"It's the middle bits I don't remember," Neville elaborated, still seeming unsettled about the faults in his own memory. "I remember my childhood...unfortunately..." He gave a grim, self-deprecating laugh. "I remember that I'm in my seventh year."

"Your seventh year?" Ten repeated, now slightly bothered. It was good, in a way, that a seventh-year Neville had confidently said No one could replace Dumbledore, but it also meant that their tentative grasp on the series was weakening all the time.

"Yes," Neville reaffirmed. "But the middle parts...I don't remember things, much; I mean, I start to remember something, and then I'm not sure. But I remember...feelings, maybe?"

"Attachments," Clara suggested.

"Right," Neville was quick to agree. "I remember bonds, and the types of feelings I have for people- loyalty, trust -but not events."

"It's the same for me; my early life is fairly clear, but I didn't even remember having a daughter, until you said her name; then it came back so suddenly," Clara said. "And yet still, I don't...even remember what she looks like. Or how old she is." Her voice wobbled a little.

Eleven drew closer, as if wanting to comfort but not completely knowing how, other than to earnestly say, "Well, that's got to be memory theft. The flux wouldn't erase something like that."

"You think he took them?" Ten guessed.

"'Course I do; he's quite the thief. Haven't you noticed? TARDIS soul, time turner, Luna, Martha, us. He stole things in the books, didn't he?"

"Why take our memories?" Clara asked.

"To inconvenience us?" Eleven suggested.

"A memory...A memory makes a fixed point," Ten noted. "Maybe he stole the memories in hopes that he could override the fixed points in time..."

"But then he'd have needed to take ours," Eleven pointed out. "And anyway, he and Luna have set the timeline in flux; there are no fixed points anymore. Wait." He smacked his own forehead, then pointed at Clara. "Say back that thing you said."

"Which thing?"

"The bit about remembering your past, but not remembering Luna."

"Well, you've just said it."

"Right. Fine. I think that's it."

"What's it?"

"Luna. He took memories of Luna. Neville's fuzzy on events, because of the time flux- that makes sense -, but Clara doesn't remember what her child looks like. That's the work of meddling."

"I don't remember what Luna looks like either," Neville contributed. "...But I remember what everyone else looks like. That's odd."

"Right. Good old Tom took their memories of Luna. Still, why not ours?" Eleven wondered aloud, pointing between himself and Ten.

"Well, I don't have any," Ten said. "Except from the books. And he can't steal the same person's memory twice, so really the question is why you've got yours."

Eleven nodded.

"I don't understand any of this," Clara sighed.

"Neither do we," Ten said.

"We're guessing," Eleven agreed.

"Good guessers though."

"Brilliant guessers." Eleven ran a hand through his hair, and when he next spoke, his voice was low and grim. "I think I'm the audience."

"What d'you mean?"

"Tom hates me personally. Not bragging, but he hates me about as much as he hates Dumbledore. Which is admittedly very cool, but moving past that, I think he let me keep my memories as a sort of taunt."

"And that means...?" Clara prompted.

"Well, besides the worrying fact that it would suggest he has a singular interest in inflicting psychological pain on me specifically, that means that once again Tom's pride has got him making mistakes. The power to steal memories, and of all people, he lets me keep mine. Sloppy. Past sloppy; it's insulting. Past insulting; it's really, really stupid. He has the TARDIS soul, he sees every enemy I've ever defeated, and he thinks a wooden door is all it takes and now I'm a sitting duck?" Eleven screwed up his face, now seeming legitimately bothered by the convenience. "He calls himself a Dark Lord, and yet he allows Ten here to keep his bizarrely encyclopedic knowledge of the books?"

"Are you leading in to something, because for once I'm not on the same page," Ten said.

"Dumbledore survives in this timeline," Eleven pointed out. "Neville just said; he survives, and he hasn't been transported here-"

"-course he hasn't. Tom can't overpower Dumbledore-"

"But can't he though? He couldn't spell Dumbledore here, but the TARDIS soul isn't magic. So what's keeping Tom from sealing Dumbledore here with us?"

