Chapter 55

5 weeks since the Toclafane invaded...

The scientists were settling in. Or rather the scientists, their students and some wizards like Rolf who weren't good for field work were settling into to Aidensfield, working themselves into groups to work out things like; were and when the Toclafane had come from, what the Toclafane are and if they could stop them and then wider groups about what to do next.

Himself, Judith and Ioan had needed to have a hand in many of these simply because they had a handle on the mixing of magic, technology and aliens together and knew the limitations and the possibilities.

Ros had informed him of the former members of Torchwood that were creeping out of the woodwork, slowly.

He'd mentioned Cohort Dow to her as well. They would also be useful.

And not just because he wanted to find out more about them. He had more important things to do than them, Cohort Dow in the grand scheme were small fry.

Martha Jones was something of a wild card, it was known she was busy telling stories about the Doctor, having escaped the Valiant and according to their contacts she'd been around a lot of the lower bits of England doing so.

They'd heard she was on the way out of Carlisle, where he was to meet her and find out what she was up to.

He didn't have to wait long, waiting and standing in the wind, his bag and ATR slung over his back. The latter standard issue for everyone in the Resistance practically.

"Hello Martha," he said as she rounded one of the blown out bends in the road. The Toclafane weren't just into random killings they also liked a bit of random destruction as well.

The Ministry and much of London had borne the brunt of these random acts of destruction.

"Harry?!" She ran up to him and then stopped, seemingly checking to see if he was a projection or something.

"I'm real and I'm not one of the Master's lackeys," he said.

"You know who he is?!" She exclaimed.

"Where's your next destination?" He asked.

"Glasgow," she said fingering a key around her neck. Harry recognised it as one design of the TARDIS key. One of the more boring designs.

Harry smiled gently. "Let's save you a little bit of boot leather," he stepped forward.

Martha stepped back, cautious.

"You and I first met when..." Harry paused. "After I had done battle in a graveyard, you helped me back to health in the TARDIS," Harry paused. "There was another boy who died with me. His name was Cedric Diggory," Harry said his voice tight. Cedric's death was something which he had done his best to put into the past.

"You're him," she seemed surprised.

"Congratulations," Harry said in false brightness. "Welcome to time travel, where all your futures are royally buggered by psychotic Time Lords." He stepped forward. "Now would you like a lift or would you like to continue to walk along the road like a mad woman?"

She looked at him strangely. "This some sort of transmat?"

Harry shrugged and wrapped an arm around Martha's shoulder. "Something like that." He said and disapparated.

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Apparating one person had become something that he didn't really think about, even two people wasn't something that anyone of the field wizards of the Resistance really thought about any more.

Everyone had become quite used to apparating their muggle soldiers or occasionally other technically minded members of the Resistance that it almost become normal for them. It was almost funny how in less than 2 months such things had become normal.

But they each relied on one another now, it was their planet they were trying to save, their society.

Martha coughed and exhaled as they reappeared a distance away from Glasgow. Harry had re-coned the location and it was a wood near a golf club, still more than 40 kilometres away from Glasgow but closer than her previous distance away.

"What?" She breathed and Harry remembered he'd forgotten to tell her to exhale. The reaction was to inhale after apparating and if you didn't exhale first you felt like you were choking on air. "Was that?" She coughed again.

"Magic," Harry said without explaining further as he awkwardly pulled a large rolled up piece of canvas from his bag and opened it up.

It was a magical tent, sort of. It wasn't one of LPI's expanding bags, this was something Rolf had brought to the Resistance's table.

Not quite a tent with all the features it was more like an expanding hut, with very little features aside from being moderately sized within and waterproof. It had none of the modcons that even the worst of wizarding tents had. It had a table, 2 chairs and two places for beds. Nothing fancy, even though this was considered amazing by any one without magic, anyone who hadn't had any contact with dimensionally transcendental things.

There was a single pole to set it up, allowing you to set it up in one movement.

"Come on," he said walking inside.

"Well bunch up," she said still coughing from apparating with him. "It would be better to talk out...side." She started and then finished as she found herself in a space moderately larger than the outside.

"It's..." She said with a smile.

"Not quite TARDIS-like. It's one of the less impressive examples of its type," Harry said pulling off his weapon and bag and pulling out one of the chairs and began to rummage around in his bag for the thermos of hot tea he'd brought with him.

He could have used his wand to heat some water and whatever, but a thermos was just as easy.

"So, what went tits up?" He asked Martha Jones. Companion to the Doctor, escapee from the Valiant and now...what?

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Martha sipped her tea as she explained everything.

Or rather she didn't, Harry suspected she was omitting large chunks of what happened and how the Master came to be here on Earth.

That he stole the TARDIS from somewhere in the future, that Jack had come along for the ride.

That wasn't surprising, that at least explained where and when he'd gone.

Gwen would be happy enough to know that. She was currently holding down the fort, and the Resistance's base in Cardiff, quite well from what he'd heard. Torchwood was well equipped for the fight, it was a pity there weren't so many people to be in the Resistance in Cardiff, but their weapons access and tech access would be useful to the main Resistance in Aidensfield and his other bolt hole; Torchwood Four.

The rift had settled down to almost nothing, ever since the Toclafane arrived, they didn't know why.

What Martha told him explained, sort of what had happened. Why the rift was so quiet, but not why it was.

"A what?"

"I don't know Harry, he said a 'touch one wrong bit, blow up the solar system'."

"I see," Harry said. He didn't know how to destroy a 'paradox machine', although he did know some little brothers and cousins of the Paradox who he could ask, if they responded. So far nothing had though. Earth was isolated, perhaps it was this machine that was doing it?

He didn't know of anything that could destroy another TARDIS, the Doctor had mentioned that it was only something done in the gravest emergencies. He had only spoken of it vaguely in relation to his rebuilding on the console. That the console wasn't the TARDIS it was more complicated than that. Destroying a TARDIS was something like murdering a complicated thing. 'Something that travels through space and time old chap is complicated, it can't be destroyed, not the way humans think of it.' He'd then pause and rub his neck in thought, musing on it before adding 'well, that's not entirely true, there are ways, but it is hardly destruction more annihilation, extinction would be a better word for it'.

