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Chapter Text

Harry stared at the cookie as if it was a mysterious apparition from another world. It looked fresh, and brown, and still warm, and slightly sticky, like it didn't want to let go of the envelope which it had fallen out of. In all his life he had never gotten a warm cookie, only whatever Dudley leftover - and they were usually store-bought. Aunt Petunia didn't like baking, considering it too messy for too little result. To be fair, she wasn't very good at it. He looked at the envelope again. It was fairly simple, with just enough room for one cookie.

For Harry, from your Uncle Moony , it said. 

While Harry thought his uncle could be a bit moony, he highly doubted that Uncle Vernon would give him cookies. In a envelope, no less. 

He ate the cookie and ended up daydreaming that Uncle Moony was a alien from the moon. That would explain all Harry's... oddities. 

He didn't think much of it in the next few months, until one bright day in July, on his way to school, he got hit at the back of his head. When he turned around, ready to fight Dudley - and lose -, he saw a neatly wrapped package and a bird darting away.

Happy Birthday!

Uncle Moony, was written in the same neat and tiny handwriting as the envelope. He picked it up, hoping it wasn't broken from being dropped by a bird on his skull. 

It contained a birthday card and a small model airplane, chocolate (some different tastes), Drooble's Best Blowing Gum and a quill made of sugar. The card was a generic 'happy fifth birthday' one and a scribbled message:

Harry,

It isn't much but it's from a good heart. I hope you'll enjoy this. Happy Birthday!

Love, 

Moony

Oh, that was right, it was his birthday. Dudley always invited friends to his birthdays, or people he wanted to show off to, but Harry had no friends, so he didn't. He took some chocolate and began to walk again, slowly, just in case Dudley decided it would be funny to ambush him. Later when school was over and Harry watched Dudley go into Pier's house, he went to a usually abandoned playground. The playground looked like some architect had, at the last minute, remembered parents with kids might, for some inexplicable reason, decide to live here, and that those parents might, occasionally, demand their kids go outside and pretend to play with kids' things, like swings and slides and playhouses and something that might vaguely resemble 'nature', planted by someone who firmly associates nature with thorny bushes, too long grass, and dog-poo. Then a lot of teens had taken over and quickly filled it with the familiar trash; old magazines, cans looking to hide their pee-stained glory in the long grass, and some things that only be left there on a dare and are best off not being mentioned here.  And there, on the swings, sat a man. 

Chapter Text

Harry thought it was rather risky to sit on the swings, or perhaps brave in a rather suicidal sort of way, considering they were rusty and squeaky, and held up mostly by what he hoped was ductape, (though not as brave as it would be to use the slide, which was so filled with rather suspicious stains it was impossible to see it’s old color, or the sandbox, which at one point might have contained sand but now looked like a chemical experiment gone wrong). The man, however, looked just as out of place as the playground, so it all kinda fit. 

Now, you might be forgiven to think that the man on the swing was Uncle Moony, for so did Harry, at first. So, naturally, he sat down on the other swing and observed the man. It was definitely a very strange man, who wouldn't look out of place among wizards trying to mingle with muggles (though Harry couldn't know that). He barely looked at Harry - or anything, really. He seemed to stare at the ground, or the distance, or nothing in particular. 

'Are you a strange man?' Harry ventured after some minutes of this. The man smiled grim but fond at the same time, at a memory. 

'Strange? I think I'm incredible,' he muttered, before looking at Harry, with the faintly surprised air of someone who had been deep in thought. (In reality, he had gone into trance, and a small snippet of the future had bled throught; another child, on a swingset). 

'Aunt Petunia always warns Dudley not to go with strange men,' Harry said. Aunt Petunia had never really bothered with the same warnings for Harry. Harry thought she wouldn't mind - not as much - if he went with strange men.  What happened if you went with them (what could happen), was vague and horrific. 

'She's right,' the man replied smiling, now looking a bit more focused.

'Are you sad?' Harry asked. 'Dudley always snacks when he's sad or angry. Do you want some?' 

He held out some candy. 'The chocolate is really good,' he offered.

'The opposite world,' the man said, with a small grin. 'Kids offering candy to adults.' 

He looked younger now, the previous darkness having fled his face to his eyes. 

'No thanks,' he added now, seemingly sobering. 'I'm sure it's good, but I think you could use it more.'

Harry shrugged and ate some. 

'You say Dudley snacks when he is sad or angry,' the man said, carefully, seemingly despite himself. 'But what do you do?'

Harry paused. 'I just... keep going and doing my thing. Sometimes I go to - ' he broke off.

The cupboard was Not Allowed to be discussed. 

'What's your name?' he asked, changing the subject. 

'I'm The Doctor.' 

Harry stiffened. 

'Not that kind of doctor!' The Doctor hurried to say, having picked up on his distress. 'Just... that's the name I chose.' 

He held out his hands in the universal gesture of peace. 'That's all.' 

'You are not a-a shrink or something?' Harry wasn't sure what a shrink actually was, but when the word was ever uttered by Vernon, it was always spoken with a mix of fear and disdain, and the word sounded scary. 

'Don't worry about it,' The Doctor said. 'Its just a name.'  ('A name is a promise you make,' he'd tell Clara on one of their many adventures, but he hadn't done that yet.)

'Why are you here?' Harry asked, just to be certain.

'I wanted a place alone,' he said. 

Chapter Text

They had all known how Sirius felt about James. It had gone from sleep-slurred 'I love you man' to awkward clarifications ("Like, really love you") to sneaked kisses in lonely nights. But before that...

'I love him and he only loves bloody Evans!' 

It wasn't quite what was said, but there was a distinct undercurrent to Sirius' quiet moping's. Of course he could never tell, they both knew that. James had only eyes for Lily, and things would only get awkward. 

Remus was certain no-one would end the friendship (Sirius was only gay, not a werewolf, and it was hardly unusual for teenagers to find...comforts in the dorms) but, well. 

'Sirius, why won't you come outside? It's beautiful weather,' Peter said, in what Remus considered a spectacular display of insensitivity, but he held his tongue. 

(Perhaps if he hadn't... no use thinking about that now)
Outside James was trying to ask Lily out for what had to be the 1000th time, and getting rejected, no doubt.
'Is it the letter?' he asked carefully. Sirius had gotten a letter from home. Again.

(That was the the summer where he ran away to the Potters, Remus remembered with a lurch in his stomach, fingers gripping his glass tighter)

He had ripped it, or burned it at wandpoint (Remus couldn't remember which, he had gotten fairly creative later on. At one point he had ripped it up and turned every snippet in a lovely pink paper bird forming James' head to serenade Lily with, saying that this way they at least did something good. The spell hadn't quite worked -at some point several slurs of Mrs. Black slipped out and sometimes James voice got high and shrill- but it was still fairly impressive) and gone upstairs, throwing himself on his bed (later Remus had learned it wasn't a anti-gay letter as he had initially suspected, but a anti Potter letter. It boiled down to 'if its boys you want, we know some lovely purebloods, but why do you want Potter?!'. Sirius had been surprised at Remus suspicion. 'No, for keeping the blood pure it doesn't matter if its men or women, why would it? I mean the men inherit most of the money, so its actually quite advantageous.' When Remus had delicately brought up children, the puzzled reply was along the lines of 'no, of course that's not a problem.' He didn't even try to explain how muggles thought about it afterwards, figuring it would be too alien to comprehend, even for someone as into muggles as Sirius.)

At one point Sirius had discovered Nirvana and he had, as he told them on the train, gleefully tormented his family by playing every record he had of them as loudly as he could, with the door barricaded, throughout summer hols. 

Nobody was quite sure how it happened, but at one point, after a Quidditch match won by a rather brilliant action by James, they had all fallen asleep on the couch and woken up to James and Sirius, holding hands. Both, it seemed, giddy with joy. They had held hands all the way to the Great Hall, and later, for some nights, Remus woke up from someone sneaking past, or the sounds of a kiss. Nobody ever really discussed it, but the group seemed split in two after that; James and Sirius, and Peter and Remus. Sometimes Remus thought Peter seemed a bit resentful, and he certainly had been happy when it looked like it was going to be James & Lily, and the rest, but he must've imagined it. They never 'ended' it, there was just a point where James... stopped. He went out with Lily and that was that, then. Maybe... maybe that was why Sirius had done it, he thought in hindsight. It wasn't exactly proper, to not even discuss it or anything, just stone-walling until Sirius worked it out for himself. But for one summer (the best of Sirius' life, he thought), he and James had been a total item. 

Chapter Text

Something knocked against the TARDIS' window. This wouldn't have been all that surprising if they had landed somewhere, but they hadn't, and the insistent sound of a regular sized beak against the window of the TARDIS became a little disconcerting if you remembered they were hurling through the Time Vortex. 

With a slight shock and rather unexpectedly, they landed and Harry, now roughly 7 years old, opened the door. A rather harried and disgruntled looking owl dropped a small package and flew away, only to return and perch itself on top of the TARDIS. Harry looked around. They were... well, it looked like Rio. Hesitant, he opened the packet. In it was what he had come to expect: special candy and a toy, accompanied by a birthday card signed 'Uncle Moony'. 

They hadn't found who it was yet, despite spirited attempts to narrow it down by handwriting and genealogy. Not even analyzing the candy worked, as the technology shortened out, sometimes sparking, sometimes making a last mournful noise. 

Harry looked at the owl, who promptly send him a baleful glare that threatened death and dismemberment (not necessary in that order) if he so much as mentioned 'returning' or 'letter' in its presence. 

The Doctor came out and not even ten minutes later they were on the run from a tropical monster.

Afterwards, they brought the owl back to its own time, scorched and tired but alive.

When they landed again, everything was quiet around them. 

'1926,' The Doctor pronounced, and they opened the door. Outside, there was a small field, and a young man ran in their direction, followed by a small group of other people firing colored beams at him. Panting, he ran towards them.

'Help me, please, they're nearly hatching! They need a warm and soft place -' 

'On it!' The Doctor interrupted, and while the TARDIS started VHOOM-ing the man jumped aboard.

'My name is Newt,' he said awkwardly and then: 'Wow, its bigger then my suitcase.'

'I should hope so,' The Doctor said drily, as he fiddled around with a appliance that would create a heatbubble. 'What happened to the mother?' he asked. 

'Killed for her silver tusks,' Newt said and for a few seconds he seemed hard and unyielding and sad, and it reminded Harry of The Doctor when he had had to kill a nest of aliens. Then Newt smiled softly at the eggs and it was gone.

Chapter Text

The eggs - put on a small pile of clothing and kept warm by a heater the Doctor rigged up with help of a energy cell from the TARDIS - made small creaky and scratchy noises, while Newt kept watch and the Doctor attempted to find alternatives to the electronic 'whatsits' that he had previously used to examine the candy. 

Harry made tea and wandered the TARDIS in search of a forest-room, but instead he found a small field of grass with a goalie and a ball. The grass was red with patches of silver, of course, but the ball was, it seemed, a regular leather ball. Harry hoped it wasn't a doomsday device in disguise (that had been a fairly bad day), as he carefully kicked it. It didn't explode. A second kick didn't unleash a paralysing or choking gas. Encouraged by this, Harry began to kick it around properly.

When he came back, it was to a almost painful metal-on-metal-noise, which nobody seemed to notice, as the Doctor was practically interrogating their guest with that typical excited glint in his eye that he always had when discovering something new. He was leaning forward, for once completely focused. 

'-the Ministry of-' 

Suddenly Newt broke off as he saw Harry. 'Nevermind,' he said hastily. 'They just don't do anything about this! They're gonna be on the brink of extinction  if they keep being poached like this! Its just so frustrating!'

With a loud shrieek one egg hatched and then the small pile got upheaved by the eggs at the bottom hatching and before they knew it there were chitterings and teeth everywere.

'I'm beginning to get a little less sympathy,' Harry muttered, having kicked one off his feet while Newt, slightly panicked, began to chatter back at them. It was in a lower frequency then the young ones and - when he was less panicked - sounded not dissimilar to a light purring noise, as they settled down and began to follow Newt around. Now that Harry looked properly, he decided they had to be the weirdest animal he had ever seen (saying something). Some had silver tusks (girls, he thought) and some had horns, and apart from that they looked like a weird cross of reptiles and geese. They had leathery wings, and no feathers but scales, but they did have the bird legs and, now that he thought about it, birdlike sounds. 

The Doctor, of course, was utterly fascinated. Harry, remembering the bite in his foot, distinctly less so. Newt seemed used to it. 

It took less then five minutes to realize they were not exactly... potty-trained, shall we say. 

The TARDIS, as it turned out, did not particularly like being dirtied, even if it was just a chick. The result was several minor explosions, one or two forced ejections, and a kitchen fire.  

Apologizing profusely, Newt helped cleaning up, which presumably was the only thing standing between him and whatever was out there. He not only apologized to the Doctor, but, as soon as he caught on, equally profusely and awkwardly to the TARDIS itself, trying desperately to communicate how sorry he was. It seemed, Harry observed, that it placated her somewhat. It helped that for the surviving chicks, there was a room arranged with a covered and easily cleanable floor. Now the only problem was the noises they made when Newt left them, or sat or lay down for a bit (for they did not recognize him then). Scarecrows did not fool them and there was, as the Doctor lamented, no time to grow a clone. At that Newt just gave him a blank look. 

In the days afterwards, it turned out that the bird/reptiles grew very fast and that they were, in fact, predators with the habits of killing their mom once they were old enough. 

'Good protection against overbearing mothers!' Newt panted as they all ran and hid in a closet. 'Less good for us.'

'How do we get them out?' 

The Doctor, having theorized they were related to Velociraptors before, had primed the TARDIS for a somewhat prehistoric location, but he still had to activate it.

'I'm about to do something insane,' Newt muttered, before jumping out and running.

