Disclaimer: All characters, names, settings etc belong to their respective copyright holders, only Night Wolf and a few other things are of my own creation (but inspired from many things under copyright, which aren't mine).

This takes place during the new series Doctor Who episodes; Aliens of London/World War Three. This story also takes place prior to The Doctor Encounter. It also takes place sometime around series 4 of Spooks (aka MI:5 in the US).

This is also a sequel (of sorts) to UNIT: Night Wolf – Beginnings (and Sorcery, UNITed, Independence, Space) and a prequel to The Doctor Encounter. Though it's probably independent enough that you don't need to know the previous stories…probably.

Chapter 01

Hermione flipped through the book she'd pulled from the back of the shelf and looked at her book of notes she had beside her before finding the correct page and grabbing the portable microdot reader she'd taken out when she'd been at Night Wolf a few days ago.

Hermione Granger, was sitting alone in the stacks below Cambridge University, the area she was in was inaccessible to most people who attended, worked or taught at Cambridge, Hermione had been coming to this area sporadically, mainly as a side research project for herself and out of the simple curiosity.

The stacks held a variety of texts that didn't seem out of the ordinary if on first and even second glance, but if you knew what to look for they held some significance.

Many of the texts had been used in various reporting and recording situations throughout the United Kingdom's history, many specifically relating to alien incursions on British (and British monitored) soil.

However not all of them held secrets and it wasn't simply a case of finding a database or index of this information, it had to be researched in detail, usually with varying levels of complexity.

Much of the information came from before the formation of UNIT, if it did detail events following UNIT's creation it was in this area for other reasons, mainly security and mistrust on behalf of the agents/officers detailing the information.

Many of the major alien incursions had been detailed and were easily available at Night Wolf, but many of the accounts in this collection were more personal, differing points of view and in many cases detailed events which Hermione didn't know about or had never heard of.

In the cases that something entirely new and undocumented came up Hermione detailed it all, photographing it and taking the original into Night Wolf for further examination.

Hermione was in London on this occasion during a break between being off Earth as part of Night Wolf's Xeno-archaeology and Linguistics department, she was also 'vigorously' as some of her friends within Night Wolf noted working towards getting her professorship.

A real Professor Hermione thought to herself, rather than just a title, not that she had anything against the staff at Hogwarts...aside from those who tried to kill her, murder her friends and play host to the reincarnation of a mad genocidal maniac.

Because Hermione Granger was in stacks hiding below Cambridge University, hidden at some depth away from everything she didn't see the small (in terms of spacecraft) craft fly down in a seemingly uncontrolled decent along the London skyline, nor did she hear the droning noise of its engines, pushing it along on what was designed to appear to be a random course.

Nor could she have seen the space craft as it impacted with the Palace of Westminster clock tower, smashing almost half of 'Big Ben' away as it ploughed onwards and landed with surprising poise in the River Thames, leaving a wake of alarms, both domestic and those of the armed forces in its wake.

Hermione looked over at her bag at the ringing noise and raised an eyebrow, the noise was the sound of an old style phone ringing, the ring tone to her mobile phone, Hermione raised and eyebrow and grabbed the at her bag.

It was odd because the room she was deep enough to cut the mobile signal, not only that, it was also shielded from all forms of electronic (and Hermione guessed probably other forms) of surveillance.

The caller ID didn't show anything.

"Doctor Granger." Hermione said calmly.

"Doctor Granger, RSCS Victory, situation Greyhaven." Said the male voice over the phone. Hermione just nodded.

"Orders?" She asked in a calm voice knowing that they wouldn't give out the specifics on this channel, that would come later.

"Proceed to inner London, work with Five, you know location of kit?" Asked the voice.

"I can find it."

"Confirmed; Independent."

"Confirmed." Hermione said and ended the conversation.

Hermione spent a few moments replacing the books on the shelf and packing her equipment back into her bag.

Greyahaven was UNIT's name for a situation, namely a major compromise of the British government from within, with alien assistance. Its name came from Edward Greyhaven who attempted a coup with the assistance of an alien race known colloquially as the Ice Warriors in 1997 (Though they were also noted to be called 'Native Martians' in some of the reports from that incident).

Independent meant that Hermione would be operating as an independent agent without UNIT's backup, as a security measure as much as anything else.

Hermione quickly discovered what had happened while she was below in the stacks.

