Harry Potter and the Slayer's Spell

Title: Harry Potter and the Slayer's Spell (1/?)

Author: Gabe

Rating: overall, R (may be upped)

Pairing: Ron/Hermione - Harry/Other - Tara,Spike (eventually for all of these)

Improv: #7--kiss, panic, cover, ice (For HPI)

Improv: #41--steel, false, letter, shiver (For BAI)

Disclaimer: Ha, now I have to say I don't own two entire franchises! Well, anyway, I don't own them. I own Al, but who would want Al?

Notes: Yes, we have a crossover--we also have some serious AU on the part of Buffy. Spoilers up to Goblet of Fire for Harry, and general season six for Buffy (Up to Entropy). I also want to add a bit of an apology, because for some people the first chapter's gonna be pretty boring; I'm writing this story trying to explain the HP verse and the Buffy verse, so if a person isn't familiar with one of the mythologies, they can still enjoy the story. So please, even if you aren't familiar with both, read and tell me if I did all right at explaining things. I live for the feedback, really.

The Bronx, New York, USA-2003

Alexandra Koto had known she was special from the day she had been born- though it seemed that the reasons were continually piling up as the years passed. She was the only daughter in a family of five children, born in the middle, which made her Daddy's Little Girl. She had been named after her Great, Great Grandfather, Al, and as such had been called simply Al for as long as she could remember. At the age of 10, she got the news of something that made her even more incredibly special; she was like her mother. She was a witch.

Now, the Koto family with its five children was not particularly rich, but Al's mother was able to afford a good wand and some books for her daughter so that she could be home schooled. And for the past three years, aside from her regular schoolwork, Al had been diligently learning the magical arts. Luckily, her family was rather supportive. So despite her unusual talents of being able to levitate her brother or turn the family cat into a pincushion, her family still accepted her, just as easily as when her older brother Jeff had dyed his hair orange and black.

One particular night, when Al was 13… Then, she learned of news of something that could possibly make her even more special. News that no member of her family could have possibly guessed.

On that particular night, when Al was 13, she was practicing her Summoning Charm in the living room of family's apartment when the doorbell rang. "Can somebody get it?!" she called, once again attempting to beckon a pillow from the couch into her lap. Instead it zoomed over her head and nearly crashed into the television set. Once the doorbell rang a second time, and no one had appeared, Al sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically, carefully tucking away her wand in its case before climbing up to answer the door. "Fine, fine… buncha lazy bums I'm livin' wit', can't even open a friggin' door…"

In all of Al's life, she could never remember having seen a man like the one standing in front of her then. He couldn't have been more than 5 foot 10, wiry and thin but able to radiate a kind of power and intimidation she didn't as of yet understand. He was clad all in black (save a blood red over shirt between a black T and a worn black leather trench coat) that contrasted starkly with pale-too pale, really-skin. His fingernails had black, chipped polish on them and his slicked back hair was a shockingly platinum color. He was lighting a cigarette when she opened the door, the bright flame outlining the sharp angles of his face, making his cheekbones all the more pronounced than they all ready were, while also filling his ice blue eyes with an unearthly kind of glow. Those bright orbs flickered up from the cigarette to burn into her, and, with his gaze never leaving her face, he flicked his lighter shut so abruptly that it made Al jump. The motion from her stirred up a Cheshire cat kind of grin from the young man.

"Hello, cutie."

CHAPTER ONE ~ The American Invasion

Outside Hogsmeade, Scotland-2006

Nestled within the highlands of Scotland, hidden from prying eyes by several means, was an ancient castle that was a well known and well respected boarding school. It was, as things always seemed to be, more than it originally appeared, for it was a boarding school for the magically inclined. It was Hogwart's School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Young students of magic from all of Britain and Ireland came to Hogwart's to study and train, and it had produced some of the world's finest wizards and witches. In fact, even in 2006 it had a student of some reputation. For the sixth year going, Hogwart's had Harry Potter-they had the Boy Who Lived.