Even without the paradox machine the Master was still dangerous. Harry didn't know what would happen even if it could be destroyed, would everything snap back into place or would snapping the rubber band cause destruction to everything around it? Like a water balloon bursting.

"The Doctor said I could trust you Harry," Martha seemed paused, waiting for him to confirm this, waiting before she explained everything, what she was doing.

Harry smiled. "I've known him most of my life." He didn't add that he'd also known the Master for a lot of his life also. Although the Master mostly in one of his regenerations, that one, he knew the best. His latter lives had been...problematic and this one, this Master, there was only the briefest suggestion of his old friend.

-/

Harry leaned back into his chair, almost blown away by what Martha had told him.

He grabbed some other food out of his bag and passed it to Martha while he digested what she'd told him. What the Doctor had told her to do.

He pitied her.

And wanted to rage against the Doctor, against his friend for gambling with the Earth the way he had done, and what he was making Martha do.

The Doctor, the one he and Draco had travelled with had told him stories of the Time Lords and he, while wandering the TARDIS during one of their times 'stuck' in the vortex had discovered some things on his own. Things he probably shouldn't have discovered, texts that he'd needed rescuing from. Things he had needed to lock away in his mind. Curiosity and all that. Would get him killed, said Draco after he'd rescued him, or maybe the TARDIS, having granted him access had allowed him to be saved. He wasn't sure.

A great many things had been discovered and learnt in his wanderings around the Doctor's TARDIS. Some even forgotten.

Harry had known, though found out more about the Time Lords, those of ancient had stupendous powers, they'd set themselves up above the gods, with arsenals of weapons, all locked away now.

Some Time Lords liked the power they had, some didn't, some had powers, enormous psychic powers that could bend the will of people. Transcendence was a possibility, and power and energies become one and the same. And then the Time Lords decided they wouldn't interfere.

The Doctor seemed to want power, weirdly, against the Master from the power of humanity...? The power that humanity wanted to give an idea? An idea based on Martha and his travels?

The Doctor was getting Martha to do it, to go on this great journey across the Earth and what remained of its population

"You know, a Time Lord can be killed," Harry said casually. The darker parts of UNIT had known how to do it for some time, just in case the Master or any other Time Lord needed 'disappearing'. The key was their binary cardiovascular system. Or their brain. Probably. "And not with your silly chemical gun," he added.

"But can you get it for me, make it for me, convincingly?" Martha asked. That was the easy part.

Finding out the other part was the much harder part. He said that to her. "Sneaking onto the Valiant just to find out the exact timing of the countdown is suicide," Harry said and then added firmly watching her. "I won't do it or risk anyone in the Resistance." He paused, something occurring to him. "The Doctor couldn't have known that I would take charge of the Resistance, or that there would even be one."

"There's always one, whenever there's a cause worth rallying for," Martha said as she swallowed some of her food.

"The Master's made a broadcast or two, we can get access to the countdown, probably."

Martha watched him. "Why won't you risk this Harry? This is important."

Harry felt ready to shout but calmed himself, maybe it was seeing that Ron was the Master's great enforcer of magic, that had unsettled him. Maybe it was that he'd not heard anything of Daphne for several weeks.

But mostly it was because Martha, via the Doctor was telling him to put the survival of the human race in the hands of faith.

He and the Resistance didn't have that luxury.

The environmental degradation had already started, the genocides had already begun. Rolf had told him about the affects the Toclafane would have had in massacring all the species in the Forbidden Forest.

"The risk wouldn't be mine to take," he said simply. Sneaking onto the Valiant was something they'd considered and a couple of Ioan's mates had done a recon job on.

The amount of Toclafane disruption meant that even brooms threatened to drop out of the sky as they got close to the airship.

The Valiant's defences would shoot anything out of the air before they got close. Sneaking onto the ship was nigh on impossible.

"Don't you trust him Harry?" Martha asked watching him. "You did when I first met you."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "I've been around the block a few more times since then," Harry said as he sipped his now tepid tea. He drained it regardless. "The Doctor plays games, he once liked to play chess with people." He paused. "He's larger than life, more powerful than some of the most dangerous beings in the universe," he sighed. "And-"

"And what Harry? This will work, it has to." Now she sounded worried. No, she sounded desperate.

"Does it? We're preparing for a lot of situations Martha. Including if it doesn't work. We need to be ready," Harry said, echoing something that Jack had told him many years ago.

That old catch cry of the 21st century 'you've got to be ready'.

-/

There was a silence between them.

Harry's expression softened. "It's a nice idea," he said, but didn't add it was a soft idea, with lots of holes. He didn't understand how it would work beyond restoring the Doctor to power. Or why the Doctor didn't stop the Master before...before all of this happened, or why he didn't dead lock the doors of the TARDIS or...any other innumerable questions.

"We need to keep our options open, us and the Resistance Martha. I won't hinder your passage through the world, we'll help where we can," he paused. "I'll try to extract a more accurate time and date of the countdown. But from what you say everyone should intrinsically know when to start, if it's manipulating the psychic field, I'm assuming of the Network." Something despite being able to use non-Archangel satellites the Resistance wasn't any closer to shutting down the Archangel ones.

"I...I'm not sure," she began.

"Neither are we, really," he reassured unsuccessfully.

"What...what do you mean Harry, if it doesn't?" She began to ask.
Harry smiled very briefly. "Operational security." That was code for 'I'm not telling you Martha Jones, just in case you get captured'.

She stared at him for several moments. "You're different."

"Time has passed Martha." Harry said calmly, he didn't want to get into a discussion about how he'd changed. When she first met him he was a teenager, mostly beaten, half dead at the hands of Voldemort. She had seen more of his life, his...intimate moments than most. The most intimate moments, the time when he was almost dead and broken, both physically and mentally, and had seen what could have happened to him, what happened to Cedric.

