a.n. i'm sorry that i make you wait for so long for an update and then when i give it to you it is just entirely angst angstangst and tragedy. i'm mourning the loss of my nan and i think that comes across in the over all depressing nature and content of this chapter - eleven is definitely not the best, but it may make you cry your eyes out. i'm so sorry. i listened to rue's farewell by james newton howard on repeat while i wrote this, and it's a beautiful heartbreaking piece of music. anyway... i'm sorry for the wait, and this serves as your warning; character death ahead. thank you for sticking by me.
Eleven – Cold Blooded Monster
The Doctor counted three before he even got inside the Great Hall. Three people – one child - dead; three lifeless bodies as cold as the stone ground they had fallen on, never to get back up again. No matter how much of it he saw and no matter how little he knew the person, death never failed to affect him. He supposed it was his human side showing, a sign that he wasn't just a disengaged observer of the universe, or a heartless warrior – but what he wouldn't give sometimes to just be numb, to be able to not feel the stabbing guilt and regret and anger that swelled in his chest and made his eyes darken until they were black as coal, cold and calculating as they swept across the battle unfurling in front of him. No one else noticed the way the lines around his mouth softened as he sighed, how his eyelids fluttered closed to both block out and preserve the faces of those freshly fallen, because although to him it felt like he took a lifetime to grieve the loss of these strangers, to the rest of the world it was mere milliseconds. And then he was back in the game, the never ending tug-o-war between good and evil, preservation and destruction, life and death. He wondered what the cost of winning would be this time.
He found Dumbledore straight away, jumped over an upturned table and dodged a few spells to grip the other man by the shoulder. "Can you hold the Death Eaters back?"
Dumbledore didn't turn his head, merely looking at the Doctor out of the corner of his periwinkle blue eyes as he continued to fight the black-robed wizard aiming spells at him. Even so, a glint was visible in the headmaster's eyes that gave the Doctor the distinct impression he was merely keeping his opponent preoccupied and could easily end the fight whenever he saw fit.
"Other wizards, we can handle," Dumbledore informed him, "But the aliens… nothing we do to them is having an effect. Their armour is too strong."
"You have to aim for the eye-stalk," the Time Lord replied, absently noting that his hands were shaking ever so slightly as he tossed his sonic screwdriver between them. He held the device out straight in front of him to demonstrate. "Aim right for the eye-stalk and it should be able to penetrate."
"Noted," Dumbledore said with a curt nod of the head.
He flicked his wrist, and in one swift movement the wand flew from the hand of the dark wizard he was duelling with, and he was propelled backwards across the room. His head connected with the stone wall, and he slid to the floor to land in an unmoving, unconscious – but definitely alive - heap. Reassured that Dumbledore could take care of himself, the Doctor clapped the headmaster on the shoulder and took off to find River and the Marauders.
Although he couldn't fire back – nor did he want to - his screwdriver turned out to be quite useful against wands. When on the right setting, it could disarm any witch or wizard with one click, which was interesting, as the wands seemed to made of wood; he'd have to look into that later. As he ran across the hall he aimed his screwdriver at the snarling Death Eaters, causing their wands to fly right out of their hands and skitter across the floor uselessly. He hoped they got stepped on in the mess of the fight.
He spotted River's wild mane of curls as she spun in a circle, blaster out and a ring of Death Eaters falling at her feet, and cut a direct path over to her. Just before he reached her, however, a flash of bright orange appeared in his peripheral vision, moving quickly in the opposite direction, and a bolt of panic made him freeze. Amy.
"Doctor!"
Moving purely instinctively, the Time Lord ducked down low as soon as River's cry reached his ears, and felt her the shot from her blaster whiz over his shoulder. He heard the cry of pain as it connected with its target, and the muted thud of another body hitting the floor. Another life, another death. He bit the inside of his cheek and tried to contain his rage as he straightened up.
"Is Amy in the TARDIS?" The words tumbled out of his mouth, even before he was fully upright again, blurring almost into one long string of a word in their desperation to be heard.
