Disclaimer: You know the drill: the Potterverse belongs to Rowling and the Buffyverse belongs to Whedon. I'm just playingwith them for a time.

Author's Notes: I'm so very sorry for the long wait here guys. Life was very busy for me there for a bit and then I got hit with a massive case of writer's block. I think my muse took a holiday or something. But, thanks in large part to a great amount of help from my terrific beta Arie (goddess that she is), this chapter finally got written. And, its a pretty long one too, so maybe that will make up some for the longness between updates!

Just a note, I've started a yahoo group, mainly so, if something happens to , the story can still be read. But, also, I'd like a place where you guys can really get in depth and tell me what you think, without feeling like you are restrained or anything. Anyway, its open to everyone and I don't send out a lot of notes or anything. You can find it at http : groups. yahoo. com /group / ryianasfics / (just take out the spaces).

Review responses at the bottom.

The Crater Formerly Known as Sunnydale

In the week since the Scoobies and Co. had gotten to LA, no one could say that they hadn't been busy. Giles had immediately assigned everyone duties of some sort. The Slayers were taking regular shifts patrolling LA and the surrounding areas. When making a report to Angel, Gunn had made the comment that the City of Angels was no doubt safer in that one week than it had been for the past century. Angel really had to agree.

Kennedy, Rona, and Vi had stepped up into leadership positions for the moment. Kennedy had always thought that being a leader was what she wanted, however it didn't take longer than a day for her to find that the reality of leadership was a whole lot different than the dream of it.

Xander was keeping busy whipping the hotel into shape. "There's a lot of mess," he had said, "but the structure's sound." Whichever girls weren't on that day's patrol schedule were roped into helping him. He was glad for the work; it kept his mind off Anya and Buffy. Hell, he even missed Faith, not that he dwelled on that thought for too long.

Robin and Giles were working far too much, contacting any Watchers that might still be alive and attempting to look for any other Slayers that had been activated by the spell done to defeat the First. They had not had a lot of luck in finding any Watchers at all. But so far, in just that week, they'd already found seven more new Slayers, who'd been brought to the hotel and put under the guidance of some of the more experienced, by all of a week, Slayers.

Andrew took up the place he had found in the Summers' household – he was cook and caretaker of the group. The eye rolls and annoyed looks in his direction were plentiful, but deep down, all of them found themselves thankful for his presence. Especially when dinner time rolled around.

Luckily, everyone was kept busy enough that they didn't really have time to ask what it was that Willow and Dawn spent their time doing. As neither one of them were overly good liars, it meant they didn't have to attempt to come up with a cover story for all the time they spent at the Wolfram and Hart offices, digging through the books that Wesley called up for them. So far, their searching had afforded them very little.

At the moment, Willow was going over an ancient Assyrian location spell that looked promising. It had mentions of locating someone in a hell dimension. Unfortunately, it was in an Assyrian dialect that was practically unknown and had, thus far, resisted all efforts by the Wolfram and Hart magics, as well as the considerable abilities of Willow and Wesley, of translation.

She sat surrounded by translation texts and similar examples of the Assyrian language, along with a laptop, attempting to set up a program that would take out similar examples from the text and other Assyrian documents and help translate the text. She would've been sufficiently creeped out had she realized how closely she resembled another woman who had attempted to do the same to an outdated Gypsy language once upon a time, and had ended up dead for it.

Even her advanced computer skills had yet to sufficiently translate enough to let her know if the spell would actually tell them if Buffy and Faith still lived and, if that were true, where it was that they still lived. The task was becoming frustrating to the extreme.

Dawn, meanwhile, sat in another room, the focus of her current research something she had hidden even from Willow. The texts surrounding her, most of them not even from this dimension, had to do with a certain ancient mystical object most often called the "key." It had occurred to her, while she was attempting to help the great researchers known as Willow and Wesley in looking for spells, that her original essence had in fact been some sort of dimensional opening device. After the mess with Glory and Buffy's death, she and the others had been far too busy grieving and hiding things from the Watcher's Council to worry about the reality of her being. It had occurred to her later to wonder what she was now, with Glory gone, but she had found herself just extremely thankful for that whole mess to be over. She knew that, whatever the others might think, there were some residual effects left over from being the key. Up until the situation with the First, Buffy and the others had never let her have anything to do with the apocalypses they had to deal with, so she hadn't even realized the things she could do until very recently. One ability she had taken note of was an almost amazing capacity for languages. She could usually get at least a basic grasp of a language within a few days. It was from this ability that she had picked up quite a surprising grasp of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Sumerian. Not that she could start speaking the language fluently, or anything, mind you, but she had enough of a grasp that she could do fairly decent translation work. She was pretty sure she didn't get that gift from Buffy or their parents.

In any case, Wolfram and Hart had access to far more files than they had ever dreamt of back when they had first found out about the Key and were dealing with Glory. These included, she had disgustedly found, an ancient spell from, she assumed, Glory's original dimension, that would have contained the "god" until after the time of the portal's opening and closing. "No one would've had to be sacrificed at all, if we'd just had this damn spell available to us," she thought, disgustedly.