A spacecraft had landed in the Thames impacting with 'Big Ben' on its way down. Everyone seemed to believe that it was real...Hermione suppressed shake of her head and wondered if this would actually stick or like the countless incursions of the past that after the event this like the others would be put down to; terrorism, hallucinogenic gas, drugs in the water, or the good old favourite; a 'hoax' faked with television trickery.

It amazed Hermione sometimes, considering she knew the truth and how many times aliens had come, walked and destroyed parts of London.

Hermione made her way through the oddly deserted streets to the UNIT safe box located down a narrow alley between two buildings in the inner London area.

Down the already narrow alley Hermione turned down a further narrow path only just wide enough to walk down, she reached an alcove secured by a rickety wooden door, behind it was a iris scanner, handprint reader and biometric sensor.

Hermione placed her hand the scanner and looked at eyelevel as various scanners passed over parts of her anatomy certifying that she was who she was and that her hand print, eyes and body hadn't been stolen or removed and replaced.

If the, very complicated systems recognised that she was A) not human and B) was trying to gain entry to the safe box the contents within would self destruct in what supposedly was a very creative and unrecoverable manner.

Hermione waited as a screen revealed itself from behind the seemingly solid wall. Hermione quickly tapped in an ever changing code based on several factors such as the date, her clearance code and several other things based on the correlation between them and other things.

Like the other security features her bio-readings throughout this process were monitored for any inconsistencies.

Hermione did once consider this whole process to be a bit of an over kill. This wasn't the only one of its kind in London and it wasn't exactly unique in what it held.

However for certain situations especially ones where large portions of the government were to be compromised it was to have various fallback options.

Inside was hardly spacious, in fact that was a huge understatement, the area was only slightly larger than two phone boxes, though it was filled to brim with equipment, weapons and other useful things.

It was also most likely reinforced and shielded from any and everything.

Hermione walked in quickly and pulled a large back back off the wall and set it on the ground before she removed a laptop from within a draw and opened it up, turning it on.

In the seconds as the computer started up she checked the pack; inside were various spell catalysers for all manner of work, capable of being used by a Night Wolf person with basic training right up to someone with and advanced Sorcerer rank.

Looking at the wall in front of her there were guns, Hermione always had her wand with her but that wasn't good enough as the UNIT training said.

She looked at them for a moment, of course she'd carried a weapon and had to use them before, but this would be the first time that she would be walking around inner London armed moderately if not heavily.

She strapped the ankle holster and hip holster on below her jacket and slid her finger across the fingerprint scanner on the laptop and typed in a further confirmation code to confirm she wasn't an alien who had suckered out Hermione's brain and eaten her fingerprints.

The message came up right away.

Doctor Hermione Granger,

Situation; Greyahaven, Government compromised. Night Wolf in security lockdown until breaches identified.

Proceed to MI5 section D; Harry Pearce is expecting you, he has prior knowledge.

Brief all officers within Pearce's division on incursion.

Disclosure specific to situation authorised by your discretion, use OSA.

You have seniority.

UNIT-UK may be compromised by Greyhaven situation, do not contact.

Information dump on offsite server, use full security when at Thames House.

Night Wolf out.

Hermione nodded to herself, checking the relevant information before shutting the laptop down and replacing it within its case and in the large pack.

Hermione moved around the tight space collecting equipment that she would need during her most likely extended time at MI5.

She grabbed extra spell catalysers, imaging equipment similar to the archaeology equipment for taking detailed images and a selection of smaller boxes, bags and packages that she thought may be useful.

She paused looking at the portable scanner unit, it was compact, but was still relatively heavy, and came was sitting within a large duffle bag, it wasn't something she would be able to chuck in the already quite full pack.

She did consider the possibility of returning, but discounted that almost immediately, aside from the fact that she would probably need to involve Five, there was also the possibility of the whoever it was (of the Greyhaven situation) tracking them, it was best not to return to this specific place.

Hermione filled the side of the pack with extra ammunition and other odds and sods before aiming a lightening charm on the scanner bag and hauled the pack onto her back.

As she made her way into the alleyway she broke a bag of spell catalyser over herself and the bags she was carrying, it smelt almost of honey and acted in a not so similar manner to a 'notice me not charm' that she could have cast with her wand. This sorcerer's spell was far more subtle, rather than a blanket 'not noticing' spell it was more of a 'not worth my attention' affect, she was still visible and could be interacted with, but it made her seem…not worth the effort.

