I very nearly didn't write a second chapter to Renaissance of the Renegades. My initial enthusiasm for the idea petered out, in favour of a pure Harry Potter fic that had a Dark Lord Harry. I will probably post the initial chapter to that later, but I thought, given that some people enjoyed the first chapter of Renaissance of the Renegades, that they would enjoy a second. So, here it is. Hopefully, I can continue this story as a full story.

Incidentally, I was surprised that a couple of the reviewers were familiar with the characters in question. Hopefully, I do you guys proud...

RENAISSANCE OF THE RENEGADES

CHAPTER 2:

HISTORY OF THE RENEGADES

Neither Omega nor the Rani ever put much stock in superstition. Omega lived at a time when the Pythia ruled Gallifrey, before Rassilon's revolution overthrew her (and narrowly avoided a curse of sterility(1)), and the last remnants of her followers became the Sisterhood of Karn in exile. The Rani thought of science and logic as supreme, and focused on biology rather than metaphysics.

And yet, here they were, reincarnated on another world. In human bodies. The hows escaped them, and aggravated them, but they were not averse to taking advantage of the situation to begin anew. Both, after all, were infamous renegades back where they came from, both adversaries of the most infamous renegade of them all, the Doctor, whom the Rani knew at the Academy under his nickname of Theta Sigma or 'Thete', as Drax used to say.

They had both ended up in the same black hole, in the Sector of Forgotten Souls, the very one Omega created in the first place. The Rani's TARDIS had been sabotaged by one of the many aliens she had as minions and experimental subjects. It wasn't the first time it had happened: the Doctor had sabotaged her TARDIS during that incident involving the Master, and the Tetraps hijacked the TARDIS after her plans on Lakertya failed. But those times, she managed to get out of it. This time, though…she didn't. As the TARDIS plummeted into the black hole, out of control, the Rani's last thoughts were of being torn apart. Her end, ironically enough, was witnessed by tourists on the Jolly Chronolidays tourist centre nearby, based on a replica of Omega's legendary ship, the Eurydice. She had cursed her own end, even as she was torn apart, and would have done anything for a second chance.

Mere months later, a deranged Omega, in a copy of the body of the Doctor and believing himself to BE the Doctor, ended up at that very site. A series of events happened, ending with Omega falling into the black hole once more, seeing Sentia, the woman who wanted to be his wife, torn apart by the gravitational forces(2). In his sorrow and fury and madness, he allowed his will to be scattered by the forces within the singularity. Before he died, he only wished that he could find happiness in another life, and with another, one who could at least approach his intelligence. One who could appreciate it, complement it, and in a world without the Doctor or the meddling Time Lords. Omega, once known as Peylix, just wanted a life to lead.

And the singularity, the force he once harnessed for god-like power, granted him that wish. And that of the Rani.

Harry didn't regain his memories until a much later time, but he clashed with his relatives repeatedly, especially where academic brilliance was concerned. He eclipsed Dudley, and refused to back down when his relatives tried to force him to dumb himself down. Harry felt a need to prove himself.

So too did Hermione. She was distant from everyone, part of her evaluating everyone she met as potential test subjects and specimens. Few wanted to be her friend, save for the advantages it gave in getting homework done. But at the same time, part of her still yearned for friends, or at least a friend, an intelligent one who she could talk to on another level. Oh, she had her parents' love, something that she actually enjoyed in this life, even once she regained her memories.

That had happened in their second year, at the Deathday Party for Nearly-Headless Nick. Peeves, ever the prankster, had noticed something about them, and, knowing he would cause chaos, did something to them both that unlocked their memories. Harry had promptly collapsed, while Hermione left almost immediately, in shock, trying to reconcile her memories. Hence, she was petrified by the Basilisk, the first victim.

Once, the Rani had created special landmines that converted anyone who stepped on them into trees, effectively petrifying them alive. Now petrified herself, she had to wait for several months before she could be revived. Thankfully, she could put her consciousness into a trance to avoid going insane, though at other times, she went over her newfound memories, and began formulating ways to regain her Time Lord physiology. She also knew, having seen Harry's reaction, that he too was a Time Lord, due to a faint telepathic signature. But which one? She sincerely hoped it wasn't the Master, or indeed any of the small clique she belonged to at the Academy, called the Deca(3). It was something of a relief to learn that it was Omega, despite the fact that she had heard from her contacts on Gallifrey that Omega turned out to be a ranting madman.

But the Harry she knew was a more thoughtful person. Yes, a bit arrogant and opinionated, but as the 'Ravens within the Lion's Den' (they had argued with the Hat that Gryffindor's academic standards could do with raising, and the Hat eventually plumped for agreeing with them), they had a friendship stronger than Harry had with most of his other students, including Ron Weasley. Oh, they were friends for a given definition, but Harry and Hermione had the stronger bond.

