HP/DW: Clarke's Third Law (19.2/20)
Summary: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So what happens when witch meets scientist, and each tries to teach the other about their brand of magic? Things become a tad confusing. And more than a bit fantastic. Doctor/Rose
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Harry Potter. I'm not nearly that brilliant.
Note: Rewrites of Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel
Alternate link to story
(Chapter 18 part 1 here)
Chapter 18 (Part 2): Lumic
He wasn’t worried, though. Not one bit. “My friends,” the Doctor whispered conspiratorially to the Cybermen, “Rose and Fred, they’ll get me- Oh, never mind.”
There they were. Rose and Fred. The were seated in the corner of the room, heads down and hands in their laps.
They looked like two naughty school children.
“Brilliant rescue,” the Doctor offered, as he sat down next to them.
Rose looked up and gave a small smile. “You think so? Just wait ‘till you see the next bit we’ve got planned!”
“I look forward to it!” The Doctor chirped back. He grew serious. “You alright?”
Rose nodded jerkily. “Yea. You?”
The Doctor shrugged noncommittally. “Eh. Be better if I wasn’t just felt up by a Cyberman, but I’ll live. Lived with Jack for six months, didn’t I?”
Rose gave him a weak smile, showing him that she wasn’t as okay as she made out to be. “They got George. They took George and they changed him into one of those things-”
“He wasn’t your George, Rose,” the Doctor said quietly.
“Well, he was somebody’s,” Rose argued back heatedly, keeping her voice down. The Doctor said nothing.
“Everybody else was gone, too. Mum, dad, Al, Lily, Sirius, James- all turned into Cybermen.”
“We were too late,” Fred said harshly. “He killed ‘em all.”
“So where is he then?” the Doctor asked, standing up to face the Cyberman. “Mr. Lumic. Come on! Don’t we get to meet our lord and master?”
“He has been upgraded,” the Cyberman intoned.
“So he’s just like you, then,” the Doctor whispered softly.
“He is superior. The Lumic Unit has been designated Cyber Controller.”
The sound of sliding doors called their attention over to the side. The Doctor, Rose, and Fred all turned in time to watch Lumic slowly enter the room. He was seated on a chair that, Rose noted, had been elaborately decorated with all sorts of wires. It floated surprisingly delicately off the ground.
Fred stood up in amazement when he, too, realized that Lumic was now a Cyberman. “Bloody hell.”
“Language,” Rose chastised half-heartedly, still filled with some sort of horrified shock. Was this how her Uncle Harry had felt the first time he had seen what Voldemort had become thanks to his own greed?
“What the hell have you done?” Rose demanded, pulling out her wand.
“Magic will not help you. Magic has been neutralized throughout the city.” Cyber-Lumic said. She would have said he sounded smug, but Cybermen couldn’t feel.
She kept her wand out, although she lowered it, knowing it wouldn’t help. The same technology Lumic had used at the party was in effect all over the city. His entire operation was now running completely on Muggle technology. It had to be. It’s a good thing Hugo was an expert. She felt the Doctor’s hand on her arm, restraining her, probably having worked out that magic wouldn’t help her here.
And what was a witch without magic?
Not much, to be honest.
But Rose wasn’t just a witch. She was Weasley. And out there, somewhere, Hugo was doing Merlin knows what to try and stop Lumic and she was going to help him, magic or not. And if there was one thing Weasley women could do, it was talk.
“I have done what no other has,” Cyber-Lumic said. “This is the Age of Steel and I am it’s creator.”
“You’re a lunatic is what you are,” Rose said finally.
“Rose-” the Doctor warned.
“No, I’m serious,” Rose snapped. “I really want to know. Did you notice when you started falling off the deep end,
or did you just wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and say, “Oh look! I’ve gone mad!’”
“I-”
“I mean what the hell is with this quest for immortality!” Rose said, her grief and anger making her just a bit more brave and foolish than was reasonable. “First Voldemort tries, and all he ends up with is a face that looks like he ran into a window and got stuck that way. And then there’s you, who looks like a robot with self-confidence issues!”
“Who is Voldemort?” Lumic asked finally. Rose scowled and was about to go off on another rant, when the Doctor stuck his hand over her mouth.
