Buffy, Giles and Dawn walked quickly through King's Cross station. "Hurry up you two!" he said. "We're going to be late! The train leaves at 10:00." He had a suitcase in one hand, and a garment bag slung over his shoulder.
"Giles, relax, we've still got ten minutes," said Dawn. She was carrying a couple of suitcases of her own. "Now, where were we supposed to catch the train?"
"Professor Dumbledore said there would be someone waiting for us between platforms nine and ten," said Giles.
"And there they are," said Buffy. She pointed with the guitar case in her right hand. She had her own suitcase in her left.
Dawn looked where Buffy had pointed and saw Harry and Hermione waving to them from near the barrier between the platforms. She hurried toward them. "Hey guys!" She looked around. There didn't seem to be any trains ready to depart. "Where do we catch the train?"
Harry smiled at her. "Through here." He took a quick look around to make sure no one was looking, leaned against the barrier, and vanished.
"Whoa!" said Dawn.
"The leaning thing takes a bit of practice," said Hermione. "The first time it works best if you take a little run at it."
Buffy gave her a look. "You realise that if I smack my head into a wall, I can kick you from here to the other side of the station." Hermione just laughed. Buffy looked at Dawn. "You first."
Dawn gave Hermione a look too. "I may not be able to kick it across the station, but I can probably kick your ass too." She took a deep breath and looked at the wall. "Here goes." She walked quickly toward the wall, accelerating into a run. She closed her eyes just before she thought she was about to hit it, and was surprised when nothing happened. She took a couple more steps as she tried to slow down. She opened her eyes and saw a luggage cart right in front of her that she was about to run into.
Dawn felt a pair of arms grab her just before the collision would have happened. The arms belonged to Harry, and he kept her from smacking into the cart that was piled high with luggage. There were a couple of cages on top, one with a large ginger cat, and the other with Harry's snowy owl. They were keeping a suspicious eye on each other.
Harry smiled at Dawn. "Here, let me take those." He took her suitcases, and added them to the cart. It was getting piled dangerously high.
Dawn looked around. "Maybe we should find another cart, to split the load." She stopped talking though when she saw where she was. It was like she'd moved into a whole different train station, from an earlier century. There was a bright red steam engine by the platform, hissing and smoking. The sign overhead proclaimed that they were on platform nine and three quarters.
Dawn turned toward the wrought iron archway behind her just in time to see Buffy appear in it. Buffy had kept her eyes open, and managed to stop much more quickly than Dawn had. She looked around too.
"Uh, you might want to step out of the way, before Mr. Giles runs into you," said Harry.
"Oh! Right!" Buffy took a couple of quick steps forward just in time to avoid the collision. Giles hadn't actually worked up to a run, he was moving at more of a brisk walk. Hermione came through right behind him.
Harry offered to take Buffy's bags. She let him add her suitcase to the stack on the cart, but she kept the guitar case herself. Giles took one look at the precarious pile, and decided he could manage to carry his bags the rest of the way himself.
Dawn took another look at the train. It was a very short one. Just the engine, with a couple of coaches behind it. "Not a lot of people going anywhere today?" She looked around the platform. They were nearly the only people on it.
"Just us and Professor Lupin," said Harry. "September first, this place is a madhouse, with all the kids going back to school."
"You're coming too?" asked Dawn.
"Yeah," said Hermione. "Professor Dumbledore thought you should have a couple of native guides. Now we better get moving, or we'll miss the train!"
"Hermione, we're the only passengers," said Harry. "It won't leave without us."
"Honestly, Harry! Just once, before you graduate, you really must read Hogwarts: A History. The Hogwarts Express must adhere to its schedule very precisely in order to slip through the Muggle rail system unnoticed. People will not be pleased if we make it late, and they have to reshuffle everything. Now come on!"
Harry pushed their cart to the end coach of the train. Most of their luggage was offloaded into its baggage compartment. Harry kept Hedwig and Hermione kept the cat, who she introduced to everyone as Crookshanks. Buffy still refused to let go of her guitar case.
There were only a couple of people on the platform to see them off. Hermione quickly introduced Buffy, Dawn and Giles to her parents. The train whistle blew.
