"Did you borrow that from the Potters?" Ten demanded.
Eleven rolled his eyes, which was the last thing they saw him do, because next he was tossing the Invisibility Cloak over himself. "No. I wouldn't do that; I just say things like that to impress people."
"Then where did you get it?" Ten asked, unmoved.
"The Peverells!" Eleven's voice replied with such chipper that he might as well have been visible.
"Alright," Ten sighed. "Our mission is to get information from Tom Riddle at Borgin and Burke's without him suspecting anything. If he suspects something, we're all at the mercy of an evil mastermind who can do magic. So, Me-" (He pointed a strict finger at where he assumed Eleven to be.) "-That means no talking, no noises, and don't knock anything over."
"And make sure the Cloak doesn't fall off," Martha added. "Though I wish we could just bring along McGonagall or something; should make this easier."
"We can't risk a face he would recognize," Ten said, "and we can't risk spoilers for occupants of this universe."
"Right," Eleven said. "We've already got Albus well-spoiled for what didn't happen."
"I'm about to meet Tom Riddle," Martha marveled. "I'm about to lie to Tom Riddle."
Ten flipped several switches on the TARDIS console. "As we'll be in Knockturn Alley, we'll want to seem sort of...dark and dodgy, I expect."
Martha swiftly lost her smile and put on an unconvincing surly expression. "Right. Dodgy. That's me. Artful Dodger."
"Don't do that," Ten sighed.
Martha only chuckled as the TARDIS whooshed them off to their destination. "So, are we faking wizard names?"
"I was gonna go with John Smith, to be honest," Ten said.
Martha snorted. "That's a Muggle name! At least you've got to be Johneus Smithawumble or Janus Sagittarius or something."
"Oh, just steal a name from the future," Eleven interjected from somewhere to Martha's left. "It's what I do, when I have to. I told the Peverells I was Percy Weasley."
"Percy Weasley?" Ten repeated. "You could've been Ron. You could've been Dumbledore!"
"Yeah, I panicked," Eleven sighed.
"That's perfect, though," Martha said. "I'll be, um, Marietta Edgecomb, and you can be Teddy Lupin."
"Brilliant. Mari-...Do you just have obscure character names in your mind at all times?" Ten demanded.
Martha beamed just as the TARDIS reached its destination.
Ten's face turned serious. "Alright. Remember: Knockturn Alley. Borgin and Burke's. Got to act like we belong so we don't get killed by wizards. Don't smile, don't giggle, and no gaping eyes of wonderment."
"Still, a bit better than 'Don't blink', yeah?"
Both Doctors groaned at the reminder.
"Hate those things..." Eleven muttered.
"Any more of them in the future?" Ten asked idly as he strolled up to the TARDIS door.
"Spoilers."
"I know, I know." Ten shook his head, then grimly repeated, "Knockturn Alley," and opened the door.
...
"I learned to milk cows from my grandparents," Luna said conversationally to the tiny baby who was slurping milk from the repurposed potion flask in her hand. She was seated in a pasture, surrounded by grazing cows, and Tom was strapped to her torso in a baby holster that she had fashioned out of her school robes. On the whole, she was more at ease than she had been in at least the past twenty-four hours.
Or maybe it only felt that way with the unicorn torture still fresh in her mind. She was still gradually detoxing away the emotional residue of the unicorn torture. The sound of its bones had left rather a strong impression.
She gazed at the sunrise and tried to push away thoughts of pain and death, but she was only internalizing it, and her experience with the Great Intelligence two years ago had taught her that internalizing things did little good. Best to push the poison out of reach rather than further inside.
She looked down at Tom. The milk was dribbling from the corners of his mouth and bubbling between his lips. If only images like this could have circulated of the "Dark Lord"; he would have thought twice before trying to earn anybody's fear. At least, she liked to think that he would. But then, Thomas has never thought twice in his entire life, has he? she thought (a bit rudely, she supposed).
"I've got to take you back," she said halfheartedly to the baby. "You've got to go to the orphanage eventually. Just because I have practically all the time in the world doesn't mean I'm allowed to cheat."
