Chapter 8
Every single person that came into the room had his or her wand pointed at the intruders. Dumbledore's group immediately identified them as aurors. Buffy and her friends, trained by many years on the hellmouth, instantly dropped into a defensive crouch and moved to strategic positions where they could leap into action at a moments notice. Because of that, more wands were pointed towards them than at Dumbledore's group. Willow and Tara looked at ease but both of them were ready to take down their aura dampening shields and start flinging spells around.
Dumbledore strode forward and held up his hand. "Wait," he shouted.
"Dumbledore?" one of the aurors said, surprised. "What are you doing here."
"Hello Thompson," Dumbledore identified the auror. "We just wanted to examine this particular artifact that apparently claimed Sirus's life."
Before Thompson could reply, another voice was heard from the doorway.
"Dumbledore," screeched Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. "What are you doing here, trespassing in the inner sanctum of the Department of Mysteries!"
"Cornelius," Dumbledore greeted the minister. "We merely wanted to examine this artifact here in the hopes that we might be able to bring Sirus back to us."
'So that's Cornelius Fudge,' thought the Scooby Gang.
"Impossible," Fudge protested. "We witnessed him falling through the veil. There's no way he could be alive."
"Indeed," a voice behind Fudge said silkily. Dumbledore's group tensed noticeably as Lucius Malfoy strode into the room. Evidently, Fudge had believed Malfoy's protestations of innocence despite the testimony of Dumbledore. "Even so, you could have arranged it with us to bring you here, instead of breaking in. You broke in once before but since it was to save your students, the ministry did not want to press charges. But this time, there was no such emergency, isn't there." Malfoy smiled nastily as he tried to get Dumbledore and his group into trouble.
"But it is an emergency," Willow burst out. All eyes turned towards her and she blushed, but still continued bravely. "Sirus may still be alive but every moment spent in wherever he is at the moment is another moment that he's in danger. If we had to go through you, we'd have needed a day or more to even see this place and that day may mean the difference between life and death for Mr Black."
"Interesting assumption, child," Malfoy said in a dismissive tone, but his eyes were cold as he fixed Willow with a hard stare. However, if he was hoping that Willow would be intimidated, he was disappointed. After facing off against a hell goddess, there wasn't a lot of things that could intimidate Willow as well as the rest of the Scoobies.
Anya spoke up helpfully. "Actually, the difference between life and death doesn't require a day. It only requires a second for someone to go from being alive to being dead."
"Then we're wasting time," Buffy said decisively. "Wills, what have you found out?"
"Well, from the energy patterns of the portal, it's definitely a one-way portal and it definitely leads to another dimension. Since I've identified the energy pattern, I can be reasonably sure I can find the dimension he's in," Willow responded. "If I use that energy pattern with a viewing spell and combine it with a scrying spell, I can not only find out if he's alive, but where he is if he's not dead."
"Portal?" Fudge asked. He was ignored by everybody who was concentrating on what Willow had said.
"Then do it," Buffy said.
"You realize, of course, that what you're proposing is ludicrous," Malfoy said with a chilling smile. "Viewing spells in other dimensions take up much more power than even what a group of thirteen can handle. If you wish to combine it with a scrying spell, there's no hope you'll succeed."
The Scooby Gang as well as Dumbledore's group worked mightily to hide their smirks. Willow turned towards the portal, confident that her friends would watch her back. The Scooby Gang moved closer to Willow, ready to protect her from anything the aurors might try.
The aurors gasped as Willow lowered two layers of her personal shields. Her magical aura blazed clearly to those who had even the tiniest bit of magic in them. The Scoobies and Dumbledore's group fought down a smile as they observed Malfoy's face turn pale. As an added bonus, Fudge was doing a reasonable imitation of a goldfish.
A moment later, the air in front of Willow rippled, and then, a vision of a forest appeared in front of her.
"This is where the portal leads to," Willow told the rest. Turning to Harry, she said, "I'm going to need something of your godfather's to do the scrying."
Searching his pockets frantically, Harry came up with the Marauder's Map. "Four people made this," he said. "My godfather was one of them."
Taking the map, Willow briefly used her magical senses to touch it. "Yes," she said quietly. "I can sense four different magical signatures." Suddenly, she looked at Remus. "One of the signatures belong to you."
Remus nodded. "I was one of the four who created the map," he said in his quiet voice.
"Then that leaves me with three magical signatures to scry for," Willow said. "Unless you can tell me which signature belongs to Mr Black?"