"We're just the prisoners connected with Luna. And also Ollivander, for some reason."

"And we're not a threat to him. Not here, not like this. Dumbledore, he's a threat anywhere."

"Pardon me," Clara said, "I'd like to think I could put up something of a fight, thank you."

"You're right though," Ten murmured, "about Dumbledore. Not captured, but not dead, and seemingly still at Hogwarts."

"Maybe Tom's got someone masquerading as Dumbledore?"

"No; he needs praise too much. If he'd done anything to Dumbledore, he'd want applause for it. He'd want everyone to know."

"Excuse me," Neville interjected. "It sounds like you're saying that Dumbledore dies in your timeline?"

"It was part of a plan," Eleven waved him off. "Don't worry about it."

"I am worried about it. Did You Know Who kill him?"

"No, someone else did. And again, it was part of a plan. The main point is, the set of circumstances leading up to that seemingly don't happen in your version."

"Does that mean he didn't touch the ring?" Ten mused.

"Could mean he never found the ring. But we'd have to be out of here to know for sure."

"I think they're procrastinating," Clara murmured, "to avoid the fact that they don't know how to escape."

"No," Eleven protested.

"A bit," Ten said.

"A bit, yes, but this is important stuff!"

"Also, if he's collecting people who are close to Luna, why not Xenophilius? Why not Rolf Scamander?"

"Rolf Scamander?" Neville repeated, looking concerned. "That's the boy who died in a terrible accident years ago."

Both Ten suddenly felt rather hot, and Eleven suddenly felt rather sick.

"When you say boy..." Eleven prompted, in a monotone.

"About five?" Neville hazarded. "It was international wizarding news."

"What happened to him?" Ten seethed.

"He...Well, there was, er..." Neville knew that the Doctors' reactions weren't directed at him, but still he felt intensely uncomfortable. "It was dark magic, but all the Aurors said it seemed to come from nowhere. No traces. Like suddenly he just...The article said, it was like he rotted off, like an old tooth. Only it didn't seem like anyone really did it."

"Dark magic always leaves traces," Eleven murmured. "Just sometimes, they're not through space."

"Are you saying Riddle did it?"

"I'm saying that I really don't like how good he's gotten at using the TARDIS soul, and I especially don't like that he's able to use it to make his dark magic effectively untraceable."

The room was silent for a minute.

Then Clara spoke up, in an oddly reflective tone: "Why...when he was five?"

More silence, this time as the others processed her question.

"I mean, five give or take," Neville said. "He might have been four, might have been six; I just know he was very young..."

Ten held up a hand to quiet Neville's rambling. "What do you mean?" he asked Clara.

"I mean, if he could have used time magic to kill the boy any time, why when he was a small child? Why not when he was born?"

"Probably the same reason we all arrived here a few minutes apart instead of at the same time," Eleven said. "He's got the technique, but not the precision. He approximates."

"Not surprising; humans aren't very good at wielding time," Ten said.

"Glass houses, mate," Eleven coughed.

"Were there other deaths like Rolf's?"

"No," Neville said. "None that have made news, at least. It's odd though; if Riddle was behind it, why did he go through the trouble of cursing him, when he could have just gotten his followers to Rabbit Hunt him."

"Rabbit Hunt?" Eleven repeated.

"That wasn't in the books either?" Clara asked. "Come on; I've heard of Rabbit Hunting."

"Well, by all means, don't leave us in the dark," Eleven prompted.

Clara sighed. "Sometimes, there are people who Riddle wants dead. There never really seems to be a reason; they're not usually powerful: sometimes they're just a random family of Muggles; sometimes they're even on his side, like the Parkinsons. But he'll put them on a list, and his followers will search for them and kill them like it's a scavenger hunt." She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the practice. "The Ministry swore it was just a fear tactic, but Xeno and I knew it was way too specific. For some reason, he wanted those particular people dead."

More silence, somehow heavier.

