Disclaimers, etc, see part one.

Author's Notes: Thanks once again to Chaos for beta-ing, and making sure I don't use too many commas or take too much for granted.

This is the first 'live posted' chapter to since the story was deleted.

No new challenges, so on with the story.

… … …

Dawn said goodbye to her new friends after dinner. Ginny and Hermione headed back to the Gryffindor common room, but they would be back at seven. They wanted to do some homework and give Dawn some time alone with her sister.

Dawn fell in beside Tara as they walked to their rooms. Buffy and Spike were already there, sitting in their chairs, chatting. Dawn took a chair next to Spike, but Tara stood, watching them as the others filed around her.

"How was your day, Bit?" Spike asked.

Dawn grimaced. "Malfoy teased Ron about Quidditch again. And it's no fun not being able to try anything. How about you? How's Hagrid? Have you got any freckles, yet?"

Dawn squinted at Spike, who waved her away with a grin.

"I'm fine, Pet," he said. "And so's the giant."

"You may be able to do some magic eventually," Willow said, plonking herself in the chair next to Dawn. "You did the spell to bring your mother back, and Buffy did the pulling back the curtain one. You've got aptitude, it just depends on how much power. Same for Anya."

Anya looked up sharply from her place in Xander's lap. Xander looked up too, and smoothed the top of his robes. He tried to look nonchalant, but Anya was still playing with his top button.

"We'll have a lesson with Ginny and Hermione later," Tara said, trying to ignore them. "We'll see how that goes. The theory is really quite different. And there are some things I can do with a wand more easily."

"Like what?" Spike asked, with a suggestive grin.

Tara blushed and promptly sat down.

"There's the flying spell," Xander said. "You'd look kind of silly pointing at things."

"And you don't even have to know what it is," Willow added. "You can float anything, you don't have to worry about the air, or gravity, or all the other forces."

"You still have to be mostly calm, though," Tara said.

Willow blushed at the memory. She'd gotten frustrated trying to float her egg and it had ended up smashed on the ceiling. Professor Flitwick had explained that he used eggs to encourage precision, but that he'd never had the pleasure of yolk dripping on his head before.

"What about you, Buffy?" Dawn asked.

Buffy jerked out of a light doze and stared around the room.

"What? Oh, I'm good."

"Are you going to be in class tomorrow?"

"Yeah!" Buffy said. "Do you want me to accidentally hit Malfoy or something?"

Dawn grinned, but shook her head. "I wouldn't mind learning to fly, though."

Buffy just nodded. Dawn narrowed her eyes.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she said.

"Yeah," Buffy sighed. "I've just been having strange dreams is all."

"Slayer dreams?" Xander asked.

"Are you going to die again?" Anya asked. "Because that makes Xander sad, and he doesn't want to have sex."

Buffy frowned. "I don't think so," she said, "Nothing happens in the dream. I'm just walking along this corridor. I always wake up before I get to the end, it's kind of frustrating."

"Do you think you should talk to Giles?" Spike asked.

"Nah," Buffy said, with believable nonchalance. "I still don't what it's about."

"So we still don't know anything," Anya said. "How are we supposed to be helpful?"

"There's a prophecy," Buffy said, quietly. "We keep the kid alive until he can face the big bad and kill him. I think, anyway. For the rest, you learn magic, I dream about corridors and Giles pretends to be evil."

"He gave Harry detention," Dawn said. "With Snape," she added.

Xander growled. Both Willow and Tara frowned and Spike punched the arm of his chair. Buffy sighed and closed her eyes.

But Anya said, "Well, that's just as well, isn't it?"

"How?" Dawn demanded. "Snape will be awful. He's missing out on his evening, too."

"Yeah, but if Giles takes Harry for detention, he won't be able to be mean. And if he doesn't give Harry detention, Harry will get suspicious. The kid wears his heart on his sleave, no poked face to speak of. Isn't that why Giles's is pretending to evil in the first place?"

"Poker face, honey," Xander said.

"That's hardly relevant, Xander."

"She does have a point," Willow said.

"Fred and George said he was mean," Dawn said.

"What if they were lying," Spike suggested. "They could pull of anything."

"Yeah, but we still can't talk to Giles, can we?" Buffy said. "I think he's having a hard time being back. I was talking to him over lunch in the Leaky Cauldron."

Buffy fell silent. She was sure, looking back on it, that Giles wanted to know 'what was wrong,' why she wasn't behaving the way she should be. She tapped her fingers on the edge of her chair. Spike gently took her hand and held it between his own. Buffy craned her neck to look at him. He was looking back at her with gentle intensity, she smiled.

The group quietly went over what they knew of what was happening, discussed their day, and what they had learnt.

Dawn loved being included in the meeting. She had been spending most of her time in the Gryffindor common room. Hermione hadn't been happy at first, but decided that Dawn's questions were actually helping the boys remember things, so it was okay. Dawn hadn't ever spent much extended time with the Scooby gang, because they tended to meet up late, and keep her out of the 'nasty stuff.' Also, Spike was still holding Buffy's hand, which was all to the good.

