Buffy sat on her couch with her friends watching some really boring TV show. She had been done packing hours ago and now she was wa€iting impatiently for the magic guys´ to arrive. They hadn't said a specific hour but she thought they'd be here by now. She hated waiting especially when she was going to be gone for a while and all she wanted to do was get the annoying emotional goodbyes over with.
It had been hard enough yesterday. Sure she had had a lot of fun but still you could feel that something wasn't like that it wasn't like it used to be. Like something was changing and it was. She was going to be gone for a whole year in England of all places attending a magic school. Buffy really doubted that this was going to end well. Her track record with school wasn't that good, she had been expelled twice and she wasn't that good of a student. Add that with the fact that she had never learnt anything about magic and was now going to magic school as a sixth year. To say that she was a little worried was an understatement.
After another awkward couple of minutes the long awaited knock on the door was finally heard. "I'll get it" Buffy yelled as she leapt off of the sofa to answer the door.
"Hey Dumby, Rulup" Buffy greeted as she threw open the door and waved them into the house.
"You do realize that those are not are names right?" The younger man asked smiling.
"I know I just thought I'd spice things up a bit". She answered as she skipped into the living room to introduce them to her friends.
When they entered the living room all eyes where on them. They hadn't expected this many people to be here just maybe Buffy and her mother but apparently she'd brought all her friends. Which they couldn't complain about since they told her she could decide who to tell and what.
"This is my mother Joyce" Buffy said pointing at a blonde kind looking woman sitting on a chair next to an older man "and this" she said pointing to the man this time "is Rupert Giles but everyone just calls him Giles he's the librarian" Buffy explained. She couldn't just tell them that he was her watcher. "And these" Buffy said pointing at the teenagers on the sofa "are my friends Willow, Xander, Cordelia and Oz". When she was done they all gave a little wave and said hi.
"I think I'm just gonna leave your introduction up to you. I'll just mess it up anyways". She said as she sat down on the floor next to her friends.
"It's very nice to meet all of you" Dumbledore began "I'm Albus Dumbledore headmaster of the school Buffy will be attending this fall".
"They all know about the magic stuff" Buffy said when she heard that he'd left out the Hogwrats and the magic stuff. Basically everything that was cool.
"Oh well alright then" Dumbledore said with a twinkle in his eye then began his famous introduction speech. "I am Albus Dumbledore headmaster of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry".
"Impressive". Came Oz's response, always a man with few words.
"Yeah it was pretty cool" Xander said. "But maybe you could have do some kind of hand gesture you know to bring up the mood".
"I thought it was perfect" Willow said not wanting the old man to get hurt by Xander's little suggestions.
"Are you sure you haven't stolen that from some guy and your look? You really remind me of someone". Cordelia said deep in thought. It wasn't like her to not come up with it right away.
"It's Gandalf" Buffy answered completely sure that that was who Cordelia was talking about. "You know from Lord of the Rings. I had the same thought the first time I saw him". A few seconds later after it was already out of her mouth Buffy immediately regretted it.
"Oh my god I just had the same thought as Cordy". Buffy said wrinkling her nose completely grossed out by the fact.
"Hey I'm not so happy about it ether!" the cheerleader tried to defend herself.
"Let's just never talk about this ever again" Buffy said eyes wide looking down on her hands.
"Deal" Cordelia whole heartedly agreed.
"Maybe we should move on to the more pressing matters," Lupin said looking over at the packed suitcases with a smirk on his face "I'm guessing that you changed your mind then?"
"Yeah but it wasn't because of anything you said" Buffy said trying to wipe that annoying smirk of his face. She hated it when she was wrong.
"I'm sure it wasn't" came his retort as he walked over to her bags and then pointed his wand at them.
"What are you doing" Buffy screamed as she ran over to her bags and positioned herself in front of them. "Don't hurt them. What did they do to you? They're innocent!" she started to panic.
"I'm not going to hurt them, Buffy, I was just going to shrink them so that they can fit in your pocket so you wouldn't have to carry them". Remus said with an amused expression on his face.
"Ooohh" Buffy said looking down at the floor her face flaming red she was so immersed. "I'm just gonna go over there in the corner and keep my mouth shut from now on". She began to walk away.
When Remus was done he walked back to the others but couldn't stop himself from asking," let me get this straight you thought that I was going to kill your bags so you jumped in front of them and were going to sacrifice yourself for them?" He couldn't keep a straight face at the end and burst out laughing together with everyone else.
"I wasn't thinking okay? I, I just have some very valuable things in there". Buffy huffed and crossed her arms across her chest.
"Like what? Your lipstick?" Xander asked mockingly and they all burst out laughing again.
"Really not helping Xand" Buffy said and shoot him a glare.
"Sorry Buff but it was just to good to pass by" he answered not wanting to get on Buffy's bad side knowing from personal experience how bad that could be.
"Whatever" Buffy said and glared openly at all of them from her seat on the floor. "It's really getting easier and easier for me to say goodbye now".
"They were only joking, Buffy". Came her mother's kind voice.
"I know. Let's just get this over with. I don't think I can handle more waiting". She didn't want to hurt their feeling but she had had enough of the waiting part and just wanted to get to England.
"How are you traveling?" asked Giles trying not to sound too interested but failing miserably.
"By portkey. It's when you…" Dumbledore began to explain but got cut of by Giles.
"Put a charm on an object and then hold on to it at the time you set it and you get sent to the place you wanted when you said the spell". Giles said excitedly.
