Chapter Text
– 1 –
The Doctor is In
Autumn and the start of a new school year arrived at Hogwarts not with drama but with kindness. After the events of the previous year --- the Triwizard Tournament, the death of Cedric Diggory, and the possible return, depending on your point of belief, of Voldemort --- this boded well.
The September sky was a soft, thoughtful blue, the sort that suggested no particular urgency. Winter did not appear to be in a hurry to arrive. The colored leaves were drifting lazily from the trees along the Black Lake, reds, oranges, and yellows, spinning as though deciding where they wished to land. The air was crisp enough to feel awake without being unkind, and the sunlight was lingering warmly on the ground.
Luna Lovegood was spending her early Saturday afternoon sipping a warm cup of tea she had brought along from lunch while walking barefoot along the shoreline. It was helping to compensate for the chill on her feet. All of her shoes had disappeared early this year. She was certain that nargles were to blame. If she were to get her shoes back, she thought, she would need to add a butterbeer cork to the laces on each of them.
As she strolled, she was careful not to disturb what she was certain were tracks. They were faint—slight impressions in the damp earth near the reeds—but Luna believed that the Crumple-horned Snorkack was a subtle creature. Large as it was, it was never prone to stomping or charging in her assessment. It preferred to almost drift along. These tracks illustrated that distinct drifting quality.
“Yes,” she murmured to herself as she examined a particular set of tracks. “It’s definitely searching for something. Possibly beetles or freshwater lobsters for lunch. Or, perhaps, just time.”
Fang, Hagrid’s huge Neopolitan Mastiff, lumbered along behind her. Unlike the snorkack, his enormous paws crunched leaves with all the grace of a small avalanche. He had been convinced to accompany Luna only because Hagrid had asked him to keep an eye on her, and because Luna had promised not to lead him anywhere too strange. He would have preferred to be napping.
This promise, the notoriously cowardly Fang suspected, had been made in bad faith.
After a bit more walking, Luna paused, crouched, and traced a finger lightly along one of the clearer impressions. It curved oddly, almost as if the creature had hesitated. “Oh,” she murmured to herself. “Something has confused you.”
And that was when the noise began.
It wasn’t thunder. It wasn’t an explosion. It sounded, rather, like an accordion with asthma being played by someone who didn’t particularly like the accordion very much. It was a wheezing, groaning, sort of “vworp, vworp, vworp” that made the air feel suddenly crowded.
Fang yelped. His acute canine hearing found the noise to be particularly painful and disturbing. Luna straightened up just in time to hear a solid thud. It was as if reality had hiccupped.
And then, quite abruptly, there was a blue police box on the shore, looking lost and out of place.
It was tall and rectangular, with white-lettered signs and a small lamp on top. It was leaning slightly to one side, as though embarrassed by its own arrival. The lamp was flickering uncertainly. The words POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX were emblazoned above the door in white letters.
Fang took one look at it, decided this was unquestionably the wrong sort of day, and bolted back toward the safety of Hagrid’s hut with a series of terrified howls. “Poor Fang,” Luna said, watching him disappear. “Oh, well. I’m sure he’ll be back later.”
Luna then turned her full attention to the callbox. It was, she thought, an exceptionally impractical place for a it. A few moments passed. She heard noises and a voice coming from inside. Finally, the door opened. In the doorway was a man who looked as though he had lost an argument with both fashion and gravity and had decided to enjoy the results.
He was tallish and all angles, his dark brown curls unruly beneath a wide-brimmed fedora. He was wearing a burgundy frock coat that had clearly seen more places than most people. An absurdly long, multicoloured knitted scarf was looped around his neck several times and still seemed determined to escape.
With only the slightest of hesitations, he stepped out, looked around, and sighed deeply. “Oh, honestly,” he groused. “One tiny adjustment. One. You recalibrate the navigation circuits just a fraction, and suddenly—” He stopped, pulled a slender metal device from his pocket, and pointed it accusingly back into the box. “—you develop opinions.”
The device emitted a faint whine. “Oh, don’t give me that,” the man said, waving it irritably. “I said trans-Galactic sidestep, not rural lakeside with suspicious energy readings. You used to listen to me.”
He clicked the device a few times, muttering, then sighed again and tucked it away.
“Well. Since we’re here on Earth,” he muttered. And that is when he turned—and that is when he finally noticed Luna.
She was standing quite still, head slightly tilted, silvery-blue eyes wide with interest rather than fear.
“Oh,” he said. “Hello, young lady.”
“Hello, sir,” she replied politely.
“You didn’t run away,” he remarked, as if he had seen her earlier and did not expect to see her again.
“No,” she agreed. “I didn’t. Should I have?”
