"Luna Lovegood and Tom Riddle?" Ten repeated.
"Yes," Eleven sighed, sinking into one of the chairs. His explanation, or, more accurately, all of the flapping around he had been doing during the explanation, had clearly worn him out.
"You let that happen more than once?" Ten persisted. "Just because she asked you to?"
"Doctor...am I correct in understanding that you willingly exposed one of my students to the most dangerous dark wizard currently living?" Dumbledore's gaze was sharp over his half-moon spectacles.
Eleven did not waver, although there was no pride in his tone. "Nothing you haven't done to Harry Potter, Albus. And the Angel sent her to him first, back when you still had an infestation."
"But you've been humoring her ever since," Ten said.
"And things have changed," Eleven shot back. "The Chamber hasn't opened this year."
"But if he opened it the first time, that means Myrtle still died, which means the diary still exists and is still a Horcrux," Martha said. "No opened Chamber this year means Harry doesn't destroy the Horcrux...right?"
"Right..." Eleven murmured, rising from the chair all over again to pace feverishly. "Right! The diary! And no opened Chamber means Ginny doesn't have it, and we haven't done anything to Lucius Malfoy's timeline that I know of, so if Ginny doesn't have it, Malfoy Senior probably never had it either."
"A Horcrux?" Dumbledore repeated.
"In the unaltered timeline, a diary is slipped into Ginny Weasley's cauldron by Lucius Malfoy while shopping at Diagon Alley," Eleven said. "The diary once belonged to Tom Riddle, and he placed a fragment of his soul in it after killing Moaning Myrtle. Harry Potter was to destroy the Horcrux in the diary later this year."
"So where's the diary?" Martha asked rhetorically.
Dumbledore leaned over to speak to one of the portraits on the wall: "Alcesta, could I trouble you to tell Filius that I require a word with Miss Lovegood?" The painted lavender-robed witch left her protrait with a curt nod.
"You think Luna has it?" Eleven surmised.
"It is a possibility that ought to be addressed," Dumbledore replied.
"I still don't understand," Martha protested. "Doctor...Ten, I mean...You said it's impossible to change the books because they're fixed points."
"It would have been impossible," Ten said hotly, shooting a glare at his future self. "For an outsider. If we'd tried to pop in on Harry Potter's 'misuse of magic' trial before his fifth year and murder Deloris Umbridge, we'd have been deleted from the timeline like bacteria and the changes would have been erased. Even if we'd tried to enter gaps inside the story, like time elapses before major holidays during the school year, and interacted with the major characters then, we'd get that same result. That's why JK wrote the books in the first place; to make sure, as best she could, that this universe's happy ending was protected from outside interference. But Luna's early life isn't in the books, so it was never set in stone that she didn't, say, meet and befriend a time lord. Eleven changed Luna's potential from outside her story, from before she became a part of the story, and she changed Tom's story from the inside."
"She was just enough of an outsider to have wiggle room but just enough of an insider to be able to make changes in the story," Eleven said in a pensive monotone. "Native, but not integral. And she has Clara's impossible-ness..."
"She has whose what?"
"I can't explain it."
The lavender-robed witch, Alcesta, returned to her portrait. "He can't find her, Albus. He says that she hasn't been to any of her classes today, she isn't in Ravenclaw Tower, and none of the other girls in her year have any idea as to her whereabouts."
Urgently, Eleven unfurled the Marauders Map and began scanning the page. "She's not on the Map; she must be in the Room of Requirement," he said, clearly preparing to break into a sprint.
Ten grabbed his arm. "Or in the Chamber. If Tom could have given her his diary..."
"Then we split up," Eleven suggested. "I go to the Room of Requirement, you and Martha go to Myrtle's bathroom...I'm sure the TARDIS translator can do Parseltongue."
Ten nodded. "Sure."
"Or!" Martha interjected. "We could save time by just asking the portraits and ghosts if they've seen her."
