Chapter 30
Harry drove up the long driveway towards the house, somewhat nervous, despite having seen the person he was visiting merely a few months ago. Though it had been about 40 years for the man who he'd received a letter from earlier that week.
Harry Potter,
The last time I met the Doctor he "reliably" informed me now would be a good time to contact you, without mucking up the timeline.
Us old soldiers get together every so often, I've been following your exploits through the years Mr Potter.
If the Doctor's not informed you of my location, I am sure you can locate me.
Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Harry looked up at the house as he got out of the Jag. The Brigadier's letter had been short, and written as one did, in case it was intercepted or maybe read by someone, though the Brigadier obviously wasn't worried about whomever it was who might read his letter knowing his name.
-/
The door opened before he had a chance to knock.
"Harry Potter," said a man's voice which hadn't changed since he'd last heard it.
"Brigadier, so you knew it was me?" He said intoning the Doctor's many timbres of voice. It elicited a great laugh from the Brigadier. "Come in Mr Potter, Doris has already got the kettle on."
"Ah, just what I need Brigadier, a good mug of hot army tea," Harry said rubbing his hands together.
The Brigadier laughed again. "Don't let Doris hear you compare her tea making skills to that of the army."
Harry grinned. "Sorry, Brigadier. UNIT tea then," Harry said as he greeted the Brigadier with a hand shake and then pulled him into a hug.
"Really Harry..." He chuckled as he pulled him inside.
-/
Doris had left himself and the Brigadier to talk, 'old soldiers' as they were.
"She knows about me then?" Harry asked, they were sitting out the back of "Alistair's" house. It was odd, it call him 'Alistair', he was the Brigadier to his mind. It was how he'd known him for more than a year, known him in command, in UNIT in his present. Now here they were together in both their own time, catching up like old friends. Old soldiers even. He didn't seem old, he was the same, even if some years had passed for one of them. Harry didn't want to make anything of the time that had passed between them, not directly, it seemed...rude some how, that the Brigadier was here, had been here, knowing, when he'd been in the past, in the 1970s, when it was the Brigadier's present...
Sometimes time travel just made him want sit in the pub and have a pint.
"Yes..." The Brigadier trailed off for a moment. "The Doctor told me not to interfere with you, and your 'timeline'," the Brigadier said with a heavy tone and a slump of the shoulders. Harry looked over at the man whom he'd come to know quite well.
"But?" Harry asked.
"But I visited your street, where you lived with those blasted relatives of yours. Just to..." He shifted again looking out into the garden, slightly uncomfortable with admitting it. "Just to make sure they weren't abusing you," he ground out the last two words with great anger.
Harry smiled, grinned and for a moment didn't know what to say, and then just reached over and patted the Brigadier on the shoulder. "Thank you."
"Then a few years ago those damn Death Eaters all over the country. Your war." He looked over at him. "I thought that was the end of them, when you left, with the Doctor, I thought those years, between the invasions and idiotic governments interfering, I saw things that will live with me-" He shook his head taking a mouthful of tea.
Harry remained silent for a long time, he didn't know what to say.
"But you got him, that bastard Voldemort?" Alistair said breaking the silence.
Harry nodded. "Yes Brigadier, I got him. Through everything I got him, and I'm here to live and love another day."
"And the Doctor?" The Brigadier looked to him questioningly.
"He continues to live another day as well, and you know, he helped me along the way, hopefully he'll continue to drop in on me," Harry paused and smiled to himself. "Or I'll have to drop in on him."
"Got yourself a time machine eh?" The Brigadier grinned at him.
"Something better than that, I know the Doctor's future, better than he knows it himself," Harry said with a smile.
"You shouldn't be too smart," Alistair warned. "a couple of the last ones I met knew what was going on, too much so sometimes."
"Which ones were that?" Harry asked curiously. "That stuff with Bambera, Ancelyn and Morgaine? Or...?"
"That one!" Alistair nodded. "No, but he's mentioned that then?"
"The Doctor tells me a lot of things Brigadier," Harry responded carefully. He was still annoyed that he couldn't remember all that the Doctor had said when he'd been wounded/semi-conscious in the TARDIS, maybe he could have got that stuff in Shakespeare's Globe resolved quicker.
"No, I've met a few, one in the most horrendous jacket." The Brigadier shook his head.
"Oh I've met him," Harry said as he put down his mug. "I didn't think the coat was that bad."
"But that Doctor Smythe woman seemed to keep him in place," Alistair remembered wistfully.
Harry frowned, he'd not heard the Doctor, in that incarnation mention a Doctor Smythe. "That must have been after he'd met me."
"What?" He looked at Harry slightly worried.
"This Smythe woman, he must have met her after he'd visited me," Harry explained.
"Ah," he smiled. "Evelyn was a lovely woman, perfect sort of lady to keep the Doctor in check."
"Evelyn..." Harry trailed off. The name rang a bell, but he was sure it the incarnation of the Doctor who had visited in the woods, when he and Hermione had been hunting the horcuxes. Though the Doctor was very retrospective at that time, sombre would be the word.
"He attracts trouble, whenever he turns up, whenever we meet, whenever he comes to see me. Trouble follows." Alistair shook his head.
Harry smiled. "You know, Brigadier, the majority of the time he visits me, nothing is going on. He, well, Jo took me shopping one time, we went to a museum, he saw the Master..." Harry shook his head. "Other times he met, we had a drink, we have a walk around sometimes, we always talk, he's rescued me on occasion." Harry looked out into the grounds. "But trouble...not really. Maybe..." Harry trailed off and looked over at the Brigadier. "Maybe you're the one who attracts trouble Brigadier and the Doctor just comes along to help you out."
The earned him a bark of laughter from the Brigadier. "That is something the Doctor would never suggest Harry. He likes to be the centre of attention, to suggest otherwise would-"
Harry cut him off. "Get him all in a tizzy. I know."
Alistair snorted. "I don't think the Doctor would ever describe it a 'tizzy' Harry old chap."
"I don't know Brigadier, the Doctor got annoyed when some of his spare parts weren't in from the UNIT stores, or the Doctor with the coat he's a bit 'bombastic', or- the excitable one who dealt with the Ice Warriors in '97, or-"
The Brigadier waved a hand at him. "Yes, Harry, yes. Perhaps the Doctor does like to get himself worked up over things."