In close contact the affect was intensified to point where 'not worth the effort' became a compulsion that made the affected person need to be somewhere else.

Hermione made it through the streets in surprisingly quick time, she hadn't even considered apparating, in situations involving alien incursions it was best to know who they were and what sort of affects they, their ships, their technology and any other things might affect the local environment.

That was one of the first things she'd learnt about doing digs off of Earth, while it was very possible to apparate on other planets, when they were dealing with long dead civilisations, or places that had survived things like the Last and deadly Chronon Catastrophe, it was best to play it on the safe 'rather than smeared across a space the size of Belgium' side.

Hermione wondered to herself as she trudged towards Thames House how the wizarding world dealt with alien incursions, especially something like today, which were pretty explicit appearances…

Although she had somehow missed the landing and invasion of United Kingdom by the Native Martians or 'Ice Warriors' in 1997…

Though there were so few wand users who ventured beyond the boundaries of the Alleys of London (Diagon, Knockturn etc) and if and when they did they mightn't know of anything that had happened without a TV or radio, unless they were right below the craft as it made its approach, even if they did it would probably be put down to "those silly muggles" and dismissed in a breath.

Hermione had long since thought that phrase and others like it was just as insulting as 'mudblood', and now with what she had learnt over the past 4 or so years it really proved how ignorant the wand user world was to the outside world.

As she walked Hermione reviewed in her head what she knew of MI:5 Section D under Harry Pearce.

Which wasn't a lot she had to admit.

Current politics and intelligence structures in the United Kingdom wasn't something she needed as part of her xeno-archaeology and linguistics studies.

She knew that General Lethbridge Stewart had had contact with Pearce during everything with Voldemort and Death Eaters, the second time around.

Hermione smiled in an odd way to herself it felt like such an age ago.

Any major contact that UNIT had with the intelligence services was through UNIT UK's head Brigadier Bambera.

But in a Greyhaven situation even UNIT was questionable, the standard UNIT being able to be usurped should the government deem it necessary, which was why she was attending to Five and doing so without backup and without any assistance.

Hermione looked up at the building, she'd arrived at Thames House.

She cringed slightly as the lightening charm of the bag that the scanner unit suddenlt became heavy once more.

She was within the auspices of the wand user jamming field that had been in place since the middle of the second Voldemort incident, though not just to ensure against Voldemort and his supporters, as the technology had become more specialised and easy to maintain it had been installed in all government buildings and other areas to protect them against people 'popping in' or wiping everyone's memories of the event.

Hermione continued to look at the doors and wandered how she's play this, she knew more or less where Section D was, the spell catalyser would do its work keeping her unnoticed, but these were spies.

"Play it by ear…" She muttered to herself and pushed open the doors.

She walked through the main reception not even trying to look at the man on the fron desk who seemed to be taking a great many phone calls and walked straight through the metal detector, ignoring the squeal of it as she passed through.

The door looked like every other one, in fact it looked like a broom cupboard door.

Which was probably the point.

It also had a lock. Hermione sighed and momentarily went for her wand and then cursed to herself.

That would have made it too easy.

Slipping her arm around and to one of the side pockets of the pack she removed thin pouch.

'Escapology, Archaeology and Entry' had been the class title for the many xeno-archaeology people at Night Wolf, a mix of 'how to uncover it', 'how to escape it' and 'how to get in', all without destroying anything vital to discovering who the 'it' were and why they wanted to hold you hostage and use the mind probe on you. It also covered all Earth based locks, just in case they came across something similar, which was lucky really as Hermione eased the door shut and picked up the scanner again.

It wasn't that heavy now that she was getting used to its weight.

Hermione looked at what was at the end of the end of the short corridor, three tubes that used 'cutting edge' technology to sweep for bugs.

Hermione regarded it as she approached and placed the scanner on the ground as she removed a wallet from her person.

The card she removed would very likely let her in, it was the same card…along with pass code and various other methods she'd used earlier in the day, before she walked through London armed that is.

As she swiped the card the pods activated and swivelled around allowing her access. She dropped the scanner into one and walked into the other and watched as they swivelled around and a tone sounded.