“I think you’re missing the point,” he said calmly. “Rose was just saying that-”
He was cut off by the screams coming from downstairs. The Doctor grinned madly as the Cybermen looked around.
“That’d be my friends at work. Good show by them, don’t you think? I think that’s a vote for free will!”
“I have stations on seven continents. No matter if the ear-pods fall. Cybermen will take the world by force. I will bring peace to the world. Everlasting peace and unity and uniformity will reign.”
“And what about imagination, hm?” the Doctor demanded. “The one thing that got you here. Where’s that gone? You’re killing it stone dead!”
“What is your name?” Cyber-Lumic asked.
“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor said firmly.
“A useless title. Doctors are not needed. Healers are not needed. Cybermen never get ill.”
“Oh, that’s the point, Lumic!” The Doctor said eagerly. “You’re a clever man- I’d call you a genius, but I’m in the room. You’ve got this whole operation up and running without magic. This whole thing- just to fight your sickness! It’s brilliant! It’s so human! But then what? Once that’s all done, what’s there to strive for? Nothing. You’ll be stuck like this.”
“You, Doctor, you’re proud of your emotions?”
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said softly.
“So you’ve felt grief, pain, loss?” Cyber-Lumic continued.
“Yes,” the Doctor said again.
“I could give you a life free from those things. Free from all that pain. What do you say to that?”
“I say that you might as well kill me,” the Doctor said harshly. Those words struck him a bit too close, Rose could tell. She knew that he still felt the guilt from the Time War. She had been woken up by his screams as he had nightmares more than once.
She knew that he’d never be free of it, and it killed him sometimes. However, she knew he was the Doctor, and he would never let himself be free of it, even if he had the choice. Not just because the Doctor was a good person and would never do something so wrong. He also thought it was his punishment, his retribution for what he did. Never mind the fact that the rest of the universe would have been destroyed. This guilt was his punishment and he felt that he had no choice but to bear it.
“I take that option,” Cyber-Lumic said after a moment’s contemplation.
Rose moved to stand in front of the Doctor, wand held out. “I hate to burst your bubble, but I don’t think he was giving you that option. You’re a Cyber controller. You don’t get to control anything with blood in it’s heart- or hearts, I guess- and you don’t get to touch the Doctor. You hear me?”
“Magic is ineffective. You will not be able to stop me. I have an army.”
“Your army won’t get you anywhere! Don’t you get it?” Rose snapped. “Ordinary people! Men, women, brothers, sisters, mums, dads... They’re the ones who can change the world!”
“Rose is right,” the Doctor said quickly, sidestepping to stand in front of her again. She scowled at him.
“Considering the technology your using, it’s so easy even a Muggle could do it!”
“Isn’t that from an insurance commercial?” Fred asked from his seat behind them.
“I just meant,” the Doctor said with an eye roll, “All it takes is for the right idiot to find the right numbers or the right code, like, say, for the emotional inhibitor. ‘Cos it’s right in front of him, since every idiot knows how to use a computer these days. Especially if this idiot knows how to bypass a magical signature check.”
Rose looked at the Doctor as though he were insane (which he was, she supposed), but then he nudged her gently and looked up towards the ceiling. She subtly followed his gaze and saw a security camera.
She still wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but the next thing she knew the Doctor was rambling on about phones and codes and binary 9.
A moment later, the Doctor had pulled out her cellphone from her pocket and jammed it into a port. It fit perfectly.
When asked what happened next, all Rose would be able to say was that all hell broke lose. Cybermen clutched their heads and moaned as a single code flashed on the screen of every computer.
The Cybermen moaned and one of them, catching sight of it’s reflection, gently touched the mirror and whimpered. Rose felt a lump grow in her throat and found that she suddenly couldn’t talk through it.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said for her.
Fred jumped backwards as the head of one of the Cybermen next to him exploded. Lumic floated closer to them. Rose had a feeling he would have been furious had he any feelings left.
“What have you done?”
“I gave them back their souls,” the Doctor said fiercely, “And, as you can see, it’s killing them! They can’t stand what they’ve become.”
