DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter or Doctor Who. Nor do I make a profit from it. That said, enjoy the story anyway.
SUMMARY: HP/Dr Who. After discovering what looks like an ordinary pocket watch, Harry finds himself drastically changed. Now he is being chased across time and space by an organisation that will do anything to prevent him from reaching someone called the Doctor...

1: The Evans Family

Her name was Rosie Doe, and she turned up outside Oxford University unannounced one day in 1948 with only a pocket watch and a small cardboard box. She didn't have an appointment, but she managed to convince the Scientific Panel to give her an interview anyway.

For her interview, she walked in front of the panel and emptied the contents of the box onto the floor. They looked like bits of junk and, when asked, Rosie said that they had indeed come from a junk yard. She then sat down on the floor in front of them, completely ignoring the chair, and began to put the junk parts together. At the end of the twenty minute interview, she had built them a television. To their surprise and delight, it actually worked when they plugged it into the mains.

Shortly after, Rosie Doe was given a scholarship deal at Oxford University. She had no money and no home, so they provided her with both.

Years later, when she had left university, the television she had assembled out of fraying wires and cork board was still in the Science Professors' lounge. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, the gathered professors watched the giant leap on the small screen, which had started broadcasting in colour the same moment the BBC had, no adjustment necessary, some years before. Although they hadn't known it when it had been made, the television had been years too advanced for its time.

000

One day, whilst still at university (though by then she had been doing a bit of teaching as well as learning), Rosie Doe had met Jimmy Evans.

He had been raised on a farm, but his parents had recently died, and he had sold the place on to get money for his degree. He sat in some of Rosie's mathematics lectures, and had to make twice as many notes as she did to understand the topics properly. He wasn't a natural, nor was he brilliant, but he was good enough, and very kind to almost everyone. When university was over, he was going to be an accountant, he said, and move to London to find more work.

Rosie wasn't interested in accounting, or London, but she was very interested in Jimmy Evans, so she married him and left the university when he did.

000

They ended up in a small house nowhere near London, close by to a place called Spinner's End. Rosie intended to put her four degrees to good use, but instead she gave birth to a daughter, who looked identical to her father.

"What should we call her?" Jimmy asked, as they both leaned over her crib, staring in at the baby. "You know, I can't think of anything. I think boy's names are more my sort of thing."

"Boy's names?" Rosie repeated. "Why, what would you have called her if she was a boy?"

"James," Jimmy said at once. "You know, after the actor James Dean?"

The red headed woman had just looked at him for a long moment. "You're joking. After him? Aren't you a little old to like James Dean movies?"

He looked a little embarrassed. "Alright, alright, it's not as if she's a boy anyway. But there's nothing wrong with the name James you know."

"I'm sure," Rosie demurred. "How about Susanna?" she then suggested, thinking of her husband's mother, who he spoke of often.

"Oh, I don't think so," Jimmy said. "It's alright but… Well, I hope she grows up brilliant like you." The two shared a smile. "All those things you think of… What was your mother's name?"

The question was out of the blue, and Rosie had to stop to think about it. A feeling of vertigo struck her for a moment, and the whole world just felt wrong. Then it passed, and Rosie was able to say, "…Violet, her name was Violet."

In the end, Rosie had two children, both girls, which meant Jimmy never had the chance to name a boy after James Dean after all. Instead, they were both named after flowers, as Jimmy assumed it was tradition in Rosie's family, and they became Petunia and Lily Evans.

000

When Petunia Evans was eleven, she built a television out of spare parts in her mother's garage.

Rosie and Jimmy were delighted, and the television took pride of place in the kitchen forever after, where the family would sit together every morning and have breakfast, whilst cartoons played on the screen.

Lily wanted to make one too. Petunia tried showing her how, but maybe nine was just too young, and she couldn't quite do it.

000

When Lily Evans turned eleven, she got an acceptance letter from an unusual school up in Scotland.

Rosie and Jimmy were delighted, and they framed the letter and put it up in the kitchen along with Petunia's junior science trophies, though they had to take it down when visitors came by. It hung there forever after, though except at holidays only Petunia, Rosie and Jimmy were sat around the kitchen table to see it.

Petunia wanted to go to that school too. Lily tried to show her how magic worked, but whatever was wrong with Petunia was just too wrong, and she couldn't do it at all.

000

During the girls' fourth year at school, the whole family spent Christmas together.

Just like in the old days the family was gathered in the kitchen all together. Petunia was writing out university math equations in a notebook, whilst planning how to style her hair for the new year's party she was going to. Lily was wrapping a present for a boy called Severus, who lived down at Spinner's End, and went to school with her. Rosie was alternating between boiling a pan of peas and quickly dicing up carrots, and her husband was sat with a big book of figures and a pen at the table.

"Mum," Lily asked quite suddenly, "was anyone in your family a witch?"

Rosie stopped chopping carrots, her focus turning inwards for a long moment. At first she thought, I don't remember, except that almost immediately after this thought formed she found herself saying, "Oh no, definitely not."

Lily looked disappointed at the answer.

"You're a one of a kind," Jimmy told his daughter with a brilliant smile.

Petunia scowled and rubbed out her lines of equations, which explained how space craft could travel to the moon on half the power they currently used.

That same night, Rosie went outside and stood looking up at the stars. There was something important she knew she should remember, except that she didn't. And the sky had no answers for her either.

After a while, the cold air made her back ache. She was getting old, and she didn't like that thought at all. It just seemed wrong. And though she supposed no-one really liked getting old, she thought she liked less than most.

