Potterhouse

Note: Please don't count on any regular updating from me. Such is notoriously problematic for me. I won't give up, but I have a life, and it often gets in the way.

I don't own these players, and I'm making no money from their performance. That said, please enjoy this effort. It's somewhat Doctor-lite at the moment, focusing mostly on Harry's predicament, but I'm digging out a niche for the Time Lord to play in later.

Chapter 1: Choices

Godric's Hollow, England, 1026 AD. . .

On the outskirts of Godric's Hollow was a stone building that was said to be haunted. For one thing, no one could actually remember it being built. For another, there would often be strange lights coming from it, and once in a while, strange sounds as well. But none of that was stranger than the man who owned the building, a man known only as the Potter. Now, the man made a living as a potter, and his work was really quite exquisite. He could make even the most utilitarian of earthen vessels a truly beautiful piece, and the ones he considered art were the most sought-after in all England. No one knew where he'd studied, and no one knew his name or origin, but because of his work, no one wanted to question him, lest he take that work and leave.

He dressed strangely, spoke strangely, and allowed his wife a great deal of latitude more than most men, though she did not abuse the privilege. People became used to the Potter, for all his eccentricities.

Then one day, the strange building was joined by a strange blue box.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

"Forget it, Doctor. I am an artist, not a fighter." The Potter paced around his small cottage, the real stone building he kept his TARDIS next to.

"And I respect that. Do you think I want to be fighting not only the Daleks but our own people, as well? I'm trying to find a way to stop them, not drag you into this war. And don't call me Doctor. Right now, I don't deserve that title."

"Well what do you want me to call you? 'Hey you?'" The Potter sighed. "I can't leave, Doctor. I-I did something the Time Lords will not forgive me for. If I return to Gallifrey, they'll kill me. Permanently."

The Warrior looked at his old friend, remembering the man who had preceded himself and the Master at the Academy, graduating three years earlier, but who he had considered something of a peer mentor, one of the few people who hadn't looked down on him for his rebellious ways. "What is it? Their ideas of right and wrong rarely match mine, you know."

The Potter chuckled a little at that. "I do know." Then he sobered. "But I'm not sure even you'll countenance this."

"Potter?" came a voice out of the back of the cottage. A woman's voice. And it was followed a moment later by a woman's form, standing in the bedroom doorway. She was fair-skinned, with golden-red hair and fine features, a lovely porcelain doll. That is, if a doll were pregnant. The Warrior stared at her in shock.

"Marie, my love, are you all right?" asked the Potter, standing from his chair and rushing over to his human wife. "Did we wake you?"

"No. I just can't seem to get comfortable." She let her husband settle her in the chair he had just vacated. "Now, who's your friend?"

"My apologies, Marie. This is an old friend of mine from home, the Doctor. He's-"

"Potter," said the other Time Lord warningly.

"Relax, Doctor. She already knows what I am. This is my wife, Marie Potter nee Peverell. Marie, the Doctor is also a Time Lord, and much like myself, he disdains war, but he finds he must fight it anyway, for the good of all."

For a moment, the Warrior stared at his old friend, then said, "I-I'm happy for you, Potter. I must say that I am surprised, but I am hardly one to argue against the course of true love. I've never found it myself, not in nearly nine hundred years, among our kind or any other, but I can see that it suits you." He grinned. "And I can see you've done something else, something I thought impossible for one of our race."

The Potter grinned with pride. "Yes. Rassilon perpetuated that farcical fiction for his own ends. We can have children with any other compatible race. Pythia's magic only affected the women of our race. But she knew Rassilon would never agree to let us bring in half-bred children to fix the problem. He believed in the superiority of the Time Lords too much, and besides which, technology could ensure our survival as a race, so there was no need to allow it."

The Warrior looked at his friend and smiled the first real smile he'd had in over a century. "All right. I won't ask you to come with me, then. You have a family, now. I-" He faltered, hating the war and all it was making him to do. "I have to do something, Potter, something I just know will rend my soul apart. But it is the only course left to me, other than to allow Rassilon to destroy all creation. Somehow, he thinks that's winning. But if it is winning to be the only ones left, then we must lose."

