(A/N) So finished by Christmas was realistically never going to happen. But the main reason I was aiming for that was because honestly I was just so embarrassed at the idea of this story being started during the tenure of the 11th Doctor and remaining unfinished right through to the time of Whittaker, that so I really tried to finish it before Capaldi's final bow. Obviously that hasn't worked out. But it felt weird to me that I only included the 12th Doctor in an earlier chapter to try and jolt some life into this story, and at that time 12 was all shiny and new, and by the time I finished it he would have been long gone.
So I have decided to play around with my plan for how things were going to work out. The scenes at the end of this chapter were originally meant to happen way later on in the story, but I've moved them up so they can serve almost as a goodbye to my beloved Twelfth Doctor. This story will continue into 2018, and while I may write 12 again, I'll never do it while he is the current incarnation.
Nothing is sad until it's over, and then everything is.
(Happy Holidays, nerds!)
Harry wondered if perhaps something had struck him in the back of the head just as it had done the Sontaran minutes earlier. Perhaps he was still lying unconscious up on the second floor of the castle, and everything since – the spaceships in the sky throwing flames at one another, the sound of the Beach Boys echoing across Hogwarts, and the image of the man standing in front of him – was nothing but a dream. Because Harry had made peace a long time ago with the fact that he'd never see the Doctor again.
And yet there he was, standing a few feet away on the grass, his face obscured by the darkness except for when the flash of a nasty explosion from above briefly bathed it in an angry orange glow. Harry fought out of the shock that had rendered the other three humans frozen, and took a step towards the man in the shadows. No one said anything, but the sound of the escalating conflict above him and Brian Wilson belting out I Can Hear Music provided a strange soundtrack as he cautiously crept ever closer to the Doctor.
He came within inches, heard the familiar hummm of the TARDIS that often drifted through his dreams, looked at the fine detail in the material which made up the bowtie around the Doctor's neck, and yet still found himself reaching out a hand. He wouldn't believe it wasn't a hallucination until he made physical contact. His outstretched fingers closed the distance, came just about close enough to touch when…
"Boo!" said the Doctor, his own hand shooting out and snatching Harry's at the wrist.
Harry jumped in fright.
"Doctor…"
"Hello, Harry Potter," he said softly. "Long time no see. Staying out of trouble as usual, I see?"
Before Harry could muster a response, the Doctor darted past him and over to the others.
"Hermione," he said, looking upwards. "You cast protective enchantments, yeah?"
"Yes," said a flustered Hermione. "But I'm not sure they'll hold."
"Not forever, but you bought us time, and time saves lives. You did brilliantly!" He suddenly grabbed her face and tilted it forward so he could plant a quick kiss in the hair on top of her head.
"Oh," Hermione squeaked. "Err, thanks."
"And Ron!" the Doctor cried, coming to face Ron and giving him some light punches to the stomach. "How've you been, buddy? Have you been to that pub named after you yet? They do a gobstopper flavoured milkshake, it's to die for!" While Ron laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, the Doctor's attention turned to the other girl standing by his side. He reached out to shake Ginny's hand. "Ah, hello, I'm the Doctor, I don't believe we've met." His face fell, and without warning he closed in on Ginny until they were nose to nose. "Ooh. Or have we? You look very familiar to me, and I never forget a face."
Ginny gazed back, wide-eyed. "I'm, err, Ron's sister?"
The Doctor's suspicious squint disappeared instantly. "Ahh, family resemblance! Of course."
A particularly flinch-inducing explosion occurred above, regaining everyone's full attention.
"So," said Harry, breaking out of his stupor and coming to the Doctor's side. "Those are aliens?"
"Yep," said the Doctor, looking skyward with great concern. "Hundreds of them. I was attending day eleven of the Neptune Comic Con when I spotted them entering the solar system."
"Why are they fighting each other?" Hermione asked.
"Because they didn't come together. Those are all different species up there, and they were racing. This is a last ditch fight to the finish line, a shoving match to see who can hit the ground first."
Out of the many ships warring above them, one in particular suffered a death blow and started plummeting downwards. But when it reached a good hundred feet above Hogwarts, it struck something – a luminous dome of energy covering the entire castle briefly flashed up, and the whole ship was suddenly vaporised into nothingness.
