A/N: Harry sees what lies behind the veil part of the veil of Death archway. He becomes a Time Lord, albeit an extremely ignorant one suffering from his lack of a Gallifreyan education. He travels through time with three objects that, when combined together, create a fully functional TARDIS and copy their attributes to another set of identical items that power up over time. Harry travels dimensions at first, learning all he needs to know as a Time Lord before joining the Time War and, eventually, the fight against Voldemort.

It's a challenge of sorts, so knock yourselves out boys and girls!

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. Boy, would I be happy if I did. Neither do I own Harry Potter. Otherwise, the wizarding world would think with portals instead of fireplaces...

'Tis a sad time we live in, when one can conquer one's belief in humanity, one's trust in one's brothers & sisters, one's reliance on love & friendship for solace and have it deemed a triumph.

Anonymous, scrawled onto the side of a TV network building

He stood in front of the archway, tears drifting unnoticed down grimy cheeks. Nothing mattered anymore. The man he'd come to rescue, a man that promised both a link to the future and a link to the past, had disappeared through it. Those he'd brought with him to rescue the man others considered a living nightmare had fought well, but ultimately had been unable to accomplish what he had intended to do. Faint sounds of battle could still be heard reverberating through the vaulted room as the soldiers of the light fought the slaves of darkness, fighting to rejoin the master whose rescue bid had failed.

It no longer mattered to him either way. He could see his fallen comrades in his mind's eye, no doubt bleeding to death in some shadowy forgotten corner after the Death Eaters caught up with them. He could still hear the headmaster, telling him to stay put while he attended a sickly-looking minister. And yet here he was, staring at the very archway that had helped take his greatest hope for a new family of his own. His face contorted into an angry rictus, his wand rising as he pooled all his hatred and self-loathing into a tight, hard ball that cast a grey shimmer everywhere but at the object he was aiming at.

"Accio Sirius" he said, hearing the whispers rise in volume. Nothing happened. His anger grew, the ball at the end of his wand turning a greyish-red under the impulse.

"Accio Sirius!" he shouted, without any apparent effect. The archway seemed to glow for a second, but no godfather came forth. The whispers rose in volume, almost matching the alarmed voices coming from the other side of the entrance doors to the room. He snarled, his anger, fatigue and self-loathing making him lose control over his emotions.

"Goddamn you!" he shouted, whipping his wand up and back down again in a quick slashing and stabbing motion. "ACCIO!"

Everything he had went into that scream, his hopes, his dreams, his magic, his very soul fuelling the spell. Nothing was held back, the pure desperation of the lonely boy overpowering any of the safeguards on his magic. The veil, which had obscured what lay inside the archway, was torn off its ethereal hinges and blew right past the youngster. Kneeling on the ground, exhaustion and despair driving him to the brink of death, Harry Potter looked at the arch and gazed into an untempered schism.

Many hours later, a panicking Albus Dumbledore gave up trying to unlock the door to the Death Chamber and unleashed a reducto on the door frame. Storming inside even before the shrapnel had settled, he frantically looked around for any hint of his favourite Gryffindor.

"Harry!" he shouted. "Harry, where are you?" he looked around, desperate for any clue as to his wayward charge's whereabouts. He didn't understand. The tracker clearly indicated that the boy would be in this room-

"Albus." came a voice from the other side of the archway. "I've been waiting for you." And out of the shadows stepped Harry Potter, the number one cause for heart attacks amongst ministry personnel. He looked... different, somehow. His stance, the way his eyes darted around, the way his wand was being handled so casually, almost as if he wasn't aware that it was in his palm when he was flicking it around.

"Harry, thank goodness!" He sighed, the weight of panic lifting off his old shoulders. "We must leave now, Harry. It is close to daybreak, you know, and your friends would be anxious to see you alive and well again." The young man in front of him looked worried for a second, his features shifting into an expression of concern before returning to one of casual happiness.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much, headmaster!" Harry said, strolling around the room whilst stealing glances at the veiled archway behind him. "Luna, Ron and Neville are still sound asleep and Hermione will not be awake until this afternoon at the earliest."

Albus startled at the young boy's dismissal of his friends' current condition. This was not like the boy he'd left at Hogwarts. "Nevertheless Harry," he demurred, a slight tinge of worry infecting his cheerful speech pattern "don't you want to go and see them? Make sure they're alright?"

Harry chuckled. "No, I don't think so Albus. For one thing, Poppy would kill me if I were to stroll into her wing at three in the morning and wake up every single one of her patients. For another, I still have a few questions for you." He sat down, patting the seat next to his.