Both Doctors took a moment to ponder this before nodding in slightly-embarrassed agreement.
...
Of course, she bit him.
Tom jerked back, stunned, while Luna, seeming at most perplexed but with her eyelashes still damp from crying over the unicorn, ran her fingertips over her own lips. "I didn't give you permission to do that," she said.
"You bit me," Tom replied, clearly stupefied in the non-magical sense.
"Yes," Luna agreed breezily.
Tom gingerly felt at his own tongue. "I didn't know you hurt people."
"Neither did I," Luna answered, casually pulling at a necklace chain that was around her neck. "I suppose it turns out that I hurt people who torture unicorns and then kiss me without permission." She started turning the time turner.
"You once told me that you wanted to see a unicorn," Tom said. "And a crumple-horned snorcack, but I couldn't manage that one. Yet."
(The word 'yet' was a temptation, but Luna kept going on the time turner.)
"So I found a unicorn for you."
"And tortured it."
"Well, yeah." Tom rolled his eyes. "And you got to see it in every stage of life. That's like showing you a hundred unicorns."
"I do not like it when you hurt things, Thomas."
Tom grinned, both in amusement at her words and in enjoyment of hearing her say his name. And he used to hate his name. "That was still a good kiss though, wasn't it?" he said smugly. Then he noticed her hands on her necklace, and though he had no way of knowing what a time turner was, the tiny hourglass in the center was a clue. "Wait a minute, stop that!" he ordered.
Luna released the hourglass; she had spun it enough times anyway. In fact, she had turned it so many times that it would turn no more, in that direction at least. Luna vanished from the clearing with the unicorn's corpse, leaving as well Tom, who looked outraged.
Luna didn't mind that he was outraged. Apparently, not only had she failed in her mission to keep him from killing people, but she had also managed to somehow allow him to convince himself that she wanted him to torture unicorns for her.
And then he had kissed her, so of course she had to leave. It was only a shame that she wasn't traveling out of his grasp at all; only hopping to a different point on his timeline. Away from the clearing in the Forbidden Forest, into a dim room in an awful, dank house.
When Luna heard a woman's screams, she was certain that she had flicked the time turner in the wrong direction and ended up in the future. The idea (and the screaming) caused her to shiver; she had been avoiding her future, Tom's future, deliberately.
But then her eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she found that the source of the screams was a woman whose stomach was positively swollen with child. She was in labor, and well-along, as well, not that Luna could be perfectly certain.
The woman saw Luna, and instead of asking who she was or why she had appeared in what must have been her home, the woman panted out a weak "H-Help."
...
"She's not here," Ten stated, shaking his head.
"Nick said he saw her go into the Room of Requirement and he didn't see her come out," Eleven argued.
"Yes, but she isn't here," Ten repeated.
"She can't have just gone," Eleven said. "You can't Apparate in or out of Hogwarts, and both of us have our TARDISes, so she didn't go on a joyride."
"There's a vanishing cabinet in here," Martha pointed out. "Maybe she...vanished."
"The cabinet's broken," Ten reminded her. "Malfoy has to fix it in book six."
"But the twins send some Slytherin bloke away with it in book five," Martha countered.
"Oi, are you two going on a quiz show or something?" Eleven spotted something on the ground at the foot of the vanishing cabinet, then. "Oh." He bent down to more closely examine it. "Oh, that's not good."
It was a diary. The diary. And something about it seemed so fundamentally sinister that the Doctor dared not touch it.
"But...that's it," Martha observed. "If that's here, maybe she abandoned it like Harry did his potions book in-"
"No," Ten interrupted. "If that were true, then she would be...somewhere."
"Gimme it," Martha said, picking the book up and removing an ink pen from her jeans pocket.
"What are you doing?" Ten asked, rapid-fire, and at the same time, Eleven protested, "Martha, wait! We don't know what might happen, or what the book is capable of in this version of the timeline!"
