When Harry woke up, for a moment he kept his eyes closed. He'd had the most wonderful dream last night, about a brown man and a blue box who had taken him away from his aunt and uncle and told him a story just for him. He did not want to open his eyes to see the underside of the stairs and the same old spiders he saw every morning.
At least his aunt had not started banging on the cupboard door for him to start cooking breakfast yet, so he could lay here a while longer, pretending the dream was real.
As he lay there, several observations came to his attention. First, he could hear a kind of hum that was not at all unpleasant, but seemed to be coming from everywhere. He could not remember ever having heard a hum quite like that before.
The second observation was that he was lying on something soft, softer than the cot in his cupboard. And thirdly, he was wearing jammies. Well, to be fair, that was hardly unusual, but the thing was... he was wearing jammies that fit.
It was that last observation that caused him to open his eyes, only to see a ceiling way up high, covered with planets and constellations. Propping himself up on one elbow, he saw that the soft thing he'd been lying on was a mattress. As in, he was lying in an actual bed, with a blanket and a pillow and everything. The humming was as yet unexplained, he could not immediately see anything that might be making that sound, but that was ok – a mystery for later.
He dropped back into his pillow with a grin spreading across his face. He had not been dreaming. The Doctor was real. A warm feeling suffused his tummy, and he wiggled his toes happily.
Eventually the call of nature proved too urgent to ignore, and he slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom. Remembering the Doctor's kindness, he even took the chance of a warm shower, although he didn't stay in for very long. He wouldn't want to push his luck too much. When he was done, he put on yesterday's clothes. He didn't really want to wear them, but they were all he had.
When he went outside of his room, he found himself in the corridor he'd gone through yesterday with the Doctor, but he was unsure which way to go. The... what had the man called it, console room? Could not be far away, he thought, so he went right. If he turned out to be wrong, he could always go try to the other way.
A door came up on his left side, and he pushed it open to check if the room behind it was the console room. It wasn't, but it was something equally good. It didn't much look like his aunt's kitchen, but it had a very kitchen-y feel to it, all chrome surfaces and a large rectangular block in one corner that might just be a fridge – or might be something else entirely, but it certainly looked like a fridge.
Harry dittered for a moment. On the one hand, he was really hungry, and he thought (hoped) that maybe the Doctor wouldn't mind so much if he just took a little bit to eat without asking first. On the other, he was a guest here, and if the Doctor caught him and -did- mind, he didn't know what would happen.
Before he could make up his mind either way, the door behind him opened and the Doctor ambled in.
"Good morning, Harry! Well, I say morning, but really there's no night or day in the Vortex – nevermind. Did you sleep well?"
Harry nodded, too shy to verbalise his answer.
"Good! I see you found the kitchen. One of them, anyway. You're probably hungry, you slept twelve hours straight. Humans usually need food after that, young humans especially. I'll show you how to work the food dispenser, and then you can grab something every time you feel peckish, ok?"
Well, that answered that question. If the Doctor minded his taking food, he wouldn't have said that, right?
The Doctor led him to the fridge-like block, which on closer inspection had an opening in the middle and a bunch of buttons just below that. The Doctor punched in some numbers, and a bowl fell into the opening, followed by cereal and milk.
"The dispenser can get you many things, so long as they're easy to fix," the Doctor explained as he handed Harry the bowl. "The cereal is hardly standard fare, but I've had a couple of companions who liked it, and I'm rather partial to it as well, so I added the option. For more extensive meals we do still need to cook, althought I generally manage to get fed on whatever planet I happen to be visiting."
When he saw Harry was done with the cereal, he punched in another code and handed the child an apple. "You'll soon get the hang of the combinations," said the Doctor, "but feel free to experiment a bit, see what comes out that you might like. Now, another little problem that we're facing... clothes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think these are your own clothes, are they?"
Harry shook his head, looking down at the threadbare t-shirt and baggy trousers held up with a bit of string. "They're my cousin Dudley's," he said.
"Yeah, that'd explain it. Come on, wardrobe room, I'm sure if we can find you jammies that fit, we can find you decent clothes as well."
A few dizzying turns later, they were standing in a cavernous room, even bigger than the console room. Harry almost forgot they were still inside that blue box. It seemed nearly impossible, and he had the impression he'd only seen the tiniest fraction yet.
The Doctor was searching through the piles of clothes, muttering to himself and throwing some things at Harry. Some of these suggestions Harry immediately discarded again, but eventually he was dressed in jeans, red t-shirt and a black hoodie, with black combat boots that were the most comfortable shoes he'd ever worn. He grinned widely, and impulsively hugged the Doctor.
"Thank you thank you thank you!" he said into the Doctor's jacket.
The Doctor smiled and hugged him back, not letting go until Harry did. "You're welcome," he said. "You're free to come here any time and find some other clothes, anything that you like you can keep in your bedroom. Anyway, there's something I want to show you. Come with me to the console room?"
Taking a bite from his apple, which he'd saved for after the clothes fitting, Harry nodded.
As they opened the wardrobe room's door, Harry glanced up at the Doctor. There was something he'd like to do – like the story before bed, it was something he'd often wondered about, what it would be like. He'd seen kids at the park do it, and aunt Petunia tried to do it with Dudley, although he rarely allowed it. And well, the Doctor had been very nice up to now, so...
Feeling brave, as well as a little apprehensive in case of rejection, he slipped his small hand in the Doctor's larger one. The Doctor looked surprised for a moment when he felt something, but when he realised what it was, he just winked at Harry and curled his fingers around the boy's hand. They walked through the corridor like that in companionable silence – a rarity for the Doctor, Harry would soon learn.
A warm feeling spread through Harry, and he almost thought his heart might burst. If nothing else had convinced him that he was no longer at his uncle's house, the warmth around his hand and the casual acceptance of the gesture certainly did. He found himself grinning as they entered the console room, and he resolved to take the Doctor's hand as often as possible.
He hoisted himself up on the battered pilot seat next to the console, looking around the room with more attention than he'd had energy for last night. Next to the pilot seat, one of the pillars was growing up, so out of curiosity he touched it. It felt warm, alive. The whole console room had this warm feeling pervading it. Despite the many cables hanging down from the ceiling, there was a feeling of home about it that he'd never ever felt at Privet Drive.