"The enchantments?" said Ginny.
The Doctor nodded. "Pretty soon now they're going to stop firing at each other and focus all their weapons on the force field. So we need to be ready."
"How can we possibly fight them?" Harry asked.
"Fight?" said the Doctor. "Harry, you disappoint me. We don't have to fight them, we just have to be cleverer than them." Another ship got too close to the enchantments and the force field flashed again. "And speaking of clever, let's go somewhere we can see what's happening without fear of being crushed by a falling Slitheen battlecruiser."
He was off before he'd finished his sentence, running back towards Hogwarts. They all followed, and when they reached the entrance they had to make room for the horde of statues and suits of armour marching out onto the grounds, ready for war. They finally caught up with the Doctor in the centre of the Great Hall, standing between the house tables and looking up. The enchanted ceiling had perhaps never presented such a sight as the one they all found themselves gazing at: an alien skirmish lighting up the skies above Hogwarts.
"So, catch me up," said the Doctor. "I know bits and pieces from listening in on their communications as I followed them, but what's been happening from your point of view?"
"These really weird lights showed up outside my house," Harry started.
"Yeah, that'd be the spaceships making their approach. Little scraps kept breaking out during the journey, and that would have made them occasionally visible from the Earth. What else?"
"Somebody hired a really dangerous wizard named Yip the Yelper to break into Hogwarts and steal something," said Ginny.
The Doctor nodded again. "A wizard would always have had an easier time getting past the enchantments than an alien, could have avoided all this kerfuffle. Whichever one of that lot hired him, they obviously didn't count on the current calibre of the Ministry's Auror division, eh?" He reached out and lightly flicked Harry on the forehead. Harry swatted his hand away, yet felt himself grinning with a hint of pride.
"Well a little, shouty creature broke into Harry's cottage and stole the Marauder's Map," Hermione explained. "And then the Minister of Magic was abducted and replaced with this scary, blobby shapeshift-y thing."
"The little one would have been a Sontaran, used the map to find one of the passageways into the castle, probably the one beneath Honeydukes. It's technically outside the protective measures so it could have just walked right in under the castle, no problem. Same for the Zygon who took the Kingsley's face. If the leader of the country walks up to Hogwarts, McGonagall is probably going to greet him at the gates with a cup of tea."
"Where is Professor McGonagall?" asked Ron. "Did you take her?"
"Had to," the Doctor shrugged. "She's waiting for me in a bowling alley in New York, thinks I've gone to get her some appropriate shoes. I'll be in for a hell of lecture when she realises what's happened, but this isn't her fight. It's our fight. Nobody should be risking anything to fix it but us."
"What do you mean, our fight?" asked Harry. "How is this our fault? We still don't really know what's going on, what are all these aliens here for?"
For the first time, the Doctor didn't answer straight away. He turned to Harry, and there was a tinge of sadness behind his eyes. "Well, that's the other way you've disappointed me, Harry. You lied to me."
Harry frowned. He felt the others looking at him, just as confused as he was. But before he could question that statement, something from above caught all their gazes.
"Uh-oh," the Doctor whispered.
Through the magical ceiling, they saw one huge ship break away from the fighting. It was a massive, saucer-shaped craft covered in dark gold chrome plating and with strange bumps all along its belly. The sight of it seemed to trouble the Doctor more than any of the others. From beneath the mighty ship, a mechanical hatch drew itself open and a powerful bubble of light began to grow from within, until a great beam of green energy shot out of it and struck the field of protective spells. The magical dome was revealed again, but this time stayed visible as the beam of energy only continued to pour against it. The dome started to quiver and crack in places.
"We're running out of time," said the Doctor quickly. He turned back to them and started digging around inside the pockets of his tweed jacket. "Ginny, I need you to evacuate Hogsmeade."
Ginny stared. "I… what?!"
"Once the force field is down, they'll start shooting at anyone in sight. You need to go into the village, wake everyone up and tell them to apparate the hell out of here!" From his pocket he produced a large handful of glittery dust. "Anyone who can't apparate will need to use Floo Powder, this should be enough."
