Blon Fel Fotch had taken them to an underground bunker, where they were surrounded by other Raxicoricofallipatorians.
"And now, Doctor and Hermione Granger, I think it's time for explanations."
"Yes, I think so," the Doctor agreed.
"When you dropped my egg off in the nursery with your other blonde friend and the randy one, I was placed into a new family's care, just as you intended. They were not rich, like my previous family Slitheen, but instead mere farmers. For the first few years, I admit I behaved like a rebelllious teenager, until my adoptive father explained to me what the Slitheen family was doing to my planet. Their influence and power were monopolized, but they were bleeding their own planet dry. I thought of you, Doctor, and what you would want me to do. I realized I had to lead the revolution for change, for good. I am now Blon Fel Fotch Day Corixator, and I started the uprising. We need your help."
The Doctor beamed. "Oh, yes. Wait, hold on, you don't care that you're going against your old siblings? Your mum and dad?"
"I have a new family, Doctor. One that nurtured and cared for me, in a way my old family did not. I was raised evil, as I told you. The family that cared for me this life were attentive, I was their only child."
"So, you grew to love them instead," he murmured. "Oh, give me this!"
"Doctor?" Hermione asked. "What are we going to do about our tools?"
"You mean these?" The alien proudly held the sonic screwdriver and her wand in her outstretched claw.
"Thank you!" she exclaimed gratefully, reaching for the wand.
The alien, Blon Fel Fotch, held it above her reach. "Only if you promise to help."
"Of course," Hermione promised. "Why wouldn't I?"
"I don't know how much the Doctor told you of my past-"
Hermione looked at him warily, and the Doctor just shook his head.
"Ah, a clean slate, then," Blon said happily before handing Hermione her wand and the Doctor his screwdriver.
"Any ideas?" the Doctor asked her.
"I have to think," Hermione said. "What did she mean her past, Doctor? Was she a criminal?"
"It doesn't matter," he said firmly. "I dealt with it then, and now we're going to help."
Hermione tried to picture helping Lord Voldemort rehabilitate himself, and she wondered if she could. She absentmidedly stroked her forearm and the Doctor frowned.
"It's not like your war," he promised. "Rose and I, we-" He trailed off, shaking his head again, sulking off in the corner with his screwdriver.
Hermione sighed, and wondered if there would ever be a time the two of them could be open to each other like true friends. She turned her attention to the problem at hand, and what spells she could use to help them succeed. A simple accio could go a long way with weapons. Maybe aquamenti if there were fires. A few shield and battle charms would also help.
She walked over to the Doctor. "I have some ideas," she said. "But I know it'll work out better if we all work together."
The Doctor nodded. "I usually don't have plans."
"And I always have plans," she said. "I don't think this is something we can wing."
"Right!" he called out. "I want you to tell me everything you know so far."
"My old family is cunning, Doctor, as you know. They've lured the people into a false sense of peace. That the world is failing due to other's faults. It is time they see reason. However, my old family has many armed guards as you saw when your friend here was thrown into prison. If we infiltrate the plant they are draining the energy from, we could take it down and we could spread the word more to the others."
"A normal, boring day for me," the Doctor said with a wink.
"So, what do we do, Doctor?" Hermione asked, readying herself for a battle.
"Blon and her team will hit these guards in the back, and we'll take the front. Only incapicate the guards, got it? We're not killers," he said firmly, staring down the entire room and giving even Hermione the chills.
The group slowly made their way out of the bunker and into the cover of the woods.
"What did Blon mean by her history though, Doctor?" Hermione asked. "If I am going to be helping her, I'd like to know who I'm helping."
He sighed. "A long time ago, when I was a different man, Blon was part of a family called Slitheen and she tried to blow up Ten Downing Street to sell for for profit."
Hermione's eyes grew wide. "She was going to destroy an entire planet for profit?" she asked, thinking of Mundungus Fletcher. "That is the lowest of the low."
"I was firm in her punishment," he told her. "Which is why I have chosen to overlook it."
"You think people can change so easily?" she asked him.
"I have to believe it." He smiled at her sadly, and not for the first time, Hermione found herself thinking the Doctor was much older than he looked. "If I didn't I don't know if I could continue on."
Even though Hermione wasn't sure if she believed it as much as the Doctor, she knew how important he could be to the entire universe even from these past few days so she smiled at him, making him beam wider. "Yeah, you're right. People can change, Doctor. You never know unless you give them a chance." She held out her hand for him to take and he did so gladly.
They arrived right outside the large castle and Blon Fel Fotch looked back at them. "Are you ready?"
They nodded. "Now or never," the Doctor said.