'Hey! Eyes on me!' he shouted, almost sternly. His voice betrayed no fear, although drops of sweat made their way from his forehead slowly downwards, and his eyes were wide and fearful. 'Longsnout! I can see you thinking, you know! Yellow! Eyes on me!' 

It didn't really matter what he said, and as he had told them before, he knew only how to calm them down, and had he known about how they grew up, he would have been more careful. 

But his bluff worked, for the time being at least, and that meant the Doctor could run, pull the lever and be back in the closet before they fully realized what had happened. Then, because of course he would, Newt ran out  of the door. 

Chapter Text

As Lupin put his shirt over his binder on that morning, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. 

The rest also went smoothly; inhaling (he noted he should get a new one soonish, but that would work now, with his new job), and hormones (ruefully he noted he was still paying off the out-of-pocket), everything went smoothly until he heard a loud and insistent knocking. 

On his windowsill sat a owl with a official-looking letter. As he opened it somewhat reluctantly, he read:

Dear Mr R J Lupin,

We regret to inform you that you have been banned from using our owls and need to pay a fine of 25 Galleons for severely mis-using the owl you loaned. When he returned, not only were there scorch-marks on him and in-explainable burns, it seems he also got some psychological  problems, violently and viciously attacking anyone who uses the word 'letter'. As you no doubt can understand, this is a bit of a problem in a company mainly used for the sending of letters. It can only be credited to your usage of it.

Sincerely yours,

Lupin barely glanced at the name. 25 Galleons... he definitely did not have that. That meant disappearing, using anti-owlpost spells on himself and where-ever he chose to live, or else... he didn't know what else, really. Maybe he could arrange to pay in terms, but what if he got fired or had to leave his job? Well, he decided, showing that you wanted to pay might help win some goodwill, even if...

So he sent a letter back, and went to the muggle school where he taught English, and hoped things would work out.

The class was a fairly relaxed bunch, he was informed by a headmaster with the first streaks of grey in his long hair. And it wasn't his first time. He remembered his first time vividly, having to actually show authority, not knowledge. It had been difficult but he had really needed the money. So he had learned and in return, taught. He smiled fondly at the memory.

Remus smiled faintly at the class when he entered.
‘My name is Remus Lupin. I am your new teacher English. Today we’ll cover the context of 1984, by George Orwell. Now - ‘
A wad of paper hit him, and it went downhill from there. Paper airplanes were thrown, books were ‘lost’...
When he entered the room the next day, he had decided on a course of action. Casually removing a fart cushion from his chair and catching the expected wad and returning it to the sender, he stood and waited until it calmed down. He made no move to check the time, showed absolutely no hint of impatience, until at last they all stopped talking. 

Then, he calmly inventoried who still didn’t have the book and asked them what they thought they would do about it? For now, he said, you can share. But if you can’t find it in a week, you’ll have to pay for a new one with your own pocket money. The next week, they had their books.

When he got home that day, there was a letter waiting for him, stating that they accepted his proposal and that they couldn't ascertain what had happened, but it hadn't been magic. 

A bit confused, he hoped James’ son wasn’t in danger and focused on paying off.  Next year he might not be able to send anything at all, he thought. Would Harry miss it? 

Nah, he decided. It was only some candy and cheap toys.

Chapter Text

A tall and lanky figure stumbled into the TARDIS. His coat was ripped in places, he had several smaller and bigger wounds, and he had a lot of branches en leafs in his hair, and his entrance was nothing short of a collapse, but he seemed to be semi-conscious. 

The Doctor closed the doors and examined him. He looked more exhausted then hurt, he thought, but there was some skin that looked like it just healed, which should be impossible.

With a faint smile he picked Newt up, as best as he could, and opened the door where the sickbay now was. He carefully bandaged most wounds and left him to rest in peace. 

When Newt woke up he realised he was in a bedroom. In the walls, orangereddish spheres emitted a soft light, illuminating several paintings. Opposite the bed hung a painting of a ladytree. Jabe of the Forest of Cheem, it said. It was rather well done, he thought, and he wondered where she was now and if she would be happy to be immortalized in this way. Next to her hung someone simply called Steward of Platform One. This man was blue, with a brown stripe on each side of the nose, starting somewhere under what he was wearing on his head and going on a little past the nose. He was dressed all in grey and, like the treelady, he didn't speak. The same went for the others; a young girl with a odd white thing on her head and simple clothes called Gwyneth, someone called Eva San Julienne, a man with short dark hair in a living room, seeming to be perpetually sad and regretful, with, for whatever reason, a stone in his head. Apart from that he looked unambiguously human.

'Didn't take to him straight away,' the Doctor said. Newt, who hadn't heard him come in, turned to him in surprise, but The Doctor didn't seem to notice it. He chuckled darkly. 'He tried to steal technology and advanced information, and then lied to me about it. I threw him out. Later...' he hesitated. 'I went back to locate him. He had to flee from job to job, being too talented for his own good.' He sighted. 'Told me it was for his Mum, hoping to find a cure for her. I realized I may have been a tad bit harsh with him.' He pointed to the portrait. 'Made that right before deciding to remove that forehead thingy. Took him for one last trip to the place we went to last time.' His face seemed to harden. 'He died overloading the enemy with information. Long story.' 

There was a pause while he gathered himself.

'Anyway, I just came to see if you where awake already!' he said, sounding almost normal, now. 'You have to tell me more about the Wizarding World! Harry will be so excited to hear about it, we might be able to find this Moony!' 

 Newt hesitated. The Doctor, as he had easily admitted, was not a wizard. But he said he wasn't a Muggle either, and looking around he could believe it.

'Why don't your portraits talk?' he asked. The Doctor looked puzzled. 

'Your portraits talk?' he asked eagerly. 'How?' 

Newt wasn't known for his knowledge of the arts, and Hogwarts hadn't covered it in-depth, but he explained what he could about potions and enchantments. The Doctor listened on with rapt attention, and whenever there was a slight pause he asked more questions. Could Newt brew him a sample of the potions? How did spells and potions interact? How was it discovered? What was the culture around it? What about the candy? How come electronics failed when dealing with even small amounts of magic? How was the TARDIS still working? 

Surreptitiously he scanned Newt with his screwdriver, but it just whined in protest after giving some very concerning readings. 

'Usually it's in the paint,' he said, slowly and carefully. 'The potions, I mean.'

The Doctor made no indication he had heard Newt. 

'But... I don't recall if anyone tried doing it over the paint,' he said, hesitantly. 'So... I don't see why not. It's not like they warn you that it blows up the planet or anything.' he chuckles. 

'Do what?'

'Try to make the portraits speak,' Newt said. 

Chapter Text

It had taken a while to repair the TARDIS. Their experiment... hadn't blown up the universe. Not quite. But it hadn't left much standing of the room, either. The room flashed a bright red, and as he saw the Doctor grimace and holding himself up against the wall, Newt felt incredibly lost. The Doctor wasn't much help either; all he said was that he felt the TARDIS screaming in his head. His magic had...hurt her? But how? It had never done anything like that before! 

Later, the Doctor told him how the spells had badly interacted with some electronics which interacted with the TARDIS, on top of the effects they had on the TARDIS which... he really should've seen coming, considering she was partly - or maybe completely - sentient.

‘There you are!’ the Doctor said, with a slightly forced cheerfulness. ‘Back in your own time, London.’ 

Newt looked at him. He hadn't blamed Newt one bit for what happened, but ever since, he had been snappish and closed-off, looking sad whenever he seemed to think Newt couldn't see him. Newt wasn't sure if it was because of the destruction of his painting, a after-effect of the TARDIS, or the fact it had become impossible to experiment with magic - the Doctor steadfastly refused to call it that, referring to some dimension or other - but Newt ignored that. 

And now he had to leave and the Doctor would be alone - Harry had been dropped off earlier today. And Harry wouldn't be his companion for long, either. The longer he was out, the more risk there was involved. Not just of dying, but also of seeing things that would… change him too much for even the Dursleys to ignore it.

‘What will you do next?’ he asked, slightly worried.

‘Oh, you know,’ the Doctor said lightly. ‘Travel. Safe the universe a few times. Invent Killroy.’

The smile in his eyes had slipped a bit. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he added, guiding Newt out of the door. 

‘This isn’t London,’ Newt said. frowning. ‘Isn’t this Cardiff?’ 

A shadow slipped out from behind a few bins, into a darkened alley. 

Chapter Text

Cardiff. They looked around. It did look a lot like Cardiff. 

They were near a dark alley, and some bins. 

Somewhere, metal clanged against metal. Slowly, The Doctor looked up. 

Not too far from them, they saw a Cyberman hanging from a gutter, its feet hanging a bit above a metal bin. The Doctor looked to were Newt had been standing not two seconds ago.

He wasn’t there anymore. Of course not. With a curse he ran up to the roof and scaled it easily. Two roofs away he saw a man shaped shadow whirling. Then it was gone. Four roofs away a kid was running, and right behind him, a cyberman was climbing up. The Doctor didn’t hesitate for more then a second, before taking off after the kid in the distance. From the corner of his eye, he saw dark smoke rising.

Lupin inwardly sighted as the door opened behind him. Putting the last of his papers in his suitcase, he looked up.

‘Hello Mr. Dursley,’ he said, calmly.

Chapter Text

At last, the kid stopped running. Newt stopped too, at a reasonable distance from him. Now that he had time to look at him, he saw for the first time how young he seemed. What was he, twelve? 
He wore a grey hoodie which had almost fallen down completely, showing dark curly hair, and pants that were more dried up paint then cloth.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ Newt assured him. ‘What’s your name?’ 

‘Marco,’ he said, turning around. He wore a bandana, Newt realised.

‘Why are you wearing a bandana?’

Had he said that out loud?

Of course he had. 

‘Don’t you know?’ Marco asked, genuinely surprised.

‘Fraid not.’ 

‘Where are you from?’

‘London.’

‘Then surely you must know! It’s illegal to be out without a mask, nowadays. It’s the latest measure against the virus.’ 

‘The… virus?’

‘Yes, sorry, we gotta go save the world from Cybermen,’ The Doctor, having caught up with them, hurriedly dragged Newt away.’You were right, by the way, we are in Cardiff, some years off, I’m afraid.’

‘Doctor -’ 

‘Come on, if there is one cyberman, there’s always more. Like mice,’ the Doctor rambled, dragging Newt steadfastly away, back over the roofs.

‘Doctor, how many years are we off?’

The Doctor halted. ‘Uhm...several centuries?’ he said, looking slightly shifty.

‘Doctor…’ 

‘Decades!’ 

The word seemed to force itself out of his mouth against his will, before he rapidly continued.

‘But in my defence, at least several. Somewhat between the 21th and, uh, the 30th.’

‘...You don’t know, do you.’

‘Not with certainty, no,’ he admitted.

‘Can we get back?’

‘...Not really, no.’

‘Mr. Lupin.’ 

That was almost polite. 

‘I heard you gave my son detention on a trumped up accusation of bullying,’ Mr Dursley said, in a dangerously calm tone. 

‘I saw him bullying Sally, yes,’ Lupin replied, equally calm. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d almost call it sexual harassment.’ Funny I never thought that about James. No wonder she didn’t want him until he grew out of it.

‘Ah, you know how it is, boys will be boys an’ all that,’ Dursley said, with a joviality he clearly didn’t feel.

‘It is my duty to punish bullying when I see it happen,’ Remus said firmly.

‘I sponsored a dorm. Can’t you cut my son a little slack?’

‘As I understand it, the dorm was a gift, and not a transaction,’ Remus said, in a voice like frozen steel. 

‘Very well,’ Mr. Dursley said at last. ‘I had hoped we could solve this ourselves, like reasonable adults, but it seems I’ll need to complain to your superior.’

‘As you wish, Mr. Dursley,’ Remus replied politely, and he continued his work. 

Several years back, at the tender age of seven and a half, Harry Potter made a teachers toupee blue when he considered it needed brightening up a bit. 
He had merely been daydreaming about what could possibly make the ratty toupe look a bit better, and there it had been in his head, a deep dark ink blue. He also considered pink, but he thought that’d be a bit much… and then he blinked and it was there! 
The Dursley’s didn’t buy it, of course. 

When he returned to school, the teacher had resigned. 

Chapter Text

‘Remind me why I’m putting up with you again?’

‘Because I’m awesome,’ Sirius replied. ‘And you can’t get rid of me. But mostly because I’m awesome.’ He grinned and winked.

Remus smiled back, albeit a little tightly.  

‘This doesn’t mean you are forgiven, you know.’

‘Well,’ Sirius said, lightly. ‘I’ll watch my drinks from now on. Merlin knows what potions you’d put in.’

‘You don’t care at all, do you?’ Remus asked. 

‘He’d have found out either way, the git. He’d have told the school. At least this way, he won’t.’

‘ If he sticks to his word. But who would have believed him? I thought we’d agreed nobody would believe of a Slytherin, not to mention our arch-enemy, that ‘sweet studious Remus’ could ever be a nasty, baby-eating werewolf?’

Sirius shifted uncomfortable.

‘You used me,’ Remus realised in horror. ‘You’d have had me take the fall for Snape's death!’

‘I am a Black, you know,’ Sirius replied airily, as his face changed, becoming hollow and dark and enraged, until it turned into the face of the werewolf that had bit him at four.

With a shock, Remus woke up. Panting, he looked around him until he realised he was alone and safe. It was just a dream , he reminded himself. Surely Siri- Black hadn’t been like that in school. He had always insisted he was different, that he’d never be like the rest of them or ‘that lot’. In real life, he had said that there had always been a risk of the werewolf attacking Snape if he snuck  out, and at least this way it was controlled, safe. And honestly, Snape was fine , Sirius and James had insisted. He shouldn’t make such a fuss about it.

