A/N: A fanfic for a writing challenge on another website. The challenge was to take the Harry Potter characters (in this case, the main trio) and put them into another TV series or film or book and see how they would act. Enjoy!

Regeneration: Potter

The TARDIS spun through the space-time continuum, as it always did. If someone were capable of living within the time vortex, they would not have noticed anything going very wrong because as far as they would be concerned, the little blue box was exactly as it should be.

Inside the TARDIS, however, there was absolute mayhem.

The Doctor couldn't remember much of what had happened. There were brief snippets – something to do with the Master, something to do with the Daleks, something to do with a gigantic machine with a magical red button that you weren't supposed to press (he imagined that he did press it, just because that was the kind of thing he did) – but nothing was very clear. His head was all jumbled up with an assortment of other memories.

Like ones of flying high above the sky on a broomstick, for instance. And waving a stick, only to set things on fire. How a stick could set things on fire, he didn't know, but his best guess was that the stick really wasn't a stick.

The Doctor groaned. He had a magnificent headache.

"Harry! Harry!"

Someone was shaking his arm. He groaned again.

"C'mon, Harry, you need to wake up!"

The Doctor's eyes snapped open. A girl with bushy brown hair and an anxious expression was looking into his face.

He sat up abruptly, brushing her away. "Hi, Hermione," he said automatically. "I'm fine."

"Are… are you sure? You took in a lot of energy back there; I think you need to lie down—"

"No, I'm perfectly fine." The Doctor sprinted around the room, just to show that he was perfectly fine. "Is there something wrong?"

"Well, erm…" This was from a ginger fellow.

The Doctor suddenly felt very jealous. Why couldn't he be ginger for once?

"Hang on!" he said. "Ron, don't say anything, I'm thinking!"

"What? I wasn't going to say anything!"

"Ssssh! Thinking!"

The Doctor stopped, his hands pressed to the side of his face. He looked up.

The little strands of hair that he could see were black. Black. Now that wasn't right. Since when did he have black hair?

"What's up with my hair?" he said. "Did someone put black hairspray in it?"

Hermione shook her head. "No, they didn't. Listen, you've got to sit down, you're still—"

"Still what?" The Doctor suddenly froze. He glanced at Hermione. He glanced at Ron.

Suddenly, things clicked.

He rushed around the TARDIS console, batting randomly at various parts of the control board and accidentally hitting a blue button that caused the console to start making a sound like a gong, and nearly tripped over the laces of his own trainers as he pulled down the closest mirror he could find.

"Wait," Hermione said.

The Doctor stared at his reflection.

"Bloody hell."

Some time later...

The three of them sat on the set of stairs near the console, Ron and Hermione on either side of the Doctor. He was continually running his hands through his new hair, as if he couldn't quite get used to it.

"I feel like there's something missing."

"You need your glasses. Here." Hermione drew out her wand and murmured, "Accio glasses!" A moment later, a battered pair of spectacles flew into her hand. She passed them to the Doctor.

"That's better," he said, sliding them on to his nose. "I can see now. Blimey, I've got bad eyesight. That's new. Usually I don't have bad eyesight; I just wear the brainy specs because they're brainy specs."

Hermione smiled. "Yes, but—"

"I know, I know!" The Doctor waved a hand. "Things got a bit mixed up. Remind me never to run Polyjuice Potion through an extra-dimensional multiverse engine again, especially one with a gigantic red button. Really screws up your regeneration cycle."

They were silent for a moment.

"So," Ron said, "do we still have to call you Doctor? Because right now, you're technically—"

"I know, I know!" The Doctor lay back, stretching out on the stairs and staring at the ceiling of his beautiful ship. Of all the strange things that had happened to him over the centuries, this was the worst. Or could it possibly be the best? He couldn't tell anymore, his memories were all a jumble. "This is the first time I've regenerated as someone else," he said. "And I really didn't mean to regenerate into Harry. I mean, who is Harry Potter now? Me or someone else who isn't there?"

"I don't know," Hermione said, "but maybe you've always been Harry and now you just have a bit of Doctor thrown into you."

The Doctor-Harry blew out a puff of air. "Maybe. But then why am I still doing this?" He held up a hand. It was glowing a golden colour. He exhaled again, and this time he blew out something that looked like gold breath.

Hermione and Ron watched it dissipate into the air with raised eyebrows, but they already looked like they were used to this sort of thing.

"At least on the bright side," the Doctor-Harry said, sitting up, "I have a name now. Sort of."

"Well," Hermione said, "you are Harry to Ron and I. There's no other Harry except you. There's only one Harry Potter, and that's you."

"Maybe I'm completely delusional," the Doctor-Harry murmured, pressing his fingertips together.

"Nah, you're not, mate," Ron said. "We're the ones travelling with you, as we've always done. We just have a… better, more interesting way of doing so." He eyed the TARDIS console.

The Doctor-Harry pulled out the mirror and studied his reflection again. Jet black hair, wide green eyes, lightning bolt scar – yes, there was no doubt about it, he had regenerated as Harry Potter. So, who could really say if there had ever been another Harry? He was Harry Potter now.

And he was never, ever, ever messing with extra-dimensional multiverse engines powered by Polyjuice Potion again. Even if they did have big, red buttons.

"Still," he said, cocking an eyebrow, "it could be worse. I might have no hands. Or no feet. Bit difficult to run from Daleks if you have no feet. Oh! I remember Daleks." He frowned. "But I also remember Death Eaters. Daleks and Death Eaters… do those two go together?"

Hermione shook her head.

Harry – as he was going to have to be called Harry from here on out, at least until he regenerated again into someone completely different – stood up and ran down the stairs.