Then the Doctor grabbed her hand and pulled her away, Fred following. Behind her, she could hear Lumic shouting “Delete! Delete! Delete!”
They were running, though, and they didn’t look back. The Doctor lead them through the factory, narrowly avoiding several different explosions, looking for a way out. They tried every door they reached, but they were all
closed.
Rose’s phone rang and she reached for it instinctively.
“Is now really the time?” The Doctor snapped, as he tried another door, only to be greeted by a group of Cybermen. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to bother you!”
The Doctor slammed the door in their faces and Rose picked up the phone, realizing that it was Hugo. She didn’t even have a chance to say hello before he was talking to her, the static echoing loudly through the phone.
“Rose? Rose are you there?”
“Hugo?” She panted as she ran. “What in Merlin’s name did you do? All hell broke loose!”
“I did what the Doctor told me to,” Hugo defended. “Listen: head for the roof!”
“The roof?” Rose asked. “How are we supposed to get there?”
“I’ve disabled the magical inhibitors. You should be able to apparate. Have Fred bring you up. Does he know what it looks like?”
“Fred,” Rose demanded, pulling at his shoulder as they ran, “You ever been to the roof?”
“This one?” Fred asked. “Once, when George and I were scoping out the place. Why?”
“Hugo managed to disable the magical inhibitors-”
“Good man!” the Doctor beamed.
“-he says to get to the roof. Can you apparate us-”
Fred pulled out his wand and grabbed Rose and the Doctor. He turned several times and took a firm step forward. Rose let out a gasp as she suddenly found herself on the roof of the power plant.
“-there?” Rose finished weakly.
The Doctor scowled at Fred. “Some warning would have been nice!”
Fred looked indignant and Rose went to soothe him. “Ignore him. He said the same thing to me when I took us to the Chula Warship during World War II.”
“I have a feeling that would make me feel better if I had understood a word of it,” Fred muttered. “What in the name of-”
Rose gaped incredulously at the zeppelin floating high above the ceiling. She brought the phone to hear ear again. “Hugo, do you know how to fly that thing?”
“It’s just like flying a broom- sort of.” He said after a moment.
“You can barely stay on a broom, let alone fly one!”
“Well, it’s a good thing it’s only sort of like a broom, isn’t it? Now hurry up and get in here! I don’t know where the breaks are- oh.” His voice became a bit distant as he called over to Jackie. “Jackie, is this little piece supposed to fall off?”
“Right,” Rose called, “To the zeppelin!”
“Can he fly that thing?” The Doctor asked, as they made their way towards it, heading towards the ladder that he had dropped from the cockpit.
“Of course he can!” Rose said too quickly. The Doctor thought about saying something, but decided that he was too out of breath to argue. He let Rose climb up first, and then followed, Fred taking up the rear.
She heard Hugo say something over the intercom, but couldn’t make it out over the explosions that racked the lab below them. Rose couldn’t help but laugh in giddy relief. “We’re going to make it!”
The Doctor laughed with her, but they both should have known better. Rose let out a scream as the ladder gave a jerk. Rose looked down to see Fred struggling with hanging on, but, even more importantly, she saw Lumic holding tightly to the bottom of the ladder.
Fred was trying to make his way higher up the ladder, but Lumic’s grip was jerking the ropes too much. Rose pulled her wand out of her sleeve.
“This is for everybody who died tonight!”
With aim that surprised even her, she shot a Severing Charm at the rope. It took less than a split second for the rope carrying Lumic to fall down towards the factory.
Along with a piece of Fred’s shoe.
“Ow!” Fred cursed as the charm nicked his foot. Rose looked down at at him sheepishly.
“Sorry!” She called. “You alright down there?”
“I’ll survive,” Fred called back, climbing the ladder with much more ease now. He wiggled his now bare toes. “All ten toes still here! Shame, too. A few more inches up and I could have saved half off on shoes!”
The joke wasn’t that funny, but Rose was still on some sort of adrenaline rush, and giggled loudly. Looking down at the Doctor, she noticed that he, too, was laughing, but at her exuberance more than Fred’s quip.