"Worked up is one way to describe things. When Jo found out I had an association with the Master she became somewhat 'worked up', to put it lightly," Harry commented.
"Jo did have a tendency to over react back then," Alistair admitted.
Harry smiled. "I'm pleased that you're over my association with the Master, not that I've ever really called him that."
"Who you are friends with Harry is your business, you're more mature and knowledgeable then men twice your age," Alistair said with a sigh.
"Excluding yourself of course Brigadier." Harry commented with a smirk.
"Of course Harry," the Brigadier said as though it were an excepted fact.
Harry left much later into the night after 'accepting' an offer of dinner from Doris, which was more she said stay and the Brig said nothing, he was only allowed to leave after promising to continue to stay in touch.
"Us old soldiers need to stick together Harry old chap."
-/ — /-
The next day, nowhere near Harry, Hermione came face to face with something she had only heard described to her, the image of 'evil' and terror, immortalised, and as fresh as it could be considering the circumstances.
Setting up the required preservation barriers, and then alerting wards, followed by security wards she alerted her supervisor she'd found something 'worrisome' and the facility went into lockdown. Then she made a phone call, it'd be easier than getting in contact by other means, plus she wanted to finish going through that portion of the facility, she had an essay that she needed to write tomorrow and the university library had gotten in several old volumes that she'd been waiting for that she wanted to read. Not for any particular class, but there was always something new to discover about something old.
-/
The back of the Defender was crammed with weapons, energy detection equipment and even more stuff along with 'expanding bags' which he'd playing with to get a bag that had an extension charm on it as well as being able to expand to envelope something large, just in case they needed to take something, or several somethings away with them.
He'd also been flirting with the idea of putting a shipping container or something like it inside so they could haul around more equipment, without, actually hauling around a container.
He and Ioan had been playing with the idea, but they couldn't seem the just stretch it out by hand, the charmed bags just didn't seem to want to take the load like that.
But they would continue to work on it, it was a challenge they both found fascinating and that Judith didn't.
"So this is a secrete bunker that the your penis waving people have hidden stuff in," she began.
"From my description of the archaeological storage facility you get 'cock waving' and store stuff in," Harry said as he turned down a dirt track as indicated by Ioan who was looking at a roughly drawn map that Harry had sketched out from Hermione's description.
"I said penis, not cock Harry, please give me some respect," Judith corrected matter-of-factly.
"Yes, Judith, because you'd never mock us wand waving people ever," Ioan called towards the back seat.
"Not you two, just the other ones who like to wave it would like they're holding a tea cup," she countered.
"He was a little bit camp Harry," Ioan admitted. He was referring to the mad-ish bloke they'd had to deal with who'd managed to get a hold of a Cybermat, probably from the sewers and had been keeping it as a pet, he'd only been discovered because it had been getting into his neighbour's wiring and sucking down all the power...and electrocuting anyone who got near it. The mad bloke 'liked' the shocks he'd been getting off his 'silver slug'.
"Fine, I'll accept that observation," Harry said after a moment.
"What does this squiggle mean?" Ioan asked, not for the first time.
Harry slowed down, why Ioan couldn't have driven and Harry could have read his own map he didn't know.
"That's an arrow, means I was waiting for Hermione to give me more info." Harry looked at the map again. "Straight ahead I think."
"And will we get an explanation of why some of your wand waving fellows have hidden a secret facility in the middle of nowhere?" Judith asked.
"Hardly the middle of no where," Ioan scoffed. Despite their needing to trudge along a beaten track they weren't too far away from civilisation, the track had evidence of use from green laneing.
"Turn left here," Ioan said looking down at the map and waving with his other hand.
Up ahead there was, surprisingly, more woodland, and a house that looked like it had been firebombed several years ago.
"This is it," Harry said pulling up in front of it, turning off the engine.
Then two people walked out of the ruin, both of whom Harry recognised, considering they were his best friends, and shagging one another.
"Not right at this moment, obviously," Judith muttered by his side.
Harry stared at her shoulder, but she continued to look straight ahead, even though she was doing that he still imagined she was smirking at him.
"Mr Potter," Ron greeted all professional.
"Ms Granger, Mr Weasley," Harry said as he pulled his hands out of his pockets, patting his thigh to make sure of the weapon that was still present there. "I wasn't aware you were going to be meeting me here."
"My supervisor is setting preservation charms around the facility, given the likelihood of it being non-terrestrial he thought I should meet you," Hermione explained, also maintaining the professional stance.
"Throw the young ones into the firing line first, so they can take the most fire," Ioan commented from behind them.
Ron was trying very hard to keep a neutral expression on his face but his eyes kept going to Harry, trying not to make eye contact with him.
"Well, let's see what's got you so worried." Harry said accepting a bag from Ioan.
-/
"No mutant inside," Harry said as he and Ioan disabled the security wards around it.
"Should there have been?" Hermione asked, her worry breaking through the professional mask she had had in place since they'd been in the facility, which was darker and larger than its exterior would suggest.
Harry made an indeterminate noise and removed a swab from his bag and dragged it along the casing.
-/
Ron watched Harry and his 'associates' walk around the 'thing'. It was "non-terrestrial" he knew what that meant and what it meant for Harry to be here and this is what Ginny was so worried about.
A thing with blue dots all over it, and on one half a sink plunger and something else on it, and some sort of eye...or something. Even without the beginnings of the training he had received, something, even as it was, here, un-alive, it seemed to scream danger at him.
"Are you okay?" Hermione squeezed his arse gently, she'd done it before, but he'd learnt not to jump at a random squeeze.
"Just, weird, seeing Harry, all professional, he didn't even look at me," he commented.
"He's doing the professional thing," Hermione blew out a lungful of air as she finished her sentence. "Probably helps him keep his life in order."
Ron looked to Hermione who had stepped away from easy arse grabbing reach.
"What does that mean?" He asked.