The Potter gave him a horrified look. "Rassilon's Final Sanction?! They're actually going through with that?" Thoughts flitted across his face, then he realized what the only thing that could stop them would be. He swallowed hard, his stomach obviously not agreeing with what his head knew was coming for his people. "H-How will you do it?"

"The Moment. Last weapon of ancient Gallifrey, and so powerful it will wipe them all out in a single moment." He sat down heavily on the plain wooden chair he had been offered earlier in the night.

"Can none be saved?" the Potter whispered.

"I can't let anyone know, can't evacuate the planet. It would tip off Rassilon, and he'd just set the Sanction off early. I have to catch Gallifrey and the Daleks all in one shot, and that has to be strong enough to erase both. If I don't the rest of the universe-all the universes-will cease to be. He'll kill all of creation. And the Daleks would cheerfully steal that technology and do it themselves. There is no alternative but to stop this insanity."

"What of your mother?" He asked because the Doctor's mother was a member of the council, one of the only sane voices on it.

A ghost of future pain slid across his mind. "I know. There's no way to save her or Susan or Braxietel. The Master is dead, and so is Romana. I don't know where the Corsair is, but I doubt he's sitting the war out. If I could save any of them, I would. I can save you, and your child. But you must never try to find Gallifrey. This destruction will put it in a time lock, along with the Daleks, and attempting to enter it will only serve to kill you."

The Potter had tears in his eyes as he asked, "Why must it be you to play our Judas?"

The Warrior shook his head. "Who else could it be, my friend?"

"Then go. Quod facis fac citius.*" He nodded, then stood to leave the house, but the Potter turned him around before he let him leave and hugged him, knowing the man would not return to see him when it was done. "I hate this, but I do not hate you for it, and I never will."

"I won't survive, Potter. You will soon be the last of the Time Lords. Raise your child knowing what Gallifrey should have been."

The Potter nodded. "I swear it."

And with that, the Warrior went back to his TARDIS to steal the Moment form the Omega Arsenal and burn Gallifrey and the Daleks together, ending this hell for the rest of the universe at the cost of their home world.

Marie stood by her husband as the blue TARDIS dematerialized. "Where is he going?"

"He is going to kill our home world, and himself." The tears in the Potter's eyes rolled down his cheeks.

Shocked, Marie turned to look him in the eye. "Why?"

"Because if he doesn't, they'll kill all the worlds."

From that moment, she was silent, merely supporting her husband as he mourned his homeland and his friend. How horrible, she thought, to have to make such a choice.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

969 years later, 31 July, Gringott's Bank of London, vault 687. . .

Harry Potter's vault was being audited, and the audit required his presence, so they had sent a car around to collect him. If he hadn't, his watchers would have stopped him. Harry knew that Dumbledore had people watching the house. He'd spotted more than one of them over the summer, and he assumed it was because of Voldemort. He'd spotted Mad-Eye Moody a couple of times, as well as a girl whose hair kept changing colors, and several others who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else.

The first inkling he'd had that all was not right with his protectors was an owl he'd gotten from Fred and George Weasley at the beginning of the summer. They'd warned him that his friends were being told not to send him letters, and that they'd overheard Dumbledore saying that he needed Harry angry. Then he'd gotten the letter from Gringott's stating that with his fifteenth birthday he now had full control of all his family's assets and asking if he wished to continue with all the financial activities that were currently being executed by his financial warden. The warden was Dumbledore. And a quick phone call to the bank (goblins not being nearly as backward as the rest of the wizarding world) revealed that Dumbledore was dipping into his money on a regular basis. He'd also filed a request to keep Harry in the dark about his finances, but it was against Gringott's policy to do so.

