multiversallogs | (no subject)

Who: Hermione Granger, Martha Jones
What: Tea and a chat. (And Hermione not realising that this is the Snape-Jones Cottage as opposed to just the Jones Cottage).
Where: Barrackham train station, then the Snape-Jones Cottage
When: day of Hermione's arrival.
Warnings: TBA, probably none.

Hermione had realised on the train that she had no idea what she was getting into- or who, really, she was meeting. It was enough to make her pause before messaging Martha- but what choice did she have, really? There were countless strangers here, and Martha's trustworthiness had been vouched for in the strongest terms. Admittedly, Snape had been the one to tell her that- but after everything which had been revealed to her about him, she had to take his word for it.

Anyway, for someone Snape seemed to hold in such high regard (even telling her to be polite to her- if she hadn't known better, Hermione would have wondered if there was some kind of romantic entanglement or something there, but by merit of who he was the thought wasn't even properly addressed) she seemed inordinately nice. Friendly, even. Cheerful, in fact.

It was probably a little stupid and incautious, but after the day she'd had, the prospect of tea with someone cheerful certainly wasn't unwelcome.

She stood in the train station feeling awkward, dressed in a dark trouser suit and trying to look as if she knew her way around perfectly well, though she took nervous looks at signs and the frown on her face never quite left. The train journey had made her realise how big the city really was, and how many different types of people it housed, not to mention the surprising normality of the city's daily life; there were people in uniforms, people going to work, people with shopping in their arms- and stranger things, too, but she knew enough not to stare too eagerly. And now she was adrift in the middle of it all, endeavouring to seem both harmless and unharmable.

She found herself hoping- rather nervously- that Dr Jones wouldn't be late.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Chuckling, Martha nodded. "It was his standard operating procedure really. In the time I traveled with him, we only ever ended up not in the middle of something twice, and that was because I insisted on it." The time after 1915, and the 1969, when he felt that he owed her. There probably would have been another one following the year, but she'd decided to step away before then.

"Well, the two of us stepped out onto the balcony, and as we were standing out there and looking, then all of a sudden ships landed. Real alien space ships just appearing out of no where. As we watched, the Doctor explained to me what they were."

She paused here, and gestured to her head, forming a box with her hands. "They were space rhinos, called the Judoon and they were intergalactic police thugs."

Blink. "Space rhinos." Frown. "Intergalactic policing space rhinos."

Her eyebrows quirked up; okay, she was still suspending her disbelief. "Doesn't sound boring, at least. It's against...intergalactic law to transport a hospital to the moon, then?"

Yes, Martha knew that frown, and it made her grin. She couldn't help it, because Hermione reminded her of one of the other times that she had told this story, to a listener who had a very similar reaction.

"Actually, it's against intergalactic law to hunt people on Earth. See, we're a class three planet, and we're not civilized enough to interact with. They think of us a bit like plankton, really. But they were hunting a plasmavore who had killed a princess."