In any case, while these spells offered much in the way of stopping Glory, something which they'd managed to do just fine on their own as it turned out, they said little about the use and capability of the key. After more than fifty different scrolls and texts, she still knew next to nothing about what she was and how she could use that to save her sister and her friends.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!" she yelled finally, in frustration, sweeping the texts surrounding her off the table in one angry move of her hand.

"You do realize," came the snotty voice of one of the assistants Wesley had working in here with her, "that many of those are thousand year old documents."

She sent a glare the woman's way. "Actually, they are copies of thousand year old documents, so y'know, I'm not gonna sit here and feel bad."

The woman sniffed and, Dawn was sure, sent some dirty looks her way. At this moment, Dawn could truly care less. Her sister could be alive and stuck somewhere, so as far as she was concerned, she didn't care if she had to piss off the entire freaking world, she was going to figure out exactly what happened down in that cavern in Sunnydale and she was going to make sure Buffy was safe. She just had to figure out how.

With a sigh, she bent to gather the papers and books she had just strewn off the table. She would admit, but only to herself, that swiping them off really hadn't done any good. Though it had felt pretty good. As she gathered the group together, the markings on one of the papers caught her attention. They were crude drawings, rather than the language scrawled on other parts of the paper. One showed some sort of opening of some kind; it looked vaguely like an archway. She wasn't really sure what that one was. The other one, however, was the one that had caught her attention this time. If she wasn't mistaken, this was a picture of the amulet that Angel had brought to Buffy and Buffy had in turn given to Spike. The one that the girls who had been down in the hellmouth with them at the end had said started to give off a great light. 'Now, why would paperwork about Glory and the Key make mention of that amulet?' she wondered.

Suddenly revitalized, she gathered the rest of the papers from the floor and spread them out once again on the table around her, her face firm with determination. 'We really didn't know anything about that amulet,' she thought, 'but I think its time we learned.'

- - - - -

Miles away from where Willow and Dawn struggled with their respective research, Angel and an excavation team had set up shop at the Sunnydale site. He couldn't help but be glad for the multi-million dollar law firm that enabled him to have official permission to be on the site of the caved in former suburb, evil though it might be. Of course, he was never there when the other government exploration teams were, considering he wasn't overly anxious to go up in flames. But his own team explored during the day with the other people, and at night he had the place pretty much to himself.

So far, they'd had little luck. Of course, they'd spent the better part of the week digging into the cavern, attempting to pinpoint where the former hellmouth sat. The hellmouth had always been a constant presence in Sunnydale. Good or evil, Angel had always felt it. So, it had come as quite a shock, to drive to where the former city had sat and to feel…well, basically nothing. Oh, there were some latent energies, for lack of a better term. But they felt…old, worn; like the smell of smoke that lingers for weeks after a fire. Not the real thing, just a memory. He couldn't help but be amazed again at what Buffy had pulled off. Time and time again, she should have given up, given in. She definitely should have lost, should've been beaten. And yet, she always came back with something, something no one expected and blew everyone away.

No one had expected her to be able to take down the Mayor, and yet she'd come up with a brilliant plan and executed it, all while injured. No one had considered her stubborn refusal to kill Dawn to save the world, or her amazing ability to figure out she could step in for Dawn and satisfy both the requirements for closing the portal and her own desire to protect her sister. Certainly, no one had expected her to be able to stick a sword through his gut and send him to hell to save the world, soul and all. She still felt guilty for that, he knew, but he didn't think he could ever be more proud of her for her ability to do what she had done. And now, somehow, she'd managed to close off a portal that had been in existence for as long as anyone remembered. He shook his head and smiled ruefully. 'No one should make the mistake of underestimating Buffy Summers,' he thought.

He sighed as he looked out the necrotempered window of the car he spent the days in. He should not be spending his time reminiscing, as it did nothing but make him brood more. Cordelia would be sure to tell him, were she here, that brooding certainly didn't do anyone any good, and he had learned that she was correct more often than not about that. Yet, he still needed a good brood on occasion, and personally he felt that, after the year he had just endured, he damn well deserved a good brood.

He laid his head back against the seat and attempted to calm his thoughts. He really needed to get some more sleep, since he would be spending his night digging through the crater again. He believed, though, that he was going to have to bring Willow out here. He just couldn't get a good enough read on where the hellmouth had sat to be able to do any real tests for what might have happened to Buffy and Faith. And Spike.

And there was something else as well. How was he supposed to feel, exactly, that Buffy had taken the amulet he had given her and entrusted it to Spike, of all people? He knew the bleached blonde whelp had been helping the Slayer, but he had figured that it had been benefiting Spike in some way. But, Spike giving himself to save the world? Spike falling in love with Buffy? It just did not sit well with him, not well at all.

He knew he no longer had any right to speak where Buffy was concerned. He had been fairly amused by her cookie analogy, that last time they had spoken, but he had understood it. He knew that he too had grown much in the time they had been apart, and still had growing to do. He also knew that he had feelings for Cordelia, feelings that were different, but every bit as real as what he felt for the blonde Slayer. Yet…it really didn't matter how far apart they became or if, as seemed likely, they never were together again as they once had been. He and Buffy shared a bond. He cared about her, deeply, and he wanted her safe. And safe, in his mind, certainly did not include Spike.