"There's a child in danger, and I'm a doctor," Martha said firmly, then relaxed and scrawled out, Tom Riddle?
The words faded away, and it briefly seemed that there would be no reply, but then: Who are you?
Both Doctors craned their necks to read over Martha's shoulder, curiosity winning out over caution. Martha wrote, I'm a friend of Luna's.
This time, the response was so quick that her words almost didn't have time to properly disappear. I was not aware that Luna had other friends. There was a pause. Unless you're the Doctor. But I don't believe that to be the case.
I'm not the Doctor, Martha wrote.
No. If the Doctor were to touch my diary, he would experience the agonizing effects of a fatal curse the likes of which I doubt even he has known.
Martha and the Doctors shared a wary look. You're very protective of your diary, Martha hazarded. Most teens just put on a lock.
Tell me your name, friend-of-Luna's.
"Oh," Martha murmured.
"Don't tell him," Ten whispered, as if Tom were physically in the room with them.
Martha wrote down the first name that came to mind. I'm Penelope. (Huh. That was the name that Hermione used in book seven. Martha congratulated herself mentally.)
Penelope. The handwriting seemed more relaxed, more steady. And you are a casual friend?
I'm a friend who wants to know where Luna is.
"Martha," Ten cautioned.
The response arrived swiftly and deliberately. All you need to know about Luna is that she is not yours.
And nothing that Martha wrote after that could get them another response.
...
Luna had never delivered a human baby before, but she had helped her grandmother deliver a cow back when her grandmother was alive, and she imagined they were essentially the same. She crouched near the woman's underside. Oh, yes; there the baby was, past crowning. Luna cast a quick cleaning spell on her own hands, then reached down to carefully help the infant along.
Then he was out.
"Oh my," Luna murmured, holding the small, wrinkly thing in her arms, drenched in the strong-smelling fluid. She took a few moments to ensure that the baby was breathing as he should; he started bawling loudly. (No, there was nothing wrong with his lungs.)
"Let...me...see..." the woman panted out. Her skin was positively glossed over with sweat, and she seemed barely able to lift her hand.
Luna brought the baby closer to his mother. "It's a boy, ma'am. You see?"
"Thomas," the woman said, clearly funneling all of her strength into the name. "Call him Thomas, for his father, and Marv-...Marvolo, for mine. T-Thomas Marvolo Riddle."
"Alright," Luna said softly. "I understand."
The woman had begun to sob, and Luna brushed aside the hair that was sweat-plastered to the woman's face and took her hand, running her thumb over the woman's bony knuckles as a comfort.
"Do you have any potions?" Luna asked. "Or any ingredients? I'm rubbish at Potions, but I can try-"
"I can't...stay...for him," the woman interrupted weakly. "I can't stay. I..." Her head fell back, and she sighed.
Luna's lip trembled. "I know," she said, almost to herself. She did not want to watch Tom's mother die. She did not want to watch anyone's mother die ever again.
"Take him away, please, help him," the woman whimpered. "Take him."
"I will, I will," Luna said, not releasing her hand; as horrible as this was for her, it had to be twice as bad for the woman herself. Still, she cooed to Tom, who was turning red, now, from his bawling. "Shh, shh, Thomas, I'm here. I'm right here, and Mummy's right here."
"Mummy's here," the woman whispered, and then, as slowly as ice melting, she went limp.
Luna took her hand away and cast Tergeo on the baby to rid of the blood and the amniotic fluid. "Shh, I know, I know." She rocked him in her arms. "I know." And she began to cry. "I know, it's awful not to have a mother. I know. I'm here, Thomas."
He fell asleep in her arms.
...
"He took her, Albus," Eleven said.
"She's not in the Chamber of Secrets, she wasn't in the Room of Requirement," Ten said.
"But we found his diary," Martha finished. "It's here. And he said it's cursed so the Doctor can't touch it."
"In that case, I doubt that I should hazard it either," Dumbledore said. "Could you set it down on my desk, please, Miss Jones?"