They hadn’t understood, he had known, even then.  In their mind, it meant danger averted for their friend, and nobody had come to harm. In his mind, his worst nightmare had just been fulfilled. To his credit, even James had been disgusted and worried at what Sirius had done, and both he and Wormtail hadn’t spoken to him for several weeks. Remus hadn’t spoken to either of them in that time, too caught up in self-pity and fear of being a danger - or worse, a weapon - to be very social. He smiled wrily as he remembered it. And to think he had been the one suspected of being a spy. 

Well, that was how its always been, he thought. Sirius and James were two peas in a pod, and occasionally he could join them. Peter, too, joined, but with him it really felt like he was ‘allowed’ in, as opposed to on his own merits. He had never stood a chance against Sirius. Sirius and James were the ones with  the brilliant, outrageous ideas (though Remus remembered fondly when he, and he alone, had dosed them through their drinks to give them green and silver hair, for a full week, before they figured out it was him. That had cemented him as The Potioneer in their team. Poor Peter had had no such luck.)

A knock on the door shook him out of his memory.

‘Yes?’ he called out, not particularly wanting who-ever it was to come in.

‘Remus, its me, Steve. I teach History? Anyway, I just wanted to know if you’ve been feeling a bit better lately? I uh, made you some chicken soup. If you want it, it's in front of the door!’ 

‘Oh, uh, thank you very much Steve, I really appreciate it! I’ll get it, just gimme a minute and I’ll make some tea as well, if you want,’ Remus replied awkwardly, realising it would be rude to just leave Steve on the doorstep after bringing him some soup. 

‘I’m not contagious anymore,’ he added hastily. 

‘No, that’s okay, I’ve still got some grading to do,’ Steve’s deep baritone replied.

‘Alright, thanks again!’

‘Not a problem!’  

Phew. He was lucky Steve hadn’t decided to visit in the evening. Nobody else had come around while he was ill, let alone brought him some soup. It was in these moments he missed his friends the most. James and S- the traitor used to come around and visit him in the hospital wing, regaling him with tales of their pranks, prank ideas, or whatever they had gotten up to. Peter brought him candy and notes from the classes, along with homework, James transformed or charmed things so that they did funny little dances, and Sirius never failed to bring his gramophone and favorite music, often singing along (off-key) with the more punky songs. Even when Harry was born, until the time for hiding came, they still attempted to visit him as often as they could. 

It was okay thought. He was better off alone, glad his muggle-colleague’s didn’t feel inclined to visit him or be friendly. Within months, he’d have to be gone anyway, he mused, as he made tea and ate his habitually checked chicken soup. So this suited him just fine .  

‘Is the human race dying out from a plague in the far future?!’

‘I wouldn’t say dying out per se, but things changed , certainly. But look at how swiftly humanity adapted! Most people do everything in their power to help out, not just themselves, but also their fellow man! Unlike every plague movie I’ve ever seen.’

Newt shrugged. ‘Bit of a surprise,’ he conceded. ‘But still… all that advancement, for nothing?’

‘Oh, you haven’t seen nothing yet. All your sci-fi dreams have gone true, except the flying cars -that should take a few centuries-, everybody is connected to each other… we’ve almost achieved world peace!’

‘Really?’

‘I don’t know, depends on the century. Close though.’

‘Yeah, from your perspective everything must be close - and muddied.’

‘Just because you could never pay attention to history…’ 

Newt coughed. ‘So, plague, Cybermen, anything else endangering the world right now?’

Chapter Text

‘Lupin.’

‘Dursley. Do you know why you are here?’

‘Because… you hate my guts?’ 

Don’t be ridiculous, you aren’t worth hating. ‘No, you are here for bullying Sally Donovan, rather severely. Tea?’

‘I know what you are, sir,’ Dudley said, and for a few seconds Lupin got worried, until he realised this was Dudley . The young man who had claimed reindeers didn’t exist somewhere last week.

‘Really now,’ he replied neutrally.

‘Nobody can actually be that nice all the time. You have to be a serial killer or something. I’m on to you.’

I can see the concept of being nice is foreign to you/have you been reading horror comics again?/ was that supposed to be threatening? were all responses that occurred to him, but he settled for: ‘well, bit of advice; never tell a serial killer you know he is a serial killer. Where do you get those ideas in the first place?’

‘My nephew had a serial killer as a teacher.’ 

Paranoid thoughts in the family then. 

‘We only heard from the headmaster at the end of last year. Harry fought him.’

Then he shut up, as if he’d said too much.

‘Well, if they had your nephew as a target, why would they come to you?’ Remus asked, trying to be logical.  Dudley wouldn’t be the first anxious kid, and although he had little experiences in dealing with them, he hoped logic would help a bit. 

‘It's not funny, ’ Dudley insisted, suddenly realizing Remus wasn’t treating the situation with the gravitas it apparently deserved. ‘The- he almost got killed!’ 

Oh dear. 

‘And last years gym coach was a vampire!’

‘At your nephews school?’

‘No, here!’ 

‘Why do you think that?’ 

‘Cuz he was pale, and he hated sunlight and garlic and crosses and he had a badge with ‘Vampire’ on it,’ Dudley said earnestly.

‘I...see. And did it ever occur to you,’ Remus asked as delicately as he could, ‘That maybe he was...joking?’ 

Dudley looked flabbergasted at this.  

Remus sighted inwardly. This would be a loong afternoon. 

‘Alright, let’s try this apologising again,’ he sighted, some time later. ‘You are not allowed to say ‘you deserved it,’ as a preface to a apology.’ 

‘But she did!’ Dudley whined protested. ‘She called me ‘Piggy’!’

Can’t imagine why . 

‘I’m just a-a growing boy!’

‘Dudley, the nurse negatively compares your weight to a whale. ’ 

(‘ Whoa Remus, that was almost causic,’ Sirius said in his memory.

‘Me, caustic? Never,’ Remus said, as innocently as he could. It was true, tho. He was rarely outright caustic. ‘How would I ever get away with that against someone who just learned the word ‘caustic’? Clearly such a person would see right through all my pathetic attempts at wit.’) 

‘My mother says -’ 

‘I heard what she said,’ Remus interrupted, with great difficulty restraining himself not to imitate her screeching voice. ‘It was pretty hard not to. And I’m sure she means well. But the nurse actually studied for this, you know. I would think she is a bit more aware of when it gets out of hand then your mom.’ 

‘But she negatevily compared me to a whale, doesn’t that mean I weigh less than?’ 

‘Yes, Dudley, but it also means that that's the only thing you weigh less than. Luckily, it was hyperbole, meaning you can still salvage it and become more muscled,’ Remus suggested, as kindly as he could, choosing not to correct Dudley’s butchering of ‘negatively’. ‘If you actually weighed so much, you’d probably be dead already.’  

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Let’s try this again. How about I show you a example of how you are expected to do a apology. You are Sally Donovan.’ 

He walked up to him, hand outstretched. ‘Hello Sally, I’m really sorry about the wedgie, and the fact I called you a mean name and beat you up.’

Dropping the slight exagaratedness, he returned to his teacher mode. ‘See? That's all you need to say. And I’ll talk to her about her use of ‘Piggy’, as well.’ 

‘You’re about to congratulate her on her originality?’

‘Truly, I’m wounded. How can you ever think that of me?’

Taking a leaf out of the traitors book, he put his hand on his heart and pretended to be hurt.

‘I’m not stupid, you know.’ 

That’s why you’re only realizing it now?

‘No,’ he said wearily. ‘I never said you were. And when I say talk to her, I mean telling her that she shouldn’t say it. I disapprove of it.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ Dudley remarked, surprisingly dry. 

‘Hey you!’ James called out to a slightly plump, mousy boy. ‘It’s Peter, isn’t it?’

‘Y-yes?’ The boy turned around,seemingly nervous at being called. 

‘D’you think you could distract McG?’

The boy bit his lips. looking torn between not wanting to offend James and being scared of Professor McGonagal. 

‘It’s okay if you don’t,’ Remus said calmly, shooting James a Look. ‘We won’t hex you or anything. Promise.’ 

‘ No, I want to,’ Peter said, determined. ‘I’ll just ask her to help me with that spell, that should keep her busy.’ 

Though he was hardly a natural at it, he turned out to be very good at inventive lies and flying under the radar - something James and Sirius barely managed with a invisibility cloak. Not booksmart by any means, he was nevertheless observant and clever, which greatly aided them all against the death-eaters later on, Remus remembered. At several points he had been crucial to Remus’ own survival among the werewolves, in fact. 

He had just been looked over and taken for granted a lot of the time. Remus regretted that now. Frankly, if it hadn’t been for his cowardice, he’d have been the perfect secretkeeper. He had never been one to foolhardy and impulsively attack anyone until S- Black , he firmly reminded himself- betrayed James and Lily. Something must have snapped in the poor man, destroying his will to live and overactive survival instincts, he thought.

He remembered when James had gone too far at some point, and they had had to make do without their scout and look-out, although, as Black had said later, Remus had fulfilled the role most admirably. 

‘I’m going to kill them!’ Sirius roared, pulling at his now glittery hair. ‘I’m going to go after them and bloody KILL THEM!’

‘ Yes, I’m sure they won’t see that coming at all,’ Peter replied, dry as a desert. ‘Only one small problem - you’d have to slip in and out unnoticed.’

‘I’ll use the Cloak,’ Black protested. 

‘Like last time?’ 

They all shuddered. ‘Last time’ involved a swinging chandelier, a clumsy Black, and a now-lost Map. 

‘Like you’ve got a better idea,’ Sirius grumbled, his anger subsiding somewhat.

‘Not that that would be very hard, but yes, as a matter of fact, I have,’ Peter replied, to their surprise. The occasional snark to point out flaws or to calm someone down was to be expected (he'd hardly have been a proper Marauder if he wasn't snarky at least some of the time) , but Peter coming up with a decent prank was unprecedented.

‘We’re rubbing off on you!’ James crowed triumphantly. He patted him on the back. ‘We’ll make a Marauder out of you yet Peter!’ 

Peter smiled uncomfortable. ‘Now now, James, let's not overwhelm him with honours,’ Sirius said magnanimously. ‘Look, you’re making him blush.’

Remus smiled faintly at all this. ‘You’re barely giving him a chance to explain his plan,’ he chided. ‘He might forget if you distract him so, and then I’ll have to come up with ideas to pick up the slack.’ 

‘Merlin’s beard, that would be terrible,’ James replied. ‘You might actually need to do something here.’

Remus snorted. ‘Yeah, it's not like I made the Slytherins hiss all day, or bailed you out last week, or anything like that. No, clearly I have yet to earn my keep here.’

‘That’s right,’ Sirius said, sending James a small Stinging Hex he automatically blocked. ‘Peter, we’re all ears. Show Remy how it’s done.’

‘Remy?!’ 

‘Well, look,’ Peter said, before modestly suggesting his plan. 

Remus didn’t remember the plan, but he did remember it ended with the Map back and Sirius’ hair suitably avenged. At last, Peter had cemented himself into the group. 

He realised he was nearly crying now, drinking some Firewhiskey - it would’ve been his birthday now, and as such it was one of the rare cases Remus drank alcohol. On the table, a bottle exploded. 

Harry, the message said. I know it’s been sometime, but I didn’t have the means to give you a present until now. Happy Birthday!

The box contained some superhero comics, with underneath another short note, saying merely James loved these. 

Harry wished the Doctor was here. He would probably have compared the handwriting and figured out who it was by now. The sample was certainly big enough. 

Instead, he had to deal with Mrs. Figg’s cats, of all things. Mrs. Figg herself was nice, offering him tea and books with even more cats , as if the live ones around him weren’t enough. Those cats where demons, he'd swear on it. Cat-demons.

‘Are you alright, dear? Do you want a book about Tibs’ youth?’

‘No thanks, Mrs. Figg,’ Harry replied. ‘I’ve had my annual fill of cats. Do you know,’ he continued, cherubic. ‘I never wish for animals after a day with you.’ 

‘Oh, I’m so pleased to hear that!’ she said, completely ignoring the sarcasm. ‘You know, I was almost afraid you’d get lonely and want for a dog or something. I would offer you a birthday-kitten but, well, Petunia wouldn’t be particularly pleased with that.’

‘And god forbid we give Aunt Petunia reason to be more displeased then usual.’

Figg beamed. ‘ Exactly. ’ 

Harry blinked, nonplussed.

Chapter Text

‘Whose idea was it to teach James dad jokes?’  Remus asked aghast.

‘Well, I am a dad,’ James pointed out.

‘Oh, really? I had no idea . You’ve only been saying so two times every minute! ’ Sirius pointed out, sounding rather frustrated. It was probably because of Regulus, Remus reflected. Sirius hadn’t been the same after his brother signed up to be a Death-eater, thought he had steadily gotten more bitter about his family since he left them, it has markedly increased when James chose Lily. Maybe that was when he had chosen - no. No use dwelling on that.

‘He has every right to be proud of his kid,’ he said sharply, before asking James, ‘Is he handsome or more like you?’

‘He looks exactly like me,’ James said, beaming. ‘We could be twins!’

‘Now there’s a disturbing image,’ Peter muttered. James cuffed him on the back of his head.

‘Your genitals survived the ordeal then?’ Sirius asked lightly, having heard Lily’s various and rather creative threats against them when she gave birth. 

‘Well, it's still early days,’ James remarked. 

‘Why are you giving me this?’ Dudley asked, looking at the graphic novel like it could explode any second.

‘Because I know that if I don’t, despite my general offer, you would rather beat someone up and steal their work. This,’ he patted on the cover, ‘Is a lot less text then that,’ he gestured to the novels. 

Dudley looked stunned for a few seconds, before he grabbed the book and left.

‘Thank you Mr Lupin, lovely that you did this Mr Lupin,’ Remus muttered to himself. ‘Come on, it's not exactly rocket science.’ 

He shrugged. At least it had been accepted. The bigger letters should make it easier to read. 

At the next report, he was pleased to see only a few sentences had been copied, although he did report it to the administration. He gave it a B overall. 