Remus shook his head regretfully. "I'm sorry, Miss Rosenberg. But I've no idea how to sense magical signatures, let alone identify them."
Willow nodded and turned back to the task at hand. Taking a deep breath, she picked one of the signatures at random and scried for it in the other dimension.
"No, nothing," Willow murmured after a while. "Let's try the second one."
Malfoy suddenly broke in. "This is ridiculous," he exclaimed. "She's obviously faking it." He turned to the aurors. "Arrest them," he roared.
Before his comment could register, he was already pointing his wand towards Willow. "STUPIFY," he yelled.
A bolt of light shot out from his wand and headed towards Willow – only to impact harmlessly off a shield Tara had raised. Before Malfoy could try anything else, Buffy, Faith and Angel were already running towards him with supernatural speed. They reached him at the same time and there was a quick movement with three broadswords.
Malfoy screamed as blood spurted out from the stump that had once been his shoulder. Buffy's weapon had gone for Malfoy's wrist, intending to separate the hand holding the wand with the rest of Malfoy's body. Faith and Angel had the same idea but Faith had gone for the elbow and Angel had aimed for the shoulder. As a result, Malfoy's arm now lay in three separate pieces on the ground and Malfoy himself was reeling back in pain. Still moving as one, Buffy, Faith and Angel stabbed at Malfoy's wand simultaneously. The heavy broadsword was not made for stabbing but slayer and vampiric strength compensated for that. The three broadswords hit the target and broke the wand into four pieces. Since the wand was still in the grip of Malfoy's decapitated hand, however, the blades sheared through the flesh to hit the wand. The result was that Malfoy's hand was now a mangled mess.
Unfazed by the carnage occurring behind her, Willow continued her scrying. "Nope, nothing on this signature too," she mumbled. "Well, one more to try."
Meanwhile, the aurors had recovered from their shock and had pointed their wands at Buffy, Faith and Angel. Before they could do anything, though, a voice was heard.
"Thicken."
It was Tara. Before the aurors knew what had happened, they found themselves unable to move. The texture of the air around them had turned into something resembling tar. Only it was much thicker than what tar ought to be like. They struggled mightily but Tara's power was far greater than theirs, especially now since she had dropped her shields. Pausing a moment to observe Malfoy and Fudge, who were also frozen, Buffy, Faith and Angel sauntered back towards the group, still clustered around Willow.
"Nice work Tara," Buffy congratulated.
Tara responded with a shy smile. Suddenly, Willow shouted. "I've got it."
All attention returned to Willow at once. They saw her focus her gaze at the picture in front of her and the picture blurred, before being replaced with another scene. This time, the picture showed a man with a thin, haunted face.
"Sirus," Harry and Remus exclaimed.
With a wave of her hand, Willow altered her viewing spell to enable them to see the area around Sirus. The first thing that caught their attention was that Sirus was in a cage. The second thing that caught their attention was that he was being lowered into a big cauldron, cage and all. The third thing that they saw were the demons surrounding him. The demons looked vaguely like a troll with red scales that covered their body. All of them were looking at Sirus and licking their lips.
"Oh no," Hermoine gasped. "They're going to eat him."
"Not if I can help it," Willow said determinedly. She began creating a portal to the place that her viewing spell showed. The Scooby Gang, having worked with her for so long, knew what she was going to do. Once the portal was ready, Buffy, Xander, Anya and Dawn leaped into it, followed closely by Faith and Angel. Harry was about to join them but before he could do so, Tara had already caught his arm.
"Let me go," Harry shouted. "I've got to help him."
"Buffy's taking care of that," Tara said gently. "We'll get him back, don't worry."
"But I've got to go," Harry protested. "He's my godfather."
"If you go, you'll only hinder Buffy," Willow said. "She'll have to protect you all the time. This way, she can focus all her attention to rescuing your godfather."
"I don't need to be protected," Harry said indignantly.
"As I recall, you weren't doing so well against the vampires back at the wiccan meeting," Willow said pointedly. "And these demons seem to be way more dangerous than amateur vampires."
Harry subsided sulkily and moved to watch the battle, courtesy of the viewing spell. It was like watching television, he realized suddenly. He had to admit that Buffy and her group were doing well in the battle. The portal had opened up in the middle of the demon group and the demons had been taken by surprise when Buffy and her friends had come charging out of the portal.
