Potter!verse: Tommy Decker and The Eternal Verities, Scene 12:
HERMIONE (exhausted and aggravated): Well, that could have gone better.
MINISTRY OF MAGIC, GRAND MEETING ROOM
September 1, 2020.
Various Witches and Wizards are filing out in various states of dejectedness.
HERMIONE and a handful of others remain behind as the room empties.
ROSE DECKER, RAHNE SINCLAIR, ISAAC “CREEPER” HARVEY, KIMBER McLEOD, DONNA NOBLE, RON WEASLEY, CLAIRE and RICH PARKER.
Oh, and TEDDY LUPIN.
RICH: Not your fault, Hermione. God, that Malfoy. I swear I could literally break my foot off in his ass.
CLAIRE (squints): First of all, ew. Second of all, you just got a new one installed.
RICH tugs his pantleg up, a new gleaming prosthetic.
RICH: Fair point. Martha does really good work, it’d be a shame to waste it on that twat Draco.
CLAIRE: Like wasting a name that means “dragon?”
RON watches this exchange dubiously, half-glances at DONNA beside him.
RON: I try not to be prejudiced, you know? But even after all this time it’s still daft to me that anyone would marry a guy who’s part spider.
DONNA rolls her eyes a bit.
DONNA: My ex left me at the altar to live in an Acromantula colony in Borneo. On Christmas. He got eaten, of course, the nutter.
RON stares at her for a long moment.
RON: That’s rough, buddy.
HERMIONE clears her throat.
HERMIONE: Rose. T.S. couldn’t join us tonight?
ROSE (shaking her head lightly): ‘E’s doin’ somefhing Unspeakable. (bursts out in a chuckle) God, that always sounds mad.
KIMBER: Dunnit just? And we still end up sayin’ it. Every time.
HERMIONE: No, that’s all right. He’s already been briefed on the Time-Turner situation. Now, I know none of you have heard anything, or you would have spoken up back at the meeting. But a few of you... have connections to the werewolf community. Their going underground like they have is a terrible sign.
(TEDDY frowns, his Metamorphmagus hair rippling through various colors before settling on a rather wolf-like silver grey.)
TEDDY: But Aunt Hermione-- I haven’t inherited my dad’s lycanthropy, I haven’t been bitten--?
HERMIONE: The name Fenrir Greyback is still held in awe in many werewolfpacks, Teddy. Tenuous as your connection is to him, it’s possible a pack might seek to have you as a member for that-- cred-- alone.
CREEPER touches his left side gingerly, his gaze distant.
CREEPER: And then there are those of us who have been bitten.
ROSE: And are managing our conditions just fine, still functional members of Wizarding Society.
HERMIONE: Wolfpacks, were- or otherwise, have always believed in strength in numbers. They may still recruit you, or try. If that happens, we need to know.
RICH: There’s a couple of rehabilitated werewolves in the support group Claire and I run at the Dangerous Dai Ward, we could-- (he hesitates) --aaaaand that’s why we’re here.
HERMIONE: I’m afraid so, Parkers. If any of your group members hear anything. Or disappear suddenly? The Ministry dearly needs a lead on this. I’m sorry if that compromises confidentiality.
CLAIRE: We promise to do what we can-- without betraying that trust.
RICH: Yeah. Exactly. We have a responsibility.
HERMIONE: That’s fair, Rich. Claire. Thank you.
KIMBER: And why, should I ‘esitate to ask, are me an’ my assistant in attendance?
HERMIONE: We have giants migrating through the Mediterranean with mysterious winged tattoos. I have someone else in mind to look into the trolls. But Kim, we need you out in the field, I’ve already had it approved with The Wizengamot and The International Confederation.
KIMBER blinks.
KIMBER: Minister-- ‘Ermione-- I’ve barely scratched the surface wiv this ginormous I.T. ticket--
HERMIONE: Your Legilimency and Divination will be massive assets in tracking these mysterious movements. You have the Ring of Sentinel Alan Scott, McLeod. And if that fails you, you’ll have Donna with you.
DONNA (sputters): I beg your jolly great pardon-- ah-- Minister! I’m an assistant. She’s an archivist.
KIMBER (slowly warming up to this idea): So was Optimus Prime.
DONNA: WHO THE BLUDDY HELL IS OPTIMUS PRIME, WHEN HE’S AT HOME?
RICH (grinning like a madman): Oh, you gon’ learn.
Potter!verse: Tommy Decker and The Eternal Verities, Scene 4:
THEODORE NOTT’S HOUSE
August 30, 2020.
DARK WIZARD: NOTT! IT’S THE MINISTR--
THWIPP!
A splatter of webbing hits this DARK WIZARD in the mouth, cutting him off, but too late! His shout echoes across the front lawns of NOTT’s palatial estate past the ornate Wizard Chess statuary lining the front path, and NOTT himself, standing near the front steps, whirls to see the Aurors preparing to move in--
--HARRY POTTER, RICH PARKER, ISAAC “CREEPER” HARVEY, a number of others--
HARRY: Hell, that’s torn it.
CREEPER: So much for the element of stealth!
A number of other DARK WIZARDS, NOTT’s cronies, rush to his defense, running down the front steps and crossing the lawn, but NOTT himself doesn’t have time for this.
Upthrusting his wand sharply, he commands the lawn-- and a massive hedge maze starts sprouting from the grass, billowing upwards with incredible speed, NOTT’s been keeping up on his Herbology since school--
--no doubt HARRY’s having a flashback to that damn Third Task--
--the maze has already cut off HARRY, RICH, and CREEPER from their backup--
--without even waiting to see the hedge maze fully grow, NOTT whirls and runs up the stairs--
RICH: If he gets inside and barricades the place, there’s no telling what evidence he’ll destroy, sonofa--
HARRY: PARKER, THROW ME!
Questions sprawl over RICH’s face but he darts to HARRY with blinding speed, picks him up with impossible strength, and--
RICH: HRRRRAAAHHH!
--throws HARRY headlong over the rising hedges.
HARRY: ARRESTO MOMENTUM!
HARRY slows his hurtling descent just in time to touch down effortlessly just outside the hedge maze and sprints at full pounding tilt after NOTT.
NOTT sees him coming and snarls with a slash of his wand as he keeps pelting up the steps towards the front door--
NOTT: PIERTOTUM LOCOMOTOR!