Harry had been brought to the back of the bank, into one of the offices, and there he'd sat down with two goblins. One was the Master of Accounts, Ironclaw, and the other was the Master of Probatry, Daggermouth. Ironclaw had pulled the statements of account from Harry's vault for the last thirteen years and nine months, and Daggermouth had pulled the bank's copy of his parents' wills. They looked over both together, and what they found made Harry so angry he almost lost control of his magic.

Once a month, every month, including time Harry spent at school, the Dursleys received a payment from his account of four hundred quid, supposedly for his child support. But Harry was forced to be the Dursleys' house elf and to wear Dudley's cast-off clothing. At first, this made him angry with them, but then he realized that the money was not being sent to them, but to a Muggle bank account in the name of Brian Dumble. Perhaps the Dursleys should have cared for him because he was family, but if he had also been the source of a ready cash flow like that, it might have sweetened their attitudes. Dumbledore had stolen that from them, and not knowing, they took it out on him.

Then there were the direct withdrawals. Harry had himself withdrawn a small amount each year to pay for school supplies and a few things for himself, but he'd never taken out this kind of coin. Just as the summer began, the largest such withdrawal, one for ten thousand galleons, had been made in his name. The money went into a "scholarship" fund for Hogwarts. All told, those unauthorized withdrawals totaled nearly a million galleons.

There were a few legitimate business dealings that had been running since before he was born, things his parents and grandparents had started. They were keeping the vault from going under, and included patents for several potions, stocks in the Firebolt Broom Company and Zonko's Novel Enterprises, and outright ownership of Ogden's Distillery in Aberdeen. Dumbledore hadn't been able to get his hands on any of the business dealings or any of the real property, because such transactions would have been noticed. But he'd taken what he could of everything else.

So now, he stood in his vault in Gringott's, and he was going through its non-financial contents; deeds, proprietary recipes, journals, books and magical artifacts. A cloth-covered pole three meters long proved to be a rolled up tapestry, a family tree that was self-updating. An old bronze key glowed a little when he touched it, becoming warm, but the goblins didn't know yet what it went to. The arithmantic equations and notes for the Marauder's Map were priceless, both for their knowledge and their sentimental value. And there was a wizard portrait of a tall man with blue eyes and a medium woman with green eyes, both with red hair, and both wearing clothes that put them in the eleventh century. But Harry realized there were some discrepancies. The man was wearing trainers and bifocals.

Well, it was a wizarding painting, so he asked, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but who are you?"

The painted man grinned. "I am called the Potter, and this is my wife, Marie. I see questions flitting about in that head of yours. So go on! Ask!"

"Your glasses and your shoes are from the present day, but yours and your wife's clothing are from the eleventh century. How did that happen?"

The Potter grinned. "Very observant, lad. It happened because I am a time traveler. See, I'm not from this planet, or this time, and there were some things I was not going to do without just because I wanted to live in a simpler time. I don't actually need the bifocals, but they do help me get the details right in some of my smaller-scale work. As for the trainers, well, you never do know when you might have to run. I much prefer a rubber sole to a boot for that." He looked at Marie. "And I took Marie to a hospital on a different planet in the fifty-first century to have our child. I wasn't risking their health on the medical knowledge of this century."

"You're not from Earth? But that means-" Harry stopped, trying to wrap his head around it. Then an ironic snort erupted from his nose. "I guess the Dursleys were right. I am a freak."

The Potter took offence to that, for both their sakes. "Hey, now, none of that. We are not freaks. We are Time Lords, members of a race that mastered travel through time and space before humans had even thought about standing up to walk. And Marie is human, by the way. You're mostly human, but even as far descended as you are from me, you'll have that little spark of Time Lord that exposure to the Vortex might fan into a flame. Now, every firstborn child of my line has seen this painting, but none were so young as you when they saw it. What has happened? Where is your father? And what is your name, by the way?"

Harry sat down on the stool the goblins had provided. "My name is Harry, and nearly fourteen years ago, a dark wizard named Lord Voldemort killed my parents. He would have killed me, but my mother sacrificed herself while using an old kind of blood magic and the curse that should have killed me was reflected back on him. Now, that didn't kill him, and I'm not sure why, but it did put him out of commission for quite some time. He was living as a shade.