"Just...nothing..." she said, but she seemed like she wanted to say more. It worried Ron about Harry, how much he was being secretive and what had happened with Ginny, even though he'd said some things, and Hermione had assured him that he had said something...about something. He worried sometimes about the amount of time his girlfriend and Harry spent together, though he'd been assured by both that there was nothing happening, actually Harry had said "we're not shagging, you idiot.".
"How long was it under the sea?" Harry called over breaking their discussion.
-/
Hermione looked slightly surprised at the question from Harry.
"Or where was it found?" Ioan asked.
"Or why were you looking for it?" Judith finished.
"Those are better questions than mine." Harry admitted, and tipped his non-existent hat to them.
"Somewhere near the Strait of Gibraltar, it was found by an independent research ship that had been funded by several wealthy families with ties to the Ministry of that time, prior to the first wizarding war against Voldemort."
"Searching for...?" Judith asked curiously.
Hermione opened her mouth. "I..." and then visibly stopped herself. "I can't say." Harry grinned over at his associates. "Classified. Who knew the Ministry and 'Wealthy Families' liked secrets?"
-/
Harry walked over to them several minutes later, she had been standing a safe distance back, Ron had left her and was patrolling around, his wand out and a serious expression on his face.
"It's safe, or as safe as one of those can be, no sign of the mutant, but I'll need to do more testing to work out how old it is since you can't tell me," it wasn't said with any malice, but she still felt she needed to apologise.
"I can't say Harry."
Harry waved his hand. "If there's anything I, we understand Hermione it's that secrets make up what we do. We'll get it bagged up and we'll be away from here so you can get back to uncovering secrets or covering up truths, or whatever it is you do here."
-/
"It's a Dalek," Judith said simply.
Said Dalek was inside one of the storage areas Harry had been building on his property, which was basically various concrete bunker rooms within one of the barns.
"Very much a dead Dalek," Harry confirmed.
"So why all the mucking around when we were down in one of the Ministry's secret locations? It was as though you were trying to out-professional your friend,." Ioan said as he brought over mugs of tea for all and sat down into one of Harry's chairs propping his feat up on a foot rest made of "Harry Potter and the..." books.
"Because they weren't the only ones there," Harry said, he was standing in front of one of his book shelves in mid-thought.
"You're looking for...?" Judith asked.
"Something that's half on my mind," Harry said distractedly still looking at the bookshelf.
"The Doctor's never mentioned the Strait of Gibraltar?" Judith asked as she flipped through Fascist Dictator Monthly.
Harry looked over from the shelf. "Not that I remember, he doesn't tell me about everything he gets up to."
"Just the highlights of stuff you might need," Judith said, the statement hanging in the silence for a moment.
Harry turned away from the shelf, leaning against it. "Yes, that has occurred to me Judith. The Doctor has been many things throughout his lives, but I've known him longer than..." Harry paused. "Longer than most people, through all his lives, he doesn't know what's coming sometimes, and no one knows it all. But he does like to play his and other people's chances sometimes."
"Fine. Just." Judith started.
"I know," Harry said in a low tone, he felt like he needed some time alone to think, he said as much to his associates.
-/
Later that week Harry was reading through the latest UNIT news bulletin, something they really needed to work on their password protection to be able to pick it up. It wasn't at the 'buffalo' stage yet, but for a secret organisation they really needed to work on the secret portion of it.
"Maybe that's why I exist, and the Doctor, and Torchwood, and whomever else. UNIT can't, didn't, won't do it all," he said to the kitchen sink, he was actually talking to himself, but it made him feel slightly better to think he was talking to an inanimate object, rather than himself. Though, not even wizarding sinks talked, no wizarding furniture talked, that would be weird, fine having garden gnomes that are probably sentient and paintings that you can have a chat with but question whether the oven or the kettle can hold a conversation or muse about the meaning of life and then you're weird.
Ron's response when he'd brought this up. "But it's magic Harry, the paintings are magical!"
Then, as he was musing on his kettle, not about it talking but whether he should make another mug of tea a noise started echoing from the courtyard.
A noise of space and time being pushed apart, by a rather rough sounding time ship.
"Speaking of weird things in small packages," Harry said as he grabbed his wand and walked outside, pausing by the door to grab a gun as well. He wondered how many of his friends did this before going outside. Probably none from Hogwarts, the wand was as much a weapon as the heavy piece of crafted metal and composite materials on his thigh.
Harry wondered whether it was the Doctor or Magister that had decided to pay him a visit, maybe the Doctor had realised he had been talked about in the not exactly positive and decided to show up to defend his name, which wasn't impossible, or maybe Magister would...arrive for a reason, share a bottle of good Cognac, not that either of them would turn up with a bottle of anything that wasn't good, or it wasn't it would have been given or stolen from a figure from history.
While he was musing a shape was pushing itself into reality and Harry realised he was wrong on both counts of who it might be, it wasn't a Police Box and unless Magister had done something really bad to his TARDIS' engines it probably wasn't his TARDIS either.
As the space-time vessel's shape solidified into being in front of him it came into full form. It was a red double decker bus. The number 22 to Putney Common.
Harry smiled at the woman behind the wheel and waved at her, she grinned back, but seemed a bit puzzled as to where she was.
-/
"'Ello, luvy, this isn't London is it? The old bus is playing up a bit," she said throwing a thumb back at her...conveyance. Harry thought to himself with a bit of a smile.
"I know that smile young man, you've got someone in the sack 'aven't you? He or she the one you do the jiggly with and get the squelchy bits going?"
Yes, Harry thought to himself, this wasn't the Doctor or Magister.
"The name's Iris-"
Harry cut her off. "Iris Wildthyme...transtemporal adventuress extraordinaire."
Her eyes went wide for a moment. "My reputation precedes me."
"The Doctor's mentioned you once or twice." Though when the Doctor had Harry'd never really got a bearing on how the Doctor felt about her.
"The Doctor! You know the dear old Doctor, not that he likes to think of himself as old, going through those regenerations like the clappers. While my body is still very much young and running at full steam." Then she pinched him on the arse. "You've got a firm one don't you luvvy, all that running up and down corridors with him."
Harry put aside how she'd managed to pinch him on the arse considering she wasn't near him, well not that near.