The three of them scrambled up the rest of the ladder, climbing up the rest of the way. Once inside the cockpit, Rose threw her arms around her brother, who was at the wheel. He couldn’t hug her back, but he did manage to nudge her with his hip.
When it became clear that she wasn’t going to let go of him anytime soon, he muttered, “Rose, I love you and I’m glad you’re okay, too, but I can’t exactly drive this thing and you aren’t helping-”
“Move,” Fred ordered immediately, pushing Hugo to the side and taking control of the steering mechanism. At this, Hugo turned around and returned Rose’s hug as the Doctor directed Fred’s flying him, getting him to park by the TARIDS.
It didn’t take very long for the group (the Doctor, Rose, Hugo, Jackie, and Fred) to all climb out of the zeppelin. The Doctor headed straight for the TARDIS, power-cell in hand, but Rose and Hugo stayed behind.
While Hugo talked to Jackie, Rose struck up conversation with Fred.
“You never told me who you are,” Fred said quietly, watching as the Doctor entered the TARDIS, no doubt wondering what was inside, but too afraid to ask and maybe find out for himself.
“We did! There’s Hugo and I’m Rose and he’s-”
“The Doctor,” Fred nodded, “But who are you? All of this stuff- aliens, different worlds. It’s mental, which is saying something coming from me! But you lot, you act like it’s normal!”
“It sort of is,” Rose said with a soft smile, “When you travel with the Doctor. And it’s like you say. Imagine there are these different worlds. Parallel worlds. A world where George is still alive. Where Ron and Hermione are still alive...and their daughter...”
Fred caught on immediately. Of course he did. “So you and Hugo- your Hugo- weren’t lying.”
“No, not really,” Rose said quietly.
“And, now that this is all over, you’re going to go home?”
“For a bit, yea,” Rose said hesitantly.
“Back to your family,” Fred said bitterly. “My family is all gone. All dead. Lumic’s factories are still out there and somebody's got to go and shut them down. Keep the government running. But you, you and the Doctor and Hugo, you get to go home to your perfect little world and see your family-my family-”
“Our world is far from perfect!” Rose protested, grabbing at his sleeve as he turned away. “Just listen-”
“Forget it. I have to go.” He broke from her grasp as the Doctor approached. She turned back to the Doctor after
watching Fred stalk off to Jackie.
“We’ll never know, will we?” Rose asked the Doctor, not turning to face him.
“Know what?”
“Why George did it. If he meant for all that to happen.”
“No, we won’t.”
Rose didn’t say anything for a long while. It was the Doctor who broke the silence between them.
“Ready to go?” He asked her simply. Rose nodded. “Hugo is already inside.”
It was nice, Rose decided, to be back in the TARDIS after such a trying adventure. The interior of the ship, it’s gentle lighting (dimmed slightly, probably due to the lack of power it had been suffering), it’s soothing hum- all were home to her by now.
“So,” the Doctor asked, “Your place for some tea and Al’s mediocre cooking, and then onto time and space?”
“Actually, I think I’ll skip the time and space bit,” Hugo said. His voice was firm, but nervous. “It’s time for me to go back home.”
The Doctor nodded, accepting Hugo’s answer, and turned to dial in the coordinates. His back turned on them to give the siblings a bit of privacy, Rose frowned and turned to Hugo, speaking quietly.
“Why?”
“After all this, Rose, I need to go home,” Hugo said quietly. “Make a name for myself. Stop being the tin-dog. This whole thing proved that there might just be a place for a guy like me in the Wizarding World.”
“But-”
“And I need to see them, Rose,” Hugo said, cutting her off. “Our family. Tonight reminded me what our parents have known for ages since the war: we don’t get to choose how long we’re giving. I’m going to take what I’ve got and not waste a second.”
Rose felt the familiar churning of guilt in her stomach, the one that arose whenever she realized that she had all but abandoned her family in favor of traveling with the Doctor, and lied to them for fear if they knew the truth, they’d make her stop.
“Don’t,” Hugo said gently and, in that moment, he looked so much older and wiser that Rose wondered when her little brother had grown up, “You’ve got the Doctor. He’s your family now- and that’s alright. Everybody leaves the nest sometime.”
