CHAPTER FOURTEEN: NOTHING
Buffy was introduced to two other Sixth Year Gryffindors, Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell. Buffy found out that Angelina, Alicia and Katie were all on the Gryffindor team as Chasers, and as such, the room was covered in brooms, servicing kits, Quidditch books and parts of the Quidditch uniform. All three of them were tremendously upset that the House Cup had been cancelled, but Katie and Angelina, who were both seventeen, were seriously considering entering the Tournament.
"How old are you Buffy?" Alicia asked curiously.
"Seventeen," she replied.
Angelina and Katie both pounced on her. She'd been fairly quiet when the other two had been talking about putting their names forward.
"Are you going to enter?" Angelina asked.
Buffy just shrugged. Dumbledore had made good points about why the younger students shouldn't apply for the Tournament. They wouldn't have learned enough, and seeing as Buffy had barely mastered a basic levitation charm, she doubted that she could enter the competition and actually hope to contend.
"I doubt it," she replied. "That whole, risk of death thing kinda makes me wanna turn it down."
"No way! You look like the kind of girl who'd never turn away from danger," Katie commented.
Buffy's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "How can you tell that?"
Katie shrugged. "It's just…you have this look in your eyes. Like nothing could scare you away." At Buffy's raised eyebrows, Katie just shrugged modestly. "I can read people."
Buffy was seriously impressed that Katie could tell that just from looking at her. And, yes, in some things Buffy was fearless. But it seemed somewhat stupid and pointless to actually put her name forward in a Tournament that could get her killed because she didn't know enough magic.
"Alright, so maybe that's not my real excuse," Buffy admitted.
"Then why?" Alicia asked.
Buffy sighed. "Because I don't know any magic."
The three girls gaped at her in shock. "What?!" they gasped in unison. "Why not?!"
"I was brought up muggle," she replied. "I didn't even know about this wizard stuff until about two weeks ago."
Angelina, Katie and Alicia all exchanged a glance, grinning at one another and then turning to look at their newest friend. Buffy suddenly found her earlier thoughts about being fearless completely untrue. The looks in their eyes were scaring her.
"What?" she asked suspiciously.
"You don't know magic," Angelina stated. "We're going to teach you."
"Uh, isn't that what the Professors are for?" Buffy asked.
The three girls just laughed. "Oh, they'll teach you things alright. But…we're going to teach you the things you'll really need to know."
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By two in the morning, Buffy had mastered the art of performing glamour spells and the very helpful spells that would nix the need to actually put in the effort to get changed. Katie, Alicia and Angelina had taught her spells to get her hair into different styles, spells to help cover zits (the girls were jealous that Buffy didn't have any), and spells that would instantly manicure or pedicure depending on where you aimed your wand.
Sometime around midnight, they'd lost their focus, and the magic lesson had turned into a female bonding session. They laughed and joked about the boys they had crushes on (Angelina on Fred, Buffy on George, Alicia on Lee and Katie on a Sixth-Year Hufflepuff by the name of Cedric Diggory).
When they drifted off to sleep, they'd all moved their pillows and blankets, and conjured up smaller mattresses, the girls sleeping in the middle of the room closer to the fireplace, gossiping until they slowly dropped off to sleep, one-by-one. Buffy's last thought as she drifted off into unconsciousness was that things looked to be turning out alright at Hogwarts after all.
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The girls, tired though they were, donned their uniforms and stumbled down to the Great Hall for breakfast. The toast, bacon, eggs and coffee seemed to waken them a little, and when the Sixth Year boys came into the Great Hall and took their seats, rubbing at their bleary eyes, the girls all grinned at each other and giggled, remembering the gossip session from the night before.
"What did you four get up to last night?" Fred asked.
The girls just grinned at each other. "Nothing," they replied in completely innocent voices.
George, Fred and Lee all looked at each other horrified.
"They've been gossiping," Fred said in horror.
"They're giggling," Lee pointed out.
"They'll start pointing at us and laughing at our manliness," George continued.
The three boys stood up simultaneously, but each of them had their wrists grabbed, and were pulled back into their seats.
"Calm paranoid boy," Buffy said to George. "Nothing bad was said."
George raised a curious eyebrow and tilted his head to the side. "But things were said?" he asked, oddly pleased by the thought.
Buffy blushed slightly and floundered for something to say. She was saved from answering by Ron, Hermione and Harry plonking themselves down on her other side, Harry stealing a piece of toast from her plate.
