Title: Harry Potters and the Ultimate Scooby Gang, Part 3
Author: Nopporn Wongrassamee aka the Evil Author
EMail Address: EvilAuthor@aol.com
Archive: Anywhere and everywhere. Just tell me if you do.
Spoilers: Anything goes
Summary: Hogwarts becomes a five dimensional maze as Willowmorte and the Ultimate Scoobs penetrate its defenses.
Disclaimer: Characters and concepts belong to their owners who I'm too lazy to list.
"Professor, I don't feel so good," Dawn said as she sank into a well- cushioned seat.
"Have a rest, Miss Summers," Dumbledore said comfortingly. "You've done enough for me."
"Thanks," Dawn said sleepily. "Maybe I should just go home, now."
"No, please stay. This is the safest place in Hogwarts at the moment," Dumbledore said. He chuckled. "After all, you're supplying the power for defenses, not to mention my OTHER project."
Dawn didn't reply. She had passed out.
***
"Oh, dear, this is bad," the Watcher commented.
"What's wrong?" Willow asked.
"We have arrived at our destination," the Watcher answered. "Nearby, there is a localized breakdown in dimensional barriers being caused by the anti-dimensional energies of the Key."
"So what does that mean?" Buffy asked.
"It means bits and pieces of various parallel realities have begun to mix together," the Watcher explained. "People and objects of different realities are being mixed together. But it looks controlled. If I am reading this correctly, only people and objects originating from the dimension holding the source of the disturbance are actually being transposed."
"Huh. Sounds like the Bleed," Spike commented.
"The what?" Buffy, Willow, and Xander chorused.
"Don't you guys remember?" Spike asked. At their blank looks, he continued. "It was before you jumped off Glory's tower, Slayer. The First Evil and Ethan Rayne dragged us into a bloody death match. We wound up bopping back and forth between our reality and the First's personal dimension of horrors and so did other side. You telling me you all don't remember?"
"Nope, sorry," Buffy said. "Didn't happen in my reality."
"Or mine," Willow said quietly.
"Nada here," Xander added.
"Wait a minute," Spike said slowly. "You're all from different parallel realities?" They all nodded. "Bloody hell!"
"Be that as it may," the Watcher broke in, "the term 'Bleed' is appropriate. In this case, major hemorrhaging might be a more apt term. If this continues unchecked, the dimensional warping could tear apart all the planets in all the connected dimensions."
"Right then, that would be our job," Buffy said businesslike. "Where's Dawn?"
"I believe the Key would be at the center of the disturbance," the Watcher stated.
"No, I mean the other Dawn," Buffy clarified. "The one doing the Tinkerbell impression?"
"She had to depart," the Watcher answered. "We are too close. Her presence would simply accelerate the collapse."
***
After draining her alternate self and Potter's friend of their magical energy, Willowmorte left them lying unconscious on the ground. She could have, perhaps should have killed them, but something inside her rebelled against the idea. They were no threat anyway, and Willowmorte was in a hurry.
Reaching out with her mystical senses, Willowmorte sensed the discontinuities in the fabric of space and time. There were a lot of them, and they were constantly shifting connections. But by simply following the traces of Key's energy signature, she was able to locate the - portal was the wrong word - rift back to the dimension she wanted. A little magic and the rift was locked on that reality long enough for Willowmorte to cross back.
Stalking twenty feet down a mostly empty corridor, she stepped back into the day-glo version of Hogwarts, ignoring what appeared to be Snape and Potter getting it on as she left. The mind controlled students and staff were nowhere to be seen.
"Cute, Old Man," Willowmorte sneered at her unseen foe. "Do you think this parlor trick is gonna stop me?"
"Oh no, Tom," Dumbledore's mental voice returned. "It doesn't have to stop you. It just has to slow you down long enough."
"And how will it do that, Old Man?" Willowmorte asked mockingly. "I can sense where the dimensional rifts are."
As if in response, the flagstone floor dropped and folded away out from under her. Willowmorte dropped a couple feet, and then halted herself with a quick levitation spell. She sensed another rift below, rapidly shifting connections through a myriad number of alternate realities.