"Yes," River replied immediately, somehow knowing how much he needed the answer straight away. "I made sure she stayed in."
Relief flooded through him, and for a moment he could breathe normally. It was Lily he had seen, no doubt fighting alongside and protected by James and the boys. He would get to her in a moment, but for now Amy was safe in the TARDIS and that was what he cared about most.
"Are you okay?" He asked as River jogged over to him, not even breathless but looking highly concerned.
"Fine," she replied quickly, glancing at the hands he placed on her shoulders and then back up at his eyes. He expected her to ask him the same question, but instead the corners of her mouth turned down and she said softly, "I'm sorry."
Perhaps it was obvious that he was not okay. Perhaps she already suspected – already knew – that he was far from okay, and just didn't want to hear him lie to her, as they both knew he would; "I'm the king of okay" would roll off his tongue without a second thought. Perhaps, even more than that, she didn't want to risk the possibility of him actually telling her the truth. Perhaps she couldn't bear to hear him actually say the words, "No, I am anything but okay." And so she skipped the question and jumped straight to the apology. She never was one for linear, River Song.
He dropped his hands back to his sides. "What for?"
"This isn't how you like to do things," she said matter-of-factly, but he could see in her eyes that she was genuinely upset by his pain.
How strange it was that she knew him so well when he hardly knew her at all.
He asked, "Is it how you like to do things?"
That made her smirk, and he saw instantly that her mask was back on. Impenetrable and unreadable once more, she answered, "Spoilers."
Her eyes flickered to the left, the smallest of movements, and without a word passing between them they both knew instantly what to do. They spun, now back to back, and their feet stepped in perfect unison as they moved in a circle, never breaking contact. The Doctor used his sonic to disarm the Death Eaters who had tried to ambush them, and then fluidly moved so that River was facing them. He felt the muscles in her back tense as she fired her blaster, once, twice, three times, and then she lowered her gun and he turned around.
Her respiratory rate had increased and her bravado had all but vanished, and without thinking about it he put a hand on her arm and squeezed gently. Her eyes widened in surprise and she stared up at him, unabashedly shocked – and then she gave him the smallest of smiles, and he found himself smiling back.
"Have you seen the Marauders?" He asked, pushing his fringe back out of his eyes.
"Last I saw them they'd stationed themselves by the end of the hall, not far from the TARDIS," River replied.
"I have to get to them, make sure they're okay," the Doctor said, "Are you alright on your own?"
River laughed at that, but it was humourless. "I can take care of myself, thank you, Doctor," she said, and he couldn't quite tell how much sarcasm she had laced her words with. Her eyes darkened as she continued, "But I think we have a bigger problem at the moment."
"A bigger problem? What could be a bigger problem than this?" He waved his arms out sideways, wiggling his fingers at the people duelling all around them.
And then he heard it, right behind him, no more than two metres away. Cold, power-hungry and merciless. The sound that haunted his nightmares, that followed him across the multiverse and just refused to die.
"Doc-TOR!"
[[…]]
Amy Pond had been in her fair share of fights over the years. She got in as much trouble at school as any of the boys, more than Rory and even Mels – in terms of schoolyard fights, that is; Mels always took the cake when it came to juvenile delinquency on a public scale – and she knew how to land a mean right hook when she needed to. She was tall and long-limbed, but over time she'd grown into her extremities and she wasn't particularly clumsy. She could dodge most hits, and as she bolted across the Great Hall in search of James Potter she found herself being extremely grateful for all the practice she'd had at honing her reflexes.
She ducked down as a jet of red light shot over her shoulder and then rolled to the right as a retaliatory blow nearly grazed her leg. It was kind of like a fireworks show gone horribly wrong, she mused as a bit of the table behind her exploded and sent shards of wood flying across the hall.
"Lily!" The voice was close by, somewhere to her left and familiar, and she was pretty sure they were saying more but she couldn't make it out over the noise of the fight. She turned her head towards where she thought the source of the noise was, and saw Sirius running towards her. "Lily, get down!"
