Thanks to:
Miz
C@rMeiNa
ScruffyWes
Dreamer Child – lol you'll have to wait a little while for Sirius, I haven't got any plans to bring him back right away.
Renna
Erak
Anne-Marie
Captinuv
Nobody…
Midnight
Becks89 – thanks for the speedy updates, they were really good! Lol you said in your review for me to get Sirius and Buffy together soon, but what about you?! I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for you to get them together in The Youngest Evans!
SlayerGirl
Wllw979- lol Buffy was never famed for her intelligent plans was she?!
Vampy the chosen one
Chapter 8 – Mrs Black and Hermione
Buffy and Harry were soon disturbed by the rest of the house's occupants entering the kitchen for lunch. They all crowded round the table as Mrs Weasley cooked rapidly a huge lunch for them. Buffy noticed right away a change in harry, he had opened up more, joined in with the conversations, laughed at Fred and Georges antics. There were moments where he drifted into silence, and his face closed over but these weren't permanent. Remus shot her a grateful glance for the change in Harry's temperament and Buffy felt oddly pleased that she had actually been able to help him.
"We've got a welcoming dinner tonight for
Harry," Mrs Weasley said as she laid out a large loaf of bread on the table and
began passing out salads and cold meat. "Hermione's coming to stay this
afternoon, and Alastor is coming, Kingsley, Tonks, Mundungus if he ever wakes
up and Professor Snape." There was a collective groan from the table.
"Why's Snape coming to Harry's welcoming
dinner?" Ron moaned and his mother gave him a reproving glance.
"Because there's a meeting of the Order
afterwards and I said he could come to dinner beforehand," Mrs Weasley
explained. Ron sighed deeply, but then brightened when he looked at Buffy.
"Snape's the one you knocked out." Buffy considered for a moment and then
recalled the man who had pointed a wand at Sirius in the Shrieking Shack so
long ago.
"You let a lot of strange people into
the Order," she said thoughtfully. "That's guys so evil you can practically
taste it." The Weasleys and Harry smiled collectively. "I'll be interested to
meet him." They all considered the idea of Buffy and Snape meeting with
delight.
"There's a meeting?" Harry asked.
"Yes, for the entire Order," Mrs Weasley
confirmed. "Dumbledore's coming, I invited him to dinner but he said he
wouldn't be able to make it sadly." Buffy watched Harry, and saw the expression
on his face. Somewhere between anger, pain, regret, sorrow and nothingness
flickered across his face at the monition of Dumbledore. Buffy supposed Dumbledore
had been right to say he wasn't Harry's favourite person at the moment.
They all
tucked into the feast and once again Buffy felt herself enjoying the happy
family atmosphere around her.
Growing up as an only child she'd never experienced gatherings like this. Even
with all the Scoobies in her house, the noise and liveliness was nothing like
this. Fred and George alone were enough of a distraction. Buffy was sitting
between Charlie and Bill and she stopped eating long enough to speak with them.
"I thought there was another brother?"
she asked. "Peter, or Percy or something. What happened to him?" Charlie and
Bill exchanged glances.
"Percy isn't on the best terms with our
family," Bill said slowly and Ron butted in.
"Put bluntly, he's a git," Ron said and
Buffy smiled a little.
"When Voldemort rose there was a big
outcry," Charlie explained. "People had been living with peace and harmony for
so long that they didn't want to believe that it was possible that this would
all be shattered. When harry came back from Voldemort's rebirth and told Fudge,
that's the Minister for Magic, that Voldemort had risen and he had seen it, he
refused point blank to believe him. He tried to discredit Harry, and Dumbledore
who he's terrified of, and tried to cut him off from the Ministry. Percy had to
choose sides, and he chose to side with Fudge. Said Harry was a liar,
collaborated with fudge's stories. They both got the shock of their lives when
Voldemort showed up at the Ministry last year."
"So why isn't he here?" Buffy said,
puzzled.
"Because he's a git," Ron repeated.
"Percy can't face admitting that he was wrong about something." Buffy nodded,
noticing that Mrs Weasley had looked progressively unhappy during this
conversation.
"So, do you lot all play Quidditch?" she
ventured and they all nodded fervently.
