Amelia Pond was having the time of her life.

She'd spent most of the night exploring the castle, having gotten the slip on the adults who were meant to be watching her. It wasn't hard. Grown-ups rarely noticed anything unless it was directly in front of their face, and apparently wizards were no exception to this.

If it had been yesterday, Amelia would've been surprised by the fact that wizards and witches and magic existed. As it was, she'd already met real aliens and had seen their spaceship and had teleported and had guarded a man disguised as a rat. Nothing phased her anymore.

She'd fallen asleep in one of the many hidey-holes she'd discovered in the castle, more content than she'd been in a long time.

She'd awoken the next morning in a bed, and for a moment, fear gripped her seven year old body before she sat up more fully and saw that she was in a room that wasn't her own. She relaxed. It wasn't just a dream, she thought, at the same time that she spotted the food.

The Doctor and Anna had kept her safe so far. She trusted that the food was safe, and so, she ate it, happily unaware that she had been forgotten about.

She did wonder how she'd gotten into a bed, though. That answer came moments later, as if by magic, when there was a knock on the door. "Ms. Pond?" the really old wizard from last night asked through the door. He looked more like the wizards she had grown up around, with long beards and robes. He was much kinder than them, though, but that could be because he was so ancient compared to everyone else. Old people, if they weren't always sleeping, were always really wise, in her opinion. Unless they were Grandma Berty. Then they were just downright mean. And so were their dogs.

"Come in!" she called to him, though her mouth was full.

He entered, a kind look on his face. "Ah, I see you've found breakfast," he said, and she nodded.

"Yeah. Thank you," she added, hastily. "Where're my parents?" she suddenly thought to ask, because it was strange that the Doctor and Anna weren't here. She only called them her parents because the Doctor had told her that it was really important that she did, so she did.

"I have no idea the whereabouts of your parents," he told her, sitting down in a chair that she could've sworn wasn't there a moment ago. She wondered if he'd made it appear by magic. "If you're asking of the whereabouts of Ms. Monroe and the Doctor-"

"They are too my parents," she argued, though she quickly lost her bravado when he gave her that look adults sometimes did, when they'd caught her out on a lie. She looked down at her breakfast. "Well, they are," she muttered, to her food.

"If you say so," he told her, and she looked up at him, annoyed. "But, enough about that. I think it's time that we have a bit of a chat, don't you?"

She frowned. "About what?"

"About how you got here, what it is that you're doing here, the like."

She looked down and away. "The Do- I mean, dad said he'd already explained it," she said.

"Yes, he did give quite the fantastical tale about how you three apparated in at exactly the right moment to catch Mr. Pettigrew." He paused. "Do you know what it means to apparate, Ms. Pond?"

He was no longer wise. Instead, he was just annoying.

"Of course I do."

Of course she didn't. But, she was starting to dislike him and that meant he'd gotten on her bad side. She put the food down, crossing her arms and looking out the window.

"I did not mean to offend, Ms. Pond," he told her, and she rolled her eyes. She was starting to dislike this castle, she thought, curling up against the wall. She wanted to go home.

But, she quickly shook herself out of that thinking. She wanted to save the world. Sometimes, that meant being somewhere you didn't want to be and doing something you didn't want to do, no matter how much you wanted to be at home with your mum, snuggled up with your favorite stuffed bear.

She still missed her bear, even as she turned to look at Dumbledore.

"I want to see my parents now," she insisted.

"I would like that very much as well," he agreed, and she rolled her eyes, looking away from him. "But I'm afraid Ms. Monroe and the Doctor have vanished."

She frowned. "No they haven't," she said.

"I know this isn't what you want to hear, Ms. Pond- Amelia. Can I call you Amelia?"

"No, you can't," she told him. "I want to see them, where are they? They wouldn't just leave me here."

They wouldn't. They just wouldn't. They'd had the promise of adventure and they wouldn't just abandon her here, not when-

The longing for her mum and her stuffed bear intensified, and for a moment, just a moment, she forgot that she wanted to save the world. The only thing she did want was to be home, for this to be over. She was only seven, what did she know about saving the world?

"I'm afraid that they have, Ms. Pond, and I am sorry for that. It is a truly awful thing to be abandoned by the people who promised to protect you. But, I'm still here, and I would like to help you. In return, I would need you to answer a few simple questions."