"I've never really travelled with the Doctor," he admitted. It wasn't something he'd really thought about, the Doctor had never really offered, and even if he had...he wasn't sure if he'd say yes, there was so much on the Earth...
"Oh sorry..." she said in a brief moment of sincerity, obviously reading something into his face. "Nothin' meant by it chuck. So how do you know the Doctor then, you work with UNIT then? Is it the swinging '70s now or the droll 80s? The bus was a bit unsure with its landing, it's the helmic regulators, fixed with my tights while chasing Morbius across the Death Zone."
Harry filed that away to question about later. "I'm Harry, Harry Potter."
Her eyes went wide and she leaned in and gave him a strong hug, very strong considering her stature. "You're Harry, he talks about you whenever we run into one another. I always thought you were a girl." She smelled of cigarettes, and alcohol and something else...ancient.
"A girl?" Harry asked in a confused tone.
"Well, he does like to get around with the young girls doesn't he? No interest in sexing them up, but he's not what you'd call an equal opportunist when it comes to travelling companions is he chuck?" She asked watching him carefully.
"Well..." Harry started, though he'd not really thought about it. He thought there was a mix, from who he'd met there was Ian and Jamie and he'd mentioned Adric at one point and...
"See, I told you," Iris nodded at him.
"Jack makes up for it, he'd shag anything," Harry countered.
Iris' stared at him. "The Doctor travels with someone called Jack who is actually allowed to think about sex in the Doctor's company?"
"Oops, maybe that's in your future, it's certainly in his-" He was cut off and joined by Iris.
"Relatively speaking," they said together and laughed. "You do talk like him Harry old mate."
"Come inside Iris, I was just about to make a cup of tea, or would you like something stronger?"
-/
"Nothing like a good cup of tea, stuck on a goddess forsaken rock for the past six months, pirates and wenches, a whole society built around that." She sipped the mug. "Good mug of tea."
"So..." Harry started.
"It was your bog-standard colony ship through a time storm with only certain bits of literature and some alien intervention, a whole society built around pirate lore. They had the worst rum I've ever tasted and no mixers!" Iris exclaimed.
"Okay," Harry said absorbing that. "The Doctor's mentioned things like it on occasion, I think, something like the 'abandon all technology to live a better life'."
"That's the jobby, which one was that." She pointed at him with a nod.
"Here, on Earth, nuclear reactor in London, dinosaurs, time travel, pretend spaceships." Harry added.
"That one with UNIT where the Doctor made an excuse to drive around in that car of his."
"Bessie?" Harry asked.
"No, but something he liked, probably built it to get over Jo running off to the Amazon and marrying that Welsh bloke."
"Plenty of interesting stuff in Wales Iris," Harry commented lightly.
"That where your bit of fluff is from, a nice Welsh bloke," she paused and then added. "Or bird."
Harry shook his head. "Nothing like that's in Wales." Except a certain Captain who would like to get into my pants he thought to himself and then regretted thinking that as Iris gave him a knowing smile. Magister and the Doctor had been considerably vague on exactly how telepathic Time Lords were.
"Don't worry luvvy. I'm not rifling around in your head, leave that to others to probe with," she winked at him.
"The Doctor's told me several stories about mind probes, it might be good to put it into practice," Harry said casually.
Iris shook her head. "Unimaginative, the cultures who resort to mind probes."
"Torture works far better as an information gathering tool," Harry replied without really thinking about it. "So I'm led to understand," he added quickly.
"Well..." Iris smiled oddly. "I didn't think a friend of the Doctor's would casually chat about something like that."
"Does it worry you?" Harry asked calmly.
"Not at all chuck, we all have things we've done, would do in our past, presents and futures," she said.
"It worries me sometimes," he admitted.
"As it should love," she said with sincerity to him.
There were several moments of silence before Harry broke it. "So, Iris, while it's lovely to finally meet you."
"Likewise dearie." She smiled broadly at him.
"I'm assuming you didn't just decide to drop in on me out of the blue, the Doctor and Magister generally drop round for reasons, or I them, though they do have something of an open invitation." Harry paused. "Well one of their regenerations anyway...it's complicated."
"Time travel is chuck...the Magister," she paused and looked a thim "you mean...him with the beard and the shrinking gun?"
Harry shrugged and nodded.
"You are a surprise, cavorting with him and him." Harry interpreted that as Magister and the Doctor.
"So...?" Harry prompted.
"I'm on a secret mission for MIAOW." She said the last part in an odd way he could only intrepret it as an acronym.
"MIAOW?" He repeated confused.
"The Ministry for Incursions Aliens and Ontological Wonders," Iris provided.
And there's another organisation, Harry thought to himself.
"So did you come to work for MIAOW in the '70s during an exile on Earth?" Harry joked.
"The 60s," she corrected without missing a beat. "I still do the occasional job for MIAOW, it makes life interesting and certainly not as tied to the establishment as he is with UNIT."
"And it brought you to my courtyard," Harry said curiously.
"Of course not Harry," she shook her head. "The bus must have been drawn here by some latent Artron energy lying around here, the Doctor's been for a visit recently?"
"More than 6 months ago," Harry answered.
She laughed. "6 months, that's nothing to a time ship like my bus. She would have homed in on it."
"The Doctor must have landed in thousands of locations around the Earth." Harry felt like adding 'why me?'.
"Maybe the bus just likes your courtyard," Iris replied as though it always happened. Maybe it did, the same with the Doctor, his TARDIS liked certain times, places that were easier to go to or find.
Only Magister really went places for actual reasons, maybe that was part of why the Doctor disliked what Magister did, that he did things with direction and purpose, of course there was the death, destruction and chaos that went along with it, but that was taken as read.
Iris pushed a beer coaster towards him. On it read Aidensfield Arms.
"Aidensfield Arms," he said turning it over in with his fingers and then rubbed it between his thumb and finger. "Feel like cardboard." He carefully sniffed it. "Smells like cigarettes, beer, gin and cardboard."
"Yes, very droll," she commented. "a good impression of the Doctor."
