Naturally, there were thirty different people to tell Albus about the sudden new appearance in his castle, the man referring to himself as "the Doctor" even though they already had a mysterious man called "the Doctor" in residence.
Naturally, one of the thirty was Lockhart, and naturally, he refused to drop the issue.
As such, Dumbledore was closely pursued by Lockhart as he progressed through the halls.
They found the time lord on the seventh floor, wearing a trench coat and a face that Dumbledore had seen before, but not frequently.
He broke into a grin when he saw Albus, and he squealed, "Is that Albus Dumbledore?"
Dumbledore smiled modestly. "It's rather early, for you, then, I trust."
A woman on the Doctor's other side stepped closer. "That is!" she exclaimed. "That's Dumbledore, and that, that's Gilderoy Lockhart, isn't it?"
This brought out the showman in Lockhart; he drew himself up into his most prideful stance and said, "Ahaha, always a pleasure to meet one of my many devoted fans." Then he kissed the woman's hand, and though it was hard to tell, she might have blushed.
"Oh..." she said, ducking her head as though embarrassed.
The Doctor made a face. "Martha, really? You've read the books!"
"Really?" Lockhart preened. "Wonderful, and terribly clever of you, to have armed yourself with the expertise that could be found only in my published works."
"Oh my G-d," Martha chuckled. "This git." Lockhart recoiled from the word, but already Martha was continuing, "But if this is Lockhart Year, and it's after Christmas, that means we've got to...keep our guard up, doesn't it? Keep a mirror, or something?" She turned to look at Dumbledore. "Sorry about Filch's cat."
"Are you referring to Mrs. Norris?" Dumbledore repeated, confused.
"Yeah. She got petrified at Halloween, didn't she?" Martha looked back at the Doctor for reassurance.
"STOP!" And the newer, bowtie-wearing Doctor sprinted around the corner and stood between Dumbledore and...himself. "Stop everything!"
"But who's this?" Martha asked. "Is he...I don't know, some minor professor or something? Or Peeves?"
"Peeves?" Bowtie Doctor repeated, aghast.
"Peeves?" Trench coat Doctor repeated, perplexed and intrigued.
"Yeah, Peeves. He wasn't transparent, was he?"
"I always imagined..."
"Pardon me," Dumbledore interjected, and Trench coat Doctor and Martha paused their side chat. "While, Doctor, you are always welcome in my school, I confess myself uncertain as to why you have come...this time." Dumbledore turned to Lockhart. "Gilderoy, could you perhaps inform the rest of the staff of our new guests? The rest of you, I would appreciate joining me in my office."
...
Tom's grip on Luna's wrist was tight as he led her down into the Forbidden Forest. It was a testament to how accustomed Luna was to being alone with Voldemort that she became swiftly distracted.
"Oh!" she exclaimed once, stopping abruptly, then stumbling as for a moment Tom tried to keep walking. "Doesn't that cloud look just like a rooster? And then that one beside it could be a blibbering humdinger on its side."
Tom paused a moment, staring at her instead of the clouds, then continued pulling her along: "Come on."
"You ought to enjoy things, Tom," Luna commented. "The clouds, the wind. You should take the time to enjoy ordinary things."
"Sure, Lovegood."
Luna frowned a little, then sped up so that she could look at Tom's face. "What are your interests, Tom?"
At this, Tom smiled sardonically. "You have to ask that?"
"I don't mean the sorts of magic that you like practicing," Luna qualified. "What things do you like to do, just for yourself, that you enjoy? Drawing, or flying, or..."
"You know very well I don't do any of that," Tom replied. "I don't do things for no reason."
"Sure you do, Tom. Isn't that why I'm here?"
This time, Tom was the one who stopped walking. He wasn't looking at her, but his thumb roamed to and fro over the back of her hand. "You say such stupid things," he at last said, sort of coolly.
Luna sighed. This was not how she had imagined friendship; Tom offered her nearly the same ridicule that others did, but none of the freedom. He alternated, seemingly at random, between dismissing her as a fool and hanging greedily on her every word. "I'm sure you're right, Tom," she said loftily.
And he seemed to notice that she was not charmed by this treatment of her, because he smiled, suddenly, and changed his demeanor to a conspiratorial one that seemed to suggest that his abduction of her to the forest was really a consensual adventure. "Come on," he said excitedly, and she was dragged along with even greater enthusiasm.
...
"So, Ten...May I call you Ten?"
"Ten?" Martha repeated. "What's that mean?"
"I'm the tenth incarnation of the Doctor," Ten replied. He and Martha were seated in front of Dumbledore's desk, like students. Eleven, meanwhile, stood (lurked, was more like it) near Fawkes's perch, in the side of the room. "Regeneration, you know."
"Oh." Martha frowned slightly. "Well...how does Dumbledore know it's your tenth?"
"Recognizes this face, I imagine. My tenth face."
