37. The Couple Who Waited.

The Doctor pointed a finger in Snape's face. "You're sure that's how they did it?"

Snape lowered the finger, looking as though he really didn't want to touch it. "Yes."

"But how? It's just impossible," the Doctor ranted, beginning to pace the kitchen floor. "Just… just how?"

Snape lowered the heat on one of the cauldrons and sprinkled ingredients into another before replying. "Just as I told you. The Dark Lord made everyone learn the Summoning Spell and then recite it."

"And there were no potions he asked you to make? No sacrifices, nothing?"

"Nothing."

"But that's impossible! How did a simple Summoning Spell punch a hole in the universe and yank me out of my TARDIS?"

"The Dark Lord is – was – extraordinarily powerful," Snape said, as if it were obvious. "And added to his power was the power of every single one of his followers."

"But – but – a spell? Against Time lord technology?"

"You're a Time Lord and, in this world, a Muggle. No matter how powerful the Muggle or their technology, magic always leads."

The Doctor almost growled in frustration. He wasn't a Muggle. Well… not an ordinary one, at least. Couldn't anyone see that? "But this wasn't just any technology."

Snape looked as though he was resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "Did it have powerful protection? Defences?"

"Well," the Doctor stammered, the wind suddenly knocked out of his sails, "you see, the thing is… I may have – accidentally – forgotten."

The corner of Snape's lip curled. "Then I fail to see why you are surprised. Anyone who 'accidentally' forgets to protect themselves foolishly leaves themselves open to attack. Unprotected fools are attacked fools."

"Yes, thank you," the Doctor muttered.

As if to punctuate his statement or, perhaps, entirely accidentally, Snape started violently hacking his ingredients to pieces with his knife.

"But if my defences had been up," the Doctor piped up, because damn it, he wouldn't be beaten by someone making – his mental self sniffed – soup, "your magic wouldn't have had a chance."

Snape smirked. "If you say so."

"I do," the Doctor said, though he felt his face flushing. Why was it doing that? He was right!

"What," an angry voice from behind the Doctor suddenly said, "are you doing in the kitchen?"

The Doctor spun around and saw, to his vague alarm, River in the doorway, looking murderous. The Doctor squinted, trying to get her to stay still in his vision despite the spinning of the room. "I needed kitchen-y things."

"Why aren't you resting?"

"…Because I needed kitchen-y things," the Doctor said, sniffing. "Keep up."

River's lips thinned. "If these 'kitchen-y things' were really that urgent, you could have asked me to get them."

"It was private, urgent kitchen-y things."

"Doctor, if you're up to something-"

"He isn't."

River turned to look to Snape in confusion. "What?"

Snape quickly wiped a gleeful grin off his face. "He is just being evasive out of embarrassment. He wasn't here for anything private."

"Er, no," the Doctor hastened to correct. He reflexively reached up to straighten his bow tie before realising too late that he wasn't wearing it, and ended up stroking his neck instead, wondering when his skin had become so clammy. "I had top-secret stuff to do in the kitchen." He looked around desperately. "I was tasting potions for Snape. No one else has taste buds as unusually sensitive as mine, you see."

River looked him up and down, and for a split second the Doctor had the distinct impression that she had developed x-ray vision and could see through his suit. "Oh, really?"

The Doctor swallowed.

Triumphant, River turned back to Snape. "What was he really up to?"

"He asked me about how the Dark Lord pulled him out of the TARDIS."

"Impossible," the Doctor agreed, like a bad tempered parrot.

"Well," River said, "I presume you told him that magic is strong enough to do that, especially if there's nothing to stop it. He has a habit of forgetting to put the shields up." She turned back to the Doctor. "You'd have thought that you would have learned to put them up after that Titanic business."

"Yes, well… this time I was being shot at!"

"All the more reason to put them up," River countered. "Especially since you're always being shot at. So that's hardly an excuse any more, is it?"

The Doctor opened and closed his mouth, trying to think of something clever, before shutting it with an audible and slightly painful sounding 'snap' and putting on his token embarrassed face.

River looked him straight in the eye. "Now go to your room."

The Doctor felt a rush of indignation. "You're sending me to my room like a child?"

"Yes. I am."

The Doctor 'harrumph'ed. "What makes you think I'll go?"

"You can either go to your room and rest voluntarily, or I can stun you right here in the kitchen and tie you to a chair in the most populated room of the house, where everyone here can watch you drooling into the cushions until I decide to let you go."

The Doctor, perhaps feeling worse than he was letting on, gave in silently, and River almost sighed in relief.

oOo

Miraculously, River managed to intimidate the Doctor into getting enough rest that his condition actually started improving. It took longer than she would have liked, but eventually he was well enough that the risks of his pneumonia worsening were slim, and his symptoms started to abate. Sleep and food still proved to be a problem, though, and River soon found herself fighting him to get him to sleep (during which he tossed, turned, and invariably woke up screaming). He at least worked with her on the eating front, but his own malnourishment meant that this was extremely hard-going, as his body seemed to want to reject everything that it was given.

"Do you ever think it's strange," the Doctor asked one evening, as he fought to keep his soup down, sat stiffly on his bed with his eyes shut, "that the body's reaction to starvation is to reject food?"