With great rending shattering creaks and groans, the statues in the garden come to life, bounding off of their plinths and pedestals and crashing into the maze to hunt the Aurors alongside the other DARK WIZARDS.
CREEPER: You get the statues, I get the henchmen?
RICH (sarcastic): Sure, that sounds fair, I love fighting dudes made out of geology, there was this sand guy the other week, I’m still finding grains of him in my socks--
RICH glances back over his shoulder and sees that CREEPER has already gone.
RICH: Oh, Harv, c’mon man, you did not just Batman Exit me! Every time!
And then a stone Knight on horseback comes storming through a hedgerow and the battle is joined.
RICH bounds up over the crashing swing of the Knight’s stony sword and up over behind the Knight’s head, grabbing the top of its helmet with one hand and twisting hard to snap the granite neck and leave the visored head facing the opposite way...
...as he flips down behind the staggered statue, his wand hand comes up and
RICH: REDUCTO!
reduces the Knight to shattered powder...
...only for another Knight to come storming down the path towards him...
RICH’s hand snaps out and he fires a line of alchemical spider-web from a web-caster at his wrist, latching onto the morningstar mace that this knight wields, tearing it out of his grasp, and whipping it around overhead, RICH brings it crashing back into this second Knight and smashes him near in half.
RICH (grunts, rotates his shoulder): Okay, ow. Maybe I should start stretching more.
And then a small army of Pawns stagger around a corner to find him, charging him en masse.
RICH (flexes his hands as they approach, readying himself for action): Doesn’t anyone play Gobstones anymore?
Then he charges to meet them, webbing with one hand and blasting spells with his wand in the other.
CREEPER has always had a bit of the soldier about him. So much more so in recent years.
Even as the DARK WIZARD henchmen are on their home turf, he dips around corners, comes at them from unexpected directions... picks them off by ones and twos and threes...
CREEPER: Petrificus totalus!
CREEPER: Expelliarmus!
CREEPER: Stupefy!
His aim is unerring, his nerves are steel, and yet there’s a grin on his face that’s the absolute troublemaking mirror of his son JUDE...
...he comes across a couple of Aurors trapped by Brachiabindo, and without even breaking his stride he casts
CREEPER: EMANCIPARE!
and whips around a corner and bowls over a trio of Death Eater wannabes with a single
CREEPER: EXPULSO!
As CREEPER comes up from that dueling stance, RICH comes crashing through the hedge, driven back by a towering Rook statue, a castle turret with fists made of stonework bricks...
...RICH lands on his back on the ground with a grunt and his wand hand comes up in the same instant that CREEPER aims his own wand
CREEPER & RICH (simultaneously): REDUCTO!
The Rook explodes into shards of stone and chunks of brick, shrapnel flying everywhere, and a large chunk of stone slams down onto RICH’s left leg before he can roll aside.
RICH (agonized roar): AHHHHH!
CREEPER: Oh, strewth, Parker!
RICH waves him off, shakes his head, shoves the stone off of his shin and pulls up his trouser leg revealing the gleam of metallic sheen.
RICH: It’s okay. I’m okay. Got me in the mad-leg. Still, though, ow!
RICH’s left leg is a magical prosthetic like the one worn by old friend JOHN WATSON-- at some point he’s lost a limb while fighting the good fight.
RICH: Go, get the bad guys, I’ll be right behind you!
CREEPER: All right, mate!
CREEPER whirls and with the rest of the AURORS he’s just freed they start hurrying through the hedge maze, casting Diffindo repeatedly to slash through the greenery even as it fights back.
RICH struggles to stand, his leg dented and twitching.
He touches the side of the leg and a hatch opens, popping out a small stick which then extends into a replica of the cane used by old UNCLE BEN PARKER, allowing RICH to hobble along after his compatriots. An Arachnomagus’ hobble is still faster than most men’s sprints, but he’s still hampered.
But even as RICH goes to pursue--
--a patch of shadow crawls out from under the hedges--
--a bit of liquid darkness--
--it hisses, sprouts teeth, a slithering prehensile tongue, and the blob of living shadow lunges for him--
--his spider-sense triggers and he whirls to blast it out of the air with a cry of
RICH: ELECTRO!
but the lightning-bolt sizzles through empty air as the blob morphs around it with impossible speed and it splatters on RICH’s chest. Instantly it tries to spread about on him, tries to consume him, tries to swallow him...
RICH: Jesus God, agh, GET OFF ME!
RICH slashes at it with his wand, tries to club it with his cane, but all it does in response is rear up on his chest like a cobra, preparing to lunge at his face--
CLAIRE (from off): ARANIA EXUMAI!
The burst of spell-force blasts RICH away with shocking force, but the sheer impact of it blows the blob off of his chest...
...at which point Magizoologist CLAIRE PARKER swoops down on the back of her small Norwegian Ridgeback dragon DAENERYS, and DAENERYS’ mouth chomps around the blob with a grrrrrrowwwwwwwwl. Flame puffs from between DAENY’S teeth and the blob shrieks and vaporizes, smoldering to nothing.
CLAIRE bounds off of DAENERYS’ back.
CLAIRE: Spider! You all right?
Sprawled a dozen yards away, laying on his back, RICH laughs nevertheless.
RICH: Always all right when I see you, Boo.
RICH clambers to his feet as CLAIRE runs up to help him.
RICH: God, that thing was gross, like every nightmare I’ve ever had that wasn’t about Basilisks.
CLAIRE: Genetically accelerated Lethifold, if I’m right. Potter called me in in case Nott had been violating The Ban on Experimental Breeding along with his other sins.
RICH: Keen bloke, that Potter. How about we clear out this greenery and get after him?
CLAIRE: How about that? (glances over her shoulder to DAENERYS, and calls out) DRACARYS!
DAENERYS roars and exhales a massive gout of flame, laying waste to the hedges faster than they can grow back, allowing CLAIRE and RICH to hurry after HARRY, CREEPER, and the other AURORS.
They all catch up to HARRY, finding him standing over a stunned THEODORE NOTT just inside a hidden magical armory that NOTT had concealed beneath the drawing-room of his family’s estate. Perhaps it had been there for generations or perhaps NOTT had excavated it for his purposes but nevertheless HARRY stands there, victorious, bleeding from his cheek, staring at his hand.
HARRY (discombobulated): He was trying to escape using this. There were... rumors, the whole reason for the raid. But I didn’t... I didn’t really believe them until right this instant. How could I believe this?