"You gotta do better than that, Old Man!" Willowmorte laughed.
The whole ceiling dropped down and smacked her into the rift.
***
"Now there's something you don't see everyday," Willow said awed.
"Not unless you watch anime," Xander added.
The castle Dawn was being held in was busy rearranging itself. Everything from individual stone blocks to whole wings were moving around of their own accord. As they watched, a tower sank down while two of its sides folded outward like two spreading arms. Every seam and crack radiated the emerald glow of the Key.
"All right, everyone," Buffy said as the three of them strode into the castle. Spike hadn't come along because it was still daylight out. Unlike Deva, this sun would burn him. "As long as we stick together, we should be all right. Willow, can you tell where Dawn is? Willow?"
Buffy looked around. Willow and Xander had disappeared. A few steps later, and Buffy suddenly found herself herself bathed in darkness with only the night time sky to light her way. She also found herself in the middle of a few thousand dementors.
"Well, damn," she commented.
***
"What are you doing here?" hissed the vampire wearing Willow's face. In the well-shaded corridor of the castle, the vampire had shoved the witch up against a wall. "And what happened to your hair?"
Given that her vampire double was more surprised to see her than surprised by her existence, Willow quickly concluded that this must be a version of the vamp Willow that she and Anya had summoned years ago. Willow shook her head. Following that convoluted line of thinking was giving even her headaches.
"Er, just lost," Willow apologized, wondering how she got here. "So this is your home reality? I would've expected more sounds of the pain and torment variety."
"No, this isn't my home reality," vampWillow retorted. "You messed up that spell and sent me here instead. And DON'T tell anyone you meet that I'm a vampire."
"Why, so you can suck them dry?"
"No, they." VampWillow let Willow go. The vampire actually looked away and fidgeted in embarrassment. "They're my friends."
Willow goggled at her. VampWillow actually seemed to be serious. Reaching out with her mystical senses, Willow didn't detect a soul, but she sensed a geas had been laid on the vampire. As Willow probed, she heard an echo of her own voice from long ago, "Be nice!"
"Okay, I won't tell," Willow reassured her double.
"Thanks," VampWillow said. She glanced over Willows shoulder at something behind her. "Look out!" she exclaimed, shoving Willow away.
A foot thick bar of black and red energy passed through the space Willow had occupied just moments before. It also passed through VampWillow, dusting her. Willow had just enough time to see that the source was her other double, the one with the glowing red eyes that she had been chasing.
Then the world changed around her again.
***
Willowmorte cursed. Her most dangerous opponent - her alternate self - had narrowly escaped. The rift that her other double had inadvertently pushed the goody-two-shoes Willow through had shifted dimensions before Willowmorte could follow.
***
"Now listen, I don't want any trouble," Xander said to the other Immortal. "I'm just passing through."
"I am Dolores Umbridge of the Ministry of Magic and this is MY school," screeched the Immortal. She waved a wand in Xander's direction. "Petrificus Totalus!"
Xander suddenly found himself frozen in place unable to move. He saw Umbridge pull a machete out from her robes. Oh, this was bad. He tried to force himself to move as she approached. His hand began to creep toward his sword under is coat.
"Now students," Umbridge said with faux pleantry to the onlooking crowd of kids. "This is what happens to little boys and girls when they're bad in MY school." She raised her machete to lop off Xander's head.
The instant his hand gripped his katana, Xander found he could suddenly move normally. In a flash, he whipped out his sword. With the runes on the blade blazing like a row of sapphire suns, Xander's first stroke sliced through Umbridge's raised arms and the neck in between.
There was shocked silence as Umbridge's body hit the ground in several pieces. Then the kids started applauding and cheering. Xander might have enjoyed it, but the Quickening intruded.
***
Watching the shifting realities he had caused, Dumbledore chuckled. He had hoped that the alternate version of Umbridge would take care of one of these meddlers, but seeing her head taken off was just as entertaining if not as useful.
As space and time became hopeless garbled, the Headmaster decided to check on some of his other intruders.