Harry didn't look too terribly like the bold and fantastic hero he was made out to be in the magical world; at 16 he was wiry and lanky, a little bit short and a little bit pale. His dark hair was permanently unruly, no matter what he did to it, and behind round glasses was a pair of unusually bright green eyes. All in all, he was becoming a handsome young man, but there were few who could see past his scar enough to realize it. He had always had a faint outline of a lightning bolt on his forehead, or, at least, he had had it since he was one. At that age a wizard known as Lord Voldemort had been gaining power in the magical community, and had attempted to kill Harry and his family. Voldemort succeeded in taking Harry's parents from him, but when the adult wizard tried to kill the small infant with an unblockable Death curse… Well, somehow, Harry blocked it. The spell backfired, leaving Voldemort in a state between death and life, with no body and no end to his suffering. The dark wizard disappeared into the world, biding his time and waiting to gain strength while Harry grew up among normal human beings-- among Muggles, more specifically, the Dursleys'.

The Dursley's were a stingy, strictly Muggle family with no love for Harry and even less for magic. In fact, they had lied about how Harry's parents had died and had never told him about his magical background - they had hoped that by ignoring the obvious, that Harry was going to be a wizard like his father before him, then it simply wouldn't come to pass. However, on Harry's eleventh birthday those at Hogwart's made sure (after several wild attempts to do so involving an awfully large amounts of letters) that Harry learned of his ability, and his family, and his invitation to join the school and learn. Without any real power to forbid him, the Dursley's allowed it, and had allowed it for the past five years, although for the summer holiday Harry was always forced to return to their home on 4 Privet Drive. Once, in his third year at Hogwart's, Harry had believed himself free of the Dursley's because of the appearence of his GodFather, Sirius Black. Unfortunately, Sirius was an outlaw--he had escaped from prison after being wrongfully tried and convicted of selling out Harry's parents to Lord Voldemort, and of murdering a large group of muggles in the process. So obviously he could not provide Harry with a proper home, despite how much he may have wanted to. For now, Sirius had settled on watching out for Harry from a distance, using his ability to transform into an animal (a large, black dog) to visit the young wizard when he could manage. However, because of present circumstances, these visits had grown less frequent. At the end of Harry's fourth year, Voldemort found a way to give himself a body again, with the help of his followers, the Death Eaters, and Harry's own blood. Since then, members of Hogwarts and several individual witches and wizards had been working tirelessly to hunt down Voldemort before he could gain too much power--the Ministry of Magic, the strongest force to fight Voldemort's evil, had yet to acknowledge the wizard's return.

Presently, on September 1st, 2006, none of this was on Harry's mind. This evening was the annual Banquet that signalled the beginning of a new school year, and there were only two things on that he was thinking about, much like the rest of the school: Who would be the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher, and was this rumor of an American foreign exchange student true?

For every year that Harry had been in Hogwarts, a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had had to be found. Whether they turned out to be Voldemort's lackeys, hopelessly inadequate, or forced out by unjustified parental fears, the teachers would come and go within the span of a year. In Harry's fifth year, Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, had taken up the position again, being as he had had the job when he was younger. The strain of running the school and of teaching Defense, however, had proven to be too much, and after the end of the year, Dumbledore had started looking for a new teacher.

At the moment, when Harry looked up at the head table to where Dumbledore was sitting, the young wizard had to admit the Headmaster looked much more like his old self again. Tall and forceful, yet very grandfatherly, Dumbledore had the kind of smile that made children light up without really knowing why. He was really rather a complete opposite of the man sitting to his right: Professor Snape. Harry unconsciously shivered a bit when he looked at the dreaded Potions teacher. Snape hated Harry, hated Gryffindors, and hated... Well, there was very little the man didn't seem to hate. And presently Snape was looking like his usual, hating everything self, with a bit of exhaustion thrown in for good measure. Since the end of Harry's fourth year, Snape had been pulling strings as a double agent, being a teacher at Hogwarts and pretending to still be a Death Eater. Harry still hated the wizard, but he had grown to have a bit of a begruding respect for the man.

Harry's gaze finally wandered over to the person sitting next to Snape, and he suddenly straightened up at the Gryffindor table. A few minutes ago, the seat had been empty, but now it was filled with a surprisingly young woman Harry didn't recognize--the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had arrived.

"Psst--Ron. Look." Harry gently nudged his best friend, Ron Weasley, in the ribs, getting the fellow sixth year's attention. Ron had been speaking with Hermione Granger, his and Harry's other best friend, and going rather starry eyed, if you asked Harry. It had been pretty obvious to him that Ron and Hermione had more than a friendship brewing in their verbal battles, but he had been content to watch them from afar and smirk.