"Fire away, dear boy!" The headmaster exclaimed, his amusement at his protege's antics and easy-going attitude manifesting itself through twinkling eyes. "But be aware that I will have to wait before answering any sensitive questions." he said, deliberately scanning the room around himself. "This is the department of mysteries, after all. A place where even the floor tiles have ears." And with that, he sat down on the seat, eyes fixed on the very archway that had featured heavily in his nightmares during the days of Grindelwald.

"Okay then!" the young man said "First question. Do you know what that stone arch is, Albus?" he hastily cut through the headmaster's 'well-' before he went into lecture mode "take your time first. Look at it and think about it. Not the room, not the veil, but the stone arch. What do you think it is?"

Dumbledore frowned, his gaze scanning the archway rather than the famous fluttering veil. In the pale illumination provided by the torches, flickering shadows and strange patterns flitted across the scarred and pitted rock. It looked like it was held together by magic alone, as no evidence of any mortar or other binding material seemed to keep the stones connected to each other. The vaulted tip, at the very top of the arch, gleamed with a metallic sheen whenever light touched it, remaining otherwise hidden and undetectable to the naked eye. Albus dared not activate his glasses' magical illumination charm, just in case he was blinded by the amount of magic that pervaded the room. "I know that it is held up by magic, extremely powerful magic." the old man leaned forward, struggling to catch another glimpse of the metal vault piece. "the artifact's magical anchoring point is the vault stone at the top, I would hazard to guess. If you were to destroy it, you would collapse the archway in both the physical and magical sense. As for the stone itself-" he said, using a magnifying charm to get a closer look at the material the arch was made out of "-i've never seen it before."

Harry smiled at Dumbledore's guess. "Brilliant, sir!" he said, shaking his neglectful mentor's hand "Absolutely brilliant deductions! The rigor with which you examined what you saw, the way you put the evidence together, set any preconceptions aside- and the sheer elegance of your findings- all in the space of a single minute!" he snorted "You are truly counted amongst the finest wizards alive today. Your findings were astute, backed up by evidence, objective and, above everything else-" Harry spread his hands out "-WRONG! But in a good way, really."

Harry chuckled at the headmaster's dumbfounded look. "You see, you were almost right. The veil itself-" he said, pointing at the tattered and billowing piece of cloth "-is extremely magical. It takes a looooot of power to budge it, believe me. But the archway..." He ran a hand through his tousled and dirty hair "The archway itself has no magic in it at all. Nothing. Nada. Niet. Dead as a magical doornail. Deader, in fact." the young man quickly amended. "Neither is it made out of rock, really. Rather-" he said, pointing his wand at the archway "The whole thing is a very, very old piece of diamond. Here, I'll show you! Lumos prismatis!" He shouted, jabbing his wand forward. A multicoloured strand of magic hit the archway, the resulting rainbow burst reflecting up and down the length of the archway, almost as if trapped by the grime-covered diamond it coursed through. "Question number two." Harry said, smiling at the intense look he was getting from the ageing headmaster. "why do you think they call this artifact the Veil of Death?"

"Because anyone who crosses the threshold dies. Because it was used as a method of execution centuries ago." The headmaster replied promptly. "And because is believed that the archway crosses the boundaries between life and death. The closer you get to the archway" he pointed at the shimmering veil "the more whispers of deceased loved ones reaches your ears. As a result, people refer to the archway as the veil of death."

Harry nodded. "A succinct summary, Albus. Now tell me" he said, turning to look at the headmaster with a serious expression on his face "Do you want to know what it actually is?" Without waiting for an answer, the youth continued "a long time ago, there were three brothers, out to see the world. One day, the three came across a river, one that had killed anyone trying to reach the other side. The brothers, working together, came up with a simple solution and built a bridge. Upon reaching the other side, death congratulated them on their feat and offered each of them a gift. One got a stone that was able to summon the spirits of the dead. Another received a cloak that would even hide them from death. And one other received a wand, a wand so powerful it was considered unbeatable. Do you know what tale i'm talking about, Albus?"

The old man had paled. "The tale of the three brothers." he whispered, his hand unconsciously clenching tightly on the wand he was holding. "It is known as a children's fairytale, yet a grain of truth is found in the words. Where did you hear that story, Harry?"

"Oh, but I didn't hear it, Albus. I watched it happen through the archway." he said, tilting his head towards the artifact "you see, the story contains, as you said, a grain of truth, yet it doesn't give a complete picture. There were three brothers, they did travel, they did build a bridge and they did end up with three artifacts on the other side. However-" he said, raising his thumb in the air "they were not from around here," another finger went up "the river does not, in fact, fit the classical definition of a river," the middle finger joined the other "they never met death at all and" another finger went up "the bridge is still there." he pointed his raised hand at the veil.