***
Dementors were mostly non-corporeal demons, Buffy knew. Like ghosts, they could manipulate the material world, but the reverse wasn't true unless the dementor let it. In other words, dementors were normally immune to physical attacks.
So how Buffy turned a dementor's head into so much mash with a single punch was something of a mystery. Buffy didn't have time to ponder the question. She was much too busy punching and kicking dementors away from her. A dementor's kiss could drain a person of their soul. Buffy had no intention of letting them get that close.
Buffy could also feel them battering at her mind, trying to drain any happiness away. She would have laughed at their effort if she weren't so busy. She was much too old for such a trick to work on her.
The dementors floated away from Buffy. At first, Buffy thought she had finally intimidated them into backing off. Around her, the corpses of a dozen dementors were evaporating away. Then she heard the voice.
"Expecto Patronum!" some kid was shouting repeatedly from nearby. He was young, maybe in his early teens, and wearing glasses. He seemed to be producing a glowing wisp of fog that didn't do anything but illuminate an odd scar on his forehead. The kid stood over several unconscious people as if to defend them. Dementors surrounded them.
Buffy felt an intense need to defend them. But even with her speed, there was no way she could reach them in time. But there had to be a way. Buffy WILLED for there to be a way.
And then she exploded with light.
An army of ghostly Slayers poured from Buffy's body. They literally tore into the ranks of the dementors. Some of the Slayers were barehanded, but most of them carried equally spectral weapons, memories of cherished possessions. Kendra had Mr. Pointy. Faith had her knife. A Slayer of the tenth century split a dementor's head with an axe. The dementors forgot their human would-be victims as they were literally swarmed and torn to shreds.
Buffy barely noticed. She collapsed to her knees, shaking. Those weren't the ghosts of Slayers past out there, Buffy realized. They were the power Buffy had acquired from the Slayers that had hosted Buffy's own spirit over the millenia, shaped by the memories from the moment that Buffy's own spirit had activated their Slayer powers to the moment they had died and Buffy's spirit passed on to activate the next Slayer.
They weren't ALL out there. Buffy still retained some strength, enough to keep her body alive. But most of that strength was going elsewhere. Buffy doubled over in pain as the demon Buffy thought that she had evicted from her body surged up from the dark corners of her mind. The demon had sensed weakness and was attempting to retake Buffy's body.
Buffy didn't know if she had enough strength left to stop it.
***
"Willow! What are you doing here at Hogwarts?" squealed a twelve-year- old Dawn Summers as she tackled the older witch. "Is Buffy and Mom with you?"
"Uh, hi Dawnie," Willow greeted uncertainly. "I had Buffy and Xander with me, but I seem to have lost them. Er, where are we again?"
"Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, silly," Dawn said, her voice obviously annoyed at the stupidity of adults. She gestured to two boys who were with her. "These two are Harry and Ron. They're friends of mine."
"Nice to meet you," Willow said to them. She saw something dark flicker out of the corner of her eye. "GET DOWN!"
Dawn and her friends were suddenly flat on the floor due mostly to Willow's telekinetic push. This saved their lives as Willow's evil twin sent a blast of darkness through the space where they had been standing. Willow barely deflected the attack, sending the beam to gouge a trench in the ceiling.
"Blast!" the other Willow cursed.
"Yeah," Willow snarled in agreement. Any fuzzy feelings she had for her evil twin were fast disappearing. She added a word of power.
BLAST.
A blast of rainbow hued energy knocked Willow's evil twin off her feet. As she flew backward, the bad Willow disappeared as if moving through an invisible curtain. Surprised, Willow extended her mystical senses in an effort to locate her other self. She couldn't sense her.
But she could sense the power of the Key in Dawn. And she could sense the energies of the Key elsewhere as well, radiating from what seemed to be thin air. No, it wasn't thin air. There were dimensional rifts all over the place, some radiating Key energy more than others. Willow deduced that if she followed the Key energy, she could get back to the Hogwarts that she had started at.
"What was that?" demanded one of Dawn's friends.
"Willow, what's going on?" Dawn asked, shaken.
"My evil twin," Willow replied, stepping away. "Excuse me, but I have to go give myself a good spanking."