"It's Doctor Jones, actually." With a small smile of pride, Martha set the book down. Then her expression turned grave again. "But how could he have just...taken Luna?"
"It's obvious," Eleven said. "He can't have transported her in space; Hogwarts is too well-protected. So, he must have transported her in time. It's possible he had the means."
"What do you mean?" Ten asked.
"He stole the soul of my TARDIS," Eleven ground out.
"He can steal the TARDIS's soul and you didn't tell me?" Ten demanded.
"Well, he can't steal it twice; that would be a paradox," was Eleven's retort.
"How did he do that?"
"Magic," Eleven said, then turned to Dumbledore. "Albus, if he's transported Luna in time, we won't be able to find her unless there's some sort of trail. Most likely a magical trail, as that is Tom's area of expertise. The question is, what might he have done that would leave a trail?"
"Dark magic always leaves dark traces," Dumbledore said. "Although of course it is our hope that he hasn't used any. Apart from this." He gestured grimly at the diary.
"The diary can control people's minds," Martha said. "Whatever he's done to kidnap Luna, she might have been helping him do it."
"Good point," Eleven murmured. "Any ideas, Albus?"
"If Miss Lovegood's autonomy is in doubt, then it might be the simple matter of a time turner," Dumbledore said.
Eleven went still.
Ten smacked himself in the forehead. "Oh! Of course! Stupid; that was in book three!"
"But that still doesn't tell us where...I mean, when she's gone, does it?" Martha protested.
Eleven could hear his own past words; he had mentioned time turners out loud to Riddle that day. It had been crammed into a boast, but obviously Riddle had remembered. "I helped the Department of Mysteries develop time turners," Eleven said slowly. "Decades ago. Tom would've been...He wouldn't have been Hogwarts age anymore. Probably working at Borgin and Burkes, by then, if that part of the timeline is the same. But if he was waiting for them to be invented..."
"How could he?" Martha asked.
"I told him they would be invented," Eleven sighed.
"You were boasting, weren't you?" Ten said. "Why do we always do that?"
"Big-headed, I imagine?" Martha proposed, and both time lords (well, both of the same time lord) nodded.
"So, Mr Riddle was aware that time turners would be invented," Dumbledore mused. "And he had years to experiment with time magic in preparation. I can confirm that, in this version of events, Riddle spent time as an employee of Borgin and Burke's. The Department of Mysteries aren't open about the discoveries they make, but practicians of dark magic often share secrets, and in a shop as well-established as Borgin and Burke's...Tom would have had access to his fair share of secrets."
"So that's our first stop, right?" Ten suggested. "Borgin and Burke's, around the time the time turners are invented. And it'll have to be me and Martha, because we're the faces he won't recognize."
"Don't be stupid; I'm going as well," Eleven said. "He just won't be seeing my face."
...
"I hope you don't think this changes anything," Luna cooed to Baby Tom as she sat on the doorstep of the orphanage. "You still tortured a unicorn."
Tom opened his eyes sleepily. His little eyes, barely seeing. He started opening his mouth, then, experimentally it seemed.
"I can't give you any milk," Luna mused. "But I can give you company, for a little while. No one deserves to start off alone." No one. "And I know you won't like it here. You're unhappy here. But it would break time if I didn't..."
Well. She had to leave him at the orphanage. It was where he grew up, after all.
But she didn't have to leave him at the orphanage...right now.
"Let's have a walk first, alright?"
...
Thomas Riddle, the one in the clearing with the dead unicorn, flexed his still-sore tongue. That had been an experience. For the most part, it had gone very well. Only she had left, and he did not like that.
No matter. If his future self had done the magic correctly, she couldn't go far. And she would always be back to him again.
He watched the bubble of time energy (Time energy that had already taught him so much!) hover and drift on a tiny breeze. What was it Luna had said about appreciating the small things?
(A/N) Btw, I love reviews. Any thoughts you have, I love to read.