Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or anything from his world. And much as I'd love to work for the BBC, I don't own or make money from anything Doctor Who either. Don't sue.

Summary: Epilogue leaving it nicely open for a potential To Be Continued that I will probably never write. If you want a sequel, write it yourself and send me a link. Seriously, I'd read it, I just don't think I'll be able to write it. I haven't seen enough of the older series' to do the obvious sequel justice.

To reviewers: lol, how would being a Time Lord stop Rose from getting sucked into an alternate dimension and stuck there? She only got in the way in the first place to stop the Doctor getting pulled through. And let's not forget she's happily living in said alternate universe with the Doctor's human clone now. I like Rose, and the whole Doctor/Rose romance thing is cool, but this was never a romance fic. Oh well, get ready to kick yourselves.

Note: Beautiful lonely song, which somehow fits the Doctor so well, especially here, especially considering some of what happened in the latest series. It was in the charts when I wrote this, and I strongly advise you listen to it while reading the first part of this chapter; The Man Who Can't Be Moved, by Script. I cried writing this.

x x x

Chapter 7: A New Beginning

Draco had told him he was glad he would forget the Master, but also glad he could remember the Doctor. Had wished him luck, and been happy to stay behind in his own world.

That desire to stay behind on Earth was not a reaction shared with the person he was now going to visit.

He knocked on the front door of the ordinary house on the ordinary street somewhere in Chiswick, London. The door was answered by an older man, rather frazzled looking with greying hair and wild eyes that, if the Doctor hadn't known better, could have been related to the Lovegoods. He stared at the Doctor for several seconds, during which music could be heard distantly in the background coming from a radio, before demanding, "What are you doing here?" in the tone of one who clearly knows exactly who he's talking to, and resents that person for some past misdeed.

"I think I've found an answer." the Doctor said simply, and the man nodded curtly as if to say 'about time', then stepped back to allow him entry.

Sitting at the table in the kitchen there were two women, the younger of the two was red-haired and looked as though she had been talking animatedly before this- stranger- interrupted. There was a rather drawn out silence, during which the radio could be clearly heard in the background, playing, "Cause if one day you wake up and find that you're missing me, and your heart starts to wonder where on this Earth I could be. Thinking maybe you'll come back here to the place that we'd meet, and you'll see me waiting for you on the corner of the street."

The younger woman looked up at him curiously, "Do I know you?" she asked.

"Yes." the Doctor answered, kneeling in front of her and holding out the Chameleon Arch to her. The older woman's eyes were suspicious and calculating, but she didn't speak just yet.

Donna Noble took the object with curiosity, "What's this? An old watch?" she asked, though the scepticism was slowly being replaced with wonder. Some flashes of memory were being triggered by the Doctor's presence, but not yet enough for her to understand them, as she traced her fingers over the intricate Gallifreyan design of the Arch.

"What are you up to?" her mother demanded.

But before the Doctor could answer that, Donna opened the watch and the energy contained within was released in a brilliant wave of golden light, and Donna fell back, her head hanging slightly over the back of her chair as the light enveloped her.

Several seconds passed, where Donna looked as if she was sleeping, dreaming if the eye-movement was any indication. While she was unconscious, the Doctor carefully checked her with his stethoscope. Two heartbeats. Then she sat up quite sharply, and slapped the Doctor across the face.

"That was for making me forget!" she said in her most strident tone. Then she hugged him for all she was worth.

It took the Doctor's slightly strangled remark of, "I might not need it as much as humans do, but I do rather like my oxygen." for her to let him go.

Not put off by his remark in the slightest, she informed him, "And that was for coming back."

The Doctor grinned madly, "So what do you think?" he asked her.

Donna tilted her head to one side, "Very interesting. I now understand what happened to Martha a bit better." she looked right at the Doctor, and grinned, "I also know a few things you don't, space boy."

"Oh this is going to be fun." the Doctor said, still grinning, not entirely sure himself if he was being serious or sarcastic.

"Come on, then, where's your TARDIS?" Donna asked, standing up and pulling him to his feet with her, "I know just where we should go first."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, "As long as it's not Midnight again."

Donna waved him off, "It's not Midnight again." she said, mimicking his tone, with a slightly malicious glint in her eyes.

"Don't." the Doctor retorted coldly.

"Sorry." the cruel laughter in her eyes seemed to imply that she found it quite amusing, and it wasn't entirely for the Master's influence either. He glared pointedly but she was unrepentant. "It's just last time I made you glare like that was centuries ago. Seriously, where I'm thinking of is way better than any old pleasure cruise."

The combination of Donna's mannerisms with the Master's obvious genius was already getting a little frightening, but the Doctor was not to be deterred. "Alright, then, let's go."

x x x

And after the appropriate farewells and promises of safe return to Donna's mother and grandfather they had made their way to the TARDIS, which had been waiting for them on the corner of the street.

The Doctor watched Donna for almost half an hour as she buzzed around the TARDIS, changing certain parts of the systems. He did follow what she was doing, but not why. From what he could tell, she was disabling some of the emergency failsafes, cross-wiring dimensional field generators with internal defensive systems, re-calibrating the temporal coordinate input system, and disconnecting some of the extra-temporal sensors.

"You know this would work so much better with the more recent models, don't you?" she asked, looking up at him briefly from where she lay on her back to get underneath the main console, to which he just pulled a face, and she laughed, going back to her rewiring, "It's not exactly proper form here, will be a bumpy ride."

"Just don't fix the chameleon circuit, you." the Doctor warned, with a faint grin. Donna waved him off not taking her attention from what she was doing.

Her eyes were focused on cross-wiring the shield generator to the internal defence system, which are quite definitely not supposed to be connected to each other, and the Doctor noticed her place something into the shielding system that he could swear they'd seen in the Time Room of the Department of Mysteries.

He hadn't remembered Draco bringing it back, but he knew it was a magic- or as Jack liked to refer to it, psyonic- artefact, adorned with runes quite unlike the Gallifreyan symbols the TARDIS usually displayed. Donna seemed to have known just where to find it and what she was doing with it, and he was beginning to get the creeping feeling he usually got when he realised the Master had planned something huge and significant right from the start.

"Where are we going?" the Doctor insisted.

Donna stood up brushing off some imaginary dust from her clothes, and she set about connecting some loose wires she'd left sitting out of the main console, then hit a button to activate the time shift. As the TARDIS started to shake with the strain of this new command, she looked up at him and smiled, a real and warm smile, not the usual plotting smirk he would expect the Master to use.

"Home, Doctor. We're going home."

x x x