CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: THE ESCAPE
Buffy found herself drowning in her memories, forced to relive the most terrible things she'd ever been put through. For any average seventeen year old, whilst there may have been pain and hurt, it usually wasn't anything like what Buffy had gone through, and the Dementor couldn't have been more thrilled. It was feeding off her joyous memories, leaving her with only the harshest times of her life.
She whimpered pitifully and curled herself more tightly into a ball in the comer of the room. Her fist pounded against the cool concrete and she hit her head several times, trying to clear her mind. Nothing seemed to work. On and on the memories plagued her, never resting for a moment as the darkness trickled through her.
Tears ran down her face, and she could barely breath, the pain in her chest feeling like a thousand knives stabbing her heart over and over again.
A sudden thought ran through Buffy's mind, a thought she'd had again and again over the last few months. She wanted her strength back. She wanted to be able to stand up and defeat the Dementor that tormented her thoughts. She wanted to force her way out of the room. But she wasn't the Slayer anymore. She wasn't strong. She was just Buffy.
Angelus' taunting voice came back to haunt her once again.
"No weapons." She wasn't the Slayer. "No friends." Her friends had no clue where she was. "No hope." And there was no way out.
"Take all that away…"She slammed her hand against the wall, trying to ground herself with physical pain. It didn't seem to work.
"Take all that away…"It felt as though her energy as well as all of her hope and happiness had been sucked away. She slumped back, too tired to fight.
"And what's left?"Nothing. There was nothing left. "I've got nothing left to lose." And with that one thought, her mind cleared completely. "Wrong kid…you've got one more thing." Her sobs stopped, and the weight on her chest seemed to lift.
"What's left?" Angelus' taunted her.
Buffy swallowed hard and her eyes snapped open.
"Me."
Pushing past the pain, fear and horror that was her past, Buffy forced her mind to focus on the present and future. She was locked in a room with a Dementor. That was her first problem, one that could be solved. She just didn't know how. Without her Slayer strength and without her wand, she didn't quite know what to do.
She forced herself to concentrate, casting her mind back to the months she had spent learning Wiccan magic. She couldn't draw on her internal magic, but that didn't mean that she couldn't draw on her outside sources. She could feel the darkness of the Dementor's magic. She could feel the barrier spell surrounding the room and knew instinctively that all she needed to do was make it even one foot outside the door.
She pushed herself to stand, holding onto the walls to support her shaking legs. She felt the Dementor move towards her, and with her eyes closed, she extended all of her other senses, trying to feel the creature as Giles had taught her to do both when she'd been the Slayer, and after she'd been stripped of her powers.
Buffy felt the creature lift a hand towards her, and in that moment, Buffy shoved her hand up to meet it, placing her palm flat against the creatures chest. It shrieked in rage and pain as Buffy drew power from the creature itself, stealing the Dementors darkness and turning it into her own. She struggled to maintain a balance between the light and dark, and knew that she needed to act quickly to dispel the power she'd just taken into herself.
She forced herself to focus purely on the Dementor, her anger, fear, rage and the new darkness inside herself all being projected onto the black cloaked creature. The Dementor stumbled back under the barrage of emotions, and Buffy clapped her hands together.
"Discede!"
Had Buffy's vision been better in the darkness, she would have watched the Dementor disappear in a cloud of dust. Buffy breathed a sigh of relief and felt the room return to a normal temperature. Her heart began beating more easily, and her breathing returned to normal. She pulled herself together, wiping the tears from her eyes. She took a deep breath and focused her energies on apparating. Nothing.
"Shit."
She felt her way around the walls to the slot in the door. She tried searching for a handle, but found that the room was sealed completely except for the small slot where the door should have been. It felt as though the door had completely sealed itself, making it part of the walls. There didn't even seem to be hinges for the door to swing open on.
Buffy could feel the lock on the slot though, and knew that her best chance was to unlock the slot in the door. Even then, what she had planned after that may not have worked. She could only pray that she was strong enough to pull it off.
She sighed tiredly and knelt down, thankful that Giles had taught her the skill of lock picking so long ago. Pulling a pin from her hair, she expertly jimmied the lock, and opened the small slot. The hole was barely an two inches high and three inches wide.
All she could do now was pray that she was good enough.
She stood quickly, but felt her knees buckle beneath her. Tears welled in her eyes at the sheer effort she needed just to stand. She braced her hands against the wall, taking deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. She'd never tried this before, and attempting things under duress was never good. Fortunately for Buffy though, that was how she'd learned to do most things. Jumping into the deep end of the pool so to speak.
She exhaled softly. "Well, at least I know I won't be sent to Azkaban for this," she muttered.
And with that, she sent her senses searching inward, tapping into her well of power that lay within her. She felt everything shift within her as her hands and arms disappeared, her legs joined together, and every part of her became stick thin.
The previously sleeping guard outside Buffy's door yelped in fear as a black serpent slithered out of the slotted window of the room. The snake hissed at him angrily, it's hazel eyes full of fire and anger. The guard stepped backwards, completely terrified, not knowing how a snake had come to be inside the room.
The guard had always prided himself on following his gut. His gut told him to run. He did.
Had he looked back, he would have seen the snake transform back into the small figure of Buffy Summers, tired and panting with exhaustion. She knew she had very little time to escape from the Ministry building. All she knew was that she was exhausted and that she needed somewhere to go. Somewhere the Ministry wouldn't find her. Maybe even somewhere that her Hogwarts friends wouldn't find her.
She closed her eyes and focussed her thoughts on the one person she'd always been able to count on. The first person who had ever stayed by her side voluntarily. And with those thoughts in mind, she drew on the very last of her strength and apparated away from the Ministry building, collapsing in a heap on the floor of a familiar living room, her body trembling with exhaustion at the effort it had cost her to get away.
She let herself sink into the darkness that had been beckoning to her for the last several hours, retreating into her mind and refusing to allow herself to wake up to the horrors of the world, fearing that she was still within the confines of the Ministry. Darkness fell upon her, and she passed out, her body still trembling as her temperature began to sky-rocket.
The brunette girl walking out of the kitchen towards the living room stopped dead in her tracks and looked on in shock. She could only wonder who the small blonde girl was and how she'd managed to end up in the apartment.
-----
Ooo mysteries. Where did Buffy go and who is this mysterious brunette girl?