"We've all been on the team at one
point," Ginny said. "Bill was a keeper, Charlie was a seeker, Fred and George
were beaters, Ron's a keeper, Harry's a seeker and I was seeker for a bit last
year but I'm gonna try out for chaser this year."
"You'll get in" Harry said loyally and
Ginny grinned.
"Okay, that's a lot to digest," Buffy
said with a laugh. "My Quidditch knowledge is somewhere between dodgy and non
existent. I've seen you play once, when I was up in Scotland."
"That was the match with the dementors
when I fell off wasn't it?" Harry asked and Fred and George scowled at the
memory of the only match they had lost with Harry as seeker.
Buffy nodded.
"I was around a lot that year," she said
with a smile, remembering. "At the Quidditch match, I ran into Ron and Hermione
in Hogsmeade, and then when we went to the dormitories to get the rat."
"You were there when the curtains got
slashed?" Ron said in surprise and Buffy grinned.
"It was me who slashed them," she
admitted and they laughed. "And then I was there at the end."
The doorbell rang startling them all from their reverie and an unearthly screeching filled the house.
"Dammit," Bill said, jumping up and running out of the kitchen. Buffy followed him, feeling potential slayage. He ran into the hallway and Buffy saw what had been behind the moth eaten curtains.
A portrait of an old woman, eyes rolling, yellowed skin stretched taut screamed and yelled loudly, clawed hands reaching out of her portrait as if she wanted to escape from her picture. The other portraits in the hallways began to screech in sympathy.
"BLOOD TRAITORS, MUGGLES IN THE HOME OF MY
FATHERS, SCUM, FILTH, HALF BREEDS!" she screeched an assortment of curses as
Bill attempted to wrench the curtains shut. Buffy grabbed the other side of the
curtains and helped to yank them closed over the old woman. The screeches died
out and silence fell again.
"What the hell was that?" Buffy
exclaimed and Bill shushed her.
"Sirius' mother, Mrs Black," Bill said
quietly. "Loud noises tend to….disturb her."
"Why haven't you burned it?" Buffy asked, also
quietly.
"We think there's a permanent sticking
charm on the back of the portrait," Bill said taking a deep breath. "We've been
trying to get it off." Buffy stored that information away at the back of her
mind, wondering how much the portrait would be a match for Giles and his
chainsaw. The thought of Giles made her insides clench, she missed him now. She
hadn't seen him before she had left; it had been such a hurry. She had written
a short letter to them all to say she had arrived but since then, nothing. She
would write that evening, she decided.
"Who was at the door?" she asked,
pointing to hit and Bill clapped a hand to his forehead.
"I almost forgot," he said and Buffy
smiled. He opened the heavy black front door and a pretty girl with bushy brown
hair and an assortment of trunks and bags stood impatiently on the doorstep.
"Hi Bill. Sorry did I wake Mrs Black?"
she asked concernedly. "I heard her yelling, I forgot about that and it was too
late after I rung the bell. She and Bill began to collect up her bags and bring
them inside quickly and Hermione helped.
"Buffy," she said in surprise. "You're
here. Why…I mean of course but….umm…" Buffy suspected it was the first time
Hermione had ever been lost for words. She waited for the babble to stop then
replied.
"I'm staying here for a while," she
answered, conscious of her hand shaking a little and stuffing it in her pocket.
The people from the kitchen moved into the hallway. Hermione squealed and threw
herself upon first Ron and then harry in hugs. Then she hugged Ginny.
"Hi herm," Ron said, apparently a little
flustered. "How have you been?"
"Oh you know," she said casually. "Doing
my summer homework, all of that." Ron and Harry both rolled their eyes good
naturedly.
"But how have you two been?" she asked
concernedly and her eyes fixed particularly on Harry. He looked determinedly at
the wall.
"We're okay," Ron said with a sideways glance
at Harry, who did not look back. "Hey, did you know Buffy's the Slayer?"
Hermione frowned at the abrupt subject change and then brightened as she
realised what he had said.
"The slayer?" she asked interestedly.
"A
slayer," Buffy corrected. "One of two actually."
"How is that possible?" Hermione quizzed
her. "Every text written on the vampire slayer has explicitly expressed the
fact that there is only one at a time."