Harry smiled with a sarcastic suggestion which was often an expression thrown at him by Judith. "Well...do I need to break out some testing equipment, is this from the past, present or future? Is the ink genuine, is a time traveller knocking out fake beer coasters and selling them at inflated prices to collectors while supporting two marriages."
"This isn't a 'Goodnight Sweetheart' scenario Harry," she said with a huff grabbing it back off him. "The Aidensfield Arms doesn't exist. The whole town of Ashfordly doesn't either."
Harry took a breath to say something and then let it out. "How was I supposed to know whether a pub exists or not, I don't mind the odd pint, but I don't know every pub in Britain."
"Ah," she held up the coaster. "But here's the thing, this pub does exist, a whole town exists, but it shouldn't but it does and has since the 1970s."
"What?" Harry said even more confused.
-/
Harry had convinced her that going by her bus wasn't the way to travel there. Mostly because the Doctor hadn't exactly talked up Iris' piloting skills, or her bus. Supposedly it was far, far, far older than the Doctor's TARDIS, "rubbish tip" and "found" were two words the Doctor had used to describe how Iris had come upon her ship. Though there was something to be said for that, restoring an antique and all, but like the Doctor Iris seemed to hold her ship together from adventure to near death experience to space station-pub.
"You're like him then, you like your cars and gadgets," Iris observed.
"I spent some time in the '70s with the Doctor and UNIT," Harry said as he changed gear to overtake a lorry.
"Oh so you've met that one." Harry nodded, he'd met a lot of them, maybe even as many as Iris, probably more.
"Well I've had a few of them," she said suggestively. "some I can't stand, but they all love their Aunty Iris."
"I can most definitely say Iris I've not had any of the Doctors," Harry said with a chuckle.
Iris laughed with him. "You're got some girl that gets your wood hard and your wand slippery."
"You have a wonderful turn of phrase Iris," Harry paused. "And you know about magic."
"Chuck, I know more about magic than your Doctor does about wine."
"Depends which Doctor," Harry countered.
Iris raised a finger as though they were counting points. "They all enjoy a good glass of wine, though only some will appreciate a very good glass."
-/
They stopped on the outskirts of Ashfordly, partly to look around, but mostly so Iris could have a cigarette, something Harry wouldn't let her do. "Not in my car."
"You're just like the Doctor," Iris commented as she blew smoke in his direction.
Harry walked along the invisible line where the sign was for Ashfordly and looked forward into it. "Nothing altering our perception." He looked back along the road they'd driven along. Iris had given him directions, but there had been signs indicating the town existed. But there was no traffic, the road was well maintained, and yet.
There was something he couldn't put his finger on.
"So how long has this town been here and not existing?" He asked.
"MIAOW said from the late '70s, just one of the weird things they've been keeping an eye on," Iris explained.
"There's a lot of organisations that do that," Harry countered.
"Including yours?" She wondered.
"Mine?" Harry said kicking a stone across the invisible border. "No shielding, no barriers, nothing. Hmmm..."
"LPI," Iris said expectantly.
"League of Paranormal Investigations," Harry supplied.
"We all do our bit, the Doctor just does the big things, and then not always," Iris said stubbing out her cigarette. "If you've decided there's no heat barrier, force field, or bloom effects in our way, can we get a move on?"
"Somewhere you need to be Iris?" Harry asked as he started the engine.
"There's always somewhere I need to be darling. But I left Panda in a bar on Barastabon, and even though I've got an unlimited tab there, he'll have taken a jolly good whack at it."
Harry didn't bother going with the 'but you've got a time machine' argument. As Sarah or Rose could (or would, or had or...whatever) attest, he couldn't get the right place or time. With Iris' bus he'd be even less sure of getting the right century or the right galaxy, maybe even the right universe.
"It's an English town," Harry said needlessly.
"You're full of totally obvious statements aren't you Mr Potter, I didn't take you for one of the Doctor's job lot," she said shaking her head.
Harry chuckled as he changed gear. "Don't worry Iris I won't be screaming for your help."
"I do love a bit of screaming, from the baddy mind, I prefer my travelling companions a little more capable than the Doctor's. Except poor Jenny, lesbian traffic cop, got the runs when we went spinning through the vortex. Never good to arrive to the sixth emperor of Draconia's coronation with brown trousers."
"Charming." Was Harry's only response as he paused looking at a single street sign.
"Oh she was," Iris smiled in remembrance. "all my companions are perfectly charming, unlike some of the Doctor's."
"Onwards to the pub or should we check in with the local police?" Harry asked casually.
"So we can go through that tedious introduction, getting locked up and escaping rubbish? Who do you take me for? To the pub."
-/
The woman behind the bar had taken his money without a thought and now he and Iris were sitting near the back of the pub watching some bloke in a big jacket called 'Greengrass' complain to whoever would listen about rabbits he'd caught or something.
"Maybe they all shop at a charity shop," Harry said.
"You call yourself an investigator," Iris said taking a long swig of her pint, Harry had merely wet his lips
"Well we didn't time travel," Harry observed.
Iris fixed him with a look. "Travelled enough through the mysteries of time, the winds of the vortex, ridding the horse of eternity unabated by a TARDIS to know what time travel is like?"
Harry blinked. "Sort of. But I've also got reception on my phone. Only one bar though."
"Cheeky. By you're thinking chuck. So I think we should have a wonder around."
"Now you sound like-" He was cut off.
"Shut it," Iris warned. "while the Doctor and I may have shared things we are nothing alike."
"Of course Iris," Harry said, wetting his lips again on the pint.
-/
"Who're those two Gina?"
"Arrived about half an hour ago, didn't say much. The young bloke barely touched his pint, but that old woman polished her pint off quicker than Greengrass on a hot day."
"Oi, I can hear you two bickering over there."
"Is that their car out there?" Blaketon nodded towards the window.
"Yeah, it looks right," Gina said tapping her fingers on the bar.
"Looks can be deceptive," Blaketon said as he reached for the phone on the wall.
-/
"So, how long do you think it'll take them to get suspicious?" Harry said as he grabbed a branch of a tree, breaking it.
"What are you doing, Harry?" Iris asked slightly annoyed.
"It's real wood, the bar was too, the pint glasses glass and the beer?"
"Not the best, but better than the piss weak stuff you get in the 20th century," she commented.