"Wait, you mean...?"
"Yup." Ten gestured at his face. "Tenth."
"Indeed." Dumbledore glanced at Eleven, who was still lurking, receiving frequent nervous looks from Martha and none from Ten, although certainly the latter was aware of Eleven's every (rare) movement. "Ten, I confess myself at a loss as to why you've come here. It appears to be very early in your timeline indeed, so I doubt this is a purely social visit. If something is amiss, I hope you'll tell me now. You mentioned Mrs. Norris and...petrification?"
"They're just confused, Albus," Eleven interjected. "Disoriented. It's their first time here, after all."
Dumbledore kept a serious look in place. "Doctor, I hope to never be so foolish as to try to deny you your secrets, but you are well aware that I take the well-being of this castle's occupants very seriously." (Ignoring the irony there...) "If there is a danger..."
"But there isn't, Albus," Eleven said. "That's what I'm trying to tell you."
"Wait a bit," said Martha. "You called him 'Doctor'."
Eleven grinned at Martha the way only he could. Pointing at his past incarnation, he said, "Ten." Then he pointed at himself. "Eleven."
Ten sprang to his feet and immediately had his sonic screwdriver out, examining, and Eleven was quick to mirror him.
"Merlin's beard," Martha said, then beamed at her own expression. "I got to say it."
"What's going on?" Ten asked Eleven, his words rushed. "You said there's no danger. What do you mean?"
"Spoilers," Eleven said.
"But it's in the books, though," Martha protested. "The cat and everything...You can't just change what happened, can you?"
"Alright, on the premise that you" (Eleven pointed at Ten.) "aren't going to remember this anyway and you" (He gestured at Dumbledore.) "won't let up, I'll explain...forty-seven percent of what's happened and why it isn't my fault this time."
...
"What do you think?" He had to ask because Luna was stunned speechless for a long moment.
"What have you done to it?" she finally asked.
The being was pearly white and constantly in flux: it was an embryo floating in midair fluid, then it was a foal, then it was a stallion, then a weak and withering thing, then an embryo all over again. Over and over again. Growing, whimpering, whinnying, its horn sprouting from its skull and receding. The full cycle took up about a minute each time; the sound of bones forcing themselves to stretch and then compress was almost as loud as the creature's complaints.
Somehow, Tom had trapped a unicorn in a time loop.
And he was very proud of himself. "It wasn't all that difficult," he boasted. "It only took me three tries. The first time I made a mistake and did the 'growing' part before the 'ungrowing', which only made it die faster, and I couldn't reverse that. The second time, I managed to cast the spell fine, but it still died because it couldn't get food or water while it was constantly changing. I've had to make accommodations for this one just to keep it alive long enough for you to see it. The bright side is, I was able to get the wasted time energy back from the failures."
Luna shook her head, at a loss as to whether she had ever seen anything so horrible in her entire life. The poor creature was suffering, innocent and horrified as every second denied it a stable state of body. And yet...and yet she was entranced. She had never seen a unicorn before, and at every stage of life, even the embryonic and the geriatric, it was beautiful.
Her eyes were watering, from its beauty and from its pain and from her inability to blink as she beheld it.
She could feel Tom enjoying her reaction. "So you like it, then?"
Luna managed to close her eyes. "Stop hurting it, please," she said quietly.
Tom laughed, without malice. "If I stop now, it'll just die like the other two. The time energy is what is keeping it alive."
"Did you use Mr. the Doctor's TARDIS to do this?" Luna asked. "To torture this poor unicorn?"
"This poor unicorn gets to live a million lives," Tom stated.
"Horrible lives," Luna insisted. "Stop hurting it."
Tom quirked an odd sort of smile. "Anything for you, Lovegood." He pointed his wand at the creature. "Avada Kedavra!"
A green flash of light and a final loud whimper. Luna winced as the unicorn went still, slain. A tear ran down her cheek. "Why did you show me that?" she asked Tom. "Did you just want to see me cry?"
Tom shrugged, then took her hand and led her to the animal's corpse. It didn't even occur to her to protest.
A golden substance like mist was beginning to seep out of the unicorn's body, and with a wave of his wand, Tom collected it into a bubble. "Time energy," he said. "Very dangerous."
Luna reached over to close the unicorn's eyes. "Poor thing."
"It taught me a lot," Tom told her.
"Not willingly," she sighed.
Tom looked at her. Actually, he had been looking at her nearly the whole time: her horror, her awe, her change in hue as the green flash lit the whole clearing. She was very stunning in the green light; green complimented her. That she was a Ravenclaw was even more of a waste in potential than he had realized.
Tom considered killing a bird or a squirrel, just to see her lit by the green again.
Her eyes, those great wide batty things, met his over the unicorn's corpse. They were pinkened from crying, but she was not crying anymore; she was looking at him as if trying to extract him from himself.
And that was when he kissed her.