Hugo smiled a beaming, slightly goofy grin that was reminiscent of his father and showed Rose that everything would be okay. “You’re just going a bit further than most.”
Chapter 19 here
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Harry Potter. I'm not nearly that brilliant.
Note: Rewrites of Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel
Alternate link to story
(Chapter 18 part 1 here)
Chapter 18 (Part 2): Lumic
He wasn’t worried, though. Not one bit. “My friends,” the Doctor whispered conspiratorially to the Cybermen, “Rose and Fred, they’ll get me- Oh, never mind.”
There they were. Rose and Fred. The were seated in the corner of the room, heads down and hands in their laps.
They looked like two naughty school children.
“Brilliant rescue,” the Doctor offered, as he sat down next to them.
Rose looked up and gave a small smile. “You think so? Just wait ‘till you see the next bit we’ve got planned!”
“I look forward to it!” The Doctor chirped back. He grew serious. “You alright?”
Rose nodded jerkily. “Yea. You?”
The Doctor shrugged noncommittally. “Eh. Be better if I wasn’t just felt up by a Cyberman, but I’ll live. Lived with Jack for six months, didn’t I?”
Rose gave him a weak smile, showing him that she wasn’t as okay as she made out to be. “They got George. They took George and they changed him into one of those things-”
“He wasn’t your George, Rose,” the Doctor said quietly.
“Well, he was somebody’s,” Rose argued back heatedly, keeping her voice down. The Doctor said nothing.
“Everybody else was gone, too. Mum, dad, Al, Lily, Sirius, James- all turned into Cybermen.”
“We were too late,” Fred said harshly. “He killed ‘em all.”
“So where is he then?” the Doctor asked, standing up to face the Cyberman. “Mr. Lumic. Come on! Don’t we get to meet our lord and master?”
“He has been upgraded,” the Cyberman intoned.
“So he’s just like you, then,” the Doctor whispered softly.
“He is superior. The Lumic Unit has been designated Cyber Controller.”
The sound of sliding doors called their attention over to the side. The Doctor, Rose, and Fred all turned in time to watch Lumic slowly enter the room. He was seated on a chair that, Rose noted, had been elaborately decorated with all sorts of wires. It floated surprisingly delicately off the ground.
Fred stood up in amazement when he, too, realized that Lumic was now a Cyberman. “Bloody hell.”
“Language,” Rose chastised half-heartedly, still filled with some sort of horrified shock. Was this how her Uncle Harry had felt the first time he had seen what Voldemort had become thanks to his own greed?
“What the hell have you done?” Rose demanded, pulling out her wand.
“Magic will not help you. Magic has been neutralized throughout the city.” Cyber-Lumic said. She would have said he sounded smug, but Cybermen couldn’t feel.
She kept her wand out, although she lowered it, knowing it wouldn’t help. The same technology Lumic had used at the party was in effect all over the city. His entire operation was now running completely on Muggle technology. It had to be. It’s a good thing Hugo was an expert. She felt the Doctor’s hand on her arm, restraining her, probably having worked out that magic wouldn’t help her here.
And what was a witch without magic?
Not much, to be honest.
But Rose wasn’t just a witch. She was Weasley. And out there, somewhere, Hugo was doing Merlin knows what to try and stop Lumic and she was going to help him, magic or not. And if there was one thing Weasley women could do, it was talk.
“I have done what no other has,” Cyber-Lumic said. “This is the Age of Steel and I am it’s creator.”
“You’re a lunatic is what you are,” Rose said finally.
“Rose-” the Doctor warned.
“No, I’m serious,” Rose snapped. “I really want to know. Did you notice when you started falling off the deep end,
or did you just wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and say, “Oh look! I’ve gone mad!’”
“I-”
“I mean what the hell is with this quest for immortality!” Rose said, her grief and anger making her just a bit more brave and foolish than was reasonable. “First Voldemort tries, and all he ends up with is a face that looks like he ran into a window and got stuck that way. And then there’s you, who looks like a robot with self-confidence issues!”
“Who is Voldemort?” Lumic asked finally. Rose scowled and was about to go off on another rant, when the Doctor stuck his hand over her mouth.