Well, shit. Harry looked down. The building was not too high to jump off, he considered, but it wouldn’t be very pleasant if he landed wrong. 

‘How did you get up there?’ a teacher called up.

‘Well, clearly I am just taking my afternoon stroll,’ Harry replied. ‘I would say I’m Karlson of the roof, but I don’t have the right stomach for it. Could make myself the house, though, with all the stuff on here. Could you help me down please?’

‘Certainly, Mr. Smartypants,’ was the cool reply. ‘Was that the last book you ever read?’ 

The Dursleys were rather displeased he hadn’t just gone and died, expressing their displeasure in furious whispers punctuated by angry bellowing, and it earned Harry several days in his closet. Dudley, having just discovered the word ‘gay’ took great pleasure in asking Harry when he finally would come out of the closet whenever he came around, and Harry varied between saying things like ‘well, I’m glad you’re open about it.’ and ignoring him, until he finally came out.

Chapter Text

Harry ran. He ran as hard and as fast as he could, through the bushes, ducking and weaving past trees, and buildings, past the swings and, before he could stop, right into a blue policebox. Which wasn't, apparently, a actual policebox with  a phone (which kinda sucked under the circumstances), but a portal to a big and rather flashy dimension, with a staircase he ran up, and a longwinding hallway that ended at a white door. In the room was a couch, a small tv and a handful of books. He stopped, panting and panicking, and realized he was lost, and at a deadend. Worse, it was completely empty. Dudley could murder him and no-one would ever know - or care. The door closed behind him, uncomfortably reminding him of horrormovies. Tentatively, he tugged at the couch. Unmovable. He looked at the books critically. Too thin to be weapons, he judged. And the tv was flat and stretched, secured to the wall, so also unusable. His best bet was hiding in here until they left. Hopefully they hadn't seen where he was and would think he wouldn't be stupid enough to get himself cornered in a phonecell. Which he shouldn't have been. What would he have done if it was a actual policecell? Call the police? 

There were footsteps outside his door, and hastily he ran to the wall opposite the door, hoping against hope that there'd be a secret door in there. Dudley must've entered and found him! The wall slid away. 

Well, things certainly were looking up today, Harry decided, upon seeing the next room, which contained a verifitable labyrint, filled to the brim with hiding places, nooks, crannies,and - for some unfathomable reason - blankets of varying weights and sizes. So he ran, and he hid, and when he grew too tired to run and hide, he curled up under a blanket which folded pleasantly around him. 

He must've fallen asleep, because next thing he knew there was a shadow over him. He nearly jumped, until he saw it was the really very strange man from earlier. 

'Hello,' the Doctor asked, quite calm and friendly, as if meeting someone new in his phonecell was something that happened every day. 'How did you get in here?'

'Uh. Nice place you got there, Mister Doctor,' Harry said, grinning awkwardly up at him. 'Roomy.' 

'...that's one way to put it,' the Doctor agreed. 'And please, don't call me mister. Doctor will do. But how did you get here?'

Harry bit his lip. He would rather not tell this stranger he was running away from his cousin. Questions may be asked, and the Doctor would surely think him a coward for running instead of standing up for himself. Everyone always said bullying stopped if you ignored the bully (but in your own house, that's rather difficult, to put it mildly), and certainly by standing up to him and punching him KO. The problem was, that Dudley's skull was simply too thick, and he was always with friends, who held Harry as Dudley ran towards him pretending to be a bull. It wouldn't be the first time he bruised his ribs, and that was just the start of it. 

'Tea?' the Doctor offered, suddenly dropping it. 

'Sure,' Harry said gratefully. 

'So,' the Doctor asked, once they arrived in something looking like a kitchen, if you squinted and ignored the various bits, pieces, experiments and general mess of it. 'Would this have anything to do with a group of boys 'round your age, 'bulling someone' as they called it?' Harry paled.

The Doctor smiled grimly. 'I taught them a lesson.' 

'That's... good,' Harry muttered, not entirely sure what to make of it. 

'By the way,' the Doctor said casually, pouring him a new cup and giving him something called a Jammy Dodger, which tasted like cardboard and very sticky rubber. 'You're not on Earth anymore.' 

'...Whut??' 

'Didn't I tell you? This is a spaceship/timemachine. Currently we are on a planet where people only spend half their lives as human!'

Chapter Text

'Harry,' the Doctor told him when he entered. 'I've almost run out of options regarding your uncle Moony, but I wanna try one last thing before giving up.' 

Harry looked at him expectantly. 'May use one of his gifts? I promise they won't be damaged in the process,' the Doctor continued. 'The TARDIS can try to extrapolate his timeline from it, the older the better, from birth to death. But it can only work if there are sufficient memories attached to it, so it can't be any random thing he bought you, it has to be old and beloved.'

'Alright,' Harry said. 'Maybe this airplane will do? The comics are certainly beloved, but more by my dad then him, I got the impression.' The Doctor paused in the opening of the right circuits. 'You don't want to see him?'

'My aunt says he's a drunk who died because he drove while drunk,' Harry said, shrugging. He saw no reason to doubt that. (Later, he would be furious. But not now.)

They landed in a peaceful suburb at night in front of a house. It was all silent, save for front door creaking. As they watched, a little girl with short brown hair, certainly no older then four went out, making her way to a little stuffed bear. Then, everything happened very fast; there was a snarl, as a large creature leapt over the wooden picket fence and in a blink and a prayer, it was at the girl, before she even had time to scream. Even the Doctor wasn’t fast enough to stop it. Almost immediately it jumped back, and it would surely have mauled the kid, had the Doctor not interfered. With a snarl to match the creature’s, and icy glare he stepped between it and the creature. 

‘I am the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, Warrior of the Time War, Destroyer of the Daleks. I bargained with the Vashta Nerada, and I succeeded,’ He said, seeming rather impressive in the moonlight, although small next to the creature, which seemed to melt in the shadows,  growling and trying to get past him. ‘I am the Warrior-Who-Is-Unarmed,’ he warned, fiddling with something in his pockets. The creature… flinched. ‘You. Will. Not. Harm. That kid.’ There was a almost protesting whine before it turned and run. 

‘I did not realize that creature understood English,’ Harry said, rather impressed. ‘Or that it knew the meaning of any of that,’ he added. The Doctor very nearly grinned, as he made his way to the girl. ‘Sonic screwdriver.’ 

Oh. ‘That’s not nearly as impressive,’ he said, almost accusingly as he joined the Doctor. She looked badly hurt, blood flooding from her arm and shoulder. A terrible thought occurred to him. ‘Was that - Was that Moony?’

The Doctor never made an answer, as they had to hurry back to the TARDIS (the parents came out, and the Doctor said it wouldn't be the first time he was accused of being the monster), but he had managed to significantly increase her chance of survival while he was there, while Harry tried to hold her still as gently as he could. (Years later, Lupin would have no idea why he gravitated towards a certain Potter, despite them being, at first sight, nothing alike)

In the darkness, something grinned.

As he sat in his (rather uncomfortable) chair, Dumbledore would have sighted if he allowed himself such a open expression of either tiredness or boredom. Lucius was trying to push once again a law prohibiting what Muggleborns could learn at Hogwarts and do after their education.

'They won't even want to be here,' he argued. 'They have no roots here, they'll want to marry a nice Muggle and get a job they won't have to hide from their spouse.'

'I am telling you, it isn't happening, Lucius,' Dumbledore said, almost lazily save for the glint in his eyes. 'While they're at my school, they'll learn what everyone learns. In fact,' he added, nearly grinning, 'I am thinking about ettiquete classes for everyone, as some purebloods will stand out like a sore thumb in any company.' He sat back, watching the Wizengamot bicker about it ("hm... that is actually a good idea." "No! They'll learn it at home, from their family!" "How are you epecting Muggle-borns to gain roots in our world if they miss crucial information?" "-me things shouldn't be taught institutionally." and so on and so forth). This was one thing Malfoy had clearly not seen coming, so it was a thing nobody was in his pocket about. What he was hearing now was their honest opinion, he thought, pleased. It was funny how sometimes it almost contradicted their earlier position, he noted out loud, to some embarassed consternation that provoked a new bout of bickering.
 

Chapter Text

I seem to have accidentally planned a doorstopping series, with lots to look forward to: Marauders, Character Development, generally fleshed out characters... in order to really do it justice I intend to rewrite it so it fits the tone and the canon from the books. So, while you won't see any new chapters for a while, the chapters you do see will be hopefully much improved! 

The good news is that most of it is planned out in more detail now, so it should all look a bit smoother! I hope you look forward to it as much as I do!

Chapter Text

Hello there, and sorry for disappearing on y'all! Unfortunately my laptop experiences great difficulties, and my phone is not well suited to writing. The good news is, that I have good hopes to sort it soonish. The bad news is that the weather (snow that has frozen over) makes any venture outside a quest not undertaken lightly, so it’ll be some time (def more time than I want) and that I need a part from a store.

Chapter Text

There was no noise in the woods. Harry looked around carefully. Something snorted, not too far away. He went for his stunner. The Doctor hated weapons, but he had offered to make Harry a stunner after the last kidnapping. Said he could set it to small, medium, large, extra large and enormous, for differently sized opponents. It sent stunning bolts and shocked nearby opponents. It also made tea and could roast bread into toast. 

The snorting had been awfully low. He set the stunner to ‘large’. Then, after some hesitation, to ‘extra large’. 

The Doctor could arrive any minute, he reminded himself. 

At that moment, there was a slight creaking behind him and a short ‘woosh’. Without thinking about it, Harry ducked and rolled, landed against the bushes and got up facing the being.

Not that it helped: it was pitch dark and all he could see was long arms, glinting claws and teeth. Too many teeth for comfort. 

Harry took the shot. A slight sizzling confirmed the hit and the being went down.

‘Hello!’ 

‘I am here, Doctor!’ Harry called out. 

‘Have you found him?’

’Looks like it,’ Harry replied, trying to see more of the being he supposed to be the Yeti. ‘I think we can bring him to Sirius right away!’ 

‘Good job!’ The Doctor said brightly. ‘I lost him for a minute.’

’I noticed,’ Harry remarked. 

The Doctor winced when he saw the claws. ‘Are you okay?’

’What? Oh, yeah, fine,’ Harry said, not paying attention. Did that claw move?

Suddenly everything went very fast. The claw moved up at the same time Harry fired. Harry had to change course rapidly from forward to examine to stumbling backwards and firing blindly. Now the groggy growling Yeti stood between him and the Doctor, which was a bit of a problem. Fortunately, it was a rather large target and not entirely awake yet. It shouldn’t take long to take it down again. 

Ten minutes later they were running towards the TARDIS, the Yeti leaping and running after them. 

Chapter Text

A dog ran into his room. The wolf sniffed. He had marked the room as his again, so why was there a intruder? The smell was familiar, promising fun. The deer that followed smelled more serious, and between his antlers sat a rat who smelled of sweat and fear and insecurity and delight and pride.

The dog barked, ran back towards the door and looked back at him. Come on, follow me!

The wolf wouldn’t follow anyone. Who did this whelp think he was? 

He growled a warning. Don’t challenge me.

From up the deer’s head, the rat tittered. 

The dog growled, too,his haunches rising. Don’t threaten me.

Both jumped. In mid-air, they met, growls muffled by fur, teeth clicking together as they snapped and snarled at each other, thudding on the ground. 

They fought until they were tired, and slowly, after they had tested each other’s strength, it got more playful, until at last they fell asleep together while the deer and the rat kept watch. 

When the fight was done, neither of them had sustained much damage as most of the bites had hit air. 

The next night, the dog padded into his room silently. Without looking at the wolf, Sirius laid down. After a while, there was a heavy weight on his back. He curled up and saw the wolf’s gigantic head on his back. That was gonna ache in the morning. 

Then, there was a slight chittering as a rat ran up to the wolf and made himself comfortable in his fur. The wolf closed his eyes and sighed, apparently viewing it more as a massage than a annoyance, the way the rat nestled and pulled at the hairs around him. The deer, having entered last, laid down next to them. For a while, it was quiet. 
Suddenly there was a snarl, and with a squeaky snicker the rat saw himself forced to leap away, a strand of hair still in his mouth. He ducked under the piano, which the wolf effortlessly trashed behind him, weaved under a table, and sprinted out of the door. 

Without thinking about it, the wolf followed him, and within seconds, they were outside. The rat made a u-turn and began to actually climb up the wolf’s legs while the wolf was distracted from the many smells permeating the night air; grass, burning wood and all sorts of animals who rustled all around him. He hadn’t smelled the humans in the village - not yet. The rat began again to burrow into the wolf’s fur and began to apologetically flea him. The wolf rumbled a bit and ignored him. Meanwhile, both the deer and the dog had followed him, both trying furiously to cuss Peter out without speaking, with varying amounts of success. The gist of it got across though. Herding the wolf back it was practically impossible; the wolf lunged past them whenever they tried, biting, growling and snarling and snapping at them both. At last, they let him be. Cheerfully, the wolf began his mission to eradicate all squirrels in the area, and the troupe of animals resigned themselves to following him.

The wolf chased after several squirrels before catching one, killing it effortlessly. Then he returned to the dog and offered it. The dog sniffed, looking as if he’d never seen a dead squirrel! Gently, the wolf began pushing the dog’s head towards it. When that didn’t help, he prodded the dog with his nose. When he was sure he had his attention, he took a bite, looking up expectantly. This is how you eat a squirrel. Come on, eat it eat it eat it!

The dog looked rather nonplussed. Slowly, the rat came down over the wolf’s head. The wolf stepped away. Here, have a try.

Hesitantly, the rat nibbled, looking up at the wolf to see if he was doing it right. The wolf looked as comforting as a enormous predator can look to a rat. The rat stopped rather fast, though. A lightbulb went off in the wolf’s head. They don’t like squirrel!