Harry wondered again if he should tell her something. What he would be essentially telling her is 'we're preparing for a time in case you and the Doctor fail to save the day. Because he's already failed the Earth. Times 2. He allowed the Master to come to the Earth and didn't prevent him from taking it to a level which was impossible to come back from'. Even Martha's plan didn't sound like it could save the Earth or destroy the Toclafane, only restore the Doctor. Would the Doctor be willing to commit genocide to save the Earth? Kill all of the Toclafane, whatever they were to save the Earth? Harry mused to himself. He had done it twice before, against the Daleks and the Time Lords to save the universe in the Last Great Time War.

"I understand Harry, why you can't tell me, in case I get captured." She took off the key she'd been wearing. "The Doctor said no one could see me with this."

"Aside from being the key to the TARDIS what is it?" Harry asked.

Martha looked surprised, Harry smiled. "You know what it is?"

Harry nodded. "Wizards have an eye for things like this. It's innate," he said. He'd learned that from all the new scientists they had with the Resistance who'd wanted to poke and prod the wizarding population of the Resistance. He, Ros, Jane, and Robert Townsend had mostly resisted it, but after they explained it was (mostly) about figuring through the Toclafane and utilising their 'wizarding assets' he'd said anyone who wanted to help could. Supposedly the whole human race had little bits of psychic abilities, and wizards were another facet of that (probably). But it was something innate, something instinctual. Richard had posited that it might an evolved response to something. Someone else, whom he couldn't recall, though likely one of the ex-Torchwood or maybe British Army people had mused that it could be an evolved response to aliens, or maybe wizards.

The amount of times that the Earth had been invaded, or had aliens mess around with their history had to have some affect on the species.

The green faced man, with the tendrils, that had been in Paris, the alien, the man, the being the Doctor had told him about. He'd never elaborated on the name 'oh...Harry...names...that's not the important part' the Doctor had grinned and beamed at him with wild eyes. 'Duggan and his punch...he's the most important part...' and then Romana had chastised him for glorifying violence to a youth like himself.

That alien and his face had popped up throughout human history.

The Daleks too had been in humanity's history backwards through time.

Then there were things like the Primords and Stahlman's Ooze, where had that come from? The Earth screaming?

What did all that do to affect the Earth?

Harry suspected that had the Earth not been invaded and the Resistance wasn't fighting to save the world, the collected scientists, professors and whomever else they had would be writing very long and very excited theses musing on all these possibilities and what they meant.

Though were they not in the situation they were in it was very unlikely they would be getting together and thinking about these things.

"I've seen a few different TARDIS keys," Harry said as he turned the key of Martha's over in his hands. It was a rather plain, boring key, that appeared to have had a few bits and pieces welded onto it. Or more likely soniced onto it.

He preferred his own TARDIS key, a much more ornate design, that seemed to fit into the TARDIS lock without actually looking like it was able to.

Draco had said it was magic, Harry hadn't really thought about it. But the Doctor had thought that they both needed one, even though they'd only travelled with him for a short amount of time. 'Escape and entry is something. (He'd pause and sniff the air) that I want you to be able to do. (He'd then glare at them).' Harry'd had no intentions of getting himself killed while travelling with the Doctor and he suspected that Draco would have always remained inside the TARDIS, if not for the things that she held within herself. Some of the things they'd discovered.

"Of course." She looked at him. "Did you ever travel with him? Between when I saw you and...now?"

"I've been in the TARDIS a few times. Lifts between places. Times," Harry replied carefully. Curious of where Martha was going with this line of questioning.

She looked at him, watching him. "And you still don't trust him?"

Harry exhaled through his nose. They were back to this again.

The Doctor had at various times said that gods were something that people created to explain things that their minds rejected.

It was science, rather than 'magic', the magic that people believed, he somehow made a distinction between the magic of wizards and that which was science pretending to be magic.

Although other times he was quite mysterious about it all.

River had also said 'the Doctor lies', although she hadn't actually said that. But that's what she implied.

Harry handed her key back, he decided he wasn't going to get into this philosophical discussion about science, magic and faith with Martha. Not so she could run over her questions to him again. "The Resistance will keep an eye out for you Martha," he said finally. "When you need to make the jump across the water, wherever, find the Resistance we'll make your journey easier," He said standing up as Martha finished the last of her drink.

"With that...?" She began.

Harry smiled. "Yes." He cleared up the remains of the food into his bag. "I'm afraid I can't leave you the tent," he said as they walked outside and he packed it away.

She nodded. "I get it Harry. You don't-"

Harry cut her off. "Time is fluid Martha. The Doctor might succeed, he might not. But people have died and will continue to die." Harry inhaled the cool air to keep himself calm. "We, the Resistance will work with you, but we're not only going to work with it. We have to pursue other paths as well." Martha looked like she was going to say something. "Someone once told me 'time can be rewritten'. The future isn't a fixed point for those living it." Probably. He didn't really know, but he didn't want to get into another discussion so he reached forward gave her a quick hug. "Good luck Martha. Hopefully we'll meet again." Then he stepped away and disapparated.

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5 and a half weeks since the Toclafane invaded...

Harry tapped a few keys on the keyboard, there were innumerable dishes set up outside the house to facilitate communication and monitoring, although for their future plans to work they'd need to use his house, which had more and a better set up to facilitate what they wanted to do.

Harry hated that they were pursuing this path. It was a just in case clause. Something they needed to do because, according to their thus far collected scientists, who were still busy pouring through the data they had, they could be facing a possible extinction event.

Albeit a slow one.

They'd barely even begun to work out how the rockets might function. Hopefully their intelligence network would bring some of the plans in soon. They also had a secondary plan to pursue late today he was due to take a dive into a pensive with Richard and Brian and one of the students, all three had been forced to look at some plans while they'd been held which had related to the rockets, although they couldn't recall in any detail what they looked like.

It was assumed looking at from a 'third person' within the confines of a pensive would assist them in recalling events.

