London, England, Earth
7:30am
November 24th 2016
The Doctor stood outside her home, this could be considered stalking but he called it professional interest. After all, it was his job. He supposed he better get on with it. The Doctor's hand glowed a golden colour as he made his way towards the block of flats Clara Oswald lived in. He buzzed, told who ever answered that he was a plumber and made his way all the way up to Clara's flat. Annoyingly, as an agent he had to make contact with his assigned human. Or as he liked to call them, pudding brains. The Doctor had many humans assigned to him throughout his years of service and he had worn many different face so he wasn't noticeable to the pudding brains he granted wishes for. In secret, he loved to help people and after his assignments were completed, he always checked on them afterwards; hence the changing of faces. His first human was named Rose Tyler and she had wished for a better life, so he had granted her love and allowed her to meet a tall, dark haired man with gravity-defying hair.
His next assignment was Donna Noble, who had wished for money and love; so he granted her a winning lottery ticket and a husband by the name of Sean Temple. Another one of his assignments was Martha Jones, who had wished to pass all her exams, which she had and moved on to become a Doctor. The Doctor had countless other people he had made wishes and dreams come true for, but this was his first assignment where he had to grant happiness, he was certain he was going to be around this pudding brain for a while. The Doctor sighed and raised his hand, knocking on the door multiple times as he waited for Clara to answer.
He put on a fake smile and activated his bracelet as Clara opened her front door, 'Sorry to bother you so early in the morning but I was wondering if you could tell me where to find the manager of this place.'
'Manager?'
'Yes, manager,'
'Um, there isn't one. But I could give you the number of the landlord?'
The Doctor arched one of his angry looking eyebrows at her, 'Sure,' he said rather quickly, not entirely sure what a landlord was.
She disappeared into her flat and he would have followed her in if he didn't have any common sense. When she returned, she quickly wrote down the number and passed him the piece of paper. The Doctor forced another fake smile, confused by their conversation. He took in her appearance, she had dark shoulder length hair, inflated brown eyes, her face was round and she was wearing a smart red shirt and a black skirt, she looked like a school teacher and Jack was right; she was pretty. The Doctor cleared his throat and quickly said his thanks and left her in peace. He could feel her giant eyes on the back of his head as he disappeared round the corner and down the stairs. Once he was downstairs, he stopped to look at his bracelet and took in the information;
'Name; Clara Oswald,
Age; Thirty years old,
Status; Single,
Occupation; Teacher at Coal Hill School,
Wish; Happiness
Father; Dave Oswald
Mother; Ellie Oswald [deceased]
Nationality; English
Species; Human
The Doctor sighed and took one last look at the building before he disappeared and thought of ways to make Clara Oswald happy.
Coal Hill School
10:15am
Clara's classroom
Clara sat at her desk, piles upon piles of English books in front of her from each year group she taught. Clara taught top set Year Seven's, gifted and talented Year Eight's, Years Nine and Ten and then the Year Eleven's that were troublesome and a massive pain in her ass. The only classes she didn't teach were the Sixth Formers, they were given to Adrian. Currently, she was busy marking the Year Seven books and only looked up when she heard a noise from outside her classroom. Standing there was a man and she frowned, confused and a little bit concerned when she realised it was that odd Scottish man from earlier. He disappeared from the doorway as soon as she had spotted him, but Clara yanked open the door to look left and right down the corridor before she had realised nobody was there and the strange grey haired stick insect of a man had banished out of thin air. Clara shrugged, brushed a strand of her hair out of her face and made her way back to sit at her desk, her thick eyebrows frowned in concentration as she tapped her pencil against the desk.
'Miss, are you alright?' one of her students asked from the back of the room, a frown on his face.
It was Billy Wakefield, the biggest troublemaker in the school but Clara and Billy seemed to have an understanding between the two of them, they both seemed to respect each other, as student and teacher.
Clara smiled at him, a nod of her head as she folded her arms over her chest and began walking around the classroom, 'I'm okay, Billy, thank you for asking.'
Billy shrugged his shoulders, his voice deep and dripping with a typical EastEnd accent, 'No problem, Miss.'
Clara nodded her head slowly, blindly walking in between desks as she looked for any sign of the strange man outside in the courtyard. She must have been imagining it and now she couldn't get him out of her head. So, Clara came up with a plan that included the students reading and acting in class, surely that would distract her. Right?
'Right, okay! Year Eleven's, stop writing,' she told them, her voice quiet as she attempted not to startle them in the almost silent room.
'I want you to act on a scene from The Great Gatsby,' she smiled at them and watched as her students rearranged the tables and chairs and stood in a line as they always did when they were asked to act out a scene from a book.
Clara skimmed through the book and chose a scene where everybody was partying in Gatsby's house, she laughed to herself and pointed at Billy, 'Okay, Billy, I want you to play Gatsby and…' she trailed her sentence off and pointed at Francesca James, a girl with long brown hair and bright blue eyes who oozed confidence and seemed to get on well with Billy.
'Francesca, I want you to play Daisy.'
Clara searched through the book until she found other characters and pointed to a male student at the back of the room who was fairly short and unknown to Clara, could barely speak a word, 'Phillip, I'd like you to narrate the scene and play the part of Nick.'