Eleven paced furiously, then stopped all at once and held up his finger. "Alright, new rule: Do not tell us about any specific deaths." He shot Ten a glare for having asked the question in the first place. "They create fixed points in time. Now, we can't save Rolf or the Parkinsons, unless the flux favors us somehow, but we can save others, so long as we don't know about them."

"Not from here you can't," Clara reminded.

"Oh, we'll escape eventually; we're just taking this opportunity to figure a few things out."

"I thought you said knowing causes a fixed point."

"Yes, but not knowing takes away our best weapon against him."

"Don't say your cleverness."

"You just did."

"We're going to be trapped here forever." It was ironically at that moment that golden light began to snake around Clara, and in an instant, she vanished from the room.

...

Luna's mission to protect Harry Potter's parents did not begin flawlessly.

Or it did, depending on how one looked at it.

She landed on her stomach on a table in the Transfiguration classroom, with Professor Snape's wand pointed at her face. Only he wasn't Professor Snape, because he looked to be somewhere between twelve and fifteen. And he was clearly just as shocked to see her as she was so see him, although that was likely to do with her having appeared right on top of the inkwell he was supposed to be transforming.

"Sorry," she said while gasps were still ringing through the previously-silent classroom. She dropped from the table and found that ink had stained the front of her robes. Well, they weren't actually her robes anyway; she was still in the Slytherin robes Tom had given her.

"You," a voice from the other side of the room exclaimed, and Luna turned to see a row of Gryffindors staring at her with incredulity. Three of them looked quite familiar: there were Remus and James and their long-haired friend. And beside them, now that she looked, was the plump boy who had burst into the Hospital Wing looking for them.

"Oh." Luna smiled; by the looks of things, it wouldn't be hard to find Harry's father after all. "Hello there."

"What's this?" demanded a sharp voice from the front of the room, and Luna turned around for a second time and saw Professor McGonagall (still an adult, in this time) regarding her sternly. "Explain yourself! What are you doing here?"

"Don't mind me," Luna said, although an arch of the woman's eyebrow suggested that she did very much mind. "I'm just passing through."

There was a moment, just a moment, when McGonagall's expression looked almost amused. Luna had seen amusement in the woman before- really, she did care about her students quite a lot, and it was lovely -but in this instance, the look chilled her. She knew, somehow, already, that this was not really Minerva McGonagall standing here.

She remembered how Tom had said that the time turner would never take her far from him.

She blinked and tried not to indicate that she knew; if she could just get to Dumbledore, she could tell him about Tom and perhaps even be free of the time turner entirely.

"At any rate, I've got to go," she said, then sprinted from the room.

Behind her, she heard the fake McGonagall protesting, "Potter, Black, you stay in your seats!", which must have been ineffectual, because next she was more-sharply commanding, "Pettigrew, if you follow them, you will be serving their detentions for them," and that time the voice was moving, like Tom was actually going to pursue her as McGonagall, and Luna hastily turned a corner and quickened her pace...

And she got no further, because James and the long-haired boy whose surname must have been Black (Sirius Black?) had caught up to her and had their wands out.

It occurred to her that she had left her wand behind with Tom before jumping to this time.

"What are you doing here?" James demanded.

Luna tilted her head, slightly perplexed; she'd thought that they had gotten on well, last time they'd met. But then, more importantly... "We should move; he's coming."

Black seemed to agree, even though he probably didn't know who she meant; he pointed at a tapestry, and he and James promptly ran to it, both with a hand on her back to usher her behind the hanging rug and into a little tunnel.

"Oh, it's cozy in here," Luna observed. "A bit dark, though."

"Lumos," James said, and then Luna could see their earnest faces across from her. They didn't look very much older than they had been last time, but they were much more serious. "What are you doing here?"

"Last time we saw you, you were with Tom Riddle," Black added. "Is he here again, too?"

Oh. That was why they were all harsh.

"Sort of," she said. "I think he might be disguised as McGonagall, but I'm not entirely sure."

"Why are you here?" James asked, for the third time now.