Immediately he barged off elsewhere to find prey they would like, while the rat tried to spit out the little bit of meat he had ingested and the full amount of his nibbles and climb a already running Sirius at the same time. Sadly, it didn’t entirely work. The deer was already running next to the wolf, easily leaping over branches and trees, steering him deeper into the woods. They ran on the outside of the village now, towards Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest. The dog easily loped through the village, which was a decent shortcut.

He began to run, seemingly for the sheer joy of it, as the rat held on as best as he could, poking his head out from the haunches occasionally. Here, it was warm and comfortable, but he also loved the feeling of the wind rushing past him and the many smells - hot midnight snacks mixed with mowed grass and his fellow rats, with a undercurrent of wood, water and insects and the smell of canine delight all around him (the rat didn’t really like that as much as the human part of Peter, but the human told his more frightened self that they were friends and protectors and the rat will just have to get over itself). 

They began slowing down. On a field with all sorts of flowers, they saw a half-eaten squirrel, but the wolf was standing by a fresh rabbit. His snout was bloody, now, and his eyes had a triumphant glint in them as he pushed the rabbit towards the dog. The dog sniffed. He realized that the wolf wanted to feed him and possibly Peter and that he would keep looking for prey until the dog ate, never realizing that they’d never want raw meat. With rabbit, he could at least pretend it was just like rabbit. Really rare made rabbit. Slowly, he took a bite, after the wolf showed him were to bite. Then he made a great show of eating until he was full and sighting with satisfaction. The wolf looked ridiculously happy at that, his tongue lolling out, rolling in the grass and rubbing his back and the middle of his head against trees with a lack of reservation that Remus would be ashamed off, Sirius realized with a lurch of his stomach. 

In the morning, they watched him transform back and hid nearby. Subconsciously Remus rubbed his fingertips on the wood as he stumbled out the door. I was here, it said, as soft-spoken as the boy himself. 

Chapter Text

'Get out.'

The coldness in the Doctor's voice was palpable. 

'I'm really sorry,' Harry tried. 'I just... I just wanted to see my parents one last time, I didn't know you'd -'

He stopped.

'I do not tolerate such deceit,' The Doctor said in that awfully calm voice.’I do not wish to have to lock my TARDIS every time I leave because some kid doesn’t get his way!’

 Harry wished he'd just shout at him so they’d get it over with. He knew how to deal with shouting. This… this was worse. This was cold fury mixed with disappointment, hidden behind that careful emotionless mask. Anything could happen now. 

The Doctor continued: ‘I told you why that was a bad idea! People could’ve died!’

‘People already died,’ Harry muttered surly at the floor.

‘What was that?’

‘I said people already died!’

He glared up at the Doctor. 'Or are my parents not people? Are they just, what, statistics?!’

The Doctor took several deep breaths. ‘Clearly you don’t understand,’ he said with a sight. ‘You’re too young-’ 

‘THEN MAKE ME! Make me understand why I shouldn’t see my parents’ last moments! Why it’s necessary that they die! Explain , instead of giving me that ‘you’re too young’ crap! Because I am not! I have a right to- to-,’ he stopped, panting slightly. 

For a moment Harry thought the Doctor wouldn’t answer, would - like his uncle tended to do - just psychically throw him out, when he spoke again, sounding exhausted rather than furious.

‘It creates paradoxes,’ he said. ‘And there are beings… Reapers they are called… think of them like white blood cells defending the Universe from bacteria. Only we’re the bacteria and they’d cause an apocalypse in their attempts to cauterize the wound. And I wouldn’t be able to help out because I’d be stuck in Stonehenge talking to a being my people didn’t even dare to have nightmares about.’

And building Stonehenge to imprison it because it was undefeatable, if what he had said was true. While fending off dodgy meat pies. 

Slowly, carefully, Harry walked to the doors. When he looked back, the Doctor was back to fiddling with the console. 

Chapter Text

It had been three years. Three miserable years without the Doctor, with nothing but guilt and misery and uncelebrated birthdays, except for the punctual arrival of mysterious packages with miniature knights, a set of marbles that spit out foul fluid when you lost, and best beloved of all, a set of comics full of scribbled notes, pictures and doodles - Uncle Moony’s were neat, clear, precise lines in his organized diagrams and beautiful drawings, but it wasn’t until the third comic that he began to express anything remotely personal in them, Padfoot’s notes were barely legible, his drawings loose, flowing lines, one seemingly growing from another and another in a endless circle, Prongs’ were relaxed, except for one pink note that contained a poem addressed to a certain ‘Lily’, and Wormtail’s were a curious mix of all. His notes were legible, but his drawing were messy until halfway the book, when they became a blend of precise and sharp lines and looser lines, and the nature of his writings differed by the note - some he employed flowery language, some had a slightly gothic edge and some were rather plain and short. It was, in fact, so stuffed with scraps of paper, doodles etc that even without them scratching out random text balloons and adding text underneath the panels it would be difficult to read - and here a new handwriting popped up. “Dinner at the Black’s.” it read, all gothic curls in cursive, under a panel describing the destruction of a city. Under it, on a green post-it, “Go away Reg - Padfoot”. Several pages later Harry found the second note. “A idol of yours?” with a arrow pointing to one of the heroes (the one whose text was most frequently scratched out and replaced, Harry noted) who was doing something stupid to save the world and “This is gonna be you.” pointing to someone getting killed by the villain. After that, there were some ripped out undersides of pages, a handful of violently scribbled over comments in the margins, making it all but impossible to figure out what happened.

On that fateful day in the third year  - Dudley’s birthday -, everything had proceeded as normal (except that Mrs Figg turned out to have a broken leg, and it was - with great reluctance - decided Harry would get to come along to the zoo. Harry couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for the daft old lady who made him watch cat pictures until he dreamt of them - cats staring at him with yellow eyes in the darkness, unmoving. Unblinking - but he didn’t get to enjoy his fun for long, as before he knew it a snake talked to him, Dudley fell in its cage, and Harry was blamed and put into his closet.) until the day The Letter arrived. 

Harry didn’t recognize the handwriting on it, although the precision led him to suspect it was from the Doctor. After all, who else but a time-traveller would be that precise? The only thing missing was the galaxy and the date. Then he remembered that Uncle Moony was that precise too, and he wondered what was so important that it couldn’t be delivered in the traditional way. His last gift had been some of the most remarkable books he had ever seen with pictures of his parents lovingly tucked in, yellowed letters sticking out as bookmarks, and scribbled comments in the margins (thankfully a lot less chaotic than those comics, Harry noted, not sure if he was happy or glad of it. At least the letters were longer and more detailed, oozing the feel of hot, dry summer days). This didn’t look like anything resembling a gift, though. In a daze, he picked it up and stuffed it in his pocket, ignoring his uncle’s aggressively unfunny joke about explosives in letters, along with the urge to respond. 

Slowly, he walked in and gave them the rest of the post, before attempting to walk out unnoticed.

‘Where do you think you’re going, boy?’ Asked Aunt Petunia, her tiny eyes boring into him.

‘Outside,’ he replied, trying to look innocent and miserably failing.

‘I don’t think so,’ she told him. ‘What’s that stuffed into your pocket?’

Now Uncle Vernon looked up. ‘Stealing our letters, boy?’ he barked over a postcard that he now threw carelessly on the table without comment.

‘It was directed to me,’ Harry protested, although he knew it was an utter waste of effort. The Dursleys would never believe he was anything but a delinquent in the making, let alone someone who received letters.  

Within seconds he’d lost his letter and along with Dudley, surprisingly, thrown into the hallway. He and Dudley fought a short but furious fight for the keyhole, which ended with Harry contending to listen at the door.

The resulting conversation was, he thought, disappointingly useless. Not that he heard much before shoes approached the door and Dudley, in a rare display of both sensibility and atletism, ran for it, Harry hot on his heels. 

The result was, for some unfathomable reason probably something to do with Vernon’s perceived spies, he got his own bedroom. Sure, it was full of Dudley’s broken stuff, but it had a window and some of the stuff might even be repairable. 

Chapter Text

‘Are you alright?’

It was Peter, smiling timidly. He held out a bar of chocolate. ‘It’s full of energy and stuff,’ he offered.

‘Thanks,’ Remus said, hesitantly accepting the chocolate. ‘I am alright, really.’ But he wasn’t, and the worried glance Peter shot him told him that he wasn’t fooled. Remus cast around for a distraction. ‘Oh, it’s my favorite!’ He said with false cheer, though he had no particular liking for milk chocolate. Inwardly, he resigned himself to getting flooded with the stuff for the rest of his life. ‘Thanks, Peter!’

‘Always happy to help,’ Peter said modesty, and Remus could tell how pleased he was to be of use.

Remus gave him a smile and shoved his books aside, not wanting to risk smudging them.

Peter put his notes down and Remus glanced at them. He was mangling a couple of laws in the paragraph he could read upside down, but overall it seemed decent enough. He ripped the paper off the bar and broke it in half.

‘Would you help me with it? Something is not quite right with it.’

‘Oh, you don’t need the help, Peter,’ Remus assured him, but Peter gave him his infamous puppy-eyes and he relented. ‘Alright, I’ll look it over.’

He took a bite and shoved the other half to Peter, who gave him his notes and shoved the half back. Absently Remus shoved it back and took the notes. After a while, he felt something prodding his elbow. When he looked down, it was the bar he had given to Peter. It seemed to look up at him and made a high, whiney noise. He grimaced. ‘You do realize that sentience doesn’t make it more appealing, don’t you? Nice charm by the way.’

Peter grinned ruefully. ‘I just wanted to remind you of it, before it walks away without magic.’

Remus finished his half melted half and began the other half.

‘One of James’?’ He inquired, absentmindedly correcting a sentence.

‘Sirius, actually,’ Peter said. Remus looked up in surprise.

‘I thought you and him had a...’ well, not a fight but that breakfast they hadn’t seemed to get on that well. Peter had been in a right sulk, while Sirius had - rather pointedly - talked to everyone but Peter in that too-cheerful-way he had when something bothered him.

‘Yes, well,’ Peter said, with a odd hint of satisfaction in his tone. ‘He apologized.’

James must’ve talked to him, Remus though. ‘Pleased to hear that,’ he said, taking another bite and noting he was halfway already, popped the last quarter in his his mouth. ‘ Alright, well, overall it is quite decent, but here you’ve muddled two laws together, see?’

And so, heads bowed together, they spent the entire afternoon. At the end of it, Remus couldn’t help but feel buoyed by Peter’s eagerness, and Peter had, it seemed, got the hang of of differentiating between Gawp’s Law and Grump’s Law.

Peter insisted he needs tea, so Remus allowed him to slip away to the kitchen and returns to his book.

He was just at chapter four (‘ Exceptions to Gawp’s law ’) when Sirius popped in. ‘Back with the living again?’

Remus looked up warily as Sirius changed the color of his parchment to blue and bronze. ‘More or less.’

Sirius looked windswept and was grinning like a lunatic. ‘You should’ve seen that broom go! I’ve discovered the most wicked function in it!’

Remus did his best to look interested.

‘I’ve discovered,’ Sirius said in a low whisper. ‘How to get the broom in a free fall .’

He makes it sound as if he’s just done the discovery of the century, but Remus failed to see why that’s so exciting. ‘And?’

‘Well, normally it slightly floats so you don’t fall off,’ Sirius explained patiently, ‘but that means how fast you go is dependent on the broom. If you go into a free fall, however, gravity does the job for you !’

Remus could imagine it now: when a  Bludger approaches James he can duck even at the last second on any broom. ‘That’s brilliant!’

‘I know right!’

There was a pause. ‘So, wanna test it?’

Remus gave the window a significant look. The rain was still beating mercilessly against it. He raised his eyebrow at Sirius.

Sirius grinned. ‘I brought brooms. We can test it in the staircase. Come on!’

Chapter Text

Dudley wasn’t particularly happy to lose his storage-room, to put it mildly. The rest of the day, Harry heard him shouting, crying, puking and once a tremendous shattering of glass, followed by a roar of Uncle Vernon and the sound of wrestling and things falling, punctuated by the shrieking of Aunt Petunia about the greenhouse that was now ruined. Then there had been a short shriek of pain, and in the end, Dudley had been practically dragged upstairs, though he seemed to kick at everything in reach, from the various bangs. From what Harry gathered, Dudley had made the mistake of kicking Aunt Petunia, and Uncle Vernon wouldn’t stand for it. ‘You’re going to sit here ,’ Harry heard him growl, as he listened to the click of the lock on Dudley’s room. ‘And you’re going to apologize to your mother when I let you out!’ Dudley just wailed and sobbed. 

As Harry looked outside, Aunt Petunia gathered up the tortoise laying in the greenhouse in a bit of cloth. Harry could only imagine the look of disgust she was no doubt wearing. He stepped back from the window and flopped down on the bed. Normally he’d have taken the opportunity to enjoy a Dudley-free house for a while, but with his aunt and uncle being as angry as they were, he thought it best not to take the risk. 

He didn’t see Dudley until the next morning, where he was unusually quiet. Had Harry even done one-tenth of what Dudley had done, he’d probably never left the cupboard.

Uncle Vernon was almost polite to Harry that breakfast, but Harry was too wrapped up in bitterly ruminating on the letter from yesterday to notice. He should’ve just opened it in the hallway, or fought Uncle Vernon for it, he thought. 

Uncle Vernon clearly wasn’t about to give him a second chance to do so, for when the mail arrived he made Dudley get it. 

‘There is another one!’ Dudley announced, and more than ever Harry wished he had been sent to get the post. ‘Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive --’

 His uncle sprinted towards the hall, and Harry did the same. When Uncle Vernon wrestled Dudley to the ground, Harry - against all survival instincts - jumped and grabbed his uncle around his thick neck. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do now, except hanging on until an opportunity presented itself.  Dudley managed to smack his fathers hand away from the letter a couple of times with the Smelting stick, but mostly he just seemed to hit anything in the vicinity, occasionally hitting himself. After about a minute of this, Uncle Vernon managed to get the letter and sent them away - Harry to his bedroom, Dudley just anywhere. 