"Spike…who is likely dead. As Buffy also might be." He said it out loud, hoping that if he said it enough, it might quell the hope he had been living on for the last week. It didn't matter really if he was together with Buffy, just as long as he knew she was alive and well, somewhere in the world. Truth was, he wasn't sure they could go back to what they were before; there had been just so much that had happened, to both of them. But what had been formed between them, while perhaps never again becoming romance, was still every bit as important. She was his friend, his heart, his vision and he wanted her on earth, at the very least. It seemed unfair that, at this point, with a world now brimming with Slayers, when she could've finally rested some and enjoyed at least something of a normal life, now she was taken away.

A knock on the door of the vehicle drew him out of his brood and he quickly moved to the other side, out of the way of the sun, as the door opened and Fred slid in.

"Hey, Angel," she said, giving him a smile. "I didn't wake you did I?"

He shook his head, giving her a quick smile in return. "Anything?"

She looked hesitant as she spoke, "There might be. I'm not really sure, the energies are just almost non-existent here. I'm getting some various readings in the meta-physical scale, but I'm just not sure if those are actual signs that, hey, there used to be a hellmouth right here, or if they're just," she waved a hand in the air, "just leftover energies, floating around with no place else to go. We've have gotten a few little spikes in certain areas, I've marked them with the stakes we brought, but…I just can't be sure." She looked at him, her face apologetic, as she finished.

He sighed and ran a tired and frustrated hand across his face. "Any other ideas on how to look for it?"

She opened her mouth, closed it, then gave a sigh of her own. "None that involve the sciences. For all the mystical information Wolfram and Hart have at their disposal, there's just nothing to record something like this. I mean, who'd have thought you could make a hellmouth just go away? I think our best bet might be to get Willow out here, see if she can't pick up any of the magical signatures that the hellmouth gave off."

Angel nodded, "I've been thinking the same thing. I was hoping we wouldn't have to bring her back here. It was her home, for all her life. It's not easy to suddenly find your home just…gone."

He got a faraway look in his eyes as he felt the impact of that statement. He knew it was true, because he had been there before. After the gypsies had restored his soul and Darla had thrown him out, he had wandered for a bit, and found himself back in Ireland at the place that had once been home to a boy named Liam. But a century had passed since he had last been there and the brutal deaths of its owners had left the place with a stigma. With no one willing to buy it or care for it, it had fallen into disrepair and ruin. It had been the pain of seeing that, that had brought home exactly what his life, or lack thereof, existed of now. Terrified at the prospect of being alone, he had responded by crawling back to Darla, begging to be included again, wanting so badly to go back to the days when he just hadn't cared. It was an impossibility, of course, and the sight of that crumbling and decayed ruin had stayed with him for a very long time.

"Angel?" Fred touched his arm in concern, wondering what had him looking so very sad.

He blinked at her, coming back from his thoughts, and shook his head slightly. "Sorry. I'll call Willow and get her down here as quickly as possible."

Fred nodded, then looked at him, a hesitant look on her face.

He looked at her and sighed. "You think I'm wasting my time here?"

She shook her head. "Nah. You wouldn't be you if you didn't attempt every possible method to save those you care about." She trailed off, again looking slightly hesitant, as if she really didn't want to say what she felt she needed to say.

"What is it, Fred?"

"Well, I just…its closed and gone. I mean, granted hellmouths are not my specialty. I didn't even know they existed until I met you guys, but…Angel, if we do find that Buffy and the others were trapped in there, how would we get them back out? We can't just open it and close it like it's a door. If we try to open it up again…" she trailed off, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

"We'd have to leave it open again?" He finished her sentence wide-eyed, looking at her in disbelief.

She looked at him apologetically and shrugged. "I just…I don't know. Like I said, totally new area here. But it took some major physic and magical energy to close it in the first place. The backlash from that energy ripped a hole in the ground and destroyed an entire town." She looked at him again, her eyes sad. "I didn't know Buffy and only barely knew Faith, but…" she cut herself off, as if she didn't dare finish the sentence out loud.

Angel, however, had picked up the gist of what she was saying. It made him mad, furious even, but he made the conscious decision not to take it out on Fred. She was doing her job as his employee, as a valuable member of his team, and, more importantly, as his friend. He took a deep, unnecessary, breath, taking the time to clear his thoughts and take control of his anger. He let the breath out again in a sigh, sadness taking the place of the anger as he spoke.

"They wouldn't want us to take the chance." He set his jaw and looked out the window. "In fact, they'd kick our asses for even contemplating it." He ran a hand over his eyes, feeling every single one of his over 250 years at that moment. How exactly did one decide between the fate of the world and the people they loved? Were he and the others truly to be left with the choice of saving their friends, but once again opening up the hellmouth, or quite possibly leaving their friends to torture and pain in a hell dimension in order to keep the world safe?

