Down the Rabbit Hole and Through the Mirror
Chapter Two: The Bride, The Wizard and The Time Lord
By BlackBlade
Disclaimer: I do NOT, and sadly probably never will, own Harry Potter or Doctor Who, nor am I profiting in any way shape or form from this entirely fictional story involving the characters in the aforementioned Book/Series, which belong to J.K. Rowling and the BBC respectively. Thank you.
Summary:Harry manages to save Sirius in the Department of Mysteries, but ends up falling into the Veil in his place. The Veil is nothing more than an opening into the Void between realities; and it is just Harry's luck that at the same time in another universe, the Void had been opened. He suddenly finds himself trapped in said universe, with no way to go back and only a crazy man and his blue box for company.
~ oooOOOooo ~
When Harry Potter woke up he was in pain. A part of him, the very small part of him that was actually awake and coherent enough to understand anything other than the fact that he was in pain, recognized that the mentioned pain meant that he was still alive…which was very much a surprise. The rest of him was just too confused to be properly grateful for his life.
His head felt as though a bludger had been pounding on it for an hour, the rest of his body was only marginally less pained, his mouth was dry and his throat itchy; in other words, he felt as he always did after almost being killed.
It took him almost two minutes to gather himself enough to even try and open his eyes, which were instantly assaulted by bright white light that only made his headache worse and made him want to try out a few of the swear words he'd learned from Fred and George; he ended up just moaning instead, much too sore and pained and generally miserable to bother with cussing.
Almost as soon as he even thought of complaining about the brightness of the light, it seemed to dimm into something that, while not entirely comfortable, was at least bearable. His vision finally not impaired by much-too-bright lights, Harry could try and get an idea of where his latest brush with death had brought him to.
He found his glasses and quickly put them on, sitting up from the very conformable bed he'd woken up in. It seemed like he was in some sort of hospital – though one unlike any he'd ever seen before – with all sorts of strange devices and…well, things all cluttered around the room in no particular order that he could see. One thing was for sure, it definitely wasn't the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts and, considering the very desperate situation he remembered being in before he blacked out, that was enough to make him nervous.
Thankfully there was no one else in the room when he woke up. He quickly shuffled out of the bed, ignoring the momentary pain as he stood up, and went to what could only be the door. It, like the room, wasn't any kind of door he'd ever seen before; there seemed to be no handle, no doorknob, no lock, no nothing, just a great big slab of metal sitting there with no apparent way of opening. He'd been about to touch it – maybe try and force it open – when the thing just went and opened itself.
Curioser and curioser.
He then found himself in a strange corridor with bizarre metal walls and metal grating in the floor. He peered down both ends of the corridor, but there was nothing of interest – such as, for example, an exit – on either side, nothing but more corridor at any rate, so he shrugged and started walking.
As he traveled down what now seemed to be the endless corridor his mind started to go over the series of events that had brought him here, trying to make sense of it all. He remembered the fight with the Death Eaters, the trap they'd laid and in which he'd so easily fallen, he remembered pushing Sirius away from that strange, otherworldly Veil and taking a rather bad fall.
"Explains this, at least" He mumbled, his hand gingerly touching the particularly sore spot on his head that he only now noticed someone had bandaged. He must have hit his head against the stone…painfully.
So, he'd fallen and then…then what? He didn't remember anything after that which meant that he must have blacked out. So, the question now was: who brought him here? Was it the Order or the Death Eaters? He took some comfort in the thought that, if it was Death Eaters, he would have probably woken up in a dungeon instead of a hospital bed. Then again, if it was the Order, wouldn't he have been brought to Headquarters and not this strange place?
Before his thoughts could spiral downwards into more troubling conclusions his musings were interrupted by a voice. He froze for a moment, terrified that he'd been discovered in his sneaking about, but finally calmed down once the voice – a man's – kept talking to someone obviously not him. He started to turn around, do the smart thing for once and walk away from possible danger instead of towards it, but something in the man's voice made him pause.
He was sad. Very, very sad if he was hearing right.
Well, he couldn't be all that dangerous if he was that depressed, now could he?
With his curiosity now piqued and his earlier fear now abated he slowly, as noiselessly as possible, walked towards the voice. It took him less than a minute to finally come to the end of the not-so-endless-after-all corridor. He peered into the room, hiding in the doorway as much as he could.
The man he'd heard was there. He was a tall bloke, skinny too, and wore a strange combination of clothes that somehow just worked for him; a brown pinstriped suit, a long tan coat and what looked like a rather old and worn pair of Chucks. The man was still talking…to no one.
"…Same old life, last of the Time Lords." The stranger said, his tone still sad, but also nostalgic, maybe regretful. He paused then for a moment, staring at something intently, something only he could see, but something important apparently.
"Quite right too." The man's voice sounded even more strained now, as though he was only barely holding back tears. It made the wizard sad too, and he didn't even know why. "And I suppose, if it's my last chance to say it...Rose Tyler…"
But whatever Rose Tyler was about to be told Harry never found out, the man just cut his sentence off there and suddenly seemed to deflate, as though somehow defeated, looking utterly miserable. He turned around then, fiddling idly with the mess of mad things that appeared to be a console of some sort – and since when do console have bicycle pumps in them? – at the center of the room, and Harry could not help but notice the tears in the man's face.
Realizing that he was probably intruding in what was surely supposed to be a very private moment, the young wizard was retreating back into the corridor, ready to lose himself into its near-endlessness if only to escape this impossibly sad man. He would have too, if said man hadn't picked that exact moment to look up and finally notice his captive audience.
