DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Harry Potter.

Chapter One

Somewhere in Scotland

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

January 16th, 1976

James bolted awake from a slumber that was plagued by that day five years ago. The day he had lost his sister. He would never forget it. Not when it haunted every minute of his life. . .

When he couldn't find his sister he had ran the whole way back to the manor and told his parents. Within ten minutes the entire grounds had been covered with Aurors searching for Buffy. His father's Ministry position of Head Auror ensured his daughter's disappearance had become top priority. It didn't help, though. They never found her or any trace to where she might have been taken.

Buffy's disappearance devastated his parents. He guessed losing a child would devastate anyone really. They just were never the same. His father never gave up looking for her, constantly checking out any possible leads, even when everyone kept telling him that she was gone. His mother – his poor mother – her health declined significantly with her grief, causing her to become sickly. It was only this past year that they've seen any improvement.

Even when he confessed to them in an explosive breakdown that he was the cause of Buffy being beyond the wards, his father and mother never blamed him. But they didn't have to, he blamed himself.

Not once had he ever listened when someone told him it wasn't his fault, because he knew better. It was his fault. If he hadn't pushed for them to explore past the wards then she would still be here. She would've been with him when he started Hogwarts, when he was sorted into Gryffindor, when he had made friends. . . They would've been together like they have been since they were in the womb. They would've never been separated.

And there wouldn't ever have been a possibility that she was. . . that she was dead.

No. . . no one could ever tell him it wasn't his fault, because it was.

James wiped away the tears that fell from thinking about his sister and glanced around the darken room. He was thankful that his roommates were still fast asleep. All three may be his best friends, but it didn't mean he wanted them to be constant witnesses to his emotional weakness. He did have some pride.

After getting himself under a control he's mastered over the years, he got up – unable to stay in bed any longer – and glanced at the mechanical clock at the far end of the room. 5:16 am. He groaned at the early hour. What was he suppose to do until the Great Hall opened for breakfast at 6:30 am? Study? Yeah, right. He looked over at Sirius Black in the bed next to his and smirked. If he was going to suffer from lack of sleep, then he was going to make sure his best mate suffered with him too.

He grabbed his wand off the night table and pointed it at Sirius, whispering, "Aguamenti." A jet of water shot right into Sirius's face, causing him to jerk awake, spluttering and coughing.

"What?" Sirius spoke in confusion as James snickered lowly to avoid waking the others. That drew Sirius's attention to him. "James! Why the blazing – "

"Shhh. . ." James interrupted with a finger over his mouth. "You'll wake the others up," he whispered.

Sirius looked annoyed, but began again in a whisper nonetheless. "Why the blazing did you just try to drown me in my sleep?"

James shrugged. "I couldn't sleep."

Nothing more needed to be said for Sirius to know his meaning. Sirius nodded and sat up, rubbing his face tiredly. They were the closest among their small group of friends. Sirius was the first to find out about his sister back in third year during the Christmas holidays. Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, his other two best friends, didn't find out until the end of fourth year.

It wasn't like he didn't trust Remus and Peter, especially with Remus having told them his darkest secret of being a werewolf in second year, but it was just always different with Sirius. They have grown to be almost as close as brothers.

Sirius gasped once he turned toward the clock. "Did you not see the ungodly hour it is?" he whispered while facing him again.

He grinned, completely unapologetic. "Why do you think I woke you up? I would have gotten bored all by my lonesome." He got a pillow in the face for that one.

They worked on their yearly end-of-the-year prank down in the common room until Remus came down at 6:51 am. "And here I thought I was imagining things. What are you two doing up so early? I normally have to drag you both out of bed an hour from now."

"I couldn't sleep," James said as he jotted down one final line of ideas for that year's prank. Their planning for the end-of-the-year prank began upon their return from Christmas holidays. "Maybe on our break today Moony, you can look at some of these ideas and see if we can pull them off in our time frame." He smoothly continued on, hopefully quite clear that he didn't want to talk about his sleeping troubles.

Remus apparently got the silent message, because he said, "Our time frame's going to have to be slimmer this year, especially with our O.W.L.s coming up."

James and Sirius had similar grimaces on their faces. "You put a great damper on things, mate," Sirius said while stretching out his limbs. "We have History of Magic today, don't we?" At Remus's nod, Sirius continued with a dreamy smile, "At least I'll be able to sleep then. And if I'm lucky I won't drown."

Remus's brows furrowed in confusion, which had James chuckling as he rolled up their prank plans and got up. He patted Remus's shoulder and said, "I 'Aguamenti' him." That cleared the confusion up and caused an amused smile to form. "Come on, Padfoot, let's get dressed so we can go get some breakfast." Since they were still in their pajamas bottoms and plain t-shirts while Remus was already dressed in his Gryffindor uniform.