HARRY is holding a Time-Turner.
CREEPER, CLAIRE, and RICH all share a look. They know, even more than HARRY does, how impossible it is that this thing should exist. The secret events that surrounded the damage to The Time Room in The Department of Mysteries on that fateful night.
CREEPER: But it... can’t be real, right? It can’t... it has to be a fake.
But HARRY is only barely listening.
The possibility of time travel. The chance to save so many lives that were lost because of him, around him... in his name...
...DUMBLEDORE...
...DIGGORY...
...his parents...
HARRY: There’s only one way to find out.
RICH’s eyes widen in his head-- alarm screams through his every fiber--
--and despite his injuries he darts with preternatural speed and claps both hands around the Time-Turner before HARRY can activate it.
HARRY: Parker?!
RICH: Dude. Spider-sense. (he takes a raggedy, relieved breath, his heart is beating so fast) I don’t know if it’s... booby-trapped, or haywire, or what-- but every Supersensory red alert in my brain went off when you tried to use that thing. Let’s... let’s let Decker take a look at it, huh? Or at least get it back to The Ministry, get a ruling from HRH Granger-Weasley.
CLAIRE: We’ve already got a lot of forms to fill out tonight from these collars. Let’s not let your chalk outline be one of them, right?
HARRY (slow, conceding nod): Right. Okay. (takes a breath, nods again) Yeah, okay. Thank you.
HARRY holds up the Time-Turner again, turns it side to side in the light, examining the dull metals of its construction.
"I saw Skyfall the other day an'--" Mae felt her lips twitch upwards into an amused grin as she straddled Creeper and made herself comfortable in his lap. "You mentioned that you thought you were getting a bit too furry with your beard."
"Uh huh." One eyebrow rose up, the Englishman's expression somewhat dubious as he watched his wife grab up a hot, damp washcloth to drape over his chin. "That much I had figured, love. See I'd been referring to the topless part." His words were only slightly muffled, the effect temporary since Mae took the washcloth away and started to lather on shaving cream. "Not that I mind," Creeper felt compelled to add.
"Honestly?" At his nod, she shrugged a shoulder even as she slowly unfurled her wings. "I like the way you look at me. Not just when 'm without a shirt but in other moments too. There's almost this reverence there when y'think I don't notice. 'S...nice." Really it was more than nice to her but for all her supposed self-professed eloquence she couldn't figure out how to explain it. So she didn't. Instead Mae started to shave away his beard, using short, gentle strokes to do so.
Creeper didn't say much while she worked, content with the comfortable silence that had fallen over them save for any absentminded humming from her. About halfway through he brought his arms around her waist, anchoring her to him so he could rub circles over her lower back. By the time she'd finished he's worked out a good number of knots and gotten himself a bit worked up in the process.
With a small, amused smirk on her face she shifted a little more just to egg him on even as she wiped his face clean. "There we go," Mae murmured; her gaze never left his even as she tossed the washcloth behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I can see you again."
A quiet scoff escaped Creeper at that as one hand rose up the length of her back and just barely touched the place where her wings unfurled from her back. "Rubbish. You've always seen me."
"'S that so?"
He grinned mischieviously. "Tha's so." As he spoke he stood and slowly walked her to the nearest wall. "You remembered what happened after she shaved him, Mae?"
Potter!verse, Track 99: "Norwegian Pirate." (Two Steps From Hell)
She was in her human, red-haired form, and she wielded a trident and wore a cutlass strapped to one hip.
The Giant Squid lowered Ariane "Ari" Peterson to the beach on the loop of an extended tentacle, and when Ari touched her feet to the sand, she patted the tentacle affectionately. "Good work, Godric. Thanks for the dramatic entrance."
Isaac "Creeper" Harvey frowned bewilderedly, as The Giant Squid bubbled back down below the surface. "Why's he called Godric?"
"Why are you called 'Creeper?'" Ari replied, effortlessly Zen, Ivan would have been proud. "'What was your name before you were born?'"
"Actually," Isaac hesitated, "me and my brothers named ourselves."
"I rest my case," Ari mused, without having really answered the question in the slightest.
And then Mae hugged her-- attacked her with a hug, even as badly hurt as she was-- "Y'are amazin'."
Ari hugged her back-- carefully-- "I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner. I felt The Mark, and then Voldemort's voice carried underwater-- I was trying to convince The Merchieftainess to do something to help-- but all she did was send up me."
Mae cupped her cheek, beamed at her. "So she's sent us th' best, then."
Creeper glanced out through the trees-- looked down at his poor, burnt-out broom-- "We need to get Mae to Madam Pomfrey. She's in a bad way."
"If it's all th' same," Mae agreed, "I'd rather not die t' get better if I can help it."
"Understandable," Ari nodded a very Rich Parker seems legit nod.
Creeper paused and looked at both of them askance, like he wondered if they were about to explain that and like he wasn't sure he wanted them to.
But before either of them could offer up an explanation, the waters at the heart of The Black Lake began frothing anew--
--the three of them swung their gaze out across the water, wondering if The Giant Squid was coming back, or if the leader of the Merfolk of the loch was sending reinforcements after all--
--but then the waters parted, burst open, and out of the storm and stress emerged the ship that had three years ago brought the contingent of Durmstrang to Hogwarts.
Its sails rippled in the darkness, water sloughed off of its decks and down the sides of its hull, and it bobbed to a stop.
And then a single sound echoed across the subsiding waters: BAMF.
Followed, immediately thereafter, by a woman's voice: "God dammit, Kurt! Logan was right, I should've stayed in Salem Center."
"Oh-kay," Creeper frowned, not sure where to aim his wand, "now what?"
And then a beautiful green-haired, green-eyed young woman soared towards them over the water, hovering before them-- the look on her face suggesting that she was pushing, shoving through her fatigue out of sheer stubborn fury.
(It was to young Isaac's everlasting credit that he took the sight of this almost as well in stride as did Ari and Mae.)
"Hey," she called down to them, through gritted teeth, glancing in the direction of the sounds of battle, "are you bad guys?"
"Depends on your definition," Ari squinted up at her. "We're not Death Eaters, that's for sure."
"Okay," Lorna Dane nodded firmly, fists at her side as she levitated above them, "show me something I can hit?"
"Yeah," Mae nodded, and then pointed her thumb towards Hogwarts and the raging battle. "Y'think we could hitch a ride?"