The second the stranger's eyes looked into Harry's own, the boy could not help but flinch. They were such…old eyes. Almost like Dumbledore's when he was very deeply troubled by something but worse, somehow, older, if that was possible. For a moment there seemed to be no end to the pain and weariness those eyes held, and Harry almost felt as though he'd drown in that endless sorrow. But then the man thankfully blinked and broke the spell, he stood up straighter, apparently perfectly willing to pretend that he hadn't just been breaking down in tears a moment ago.
"Ah, you're awake then?" The man with impossibly old eyes said, and though it was phrased like a question it clearly wasn't one, so Harry didn't answer. "Good, maybe now you can tell me exactly what happened to you."
That had also been not-a-question, but the wizard didn't know how to answer, he honestly had no idea what had happened to him after falling in the Veil room. To be honest, he'd sort of hoped the man would know, but apparently they were both in the dark.
He opened his mouth, ready to tell the stranger this, when he suddenly noticed a new addition to the room. His surprise must have showed rather clearly on his face because the man, looking a bit puzzled, turned to see what had suddenly caught the boy's attention.
It was a bride. A ginger bride who appeared in a golden cloud right in the middle of the room. Well, if he'd had any doubts about his captor/rescuer being magical, they'd just dissipated.
~ oooOOOooo ~
The next couple of minutes proved to Harry that there must indeed be some truth behind the 'redheads with a fiery temper' myth. The ginger bride had made her displeasure known for the world – or at least Harry and the strange man with the old eyes – to hear, and loudly demanded to know where she was. Harry kind of understood her frustration.
"What the hell is this place?!" The woman demanded, ignoring, for the third time, the strange man's confused 'What?'.
"Actually, I'd kind of like to know that too." Harry spoke, finally stepping out of his not-quite-successful hiding place in the doorway and fully stepping into the room.
At the sound of his voice, the woman immediately turned to him, her eyes assessed him for a moment before she angrily stomped across the room and towards the still befuddled-looking man. "And you're abducting kids too!" The ginger bride shouted, apparently personally offended on Harry's behalf.
"Oi! I'm not a kid!" The boy protested, feeling somewhat insulted.
The woman turned to him once again, now ignoring the man's rather crazy mumblings about impossibilities and that he wasn't a kidnapper, thank you very much. She walked towards Harry slowly, as though she were approaching a frightened animal instead of a young man, and when she was finally next to him put her hand in his shoulder, apparently trying to comfort the now very confused wizard.
"It's alright, we're getting outta here." She proclaimed, in a voice softer than Harry had thought possible for her, considering her earlier shouting fest. Then she turned back to the 'kidnapper' and was back to wild, redheaded beast, glaring eyes and all. "And I'm calling the police, and then I'm going to sue the living backside off ya!" She said, pointing a finger threateningly.
After that Harry was rather firmly herded towards a door that he had only just noticed, hopefully the exit to this madhouse. He considered protesting again, or maybe outright running away from the slightly-crazed woman, but he wanted to get out of here as much as she did and she at least seemed to want to help him.
She opened the door, ignoring the strange man's yell of 'Wait a minute! Don't!'. The sight that greeted them outside was like nothing Harry had ever seen before. It was beautiful and wonderful beyond words, the colors and the...the things, and the boy could not help but gasp in amazement and more than a little surprise.
"You're in space. Outer space." The man said, from somewhere behind Harry where he had apparently approached them without them noticing. "This is my spaceship, it's called the TARDIS."
Harry had heard about space and spaceships before, of course, when he was a little boy and hid behind a sofa to listen as Dudley watched the telly, some shows were about space travel and aliens and stuff like that. To be honest, he had not spared even a stray thought to what lay beyond the sky since he'd gone to Hogwarts, too distracted by the wonder that was magic to pay attention to the wonder of space; he was kind of regretting that now. It was really…something.
"How are we breathing?" The ginger bride asked, her voice once again soft though now with wonder and more than a little fear.
"The TARDIS is protecting us." The man answered simply.
"Who…who are you?" Harry finally asked, finally managing to tear his eyes away from the magnificent sight before him to look at the strange man, his gaze both curious and suspicious.
"I'm the Doctor." He said, still acting a bit too calmly for the situation, Harry reckoned. "And you two?"
"Donna." The woman answered simply, still caught up in the bizarreness of outer space.
The young wizard decided he might as well answer too, since so far neither of these two seemed to be Death Eaters. He was still deciding if the Doctor was dangerous (because no matter how innocent he looked at the moment, eyes like his scared Harry, just a bit), but he was pretty sure he was not one of Voldemort's men, they usually didn't have spaceships.
"Harry. Harry Potter." The lack of reaction to his name, other than a vague nod of acknowledgement, informed him that these two were muggles. Well, that was somewhat comforting…and also a bit problematic, because wizards at least would have known how to help him get back to Hogwarts or the Ministry. It seemed he was stuck with them for now…in space.
"Right. And you're human, Donna?" The Doctor asked, his impossibly-old eyes now focused solely on the redhead.
"Yeah. Is that optional?" Donna responded sarcastically, apparently finally starting to get over her shock.
"Well it is for me."
So apparently he had somehow gone from the Department of Mysteries to a bizarre spaceship with almost endless corridors currently floating somewhere in outer space and inhabited by a non-human man. For what seemed like the millionth time, Harry Potter cursed his rotten luck and very, very weird life.
~ oooOOOooo ~
After another few minutes of shouting, mostly on Donna's part but with a good bit of crazy ramblings from the Doctor and yes, even a frustrated question or two from Harry, not to mention a bit of slapping-the-Doctor-silly (also courtesy of Donna), they had made their way back to Earth – and that still sounded strange to the boy, who had before this not even been out of Britain – to try and make it in time for Donna's wedding, which had apparently been interrupted by her suddenly being transported into the spaceship.