"Hey!" she cried. "Get your own!"
"Oh come on, I've never been able to get away with annoying my cousin before," Harry said. "You wouldn't want me to miss out on an important part of a family bonding event, would you?"
Buffy glared at him, but rolled her eyes in defeat. "I blame this on the Weasley's," the Slayer announced.
"Us?" George asked in an innocent tone that fooled no one. "How could he have got something so wretched like stealing from us? We're the perfect family-"
"Of trouble-makers," Fred finished for him.
Harry began filling his own plate, piling it up with toast and bacon and eggs. He began eating, but was constantly having to stop his fork midway to the plate as Buffy began picking at his food. He tolerated it until she stole his last piece of bacon.
"Would you get your own?" he asked impatiently.
Buffy grinned and the Weasley twins cackled with laughter.
"It's an important family bonding experience Harry," Buffy replied seriously.
Harry threw down his fork in mock-anger. "Fine, you win. I won't steal your food again, okay?"
Buffy nicked another quarter piece of toast and popped it into her mouth. "Okay."
From somewhere deep within the castle, a bell rang, the sound of it echoing through the entire school, the students all groaning and standing up from their breakfast.
"What've you got first?" Ron asked the twins.
"DADA," George replied. "With Moody. You?"
"Herbology," Ron replied. "Then Care of Magical Creatures with the Slytherins."
"The Professors make you take care of the Slytherins?" Buffy asked.
The twins grinned at each other, grateful that their newest friend seemed to be quick with the wit as well.
"They have to be taken care of," Fred said.
"They'll die without the proper tender, loving, care from the Gryffindors," George continued. "Without us kicking them-"
"And spitting on them-"
"Hexing them-"
"Cursing them to the fiery pits of hell-"
"They'd be lost," the twins finished together.
The group laughed at the twins antics, Ron and Harry especially, who the Slytherin 'Prince' seemed to enjoy tormenting.
"They can't all be that bad, can they?" Buffy asked.
George's eyes darkened. "You'd be surprised," he replied. "Never met a single one of them who was actually half-way decent."
"Malfoy especially," Ron complained.
"Malfoy? That was the blonde kid up in the top-box with us at Quidditch right?" Buffy asked. "The one who looked like he'd been playing with a box of peroxide and accidentally spilt it over his head."
Hermione and Harry snickered, the Weasley's and Lee not really getting it.
"His father's a Death-Eater," Harry whispered. "Most of the Slytherins parents are. They think that being anything less than pureblood is a disgrace to the wizarding world."
Buffy noticed Draco Malfoy walk past them, glaring at the entire group with nothing but disdain on his face.
"So, how many house points would I lose if I flushed Malfoy's head down a toilet?" Buffy dead-panned.
Hermione looked torn between amusement and outrage, but the others all just laughed in appreciation at the mental picture that Buffy's suggestion conjured.
"I think you'd be forgiven for it," Ron said through his laughter.
Harry checked his watch, and grabbed Ron and Hermione, heading towards the Greenhouses for Herbology. Fred, Lee, Angelina, Alicia, Katie, George and Buffy all headed up the stairs towards the DADA classroom, taking their seats, Lee and Fred sitting next to each other and Buffy sitting with George.
Moody came clunking down the hallway, closing the door with a bang before instructing them to put their books away.
"Straight into it. Curses. A wizard who's about to put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's about to do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful," Moody said.
Buffy straightened slightly in her seat. The Professor actually sounded as though he knew what he was talking about. He sounded like someone who knew what the real world was like. And if he sounded slightly paranoid to the others, then they had never had to face what went bump in the night.
The three illegal curses were then explained, mostly by the students, the Imperius Curse, the Cruciatus Curse and the Killing Curse. Moody demonstrated it on a spider, and Buffy couldn't help but wince in sympathy as Moody tortured and killed it. What sickened Buffy even more was that this had happened to people. Complete control over their mind, torture worse than knives and chainsaws, and an instant death from a flash of green light. That was how Voldemort had killed people. And it was sickening.
"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Moody roared, making the entire class jump.
Someone in the back giggled slightly and Moody turned his magical eye to look at them in contempt. "Think it's funny do you?"
It was a Slytherin girl with an unpleasant face and an upturned nose. Half of the class swivelled around to look at her.