Of course, Harry wasn’t about to just give up on reading the letter. Fortunately, whoever sent it clearly wasn’t about to give up on reaching him, so the letters kept coming. Rather unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have figured out that they could reach Harry in other places than the house, unlike Uncle Moony. Harry had trawled the entire library to find anything about him, from the Yellow Book to all sorts of esoteric books about moon-symbolism, making him somewhat of an expert on that bit of symbolism, but not much else. He had entertained the thought that it might’ve been a group of three people, but the style was too consistent for that, and obviously werewolves weren’t at all like the myths, so that was out, and there really wasn’t much else in the small library near the school. Since he couldn’t become a member, he couldn’t even ask them to get a couple of books for him. Also, that required knowing specific titles, and he didn’t. 

He considered it odd that nobody had tried to contact him on his way to school, no matter how much he stayed behind or how late or early he left school. It was as if they wanted his aunt and uncle to give him those messages. Well, they could wait a long time, he thought, but he hoped Uncle Vernon wouldn’t go completely insane beforehand.

That night, the house slept warily. Early in the morning, Harry’s alarm rang. Half-asleep he hit it to turn it off, nearly rolling out of bed in the process. He awoke entirely in a matter of seconds, quickly dressing himself. It was six o’clock in the morning. The mailman might just be starting his round, and while the appearance of a small boy asking for the letters for Privet Drive number 4 might raise some eyebrows, he was sure he wouldn’t be refused. As he passed the bedrooms before he crept downstairs he listened carefully. From Dudleys bedroom there came a soft snoring. From his Aunt and Uncle’s room, there was nothing but silence at first.

‘Lily…,’ 

Harry nearly jumped at the sudden soft mutterings he heard.

‘Dn’t go…’ 

He relaxed again. It was just his aunt talking in her sleep. Don’t go....that must be about the night of the car crash, he thought with an unusual pang of compassion, perhaps even pity, for his aunt. 

Slowly, carefully he stepped on the stairs. He couldn’t risk stepping on the bottom stair, which creaked loud enough to wake the house up,so he counted the stairs and skipped the bottom stair. 

The hallway in front of him had a hint of otherworldliness that comes with the hours just before the dawn. For a second, Harry thought he saw something move near the door, and he stiffened. Then he shook himself and snuck determinedly towards the door, where the key would be in the lock, as always. But before he could reach out and turn them, he stepped on something soft and squishy, and the most terrible scream resounded through the house. Harry jumped backwards, at the same time the shadowy being jumped up. At that moment, the lights were turned on and Harry looked into his furious Uncle’s face. 

His heart sank. He was in for it now. 

And indeed, his Uncle yelled at him about being a sneaky little brat, them having taken him in out of the goodness of their heart and rewarded in THIS MANNER ! (Harry effortlessly dodged the spit coming out at this point) with him, the ungrateful brat that he is, sneaking out to do god-knows-what, stomping on his uncle’s face (Even Harry didn’t dare to protest it was hardly stomping of any kind), growing up for the hangman no doubt, and so on and so forth. This all went on for about half an hour before he got the order to make the tea. Harry had no choice but to obey, and when he came back it was to the sight of his uncle, his lap full of letters, tearing them up right in front of him, with the most maniacal grin Harry had ever seen. 

Uncle Vernon’s sanity didn’t improve over the day, though his mood certainly did. After breakfast he began nailing up the mailslot, arguing that if they couldn’t deliver the letter, they’d soon give up. Harry considered explaining that, from their point of view, they hadn’t been able to deliver the letter for a couple of days now, but the sight of his uncle attempting to knock in a nail with a piece of cake while explaining that the letter-writers minds worked in strange ways, ‘not like you and me’ amused him so much he decided to remain silent on the matter. 

In the following days, he began to admire the creativity of the writers. No crack seemed too small or too high up to get a letter in, and without being overtly threatening, the whole situation clearly drove his uncle over the edge. Harry rather thought that any eventual possibility of him actually reading the letters was merely a nice side-effect for the pranksters, and although he was more than a little uncomfortable at being used as a pawn, he couldn’t be too peeved at it. The amusement at seeing his uncle jump when a fingernail scratched the window or some wood creaked was simply too much. None of them quite realized Uncle Vernon’s insanity yet, though the moment was very near. 

It began when Uncle Vernon boarded up the entire house so that nobody could get in or out. 

‘What if they use real explosives in letters to clear the planks away?’ he asked his uncle as innocently as he could, while he was in the midst of humming ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’. Predictably, Uncle Vernon jumped and turned around. Harry didn’t even flinch. 

‘They won’t,’he said shortly. ‘Now get me another cup of tea, boy.’ 

Silently Harry turned around and fetched the tea. 

That evening, both the front and the backdoor were all boarded up and Uncle Vernon had a remarkably smug and self-satisfied air.

That promptly disappeared the next morning, when he discovered that the letter writer had hidden no less than 24 letters in the two dozen eggs that the milkman - who looked like he wasn’t quite sure about their sanity but attempted to take it in stride - handed them through the window of their living room. Uncle Vernon bellowed in rage and ran for the telephone, while Aunt Petunia explained that they had been bothered by a rather persistent prankster and would the milkman have any idea who had access to the eggs? 

The milkman, of course, had no idea, assured them that he’d be on the lookout for anything unusual and went away as fast as he could without running. 

Uncle Vernon spent several hours trying to find someone to complain to, and came back when Aunt Petunia was making the lunch, his equilibrium restored after having given what he tended to call ‘a good shout’ to some unfortunate employee of either the post or the diary. His vein pulsed impressively. No more letters arrived that day.

The next morning, Uncle Vernon was in an unusually good, if somewhat distracted mood, reminding them all that there was no post on Sunday. Before Harry could open his mouth to remind him that they had hardly stuck to the post schedule yesterday, there was a whizzing noise and then a soft thud, as a letter burst out from the chimney and hit the back of Uncle Vernon’s head, as if to taunt him. 

The next moment, a steady stream of letters fell down from the chimney. Harry dove to get one, but he was seized around his waist and thrown into the hall before he could even get near one. Dudley and Aunt Petunia came running out soon after, and Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. 

He looked quite calm as he announced they were leaving, save for the glint in his eyes and a compulsive pulling on his mustache, resulting in great tufts of hair being spread across the hall. Nobody dared to argue when he ordered everyone to be ready in five minutes. Harry managed to gather his clothes easily enough, but with a pang of regret had to leave the comics behind in the loose board under his bed. Bitterly he wished they’d send a letter here . If they were capable of climbing up to the damn chimney to do it, why would a window cause much difficulty? 

Nevertheless he ran downstairs on being called, finding a sniffling Dudley emptying his sports bag (never used for actual sports, of course) from several electronics, his ear and cheek red and swollen. Within seconds they were in the car and speeding towards...yes, to where? Not even Aunt Petunia dared to ask questions. Uncle Vernon seemed in a tremendous hurry to go absolutely nowhere, doubling back whenever they seemed in danger of actually arriving anywhere. 
Worse, they hadn’t packed food. This wasn’t so bad for Harry, who was used to not eating for days at a time, but it nearly broke Dudley (well, that and not watching tv or playing video games). At last they stopped at the foulest hotel Uncle Vernon could find, apparently in the hope that even the most hardened spies would never lower themselves into coming anywhere near there. The best thing Harry could say about it was that they had enough beds that he didn’t need to share one with Dudley. 

‘I’ll never be able to sleep hungry,’ Dudley announced loudly on entering the bedroom assigned to him and Harry, but of course he was asleep before his head even touched the pillow. Harry was rather less lucky, finding himself unable to sleep with the incessant snoring next to him. He sat up all night on the windowsill staring at the passing cars below, wondering if any one of the cars contained the writer, hoping against hope that there was something in the letters, something just for him… ah, who was he kidding? It was probably just a plot to drive his Aunt and Uncle insane, maybe to take over their house… He sighted and watched his breath condense on the window. 

Chapter Text

Breakfast the next morning was miserable. Even Dudley could only listlessly poke at his canned tomatoes, though he devoured the stale cornflakes earlier. It certainly isn’t improved when the owner informed them she had gotten at least a hundred letters, all addressed to a Mr. H. Potter. Harry’s grab at it was rendered futile by his uncle slapping his hand out of the way and saying that he’d take the letters. Exactly what he did with them, Harry would never know - at any rate, they weren’t in the car when they decided to move on. 

Late that afternoon, everyone was convinced that Uncle Vernon was completely, utterly, irrevocably mad. He spent the entire day going to all sorts of places that were secluded, Harry understood that much, but they were primarily secluded because you couldn’t live there, like halfway a suspension bridge. At last, they stopped at the coast. Uncle Vernon got out, locked them all in, and left.It was near dark by the time he got back, but Uncle Vernon had apparently scoped out ‘the perfect place’ and bought something. He refused to tell anyone where it was or what he had bought. 

‘The perfect place’ turned out to be a miserable old shack on a rock in the middle of the sea in the midst of a serious storm.

The hut was almost too soggy to creak, planks held together with fungi and overgrown duct tape that threatens to let go under the merciless onslaught of the storm. It looked like the owner couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it or perhaps that it was intended as an art project to show transience. Harry imagined boatloads or tourists rowing themselves to this godforsaken rock, making pictures of it and showing it to others, who inevitably wouldn’t understand it, so they could sniff and say ‘it's the experience , dear’, like he had heard someone say on TV once or twice - though that wasn’t about houses that nearly walked away on their own. 

It’s owner cheerfully claimed that the hut was a sturdy one and survived many storms. Harry watched as Uncle Vernon visibly weighed the pros and cons of strangling the owner, before deciding against it - probably because it would be noticed by the suspected spies and being a convicted murderer would give them a bad rep.

They have a dinner of canned tomatoes, chips and bananas, while sitting miserably around an empty fireplace (except Uncle Vernon, whose glee was rather encouraged by the whole thing) and so far the owls were staying away. Harry didn’t blame them - Dudley was so hungry he might just eat them - but he rather missed them all the same.

Aunt Petunia began making the beds, while Uncle Vernon began ‘setting up the defense’ which mostly appeared to consist of shoving empty bags around and making a clumsy attempt at a barricade.

As his aunt and uncle retreat in the bedroom, Dudley flopped down on the couch and Harry burrowed himself in in blankets on his lumpy mattress, the storm grew steadily worse. Drops of salt water splattered in through the cracks, making puddles and occasionally flicking Dudley and Harry in the face. Sheets of rain attempted to break through the roof. No letters could possibly get through this siege of the elements, Harry thought.

If he craned his neck, he could make out the red glowing numbers on Dudley’s watch, which seemed to dangle in thin air except for the tiny illuminated bit of arm. He watched time pass by until his neck hurt.

Suddenly there’s a heaving, wheezing noise around him, and when he blinks he is surrounded by the TARDIS.

‘Hello, Harry.’

‘Doctor,’ he says, and it probably shouldn’t be a greeting but it suffices. He gets up and nods at him. ‘Changed your TARDIS.’

He likes the previous one better, he thinks but doesn’t say. The Doctor changed, too; just a little more grim and sad, a bit more barely controlled anger hidden away.

‘I am really sorry about last time,’ he offers to the silence.

‘Yes, well, I might’ve been a touch harsh there, as well,’ the Doctor says, and Harry looks at him and thinks that perhaps the Doctor’s capacity for forgiveness has grown as well. Something in his chest loosens and uncoils somewhat. He wonders how long it’s been for him but decides not to ask. Time is rather fluid here, anyway.

‘I wanted to give you a proper birthday,’ the Doctor says, treading carefully around the cracks they made.

Harry shrugs. ‘Sfine,’ he mutters.

‘No it isn’t,’ the Doctor insist, suddenly angry. Harry very deliberately does not step back.

‘I want to make it up to you,’ he continues, gentler. ‘And you don’t turn eleven every day, eh?’

‘You could make that happen,’ Harry responds with a careful grin.

The Doctor smiles sadly. ‘You know I can’t.’

‘I was just kidding.’

‘I know,’ the Doctor murmurs, and then: ‘How’s it been?’

‘Got my annual gifts,’ Harry says, dancing around the subject of ‘Dursley’s’ as well with practiced ease. ‘Bunch of comics I couldn’t read, full of notes and pictures.’ After a pause, he adds: ‘lots of text balloons with new texts, doodles of a certain Padfoot with text one of the heroes - science guy with red and gold armor who is really hyperactive - utters. Nothing of interest to you, I am sure.’ He verbally jumps over the hole in the road that is ‘parents’ and continues: ‘what about you?’

‘Oh, nothing much,’ he says. ‘Lost my friends. Played the Ghost of Christmas Future. Saw my own death.’ After a beat, he adds, a bit unnecessary: ‘not in that order, of course.’

Harry breathes out, then in again. That explains it. Then again, talking with the Doctor means sifting the truth from the technicalities. He’s just out of practice.

‘Saw your own death?’

And there it is, the guarded look that means he stumbled upon an uncomfortable truth. ‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Well, I was there, you know,’ the Doctor points out. So maybe it wasn’t quite that look and death is just a sensitive subject. 

Harry nods.

‘Obviously it didn’t stick,’ he tells himself.

‘It didn’t,’ the Doctor confirms. ‘But it was a near thing.’

Harry waits, carefully. ‘Nearly destroyed my wife and friends.’ The Doctor sounds surprised at that.

‘Well,’ he says with his customary forced cheer. ‘Where do you wanna go?’

Harry thinks that over for a while. There’s loads of things he wants to say, but what comes out is a soft: ‘What happened?’

The Doctor exhales slowly. ‘They got invited,’ he says when his lungs must be close to empty. ‘To my death, I mean.’