Tom moaned pitifully.
At the same time, Luna's stomach growled. That's right...She supposed she hadn't eaten in a while. Not since before Tom entrapped her with his stupid time turner, in fact.
And she couldn't help but to doubt that a Muggle establishment would serve her. Not when she had no Muggle money, no clue as to how to even order in a Muggle establishment (especially in this time period), and in addition probably smelled like cows.
That left her one option worth considering.
"Alright," she said calmly. "We're going to the Leaky Cauldron. But it's straight back to the orphanage after."
...
They entered the shop in a V formation, Martha spearheading them, Ten hanging left, and Eleven lurking invisibly to the right.
"Hello," Martha said, only a bit too brightly, to the greasy old man at the desk. "I-"
"Sign the visitors' log," the man interrupted, gesturing to a dingy old book on the countertop.
"Hello," Martha tried again while signing in with her assumed name and Ten's. "I'm Marietta Edgecomb, and-"
"Edgecomb?" the man repeated. "Of the Yorkshire Edgecombs?"
Martha only froze for a moment before smiling again, then thinking better of it and donning a somewhat haughty expression. "The very same."
"It's rare," the man said slimily, "that someone of your...leaning...would announce herself so plainly in a place like this." He looked her over while she was still processing his words. "And in such...attire."
"I didn't know it was common practice for you to remark on your customers' fashion," Martha said smoothly.
The man smiled thinly. "My apologies, ma'am. And you are here for...?"
With a grand flourish of her hand- Clearly she was enjoying herself too much -Martha gestured at Ten. "My associate, Mr. Theodore Lupin, has just arrived from Albania, and he would like to be shown the contents of this shop."
Still wearing his peculiar smile, the man looked over his shoulder and called into the shop's back room, "Riddle! Could you give Mr. Lupin and Madame Edgecomb a tour of the shop?"
From the doorway emerged a pale young man, handsome but cool-looking and the slightest bit untidy; his hair in particular was clearly in want of a trim.
"Perfect," Martha said, but her tone had changed; it sounded as if she was operating on half of her normal air. But then, that was to be expected. This was him. It was Voldemort standing in front of her, meeting her eyes with his own, and she was a Muggle. He could kill her with two silly words, torture her with one.
She broke eye contact; she kept her gaze moving. If he deigned to practice any sort of Legilimency on her, their plan would fall apart completely.
"Right this way," Tom Riddle said.
Martha hung back a bit so that Ten could fall into step behind him.
...
Dinner was five Sickles. Luna counted herself lucky that Tom hadn't robbed her in addition to kidnapping her, and luckier still that she always kept what money she had on her person rather than in her trunk (to keep it safe from metal-eating zimwidgets and the run-of-the-mill niffler).
"Excuse me," said a hesitant voice. A freckled young man in a blue waistcoat had drifted nearby. He stood slightly curled in on himself, as though anxious that he would bother her if he took up too much space. In one hand, he held a traveller's trunk; in the other, a bowl of soup. "Do you mind if I take this chair? All the others are full."
"Oh, certainly take it," Luna said. "I don't mind at all."
"Thank you." The man pulled the extra chair away from Luna's table and sat instead against the wall. Lacking a table of his own, he sat his trunk in his lap. and his bowl of soup on top of that.
"You can use the table as well," Luna said, a bit concerned for the man.
"Oh," the man began to stammer. "Oh, I wouldn't want to im-" He paused, seeming to look at her more closely. "I'm sorry, are you alright?"
Luna was a bit surprised; she hadn't thought that there was anything visibly not-alright about her. "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"
"Sorry, it's just that you look as if you've had a trying day, and you're using your school robes as a baby holster." Whilst still looking hesitant, a look of deep concern had entered the man's eyes: a look that reminded Luna very much of Mr. the Doctor and that made her feel suddenly quite young. "Do you need help?" the man asked gently. "My name is Newt. Newt Scamander."
...