He grabbed a goblet from the Hufflepuff table, tipped the powder into it, and then handed it to Ginny. She nodded quickly, risked a brief glance up at the battle that she was walking out into, and then grabbed Harry's hand to give a quick squeeze.
"See you soon, yeah?"
Harry squeezed back. "I better."
As she ran out of the Great Hall, the Doctor continued handing out duties.
"Ron, get to the Owlry, send a message to the Ministry telling them what's happening. Tell them Harry Potter is here and he is taking care of the situation. Most importantly, tell them not to come here – they're outmatched and they'll die."
"Couldn't we use all the help we can get?" asked Ron delicately. "We can't fight all that alone."
The Doctor shook his head. "I already told you, we're not gonna fight them, we're gonna outthink them. Now, go, quick before someone else raises the alarm."
Again, Ron didn't go anywhere without looking first at Hermione. He came close to give her a quick kiss on the lips (the Doctor looked away awkwardly, and Harry thought he heard him mutter "Urgh.") and told her "Be safe."
"You too," she said, keeping hold of his hand until she had to let it go so he too could run out of the hall.
"And that leaves us," said the Doctor, once he, Harry and Hermione were the only ones remaining. "Team 'Left Behind'! Lucky us. Stick close, and keep your wands out. I have a feeling this place is going to get very crowded very quickly."
And so they were running, flying up staircases and sprinting down corridors, all whilst a intergalactic firefight was taking place above them. Every time they passed a window, the Doctor would quickly glance out to see what was happening.
After five minutes of non-stop, full-speed following of the Doctor, a breathless Hermione called out to him, "It would really help if we knew where we were heading."
He frowned at them over his shoulder. "Gryffindor Tower, where else?"
"We don't know!" Harry said again. After so many years of longing to see him, he was suddenly remembering how frustrating a conversation with the Doctor could be. "You seem to think we've got all the answers when we barely have any. So if you know, tell us. What's brought aliens here and what did I lie to you about?"
The Doctor halted, and turned around to give Harry another downright irritated look. "You really haven't figure it out yet?"
"No," Harry insisted.
The Doctor shook his head. "Well you can find out when we get there," he said, dramatically turning his back on them and setting off down the hallway again. "I'm the Doctor. I'm here to save your life, not to dump expositionOof!"
As he reached a corner, an arm had come out of nowhere and clotheslined the Doctor's midsection. He dropped to the floor, and the apparently newly-conscious Sontaran stepped over his prone body.
"Perish, Time Lord scum!" he snarled, and aimed his heavy alien gun right in the Doctor's face.
"Expelliarmus!" Harry and Hermione cried in unison. The gun was lifted out of the Sontaran's hands and flew down the corridor. Harry followed this up with a stunning spell, but the Sontaran deftly rolled out of the way of it, then bounded across the distance between them like a tenacious pit-bull, and tackled him to the ground. He placed a three-fingered palm over Harry's mouth and pressed down, hard.
"Tell me where the remains are or die gasping for air!"
"Stupefy!" Hermione yelled, and this time she was too close for the Sontaran to dodge the spell. It hit him right in the face, and he rolled off of Harry to the floor next to him. Harry stumbled to his feet, regaining his breath, only to have the dazed Sontaran claw out at his ankle.
"The remains!" he said in a strangled whisper. "Tell me where –"
The Doctor appeared out of nowhere, and swiftly struck a blow to the back of the Sontaran's neck. The tiny, beady eyes on his potato-like face rolled upwards, and he finally slumped motionless against the stone floor.
"For future reference," said the winded Doctor, clutching his midsection, "probic vent. It's a feeding tube on the back of the neck. One good whack and they go out like a light."
"But how did he – " Hermione began, but then the whole castle shook again, and from a nearby window they saw more cracks and splits running across the protective magical dome covering Hogwarts.
"Forget him, keep up!" said the Doctor, and he was running again.
Before long, they found themselves in front of the Fat Lady's Portrait. She hadn't finished asking for the password before the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at her and she began opening against her will. She shouted insults as they hurried inside.