Fred laid a hand on his arm. "We don't know enough yet to give up. Really, the energies are almost nonexistent. Maybe it would be impossible to open it up like that again. Maybe there's a spell or something we can do to get them back. I really shouldn't have even said anything." She bit her lip, her eyes taking on a decidedly angry glare, and Angel knew she was berating herself for speaking up.

"No, Fred, you did what was right." He sighed and squeezed her hand. "Buffy and Faith sacrificed a lot to close the hellmouth down. We can't just jump in without carefully checking out each and every angle. We need all the information we can get our hands on in order to make a decision."

She didn't look overly convinced, but she nodded anyway and gave him a small smile. "Well, I guess I'd better get back to it. There's still quite a bit of ground to cover. Maybe we'll run across something in one of the other areas." The optimism in her voiced was forced, but Angel appreciated the effort all the same.

He gave a return smile and nod as she climbed out and then reached for his phone. Whether or not he wanted to contact Willow, she was pretty much the most powerful witch on the planet. If any one could get an idea of where the hellmouth had been, and also of what steps they should take now, it was she. He'd have to be careful with her though. He was pretty sure she had learned her lesson about rushing in from the whole incident last year, but he wasn't going to take any chances of opening the hellmouth until they were sure they could close it back up. It would be a mutual decision by all of them, both his inner circle and the "Scooby" one.

"Wes," he said, when the line connected, "let me talk to Willow."

-----------

He stood quietly as he watched the helicopter approach. He and Willow had decided it would be better for her to come out during the dark hours. The government people were already antsy about Angel's crew being there. It was only the fact that the governor of California owed Wolfram and Hart a few favors that had insured their continued presence at the site. Angel didn't feel the need to push matters any if he didn't have to, however, so they'd waited until a time when the other workers would be gone. With it being a Friday, they'd be gone for the whole weekend, giving Willow plenty of time to work.

The helicopter landed, and he moved forward, opened the door and started in surprise at the group gathered in the craft. Willow had evidently mentioned something to someone back at the hotel, because sitting, rather scrunched together, were Willow, Giles, Xander, Dawn, and Kennedy. As they all climbed out and moved away from the chopper, Willow gave him an apologetic smile.

"Sorry, I know you weren't expecting all of us. But, I, well, I mentioned to Dawn where I was going and she insisted on coming, but she had to get Giles' permission of course. He said only if he came as well, but Xander overheard and insisted on coming and Kennedy wouldn't let me go without protection and…"

Xander's hand over the redhead's mouth cut off the stream of explanations. "Will, breathe," he commanded, "I'm sure Deadboy doesn't need a bunch of explanations for us being here."

Angel made a face at the long despised nickname, but ignored the urge to comment back and simply nodded. "It's fine. You all have a right to be here."

Xander nodded and looked back at Willow. "See? No more babbling." Then, a strange look passed over the dark-haired man's face and he turned to Angel, "Uh, sorry about the nickname. Force of habit, you know?"

Angel blinked at the other man in shock and had to fight off the inane urge to look over his shoulder to see who Xander was speaking to. Quite obviously he and Buffy had not been the only people who had done a lot of growing over the past several years.

Dawn couldn't help her grin at the expression on Angel's face. "Might want to close your mouth, Angel."

The vampire's mouth shut with a snap and he nodded, somewhat dumbly, at the dark-haired man. "Uh, no problem."

Xander nodded back distractedly, his focus already on the sunken cavern that now existed where the city had once stood. "Not sure I'm ever gonna get used to that," he mumbled slightly, as the group began to move toward the crater.

Willow was looking with concern at the large hole. "It…feels wrong," she said.

Angel immediately stepped up next to her. "Wrong how? Are you sensing the hellmouth?"

She turned to him with wide eyes. "I'm…No. I'm not. I think…that's what's wrong. It's just, not there. I…I never realized…the energy it must have given off. Its like, a completely new place."

Angel sighed, "That's what I was afraid of. That's what I feel too." He looked at the group around him. "All of you should be proud, you've done something completely unheard of. Something no one thought was even possible."

"I'd be quite a bit more proud if this great thing had not been accomplished at the loss of my Slayer," Giles said acerbically.

Angel flinched and the group as a whole looked suddenly even more downcast.

Giles closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. "Forgive me. I should not speak as such. I'm afraid I haven't been getting much sleep and being back here…well, it's not easy."

Angel shook his head. "I understand," he said simply. For several minutes, as the group made their way carefully down into the crater, there was silence, caused more by the location than by any strenuous activity. Fred was waiting next to a tall marker with a bright light attached to it. Several of these markers were placed throughout the crater, marking the areas where Fred and her team had found the energy signatures. She lifted her hand in greeting, sending the group a smile as they made their way over to where she stood.

"Hi," she said, somewhat shyly. "How are ya'll?" She immediately grimaced and looked embarrassed. "Sorry. Guess that's a really stupid question."

Willow smiled at the dark-haired girl who she felt quite a kinship with, considering how alike they were. "Of course it's not. We're ok. Well, you know, not okay okay, but we're…" Willow shook her head at the babble that seemed to be constant over the past several days. It always seemed to be worse when she was stressed and nervous, both emotions which she had been experiencing in the extreme over the past week. "So, the markers mark the spots, huh?"

