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batsutousaiTitle: Give an Ape a Banana
Fandom: Doctor Who/Harry Potter
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Doctor 9/Harry Potter
Warnings: Canon-typical violence
Summary: Harry and the Doctor get captured by unfriendly aliens.
A/N: Every winter season, I send out cards to anyone willing to give me their address, and I decided two winters ago to start adding fic to the cards. This year, I settled on the very loose prompt of getting stuck in a cabin because of a snowstorm. Which some fics held to better than others, whoops. XD
Despite all evidence to the contrary, they were not, in fact, trapped. Rather, they were kindly staying put for the sake of their captors, who didn't actually know who they had in their grasp.
At least, that's what the Doctor said the last time Harry pointed out that they had no way to escape their current prison.
"Really," Harry said in the driest, most unimpressed voice he could muster, whilst also resisting the urge to throttle his (usually) favourite alien. "That's the line you're going with."
The Doctor's overly-comical insulted look, followed by him mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like 'apes' under his breath didn't leave Harry feeling any less inclined to physical violence.
The Doctor pulling out a banana, incidentally, was what calmed him down and filled him with hope. Because if the Doctor had got a banana past the body search and scanning they'd undergone before being tossed into their current prison, then maybe he'd managed to get a sonic screwdriver or something equally useful past it. Perhaps even inside the banana, which would explain why he was oh-so-casually peeling it.
It would be just like the Doctor to let Harry get frustrated with his own helplessness – "Ya depend far too much on magical solutions!" he was fond of saying – then pull out his brilliant plan for getting out of whatever ridiculous amount of trouble the Doctor's flippant remarks or Harry's lack of familiarity with various alien customs had dropped them into.
And then the Doctor took a large bite of the banana, revealing nothing hidden inside, and offered what was left to Harry. "Banana? They're quite good for you."
...throttling it was, then.
Somehow, Harry ended up holding the banana, while the Doctor ended up leaning against the wall next to the door, unharmed and hands crossed over his chest and plainly in view, so it was very unlikely he was doing anything to weaken the door or wall. He also had one eyebrow raised at Harry and was wearing that utterly unimpressed expression that Harry usually enjoyed watching him turn on other people, but hated having it aimed at himself.
Harry took a large bite of the banana, irritated with himself for losing his cool like that; he'd thought he'd left his infamous adolescence temper tantrums back on Earth in 1998, where Ron and Hermione were still trapped, waiting for him to save the day. They had no idea that he would die when he faced Voldemort again, because he hadn't known how to tell them they were sending him off to die. (Nor was he, honestly, certain he wanted them to know going into it that there was no chance he'd come back alive.)
But he wasn't the hero the wizarding world needed, in the end, because when a strange blue box appeared in an empty hallway he'd been walking through, trying to clear his head and psych himself up to face Voldemort, and a man stepped out and said, "Come with me if you're not ready to die," he'd taken the outstretched hand and followed him away from Hogwarts and his own fate without a moment's hesitation. It was only later, when he’d learnt that the Doctor was a time traveller, that he realised that he hadn't actually doomed his friends and community to the rule of a madman. Instead, he'd given himself as much time as he needed to run from his fate and finally accept it. Which, given that hadn't been his intention when he'd made the decision, he wasn't certain he knew how he felt about it.
With a sigh, he sat on the floor and set the banana peel to one side, then hid his face in his hands. "Sorry," he offered, because he had just tried to attack his companion.
Harry was not destined to know how the Doctor would respond to that – with sarcasm, probably; it was his default – as their captors chose that moment shove into the room. The first one in grabbed the Doctor, and Harry might not have been able to read these aliens' features, but he could read the Doctor's wince just fine, not to mention the promise of violence. Almost certainly far worse than what Harry'd just had in mind for the Doctor.
"Wait!" he shouted, starting to his feet.
The second alien shoved the sharp end of their staff at Harry and let out a couple of low, guttural noises, which the TARDIS helpfully translated to mean, "Be still or die. You'll get your turn soon."
Three things crossed Harry's mind in quick succession:
One: The Doctor was the only one of the two of them capable of driving the TARDIS.
Two: The Doctor was far more likely to find a way to get them out of this mess than Harry.
Three: The Doctor was his only friend, right then, and Harry didn't want to see him hurt. Previous intentions notwithstanding.
Which gave birth to the extremely stupid and probably quite noble action of grabbing the staff in his face, yanking it hard enough to unbalance the alien, and sweeping the banana peel next to him forward, so when the alien tried to regain their balance, they stepped on it, slipped, and hit the floor with a loud crash.
The Doctor applauded in the following silence. "Bananas," he said in a tone that usually meant he was about to impart something ridiculously clever, or else leave you wanting to punch him in his smug, alien face.
When the Doctor didn't actually say anything further – given Harry had just taken down an alien guard with a banana peel and desperation, he didn't suppose anything more needed to be said – Harry stood and pointed his new spear at the guard holding the Doctor. "He's the non-violent one," he said. Because most beings seemed to accept the implied threat as a promise, even though Harry usually shared the Doctor's preference for handling matters as peacefully as possible.
The guard, wisely, fled.
"Are they dead?" the Doctor asked as he straightened his leather jacket.
Harry looked uncertainly down at the alien at his feet. He wasn't completely clear about how they breathed, beyond it not having to do with the closest thing they had to a mouth, and their biology in general was a mystery to him. But this one's skin was sort of...rolling, and it didn't look like a death gasp, so he said, "I don't think so?"
"Good enough for me. Let's find your wand and the TARDIS."
"Yes, please," Harry muttered as he skirted around the fallen guard and hurried after the Doctor, because he really was quite ready to just leave.
It didn't take them long to find the items that had been confiscated from them, and the various aliens they crossed paths with along the way seemed happier keeping away from them upon seeing the staff Harry was still carrying, so they made it back to the TARDIS without further incident.
The Doctor moved them in the general direction of away from the system, then parked them in space so they could both go clean up.
Over the course of their trip back to the TARDIS and getting changed, Harry had a lot of time to think about his actions. About how he'd been willing to endanger himself – perhaps even die – so the Doctor had a better chance of escaping. And, yes, it had turned out well, but it might not have.
Actually, it'd had a pretty good chance of turning out really badly for Harry. Even odds how the Doctor would have fared once he was dead.
Even odds how anyone would fare after he died. Except his community, who were waiting for him to die at Voldemort's hand so they had a chance, finally, of facing him on a fair field of war. If Harry died on an alien planet, would that still hold true? Or would he have doomed them because he was too scared to face the demon of his childhood?
"Take me back," Harry requested when he returned to the central room of the TARDIS. "To Hogwarts."
Every time one of them mentioned the war back home, a broken, tired shadow would darken the Doctor's face, and that time was no different. "Ya sure?" he asked, but he was already reaching for the controls, and Harry knew he didn't really need to respond for the Doctor to know.
And, indeed, they were in flight without any further comment from either of them.
When they landed, Harry reached out a hand towards the Doctor and said, "Thank you. For...everything."
The Doctor used Harry's outstretched hand to pull him into a hug, which was the sort of move Harry would sometimes pull when he wanted that little bit of extra contact. "When it's all over, you’ll have a place here," the Doctor told him.
Harry snorted, because he was going to die. But he didn't say that, instead settling on, "Goodbye, Doctor. Take care of yourself." Then he stepped out of the TARDIS for the last time and went to face his destiny.
(Turned out, in the end, he should have trusted the Doctor.)
.