It had been a long time since Harry and Hermione had been in the common room. They paused for a second instinctively, and looked around at their old armchairs sitting in front of the fireplace.
"No," said the Doctor sharply, without breaking his stride towards the boys dormitories. "No nostalgia. Not tonight. Hurry up."
He and Hermione shared a worried glance, and followed the Doctor up the stairs. When they entered the room Harry had once called home, the Doctor immediately began pulling the sheets off of empty beds and knocking items off of the side tables.
"Well?" he said impatiently. "Where is it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Harry for umpteenth time.
The Doctor stopped his search and looked at Harry. "Seriously? Are you that desperate to keep it? It can't even do what it used to do, and you're still prepared to let Hogwarts be torn apart brick by brick rather than let it go?"
"Doctor, just tell us!" Hermione pleaded.
"The Mirror of Erised, Hermione," the Doctor shouted suddenly. That shut everyone up. Harry's face fell, and though he didn't look, he could feel Hermione's puzzled gaze on him. "That night, at the foot of the Astronomy Tower, you took a piece of the destroyed frame. Something to remember it by, probably – the only way you ever got to see your parents' faces. And then, months later, when I told you I had thrown every trace of the mirror into a supernova just to be safe, you neglected to tell me that you had a chunk of it in your bedroom."
Harry had no response. He kept looking from the Doctor, to Hermione, to the chaos happening in the sky outside the window next to his old four-poster.
"Doctor… I'm sorry, I –"
"It's too late for apologies, Harry. Half the universe is here ready to scorch everything in sight until they get that piece of frame. 'I'm sorry' isn't quite good enough!"
"But why?" Harry spluttered. "I don't understand, it's just… just a chunk of wood! There's not even anything magical about it left – why would aliens fly across space just for a piece of mirror frame?"
The anger in the Doctor's face softened slightly. "Because it's not a piece of wood, Harry," he said, as though he was breaking some truly terrible news. "It's not the last part of the Mirror of Erised, it never has been. It's the last piece of the Weeping Angel."
It was as though the floor had opened up, and Harry's heart had dropped out of his body and plummeted out of sight. He stood very still for a moment, holding the Doctor's gaze. And then he produced his wand, walked over to the floor next to his old bed, and patted the floorboards with his foot. When he found the weakest one, he stamped on it with all his might. It split instantly, and Harry aimed his wand at what it revealed.
There, amongst the dirt and dust, was a chunk of wood. The once sparkling gold paint was peeled in places, and if you looked hard enough you would just be able to make out the word 'Erised' carved into it.
"I couldn't take it with me," said Harry quietly. "It felt wrong. It felt like it was part of Hogwarts. Like Dumbledore. It should stay here even after…" He trailed off, and then glanced at the Doctor. "Explain."
The Doctor and Hermione came to his side and looked down at the frame.
"I told you," said the Doctor. "The real mirror shattered, and the Angel dove into the explosion. All that magic, all that power over images. I think it asked for one last deep desire to be realised: to look not like itself but like any old piece of rubble we might have found on the ground that night. No, actually, worse than that. To look like a piece of rubble that Harry Potter would never quite be able to throw away."
"Why now?" said Harry, not taking his eyes off the piece of frame. Not even blinking. "Why did you wait all these years, how did you know for sure?"
"I didn't," said the Doctor, and he nodded to the window. "They did. It's all over everyone's communications. 'Harry Potter has the remains of a Weeping Angel. Let's go take it from him.'"
"But he's blinked," said Hermione. "He must've done. In all the time it's been here? It must have been unobserved a thousand times. Why hasn't it attacked."
"I don't think it can," said the Doctor. "I think it transformed itself and ended up stuck like that. It's as close to the dead body of a Weeping Angel as there's ever been, and every warrior race in existence wants to do the autopsy. Study it, learn the secrets, use them in battle."
"So what do we do?" she asked.
The Doctor bent down, carefully moved Harry's wand hand out of the way, and reached down to pick up the dirty piece of frame.
"We throw it into the fire of a dead sun like I should have done the first time."
As if hearing him, this is when the aliens finally succeeded in breaking the forcefield. There was a crackling sound like lighting, and they saw the dome of magic crumble into nothing.