“I think you’re missing the point,” he said calmly. “Rose was just saying that-”
He was cut off by the screams coming from downstairs. The Doctor grinned madly as the Cybermen looked around.
“That’d be my friends at work. Good show by them, don’t you think? I think that’s a vote for free will!”
“I have stations on seven continents. No matter if the ear-pods fall. Cybermen will take the world by force. I will bring peace to the world. Everlasting peace and unity and uniformity will reign.”
“And what about imagination, hm?” the Doctor demanded. “The one thing that got you here. Where’s that gone? You’re killing it stone dead!”
“What is your name?” Cyber-Lumic asked.
“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor said firmly.
“A useless title. Doctors are not needed. Healers are not needed. Cybermen never get ill.”
“Oh, that’s the point, Lumic!” The Doctor said eagerly. “You’re a clever man- I’d call you a genius, but I’m in the room. You’ve got this whole operation up and running without magic. This whole thing- just to fight your sickness! It’s brilliant! It’s so human! But then what? Once that’s all done, what’s there to strive for? Nothing. You’ll be stuck like this.”
“You, Doctor, you’re proud of your emotions?”
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said softly.
“So you’ve felt grief, pain, loss?” Cyber-Lumic continued.
“Yes,” the Doctor said again.
“I could give you a life free from those things. Free from all that pain. What do you say to that?”
“I say that you might as well kill me,” the Doctor said harshly. Those words struck him a bit too close, Rose could tell. She knew that he still felt the guilt from the Time War. She had been woken up by his screams as he had nightmares more than once.
She knew that he’d never be free of it, and it killed him sometimes. However, she knew he was the Doctor, and he would never let himself be free of it, even if he had the choice. Not just because the Doctor was a good person and would never do something so wrong. He also thought it was his punishment, his retribution for what he did. Never mind the fact that the rest of the universe would have been destroyed. This guilt was his punishment and he felt that he had no choice but to bear it.
“I take that option,” Cyber-Lumic said after a moment’s contemplation.
Rose moved to stand in front of the Doctor, wand held out. “I hate to burst your bubble, but I don’t think he was giving you that option. You’re a Cyber controller. You don’t get to control anything with blood in it’s heart- or hearts, I guess- and you don’t get to touch the Doctor. You hear me?”
“Magic is ineffective. You will not be able to stop me. I have an army.”
“Your army won’t get you anywhere! Don’t you get it?” Rose snapped. “Ordinary people! Men, women, brothers, sisters, mums, dads... They’re the ones who can change the world!”
“Rose is right,” the Doctor said quickly, sidestepping to stand in front of her again. She scowled at him.
“Considering the technology your using, it’s so easy even a Muggle could do it!”
“Isn’t that from an insurance commercial?” Fred asked from his seat behind them.
“I just meant,” the Doctor said with an eye roll, “All it takes is for the right idiot to find the right numbers or the right code, like, say, for the emotional inhibitor. ‘Cos it’s right in front of him, since every idiot knows how to use a computer these days. Especially if this idiot knows how to bypass a magical signature check.”
Rose looked at the Doctor as though he were insane (which he was, she supposed), but then he nudged her gently and looked up towards the ceiling. She subtly followed his gaze and saw a security camera.
She still wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but the next thing she knew the Doctor was rambling on about phones and codes and binary 9.
A moment later, the Doctor had pulled out her cellphone from her pocket and jammed it into a port. It fit perfectly.
When asked what happened next, all Rose would be able to say was that all hell broke lose. Cybermen clutched their heads and moaned as a single code flashed on the screen of every computer.
The Cybermen moaned and one of them, catching sight of it’s reflection, gently touched the mirror and whimpered. Rose felt a lump grow in her throat and found that she suddenly couldn’t talk through it.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said for her.
Fred jumped backwards as the head of one of the Cybermen next to him exploded. Lumic floated closer to them. Rose had a feeling he would have been furious had he any feelings left.
“What have you done?”
“I gave them back their souls,” the Doctor said fiercely, “And, as you can see, it’s killing them! They can’t stand what they’ve become.”
Then the Doctor grabbed her hand and pulled her away, Fred following. Behind her, she could hear Lumic shouting “Delete! Delete! Delete!”
