wondering where she was," Harry lied quickly. He didn't want the Doctor to know that he'd seen his memory.

The Doctor sighed. "You're lying, Harry," he said quietly. He let his hands drop off Harry's shoulders. "But you honestly haven't seen her here?" he asked expectantly.

Harry felt a little abashed that the Doctor had caught his lie. "No," he said, letting his gaze drop to the floor.

The Doctor bit his lip and turned away from Harry. More students were starting to filter into the classroom.

"Take a seat, you three," the Doctor said, disappointment heavy in his voice. Harry and Ron slid into seats in the back, while Hermione sat in the very front. She and Ron were not feeling particularly…amiable towards each other at the moment.

"Well, that was weird. Doesn't he realize he just fell off his ladder?" Ron whispered to Harry before the Doctor started the class.

"Well, it's the last day of class before the holidays," the Doctor said, a grin pasted onto his face again. Harry was surprised by how quickly his mood had changed from extreme disappointment to giddy excitement. It seemed that his quirky, happy appearance was a mask for a much darker personality.

"…and I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you have to take a mid-year test today," the Doctor said. There were several groans around the room, but the Doctor looked genuinely apologetic.

"I know, I know, it's a rotten piece of luck, but at least the day's almost over and you can all go home tomorrow, right?"

Well, Harry thought, that's true for everyone but him.

The Doctor started passing out rolls of parchment with the test printed on them. Harry sighed as he looked down the list of questions. They weren't terribly difficult, but they'd covered a lot of material during the year and he wasn't sure he'd be able to remember everything from September.

For the next forty-five minutes, the class was silent except for the scratching of quills on the paper. Everything passed by fairly uneventfully, until the last few minutes of class as Harry was approaching the last questions.

Give the names of the three planets orbiting Babel Fis 42 and describe their physical characteristics.

Harry bit his lip in concentration and was about to start answering the question when he felt a cold tingling sensation on the back of his neck. It was as though a chilly breeze had just swept across him. Confused, Harry turned around in his seat and looked at the students behind him. It was just Lavender and Parvati. Parvati was completely absorbed by the questions on the test, and Lavender was making kissing sounds with her lips, focused solely on the back of Ron's head.

A little disgusted, Harry faced forward again, his face twisted in confusion. Had he just imagined the sensation?

Another frosty breath dispelled that theory. Harry sat up straight. No one else seemed to notice the cold wind that had crept into the classroom; they were too focused on finishing their tests.

Something strange was definitely going on as a third gust of the impossible wind sent shivers down Harry's spine. It felt…stronger. More powerful.

Harry was no stranger to evil. His whole family had been murdered when he was just one year old. The most powerful dark wizard in history had tried to kill him six times already, and he was just sixteen years old. He knew when something was evil. He could feel it.

The gusts of wind that blew around the room like ghosts that no one else could see were dark. Harry didn't know exactly what they were, but it was safe to assume that they were far from being good.

His first thought was that the dark winds were there for him. He'd been threatened pretty much his entire life. It made sense that Voldemort would have found a way to send his minions into the castle.

But the longer Harry thought about it, the less it felt like that was the right answer. The winds were brushing past him, hardly taking any interest in him. It sounded insane, even to him, that winds could have thoughts, but the winds were feeling less like ghosts and more like tangible creatures with every second that ticked by.

Harry could feel it; he was a random passerby who, just by chance, was watching something much more dramatic play out in the classroom. The winds were whistling past him, unintelligible whispers carried by the frosty gusts. They were gathering together, converging on one point in the front of the room.

Harry was vaguely aware that he was trembling as he scanned the front of the room from under his eyelashes. There was nothing up there, just the chalkboard, the star chart, and the old wooden desk where the Doctor was sitting, grading essays.

…The Doctor.

As soon as the Doctor's name popped into Harry's head, he was sure he had found his answer. The only thing the ghost winds could be closing in on was the Astronomy professor.

The phantom gusts were getting thicker and darker, and still no one could see them. They were clustering around the Doctor, beginning to whirl in a dark cloud around him. Harry saw the Doctor suddenly blink and look up, as though he had just sensed that there was something wrong.

Harry had to say something. He put his hand in the air. "Sir- " he started to say, when the dark winds all dove at the Doctor at once, disappearing inside his head.

There was a gasp from the front of the room. Harry blinked and shook himself. He felt like he had just surfaced from a nightmare and woken back into reality.

The Doctor was grinding the heels of his hands into his temples, as though he had suddenly been seized by a severe headache. His jaw was clenched tight, and his eyes were screwed shut tightly.

"Um…Professor?" Harry asked tentatively. After a few seconds, the Doctor opened his eyes and locked gazes with Harry. The Doctor smiled in an obviously forced and pained manner.

"Yes, Harry?" he forced past his gritted teeth. "What do you need?"

"…Are you all right?" Harry asked after a pause.

"Never better," the Doctor said quickly, his voice rising in pitch. He shut his eyes again for a moment, and then opened them again.

"I think that's enough testing for today," the Doctor said. His breath hitched in his throat. "Pass…pass your papers up to the front."

The whole class looked confused and worried as they brought their roles of parchment up to the Doctor's desk.

