About one month and another two weeks in, Sarah found herself looking forward to finally begin investigating the first story after her return. It was about a series of robberies in the London tube. She could have also taken UNIT's case of missing people, but she had chosen specifically to take a break from all the alien-related stuff in this world. In fact, she was almost excited to do something ordinary again when she joined her aunt in the kitchen for breakfast on the day of the investigation's first interview.

As always, there was today's newspaper lying on the table right next to Sarah's half-burnt toast. And while she contemplated her plans for today, she flipped through its black-and-white pages somewhat absent-mindedly, mostly out of the force of habit. Quite soon, she would be writing the articles again, the real interesting ones! Just a little while before she would have gotten up to leave the house, Sarah emptied her glass of milk and through the bottom of it, quite by chance, her sight fell on a picture in today's paper. It was nothing special, really. Just a black and white photograph of a group of students from the Amberton university that was slightly blurred by the quality of the print. But what she saw had almost caused her to drop the glass from her hands. Her mind was wiped blank by a thousand thoughts crashing into it at once and her interest in the robbery case was forgotten in the wink of an eye.
"Not possible!", she exclaimed and hastily moved her dishes out of the way to unfold the newspaper page so she could get a better look at it.

"What is it, my dear?" Lavinia's words were too distant to reach Sarah's mind.

In the photograph stood assembled this small group of students celebrating the begin of a new semester and with them were a few of the university's professors as well. There was one of them, standing a little aside. In fact, he was barely in the picture, as if he had not meant to be in it at all. But it was a rather tall man in a suit, who stood relaxed near a column, with his hands in his pockets. He had a mob of fluffy looking, dark curly hair and was laughing in the general direction of the camera. This toothy grin and the wrinkles around his eyes were so unique to his face that, despite the mediocre quality of the print, Sarah immediately recognized it as familiar.
"I don't believe it! This man looks just like him. Am I seeing things?"

Naturally, since she had not gotten an answer yet, Lavinia still kept asking.
"What are you seeing, Sarah?"

Finally, Sarah decided to react to her questions. She took the newspaper and held it up for her to see – but just a moment long, because she could hardly stop herself from looking at it.

"Here, in the photograph.", she pointed at the article. "This man looks just like the Doctor!"

After all this time she had spent searching for him, and there he suddenly was. Just a little while after she had finally settled back into her old life and given up for good. Ridiculous! Still, the hope she felt spreading inside of her was real, and so was the glad feeling that he seemed to be alive after all. But, Sarah rationalised her thinking quickly. It was too easy to fall victim to disappointment again. It was a poor photograph after all, and who knew, maybe out in the world really existed someone who just so happened to look a lot like her time travelling friend? Sarah quickly skimmed the article below the picture for any information about him. The text was just a quick note on the starting semester and mentioned the loss of the university's only professor for planetary science during the recent space telescope project. Quite honestly, however, this was of little interest to Sarah at the moment...
She did not let her aunt have the chance to talk her out of it as she stood up from the breakfast table with the newspaper under one arm, her handbag in the other. "I have to go find him!", Sarah announced.

Of course Lavinia, who had spent so much time to help Sarah return to Earth, had a few objections.
"But what about the interview today? Sarah, remember, this is also important."

"I'll promise if this is another red herring, it will be the last one I fall for!"
It was not something she had said out of the spur of the moment as she left the house. If this lead would turn out to be yet another disappointment, she would never think twice again.

Even as Sarah drove out to the university, she kept telling herself that she must not let herself get carried away. The higher her expectations of a possible reunion became, the greater the disappointment would be. But it was only when she arrived at the campus that she realized how little of an idea she had where she should start the search. All of these old buildings and the different faculties… If the Doctor was a professor, what kind of professor would he be? Sarah wandered around the campus and watched all the students pass her by. She had never longed for a life at the university; she had barely been able to stand school. Which was not to say that Sarah was not keen to learn more. It was just that she hated having to force knowledge into her brain, dry as it came, out of books. In her opinion, knowledge had to be experienced to be understood.

On a whim, the journalist decided to talk to a group of three students who were sitting on a bench to enjoy one of the last warm days of the years. The girls all wore the university's uniform, a dark blue jacket on top of a blouse and a long skirt. A different set of button badges on each jacket and a collection of accessories seemed to satisfy the students' common need for individualism. As Sarah approached them, she knew she was probably looking a bit out of place. "Hello.", she greeted the little group while she searched her pockets for the torn out newspaper article with the photograph in it. "I was looking for someone and wondering if you could help me..."