They were running, though, and they didn’t look back. The Doctor lead them through the factory, narrowly avoiding several different explosions, looking for a way out. They tried every door they reached, but they were all
closed.
Rose’s phone rang and she reached for it instinctively.
“Is now really the time?” The Doctor snapped, as he tried another door, only to be greeted by a group of Cybermen. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to bother you!”
The Doctor slammed the door in their faces and Rose picked up the phone, realizing that it was Hugo. She didn’t even have a chance to say hello before he was talking to her, the static echoing loudly through the phone.
“Rose? Rose are you there?”
“Hugo?” She panted as she ran. “What in Merlin’s name did you do? All hell broke loose!”
“I did what the Doctor told me to,” Hugo defended. “Listen: head for the roof!”
“The roof?” Rose asked. “How are we supposed to get there?”
“I’ve disabled the magical inhibitors. You should be able to apparate. Have Fred bring you up. Does he know what it looks like?”
“Fred,” Rose demanded, pulling at his shoulder as they ran, “You ever been to the roof?”
“This one?” Fred asked. “Once, when George and I were scoping out the place. Why?”
“Hugo managed to disable the magical inhibitors-”
“Good man!” the Doctor beamed.
“-he says to get to the roof. Can you apparate us-”
Fred pulled out his wand and grabbed Rose and the Doctor. He turned several times and took a firm step forward. Rose let out a gasp as she suddenly found herself on the roof of the power plant.
“-there?” Rose finished weakly.
The Doctor scowled at Fred. “Some warning would have been nice!”
Fred looked indignant and Rose went to soothe him. “Ignore him. He said the same thing to me when I took us to the Chula Warship during World War II.”
“I have a feeling that would make me feel better if I had understood a word of it,” Fred muttered. “What in the name of-”
Rose gaped incredulously at the zeppelin floating high above the ceiling. She brought the phone to hear ear again. “Hugo, do you know how to fly that thing?”
“It’s just like flying a broom- sort of.” He said after a moment.
“You can barely stay on a broom, let alone fly one!”
“Well, it’s a good thing it’s only sort of like a broom, isn’t it? Now hurry up and get in here! I don’t know where the breaks are- oh.” His voice became a bit distant as he called over to Jackie. “Jackie, is this little piece supposed to fall off?”
“Right,” Rose called, “To the zeppelin!”
“Can he fly that thing?” The Doctor asked, as they made their way towards it, heading towards the ladder that he had dropped from the cockpit.
“Of course he can!” Rose said too quickly. The Doctor thought about saying something, but decided that he was too out of breath to argue. He let Rose climb up first, and then followed, Fred taking up the rear.
She heard Hugo say something over the intercom, but couldn’t make it out over the explosions that racked the lab below them. Rose couldn’t help but laugh in giddy relief. “We’re going to make it!”
The Doctor laughed with her, but they both should have known better. Rose let out a scream as the ladder gave a jerk. Rose looked down to see Fred struggling with hanging on, but, even more importantly, she saw Lumic holding tightly to the bottom of the ladder.
Fred was trying to make his way higher up the ladder, but Lumic’s grip was jerking the ropes too much. Rose pulled her wand out of her sleeve.
“This is for everybody who died tonight!”
With aim that surprised even her, she shot a Severing Charm at the rope. It took less than a split second for the rope carrying Lumic to fall down towards the factory.
Along with a piece of Fred’s shoe.
“Ow!” Fred cursed as the charm nicked his foot. Rose looked down at at him sheepishly.
“Sorry!” She called. “You alright down there?”
“I’ll survive,” Fred called back, climbing the ladder with much more ease now. He wiggled his now bare toes. “All ten toes still here! Shame, too. A few more inches up and I could have saved half off on shoes!”
The joke wasn’t that funny, but Rose was still on some sort of adrenaline rush, and giggled loudly. Looking down at the Doctor, she noticed that he, too, was laughing, but at her exuberance more than Fred’s quip.
The three of them scrambled up the rest of the ladder, climbing up the rest of the way. Once inside the cockpit, Rose threw her arms around her brother, who was at the wheel. He couldn’t hug her back, but he did manage to nudge her with his hip.