He propelled himself forwards and hit her at such an angle that she was knocked flat to the ground. Amy held on to Lily's wand for dear life, keeping her fingers curled tightly around the stick even as her reflexes said to drop it and use her hands to break her fall. Sirius landed on top of her and all of the wind left her lungs as his arms circled around her head, cradling her in darkness and somewhat stifling the noise of explosions and taunts from those fighting around them. There was a sudden flash of heat, and then his weight lifted and he was grabbing at her and hauling her up to her feet. As soon as she was standing, however, his arm was on her back, his palm pushing her head down and forcing her to run forward with her spine bent, so she was half crouching. He only let her go when he'd pulled her into a sort of make-shift fort behind two upturned tables in the corner behind the TARDIS.
"Get off me!" Amy cried indignantly in her natural Scottish brogue, pushing him away as soon as she could. "You could have just told me to stay down, instead of jumping me."
"Oh, thanks for saving my life, Sirius, I very much appreciate the fact that you endangered yourself for me," he said sarcastically, rolling his grey eyes at her and scowling.
"Alright, thanks for the help," she relented with a sigh, trying to stretch the kink out of her back as she spoke.
Sirius didn't react the way she'd expected him to. His eyes went wide and he pointed a finger at her accusingly. "Blimey, you're not Lily!"
Now it was Amy's turn to roll her eyes. Of course, the accent. "No, I'm not. She's in the TARDIS… She's hurt," she paused here, softening at the genuine worry in Sirius's eyes. "She sent me out to find James."
"I haven't seen Prongs for a while," Sirius admitted, and she saw the worry in his eyes. "We split up, took a side of the room each… Lily went with him."
"What side was his?" Amy asked.
"Obviously not this one," Sirius replied, shaking his head at her.
"Okay, so that was a stupid question. Excuse me for being a little bit thrown by the circumstances!" Amy snapped back, folding her arms over her chest with a huff. "Where are the others then, Remus and Peter?"
"Trying to stop any more from coming in the front doors, last I saw," he told her. A Dalek hovered past their table, its mechanical voice audible above the din, and Sirius' features darkened. "How do we beat those things, Amy?"
"The Doctor'll take care of them," she answered confidently, even as her stomach twisted uncomfortably. "All we have to worry about is stopping the wizards, and finding James."
Sirius set his jaw and held out a hand. "What are we waiting for then?"
Amy managed the smallest of smiles as she curled her fingers around this strange, lovely boy's palm. "I thought you'd never ask."
The two of them sprinted across the hall, hand in hand, Sirius madly firing spells at any Death Eaters within range, until finally they found Remus and Peter by the front doors.
"Sirius, Lily!" Remus said, staring at them. His hands were shaking and there was a stain of scarlet blood on the hem of his robes. "You're okay!"
"Amy," she automatically corrected, but it didn't stop him from sweeping them both up into a hug.
"You're safe," he repeated when he let them go, and Amy readily returned his smile.
Sirius pulled a disgusted face and smoothed down the front of his crumpled shirt. "This is no time for feelings, Moony."
"Of course, forgive me for being happy to see you safe," Remus retorted with a roll of his eyes.
"Th-th-there's more of th-them out th-there!" Peter stammered, glancing out the small crack between the two heavy doors. "H-how c-c-can we s-st-st-stp them?"
"Just keep fighting back, Wormtail," Sirius said, clapping him on the shoulder. "You've got this."
Peter didn't look convinced, but he didn't argue – just kept his wand pointed at the doors, even as it shook unsteadily.
"Have you seen James?" Amy inquired, "Lily asked me to find him."
"Where is Lily?" Remus asked, eyes narrowing in concern.
"Safe, in the TARDIS," Amy replied, squashing down her guilt over the lie. Lily was in the TARDIS, and that was the safest place to be, she thought – there was no need to mention that she was hurt when Remus was scared enough as it was. "But I need to find James."
Remus scanned the room over their heads, and then pointed. "There!"