Willow and Xander were arguing about the first time they met, when there was a knock on the door. The argument had started when Spike's painting had told them that everyone had first day nerves and took a few days to settle into a new place, especially a school. Willow, of course, had contradicted him, and Xander had tried to correct her interpretation.

The painting was still goading them when Dawn opened the door to let Hermione and Ginny in.

"No, that was Jesse," Xander said. "He was the one who said that Mrs Felton would get angry."

"Oh, no, it was you," Willow said. "Jesse had run off to pull Harmony's hair. Do you remember how she never came back?"

"See, another one," the painting said.

"You, shut it," Spike said.

"What are they arguing about?" Hermione asked.

"Stuff," Dawn said, with a shrug.

"Who's that?" Ginny asked, nodding towards the painting.

The man in it stepped as close to the surface of the paint as he could and was glaring at Spike. His hair flopped over his forehead, obscuring his eyes. He was leaning on his hands against the inside of the painting and turned a cocky glare at Spike.

Anya gasped. Buffy shared a startled glance with Willow. Spike, who seemed to have a taken a liking to Ginny answered her question.

"He is a right interfering git. But before that he was my brother."

"So kind you were to mother, too," the painting said.

"She would have died soon anyway," Spike said.

He turned back to find everyone staring at him, a mixture of looks from curiosity to horror to amusement.

"What?" he asked, trying as hard as he could to remember how New York Spike would have said it.

He must have remembered, because they all shook themselves out of their shock and turned back to each other. Hermione, Ginny, Anya, Dawn, Tara and Willow sat cross-legged in a circle on the floor to begin their magic lesson. They asked Buffy if she wanted to learn as well, but the Slayer declared herself perfectly happy with her own current super powers.

Xander and Spike got out their Transfiguration textbooks to practice the basic colour and size manipulations, so Buffy got her sketchbook from her room and began to colour in the second page.

"We'll start off slow," Tara said, checking that they were all paying attention. "This sort of magic depends very much on you and your personal state, so you'll need to be able to know who and how you are."

Dawn, Anya and Willow nodded. Hermione looked from Tara to Willow, obviously quite confused.

"Meditation is a journey towards your true self," Willow explained.

She recognised Hermione's expression from her own first forays into Wicca theory.

"This is how both Tara and I began, with the spiritual elements. It lets you find where your power sits inside you. In order to do that, you need to be aware of your whole body, you need to be comfortable with yourself and relaxed."

"Okay, so, ah, close your eyes," Tara began. "Breathe in, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four, five, six. Make sure you breathe right into your diaphragm, as deep as you can. Take the whole count to breathe. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five, six."

By eight o'clock they moved on to breathing in through their left nostril and out through the right, then in through the right, out through the left, and feeling their body at each point on the way. Tara made them promise to do at least five minutes every day, and described what they should begin feeling.

Hermione and Ginny left feeling a little giddy. They hugged Dawn goodnight and raced each other back to the common room. Dawn stretched, using some of the forms Buffy had taught her and settled herself next to her sister to see what she was drawing. Buffy closed the sketchbook before Dawn could see.

Anya sat up on her knees and grinned.

"Well, that was kind of sexy," she said.

Willow gave Tara a shy grin.

"Yeah, it kind of is," she said.

Spike suddenly swore. The textbook he had been reading was now a lizard, which was blinking at him stupidly.

"Go Spike," Willow said. "Animation is pretty advanced."

"I just wanted to turn it into a brick," he said, pouting. "I don't know how to turn it back."

"Reficio," Willow said, gesturing at the lizard.

The book returned.

"Oh," Dawn said. "It was kind of cute."

"We can get you a real pet," Buffy said.

Dawn turned wide eyes onto her sister. "Really?"

"Only if you promise to look after it, and all that, that's how it goes, isn't it?"

Dawn squealed and threw her arms around Buffy. Buffy laughed, patting her on the back.

"We can't get one now, though," she said. "What else can we do?"

The group looked at each other. They had spent most nights on their own, or with their respective partners, rather than trying to do something all together.

"I know," Dawn said, suddenly leaping up.

She ran out of the room, and returned a few minutes later with a pack of cards a chess set.

"I remember them," Spike said, staring avidly at the box of chess figures. "Edward's men never liked me much."

"That's because you always lost," Edward said, from his painting.

Dawn, however, opened the pack of cards and began shuffling them.

"We're going to play cards," Willow asked, sceptically.

"They explode sometimes," Dawn said, "it's very funny."

The seven of them arranged themselves in a circle on the floor and played exploding snap, exploding animal snap, and five hundred (Spike played with Dawn) for the next hour or so. In the end Anya just stood up and dragged Xander off to bed. Dawn packed up before disappearing into her room. Tara and Willow wished Buffy and Spike both a goodnight; Spike kissed Buffy gently on the cheek before disappearing himself.