Ros and Air Marshall Robert Townsend had found the pensieves quite useful. They'd recovered several and the wizards of the Resistance had offered others and they were useful for watching back encounters and more often than not atrocities. Oliver Wood was helping between the Resistance in Aidensfield and at Torchwood Four putting his 'management skills to work'. In between the field work which most the field-capable wizards were doing. They were still the most efficient way to move around, even with the Toclafane distortions.

The screen indicated the satellites were coming into range, those that the Master didn't control or had forgotten about.

Symbols scrolled along the screen indicating what encryption they were using and what piece of alien technology they were using to make this link up happen.

Then the screen snapped into life and a woman appeared on the screen, Harry smiled briefly at her.

"Doctor Shaw."

"Mr Potter, surely we can forgo salutations by this point." She smiled. Harry had yet to meet Professor Shaw of UNIT, although he'd read her reports while he'd been in the 1970s with UNIT, and of course they both had common friends. The Brigadier and the Doctor.

"Fine, Elizabeth?"

"Liz please Harry." She watched him as he nodded.

"This link up seems to be holding, Dalek again? You're lucky we had the parts up here."

"Dalek technology has its uses," Harry paused. "It's how we're going to be getting the gear up to you and the ISS for this..." Harry trailed off.

"We went to Mars in the '70s Harry, you know that," Liz commented.

"I had more important things to do while I was there, back then." Harry exhaled. "What about the relay, we're trying to push ahead at least 10 years, probably 20 with the tech we've got to create the relay system."

"We've looked at the numbers you have and at what's happening on Earth at the moment. We need to prepare for all possibilities."

Harry closed his eyes and dragged a hand over his face. He knew that, and they were still exploring other possibilities. Martha Jones' countdown being one of them, though she was as helpful as she was unhelpful. There were still other possibilities to be pursued. He'd have Professor Cox and another research team look into it when he worked out if it wasn't temporally suicide. Even then there were so many 'I don't knows' it was mind boggling. "I know Liz, I know. The Toclafane just seem to kill randomly. I've heard some things that say if the Master doesn't wipe us out..."

"That the Toclafane out of sheer madness will wipe up out for the thrill of it," she paused. "Did you rescue any clinical psychologists in your raids, maybe they can shed light."

Harry wasn't sure, he worked between them, it was someone else who knew them all intimately and what they did. He mostly chatted with Brian and Richard, they felt most comfortable with him as he'd apparated them to safety, he said as much to Liz.

She smiled. "Typical, dazzled by your great feats."

"Hardly. Just magic."

"Such a simple word for such a large concept. Something I am sure is blowing your scientists' minds at the moment." She fixed him with a look, surprising over the sat-link they had. "I will have to trust this 'just' magic of yours, as you continue to advocate using the relay system but once, in favour of your magic cabinet system."

"Learn to roll with it Liz, that's what everyone in the resistance is doing. Roll with it until the crisis is over or they can have a cool pint."

"When it works Harry, the relay and your cabinet then I will have a pint. If what you say is true, a simple passage between here and there, it will be a boon for the evacuation." She paused. "If it comes to that." She looked off camera. "It seems Sergey is about to come online."

"He appreciated what we're going to do, even embraced it," Harry commented.

"Russians Harry."

"How very Cold War attitude of you Liz." Harry smirked as he typed some commands into the computer and another screen joined them. "Sergey not running out of food quite yet I hope?" Harry smiled greeting the cosmonaut.

"Not quite yet Harry, not quite yet, and Doctor Shaw, we are it seems all linked."

"Indeed. We're still go to attempt the transmat to you in 5 days time. I'm still working out the power system requirements."

"Transmats are power hungry systems, we'll be canabalising a lot of things to get it to work," Liz commented.

"You've also still got to launch a relay craft when we get all this set up." Harry added. "It only needs to work once, to get the cabinet there."

"If." Sergey added in.

"When," Liz said more forcefully.

"Indeed, when," Harry commented. "We shouldn't be more pessimistic than we are already. Earth invaded, Master in charge, more than one tenth of the population dead and the number going up every day., Harry snorted a cynical sigh. "Sorry, shouldn't bring the tone down. I know you Sergey had to watch it all."

"We are just fortunate these Toclafane have little interest in us. But when the rockets start firing, well..."

Harry nodded, the ISS was right in the middle of many of the predicted flight paths of the rockets, although that was at the moment only a guess based on the construction sites of the rockets.

A warning went off on his computer. "Looks like we're about to drift out of range Sergey, Liz, we'll talk soon."

"Just get to work Harry, I want to see if this will really work."

"And see if I know my stuff, trust me I know Dalek tech." Harry said and left unsaid he knew and would've known more, had things not gone askew so quickly.

Then the signal dropped out, Ros Myers waltzed into the room less than 10 minutes later as Harry had given up on getting it back up.

"You look awful Potter."

"I feel..." He trailed off. "I've felt worse." He concluded after a moment. He walked in silence with Ros to their break room to get a cup of tea. Thus far they weren't seeing any problematic shortages of any of the essentials, it was one of the things they'd done early on; to secure food stuffs for the Resistance.

"We're continuing to check Martha Jones' path, and how to confirm her countdown, you're sure she can be trusted?"

It was a question Ros had asked him before when they'd managed to find and catch up with Martha Jones. The Resistance was quickly gaining an ear to the ground near plenty of the work camps and factories that were being set up around the country.

A woman telling tales of the Doctor, who could seemingly be ignored by the Toclafane could be found if the right people looked.

"I trust her enough." Harry said pouring himself a mug of tea warming his hands around it and breathing in the dark steam. No milk, something that was easy enough to forgo, although they did have very good stores of UHT and powdered milk, it wasn't something he needed.

There was still the long, the very long term to consider. The plan with Liz Shaw and the Moonbase and Mars. In the back of his mind he called that the 'if we fail' plan.

But they needed to prepare for all the big eventualities that they could consider.

Failure was an option.

At the moment he didn't trust Martha Jones' plan. Which meant he didn't trust the Doctor's planning either. But look where it had got them, he had practically said that when he'd met Martha Jones on a road on the way out of Carlisle.

