Tom sat curled up on the bed in the room that had been provided for him by the Doctor, glad that nobody could see him like he was now. That nobody could see him this...uncertain. This unsure. This weak. He didn't know where to go, or what to do next, and the Doctor, who had given him houseroom aboard his vessel, had made it clear on no uncertain terms that if he tried any of his usual tricks, the consequences would be highly unpleasant, and would make whatever Professor Dumbledore could do to him look like a walk in the park in comparison. The Doctor had then told him that as long as he behaved himself, he would be allowed to do as he pleased, so long as it didn't hurt others, and led him to a room that he was informed would be his for the duration of his stay. Strangely, he hadn't felt as resentful of this as he usually would've felt over such heavy-handedness from an adult. It was probably because the Doctor had allowed him to stay, rather than dumping him out in the cold, and underneath all of the annoyance at the inconvenience of his presence, he had felt something he hadn't something that he hadn't felt coming from someone ever. Actual concern over his well-being. That, and he hadn't tried to confiscate his wand, or burn what little possessions he had.

It was two hours after his having been revealed as a stowaway aboard the alien "Doctor"'s craft which externally resembled a police box, and he could barely think through the rapid-fire thoughts that were randomly swimming through his head, slipping from his grasp like silvery fish as he tried to grab onto one and joining the shoal of its brothers which teemed about and multiplied with each passing second. His world had been completely tipped on its ear for the second time in his life, and he was going to have to find a new normal in a world where extra-terrestrial beings were real and wizards - technically speaking - weren't, rather than the other way around.

Two and a half years earlier, he had been forced to accept the fact that magic, which he'd been told all of his life was superstitious nonsense and the stuff of fairy tales, existed when Professor Dumbledore had come to the orphanage and revealed to him that he was a wizard. Now however, if what this powerful human looking alien was telling him was true, he would have to unlearn what he'd learned two years previously with the evidence of his eyes which had been backed up by two and a half years experience and go back to believing that magic wasn't real. He had to believe that everything he was capable of doing had a scientific explanation, and that it was only a matter of time before the less "psychic" muggles discovered it.

The worst part of this all was that one, both, or neither of the men could be lying and he had no real way to tell, because both stories seemed equally valid as he examined them. While the Doctor used words and terms he couldn't understand and had never heard before, he had begun to study Arithmancy and knew of its uses in spellcrafting which could be explained by it having been invented by a race of people who had learned how to manipulate the very building-blocks of the universe using psychic abilities and Mathematics. But, on the other hand, this powerful stranger could be mad, as the more powerful magicals were wont to be, and Dumbledore had told him the truth when he'd revealed magic to him. Then again, the answer could be somewhere in the middle or somewhere else entirely. There had been some times when he'd had the sneaking suspicion that Mrs. Cole really had made good on her threat to have him sent to the asylum, and that everything he'd seen and heard since Professor Dumbledore had turned up in his room had been a figment of his imagination after-all.

"What are you doing Doctor?" Rose asked as she watched the Doctor shimmy half-way up a massive bookcase and start dropping a set of hardcover books to the floor.

"Moving these to the fiction section." the Doctor said as he dropped the last of a series of books and jumped down from the shelf he had been perched on, giving Rose a bit of a fright since the drop looked to be about two stories. He landed effortlessly and without any signs of pain whatsoever though, reminding Rose once again that while he looked human, the Doctor very clearly wasn't.

"Why?" Rose asked as she moved to the pile of books that had titles that started with "Harry Potter and the". It was in that moment that she realized exactly who the dark-haired boy who had stowed away aboard the TARDIS was. Remembering what had happened just recently when she had interfered with something that already happened, Rose began looking around fearfully, praying that a Reaper wouldn't swoop in out of nowhere and take the Doctor. If that happened, they would all be lost.

"Some points in time are malleable and some aren't. As long as there is a war that resulted as a backlash against the muggleborns who had been inspired by the American civil-rights movement to seek equal rights in the Seventies and another less than two decades later because of teaching practices and school policies that exacerbated the situation rather than reduced hostilities, then nothing has really changed," the Doctor who had apparently sensed her fear said in a tone that was meant to calm her. "Since we never personally interacted with 'Lord Voldemort' prior to today, our interaction with the boy who would have become him hasn't created the sort of paradox that would rend time in a way that would bring the Reapers."

"But, what about..." Rose said, pointing to the pile of books on the floor.

"Tom Riddle was a big fish in a small pond, but he was still a fish, and there will be another to take his place. Someone whose rise he most likely would've ended by either bringing them under his thumb, or outright killing them," the Doctor said. "As for the books, Rowling was something of a seer who could've been tuned into an alternate timeline. That would explain why I never ran into Harry Potter even after I went looking for him for Ace despite the fact that I happen to know for a fact that a Harry Potter who was born to one James Potter and one Lily Evans Potter existed, lived in the "magical world" and made a major impact on it after he defeated a Dark Lord."

