Two - Different Paths
The Doctor glanced one more time out the window before nodding. "You're right, we're in Scotland. How does it feel to be home, Amy?"
Before Amy could answer, he'd jumped back down to the TARDIS and disappeared inside. She opened the door to see him standing at the screen, looking perplexed. "Is everything okay?"
"Something's blocking our conductors," the Doctor explained, half of his attention on Amy and the other half on the centre console. "There's some other type of energy here that I can't quite get a reading of, because it's scrambling all of our signals. It's everywhere, heaps of it…"
"So we're stuck here then?" Amy asked, sounding more annoyed than scared.
"Not stuck, exactly -" The Doctor walked over to where she stood, just inside the door. She gave him a disbelieving look, and he conceded, "Okay, we're stuck. But only until I figure out what it is that's disrupting the TARDIS."
As though this wasn't a problem, he pushed her back out into the hall, locked the door of the TARDIS and started moseying down the centre aisle, occasionally waving the sonic screwdriver at something that caught his fancy. Amy hurried after him, vaguely thankful for the fact that she'd decided to wear a jacket and scarf that morning, as she was going to need warmth if they were going to go looking around Scotland. It was alright for the Doctor, wearing his usual tweed jacket and trousers, but Amy was in her usual attire, too; a short skirt. So any extra warmth she had, she would treasure.
"But what time is it?" She asked when she'd caught up to the Doctor, who was now walking along on top of one of the wooden benches that lined either side of the tables.
"I'd say about ten o'clock at night." He jumped down in front of her, looking from side to side and up to the roof – it must have been an invisible roof, Amy had decided - as though he'd landed in a wonderland.
Amy sighed, exasperated. "No, what time are we in?"
The Doctor stopped, and she almost ran into him. Oblivious to personal space, he turned to face her. "The architecture suggests this castle was built in the early middle ages, I'd guess around 1000 CE -" He took a step back, waved the sonic, and continued, "-No, closer to 993. There's no trace of electric wiring anywhere, so we should still be pretty far back, and you were right, we are definitely in Scotland; but something feels off…"
"What do you mean, off? Like, hostile life forces will try to kill us as soon as they find us, off?" Amy asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
"I don't think so…" The Doctor answered, but he sounded so distant and looked so focused on whatever readings the sonic was giving him that Amy wondered if he'd even heard her question. "Very strange, very strange indeed." He straightened suddenly and headed towards the wooden doors towering at the end of the hall, calling cheerfully, "Come along, Pond!"
When they exited through the thick doors, they found themselves standing in a smaller hall, just as deserted as the first. Amy felt slightly unnerved, but the Doctor didn't seem as worried as before. Indeed, he practically pranced up the stair case in front of them, rambling on about architecture, atmosphere and aesthetics and a scholar he'd known from the middle ages whom he'd saved from being hanged after he'd had the nerve to tell the church that humans weren't the only sentient beings in the universe.
Amy followed at a slower pace, taking in the grandeur of their surroundings. She was grateful to note that this room had an actual roof, even if it did stretch high above their heads into gables and turrets. About half way up the stairs there was an elaborate painting hanging on the wall, in a heavy gilded frame. She stopped to admire the detail on the sleeping figure's dress, reaching out a hand to touch the painting, when suddenly the woman depicted in oil paints blinked open her eyes and pulled her skirts away with a huff. Amy jumped back, startled.
"How rude!" The painted woman declared, turning and storming to the edge of the frame – where she just disappeared.
"Did you say something, Amy?" The Doctor asked from the top of the stair case.
"The painting, the woman in the painting…" Amy turned from the painting, which was now of an empty arm chair, to the Doctor with wide eyes. "She just got up and left."
"Got up and left the painting?" The Doctor repeated, bounding back down to the same level as Amy, and peered at the oil painting in front of her.
Amy pushed her hair out of her eyes. "Yeah, there- there was a woman, painted in the chair, asleep. And I- I woke her up, or something, I don't know, and she just got up and stormed right out of the painting."
"How fascinating!" The Doctor exclaimed, lifting the edge of the frame from the wall and bending awkwardly to peer behind it. He soniced the canvas, and turned around in a circle as though he half expected to see the painted woman now standing in the room with them.
"What is it?" Amy asked, peering around nervously. "Is it some kind of-of hologram, or interface thingy just made to look old?"
"No, no, it's definitely oil paint, on canvas." The Doctor made a sweeping gesture with his arm. "This is a marvellous place, Amy, don't you think?"
"A bit creepy," Amy answered, looping her scarf around her neck once more.
"Oh, come on, there are plenty of castles in Britain, you should be used to this," he replied flippantly.
"Well, yeah," she said as they walked up to the top of the staircase. "But I'm used to being in them when they're – you know, tourist destinations. Not… Not whatever this is."
"Maybe this is a tourist destination," the Doctor offered brightly, but then shook his head. "No, no, much too guarded for that. Definitely not a place to just let anyone wander around the halls at night -"
"Where do you think everyone is?" Amy asked.