Potter!verse, Track 95: "Do You Believe." (Joydrop)
Willow Rosenberg was a force of Nature, even for a Witch of Mass Destruction. And she could put on a brave face with the rest of The Scoobies. She'd even out-stiff-upper-lipped Giles more than a few times.
But she was human.
How human she sometimes forgot, when she was busy doing things that would make goddesses blink and demons regret and--
--but now she was staring down a zombie dragon's throat as it opened its mouth to belch flames the color of Barney the Dinosaur's Goth phase--
"Agh!" Willow's eyes widened, and she held up wandless ASL-I-love-you hands, hastily summoning shielding, too slow, too slow, "Smaug loogies! Smaug loogies me no likey!"
FOOM!
Violently violet fire poured at her in a strangling torrent, and even her mighty shields shuddered and cracked as it blew her downwards hard, almost knocked her out of the sky--
--I make a wish that I don't fall, I make a wish that I don't fall--
--whipping her hands out to the sides and unleashing a cry of supreme effort, she parted the flames like The Red Sea, carving it out to either side of her, and she pointed rock-and-roll horns at the dragon's face--
--her eyes flashed white, white hot--
"LUMOS SANCTI MAXIMA!"
Pure pale light split the night sky and the dragon reeled and wheeled away, roaring with all the power in its massive lungs-- beaten back but not beaten.
Behind her in the sky, Kim McLeod took on a whole squadron of Metaltrons by thinking green thoughts-- thoughts that became things--
"KED-AV-A-RA!" they screamed at her with their voices of anger and agony--
--but their spearing bolts of green met her walls of emerald force and rebounded uselessly--
--she thought of flyswatters and warhammers and bows and arrows.
Their own forcefields were tough and their armor was tougher but Kim had been putting up mental walls since she had been old enough to think and this was no different. Make a thing in your head. Make it as real as can be, and it will be.
Only with The Ring, this wasn't a metaphor-- the things that she thought poured out of The Ring shaped from green green flame into green green substance, and they were as real as she willed them to be.
So long as she didn't falter. So long as she didn't fear. She could do anything.
And right now she was assaulting genocidal pepperpots before they could exterminate her.
"So tell me, Rosenberg," Kim bellowed back over her shoulder as a giant glowing green wakizashi that looked suspiciously like Jack Harkness'-- right down to the sharkskin of the handle --fiercely beheaded an encroaching Metaltron, "are yeh bored now?"
Willow fought to get her breath back as she watched the dragon swoop around for another pass, and she shook her head as she bunched her hands into fists at her sides. "Wiggins, McLeod. Maximum wiggins."
********
There weren't many Carrionites in the sky, but they were powerful indeed-- they didn't need wands, they just needed to point and shout-- but fortunately it turned out that pointing was pretty important--
--Mae could fly fast.
She wasn't as fast as a full-blooded angel. Their flight was basically Apparition-- teleportation-- but she was still faster than any broom in the sky and The D.R. had had to burn through a whole lot of Weasley-brand Speed Boosts in order to try and keep up with her in The Ford Anglia.
By the time the Carrionites pointed-- before they could shout--
--she was already gone.
Her wand did some pointing of its own. "SILENCIO!"
"IMPEDIMENTA!"
"EBUBLIO!"
And where she found an opening--
--a good solid straight shot at those billowing red-and-black shrouds--
--adamas stele would flash in the night and run through one Carrionite at a time, and their eyes would burn like an angel's smite and their lifeless husks would disintegrate long before they hit the ground.
She was herding them-- she was hindering them-- she was halting them--
--barely three of them left now--
--with gritted teeth she swept her wand to level at a Carrionite's eyes, right between them--
Its finger was pointing back at her.
"I NAME YOU NEPHILIM!" it shrieked--
--and a bone-rattling concussion, a Depulso the likes of which Mae had never imagined--
--slammed her out of the sky, corkscrewing down and away, spiraling out over the grounds...
"MAE!" Kim howled, and lashed out with The Ring, aiming a tendril of green to try and snag Mae as she tumbled, but another Carrionite pointed at the Ringbearer and cawed "CONFUNDO!"
It only took her a moment to shake off the bewilderment that followed-- not for nothing was her brain a finely-tuned instrument-- but by the time she'd done so the tendril had already dispersed and Mae had fallen out of sight into the dark--
--and as the dragon shattered another binding spell and Willow grimaced with encroaching exhaustion, Kim realized she had literally bigger problems on her proverbial hands.
********
Mae fell and fell and she tried to steer-- only one wing was even half-working-- what did that hag do to her?
--the wind whistled around her and she could hardly see anything below her in the dark--
--somewhere far below her she thought she heard someone yell "Accio!" but the ground was rolling along and she had no idea who or where--
--but there came the gleam of starlight and she knew she was nearing The Black Lake.
Right. Yes. If she landed in the water, right, she'd be--
--no wait Tommy had ranted once about stupid fake physics in movies and "surface tension" and "noncompressible medium" and if she hit the water going this speed she might as well be hitting concrete--
--steer, steer, g'dammit, steer!
--yaw, roll, pitch--
--she crashed into the sand of one of the few actual beaches surrounding The Black Lake and with a cry and a groan muffled by sand in her face she skidded to a halt in the gross wet dust.
Somehow she didn't die this time.
But that was a double-edged sword.
Because if she didn't die all the way, her body wouldn't insta-heal.
And as she strugglingly hung onto consciousness the way she'd miraculously held onto both wand and stele, she suddenly realized she wasn't on this beach alone.
The moaning, eager scuttling of Inferi rippled out of the darkness--
--they had emerged here too, not just on the castle lawn.
"Hell," Mae seethed, fighting herself to hobbling feet as both agonized, hypersensitive wings hung limp and broken around her. "Y'ain't takin' me that easy."
But then a strong, familiar voice called down to her from above in desperate deterimination-- "Mae!"
--Isaac "Creeper" Harvey came swooping down on a broom, wand lit by Lumos, the sudden light driving back the Inferi just enough that he could half-crash-land beside her.
"Inferi!" he bellowed in surprise, his eyes flashing-- "Where the Hell did they come from?"
"Looks like y'r in th' know, now," Mae smiled faintly. "Shoulda figured Th' TARDIS'd like you."