Kennedy couldn't help the fond smile she sent at the redhead. Willow was extremely cute when she babbled and even cuter when she realized she was babbling and tried to be all business like instead. Of course, as far as Kennedy was concerned, Willow was always cute. She watched the redhead as she entered into a heavily scientific discussion with Fred and decided that perhaps Willow wasn't quite as cute when she started with the Star Trek speak, but that probably had as much to do with the fact that Kennedy got lost and bored by it as anything else. Tuning out of the conversation between the others, she glanced around at the remains of the town of Sunnydale.

When she had overhead Xander and Giles discussing making a trip back to the site of the town, she had been beyond confused, wondering what reason they could possibly have for going back there. Later, when Willow had come back to their room to gather a few things, Kennedy had cornered her and, using all of her persuasive tactics, had finally drug the truth out of the other girl. She wasn't really sure what she thought about all this. Fact of the matter was, she had never been Buffy's biggest fan. She had thought the blonde girl to be arrogant and bossy and overbearing. And man, those never ending speeches!

Now that she was on this side of things, however, one of the leaders, one of the responsible ones, she found that perhaps she still had a whole bunch to learn. She had thought that she understood, that she knew better than Buffy. She had thought Buffy had made a mess of things in taking care of the potentials. But, now that she was one of the ones they looked to for guidance, the one they looked to for direction, she suddenly found herself to be dealing with a whole host of uncertainties. And, though she would never, not even on pain of death, admit it, she wished several times this week for the older Slayer's advice. Besides all that, she knew that Willow loved the original Slayer and whatever made Willow happy made Kennedy happy as well.

But, on the other hand, it had been a horrible, painful, exhausting fight, getting the hellmouth closed. She knew she hadn't carried near the load the older Slayers and the other "Scooby" gang members had, but she had felt the burden nonetheless. They had lost quite a few girls that day, not just Buffy and Faith. She was greatly worried that they were messing with something that should not be messed with here. Granted, she had a sort of innate distrust of magic, so she knew she was automatically likely to be suspicious of anything they came up with. Yet, she didn't want all that they had done here to go to waste, just on the off chance that somehow Buffy and Faith survived. Personally, she found that highly unlikely. She was pretty sure they were dead, buried somewhere under tons of rock and debris.

"But what if they aren't?" a little voice whispered in the back of her mind. "What if they're alive and trapped, just as Willow says? Would you want her to give up looking for you?" She sighed to herself at the thoughts. Fact of the matter was, the decision wasn't up to her. This was a Scooby, and apparently an Angel (and what WAS the deal with all these "good" vampires anyway), decision and, despite the fact that she was dating Willow, she was not a Scooby.

She was brought out of her thoughts when the group started moving. She was sort of surprised that she had been so deep in thought that she had completely missed the conversation between the others and thus had no clue where they were headed. She needn't have worried however, as they were only moving to another of the markers that were set up around the site. This time she focused on the group around her.

Willow walked slowly around the area where the marker sat, stopping every so often and closing her eyes. After a few moments of this, she let out a sigh, a frustrated look on her face. "I just don't know. I do feel something, but it's like…like an echo, almost. It's distant and nothing I can really grasp a hold of." She made a face and shook her head, then reached for the bag that Kennedy held. "I do know a spell that should give me a sort of…memory of what was here before. If nothing else, we could probably narrow down where the high school sat that way. Of course, it will take forever, but, "she shrugged, "it's the best I've got at this point."

The others nodded and Giles moved to help Willow set up for the spell, the rest watching closely. Dawn watched as well for a few seconds, but the teen quickly grew bored with watching and wandered off on her own, not straying too far from the others, but checking out the areas further away.

Being back here was just…so strange. There were so many memories, so much life that had happened in this place. She remembered moving to Sunnydale, the fear of a new town and new people and the ache of leaving dad behind. She remembered dinners and fights and staying up late watching old movies with Mom and Buffy. Of course, she also remembered being kidnapped, apocalypses, and various forms of horrible, deadly demons coming after her and her sister. Sunnydale had not been the greatest of places to grow up. They had dealt with one monster after another and had lived with the constant knowledge that they, or someone they loved, could die at any moment. Two years ago, hell even six months ago, she would've been jumping up and down at the thought of being out of Sunnydale and never having to come back.

And yet, now, standing here, looking at the ruined remains – a deep, scorched crater, with the broken bits of houses and the odd memorabilia strewn around – she greatly missed it. She wanted it all back. For as hard as everything in Sunnydale had been, at least they had known where they stood. They had understood the way things were and their place in the grand scheme of things. Now, everything was up in the air. She had no clue what she was supposed to do now. And she couldn't…damn it, she just couldn't do this without Buffy. Her sister was all she had left, deadbeat dad notwithstanding. The hope that Buffy was still alive and okay was all that was keeping her sane at this moment. She had been created from Buffy and, despite the memories the monks had provided, Buffy was her anchor in this world. She didn't know who she was if her sister was gone.