"So what is it that you're looking for, Mr. Lupin?" Riddle asked as they wove carefully through the shop's narrow aisles.
Ten's brow was furrowed as he alternated between glancing at the shop's contents and observing Tom. "That depends," he answered mildly. "What do you recommend, Riddle, for a man on a budget?"
"That depends," Riddle responded evenly, "on your intentions."
The air felt heavy with subtext; they could all feel it as Riddle's pace slowed gradually more and more until they were all standing still in a corner of the shop. Ten continued to observe Riddle, and Martha stood uncomfortably by, and Eleven was surely somewhere, doing something, but nobody could see him. Riddle, meanwhile, stood with all the confidence of a man brimming with power and understanding.
"Intention is such a fickle thing," Ten said. "Don't you agree?"
"I'm sure it can be," Riddle said. "If you lack focus. But then, I imagine one loses all sorts of things when one lacks focus." Then he grinned a young man's grin, but there was something in his eyes, something too deep, almost hollow.
Ten raised his head slightly. "And where do lost things go?"
"To someone more deserving," Riddle said. "Someone with the power to keep what is theirs."
"You recognize this face, don't you," Ten surmised while subtly maneuvering Martha behind him.
"I don't, but she does." Riddle held out his hand, and in it appeared a ball of golden energy; his eyes started to glow with golden light.
Ten clenched his teeth, fury changing his entire posture. "That's distilled time energy, extracted from the TARDIS's soul. He's able to interact with it."
"Very good, Doctor." Riddle wiggled his fingers, and the golden energy squirmed between them. "I have your negligence to thank."
"Where's Luna Lovegood, Tom?" Ten asked.
"You know that the 'where' doesn't matter, Doctor," Riddle said pompously. "But I will answer you. 'Where' is she? Wherever I am. 'When' is she? She is always." Then he grinned again, as if he thought himself terribly clever.
"What have you done?" Ten demanded.
"Thus far? Not nearly enough." And then he thrusted his hand forward, and the golden energy surged and smacked into Ten's chest, and then Ten vanished.
Martha stumbled back. "What...What did you do? Where is he?" she asked.
Riddle's smile was gone. He looked her over as though curious. "Hmm." Suddenly, he whipped out his wand and fired it, not forward at Martha, but sideways, and a red beam of light collided with something invisible, and Eleven fell to the floor, the cloak bundled at his ankles. "I do love it when the TARDIS sees things that I don't," Riddle murmured before firing another blast of golden time energy at the fallen Eleventh Doctor.
Martha turned and tried to run, but a beam of light from Riddle's wand hit the small of her back, and suddenly she was bound with ropes from shoulder to foot. She hit the floor with a dull thud, and the wind was knocked out of her.
At a leisurely pace, Riddle walked around to her head and then sat down beside it. "You have a lot of names, don't you, Madame Edgecomb?" he commented. "From your handwriting, I would have thought your name was Penelope."
Martha reeled. "What do you-?"
"I saw your signature in the visitors' log. The penmanship matches exactly." Riddle's tone was sharp, impatient, but then it lightened: "But then, the TARDIS has another name for you. Doctor Jones? Martha Jones?"
Martha did not answer. Riddle's hand played with the golden energy in front of her face for a while in silence.
"You wrote in my diary," Riddle finally said, "about Luna. That diary never belonged to you. It was a gift to her." The golden energy went away, but he kept his wand out, tapping it against his shoe in a coolly threatening way.
"Nice of you to give her a Horcrux," Martha said, and as she spoke she remembered her power here; she knew this story, this series, better than any of its occupants. Better than Tom Riddle. She did not know this altered timeline very well, but she knew that the premise had not changed. "I think she would have preferred something less dark. You had to kill someone to make that. Myrtle, right?"
Riddle took a second to adjust to her knowledge of Horcruxes, her knowledge of him. He seemed a bit impressed. Then, he replied. "I gave her a unicorn, once," he said. "The 'purest' of creatures, they say. But she didn't like that very much."
"Did you kill it in front of her or something?" Martha asked.