She'd expected them to detect something, after all she was carrying a lot of kit.

Ignoring the warning sound she grabbed the bag and stepped out.

"Malcolm kill that alarm." Harry said as he walked through the Grid.

The woman standing at the base of the pods was young, younger than Jo most probably.

She had short brown hair, and a slight varied tan.

This was Hermione Granger…

3 Hours Ago…

Harry looked up from the 'new' paper work the government was having him sign, lord knew why.

A phone was ringing, which was a feat in itself considering it was away being dismantled after Malcolm's recent bug sweep.

There was a mobile phone on his desk, which he swore hadn't been there before.

"Pearce."

"Harry." Said a recognisable voice as he answered.

"General Lethbridge Stewart."

"We have a Greyhaven situation."

"Not another one…the country might have an particular inclination to forgetting space craft but…"

"It's just hitting the atmosphere now. We're going into lockdown per Greyhaven protocols. We're sending in someone to help with the situation, UNIT may be compromised."

"Bloody hell. How do you know your operative hasn't been?"

There was a chuckle. "You could say she's been…indisposed and away for the past few months…"

"Who is she?"

"Hermione Granger, I'm sure you'll find everything in order, oh and Harry, she knows her stuff and she's got hight clearance than you. Good day."

Harry put down the phone and looked out of the windows of his office, when he turned back to type 'Hermione Granger' into his computer the phone had disappeared.

Harry hit the call button on his desk.

"Ruth, get the team in, we've got a Greyhaven situation."

Now…

"Doctor Granger." Harry Pearce extended his hand.

"Harry Pearce, good to meet you." Hermione shook his hand, taking a moment to study how his eyes moved, the grip of his hand shake and any other quirks of the physiology.

"We'll move to the meeting room and you can brief my team."

"Yes…I'll need to set a few things up before we can start, I wasn't intending to…"

"Have the government taken over? No coups are like that, quiet." Harry commented as they walked, Hermione smiled vaguely.

"Generally speaking you don't even need a coup, coups aren't the only thing that are quiet, wars can be almost silent…then they're gone." Hermione made a motion with her hand.

"I'm sorry?" Pearce asked. Hermione smiled.

"Just something to do with time."

"10 minutes long enough?" Pearce asked sliding open the door.

"Plenty." Hermione answered.

As soon as she was left Hermione set up her laptop and the scanner at the end of the table with a clear view of the door so she could scan them all, and neutralise them if necessary.

"Who's that?" Jo asked over Zaf's desk.

"She's from UNIT, she's here to brief us about that." Ruth nodded towards the TV hanging on the wall showing BBC's coverage of the 'ship' that crashed in the Thames.

"Meeting room." Harry said as he walked past Adam and onto them.

Hermione looked up as the first of them walked through the door, she had a weapon in her hand and was splitting her attention between the laptop and the people walking through the door.

"Umm why do you have a gun pointing at us?" A woman with dark hair an intelligent eyes asked her.

Hermione just smiled her 'I'm working stop trying to annoy my Harry Potter' smiles.

Harry Pearace was the last of them to enter, he looked at her and the weapon before closing the doors and sitting down.

"Are you finished?" He asked from the other end of the table.

Hermione nodded replacing the gun in her holster.

"Yes, you're all human."

Jo laughed. "What else could we be?"

"We have a Greyhaven situation, anything is a possibility and frequently is."

"I'm sorry…What's a 'Greyhaven situation'?" Jo said putting up her hand.

"It's not something I've heard of either." Zaf mentioned.

"Well its…" Both Hermione and Ruth started.

"Ruth Evershed" Pearce said by way of an explanation.

"Would you like to or…?" Hermione asked the woman to her left.

"I well…Greyhaven is named in 'honour' of Teddy Greyhaven, completed a short lived coup a couple of years ago against the government, killed and replaced them with his loyalists and de-throned the queen."

"It was hushed up in the end." Pearace added.

"No where in there you mentioned the large alien space craft that landed in Trafalgar Square, or the brief occupation of the Tower of London by a what is termed as 'Native Martian'?" Hermione asked simply, only Harry did not stare at her.

"All true Doctor Granger, though on the current situation?"

Hermione nodded pressing a button and brining the display at the end of the room to life.

A picture of the craft appeared on the screen.