The first one to raise her head was a woman with short, ebony-coloured hair, both slightly smaller and younger than she was. The student looked at her out of big brown eyes and smiled at her friendly. Her facial expression was so pretty and graceful, it reminded Sarah a bit of a china doll. "That depends who you are looking for, but we'll try.", the stranger quickly replied, even before Sarah had unfolded the photograph for her and her fellow students.

As she pointed her finger at the figure of the man in the corner of the image, the first student exchanged a quick glance with her friends to reassure herself before she spoke. "Ah, yes! That's, uhm, Dr. Smith, the professor for planetary sciences!"

"So you know him?", Sarah blurted out, happily surprised and felt a smile spreading on her face. "It's John Smith, isn't it?" That was the name UNIT had always used for the Doctor in the official papers whenever necessary and so the mere mentioning of the last name had raised her hopes even higher.

But the student just blinked at her, slightly confused. "No, that's not it.", she corrected her. "His first name is… what's his first name again? Something starting with T..." Impatiently, Sarah waited while she rustled up the memory. "Anthony, that's it! Dr. Anthony Smith. I think most people just call him Tony, though."

The smile on Sarah's face began to crumble, now that reality had just been a stone's throw away from her expectation. But still averse to giving up just yet, she quickly regained her posture and put a smile back on her own face, right as it belonged in the company of people as nice as these were. "Well.. do you think you could tell me where to find him?"

"If you're lucky, you might find him in lecture hall C-2.", answered the student, although a certain amount of scepticism in her eyes proved that Sarah's moment of disappointment had not gone entirely unnoticed. She waited another second to see whether the university guest had any idea where to go and after Sarah signalled her that she had none, the student continued. "That's down the road, turn right into the building with the big entrance, right again and then straight towards the double-doors."

"Thank you very much! You've just helped me a lot." Sarah thanked them politely before getting on her way. "Have a good day!"
Her feet were moving faster than she consciously had told them to, while at the same time the expectation just continued to build up in the back of her mind. She reached the double-doors mentioned by the student very soon, but the currently ongoing lecture forbid the intrusion at this specific point in time. Still, through the closed doors she could hear a handful of different voices, all muffled and the words far beyond comprehension, but one of them had a baritone sound that was familiar enough to cause her heart to beat ever so slightly louder. Her growing impatience made the wait just more difficult to endure. The wall clock above the lecture hall would know; Sarah would have pushed its hands with the force of her thoughts by now if only she could. Not before long and that rational part of her brain which had continuously warned her of the dangers of building up her expectations too high was being taken over by pure emotion. In her thoughts, she was playing through a dozen different scenarios, trying to bring all the questions she had in some kind of order. What did she want to know first? How the Doctor had ended up at a university? No, first of all she should ask him whether he was fine, and then… why had he gone into hiding? Was the Master still after him? What had happened on that day near the French coast? Too many questions, too many thoughts. None of them really mattered, anyway – he would tell her soon enough. Finally, the clock's hands moved forward again, and the noise of people leaving their seats and tables finally forced its way through the double-doors. Nervously, Sarah bit her thumbnail while she waited for the students to come pouring out of the lecture hall. Once one of the doors opened, she moved out of the student's way, but tried to catch a glimpse of the person in front of the blackboard at the same time. Finally, as most of the lecture hall had emptied, she found a gap in the stream of young people to step past the doorway. But even despite all of her hopeful expectation, she still paused after she had stumbled into the room. Sarah sighed, both relieved and endlessly glad, and felt a smile spreading across her face wider than it ever had during the last month.

==== ==== End of EPISODE 1 ==== ====

Perhaps I should mention that I specifically haven't seen (or read) 'Human Nature' and only know about the basic outline to the plot, in order to avoid being influenced too much by the TV story while writing this.

The change of the Doctor's official name is really of no greater importance. Re-using 'John' just didn't work for me - either because it reminded me too much of the original plot line, or because the combination of the name and the Fourth Doctor's face just failed to match.
Just as I reached for script authors' names in 'The Race For Time', I picked 'Anthony' as a reminder of the season 16 script editor, Anthony Read.

Besides, there obviously is no place or university called 'Amberton' in the UK. But since I lack the knowledge to write about one of the big universities, especially whatever they were like during the 70s, I decided to make one up. It's not vital to the plot which university it is, anyway.