Currently the Doctor was trying to get some money from a cashpoint while Donna phoned her family. Harry was left standing there, trying to make sense of the situation. He was considering just making a run for it now that he was out of the ship, maybe he could even make it back to London and find the Leaky Cauldron or even the Ministry.
Just as he was thinking of ways to get there with his extremely limited resources – no Muggle money and only the clothes on his back and the wand in his pocket – he heard Donna shout in the distance.
"Thanks for nothing, Spaceman! And get him home!" The bride gestured towards Harry as she said the last part, not having entirely forgotten about her 'co-kidnapping victim'. The boy felt strangely touched that she still remembered to worry over him even though of the mad frenzy to get back to her wedding. He might even kind of miss her.
"Donna!" The Doctor's alarmed shout instantly caught Harry's attention, making him freeze and tense, it could certainly mean nothing good.
Everything suddenly becomes chaos as the cashpoint starts spitting out money that flies everywhere, people shout excitedly and greedily try to grab it as the Doctor thugs Harry away from the madness.
"Back to the TARDIS!" The man exclaims, still holding on to Harry's arm as they run full speed back to the spaceship. The panic in his voice certainly does nothing for the boy's nerves.
"What happened?" He demanded, sick of this very strange day and just about ready to stop and turn mulish-teenager on the Doctor if it meant the man would offer some answers, something that could finally make sense in this world suddenly full of spaceships and aliens. He should have known better that to hope for something so…normal. Nothing in his life was normal.
"Pilot fish robots have got Donna. I don't know what they want with her but it can certainly not be good for her health, we're going to get her back." The Doctor says, sounding completely determined and sure of his ability to fulfill this mission.
The two made their way back to the police box – Harry was still having a bit of trouble reconciling the absolutely huge interior of the ship with its surprisingly small exterior, though thankfully not as much as Donna had, since he had some prior experience with things being bigger on the inside…of course, that had been because of magic, but still – and the Doctor immediately started to press buttons and pull levers and do a dozen other strange things to get his ship in flight.
"Right. Harry, come here." The Doctor said, waiting until the teen obeyed before continuing. "See this lever here? Stay right here and pull it when I tell you to."
Harry did not want to touch absolutely anything in the console; he didn't know how to drive a car, much less a bloody spaceship, but the Doctor still sounded a bit alarmed and Harry remembered that this was all to rescue Donna, who had been nice to him even during a crisis of her own. He could deal with this, it would certainly not be the hardest thing he had ever done…it was only a little lever, after all.
When they finally found Donna, the Doctor kept trying to convince her to jump from the still moving taxi into the TRADIS, all the while also shouting instructions at the slightly-panicked teen currently trying to not crash and kill them all. The whole thing degenerated into an outright car chase on the motorway, with the robot-driven taxi continually gaining ground until the Doctor finally zapped it with his…whatever the pen-like thing was.
Harry suddenly felt the overwhelming need to flick a switch that had looked perfectly uninteresting only seconds ago, momentarily forgetting his reluctance to even touch the console. It was strange, as though he somehow instinctively knew he had to do it or something bad would happen; so, caught in the feeling, he did. The ship immediately moved to one side, a bit too fast and a bit dangerously for the Doctor who clung on for dear life to the door. He flicked the switch again and then pulled on another lever and the ship responded by once again aligning with the speeding car. Harry didn't know it, but he had just avoided what would have been a very messy collision with a car.
"Sorry!" He called to the Doctor, wincing a bit as he saw the man barely still hanging on to the ship.
"Well done, Harry!" The Doctor answered happily, completely bewildering the teen. Harry had thought he would get a talking to, or at the very least a protest over touching stuff he didn't know anything about…he had certainly not expected praise.
"Ah…right" He said, unsure. The Doctor was certainly a very strange man.
Finally, after another few moments of the action-movie-worthy chase, the Doctor finally talked Donna into jumping and they both landed safely on the TARDIS's floor, a bit scared but unharmed.
The Doctor quickly jumped up and towards the console, clapping Harry's shoulder excitedly as he finally took the controls from the boy. "Very well done, excellent! Have you ever piloted a TARDIS before? No, of course you haven't! Hmn, she must have told you what to do…interesting." The man said, turning now contemplative eyes towards Harry.
The boy was rather sure he didn't like the man staring at him like that, like he was a particularly interesting specimen to be analyzed or something. Didn't aliens abduct people for that? He certainly hoped the doctor wasn't one of those aliens, but what the hell did he know about aliens anyways? Certainly not enough to judge one's character.
And who was this 'she' the Doctor was talking about? Was there someone else on board? Another alien, maybe? Harry hoped not, one of the Doctor was definitely enough.
~ oooOOOooo ~
Donna ended up missing her wedding. She was understandably upset about it but gamely soldiered on and decided they could still make it to the reception. Harry had tried to politely decline the invitation but the would-have-been bride insisted (mostly by pulling and dragging Harry the first few steps out of the TARDIS).
To be truthful he wasn't much in the mood for a party, but at the very least now he finally had some time to properly ask the Doctor about how he'd suddenly found himself on the man's ship, and without slightly-neurotic brides and killer robots to interrupt too.
"So…" Harry started, approaching the Doctor, who sat away from most of the crowd in the party. "Could you tell me what happened? With me, I mean…How I ended up in your ship when the last thing I remember is being…somewhere else?" The last part was said a bit hesitantly, because Harry really wasn't sure if mentioning the Ministry of Magic to an alien was breaking the law or not, better safe than sorry though.
The man looked a bit uncomfortable at the question, tugging at his right ear nervously and looking away from the teen. "Ah…well, what is the very last thing you remember before waking up in the TARDIS?"
For a moment, Harry considered either not answering or making up a lie, but something told him that the Doctor wouldn't stand for either option and anyways, he really, really wanted to know what had happened and this man was his best shot at finding out.