***
"Lord Voldemort?" Draco Malfoy squeaked in surprised horror.
The first thing Draco saw when he had woken up was a pair of glowing red eyes. The last thing he remembered before that was Ginny Weasely hexing him with a face full of bat bogies. Although he had never personally met the Dark Lord, Draco had heard enough from his father to recognize him.
Except he wasn't a him. The glowing red eyes were set in a pale white face true, but everything else was distinctly feminine. Any doubts were dispelled by the shiny black suit that hugged every curve of that womanly body.
"Yes, I am in a matter of speaking," the woman said, clearly amused at Draco's confusion. "And you're Lucius Malfoy's son, Drabble, correct?"
"Draco," the scion of Malfoy said automatically. He cringed when those red eyes flashed at him. "Er, Father didn't mention you were a woman, Lord."
"I'll bet he didn't," she chuckled. "Now, c'mon, Drippy, I want your assistance. By the way, I've decided to get a new name since I crossed the sexual divide. Call me Lady Willowmorte."
"Yes, Lo. Lady Willowmorte," Draco said fervently as Willowmorte dragged him down a corridor. When had the halls started glowing? "Er, how may I be of service?"
"Well, after some of the things I've seen in some alternate realities," Willowmorte mused as they dodged a moving wall, "I'm kinda wondering how you are in bed."
"Milady?" Draco squeaked. He had never imagined that serving as a Death Eater would include being the Dark Lord's - correction, Dark Lady's sex toy. Perhaps this wasn't the best time to admit that he was a virgin.
"But business before pleasure, Dribble," Willowmorte continued. "We'll see how good you are if you manage to survive."
"Survive?" Draco squeaked as swinging column narrowly missed them.
***
Xander sliced through Umbridge's neck. The woman instantly dusted, her scream cut off in mid screech. And again, the student body applauded and cheered him even though they were all vampires too.
This was the seventh or eighth reality - he had lost count - Xander had stepped into. In all of them, he kept finding himself in a position of having to kill this Umbridge woman. And in all of them, the kids were glad to see her gone.
"Okay, I'll be going now," he announced to the crowd.
"Oh no, we must insist that you stay for dinner," said Harry Potter. Xander had learned his name a couple realities ago. Heck, he had learned most of their names in one reality or another.
"Sorry," Xander replied, waving his sword in warning at the teen vampire. "I don't like being on the menu."
"There's always dessert," Ginny Weasely said, her body language leaving no doubt that eating was NOT her intention.
"Yes," agreed Herminone Granger. "You look so yummy."
Why was it, Xander wondered, that he always attracted demony girls?
"Xander," came Willow's mental voice. "Take three steps to your right."
"I really have to go, girls," Xander said aloud as he obeyed Willow's instruction.
"But you're our hero," Cho Chang cooed. "We just want to thank."
Thankfully, she was cut off when Xander suddenly found himself in glowing green halls. He was apparently back in the dimension he had started in. Willow, his Willow was right there. She grabbed his arm.
"Are you okay?" Willow asked.
"Yeah," Xander said. "But the next time we see Dolores Umbridge, I'll let you kill her."
"Who?" Willow said, mystified.
"Never mind, she's not important," Xander replied. He looked around. "Where's Buffy?"
"I don't know," Willow answered, worried. "I can't sense her mind at all."
"AVADA KADAVRA!"
Willow screamed as one of the zombified students in this reality snuck up and hit Xander with the curse of death.
***
Dumbledore laughed out loud. It was almost time. None of his enemies were even close to stopping him. The Voldemort of this reality was busy chasing Harry Potter around the Ministry of Magic, trying to get a worthless prophecy. Cornelius Fudge didn't have a clue, as Miss Summers would say. And his visitors from parallel dimensions were either befuddled by the twisted space and time or too busy hunting each other down.
Looking out his office window, Dumbledore willed the newly transformed wing of the castle to rise. But it wasn't a piece of a castle anymore. It was now a giant hand made out of masonry. He flexed the fingers experimentally.