One of the demons had gone too near the portal which Willow had left open. An accidental push by a fellow demon caused him to stumble through. Dumbledore immediately had his wand out and cast a stunning spell. To his surprise, his spell only staggered the demon a little before he stood up again. 'Another demon species with natural magic resistance,' everyone thought at once.
A moment later, every single person in Dumbledore's group had their wands out and pointed towards the demon. Laura and Shawn did not have wands but they gathered their magical powers just the same. The flurry of stunning spells that followed caused the demon to stumble back through the portal and crash into another demon, before being decapitated by Faith.
Willow looked at Dumbledore's group in amusement. All of them were panting with the exertion of putting most of their power into their stunning spells. "If it took all of you to merely cause a single demon to take a few steps back, none of you would last ten seconds in an actual battle," she observed. "I take it that most, if not all of you have no knowledge of the more physical aspects of fighting?"
The sheepish looks that Dumbledore's group gave her was enough of a answer.
"Don't rely on your magic too much," Willow advised. "Not everything can be solved by casting spells."
Everyone returned their attention to the battle. Another demon managed to drop through the portal but this time, Tara simply took out a long dagger from within her clothes and moved towards it. She easily avoided its attacks and when she saw an opening, she struck quickly and plunged the dagger into its left eye. The demon reeled back and went through the portal again before ending up in its home dimension, dead.
Everyone was staring in amazement at the unassuming blonde wiccan. Tara shrugged her shoulders and said, "Before I knew Willow and her friends, I didn't know anything about self-defense. Buffy trained me to be able to take care of myself, even without using magic."
"Buffy trained all of us in fighting," Willow interjected. "She wouldn't let us patrol the town with her until we got at least some knowledge of how to conduct ourselves in a fight. She wanted us to have at least a chance to stay alive if our magic wasn't powerful enough to defeat our enemy."
From the expressions on everyone's faces, it was clear that they thought that her magic not being powerful enough against any opponent was an almost impossible occurrence. 'Well, they've never met Glory,' Willow thought reflectively, even though she was only beginning to realize her powers at the time that Glory appeared. Her powers had grown tremendously since then.
The battle was almost over. The demons that remained alive were running away. Buffy freed Sirus from the cage. Initially, Sirus was wary of them but the fact that they saved him from being eaten made him willing to trust them for now. With only a brief moment of hesitation, he followed them through the portal.
Every single person that came into the room had his or her wand pointed at the intruders. Dumbledore's group immediately identified them as aurors. Buffy and her friends, trained by many years on the hellmouth, instantly dropped into a defensive crouch and moved to strategic positions where they could leap into action at a moments notice. Because of that, more wands were pointed towards them than at Dumbledore's group. Willow and Tara looked at ease but both of them were ready to take down their aura dampening shields and start flinging spells around.
Dumbledore strode forward and held up his hand. "Wait," he shouted.
"Dumbledore?" one of the aurors said, surprised. "What are you doing here."
"Hello Thompson," Dumbledore identified the auror. "We just wanted to examine this particular artifact that apparently claimed Sirus's life."
Before Thompson could reply, another voice was heard from the doorway.
"Dumbledore," screeched Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. "What are you doing here, trespassing in the inner sanctum of the Department of Mysteries!"
"Cornelius," Dumbledore greeted the minister. "We merely wanted to examine this artifact here in the hopes that we might be able to bring Sirus back to us."
'So that's Cornelius Fudge,' thought the Scooby Gang.
"Impossible," Fudge protested. "We witnessed him falling through the veil. There's no way he could be alive."
"Indeed," a voice behind Fudge said silkily. Dumbledore's group tensed noticeably as Lucius Malfoy strode into the room. Evidently, Fudge had believed Malfoy's protestations of innocence despite the testimony of Dumbledore. "Even so, you could have arranged it with us to bring you here, instead of breaking in. You broke in once before but since it was to save your students, the ministry did not want to press charges. But this time, there was no such emergency, isn't there." Malfoy smiled nastily as he tried to get Dumbledore and his group into trouble.
"But it is an emergency," Willow burst out. All eyes turned towards her and she blushed, but still continued bravely. "Sirus may still be alive but every moment spent in wherever he is at the moment is another moment that he's in danger. If we had to go through you, we'd have needed a day or more to even see this place and that day may mean the difference between life and death for Mr Black."
"Interesting assumption, child," Malfoy said in a dismissive tone, but his eyes were cold as he fixed Willow with a hard stare. However, if he was hoping that Willow would be intimidated, he was disappointed. After facing off against a hell goddess, there wasn't a lot of things that could intimidate Willow as well as the rest of the Scoobies.