He talks about it as if being invited to someone’s death is a regular thing. Harry wonders if it is, for him. If he revisits them often. He doesn’t think so, thinks the Doctor is more likely to visit the days before, when everyone is young and happy, giving them just what they need... and suddenly his stomach sinks as he suspects the Doctor might just be doing that right now, offering his forgiveness and closing the last link...

‘It’s a future me,’ he says now, as Harry tries to focus. ‘Past-me was in a saloon at the time, you can imagine their surprise.’

‘There is this order,’ the Doctor continues. ‘They kidnapped a dear friend of mine, who was already pregnant at the time, and they took the baby as soon as it was born, raising it as a custom-made assassin just for me,’ he says, smiling wryly. ‘Of course, she fell in love with me and attempted to refuse her mission. They weren’t happy about that and forced her anyway.’

For a moment he looks lost in thought. ‘I visited her every day in prison, never knew she killed me. But how could I, they described the victim as a good man. Afterward she became my wife -‘

‘Hold on, was this after she killed you?’

The smile slips. ‘Yes,’ he says curtly.

‘Okay,’ Harry says, realizing he sounds almost placating. ‘Just establishing a time-line here. Weird way of flirting, but I’m not judging.’ It comes out stiff and wooden, but he can’t take it back.

‘There’s this prophecy,’ the Doctor says, sounding like that’s a continuation of the story rather than a complete non sequitur.

‘About a question that must never be answered. This order wants to silence me prematurely, so to speak. Appropriately they’re called the Silence.’

Harry stiffened. Something about that... it rang a bell.

‘Are we safe here?’

‘Yeah, we’re in the Time Vortex. It’s fine,’ he says. ‘So, where do ya want to go?’ Discussion closed then.

‘Anything interesting in the future?’

‘The end of the world is rather spectacular,’ the Doctor offers. ‘There is a rather good Mars Landing. The moon explodes, of course.’ He pauses, walks around the console. ‘Then again, the past has Woodstock and Star Wars, along with other things. I don't think you'll like Woodstock very much though.‘

‘What about other planets?’ Harry suggests as the Doctor stops next to the blue lever.

He stops, looks at him, face unreadable. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘I don’t know, I am sure you know an appropriate place.’

The Doctor relaxes somewhat as he presses the lever. ‘Hold that, will you?’

Soon after, they investigate disappearances, stop the Cybermen (again) and Harry finds himself annoyed at what the Doctor doesn’t say; the pretexts to scan him with the screwdriver, the sudden sharp looks, the abrupt refusal to explain anything (honestly, usually you couldn’t get him to shut up if you tried )... all he tells Harry is that the candy short circuited the machines because it was a different sort of energy, that there was a scientific explanation and that he refused to call it magic, and that he met it before.

‘Doctor,’ Harry says as they land. The Doctor turns exactly 180 degrees to look at him. ‘Is it... Stonehenge?’ A tiny shiver is his only answer. ‘I mean,’ he ploughs on. ‘It’s just... it’s a place that attracts users of m-magic, and historically speaking weird things have happened... couldn’t your slimy monster have leaked into the groundwater or something?’

There is a pause, as the Doctor appears to consider him carefully. Then, with something alarmingly like pity in his eyes: ‘Yes. It could be.’

‘And, unless I am very much mistaken, that means it could’ve spread into a batch of candies, correct?’

There’s a pause in which the Doctor’s face can best be described as surprised and relieved. ‘Yes,’ he agrees.

‘Does that mean it spread to humans as well?’

Silence, but the earlier expression returns.

‘And what would happen if it did?’ he asks, knowing asking for a general answer is his best bet.

The Doctor swallows, while the TARDIS hums reproachingly. Then he turns around and walks to the kitchen. When he returns, carrying two steaming mugs smelling of hot cacoa filled with whipped cream and marshmallows and somehow, impossibly, two plates at his elbow. ‘I forgot,’ he says by way of explanation, slathering his pancake in syrup and adding ham. Harry sticks to powdered sugar and syrup. ‘Happy birthday!’

‘You also forgot my question,’ Harry says mildly, but he can’t help the grin that splits his face at the birthday wish. Now it’s his birthday.

‘S’tng ‘n th’ kchn ‘r you,’ the Doctor says later, gesturing with his pancake to the door he came out of.

‘Nah, you wouldn’t understand,’ the Doctor says, having apparently finally managed to swallow his bite. ‘It’s a very complicated explanation, most people wouldn’t.’ Harry's not sure if he should believe him, but decides to let it go. He's way too happy to be here to risk messing it up again.

He takes a smaller bite, folding the back of the pancake so the syrup doesn’t leak out. ‘What’s in the kitchen?’

‘Cake, several gifts,’ is the offhand reply.

Harry finishes his pancake in three bites, burns his throat on the hot cocoa and sprints to the kitchen.

Laid out neatly on the table the first thing he sees is a big vanilla-whipped cream cake with Happy Birthday Harry Potter on it in green frosting.

Next to it, a small tubular package, one big cube, several smaller ones and a handful of oddly shaped packages, all neatly wrapped. Upon further inspection, the tubular package contains a rolled up yellow hammock that proclaims itself to be ‘hyper-attachable’ and a ‘temperature-regulated’ blanket. In the biggest package is a red, actually working steam-train and several pieces of station and rail, along with miniature coals, water and an explanation of how to ignite it, which appears to be through a red button that’s almost bigger than the train itself.

‘Build you a whole room for it,’ a voice says. ‘You wanted it earlier, but I wasn’t sure it was safe.’

The train seems to grow fuzzy and his throat tightens. He doesn’t remember specifically wanting this but then, he doesn’t remember ever not wanting this either.

‘There’s more,’ the Doctor prods gently, after a while. Harry looks up.

‘Oh yeah, alright,’ he murmurs distractedly. There’s a foldable laser-guitar, some chameleon clothes infused with metal, a ‘protection-field-ring’ and a handful of other things.

Harry pockets the laser-guitar, puts the ring on a bracelet around his neck and pauses to look at the Doctor, ignoring the bright smile, searching for a clue. There’s a a slight wetness around the eyes, and a slight downturn of the lips, but he can’t see anything more. He doesn’t need to. ‘This is a goodbye, isn’t it.’

‘I am sorry.’

Harry feels his muscles tensing as he asks: ‘Why?’

‘I am dying. I am going to Trenzalore, and there I will probably die. I am- I am at my last regeneration. There’s no way out. I didn’t want to leave you like last time. I wanted... I wanted to give you something to remember me by, and these - he gestures - might save your life one day.’

‘Do you have to? You said it’s just a-a prophecy, you can... you can ignore it, can’t you?’ And then, plaintively: ‘Can’t you?’

‘I am sorry.’

There’s a pause and then he says: ‘Some things need to happen. The Silence hunted me to the end of the universe and beyond, and they dragged my friends into it as well. Now I am taking the fight to them .’

A lever is pulled and with a whirring sound they’re off. Back to the shack.

Harry walks to the door and turns back, remembering the last time he did that. This time he finds the Doctor staring back at him, a gentle smile on his face. And for the first time it reaches his eyes as well.

‘Goodbye Doctor and,’ he hesitates. ‘Good luck.’ He doesn’t say please don’t go or I’ll miss you , though he will; he understands completely and would, he thinks dimly, do the same if he had friends and enemies like the Doctor.

‘Good luck Harry,’ the Doctor says softly, understanding the unsaid. ‘You’ll need it.’

And so he walks out of that door and watches the TARDIS disappear.

Chapter Text

BOOM!

Harry turns to the side, so he can watch Dudley, the bedroom door and the front door at the same time. Dudley slurs something about a canon in his sleep, but it’s not important. What is

BOOM!

Yes, definitely a knock, not a thunderclap. The door is trembling.

The bedroom door bursts open at that moment, and his uncle stumbles out with a rifle.

‘Who’s that!’ He barks, with a hint of panic. ‘I am warning you - I am armed!’

With a final bang the door falls on the floor. In the doorway stands a... well, it’s vaguely humanoid shaped. The face is obscured by something that looks like a bush, going by the silhouette, and the rest is a mass of shadows, save for the... well, he hopes they’re arms, but something is wriggling in the lower areas of the clothing. Or what he assumes is clothing.

Well. Best not to draw attention to himself, then.

Some time later, when the definitively-humanoid-giant greets him enthusiastically and introduces himself as Rubeus Hagrid, he reflects that that plan isn’t working.

Briefly he considers using Dudley as a human shield, but the Doctor’s disapproving face rises up in his imagination before he can even finish that thought.

The giant enquires after tea, and Harry throws him an apologetic look that he hopes conveys his tremendous regret at not having the kettle put on.

It takes one pointed look at the fireplace for him to understand.

In a snort and a poke the hearth is alive and cackling. Now, they can all see the intruder better: the bush on his face turns out to be a beard, and the mass appears to be a long coat, slick with rain.

Not long afterward, Rubeus Hagrid begins fishing out everything for a midnight snack: a kettle, sausages, several chipped mugs, a teapot and a poker. Soon enough the first sausages are ready. Dudley’s fingers twitch in their direction, but Uncle Vernon sharply tells him not to accept any food. Sensible advice, Harry thinks privately, though apparently funny to the humanoid, who responds that Dudley hardly needs the food. He passes the sausages to Harry, who sees no polite reason to refuse, and is too hungry to spend too much time on finding one. The sausages turn out to be utterly delicious, though Harry can’t help wondering if it’s like the candy, and if perhaps it’ll turn to mud and leaves in his stomach (ever since he's visited a planet where food turned out to be a illusion that turned back to its original state when coming into contact with stomach acids, compounded by some kids attempts to scare him by talking about the Fae and the suspicion that Harry's a Changeling (The Doctor had mentioned that the Fae liked making mortals think their kid was a changeling, but they also took children), and that they'd make the Fae return the real child by boiling Harry, and ever since he heard there was something in the candy, Harry had, in the back of his mind, wondered if wizardfood was like Faefood), and if that would still be worth it. 

Hagrid’s beard twitches independent of his facial movement, he observes, as he finishes his last sausage. Hagrid merely smiles at him, - which produces a different movement in his beard -, tells Harry to call him Hagrid, and adds casually that he no doubt knows everything about Hogwarts. 

Harry tries to remember if he ever heard of anything resembling that name, and comes up empty. ‘No, can’t say I do,’ he says. 

Hagrid looked shocked.

‘Sorry,’ he adds, feeling as if he really should know it.

"Sorry?" barks Hagrid, turning to stare at the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows. "It's them as should be sorry! I knew yeh weren't gettin' yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn't even know abou' Hogwarts, fer cryin' out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yer parents learned it all?" 

‘Why would they tell me about Hogwarts and then not let me get my letter?’ Harry asks, feeling as if he’s missing something rather crucial here. ‘And all what? What did my parents do?’ 

Unfortunately, this enrages Hagrid even further, though it wasn’t aimed at Harry. Harry, now positively burning with curiosity, tried to get some answers, but all he got out was that his parents were famous in a different world. Until Hagrid - over vehement protests of his aunt and uncle - said that he was a wizard. There is a scientific explanation and I refuse to call it magic, The Doctor had said. But the Doctor was a bit weird that way, though he hadn’t been wrong yet. Mentally, Harry shrugs. It doesn’t matter what the Doctor calls it, he decides, what matters is that according to Hagrid he has it. If it works like magic and functions like magic, he’ll call it magic.

‘So… I am a wizard?’

‘an' a thumpin' good 'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter.’

Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr. H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,

Deputy Headmistress

‘Owl? What do they mean, owl?’

Apparently, this reminds Hagrid of something he has to do, and he proceeds to demonstrate the use of an owl, which apparently consists of giving the owl a letter and throwing it out of the door. 

Harry wants to ask why on Earth you’d use a owl if you could also use pigeons, and wasn’t the owl gonna get lost in the storm and how were they trained and how did they know where to go and much more, but Uncle Vernon chooses that moment to speak up, saying Harry isn’t going. 

In the course of insulting Uncle Vernon, Hagrid proceeds to insult all nonmagical humans with the word ‘muggle’. Well, he says it’s just what wizards call nonmagical people, but that becomes rather hard to believe when it’s immediately followed by: ‘An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on.’

Just when Harry wants to point this out, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia reveal they had known all this time that he was a wizard, and that his parents were blown up instead of dying in a car crash.

‘Blown up?’ he says when he finds his voice again. ‘B-but you always said they died in a car crash because they were drunk!’ For a second, he feels oddly lost. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had never been pleasant to him, but he had always thought they were at least honest with him. He had never expected them to lie about something like that .

Before he had the time to process this, however, Hagrid exploded in moral outrage about ‘Harry Potter not knowing his own story’ and the Dursley’s scuttled back into their own corner, presumably in the hope of not being turned into frogs or worse. Harry privately thought he wouldn’t mind an awful lot if they got turned into frogs, but he was rather distracted with getting the story out of Hagrid. 

According to Hagrid, there once was a wizard, who went as bad as it was possible to go. At the height of his power, Hogwarts was one of the few safe spaces left. This wizard - Voldemort, he was called - turned up in the village where Harry’s parents lived. Nobody knew why. Perhaps he tried to turn them to his side (Harry didn’t expect someone with that many followers would’ve recruited them all personally), maybe he just liked killing (but then, why didn’t he kill all the people in that village?), but either way, he came to their house and killed them with a powerful course, powerful enough to destroy the house, but somehow… it didn’t work on Harry. That’s how he got his scar and his fame - nobody had survived when Voldemort decided to kill them, and this tiny baby had lived when all the rest died. Instead, Voldemort disappeared. Hagrid himself had rescued Harry from the ruins and brought him to the Dursleys’, on Dumbledore’s orders. 

‘Why?’ 