"I was…in this place. There was a fight, it's all a bit of a blur really, everything happened so fast. There was…we were in this room with this stone archway and a veil that…well, it was a strange place. Anyways, last thing I remember was falling, I think I hit my head in the archway and must have passed out." As he spoke, the memories of the events he described invaded his mind, the fear he'd felt, the confusion, the pain and everything. He only barely repressed a shudder.
The Doctor was now looking at him intently, in that slightly frightening way he had before that made Harry just a tad bit uncomfortable. "This veil…what was it like?"
Again, Harry considered not answering, he wanted the Doctor to finally answer his question instead of interrogate him, but the man's intense gaze practically compelled him to cooperate. "It was…like it was and wasn't there at the same time." His voice sounded unsure, he knew, but he really didn't know how to describe the bloody thing. "And it moved, as though there were a breeze or something, but the air was very, very still. There were voices too, whispers that came from the other side, but there was no other side…there was just, nothing there, just and arch and a veil in the middle of the room."
By now the Doctor had once again turned away from him, his eyes towards the dance floor though it was clear that he was not actually looking at it. He seemed lost in his own thoughts.
"That veil you saw, that archway…They were probably an open gateway into the Void, the dimension of nothing, empty vastness and eternal darkness that connects all the universes together. I think you fell through it." As he finished that last sentence he turned back to Harry again, and his eyes were not just intense but back to the impossibly old stare that very much unnerved the teen. "You would have died there, in the Void, but you got lucky. I opened another gateway into the Void, at apparently just the right time for you to fall through it and into this side of the Dimension Walls. You are very, very lucky to be alive."
Harry wasn't feeling all that lucky, in fact, he felt a chill running down his spine, and cold fear travel through his veins, freezing him from the inside out. He might never have been the brightest student – certainly nowhere near Hermione – but he wasn't stupid either. Connects all the side of the Dimension Walls. You fell through. It did not sound good.
"So…what…what are you saying?" His voice was almost a whisper, rough with fear and unwanted realization.
The Doctor sighed, his shoulder slumped and his eyes turned pitying. Harry was almost ready to hate the man just for that. "It means, Harry Potter, that you fell out of your universe and into another one. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry."
Another bloody universe. Oh, he couldn't have just transported himself to another city, or country, or hell, even another planet…no, he'd managed to get lost by a whole universe. And everyone back home probably thought he was dead, and he might as well be, really, for all the good he was to them in another universe!
"Can I…could I get back?" He didn't really want to ask, because knowing his life, he already knew the answer, but he still had to try.
"No. The Walls have closed now, forever. Travel between the universes is impossible." The way the Doctor said it, it seemed he knew Harry needed absolute and complete confirmation, it might have seemed cruel, the way he utterly destroyed any hope the boy might've had of getting back home, but in the end, it was what the teen needed.
"Right. I…I'll just…go out for a bit, fresh air." The excuse sounded lame even to his own ears, but the Doctor allowed it, patting his shoulder in an attempt to offer some comfort but not making any move to stop them.
"Just come back. I might not be able to get you home, but I'll take you to the closest thing to it possible." The man's voice was softer now, the kind of voice one might use when speaking to a very frightened kitten; Harry could almost resent him for it, if he had the energy for it.
He left the room then, ducking around the mass of happy people as though his life depended on it. When he finally made it outside, he was very close to completely freaking out, it was suddenly hard to breathe, to think, to do anything other than feel…and it hurt.
He would have probably started to hyperventilate or something equally embarrassing, if his panic attack hadn't been interrupted by a familiar and very unwelcome sight. Masked Santas. He first noticed them out of the corner of his eye, though it took his overwhelmed mind a couple of seconds to actually register what he was seeing. He looked up and, yes, there they were, robot Santas.
'As though my day could afford to get any worse.'He thought morosely, before remembering that these were killer robot Santas and he dashed back inside.
It was almost welcome, the danger. It made adrenaline rush through his system, it made him run and move and do something, and for the moment it even made him forget that he was trapped and away from everything he'd ever known and loved. He was sure it said something – and not something good – about his current mental state that suddenly killer robot Santas were a good thing.
He ran all the way back to the Doctor, who was now speaking with a cameraman. He skidded to a halt, almost knocking the camera down, and barely took the time to breathe properly before speaking hurriedly.
"Robot Santas outside." It was a short message, but it was fairly direct and to the point.
"Of course!" The Doctor cried, hitting his head in frustration. "Huon particles are so old that they can't be hidden by a bio-damper! We have to get Donna out of here!" Even as he was finishing his sentence, the man was already bolting towards the happily oblivious Donna.
The three tried to make it out of the building, but it was soon made clear that they were surrounded. That's just about when the Doctor started to shout at everyone to get away from the Christmas trees that decorated the whole room. Harry wasn't sure why, exactly, the trees were so bad, but he figured the Doctor knew what he was talking about and promptly followed his and Donna's example and started herding confused people away from the apparently murderous trees.
It turned out to not be the actual trees, but the ornaments in them that were murderous, in this case explosives. They started going off and attacking people, and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of screams and explosions. Harry's wand was out of his pocket and in his hand before he could properly think about what he was going to do. Then again, Harry had always been a person more likely to act and react than to make up careful plans.
"Reducto!" The spell flew out of his wand and hit one of the Christmas-themed little bombs, making it blow well before it could hit anyone or anything in the room. "Reducto! Reducto!" One of the spells also connected with a bomb, but the second missed by an inch and hit a Christmas tree, though it fortunately didn't end up injuring anyone. It, however, made Harry realize that this particular spell was not entirely safe to use in such a crowded environment.
