Chapter 5

"By my power and through my will, I command you, ARISE."

Only a few words, and yet, nobody could deny that those words were filled with power. 'Even a muggle should be able to feel the power in those words,' Harry thought irrelevantly.

From her words, everyone suspected that she was summoning an elemental to help. No one expected what happened next. The darkness of night receded to be replaced by the dawn of day. The collective gasps from the assembled wiccans, wizards and witches was almost enough to create a temporary vacuum around them. Everyone watched, wide eyed in disbelief, as, at three in the morning, the sun rose up from the east.

As Willow cast her spell, Tara pulled Angel to her and touched his forehead briefly. "Darken," she murmured. A black aura surrounded Angel immediately. An aura of darkness, he knew, since Willow and Tara had explained it to him when they formed the plan. The aura of darkness prevented sunlight from touching his body, thus sparing him from a fiery demise.

Everyone watched as the vampires rushed to find cover. However, the continued rising of the sun effectively penetrated any cover they could find. Before long, hundreds of vampires had turned to ashes.

The demons were hesitating now. Although Voldemort had chosen these particular demons for this task due to their natural resistance to magic, no demon was brave or suicidal enough to take the risk of depending on their magical invulnerability by messing around with a magic user who had enough power to cause the sun to rise in the middle of the night. The demons, not being a particularly brave lot when confronted by a much superior power, turned and ran. Some of them who could teleport did so. A moment later, all that remained of the battle were the ashes, blood and slime. With a wave of her hands, Willow made the sun vanish, returning the area to the darkness of night. Tara also removed the aura of darkness from Angel.

The first thing everyone did after the battle was to take care of the wounded. There were only a few vials of potion left to restore magical energy and they were given to the wiccans whose magical energy was drained the most. Healing spells were needed by almost everyone. Now that the fight was over, the adrenaline rush had subsided and many of them were collapsing onto the ground and suddenly realizing how much pain they were in.

Willow and Tara moved around the injured, healing them with simple charms. They had already put their shields back in place and their magical auras were now reduced to only slightly stronger than that of a powerful wiccan. However, everyone now knew who Willow was, even before she introduced herself. It was one thing to listen to rumors of a powerful wiccan, but to see the power for themselves was another thing altogether.

The power that they had seen coming from Willow had silenced any doubts that the rumors of her power had been exaggerated. According to their senses, Willow's magical aura was now no longer blindingly powerful as it had been before. However, they had seen first hand, what she had accomplished.

Tara, who was the more experienced healer of the two, was taking care of the most serious injuries. Willow, despite her power, was less knowledgeable when it came to conventional healing spells and was helping out with the slightly less injured. The rest of Buffy's group, having had more than enough experience dealing with injuries, went to help Willow and Tara. The more powerful and experienced wiccans also went to help them. The rest of the wiccans and Dumbledore's group were tending to the relatively minor wounds.

After all the wounded were taken care of, their attention turned to the coven, who was still sleeping away blissfully.

"Any suggestions on what to do with them?" Faith asked.

"Well, all wiccans who have turned to the dark before have been imprisoned," Laura replied. "They are kept in an cave located on an island right in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Wards have been placed there a couple of millennia ago to prevent anyone from escaping."

"The Bermuda Triangle!" Willow exclaimed. "Its really a prison for wiccans?"

"Yup," Shawn replied cheerfully. "You didn't think we could put them in a regular prison, did you? Actually, it only looks like a cave. In reality, its actually a gateway to another dimension. We have provided crops and tools so that they can try their hand at agriculture to feed themselves."

"So, how do we get there," Dawn asked impatiently.

"Well, we'll have to take a plane, then rent a boat..." Larua began.

"Forget that," Willow interrupted. "If you can visualize the island, I can create a portal to that place."

"Oh! I know that place," Anya exclaimed happily before Laura could reply. "You can take the image from my mind."

"Great," Willow said happily, linking to Anya's mind again. "I should be able to take you directly to the entrance of the cave," she announced, as she picked up the image Anya was sending her.

"Wait... portal? What do you mean, portal," Another wiccan asked, confused. Judging by the expressions of the wiccans around them, he wasn't the only confused one.

Willow sighed. "A portal," she explained, "is a kind of a gateway to another place. You know, step through a portal here and end up a thousand miles away."

"We know that," Hermoine blurted immediately. "But isn't portal creation supposed to be impossible? I mean, I've read about it and the books say that creating that kind of portal involves folding the fabric of reality to allow two different places to exist in the same space. No one has the power to do that." Everyone nodded, including the wiccans. Apparently, wizardry and wiccan magic had some similarities after all.

Willow grinned at Hermoine. She reminded Willow of herself a long time ago, when she had relied on books for information. It was only until she met Buffy that she realized that the information that books contained within their pages were not necessarily accurate. Heck, there were books that specifically stated that vampires were myths and did not exist. Since then, she had begun to question what she had read, attempting to verify the information in the books through independent study. Even her experimentation with magic was, in part, due to her eagerness to prove – or disprove – several fundamental magical laws, laws that magic users treated as gospel.

"As you grow older, child, you will find that nothing is impossible," Willow said gently. "Furthermore, books do not give you all the answers. Answers have to be found on your own. If you rely too much on books, then you will never surpass the limitations that the author of the book has placed on you."