“No. Of course not.”
The man studied her for a moment. Bare feet. Bountiful blonde hair. Bronze jumper. Pretty face. Calm expression.
“I often get screaming,” he said. “Or fainting. I hate fainting. Once, a man tried to hit me with a fish.”
“That doesn't sound like it would be very helpful,” Luna said thoughtfully.
“No, it wasn't. It didn’t involve much planning. But I did get a nice haddock for lunch out of it.”
A couple of more moments passed. Then, he cleared his throat and straightened his coat. “I’m The Doctor,” he said. “Please call me Doctor.”
“That’s a very nice name,” Luna said. “Pleased to meet you, Mr Doctor, sir. I’m Luna Lovegood. Please call me Luna.”
He blinked. “You’re being remarkably polite about all this, Luna.”
“Well,” she said, gesturing to the box, “you’ve arrived in a rather unusual way, but you don’t seem dangerous… and being polite is almost always proper.”
“I’m deeply relieved.”
“Besides, you don’t feel at all like a Heliopath,” she continued, “or an Umgubular Slashkilter.”
The Doctor froze. “A what?”
“Umgubular Slashkilter,” Luna repeated helpfully. “They’re much nastier.”
He stared at her, then laughed—a sudden, delighted bark of sound. “Oh, I always like this planet.”
Luna smiled faintly, perhaps wondering why he referred to the Earth in such a way. Had he been to other planets?
“That box,” she said, glancing back at it. “It seems like a very unusual way to travel.”
“Oh, it is,” the Doctor said cheerfully, as he patted the blue wood affectionately. “And it isn’t. It’s a TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space vessel. She takes me everywhere.”
“Everywhere sounds lovely,” Luna said. “I’ve always wanted to see more of everywhere.”
He paused, studying her more carefully now.
“I usually travel with a companion,” he said, testing the waters as they stepped away from the TARDIS. “But at the moment, it’s just me. Lonely business, travelling alone.”
“That’s a shame,” Luna said. “You’d probably miss things that way.”
“Exactly! Someone else always notices what you don’t.”
He glanced around again, expression sharpening. Luna was becoming increasingly interesting to him. He had never encountered anyone so young, yet so wise.
“This place we are at, with that castle up on the hill,” he said. “It’s humming. Magic is everywhere. Not the usual sort, either. I have never come across anywhere like it on Earth, or anywhere else.”
Luna nodded. “That’s Hogwarts. It’s a school of witchcraft and wizardry.”
“A magic school,” he echoed. “Of course it is. Explains everything. I was unaware of anything like it being present on the Earth.”
She brightened. “Would you like a tour, sir? I would be particularly happy to show you around.”
“I would love a tour, Luna. You are a truly remarkable young lady.”
Luna quietly gobbled up the compliment like the sweetest of delights from Honeyduke’s. She was not used to being treated in such a kind and welcoming manner. She was more accustomed to being treated as a weirdo and better to be left on her own sort. This stranger was a very likeable person. Since he could see the castle rising beyond the trees, she assumed it was perfectly acceptable to give him a tour of the school. If he did not belong here, Hogwarts would not appear to him.
They talked as they made their way up the hill from the lake. She pointed out different places, such as the Forbidden Forest, which is “filled with strange and sometimes dangerous things such as werewolves and vampires, but also home to centaurs, unicorns and thestrals”. She talked about the Black Lake and its many creatures, including “merpeople, a giant squid, and Gulping Plimpies”.
Once they neared the entrance to the castle, Luna spoke of student houses and moving staircases, of talking portraits and ghosts and lessons that sometimes bit back. The Doctor found the description of the castle to be visually and intellectually intriguing. He listened intently, asking questions that made her stop and think, questions about intention and belief and what happened when magic forgot it was supposed to obey rules.
Eventually, they reached the castle doors. A familiar face was waiting for them there, like he knew they were coming all along. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore was standing with his hands folded, a long, grey beard, and eyes twinkling behind half-moon spectacles.
“Good afternoon, Luna, I see you have brought a guest with you,” he said pleasantly, “this is a most unexpected surprise.”
“Yes, Professor,” she said. “This is The Doctor. He likes to be called Doctor. Doctor, this is the headmaster of our school, Professor Albus Dumbledore.”
The Doctor stopped, smiled broadly, and inclined his head. “Oh, good,” he said. “Someone else who knows.”
Dumbledore’s smile widened. “Shall we talk,” he suggested, “about the universe?”
The Doctor’s eyes lit up. Clearly, he was meeting someone with incredible knowledge hidden behind his welcome.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Let’s.”
And Luna, watching them, had the distinct feeling that something very important, something with the power to be life-changing, had just begun to blossom.