Luna looked at him and remembered how young he had died (would die?), and that he might die even younger this time. Life was not kind to James Potter. "You're in danger," she said solemnly. "I think Tom might want to kill you and Lily P-...Evans."

"Me and Evans?"

"Them? Why? Wait, first, I don't believe you," Black said.

"Why not?" Luna asked. "You know that I know Tom Riddle, and you probably know that I can time travel."

"And we know that you're trying to change him," James tacked on, a bit sardonically. "How's that project going?"

"It's taken some turns, if I'm being honest."

Black seemed unable to handle the ridiculousness of the situation; he chuckled.

"Laugh it up, Sirius," James said. "You're not the one he wants dead."

(It was Sirius Black. Alright then; Father didn't believe he was really a murderer anyway.)

"He who?" Sirius asked through his chuckles. "McGonagall?"

"She was with Riddle last time; remember, she tackled him to keep him from killing us. Why would she lie now?"

"Why wouldn't McGonagall have killed you by now, if she's Tom Riddle in disguise and wants you dead?"

"That's a good question," Luna mused. "But I don't always know why Tom does things."

Suddenly, the tapestry was pulled aside, blinding all of them with the corridor's light for a second. "Indeed," a slightly-smug voice said.

Luna reopened her eyes and was not pleased to see the fake McGonagall standing there. She knew with certainty that it was Tom, now; who else could fit that much smugness into such a calm expression?

"Potter, Black, to the common room," Tom-McGonagall (TomGonagall?) commanded. "Lovegood, with me: my office."

Luna nodded absently, and she felt slightly moved that Sirius had to force James to leave her there.

...

"Oh, come off it," Martha groaned. Bizarrely enough, she was now comfortable telling Voldemort to "come off it". She had definitely been here too long. Well, it helped that he was being utterly absurd. "That wasn't even canon; I told you, it was just in a fanfiction I read."

"I asked for the name," Tom repeated coolly. He had been positively wringing her out for names of every human male Luna had ever interacted with in the books, and now they had somehow crossed over into crack ships.

"Dean Thomas," Martha said morosely. "You know, in most of the fanfiction, he's gay. In most of the fanfiction, she's gay!"

"Then give me a list of the girls, too," Tom said calmly.

"Shouldn't you be more confident than this?" Martha probed, before the fading strains of the Veritaserum forced her to list off, "Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger- I mean, you've already got her. You don't actually need- Pansy Parkinson -to eliminate the competition."

"There is no competition," Tom said. "She's mine, indisputably. I just don't want anyone else touching her, in this or any timeline or canon."

"There's a Japanese word for that, but I don't watch anime."

"Is that the whole list?"

"I don't actually read that much fanfiction; most of it I scrolled past when I was procrastinating on a dissertation."

"Do you mean to tell me that you're now useless to me?"

"No," she said hastily.

"Then I hope you can remember something important while I'm away at work." And he left her there with only a wave of his wand to ensure that she kept quiet in his absence.

...

Luna eyed the cat in the cage. "Tom, you didn't."

Tom, in McGonagall's body, smirked, which was an odd sight to behold. McGonagall, in McGonagall's office, and yet she was Tom. It was something that required adjusting to every second. "What? She's not hurt."

Ostensibly true. Though the cage was quite small, the cat inside it seemed fine, if positively furious.

"It's not nice to put people in cages, Tom- even in their Animagus form."

"Well, a friend of the Doctor's once told me about a Mudblood girl-"

"You know that's not a kind word."

"-who kept an Animagus in a jar for months. This nice professor has only been caged for about two days. And I wouldn't sympathize with her too much; she scratched me quite ferociously."

"Before or after you locked her up and stole her identity?"

"Very funny."

"I'm not joking; I'm asking."

"Before. I've kept clear of her claws, since then."

"How did you get here without Dumbledore knowing?"

"Interestingly, that same friend of the Doctor's also told me about an unregistered Animagus who managed to sneak onto school grounds in his animal form."

"So you turned into a snake, then?"