Amy looked in that direction and saw James, duelling with a Death Eater and looking as though he was totally capable of taking care of himself. When she looked closer, however, she noticed the worry glistening in his hazel eyes, the bloody tear on his left trouser leg and the way he limped ever so slightly when he moved. She had to get to him, fast.
She took off without saying goodbye, vaguely aware of the three other Marauders following after her. Sirius aimed a spell at the Death Eater's chest and he fell back, leaving James alone and free to catch Amy when she tripped over a table leg and accidentally threw herself at him.
"Lily," he gasped into her hair, squeezing her tight. She ignored the aching bruise on her spine and how it hurt when he hugged her, and just let herself be comforted by his embrace. "Lily, Lily, Lily… I thought -"
And then she pulled back, and when she saw his eyes widen in recognition she couldn't hide her sadness. "I'm sorry, James. She's in the TARDIS, safe. But she – she wants me to look after you."
James' eyebrows knitted together in concern. "Look after me? But, Amy -"
"What's this?" Remus asked, and Amy turned to see that the book the TARDIS had given her had fallen from her pocket when she'd tripped.
"It-it's a book," Peter answered.
"Yeah, thanks for that enlightening observation, Wormtail," Sirius said sarcastically, casually firing a spell at a passing Death Eater.
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," Remus read out the title, and the five of them went still.
"Harry Potter," James repeated, grabbing the book from Remus and observing the cover. "Potter's my last name… And he looks just like me!"
But the book hadn't had a cover before, when Amy had first gotten it. Inf act, she hadn't been able to read any of it at all… Amy suddenly felt lightheaded. She swayed on her feet, blinked rapidly, and then everything came flooding back.
"Oh my god!" Amy breathed, snatching the book away from James and thumbing through it's pages.
Yes, it was all there – the story of Harry Potter, Lily and James' son. In a book. A fiction book. A fiction book that she had read when she was a kid, that practically everyone in her world had read… And yet here she was, talking to the characters before the events in the book had even happened, and they seemed perfectly solid and real and was it possible to slip into a dimension where books were real life?
"Amy, what's this book? Why's it got such a dashing young bloke with my surname on the front?" James asked her.
She debated whether or not she should tell him, worrying that it could rip a hole in the fabric of space-time if she revealed too much information. But then, she reasoned, apparently the universe was already full of cracks, so it couldn't do that much damage, could it?
"It's a book from my universe," she began, and then she took a deep breath. "A book about your son."
"My what?!" James exclaimed in disbelief.
"Your son," she repeated, "With Lily."
"Yes!" James whooped, punching the air. "I knew it."
"You owe me five sickles," Sirius said to Peter, and the latter swore under his breath.
"So in your universe we're characters in a book?" Remus asked the important question.
"Yes," Amy answered.
"So that book has our future in it?" James inquired, reaching out for it.
She held it out of his reach and placed it securely back into her pocket, which now seemed to be, strangely, bigger on the inside. "I don't think you should look at it," she said sternly.
Her heart ached as she remembered what had happened – was going to happen? She though in a panic – to Lily and James and all the Marauders over the series.
"But Amy it could help us win this fight! It could tell us -" James began to argue, but whatever else he'd been about to say, it was cut short by a howl from a Death Eater across the hall, and then a deafening silence.
The Marauders and Amy all froze, staring about the Great Hall in shock. The Death Eaters had all fallen, lying in crumpled black piles across each other on the floor and against the walls, limp and powerless, and no more were appearing through the doors.
Dumbledore, McGonagall and the other staff and older Hogwarts students were standing at various points around the hall, but they were slowly huddling together as they realised that there were no more enemies present.
"D-Did we – Do you think we…?" Peter asked, not daring to voice the end of the question, because it defied reason.
No one answered him; everyone was in a state of disbelief. Surely it couldn't be over? The Dark Wizards weren't going to go down that easy, were they? And the Daleks, the Daleks were definitely more of a threat than this –
Amy looked for them around the hall, desperate suddenly to see what they were up to. One Dalek was still and apparently lifeless, facing the back corner, and the other three were hovering forward to one place, joining together – congregating. And heading straight for River and the Doctor.