"And that was true…up to now," Buffy
said with a sardonic grin. "I died a while back, that is I was clinically dead
for a minute or something. In that time the new slayer was activated and then I
came back to life. That was Kendra, but she was killed by Drusilla. So Faith
was activated."
"Two vampire slayers," Hermione mused. "Where
is the other one, faith is it?"
"Back in
Sunnydale, fighting the good fight," Buffy confirmed. "Normally we work
together, since we live together, but she's taking care of the hellmouth while I'm
here."
"What kind of things do you do as
vampire slayer? Do you work closely with the watchers council? What is your
watcher called? What qualifications does he have?" Hermione began to fire
questions at Buffy, and Buffy held up her hand, laughing, to stem the flow of
words.
"Questions later," she said, with a
chuckle. "You babble just like Willow. We'll talk at dinner." Hermione nodded,
choosing not to ask about the strange 'Willow' comment. She, Ginny, Ron and
Harry began to take her bags upstairs while the rest filed back into the kitchen.
"That was Hermione," Remus supplied with
a smile. "She's been a good friend to Harry. And she's very intelligent, one of
the most diligent pupils I've ever seen."
"She reminds me of my friend Willow,"
Buffy said wistfully. "The babbling, the smartness. Loyal friend. Very Willow."
"Ron, Ginny,
Hermione and Harry all learned their own mortality last year," Remus said as
they all entered the kitchen. "They were in the big final fight at the Ministry,
along with two others students. The six of them against a lot of fully grown
death eaters. And they held their own for a while. Harry doesn't believe it but
everyone is very proud of him, proud of all of them. He still blames himself."
"Why were they there in the first place?"
Buffy asked. "Especially since you say that the Ministry pretty much hated
Harry at the time."
"Harry is special in a lot of ways."
Remus said. "Ever since Voldemort gave him that scar by trying to kill him, the
two have had a connection of sorts. Harry feels when Voldemort feels particular
emotions and sometimes he has visions of what Voldemort sees. When Voldemort
rose again, the visions were more intense and more often. And then Voldemort
became aware of this connection and sent Harry visions of Sirius getting
tortured in the Department of Ministries. Harry thought what he saw was true
and so went to the Ministry."
"But why did Voldemort want Harry to go
there?" Buffy asked, feeling more confused. "You, and Dumbledore, have told me
about what happened to Sirius and the fact that he went to save Harry but I don't
know why they were all there in the first place."
"The Department of Mysteries holds a lot of strange things, as Dumbledore probably said." Remus replied. "Even those that work there don't understand the things kept there. It contains the mysteries of life, things that people will probably never understand. They also keep every prophecy made about anyone. The prophecy can only be picked up by the person whom in concerns, otherwise it causes madness. You know about Harry's prophecy, but Voldemort didn't. He knew the first part, that a boy would be born with the power to kill him, but not the second, about marking him as his equal. He heard it, and then went to kill Harry, meaning to end the prophecy. But he failed, and this time he intended to hear the prophecy for himself in full before attempting anything. But he couldn't collect it, and so he had to get Harry there. So he used Sirius, one person that Harry would've risked everything for. But he failed, the prophecy was smashed and he didn't hear it."
"Every prophecy?" Buffy said with wide eyes. "I'd
like to see that, like to see my own prophecy. I'd like to see the Ministry itself."
"I could take you," Bill offered, having
been listening in to the tail end of their conversation. "I've got to go in tomorrow
to pick up some parchments for work. You could come with me."
"I'd like that," Buffy said warmly. She
smiled then looked back at Remus. "But what stops Voldemort catching one of us,
that knows about the prophecy and torturing us til he gets it, or using a spell
thing to find it out?"
"Prophecies can only be told willingly,"
Remus revealed. "They can only be extracted from a person if they are willing
to them. No amount of torture or spells will extract the prophecy from a person
and Voldemort knows that. He was lucky to hear the first part; he overheard the
original seer prophesising to Dumbledore." Buffy nodded, remembering
overhearing Giles and Angel discussing her own prophecy. With a smile, she remembered
Giles saying that he would go and take on the Master himself. She missed him a
lot now.
****
Again, not a natural cut off point, but I want to stop there before I get into the next big thing and I'm supposed to be doing my English coursework at the moment! Hope you enjoy, read and review please!