"It's the 21st century Iris," Harry corrected idly.
"It is?" She asked looking at him surprised.
"2004, it's the 21st century, 'it's when everything changes'. So said a friend of mine," Harry said looking around. It was a little town, he'd been into several of them, there wasn't anything too remarkable except the presence of red phone boxes with old phones in them and that all the cars were from the 60s. Unusual but not totally weird.
"Your friend knows the future then?" She asked slowly.
"The long future, he was a Time Agent," Harry said carefully, Jack had only mentioned it a few times and so far he hadn't really learned much about them.
Iris shuddered. "Oooh, those shifty buggers, sticking their noses in where they don't belong, bossing everyone about. And their time travel, those dinky bracelets! Only a few steps better than Greel's cabinet jobby."
"Magnus Greel, isn't that to do with Weng-Chiang and the Tong of the Black Scorpion?" Harry asked somewhat unsure
Iris regarded him curiously, pausing as she was walking. "The Doctor is a talkative chappy Harry, he's really told you a lot about his comings and goings, with that marvellously violent woman he travelled with."
Harry shrugged. "The Doctor mentioned something, I was curious about time travel, Greel's name came up in a biography from the time, Ron thought it was amusing I was reading up about 'muggle magic'."
"Ron's your boyfriend then?" Iris asked as they continued to walk along the path.
Had he been eating, drinking or breathing Harry would have choked, instead he just stumbled slightly as he was presented with a mental image that he wasn't sure where it had come from. Instead he just eyed Iris Wildthyme's back as though it was her fault he had imagined Ron and him in...he didn't even want to re-think about it.
It was worse enough that there were books from another universe that described the various 'adventures' a fictional version of himself got up to, but to be provided with a mental image with one of his best friends and himself...
When he caught up to Iris she was standing at a (very) small intersection.
"Well, that's it chuck, we've not been confronted or shot at," Iris said as she looked around.
"Bully for us, I think that's at least ten points to us," Harry said looking around, patting his pocket for his wand. Whenever someone said something like that they were guaranteed to be shot at.
There was only one worse thing, that could be said, and Iris said it. "I think we should split up."
Harry looked up at the sky, the clouds seemed to say 'I told you so'. "I'm going to look in at the local police station. Why don't you have a jolly good look around the town, maybe find a crypt or a hollow."
"Bloody hell," Harry said, mostly to himself. "There's a church in the town, I'm sure we can have a go at blowing it up, UNIT always liked a bit of that."
"Right you are Harry, all organisations are rampant theists of some sort, rebel against the government while picking up their pay cheque. Meet back at the pub in an hour!" She shouted as she wandered off.
-/
Harry looked around, the silence of the village being broken by a big old truck with a flat tray on the back driving past, with the man 'Greengrass' at the wheel. He stopped his truck and looked at Harry before leaving him in a cloud of diesel smoke from a badly maintained engine. Harry listened as the truck ground through its gears into the distance.
"Church..." Harry muttered to himself looking around. Then he paused and removed his phone from his pocket.
"Ioan, hello. Oh, nothing much, I think I'm stuck in someone else's adventure with a mad time travelling woman, in a little town possibly involving time travel or aliens, or wizards, or something, very likely about to be shot at," Harry said casually as he walked down the street, aware that there were some people looking out of their windows from behind frilly white curtains at him. It was like being in Midsommer, if such a town existed.
"Get Judith and meet at my house, pack the Defender up with all the usuals and anything else, plus anything magical you think might be useful," Harry said looking around as he reached the small church. "No, I'm not really sure, but just in-" Then his reception dropped out as he entered the grounds of the church.
"Weird," Harry said as he looked around him. The ground hadn't been recently disturbed, there were no burn marks on the ground, there was enough room around the church to plant explosives, should the need arise. Plus no one knew this town existed so he wouldn't need to explain why he was blowing up churches. He'd never got around to asking the Brigadier how he explained it to the various officials.
Pushing open the doors he walked in, the pews were caked in dust. "Evidently not god fearing people," Harry said mostly to himself as he looked around. As far as his own interaction with these things he didn't really believe in anything.
The Dursleys hadn't been much for religion, Vernon had once or twice gone when he was trying to talk himself up to some higher up in Grunnings. That was at least a blessing, that the Dursleys didn't have any form of religious leaning, he shuddered to think what they would have done with that and his magic.
The Doctor had revealed to him that a great many gods, goddesses and others had influenced human history posing or taken to be gods, he'd seen some himself in the form of Chronovores. So this building didn't represent anything too much more than any other building he'd been within.
Though this church was exceptionally dusty, it was only as he looked around the front of the church a second time that he noticed, standing up on the pulpit a man, a bloke in religious garb, standing there, with almost dead eyes, cobwebs had even formed around him. He'd not noticed him on his first look around the room but now he stood out like a statue or a mannequin.
"Hello?" Harry called out. "Umm...Priest, Clergyman, Preacher, Vicar?" This final word seemed to jolt the man out of...whatever it was.
Then his dead eyes seemed to stare down at Harry as he jolted again as there was another noise and the door to the church that Harry had carefully opened and closed opened with a noise. His wand was out in a flash, not the gun he also had with him, just in case these people weren't dangerous and he was just jumpy, and then he could just stun them.
"PC Bell-Bell-Bell-Bellamy," stuttered the Vicar in an altogether creepy fashion.
"Vicar, heard there was some trouble in here. Mister?" Harry assumed this policeman who, like the rest of the town was firmly in the 60s. No taser, reflective pouches, or radio for this guy.
"I'm just looking around, thought I'd have a look around the church," Harry said carefully as he looked around for another exit and cursed Iris, there were a set of stairs, not down but up to the small bell tower.
"No trouble Mister," the man PC Bellamy paused extremely unconvincingly "just we've had some trouble round here recently."
Harry shuffled along one of the pews.
"Trouble? This seems like a perfectly calm town, unless you count ole Greengrass and his dodgy deals," Harry said extremely calmly with a hint of joking and a smile and hoped that Greengrass was, as he seemed in the pub rather than something else, an international smuggler or drug dealer who used the little town of Ashfordly to spread hardcore drugs to party goers of Britain.