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6 weeks since the Toclafane invaded...

Harry wandered out of the planning room and almost walked into Luna. "Hey."

"You look awful Harry," she said a look of concern on her face,

"Thanks." Harry looked her over. "You're not exactly heading out to the ball." He smiled.

"Reconnaissance in Glasgow." She grimaced. "One of the soldiers was injured."

"Did you plant the monitoring equipment?" He asked.

She nodded. "We placed as much as we could and planted the bombs." She looked at him and smiled. "Your 'just in case'."

"Everything's just in case," he exhaled. "I wish I could have gone with Draco and Hermione."

She gave him a look. "From what I know Harry the ruins of Hogsmede are nothing you wish to visit."

"No," Harry said. "But they won't be the last."

Luna punched him in the arm. "Cheer up."

"This is Harry Potter," said Judith as she stalked along the corridors. "Cheery is not something he does regularly." She paused and nodded in Luna's direction. "Luna."

"Judith." She nodded. "I will now try and extract my husband Harry from your Dawkins' claws."

"You make him sound like a big monster," Harry grinned. "He's recovering from his own wizarding experience."

"So it's one of his lackeys then Harry? Much better the students are much less..." Luna trailed off wrinkling her nose.

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Outside of Hogsmede, scout position 4.

Hogsmede was only smouldering.

It had burned, died down and then burned again.

There were craters in the ground where the Toclafane had concentrated their fire, and there were carcasses of unicorns that had been strung up.

Hermione wanted to throw up, she wanted to rage.

Draco Malfoy was doing the latter. Silently.

She knew why Harry had put herself and Draco together.

Harry trusted Draco as much as he trusted her. Harry and Draco had shared something that no wizards had before, well none that she knew of.

True experience of the fourth dimension, it was something some had experienced via a time turner, but not via the temporal travel as Hermione understood it.

From the surveillance of the surrounding area and their own assumptions there would be several wizards at Hogwarts, hiding out away from the carnage.

The Resistance needed people ready and willing to fight and to help. There was only so much the wizards that were in the Resistance could do.

Draco Malfoy had, mellowed in his time knowing Harry. Exactly how long that had been seemed to be a somewhat fluid question.

Hermione looked down at the large piece of bulky equipment that she had been provided with by the Resistance. Via Harry, although Harry had other things on his plate.

It was amongst other things a Toclafane detector, but even with the advances from the scientists thus far, their proximity to Hogsmede and Hogwarts was not assisting in its function.

"Well Granger?" Malfoy asked, though his tone was not, surprisingly a demanding one.

"As good as it can be, there doesn't appear to be anything around." She tucked the device into her bag.

"It is fortunate then we have these." He patted the weapon on his back, it was something everyone had become used to carrying. Although it had appeared some Toclafane were getting wise to their use of the anti-tank rockets. But the muggle soldiers were working on varying their weapons and to adapt.

"I guess it's time we go back." Hermione looked to him.

"I suppose so Granger. Do you think it'll be a shock to them if we arrive together."

"Only if we arrive hand in hand Malfoy," she commented.

Malfoy looked at her with an amused expression. "That's unlikely Granger."

"Wouldn't want to touch a mudblood like me?" She smirked.

"I couldn't grab my ATR," he tutted. "Didn't you learn anything from our briefings Granger?" He said as he climbed over the mound they'd been hiding behind.

Hermione glared after the blond man, he had been spending far too much time around Harry.

-/

"Can you feel that?" Granger said as they walked along what was left of the path to Hogsmede towards the castle.

"Yes, it feels like..." Draco trailed off.

"Like the siege..." Granger started but didn't continue her sentence. They both knew that day.

As they approached the doors to Hogwarts they creaked open.

Draco wondered of the people who came out made of them.

Both he and Granger were in muggle battle dress with their new and quickly developed wizarding 'stab vests' over the top. In theory they might protect against a Toclafane knife, enough to survive long enough for treatment at least. That was the theory with the charms that had been layered onto the muggle material.

"Hermione?" Said a voice Draco knew.

"Malfoy?!" Said another.

Neville Longbottom was pointing a wand at Granger and George Weasley was pointing one at him.

Draco was tempted to point out whose sibling was working for the enemy. But that information fell under 'secure information'. Almost everything about the Toclafane, the Master and those working for him was.

"We come in peace," Granger said raising her hands and then muttered as she stepped forward. "Get ready to stun them."

Draco would have thought she was mad a few months ago. But times change.

"We're the Resistance," she said looking to them both.

Draco stepped closer to them, George Weasley had lowered his wand, Longbottom he could now see had a large splotch of an energy burn on his face, likely from a Toclafane. The man had obviously managed to put up several lays of shielding spells to protect himself.

It helped, but they'd yet to find a spell that was entirely affective.

"You and Malfoy?" George looked between them and them smiled. "Harry's busy is he?"

Draco stepped forward. "Put your hands down Granger." He paused and looked Wealey, George Weasley that was in the eye. "Yes. Harry's quite busy."

"He's leading the Resistance?" George asked a knowing tone in his voice.

"Of course." Granger put down her hands. Draco noticed that she had pushed her wand up her sleeve, likely when she'd put her hands up.

-/

Hogwarts had a sense, a smell, a tone, as they walked through the corridors, one of...

Draco couldn't quite discern what.

"Suffering. Death." Granger commented in a tight tone as they followed Longbottom and George Weasley through the corridors.

Unlike Harry he had not returned to their school since that day, Granger he wasn't sure. Her job in what used to be the Ministry had likely meant she had free access to sites like Hogwarts.

They were led up to the Headmaster's office.

Draco wasn't sure what he was expecting to be there when they arrived.

To see Dumbledore's portrait sitting along with the others he was not surprised.

Nor was he entirely surprised that McGonagall was still alive.

He tensed still though.

From the Resistance's surveillance of Hogwarts it didn't reveal anything off. Nothing like what had happened to those few wizards, those that had turned.