000

After Petunia finished her schooling, a dozen universities headhunted her for their science departments. Rosie was so proud as she shifted through the pile, and she paid special attention to the one from Oxford University, whilst smiling at the television set Petunia had made out of a few spare parts from the garage. Its screen was flat, unlike the bulky boxes other people bought from the shops. In the twenty-first century, when flat screen TVs finally became available for the public, Petunia would scoff and inwardly think she had made one at eleven, years ahead of its time.

000

Petunia never answered any of the letters.

She met Vernon Dursley instead, at a nightclub in town. He was nervous and kept spilling his drink when she talked to him. He was going straight into work, like his father before him, and he had been accepted into a small business that made and sold drills. He was a pencil pusher- he worked with numbers and added up costs or took them away- rather than working on the factory floor. He told Petunia a lot of people liked him because they knew he would be able to fire them someday.

Petunia wasn't interested in drills, or costs, or factory employees, but Vernon Dursley was very interested in her, so they eventually got married and they moved away to Surrey.

They bought a posh, normal-looking house and Petunia filled it with modern conveniences and nice curtains, but she left all of her science trophies behind at her parent's house.

000

When Lily Evans finished school, she sat down and began to apply for work at a number of charm's research facilities. She showed application forms to her mother, who didn't really understand how important they were, and continued to wash up as Lily went through the pile by herself.

Petunia's television was on as Lily compiled a portfolio to show to them, and she even included her own theoretical research on a new charm for time turners she had been working on for the past two years.

She was interrupted twice- once by her mother's excitement as a letter arrived for Petunia from Oxford; the second time by James Potter arriving to take her out on a date.

000

Lily never got to send any of her letters.

She was asked to join the Order of the Phoenix shortly afterwards, along with her boyfriend James Potter and some of his friends. There was a war going on, and Lily knew she would have to help fight with the rest of her people. Everywhere she turned, people were dying or disappearing.

Then one day James Potter asked her to marry him and she accepted. It wasn't the smart decision to make, but it felt like it was the right one.

She moved into Godric's Hollow with James, so she didn't have to go home and risk putting her parents in danger. She sent them a letter about the wedding, but didn't visit, which meant she never got to see how pleased her father was about having a son-in-law called James. During the day she worked at the Ministry; at night she helped organise guerrilla campaigns like the ones in Vietnam only a few years ago, except that they were the good guys, so they couldn't kill anyone.

(Except for the people they did kill, of course.)

000

After that, Rosie and Jimmy didn't see much of their children anymore. They were both old by then, and soon retired. Jimmy only did accounting for their next-door neighbour now- a single mother who couldn't balance her bills for toffee.

They spent their days relaxing, visiting the country so Jimmy could look at cattle, like those his family had used to own. It was obvious now that he had never enjoyed his work as much as he had enjoyed helping out on his parent's farm, although he had never said anything about it to Rosie, or anyone else for that matter. There was less risk and more money in accounting, anyway.

That day in particular, their car was parked at the side of the road, and they were stood on a grass verge looking into a field full of Jersey cows.

"Do you ever regret marrying me?" Jimmy asked suddenly.

Rosie was silent.

She could have done all sorts of things. She could have been a full-time science professor at Oxford, she could have worked in an experimental research facility for the Government, she could have become a doctor. There had been offers. Instead she had been a housewife. She made dinners and beat the dust off curtains. She had two daughters, but neither of them talked to their parents, for various reasons. And on the weekends they drove to the rapidly shrinking green belt around London and looked at cows.

On the way home they were both killed in a car crash. The car flipped several times before it stopped, and both Rosie and Jimmy were suspended upside down by their seatbelts. Jimmy was already dead, but Rosie wasn't quite there yet.

For one floating moment she groped for her pocket watch, which she wore still on a chain around her neck. Her fingers brushed over the cold metal and she felt it pulse in response. There was a din of noise in her head, and the image of stars and space as far as she could see. And for a brief moment at the end of her life she remembered looking into the Schism long ago and being awed by that brief glimpse of forever. Open it, open it-

Then Rosie let go of the pocket watch. Instead, she reached down and found one of Jimmy's hands. She gripped it tightly.

"No," she said. At last. "Of course not."

She was happy.

000

After the death of their parents, the last time Petunia Dursley and Lily Potter saw each other was when they went to sort out the remaining personal affects at their parent's house. The house itself would be sold, and the money split. Anything else they were free to take or dispose of as they wished.

Lily went into the kitchen and took down her acceptance letter, still in its little glass frame on the wall. She noticed Petunia's old trophies were already gone, and assumed her sister had taken them.

Petunia had put them in the bin whilst Lily was upstairs, looking at old photograph albums. Shortly after the television in the kitchen had joined them. There was no room for any junk in the house she and Vernon shared.

She watched Lily making the finishing touches to a box of items she was taking with her. They were both stood in the kitchen, in the midst of an awkward silence both were trying to ignore. When Petunia looked her younger sister over critically, she noticed that she had a small bump about her stomach. It was obvious she was going to have a baby in a few months.

Petunia's own bulge was much more pronounced- she was a couple of months ahead.

"The furniture is going to a charity shop," Petunia told her. "I've asked them to come in the morning."

"Alright," Lily agreed.

Petunia hesitated. There wasn't anything here she wanted, except for one thing, but she hadn't been able to find it. All her life, Rosie Evans had worn a pocket watch on a silver chain around her neck. Petunia wanted it now. She wasn't quite sure why, except that she thought it should be hers. As a young child she had grown up grabbing for it with grubby hands whenever she saw it dangling around her mother's neck.

She looked at Lily again. She might know where it was. And she was sure that if she asked, Lily would give it to her.

"Are you done already?" Lily asked her.

Petunia answered. "…Yes."

She was a person who might have had the stars. But with that her last chance passed and went.