Disclaimer etc. in part 1.

Notes: As ever, thank you for waiting. Law school waits for no one, so I've been putting this off for a while now. Point one, "JC-G" is Jennifer Calendar-Giles. Meaning the now former Miss Calendar. I figured why not? Let's give Giles a permanent female presence in his life. He deserves it. And he would be more comfortable with her helping him with computer stuff than Willow. Point two, I haven't done research and I've never suffered from torture. So, anything I say about torture is to be taken with a very large block of salt.

Having enlisted Hermione's help with the Hogwarts library and gotten an unrestricted pass to the Restricted Section of the library from Professor Snape, Buffy was now anxiously waiting for Willow's response to her question. She had taken to staring balefully at her laptop in the vain hope that it would make Willow and Giles reply faster. Snape was being as helpful as he could in inquiring around about those who might know something about the situation, but with no idea of where Angel had been for those months he was missing, it was whistling in the dark.

Which turned out to be much what Giles said when Buffy finally had a return email in hand.

Dear Buffy,

Jenny is typing into the infernal machine on my behalf. (He actually said that! Can you believe it? JC-G) I have yet to discover any precedent to a situation such as you described barring a misunderstanding of what you wrote in your incessant mangling of the English language. (I had no idea what I was in for when I agreed to play secretary for him JC-G). There are tales of an amulet which provided protection from the sunlight as well as a state of near-invincibility for a vampire. It was called the Gem of Amara. However, as you have not mentioned any kind of object in relation to Angel's development I do not believe this item can be considered the cause.

I will continue to search. If any further incidents occur revealing more symptoms of this change do write. It would be worthwhile even if only from a research standpoint.

Sincerely,

Rupert Giles

PS I haven't seen Rupert this enthusiastic about something since we had to research the cure for that love spell. It would be adorable if it weren't cutting into our personal time.

Jenny

Buffy stared at the email for a moment and then shivered a little. "Ew," she said.

"What?" Ron asked from his place in front of the common room fire. Ginny, Harry and Hermione had also all perked up.

Buffy winced. "You don't wanna know."

Frowning, Hermione said, "You're our friend and something's upset you. Why wouldn't we want to know?"

"Ever imagined your parents or teachers having . . . um . . . well . . ." She trailed off trying to find a delicate way to say it.

Angel piped up with the shamelessness of centuries of debauchery and the massive social changes society had undergone since the Victorian period. "Making love?" He said from where he had been reading over her shoulder. "Or do you want the more delicate 'being intimate'?"

"Ew," chorused the teens a moment later.

Angel opened his mouth to say something and promptly shut it when Buffy hit him. "What was that for?" he said clutching his arm.

"You're not going to say anything unless it's not related to Giles and Jenny doing . . . it," Buffy told him sternly. "And don't be a baby. You can take it."

He snorted. "First, I was going to ask if Giles had said anything useful at all, and second, when your girlfriend is the Slayer a punch like that hurts, vampire or not."

"Oh, yes. Did Mr. Giles have anything helpful to add?" Hermione inquired eagerly.

Buffy's nose wrinkled for a moment as she scanned the letter again. "He mentions a 'Gem of Amara', but he also said that it was an amulet. He also said that he didn't think it was related, but that it was the only thing he'd come across so far that was at all like what happened."

Those words were enough for Hermione to get up to check through the Hogwarts library stacks. Unfortunately she hadn't found anything a week later either. "Amara derives from Latin and Greek. The Latin means 'bitter' and the Greek means 'unfading'," she informed them. "I've checked and checked, but I simply can't find anything referring to Amara as the name of a person, place or thing, nor have I found anything that relates to the translations."

"Well that was bloody useless," Ron grumbled.

"Ron! Language!" Hermione said in irritation. At the same time Ginny hit him.

He flinched away and looked at Harry and Angel in confusion. "What'd I do?"

"If you can't guess Ron, nothing I say will help," Harry informed him. Angel just shook his head and turned back to the book he was reading on wizardly vampires. Ron continued to look confused as the girls walked off muttering amongst themselves about "emotional depth of a teaspoon."

Life settled into a routine for everyone. Angel moved out of the Room of Requirement and into an apartment in the dungeons. Buffy and Harry's bunch continued taking classes. Everyone continued to think it was weird that Buffy and Snape got along that well. Still, no firther evidence surfaced as to what had happened with Angel and how it was that he had become immune to sunlight. They had attempted the occasional test to see what kind of tolerance he had for it and had even discovered that he was no longer subject to burns when he was touched by holy objects or water as well as his continued immunity to sunlight.

Ron, Hermione, Harry and Ginny had also talked Buffy and Angel into teaching them some martial arts. Buffy had eventually given up on Ron and Hermione after Ron had attempted to do a spin kick and fallen on his butt for the fourteenth time. Given that he had yet to master any of the basics at all, it was more than a little exasperating to see him flinging his arms and legs around in a desperate attempt to imitate the motions of a professional sparring match between Buffy and Angel.