"Oh, I gotta go!" Hermione gave her parents one more hug and kiss each, and climbed up onto the train after the others. "Bye! I'll write!"
The train lurched into motion as they moved down the aisle between compartments. Professor Lupin stuck his head out of one up ahead, and called for them to come join him. The compartment would have been awfully crowded with all six of them in it, so Giles suggested that Buffy and the kids take the next compartment, while he joined Lupin.
They all settled into their seats. Harry and Hermione let Buffy and Dawn have the window seats. Hermione released Crookshanks from his carrying cage, and let him sit in her lap.
Harry nodded toward the case that Buffy had leaned against the seat beside her knee. "You play guitar?"
"She can't play a single chord," said Dawn.
"So why the guitar?" asked Hermione.
Buffy looked at Dawn. "You think they'd like to see it?"
Dawn smiled back. "Yeah, I think they'd like to see it."
"Okay." Buffy lifted the case into her lap, and released the catches. She opened it.
Harry's eyes opened wide. "Wow!" He had never seen anything like it. "To quote Ron: 'Wicked!'"
"Isn't it?" asked Buffy. She pulled the Scythe out of the guitar case she used to carry it around in public. She held it by the hand grip down near its blade, which shone with a jewel like luster. The long handle ended with a sharp wooden stake. "It does make music though." She twirled the Scythe in the air in front of her and the blade sang.
"That's it?" asked Hermione. "That's what you used to make Ginny a Slayer?"
"Yep," said Buffy. "But if you want to see real magic, you should see what it takes to get this onto an airplane in your carry on luggage." She smiled. "No way I'm checking this as baggage. It might disappear for another ten thousand years." Willow had placed some serious enchantments on that guitar case. When X-rayed it looked like it had a guitar inside, and there were several layers of aversion spells to keep anyone who wasn't supposed to from opening it.
Buffy put the Scythe back in its case. "Not really room in here to give you a real demo, wouldn't want to take someone's head off."
They settled back to enjoy the trip. Harry and Hermione told Dawn about their professors, and their classes, and about the Hogwarts houses, named after the witches and wizards who had founded the school. "Gryffindor is the best," said Harry.
"Let me guess," said Dawn. "You're in Gryffindor."
"Well, yeah, but I knew it was the best before I ever joined it." Harry pointed at Hermione. "She told me. She was a really stuck up, annoying little know-it-all bookworm back then, but she spoke with conviction.
"Gryffindors are the best, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs are good to. There are some really good guys in both those houses. You don't want to be in Slytherin! Worst house in the school."
"So how do they pick what house you go in?" asked Dawn.
"The Sorting Hat does it," said Hermione.
"The Sorting Hat?" asked Buffy.
"It's an enchanted hat, created by the founders," said Hermione. "You put it on and it kinda reads your mind, looking for the qualities that each of them prized. It then picks which house you go into.
"Gryffindor prized daring and bravery, Ravenclaw intelligence and learning, Hufflepuff loyalty and hard work, Slytherin cunning and ruthless ambition. Slytherins are a bunch of scheming weasels."
"And ferrets," said Harry. "Don't forget Malfoy the amazing bouncing ferret." He and Hermione both laughed at the memory. Buffy and Dawn just looked at them.
"I'm having a flashback to Willow and Xander and 'Be my deputy!'" said Buffy.
"What?" asked Dawn.
"Oh, it was a conversation between them about Cordelia, my first year at Sunnydale High," said Buffy. "Completely incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't present at the incident being discussed."
"Oh, sorry," said Harry. "One of our professors a couple of years ago got annoyed with Malfoy—he's pretty much the worst of the Slytherins—and transfigured him into a ferret. And then bounced him all around the hall."
"Professors do things like that?" asked Buffy. "Maybe we should turn this train around."
"Oh, no!" said Harry. "That was Mad Eye Moody…actually it was someone impersonating Mad Eye Moody who turned out to be working for Voldemort, and Professor McGonagall caught him—she's the Deputy Headmistress—and read him the riot act. That sort of thing is totally against the rules. Standard punishments are points taken from your house, and detentions spent scrubbing Snape's cauldrons by hand and things like that."