When it became clear that she wasn’t going to let go of him anytime soon, he muttered, “Rose, I love you and I’m glad you’re okay, too, but I can’t exactly drive this thing and you aren’t helping-”
“Move,” Fred ordered immediately, pushing Hugo to the side and taking control of the steering mechanism. At this, Hugo turned around and returned Rose’s hug as the Doctor directed Fred’s flying him, getting him to park by the TARIDS.
It didn’t take very long for the group (the Doctor, Rose, Hugo, Jackie, and Fred) to all climb out of the zeppelin. The Doctor headed straight for the TARDIS, power-cell in hand, but Rose and Hugo stayed behind.
While Hugo talked to Jackie, Rose struck up conversation with Fred.
“You never told me who you are,” Fred said quietly, watching as the Doctor entered the TARDIS, no doubt wondering what was inside, but too afraid to ask and maybe find out for himself.
“We did! There’s Hugo and I’m Rose and he’s-”
“The Doctor,” Fred nodded, “But who are you? All of this stuff- aliens, different worlds. It’s mental, which is saying something coming from me! But you lot, you act like it’s normal!”
“It sort of is,” Rose said with a soft smile, “When you travel with the Doctor. And it’s like you say. Imagine there are these different worlds. Parallel worlds. A world where George is still alive. Where Ron and Hermione are still alive...and their daughter...”
Fred caught on immediately. Of course he did. “So you and Hugo- your Hugo- weren’t lying.”
“No, not really,” Rose said quietly.
“And, now that this is all over, you’re going to go home?”
“For a bit, yea,” Rose said hesitantly.
“Back to your family,” Fred said bitterly. “My family is all gone. All dead. Lumic’s factories are still out there and somebody's got to go and shut them down. Keep the government running. But you, you and the Doctor and Hugo, you get to go home to your perfect little world and see your family-my family-”
“Our world is far from perfect!” Rose protested, grabbing at his sleeve as he turned away. “Just listen-”
“Forget it. I have to go.” He broke from her grasp as the Doctor approached. She turned back to the Doctor after
watching Fred stalk off to Jackie.
“We’ll never know, will we?” Rose asked the Doctor, not turning to face him.
“Know what?”
“Why George did it. If he meant for all that to happen.”
“No, we won’t.”
Rose didn’t say anything for a long while. It was the Doctor who broke the silence between them.
“Ready to go?” He asked her simply. Rose nodded. “Hugo is already inside.”
It was nice, Rose decided, to be back in the TARDIS after such a trying adventure. The interior of the ship, it’s gentle lighting (dimmed slightly, probably due to the lack of power it had been suffering), it’s soothing hum- all were home to her by now.
“So,” the Doctor asked, “Your place for some tea and Al’s mediocre cooking, and then onto time and space?”
“Actually, I think I’ll skip the time and space bit,” Hugo said. His voice was firm, but nervous. “It’s time for me to go back home.”
The Doctor nodded, accepting Hugo’s answer, and turned to dial in the coordinates. His back turned on them to give the siblings a bit of privacy, Rose frowned and turned to Hugo, speaking quietly.
“Why?”
“After all this, Rose, I need to go home,” Hugo said quietly. “Make a name for myself. Stop being the tin-dog. This whole thing proved that there might just be a place for a guy like me in the Wizarding World.”
“But-”
“And I need to see them, Rose,” Hugo said, cutting her off. “Our family. Tonight reminded me what our parents have known for ages since the war: we don’t get to choose how long we’re giving. I’m going to take what I’ve got and not waste a second.”
Rose felt the familiar churning of guilt in her stomach, the one that arose whenever she realized that she had all but abandoned her family in favor of traveling with the Doctor, and lied to them for fear if they knew the truth, they’d make her stop.
“Don’t,” Hugo said gently and, in that moment, he looked so much older and wiser that Rose wondered when her little brother had grown up, “You’ve got the Doctor. He’s your family now- and that’s alright. Everybody leaves the nest sometime.”
Hugo smiled a beaming, slightly goofy grin that was reminiscent of his father and showed Rose that everything would be okay. “You’re just going a bit further than most.”
Chapter 19 here