Unfortunately, Uncle Vernon picks that moment to interrupt again, primarily to insult Harry’s parents (briefly, Harry wonders if he’s brave or foolhardy). Hagrid won’t stand for that, thankfully, and within two seconds Uncle Vernon flattens himself against the wall again. The walls must’ve been stronger than they looked, for they appeared to hold Vernon’s weight easily. Harry wonders if they’re magical. 

Trying to distract Hagrid from spearing his uncle, Harry asks what happened to his would-have-been-murderer. Apparently he vanished that very night, which made Harry even more famous. Though some are convinced Voldemort died, Hagrid isn’t one of them, thinking Voldemort didn’t have enough human left in him to die, but he definitely disappeared, since some people came of these sort of ‘trances’ and they probably wouldn’t have been able to if he was coming back. 

And according to Hagrid, everyone thought that was something Harry had done. That must be a mistake, it must be, because if Harry could do magic, let alone the sort that defeated wizards like Voldemort, none of the Dursley’s should’ve been able to even look at him funny, let alone bully him and lock him up into his cupboard and the like without getting turned into funny animals. 

‘Hagrid,’ he says quietly. ‘I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I can’t possibly be a wizard, let alone one powerful enough to defeat Vol- You-Know-Who.’

Hagrid chuckled, a slight, booming noise that seemed to reverberate from the walls. 

‘Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?’

Harry considers that briefly. It would explain how he ended up on the roof that time… and why his hair never grew longer nor shorter and seemed to have a life of its own, or how he could talk to snakes (he had assumed it was a side-effect from the TARDIS, of course, but magic fit as well). He glances up at Hagrid and smiled. Hagrid beams at him like this is the happiest moment of his life. 

Uncle Vernon chooses that moment to attempt to reinstate his authority again, hissing that Harry isn’t going and that he wouldn’t pay ‘for some crackpot old fool to teach him magic tricks.’ 

Harry tried to find even the tiniest scrap of magic within him to make Uncle Vernon shut up, or at least let him go to Hogwarts, but Hagrid roared and pointed his  umbrella at Dudley. There was a flash, a sound like a firecracker, a squeal followed by a howl of pain, and when Harry looked at the Dursleys, he saw Dudley hopping up and down, still howling in pain.

‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!’

Hagrid blinks, befuddled, as Harry faintly realizes it was he himself who had yelled. ‘Nobody insults Albus Dumbledore. Not on my watch.’

‘You don’t punish a kid for what his parents did,’ Harry says, feeling his anger crystallize in something far colder. ‘Dudley has done nothing to you, though even if he had, this was unwarranted. It’s not fair. Change. Him. Back.’ If he ever had any magic, he thinks, now is the time to come out and make Dudley better or at least make Hagrid understand.

‘I can’t,’ Hagrid says, flippantly. ‘The spell didn’t work so it’s not as easily reversed.’

‘Well, go write this Dumbledore you worship so much,’ Harry spits out. ‘And tell him to reverse it, if you find the time between kissing the ground he walks on!’

Within seconds, the umbrella is aimed at him.

‘You need me alive,’ Harry points out, though he isn’t actually sure. One of the Dursley’s snickers. Figures; he’s helping their son and they’re hoping he dies in the attempt.

‘Yer cousin seems like nuthin’ more than a useless lump of fat who takes your food given haf a chance, and I’d bet my life he bullies you as well,’ Hagrid says, sounding curious rather than furious. ‘Why’re you defending him?’

‘It’s the principle of the thing,’ Harry says. ‘You pick a weak target because you can, because you know you’ll win, instead of the one who you actually have something against. That’s cowardly and it’s bullying. I hate bullies. ‘And it didn’t even prove a point. I mean, if you insist on being pointlessly cruel, at least do it to the right person!’ He breathed 

‘So if I turn your uncle in a pig...’

‘Be my guest.’ Harry says nonchalantly. ‘He insulted your precious Dumbledore, after all. Dudley’s worst utterance was a squeak.’

Hagrid sights. ‘I really can’t, you know,’ he confides in Harry. ‘I am sorry - I never thought about it that way, and I should’ve realized it before firing the spell, but I really don’t know how to remove the tail.’

‘Will it go away on its own?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Unsure what to do, Harry says the first thing that occurs to him: ‘Would you mind moving the umbrella? Preferably keeping it to yourself?’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ Hagrid hurries to say. ‘I am really sorry, I never meant to threaten you.’

‘That’s okay,’ he tells him, feeling rather relieved it ends like this rather than with satè la Potter.

The Dursley’s, of course, are less happy, but soon enough they hide away in the bedroom.

Hagrid writes another note to Dumbledore, gives Harry his coat to sleep under and seems to fall asleep right away.

Harry watches until he’s sure Hagrid is asleep before falling asleep as well.

When he wakes up, he has almost convinced himself it was all just a dream, until the tapping starts. Soon enough, he finds himself paying an owl with unfamiliar currency, making tea on a still-glowing hearth and finishing the sausages.

Hagrid gets up as well, and they start on a slightly squashed but surprisingly tasty birthday cake. At the end of it, Harry follows him as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Over the day, Harry finds himself liking Hagrid more and more. He is not the brightest nor the most discrete, spilling secrets like they’re going out of style, but he’s... uncomplicated and honest, with a fierce loyalty to boot.

For Harry, used to having to drag important information out of the Doctor, this is a welcome and refreshing change. It does make him wonder why Dumbledore trusts him with secrets. If he was Dumbledore, he would only provide information that the rest of the world could know as well. But, he thinks, if I want certain information to be leaked to one person, Hagrid would be perfect. It would be easy to send him to that person and then right before he goes drop a line of ‘secret’ information to him and then let the curious nature of the person do it’s work to discern the secret.

The Doctor might’ve done it that way and, from what he gathers, Dumbledore is a lot like the Doctor.

At the end of the day, it turns out the Dursley’s have returned home, with Dudley having been transformed back to his usual self (Harry suspects that either Dumbledore sent someone or the owner of the shack was a wizard and helped out, but he doesn’t bother to ask) and are determined to pretend Harry doesn’t exist. It’s probably meant as punishment, but Harry welcomes the change with open arms. It gives him time to think about Uncle Moony, and who it might be. It isn’t, as he always hoped, a brother of his father who couldn’t take him in, as Hagrid believed his father was an only child. Nevertheless, it must be a wizard who knew his dad, because he used owls and parchment.

On September the 1st, they bring him to Kings Cross because, as Petunia puts it, they ‘don’t want his freakishness to contaminate poor Dudley’. Uncle Vernon adds that the longer they are rid of him, the happier they’ll all be. It takes a lot longer to convince Dudley to sit next to him in the car, and the ride itself is tense and silent.

When he is, at last, on the station and Vernon drives away, cackling, he discovers he has absolutely no clue where Platform 9 3/4 is and if he hoped for magical glowing neon-signs with pointing arrows, he’s sorely disappointed.

Grumbling inwardly about hiding an entire pub but not having one helpful sign, he wanders around looking for anyone vaguely odd.

As it turns out, there are a lot of weird people in London.

He very nearly misses the group of redheads, but somehow they stumble on his path, talking about ‘muggles’ and ‘platform 9 3/4’.

Hesitantly, he follows them and watches two of them walking up to a certain wall.

‘Excuse me?’

The mother looks at him. ‘Hullo, dear,’ she said. ‘First time at Hogwarts? Ron’s new, too.’

When they arrive at Hogwarts and hear the descriptions of the Houses, Harry likes the sound of Hufflepuff. Being just and fair is what he hopes to be, and he is neither brave nor ambitious or particularly clever. The hat begs to disagree. You stand up for what you believe in, even against insurmountable odds, it tells him.

‘I don’t fight,’ he says. ‘I run.’

And you look into the heart of an alien with kindness and understanding instead of fear. You’d be surprised at how much courage it takes to be kind.

‘ Isn’t that more of a Hufflepuff quality?’

Good point, but it takes the ability to think past the fear of the unfamiliar to do that. You fought monsters and you wouldn’t sit still if you saw evil being done, yes?

‘Anyone would’ve done the same if they ran with the Doctor.’

And why do you think that is, hm? Anyone else might’ve done the same for different reasons, like protecting friends, or getting on the good side of a Time-Lord or other reasons, but not merely because it’s the right thing to do.  He chose you.

 ‘ I ran toward him.’

Why would he choose that particular boring neighborhood to just happen to be at the right time for you to meet him?

‘Good point, well made.’

Of course, Slytherin is also a good place for you.

Harry nearly chokes.

‘ What?!’

Well, you’re cunning and ruthless , the Hat tells him, replaying his memory of when he deceived the Doctor, stole the TARDIS and ran for it. You did everything to get what you wanted then.

‘And never again,’ Harry whispers. ‘Who are you to judge me anyway?’

There’s laughter in his head, then, soft and knowing. I am you, it says. You without the things stopping you from seeing yourself as you are. Are you sure about Slytherin?

‘ No Slytherin,’ Harry says firmly.

Well, better be... GRYFFINDOR!

‘Thank you.’

He hurries off to the table, but not before catching a sharp look from Dumbledore.

Chapter Text

Soo,, this has been ages. And from now on, I'll write WiUM by hand, and then type it in as soon as I am at least three chapters ahead. Thanks for coming to my tedtalk. See ya around!

Chapter Text

Walking into Hogwarts is like walking into the TARDIS. Harry feels a curious pinprickle in his mind while she examined him. Soon it faded into the background as part of the general buzz. Everything is so different already!

'This way!' Harry pants to Ron, who follows him. 'I'm positive this one is a door!'

Hogwarts is pulling him towards it. Harry thinks the TARDIS would be delighted to meet her: they could exchange friendly grumbles about their inhabitants. Just as Harry is pushing and pulling in a frantic attempt not to be late - again -, a heavy hand lands on his shoulder and Ron makes a muffled noise.

'Oh, you're really in for it now,' the door says gleefully. 'He was manhandling me, sir! He was! Pushing and pulling me around like I was just a inanimate piece of wood -' but it gets cut off by a cackling voice: 'Trying to enter the forbidden corridor, eh?'

'I- I am s-sure t-they're just l-l-lost,' says a higher voice. The stuttering can't hide the subtle sneer in it. Clearly not even Quirrel is truly afraid of Filch. 'A-aren't you, b-boys?'

'Yes, professor,' says Harry, as Filch lets him go with a suspicious glare and slinks away.

'H-h-happy to help,' says Quirrel, now sounding as nervous as ever. 'You'd b-better g-g-go back to your c-classes, now,' he says, staring at the door. They leave quickly and eventually recognize a hallway. What did you do that for? Harry silently asks the castle, who merely hums in reponse. Harry gave up. Bloody secretive castle... They arrived at the Transfiguration classroom, fifteen minutes late.

In the beginning, Harry watched every statue and armor with suspicion and avoided the library. But soon he learned that the statues were just statues, and if he saw a little girl with a red balloon in the mirror, or something in the corner of his eyes, he ignored it. The mirrors and taps were very friendly and helpful. Harry, after the initial start, was polite to them. Ron treated it as normal, or even a nuisance at times. Somehow, Hogwarts seemed immune to monsters; people didn't seem to get replaced by their mirror images (at least Harry didn't notice any suspicious hand-switching or similar signs), statues didn't move other than how they were supposed to, and Harry could almost believe that even dreaming about the Weeping Angels wouldn't cause them to appear. (Later, he'd warn Hermione about the Vashta Nerada, flesh-eating living shadows that he'd heard about being particularly aggressive in a library with books from trees from their forest, but generally harmless - at least by The Doctor's standards).

It was the whispers that bothered Harry most. Whisperings about him were never a good thing, and the students - and even some of the staff - seemed to do nothing else. So he stuck to Ron, who seemed to view him as a friend, and ignored everyone else as best be could. It was unavoidable that he'd make some enemies, however; Draco had it in for him ever since Harry had told him off about insulting his friends, and had since tried to get Harry into trouble at every opportunity. The most memorable experience was the wizarding duel - although the flying lesson were Harry almost crashed into the ground to save Neville's Rememball that preceded it came a close second. The wizarding duel was arranged for midnight, and Harry and Ron slipped out in spite of Hermione's unwanted advice and with her and Neville tagging along - the castle let out a deep and throaty chuckle as they turned to discover the Fat Lady was gone, making everyone locked out -, they went to the the Trophy room. Harry did his best imitation of The Doctor when they were about to be discovered, and they ran straight back into trouble, led by Harry, who was led by the castle. Genius loci are not known for taking into account the feelings of children, let alone four particular among a large group. This one cared little about Neville's terror or the risk they all ran of being eaten: only that Harry had found his clue and would be able to find it again when needed. And Harry, who had begun to rely on Her, who was fully prepared to like and trust her (after all, the TARDIS was mischievous and trustworthy too, and Hogwarts rarely whispered and couldn't care less about Harry's fame, so she was a steadying voice in his ear, almost a friend)...felt betrayed. He cared - perhaps a little too much - about them and felt bad about Neville being dragged into this entirely against his will (Hermione had chosen it by choosing to follow them out, but Neville had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and seemed more affected than either of the group). The castle attempted to placate him by leading him and Neville straight to classes for several weeks, and after a while Harry accepted this olive branch, since Neville was so cheered up about being consistently on time for his classes.

In his third week Ron joins the chess club.
'Not because of you,' he says, as if thinking Harry might get offended. 'I just thought it'd be fun.'

'Yeah, sure,' says Harry, who had already considered it as he was well aware that while he liked chess well enough, Ron was way more passionate about it.

In the meantime Harry was often training and playing Quidditch and when Fred and George told him about All-Flavor Beans not just being a thing from the Hogwarts express but findable near Hogwarts, Harry suggested playing Gobstones with them, so that instead of getting sprayed by foul liquids, the loser would have to eat the bean they had been playing with.

While Harry had a lot of practice in making up his own games, he was significantly less experienced in sharing them. Despite his hesitance, it turns out that Ron and Hagrid like this variation on Gobstones.