Bungle in the Jungle

Prompt: Tom Riddle got lost in the jungle with Captain Kirk.

Disclaimer: This story contains characters not only from the Harry Potter universe, but the original Star Trek 1965-1967 series and is not intended to infringe on any copyrights in either universe.

The cool dimness of the Albanian forests took on a deathly silence. Something unnatural and utterly evil was hunting. The rat paused to survey the canopy until it spotted a grey squirrel foraging for nuts. The concentrated evil that was Tom Riddle, or Lord Voldemort, detached itself from the small rodent soul and flung itself at the unsuspecting squirrel, its spirit-hooks spread wide to bury deep into the small consciousness it had targeted. Then horror... A disembodied shriek of rage and terror faded from even the subconscious as the forest slowly came back to life.

~~*~~

James Kirk brightened as he saw his second-in-command waiting for him at the hallway juncture ahead. He felt Doctor McCoy quicken his step as he, too, saw the dour Vulcan.

"Well, Mr Spock, are you ready for shore leave?" the Captain asked. "I am told the planet below is lovely, with fresh air..."

"Captain, I was merely going to escort you and the doctor to the transporter room. As you know, I never voluntarily take shore leave," he said in a matter-of-fact tone as he paced beside his superior officer, hands clasped behind his back.

Spock snuck a sideways look at Doctor McCoy and noted a look of -- dare he think it? -- glee in the man's eyes!

"Mr Spock," the physician said, mirth infiltrating his voice, "according to Star Fleet Regulation 122, Section five, paragraph..."

"...six, all Starfleet personnel must take shore leave every ninety days," Spock finished. "Your point, Doctor?"

"You are overdue and I am insisting!" McCoy crossed his arms in front of his chest in mock seriousness, although the smile on his face belied that fact.

Spock sighed. "If you insist!" he acceded.

"Perhaps you can wear the Hawaiian shirt Doctor McCoy gave you for Christmas," Kirk teased.

Spock's left eyebrow rose as he crossed his arms.

'Wish I could do that!' Kirk mused, a faint smile colouring his expression as they entered the transporter room. 'If I didn't know that he was Vulcan, I'd swear he practiced in a mirror to get just the right haughtiness.'

Kirk, Spock, McCoy and two red-uniformed security personnel stepped onto the transporter platform ready to beam down. Mr Scott nodded as he programmed the coordinates and beamed them to the planet below. Montgomery Scott's instinct suddenly froze his hand on the controls, then he continued with the transport as no alarm sounded. The blip had been so quick that he assumed it might have been his imagination . . . or his paranoia acting up.

~~*~~

Ensign Uttson stumbled as they materialised on the lush green world they called the Shore Leave Planet. Tom Riddle gasped and blinked the eyes of his new host, realising he had hooked a human! Going from small rodents to an individual's body was rather disorienting; he knew he had to move his host away from the others while he 'settled in'.

The host was amenable, staring about the light forest in obedience to Voldemort's commands. Once free from observation, Tom Riddle firmed his hold and readied the man for a small spell but could not find his wand. A hint of panic entered his thoughts, as he wasn't good with wandless magic. Instead, his questing fingers found an oddly-shaped Muggle device, and his host's memories showed him how to use the 'phaser'. There was a dial for different effects, which, the host seemed to feel, needed a sentient being to show up the true potential. The 'stun' setting did very little to a tree but caused the other guard to lose consciousness.

A trill made Voldemort jump, but his host stabbed a hand down to his belt and pulled out the thing he named 'communicator'. It requested he 'check in'. Voldemort studied the thing in baffled silence, his phaser idly blazing away, forgotten in his hand. He was still trying to understand what the host was supposed to do when a voice spoke from behind him.

"Ensign, why are you blasting that bush?"

Mr Spock, always alert to aberrant behaviour, had noticed the Ensign. Spock ducked as a swathe of fire almost carved him in two, then pinched the nerve in Uttson's neck. As Spock wrapped an arm around the young man's shoulders, something coiled out of Uttson's forehead and burrowed into Spock's conscious mind, taking control of him.