She sniffled, frowning. "What happened to your hand?" she asked.

He shook his robe back over his blackened hand, shaking his head, giving her a kind smile.

#####

She was startled to find that she wasn't in the Great Hall anymore, now standing somewhere else that was completely unfamiliar to her. For a moment, she thought one of the Weasley twins was playing another trick (George was her favorite, and she could already tell them apart), but she didn't think this for long before she realized that it was familiar. She was standing on her bed, home.

Relief fluttered through her, immediately diving to pick up her teddy bear and hugging him closely to her chest.

No more saving the world for now, she thought, happy to be home, tucked away in bed, her sleeping parents none the wiser.

That happiness wouldn't last forever. It wasn't long until Amelia was once again itching for adventure. She wrote down the stories of what had happened, and her parents applauded her imagination, though it wasn't long before that happiness that their daughter was so creative was turning into worry that their daughter was something a little more... weird.

Four psychiatrists later and none of them had managed to convince her that her 'imaginary friends' weren't real, that her trip at Hogwarts wasn't real and that she hadn't spent a week learning magic that she'd never be able to perform.

By the time that she was fifteen, she began skipping the sessions altogether. It was never spoken about in her household after that, even if it was in the air all around them. Her parents and the rest of this stupid town thought that she was crazy. Well, that was okay, because she thought they were crazy, and anyway, who cared about what they thought? Her eighteenth birthday was next year and she was well on track to start her whirlwind tour of the world. Years of lying about various things (though she never lied about her imaginary friends) had made her quite the creative writer (something even her teachers had grumbled begrudgingly about, even when they'd loudly bemoaned she wasn't even close to a good student), and she'd secured an internship with a travel magazine, Flotsam and Jetsam. It was well renowned in small parts of the U.K., but it was a stepping stone to something bigger.

"But college!" her parents had bemoaned her, over and over again. "And what about starting a family? How are you gonna start a family if you're off galavanting about the world? That lovely boy Rory is always over here, what about him?"

"What about Rory?" she'd always asked, defensively.

But, what about Rory. It was a question that had started to have a weaker defense recently. Rory, sweet, kind Rory had always been the only one who believed her. It was one of the first things he'd said to her, after all was said and done and the rumors had spread.

"I believe you," he blurted out, and she still laughed at the way the words just tumbled out of his mouth, without any preamble.

"About what?"

"About, you know. The-the Doctor and Anna Milner-"

"Monroe," she corrected him, but she couldn't begrudge him a mispronunciation when he seemed to be the only person in this entire town who did believe her. "She's an all-powerful being, you know. Whatever that means."

But, Rory, sweet, kind, always available Rory, wanted to be a nurse. He wasn't exactly happy where he was, though he could be described as content to be in Leadworth. Any time she found herself starting to even think about imagining a life with him, it vanished like smoke the moment she thought about being stuck in Leadworth her entire life, raising 2.5 children and receiving the same glares on the same corners in the same town, forever.

But, time passed, and more feelings developed. Rory studied to be a nurse and she commuted an hour every day to make it for the internship that was much less about the travel or the writing and more about the way the execs in the office liked their coffee.

And then it was about how she'd slapped one of the execs in his office because he'd grabbed her when she'd been unaware. It only ever happened the one time, but once was enough.

"They can't fire you for that, he should be the one that's fired!" Rory said, completely outraged. She'd never seen Rory so angry, so passionate about anything, and she suddenly couldn't remember what was standing in their way, all those little reasons. Instead, all she remembered was how he'd never stopped believing her.

The kiss was a long time coming, but god, it felt good.

Suddenly, it didn't matter that the exec had promised her she'd never work in this town again, or that she had no prospects or idea of what happened next. The only thing that mattered was that she was kissing Rory, and their future was opening up before them, like a flower.

She applied for jobs, but the exec had done an incredibly good job at getting her blacklisted. Her parents let her live at home with them, but it wasn't long before they were asking for rent and she was forced to get a job... and then another... and then another, until three years had passed and the only thing that had changed was that she was now living with Rory, about to get married without a clue of how to get to where she wanted to be.

She loved Rory with all of her heart, really, she did, but she was 21 for god's sake and she'd never been further than Gloucester, which was half an hour by car. This was not where her life was supposed to be. She was supposed to have traveled, seen the world, been an incredibly famous writer. She suddenly remembered the seven year old who had wanted to save the world, and she curled up in bed clutching the same bear and wondering what had happened to that little girl.

