Many apologies! This chapter took WAY longer than it should have to get out, and I wasn't able to work on it over vacation. With the school year starting on Monday, I will be aiming for a chapter per week. And for those of you following A Police box in the Plaza, then next chapter should be coming out some time soon.

Chapter 12 I'm Coming for You

The Doctor looked at Jack, and placed his hand on the Manipulator. "For Taal."

"For Taal."

There was a flash of light as the Time Vortex ripped a hole in space around them, and they vanished.

.oOo.

They reappeared, sprawled, in the same dungeon that they had been held in earlier. "Well…" said the Doctor. "Looks like she's not in here, then."

Jack winced getting up. "That was rougher than normal. Why?"

The Doctor quickly scanned his Vortex Manipulator, sighing. "The magic in the air here is eating away at the power reserves in that thing. We have enough for two, maybe three more hops before that thing needs to be far, far away from here and allowed to recharge."

"So, we're stuck here with next to no higher technology except for my gun and your…" he looked at the Doctor's screwdriver with something bordering on distaste. "screwdriver…"

"Oi! Don't diss the sonic!" cried the Doctor, brandishing it in Jack's face. "or I might just disable that gun of yours!"

"You wouldn't dare!" laughed Jack. They both knew that the threat was a hollow one, intended to break up the tense mod that had fallen over the two. The Doctor's eyes were hidden in the gloom, but Jack knew him well enough to guess what he might be going through right now.

Sacrificing himself to save others was a job belonging to either the Doctor, who could regenerate if he had to, or Jack, who could never die. Not to an ex-Major fighter pilot who was a mortal. Who could die. And Jack could tell that, while the Doctor was refusing to acknowledge that possibility, it was still there in the back of his mind.

"So, what's the plan?" asked Jack as the Doctor sonicked the door to the dungeon and the two of them stepped out.

"Haven't got one." said the Doctor. "You know me; I'll make it up as we go along. That's what I always do, it always ends up ok." His voice dropped as he muttered, "usually…"

"Doctor, what happened to Rose and Martha won't happen to Taal. You'll find her; you'll get her out of here. And I doubt that she would ever leave you voluntarily. She hasn't got any family to threaten-"

"But she's got me." hissed the Doctor. "She knows that I'm an alien like her, but she doesn't know that I can regenerate. "and she is still a pilot at heart. An egotistical flyboy… with a heart of pure gold. She'd never just sit by if I was in danger. She'd have to go out and do something stupid like this, and get herself killed! That's my job!"

"Doctor, in case you haven't noticed, Taal cares about you." Jack said, looking at the Doctor. "Not to the point of, say, Rose, but cares enough to do something like this. She obviously rates your life above her own. That, coupled with her training as a pilot makes her want to protect those that she can."

"But why me? Why does she feel the need to protect me?" said the Doctor. "I saved her life, she should see that I don't need protecting."

Jack stared at the Doctor. "There's your answer." He said. "She probably feels obliged to save your life because you saved hers. It makes sense if you think about it." He shrugged and edged out into the corridor. "But we don't have time to talk about this now, Doctor. Let's go find Taal."

The Doctor followed, his screwdriver held out in front of him, scanning for Taal. Jack followed, his gun sweeping back and forth, covering their backs and their advance. The Doctor ignored his casual use of a gun, focusing his entire mind on the screwdriver.

He shook his head in annoyance. The screwdriver seemed to be picking up traces of Taal from all over, as if she had been paraded up and down this corridor just to… just to throw him off by hiding her in herself.

"Jack, can you pick up anything from Taal? Your gun works as a scanner too, right?"

Jack nodded, then tossed the gun to the Doctor, who looked at it with distaste for a moment before throwing it back to Jack with a disapproving look. Jack shrugged and smiled and quickly pressed a butting on the back of the handgrip. "From what I can tell, Doctor," he started, "she's been lead up and down this hall numerous times to hide her trace. Then, she was lead out of that hallway there-" he broke off to gesture towards a wooden door at the end of the hallway, "-where the trace just vanishes. I suppose she could have been, I dunno, teleported, or something, but that would have left a trace."

The Doctor shook his head, preoccupied with getting the door open. "Dammit!" he cried. "I forgot, the sonic doesn't do wood!" he smacked the tiny silver device against his palm several times before standing up and looking at Jack, who had a somewhat smug look on his face. "Do the shoot-y gun thing…"

Jack took aim with a little more flourish than was strictly necessary and shot the door. The handle vanished in a square of blue light, and he shoved it aside with his shoulder. The Doctor followed him in, absolutely quiet. Jack spared him a quick glance before returning the handle and lock back to its place and noticed that the Doctor's face was the perfectly composed mask that he would use to hide his feelings. Jack gulped slightly, something about this Doctor shook him.

As Jack scanned the small room, the Doctor walked up to the only means of escape from the room- a window. He pressed his hand flat against it, and sighed. He spun to Jack. "Brooms!"

"What?" said Jack, completely caught by surprise. The Doctor seemed to be sinking into some sort of depression, why was he all bouncy again? Then it hit him- now he had a chance to save Taal.

"Brooms!" cried the Doctor again. "They flew away on brooms! That's why they didn't leave a trace; the magic would interfere with your scanner!"

Jack looked at him skeptically. "Really, Doctor? Are you sure that you're not just grasping at straws now?"

The Doctor shot him a look. "How else could they have taken her? Apparition doesn't work on Hogwarts grounds. And if they took her away by brooms…" his voice dropped as he looked out the window again. "They took her to the ministry."

Jack looked nervous for the first time. "And we need to break her out of there?" he leaned against the wall. "And how the hell are we going to do that? They're wizards! They could kill either of us with a single word, and you want to fight them?"

The Doctor once again gave him a withering look. "Good thing that you can get back up again then. But I wasn't thinking of anything quite so elaborate. We take the TARDIS into her cell, sonic any cuffs, get her into the TARDIS again, and get the hell out of there."

Jack sighed. "You know that that's never going to work, Doctor. We'd be better off taking my manipulator."

"Good point, but we can't take the manipulator. That thing's almost out of charge. What if we took brooms too?" The Doctor looked around, finally spotting two sleek looking broomsticks lying against the far wall. "We can take those."

"You expect me to ride one of those?" asked Jack incredulously.

The Doctor looked at a point just over Jack's shoulder, at the still open door. "You might not have a choice, Jack. They're coming. Seal the door, now. I'll get the window open."

Jack looked at the door, then shoved it closed. With another shrug, he walked over to the Doctor. "That won't hold them for long, Doctor. We need to get out of here, now."

The Doctor ignored him for a moment, turning only when the window swung open. "They're coming. Hurry!"

Jack nervously hopped onto a broom, the Doctor casually sitting on the other. They swooped out of the window just as McGonagall burst in behind them. She ran to the door, yelling something, but the wind snatched her words away. And the Doctor and Jack wouldn't have heard her anyway- they were on their way to save Taal.