Hermoine blushed. For the second time in two days, someone had criticized her learning methods. And it wasn't just anyone. It was true that Laura was a pretty impressive wiccan, but Dumbledore was even stronger. That was why Hermoine did not pay much attention to her when she had said that books could not give true answers. However, Willow was now essentially saying the same thing. And Willow wasn't just any impressive wiccan. From what Hermoine had seen, she had no doubts that Willow was the most powerful wiccan in the world. Perhaps for the first time in her life, Hermoine began to wonder if her worship of books had been misplaced. Maybe the altar that she had set up for books was a mistake. Before she could further this line of thought, Willow continued.

"To answer your question, folding the fabric of reality is not the only way to create a portal. As a matter of fact, I don't like to tamper with reality if I can avoid it. What I do is to create a portal to the dimension above this one and from the next dimension, create another portal to the place we wish to go."

"Huh?" was the general reply all around.

Willow explained patiently. "There is a another dimension above this one – lets call it the upper dimension. Now the upper dimension is all around us. It touches every place in our dimension. That is why once we are in the upper dimension, we can take ourselves to anyplace that the upper dimension is touching, which includes anywhere in this world. Many demons use the upper dimension for their teleportation. That's how I got the idea for creating portals. With a little 'refinement' to existing portal spells, I managed to combine the two portals into one, so there's no fear that you would get lost or stuck between the portals in the upper dimension."

Everyone stared at Willow in amazement. Laura understood the theory immediately but creating a portal to another dimension, although much easier that folding reality, still required an immense amount of power. In fact, she would have thought it required the full circle of thirteen – thirteen wiccans linking their powers – to create a single portal. Willow mentioned creating and manipulating portals so casually as if it wasn't any trouble at all. Well, considering that she could make the sun rise and set whenever she wanted to, it probably wasn't surprising that she could create a portal by herself, but still... She shook her head. The mere thought of such immense power was making her knees tremble.

Dumbledore was equally shocked. Creating a portal was tricky business and it required a great deal of power. He would never have attempted a portal spell without the maximum number of thirteen wizards or witches to join their powers. For Willow to treat creating portals in such a blasé manner was a good indication of how much power she possessed.

This was yet another similarity to wiccan magic, the number thirteen. Regardless of whether it was wiccan or wizardry, thirteen was the optimum number of magic users to join their powers. More magic users added to the mix would cause the power to be reduced instead of increased. No one had figured out why. It was just an accepted fact that thirteen was the magic number if one needed the most amount of magic power.

For perhaps the only time in his life, Dumbledore felt insignificant, overshadowed by the petite girl who was decades younger than him. He got a flash of insight as to how normal wizards and witches who were looking at him must feel. It was what he was feeling now as he looked at Willow Rosenberg.

Alastor Moody had focused on another part of the conversation. 'As a matter of fact, I don't like to tamper with reality if I can avoid it,' Willow had said. Did it mean that she could actually warp reality if she so chose? In his harsh voice, Moody asked Willow as much.

"If I really wanted to, yeah," Willow replied, shrugging her shoulders a little. "It would take all my strength but I can do it. However, the circumstances have to be really dire for me to even consider tampering with reality. The consequences of manipulating reality can be unpredictable and far reaching and sometimes, it will put you in an even worse situation than before."

Faith cut in just then. "Look. I'm sure you all have questions you want to ask, but first, why don't we send these guys away to that other dimension you've been talking about. They really spoil the view."

She got no arguments there and Willow created the portal. This time, everyone was prepared for the increase in her magical aura but some of them still started when Willow dropped two layers of shields. A moment later, the wiccans stood there and looked nervously at the black hole that had suddenly appeared out of thin air.

Sighing, Buffy picked up a sleeping man and slung him over her shoulder.

"Oh for crying out loud. Look its perfectly safe. Watch me."

With that, she confidently moved over to the portal and went through it. Faith and Angel each picked up a sleeping body and followed her. With that, the wiccans seemed to recover some of their courage and ten of them, Laura and Shawn among the ten, picked up the rest of the coven and walked through the portal.

It was only a short while later when they stepped through the portal back to the clearing again. The wiccans who had followed Buffy, Faith and Angel through the portal were looking slightly dazed, as if they could not believe what had happened.

Laura recognized the expressions showing on the other nine wiccans. She had no doubt that she was wearing the exact same expression on her face. It was a look of awe with a slight touch of reverence. Not that they had doubted Willow's power in the first place but it was the first time they had actually touched that power. When they were crossing through the portal, they had boosted their magical senses to high alert in order to sense the magic of the portal. What they had felt had astounded them. She was sure it was the first time any of them had felt such an incredible amount of power. Not only that, but the power was stable and perfectly controlled. Even a full circle of thirteen would have a difficult time controlling that much power even for a short while, and Willow had kept the portal up with apparent ease for the whole time that they were on the other side. Willow's focus had to be phenomenal to accomplish such a feat. Even now, Willow's face showed no sign of strain as she collapsed the portal.

After Willow had taken down the portal, Buffy's group turned to face the assembled wiccans. "Well, now that that's settled, what's next on the agenda?" Buffy asked brightly.