"Right," said the Doctor, putting the chunk of frame inside his jacket, and then straightening his bow-tie. "Here we go."
He flew out of the room without another word, and Harry and Hermione knew better by now than to try and stop him. They were out of the dormitory and out of the common room in seconds, and running through Hogwarts again.
"So what are we up against?" said Harry. "More Sontarans?"
"What about the thing that kidnapped Kingsley?" Hermione asked. "The Zygons? Are they here too?"
"Yep," said the Doctor. "Loads and loads of them. Everyone has sent their entire fleet, everyone wants to get their hands on the Angel's corpse."
"But Doctor wait," said Harry. "Something else tried to breech Hogwarts earlier and got tangled in the enchantments. It was metal, like a robot. Had a weird handle bar running over its head?"
The Doctor sighed grimly. "The Cybermen. They're here too."
"Well we think they've been planning this for a while," said Hermione. "They're the ones who hired Yip the Yelper."
The Doctor came to a complete stop, and turned to them in confusion. "What? No, that can't be right. Cybermen wouldn't cut a deal with a human, they're programmed to try and upgrade anything fleshy and alive. They'd wouldn't hire him, they'd cut his brain out and put it into a cyber body."
"But I spoke to someone who was working with Yip," said Harry, "and he told me. Duggy Dungonan's dying words were that Yip was working with people made of metal."
The Doctor's look of confusion fell away. A horrible look of realisation took it's place. "Oh, he might have said metal… but he didn't mean people."
The next voice that spoke did not belong to anyone standing in that corridor or, indeed, within in castle itself. It was coming from outside, from one of the ships, and it was one of the most harsh, piercing voices that Harry and Hermione had ever heard.
"HU-MANS. STEP FORTH. YOU WILL PRE-SENT THE RE-MAINS OR THEY WILL BE TAKEN BY FORCE."
"What the hell is that?" asked Harry uneasily.
The Doctor rushed to the nearest window to look out, but after barely a second he turned back and shouted "Get down!". He dived at Harry and Hermione, taking them both to the floor as the wall he'd been in front of exploded. Heavy stones and bricks were sent raining down to the grass below. When Harry sat up to look out of the giant hole in the castle, he saw something come hovering into view.
The eyestalk on the thing's head spotted them and flew in for a closer look. It was like a mini-talk, covered in the same otherworldly bumps as the flying saucer which had first attacked the enchanted forcefield.
"LIFE FORMS DE-TECTED. HUMANS, ALIVE. TIME LORD, ALIVE. WEEPING ANGEL, DE-CEASED. PRE-SENT THE REMAINS! PRE-SENT THE REMAINS! PRE-SENT THE REMAINS!"
"Doctor, what the hell is that?" asked Harry, of the ranting pepperpot hanging in mid-air outside of Hogwarts. He could see more, hundreds more, dropping out of the saucer and sweeping out across the castle grounds.
"We need to – " said the Doctor, scrambling to his feet and not getting three steps into a run in the other direction when the tank-thing fired a ray of energy from its attached gun, which struck the stone ceiling and caused a cave that blocked their escape route. The Doctor simply glanced in the direction they had come, and the creature did the same. They were trapped.
"YOU WILL GIVE US THE RE-MAINS! YOU WILL GIVE US THE RE-MAINS!"
Harry and Hermione instinctively held out their wands, ready to fight. The Doctor looked at them helplessly.
"They won't work. Not against that," he said gravely. But then his expression changed. From one of deepest dread to one of… curiosity. "Wait… how is that… that can't be…"
He turned his ear, so Harry did the same, and he heard it. That old, impossible, mechanical grinding noise with the wheezing whisper, which had begun this trouble with Weeping Angels on that stormy night long ago. The air around them began to blow like an invisible breeze was sweeping down the half-destroyed corridor, and their view of the Dalek hanging in the night sky became gradually more tinted with blue.
"It's the TARDIS!" said Hermione.
The Doctor looked entirely lost. "It can't be. Look, there's my TARDIS."
He pointed out at the castle grounds. His Police Box could be seen, next to the Entrance Hall where they left it.