At least, when Buffy had been gone before, she had had Spike there to help her. Whatever the others might think, she knew that Spike had cared deeply for her and had done a lot to help take care of her and of Buffy. She missed him. She missed them all, even Faith, though she didn't dwell for long on that particular thought. Faith, for all that she had helped them over the past several months, was still something of an enigma to Dawn. She didn't know what she thought of the reformed Slayer. She did know, however, that, with the notable exceptions of Glory and the creepy doctor who had sliced her on the tower, no one deserved to be trapped in a hell dimension.

But, did she really believe that's where they were? She had lived this week on the hope that this time Willow was right, that this time they really were stuck in a hell dimension and would be back, just as soon as the group figured out the right spell to get to them. And yet…that horrible voice inside of her kept pointing out that that was a fool's hope; the desperate wish of friends and family that did not want to face the thought that they might never see their loved ones again. In all likelihood, Buffy and Faith and Spike were…dead, having finally met the end that their different callings had prescribed for them.

With a sigh, the teen glanced back over at the others. Willow was moving the group to a different marker, the last one having obviously been a bust. For a moment, she considered going back to join them. She knew, if they were to notice her wandering around, they'd be calling her back quickly and then there'd be the lectures about not wandering off and being careful and what have you. Like she was 10 and not 17 years old. She had lost her sister and gained 15 guardians, all of who seemed determined to protect her and keep her out of trouble. She smiled slightly in their direction at that thought. They loved her; she got that now in a way she hadn't in earlier times. But, that certainly didn't mean she was going to make things easier for them. Nope, wasn't gonna happen. Which meant, of course, that she decided she'd go ahead and wander a little farther.

Meanwhile, Willow was setting things up to do the memory spell on the next of Fred's marked sections. She was masking her frustrations with having to do this in this way. She knew she could only do this particular spell three or four more times before she had to stop for the night. As much as she would like to push herself beyond her limits, she had learned the hard way, several times, that in most cases doing so just made things worse. Unfortunately, in this situation, it meant it could take them months to find where the hellmouth had sat. And, exactly what they would do once they found its location…well, she didn't know. The truth was, she wasn't sure about a lot of this. She wanted so badly to have her friend back, wanted to give her the chance to enjoy the new world Buffy had created with her idea, to laugh and cry and all that again. And yet, she couldn't help but realize how familiar that feeling was. When Buffy had died before, she had felt just as determined, just as sure, just as convinced that she was doing the right thing. And she had ended up ripping her friend straight out of the rest that she had so rightly earned. The trauma from that experience, along with waking up inside her coffin, had haunted the Slayer for a very long time.

And now, here she stood again, faced with the likelihood of her friend's death and bound and determined to do something to right it. There was so little that they knew, so little even she, with all her power, understood. And this wasn't just her friends' lives she was messing with. If they did this and she messed it up, there was every possibility she could re-open the door that had kept Buffy tied here. Undo the great thing that Buffy probably gave her life to do.

Because, if she were really honest with herself, she believed that they were gone. Especially now that she was really looking at the crater that used to be Sunnydale. The little voice inside of her told her that they were more than likely dead, and she was just holding onto a dream, instead of learning to deal with her grief, something she had a history of having a problem with.

"Willow?"

She blinked, looking up at Kennedy, who had spoken, and at the others who were looking at her in question.

"Sorry," she said, giving a somewhat sheepish smile, "I was just…lost in my thoughts."

She sighed, pushing back the doubts that were haunting her and spoke the words to the spell. She felt the wind that blew around her as she said the last word and then found herself again in a memory.

------

She produces a small jar and pours it into the urn. Tara and Xander look nervous. Hiding her own nervousness from the group, she begins to speak.

"Osiris, keeper of the gate, master of all fate, hear us."

She dips her finger into the urn and marks her forehead and both cheeks with the blood, ignoring the revulsion she still feels at her sacrifice of the fawn earlier that day. "It's for Buffy. I've got to save Buffy," has been her mantra through all of this and it will get her through this part as well.

"Before time, and after. Before knowing and nothing."

She pours the contents of the urn onto the earth.

"Accept our offering. Know our prayer."

Suddenly she jerks backward, panting, and her arms go out at her sides. Deep ugly gashes appear on her arms. She wants to hide from the pain, she desperately wants to stop. She knew that she would be tested but, Goddess, was this supposed to happen? She can hear Xander yell, sounding as if he comes from a long distance away and Tara answering him, but she ignores them both. She focuses, shoring up her resolve, putting her thoughts and all her focus on Buffy. "I WILL get my friend back," she thinks and then continues.

"Osiris! Here lies the warrior of the people. Let her cross over."

Oh sweet Hecate, the pain. The blood is running from the cuts on her arms, and round shapes are moving under her skin. She can't help the moan of pain that escapes from her. And there is something crawling inside of her, something moving and writhing and anxious to get out. She can feel it moving up her chest and it hurts, oh it hurts.

Xander speaks again, saying something about helping and this time she hears Tara's response. " Xander, she's strong! She said not to stop, no matter what. If we break the cycle now, it's over."