Voldemort was not pleased at the change of venue, especially as it was involuntary. His last host had had such delicious predatory thoughts still to be explored. Then he felt his new host rebel, trying a very strange type of Legilimency to find him. Pleased, Tom dove deeper into the mind seeing the oddly built barriers and taboos that were walled away, plucking at them to find out what they contained. Laughter, anger, fear -- emotions rigidly controlled -- and Voldemort sniggered as he released them all.

Spock foamed and twitched, writhing in the dirt as he fought the organism in his mind for control of his body. The alien presence was malicious and dangerous, attempting to take over his mind. It laughed and thought this was better than Crucio before it seemed to writhe and depart.

Doctor McCoy and Janice Rand were strolling through the woods when they spotted Mr Spock having an epileptic fit. McCoy whipped out his tricorder and immediately scanned the helpless Vulcan, as the Yeoman bent down to check on the Commander, placing a hand on his forehead. Better safe than sorry, McCoy pressed a hypospray of sedative against Spock's neck and the Vulcan went limp. Janice screamed reflexively, then screamed again as something slammed into her mind, making her almost swallow her tongue as she felt instantly drunk. To her horror, her hands came up to weigh her breasts, then crawl all over herself, testing and checking.

'No! Or... Yes! Female, by the feel of it and...' To his dazed horror, Voldemort felt a giggle coming on as he staggered. He slapped a hand over his host's mouth to stifle it but instead gave a little skip, then a bigger one, his rather pneumatic frontal assets cantilevering, dragging the skin of his upper torso down, then bouncing back to whack himself in the face. His hand squelched his nose when another equally horrifying and impossible sensation hit. Bodily functions! He needed to... but with what? He screamed again as he attempted to discover a way out of the tunic and attached knickers she was wearing.

McCoy stared, flabbergasted, as Janice began to try and remove her clothes in a frantic scrabble, muttering about 'impossible peas'. There was something very wrong - but interesting - about the young woman's stripping, her voice cursing in Latin, then giggling madly about lack of proper plumbing. He was still fumbling out another tranquiliser when the Captain hurried over. Janice flung her arms around his neck and began kissing him wildly.

Kirk couldn't believe what was happening! He tried pushing her away - she was his Yeoman, this wasn't proper Starfleet behaviour! But she resisted his efforts. Even as Janice wriggled against him, something followed the path of her tongue and drilled into Kirk's brain with a cry of 'a real mind'. Kirk felt instantly drunk as the entity drove through his brain, plucking incidents and emotions at random. His body tossed Janice aside, while he noted, cynically, that she ran off crying rather than making an effort to resist, the Hufflepuff!

'Prettier and perkier than Bella any day,' the entity thought, then spotted Spock slowly climbing to his feet. 'Well, things are certainly looking up! I always preferred brunettes, especially males.' To Kirk's helpless horror, he realised his hand was about to perform an unforgivable, but Doctor McCoy saved his dignity with a well-placed hypospray. The entity in Kirk's head wailed in fury as it was slowly driven out of his mind and coalesced above in a fine, dirty mist of particles. It darted toward McCoy but a touch of the phaser beam drove it back into the centre of the circle until Ensign Uttson contacted Mr Scott. The particles glowed as the matter stream engulfed them but, when Mr Scott terminated the transport inside a containment field, there was nothing there.

"The ion cloud the beam passed through on the way down to the planet seemed to have gathered the cloud entity, but as the beam came back, the entity was again deposited into the cloud and lost," Mr Scott reported to the Captain later that afternoon.

"I think we can put this incident down to a learning curve and call it case closed," Kirk decided with a shudder.

~~*~~

Tom Riddle slammed down again into another consciousness and immediately felt the difference. This was a real mind, a wizarding mind, a weak and useful mind. This was a Quirrell, not a squirrel, it had a real wand, and...

"Oh Merlin, why me?" Tom Riddle asked, looking for a convenient tree as his new body's functions kicked in!