Yes, Dumbledore chuckled to himself, his Ascension was at hand.
Author: Nopporn Wongrassamee aka the Evil Author
EMail Address: EvilAuthor@aol.com
Archive: Anywhere and everywhere. Just tell me if you do.
Spoilers: Anything goes
Summary: Hogwarts becomes a five dimensional maze as Willowmorte and the Ultimate Scoobs penetrate its defenses.
Disclaimer: Characters and concepts belong to their owners who I'm too lazy to list.
"Professor, I don't feel so good," Dawn said as she sank into a well- cushioned seat.
"Have a rest, Miss Summers," Dumbledore said comfortingly. "You've done enough for me."
"Thanks," Dawn said sleepily. "Maybe I should just go home, now."
"No, please stay. This is the safest place in Hogwarts at the moment," Dumbledore said. He chuckled. "After all, you're supplying the power for defenses, not to mention my OTHER project."
Dawn didn't reply. She had passed out.
***
"Oh, dear, this is bad," the Watcher commented.
"What's wrong?" Willow asked.
"We have arrived at our destination," the Watcher answered. "Nearby, there is a localized breakdown in dimensional barriers being caused by the anti-dimensional energies of the Key."
"So what does that mean?" Buffy asked.
"It means bits and pieces of various parallel realities have begun to mix together," the Watcher explained. "People and objects of different realities are being mixed together. But it looks controlled. If I am reading this correctly, only people and objects originating from the dimension holding the source of the disturbance are actually being transposed."
"Huh. Sounds like the Bleed," Spike commented.
"The what?" Buffy, Willow, and Xander chorused.
"Don't you guys remember?" Spike asked. At their blank looks, he continued. "It was before you jumped off Glory's tower, Slayer. The First Evil and Ethan Rayne dragged us into a bloody death match. We wound up bopping back and forth between our reality and the First's personal dimension of horrors and so did other side. You telling me you all don't remember?"
"Nope, sorry," Buffy said. "Didn't happen in my reality."
"Or mine," Willow said quietly.
"Nada here," Xander added.
"Wait a minute," Spike said slowly. "You're all from different parallel realities?" They all nodded. "Bloody hell!"
"Be that as it may," the Watcher broke in, "the term 'Bleed' is appropriate. In this case, major hemorrhaging might be a more apt term. If this continues unchecked, the dimensional warping could tear apart all the planets in all the connected dimensions."
"Right then, that would be our job," Buffy said businesslike. "Where's Dawn?"
"I believe the Key would be at the center of the disturbance," the Watcher stated.
"No, I mean the other Dawn," Buffy clarified. "The one doing the Tinkerbell impression?"
"She had to depart," the Watcher answered. "We are too close. Her presence would simply accelerate the collapse."
***
After draining her alternate self and Potter's friend of their magical energy, Willowmorte left them lying unconscious on the ground. She could have, perhaps should have killed them, but something inside her rebelled against the idea. They were no threat anyway, and Willowmorte was in a hurry.
Reaching out with her mystical senses, Willowmorte sensed the discontinuities in the fabric of space and time. There were a lot of them, and they were constantly shifting connections. But by simply following the traces of Key's energy signature, she was able to locate the - portal was the wrong word - rift back to the dimension she wanted. A little magic and the rift was locked on that reality long enough for Willowmorte to cross back.
Stalking twenty feet down a mostly empty corridor, she stepped back into the day-glo version of Hogwarts, ignoring what appeared to be Snape and Potter getting it on as she left. The mind controlled students and staff were nowhere to be seen.
"Cute, Old Man," Willowmorte sneered at her unseen foe. "Do you think this parlor trick is gonna stop me?"
"Oh no, Tom," Dumbledore's mental voice returned. "It doesn't have to stop you. It just has to slow you down long enough."
"And how will it do that, Old Man?" Willowmorte asked mockingly. "I can sense where the dimensional rifts are."
As if in response, the flagstone floor dropped and folded away out from under her. Willowmorte dropped a couple feet, and then halted herself with a quick levitation spell. She sensed another rift below, rapidly shifting connections through a myriad number of alternate realities.