"Oh, good," said Buffy. "Dawn could work on her pot scrubbing."
"Hey!" said Dawn. "I've never seen you doing much of it!"
The train continued northward. At noon a woman appeared with the lunch cart. She smiled at Buffy and Dawn. "Could you please pull in your feet a little, dears?" she asked.
Buffy and Dawn had both been reclining back in their seats, with their feet stretched out comfortably in front of them. They sat up a little straighter, and pulled their feet in.
"Thank you." The witch gestured with her wand, and a table grew up out of the floor between the seats. She laid out four small covered trays, that looked suspiciously like airplane meal trays to Buffy, on the table in front of them, and handed out menu cards. "So what would you like?"
Buffy scanned the card, looking over the choices available, and thinking that the question should have been asked before she was given the tray. "Umm, I'll have the fish and chips, please?"
"Very good." The witch tapped the tray in front of Buffy with her wand.
Fwhoop! The tray transformed in an instant into steaming hot plate of fish and chips.
"Whoa!" Buffy and Dawn both started in their seats.
"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you dears," said the witch. "Now what would you like to drink?"
Buffy scanned the menu list again. Many of the beverages on it had unfamiliar names to her, so she asked for a glass of milk. Another tap of the wand and a glass appeared in front of Buffy. The witch turned to Dawn. "And what would you like?"
Dawn ordered the clubhouse sandwich, and when asked what she'd like to drink, Harry and Hermione recommended that she try the butterbeer.
"I think she's a little young yet for beer," said Buffy.
"Oh, no!" said Hermione. "It's non-alcoholic, kind of like rootbeer, only sort of butterscotch flavoured."
"Okay, I'll try that," said Dawn.
The witch tapped her wand, and a tall glass of light brown, foaming liquid appeared in front of Dawn. She picked it up and took a cautious sip from it. "Hey, pretty good. Thank you!"
Harry ordered a hamburger, and Hermione a roast beef sandwich, and they both got butterbeers to go with them. The witch moved down the aisle to serve Professor Lupin and Giles.
"Why don't we get service like this on the school train?" asked Harry around a mouthful of hamburger.
"Don't be silly," said Hermione. "Could you imagine how long it would take to feed four hundred kids this way? And Fred and George would have probably just started a food fight anyway." She bit into her sandwich.
The witch came back about half an hour later with the dessert cart, and tea and coffee. Buffy just had a coffee, while Dawn, Harry and Hermione got tea, and pumpkin pasties.
Harry left the compartment to visit the toilet when lunch was finished. Dawn had been waiting for the chance to ask Hermione a couple of questions when he wasn't around. "So, does Harry have a girlfriend?" Buffy laughed. "What?" asked Dawn. "He's cute!"
Hermione laughed too. "Yes he's cute, but you'll never get me to admit it in front of him, and no he doesn't have a girlfriend right now. He had a crush on Cho Chang in third and fourth years, and he dated her a bit last year, but nothing came of it, and Ginny used to have an enormous crush on him, but I think she's pretty much gotten over it…at least she can talk when he's around her now."
"What about you?" asked Dawn.
"Harry and Ron have been my best friends since we were eleven," said Hermione. "But there's nothing 'boyfriendly' between us."
"So Harry's available?"
Hermione smiled. "Yes, he's available. You should probably take up Quidditch though if you really want to attract his attention. Cho is the Ravenclaw Seeker."
"What's Quidditch?" asked Buffy.
"Only the best sport ever!" said Harry, who had just gotten back.
"Harry is pretty mad about Quidditch," said Hermione.
"It's 'the sport of warlocks,'" said Harry. "Everyone follows it."
"How do you play?" asked Dawn.
"There are seven players on each team," said Harry. "The Keeper, two Beaters, three Chasers, and the Seeker. I'm Gryffindor's Seeker. Ginny played Seeker for us last year while I was suspended, but now that I'm back she's planning to try out for Chaser. Ron's our Keeper. The main ball is called the Quaffle, and the Chasers try to score by throwing it through the other team's goal hoops. The Keeper guards the hoops, and tries to keep the Quaffle out. There are a couple of Bludgers that the Beaters knock around with bats, keeping them away from our own players, and trying to knock the other team's players off their brooms."