Wizards like Ronald Weasley.

He had seen the pensive memory. Potter had said it was important to understand any psychology of the wizard, should they come up against him or others like him.

Traitors.

If you were a wizard and weren't clear enough of mind and intelligent enough to fight the Master's Archangels then you were subservient. To actively serve meant you did so willingly.

"Mr Malfoy. Ms Granger. What an unexpected visitation." McGonagall rose from a chair, leaning heavily on a cane.

"You're injured?" Granger stated the obvious in the form of a question though didn't move to assist.

"A wound of an encounter with these Toclafane." She looked between them. "And now." She looked at them. "You're the resistance are you?" She wrinkled her nose.

"We thought they were just muggles," George said to McGonagall an excited expression on his face. "Harry's with them."

"And Mr Potter could not come himself?" McGonagall looked between them.

"I imagine Minerva that Mr Potter is very likely doing a lot more than we could conceive of. A very capable young man throughout the years and times I have known him. Very capable," commented a voice everyone in the room knew.

"These aren't assassins McGonagall," grumbled another voice from a portrait.

"If we were you would already be dead." Draco commented idly.

Granger sighed and glanced at him. "That's not helpful Malfoy."

"But nonetheless true Hermione?" Longbottom looked at them carefully.

Granger shifted her weight onto the backs of her feet. "Yes. It's true. I wouldn't do it," she paused.

Draco knew the rest of that sentence 'unless it was absolutely necessary'. Collaborators were eliminated, those willingly serving the Master. Strategic removals were one of the euphemisms that Harry had spoken of to him. Those in certain positions doing certain jobs. Anything to slow the work, the ships, the factories. The slave camps.

"We're here to help." Draco decided to break the silence. Strictly speaking that was only sort of true.

But from what they'd observed no one had been away from the castle, with the Resistance they could help.

He, with interjections from Granger explained this evenly to the people in the office.

"I see, and why have you waited until now to contact us?" McGonagall asked, almost petulantly.

Draco could see Granger again breathing and remaining calm, he decided to say what she was thinking.

"There have been more important things to deal with than this school," he calmly said as he noted Granger nodded.

"We had to wait until Hogsmede stopped burning and the Toclafane lost interest in it," she added.

Draco noted that Longbottom tensed and focused in his stare on Granger.

"And there is nothing you could've done Hermione? To save Hogsmede?"

"Would there have been a point Neville? We have bigger issues to face than the loss of one town. We honestly did not have the manpower to do anything. The Ministry is destroyed, Diagon Alley burned," Granger explained, Draco wondered if the wizards and witch here knew.

"I know," Neville said in a soft voice. "Hannah helped evacuate Diagon Alley to Hogsmede." He stared at them fiercely. "Then. It. Burned."

Again there was a silence in the room.

"Show them to Grubbly-Plank Mr Weasley, she will be able to help them and any people they may need." The elder professor waved dismissively in their direction.

-/

With that they were dismissed from the office. Neville remained in there with McGonagall and the portraits.

"He's..." George started.

"Broken," Hermione finished for him and hugged him with one arm. "It is good to see you're...alive George."

"Angelina's here too," He said with a grin. "I'm glad to see you." He looked over at Malfoy. "Even you Malfoy."

"Indeed. That is surprising Weasley," Malfoy muttered.

"Grubbly-Plank's been sorting everyone, after what happened in the forest and elsewhere..." He paused. "You know about-?"

Hermione cut him off. "Yes, we're aware of what the Toclafane have done," she said a little too quickly. It had been disgusting to think about it. From the reports that she had seen from elsewhere around the world it seemed that the Toclafane had sought out wizarding creatures; killing them. As the Resistance's reach grew they discovered more information. There were pockets around the world that were more secure, that had been saved. But any large forests where there were concentrations of animals and creatures they had been massacred.

It seemed their presumption of a unicorn genocide was accurate. The Toclafane had been quite thorough with regard to them.

George led them to a part of the castle that Hermione had not frequented, it was where guests to the castle stayed from what she recalled.

There were several guest rooms around here, sectioned off from the rest of the castle with their own access to similar amenities that the houses in the castle had.

Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank was waiting for them. Hermione congratulated herself for remembering Grubbly-Plank's first name.

She wouldn't call any of the people in the castle 'Professor', she'd told herself. The only Professors she had contact with were the ones that were in the Resistance, and of them the only two she really spoke with were Professors Cox and Dawkins because of their odd friendship with Harry. If that was what it was, they were amazingly eager and curious about magic and everything.

"Miss Granger, Mr Malfoy, I was informed you'd arrived," she greeted gruffly.

"Wilhelmina they're-"

"From the resistance. Yes." She looked between them. "Come to take some people off our hands?" She commented. "Good. I'll come with you. Get away from this..." She wrinkled her nose.

Hermione looked to Malfoy who didn't so much as shrug as do not much, it was his equivalent of a shrug.

"How many people are here Wilhelmina?" Hermione started as they were led forward further into the castle.

"Some students parents, some that escaped the Ministry, others..." She looked carefully to Malfoy. "They thought we'd forget what they'd done in the past."

Malfoy met her gaze and didn't say anything. Which was the right thing to do. Hermione suspected that he wanted to say something to her but was holding his tongue, or perhaps he thought that Wilhelmina was below him.

Hermione really didn't know. Malfoy had changed, and not just because of their situation, the situation of the Earth, Malfoy was quite changed, different, even though not many noticed it. She noticed it, a definite change in his personality, albeit slight, most of the time.

"I suspect you're not here just to rescue these sods from us," Wilhelmina commented as she indicated one of the larger rooms where people could be seen reading, playing chess and various other games.

"No," Malfoy said in a level tone.

Harry and Ros Myers had been quite firm on this front.

The Resistance was just that, they were resisting against the Master and the Toclafane.

It wasn't the place for people to go to...do what McGonagall seemed to be doing. Trying to ignore it and waiting to be saved.

They would accept people into the Resistance who were ready and willing to help to free their world of the Toclafane and the Master, to help around the world.