Anya spoke up helpfully. "Actually, the difference between life and death doesn't require a day. It only requires a second for someone to go from being alive to being dead."
"Then we're wasting time," Buffy said decisively. "Wills, what have you found out?"
"Well, from the energy patterns of the portal, it's definitely a one-way portal and it definitely leads to another dimension. Since I've identified the energy pattern, I can be reasonably sure I can find the dimension he's in," Willow responded. "If I use that energy pattern with a viewing spell and combine it with a scrying spell, I can not only find out if he's alive, but where he is if he's not dead."
"Portal?" Fudge asked. He was ignored by everybody who was concentrating on what Willow had said.
"Then do it," Buffy said.
"You realize, of course, that what you're proposing is ludicrous," Malfoy said with a chilling smile. "Viewing spells in other dimensions take up much more power than even what a group of thirteen can handle. If you wish to combine it with a scrying spell, there's no hope you'll succeed."
The Scooby Gang as well as Dumbledore's group worked mightily to hide their smirks. Willow turned towards the portal, confident that her friends would watch her back. The Scooby Gang moved closer to Willow, ready to protect her from anything the aurors might try.
The aurors gasped as Willow lowered two layers of her personal shields. Her magical aura blazed clearly to those who had even the tiniest bit of magic in them. The Scoobies and Dumbledore's group fought down a smile as they observed Malfoy's face turn pale. As an added bonus, Fudge was doing a reasonable imitation of a goldfish.
A moment later, the air in front of Willow rippled, and then, a vision of a forest appeared in front of her.
"This is where the portal leads to," Willow told the rest. Turning to Harry, she said, "I'm going to need something of your godfather's to do the scrying."
Searching his pockets frantically, Harry came up with the Marauder's Map. "Four people made this," he said. "My godfather was one of them."
Taking the map, Willow briefly used her magical senses to touch it. "Yes," she said quietly. "I can sense four different magical signatures." Suddenly, she looked at Remus. "One of the signatures belong to you."
Remus nodded. "I was one of the four who created the map," he said in his quiet voice.
"Then that leaves me with three magical signatures to scry for," Willow said. "Unless you can tell me which signature belongs to Mr Black?"
Remus shook his head regretfully. "I'm sorry, Miss Rosenberg. But I've no idea how to sense magical signatures, let alone identify them."
Willow nodded and turned back to the task at hand. Taking a deep breath, she picked one of the signatures at random and scried for it in the other dimension.
"No, nothing," Willow murmured after a while. "Let's try the second one."
Malfoy suddenly broke in. "This is ridiculous," he exclaimed. "She's obviously faking it." He turned to the aurors. "Arrest them," he roared.
Before his comment could register, he was already pointing his wand towards Willow. "STUPIFY," he yelled.
A bolt of light shot out from his wand and headed towards Willow – only to impact harmlessly off a shield Tara had raised. Before Malfoy could try anything else, Buffy, Faith and Angel were already running towards him with supernatural speed. They reached him at the same time and there was a quick movement with three broadswords.
Malfoy screamed as blood spurted out from the stump that had once been his shoulder. Buffy's weapon had gone for Malfoy's wrist, intending to separate the hand holding the wand with the rest of Malfoy's body. Faith and Angel had the same idea but Faith had gone for the elbow and Angel had aimed for the shoulder. As a result, Malfoy's arm now lay in three separate pieces on the ground and Malfoy himself was reeling back in pain. Still moving as one, Buffy, Faith and Angel stabbed at Malfoy's wand simultaneously. The heavy broadsword was not made for stabbing but slayer and vampiric strength compensated for that. The three broadswords hit the target and broke the wand into four pieces. Since the wand was still in the grip of Malfoy's decapitated hand, however, the blades sheared through the flesh to hit the wand. The result was that Malfoy's hand was now a mangled mess.
Unfazed by the carnage occurring behind her, Willow continued her scrying. "Nope, nothing on this signature too," she mumbled. "Well, one more to try."
Meanwhile, the aurors had recovered from their shock and had pointed their wands at Buffy, Faith and Angel. Before they could do anything, though, a voice was heard.
"Thicken."
It was Tara. Before the aurors knew what had happened, they found themselves unable to move. The texture of the air around them had turned into something resembling tar. Only it was much thicker than what tar ought to be like. They struggled mightily but Tara's power was far greater than theirs, especially now since she had dropped her shields. Pausing a moment to observe Malfoy and Fudge, who were also frozen, Buffy, Faith and Angel sauntered back towards the group, still clustered around Willow.