Fortunately he didn't have to further break the Statute of Secrecy – did this universe even have a Statute of Secrecy? It probably did, considering his luck – because the Doctor once again came to the rescue and used the sound system, of all crazy things, to deal with the killer robots. Sure, it also gave everyone a killer headache, but that seemed like a small price to pay for getting away with your life.
~ oooOOOooo ~
The robots having been dealt with, the Doctor had quickly run off outside and was now trying to find whoever it was that had sent the killer Santas after them. Donna was not entirely pleased with this.
"…You're a doctor, you could help!" She cried indignantly, trying to get him to go to the aid of the injured people still inside.
"I've got to focus on the bigger picture."The man replied, adjusting something on his sonic screwdriver (and how a screwdriver could be sonic and not look like a screwdriver at all, Harry had no idea, but that's what the bloke had called it).
There was something in the Doctor's voice that did not sit at all well with Harry; it wasn't indifference per se, more like he was more concerned with getting to his goal than with helping those people. It didn't take Harry all that long to realize why he didn't like it…it reminded him a bit of himself. He had been like that, utterly determined to get to the Ministry and save Sirius and nevermind what his friends said, and how they were putting themselves in danger for him again. Now, he would never see them again…hell, he didn't even know if they got out of that battle alive.
"They are the bigger picture." The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, but he didn't regret them. To be truthful, he wasn't sure if he was talking about his friends or the people in Donna's reception, but it was probably both.
The Doctor and Donna turned to look at him, slightly incredulous looks in their faces. The Doctor was even looking at him with that slightly calculating look of his, which momentarily drifted to Harry's still tightly clutched wand before finally turning away once again.
"Yes, well, a lot more people might get hurt if I don't find and stop whoever did this. You stay and help them…and no more blasting things while I'm gone." He pointed a finger rather like a parent scolding a particularly naughty child at that, making the young wizard bristle indignantly, but not giving him a chance to protest. "And stay here, I'll be back as soon as I can."
And with that, he was gone, leaving Harry and Donna to deal with the mess. Harry hated him a bit for it.
"So, that blasting thingy…" Donna said, making a vague and strange motion with her hand that he guessed was supposed to represent his spells. "Are you an alien too?" She sounded just the slightest bit sarcastic, as though she was actually expecting him to confess that, yes, he was an alien too.
'Well, it's not like one more breach of the Statute could possibly get me in more trouble.' Harry thought, fully aware that so far he'd told an alien about the Veil and performed magic in front of a whole crowd of muggles. 'Yeah, I don't think anything I do could possibly make it worse.'
"No. I'm…well, I'm kind of a wizard." He finally said, shrugging as though the whole thing was…well, normal.
"Well, isn't that wizard?" The sarcasm was not back full-force, accompanied by just the slightest hint of disbelief and just a touch of resignation. Donna seemed to be starting to get used to weird things happening around her; it made Harry just a tad envious of her ability to cope with the bizarre, he could certainly use a bit of that right now.
~ oooOOOooo ~
The next few minutes were a whirlwind of activity for Harry, helping people out of the building, fetching water and blankets and just about anything anyone could come up with, and finally speaking with the police about the 'incident'. He was careful to leave out anything about aliens and spaceships, the poor coppers probably had enough weirdness to deal with, what with the robot Santas and all.
After the police, he'd had to speak with the paramedics, who insisted on at least checking him for any injuries or shock or a half a dozen other things Harry knew he didn't have. It had taken him at least five minutes to get rid of them ("No, sir, I do not see any black spots. No, I don't feel faint or dizzy. No, I am not shaking, and I don't feel particularly hot or cold. Can I go now?") and escape back into the partially-blown-up building.
"Donna? Donna, are you in here?" He called out to the redhead he'd seen disappear inside just a couple of minutes ago, probably trying to escape from her mum just as desperately as he did from the paramedics.
Donna was just about the only person he knew here – hell, she was the only human he knew in this universe – so he figured he might as well stick with her for company and also to make sure no further attempts on her life were made. Until the Doctor found whoever was responsible for this whole thing, he knew Donna wouldn't be entirely safe.
He was about to call her again when he rounded a corner and finally saw her…and the groom, who was currently dragging her unconscious form through the back exit. He held back the gasp that would have surely given him away in the deadly silence of this abandoned room and, quiet as he could, followed.
'I could really use my cloak right now.' He thought morosely, painfully missing the invisibility cloak that had been so very useful in all his sneaking-about since First Year. Just one more thing left behind in another universe.
Thankfully he wasn't exactly new at trying to avoid detection and even without an invisibility cloak he was rather good at it. He followed Lance – Donna's apparently not-so-loving would-have-been-husband – out the back and into the street, clutching his wand tightly in his hand even though he'd been determined not to use anymore magic. If he had to, he would use it and to hell with the laws, this wasn't even his universe to begin with, they might not even be able to detect his spells (and that would actually explain why no one had shown up even though it had been just about 20 minutes since he'd performed magic in a room full of muggles.).
Lance dumped the unconscious Donna inside a car, none too gently, before getting in himself and driving off. Harry considered casting something at the car, maybe blow up a tire like in those action movies his cousin enjoyed so much, but there was a chance that Donna could get hurt, or that Lance would hurt her if he knew someone had seen him kidnap her.
Giving a frustrated growl, he ran to the street and stopped the very first taxi he could see.
"Follow that car!" He said to the cabbie, pointing at Lance's car before it could disappear in the mass of vehicles that filled the street.
The cabbie fortunately complied without question, though he did throw the boy a funny look on the rearview mirror. Harry decided to give the man a good tip for this, but then he remembered his current lack of funds.
'Ah…best not tell him that until we've got to wherever Donna's been taken.' He decided, mentally wincing as he imagined the cabbie's less that pleased reaction. He dug around his pockets for a bit, not really hoping to find anything but wanting to be sure. Finally, at the very bottom of one said pocket, his fingers touched something. 'That might actually work.'