"She told me to kill it," Tom said. "At least, she told me to end its suffering, and that was the only way to do it with time energy keeping it in flux."
"You tortured a unicorn and expected her to like that?"
"I was young. She had said that she wanted to see one, so I gave her what she wanted. I had to search the Forest for it."
"And this was before or after you opened the Chamber of Secrets?"
Tom smirked, again seeming impressed...and pleased. Maybe this was going to keep her alive. "Before. Long before. She cried when I told her about the Chamber, and about that Mudblood girl...What was her name?"
"Myrtle," Martha said forcefully.
Tom chuckled. "Luna cried. She cried for the unicorn, too. The green light looked wonderful in her tears."
Martha took a pause to process and relax. "What relationship...do you think you have with Luna?" she asked. "Are you her friend? If so, you're not a very good one."
"'Relationship'," Tom repeated scornfully. "Listen to yourself, Doctor Jones. You speak the language of the weak. A 'relationship' only binds for as long as both are faithful to it."
"But you've surpassed all of that, because you're the cleverest boy to ever live, right?" Martha exhaled. "You're just so brilliant, you figured out what none of us ever did."
"She can never leave me, now," Tom said evenly. "Even if her heart or her mind start to deceive her, to tell her that she isn't mine, she will never leave me. Your Doctor will leave you one day, Martha Jones. The TARDIS sees it. Do you want to know what she sees?"
Martha swallowed. "You said Luna can never leave you. What do you mean?"
"I mean the two old men who wanted me to have power the least also gave me the most of it," Tom said, "and I'm able to use that power to keep what belongs to me."
"Luna doesn't belong to you," Martha said. "You can't own a person."
"Oh, I don't know Doctor Jones," Tom sighed contentedly, easing his wand closer until it was pressed against her skull. "At this moment, your life and your death are mine to decide. Whether or not you continue existing depends on a single choice: mine. Who would you say you belong to, O Other Friend of Luna's?"
...
"But..." Mr. Scamander's emotions were so high that he started to stammer again. "But how can he...do such a thing? To harm a creature so innocent...and have anything inside him at all?"
Luna shook her head, at a loss. She was crying again, overwhelmed and a bit relieved to find someone with perhaps more compassion for the unicorn than she had.
"Your friend, he..." Mr. Scamander broke off, shook his head. "All the time, I run into people who have no respect or love for the most beautiful of creatures, such disregard..." As if on cue, a tiny bowtruckle crawled out of the collar of Mr. Scamander's waistcoat and climbed up onto his shoulder to pat his face comfortingly.
"He just kills things, and people," Luna went on miserably, "and it has no meaning to him. I can't understand him, and I don't know how to help him."
"And this, this, this..." Mr. Scamander paused, then started again. "This necklace" (He pointed to the time turner.) "is what takes you to him?"
"Yes," Luna agreed. "It won't allow me to be far away from him, and I can't take it off."
"And that..." Mr. Scamander gestured at Tom, who was now sleeping in her arms.
Luna nodded. "I just delivered him and watched his mother die. I'll have to take him back to the orphanage soon; I don't know what happens if I alter something I've seen happen."
"Such an awful future, to become something so..." Mr. Scamander shook his head.
"I wish I could change it," Luna told him. "But I'm not clever enough."
Mr. Scamander frowned slightly. "I suppose...it takes patience more so than understanding. If you're at it for long enough, you can't help but to learn. And until you can solve this," (He gestured again at the time turner.) "learning is the best you can do. And I'll help in any way that I can."
Luna smiled through the tears. She felt so much lighter, after confiding in Mr. Scamander. There was so much goodness in him, so much care for others, that it was like she was building up an internal defense for what she would have to face soon enough. "Thank you, sir," she said sincerely, "but this problem came from my choices. I'll have to face it now." She stood up from the table. The Leaky Cauldron was significantly emptier than it had been before; they had been here awhile. "I'm going to take him to the orphanage," she said clearly. "Then, I'm going to go...ahead." She laid a deliberate hand on the time turner before turning to leave.