"You assume my Animagus form is a snake? Lovegood, I'm touched."

Luna sat on the corner of McGonagall's desk, then eyed the trapped cat guiltily and dropped down, wandering instead to one of the office's windows. "Are you here to kill students?"

"Oh, there are simpler ways to do that," Tom said. "If I wanted them dead, I'd have done it over the summer, when Dumbledore wouldn't have been breathing over my shoulder."

"What, then?"

"That's not really any of your business."

"If you don't want to tell me things, then why keep me around?"

Tom cackled. "Never ask a murderer that, Lovegood."

"It's terrible that that's what you call yourself."

"We've had that discussion before."

"I haven't."

"No, I suppose not; you're tiny." His tone was one suited for whispering over a newborn's cradle.

He was making fun of her, or goading her, in a decidedly friendly way. Luna came to terms with the fact that she had been in over her head, for this whole endeavor. But that was neither here nor there; for now, she had a job to do. The Potters were in danger, in some way. She had to be vigilant.

"And you haven't got your wand," Tom added.

"You have it, decades ago." And now it was occurring to her that, though he was being McGonagall right now, this was legitimately the oldest version of Tom she'd met yet. With that in mind, it was sort of comforting that he was treating her like an amusing child. Not that he didn't always.

"Oh, I remember that. I took the wand so you wouldn't leave, and you just left without it, silly girl." Tom chortled, then paused. "Here; you can have Minnie's."

Luna turned, only to have an old-seeming wand thrust into her hands. "Tom," she protested.

"Come now, Luna; this seems as good a time as any for you to continue your Hogwarts education. I intend to be here for a while, which means that I'll be able to supervise you and the time turner won't force you to go someplace nearer to me. And I can't have my Lovegood staying magically-illiterate, now can I?"

"I don't think it would be very nice to use Professor McGonagall's wand while she's a cat," Luna opined. "And you only have as long as it takes for Dumbledore to catch you."

"Call me an optimist," Tom said cryptically.

Really, it was sort of a good idea to take this opportunity. She did still need to learn magic, and this way she could do it while keeping an eye on Tom and the timeline. "I need different robes," Luna said.

Tom cast Tergeo to rid her of the ink stain.

"I'd like different robes," she reiterated. "I don't want to be in Slytherin."

"But I so enjoy it when you wear my colors," Tom sighed.

"I'm going to be in Gryffindor this time."

"No," he said, point blank. "You're just hoping to stay close to Potter and the rest."

"Of course I am."

"No."

"Fine. But I daresay it'll seem odd for the Head of Gryffindor House to spend so much time talking to a Slytherin." Luna crossed her arms, her expression neutral as she turned to gaze out the window again.

Tom sighed, and suddenly a whoosh of air went over Luna. She looked down at herself and found that her robes had transformed into Gryffindor ones. "I hope you know that no one else can make me change my mind like that," Tom said.

"No one?" Luna repeated, puzzled. "That ought to depend on what information they reveal, not who they are, shouldn't it? If someone told you your house was on fire, you wouldn't change your mind about returning there?"

There was a chiming sound from the distant Clock Tower before he could respond.

"On that note," Tom said, "I think I'll walk you to lunch. I'd urge you not to be too friendly with your classmates; I've had people killed for less than eating with you."

Luna closed her eyes to keep the tears from forming.

...

Clara returned to the room after a few minutes, but she did not look quite the same as before. Her hair was messier, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Where did he take you?" both the Doctors asked immediately.

"Luna," Clara said hoarsely, staring into space. "I...I saw her. And he took my memory of her again."

"You saw her?" Ten repeated.

"We're gifts," Clara said. Her dazed tone was becoming an enraged one. "At least I am; he brought me out to talk to her as a Christmas gift. I saw her face, and now I can't remember it."

Eleven backed off. "Well. That gives some context as to why he's keeping us alive."

"Think he'll let us talk to her?" Ten asked.

"Doubtful. Audience, remember. And unless he's gotten rather cool about a few things, I don't think he'll be giving Neville to her, either."