"Didn't think so. Some of them are useless." Grubbly-Plank nodded to the left.

"My former house mates?" Malfoy asked an amused tone in his voice.

"No where for them to go," she said.

"No," Malfoy mused.

"So how do you two want to do this?" Grubbly-Plank asked them hands on hips.

-/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/

7 weeks since the Toclafane invaded...

It had taken rather longer than he wanted to set up the transmat systems. So much so he was now at his house with all its other bits of tech that wasn't at the Resistance base.

Doing it from there presented its own risks, here he had a lot of his experimental technology.

He also had something that had been loaned to him while its owner was being a roving Resistance member, cementing relationships with people who wouldn't associate directly with the Resistance.

Harry twisted the controls on his sonic screwdriver and 'welded' another powerpack into the irritating metal mutt. "How's that K9? Connections stable, powerflow okay?"

K9 waggled his ears for a few moments and Harry craned around to look at the screen on his side. "Power systems aligning Harry Potter. You have accurately added the powerpacks to this unit's power systems."

"Good. Do you think you'll have enough to take out a Toclafane if they arrive?" Harry mused as he went over to the other thing they might need.

Being out here away from any protections, and they'd be generating an unshielded energy disruption with the transmat systems, it'd be a big target for the Toclafane. If they noticed, sometimes Harry wasn't sure if they were looking or monitoring.

Sometimes they just seemed to pick a target and torture and kill the inhabitants of a work camp for amusement.

"Insufficient data Harry Potter. Energy weapons have-"

Harry cut him off. "I know, different properties to our ATRs. Though Richard still wants a full one to dissect, I think he's annoyed that we blow them up whenever we see them. Bits of Toclafane aren't enough for him." He said to himself, and to K9, it was nice, even if he was incredibly irritating the K9 was the thing he had to talk to.

He turned around and grabbed the dead Dalek he had in the shed and pulled it outside. The motive units he'd been unable to power back up, but they still had some passive elements to them, enough that meant it wasn't impossible to pull along. The weapon system was functional and with a bit of tinkering he hoped to give K9 remote control.

K9 would also be helping him with balance and targeting the transmat to the ISS for their first and hopefully only delivery in this manner. Once they relay was operational they could use the transmat at the Resistance base to send things.

But this open ended transmat meant a lot more things could go wrong.

He needed to get it exactly right or risk blowing a hole in the delicate hull of the ISS with a misaligned transmat.

-/

The transmat itself was also outside, mostly because he was worried about using inside one of his sheds. It was quite a bodged job of a thing and now, even in standby mode there was a strong smell of static and some sort of burning. K9 assured him...actually that wasn't the right word for the tone the uppity metal mutt used, he'd informed him it wasn't anything to worry about. Except K9 hadn't said that either, he'd suggested he was smelling things.

So said the mobile computer that looked like a dog.

Harry had declined the offer to have extra soldiers or wizards present when he initiated the transmat. K9 was enough.

Also as his house was a really big non-magical movement zone – no apparating or port keying escape was limited. K9 would have to do. K9 and his dead Dalek friend.

He was sure Judith would have offered were it not for the fact she was across the Channel sorting out some assets over there. Ioan was with some of his friends in the Czech Republic and through Poland, Ukraine and Belarus all the way to Russia where they'd been getting sporadic reports of 'radiation pits' being formed by the rapid expansion of the Master's factories. Air Marshall Townsend had suggested this was where they should target their larger attack.

When they worked out what to target exactly.

The Master was exploiting various manufacturing hubs to produce his rockets.

The spaceports in Russia, Belgium, France's Guiana Space Centre and numerous other spaceports were being expanded to become centres of their owns for launch and other control mechanisms.

They also had the issue of how to target.

The Valiant was another thing that had question marks all around it. Not just because of the Toclafane's presence there but its monitoring, defensive and offensive capabilities. That was in addition to the Toclafane's lethal offensive capabilities.

They were potentially outnumbered, outgunned and had thus far been outmaneuvered. Though there was one thing they had over the Master; determination.

Something the Master, from everything he knew of the Time Lord had only to a point, they just had to discover his breaking point. But then that was the man, the Time Lord he had known, and over time he had known him less and less.

The psychopath who sat as lord and master over the Earth had no trace of the man, the friend he had known.

The Doctor had said that he was the only one, the only Time Lord to survive the Time War, the last great war against the Time Lords and the Daleks.

Exactly how he'd managed to have a chummy relationship with said other side in that war, how they existed and seemed to know about said war...didn't make sense. Though the 'emergency temporal shit' Daleks' existence also didn't make sense. In fact Dalek chronology didn't make sense full stop.

-/

Harry exhaled.

"Confirm energy flow," he said tapping buttons on two keyboards and twisting two dials so that they read purple, which was the equivalent of green.

"Energy flow stable, transmat primed and ready." K9 reported.

Harry switched his gaze briefly to the energy scanners "Local sensors reading no Toclafane in vicinity."

"Confirmed Harry Potter," K9 paused and then added. "International Space Station will be in transmat range in 2 minutes. Communication range in 10 seconds, 9 seconds, 8 seconds."

"I can count for myself thanks K9," Harry commented smiling as its head drooped down a little bit seemingly disappointed it couldn't do a countdown. Good. Smug gittish metal mutt.

"Ah, Harry. We have cleared the section for your 'transmat'." Sergey appeared on another monitor.

"And you're clear what you need to do." Harry reconfirmed looking into the camera. To save on doing multiple transmats they were transmatting once, with everything in an expanding bag. From LPI's previous experience with transmats and their own expanding bags they'd found a transmat had a detrimental effect on the bag's stability. It shortened the life by around a quarter. Which wasn't bad, but it needed to be taken into account. Both Draco and Hermione had chastised him for the shortcuts they'd taken and the compromises they'd made to make them work for what they needed to do.

Long life wasn't something they really needed from the bags, not when they were frequently covered in alien or wizard-related goo or shot through by energy weapons or spells. It was better for them to have that happen and then they could unpick the spells that made them up and reuse or remake them.