But it seemed the latter was the case as both the Vicar and the PC laughed, well chuckled at least as his comment.
"You've met Greengrass then?" Asked the PC, his face lighting up.
"I encountered him in the pub, quite a character." Neither had commented on him holding his wand, which was odd, he had carefully pulled it back into his sleeve but he had been waving at the PC when he'd come in.
"Well, I just thought I'd check in, you know how it is..." the PC said looking at him.
"Yes." Harry nodded and ran for the door to the bell tower, pushing the bolts on the door across it.
"Marvellous." The door didn't lead to stairs to the bell tower, or at least not just, there were also stairs down.
"Is this what it's like to travel with the Doctor?" Harry mused to himself. "Lumos," he whispered as he took to stairs down, rather than the more safe and likely less interesting stairs up.
At the bottom of the stairs he realised there was another entrance to the crypt below the stairs as the PC Bellamy was waiting there for him.
"You, will come, with, me," he said, and then his hand slid open to reveal a gun.
"Oh bloody frakking marvellous." Harry said and disapparated.
-/ — \\—
"So these are Autons then, not seen since the 70s, fantastic fun plastic, though not in the sex doll sort of way," Judith surmised.
"Yes, and they'll pop up next year," Harry said as they went through the storage sheds looking for the extra nozzles for the flame throwers.
"How many RPGs should we take?" Ioan called from where Harry had several of the weapons. Harry shrugged and looked at Judith.
"If they're just foot soldiers we're going to need the throwers more," She mused to herself and then shouted to Ioan "Take 3, we can each use one and dump it."
"Haven't you got some magic stick work you can break out?" Judith asked as Ioan and Harry as they loaded up the Defender with the equipment and expanding bags full of items.
Harry and Ioan looked at each other. "Well there's Incendio, that's a good one," Ioan said.
"If we get into a shitstorm I could give fiendfyre a go, but I think the explosives might be safer," Harry admitted as he checked the equipment.
"So what about this woman, and her bus? You're not worried about what happened to her?" Ioan said as they got into the Defender.
"Iris?" Harry said, starting the engine. "No," he said as they drove past the double decker bus still in his courtyard. "From what I know about her and what the Doctor's said about her she's about as bad as him, probably worse in these situations."
-/
They were driving at the speed limit into the town, no need to draw too much attention to themselves unless they needed to. Not until they were ready.
"Are you sure you can fire that while we're driving?" Ioan asked slightly worriedly as Judith leaned out the window with the grenade launcher as she took in the landscape of the town.
"Shouldn't you be more worried about where Harry got it?" She asked as she checked that the safety catch was on.
"No," Ioan replied.
"We've got to make an entrance Ioan, I tried the covert approach before," Harry said as he slowed down a little bit, he didn't want Judith accidentally hitting his Jag.
-/
Iris leaned back into the chair, the Autons had left her to her own devices and hadn't stopped her when she'd helped herself to the bar and some nuts. Unlike the beer the nuts were well past their date of expiry.
Why Autons were here, pretending to be people from the 60s was another question.
Her questions had gone unanswered and it seemed Harry had disappeared, quite literally.
"You will explain the male's disappearance," said the plucky woman who had been behind the bar.
"I will?" Iris said surprised. "Luvvy, I don't know half a thing about that bloke."
"Matter transmission will not be perfected in this time period," the bartender stated in a monotone.
"Could you tell me why you think it's the 1960s then, and I'll tell you where Harry disappeared off to," she offered.
This seemed to make them pause for a moment and the woman went off somewhere.
She returned a moment later. "The energy unit has instructed we remain here to carry out the prime instruction."
"Very informative," Iris muttered "very little information."
"The male." It seemed like an order, coming out of the sweet 60s woman.
"Don't know anything, I told you. He's just some bloke that gave me a lift," Iris said as she rummaged through her handbag, somewhere inside she kept an energy blaster for such an occasion. Or she did, possibly that had been her last hand bag that ended up being worshipped as a god.
However she needn't have worried as the side of the pub exploded. To Iris' ear it sounded like several grenades had exploded against it.
-/
Pulling a flame thrower onto your back was not the most graceful of actions Harry thought to himself as Judith covered them.
Ioan and he had layered a variety of charms onto the backpacks that contained the flammable fuel, just in case so they wouldn't be a danger when the shooting started.
Then people started filing out of their houses and onto the streets their hands hinging open.
"Yoo hoo!" Cried a voice as explosions of pink energy emanated from within the pub.
"That's her?" Judith said as she fired the last grenade into a crowd of school children, each of them their hands open and shooting at the Defender. "Alien fake children" Judith shrugged as Harry helped her on with the flame thrower. "Terrible shots."
For Harry the image of young children shooting at him brought back some rather nasty memories, the explosion following the grenade hit was even more disturbing.
"RPGs first I think, thin out the crowd." Harry shouted he and Ioan were already using their wands, Incendio spells filling the air with the smell of melting plastic.
The crowd was forming up around them and the Defender coming in from three sides, with the pub taking up the fourth side. It was fortunate the pub was in the middle of the town.
"Masks down!" Harry shouted.
"Coms up," Said Ioan's voice in his ear.
"Safety first, least you're not making us were high visibility vests," came Judith's cutting response.
The masks were a relevant safety precaution, no one wanted an energy weapon or whatever it was that Autons used and the fuel to mix and blow back at them or for them to breath something toxic "Let's go," was Harry's only order as they started walking forwards in their chosen directions.
-/
Iris ran out of the pub brandishing her little pink ray gun, which was overheating, though not as bad as when she'd faced Morbius in the Death Zone.
"It's alright chuck, Aunty Iris is here..." She trailed off as she came out into a maelstrom of fire and melting plastic. Three figures were slowly walking away from a dark coloured Land Rover.
"You don't do things by half do you Harry Potter." Iris said to herself. It was like being at that Inferno project, when she and Timmy her glamorous assistant caught a ride into an alternate universe in the bus's secondary console room they'd had to access after that weretiger had gotten loose in the bus's loo.
