Author's Note:I feel like I should say this again as I haven't said it in a while - thank you to all who are reading the story! It really helps keep me going to know that people are still enjoying it :) It's also been pointed out to me what the scale of the different timelines is: a month in the Potter Universe is roughly a week in Amy and Rory's universe. This made me realise that I made a mistake in the last chapter regarding it being winter in Amy and Rory's universe, so have tweaked the last chapter slightly. You don't need to re-read it, since I've mentioned it here, this is just in case it comes up later and everyone gets confused :)

Now, on with the new chapter!

13. Blending in.

River walked slowly down Diagon Alley after her dismissal from Hogwarts, drinking in its every detail. She was used to magical alien landscapes, bustling streets and strange shops. She was used to the foreignness of it all. But she knew that being here, a world so familiar and yet so strange all at the same time, was not something that could ever seem ordinary.

The buildings leaned over her head and their shop fronts jutted into the street. Their paint was peeling, the names were in old fashioned font, and the streets running between them were cobbled. They sold quills, gowns and robes. There was an apothecary and, just down the street, a pet shop. Pubs with names straight of the medieval era loomed in the distance. All of this she registered with a practiced eye, and marvelled at its authentic age, at what must be the heart of a rich history and tradition.

And yet this same eye noticed that a third of the shoppers were in modern Muggle dress. They wondered through the streets, marvelling at brooms that actually flew. One, to their evident surprise, found their ice cream (River secretly admired whoever could eat ice cream in the snow) shooting sparks that reached such a height they might as well say goodbye to their eyebrows. A man in the middle of the street let his newspaper fall carelessly to the ground, and River saw that the pictures where moving – the Daily Prophet, then.

It was such a mixture of Muggle, medieval and magical culture that she found it hard to know where to look.

River finally saw the Leaky Cauldron looming in the distance, so she made her way quickly towards it, reminding herself with each step that she had a job to do. Once inside, she paid for a room using a small fraction of the money she had stolen from Umbridge (who, thankfully, appeared to be very rich), and made her way upstairs.

The room was hardly stellar, but it was better than she had hoped for. She at least had a desk, chair and decently sized bed, and that was all she really needed.

Crossing the dingy room to the grimy window, she looked down at the street below. Even during term-time it was jam packed with people; to be expected, since it was one of the major wizarding shopping capitals in Britain. It was hard to keep track of people as they flitted in and out of the dense crowd, and she soon gave up people watching.

But, as she looked up, she thought she saw the glimmer of a person stood still, staring at her. They were there for an instant, just an instant, before they disappeared suddenly into a nearby shop, out of sight. Tall, pale, dark clothes – that was all she had had the time to see.

Was she being followed? She frowned and moved away from the window, just on the off chance. One thing that she had learnt from her childhood with the Silence, and travelling with the Doctor, was that it always paid to listen to your instincts.

oOo

The next morning, River rose early and ordered breakfast in the pub downstairs before making her way onto the streets, which were just beginning to fill with people.

She found a bookshop easily enough and set to hunting through it. There was certainly no shortage of choice: the shop had everything from a written guide on learning to read (bit pointless, she thought) to an encyclopaedia of everything in the wizarding world. She scoured the shelves, leaving no book unturned, no matter how ridiculous and pointless at first sight, in the hopes of finding something that she could use to educate herself on the world around her. After all, there was no hope of finding the Doctor if she had no idea how, why or where he had been taken.

Before long she had enough books that it was a serious struggle to lug them down the narrow corridors between shelves and heave them onto the desk where an old till sat. The sleepy-looking witch behind the till slowly began packing them into a bag for her, yawning, while River counted out an approximation of the money she would need to pay for them.

After counting through the Galleons and giving River her change, the witch handed the bag of books over with a weak smile and "come again soon". Bracing herself for the huge weight, River was pleasantly surprised, though not shocked, to find that the other woman had placed a lightening charm on it as well as, from the looks of things, making it bigger on the inside. The whole bag looked only big enough to hold a book or two.

Her next stop – Ollivander's – sent butterflies through her stomach. Drawing up a checklist of things to do, she had hesitated to add "get a wand" to the list. She didn't even know, after all, if she had any magical ability, for though Dumbledore had advised her to look out for accidental magic while doing her work at Hogwarts, she had not been in this world for long enough to notice any obvious change. However, she also knew that she owed it to herself and the Doctor to try.

After all, if she was not a witch, no wand would choose her, and the matter would be decided.

Ollivander looked up from a book and smiled politely as she entered, though he had a slight look of confusion on his face. River vaguely remembered the Ollivander of the books being able to recall which wand chose which wizard, and she hoped that he did not think it strange that she was unfamiliar.

Her conclusion was proven to be wrong on the old man's greeting.

"Back again, Mrs Song?"

River quickly ran through the possibilities. 1) She had travelled back in time to this point and gone to Ollivander's again, for whatever reason. 2) Someone was impersonating her and she had just missed them.