A sound so impossible, one she had heard in her dreams over and over again, happened at that exact moment, but because she'd heard it in her dreams and imagined it hearing it so many times over the years, she'd grown accustomed to ignoring it.

She shot up before she even knew what she was doing, out the door and still in her nightie, because she'd been about to sleep and wake up to get married to Rory and for the next phase of her life to start, all the what-ifs whirling about in her head like they had any right to be there.

"Oh my god."

She stared at the impossible machine standing proudly on the street in front of her flat, as if it had any right to be there.

And, out from the machine he came stumbling as if he had any right to, looking around before he said, "I'm sure this isn't the right place, Anna, I told you, you should've teleported her onto the Tardis- Oh, hello! Sorry, I'm looking for Amelia Pond?"

She punched him.

She didn't even think about it, simply reaching out and hitting him as hard as she could. In that moment, she hadn't seen the Doctor; she simply saw the reason for four psychiatrists in twelve years, the reason that she spent most of her childhood wishing to be anywhere else, the reason that she'd never been believed.

She couldn't even give him credit for Rory, because her and Rory were simply her and Rory. They never would've been anything else. They never could've been. It wasn't fate and it wasn't destiny (because she didn't believe in those things on principle) . It simply was.

"Yeah, no, I, erm, I'm the one that deserves that."

"Deserves-" Amy started, almost shouting. She realized what Anna Monroe was talking about a moment later, what she thought she deserved and she rolled her eyes, agitated. "I'm not gonna hit you," she said to her, though she did consider spitting at her feet. She'd gotten a lot of her aggression out when she'd landed the hit on the Doctor, her knuckles throbbing pleasantly in a remembered way because she'd gotten into a lot of fights as a kid. Rory would look at it as he always did.

"But you hit him," she pointed out.

"It's different," Amy pointed out back, wondering why they were even talking about this when they should've been giving her answers, like what the hell had happened and where they had been and, oh yeah, why they'd abandoned her at Hogwarts for a whole week while she wondered if she would ever see home again?

Anna's brows furrowed. "Because I'm a woman, but he's a man so it's okay to hit him?"

Yes. But it sounded stupid when she put it like that, so she answered, "No, look- what the hell?" she asked. "Where the hell have you two been?"

"Sorry," the Doctor chimed, and Amy's fist tightened in reaction. Apparently, all of her aggression had not gotten out. He held up a finger, the other hand still bruising his lip, though it wasn't bleeding and that disappointed her a little bit. "Bit lost. Someone explain? Who is this? Why are you hitting me? Are you going to hit me again? Just need to prepare myself. Brand new face, blimey, that was a good slap."

"I punched you."

"All the same," he said, nodding as he probed at the corner of his lip experimentally, like he did expect there to be blood. "Who are you and why are you hitting me?"

Oh.

Something in her chest that she would never, ever admit to, burned at the realization that he didn't remember her. Of course he didn't. He was a big important alien with his big, stupid important space ship and his big, important, stupid wife. Why would he remember little old her, little old Amelia Pond who's life he had changed forever?

Screw that.

She was not someone who moaned or complained about people not remembering her. She didn't need people, and she certainly didn't need big stupid important aliens to remember something that had probably happened a million years ago for him.

"Amy Pond," she told him. "And that was for abandoning me at Hogwarts for a week!" she shouted at him.

She turned, about to not give them a second thought, about to close the chapter on her life she hadn't even realized she'd left open. For the first time since she'd found out that the exec had, indeed, blacklisted her, she felt determination coursing through her. Screw the Doctor. Screw the exec. She would start her own magazine, writing about whatever she wanted, traveling wherever she wanted-

What about Rory?

She dismissed the thought out of hand. They needed nurses everywhere. They'd set up shop as much as they needed to before they moved onto the next place. Besides, Amy's magazine would be a success. She would make loads of money. Maybe Rory could even be the housewife. She smirked at the thought of the look on her mother's face when she would tell her that she was the one making money in this relationship.

Take that, mum.

She just barely caught the look on the Doctor's face before she turned, before she decided the course of the rest of her life, but it wasn't relevant to her until she heard the Doctor speak.