"It was..." Clara broke off. "I think I disappointed her; I didn't remember so many things."

"That was probably part of Tom's intention," Ten said delicately.

"Right. He can provide her lost mother, but only on a superficial level. Because he doesn't want her actually forming deep connections with-"

Ten cleared his throat to interrupt his older self, then pointed at Clara's crestfallen, tear-streaked face with his head. Eleven backtracked:

"I mean, obviously it's still you, and Luna would have been happy to see you any way she could, memories or no memories."

Clara wiped at her cheeks with the sides of her hands. "He said to her...'I'm keeping alive the people you want alive'. Like we're some sort of peace offering."

"Rubbish; there's a lot of people Luna wants alive," Eleven protested.

Clara smiled. "I think that's how she answered him."

"Ohhhh," Ten groaned. "That explains why he killed Rolf but not Neville; Rolf he could get away with, because she didn't know him until after she left Hogwarts. Neville she knows...or knew...Hard to say; timeline in flux."

"I don't want to talk about him anymore," Clara said. "I don't want to reflect on his motive or his thoughts; I just want to get out of here and save my child from him."

Eleven patted her consolingly. "Alright then." He took long strides to the other side of the room. "Tennie, sidebar."

...

Martha rolled off the bed. The magical ropes around her did not relent, but she found with some pride that she could stand in them.

Alright.

After just a moment of consideration, she had surmised that she would absolutely not be making it out the door. It was locked with magic, and the ropes kept her from reaching for the doorknob anyway.

"If I ever make it out of here," she decided aloud, "I will come back to this time and place and I will open the door for myself."

Then she waited, hoping.

Nothing happened.

"Of course not," she murmured. "I don't even know when I am."

She eyed Tom's possessions. Surely he had the date written down somewhere...and a wristwatch?

Rummaging for something to tell the time was quite difficult when she was tied up; a lot of things, she ended up doing with her teeth, which was quite demeaning, but being interrogated for hours on end put these things into perspective. Tom's bags were apparently sealed with magic, but his desk drawers were not. After over twenty minutes, she found a day planner with the correct date.

"Alright. Making a mental note of that."

It was another ten or so minutes and a few false starts involving broken pocket watches before Martha realized that the planner itself could give her the time, if she looked for the time when Tom was supposed to go to work and estimated from there.

Another minute passed before the door to the room suddenly clicked open.

...

It was Christmas day, and fourteen-year-old Tom and fourteen-year-old Luna left the Great Hall early from dinner.

Tom insisted on holding hands, and Luna complied easily enough, only she occasionally forgot and started to casually pull away or try to wander, only to have his hand tighten on hers. He was rather rubbing her bones together, at this point.

If anyone else noticed that Tom's companion was a few years older than she had been the other day, they did not show it.

They made a turn, and Luna hummed in confusion. "We're not going back to the Come and Go Room?"

"Not at this moment," Tom said. "I have a gift for you, remember."

"In the interim three years, I suppose I forgot," Luna mused. "It's not like the-?"

"No, it's not like the unicorn. Merlin, you never change."

He took them up to the Astronomy Tower.

"Are the stars my gift?" Luna asked, her face upturned wonderingly at the points of light spread before her.

"Would you actually accept the stars as a Christmas gift?" Tom asked.

"Well, they make me happy. So I suppose I would."

Tom rolled his eyes, but he couldn't keep the smirk of anticipation off his face. "Don't I feel foolish then. Perhaps you don't want your real gift, then."

"Perhaps I don't." Calling his bluff. Her hand outstretched as if to feel the stars.

Behind her, Tom lifted his hand and concentrated until the golden light appeared around his fingers. He could feel what he was reaching for; he closed his hand around it and pulled until it fell into place. "Well, why don't you turn around and tell her that yourself."

Luna turned around slowly, and Tom watched her expression transform, from serene bliss to a sudden hurricane of other emotions, each more entrancing than the last and all too short-lived. "M-..." She had settled on a bewildered frown. She quirked her head to the side. "Mum?"