"Tardis?" Isaac shook his head, bewildered, even as he snapped his wand tip to the broom-bristles and ignited them in a woosh of magical fire, causing the Inferi to hiss and recoil... "What the Hell is a Tardis?"
"S'not important," Mae promised him, glancing feverisly around-- "but I think th' boathouse cavern's not far from here, we can make a stand there-- cast defenses 'cross th' entrance--"
"Sounds like a plan," Isaac nodded, thrashing the broom back and forth like a villager with a torch storming a castle, "right behind you!"
He half-glanced at her-- "Are you wearing your old Hallowe'en costume? Are-- are those wings real?"
"Funny story," Mae laughed grimly, even as she swept her own Lumos light in the direction of where she thought the cave for the first-years' boats would be--
--but before they could make much headway, before she could even speak another word, things got worse--
A giant strode out of the woods, stamped its way out onto the beach.
Unlike Mae and Creeper, the giant couldn't see or hear the Inferi, but it sure could see and hear and fee-fi-fo-fum smell the blood of the Englishman and the Earth Angel.
"RRRRRAAAAAARRRRRH!" it roared, bending down to reach for them with hands like bulldozer scoops.
"I love you," Isaac made sure to say.
Mae shoved her stele into her belt-- what the Hell good would it do against a giant? Could a Nephilim use a toothpick to slay one of The Gibborim? --so she could clutch his hand in the dark and smile a frightened smile at him. "Weirdo."
--but then the water boiled and the water bubbled and something surged out of the blackness of The Black Lake lit only by wand-glow and broom-fire.
The Giant Squid, tentacles thrashing, with a figure perched atop its vaguely triangular head--
--a Scottish accent exulted furiously: "KICK THEIR ARSES, GODRIC!"
--tentacles lashed out like bullwhips the size of tree-trunks, crushing Inferi this way and that--
--the giant turned to face The Squid, bellowing at this newfound threat, but one of those tentacles cracked it across the face, shattering its jaw and sending it pirouetting to the sandbed in half a heartbeat.
Mae's giddy disbelieving smile could have lit the night without the aid of wand or flame.
Mae stays to the back of the ceremony, watching quietly and doing her best not to draw any more attention to herself than needed. Three of the four Harvey's nodded in her direction, George taking a moment to squeeze her hand and kiss her cheek before heading towards the front where the casket was sitting.
Richard acted like she didn't exist which almost felt like a small mercy since she didn't particularly want to exist at the moment.
Grief comes to her in waves, dragging her down so far that she starts to wonder if she'll ever breathe properly again. It's almost surprising just how much it hurts. Not just knowing he's dead but knowing that she was partly responsible for that death. I thought that I was doin' somethin' right. I thought that I was protectin' you. She scoffed inwardly at the thought. Protection. No, if anything she had signed his death warrant.
One arm winds around her middle as if that were somehow keeping her together while the pastor talks about finding comfort in knowing Isaac was in a better place. When he says he's found a spot among a host of angels Mae chokes. Mae chokes and she can hear Elizabeth start to sob openly. Richard, Paul, and George speak to their mother in quiet, soothing voices as the final prayer is said.
Each takes a turn putting a handful of dirt and a rose on top of the casket, still talking to each other in low voices as they say their final goodbyes. She doesn't look up to watch them leave, knowing she wouldn't be able to take how they would look at her as they did so. Mae Cardwell is a coward.
By the time she composes herself again she's the only one left save the people breaking down the tent and chairs. It takes some inner cajoling but eventually her legs and mind have a heart-to-heart and bring her up to the graveside. His graveside, she corrects internally as she looks at the mound of freshly turned dirt. It was strange to know that he was down there without really being present.
The thought is more than she can wrap her mind around in that moment. As the sky slowly starts to turn from light to dark, kneeling beside his headstone, she can feel herself start to break. White to golden copper wings quietly appear, feathers silently falling into place. "'M sorry." The words are soft, barely a whisper and even then they sound as if she'd shouted them. "I shouldn't have left. I should've stayed. Should've, should've, should've. Doesn't really do you any good, now does it?" Mae is silent for a long moment before the tears finally come. White hot and unrelenting, she cries until she's exhausted, one arm holding onto his headstone like an anchor of sorts. She wants to say something, anything. But the words won't come and she can feel the dew start to seep into her skin. Would he want to see you like this? The thought has her pushing up off the ground to stand. In the back of her mind she registers the feeling of being watched as leaves.
The seven-year-old girl with the long red hair knelt at the side of her bed, and she pressed her palms together, and she scrunched up her eyes tightly and seriously.
"Dear Dumbledore," she invoked, sincerely and without irony, "thank you for the Chocolate Frogs and the sherbet lemons, and the Cauldron Cakes. It's Easter now, a few months before Dumbledore's Day, so I hope I'm not interrupting-- you're always so busy, my dad says, busy as a bee --but honest, it is an emergency. My friends keep disappearing into the darkness. My aunt says to try not to worry, 'keep calm and carry on,' but they're my friends, of course I worry."
She took a breath. "So please could you send someone to help find them. Or an Auror, or--"
...all of a sudden, behind her in the dark outside her bedroom window, there came a terrible whooshing ripping tearing crashing thudding noise like the world all falling down.
Hesitating, she murmured: "Back in a moment."
Hopping to her feet, she grabbed up a flashlight and hurried to the window, tugging aside the white lace curtain to peer out into her backyard. There, laying on its back half atop a crushed toolshed, was a funny looking blue box, smoldering and steaming around the edges.
On the rim around the top it said "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX" in bright, backlit letters. Aurors were like police! Wizard police! And sometimes they used phone boxes, there was a phone box entrance to The Ministry of Magic, her dad had said.
Grateful but a little bit taken aback, she glanced skyward with blue blue eyes and murmured softly, "Thanks, Dumbledore."
Hurrying downstairs in her jacket and nightie and little red Wellingtons, she gingerly approached the fallen police box. As she drew closer to it, however, the doors on the top cracked open and a cloud of steam billowed out-- followed almost immediately thereafter by a young man's head, with thick brown hair dripping wet in his face.
They stared at each other for a moment, she transfixed by this damp, freckly stranger with the big dark eyes, he apparently getting his breath back.
"Oh," he grinned at her. "'Ello! You can see me, good, you're being let in on our little secret. What year is it?"
Understandably, she hesitated, quite puzzled.
He gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. "Only I'm having a bit of trouble rebooting the calibration on this thing and it might be good to have a bit of base code to extrapolate."
The daft bloke then sort of elevated out of the hatchway, standing atop a Persian rug that matched the outside of his box, pointing a silvery-looking blue-lit wand very carefully at that rug as he did so. He glanced back down into the hatchway, and he clucked his tongue.
"Phwoar," he tutted, "look at that!"
She squinted at him. "Are you okay?"
He snorted dismissively. "Just had a fall. All the way down into the library. Would've been a Hell of a climb back up, except Accio and Wingardium Leviosa still work perfectly well on a flying carpet even if it has been rendered flightless."
"You're soaking wet," she observed.
"Yeah, that'll happen," he bobbed his head in an exuberant nod. "I was in the swimming pool."
Okay, now he was being daft. "You said you were in the library."
He sniffed amiably, agreeably, and puffed water out of his nose. "So's the swimming pool."
This was getting them nowhere. She attempted to get down to business: "Are you an Auror?"
That got his attention. Hunching a bit on the carpet, he scrutinized her with furrowed brow. "Why? Did you Summon an Auror?"
Oh, no, she wasn't going to put up with any grown-up double-talk answering a question with a question, going in circles, she fired back: "Did you come about my disappearing friends?"
"What disappearing frien--?" at this point, apparently, he lost concentration on his Leviosa, and the carpet dropped him to the ground like a stone-- dropped him in a heap.
Dubious but not unfeeling for his plight, she wondered, frowning with concern: "Are you all right, Mister?"
"I'm fine, I'm okay," he dismissed, picking himself up, dusting himself off. "Just-- apparently-- not having a very good day for landings."
She gazed up at him with that precocious scrutiny, a fascinating mix of rebellious adventure and childlike belief and discerning wisdom, a seven-year-old conundrum. And she knew another conundrum when she saw one: "Who are you?"
He beamed at her. "My name's Tommy, Tommy Decker. Pleased as Punch to meet you. What's your name?"
"Jasmine Pond," she volunteered.
"Cor," he grinned, "that's a brilliant name, Jasmine Pond, like a name out of a Disney film."
She grinned at him. He was completely ridiculous, and she wasn't sure he was a very good Auror, but at least he was funny, and funny was good. "My aunt's not going to be very happy with you that you ruined our shed."
Tommy shook out his jacket, casting raindrops in a wide ring, shaking his head. "Oh, don't worry about me, I've dealt with worse things than aunts, and that's just in the last half hour."
"I wouldn't count on that," a woman opined as she strode through the garden, her own flashlight casting its glow on the crashlanded box, the crashed-upon shed, Tommy, and Jasmine.
She was dark of skin and dark of hair, an exquisite creature with ornate, innumerable, carefully-tended tight braids. Her gaze was ferocious, and she was very obviously no-one to be messed with.
"Oh," Tommy blinked, "'ello, 'oo're you?"
"I'm Mels," she drawled, narrowing that gaze at him. "Mels Zucker. I'm her aunt."
"Erm," Tommy hesitated, instantly on his back foot, and then whipped his gaze back to Jasmine. "Tell me about these disappearing friends, then."
******
"It's not just friends," Mels explained as they sat around the kitchen table. "It's neighbors, family--" she glanced worriedly at Jas, who looked away, perturbed.
Jas then busied herself with a funny looking calculator that Tommy had given her to play with from his pocket, tapping away at the keys, trying not to think about all of this dark and horrible stuff, as Mels continued to explain.
"It started on the outskirts," she noted, "the fringes. People we barely noticed were gone, the neighborhood stray cat, that smelly bloke always sits the same spot on the bus. Then her mates at school, teachers, the goldfish she got last Christmas. Then teachers, the postman--"
"--her mum and dad, Aunt Winny, Uncle Rory, that foxy Doctor Undecim--"
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Jas couldn't resist rolling her eyes at Mels' inexplicable crush on her grandfather. Now is not the time.
She tapped the keys of the calculator thing, 8 plus 8 equals...
...the display blinked something inexplicable at her. "'A suffusion of yellow?'" Jas wondered, flummoxed.
"Now you say disappearing," Tommy mused, hands wrapped around a warm mug of tea-- he'd dried himself with a wave of his wand easily enough, but there was no taking chances.
"We mean disappearing," Jas put her foot down at that, glancing up from the calculator.
Tommy stared at her. "What, like spring dwindling except with people instead of bees?"
"They just go off into the darkness," Mels murmured, "and they don't come back."
"Have you tried, erm," Tommy winced, feeling like an arse even as he said it, "not going out into the darkness?"
Jas shook her head, sliding the calculator back to him across the table. "You don't understand."
Mels smiled a faint, faint little smile. "There hasn't been an actual morning for what we're guessing is at least a month. The darkness is all there is."
"What, like the sun's disappeared?" Tommy frowned incredulously, pocketing the calculator without ever taking his eyes off of Zucker.
"No, I mean, we'd freeze to death, right?" Mels pointed out. "No, it's more like the world's... forgotten what the sun looks like."
Tommy tried to let that sink in for a moment, but instead felt like he was sinking. He was sinking and he was so far out of his depth.
Before he could sink too far, however, a sharp sound reported through the house-- a knocking at the front door.
An awkward moment of hesitation gripped them as they stared in the direction of the front, and then exchanged a look-- as though performing a headcount. Well if we're all here, then who is that?
And then, the moment passed, and they were all to their feet and hurrying in the direction of the door-- as they drew closer, they heard it, echoing, mournful, pleading: "ZUCKER! ZUCKER!"
Decker was fast, but Mels was plenty light on her feet and knew the space better, she hauled the door open--
--a spindly-looking old man stood there, wearing a knit cap, gloves, a coat, and yet still he was shivering, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.
Craggy lips mouthed Mels' surname before he found his breath again: "Zucker! It's-- it's taking me--! I can feel it! You can't-- you can't let it take me!"
Mels frowned-- "Rog'? Rog'! How are you still--? Get in here, if there's someone chasing you, we'll hide you!"
"Sir!" Tommy pushed forward next to Mels, "what's trying to take you? Can you describe it?"
But before Rog' could reply again, he started to tremble all the harder, and he started to grow pale-- not just pale, translucent-- not the skeletal translucence of Harold Saxon, but through and through-- through the knit of Rog's cap, through his forehead, they could see the darklit street behind him... Through his chest, they could see the trees of the garden.