Hermione was less exasperating than Ron in that she paid attention to the directions and followed them to the letter. However, she lacked confidence in he physical abilities to the point that it severely affected her ability to perform even the most basic of movements. So, Buffy worked with Harry, who was quite gifted, and Ginny, who had all of Ron's confidence in her physical capabilities, combined with Hermione's sensible approach to learning. The two learned fighting techniques faster and so Buffy didn't need the infinite patience that Angel displayed. So, Angel taught Ron and Hermione slowly but surely while Harry and Ginny took great pleasure in beating each other up and then cuddling and kissing each other better.

On having had Buffy and Angel's relationship explained to her, McGonagall had taken the opportunity for some amusement for herself. She had arranged to speak to Angel alone and had promptly shown him the items Buffy had transfigured in her placement test. He had left with images of himself dressed in nothing but black leather trousers or completely in the buff, floating in his head, and the great relief of knowing that he couldn't blush and so would not be caught in the halls looking as hideously embarrassed as he was.

All in all, it was a relaxing month for those concerned and Buffy had almost lost any sense of urgency about Angel and what might have caused his sudden immunity to sunlight. What brought that worry back to the fore was caused by a discussion between Angel and Harry about the current war against Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

Buffy hadn't paid a great deal of attention to it because the war was primarily a Western European thing and there weren't any countries in the Americas that had become involved in any way beyond the most peripheral sense. In point of fact, many of the Eastern and Central European countries had also expressed wishes not to be involved and many countries were actively distancing themselves from the rapidly developing situation in Britain. So when Angel expressed an interest in the mess Buffy could only refer him to the newspapers. Which Harry and Hermione had promptly informed him were utter trash and followed this up by telling him about everything they knew. Which was rather a lot what with Harry being at the centre of the whole war effort.

Harry and Angel were talking about battles as they walked through the halls on the way to dinner and gradually moved on to the topic of the Unforgiveable curses. Harry was describing the cruciatus curse from firsthand experience when Angel suddenly staggered, slamming into the wall. The breaths that he continued to have as both camoflage and out of habit sped up and he began to shudder.

"Angel?" Harry asked as he slowly approached the man. "Are you all right?" He didn't reply and Harry moved closer, seeing the dark brown eyes widen and flicker back and forth as though seeing things invisible to Harry.

Suddenly, Angel's legs seemed to give out and he collapsed to the floor.

An hour later Buffy was pacing back and forth in the hospital wing while Hermione, Ron and Ginny all looked on in understanding and Madam Pomfrey worked with Snape to try to figure out what had caused Angel's sudden collapse. Harry was only slightly less impatient than Buffy. "Why won't she say anything to us?" Harry asked for the fourth time.

Rolling her eyes, Hermione sighed and responded for the fourth time, "Because she doesn't have anything to tell us yet Harry."

"Now you know how we feel," Ron groused under his breath.

"What?" Harry asked.

It was Ginny's turn to roll her eyes. "Honestly, with the amount of time you spend unconscious and on the verge of death in here we're pretty much used to sitting here and waiting for you to either wake up or die." She continued a moment later at Harry's incredulous look. "It also means we're used to no one telling us anything for hours while we wonder if you've bled to death."

Buffy winced. "A little less talk about dying, please." She said.

"Sorry," said Ginny.

Finally Madam Pomfrey came out from behind the curtains concealing herself and Professor Snape. "I have absolutely no notion of what's wrong with him as I have no notion of what his state should be normally," the woman said. "However, he is conscious and lucid and I do not believe that he is in immediate danger."

"So I can see him?" Buffy asked eagerly.

The nurse sighed. "Yes Miss Summers. You can go in to see him."

Buffy promptly bounced past the nurse and up to Angel's bedside. "How are you? What happened?" She asked him, taking his hand and settling on the mattress next to him.

He sighed and his hand tightened on hers briefly, searching for comfort, before he began. "Harry and I were talking about the . . . what did you call them, 'unforgiven' curses?"

"Unforgivables," Harry picked up the narrative. "I was telling Angel what the cruciatus is like when he just . . ." Harry trailed off, uncertain how to describe Angel's actions.

A wince crossed Angel's face and he began to explain. "I think I remembered some of what happened to me. It was like I was reliving something that seems a lot like what Harry described." He shuddered. "I could remember being somewhere . . . it seemed underground. There were people there and they were torturing me . . ." His eyes glazed over a little. "It was so unsubtle," he continued with a ghost of a smile crossing his lips. "I did better in my heyday."

Ron's eyes were wide. "You caused more pain than the cruciatus?" he squeaked.

Something that bore a resemblance to a chuckle emerged from Buffy's mouth. "It's not that he caused more physical pain Ron," she told him. She shook her head a little. "When you're torturing someone there are more important parts to the torture, especially when you can tell that the person won't fold because of some physical pain. The most important part of torture is the mental part. The way you make someone feel worse because of what you say or do. Humiliating them and stuff."

By the end of the speech Snape, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were staring in shock at Buffy while Angel looked resigned and Harry looked . . . for lack of a better term, intrigued. "You've had a great of experience in being tortured Miss Summers?" Snape inquired.