"That would be correct but if you don't mind me asking how do you know that?" The headmaster asked suspiciously.
To late Giles caught his mistake. "Well when I was younger I loved learning about magic and I borrowed a great deal of books on it". Giles lied and Buffy had to admit that she was pretty impressed. "One of the books had a whole chapter about portkeys".
"Alright then" Said Dumbledore still sounding suspicious but thankfully it seemed that he had let it go for the time being. "It will activate in about ten minutes so you should start saying your goodbyes". He said looking at Buffy.
The goodbyes were just as hard as Buffy had imagined. There were a lot of tears mostly from her mother and Willow but some from herself as well. Xander was trying to put on a brave front but Buffy knew he wasn't happy about this. Ox seemed a bit sad but you can never really tell even Cordy seemed a little upset but quickly hid it. Of them all Giles was the hardest for Buffy. She was so used to always having him around and being able to count on him. How she was going to survive without him she had no idea.
During the whole exchange Dumbledore and Remus stood quietly and just watched as Buffy said her goodbyes. When it was time to go they waved her over and she began walking over to them slowly. She grabbed a hold on the portkey (a boot) and looked at her friends with tears streaming down her face. She closed her eyes as she felt a weird tugging sensation behind her naval as if an invisible force pushed her forward. When she opened her eyes again she was lying on the ground and when she looked up she saw that Remus and Lupin were looking down on her trying to hide their smiles.
"Great" she said as she got to her feet "Now I'm all dirty, you couldn't have warned me about that could you?" she was getting a little annoyed.
"That can be fixed" Said Dumbledore as he mumbled some spell. When Buffy looked down on her clothes again they were clean.
"Thanks" she told her future headmaster "I knew there had to be benefits with magic".
"There most certainly are" replied Remus as Dumbledore began to search his robe for something.
"Ah, here it is," he told them as he brought out a piece of paper with it came a lot of candy wrappers that he just pushed down in his pocket again. "Read this and memorize it when your done give it back to me".
"Um sure" Buffy said a bit uncertainly wondering what this was all about but took it anyways. She looked down on it and saw that with beautiful handwriting it said:
The Headquarters of the Order of Phoenix may be found at number twelve. Grimmauld Place, London.
"But I thought we were going to…" she began confused but Remus cut her off.
"Just read it Buffy" They were both acting really weird looking around everywhere it looked like they were checking to see if they were being watched.
"Here" she said giving it back to Dumbledore. She had no clue what was going on and it was beginning to scare her a little.
Dumbledore took the paper and using his wand set fire to it. Buffy watched as the paper turned into ash and then started looking around at the houses. She saw number ten and thirteen but couldn't see number eleven.
Luckily Lupin saw the confused state Buffy was in and said quietly "Think about what you just read" which only served to make things worse for her. After a few moments she got it and started to really think about what had been written on the piece of paper. As soon as she got to the part that had said number twelve Grimmauld place she saw a dirty old house appear between numbers eleven and thirteen.
"What's going on?" she asked as she stared in disbelief at the shabby looking house.
"We'll explain everything when we get inside" Dumbledore said and began walking to the house.
"Let's go" Lupin said as he began to walk ushering Buffy in front of him.
When they got to the door Dumbledore taped his wand against it once and the door cracked open. "Go inside Buffy, but not to far and don't touch anything".
This was really freaking her out. Maybe they'd just tricked her and really wanted to kill her. They probably knew she was the slayer and set up this trap and she was stupid enough to go along with it. But as much as Buffy wanted to run away she couldn't. it was like something was keeping her there. Her curiosity got the better of her and she walked in longer than she had intended till she saw a flight of stairs.
I'm sure they wouldn't mind´ Buffy tried to convince herself and it wasn't really that hard. I'll just look around a little. I'll be back before the even notice that I'm gone´.
She began to walk up the stairs and jumped a bit when they creaked but continued to walk. The house looked very old and was really dirty with spider webs in very corner and dust everywhere. It looked a lot like one of those hunted houses at a carnival.
When Lupin and Dumbledore finally got inside Buffy was nowhere to be seen. It was late and nobody was up so they couldn't shout out her name instead they decided to split up and go look for her. Dumbledore took the downstairs and Lupin took the second floor.
The headmaster was just about to give up when he saw that a light was on in the kitchen. He walked slowly to the door and pushed it open gently stepping inside. But it was not Buffy who was sitting on the counter it was Harry.
"Let me guess she wasn't done with the whole processing thing yet?" Harry said annoyed when he saw Dumbledore coming into the kitchen alone. He had really thought she was going to be with them this time.
"Actually…" Dumbledore began but was cut of.
"I'm right here" said Buffy as she entered the kitchen with a smirk on her face. "And I don't take that long processing stuff!" She crossed her arms across her chest and stared at her brother.
HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPI'm sorry if this wasn't how you had wanted them to meet. To tell you the truth I'm not sure if I like it that much ether but I didn't have any other ideas so I went with this one. I'd love to hear what you think about it.
Thanks for all the reviews for the previous chapter I love reading them especially your ideas. So if you see anything familiar in this story it's because I liked it too much and just had to have it in my story. Oh and thanks magicaltears for you sympathies. I loved your bangel rant it made me feel much better. Unfortunately I wasn't planning to make it a Buffy/angel story but if I was I'd totally go with your idea.
And lastly thanks to Shezzi for being such a great beta reader even when she doesn't have the time.