He lost strength in his legs, sank to his knees, clutching at Mels' arms as he fell, croaking up at her-- "I was the best-- I could run-- I could hide-- from anything-- they never could catch me-- but this-- not this-- I was a legend and I can feel it-- all-- wiping away--" he whimpered softly-- "--they told stories about me and now I'm all gone away..."
...and the translucence deepened to transparency...
Tommy hauled out his wand, brandished it, wracked his brain-- "C'mon, Decker, think! The Counter-Charm for Annihilare, the-- the-- Untransfiguration for Evanesco--!"
--he fumbled his wand but instinct and memory took over, swish and flick, he spouted words, conducted power-- REINCORPUS! DEVANESCO! --but nothing took effect, nothing was good enough, and like the sand of an hourglass the image of Rog' faded through Mels' fingers.
Jasmine buried her face against Mels' side and, rather impressively, did not scream, did not shout, did not weep. She just hid. For a moment. Just hid.
Tommy stared disbelievingly, defiantly at the space where Rog' once stood-- "Accio Rog'! ACCIO ROG'!" But there came nothing-- nothing.
"Roger the Dodger," Mels murmured, staring down at the hands that Rog' had just faded through. "Best car-thief in the history of London, The Yard never laid a finger on him. He taught me how to twoc my first 'Vette. And he's-- gone."
Tommy roared in disappointment and frustration the man had been right in front of him and he had been useless! --he whirled and threw his wand, sending it end-over-end--
--the stonesilver wand cracked hard into a picture framed on the wall, shattered the glass, knocked the frame from its nail.
Suddenly, heartachingly realizing how futile and impotent was rage in the face of this, Tommy slumped his shoulders in shame at his lack of discipline. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," Mels murmured, though she was obviously shaken, kneeling to hug Jas close. "It's all right. I can empathize. Seriously, I can empathize."
Tommy moved slowly over to the shattered glass, reached down to carefully pick up his wand, and-- "Reparo." --magic the glass back into place within the frame. As he then went to pick up the frame, however, he glanced at the picture-- and hesitated.
It was a wedding picture.
Tommy stared at it for a long, long moment.
It was a Muggle photograph, stationary images, though at least two of the people depicted certainly weren't Muggles.
"Jasmine," he murmured, glancing over his shoulder at the little red-haired girl, "who did you say your parents were again?"
"I didn't, I don't think," Jasmine reflected, leaning back from pressing her face into Mels' side. "Their names are-- were-- Isaac Harvey and Amy Pond. Mum kept her name, I took after her."
"Isaac 'Creeper' Harvey," Tommy repeated, turning to face Mels and Jas, "and Amy Pond." He turned the picture so Jas could see it. "And the people with them, the maid of honor, the best man--"
"My Aunt Winny," Jas blinked, "and my Uncle Rory. Not really my aunt or uncle, any more than Aunt Mels is, they're friends who are family--" she hesitated-- "were family."
"You call her Winny," Tommy shook his head disbelievingly. "But her name is Mae. Mae Cardwell." And so it was, his school friend, his neighbor in the safehouse flats, baker of the most amazing banana walnut muffins he'd ever chanced to try-- this was her. In that picture.
"Mmhmm," Jas nodded. "Winter Mae Cardwell. I'm the only one who gets away with calling her anything but 'Mae.'"
Mels smiled a faint little smile. "I give that another year, tops."
Year, the word echoed in the back of Tommy's brain, and Tommy's brain whirled along at shatterneck speed. "....how long were they together, before they got married?"
Mels squinted. "Think Creeper once told me they got together, what, summer before his fifth year at that fancy school? I didn't know them then. Moved in different circles."
"Mm," Tommy murmured absently, "you're not in the picture."
"Yeah," Mels nodded agreeably enough, a smirk gracing her lips as she rose from her kneel to stand-- she shook a bit, plainly rattled by the loss of her mentor, but she was strong --and take Jas' hand. "I don't do weddings."
Tommy really wasn't listening to her-- he'd barely listened to himself when he'd murmured about the picture-- his mind was off and running. This didn't make sense! Mae had told him about this-- how she had heard word that Isaac and Amelia had become an item, but after their fifth year and the bursting of The Eternity Turner, The First Eternity Turner, things had become muddled, things had shifted-- Isaac had never been with Amelia-- Amy-- and had only ever had eyes for Mae.
Isaac had been friends, then, with a lad named Rory-- and a girl named Mels.
This didn't make sense.
If Mels hadn't known them back in school, how could Creeper have name-dropped her? If Isaac had only ever longed for Mae, how could he and Amy have been childhood sweethearts with a child of their own--? This was a convergence of contradiction and it stuck like a splinter in his brain.
"Oh," he blinked. "Oh."
Mels furrowed her brow at him. "Penny in the air?"
Tommy slapped his forehead with force enough to echo in the front hall, clawed his hand right through his hair, snapped his fingers and pointed at Mels-- "OH!"
Mels and Jas shared a bewildered look, and Mels observed: "Aaaaand the penny drops?"
"Time was rewritten!" he roared, brandishing the photograph like a fire and brimstone preacher might brandish a Bible. "Time was rewritten! The Rifts were unleashed, and history rearranged itself, and-- and that whole course of the timeline just ceased to be--!"
He hesitated-- "Except. What if it didn't? What if it didn't just cease to be? What if it lingered on, like a ghost of things never to come, and gradually-- crumbled? Time got rewritten, and you're getting unwritten, line by line?"
Tommy's eyes frantically searched a nowhere middle distance as he talked-- "I was blown off-course. I was traveling back from a badly damaged future, and a catastrophic event blew me off-course-- so I didn't go straight back in time, I went diagonally-- I skewed into what was left of your timeline-- your abandoned tangent-- and now it's falling down around us. Being unwritten."
"Tommy," Jas mumbled, agony writ large in the blue of her eyes and the downward curve of her lips, "I don't want to be unwritten. I want to have a story. I want to have a happy ending."
"I'd just settle for an ending," Mels agreed quietly. "Not like Rog'. Not like this. Getting washed out by the rain? What kind of grand finale is that? No... no. It's better to burn out than to fade away."
"Of course," Tommy replied grimly, hooking that photo back on its nail. "I'm going to get you both out of here, that's a promise."
He turned to them, and he held out his hands.
"Come with me."