"Don't you dare!" she thinks to herself. She focuses her indomitable will on her friend again. She will not give into the pain. She will rescue her friend, she will be the savior this time and she will have her friend back and then the pain could end.

She yells it this time, determined that the Egyptian guardian of the underworld will hear her, will give her what she asks for. "Osiris, let her cross over! Aah.." she chokes, and suddenly can't breathe. The thing is in her throat and she can't breathe! What has she done?.

Tara's saying something, but she can't hear her, can't see her, the black is edging around her eyes and it's in her mouth and she can't help but bend over to the ground. Oh my god, oh my god, it has to come out. She lurches over, the feeling of needing to vomit overcoming her and suddenly the wiggling thing erupts out of her mouth, and somewhere in the back of her brain she realizes it's a snake and again the thought occurs to her, "What have I done, what have I done?!" But again, she focuses on Buffy. Damn it all, whatever she had done, she was getting her friend back!

She yanks herself back up, panting, hardly able to take in air, but the look in her eyes is resolved. "Osiris, release her!"

---Break---Flash---

She is disoriented for a moment as the memory suddenly changes. She can hear the others in the time that is real, as if from a long way away, asking if she is all right, calling her back. But she is lost in the memories and looks around to figure out when she is now. Once she realizes though, she wants to go back, doesn't want to see this moment again, doesn't want to feel it. Yet, the spell won't let her go and she has to live it to its end.

She is standing with Giles and Tara and Anya and Xander looking up at a stage. On the stage stands a demon, Dawn, and her friend, who is looking at her with eyes that are fathomless in their sadness. She tries to back up, wants to leave… "please, please," she thinks, "don't make me hear this again, I don't want to hear it again." But the fates are not kind and the Slayer opens her mouth and sings the words that ripped Willow apart. The words she purposefully spent a year repressing, that she tried never to think about.

"I think I was in heaven…"

And with that, the memory releases her.

-----

"NO!" Willow yelled, feeling the wrench as she was returned to the present. She could feel Kennedy next to her, holding her hand. She was talking, but Willow couldn't have said for the life of her what she was saying. She could feel the tears on her face, the ache in her body and in her soul. She shook her head and pushed away from Kennedy. She saw the faintly hurt look her girlfriend sent her but she couldn't deal with that right now, couldn't handle someone else's pain when hers was still a fresh, gaping wound.

"We can't do this."

All of them looked at her askance, surprised at her seemingly sudden about face.

Angel bent and took her arm, helping her stand up. "Willow, what memory did you see?"

She didn't look up, because to do so would have put her into eye contact with Giles and she could not look at him right now.

"Giles was right from the beginning. I didn't…I want them to be alive, I want Buffy to be all right. But we're kidding ourselves. Look at this place. And I won't do this to her again. I won't."

They all traded confused glances, even Giles looking taken aback by Willow's vehemence.

"Willow," Angel said again, squeezing her shoulder in comfort, "what did you see?"

She did look up then, and her eyes were so full of pain that it was shocking. "You want to know what I saw, do you really?" She locked eyes with Giles, because he was perhaps owed more explanation than any of them. "I saw the spell I did to bring her back the first time. I saw myself doing a spell to Osiris, a completely DARK spell to the god of the underworld to get my friend back. And then I saw that same friend, who I claimed to love, standing on a stage, with pain bleeding out of her soul, singing of how I had ripped her out of paradise!"

Her tears came in torrents now and she yanked her arm away from Angel. "I hated myself for what I did to her. I did everything I could to make it up, to make it better and it took her forever to recover from that. And yet, here I am, two years later, trying to do the same thing AGAIN." She turned then, unable to look at them anymore. There was silence, as each of them tried to deal with their own feelings and emotions and tried to come up with a way to comfort Willow, when there just didn't seem to be a way.

Finally, she spoke again, her voice softer, the anger gone, leaving only the pain behind. "I didn't want to accept it, you see? I kept telling myself, last time, that she was in a hell dimension, that we didn't know where that portal had sent her. But, I just didn't want to let her go."

She turned back to them then, the tears wet on her face but her eyes resolved. "I won't do that to her again. We have every reason to believe she's…dead," she forced the word past her throat, "and no reason to believe that she's not. Those memories…I think I was sent those memories and I think they are a message that we have to let them go. That it's their turn to rest. They deserve that, they've earned it."

They all looked at her and she could see they wanted to protest, Angel and Xander especially. She shook her head. "We've known this all along, guys. We've all spent the past week pushing back our doubts, ignoring all the things that say they're gone. Maybe…maybe this is why I could do the spell to awaken all the Slayers, when I had such trouble with all the other spells. Maybe it was so Buffy and Faith could finally...be at peace."

Angel looked at her for a moment and then looked away. He didn't like it, didn't want to agree, she could tell, but inside, he already thought she was right. The silence stretched between them again and this time it was Giles who broke it.

"I believe Willow is right. I have believed it since, well, since we left here the first time." His voice was broken and he reached up, took his glasses off, and wiped his own eyes. "Perhaps the time has come for us to let go."