"Oh, n- what did you do- Amelia-"

She was seeing red again. Grown up in a small English village she might've done, but she was still that small Scottish girl with a temper. If the Doctor knew what was good for him, he would stop talking and get back into his stupid machine and fly away.

But, he didn't do that, so by the time that she turned, he was still stupidly standing there. "It's Amy now!" she shouted at him. "And where the hell have you two been? You just left me at Hogwarts and then left me, on my own, four psychiatrists in twelve years! Four! Twelve!" she shouted. Repeating the numbers seemed important to her cause, which was to make the Doctor feel properly guilty for what he'd done before she stormed off.

"Anna was meant to have teleported you back home-"

"Oh, well, she bloody well did that!" she shouted at him. "Back home where nobody believed the crazy Scottish girl about her trips to a magical castle- they called me witch girl. Witch girl!"

"Well, that hardly seems right, you're not even a witch," he said, and her eyes widened, before he shook his head. "We were meant to show up five minutes later," he told her. "To explain things, to tell you what happened, to tell you not to talk about us, and we're- this was never meant to happen."

She raised her eyebrows before she looked at them with disdain. "Yeah, well, it did," she told him. "And it's too late to fix it."

"No, but maybe we can give you something even better than that."

She laughed, outright laughed. "I don't want anything from you two," she said, and she'd never meant anything more in her entire life.

These two were the reason she was labeled as the crazy Scottish girl, but worse, these two were the reason she stopped believing in magic. She didn't want anything from those two, except maybe for them to leave. She turned once more, about to tell them just that, when the Doctor spoke.

"Not even a chance to see all of time and space?"

"Sorry, what?"

The idea seemed so ludicrous, but it was possibly the only thing that could've made her turn around, because the idea was so ridiculous. Going by the glint in his eyes, he knew that, and she almost turned around out of sheer spite because of it.

"We are aliens. Well, like I said, I am, but she's complicated. Point is, this is our spaceship. We can take you anywhere and anywhen that you want." He raised his eyebrows. "What do you say? Fancy a trip to anywhere?"

For a moment, all of that anger was replaced with yearning. It was like the universe had been listening, answered her wish. She'd wanted to travel. Now she was being presented with the opportunity to.

All that anger was put back and the yearning simply vanishing when she remembered. She crossed her arms, raising her eyebrows.

"And how am I supposed to trust that you two won't leave me at whatever destination we land at? You two left me at Hogwarts for a week, when I was seven."

"Nearly eight," he pointed out.

"I was lying!" she said, exasperated.

"And, we did get you back," he pointed out.

She bit her lip at that. He was right. They had gotten her back, even if they'd abandoned her again for nearly fourteen years after the fact. And, they'd said it was a mistake. They had meant to come back for her, to prevent all of it. And, they were offering her all of time and space.

None of this would've been a good enough reason if something she'd long forgotten hadn't resurfaced.

They'd just gotten back to the castle, Dumbledore pulling the magic he was known for and convincing the Ministry aurors to let him take custody of them; he would have answers for the Ministry in the morning, he said. Anna had been taken away and so had Peter Pettigrew, but a moment later, she'd felt the warmth that was slowly fading from the rat be replaced with the warmth of his hand in hers, and he winked at her before he was pulling her away. Dumbledore made eye contact with the Doctor but still let them slip out, the Ministry aurors none the wiser that their high value targets had just escaped (though she'd never known what Dumbledore had said to convince them that it was fine that they'd just slipped off).

That didn't matter. They were fumbling about the castle in the next moment, though it opened to a place she knew well: the kitchen. She spent a lot of time in there with her mum, and she was starting to resent it. Who cared if she knew how to cook? She'd have people throwing themselves at her feet to cook for her.

All feelings of resentment went away when she saw this kitchen. It was big and beautiful and bright and smelled like birthday cake and stuff was floating and it was everything she'd ever dreamed and more.

"Is there something that Sabry can help with?"

"Hello, Sabry, was it?" the Doctor asked, kneeling down so that he was eye level with the creature that Amelia did not understand but did not want to shy away from. People who were going to save the world one day were brave in the face of creatures with bat like ears and gray skin and human faces.

A person in a robe with a yellow emblem emblazoned on the front passed in front of her as if she weren't there, and she made an annoyed, "Oi!" in the face of it. She recognized the look in his drowsy green eyes, though, his brown hair disheveled, and she forgave him because it was probably midnight and he was having a midnight snack. She did that sometimes, though she'd never been caught by her parents. They were very heavy sleepers.