"Well, it's not as though we're about to get attacked here are we?" the girl asked, turning a bright shade of red at all the attention, her voice a little shaky. "It's Hogwarts. We're safe."
Buffy snorted slightly. That was her first thoughts about Sunnydale as well. How could a place with such an innocent name be so filled by demons.
Moody heard Buffy's snort of disbelief and turned his attention to her.
"Got something to say Potter?" Moody asked.
"It's Summers, or Potter-Summers if you really wanna keep the Potter in there," Buffy replied.
Moody looked slightly impressed that Buffy had neither gone red with the attention, nor backed down. She'd even corrected him, something that he suspected wouldn't happen very often.
"Summers then," he complied. "You don't think Hogwarts is safe?"
"No one's safe. Not here, not ever," Buffy replied.
Again, Moody looked impressed.
"Why do you think that?" he asked.
Buffy laughed again and shook her head.
"What's funny?" he growled.
"Nothing sir, it's just…I was always taught that it's never 'what do you think'. It's always 'what do you know'. Cos you gotta know. You can't think too much. Reacting is better," she explained.
"Why's that?" Moody asked, incredibly intrigued.
"It could mean the difference between staying alive and that other thing," Buffy replied. "If you don't, if you make just one mistake…" She trailed off and the class was silent, hanging on her words.
George was looking at her in shock, wondering where Buffy's explanation had come from. He knew that there was more to Buffy than she was letting on, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what it was. She'd been able to see the Thestrals which could only be seen by people who'd seen death, and she'd spoken knowledgeably about being in a battle. He was definitely intrigued by it all, and he knew that the mystery surrounding her was only making him that much more interested in her past.
Katie Bell was looking proud of her previous nights insight to Buffy, and knew that she'd been right about the blonde girl. There was something hidden inside Buffy, some strength that was subtly obvious.
"Miss Summers is onto something here class," Moody said. "You can't just learn this stuff by rote. You need to know it. You need to prepare yourself against it. You need arming. But most of all, you need to practise constant, never-ending vigilance."
They spent the rest of the class taking down notes on the Unforgivable Curses, even Fred and George were oddly silent for once during a lesson, completely captivated by what they were being taught. As the bell ended, everyone packed their belongings away and moved towards the door.
"Summers, I want to see you in my office after dinner," Moody said before Buffy could leave.
Buffy winced and nodded, hoping that she hadn't just got herself into a boat-load of trouble.
George and Fred flanked her as they walked down the hallway towards lunch.
"In trouble already," Fred said approvingly. "I think you'll fit in just fine."
"She's not in trouble you git," Katie defended her new friend. "I think Professor Moody was impressed."
"Hmmm, just what I wanted. I swear, if that guy had a parrot on his shoulder he'd be a shoe-in for Captain Hook," Buffy murmured.
"Who's that?" George asked curiously.
Buffy rolled her eyes, wondering if any of her jokes would ever be appreciated around the witches and wizards of Hogwarts.
"Muggle thing," she replied.
They reached the Great Hall and sat down with Harry and Ron, saying goodbye to a departing Hermione.
"Moody!" Fred said as he took his seat. "How cool is he?"
"Beyond cool," George replied.
"Supercool," Lee added. "We had him just now."
"What was it like?" Harry asked eagerly.
"Never had a lesson like it," Fred said. "Summers here managed to either get herself into a heap of trouble, or she impressed the pants off of him."
Buffy, Angelina, Alicia and Katie all wrinkled their noses at the phrasing Fred had used.
"I hope not," Buffy said in disgust. "I think I want his pants to stay where they are, thanks all the same."
"Why are you in trouble?" Ron asked.
Buffy went to explain in very simple terms but Fred jumped in first.
"First off, she corrects him about her last name," he began.
"Summers, not Potter," Lee mimicked, his voice slightly high-pitched. He was hit in the arm by Buffy for it, and he tried to rub the sore spot as inconspicuously as possible.
"Then, she goes and tells him that you can't just think stuff, you gotta know stuff," George continued.
"It was very impressive," Alicia commented.
"He asked her to see him in his office after dinner," Fred finished.
Harry and Ron looked incredibly impressed. Buffy just shrugged modestly, but inwardly worried that she'd drawn a little too much attention to herself. If she wasn't careful, it would be Sunnydale all over again, and people would find out about her status as the Slayer if she wasn't too careful.
"Eh. It was nothing."
