When Luna's eyes fluttered open, she found that she was lying in a bed in a dimly-lit room. There was a desk and a wardrobe and a window, but this was not Tom's room at the orphanage. That much she could tell.
And Tom was there, murmuring some complex incantation over her, his gaze and his wand making multiple passes from her head to her toes, as if she was being medically examined. The light from his wand, which was the only light in the room, swirled around her in a spirally pattern, and it seemed to brighten and dim in time with either her heartbeat or his. His, she reasoned a second later; her heartbeat was not quite on that rhythm. It did seem to be making efforts to match it, though.
Tom looked a bit older than Hogwarts age, now. His face was still unlined, still objectively handsome, but his hair was longer, now, than she had ever seen it, as if he hadn't bothered to cut it for several weeks. It wasn't a bad look, although Luna wasn't exactly the gold standard in tidiness.
It wasn't until Tom's murmuring stopped, ending the spell and plunging the room into darkness, that Luna gasped, realization after realization hitting her. She had most certainly not agreed to come here, least of all without leaving even a note for Mr. the Doctor. How was he to find her? The geography alone was a question, let alone the chronology.
She had not agreed to come here.
And she did not remember doing so. She had been writing in the diary...She had cried; she remembered crying...and then everything had turned all black. And now she was here, with Tom.
"What have you done?" she asked, her voice coming out thin from disuse.
Tom had busied himself lighting the room. "So you're awake, then, Lovegood?"
"Tom. What have you done?"
"You're going to have to be a bit more specific."
Luna's hand felt along her throat for the time turner and found it still in place. Had Tom left her this means of escape on purpose? "How did you bring me here?" she asked. "I didn't use the time turner."
"But you did, Lovegood," Tom corrected good-naturedly, seating himself on the bed facing her. "You just didn't use it of your own accord. I saw that you were being hesitant, so I used the diary to...urge you on to the inevitable conclusion."
"I didn't know that the diary could control minds," Luna said faintly.
"Well, before you consider that you'll stop using it because of this, I'll just remind you that I could always remove that information from your memory if I suspect that you're growing distant."
This caused Luna to make a statement that she had never made in her life: "That's weird, Tom."
Predictably, he chuckled. "Who are you to say?"
"A fool, for accepting a gift from you," she replied, without any vitriol or bitterness; she still sounded just as light as a breeze, although there was now something slightly sad in her tone. "Most people don't gift mind control. I'd prefer pudding next time, I think."
"I'll keep it in mind."
"What spell were you casting on me?"
Tom smiled self-indulgently. "You only woke up near the end of it. It was rather a complex bit of magic. You'll notice that I'm letting you keep the time turner. A better gift than the last one?"
"I don't know yet."
"Well, it comes with a few provisos; I've altered the time turner so that, firstly, it can only be operated by you, and secondly, it can only travel along my personal timeline. Those alterations were made before I hid the time turner away for you. Now that you've arrived with it, I've endowed you with the same limitation, in case the time lord tries to steal you. Now, no time travel device can take you from my reach. You'll find it difficult to distance yourself very far in space, as well."
"How have you done that?" Luna asked, unsure that Dumbledore could pull off that sort of thing.
"When I was young, I had a deep interest in life-and-death magic: stones to make one immortal, objects to store one's soul, and all that. And while I can't say I no longer have interest in the topic..." (Another self-indulgent smile.) "...once one knows how to kill and knows how to stow away a bit of one's soul, that's all that is really needed. There isn't much of a point to studying further. But time magic!" Tom's face was alight, now, in a way that wasn't completely un-frightening. "That has infinite use, and as it happens, there is one old fool who keeps advanced magical texts in a students' library, and there is another old fool who carries powerful sources of time energy around unprotected in a box."
"You hurt Mr. the Doctor's feelings, you know, violating the TARDIS like you did."
Tom waved the comment away. "If a particularly well-read twelve-year-old had the opportunity and the power to do it, one can only conclude that it was in the child's destiny."
"That's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, don't you think?" Luna mused. "If you assume your own destiny and then work to make it real, then it isn't really destiny anymore, is it?"
"That's uncharacteristically cynical," Tom noted.
"No. I believe in destiny. I'm just confused about your view of it."
"Well, it's as I said: destiny is power mixed with opportunity."
"And inclination, I should think. After all, you might have opted not to use your power or your opportunity. On the topic, I might ask why you've chosen to waste your destiny procuring me."
Tom grinned. "Well, it's as I said, Lovegood: You are mine."
Something in the fact that Tom was closer to twenty, now, than twelve made Luna even less comfortable with his comment. She frowned slightly. "I've told you that I am my own."
Tom reached out and lifted her chin with the tip of a forefinger. "And yet here you are, Luna." Somehow, he managed to make his use of her first name sound like a badge of entitlement, a smug display of ownership. How absurd, how completely absurd.
Luna turned her face away purely to get his hand out from under her chin. "I don't like that, Tom."
He ran his fingers along her cheek, now. "I don't need you to like it," he replied.
"What do you need, Tom?"
He smirked but did not answer. She was looking at him again, and she did not know how penetrating her eyes were. It wasn't Dumbledore's brand of penetrating, which was really just Legilimency; it was something more gentle, less demanding, as if she was extending a hand to what she thought might be his heart.
Redundant thing to do; he had given her his soul long ago.
...
"So you haven't got a wand at all?" one of the twins persisted. There went the idea that the Doctor wasn't some Squib, like the Slytherins said.
"Not at all, no. So, if you would..." The Doctor gestured at the folded parchment before them.
After sharing a look, the Weasley twins both shrugged in unison and pointed their wands. "I solemnly-"
"Wait! Actually, can I do it? Just, I've always wanted-"
The twins looked as if they thought they were being pranked. "We can't just give you one of our wands," one of them said indignantly.
"You people. Always obsessed with...Okay, fine, whatever. Go on."
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
As ink filled the page, forming the Map that he had read about, the Doctor took the parchment into his own hands and scanned it.
One of the twins cleared his throat. "So, how did you know about the Map, then?"
"And how'd you know we had it?" the other added.
"It wasn't magic," the first one guessed.
"I dunno, it's a sort of magic," the Doctor said vaguely, still scanning the page. "You read a book and suddenly a bunch of symbols have made elaborate pictures in your mind. Everyone's pictures are different, but most everyone gets something similar. That's magic, isn't it?"
"What book?" the twins asked at the same time.
The Doctor glanced up from the Map to observe, "I shouldn't have told you that." Then, pleased with his own reference, he beamed. This is the best day ever! If only he could find Luna's name, now. Maybe she really was in the Room of Requirement; that didn't appear on the Map. Or perhaps he could ask the ghosts, or the portraits, or...
What was that?
Oh. Oh dear.
By chance, he had found the spot where he stood with Fred and George Weasley. He had found the dot with his name over it.
His true name. Scrawled out just as plainly as any other. Anybody could just...
"Twenty galleons if I can keep this," the Doctor said quickly.
"We can't sell it," the twins protested.
"Thirty."
"It would be an affront to the Marauders."
"A hundred. Go on, you want to open a joke shop, don't you?"
"Sure, but we can't hand over the Map to just anyone," one twin said.
"We'd have to know that you were going to use it properly," the other agreed.
"You're speaking to the bloke who annoyed Peeves. Come on, Weasleys!"
"You don't have a wand; how are you going to-"
"Oh, I'll manage. Very clever, you know. So, hundred galleons, yes?"
And, as if his great day couldn't plummet fast enough, he spotted another unexpected name on the Map. Oh, you've got to be kidding me.