"Do I have to?" Sirius whined. "I'm comfy."

James looked over to Remus, who looked back at him. They shared mischievous grins before turning back to Sirius. The latter's eyes flickered between them and quickly became nervous. Before Sirius could react, James drew his wand and said, "Incarcerous." Ropes burst from the tip of his wand and wrapped tightly around Sirius.

Sirius immediately began struggling against the binds. "Oh come on, Prongs! Get these things off me!"

"Wingardium Leviosa," Remus said next, both of them ignoring Sirius's complaints.

"Moony!" Sirius protested as he was lifted into the air and began to float across the common room on his back. Sirius sighed in what sounded like defeat and dropped his head back so he could stare at Remus and him from an upside-down view. "I could have walked, you know. But this works too." He smiled, closed his eyes, and leaned back further. "I don't have to expend the extra energy."

They got to the stairs that led up to the boys' dormitories and Remus purposely let Sirius's head hit the wall. "Ow! Will you watch where you're leading me. I'm fragile."

James snorted while Remus merely said, "Oops."

Sirius suffered from a few more bangs, ensuring he didn't enjoy the ride at all by the time they made it to their room. James and Remus were openly laughing at their friend while Sirius was cursing up a storm, all three uncaring about their remaining friend sleeping in his bed.

Once Sirius was over his bed both James and Remus released their friend, causing him to fall several feet to the bed with what sounded like a very girly yelp. The best part though was that he bounced right off the bed and landed on the floor with a loud thud.

James collapsed to the floor, clutching his sides from the laughter racking through his body. He heard Remus laughing, but he didn't have strength to see if he were still on his feet unlike himself.

"What's going on?" came Peter's tired voice.

"Nothing, Wormtail." he heard Sirius reply over his and Remus's laughter. "Just planning on how I'm going to kill Prongs and Moony."

"Oh, okay."

His laughter slowly died down to a chuckle here and there as Sirius's head appeared from above the side of the bed. "Having fun down there?"

James rolled until he was laying on his back on the hard floor. "Loads," he replied with a cheeky smile.

"I will get you two back for this."

He looked over at Remus, who appeared to have kept himself upright by holding onto one of the post of his four-posted bed, and started to laugh all over again. Remus too began to laugh again. Sirius appeared to fight with himself to keep a straight face, but he soon lost and laughed along with him and Remus.

After another thirty minutes of getting Peter out of bed and the three of them getting dressed while Remus waited, they headed back down to the common room on their route to the Great Hall.

"Lily!" James exclaimed upon seeing the fiery red-head about to exit the portrait hole.

She stopped and turned back to him with a scowl on her face. "What do you want, Potter?"

He gasped in mock shock and placed his hand on his chest. "I'm hurt. I was just going to say, 'good morning'."

"I don't need your pleasantries." She then stalked out of the portrait hole, leaving him deflated at seeing his long time crush walk away once again.

An arm was slung over his shoulder. "Lily!" Sirius mimicked in a much higher pitch. "When are you going to give up on that girl? It's obvious she wants nothing to do with you," he said as they past through the portrait hole.

"When she gets married to someone else." Otherwise he wouldn't give up.

Although, he did have a lot of things going against him. It probably hasn't helped one bit that he had targeted her for the first two years of Hogwarts to test minor pranks on, which resulted in her not approving of any of their pranks that followed. Nor did she like the way they treated Snivellus and the few students who got on the wrong side of them.

But she didn't know. She couldn't possibly understand. There was a reason why he was the way he was – why he lashed out at others through pranks. There was a reason why at times that even he knew he was being cruel, but never stopped. It helped him to forget. Even if it was only for a moment, he forgot the guilt and the despair of losing his sister. It wasn't the healthiest way to deal, but it was the only thing he found that worked.

"And where is your girlfriend of the week, Padfoot?" questioned Remus in his obvious attempt to steer the conversation away from his utter failure in enamoring Lily Evans.

James finally noticed that Sirius's arm has been vacant since they left the tower and they were already halfway to the Great Hall. "Yeah, what's her name again? Sydney?"

"Serena," Sirius corrected.

James rolled his eyes at Remus, like her name really mattered. It was hard to keep up with all their names when Sirius never kept a girlfriend must longer than a week. He did have one for two weeks once, but that was the record.

"We broke up after supper yesterday."

"Didn't you two start going out on Monday?" Remus asked, sounding astonished.

"That's three days," James said, feeling just as astonished as Remus sounded.

Sirius shrugged. "She talked too much." Like that was a perfectly reasonable excuse. "You know that lunch I shared with her on Tuesday. That's all she did. She talked and talked and talked. I purposely didn't say a word to see if she would keep going. . . and she did. She never stopped." Alright, maybe breaking up with her was understandable.