"Daleks, Death Eaters, two life forms from completely different places among the multiverse, no of course they don't exist together, that would be silly, quite silly indeed, but maybe they got mixed up if they travelled through the portal opened by the engine, because it was sort of like a magic door – a magic door into a magic world, and so the Death Eaters could get in because there was a magic door, at least that's how the Master got out, because he was stuck in the magical universe in the multiverse, where I picked up you lot – except I never picked up you lot because I'm Harry Potter and I've been your friend since we were eleven years old, except I'm not eleven years old, I'm nine hundred and twenty eight and I'm on my twelfth face, which just happens to be Harry Potter's face, but I have all his memories and – is this a fez?"

Harry stooped and picked up a red hat. He liked it, for some reason. He couldn't remember why. He felt extremely attached to it. He flipped it upside down. Inside, there was a note, written in a familiar hand – his own, he believed. From his eleventh incarnation.

Fezzes are cool.

"Hey, look at this," Harry said. He put the fez on top of his head. "Fezzes are cool."

Ron blinked. "You're out of your mind, mate."

"No, I'm not. Fezzes are cool. See for yourself." He strode back over to his friends, took the fez off his head and showed them the label his previous self had put in it. Ron stared at it, an eyebrow raised. Harry flipped the fez around and put it on Ron's head.

"No," he said. "It really clashes with your hair."

Hermione giggled.

"What?" Harry said.

"It's just…" She giggled again. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

"What's so funny?" Harry asked.

"Never mind."

"Fine. I'm taking the fez back." He swiped it off Ron's head and put it back on his own. He sprang back up on his feet and dashed back to the console, where he began to play with the controls.

"Harry," Hermione said, standing up and walking over to him, "I'm not sure that's the best idea, the TARDIS—"

"Hey, it's my ship," Harry said. "She can manage. I'm just looking. Don't get so fussy, Hermione, it's not like I'm setting a book in the library on fire." His eyes glinted. "That would be a fun idea. How about going to the Great Library of Kajani Kresh? They have the largest magical compendium in this part of the universe; we could set it all on fire and see what happens—"

Hermione's face paled.

"—but I can see that wouldn't make you very happy," Harry finished. "Okay. Bad idea. Sorry." He turned back to the console.

"Harry, you're still glowing," Ron said, coming over. "Maybe you should sit down or something. You don't look—"

"I'm perfectly fine, Ron," Harry said. "Look, I'm fine. Perfect. Good. Great. I can hop on one foot if you like." He began hopping. His eyes wandered across the TARDIS console again. He spotted something. "Or – or I can fly around on my Firebolt." He hopped around the console, stopped and stood on one foot while he reached up and untangled his broomstick from the upper reaches of the controls. He couldn't remember why he had put it there. Most likely it had a job to do, but whatever. He felt like flying. He really felt like flying.

"Harry, you should put that back," Hermione began, but he didn't listen.

He mounted the broomstick and took off, shooting towards the ceiling.

Five seconds later, he collided with the top of the TARDIS and crashed, falling back down to the floor with a thud. Somehow, he ended up under the console.

Hermione and Ron poked their heads over the edge and stared at him.

"Ah," Hermione said.

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "That didn't look too good."

They quickly rushed down the stairs and helped Harry back on his feet. He breathed out more gold breath.

"I told you, you need to rest," Hermione said. "You're never going to sort out all this Doctor-Harry Harry-Doctor stuff if you don't rest and let the regeneration sort itself out."

"I don't want to let it sort itself out," Harry said, reaching for his fez. It had fallen off when he crashed. "I want to go out, I want to do stuff!" He plunked the fez back on his head.

Ron groaned. "This is worse than when he took Felix Felicis," he muttered.

Harry didn't pay attention. He couldn't remember what Felix Felicis was and he really didn't care.

Harry dashed up the stairs, paying no attention whatsoever to his glowing hands. He mounted the broomstick again and pushed off. This time, he managed not to collide with the ceiling and instead zoomed around in circles in the upper reaches of the TARDIS.

Hermione and Ron ran up the steps and craned their necks to keep an eye on him.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Ron said.

"Me, too." Hermione pursed her lips. "Come down, Harry! Please!"

"I don't want to!"

"Uh, Hermione," Ron said, pointing at something.

"What, Ron?"

"Look. Just… look."

Hermione followed his pointing finger to the scanner. She brushed a lock of unruly hair out of her face and stared at the scanner.

The colour of her cheeks drained.

"HARRY!" she shouted. "WE'VE GOT A—!"

The cloister bell rung.

The TARDIS veered off course.

For a moment, everything was a blur of colour and the ringing of sound. Harry, Ron and Hermione collided and rolled, none of them could tell where they were going as the console room spun around and around and upside down; Harry's broomstick tail ended up in Ron's mouth and Hermione's hand got crushed by someone's foot. She yelped in pain just as the TARDIS finally stopped moving altogether.

The lights were out. Not even the emergency power sources were on.

The ship was dead.

"Uh oh," Harry said.

And, surprisingly, he meant it.

The doors burst open and bright, white light flooded in.

"THE DOC-TOR WILL COME WITH US," an electronic, monotone voice said.

Harry picked up his fez from the floor; it had fallen off in the collision.

He, Ron and Hermione stood up slowly behind the console.

"Daleks," Harry muttered, staring, blinkingly, right into the bright light.

"What do we do?" Hermione said.

"We'll have to fight them," Ron said, taking out his wand. "Again. Know any spells that rip apart metal?"

"No," Harry said. "I can't remember."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Some Auror you are!"

Harry shrugged. He patted his hair down and put the fez on. "Don't blame me," he said, striding out towards the endless white depth where the Daleks waited, "I didn't mean to regenerate into the hopeless wizard type!"

the end