"So what's going on?" asked Harry, as the sight of the Dalek became more coloured with royal blue.
"I have not the foggiest," said the Doctor.
The tank-creature seemed to work out something was happening. The eyestalk looked around wildly.
"WHAT IS THIS TIME LORD TRICK-ERY?! CEASE! CEASE! CEASE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"
It fired again, this time right at them. And yet the ray never reached them. Suddenly they were not looking at the Dalek hanging in a hole blown into a Hogwarts wall at all. They were looking at two very familiar wooden doors. Above them, clearly being seen from the wrong side, was a sign that read POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX.
The Doctor, Harry and Hermione looked at each other, each at a total loss.
"Cut that a bit fine," said a voice behind them. It was loud, and gruff, and Scottish. "Two TARDISes together confused the engines a bit. But hey, no one's a smoking corpse so, 'alls well' and all that, eh?"
They turned around. They were inside the TARDIS. Or somewhere that looked very, very like the TARDIS. It was vast and impressive, had little round things on the wall, and a console unit around a big central column – but unlike the vivid oranges of the Doctor's TARDIS that they knew, this was one was all dark blues and shadow-y. And standing at the console was a man, pushing buttons and pulling levers as the Doctor did. Yet he did not look anything like the Doctor they knew. He was tall, dressed in black, with a wild mess of grey hair.
Harry and the Doctor had never seen him before in their lives. This was not true of Hermione.
"I didn't dream it," she whispered to herself. "I knew it! I knew I wasn't dreaming. Unless I was dreaming, and this is another dream. Am I dreaming? Is everyone else seeing this?"
The Doctor took a single, cautious step forward.
"Who are you?" he demanded of the grey-haired man. "Where did you get this TARDIS?"
The man at the controls shrugged. "I stole it from Gallifrey a long time ago."
"No, that's how I got my TARDIS."
"This is your TARDIS."
"Wait," Harry interrupted. "I'm sorry, bit too much too quick, between the talking tank, the two Police Boxes, and the knowledge that I slept next to a dead Weeping Angel for a good few years. Who are you?"
"He's the Doctor," said Hermione. Harry and the Doctor stared at her in confusion. "He is. You are, aren't you?"
The grey haired man left the controls and came to stand before them. He held out his hands out at his side, as if surrendering himself to inspection.
"Police Box, bigger on the inside, rudely interrupting Daleks while they're in the middle of murdering people – who else could I be?"
"That's impossible!" said the Doctor – they Doctor Harry knew – to this other Doctor. "I can't change, not again. There can't be any more faces than the ones I've already had."
"What, sorry?" Harry cried. "Did you just say you've had multiple faces? That's crazy."
"Oi," said the Grey Doctor, pointing a finger and his stern eyebrows at Harry. "You spent 17 years as a living Horcrux. Have an open mind."
"Oh my god," said the Doctor – the Bow Tie Doctor – having gotten a good look at the grey-haired man's eyes during that snarky remark. "You really are me! How is that possible? I used up all my regenerations. How can you possibly exist?"
"The Time Lords gave me some new ones as a thank you for saving them from the Time War and placing Gallifrey safely in another dimension."
The Bow Tie Doctor yelped and clamped his hands over his ears. "Are you mad?!"
The Grey Doctor frowned. "What?!"
"You can't tell me that, it's my own personal future. Just you telling me that could cause catastrophic events throughout my timeline and the whole universe."
"Well, you're the idiot who asked!"
"Okay," said Harry calmly. "This is at least the fifth time I've asked this tonight, but could someone please catch me up."
The Grey Doctor came to face Harry. "I'm a time traveller. I mean, he's a time traveller. He is me, as I am he. Every few years we change our face. I'm his future." Harry looked at the Bow Tie Doctor, who merely gave a feeble shrug in response. The Grey Doctor gave Harry a manic grin that was unsettlingly familiar. "I know what you're thinking: talk about a glow-up."
"Okay so you're me," the Bow Tie Doctor said. "Congratulations. But we only need one of us, why bother coming here?"