"What do you mean?" Rose asked with a frown.

"Well, considering I'd only really read about him in the books that were published in the so-called muggle world and just used the actual reference books to confirm that there indeed had been a Harry Potter who did defeat a Dark Lord whose name most wouldn't speak aloud, I would've been looking for him in all the wrong places. I wasted a great deal of time hanging around Little Whinging, and never even considered looking for him being at home with his parents." the Doctor said.

Dumbledore was exhausted. Though it had looked as if all was lost at one point, all of Wizarding Britain, including some of the more questionable denizens of Knockturn Alley, had rallied and pushed Grindelwald's forces from their shores. The battle had been long and hard and left many orphans, but it was over. For now. While the battle had been won, the war would go on until Grindelwald was stopped.

Since Grindelwald's forces had been repelled from Britain, it was decided that life would go on, and that they would not allow Grindelwald to keep them from living. Part of regaining some normalcy despite the war would be the reopening of Hogwarts which was to be guarded by volunteers while the wards were being mended. This was why he was here in Muggle London which looked just as war-torn as Hogsmeade did. He'd saved this particular task for last, and had been very sorely tempted to not retrieve this student at all and pretend that he had been unable to find him. The fear of what the boy would do if left to his own devices however had killed off much of that desire however, and practically sent him running to the assigned pick-up point after the Nott boy had been retrieved from a home where he and his crippled grandmother were the last survivors.

The boy was waiting where he was supposed to be. Sitting on top of his trunk at King's Cross station next to platform 9 and 3/4, holding the letter that had been sent out and looking thoroughly bored.

He frowned as he took in the sight before him. The boy he'd been sent to retrieve stood taller than he remembered him being, and frankly looked more like a Sixth or Seventh year than the Third year he was. Knowing the boy however, it was more than likely that he'd been up to some mischief, and not the good kind that provided everyone some much-needed laughter in such dark times. It wouldn't surprise him to learn that the boy had smuggled an aging potion out of the castle despite the stringent wartime bans and the risks of being charged with using magic outside of certain prescribed areas without a permit. If he hadn't known that the boy was a loner who wouldn't join a crowd he wasn't the leader of, he would've suspected that the boy had used the aging potion or whatever it was to appear to be of age enough to join Grindelwald's forces.

The boy was a bad seed from the start, and it was his misfortune to be forced to teach the boy who had the students and the other faculty who couldn't see him for what he was much the way he hadn't seen Gellert for what he was wrapped around his little finger. Since it was his unfortunate duty to teach the boy, he would teach the boy his place, and that he would not get away with things the way Gellert had, no matter how cute and charming he was.

As if sensing his presence, the boy stiffened slightly, looked up, and gave him a strange smile before getting up and walking towards him.

"Sign here please." the boy said as he handed him a form and a muggle fountain pen.

"I wouldn't want to get charged with thieving." the boy said as he looked over the form which appeared to be an inventory of school supplies.

After doing a couple of subtle checks, he confirmed that that was exactly what it was. The form duplicated itself after he signed it just to hurry things along and get this over with so he could go back to Hogwarts to have a pint or two and a good long sleep.

"Come along Tom," he said to the boy who for once didn't wince at his name.

"What makes you think I'd go anywhere with you?" the boy asked. "I got my N.E.W.T.s at the Ministry and you got your unused school supplies and the remainder of the yearly allotment from the orphan's fund as per the rules, which means I'm done with your primitive school full of inbred backwoods yokels."

"What?" he asked, completely thrown for a loop.

The boy didn't reply, and as he stood there wondering what had just happened, since what had happened over the last minute or so was completely out of everything he knew of the boy's character, the boy started walking away.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked the boy, pulling his wand out as subtly as possible considering the crowd. He didn't need to know though. The boy had done what he'd not considered possible and joined Gellert.

"Back to base. My week's leave is over." the boy said, apparently not even bothering to hide his affiliation. "Which reminds me, I'm going to have to send Mrs. Cole a thank-you gift for backdating my birthdate one of these days."

Throwing all caution to the wind, Dumbledore pulled his wand from hiding and fired a curse at the back of the boy who hadn't even turned back to look at him. Before the curse hit, the boy was knocked to the ground by a young man in a military uniform that he had recognized as being a muggleborn from his house who'd graduated the year prior.

"You okay Tommy?" the young man asked as he pulled the boy off of the ground.

Before he could fire off a second curse at the boy and the apparently surprise traitor from his house, another man body-checked him, knocked him to the ground, disarming him and breaking his wand in the process.

"You, Mr. Dumbledore, have a lot of explaining to do. Starting with exactly why you decided to fire on one of our airmen." the plain-clothes Auror that he recognized as being a Hufflepuff half-blood who'd graduated about a decade prior said as he silently and discreetly cursed him into immobility, picked him up off the ground, and carried him to the waiting arms of a pair of constables who had witnessed the entire incident.