When she looked back, the Doctor was standing, apparently having gotten his inquiry answered. "Actually, Sabry, there was just one more thing," he said, kneeling down in front of the house elf. "You wouldn't happen to have any fish fingers and custard to hand, would you?"

She thought it disgusting, but she didn't say anything, not until they were sitting in the infirmary, him eating his fish fingers and custard as he stared down at Anna, a sad look in his eyes.

Instead of saying, gross as she'd wanted, she took pity on him and said, "Funny," instead.

"What is?" he asked, around a mouthful of fish fingers and custard.

"You are."

This seemed to interest him, and take his mind off of Anna, looking back at her. "Am I? That's good." He swallowed. "Funny's good."

"Where are we?" she asked, trying to take his mind off of his wife, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully. She knew by the look on his face that something was wrong with her, and while Amelia couldn't do anything about that (she'd leave it to the grown-ups. For now, anyway), she could distract him for a bit.

"Hogwarts. Most magical place in the world. Well, this world, anyway." He smiled slightly. "You're very far from home, Amelia Pond."

"It's all right," she said. "I'm going to save the world. I'd better get used to it."

She'd expected him to laugh, almost even wanted him to so that he would smile. But, he wasn't like the other adults. He didn't laugh. In fact, he did what no one had ever done and taken her seriously.

"Yes, you mentioned this before. And is this a general saving of the world or is there a threat I can help you with?"

She was so flustered for a moment that she opened and closed her mouth before she shook her head. "No, no. Just- you know. When I grow up and everything- there was a homework assignment," she suddenly explained what she never had, because nobody had ever actually asked her, simply laughing and shaking their heads at funny little Amelia (because long before Witch Girl they didn't take her seriously). "They asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. I decided that I wanted to save the world."

"And what did your teacher say?"

"Oh, I put that I wanted to be a firefighter," she replied, offhandedly. "I didn't want the whole school to know that I wanted to save the world."

"Why not?" he asked, absently running the back of his thumb against Anna's hand while he ate another fish finger dipped in custard. It was utterly disgusting, but he was paying attention, so she didn't care.

"Because I probably have to be a superhero and that means that I have to have a secret identity. Don't you know anything?" she asked him.

He broke out into a wide smile, and this was the moment that she thought he would laugh at her. She prepped herself for it, wishing he'd gotten it over with sooner so it wouldn't hurt as much.

But, he didn't laugh.

Instead, he said, "Good thinking."

Never once did he laugh.

It was for this reason and this reason alone that Amy Pond, now twenty one years old and without any solid prospects except a distant dream of owning a magazine that she'd just now had come up with and the actual reality of getting married in the morning, started to nod.

What about Rory?

She hesitated, starting to glance back at the flat that Rory wasn't even inside of.

"Can you get me back for tomorrow morning?" she asked.

"We can get you back for five minutes from now, why, what's tomorrow morning?" he asked, slowly.

She almost told him. She almost told him all of it, about the exec and the fact that she hadn't traveled and there had been Rory and she was the luckiest girl in the world to be have even met a man like Rory, let alone to be getting married to him. She almost told him that tomorrow was the day she would be getting married to the love of her life.

But, she held back.

She didn't owe these two people anything. Not her story, and certainly not the reason she wanted to be back for tomorrow.

So, she shook her head. "Nothing, nothing. Just, you know, stuff," she said.

"All right, then. Back in time for stuff," he said. "What do you say, Amy Pond? All of time and space? Anywhere and anywhen?"

She hesitated again before she remembered that they might've left her in the magical castle for a week but they had gotten her back five minutes from when she'd left, so at least she could trust that, even if years passed, she'd still be able to get home in time to marry the love of her life.

"Okay," she agreed, walking past him. "But, if either of you leaves me stranded again, I won't be held accountable for my actions."

Anna swallowed, trying not to think about The Girl Who Waited.

But, something did settle in her chest, seeing the 21 year old Amy Pond sauntering onto the Tardis. She'd kept another part of his life intact, one that she'd nearly taken away because she'd saved Gallifrey (even if it meant Martha was still nowhere to be found). She didn't focus on that for long.

Amy Pond was here, and for now, that was enough.

Even if the crack was also nowhere in sight.