"In -" The Doctor cut himself off, mouth opening in surprise and then splitting into a huge grin. Amy followed his gaze to a painting on the wall to their right, in which a man wearing emerald green robes and a pointed hat was sitting by a fire, reading a book. And he was definitely reading it, because as they watched he turned the page. "Excuse me, good fellow!"
The man in the painting looked up and across at them, raising his eyebrows beneath the brim of his hat. "Can I help you?"
"Yes, I think you can," the Doctor said, stepping up to the wall. Amy joined him, watching the painted man closely.
Before the Doctor could continue, however, the painted man stood up and smiled warmly. "Ah, Miss Evans. And this must be the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher! I should have guessed it from the bow tie. Dumbledore's not in his office at the moment, according to the portraits – urgent owl from the ministry, I suppose he didn't have time to get a message to you – but he should be back relatively soon, so I suppose you can wait in his office if you have any administrative problems to sort out."
Amy opened her mouth to ask the oil man what the hell he was talking about, but the Doctor kicked her ankle and she just gasped. "Thanks very much!" He exclaimed, "Very helpful indeed."
He hooked his arm through Amy's and pulled her away down the corridor, out of ear shot of any of the paintings on the walls – How well could oil paintings hear, exactly?
"That wasn't helpful at all! Do you have any idea what any of that meant? And why did he call me Miss Evans?" Amy snapped, rubbing her ankle. "And that kick really hurt."
"Yes it was, no I don't, not a clue, and sorry," the Doctor said in a hurry, stopping only briefly to draw a big breath before continuing on, "So, we're in a school, a very old school, a very, very old school, with a subject called Defence Against the Dark Arts – that sounds promising, doesn't it, Dark Arts? I suppose the Defence part is good, right, but why would they need to add it to the school curriculum? Unless it's a big threat, a huge threat, one that could effect their entire population, race, civilisation – Which means it's bad, very bad, so bad, in fact, that they're preparing their children to fight it. Yes, okay, right, so that explains where everyone is, but what are they fighting and how are they doing it?"
Amy leant back against the stone wall and asked, "Hang on, where is everyone?"
"Ten o'clock at night, in a school? Everyone's in bed," the Doctor said, as though this was an obvious link she should have noticed.
"Okay." Amy leant back against the stone wall. "So what do we do now?"
"We go get some answers," he told her, rubbing his hands together with obvious glee.
Amy couldn't help but laugh at his excitement. "I do love a good adventure."
So the two of them, Doctor and companion, set off down the corridor, slowly getting used to the paintings around them making small movements and whispering behind their backs, until they came to an opening that branched off into various staircases. Amy peered over the railing of the closest stairs and saw that there were more on every level, both above and below them. "How big is this place?" She breathed.
"Quite large, for human standards," the Doctor said.
"So you're sure there's humans here, then?"
The Doctor smiled reassuringly. "Yes, but I'm not sure what type of humans."
"What do you mean, 'what type of huma-' Oh!" Amy's sentence was cut short as the staircase she was standing on lurched forward suddenly, swinging out into the open air of the tower. "Doctor!" She gripped the railing so tightly her knuckles went white and stared back at the Doctor, who was stranded on the landing behind her.
"Amy!" He called out, rushing to the edge of the platform just as a new staircase swung in to take the place of the one Amy stood on, which was now connected to a landing on the left side of the room. "Amy, it's okay! It's just a clever trick, some nifty architecture!"
"Doctor, how do I get back? Can you get up here?" Amy loosened her grip slightly, but her worry was still evident in her voice.
"I'm sure I can, I'll just have to go… another way." The Doctor wrung his hands.
"Will the staircases move back, do you think?" As nice as that would have been, Amy had a feeling there wasn't much chance of that happening. Things could never just be easy, could they?
"They should, but there's no telling when that staircase will come back to this landing." The Doctor looked a bit worried, but he held a hand up to her and said confidently, "Stay put, Amy, don't move, and I'll come to you, okay? I'll be right there. Just stay put."He bounded up the staircase in front of him and disappeared into a corridor a story above Amy.
Now, as much as she trusted her Raggedy Doctor, Amy was nothing if not curious, and she had been promised an adventure. So the Doctor shouldn't have been surprised when she rolled her eyes and muttered, "Yeah, like that's going to happen."
So Amy Pond set off down one corridor, and the Doctor raced along another, and neither had any idea of what they were going to collide with.
a.n. A note for the timing of the story; very, very near the beginning of Seventh Year for Lily and James, and in between "Cold Blood" and "The Pandorica Opens" for Amy and the Doctor. So the Doctor remembers Rory, but Amy's conscious mind has forgotten him - very, very important to keep in mind for the next chapter.
And I'm sorry I lied and said Lily would come in this chapter, I had to review the pacing and so now she actually comes in at the start of the next one, which is where the plot really starts to pick up. I wanted to establish a few clues as to what's happening in this chapter, before revealing it in more detail in the next one; I hope you liked it! Please review and tell me what you think of the plot clues/writing/characterisation/dialogue/anything at all, it honestly means the world to hear your responses.