There was an awkward silence and then the class started to whisper between them, Phillip didn't move a muscle or say a word. Clara frowned, her hand on her hip as she slowly looked around the room at the whispering students. Had she said something wrong? Usually, she was quite sensitive with her students. Had she missed something? Clara cleared her throat, her gaze landing on Phillip at the back of the room as he looked away from her and cleared his throat, opening his mouth and then not one word managed to come out. Clara swallowed, oh. He was either mute or had trouble speaking, which meant he had a stammer or a stutter; two completely different things, she had remembered.
Clara rubbed the back of her neck, the situation becoming incredibly awkward as she realised how badly she had been slacking on looking at notes other teachers had left her; informing her of anything new developing with her students. God, she was an awful teacher. She had a rubbish life and now she couldn't even teach properly or understand any of her student's problems. Eventually, Phillip ruffled his red hair and stepped forward, book in hand.
'M – Miss, I – I can try…' Phillip stuttered, his face growing as red as a beetroot as he felt as though everybody in his class was staring at him, his face was almost as red as his hair.
Clara shook her head immediately, 'No, no. Of course not Phillip, I'll take the part of Nick, you just write notes down. I'll sort out some help with your stammer, I promise,' she smiled warmly at him like she normally did and his shoulders dropped, a sigh of relief escaping his lips as he sat back down at his desk.
Clara felt awful and it was all because of that ridiculous man distracting her. She took a deep breath and turned over the page, beginning to read the part of Nick as she told the story and the students started to act as though they were at a party and having a good time in the 1920's. Clara closed her eyes for a moment and wished that her students would start to do well in their coursework and exams, that was all she wanted, for her students to do well; that was what any good teacher would want. Eventually, the scene finished and the class calmed down and sat back in their seats. Unknown to her, the Doctor was stood just outside her classroom when he had heard her make her first wish. He made sure to record the thought on his bracelet and smiled a little too knowingly as his hand glowed a golden colour and disappeared from his fingers. The Doctor watched on as Clara's wish was granted and the look on her face was priceless when all of her student's hands shot up at once and suddenly, each and every one of her students knew everything about The Great Gatsby and all its deeper meanings. The Doctor smirked and vanished to go and find the Head Master, he would act as if he was the new Caretaker at Coal Hill so he could keep a close eye on Clara Oswald and her wishes. He made a mental note to buy a flat near hers so his story seemed realistic and he didn't seem like a creepy old man stalking a young, extremely pretty woman. Did he say pretty? No, not possible, he was never attracted to humans.
Coal Hill School
12:30pm, Lunch break
Staff Room
'Something really quite… odd happened to me this morning.'
'Your life is fairly weird, a lot of odd things happen to you.'
'Odder than usual.'
'Is odder a word?'
'It is now.'
'You know, as an English teacher you should really know if odder is a word or not.'
Clara scrunched up her nose and sipped on her cup of tea, 'Back to the point then, Pond.' she laughed, noticing the fully packed lunch Amy had on her lap.
'Quite sweet that Rory packs your lunch for you, usually that's the woman's job.'
Amy rolled her eyes and then began to smirk, 'Our marriage defeats any other marriage because we're equal… but I definitely wear the trousers in this relationship,' she laughed, her Scottish accent almost as thick as that weird man from this morning.
Clara closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, her leg resting on the other one, 'Anyway, back to my weird morning. It was half seven in the morning and I was just about to go out the door to drive to work on my bike and this weird man knocks on my door -'
Amy immediately interrupted her friend, her mouth half full of a ham sandwich, 'Did you fuck him?'
Clara gasped, her brown eyes inflated and wide as she grabbed a book and threw it at her, laughing when it smacked her in the chest and fell to the floor, 'Amelia Pond, stop it with that foul mouth of yours! You have two young children, you can't talk like that and you're an Art teacher,'
Amy shrugged and continued to eat her sandwich, nodding for Clara to go on with her story.
Clara gave her a funny face and after a moment, she continued with her story as she day dreamed, her cup of tea held up to her mouth the whole time, 'I didn't sleep with him, he was old enough to be my father. But, he was really weird, we'll refer to him as the weird man from now on. Anyway, he asked to see the manager, which I thought was really strange because they're called landlords, not managers.'
Amy arched her eyebrow at her, moving on to eat a packet of crisps as she crunched on them a little too enthusiastically, 'He does sound weird, carry on.'
'So I gave him the landlords number and he just looked at me like I had two heads, like he didn't even know what a landlord was. Then he said thank you and left as quickly as he could, he pretty much ran. Then earlier when I was teaching my Year Eleven's, I wished in my head that my students would start to do well and ten minutes later, all their hands shot up and they answered every question right.'
Amy frowned and stopped eating her crisps, her hand half way in the bag, 'Wait, so you think the weird man has something to do with your wish for your students to do well?'
Clara sighed and ran her hands over her face, 'No, no, of course not. That's just stupid and childish and – and I'm not a child anymore and I shouldn't believe in silly ideas of wish granting.'
Amy laughed and finished off her lunch, leaning forward to give Clara a quick hug and a rub on the back, 'I've got to get back to my classes, but you should probably get home and get an early night in. I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning.'
Amy smiled at her and Clara still didn't feel at ease, she felt just as weird as she had done this morning. She sipped on her tea and reached for a biscuit from one of the packets, fully aware that she had forgotten to pack herself a lunch this morning. She would have done, if it wasn't for weird man standing at her door. She frowned and continued to think of him, his wild grey hair that was incredibly curly and out of control, his weird dress sense and that red velvet coat he was wearing. She sighed and stood up after she had finished her biscuit and tea, her heart threatening to fall out of her chest when she left the staff room and settled back behind her desk in her classroom.