Ron started slightly from his spot next to Harry, almost as if just waking up before his gaze turned up to the head table and he caught sight of the new teacher. "Bloody hell..." the young redhead said under his breath, surprise evident in his voice. Harry had to admit, he agreed with the assessment. The teacher couldn't have been older than her late twenties, with dark blonde hair that hung down around her freely in soft waves, covering her simple but elegant maroon robes. Dark, warm eyes seemed to smile at you, though a tad bit sadly. She had a gentle, old fashioned kind of beauty about her that was quite pleasing to the eye.

Harry turned his head slightly, watching Hermione's reaction carefully, silently wondering if her feathers would be ruffled at Ron's staring. 'Not that they've even kissed', Harry thought with a bit of an internal chuckle as he finally decided she wasn't ruffled, for she was looking intently as the new teacher as well.

"She must be incredibly good, to be brought in to teach so young," Hermione stated, sounding just a tad wistful with the thought.

"That or Dumbledore's incredibly desperate for a professor," Harry replied after a moment--though he really didn't believe that of Dumbledore--with his voice slightly lowered. The first years were entering the Great Hall now, obviously in awe of the room with it's four great tables, with floating candles all around, and it's enchanted ceiling which reflected the night sky. And, of course, the Sorting Hat. There were four houses in the school--Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin--which were a kind of mini family for the school term. You ate, slept, and had classes with your house, while competing against the other houses. Generally though, people between houses were usually quite friendly with one another; for instance, Harry's old crush, and briefly, his girlfriend the previous year, Cho Chang, was in Ravenclaw.

"There's no one older than a first year up there," Ron commented as the sorting ritual dragged on. "Guess that exchange student rumor was a sham."

Harry looked over at the line of waiting students, remembering how panicked and terrified he and his friends had been when they had been sorted, and smiled slightly at the memory. "Well, if you were a sixth year, would you want to go up there and be sorted like all the firsts?" he finally said in way of reply, absently pushing his round glasses up his nose. "Perhaps Dumbledore thought it'd be embarrassing and will have them sorted in private."

"Well, sorting is almsot over, and once it is, Dumbledore will make his speech, like always," Hermion pointed out, lightly pushing back her somewhat frazzled looking mane of brown hair. "I'm sure he'll tell us then if an American is coming."

As predicted, as soon as the last of the first years had joined their table, Professor Dumbledore stood up from his chair, gazing at the students from his half moon spectles with a smile on his face. He greeted the first years like he always did, and gave out the usual warnings and announcements- -no one to enter the Forbidden Forest, only third years and up can travel to Hogsmeade, etc--but afterwards, he paused, and turned slightly to his right.

"As I am sure you all have been able to guess, we have a new professor amongst us. She is a tad young, and from America, but mind you she has incredible experience and knowledge, and we are quite pleased to have her be able to join us. Professor Tara MacClay will be your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher."

At the sound of her name, the new teacher waved slightly, looking rather nervous under the attention being brought to her. Not that Harry blamed her- -she did look to be quite, not a tad, young and with people like Draco Malfoy in Slytherin, she could have some troudlbe gaining respect due to her age.

"And--in order to squash any wild rumors before they grow bigger than this castle," Dumbledore continued, gathering a small chuckle from the tables of students. "I will inform you that, yes, we do have an exchange student that will be joining us. I am afraid she is not with us at the moment, I have been informed she is having a bit of trouble with her transportation, but she is a 6th year student, and comes to us from New York. Whosever house she ends up belonging to, I expect the whole of the house to give her quite a warm welcome, and help her to feel as if this were her own home." Harry couldn't quite figure out why, but as he listened to the last of Dumbledore's speech, he was pretty sure there was a bit of a forceful, steely note in the older man's voice. Did Dumbledore expect trouble with the new student?

Almost as soon as this registered in Harry's mind, Dumbledore was concluding his speech, and the tables were filling with food. Famished, all the students gladly dug into the feast as soon as it appeared.

"So an American girl really is coming here," Ron said after pouring himself a glass of pumpkin juice. "Lord, I hope she ends up in Gryffindor, don't you?" he added, elbowing Harry slightly and exchanging a knowing look with his friend.

This, unlike Ron's oogling of the new teacher, did seem to ruffle Hermione's feathers. "Really, Ron," she said, glaring slightly from across the table. "Just because she's from New York instead of Manchester doesn't mean she'll be any different from us, excluding the accent."

"Hermione's right," Harry decided, still busily piling food onto his plate. "Afterall, how strange can Americans be?"