"No!" Amy screamed, lurching forward and going to run to the Doctor's side, wanting desperately to help him.
"No!" James cried just as passionately, gripping her arm and pulling her back to him. She struggled, but he refused to loosen his grip. He reached up and curled his fingers around her other arm, too, holding her in place and forcing her to look at him. "You can't put yourself in danger like that -"
"But I have to tell him about the book, he has to know -"
"Amy, I have to tell you something," he said, hazel eyes boring into hers. She thrashed against him, and still he held fast. "Amy, stop. Just listen to me, please, just listen. You've told me a secret about myself, and I think that you deserve the same." With great difficultly, she forced herself to stop fighting and listen to what he had to say, even as every fibre in her body screamed for her to run to the Doctor. James took a deep breath and said, "When we first met, you cried."
She didn't understand why he was bringing this up now, why this stupid detail was suddenly important to him. "Yeah, so?"
"So, you were crying because you were sad," James elaborated, looking at her as though she should have understood what he was talking about.
"Yeah, but I don't even know why I was sad; it was stupid," Amy replied, "And why does this even matter?"
"It matters because I know why you were sad," he told her, and for some reason Amy's breath caught in her throat.
"Why am I sad?" She asked, her voice coming out in a whisper.
James opened his mouth to reply, but Amy never heard what he said.
Because at that moment the doors to the Great Hall of Hogwarts swung open, and the Dark Lord Voldemort marched in – with eleven year old Ariel in front of him, suspended like a puppet on strings.
[[…]]
Great, three Daleks and a wizard with an ego complex against him and River, who was now staring at their enemies in obvious shock. No TARDIS, no magic and no more time. The Doctor looked into Ariel's scared, blue eyes and tried to stay calm, because if he lost his temper there was a good chance he'd lose her, too.
"Let her go," he said, voice surprisingly even.
"She's our bargaining chip," Voldemort replied with a cruel snicker. "Why would we just let her go?"
"Because you don't need her," the Doctor tried to convince him, "Because I'm more likely to do what you say if you just let her go -"
"And why should I believe you?" Voldemort asked.
"Because I'm a man of my word," the Doctor managed to grind out.
"Ah, but you're not a man at all, are you?" the dark wizard retorted. "You're not from here."
"I thought that was common knowledge by now," the Doctor said snarkily, quickly tiring of this pointless talk while Ariel was still trapped in Voldemort's enchantment. "What do you want?"
The wizard made a face that the Doctor supposed could have passed for a smile. "Join us, Doctor."
He recoiled, visibly disgusted at even the thought. "No. Never," he replied instantly.
Voldemort hissed, "I wouldn't be so quick to turn down my offer if I were you, Time Lord."
He flicked his wrist and Ariel's whole body twitched, lifting into the air and writhing unnaturally as she howled in pain.
"Stop!" the Doctor and River cried in unison, both rushing forward. "Stop, leave her alone!"
Voldemort lowered his wand, and Ariel collapsed down to the floor, her small legs crunching painfully against the stone ground. The Doctor flinched at the sight, physically pained by the terror written across her young face. This wasn't fair, at all, and it had to stop, right now.
Dumbledore walked over to stand behind Tom, periwinkle eyes trained on the boy that had once been such a promising student. "Stop this, Tom."
"What are you going to do about it, Dumbledore?" he asked, firing a curse at him. Dumbledore reflected it easily and sent it back towards the other wizard, but he waved his hand and the spell vanished. Dumbledore went to lift his wand again, but Voldemort sang out, "Don't come any closer, Albus. If you do, the girl will suffer."
Obediently, the advancing line of Hogwarts staff stopped in their tracks.
"What do you think of this?" the Doctor asked the Daleks, deciding to ignore Voldemort for the time being. "You can't like this plan very much." He stared defiantly down the lead Dalek's eyestalk. He heard River make a faint noise of concern behind him, but he couldn't afford to turn his head and look at her. He continued, "You've chased me for so long, and now that you're finally here, right in front of me, you're just going to let me go, are you? You're going to let me walk away, with some human who outsmarted you? Huh? Go on. I'm right here; why don't you kill me?"