"I was sent to live with my mother's family, but living with them has never been easy. They didn't want me and don't like me. When I turned eleven, I found out I was a wizard, and that my parents had been wizards. I found out they were killed and that I could go to a school for magic. Then I faced Voldemort for the first time. He was possessing my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and living off of unicorn blood, and he tried to steal Nicholas Flamel's Philosopher's Stone from the school. I met and defeated his sixteen-year-old memory in second year. It was being held in a diary, and I stabbed it with a basilisk fang. Then at the end of last school year, just over a month ago, he was able to come back. He's alive again, and he used my blood to do it. He killed a friend who was with me just because he didn't need him for the ritual. Then he forced me to duel him. I wouldn't have survived, but our wands are brothers and wouldn't fight each other."

By this time Harry had tears streaking down his face. The goblins were listening, but he ignored them. He needed to get this out, and even though this Potter was long dead, he was family, real family. "After I got home for the summer, I found out that the Headmaster has been stealing from me ever since my parents were killed. I looked up to him! But he's never seen me as anything other than a source of cash and a weapon!"

For a moment, neither Potter said anything. But eventually, the Time Lord looked at his Marie and said, "Harry, I think that you, more than any child descended from us, both need and deserve the knowledge of the Time Lords. First, though, let's deal with your money problems. Goblins, is the Kanli Statute still on the books?"

Ironclaw and his assistant, Hammerfist, both grinned at him with their sharpened, enameled teeth. "It is."

Harry wiped the tears off his face and said, "What is the Kanli Statute?"

The Potter said, "'Kanli' is a Turkish word meaning 'blooded'. In this instance, it is describing a feud between two families, and the statute is in place to keep blood out of the fight. Instead, if Kanli is invoked, and proven within the bounds of the law, then the wronged party has the right to make the other party bleed financially until they are destitute. If Dumbledore cannot repay what is owed, you will effectively own him until he can, and any money he makes will flow into your coffers until the debt is paid or he is dead. Such a debt can also be passed on to any siblings or children, but not backward to parents."

Harry's face hardened. "Master Ironclaw, has Albus Dumbledore's theft been proven to the requirements of Kanli?"

The goblin nodded. "Though it will have to be made official, there is certainly enough evidence here. It will mean a formal inquiry, and formal charges. Kanli is a civil matter, but criminal charges can result from it, especially given that your parents' wills were violated. You will also have to learn a ritual casting to invoke Kanli, but it is not difficult, and it only requires a drop of blood. Technically it is blood magic, but it was never tarred with the same brush as other blood rituals because of the nature of the offense. This isn't some imagined slight or love quarrel. This is provable and measurable harm. The inquiry will need the full audit of the vault, but it will not have to be redone. It will also require a full audit of Dumbledore's vaults and accounts, including the Muggle one. We'll have to go through the Muggle authorities and get a warrant for his bank records, but that should not be a problem. Gringott's runs a small Muggle banking concern, mostly for cross traffic and business dealings, and we will file the injunctions through that office. And most importantly, the moment the ritual is begun, Dumbledore will no longer have access to any of your money."

"Then I wish to invoke Kanli. I'd also like to make sure that the Dursleys start getting their child support payments, as well as all the back pay they are owed. By my math, that's £66,000."

"It will be done." Ironclaw said a few words to Hammerfist in Gobbledygook and he made several notes on his ever-present clipboard.

"Good," said the Potter. "Now, Kanli proceedings, while quite swift, will take a little time to get organized. I'd like to show you a part of your inheritance that Gringott's was never made aware of, simply because the laws of my own people forbid the technology from going to hands not of our race." The painted alien knelt down so he was eye-level with Harry. "I want you to have my TARDIS. If she's still alive, she'll help you. And if any of our people still live, they might help you, too, though you'll want to be selective about them. I'll help you with that."