"There aren't three artifacts, but four. They weren't given to the brothers, they became what you know as the deathly hallows after they lost most of their power bridging the so-called river. The veil of death is that bridge, Albus. There are other earths on the other side of that archway, worlds a lot like ours, connecting to each other randomly every millisecond. Nobody comes back because the connection has yet to reconnect to a world that it was connected to before. Everyone assumes that the one to fall through the veil is dead because any spells monitoring the person's health can't transmit data across dimensions. Which means" he exclaimed "Sirius is alive! But-" he pouted "- I can't go find him yet. The bridge is still broken, its connection reset to time rather than space. I wasn't ready then, and I won't be for a couple of years. Not until I have all three artifacts, at least."

Albus just stared at the boy. "That is... interesting, Harry. The theory is good, but how can you support it?"

The young man smiled at him. "Easy. Expelliarmus!" he shouted, taking the headmaster by surprise. He summoned the Elder wand to his side. "Now then, what next. Oh yes! Dobby!" A small pop could be heard as a the diminutive house-elf appeared next to his human friend. With a wave of the Elder wand, the elf fell silent while Harry bent down and whispered a set of instructions in the elf's ear. With tears in his eyes, Dobby nodded, gave Harry the Vulcan salute and popped out. "You. Wait here, okay?" Harry asked, finger pointing at Albus. "I'll be right back." Crack.

Albus was in that room for what seemed like an eternity, staring at the archway whose mysteries had eluded everyone before, apparently, his most troublesome student ever. What happened here? He said he saw what happened through the archway? How did he get past the veil without going through? What happened to him? -CRACK- Dumbledore jumped, his hand twitching towards a wand that was no longer there. Before him stood Harry Potter. It was... odd. The boy was taller than he'd been when Albus had fled, a lot taller. His scar looked faded, almost healed over now. And his clothes... The baggy pants and jeans now fit the boy well. His right hand gripped the elder wand, the most powerful foci ever made. A ring covered his left ring finger, its black stone- the stone? Harry has the stone? A muffled pop, and Dobby was there with cloak and trunk in tow. Harry grinned at the two of them.

"Now, here they all are. The cloak" he said, picking up the shimmering cloth the color of moonlight "to hide you from death. In other words, to shield you from the ravages of time. The wand" he brandished his right hand. "undefeated in battle. In reality, the only device able to navigate through the Void itself and not break down halfway through. And the Stone" his left hand went up "complete with spells so nasty I spent five minutes getting rid of them. I mean, five minutes! That was brilliant spellwork on Riddle's part!" he exclaimed, pouting at having praised his nemesis so. "Ahem, as I was saying, stonecapable of bringing back the dead. In reality, this little baby" he chuckled mysteriously "is the miniaturised heart of a type 60, with excess coral for more of her kind and all! Doesn't even need a shell, she does, though she does feel better wearing clothes." He stroked the black stone, cooing and muttering 'don'tcha girl? Don'tcha?' every now and then. "And now for the fun part!"

Albus watched, fearing for his student's life, as the odd teen united the legendary items for the first time in a thousand years. "Harry" he whispered "There... is a reason I came here to find you apart from taking you back to Hogwarts. You see, there is a-"

"Prophecy" Harry stated in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "Yes yes, I know. And I also know that Riddle activated it fourteen and a half years ago. Born as the seventh month dies, marked as an equal, with thrice-defying parents. And now" he turned towards his headmaster, regret in his face. "with the power he knows not. Albus, I cannot stay." He sounded... resigned, heartbroken even.

Dumbledore closed his eyes, wishing he had some means left at keeping Harry confined until they could talk. "Why, Harry? Why must you leave?"

"There's a war on." the youth said. "A war covering all of creation, across time and space, never ending. The War, Albus. The last Time War. I can hear the beacons calling me home, right here and right now. And once I go through that archway..." he shrugged. "I do have it on good authority, though, that I'll be back before long." The old man nodded his head, accepting of that which he can't really change.

"Just come back, all right? Promise me."

"I'll be back before you miss me, headmaster! I promise." And with that, he turned towards the Veil, brandished the Elder wand and tore off the veil before storming through what looked like a tunnel. Albus stared at where Harry, his student, his pupil, had been standing a second ago. The archway dimmed and died, causing the shadows to grow longer and longer as the light receded. A set of sobs echoed through the dark room a while later. He'd been right. The childhood of one Harry James Potter had ended. The boy he'd thought would put an end to the misery of war was now a man, fighting another War somewhere far away. Albus hoped to live long enough to say sorry to him.