The Daleks were silent and still, standing in front of the Doctor and revealing no clues as to what they were thinking.
"What, now that you've actually got the chance you don't want to?" The Time Lord asked tauntingly.
The Daleks still did not respond, and Voldemort was still preoccupied with Dumbledore.
River stepped forward and gently went to grasp the Doctor's arm. "Sweetie -"
He cut her off and shrugged away from her hand, grinding out, "Stay behind me, River."
"But -"
"No buts," he growled, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "You need to stay behind me."
"But Doctor," she insisted, refusing to step back, "I think they need you."
"What?" That stunned him. He blinked at her, and then at the Daleks, and then slowly the realisation that she might have a point dawned on him. "Oh. Oh. Ooh. You need me. That's why you aren't killing me. Great." He flashed River a smile – which she nervously returned – and then focused on the Dalek again. "Why do you need me?"
The front Dalek's eyestalk twitched once, and there was a weighted pause.
Before any of them spoke, the Doctor cut in again. "No, wait, don't tell me! I know – Your Time Portal was hijacked, and you were brought here through a crack. So the crack was there first, and it wasn't your plan to end up in this dimension; someone else brought you here. Who? Who would have that technology?"
The Dalek didn't answer, but Voldemort said, "I brought the machines here."
"No, you didn't," the Doctor retorted as though this was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. "You might be a wizard, but you're still a human – as much as you hate to admit it – and you don't have that sort of power. Humans never will. You can't have brought them here. You just found the crack, stumbled across the injured Daleks and decided to use them for your own gain. You're just a parasite -"
Flinging a burst of fire at Dumbledore, Voldemort flicked a curse again at Ariel, and the Doctor immediately fell silent.
Once the girl's cries had turned into quiet whimpers, River leant forward and whispered in his ear, "Get them to bargain with you, use them to turn Voldemort's focus." Her breath was shaky against the shell of his ear, her voice wavering with repressed emotion. He noticed that she hadn't stopped looking at Ariel since the girl had been brought in.
"Bargain with me? Bargain over wha- Oh." The Time Lord's lips stretched into a taut smile as the enigmatic River Song proved to be, once again, a step ahead of him. He said to the Dalek, "You want me to re-open the Time Portal for you. You're too weak to do it on your own, and you need my help. Ha!"
"They will not be leaving," Voldemort interrupted, "And neither will you."
"I won't join you, Tom," the Doctor said quietly.
His calm seemed to infuriate the dark wizard even more, and he raised his wand, about to strike the Doctor himself –
When Dumbledore aimed a spell right at him, breaking the enchantment he had over Ariel and allowing the girl to run forward into the Doctor's open arms.
He cradled her small form in his arms, looked down at her young, pale face and wide blue eyes, so bright and beautiful and alive.
Her tiny hands clutched weakly at his jacket, curling around the tweed and pulling him closer to her. Her eyelids fluttered as tears spilled over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. He lifted a hand to wipe them away, trying to give her a reassuring smile even as he felt his throat constrict. Oh, she was so small and so fragile and how close had she come to being broken beyond repair?
"I'm going to keep you safe, Ariel," he said, and some part of his mind vaguely registered that he was rocking her gently back and forth as he held her against his chest. "I promised I'd keep you safe, and that's what I'm going to do. Once Hogwarts is all cleaned up we'll get some more ice-cream, you and me, because ice-cream makes everything better, and – and -"
A spell shot over his shoulder, barely missing the top of Ariel's head, and – with some reluctance – he passed her off to River.
"Take her back to the dorms," he instructed, "Or – just away. Just take her somewhere she'll be safe."
River nodded and ran from the Hall with Ariel in her arms, taking advantage of Dumbledore's duel with Voldemort to make her escape. The Doctor used this time to focus again on the Daleks.
"You need my help to get back to the right universe," he stated, "You know that this isn't going to end well for you. So stop it, right now. Just stop."