"What happened t-to our people?" It felt strange to ask that, strange to have a people to call his own. He'd never been able to call the normal world home-his relatives had seen to that-and the wizarding world was too hot and cold, too willing to believe both the best and the worst of him at the drop of a hat. Would the Time Lords be any different?

The Potter's face was saddened, though, and Harry knew this wasn't going to be good. "There was a war, a terrible war that spanned galaxies and millennia; a Time War. The laws of Time were ignored by both sides, and they were both threatening to tear reality apart in order to be the victors. Our home world, Gallifrey, was beautiful, Harry, but the Time Lord society was not, and they fought an enemy called the Daleks who were just as deadly. One man stood against both sides, against the insanity of the war and the politicians who were directing it. And that man was forced to destroy our world to save the rest of the universe. If anyone survived, it is him."

"Why didn't you survive?"

"Oh, I did, but this was my last regeneration. I'm six thousand years old, and frankly, I'm just glad that I'm ending my life on such a high note. I doubt I'll live another two hundred years, but I've done what no Time Lord has in millions of years-I've made a family, sired a son!

"Now, Harry, there is a small key somewhere in here. If my TARDIS lives, the key will warm up when you touch it."

"Six thousand?" It boggled Harry's mind that he might live to see an age like that.

"Yes, but that's part of the Time Lord history you'll be learning later. Go ahead and get that key."

He remembered the key, and went to pick it up. The bronze metal warmed in his hand, and he showed it to the Potter. It glowed with yellow light, but it wasn't the glow of heat. The metal wasn't that hot. But the glow and the warmth seemed to seep into the painting, and the Potter said, "Now here's the very cool thing about this painting, Harry. This wizarding painting was done over the top of a Time Lord painting, a moment in time captured by a stasis cube." He pointed to the little crystal cube with rounded edges that was in among the gems. "Touch the key to the cube. That'll call her through. She'll dematerialize from the moment in the painting and rematerialize somewhere close to you."

Harry got an odd little smile on his face. "What is she?"

"She's my time ship. T.A.R.D.I.S. Time And Relative Dimension In Space, a sentient vessel capable of traveling all over time and space, from beginning to end, and anywhere or when in between. And she's your inheritance. She'll treat you right, Harry, and if you choose to activate that sleeping bit of Time Lord in your genes, she'll help you to learn everything you need to become a Time Lord yourself, but the kind of Time Lord that they should have been, one not so arrogant and superior that they think they are above the rest of the universe. It is your choice, and not one to be made lightly, so take advantage of her library first. Oh, and make sure you bring this painting with you. I'll be able to start you learning how to fly her."

So Harry did as he was bidden and laid the TARDIS key on the stasis cube. Light flooded the vault, and he was blinded for a moment. When he could see again, a sound seemed to issue out of the thin air behind the two goblins, out on the ledge where people got out of the carts to get into their vaults. Excited to see this TARDIS, Harry quickly left the vault to see-

A stone pillar, one that blended into the stone around it as if it were a part of the cavern walls. Hammerfist said, "That wasn't there a second ago. Stone pillars don't just appear out of thin air! This must be the vessel, with some kind of illusion disguising it."

Harry went back and grabbed the key, then returned, trying to find a keyhole to match it. There, about three feet from the ground, he found it, a tiny hole that the key would fit into perfectly. He took a deep breath, put the key into the hole, and turned it, almost surprised when it actually worked. The lock clicked open, and the seam of the door appeared. Grinning, Harry pulled the door open and stepped inside.

The inside was so much bigger than the outside, which only surprised him because it was not a magical device, but a technological one. Entering the time ship, he looked around and drank in what he was seeing. It was a huge room that was constructed as six conjoined gothic arches of a red lacquered substance, with flying buttresses on each which supported a second level. In the center, the arches met in a column, which was interrupted by a clear hexagonal tube. Inside the tube were six tubes of golden light which lit the room along with the recessed circular lights in the curved ceiling.