"Less than four hours ago UNIT contact me with the Greyhaven indicating that the government and possibility elements of UNIT have been compromised, we need to work out what and who, and preferably before they start blowing chunks of the countryside away.

"What was all that about?" The older man to her side asked her.

"To ascertain that you're all human and not being impersonated by non-humans." Hermione said dismissively.

Adam leaned against the gate as he watched the body be brought into the hospital.

"Come on, let's get in there before anyone else shows up." Hermione muttered beside him.

Adam looked around the corner, the building was filling up with SAS troops.

"It's no good we'll never get in there with that lot surrounding the place."

"Getting in shouldn't be a problem." Hermione pulled out a pouch of what looked like dust and handed to Adam.

"Chuck that over yourself."

"What is it?"

"If I said magic would you believe me?" Hermione asked doing the same with another pouch.

"No."

"Well then I won't say anything then. Keep quiet, I have no compelling need to be shot today, I leave shooting part to me friends."

"You seem pretty ready to handle a gun. Jo we're heading in."

"Copy Adam."

"Harry, we, I mean Colin and I, umm we think we've worked out…"

"We've worked out where the 'space ship' came from and probably what it was doing." Colin finished for Ruth as Harry walked over.

"Not just causing a headache for all involved?" Harry asked wirily.

Ruth smiled and nodded to the main computer screen.

"We've tapped into all the CCTV cameras and used the news reports own guess work to come up with its route once it was inside the atmosphere." Ruth gestured as Colin played the animation through a map of London accompanied by the associated CCTV footage.

"It came in over Powell Estate, straight over a lot of London, then over Tower Bridge, that really doesn't make sense." Colin muttered to himself.

"What doesn't?"

"It crashed in to the Thames, but here." Colin pointed at a fuzzy CCTV image of what appeared to be the craft. "It came within kissing distance of the water, if you look at the reverse angle, here…it's engines are failing."

"Just to ask a question."

"How to do know they're engines?" Ruth asked for Harry. "I asked that."

"They're at the back" Colin shrugged. "Even so the amount of power to keep that thing upright, it isn't aero-dynamical enough to support its weight.

"Not that we know what it weighs." Ruth added.

"Where did it go before?"

"Before hitting one of the number one terrorist targets in London?" Harry nodded to Ruth and Colin continued his commentary.

"It came right up and around St Paul's Cathedral before aiming for the Houses of Parliament."

"The evacuation alarms were sounded but there's hardly anyone in there, most of the Government's out of session, lucky."

"Luck has nothing to do with it, they're out at Turnstile having another look." Harry said as he stared at the screen showing the ship baring down on the clock of the Palace of Westminster.

"The hit must have been calculated, any more of less and it could have destabilised the top peaks sending it all crashing down."

"Now it's in the Thames." Ruth surmised.

"Now here's the interesting bit, I've rolled back the footage and found its insertion point into the atmosphere, I got onto some friends at Jodrell Bank, they've been able to tie together everything."

"The point Colin?" Harry asked abrubptly.

"It didn't come from 'space', it was launched, from somewhere in the North Sea."

"So not aliens then, just what and elaborate hoax. Some how it's not Al qaeda's style, space ships and crash landings."

"What now?"

"Now we pass these findings onto a secure UNIT operation." Harry indicated the meeting room.

Hermione allowed Adam to lead the way through the corridors of Albion hospital toward the morgue, the most likely place they'd find the 'body'.

It was lying with a sheet over it, seemingly ready to go into the X-ray machine.

Hermione walked straight over and pulled the sheet off.

"Oh my…" She muttered.

"What is it? What the…is that?"

"It does appear to be so."

"It's a pig." Adam said incredulously.

"As I said…" Hermione took a moment to study the space suit on the…on the pig. She ran her hands over the fabric of the space suit, and it was that.

"It's porus."

"What?"

"The suit, it wouldn't keep out anything, especially hard vacuum."

"How would you know?"

"As they say Mr Carter 'been there, done that, been nearly shot'."

"Who says that?"

"A friend of mine, gets shot at a lot." Hermione said as she looked down at the pig's trotters the lower first and then the uppers, they were smooth, the trotters were soft, not designed to ever be walked on. She pulled a camera out of her bag and took a series of photos.

"How much longer are you gonna be?"

"Not too much longer, I just want to confirm…"

"Put your hands up, do not move!"

