Despite their protests, the Doctor couldn't be kept out of the flat. He finagled his way into the dining room, aiming the sonic screwdriver at any and everything that sounded the least bit odd. He scanned his way down the walls over lines of odd knickknacks and small devices. Inside the house smelled lived in, though it was clean there was the unmistakable odor of years long past.
The furniture, the carpets and the wall papering—it all seemed to be of another time. While most places were about modernization this flat looked like the Doctor could have found a hundred like it in the 1840s. As he surveyed the ornate ceiling light he finally spoke again:
"I never did get your names."
"What?" Ron asked.
The Doctor slipped the sonic screwdriver into his coat. "You know, your name—what you're called."
"He's Ron—I'm Hermione. Over there is Ginny and Harry's the one that owns this place," she explained pointing to them in turn.
The Doctor looked to Harry. "Harry, eh? You're a bit young to own a place like this—your parents out of town or something?"
"Haven't got parents anymore…"
Something in the tone that Harry used registered with the Doctor and he nodded slowly. "I see," he paused. "I'd better get to work—if you want me out of your hair anytime soon. Were you lot busy with—"
"It was Harry's birthday," Ginny cut across him with a harsh tone.
"I see—Ginny, was it?" the Doctor asked before muttering. "Ginny, Ginny—its like Ginger. Okay, well I'm sorry to intrude but I've got an angry Time Machine outside if I can't get the engines back in flux they're going to phase out. Do you know what happens then?"
"They cart you back to the loony-bin with the rest of the half-cocked nutters?" asked Ron.
"No," the Doctor said walking closer to Ron. "If we're lucky, the resulting explosion will just level London…"
"I see," said Ron.
Hermione pointed to the front door. "Let me get this sorted. That police box outside—that's a Time Machine?"
The Doctor nodded. "It's a TARDIS, but yes that's the long and short of it. The police box is just a disguise." He started back into the entry room and took a right into the hallway, they all followed.
"Hell of a disguise—Hermione claims those things don't exist anymore," Harry said.
"Yeah, I've grown fond of it," the Doctor responded as he reached the stairs.
They moved up the stairs in a line, following him as he made his way into the drawing room. This was where he saw the light from the street and also happened to be the source of the fish and custard smell—though much to the Doctor's disappointment they two items were on separate serving plates.
"Excuse me, what are you looking for, Doctor?" asked Harry.
"Anything large enough or powerful enough to throw the TARDIS out of whack—I got ripped right out of orbit," he pantomimed something plummeting from the sky. "I'll know when I find it."
"And what are you a Doctor of—what's your name?" asked Hermione.
"I'm not a doctor of anything, just the Doctor—that's all," he explained. "I heard one of you mention magic a few times, usually magic is a more simplistic way of explaining high technology. Computers, telephones, cars—they look like magic to your ancestors. But whatever you're calling magic is probably just…"
Before he could finish Ginny drew her wand and with an upward flick of the wrist shouted an incantation. "Levicorpus!" the Doctor was flipped upside down and hoisted into the air as if he had been hooked to a string. He dangled, his lanky arms nearly dragging the carpet.
"Put me down! Down!" he grabbed for the screwdriver and curled his body to try and aim for his feet and then swung around to aim it at Ginny. But he couldn't make heads or tails of how to stop her.
Ron and Harry chuckled at her antic, but Hermione seemed upset about it. "Ginny that's enough," she said. "You could hurt him," silently she stepped forward with a quick wand movement, let him down. It was as if a rope holding him had been cut.
The Doctor sat up from the floor staring at Ginny as she stood with hands over her face to conceal her fit of giggles. "Well, I'd like to thank you for that demonstration, Ginny—I see that what you're calling magic seems to be extremely hard to spot as technology. But I've traveled a lot, several thousand star systems and thousands of periods of time—I've never come across magic that I could confirm was what it claimed to be," he said.
"Well you can be assured this is magic," Harry stated firmly.
"Yes. Well that aside, there must be something in this apartment that's causing the problem with the TARDIS—considering I've been in London several times I would guess its something relatively new…" the Doctor said.
Ginny sighed. "How can you really go all of these places and do all these things when you barely look older than me?"
"I told you, I'm a Time Lord—I'm so old I can't even keep track of it all because of the zipping back and forth between times and getting caught in alternate tangents…at last count I was nine hundred and four," he said.
"Bollocks," Ron muttered.
"We could at least try and help him, just in case he's telling the truth. It's no stranger than half of the things I've dealt with over the past nine years," Hermione said.
The Doctor short her a beaming smile. "Thank you bushy-haired-pretty-girl," he said.
"Hermione," she reminded him. "You said that it was something new to this place more than likely? What about one of the gifts—could it be messing with your TARDIS—Magic has been known to mess with electronics."
"Oh you're brilliant, I could kiss you!" the Doctor exclaimed.
Ron threw a possessive arm around her. "Yeah. Well don't," he said.
After a nod to Ron, the Doctor turned back to Harry. "So the gifts, where are they?" he asked.
"Over here, not opened yet," Harry said.
"Well then," the Doctor pulled a chair from under the table and dropped down into it with his arms dangling awkwardly at his sides. "The sooner we get this party finished, the sooner we can find out which of those boxes is causing the problem."
Reaching inside of his tweed coat, the Doctor produced a party hat which he then unfolded and strapped to his head.
"You carry that around on you all of the time, just in case?" asked Harry.
"Yeah, jackets bigger on the inside," the Doctor said giving the breast pockets a quick pat. "Now, where were we?"