The two of them started to advance just as the sky opened up on them. Big, fat raindrops poured down on them and the Doctor laughed, pushing his sopping hair away from his eyes. Hermione couldn't help but laugh too, the Doctor could be infectious like that sometimes.
A streak of lightning lit up the castle ahead of them, followed by a loud clap of thunder.
"I used to be afraid of thunderstorms, you know," Hermione told him. "Before everything happened, and it seems so silly now to be afraid of something so trivial."
"Thunderstorms are a rational fear," he assured her. "People can die from lightning strikes, of course, that's only if they are stupid and don't listen to the news or find shelter immediately when they see lightning."
"Does that make us stupid, then?" Hermione asked, grinned.
"Oh, completely," he said, breaking off in more laughter.
"I don't know if I can fight anyone," she said softly. "What if my spell misfires or I-"
"You don't have to," he said gently. "But think of the lives you'd be saving."
"There's always saving," she said. "I think I developed a savior complex."
The Doctor laughed. "One tends to do so when they save the entire world, Hermione Granger."
"Look," Hermione whispered when they reached the edge of the forest right by the castle entrance. "Rose bushes."
His mouth quirked in a small grin. "Good luck charm. Come on!" The Doctor brandished his sonic screwdriver into the air to make the door unlock for them and swing open with a mad twinkle in his eye.
Hermione waved her wand and shouted, "Stupefy!" causing the guards to drop to the ground.
The Doctor looked impressed. "You'll have to teach me how to do that with the sonic."
She rolled her eyes. "When will you come to learn that some magic can't be replicated by science?"
"Never," he admitted. "Let's go, then!" He rushed forth towards the open door, his duster jacket billowing out behind him.
Hermione ran after him, the adrenaline flowing through her veins making her smile. It was then they heard gunshots ring out through the air. Her eyes widened as she expected the worst of Blon killing her team and siding with her old family. They took off ever faster towards the sound, blasting every guard they encountered, until finally they found the group in a bedroom off the hallway.
Blon Fel Fotch was laying on the ground, blood seeping from a stomach wound. The culprit was the eldest Slitheen, gun still smoking in his hands as he grimaced down at the sight before them all. Blon's team were in shock, weapons still poised in their hands, not sure how to proceed. It was suddenly simple for Hermione, what her action should be, and without a waver, she pointed her wand.
"Expelliarmus!" Hermione shouted, making the gun whizz through the air towards her outstretched hand where she threw it out the open window into the garden below. "Now, then. I'm Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of my age. What the bloody hell is going on here?"
The Doctor rushed to Blon Fel Fotch's side, his sonic screwdriver whirring over her body, but Hermione could see the signs of life slipping from her eyes. She gulped and swallowed an unexplainable lump in her throat. She pointed her wand firmly at the eldest Slitheen. "Why did you go and do a stupid thing like that?" she spit out.
"She betrayed us," he said simply.
"So you had to kill her?" she asked angrily. "I don't know who you've been dealing with, high up here in your castle, but Blon Fel Fotch was our friend, and you've pissed off the calvary, mate." With a smirk, she waved her wand and bound the three aliens together with snug ropes before turning to Blon's team. "Right, go do what you were meaning to do. The Doctor and I will look after her."
After they left, she turned to the Doctor where he was trying to put pressure on the wound as he concentrated on a setting with his screwdriver, sweat beading on his brow. She cast a simple vital signs spell on the alien.
"Doctor," she said softly. "She's gone."
"No," he said angrily. "Not her. She can't be."
"It was a senseless act of violence," she told him, "but the only thing we can do for her is finish her mission and make sure her legacy lives on. Come on, we've got to leave her for now."
The Doctor swiped tears from his eyes. "I'm fine. As for you, Slitheen family, I'm not done with you."
Hermione grinned. "That's what I like to hear, mister. Space justice!"
He grimaced. "Eurgh, don't say that ever again."
…
When the Slitheen had been properly disposed of, the Doctor and Hermione Granger attended a funeral. Blon Fel Fotch's team had rubbed the sacred oils on her body to prepare her for her eternal rest, woven the planet's burial cloth around her body, and placed a rose in her hands; it made the Doctor smile sadly again.
Hermione looked at this alien who had broken them out of their prison cell and saved their life lying peacefully in the burial pod of her people, and shed a tear, thinking about the funerals of other good men and women she had attended. It wasn't fair that evil struck down the good in the world, but she knew that the Doctor made sure that there was always victory in the universe, and she decided maybe that was something she wanted to be a part of.
The Doctor bumped her side gently, and she looked down to where he wiggled his fingers at her. She took his hand and leaned her head against his shoulder. Being with the Doctor always meant loss, but it also meant triumph.
She watched Blon Fel Fotch's team rocket the burial pod into space, and thought of the rebellion that would be fought in the alien's name.