A while later, Lance's car finally stopped, and Harry instructed the cabbie to park around the corner; he wasn't sure if Lance would even recognize him, since he had mostly stayed with the Doctor or off on his own during the reception, but he figured it was better safe than sorry when Donna's life could be in danger. After everything that had happened, he'd finally learned to be careful instead of rushing in recklessly. It was a lesson learned a bit too late, in his opinion, but learned at least.
"Thanks." He said to the cabbie as he jumped out of the taxi, throwing what he'd found in his pocket at the man before he could protest.
"Hey! What? This is…this is gold! Hey! Hey kid!" But the young wizard ignored the man – who was now the befuddled owner of a galleon – and ran to where he'd last seen the kidnapping groom.
There was no one in the car when he got there, but it didn't take him long to conclude that they were probably inside the large white building the car was parked in front of. The great big letters proclaiming it to be 'H.C. Clements', which Donna had mentioned was where she and Lance worked and had met each other, was a rather large clue.
He went inside – Lance had thankfully left the door unlocked, though that wouldn't have been too much of a problem for a wizard – and started to look for the missing bride and groom. He soon realized that the building was much too large, and had too many hiding places, to successfully search all on his own. Fortunately, magic once again made life easier.
"Point me Donna." He didn't know her last name, but he figured there couldn't be all that many Donnas around here. Instantly his wand spun in the palm of his hand before finally pointing…down.
It took him only a moment after that to notice the lift off to one side of the entrance. Since he could see no stairs going down, he figured they must have taken said lift. He was moving towards it when he heard the 'Ping!' that indicated the bloody thing was being used and about to open on this floor. Thankfully his reflexes had been honed from years of playing the dangerous sport that was Quidditch as well as just as many years of escaping lethal encounters with dangerous creatures and a murderous madman; he wasted no time in ducking behind the nearest hiding place – in this case a potted plant, not the greatest hiding spot, but certainly not the worst he'd ever had to use – and getting ready to stun whoever came out of that lift.
Obviously he'd been expecting it to be Lance, maybe going back to the car for something he'd forgotten or whatever, so imagine his surprise when the lift doors opened and out came no other than the Doctor.
"Doctor!" He abandoned the potted plant and made his way towards the slightly frazzled-looking alien.
"Huh?" Said alien turned confused eyes towards the previously unseen company. "Harry? What are you doing here? I told you to stay…Humans! You tell them not to wander off and what's the first thing they do? They wander off!" The man ranted as he made his way towards the young wizard, though for all his grumbling he didn't seem all that angry or even annoyed at finding Harry there, more like resigned.
"I followed Lance, he took Donna! And…wait, how did you get here?" He clearly remembered the Doctor saying that his ship would need a couple of hours before it could be used again so it wasn't likely he flew in here.
"I took a taxi." He answered simply, his attention more focused on his surroundings than on the teen.
Harry gave him a look that he was sure was something between puzzlement and accusation. "I thought you didn't have any money." And if it turned out that he did and Donna found out, she was likely to actually sue him – if not outright strangle him – as soon as she was rescued from her kidnapping groom.
"I don't." The man confirmed, tugging at his ear somewhat nervously. At Harry's answering look, he finally gave up and explained. "I may have used psychic paper to convince the cabbie that I was a detective currently on a very important case." He was smiling sheepishly as he confessed.
Harry was very, very tempted to ask what in Merlin's name a psychic paper was, but he finally decided that there were more important things to deal with right now. "Never mind that! What about Donna?"
The Doctor's sheepish and amused look vanished almost instantly, his eyes once again taking that intense look that usually hid behind fake cheerfulness and manic energy. "Right. You said Lance took her, did you see where exactly they went?"
At this, the young wizard shook his head. "Not really, but I know she's somewhere below this floor."
For some reason, the Doctor didn't question how Harry had come to this conclusion, or even said conclusion itself, he merely nodded. "He's taking her to the secret basement. We have to hurry!" And before he had finished even half of that sentence, he was already bolting back towards the lift. Harry wasted no time in springing after the running alien, wondering how he knew about any secret basement if it was supposed to be a secret but now pausing to ask; he had spent maybe all of one hour with the Doctor but he was already learning not to question any oddness around this man.
A couple of minutes later, the two of them were not on a secret basement, but a very, very long secret tunnel. It reminded Harry a bit of the almost-endless corridor back in the TARDIS. It wasn't long after that that the Doctor found a secret lab. It was fortunate that Harry was so very used to discovering secret places and evil plots because otherwise he would have seriously panicked at what they found.
~ oooOOOooo ~
Spiders. Of all the bloody things in not just Earth but the whole universe, it had to be spiders. Giant ones too. Again. So, it had turned out that this whole entire thing – even the part where Donna had mysteriously appeared on a spaceship that had been nowhere near Earth – was all due to the machinations of the Racnoss Empress. She was apparently the last of an ancient species from another world – though Harry was very hard pressed to think of her as anything other than a giant red spider – and was trying to wake up her children, who were buried down in the center of the Earth – they had taken a nice little trip back on time to witness the very birth of the planet, and that was certainly going to be on Harry's list of Greatest Things Ever Seen. Problem was that her children were carnivorous little beasts that would devour everyone and everything on Earth. By the time Harry and the Doctor had gotten there, both Donna – who they had rescued and then lost while the Doctor babbled, distracting both himself and Harry – and Lance – who had somehow been made into a replacement 'key' after Donna had disappeared in a blue box – were being held by the Empress…in a spider web.
"Donna, hold on!" Harry yelled at her, bringing out his wand and pointing very, very carefully.