Before any of the Daleks could respond, the Headmaster of Hogwarts managed to snare Voldemort in a binding spell, locking him into place. He roared with rage and fought against the spell, but couldn't get free. Dumbledore had trapped him, and it looked like the Death Eaters had been beaten, and only the Daleks were left to contend with.
And then something totally unexpected happened.
The Doctor caught a flash of bright red hair out of the corner of his eye, and without thinking he turned to look – and his worst fears were confirmed. Because that wasn't Lily, wrenching herself free from James's hold and sprinting out of the makeshift barricade they'd been hiding behind; it was Amy, his Amelia Pond, running towards him and right into a battle he did not want her to have any part in.
"NO!" He cried, flinging his arms out in front of him and urging her to stop, to turn around and run in the opposite direction, because the Daleks were more dangerous than the wizards and he wanted her safe, as far away from them as possible.
She didn't listen though, just kept running to him – and the Doctor was so distracted by his worry for her that by the time he noticed the female Death Eater with the crazy, dark curls a few metres away lurch into a sitting position, he was a millisecond too late.
The beam of green light shot forward from her wand, and everything seemed to slow down. Instantaneously Sirius shot at the offender, but it wasn't enough. She dodged his spell by rolling to the side, and still her curse was racing forward through the air, and it was going to hit the Doctor, and it was going to kill him –
"Doctor!"
Until something solid and warm crashed into the Doctor's side and knocked him off his feet, sent him stumbling sideways and crashing down as his centre of gravity shifted. He whirled around to see what had run into him, what had saved him from being hit by the curse – and at the same time he heard Amy scream, he saw James.
Lying on the ground with his glasses askew and his chest rising and falling unevenly as he vocalised his pain, he'd knocked the Doctor out of the way and taken the hit himself. The Doctor felt an indescribable pain swell in his hearts at the realisation that he'd done it again. The realisation that Rory had been right – that he made people reckless, he made them a danger to themselves, and that even in a parallel universe it was his fault that this boy died. That he had made Amy lose the boy she loved not just once, but twice.
"James!" Amy cried, dropping to her knees beside the boy. She gently cupped his face in her hands, repositioned his glasses and stared into his hazel eyes as the light in them slowly dimmed.
The Doctor knelt over the top of him, scanned him with the sonic and tried to ignore how futile it all was. He knew just how it would end, because he'd lived through this before. But he was still going to try. "James, can you hear me?
"I don't understand," he gasped, and the words were laboured, shaking with the effort they took to say.
"Shh, don't talk," Amy told him urgently before asking, "Doctor, is he okay? We have to get him on the TARDIS, Lily's there -"
James said dazedly, "I'm in the books. I have a son. I can't die here -"
"Don't say that." Amy was shaking her head, desperately trying to hold onto a fading hope.
The Doctor watched on helplessly as this boy died and another piece of Amy's heart died with him. Her face crumpled as the Marauders gathered around their fallen friend, overwhelmed by the pain of grief, and the Doctor wanted to scream because there was nothing he could do to stop it. James was going to die, just like Rory. Just like they all did, eventually.
"Prongs," Sirius said, voice cracking, "James, mate, you're going to be okay."
"You'll be the most handsome guy in school when I'm gone, Padfoot," James managed to joke, smiling weakly at Sirius, who tried to laugh but sobbed instead. James reached out to the three Marauders and said, "You're my best mates."
"You're the best," Remus choked out, squeezing his hand.
James turned to look up at Amy, and in that moment it was clear that he was mourning all the things he would never get the chance to do. "You're so beautiful… Tell Lily…" he grimaced, "I'm sorry."
"She knows, James," Amy said as tears rolled down her cheeks, "I know she does."
James went still, his eyelids closed, and as his face relaxed the Doctor knew that this was it. He slowly rose to his feet, glancing nervously at the Daleks, who were still standing too close for his liking, and at the witch who had tried to kill him, who was currently staring down the end of McGonagall's wand.
"Amy," he said slowly, "boys, you have to step away now."