The other Doctor shrugged. "The TARDIS keeps getting drawn here. You don't know this yet, but this situations eventually involves timey-wimey issues and I think that - "
"Gahh! Stop telling me things about the future!"
"Well stop asking me then!"
"Time stopped," said Hermione, pacing around the strange new TARDIS and taking it all in again. "That's what you told me last time I was here."
Harry gawked at her. "When where you here?"
"Miss Granger got into a bit of scrape with a shop window dummy during a very vulnerable temporal point. The events could have unfolded a billion different ways, and as a result, everything to do with time just sort of crashed. I stepped in to right the ship. See, that's why I'm here!" He had turned back to his younger self. "You want to know who I am? I'm the Ghost of Christmas Present! I'm have cast my judgemental gaze upon tonight's events, and I'm very, very cross with what I've seen."
The Bow Tie Doctor, reading the subtext, let out an affronted laugh. "What, with me? You're cross with me? Oh, of course, how dare I leave Comic Con to jump halfway across the solar system and protect an empty Scottish castle. When is someone going to do something about me?"
"Ooh, the jokey deflection," said the other Doctor. "Nicely done, shame it doesn't work on yourself. You know what I'm talking about. You've got a cheek to give him grief."
The other Doctor had pointed at Harry. Harry's Doctor glanced at him and turned defensive.
"He lied to me," he said. "This could've all been avoided. If he'd just told me what he'd done, if he hadn't - "
"Hadn't what?" said the Grey Doctor suddenly, those eyebrows on full offensive. "Hadn't been selfish? Hadn't been young, and lonely, and sentimental? Ooh, doesn't that remind you of someone? Get real: If we can't relate to that, then what's the point of us?"
Bow Tie didn't reply, holding his older self's gaze for a few seconds and then looking away in discomfort. The Grey Doctor turned back to the controls and pulled a big lever that made the floor lurch and the central column emit that strange grinding noise.
"Where are we going?" asked Hermione.
"Back to Hogwarts," said the Grey Doctor. "By the Herbology Greenhouses, which is as close as I can get you to both Ron and Ginny. You need to get everyone back together and get away from this castle as quickly as possible. After this you're on your own, I probably won't be stopping by to help again."
"Probably?" asked the Bow Tie Doctor sardonically.
"I told you, this is a really funky moment in time. The TARDIS seems to end up here or nearby fairly often. Think back and you'll realise we've strolled through this mess a few times without even realising."
The floor shook again, and the Grey Doctor came to open the wooden doors. "One last thing, wizards," he said to Harry and Hermione. "The creatures descending on Hogwarts tonight are not of this earth. Magic is going to entirely incapacitate some of them and have zero effectiveness on others. Don't waste time trying to work out which is which. Be cleverer with your spells."
Harry frowned. "What does that mean?"
"Don't bother with curses and stunning spells," Hermione guessed. "Conjure fire, summon tidal waves, blind people with Lumos. Use cleverer spells, not necessarily deadlier ones."
"Five points to Gryffindor," said both Doctors at the same time, and then promptly glared at each other afterwards.
"Anyway," said the Grey Doctor. "Off you pop. School's out, possibly for forever. Go do what you do best and save Hogwarts."
Harry and Hermione gave this stranger an equal parts thankful and yet wary look as they exited the TARDIS. The Bow Tie Doctor went to follow, but his older self grabbed his wrist.
"Oi, Freshers' Fair."
"Well, that's just rude."
"Shut up. Listen, wanna know why I'm really here? Why I'm not bothered telling you all about the future? Because my answers aren't final yet. This face, me being here, it doesn't prove anything. It doesn't mean this all works out okay. All it means is that in one of the trillion different eventualities, you do a clever thing that lets you live long enough to turn into me. I'm just here to wish you luck. I'm counting on you, Doctor. Because to be perfectly frank, I've only just started watching The Walking Dead. It'd be a real shame for you to go dying and wiping me out of existence."
Bow Tie couldn't help it: he smiled. Just before he left, he glanced around the unfamiliar TARDIS again.
"I don't like it," he said, and stepped through the Police Box doors.
The Twelfth Doctor rolled his eyes. "You shouldn't have designed it then."