"Wait a minute," said Dawn. "Did you just say 'brooms?'"
"Oh, didn't I mention that?" asked Harry. "You play on flying brooms." His grin told Dawn he had deliberately left that bit out until the end.
"Flying brooms." Dawn looked at Hermione. "Is he having us on?"
"Nope," said Hermione. "Really living up to the stereotype, aren't we?"
Buffy grinned. "Some of the 'witches' in the UCSunnydale Wiccan group would be so disappointed."
"So what does the Seeker do?" asked Dawn.
"The Seeker catches the Snitch," said Harry. "Catch the Golden Snitch, and you score 150 points and end the game."
"So how much does scoring with the Quaffle get you?" asked Buffy.
"Ten points."
"Oookay," said Buffy. "Let's see if I've got this straight. You've got a dozen players, flying around on their brooms with the Quaffle and Bludgers and stuff, working hard to score ten points a shot, and you've got a couple of Seekers chasing after this Golden Snitch thing, and when they catch it, they score 150 points, and the game's over."
"That pretty much sums it up," said Hermione.
"So unless you've got a real blowout going, where one team gets more than 150 points ahead of the other, 90 percent of the action is irrelevant to who wins the game," said Buffy.
"That's a fairly accurate assessment," said Hermione. "But for some reason that doesn't seem to bother anyone. For tournament play, if there's a tie in the number of games won by the two leading teams, it's decided by total points scored, so all that other stuff is important. A couple of years ago, Gryffindor went into the final game one win and 200 points behind, so we had to win the game by more than 200 points to win the cup."
"And did you?" asked Dawn.
"230 to 20," said Harry.
"But how often does that sort of situation come up?" asked Buffy.
"It's not uncommon," said Hermione. "Last year was decided by total points too. Total scores also get added to House points, so they can affect the winning of the House Cup at the end of the year."
Dawn asked the other question that she'd been wondering about off and on since the first lunch with Harry. "So how'd you get that scar?"
The smiles instantly left Harry and Hermione's faces.
"Oh god, I just put my foot in it again didn't I?" asked Dawn.
"You couldn't know," said Harry. "It happened when my parents died. Lord Voldemort, he's an evil wizard, tried to kill me. My parents tried to stop him, and he killed them, and then he tried to kill me, and I got this." Harry pointed to his forehead.
"Harry's the Boy Who Lived," said Hermione. "There is no defense against Voldemort's killing curse. No one that it has ever been used on has ever survived, except for Harry. For some reason the curse backfired on him, and it nearly killed Voldemort. He was left nearly powerless."
"Not nearly enough," said Harry.
"It took him until a year ago to really start to recover," said Hermione. "Most people didn't want to believe it, even then. It was only last spring that he 'went public' in a way that they couldn't deny."
"Why would a powerful wizard want to kill a baby?" asked Dawn.
"A prophecy," said Harry. "There is a prophecy that says that either Voldemort will kill me, or I'll kill him. He decided to take action while I wasn't able to defend myself, to make sure he came out the winner."
"He really should have been smart enough to know that it's best to ignore prophecies," said Buffy.
"But some prophecies are true," said Harry.
"Those are the ones you should ignore the most," said Buffy. "It was a true prophecy that got me killed the first time."
"Killed?" asked Harry.
"First time?" asked Hermione.
"Boy Who Lived," said Dawn. "Meet the Girl Who Died…Twice."
"Huh?"
"There was this really old and powerful vampire called the Master," said Buffy.
"Oh, I've read about him!" said Hermione. "He disappeared about seventy years ago!"
"He moved to Sunnydale about seventy years ago, tried to open the Hellmouth, and got trapped inside it instead," said Buffy. "But there was this prophecy that said that he'd escape, kill the Slayer, and open the Hellmouth. Well, I couldn't let that happen, even if I died trying to stop it. Opening the Hellmouth would allow the demons to take over the world, so I went down to face him. I lost, he fed off me, and that's what gave him the power to open the Hellmouth and escape. He dropped me face first into a pool of water, and I drowned."