On the column was a hexagonal work station or console, each side with a large monitor, a keyboard, a switch board and a smaller inset monitor. The floors and stairs were polished black stone with veins of gold running throughout. There were five doors leading out of the room, each a gothic arch shape and made from the same red lacquer as the arches and possessed of a brass knob. There was a bench seat that ran in a semicircle around the console that was decorated in crimson with gold buttons, and running around the entire "ground" floor was a safety railing of steel that reflected the red and gold of the rest of the room.

Harry couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound woefully inadequate.

And then there was the hum. A two-fold sound, the hum of the TARDIS was both a low mechanical hum, like a vent or an engine, and a musical whisper of thought in his mind. He remembered that the Potter had said the TARDIS was a living thing, not just a ship. Could she understand him? Hesitantly, he said, "Hello?"

A feeling of amusement and a flicker of the lights was his answer. Oh, yes, she could understand!

A delighted grin spread across his face. "I'm Harry Potter. The other Potter, the one in the painting I mean, he said you could help me. I want to learn about my family, where we came from. I need to decide whether to become, well, a Time Lord."

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

Kanli proceedings were guaranteed to take at least a week, which Harry used to learn the Rite of Kanli and to attack the first two books that his TARDIS wanted him to read; The Basics of Time Travel and A Condensed History of Gallifrey. He had sent a messenger to his relatives' home with instructions to remove all magical items from the house and to give them the paperwork needed for their portion of the Kanli, which was the child support that had been stolen from them. After the week was over, the Potter showed Harry how to pilot the TARDIS enough to get him back to Privet Drive without going through time. It was time for a conversation. But first he'd have to deal with the wizards who were watching the house.

Since he'd gotten his things, Harry got out his invisibility cloak, knowing the only one who would see him would be either Dumbledore himself or Mad-Eye Moody. Hell, Mad-Eye would probably cheer him on. But still, he approached cautiously, trying to spot whoever was watching, intending to slip into the house without alerting them.

He found the girl with the color-changing hair, and the dirty scrounger who was always looking for something to steal, but he also spotted the twins and Remus. Fred and George had already proved themselves very loyal to Harry, and had told him about Dumbledore's machinations, so he approached them first in the darkness. Taking great care not to make any sounds but his whispers, Harry said to them, "I'm here. Don't let anyone know you've seen me."

Fred, at least harry thought it was Fred, said, "Harry are you insane?! Why'd you come back?"

George said, "we thought you ran away!"

He grinned, though they couldn't see him. "Not yet. There's still a few things to be handled first. Will I be able to get into the house without setting something off?"

"No," said Fred. "He's in a towering rage, and we've been ordered to take you to him the second you're seen."

"Apparently, someone invoked the Rite of Kanli against him," said George.

"The bastard has been stealing from me since my parents died. He wanted angry? Well he got it. Now, I need to know, did either Ron or Hermione just go along with Dumbledore, or were they forced?"

"He screens all outgoing mail from their location," said Fred. "We used the public post."

"Can we get them away from him for an afternoon? There are some things they and you need to know, Remus and Sirius too if you think they can be trusted."

"A shopping trip might be arranged. When?" asked George.

"Tomorrow, but where is a better question."

"There's a little cafe we go to sometimes on Halloway Road. It won't be suspicious, but it'll have to be quick."

"Are you staying somewhere safe, Harry?"

"Yeah. This place is tighter than Gringott's. I'm learning quite a bit, as well. I'll fill you all in tomorrow. Thanks, mates."

Harry left the twins and quickly made his way back to the TARDIS. Since he couldn't slip in, he'd put the time ship in the sitting room and ask them in for tea.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

*Quod facis fac citius: That thou doest, do quickly. John 13:27

This is the first story that I'm reposting from those profiles I lost the passwords to. And there is also more that has been written since I was forced to stop posting. It's not finished, but there is more to enjoy.

And a note to a certain "naked" reviewer. If you don't like it just leave. No one's forcing you to read this story with a blow gun to your eye ball.