"No." River scribbled notes in what had become her medical chart for the Doctor.

"It's almost like it wants to starve itself more. Kind of like a catch-22. To get better you have to eat-"

"Sweetie," River said firmly but not unkindly, noting the unhealthy pallor of his skin and more convulsive swallowing, "I'm sure that your explanation would have been fascinating. But since I already know all of this and you need to keep your mouth closed as much as possible to keep it in, perhaps you should leave it for another time."

The Doctor obediently fell silent.

The Master, on the other hand, was doing much better, and River did not doubt that, had she not thoroughly bugged and booby-trapped his room, he would have escaped by now and would already be trying to dominate this parallel world. Which, she hated to think, may very well have been easy for him, as no one in the house seemed to recognise him at all. He would have been able to build another Harold Saxon.

The same ideas seemed to have also occurred to the Master, who became even more insulting the more restless he became, which was certainly saying something. And being restrained certainly didn't stop him passive aggressively throwing his food on the floor or spitting it out in childish spite.

River was starting to wonder if childishness was actually a Time Lord trait, and if she was destined to be caught between the two of them for the rest of her days, playing referee in arguments and stopping one or both of them blowing something, or each other, up.

She hated to think what schools had been like on their planet. Children with the knowledge of how to work a nuclear power plant? Her brain hurt just thinking about it.

And so the weeks passed with River running between them, keeping them both alive and at the same time trying not to go insane. Now that their conditions had improved and she had had the chance to brief Madame Pomfrey on the essentials of their biology, she at least had some help, and was able to retreat when she had had enough.

On these occasions, she would venture downstairs to see how the rebuilding of the wizarding world was going. The initial flurry was dying down somewhat, but the residents of Grimmauld Place still occasionally disappeared to deal with one crisis or another, thankfully more often than not returning alive. Dumbledore was forever bustling in and out, his face the most focussed and serious that she had ever seen, but he seemed to spend the majority of his time at the Ministry or Hogwarts. Snape was now out of the kitchen and onto other tasks, as Madame Pomfrey's patients had either been healed (or, less fortunately, died), and he was no longer needed for potions – consequently, he was often asked to the Ministry to testify or offer intelligence against the Death Eaters.

The children, though not allowed to help with all of the particulars, offered a listening ear to the ranting adults and, were necessary or possible, advice. For the most part, they were all still visibly traumatised by the war, but were trying to work past it in ways that they seemed to have developed when Voldemort had first returned and disrupted their quiet world. The Weasley twins were of course busy inventing things (this time helpful for catching those who were still at large or interrogating those who weren't), Hermione had left with Mrs Weasley to find and restore her parents' memories, Ron, Ginny and Harry were often seen playing Wizard's chess, though Harry did this with a faraway look in his eye; his godson needed looking after and, though he had the help and support of those around him, the worry and responsibility still preyed on his young mind.

And through all of this, a general note of hope hung in the air.

oOo

Amy stared at the now-twice-scorched square of carpet where River had disappeared what felt like a lifetime ago, though in reality it had only been a week or two. Perhaps three. She closed her eyes briefly, berating herself for losing count. It was just so hard to know which day was which, which week this was, when everything blurred into one thing: waiting.

It seemed that all she ever did was wait. And she always seemed to do it alone. Rory wanted them to come back too, she knew, but he was somehow managing to get on with life. Rory was the one still working, the one paying the bills, the one making sure they still had everything they needed. And Amy felt so useless, just sitting there, not even knowing the time of day until Rory got home and gently took her off to bed. She tried to focus on her writing, on cleaning the house, on cooking, and she would manage for a while, but then her gaze would get drawn back to that spot. That blackness. The promise.

She was keeping afloat. She still had her work accepted (when she finally managed to finish it), she kept the house clean, though it was slightly messier than normal and, occasionally, she even managed to go out, to meet up with friends. But it was as if her heart wasn't really in what she was doing. She was on autopilot.

And every day was the same. Waking up – is he coming, is River bringing him back, are they still alive? They were her first waking thought, and her last. She was good at this, waiting. Waiting was what she was for. If they had a job as a professional waiter, she could be one. Not an actual waiter, though – she was always dropping things these days in her absent-mindedness.

But that wasn't important. She didn't want to be a waiter. She wanted them to come back. She hated being The Girl Who Waited, and that she was so good at it. But she was. So she waited.

And Rory, for the most part, let her. He too was consumed with worry for their daughter and, for all their differences, for the Doctor. He too wondered if they would ever come back and, if they did, what state they would be in. He even found himself in the TARDIS library, reading up on Time Lord biology. And every time he opened a new book, he berated himself for not doing this earlier. In their line of travelling, anything could happen.

And anything had happened. Rory had always thought the TARDIS to be impenetrable before, but not now. Now, when he went in there for anything, he glanced about himself warily, wondering if he too would be snatched. So he limited his visits, grabbed several things he needed at a time, took them back, and took more things. And so far he had been safe. But he could practically feel Amy's relief whenever he came back into the living room after these mini-expeditions. And he could always feel her worried and accusing glare when he left.

Don't leave me too.

She never said it, but she didn't have to. And neither did he. They stayed together, in the house that the Doctor had found for them, reminders of him everywhere, and clung to each other, waiting.

Never had Rory hated waiting so much.