Hermione looked over at Adam had an SAS issue gun pointed at his chest.

"Move over there, you two." One of them motioned.

"Control, we've got a set of U-FO freaks."

Adam moved over to Hermione.

"We I say, create a distraction."

Hermione stared at him, there were, 5 SAS men in the small room with them, all pointing their guns at them.

"I don't think so. Using non-lethal force you're not going to take out all of them." The Hermione dropped her voice. "Plus, Greyhaven remember, if we get taken…"

"Right so have you got a plan?"

Hermione looked around the room, there were several 'plans' in mind, all which left a lot of unanswered questions for whoever turned up.

In an ideal situation UNIT would have already turned up and the body shouldn't have been allowed to be removed from the craft, which definitely meant someone was pushing for the government to handle this, knowingly or otherwise.

Although…Hermione conceited to herself, Albion Hospital wasn't on the list of government buildings covered by Night Wolf's magical jammers. But even so if she could knock all of them out there was a whole squad…

"Cruk…yes I have a plan." She muttered in an almost groan to herself, really she spent too much time talking to Harry Potter, who probably would have loved this sort of situation.

"Distract them." Hermione hissed as she extricated her wand from her pocket. A nice flare spell was probably best.

"How long are you going to keep up we're British citizens you know?" Adam said in his best 'hippy' accent before he heard Granger shout some latin, and then the world and his body compressed and he heard a 'pop'.

Then they were standing outside St Paul's Cathedral.

Hermione let a breath she'd been holding and let go of Adam's shoulder that she'd gripped.

Hermione looked at him for several seconds and hoped that he'd be able to 'deal with it', too many potential UNIT recruits just didn't handle it 'too much too fast' they said.

"How, how did we…? Jo can you hear me?"

"Copy Adam, looks like General Asquith is entering now Adam you should look into getting out."

"Already out Jo, get back to Thames House, I'll…" He looked at Hermione with cold eyes. "We'll meet you there."

"OK Adam."

Hermione was mildly surprised that Adam didn't ask her any further questions until they'd stepped out of the pods within the 'Grid' in Thames House.

"How did you get us out of Albion Hospital Doctor Granger?"

"Magic." Hermione said with an open face, Adam stared at her.

"Hermione, Harry and Colin are just contacting your 'secure' UNIT operation, they want to speak to you." Ruth said walking up to them.

"Right." Hermione muttered following her back to the meeting room.

"Yeah that's the number." Hermione nodded at the indicated 15 digit number which in theory would patch through a secure EU satellite and up to the RSCS Firefox.

Colin looked at Harry and shrugged and pushed dial, the numbers appeared on the large plasma screen hanging on the wall, it went blank before being replaced by electronic static.

Then a man appeared, inside a ship of some kind.

"Captain Timms."

"Doctor Granger."

"Clearance…" Hermione reeled off from memory a set of clearances she used while within Night Wolf.

"Good to see you."

"I'm working with Five, we've discovered the original site of the craft, can you investigate?"

"Send the data Dr Granger." Hermione nodded.

"Transmitting on a sub-frequency." Colin said from the table beside them.

The captain looked behind him and nodded.

"Received Granger, we're looking into it. Greyhaven is in place until you receive confirmation from the General."

"Received." The screen went blank.

Harry motioned for Hermione to follow him out into the corridor.

"So tell me Dr Granger, UNIT has ships that can handle alien craft?"

"Which might not even be that." She said as they made their way back into the Grid, Adam was looking to the photos she had taken. Hermione's hand went to her pocket, her camera was sitting at the desk beside Adam.

"Spook, right…" She chastised herself lightly.

"It was a pig Harry, a pig dressed in a space suit."

--//

"Damn it." Harry Pearce slammed down the phone. The 'so called' Ministers were stone walling him, there was some idiot on the phones refusing to pass him onto the senior most minister at Downing Street.

Harry walked out onto the grid where Malcolm and Colin were staring at a section of CCTV footage from the Powell Estate.

"Malcolm we need eyes and ears in Downing Street."

Malcolm nodded.

"It's one of the tightest most secure buildings, they had Six go over their arrangements."

"There is a way." Hermione added from where she was working with Ruth.

"We'd need to get to the Foreign office opposite, we should be able to get into the hard line CCTV camera from Downing Street."

"When did they go in?" Malcolm asked annoyed.