"I could have told you she talked too much." They all turned to Peter when he said that. "I share a class with her and she hardly does anything else but talk."

"What?!" exclaimed Sirius, "You knew and you didn't warn me!"

"Like you would've listened to me anyway," Peter argued, and he says this in a loose term, since Peter rarely disagreed with them on anything. "You would've just claimed I liked her or something."

"Do you?" Sirius perked in interest. "Because you can have her, mate. I definitely don't want her."

Remus swatted Sirius on the back of the head and reprimanded, "She's not some pet you can pass to the next person."

"You sure about that, Moony? Because she surely sounded like a dog with her constant barking."

"You're one to talk about barking, Padfoot," James teased. "If I recall correctly you even like to chase your own tail."

Sirius shoved him, "Oh, shut it." which only caused him to chuckle.

They made it to the Great Hall, where many students had already began to congregate, and went over to the Gryffindor table to eat. James caught sight of Lily sitting by herself further down the table reading a book while she ate as he sat down next to Sirius. Remus and Peter sat across from them that held the view of the Slytherin table. He pulled his eyes away from her only when Sirius manhandled his face forward. That resulted in the hand being smacked away, getting the annoying hint, and began piling food on his plate.

The mail came in twenty minutes later, his copy of the Daily Prophet landing right in his porridge. A snort sounded from Sirius, and he automatically flicked his paper in his direction, causing bits of porridge to splatter on him. He suspected Sirius would have retaliated if he hadn't unfolded the Daily Prophet, revealing the front page story of another attack on a muggle-born's family.

"Another one. . ." he heard Sirius say in a voice filled with disgust before asking louder, "How many does that make now?"

"I believe it's the second one since the school year started." Remus answered, having his own paper in his hands and looking more concerned the longer he read the article.

James couldn't blame Remus, this recent attack was by far the most brutal with the continuous torture of the three victims and the sexual assault of the only woman. The paper stated that there was one survivor upon the arrival of the Aurors, but the man soon died from his injuries. It was clear with the Dark Mark hovering above the household that the perpetrators were non-other than Death Eaters.

Death Eaters. . .

They are a group of witches and wizards who chose to side with a dark wizard named Voldemort. A man who wanted to rid the Wizarding World of muggle-borns and half-bloods. Death Eaters are his followers and believe in his ideals.

James first heard the words 'Death Eaters' from a few Aurors that searched for his sister, but he hadn't known what they meant until he started attending Hogwarts and began hearing students talk about them. He had been ignorant then. He may have been a pure-blood, but his parents had kept him and his sister shielded from the dangers of the world. Ones that would have targeted them because of his father's position in the Ministry.

If he had known there had been a threat as dangerous as the Death Eaters, if he had known there was threat at all, then he would have never even considered passing the protection of the wards. He would have never took that chance. Especially not with his sister's life.

And now he will always question every time he read about an attack by the Death Eaters if they were the ones who took his sister. Then that thought only brought horrors to his mind at what they could have done to her. He never liked thinking to that point, because he always imagined the worst. And that worst was getting more depraved as each attack was reported.

He just prayed each time the name 'Death Eaters' was brought up that they weren't the ones who took Buffy. . .

"This was never your life.

Not really. . .

Somehow you were called as a slayer in a dimension that the slayer line had long since died out of.

And you were powerful.

So we took you, aged you, sealed your memories and magic, and sent you to another dimension that needed you the most.

It was your destiny. . . You were the Chosen One."

Energy crackled and popped, heating the atmosphere with its intensity as Buffy and Dawn stood on top of the rickety tower. Buffy stared out at the horizon where the sun was just rising. She knew, right then, that it was the end. The portal was open and the barriers between the dimensions were collapsing with each second that ticked by. There wasn't much time left. . .

She turned back to Dawn, and her sister must have seen something in her face, because the next thing her eyes are widening in realization. "Buffy. . . No!"

"Dawnie, I have to," she tried to soothe Dawn. There was no other option. The portal needed the blood to stop for it to close. With Dawn being made out of her, the only way for it to close was for either her or Dawn to jump. And she would die first before she would ever allow her sister to.

Dawn's features crumpled in anguish. "No!" Tears gathering in her eyes.

Buffy gently placed her hands on both sides of Dawn's face. "This is the work I have to do." The tears fell then, and she wiped them away with her thumb. She then leaned in and kissed her sister's cheek.

When she leaned back she shared one more looked with her sister before turning and running to the edge of the platform. She swan-dived off and fell right into the portal.