"Thank you, thank you…" the Doctor muttered as each person laid down their scroll. "Class dismissed."

With one last worried look at the Doctor, who was covering his face with his hands now, Harry and Ron hurried out the door.

"What's the matter with him?" Ron started to say as he and Harry walked down the hallway. Harry wasn't listening, however. The Voice had started to speak inside his head again.

Why, look who is back, my dear! You weren't expecting this, were you? Come out and play, my friend.

Ah, it's just a little pain. It will all go away with death.

Kill you now? No, no, it is too soon. I have uses for you yet. And either way, it would require far too much power to kill such a magnificent creature as yourself from this great a distance.

I said I could not kill you. That does not mean I do not have enough power to do…THIS!

Good night, my friend! Sleep well! Until we meet again!

"…like I was telling Lav, it's not what you know, it's who…hey, Harry, are you okay?"

Harry had suddenly jerked as what felt like an arc of electricity raced through him. He staggered as his knees gave out from underneath him.

"Harry!" Ron said, alarmed. He just managed to catch Harry by the arms before he fell to the floor.

"Harry, what's wrong?" Ron repeated, panic evident in his voice.

"Nothing, it's nothing," Harry murmured as he tried to push away Ron's hands.

"Don't tell me that's nothing, you just collapsed on me!" Ron said indignantly.

"I'm just tired, that's all," Harry said evasively. "Not enough sleep, you know, with homework and…things."

Ron looked suspiciously at him. "If you say so," he finally said.

"Won-Won!" squealed a voice from behind them. A pair of skinny pale arms flung themselves around Ron's neck.

"Hello, Lavender," Ron said, his face a little red. Harry raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, don't let me keep you two," Harry said, edging away as Lavender coyly drew quite close to Ron.

"Sure, Harry," Ron said. There was a very slight miserable tone to his voice.

Harry backed away quite quickly when Lavender began to settle herself into Ron's lap. He had something a little more important to worry about at the moment than Ron's problems with his girlfriend. For one thing, he was now positive that the voice he kept hearing in his head was threatening the Doctor into doing…something.

And that made him more dangerous than ever.

The Doctor knew that he was in trouble the moment the first demon slipped inside his head.

He had been grading papers as his last class took their last tests before the holidays. Some of the essays had been quite good, while others had been…lacking. He was especially disturbed by the lip-shaped smears of lipstick he had found all over Lavender Brown's essay.

Everything had been running smoothly. Then, without a single warning, his mind had been brutally assaulted by a dark…presence. As soon as the 'thing' had attacked, he had thrown up his strongest mental barriers in a split second. He had felt more and more of the assaults as the dark winds crowded into his head, prowling around the iron walls of his last shelter, looking for chinks in the armor.

He had responded to Harry and the rest of the class as well as he could. He could only spare the smallest part of his brain to regular motor functions as he battled furiously with the demons, just long enough for the last students to close the door as they scurried away.

The moment the door was shut, the Doctor fell to his knees, his hands gripping the sides of his head as though that would make the invaders leave him alone. The sheer number of minds inside his head, all working viciously to tear down his barriers, was beginning to overcome him. He panted heavily as they tore at his mind, leaving invisible scars behind them. He fell onto his side as black spots started to blur his vision. His thoughts were becoming disjointed, less focused, weaker…

There was a sweeping sensation inside his head, and the demons were suddenly banished. Chest heaving, he let his head fall back onto the ground with his eyes closed.

The relief didn't last long as a voice like nails on a chalkboard began to speak inside his head.

Why, look who is back, my dear! You weren't expecting this, were you? Come out and play, my friend.

Groaning, the Doctor shook his head. He wasn't going to lower his barriers just because some insane creature told him to.

What did you do to me? the Doctor demanded from behind his barriers as he continued to tremble.

Ah, it's just a little pain. It will all go away with death.

Startled, the Doctor felt like he'd just been punched in the gut. Death? You can't kill me. It's going to take a lot more than just a mental attack…

Kill you now? No, no, it is too soon. I have uses for you yet. And either way, it would require far too much power to kill such a magnificent creature as yourself from this great a distance.

The Doctor continued to lurk behind the iron walls. Is that supposed to be comforting?

I said I could not kill you. That does not mean I do not have enough power to do…THIS!

A burst of white hot pain suddenly erupted inside the Doctor. His breath was completely stolen away as fire coursed through his whole body. He was so surprised he couldn't even cry out as he shook and fought against the knives forcing their way through his veins and cutting him to shreds.

The Doctor screamed inside his head. Only a dark chuckle of sick pleasure answered him. The knives continued to coarse through him, while fire blazed inside right behind them. The Doctor could feel his physical body weakening by the second. Each moment that passed was dragged out for a year, and when the force gripping him finally relaxed its hold, he couldn't muster enough energy to even lift his eyelids again, much less pull himself to his feet.

He could hear the screeching voice faintly through the blood pounding in his ears…

Good night, my friend! Sleep well! Until we meet again!

Then the force reached back into his head and, with a faint snapping sound, sent him spiraling into the darkness as he passed out.

A/N :) Okay…maybe I was the one chuckling with sick pleasure as I wrote this chapter…goodness gracious, what is WRONG with me? ;)

Bonus points to any reviewers who catch my reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! :D