"Nice work Tara," Buffy congratulated.
Tara responded with a shy smile. Suddenly, Willow shouted. "I've got it."
All attention returned to Willow at once. They saw her focus her gaze at the picture in front of her and the picture blurred, before being replaced with another scene. This time, the picture showed a man with a thin, haunted face.
"Sirus," Harry and Remus exclaimed.
With a wave of her hand, Willow altered her viewing spell to enable them to see the area around Sirus. The first thing that caught their attention was that Sirus was in a cage. The second thing that caught their attention was that he was being lowered into a big cauldron, cage and all. The third thing that they saw were the demons surrounding him. The demons looked vaguely like a troll with red scales that covered their body. All of them were looking at Sirus and licking their lips.
"Oh no," Hermoine gasped. "They're going to eat him."
"Not if I can help it," Willow said determinedly. She began creating a portal to the place that her viewing spell showed. The Scooby Gang, having worked with her for so long, knew what she was going to do. Once the portal was ready, Buffy, Xander, Anya and Dawn leaped into it, followed closely by Faith and Angel. Harry was about to join them but before he could do so, Tara had already caught his arm.
"Let me go," Harry shouted. "I've got to help him."
"Buffy's taking care of that," Tara said gently. "We'll get him back, don't worry."
"But I've got to go," Harry protested. "He's my godfather."
"If you go, you'll only hinder Buffy," Willow said. "She'll have to protect you all the time. This way, she can focus all her attention to rescuing your godfather."
"I don't need to be protected," Harry said indignantly.
"As I recall, you weren't doing so well against the vampires back at the wiccan meeting," Willow said pointedly. "And these demons seem to be way more dangerous than amateur vampires."
Harry subsided sulkily and moved to watch the battle, courtesy of the viewing spell. It was like watching television, he realized suddenly. He had to admit that Buffy and her group were doing well in the battle. The portal had opened up in the middle of the demon group and the demons had been taken by surprise when Buffy and her friends had come charging out of the portal.
One of the demons had gone too near the portal which Willow had left open. An accidental push by a fellow demon caused him to stumble through. Dumbledore immediately had his wand out and cast a stunning spell. To his surprise, his spell only staggered the demon a little before he stood up again. 'Another demon species with natural magic resistance,' everyone thought at once.
A moment later, every single person in Dumbledore's group had their wands out and pointed towards the demon. Laura and Shawn did not have wands but they gathered their magical powers just the same. The flurry of stunning spells that followed caused the demon to stumble back through the portal and crash into another demon, before being decapitated by Faith.
Willow looked at Dumbledore's group in amusement. All of them were panting with the exertion of putting most of their power into their stunning spells. "If it took all of you to merely cause a single demon to take a few steps back, none of you would last ten seconds in an actual battle," she observed. "I take it that most, if not all of you have no knowledge of the more physical aspects of fighting?"
The sheepish looks that Dumbledore's group gave her was enough of a answer.
"Don't rely on your magic too much," Willow advised. "Not everything can be solved by casting spells."
Everyone returned their attention to the battle. Another demon managed to drop through the portal but this time, Tara simply took out a long dagger from within her clothes and moved towards it. She easily avoided its attacks and when she saw an opening, she struck quickly and plunged the dagger into its left eye. The demon reeled back and went through the portal again before ending up in its home dimension, dead.
Everyone was staring in amazement at the unassuming blonde wiccan. Tara shrugged her shoulders and said, "Before I knew Willow and her friends, I didn't know anything about self-defense. Buffy trained me to be able to take care of myself, even without using magic."
"Buffy trained all of us in fighting," Willow interjected. "She wouldn't let us patrol the town with her until we got at least some knowledge of how to conduct ourselves in a fight. She wanted us to have at least a chance to stay alive if our magic wasn't powerful enough to defeat our enemy."
From the expressions on everyone's faces, it was clear that they thought that her magic not being powerful enough against any opponent was an almost impossible occurrence. 'Well, they've never met Glory,' Willow thought reflectively, even though she was only beginning to realize her powers at the time that Glory appeared. Her powers had grown tremendously since then.
The battle was almost over. The demons that remained alive were running away. Buffy freed Sirus from the cage. Initially, Sirus was wary of them but the fact that they saved him from being eaten made him willing to trust them for now. With only a brief moment of hesitation, he followed them through the portal.