"You gotta do better than that, Old Man!" Willowmorte laughed.
The whole ceiling dropped down and smacked her into the rift.
***
"Now there's something you don't see everyday," Willow said awed.
"Not unless you watch anime," Xander added.
The castle Dawn was being held in was busy rearranging itself. Everything from individual stone blocks to whole wings were moving around of their own accord. As they watched, a tower sank down while two of its sides folded outward like two spreading arms. Every seam and crack radiated the emerald glow of the Key.
"All right, everyone," Buffy said as the three of them strode into the castle. Spike hadn't come along because it was still daylight out. Unlike Deva, this sun would burn him. "As long as we stick together, we should be all right. Willow, can you tell where Dawn is? Willow?"
Buffy looked around. Willow and Xander had disappeared. A few steps later, and Buffy suddenly found herself herself bathed in darkness with only the night time sky to light her way. She also found herself in the middle of a few thousand dementors.
"Well, damn," she commented.
***
"What are you doing here?" hissed the vampire wearing Willow's face. In the well-shaded corridor of the castle, the vampire had shoved the witch up against a wall. "And what happened to your hair?"
Given that her vampire double was more surprised to see her than surprised by her existence, Willow quickly concluded that this must be a version of the vamp Willow that she and Anya had summoned years ago. Willow shook her head. Following that convoluted line of thinking was giving even her headaches.
"Er, just lost," Willow apologized, wondering how she got here. "So this is your home reality? I would've expected more sounds of the pain and torment variety."
"No, this isn't my home reality," vampWillow retorted. "You messed up that spell and sent me here instead. And DON'T tell anyone you meet that I'm a vampire."
"Why, so you can suck them dry?"
"No, they." VampWillow let Willow go. The vampire actually looked away and fidgeted in embarrassment. "They're my friends."
Willow goggled at her. VampWillow actually seemed to be serious. Reaching out with her mystical senses, Willow didn't detect a soul, but she sensed a geas had been laid on the vampire. As Willow probed, she heard an echo of her own voice from long ago, "Be nice!"
"Okay, I won't tell," Willow reassured her double.
"Thanks," VampWillow said. She glanced over Willows shoulder at something behind her. "Look out!" she exclaimed, shoving Willow away.
A foot thick bar of black and red energy passed through the space Willow had occupied just moments before. It also passed through VampWillow, dusting her. Willow had just enough time to see that the source was her other double, the one with the glowing red eyes that she had been chasing.
Then the world changed around her again.
***
Willowmorte cursed. Her most dangerous opponent - her alternate self - had narrowly escaped. The rift that her other double had inadvertently pushed the goody-two-shoes Willow through had shifted dimensions before Willowmorte could follow.
***
"Now listen, I don't want any trouble," Xander said to the other Immortal. "I'm just passing through."
"I am Dolores Umbridge of the Ministry of Magic and this is MY school," screeched the Immortal. She waved a wand in Xander's direction. "Petrificus Totalus!"
Xander suddenly found himself frozen in place unable to move. He saw Umbridge pull a machete out from her robes. Oh, this was bad. He tried to force himself to move as she approached. His hand began to creep toward his sword under is coat.
"Now students," Umbridge said with faux pleantry to the onlooking crowd of kids. "This is what happens to little boys and girls when they're bad in MY school." She raised her machete to lop off Xander's head.
The instant his hand gripped his katana, Xander found he could suddenly move normally. In a flash, he whipped out his sword. With the runes on the blade blazing like a row of sapphire suns, Xander's first stroke sliced through Umbridge's raised arms and the neck in between.
There was shocked silence as Umbridge's body hit the ground in several pieces. Then the kids started applauding and cheering. Xander might have enjoyed it, but the Quickening intruded.
***
Watching the shifting realities he had caused, Dumbledore chuckled. He had hoped that the alternate version of Umbridge would take care of one of these meddlers, but seeing her head taken off was just as entertaining if not as useful.
As space and time became hopeless garbled, the Headmaster decided to check on some of his other intruders.