"She's tortured a few vampires in her day," Angel replied for her. "Although when you had the chance to humiliate as torture I don't recall. Must have happened after I left."

"Oh that," Buffy said. "That was Xander. He threatened someone he knew in kindergarden with telling some story about the time he wet his pants during free time. The vamp totally caved after that." Ange raised an eyebrow at her. "Okay, okay, maybe I broke a few bones too."

While Hermione, Ron and Snape went back to looking properly appalled, Ginny's sense of humour reasserted itself and Harry asked the question again. "Have you been tortured Buffy?"

"No. I've been beaten, threatened, attacked and seriously hurt, but I can't say I've ever been tortured," she answered.

Angel, however, saw what Harry was trying to find out without asking. The questions that were in Harry's eyes were obvious to the vampire. "The most important thing about torture is to prevent them from breaking you. It's all the more important in some ways when the torturer is actively looking for information. Different things work for different people. Sometimes you can find a weakness in the torturer's technique and exploit it by playing up how much one thing affects you and playing down another.

"The difficulty I found when I was being held by those . . . Death Eaters you call them?" The others nodded. "They enjoy causing pain so much it overwhelms any attempts to get information." Angel sighed in exasperation. "If it hadn't been for the fact that I would have suffered for it as the guinea pig, I would have given them tips. Driving your victim insane before you've even gotten the full amount of torture possible from them, nevermind information, is just such a waste."

Hermione twitched a little, but the others recognised the gallows humour for what it was -- an attempt to make light of the situation before the emotions had a chance to overwhelm. Ron asked the first thing that came to mind. "So are you starting to remember more?" Hermione hit him. "Ow!"

It did the trick. "Yes," Angel said. "It's still something of a blur but I remember now. I had gotten diverted to Yorkshire on the way back home and I was out to stretch my legs when several men in black robes with white masks called me 'muggle' a few times, insulted me and then hit me with something when my back was turned that knocked me out. When I woke up I was in someone's dungeon. They talked about casting curses and spells for a while until some other man came in."

"Other man?" Hermione prompted when Angel seemed to have lost track of what he was saying.

"Hmm?" He glanced up. "Oh. Sorry. Yeah. He played up being a villain for a while. All that stilted megalomaniacal talk," he smiled a little at Buffy who grinned back.

"Join me Luke," she said, and then put her hands over her mouth to recreate the sound of muffled, rattling breaths. "Join the Dark Side."

Hermione giggled and added, "I am your father."

Ron and Ginny looked baffled and Harry looked resigned. "That stupid film."

"You don't like Star Wars?" Buffy asked. "You're a guy."

"Dudley used to watch it all the time-" he started to reply.

Hermione cut in, "Which just means you've never actually seen the film. Don't mock."

Ginny and Ron suddenly stopped looking confused and mouthed, "Muggle thing," at each other.

"Is this one of those things Giles and I never get?" Angel asked.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "If Giles wouldn't get this he's been living under a rock for longer than I gave him credit for."

"So just me then."

"Yeah."

"Can I finish my story?" Angel inquired.

Ginny flopped down on the bed next to him and said, "Oh please Daddy, finish the story please. I want to know how the princess escaped from the dragon." She finished with widened eyes and a remarkably guileless appearance. Ron rolled his eyes but sat down as well. Buffy shoved Ginny over and laid claim to her boyfriend so Ginny shoved Harry into a chair and sat on his lap while Hermione took claim of the last chair.

When they were all settled again Angel took up the thread of his narrative. "As I was saying, he was talking like the villian of a Saturday serial matinee when he lifted up his hood and his face . . ." Angel shook his head a little as if to jar the image from his mind. "It was just this horrible scaled thing. You could see that he was once human and had changed himself somehow."

Harry looked very grim as he asked, "Did he have red eyes?"

"Yes," replied Angel. "How did you . . . Of course. I forgot, you've seen him." Harry just nodded in response. After a moment Angel continued. "They told him that I had taken the torture better than anyone they'd ever seen so they were . . . I don't know, seeing what my limit was. He postured, took off his hood and then told them to go on as they were." Buffy took his hand and Angel grasped it gratefully. "Everything after that is a blur, but I remember a green light coming at me some time later."

Hermione twitched upright and got a concentrated look on her face. "Hermione?" Harry asked.

"The killing curse . . ." She said musingly.

The others exchanged looks, but Snape, from where he stood supervising the visit spoke up. "You think that may have some bearing on the . . . changes Mr. Shaughnessy has experienced?" he asked. He had pointedly refused to call the vampire anything as ridiculous as 'Angel'.

Frowning, she said, "I can't be certain of course, but it seems plausible. What if somehow the killing curse managed to damage or even kill the demonic part of Angel? If it were somehow driven off or away it could effectively alter his entire spiritual and magical structure." She leapt to her feet. "I have to get to the library," she told them. "I have to see how the curse works and then we can consult with Mr. Giles on whether it could have had such an effect on Angel."

Everyone stared after her. Buffy said with amazement, "Wow. She's good."