It also smelt like that time Flossie and Fritter had been trapped inside the sex toy factories of Hoopla IV, the sights in those factories were almost as bad as the kitten workshops of Plovak 6 though quite horrible they did use the most lovely diamonds from Arcadia.
Harry Potter certainly wasn't one of the Doctor's lackies, at least not one of the early ones. Maybe that shouty incarnation he might have had him along or the other one in his endless chess games.
Harry switched fingers quickly as his hands were beginning to cramp from holding down the trigger and fought the urge to wipe the sweat from his brow.
He'd definitely need a new pair of boots after this was finished he realised from the slag around them, and there'd be a long amount of clearing up, or a large amount of vanishing charms.
-/
It had taken sometime to deal with the main population of the town, smoke was rising from several buildings they'd needed to tactically destroy.
Judith was on the outskirts of the town with Ioan checking the outlying buildings, they'd found 'Greengrasse' and dealt with him, like all of them as the Auton died its face sort of just...fell off.
Now though he was left with something of a dilemma, that wasn't really a dilemma, though it should have been, on both sides of it.
But it still troubled him slightly, probably too much time around the Doctor.
He'd found the energy unit in the church, plugged into a series of what looked like cables, or vines, or something, interfacing with the sub-structure of the town and the power cables, probably.
And now it was wrapped up in a box, pulsing away gently.
Harry knew that the Nesetene Consciousness would try to invade Earth following the events of the Last Great Time War, obviously that was still in the future.
But if he destroyed this energy unit of the Nestene would he be committing genocide?
Harry wasn't sure if he was ready to do that, even if the Autons here were ready to kill them, if he and Iris hadn't arrived here would they have attacked them? Maybe they'd just continued on in their faux-1960s lives.
Iris walked over and shoved him gently. "All done chuck?"
"Ioan and Judith are finishing up, we'll have to come back and sort our the clean up," Harry said as he put down the box beside his Jag, which had managed not to get too many energy blasts on it.
Another thing he'd need to sort out Harry thought to himself.
"What's that?" Iris asked gesturing the box.
Harry presumed she already knew. "The energy unit that was powering all this."
"And? Harry?" Iris asked.
Harry remained silent, looking up at the sky.
"The Nestene have only come to Earth once, I think anyway, UNIT encountered them in the '70s. The Swarm Leader was destroyed, so this is probably one of the others."
"A foot solider. Or something," Iris surmised.
"How would you like to take it away, find some boring planet or some alternate universe where it can live out its life?" Harry asked suddenly.
Iris stared at him for several seconds and then kissed him, tongue and all. Harry was too surprised to do anything.
"Nope, not the Doctor, a pity," Iris said as she stepped back. "There's room on the bus for another passenger, at least he'll be less chatty."
"Good," Harry smiled with relief and a quick glance to the sky he opened the boot of the Jag.
-/
Much later they were back at Harry's house, though Ashfordly was still in need of another going over to clean it out all of them were far too knackered to do anything about it today.
Harry, Ioan and Judith agreed to return the next day. Leaving just Harry and Iris, and her bus.
"There we are, he's all packed away in a dwarf star alloy lined trunk I picked up somewhere," Iris said brushing the dust from her hands.
Harry shoved his hands in his pockets unsure what to say, which was odd, as Iris and he had chatted about a series of random things on the drive back here.
"Well, it was nice to meet you Iris-" He was cut off.
"Come here and give your Aunty Iris a hug Harry Potter!" She said and grabbed Harry in a bear hug.
She still smelt of cigarettes and dust, and ancient things, like libraries on worlds older than the universe, and pub floors walks over by the population of the universe, maybe that was what her TARDIS was like. At some point he found himself hugging her back, though he wasn't quite sure why.
"Ooh, a strong set of hands and muscles on you Harry." She gave his arse a firm squeeze and then leapt towards her bus. "And a good bucket of morals." She winked and rushed up through the bus to the cab.
"Too-rah Harry Potter! Give the Doctor my love!" She shouted and then the wheeze groaning of a TARDIS began to fill his courtyard. Wind seemed to kick up around the red number 22 to Putney Common as it began to fade, sucking and blowing more and more wind around, dragging the air in towards it until its ancient engines reached their peak, dragging the bus from view as it faded away into the vortex.
"See ya Iris, don't forget to write," Harry said to himself.
-/ — \\—
Andrew Fuller, council to several elements of the Ministry, looked up as an urgent letter flew in and landed on his desk.
Opening it he read it quickly.
Ashfordly occupants destroyed, no survivors.
He cast an incendio on the paper and the ashes crumbled into a dish he had for such things the ashes mingled with thousands of other messages.
Opening a diary he noted a small mark on the relevant page. The Ashfordly Experiment had been something a predecessor had started after the octahedron had been donated by his current benefactors.
His notation finished he open a small box filled with white powder he kept in a drawer. Licking his finger he dipped it into the powder. A most excellent invention his benefactors had provided, it meant through no matter what means or investigation he wouldn't be able to remember these side activities, though he could make himself remember, should the need arise. Closing the box and regarding the ash before placing the white dusted finger in his mouth he mused, it was a pity that the Ashfordly Experiment had not been able to be used. Especially since Ms Weasley had so spectacularly failed with her intentions.
As the 'Retcon' fizzed on his tongue he concentrated on the panels next to the door to ensure that would be the last thing he remembered, were the memory to be recalled by someone.
-/
A/N:
I had some trouble with this chapter, with various things getting in the way of starting it and then more things preventing me from finishing it.
I did think about uploading it as it was at about 1500 words, following Harry's meeting with the Brigadier, but it felt some what unformed and rather short.
So the rest of the story is a few ideas I've had floating around; Iris Wildthyme transtemporal adventuress. I never really decided that she'd appear but she is a great character who's easy to evoke. This incarnation is based on the Big Finish version played by Katy Manning.
The Heartbeat story is an idea I had a while back and I wrote out a quick plot for it. It would have been something that Harry got up to while with UNIT in the 70s, Benton likely would have been along for the adventure and it still would have involved flame throwers. Why Heartbeat? It's a show set in the 1960s and lasted longer than the actual 60s, so obviously they're Autons in disguise.
Thanks for reading.