***
Dementors were mostly non-corporeal demons, Buffy knew. Like ghosts, they could manipulate the material world, but the reverse wasn't true unless the dementor let it. In other words, dementors were normally immune to physical attacks.
So how Buffy turned a dementor's head into so much mash with a single punch was something of a mystery. Buffy didn't have time to ponder the question. She was much too busy punching and kicking dementors away from her. A dementor's kiss could drain a person of their soul. Buffy had no intention of letting them get that close.
Buffy could also feel them battering at her mind, trying to drain any happiness away. She would have laughed at their effort if she weren't so busy. She was much too old for such a trick to work on her.
The dementors floated away from Buffy. At first, Buffy thought she had finally intimidated them into backing off. Around her, the corpses of a dozen dementors were evaporating away. Then she heard the voice.
"Expecto Patronum!" some kid was shouting repeatedly from nearby. He was young, maybe in his early teens, and wearing glasses. He seemed to be producing a glowing wisp of fog that didn't do anything but illuminate an odd scar on his forehead. The kid stood over several unconscious people as if to defend them. Dementors surrounded them.
Buffy felt an intense need to defend them. But even with her speed, there was no way she could reach them in time. But there had to be a way. Buffy WILLED for there to be a way.
And then she exploded with light.
An army of ghostly Slayers poured from Buffy's body. They literally tore into the ranks of the dementors. Some of the Slayers were barehanded, but most of them carried equally spectral weapons, memories of cherished possessions. Kendra had Mr. Pointy. Faith had her knife. A Slayer of the tenth century split a dementor's head with an axe. The dementors forgot their human would-be victims as they were literally swarmed and torn to shreds.
Buffy barely noticed. She collapsed to her knees, shaking. Those weren't the ghosts of Slayers past out there, Buffy realized. They were the power Buffy had acquired from the Slayers that had hosted Buffy's own spirit over the millenia, shaped by the memories from the moment that Buffy's own spirit had activated their Slayer powers to the moment they had died and Buffy's spirit passed on to activate the next Slayer.
They weren't ALL out there. Buffy still retained some strength, enough to keep her body alive. But most of that strength was going elsewhere. Buffy doubled over in pain as the demon Buffy thought that she had evicted from her body surged up from the dark corners of her mind. The demon had sensed weakness and was attempting to retake Buffy's body.
Buffy didn't know if she had enough strength left to stop it.
***
"Willow! What are you doing here at Hogwarts?" squealed a twelve-year- old Dawn Summers as she tackled the older witch. "Is Buffy and Mom with you?"
"Uh, hi Dawnie," Willow greeted uncertainly. "I had Buffy and Xander with me, but I seem to have lost them. Er, where are we again?"
"Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, silly," Dawn said, her voice obviously annoyed at the stupidity of adults. She gestured to two boys who were with her. "These two are Harry and Ron. They're friends of mine."
"Nice to meet you," Willow said to them. She saw something dark flicker out of the corner of her eye. "GET DOWN!"
Dawn and her friends were suddenly flat on the floor due mostly to Willow's telekinetic push. This saved their lives as Willow's evil twin sent a blast of darkness through the space where they had been standing. Willow barely deflected the attack, sending the beam to gouge a trench in the ceiling.
"Blast!" the other Willow cursed.
"Yeah," Willow snarled in agreement. Any fuzzy feelings she had for her evil twin were fast disappearing. She added a word of power.
BLAST.
A blast of rainbow hued energy knocked Willow's evil twin off her feet. As she flew backward, the bad Willow disappeared as if moving through an invisible curtain. Surprised, Willow extended her mystical senses in an effort to locate her other self. She couldn't sense her.
But she could sense the power of the Key in Dawn. And she could sense the energies of the Key elsewhere as well, radiating from what seemed to be thin air. No, it wasn't thin air. There were dimensional rifts all over the place, some radiating Key energy more than others. Willow deduced that if she followed the Key energy, she could get back to the Hogwarts that she had started at.
"What was that?" demanded one of Dawn's friends.
"Willow, what's going on?" Dawn asked, shaken.
"My evil twin," Willow replied, stepping away. "Excuse me, but I have to go give myself a good spanking."