"1997 just after the whole coup."

"So what are you a Doctor of?" Malcolm asked as they drove through London's mostly empty streets.

"Archaeology."

"Really? And why does that give you such a professional eye to aliens?"

"Specialist subjects." Hermione answered swiftly. Malcolm stared at her.

"Alright, Xeno-archaeology, happy?" Hermione answered with a sigh.

"Yes, now I am." He smiled.

The door was triple thickened and didn't look like a door, which was probably the point.

Hermione dig out the paste she'd prepared, it smelt…well she didn't want to think about what it smelt like, but the door was impregnable against anything but the right code, which had been changed or several explosives. Which would alert everyone in the building above them to their attempt at entry to the secure operations and monitoring opposite Downing Street.

Hermione noticed Malcolm staring at the grey paste.

"Just something to get us in, undetected." She said as she smeared it around the whole door, there wasn't any 'lock' that she could burn out, that would be easy. But she'd used this before, not in this concentration, but applied lightly it could eat through various types of rock.

In this concentration however it could eat through a car.

"Now the second dose." She brandished a bag of what looked like red dust and emptied it onto her hand, blowing in onto the door.

There was a hissing and then the door just seemed to crumble to the ground revealing a room within.

Hermione smiled at a stunned Malcolm and lead him in.

Hermione watched with vague interest as Malcolm searched through the banks of wires to find the secure CCTV, the ones that even the Prime Minister didn't know about. Which had been the point following Edward Greyhaven's coup attempt.

"Colin, I think I've got the feed plugged in an transmitting. Oh good. Yes we're coming back now."

"Finished?"

"Yes." He said as he packed up a large case.

"What about the door?" He asked as they walked out into the deserted underground tunnels below the car park.

"Simple." Hermione said as she shielded herself and her wand from Malcolm and a swish and a few flicks later and there was a wall that looked almost as it had done.

"Probably not as strong as before." She muttered to herself, but a well used Hogwarts education nonetheless.

--//

As the arrived back at the Grid, half the screens were flashing.

"What the hell is a Code Nine Alert?" Adam almost accused her as she walked in.

"Some idiot in another section set up a public phone in 'Alien Emergency Help line', the Code Nine came in about half an hour after it was launched." Ruth said coming up to them handing Adam a set of reports.

"UNIT's arrived, they're meeting inside Downing Street." Adam said looking up from the reports.

"Got the feed up." Hermione turned and what appeared to be an empty room aside from four people.

"Run their faces." Adam barked.

"Running it now." Colin answered.

"That's Margaret Blaine, she's from Division A seconded to the Parliament." Harry Pearce answered beside them. "No one's heard she's been out of contact for the past month."

"Indra Ganesh, Junior secretary to the Minister of Defence." Malcolm called out.

"Can we get sound Malcolm?"

"…No…" Was his short reply.

"Who're the other two?" Hermione asked as she tried to lip read their responses.

"Are we getting any other feeds Colin?"

"Yes just let me…I think you need to see this Harry." Colin hit a button, switching the view, it showed a large meeting room…with the Defence Minister and MP Joseph Green in a room, except.

"Oh my…what is that?" Ruth stared.

They all watched as General Asquith peeled back a zip on his forehead and a green head pushed its way out of the skin.

"The other two are Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North and a missing young girl, Rose Tyler."

"Switch back to them."

"Oh crap." Hermione said as she looked at a fully sized and out of the 'skin' alien. "That Ruth is an alien." She said needlessly as it advanced on

Hermione added in a detached part of her mind that she sometimes wished didn't exist that Ganesh was dead, given the size of the claws and the make up of the body, and the fact he was being held against a wall several feet off the ground there was very little chance of him surviving.

--//

I decided to end this chapter here, where the Aliens of London ended. It's not quite as much of a cliff-hanger as the actual episode, but it's something.

This will most likely only run to one or two chapters, but it's not meant to be a long story, this will only take place through these two episodes (give or take).

This is, obviously a less action orientated story than my previous 'Harry' centred stories, but Hermione's a more cerebral sort of person, and this isn't the sort of thing she'd be doing, but she's working with it.

Edward Greyhaven and the situation that is referenced is from The Dying Days by Lance Parkin. It's a Doctor Who novel which is available on the BBC Doctor Who website as an ebook (in case anyone is wondering).