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The rest of the day passed without incident for Buffy, she mostly took notes and watched as the others tried more complicated spells. She was writing as much as she could, and the Professors had been helpful, giving her books to learn from, to help her learn the most common things that she would need to know. Every teacher she'd had so far had been extremely helpful to her. She was just dreading the day she met Snape. She'd heard horror stories about the man from the twins and Harry, and she wasn't looking forward to having him tell her that she was a failure. She'd gladly left Principal Snyder behind, she didn't need some malicious Professor taking over.
After dinner, Buffy made her way to Professor Moody's office, knocking on the door and awaiting an answer.
"Door's open," shouted a gruff voice.
Buffy nodded in approval at the vague invitation indoors. It was how she had started answering her door after she'd been Called as the Slayer. It was vague enough to not sound rude, and not enough for a vampire to be allowed in.
She entered and instinctively looked around the room, taking in everything the room had to offer. Moody watched her for a moment before gesturing towards a chair and asking her to sit down. She sat and watched Moody move to seat himself behind his desk.
"It takes a lot to impress me lassie," Moody stated calmly. "But you managed to do that today. Twice in fact."
Buffy just shrugged. "Just a habit I guess. Y'know, six impossible things before breakfast, that sort of thing."
"Professor Dumbledore tells me you grew up muggle," he continued.
Buffy nodded. "Yeah. The most complicated spell I've ever done was to get my hair as straight as it is."
Moody's magical eye flicked to Buffy's hair before returning to gaze into the Slayer's eyes.
"Then you're probably a fair way behind the others then," he commented. "Take a long while to catch up."
"Yeah, it kinda sucks. I've never really been good at the whole learning thing either, that was more Will's department," Buffy rambled.
"D'you need a tutor?" he asked.
Buffy looked at him, completely shocked by the offer. The most the other Professors had offered her had been previous years books and complicated looking diagrams to show wand movements.
"This is a one time offer only," he warned. "You say no, I won't offer again."
"Then I'll say yes," she replied. "Definitely yes. You sound like you know what you're on about, and…I could probably use the help."
"Alright then," he said. "My office, eight thirty until ten every evening. Don't be late."
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Buffy had asked one of the portraits for directions to Dumbledore's office and she'd managed to find it with relative ease. The problem now was that she didn't know his password. She sighed, knowing she'd be better off asking one of the twins and coming back another day. She turned, but stopped as she heard the statue of the phoenix begin to twist, creating a spiral staircase. Buffy stepped towards it, about to walk up, but she saw Professor Dumbledore walking down the steps.
"Miss Summers," Dumbledore greeted her. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person."
Buffy shook his hand politely. "Good to meet you too," she replied.
"Now, tell me, what can I do for you?" he asked.
"Professor, I know you said that the Forest was Forbidden, and…well, I can't help but wonder…why?" she asked.
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled and Buffy grinned at the mischievous look in them.
"I should have known that you would wish to explore them," the Headmaster said brightly. "And, knowing that you are the Slayer, I will not try and stop you from entering the Forest if you wish. I do however request that you do your research before you enter the Forest. There are all manners of creature that reside within, and not all of them are in need of Slaying."
Buffy nodded, grinning widely at the thought of being allowed to patrol the Forest. As a Slayer, she was built for the night-time and she'd worried that she'd have been forced to remain inactive while she was at Hogwarts. When Dumbledore had announced that the Forbidden Forest was still forbidden, Buffy had been curious as to why.
"What's it there?" she asked curiously.
"I believe you'll be able to find that out if you borrow Hogwarts: A History. If, that is, you can pry a copy away from Miss Granger," Dumbledore said teasingly.
Buffy grinned. She'd heard Hermione reference the Hogwarts: A History book at least once already.
"Thanks," she said gratefully.
"I do however request that you don't take any of the others students into the Forest with you," Dumbledore said seriously.
"I won't," she replied. "You have my word."
Dumbledore nodded in satisfaction. "Good. Now, I suggest you adjourn to bed. It's late."
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Buffy's little spiel to Moody about thinking and knowing is stolen from the Season Seven episode 'Potential'.
Many thanks for the feedback! You guys rock.
BTW, does anyone know any good (long) Buffy/Alias Crossovers? I haven't really found any quality ones, and I'd really like to read one, cos I wouldn't mind writing one know that I'm actually into the series. So…if you know any fics, or have any suggestions for one, email me or something please!
Toodles.
DKG.