Again, there was silence, several moments of them, and finally, one by one, they begin to nod.

This time, the long silence was broken by Dawn's excited shout. "Guys! Guys!" she yelled as she came running up to the group. "I know what happened to them, I know where they are!"

-----

Several moments earlier…

Dawn had been wandering for quite a bit now, and she was much farther away from the lighted areas than she really should be. She was lost in her thoughts and in her grief for the amount of loss that had been endured over the past couple of years. So, when she heard Willow's pain-filled shout, she was caught off guard and startled. Instantly, she whirled around to run back to the group, the habits formed from growing up in Sunnydale not easily forgotten. However, she lost her balance as she turned and fell hard on the ground. She felt the skin of her hand rip as it skidded across the dirt she had fallen on and felt a flash of pain in her head, before green surround her vision and suddenly, she saw…

Light…it is bright and for a moment she is blinded by it. And then she sees its source, the amulet, in place around Spike's neck. She can see her sister now too, standing next to him. She can't hear what they're saying, the pounding in her ears is too loud for that. She glances around and sees Faith, standing on the stairs, practically dancing in impatience waiting for the blonde Slayer. Then she sees Buffy reach out for Spike's hand and she wants to warn her off, because somehow, she knows what's coming. But of course, she is a spectator here and she can't say anything. And Buffy clasps Spike's hand and suddenly the light is brighter than ever and Buffy and Faith are gone. Not dead, not disintegrated like the Turok Han, just suddenly gone.

And suddenly she is somewhere else. And she can see what looks like an archway, only she's looking into the back side of it. The really bad part, though, is the group of horribly ugly demons that seem to be attempting to do something to the arch. And she knows, with a certainty she doesn't understand that it will be a Very Bad Thing if they accomplish whatever it is they are trying to do. There is a flash, but the demons don't seem to be happy with that and, though she has no clue what they're saying, the gist from their actions,and the sudden full out fight that starts up, seems to be that whatever they had been trying to do had failed.

And she is moving again and she is standing on a plain or plateau of some kind and down in the valley below her she can see what looks like hundreds or maybe even thousands of demons. She blinks in fright and steps back, turning around to go the other way…and then she sees them and suddenly, she understands. The pieces come together and she moves to go to her sister's side, to explain that she knows and she'll be coming for them soon, but then she is moving again and then…

She gasped, blinking her eyes in surprise to suddenly find herself back at the crater formerly known as Sunnydale. She pulled herself to her knees, ignoring the dirt and shook her head in an attempt to regain her bearings.

For a moment she just sat there, confused and uncertain by what had happened and by what she had seen. And then she was moving, long legs flying across the dirt back to where the others were. Some part of her brain observed, as she ran up to them, that they all looked sad or disheartened, but she was too excited to really pay attention.

""Guys! Guys! I know what happened to them, I know where they are!" she yelled.

"Dawnie? What…?" Willow looked at her in surprise and then her eyes widened in shock. "Oh my God, Dawn, what happened to your head?"

Dawn looked her in confusion. "My head? What are you talking about? I'm telling you, I know where Buffy is and, oh my God, Willow, you were right! They're in a hell dimension and there were all these demons and it was…"

"Dawn!" Giles' spoke firmly, cutting through her tirade as he moved towards her, his eyes concerned. And she turned to look at him and wobbled on her feet, her head suddenly throbbing and the world spinning around her.

"Whoa, earthquake," she said. Then she was falling and then all was black.

-------

Up next: What has the Gryiffindor Trio been up to all this time, anyway?

Reveiwer Responses:

phoenix83ad: There's definitely more to Ford than meets the eye and there's more to his involvement then even Buffy and the others can guess. And, I'm mean, so that's all I'm saying for a bit! :) Thanks for the review,I truly love getting one from you!

ztacel: Thanks so much for the review! I've never really thought of myself as creative, so that's a way cool compliment. Hope you like this chapter!

zayra: Thanks for reviewing and glad you liked the chapter! Hope this one was worth it too, especially since it was much longer in coming. :)

Padfoot and Moony: As always, I love your reviews! We'll be checking back in with Harry and the others in the next chapter, which I will try to get out in a week, instead of like...two months! sheepish look

WhiteWolf3: Yes really, who can one trust in hell? :) And, you know, I hadn't considered having Buffy blow up a hell dimension, but now that you mention it...wouldn't that be fun? :) Thanks for the review!

Sterling-Ag: Thanks for reviewing! Ford showing up kind of surprised me too, but once I thought about it, I really liked the idea. He's a tricky character and I think he has a few more twists and turns up his sleeve. ;)

angelus cado: Champion Industries is such a great story, isn't it? Arie's working on it right now, so I think we'll see an update before too long! Thanks for checking the story out and I'm glad you're liking it!

SiriusEarendil: I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter! I enjoy having these sudden "whoa, where did THAT come from" twists. Although, sometimes my muse surprises even me. :) Thanks for the review!

smurfinator: He is definitely a bastard, but we're not finished with Ford yet.He's got a few moresurprises in store!Thanks for the review!

Tanydwr: Thanks for the review, hope you liked the chapter!