********
"...a phone box," Mels shook her head, disbelievingly awed, as they stood out in the backyard once more. "A bigger on the inside phone box. Time travel, that's brilliant."
"It is a bit, ennit?" Tommy grinned, chuffed as could be, picking up his old flying carpet from where it had crashlanded earlier.
Jas frowned. "But how are we going to get it right-side-up again? You said your magic doesn't work on wood, and I'm still Underage."
"We don't need to get it right side up again," Tommy declared, "because this flying carpet can't fly anymore."
Jas frowned at him. "You're not making sense again.'
Tommy waggled his eyebrows and beamed at her. "Well, those flying enchantments had to go somewhere, didn't they?"
And he raised one hand. And snapped his fingers.
Nothing happened.
His face fell into a scowl.
"Maybe they went somewhere... else?" Mels mused, not unreasonably.
Tommy snorted loudly, but then perked a bit as The TARDIS shifted, wobbled... "Allez-oup!" he cried. "Viens sur! COME ON YOU BYOOTAY!"
And with a massive surge, Blue the Box lurched to a standing position, and the doors swung inward to their usual configuration.
Mels and Jas stared in wonder for a second, and Tommy trumpeted, with a wave of his hand, "ALL ABOARD!"
They hurried inside, Tommy slamming the doors shut behind them, tossing his coat over its now-customary coral pillar, and the no-longer-flying carpet over the one next to it.
"Now, then," he mused, clapping his hands together, "what year did you say this was?"
Jas frowned. "I didn't, I don't think. 2006."
"Right then, Summer 1997, here we come," Tommy nodded, cracking his knuckles, hitting switches, spinning a dial... "Hold onto your socks!"
He hauled off the handbrake, grinning brightly up at The Console.
Nothing happened.
Blue made a very disappointed noise, like an R2 unit's low whistle, in the back of Tommy's brain.
"Problem?" Mels prompted, looking dubious.
Tommy stared to nowhere for a moment, looking panicked. "I got-- I got blown off course. I got sent diagonal. I don't know how to fly her diagonally!"
"I hope you figure it out fast, please," Jasmine suggested, her voice a soft squeak.
Both Mels and Tommy whipped their heads around to look at her--
--she was staring at her hand, and her hand rippled a bit and just for a moment, one could see through it as through a glass darkly.
"Oh, Christ," Mels groaned, sinking to her knees, glancing at Tommy as she hugged Jasmine close. "Please, kid, do something. Please!"
Tommy made a strangled, disbelieving noise, tried not to let his eyes blur with frustrated tears as he flicked switches and cranked cranks and dialed dials on his way around to the viewscreen... "Can't go straight back to the timelines' intersect point, no Back to The Future II shared 1955, because-- because as far as this timeline's concerned, this is all that's left, a lonely little island in spacetime, no back to go back to."
"So-- we need a sideways hop. A jump to the left, or a step to the right. Reunite with the new prime timeline. But how-- how do I do that? I can't even begin to make the calculations--"
He reflected, panicked, on the memory of the shattered Bootleg Ball on the floor of The Clock Tower next to The TARDIS, agonized over that lost data, those instructions--
--he was trying to drive a Shelby Mustang GT on The Autobahn and he didn't even have his Learner's Permit.
Jasmine's whole body flickered in Mels' arms, and Mels crushed her eyes shut as Jas sagged against her.
"Please," Tommy begged up at The Console, "please, Blue, please..."
But Blue the Box replied only with the sound of question marks in Tommy's head.
...and then, just as Tommy slumped helplessly against the screen, another wordless reply came in behind his eyes.
The color yellow.
...a suffusion of yellow.
Tommy's eyes snapped open. "What?"
It came again, insistent, that color smearing across his mind's eye. Yellow like a daisy. Yellow like The Roses' hair.
He started to ask again-- "Wha--"
But then his hand flew to his pocket. Found that ridiculous looking calculator that Romana had given him from Professor Gently.
And flying on a very special kind of desperate instinct, Tommy grabbed a cable dangling from the bottom of the viewscreen and jacked it into the top of that calculator.
Ornate Chinese characters sprawled and scrolled across the viewscreen and the calculator display alike, rapidly narrowing down and down and down to a hexagram, then a trigram, then--
--coordinates blinked on the screen.
With a cry like a horseman urging on a steed, Tommy again set to hitting buttons, adjusting instruments, toggling and hammering and--
--and with a groan like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill just one more time, The TARDIS ground to slow, growling, determined life...
Glancing at the viewscreen to determine his readings, he exulted in a purer joy the likes of which he'd rarely known-- "That's it! That's it! We're orbiting the timeline, closing in on a landing date, you should be clear of the deleterious--"
--but then he looked up, found Mels kneeling with Jas, both girls holding each others' hands... Jas was still fading. She was strobing in and out, timed with the whooshing vworrrping plunging noise made by The TARDIS.
"No," Tommy recoiled. "No, you should be-- you should be fine now, no, we got it to work!"
Then Jasmine turned to smile at him, and it was the softest of smiles. A smile of beneficent peace. "No, no, it's okay, I think. It's different now. It's not scary anymore. I think-- I think I'm going to be all right. It's not hurting me. It's like coming home."
"Thank you."
And then she was gone, and Mels choked back a sob as the image of the girl became an afterimage and then became nothing at all.
Mels then looked at her own hand, and it, too, was starting to fade away-- like a Force ghost from Star Wars high-lit by a blue aura, slowly, slowly-- going...
Tommy sagged against The Console, watching her helplessly. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"It's all right, Decker," Mels mused, and rose to her feet, approaching him. "She's right. It's not scary. I don't think we're being unwritten anymore. We're being rewritten. We're being incorporated into the the new events. I mean, it's anyone's guess where we'll end up, but-- at least we'll be."
"I hope you're right," Tommy shuddered, gazing up at her. "God I hope you're right."
Mels smiled at him, and cupped his cheek, and it was an odd little feeling, not quite as intangible as being touched by Reinette, and slightly warmer. "Decker. Sweetie. You don't know me. But I'm telling you. I'm always right."
And then she kissed him, soft and warm and almost-there and almost-gone...
...and then she drifted off like stardust and he was alone.
He sank to kneel, hands between his knees, and he didn't know whether to smile or cry. So lost was he in the fathoms of that moment that it actually startled him a great deal when The TARDIS shuddered to a landing stop.
