CHAPTER TWENTY: TALKING

As Christmas approached, the students calmed down after the first task.  The first week after the task, Buffy and Harry had been fending off people trying to talk to them, or Colin with his camera, or even worse, Rita Skeeter trying to get interviews. 

Two weeks before Christmas, it was announced that the Yule Ball would be being held on Christmas Day.  The champions and their partners would officially open the dance, a thought that completely horrified Harry.  Firstly, he didn't dance, and secondly, he didn't have a partner.

To his complete surprise, he had girls approaching him to ask him if he would go with them.  He'd turned them all down, but had been so shocked by it all.  With a week left, he was quickly running out of options. 

He tried not to worry about it as he sat by the fire in eh Gryffindor Tower, reading through his copy of Flying with the Cannons that Hermione had bought him for his birthday one year. 

Ron was building a castle of cards out of his Exploding Snap deck, while Hermione was revising for the test that Snape had cruelly set for them for the last day of term.

Fred, George and Buffy approached them just as Ron's castle of cards exploded in his face, singeing his eyebrows.

"Nice look Ron," Fred commented.

"Ron, can we borrow Pigwidgeon?" George asked.

"No, he's off delivering a letter," Ron replied.  "Why?"

"Because George wants to invite him to the ball," Fred replied sarcastically. 

"Because we want to send a letter, you stupid great prat," George replied.

"Who d'you three keeping writing to?" Ron asked curiously.

"Nose out Ron, or I'll burn that for you too," Fred replied.  "So…you lot got dates for the ball yet?"

Harry groaned, not wanting to think about it. 

"We'll take that as a no," Buffy commented, seeing Harry's distress.

"Nope.  Neither of us do."

"You'd better hurry up mate, or all of the good ones will be gone," Fred warned.

"Who're you going with then?" Ron asked.

"Angelina," Fred replied instantly.

Buffy looked at her friend questioningly.  "I didn't think you'd asked her yet," she commented.

"Good point," Fred replied.  He turned his head and called across the Common Room.  "Oi!  Angelina!"

Angelina, who'd been chatting with Alicia and Katie looked over at him curiously.

"What?" she called back.

"Want to come to the ball with me?"

Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look.  "All right then," she replied, before turning back to Alicia and Katie, carrying on their conversation, with a wide grin on her face.

"There you go," Fred said to Harry and Ron.  "Piece of cake."

Buffy rolled her eyes and poked Fred's ribs.  He squirmed and slapped her hands away.

"That was the most unromantic thing I've ever seen," Buffy commented.

Fred just shrugged. 

"What about you George?" Ron asked curiously.

George put his arm around Buffy's shoulder and pulled her closer.  "I bribed her into it," he teased.

Ron smirked.  "You'd have to."

George looked completely offended, but finally conceded defeat. 

"I'm considering it payment for the firework she stole," he explained.

"What?!  You gave that to me!" Buffy cried in outrage.

George shrugged.  "Technicalities mean nothing to me."

Ron leaned across to Harry, who was watching George mess around with Buffy.

"You reckon there's something going on between those two?" Ron whispered.

Harry nodded, slightly shocked.  He'd known that Buffy was good friends with both twins, but he hadn't seen the sparks between Buffy and George before.  It was strange that he hadn't seen it, because now that he'd noticed, he couldn't seem to not notice it.

"That's uh…disgustingly cute actually," Harry commented.

Ron wrinkled his nose.  "What does she see in him?"

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By the end of the week, Ron and Harry had partners, twin girls, Parvati and Padma Patil.  The two boys were trying desperately to find out who Hermione was going with.  She'd been completely secretive about it, especially when Ron had just assumed that she would be going with him as she 'obviously' wouldn't have a partner.  Neville and Ginny were going together as well.

Christmas morning came, along with the usual noise that followed it.  The group met down in the Common Room, exchanging gifts and laughing over what everyone had been given.

The twins were sporting their usual hand-made jumpers from their mother, Ron wearing his, and Harry's had a picture of a dragon on it.  Mrs Weasley had even made one for Buffy, something that George had grinned at.