As a result he wanted Sergey to get everything out of the bag lest it explode and do some nasty damage to the ISS. They'd put in place some spells to prevent that from happening, more than they usually did on their bags, but still there was risk there. Once empty even if it did fail it was more like a deflating balloon eating itself than an explosion.

"Of course Harry of course. You just watch yourself."

Harry grinned at the camera and looked back to the power levels. "I've got defences standing by."

"No soldiers though Ros said."

"No," Harry said. "Standby, I'll be initiating transmat in a moment."

"We are waiting eagerly, also for your supplies." He commented with a grin.

An ISS resupply mission had been scheduled a week or two after the Toclafane invaded. The Master had commandeered the rocket and the launch base it was to have launched from. They did have enough supplies following that, but from what Harry gathered they had needed to do more patches to the space station than previously.

"K9?"

"Still no sensor traces Harry Potter."

Harry nodded. "Okay." He twisted the controls on the Dalek transmat and refocused his satellite equipment from communications to transmat targeting, all but one, which he'd been using to communicate and lock onto the ISS was now locked into a transmat patter.

"Transmat locked, coordinates locked." He mummed to himself as he pushed the slider controls up to full and the smell that K9 told him wasn't there increased.

"Alert, Toclafane detected. 15 kilometres away."

"Track their approach and deal with it." Harry barked as he eyed the power controls. He was sure the Doctor had said something about open ended transmat beams being dangerous.

Although he also said that eating with the Mercurian Boomerang Spoon was dangerous, not that Harry knew what a Boomerang Spoon was.

"Affirmative," the metal mutt that was a dog shaped computer affirmed enthusiastically.

"Alright." Harry said as he double and triple checked the coordinates were locked in on the correct section of the ISS and were locked within the internal parameters.

"Yes." He said as he adjusted the energy flow. Then he heard it the tell tale giggle and noise of Toclafane arrival.

He also heard the reassuring noise of energy weapons fire.

But he couldn't be distracted by that. K9 would handle it. He certainly, well, hopefully had enough energy to do so without needing a recharge any time soon.

"Initiating transmat," he said and hit the button. In front of him the package disappeared in a swirl of light.

"That...is amazing. Harry, it worked, it's here."

Then something exploded. Thankfully it was on his end.

"Gotta go Sergey, things are heating up." Harry ended the transmission as a Toclafane appeared in front of him dropping down from the sky.

"You're a wizard man. We don't like the wizard men. Except the red man."

Then two energy beams his it; boring through its side. Harry heard something audibly pop within it and it dropped to the ground.

Harry pushed himself away from the controls and pulled out a Cybergun, firing it at the assorted controls destroying them.

"Attention Harry Potter, multiple Toclafane on approach vectors."

Harry felt like sighing but was moving too fast to do so. "That's why I destroyed the equipment." He said as he grabbed one of the spare expanding bags he had left that he'd put the equipment in. "Confirm it's dead."

K9's ears waggled for precious seconds. "Both Toclanfane have no lifesigns." It paused. "Your modifications are most effective."

Harry grinned and scooped the Toclafane into the bag and rushed over to the other near the Dalek, scooping that up.

"Get over here K9." Harry said as he hooked the bag over his back and grabbed the Dalek by the sucker arm pulling it towards the road as K9 followed.

He could see the Toclafane floating along above the road.

"Come on K9."

"Alert, magical transportation detected 500 metres." Harry saw them as K9 alerted him to it.

"Hello Ron," he said to himself as he dug a hand into his not-magical bigger on the inside bag and sat something down on the road. It had the helpful instruction of 'Front Toward Enemy'.

"Estimated time to target." Harry barked to K9 who thankfully didn't waste any time musing on his question. Harry affixed the detonator, not something that was part of the original mine's operation and then reached down to K9 and put his other hand on the Dalek shell.

Several moments later there was an explosion directed at a group of wizards and Toclafane.

Many of the wizards died from their injuries.

But not the red man.

-/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/-/

A/N:

From Harry's perspective it's a lot for him to take on the word of Martha/the Doctor.

Martha's journey and her task set by the Doctor is huge. Ignoring how much he'd managed to explain to her in that quickly whispered conversation it's a lot for one woman to do.

But from Harry's perspective the Doctor's already failed the Earth in a fairly epic sense. He let the Master escape with the TARDIS and allowed him to bring the Toclafane to Earth and everything that's happened thus far. Harry I know is getting all this information second hand from Martha, but with limited information that's all Harry can know.

Of course I could have just had Harry go with Martha's plan 'trust the Doctor' plan.

But Harry is much more within the sphere of the science than the faith sphere when it comes to this stuff.

He spent all that time in the 70s around the Third Doctor who was all about science, rather than 'magic' (I use the term loosely rather than specifically about wizarding magic).

Harry is also slightly less in awe of the Doctor at the moment than Martha is. He's also known the Doctor a lot longer than Martha has and knows he's fallible.

I've based Martha's dialogue on what she says / how passionate she is in Last of the Time Lords. There's a desperate passion almost fanaticism to her dialogue.

Harry and the Resistance also have to prepare for the possibility of Martha and the Doctor failing.

Draco and Hermione going to Hogwarts is a scene I had in mind for quite a while, just not in this configuration. I'd, quite a while ago now quickly written out the basics of a scene where Hermione and Draco would be on patrol for some reason and would need to be staying outside, keeping watch by a fire and basically having a go at one another. It worked as an idea but I couldn't work out what to do with it and it just didn't work for how Hermione and Draco's characters have turned out.

How they appear in this chapter is much better than how I'd initially written it.

McGonagall and some of the wizards in Hogwarts are petulant, they're waiting for a rescue that isn't going to come. A rescue they thought would come, from their past saviour or from the Ministry or wherever. They're also shocked into submission, faced with an enemy far superior to them.

Hannah Abbot gets killed off screen because I wanted Neville antagonistic towards Hermione and Draco (and also the Resistance).