A/N: This author's note will very possibly be longer than if not equal in length to the ficlet it precedes. This, my first ever NCIS/Harry Potter crossover ficlet, came about because of jibbloversunited mentioning in chapter 16 of her NCIS fic "Scenes from a relationship" that there is (to muggle eyes at least) no cliff in France with a lake underneath it, that Ducky Mallard could have pushed a French policeman into, as Gibbs alleges in a very early episode of the TV show NCIS. In my review of jibbsloversunited's fic chapter, I mentioned that maybe Albus Dumbledore owed Ducky a favour and thus to wizarding and permitted wizarding eyes, there is in fact, such a cliff, but that Albus placed in under fidelius or made it unplottable, thus repaying a favour he owed ducky. Then I had no choice but to write said ficlet.

Albus Dumbledore was in a bind. He had just heard and seen the worst of bad news and thus he owed Minerva McGonagall, his deputy at Hogwarts, an apology as large as Hogwarts herself for disregarding her misgivings about the dreadfulness of those Dursley muggles that long ago night at 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, when he left little Harry Potter on their doorstep.

In a distracted state, he boarded the South Western Mainline train to Waterloo station in London.

Dressed as he was, in a black velvet Edwardian suit, Albus Dumbledore drew a fair few sidelong glances, but he noticed none of them.

He took a seat next to a dumpy woman in jeans who was knitting.

Albus being Albus, and already being partial to knitting patterns noticed the intricate leaf pattern emerging in pastel wool and stared.

When the dumpy woman stabbed him in the thigh with the one end of the cable stitch holder, his draw at first dropped in astonishment.

Then he collapsed into the aisle, hissing, moaning and clutching his wounded thigh.

The conductor sped off in one direction, screaming for a doctor, as the railway policeman on duty arrested the woman who stabbed Albus and read her her rights.

The next thing Albus knew, he was looking up into twinkling blue eyes, much like his own normally looked.

"We need to stop the bleeding, sir," said a soft Edinburgh brogue.

"you're a hea-…er…doctor?"

"Yes sir."

Albus winced as his pant leg was cut away. The steel of the scissors was so cold it burnt his skin.

Then a pair of feminine hands pressed what felt like a tea towel against the wound. It WAS a tea towel, Albus saw out of the corner of his eye.

"Mother, you are ruining your souvenir!"

"Damn my souvenir, Donald! This man cannot bleed to death!"

Unbeknownst to Albus, when the bleeding stopped, stitches were put in and a pressure bandage wound round his thigh – Donald, not Mother, did the winding and the stitching prior – the motif on the tea towel was traced onto Albus's thigh permanently.

(And that is how the headmaster came to have a scar on his one leg that looks exactly like a map of the London Underground.)

"how can I ever repay you?" Albus wanted to know from Donald the doctor as he (Albus) limped from the carriage at Waterloo station.

Donald's eyes twinkled in a very familiar manner as he replied: "Don't you worry, Albus, I will collect."'