Tom dragged Luna deep into the forest (at such a speed that her headache returned with a vengeance), never lightening his grip on her arm. Luna glanced, periodically, behind them, to see if Dumbledore would come gliding in pursuit any time soon. She was not sure how she felt about the idea. Or, more accurately, she was not sure whether she was more frightened of a scenario in which Dumbledore came or one in which he did not.
Tom stopped suddenly. "It should be here..." he murmured.
"Perhaps it's invisible," Luna suggested quietly.
"It isn't invisible! It's gone!" Tom shouted. He turned to face her. "Did you do something?"
"I was hexed, Tom," Luna answered in something of a morose tone. "What could I have done?"
"Then where is it?" Tom demanded, releasing Luna's arm but tightening his grip on his wand.
"Where indeed?" a smooth voice asked.
Luna couldn't help but smile at the familiarity of the voice, and at the fact that she had never heard Mr. the Doctor sound so smooth. Usually, he was a bit like a hen, clucking around, but now, standing in the shadows of the Forbidden Forest, he looked...powerful. Like a time lord.
"How did you get here?" Tom asked the Doctor, his tone having returned to calm alarmingly quickly. Like the eye of a hurricane. Only the behavior of his jaw betrayed his frustration.
"Come on, Tom. All of the wizarding world as a resource? How did I get here? Albus Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel and I go on vacation in Bermuda together every twenty years. I've tutored some of the most prominent minds of the wizarding community on my downtime between rendezvous with Lovegood. How d'you reckon time turners get made?" He approached Tom. "Did you really think I didn't have a back-up plan?" he asked almost menacingly.
Tom smiled, an eerie approximation of a child's grin. "Just a bit of clean fun, Doctor. Wanted to get some reading done in a different time. Are you truly cross about a young boy's curiosity?"
Without answering, the Doctor turned to look at Luna. "You said he hexed you?" He didn't wait for her reply; he already had his sonic out and scanning her.
"She only said that she was hexed," Tom sighed, exasperated.
"Some head trauma." With his ominous tone, the Doctor made it clear that he was not amused by Tom's actions in the slightest. "You ought to be in the Hospital Wing."
"I'm due another healing potion in three hours," Luna said.
"I'm taking you back," the Doctor said decisively.
"Alright. We'll have another go next weekend, then?" Luna prompted.
"No," the Doctor said firmly.
"You know that we will, Mr. the Doctor. It's already happened."
"He might have lied about that. It's not a fixed point."
"Haven't I got a choice?"
The Doctor did not answer. He now stood with his back to both Luna and Tom.
Tom took advantage of this fact and raised his wand. "You're not taking her away," he said flatly.
"Are you gonna stop me, Tom?" the Doctor asked loudly. "Hex me, and you'll never find the TARDIS. Then you're trapped here at the mercy of my good friend Albus. And when I come around again, you'll be at my mercy, too."
"I'm not frightened of you," Tom said.
"And you won't be," the Doctor said, suddenly very clinical-sounding. "Until it's too late for you. Isn't that how it goes?"
"Mr. the Doctor," Luna said, approaching him. Both the Doctor and Tom noticed the way that she always looked like she was wandering no matter how deliberately she walked somewhere. She seemed to drift from place to place. "You're upset. What's happened?"
"What else, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Nothing. Everything's fine."
Luna lowered her voice: "We have made changes, you know," she whispered. "Things have gone all...different."
"You think you've improved him?" the Doctor deadpanned.
"I don't know what I've done, but I do see that some things have changed."
The Doctor bent closer to Luna in order to gravely whisper, "He's done something to the TARDIS. Something's wrong with her. She still functions fine but she's...silent. As though the box's soul has gone into some sort of...coma." He shot a watery glare at Tom where the boy stood, several meters away. "I don't know how to fix her, because the machine itself is working fine; in all appearances, nothing is wrong, but..."
Luna nodded solemnly.
"I'm going to be spending some time in your Hogwarts," the Doctor continued. "Conferring with Albus, keeping an eye on things, seeing as I know how the timeline was meant to go."
"Alright," Luna said.
"We've got to leave now, though."
Luna nodded.
...
They deposited Tom back in his time before returning to Luna's Hogwarts.
Upon returning, Luna found herself fascinated by the mundane lives of the students in the castle; how they doddered around like time was linear and seemed so sure about what was real and what was not. She began interjecting into discussions more frequently. Periodically, she would drop the name Voldemort in conversations, but it was never recognized. The name seemed to have been erased from time.