The pain was excruciating, like a million little needles pricking every part of her body, inside and out. She was going to die. It was a simple fact, but why did she still feel like there was something missing even with the prospect of finally being able to rest.

She could remember that emptiness starting when she became the Slayer. She thought it was because she felt isolated from everyone else. She had no future. She was going to die young and most likely alone. How could anyone understand? But it was in her last seconds that she finally knew the real reason. . .

This was never her home.

Tears slipped from the corner of her eyes as her memories returned of the life she was taken from. Memories of her most previous person – her twin brother. Jamie. . . She would never get to see him again. I'm so sorry. . . Then the darkness overtook her.

"But you've fulfilled your role and now it's time for you to go home.

To the life we stole you from.

You've done good, kid. Better than we could have ever hoped for.

We own you big.

That's why the Powers are going to give you one wish if you ever have the need for it.

One wish, that no matter what it is, will be granted.

Good luck, kid.

You're going to need it.

For your hard times are not just going to end here."

James turned toward the head table when clapping was heard over the increasing volume of the other students talking about the main article from the Daily Prophet. The Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, stood at the podium waiting for the noise to quiet. It was only a moment later when the whole Great Hall settled into silence.

"All of you by now have heard of the latest attack by Voldemort's followers." There were various responses to the monster's name being spoken out loud, but none seemed to have bothered Dumbledore. "This was a heinous crime that was committed –"

A crack of energy flashed across the enchanted ceiling, interrupting whatever Dumbledore was going to say. That was strange, James thought, since the sky was clear otherwise. He turned back to Dumbledore, who – along with the rest of the staff – were still staring at the ceiling.

Smaller flashes had him focusing back on the ceiling also, taking in the strange phenomenon. Then a much larger bolt of energy flashed, causing a deafening thunder of sound to fill the room. It was quickly followed by a continuous series of crackling energy that grew to cover the entire center of the Great Hall.

"What the bleeding hell is that?" Sirius questioned as they shielded their eyes from the blinding light of the building energy.

He didn't believe he had to answer that, since the other should know he had no idea.

"All students are to move immediately to the side walls!" came Dumbledore's amplified voice over the thundering noise. "I say again, all students are to move immediately to the side walls!"

James didn't waste any time in grabbing Sirius's arm and forcing his best friend in following him over the table. They found Remus and Peter easy enough and stood next to them. James looked in the direction of where he thought Lily would be, but he couldn't find her. He cursed, then brought his wand out like many of his fellow students were doing and got in a defensive position.

It went unsaid that the three older years would stand as a line of protection in front of the four younger years. No one knew what was going on. It could be an attack by Death Eaters for all they knew. One couldn't be too sure nowadays.

The crackling energy flashed brightly right before someone dropped out of it, landing with a brutal crash on the Ravenclaw table.

James and all the others around him tensed at the sudden appearance, fully ready for a fight. All the while, the bundle of crackling energy disappeared as dramatically as it appeared, leaving an eerie silence behind as all eyes remained on the unmoving figure.

"Everyone is to remain where they are," Dumbledore said while he, the Deputy Headmistress and Transfiguration Professor Minerva McGonagall, and that years Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Carrick Rukin approached the figure with their wands raised.

As they neared, McGonagall gasped, startling a few. "Dear lord, Albus. She's just a young girl." James heard her say.

Dumbledore said something that he couldn't quite hear, but Professor Rukin's response carried. "Is that wise, Albus? She just appeared out of a mystical portal inside of Hogwarts. That takes quite a bit of skill in the Dark Arts and you want to take her to the Infirmary. She could be dangerous."

"And she could not be." Dumbledore, his voice louder and easier to hear. "We won't know until she wakes up. But in order for that to happen she needs to be treated for the injuries she has. So if you would excuse me." Dumbledore turned away from Professor Rukin and proceeded to point his wand at the mysterious girl. She was magically lifted several feet from the table and carefully turned until she was lying on her back.

James breath caught in his throat at the sight of the girl's features. Even after five years and a bit of maturity, he would recognize those features anywhere. Those were the features he grew up with. . . Those were the features he desperately missed and was terrified of never seeing again. . .

Without taking his eyes off her, terribly afraid she might just disappear again, he began to make his way to where the Professors were taking her out of the Great Hall. He heard Sirius call his name, but his urgency to get to her had him running the rest of the way, ignoring everything else around him.

He was stopped though by Professor Rukin before he could get within five feet of her. "Let go of me!" he struggled, "I know who she is!"

That got their attention as all three sets of eyes settled on him. He could feel more on his back, but he hardly paid any attention to those. All that mattered to him right then was right there just out of his reach.

"Mr. Potter. . ." Dumbledore was the one to speak. "How do you know this young lady?"

"She's my sister."