"No!" Amy cried out, clutching at James' arms. "I am not leaving him, we can't leave him -"
The Doctor looked at Amy, curled over James and crying her heart out, and then he looked at the horde of Daleks and the Death Eaters in front of him, and he felt more sick and tired of their callousness and their arrogance and more ready to end this pathetic war than he had in a long, long time.
"He was just a boy!" The Doctor cried, torment tearing the words from his throat and making them jagged at the edges, so they ripped the very air apart as he hurled them straight at the dark haired witch. "He was a child!"
"And now he's dead," she said, and where the Doctor had expected malice he instead found humour. She turned to Sirius, who had his wand aimed at her throat, and laughed. "Sorry that I killed your ickle blood traitor friend, cousin. It's his own fault for getting in the way."
Boiling over with rage, Sirius aimed a curse at her, but again she reflected it.
"I liked him." The Time Lord's voice came out in a low rumble, threatening and forceful and dark. "He was just a child, an innocent seventeen year old boy, with his whole life ahead of him! He didn't have to die. And you killed him."
"Everyone dies, Doctor," Voldemort said mockingly, throwing his own words back at him.
Something inside the Doctor snapped. He didn't miss how the witch flinched as he stepped towards her. He was not some silly little man they could bully and threaten into submission – he was the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords of Gallifrey, the Oncoming Storm. He had watched worlds burn and universes end and time itself run out, and they thought their silly little war could stop him? Oh, how wrong they were. And oh, how he was going to make them pay for what they had done.
"Not today!" The Doctor roared. "No one else will die today!"
"You still think you can stop me?" Voldemort sneered.
The muscles in his shoulders tensed, and then, to everyone's surprise, he broke out of the bindings Dumbledore had placed him in, the force of his escape knocking all of the Hogwarts staff and students behind him to the ground.
The Doctor bent down and gripped Amy's arms, dragging her to her feet and desperately pushing her behind him. She was still crying and she fought to get back to James, but her muscles were tired and he could lift her easily. When she was somewhat shielded by him, he tapped the wand she still held with his sonic screwdriver, giving her a meaningful look.
"There's no hope for you now, Doctor," Voldemort sneered, and the witch beside him cackled.
The Doctor growled, "Do you really think I'm going to let you ally yourself with the Daleks, threaten my friends and murder innocent people – innocent children – and get away with it? Oh, no. No. You will regret the day you found that crack, Tom; I will make sure you regret it until the day that you die."
The lead Dalek's eye stalk twitched and it slowly said, "You will HELP us, Doc-TOR. We have a COMM-on EN-e-MY. WE will DE-FEAT the hu-Man and you WILL op-en a Ti-ME Por-TAL for US and we WILL re-turn to OUR di-MEN-sion."
"Your dimension?" The Doctor scoffed. "Hardly."
"I am not your enemy!" Voldemort roared at the Daleks, "You are my machines, my weapons! You fight for me!"
Apparently fed up with being ordered around, one of the Daleks spun and shot Voldemort. The Daleks were still weak, nowhere near full power, and Voldemort was a powerful wizard - he managed to soften the blow to less than deadly, but it still hit him hard and did quite a bit of damage. He fell backwards with a cry, landing on the dark haired witch and taking her down with him.
"Well thanks," the Time Lord said, only slightly sarcastic, "that makes this a little less complicated."
"WE are the MOST POW-er-FUL be-INGS here, Doc-TOR," the Dalek said, "If you DO NOT he-LP us we will DE-STROY the WIZ-ard-ING world JUST as we DE-stroyed Gall-I-FREY."
His jaw clenched, a vein in his neck popped and the knuckles of his left hand cracked as he squeezed them into a tight fist. "You didn't destroy Gallifrey," he said venomously, "I did."
With a shaking hand, he pointed his sonic at the ceiling and yelled, "NOW, AMY!"
And then the whole world came crashing down.
a.n. please leave a review telling me what you think? i promise the next chapter things get much better and brighter and there's far less crying and heartbreak!