"To what?! I'm stuck in a web! Like a bloody fly!" The woman protested, wriggling in said web furiously.
Harry didn't waste any more time explaining, he didn't exactly want the Empress' attention on him either. "Diffindo!" The spell was thankfully aimed right and struck only the web, splitting the cocoon open just enough for Donna – and Lance, though Harry could admit that was more a coincidence than any actual effort on his part to save the traitorous man – to break free. Problem with breaking free was that they were stuck to the ceiling and it was a very long fall – center of the Earth and all.
"A little warning next time, magic boy!" Donna yelled, desperately holding on to the remains of the web, which was being torn more and more every second. Lance was just screaming incoherently.
"I did warn you!" The offended wizard protested, even as he once again pointed his wand at her. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Donna's shouting also turned incoherent as she suddenly found herself floating in midair. If it weren't for the fact that they were still in danger of being eaten by a giant spider and its offspring – and how odd was it that this was not the first time Harry found himself in such a situation? – he would probably be laughing.
Almost reluctantly, but not willing to let a man die just because he was a treacherous scumbag, he also levitated Lance out of the web. He was careful to drop the man – probably a couple of feet higher than was strictly necessary – somewhere as far away from him and Donna as possible. Unsurprisingly, Lance turned and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, the coward.
Unfortunately, this finally seemed to get the Empress's notice – who had until now been brilliantly distracted by the Doctor and his incessant babbling. She hissed furiously and moved towards them full of murderous intent.
Donna was trying to tug Harry away from the enraged spider, but the wizard would not budge. He was not going to run away and let the Empress and her children take over the whole bloody planet; maybe it wasn't really his Earth, not the same one he'd been born in, but it was still a planet full of innocent people and he couldn't just run away from this. He kept Donna behind him and was getting ready to fire another spell – in the corner of his mind currently not flooded with adrenaline he wondered if Arania Exumai also worked on out-of-space spiders – when he Doctor's voice interrupted the Empress' charge.
"Empress of the Racnoss! I give you one last chance, I can find you and your children a place in the universe to coexist, take that offer and end. This. Now." The Doctor's voice sounded cold and, though Harry was hesitant to even think it, deadly.
The Empress, however, seemed to think differently. She must have thought the Doctor could not really do anything to stop her, that his words were just words and not the warning they had clearly been meant to be. She declined the offer, hissing in laughter all the while.
"What happens next is your own doing." The Doctor still sounded grave, serious, but also sad and resigned. Harry did not dare look him in the eyes because he knew, with all possible certainty, that those eyes would once again be impossibly ancient and…strange, alien.
At that, the Empress tried to, once again, have them killed by her little robot minions – who were at least no longer dressed as Santa Claus, thankfully – but the Doctor put an end to that little plan when he revealed the remote control he'd somehow stuffed into one of his jacket pockets, apparently he was now in control of the robots.
"They are not needed, my children may feast on Martian flesh." The Empress hissed. If the situation was not as dire, Harry would have certainly been tempted to at least snicker at the continuous mistaking the Doctor for a Martian – which Harry for some reason could not help but picture as little green men.
"Oh, but I'm not from Mars." The Doctor's eyes were firmly focused on the Empress, solemn and determined. Said Empress was clearly confused by the mistaken identity.
"Then where?"
"My own planet is a far away and long since gone, but it's name lives on." He paused there for a second, as though gathering himself to mention his home world's name. "Gallifrey."
If the Empress of the Racnoss had been angry before, it was nothing to how she reacted to that. She hissed and spat. "They murdered the Racnoss!"
"I warned you." The Doctor said simply, though it was easy to see that there was a great weight in those words, burdening him with sorrow and something else Harry could not rightly name. "You did this." And with that, he put his hand in his pocket and brought out the Christmas ornaments that had attacked everyone at Donna's reception. Explosive Christmas ornaments. The Empress screamed.
The bombs started to go off, bringing parts of the walls and ceiling with them. Harry watched – only mildly distracted by Donna's grip on his arm suddenly tightening – as the water started to rush in, flooding the place. The Empress kept screaming and the water kept coming, drowning her recently-awoken children as it rushed down to the very core of the Earth.
He couldn't tear his eyes away. He didn't exactly like the Racnoss, the Empress had certainly made no friends in her continuous attempts to kill them and he knew her children would only ravage the planet until there was nothing but Racnoss left…but still. He couldn't help but feel somewhat sorry for their death, the end of a whole species; it wasn't that he wished the Doctor hadn't brought the river down on them, it was more that he wished he hadn't had to.
It was Donna's shouting that finally broke him from his trance of mixed horror/sorrow/relief.
"We have to go now! The whole place is gonna flood!" She yelled in his ear, once again tugging insistently at his arm. "Doctor! Doctor! You can stop now!" She called to the alien man, who had not spoken or even moved since detonating the explosives.
Harry, who had just managed to finally look away from the still screaming Empress, joined the shouting. "Doctor! Let's go!"
Their words finally seemed to get through to the Doctor, who visibly composed himself as best he could and quickly ran to join them. He only slowed down a bit to, almost unconsciously, take their hands, one in each of his, and quickly led them away from the flood and back to the tunnel. For just a moment he glanced back and Harry could see – because there simple was no way he couldn't notice – that the Doctor's eyes were once again those of that sorrowful, serious and impossibly old man he'd first seen standing by TARDIS's console.
~ oooOOOooo ~
After saving the world – and draining the Thames while they were at it – the Doctor brought them back aboard his ship and took them to Chiswick, where Donna was apparently from. They were currently standing in front of her house, watching the snow the Doctor had somehow made fall – "Atmospheric excitation!" – just for Donna. It was time to say goodbye.