She frowned mentally, trying to work out why anyone would want to impersonate her. What, exactly, would they gain from it? She was not important or even known in this world. She was just another ordinary face in the crowd, unremarkable if not for the fact that she had managed to materialise within the boundaries of Hogwarts. But that last fact was likely only to get her followed if anything (a possibility she had not dismissed), and impersonation was, at the moment and provided she didn't do anything stupid in this world, unlikely.

Time travel, then.

River nodded, hoping that her pause had not been too lengthy. "Yes," she replied, walking to the counter with a confidence that expertly hid her own confusion, "I find myself in need of a wand."

"Another?" Ollivander asked in surprise. "You only bought one here a week ago…" he looked at her in consideration. "And I was so sure that we had the right one."

River nodded. "We did; it worked wonderfully for me, thank you," she said, going along with it. "But sadly I ran into a bit of trouble not long ago and it was taken from me. You know how it is these days."

Ollivander nodded gravely. "It is always a shame to lose one's wand."

"Yes," she agreed, not really knowing what else to say.

Fortunately, Ollivander filled the silence for her. "Now, let's see… last week you bought a vine wood wand with dragon heartstring, if I remember correctly."

It wasn't really a question, but River replied anyway. "Yes."

"It is rather unorthodox to pick one's own wand."

So she had never actually tried it out first, River mused, and had only bought it because it had been mentioned to her past self that she had bought it without trying it, and to do otherwise would be to cause a paradox.

She took a leap and said, "I had the same type for my first wand and it worked perfectly."

Ollivander's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing more and merely handed over a sleek, thin, white wand. River picked it up gingerly and, seeing the older wizard watching her expectantly, pointed it at the quill lying on his desk.

Aware that this was in fact the first time that she had ever even held a wand, let alone try to cast a spell with it, River found herself pushing down nervousness while she focussed on the quill. It rose, if hesitantly, into the air, and River realised that she had never even said the spell out loud. She tried not to let her relief and elation show.

Ollivander nodded as it flopped back onto the desk. "Perfect response," he remarked in what sounded vaguely like relief.

River raised a cheeky eyebrow. "How many times have you had to put out fires and re-tidy your rooms, then?"

"More frequently than I care to admit," he sniffed in slight indignation, and River bit back another teasing retort.

She could imagine that a man such as Ollivander, who believed solidly in the craft of wand-making and wandlore, would not want it suggested that he made mistakes when first handing children a wand he thought would suit them.

She couldn't help wondering what would have happened to her had she not possessed magical ability – what happened to children who were born Squibs. To have to stand in this shop, all of eleven years old, perhaps having been raised (as she had been, of sorts) on tales of the fantastic, the magical, and being told that everyone formed a part of this world, only to find that no wand would choose you…

She levitated the quill again to distract herself from this thought. She was very lucky indeed that that had not been the case with her.

As the quill dropped back down, she wondered if some children grew up believing themselves to be Squibs when, in reality, the wand that would have chosen them simply had not yet been created.

Realising that Ollivander had moved expectantly over to his small till, River counted out money for the wand and gave it to him, barely able to contain her excitement. She took the wand and her change and put both in her bigger-on-the-inside coat pocket, smiling.

oOo

Several hours later, River re-entered her room and sank onto her bed, feeling tired but very pleased with herself. She began unpacking her bags: books on wizarding geography (including maps of the world with towns and, in some cases, entire islands that were missing from all the Muggle maps that she had ever seen), politics and current events, spell casting, herbology, transfiguration and potions making. Formal and informal cloaks and clothes that were fashionable enough in the Wizarding world to make her look like a normal witch, and yet not so fashionable that they made her stand out in a crowd. Her wand – her favourite purchase by far; it was light and elegant yet strong, perfect for someone who was frequently caught between war and politics. Last but not least, she had bought potions supplies after finding out that she had magical ability – you never knew when you had to drug someone.

Or give first aid, but River preferred not to think of that possibility.

Having arranged her newly acquired possessions in some kind of order and deciding what was the most important, River set to scouring the maps of the world grid by grid and mentally noting which places seemed ideal for a hideout or secret base. Unfortunately this was more easily said than done, as many areas simply carried the inscription "approximate scale", hinting that there could be land that even the wizards had not yet discovered, for whatever reason. She noticed that one such area was the Forbidden Forest.

Having made short work of the maps, River moved on to basic spells and defences, knowing that it would be negligent not to try to master them, even though she could feel her and the Doctor's time slipping out of reach. Even Expelliarmus could be the difference between life and death, and she hardly wanted to risk going into a magical situation as a voluntary Squib.

River held her wand gingerly and began waving it about according to the visual instructions in the book, feeling vaguely foolish. Remembering how she had levitated the wand in Ollivander's shop, she decided to move onto something bigger, and tried to levitate a cushion.

She had to admit that she was slightly disappointed when it burst into flames.

"Ok," she muttered to herself, "perhaps earlier was a fluke."

She sighed and walked over to a vase filled with miserable looking flowers. She yanked the flowers out of the vase and dunked the water over the burning cushion, which immediately resolved the situation. She stared at the smouldering wreck for a while and considered her options.

Perhaps she could simply try to levitate whoever got in her way?