***
"Lord Voldemort?" Draco Malfoy squeaked in surprised horror.
The first thing Draco saw when he had woken up was a pair of glowing red eyes. The last thing he remembered before that was Ginny Weasely hexing him with a face full of bat bogies. Although he had never personally met the Dark Lord, Draco had heard enough from his father to recognize him.
Except he wasn't a him. The glowing red eyes were set in a pale white face true, but everything else was distinctly feminine. Any doubts were dispelled by the shiny black suit that hugged every curve of that womanly body.
"Yes, I am in a matter of speaking," the woman said, clearly amused at Draco's confusion. "And you're Lucius Malfoy's son, Drabble, correct?"
"Draco," the scion of Malfoy said automatically. He cringed when those red eyes flashed at him. "Er, Father didn't mention you were a woman, Lord."
"I'll bet he didn't," she chuckled. "Now, c'mon, Drippy, I want your assistance. By the way, I've decided to get a new name since I crossed the sexual divide. Call me Lady Willowmorte."
"Yes, Lo. Lady Willowmorte," Draco said fervently as Willowmorte dragged him down a corridor. When had the halls started glowing? "Er, how may I be of service?"
"Well, after some of the things I've seen in some alternate realities," Willowmorte mused as they dodged a moving wall, "I'm kinda wondering how you are in bed."
"Milady?" Draco squeaked. He had never imagined that serving as a Death Eater would include being the Dark Lord's - correction, Dark Lady's sex toy. Perhaps this wasn't the best time to admit that he was a virgin.
"But business before pleasure, Dribble," Willowmorte continued. "We'll see how good you are if you manage to survive."
"Survive?" Draco squeaked as swinging column narrowly missed them.
***
Xander sliced through Umbridge's neck. The woman instantly dusted, her scream cut off in mid screech. And again, the student body applauded and cheered him even though they were all vampires too.
This was the seventh or eighth reality - he had lost count - Xander had stepped into. In all of them, he kept finding himself in a position of having to kill this Umbridge woman. And in all of them, the kids were glad to see her gone.
"Okay, I'll be going now," he announced to the crowd.
"Oh no, we must insist that you stay for dinner," said Harry Potter. Xander had learned his name a couple realities ago. Heck, he had learned most of their names in one reality or another.
"Sorry," Xander replied, waving his sword in warning at the teen vampire. "I don't like being on the menu."
"There's always dessert," Ginny Weasely said, her body language leaving no doubt that eating was NOT her intention.
"Yes," agreed Herminone Granger. "You look so yummy."
Why was it, Xander wondered, that he always attracted demony girls?
"Xander," came Willow's mental voice. "Take three steps to your right."
"I really have to go, girls," Xander said aloud as he obeyed Willow's instruction.
"But you're our hero," Cho Chang cooed. "We just want to thank."
Thankfully, she was cut off when Xander suddenly found himself in glowing green halls. He was apparently back in the dimension he had started in. Willow, his Willow was right there. She grabbed his arm.
"Are you okay?" Willow asked.
"Yeah," Xander said. "But the next time we see Dolores Umbridge, I'll let you kill her."
"Who?" Willow said, mystified.
"Never mind, she's not important," Xander replied. He looked around. "Where's Buffy?"
"I don't know," Willow answered, worried. "I can't sense her mind at all."
"AVADA KADAVRA!"
Willow screamed as one of the zombified students in this reality snuck up and hit Xander with the curse of death.
***
Dumbledore laughed out loud. It was almost time. None of his enemies were even close to stopping him. The Voldemort of this reality was busy chasing Harry Potter around the Ministry of Magic, trying to get a worthless prophecy. Cornelius Fudge didn't have a clue, as Miss Summers would say. And his visitors from parallel dimensions were either befuddled by the twisted space and time or too busy hunting each other down.
Looking out his office window, Dumbledore willed the newly transformed wing of the castle to rise. But it wasn't a piece of a castle anymore. It was now a giant hand made out of masonry. He flexed the fingers experimentally.
Yes, Dumbledore chuckled to himself, his Ascension was at hand.
