Chapter 7

The interior of the TARDIS glowed with an almost golden light, illuminating the four people inside of it. Coral like structures stretched out towards the control panel. The column in the center of the panel was stationary. It hummed, so obviously alive, as it awaited a time and destination.

Harry decided that it was one of the most beautiful things that he had ever seen.

"So," The Doctor interrupted Harry's fascinated staring at the TARDIS. "Do you all have any place in mind? Forwards in time, backwards in time, anywhere in space?"

"You know when you were younger and they asked you in school who in history you'd like to meet?" Martha asked.

"No," Sirius said. "No one never asked me that."

"That's because your family thought that it was the best in history and therefore didn't need to talk to anyone else," Harry grinned at his godfather. "My school before I started at Hogwarts did that."

"Well," Martha said. "I've always wanted to meet Shakespeare!"

The Doctor ran around the console and began flipping switches.

"That's a good one," Harry said before adding quietly, "I always just wanted to meet my parents. Not to change what happened or anything because that would cause a paradox. I just wanted to know what they were like and if they loved me."

The Doctor paused in his flipping of switches and turning of knobs to give Harry a sad look.

"I'm sorry," He said. "It might interfere with your timeline. You can't do it."

"I know," Harry nodded. He then let a halfhearted smile stretch across his face. "But getting to meet Shakespeare is definitely on my top ten list!"

"Who's Shakespeare?" Sirius' statement had Harry once again questioning how the wizarding world had made it that long.

The Doctor returned to his mad fiddling at the console. Seeing all of the technology being messed with reminded Harry of what he still had in his pocket.

"Doctor," Harry caught the older Time Lord's attention. "I forgot to give this back to you."

Harry held out the sonic screwdriver that he had used to shut down the MRI machine.

"I thought the Judoon must have taken that!" The Doctor's face lit up. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a nearly identical looking sonic and flipped it in the air. "But I've already gotten another one. You might as well keep that. You've already shown that you know how to use it. And you never know, it could come in handy again."

The smile that lit up Harry's face was very much real as he thanked the Doctor and put the sonic back in his pocket. He watched in fascination as the Doctor once again returned to his piloting.

With one last pull of a lever, the center column began moving and the TARDIS let out a wheezing sound. Within seconds, Harry felt a sense of comfortableness that he had only ever felt in his memories. He fell to the floor as new memory barged its way to the front of his mind.

_ Line Break _

"This way children," A teacher led the group of eight-year-old time tots to the place that they had all been both looking forward to and dreading. "Remember, what you see today will dictate the rest of your lives, so please take it as serious as it is."

The teacher had no need to tell the time tots that. They all knew exactly what they were doing. Looking into the Untempered Schism was an honor that they all wanted.

All too soon yet not soon enough the group reached the area that housed the Schism. The group would wait outside the circle of torches as each would enter alone. They went in based on age. The oldest went first. Then the next oldest and so on.

Harry, except he wasn't quite Harry, found himself to be towards the back. He was the second youngest in his group. He watched in fear and excitement as his friends and fellow time tots went in and came back out in a different state.

Some came out with wide eyes and heavy breathing. Others grinned as if a piece clicked into place inside of them. Two ran out of the room and behind the teacher and the rest of the group, but both looked pleased after the panic wore off. Others yet came out more determined than when they went in.

The time came for Not-Quite-Harry to go into the circle of torches. He walked at a slow pace, his gait even and his breathing slow. The Schism was impossible to ignore. As soon as he got near it, it called out to his very being. It beckoned him forward, enticing him to look inside.

Not-Quite-Harry was all too happy to agree. He walked up to it, almost in a trance. Its swirling depths greeted him as he got within two feet of it.

The first thing that he felt when he looked into it was contentment. A sense the he had always had yet never used before awoke and took in the beauty of it with his other senses. It was then that Not-Quite-Harry realized what he was sensing in it. Time.

With his new-found awareness, he looked closer into the schism.

NO.

