Sunnydale High School, California
November 3rd, 1997
Bellatrix Lestrange may have been completely mad, but she was also a mad woman with a plan.
Spying on Willow within the school gym, Bellatrix watched as the female teen used her wand to cast Expelliarmus on a training dummy. Oddly, the dummy kinda looked like a wooden vampire holding a knife. The disarming charm knocked the knife out of the dummy's grasp effectively enough...
{ Time to get my plan into gear, } Bellatrix thought to herself with a wild inner cackle, as black smoke appeared in the gym.
"I could teach you better spells, my dear Willow."
"Who-?" Willow turned around, and gasped in recognition. "Bellatrix?!" Given what the redhead had witnessed back on Halloween, she was naturally worried that the crazy witch was here to kill her.
"You think I'm here to kill you?" Bellatrix smirked, easily able to divine the younger witch's thoughts. "No, girl, I'm here to train you in dark magic. That's the only way to save your beloved Xander, you should know."
Without even thinking about it, Willow smacked her enemy in the face. The young woman instantly went white with fear, but she still said, "You're a monster! You did something like that to the man I love, why should I even believe you?"
Bellatrix rubbed her cheek, before laughing evilly. "Because I'm the only one that can bring him back from the Underworld - if I wished to. But first, you have to kill the Slayer for me."
Willow's eyes went wide with disbelief. "You're, you're nuts! I won't do something like that to Buffy! I CAN'T!"
"Can't you? You seem to be under the delusion that you have a choice in the matter, my dear Willow!"
Bellatrix smiled evilly while she put her hand right through Willow's chest, removing her heart. Well, not her physical heart, of course; but something that looked like it was made of glass. It glowed red, with a bit of black at the edges.
"My, my, my. I see that you've already done something evil," Bellatrix purred.
"Evil?" Willow seemed dazed, as her ability to tell right from wrong had just been suppressed.
"Yes - doing evil things, that darkens your heart. That's why there's a black glow here. But what evil thing have you done, I wonder? Ahhh...it couldn't possibly have been steering your Slayer friend away from your beloved Xander, could it? Making sure she fell for that stupid, brooding, pathetic excuse for a vampire instead, a romance you deliberately engineered - simply in order to get what you want?"
Willow was beyond freaked that Bellatrix was holding her heart, and had figured out her deepest, darkest secret. And it was starting to blacken noticeably.
"I..."
"Go on, Willow, you can tell me. After all, I do have your heart in my hand, and you will do as I say - if you don't want me to destroy it!"
"All right, fine! I sabotaged Xander's hopes for establishing a relationship with Buffy. But I knew she only had eyes for Angel, and I..." she trailed off. But it wasn't hard for Bellatrix to guess the rest.
"So you made *sure* that she would never see him as anything other than a friend. And even that was iffy, after the Hyena incident! Interesting..."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, Xander was muttering to himself as he walked through the Forbidden Forest.
"The Sword of Gryffindor?! Damn it, Merlin, you said whatever happens, don't go into Hogwarts. So what am I supposed to do now, go in there anyway? Or maybe hope there's a sword in temple I can use? Yeah, right, maybe the dragon won't kill me first if that's the case; but I wouldn't bet money on that!"
Looking up in the sky as it started to grow dark, Xander quickly stopped and set up camp for the night, figuring it would be smarter to try to enter the castle during daylight hours. He placed advanced shields all around him, plus wards to warn him of intruders, before entering the tent; which was bigger on the inside than the outside. Oddly, his current domicile reminded him of the TARDIS in Doctor Who.
{ It's been years since I went camping, } Harris thought to himself. { Huh, good thing there's a fridge. Really don't want to have to look for food, and worrying about running into some strange monster in the Forbidden Forest! }
Not all that far away within Hogwarts, Auron sat on his throne talking to Xylon. "You failed to kill the human."
Xylon nodded, there was no point denying it. "Yes, master. But the dragon will kill him once he enters the temple, and I thought it more urgent to warn you that he killed Adelaide; and he almost killed me as well."
Auron frowned. "Go seek out the acromantulas. Tell them there's a human in the forest, no doubt they'll want to feast on his flesh."
"Yes, Master Auron!" Xylon bowed, and then vanished via a dark portal.
Back in the Forbidden Forest, Xander got into bed after dinner. As he started to dream - a s ex dream about Cordelia, unsurprisingly enough - a vampire from Hogwarts appeared, just beyond the wards...
Back in Sunnydale, the wounded and hospitalized Buffy told her companions that Shredder looked like Xander - and it might be best not to tell Willow that. Giles agreed, while Faith abstained due to not knowing who the Rosenberg girl was.
"So, uh, why exactly should we not tell this Willow chick the 411?" Faith asked curiously.
"'Cause Willow and Xander have been friends since they were in kindergarten together! I don't get it, Giles. Why does Shredder look like Xander?" Buffy wanted to know.
"That's a good question, Buffy. Um...I'm just speculating, of course, but, uh, Bellatrix may have used some kind of blood magic to resurrect this Shredder chap, and since she's possessing Xander's body...well, I'll contact the Council about Oroku Saki. Maybe they might have some ideas."
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Sunnydale, Regime Superman was about to fly off; up, up and away. But a magic spell hit him and he fell straight down to the ground. Getting up to his feet, the tin-pot dictator yelled, "Who dares to attack me?!"
"I do, Man of Steel." Malice grinned at him, his body wreathed in green flames. "And in case you didn't realize it? You're going nowhere, Kal-El."
The Kryptonian was instantly enraged. "Really, now, winged man? First, you die!"
Regime Superman attempted to freeze Malice with his ice breath. Unfortunately for Zod's killer, the ice immediately turned into fog. Malice then pointed his staff at his enemy; at once, magical lightning struck Regime Superman. The Kryptonian's body was quickly covered in magical electrical bolts, crawling all over him like vines, and sapping him of all his powers and strength.
"I'm sorry, Kal-El - no, wait, I'm really not! Your soul will be mine. It's a shame that Hades won't let me summon my undead army, granted. But you'll do for now!"
And the next instant, he who had once been Larry Blaisdell was dead - just like he who had been Daniel 'Oz' Osbourne, far away on the surface of the moon.
No doubt about it. The plans of the higher powers were now completely shot to hell, especially since Spike, Drusilla and Angel were all dust as well, and without any of them having fulfilled their original purpose...
TBC...