"Uh, you're here." Harry looked out the window at the passing scenery. "World seems pretty demon free."
"Lucky for me and the world I have friends," said Buffy. "A couple of them, Xander and Angel, had followed me down, and they pulled me out of the pool of water, and Xander did CPR, and revived me. Then I kicked the Master's ass, and the Hellmouth closed up again before anything could get all the way out.
"Anyway, point of the story: Prophecies: Best to ignore 'em, especially when they're true, because even then, they don't tell the whole story. There's always something they leave out which will come back and bite you on the ass. Your Valdywart guy should have known that."
Harry thought for a second. He had never told anyone about what Professor Dumbledore had told him about the prophecy. What he had shown him in the pensive. "'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.'"
"That's the prophecy?" asked Buffy.
"But I thought no one heard it when it got broken!" said Hermione.
"It wasn't heard then," said Harry. "Dumbledore heard it when it was first made. He told it to me."
"Pretty damn vague," said Buffy. "Trying to make a decision based on it is a pretty pointless thing to do."
"But my parents are dead because of it," said Harry, "Because of me. And Voldemort is still trying to kill me before I can kill him."
Buffy looked at Harry and thought a bit. "Moldywart is a very dangerous wizard, right? His killing curse had an impressive 'never fails' record before he came up against you."
"Yeah," said Harry. "So?"
"So your parents had already defied him three times, and still lived. I get the impression that's a pretty good track record too. I doubt if most people who defied him ever got a second chance to try. Do you think your parents would have stopped defying him?"
"Never!" said Harry.
"So how long do you think it would have taken him to get around to your parents, even without you and the prophecy?" asked Buffy. "Their deaths have nothing to do with you. It sounds to me like they died because they were good people who wouldn't sit by and let Evil have its way. It's Moldywart's fault that they're dead. Because of you though, the world got what? Fifteen years without him…pretty good."
They rode in silence for a while. Buffy looked out the window of the train. They were moving into more mountainous terrain and the sun was sinking toward the horizon. Buffy couldn't help noticing that while she could see perfectly well through the train window, the sun itself looked like she was seeing it through heavily tinted glass. She thought that was a pretty neat trick.
"You died twice," said Harry suddenly.
Buffy took her eyes off the scenery, and looked back into the compartment at him. "Yeah, I did."
"How did you die the second time?"
Buffy looked across at her sister. "In a way, I suppose it was kinda like your parents. I died to save Dawnie. There was this rift that had been opened, breaking down the barriers between the worlds, and if it stayed open, it would have destroyed everything. The only way to close it was for Dawn or me to die, so I chose me."
"And how'd you come back?" asked Harry.
"My friends again," said Buffy. "Only this time they used a little resurrection spell."
"Oh, my god, no!" said Hermione.
"Wait," said Harry, "There are resurrection spells? We can bring them back?"
"Harry! No!" said Hermione.
"But my parents! Sirius! We can bring them back!"
"You don't want to do that Harry," said Buffy softly.
"Why not?"
"Because I was in Heaven," said Buffy. "Getting ripped out of there, forced back to earth…it was horrible. I was miserable, and depressed, and damn near suicidal for the next six months, and I made all my friends miserable and depressed too. It wasn't until nearly a year later that I would start describing myself as 'happy' again."
"Um…if you don't mind my asking…who's Sirius?" asked Dawn.
"My godfather," said Harry. "Someone else who died because of me."
"It wasn't your fault, Harry," said Hermione.
"Yes it was! I fell for Voldemort's trick! You tried to warn me, but I went anyway! I had to try to be a hero, and Sirius died saving me."
"He died saving us," said Hermione. "It wasn't just you. It was you, me, Ron, Ginny, Neville and Luna. We all went. We checked as best we could, and in the end we had to go because we couldn't risk that it wasn't a trick. And we'd all do it again, if we had to."
"I know how you feel Harry," said Dawn. "Buffy died because of me. People I love were tortured by someone who wanted to find me. But if Buffy dies again…I'll miss her horribly, but I won't want anyone to bring her back. I don't want to do that to her. Not again."