After learning he was a Parselmouth, Harry, or rather, Omega soon found the Chamber, and intercepted Ginny, destroying the diary and removing her infatuation with him through a bit of psychic surgery. She became infinitely more tolerable company, though Omega actually preferred the company of her eccentric Ravenclaw friend, Luna Lovegood, who seemed to know more than she let on. Indeed, he and the Rani soon learned she had an interesting secret. He had also managed to bind the half-maddened Basilisk to him. Said Basilisk was now in a new, city-sized chamber within his TARDIS, with Omega buying livestock to feed it. And the Basilisk had never been happier.

Omega and the Rani, once the latter had been freed from her petrification (Omega, as Harry, had offered to pay for imported mandrakes, which Snape accepted), had a private discussion. They learned of who they really were, and accepted each other for it. They decided to embark on projects to bring back their Time Lord physiologies (well, the Rani's: Omega had vanished into the black hole before Rassilon began embarking on altering Time Lords through genetic engineering, but he wouldn't say no to having two hearts like he did when inhabiting a copy of the Doctor's body), as well as recreate a TARDIS. After choosing their subjects for their third year, they deliberately chose enough that Professor McGonagall would give them Time Turners, which they could also use to begin using as the base for their new TARDIS. The lack of sleep didn't bother them: Time Lords could function without sleep for far longer periods than humans with less side effects, and once they regained that physiology, that helped.

The Rani's project, recreating Time Lord physiology, was easy. The pair of them discovered that, when they re-awoke their Time Lord memories, they also gained a special, unique ability to their magic. Omega had the ability to shape and manipulate matter at a basic level, even convert it into antimatter, making it a powerful offensive weapon, as well as being able to create servants similar to the Gel Guards or the Ergon, though doing anything other than simple matter-antimatter conversion took an effort and a lot of energy, even with magic. He also had the ability to manipulate gravity to an extraordinary degree. The Rani, on the other hand, could vivisect her targets alive, and put them back together, with or without harming them in any way. She could also bring them under her control, like she used specially enhanced maggots to take control of certain people…something the Master took advantage of when he meddled in her plans to try and one-up the Doctor. The Rani managed to use a combination of that ability, along with a specially created vector virus, to transform them into Time Lords.

Of course, they had other distractions to deal with in that year: namely learning that Harry's godfather had escaped from Azkaban, the Minister in his infinite (or rather, infinitesimal) wisdom had posted Dementors around Hogwarts, and their DADA teacher was a werewolf. Although Hermione, as the freshly reborn Rani (well, by several months, but that was generally a short time to a Time Lord who could live for centuries if not millennia), merely saw Remus Lupin as a research opportunity.

During his attempts to create a TARDIS in the Chamber of Secrets, Omega actually created a time manipulation field similar to the Time Turners, only they sped up time within the field, and to help the pair of them learn more of the knowledge in this world, Omega and the Rani studied. Because they spent quite a while in the field, they began to age faster than they normally would. But this was fine: Time Lord childhood and adolescence was similar enough to human adolescence. Omega created something not unlike a TARDIS' Chameleon Circuit that would make them appear their normal ages. By the end of their third year, their bodies were now 17, when Hermione was meant to be 14, and Harry 13, coming up to his 14th birthday.

They eventually decided to drop Divination and Muggle Studies at the end of the year: the former was virtually useless, and the latter was, for the most part, out of date, with the most recent discussion of technology, at best, being radio and the car. The textbook itself dated from the 1930s, and was never updated since, despite the protests of the teacher, Charity Burbage, who was considerably more up to date: she at least knew of nuclear weapons and spaceflight, though electronics and computers were a little more tricky. But by then, the Time Turners had done their job, and Omega was able to fake breaking one of them in order to steal the sands within, which turned out to be a strange mixture of Taranium and Kontron crystals(4), which accounted for the rarity of the substance. But then again, both were not normally found on Earth, though what little literature there was on Time Turners suggested that the sand was created through alchemy.

Another alchemy of sorts was the growing relationship between them. What started as a purely platonic friendship and alliance began to grow into love. Omega never thought he would love again, as the last woman he did (admittedly an obsessive fangirl) got killed, and the Rani considered love to be a chemical imbalance. However, as their time together grew, so too did the realisation that they were growing in affection. While Omega had long since disappeared into the black hole when the Rani was born, she had never been one to hero-worship him (the Doctor had been an Omega fanboy, though, and the Rani later heard rumours that somehow, the Doctor had gained control over the famed stellar controller known as the Hand of Omega, and tricked Davros into destroying Skaro with it(5)). Considering that they were both by this point millennia old in terms of mental age, such age differences didn't exactly cut it.

What united them were a number of things: being opposed by the Doctor and having their plans thwarted by him; being scientists who were prodigies in their respective fields; a contempt for the dullards who comprised the masses; and an eagerness to start afresh. As they saw the inequities inherent in Magical Britain, and indeed in magical society the world over, they also began to get ambitious. And not long after they both reached the biological age of 16, they became lovers.

The first major rift between the pair and Ron happened when Harry, after losing his broom after an incident involving Dementors, was sent another one, the latest one. Hermione had taken it to McGonagall, worried that the anonymous broom had been cursed by an enemy, possibly Sirius Black. Even then, the pair had doubts about Sirius' guilt: the story seemed to have a few holes. But Ron believed that Hermione acted without caring about Harry's feelings, and while Omega did believe that the Rani did act rather precipitously, he viewed it as her actually caring about him. The fact that, even with her memories restored, someone like the Rani COULD care about him was a surprise.