He took a step back as absolute fear assaulted him. Before he could turn and run, though, a sense of calm and rightness completely filled him. It started in his hearts and spread up to his head and down to his toes. He knew then that everything would be alright. He pushed a strand of his ginger hair out of his face, turned, and walked out of the circle with a small smile and a confident air.

Yes. Everything would be alright.

_ Line Break _

"-alright? Harry? Harry, answer me! Are you alright?"

"Huh?" Harry opened one bleary eye and saw three people standing around him. Sirius, who Harry realized had been the one that was talking, was close to shaking Harry to death. "Yeah. Where are we?"

"In my TARDIS," The Doctor said as Sirius leaned back with an overexaggerated sigh of relief. "In the time stream. Are you time sensitive somehow?"

Harry's gaze drifted to the one person who hadn't said anything yet. Martha was looking at him with a mix of curiosity and shock.

"I think that I just need to eat something," Harry said. "The fight broke out before I could really enjoy any of the food at the party."

"Right!" The Doctor jumped up. "Food. We can go into the kitchen and get you something. Definitely better than anything that they're serving in England around Shakespeare's time."

"You have a kitchen here too?" Sirius was thoroughly in love with the TARDIS and Harry could see his brain working at trying to come up with ways to incorporate some of it into a wizard's tent. "I mean we have kitchens too, but this is a time machine."

Sirius made to follow the Doctor before stopping mid step and looking back at Harry.

"You two go ahead," Martha said. "We'll catch up. If anything happens again I'm the most qualified to help him."

Sirius accepted that answer and he and the Doctor started towards the kitchen. As soon as they rounded the corner Martha addressed Harry.

"I am most certainly not the most qualified to help you," She said.

"Why not?" Harry asked. "You're a great medical student."

"I took your pulse to make sure that you were still alive when you passed out," Martha said in a low voice. "You have two separate pulses! Is that normal for wizards?"

For some reason, both of Harry's hearts seemed to skip a beat when he heard Martha say that.

"No," Harry gulped. "As far as Sirius and I can tell, I'm the only wizard like this."

"What if you're not a wizard at all?" Martha asked.

"Don't say that!" Harry begged.

"What if you're a Time Lord like the Doctor?" Martha said. "Does he know that you have two hearts?"

Harry shook his head.

"Are you planning on telling him?"

"I-," Harry paused in thought. "I don't know."

Martha sighed. "Sirius knows?"

Harry nodded.

"Then I won't say anything," Martha said. "Patient confidentiality means that I only have to tell the parent or guardian and since your guardian already knows about it-,"

"Thanks, Martha," Harry said. "We should probably catch up with them. Do you know where the kitchen is?"

"No. Do you?"

"Nope,"

"Great."

_ Line Break _

The TARDIS must have really liked Harry. As soon as he took the lead and started walking through a hallway it took him, and Martha, who was following him, straight to the kitchen.

"I was wondering when you two would get here!" The Doctor said.

"We would have been here faster if we knew where we were going," Harry pointed out.

"Aww," The Doctor shrugged off the comment. "You made it. Now! I've got just about everything in here. At least I should. But don't think for a second that I believe that you're only hungry. You're going to get a full examination once we get back from meeting Shakespeare."

"Ok," Harry had no choice but to agree. This would be an interesting doctor's checkup.

Author's Note:

Ok guys, I've got two things to apologize for. The first is how short this chapter is. I have more written and the next chapter is going to be just as long as my chapters usually are but this felt like the best place to stop it at. The second thing that I have to apologize for is that I don't know a lot about the ritual of looking into the untampered schism. I bought a book on time lords and it said a bit about it but it wasn't very clear so I wrote about it to the best of my knowledge. This is also The first big look at Not-Quite-Harry! I do have a reason for him being ginger which I also got from my lovely book!

I hope that you all have a good day and I understand if you don't want to leave a review with how short this chapter is but I'd still love to read some!

-Aniala (catz4444)