Before he even saw her move, Harry found himself being hugged by the redhead. He only hesitated a moment before hugging her back. He knew Donna Noble for only a few hours, but there was something about being in mortal peril together that brought people close. He was really going to miss the brass ginger bride.
"You take care now, love. I don't care if you're the greatest wizard since Houdini, don't go about playing hero and getting hurt." She patted his hair a bit, making the teen fidget awkwardly for a moment or two before he finally just smiled at her.
"I will. You take care too, and don't you let what Lance said get to you, you were brilliant back there, Donna. I guess he just didn't deserve you."
Donna snorted amusedly. "You keep saying things like that to women and you'll find yourself mobbed and with a girlfriend before too long." Her grin turned positively wicked when she noticed his blush, but she was merciful enough not to comment on it.
She turned towards the Doctor then, and the two of them stared at each other for what seemed like a very long time. It was the Doctor who finally broke the silence. "You could always, you know…come with me, travel and see the stars and all that." He offered, his voice softer than usual even as he tried to make his tone casual.
Donna's eyes didn't leave him even as she answered. "No, I can't."
The Doctor tried once again to act casual, to hide his disappointment and hurt at the rejected offer. "Oh, okay." He said simply and turned to go back to the TARDIS.
"No, but I really can't." Donna said, for the first time in the whole day sounding somewhat unsure of herself. "It's just that…They were dying and you just stood there and then you made it snow!" She sounded as though she didn't know whether to be utterly amazed or scared stiff and settled for something in the middle.
The Doctor nodded, apparently understanding what she meant. He herded Harry back into the TARDIS before stepping in himself. Donna calling his name made him peek his head out of the ship and Harry could only barely hear what she said, but it would stay with him for a very long time.
"Find someone." Donna said, her voice firm but somewhat soft, at least soft for Donna.
"I don't need anyone." The Doctor protested, though it sounded forced even to Harry.
"Yes, you do. Because sometimes I think you need someone to stop you." Donna paused for a moment there, letting the Doctor think on it before she continued. "And don't make Harry have to do it. Get him back home, Doctor, he's too young to watch people die."
"I'll try." The Doctor's voice sounded rough as he said it. He never did specify which of her two requests he was referring to.
And with that, they were gone.
~ oooOOOooo ~
The TARDIS had finally stopped, it's strange grinding noise now but an echo in Harry's mind, and its two occupants stared at each other. The wizard didn't really want to think where the ship might have taken them now; The Doctor had already left Donna and now it stood to reason that it was Harry's turn to be dropped off. Where he would be left was the question he didn't want answered.
"So…what…what about me?" He hated the hesitant, almost fearful tone in his voice. He didn't want to know, but he had to.
The Doctor was still staring at him, but Harry had the oddest feeling that the man was more like looking through him. "I can't get you back home. The Walls have closed." He repeated his earlier words, regretful but firm.
Harry just nodded absently, turning away and trying very, very hard not to let the man see him break just a bit at the confirmation that his world was lost to him forever. He didn't really think he was fooling anyone.
"But I did say I would take you to the closest thing possible." The Doctor's words, softly spoken though they were, instantly made Harry look up with wary, hesitant hope. "Parallel universes are different from one another, but still similar. Sometimes the same people live in several of them, they've just had different lives. Somewhere out there there's people who look like your family, who are your family, or could have been, had their lives been different. I could take you to them, if you want."
The explanation made Harry both unbelievably happy and terribly sad at the same time. His family? Well, his parents had died long ago, but if what the Doctor said was true and in this universe their lives had been different then it was entirely possible that they had lived. Maybe Voldemort never rose to power in this universe, maybe Lily and James Potter were living full, brilliant lives still. But then again, if that was the case then it was very much possible that they had their own Harry, the parallel version of himself. They would not be his parents, not really.
Still, he couldn't deny that he would do anything to meet them, maybe just see them. It was maybe cruel, to know that he might have a family here who were not really his own but could have been, had things gone different in his world.
He was thinking of how to answer – as though he really would say anything other than 'Yes, please!' – when the Doctor once again broke through his thoughts. "But like I said, they might be different from the people you knew in your original universe, so you have to be mindful of that. For one, do all humans in your universe have those things?" The man's eyes were now on the wizard's wand, still clutched tightly in one hand.
That certainly brought Harry's thoughts away from the possibilities and complications of parallel-world parents – thankfully – and made him realize he had yet to explain magic to the Doctor. Talking about magic with an alien on a space – and time! – ship. His life was never boring.
"Ah…well, not really. Just some people can use them…"
And what followed was a very long and very complicated lecture on magic and witches and wizards. Harry would have been perfectly happy to leave it at 'I'm a wizard' but the Doctor had asked an almost terrifying amount of questions – half of which Harry had never even considered, much less had an answer to – that had made it go from simple to complicated and include topics such as abilities, education culture and even politics.
Was it odd that the Doctor's manic grin was somehow almost more terrifying than his terribly serious – also known as 'Oncoming Storm', though Harry had yet to find that out – look?
~ oooOOOooo ~
Author's Notes: That was like the longest chapter I have ever, ever written in my entire life…but I feel it was worth it. It was a bit hard in that I didn't want it to just be a recap of the actual episode, with Harry just standing there and occasionally saying something, so I had to change things but still follow the basic plot. Anyways, I liked the end result…how about you guys?
And next chapter! What do you think…should the Doctor and Harry find this universe's Wizarding World or should we leave or favorite wizard stranded?
A great bit, heartfelt "THANK YOU!"to all the lovely people who were kind enough to review….and to all those who didn't: it's never too late XD
Also, if you notice any mistakes, whether they are in grammar, spelling or my very sad lack of knowledge on British words, I would very much appreciate it if you pointed them out to me so that they may be corrected. Thank you ^_^