Chapter 2: Lunch

Buffy sat at a table on the outdoor patio of the restaurant that they were supposed to meet Giles at. She sipped her beer, and looked across at Dawn, who had an enormous chocolate milk shake. She wondered how Dawn stayed so thin while eating the way she did. One chair was piled high with their shopping bags, and a plain brown package was sitting in front of the chair that was waiting for Giles. Plain brown was the only sort of gift wrapping that Hunter and Cross would do.

Buffy took another sip from her beer. She was beginning to appreciate some of Spike's disparaging remarks about American brews. Her spider sense started to tingle again. She glanced up and saw that Remus and Harry were being led by the restaurant hostess toward the only vacant table left on the patio. The one right beside Buffy and Dawn. If Buffy hadn't seen the way Harry's eyes lit up in surprise when he spotted Dawn again she might have suspected that they'd followed them. She also might not have recognised Harry, if it wasn't for his hair and the glasses he was still wearing. He was wearing new, well fitting clothes from head to toe.

Harry made sure that he snagged a chair facing Dawn. He smiled nervously and leaned toward her. "Er, hi. You're the girl from the book store." He held out his hand. "I'm Harry."

Buffy saw Dawn suppress the first thing she was going to say—no doubt a pun based on Harry's name—and then she smiled and took his hand. "Dawn. And that's my sister Buffy."

Buffy smiled and nodded. "Hi."

Harry smiled back. "Hi. Oh, er, this is Prof— Mr. Lupin."

Buffy looked at the older man. "You're a professor?"

"Not anymore," said Lupin. "I'm…retired."

"Still the best DADA teacher we've had," grumbled Harry.

"Harry."

Buffy heard the note of warning in Lupin's voice. "Dada?"

"Defense Against Dastardly Auditors," said Lupin. "It was a bit of a joke. I taught accounting."

"Oh," said Buffy, but she caught the look that Harry was giving Lupin. She suspected that DADA stood for something else. She couldn't imagine what, though.

"There you are Buffy!"

Buffy looked around, "Giles! Hi, have a seat." She then got the biggest surprise she'd had since Angel had shown up in the Guardian's temple.

"Rupert?" asked Remus Lupin. "How are you doing, you old Muggle?" He stood up and held out his hand for Giles to shake.

"Remus! Good lord, what are you doing here?" Giles took his hand and shook it enthusiastically.

Buffy was having mixed feelings about this reunion. While Giles was obviously delighted to see Lupin, they'd had trouble in the past from people who knew Giles and then showed up out of the blue. "So, you guys are old pals, huh?" she asked out loud.

"Oh, he worked for me while I was at the British Museum," said Giles. "One of my old professors at Oxford introduced us. He was a great help to me. Very knowledgeable about all sorts of mythical creatures."

Buffy raised her eyebrow at Lupin. "Accounting, huh?"

"No one will pay me to teach about mythical creatures," said Lupin, with a very straight face. Buffy saw Harry try to suppress a snort. Lupin smiled at him. "Rupert is very knowledgeable about mythical creatures too. The school library even has some copies of his book. Very good, for a Muggle. It's on the recommended reading list for a few of your classes."

"What were you doing at the British Museum?" asked Harry. He seemed surprised by this bit of information about Lupin's past.

"After everything that happened, I needed to get away from…things for a while," said Lupin. Buffy noticed Harry's jaw clench a bit at that statement. "The headmmaster has friends everywhere. He arranged it for me."

"What's a Muggle?" asked Dawn. "Is that one of those English insults like 'prat' or 'pillock?' I don't think I ever heard Spike use it."

"I don't know what it means," said Giles. "Remus here just smiles whenever I ask him."

Remus smiled, and said nothing.

"Still won't tell me, eh?" asked Giles. "How about a question you will answer: What brings you to be chatting with my old student here?"

"We kinda met in Hunter and Cross," said Lupin, "and my old student Harry here took a shine to Dawn. Then we bumped into them again here, and he started to chat her up." Buffy laughed as Harry and Dawn both turned red.

"Hunter and Cross are still in business?" asked Giles. "They must both be in their 90s by now."

"Oh, they've retired," said Lupin. "'Young' Norman Cross is running the shop now, and being very suspicious of these young ladies. They aren't his usual sort of customers."

Buffy pointed to the package on the table. "We bought you a present. Now I understand why it seemed like such a 'you' sort of place. I was going to tell you we could get some of the books we lost there."

"You lost books Rupert?" asked Remus. "I thought that was impossible."

"That sort of thing can happen when you have to leave town so fast that you couldn't even pack clean underwear," said Giles.

"A couple of people on that bus could have used the underwear," muttered Dawn to Harry.

"Not getting into trouble again, and having to run from the law?" asked Lupin. "I thought you grew up."

"Not the law this time," said Giles. "More like a bloody great hole in the ground swallowing the city underneath us."

"You were in Sunnydale?"

"Yep," said Buffy. "The outside world finally noticed us. After everything else, all it took was a five mile wide sink hole opening up and swallowing it." 'Sink hole' was what all the news reports about the collapse of the Hellmouth called it. "We were on the last bus out. I almost missed the bus."

Harry gave these Muggles a closer look. Something about their attitude told him that they knew that the 'sink hole' story was a crock. The collapse of the Hellmouth in California had been big news in the wizarding world. It had even crowded the news about Voldemort's return off the front page of the Daily Prophet for a day. (Mostly because there really wasn't anything new to report about Voldemort. After the attack on the Ministry of Magic, he'd gone back into hiding.) There had been a great deal of concern that the collapse of the Hellmouth was a portent for something worse that was about to happen, perhaps some new assault by Voldemort, but when nothing further happened, it was quickly relegated to the back pages. Mostly the humour section, where people made fun of the Muggle 'sink hole' theory. Of course when you really looked, it was plain that no one in the wizarding world had a clue about what had really happened there either.

They rearranged the tables so they could all sit together, and Giles and Lupin ordered themselves beers, after making their waitress tell them all the varieties available. Harry just pointed to Dawn's milkshake and told the waitress that he'd have one of those.

They spent the lunch with Remus telling stories about Giles in his younger days, and Dawn telling the story of racing through the streets of Sunnydale in a school bus with her watching the street crumble away behind them. (She left out the really exciting bits about Buffy leaping from building to building as they collapsed underneath her, and just why they'd stayed in Sunnydale right up to the last possible second.) At the end of the meal Harry worked up the nerve to ask Dawn if she wanted to join with him and some friends who were going to see their first 'Muggle movie' tomorrow afternoon.