Why is it always me that puts a foot in it?

"You don’t?” 

"Yes, but it wasn’t to your own moon."

Harry was half in love with Sarah Jane Smith, and he didn’t even know it. Or perhaps he did know it, but had pushed the idea so for to the back of his mind that it no longer registered. They had a close and special friendship, but ultimately he was like the faithful family friend, and even more ultimately than that, he knew she found him a bit irritating. But she was his ideal. And she’d spoilt him, because he judged everyone else against her without realising it.

There had been just Sarah and Harry. “I think it’s the middle of the night,‟ he’d said. “It looks cold out there.‟ “It’s always cold in Scotland,‟ she‟d said. “I’m going to get a jumper. You should wrap up too.‟ “I’ll be fine,” he’d said. “I’ve got a coat.‟ But she’d grabbed the enormous scarf from the coat rack and wound it round his neck anyway. It went round twice and still trailed on the floor. “There you go,‟ she’d said. “That’ll keep you warm. Now, I won’t be a minute.‟ “I might have a look around while I’m waiting,” he’d said. “Well, don’t go far,” she’d said. “I won‟t believe we’re where we’re supposed to be until he proves it to me.

Rose, on the whole, liked to think of herself as not stupid — or at least, not as stupid as she could be. For a girl with no A-levels who’d refused to go into sixth form and had become a shop girl instead, she was fairly intelligent. After all, her grades in school hadn’t been all bad, and when she actually was interested in what she was learning, her capacity to remember, repeat it back, and understand skyrocketed immensely. And yet, despite how long she’d been in the TARDIS and how many times she’d tried to understand how the bloody thing’s corridors actually worked, she’d gotten no further at all.

Harry was no closer to understanding how "bigger on the inside" worked now than he was the first time he set foot inside the TARDIS, at the Doctor's behest, for no other reason than to prove to him that it couldn't be done. He was a reasonable man, and police boxes, after all, didn't go careering around all over the place. Except when they did. The Doctor, in his own way, had tried to explain to him, how it all worked, but "bigger on the inside" didn't account for all of it, the roaming rooms, the disappearing kitchen.

Sarah stood back up the second that she heard him say that he could manage. Honestly, if Harry didn’t just let her help him soon.. She watched him for a little while, seeing as he tried to free his arms from the incredible mess he had made there on top of him. She let out an impatient sigh.

There was a moment, brief, mind, where Harry considered not taking Sarah's hand on principle to salvage the fragmented remains of his wounded pride, but pride was a fool's fortress, and he'd had quite enough of foolishness for one day. He didn't want to chance bringing down a second barrage of boxes on Sarah by making a fuss while she was trying to dig him out, nevertheless, that didn't stop him from giving his legs a petulant wiggle as they were uncovered bit by bit. "I say, I don't expect you'd notice a bit more mess in here." He imagined he could pull himself out on his own at this point if he tried, but on the other hand, given his luck and coordination, he was just as likely, maybe even more so, to make things worse.

Aria bit her lip, the way he’d drawn up his posture making him seem impossibly bigger. He carried himself confidently, every inch the man Sarah had described him as, and she was caught between feeling awestruck and slightly terrified of the man she’d heard stories about as a child, the two sides of her creating an interesting dichotomy until he seemed to relax a bit.

Harry fiddled with his blazer in embarrassed silence. He wasn't going to apologize. He hadn't said anything unwarranted, in retrospect, he supposed he could have handled the situation with a bit more sangfroid, but he had reacted without thinking, allowing that judgmental voice in his brain that he attributed to being a physician to hold the reigns, and while he didn't regret speaking up, he would have liked it to have been said with a bit less hostility.