The second, and more serious, rift happened when Scabbers, later revealed to be Wormtail, was apparently attacked and eaten by Crookshanks. Despite trying to mediate between the two, Harry was all but given an ultimatum by Ron, to ditch Hermione, or sever their friendship. Harry opted to do the latter, much to Ron's surprise and anger. Harry pointed out that Scabbers was old, decrepit, and not long for this world. Not to mention a hand-me-down from Percy that Ron had called useless before anyway. Harry had offered to buy Ron an owl, but Ron, in his anger at Harry defending Hermione, refused.

Pride and prejudice had shattered a friendship, not wholly beyond repair, but even when Ron rediscovered Scabbers, there was a cooling of the relationship between them that remained. The truth was, it wasn't Ron's obnoxious and opinionated attitude that put them off: Ron was, in the end, a decent enough person. But it was his lack of intelligence, or rather, his laziness with his intelligence. He was intelligent enough to play chess and play it well, but he didn't do anything else with what had to be a decent intelligence, something that was anathema to Omega and the Rani. Ron didn't exercise his intellect beyond chess. He didn't want to learn anything he didn't want to. In short, they had become incompatible, and the embryonic Golden Trio dissolved.

They managed to learn the full truth from Sirius about what happened, but thanks to a number of factors (Snape being a dick, Remus forgetting his potion, and the Dementors deciding to attack), they were forced to rescue Sirius using first their Time Turner, and then their prototype TARDIS recreation. After that, Omega and the Rani were pissed to learn that Snape had deliberately outed Remus as a werewolf…which the pair of them took delight in revenging themselves. Now, Snape didn't serve two masters…or rather, not the two masters he served before. Instead of being caught between Dumbledore and Voldemort, he was now forced to serve beings he once denigrated as beneath him, only to realise too late that they were his superior by far. Omega found the irony of enslaving Snape as his spy in Dumbledore's camp appealing, especially as he learned, through telepathy (Gallifreyan telepathy bypassing Occlumency rather handily), that Snape had once loved his mother, a love that later became a twisted obsession. For goodness' sake, Snape wanted Voldemort to spare Lily alone out of the Potters sorely so that he could have her to himself, even thinking of making her into his sex slave if (or rather, knowing Lily, when) she refused.

In any case, they kept their friendship with the Twins, and with Percy, oddly enough, but their relationship with the younger Weasley children had become distant. Even so, they were heading there even now.

In Old High Gallifreyan, Omega said to the Rani, "Look at these humans, these wizards and witches, scrambling around without heed or care, even to try and conceal themselves. Fools."

"You're not saying anything I don't already know," the Rani sniffed. "Incidentally, I ran into Luna earlier. I ran our proposal by her, and she seems willing, as long as she can keep her body as an interface."

"Hopefully, we can," Omega mused. "We'll discuss this later. Time to put on the masks."

The Rani nodded, and as they approached the Weasley tent, they put on the mask of relatively normal people, humans. Intelligent, haughty humans, but humans all the same. The time had not yet come to reveal the full extent of their true selves to Magical Britain.

At least not yet…

CHAPTER 2 ANNOTATIONS:

So, the history of how Omega and the Rani came to be in the Potterverse. And is there something involving Luna? Well, DZ2's review for the first chapter in The Cauldron gave me an idea…

Next, the riot! And Omega and the Rani let loose…

1. In the novels, the Pythia, upon being overthrown, committed suicide, but not before cursing Gallifrey to sterility, ensuring that the Time Lords would have to be born from special biological engineering engines known as looms. Here, this was avoided, in order to keep continuity with the actual TV show, particularly the new series.

2. While how the Rani came into the Potterverse was made up (and presumably takes place, for her, much later in her life after Planet of the Rani), how Omega was wasn't, more or less, though it disregards Gallifrey: Intervention Earth. I basically summarised the events of the audio story Omega, albeit in heavily abridged form.

3. In the novel Divided Loyalties, the Deca was a group of ten Time Lord students. Amongst them included the Time Lords who would become the Doctor (then known by the nickname of Thete or Theta Sigma), the Master, the Rani, the Meddling Monk, Drax (from The Armageddon Factor) and the War Chief (from The War Games). The Deca are mentioned in The Rani Elite, so while the novel may not be canon (for this work, anyway), the Deca are.

4. Both are exotic materials relating to time manipulation. Taranium was a vital part of Dalek time-manipulation technology in the Hartnell era, with a time machine powered by a small amount of the substance being used in The Dalek Masterplan. Even more vital to the story was a canister of Tarranium used as the power source for a Dalek superweapon, the Time Destructor. Kontron crystals were part of the titular time corridor in Timelash. The Doctor used them as a personal weapon to make himself invisible, as well as absorb and redirect time-acceleration beams.

5. Which happened in Remembrance of the Daleks.