Buffy's gift to Harry was a stuffed dragon, which she had managed to find in Hogsmeade after the first task.  Harry had laughed and jokingly named it Puff the Magic Dragon.  Only Buffy and Hermione had appreciated the name.

Harry had given his cousin an anklet with the initials EAB on it.  She'd put it around her ankle immediately and vowed never to take it off. 

Fred and George had handed out boxes of sweets that were a mixture of normal chocolates and lollies from Honeydukes.  Approximately every fourth sweet however had been modified somehow, and it was with great caution that anyone actually ate anything that the Weasley twins had given them.

George had pulled Buffy asked and handed her a small ring box.

"I was browsing around Hogsmeade, and…I saw this," he explained before Buffy opened the box.  "It's…it symbolises friendship."

Buffy smiled at the gesture and lifted the lid on the box.  Her breath caught in her throat and her hands trembled.  The box fell from her hands and the claddagh ring hit the floor.  The entire Common Room went silent, watching as George squatted down and picked up the fallen ring.  He stood and went to touch her arm, but she stepped back.

"I…I'm sorry….I-I – I can't do this."

All of Gryffindor watched as the usually calm and collected girl, the champion of the Triwizard Tournament, lifted a trembling hand, wiped an errant tear from her eyes and fled the Common Room, racing out into the hallways and down several flights of stairs.

Fred looked to his twin, completely mystified by what had gone wrong.  He'd been certain that there was something between Buffy and George, and to see his twin brother standing in the middle of the silent Common Room, looking in the direction that Buffy had fled, a sad expression on his face, Fred felt his heart break.  No matter what everyone else thought, Fred hated to see people hurt, and it was obvious that George and Buffy were both hurting.

Fred stood up, unconsciously touching Angelina's shoulder as he approached George.

"Go after her," he advised.

George nodded mutely and raced after Buffy, the Common Room staying silent for a long moment before everyone tactfully changed topics.

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George found Buffy down by the lake, her arms folded against her chest, a look of sorrow etched on her face.  George stood beside her and placed a gentle hand at her back.

"Are you okay?" he whispered.

Buffy shook her head before turning to face him.  George frowned as he saw the tears streaking down Buffy's face.  He removed a relatively clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the salty tracks off her cheeks.

"Do you want to sit down?" he asked.

Buffy nodded and they gracelessly sunk to the ground, sitting on George's Gryffindor cloak so that the snow wouldn't freeze them.  George cautiously held out the ring between them, and Buffy took hold of the small silver item, sighing at the memories that it brought back.

"It's not the first time you've been given one of these, is it?" George asked.

She shook her head again.  "Nope."

"Who was he?  Is he the someone you mentioned that night in the woods?"

"His name was Angel," Buffy whispered.  She hadn't spoken about Angel to anyone except Willow and Giles, and trying to explain it now to someone that she was on the verge of something with was incredibly difficult.

"Was?" George asked.

Buffy nodded.  "He died.  About two weeks before I met you."

George winced, suddenly understanding why Buffy had been so reluctant to start anything with him.  Buffy suddenly pushed the ring back into George's hand, and he closed his fingers around it to hide it from Buffy's sight.

"What happened to him?" George asked.

Buffy let out a snort of mirthless laughter.  "I killed him," she replied.

George took in an involuntary breath of air.

"There's an explanation behind that isn't there?"

She had no choice but to tell him the truth.  All of it.  She wanted things between them to be cleared up completely.  She didn't want Angel hanging over their heads anymore, and she didn't want her secret of being the Slayer between them either.  And then there was the truth about her parentage, and Sirius, and why she was still using the name Summers.

"There's some stuff that you have to understand about me before I explain about him," Buffy said.

"I'm listening," he offered.

She breathed in deeply and fiddled with the anklet that Harry had given to her earlier. 

"Have you ever wondered why I was raised muggle?" Buffy asked.

George nodded.  He had been curious about that, but he'd known better than to pry into it.  He knew that the Potter's were a curious family.  The last name was known by everyone.

"My mom believed that my dad betrayed her and her brother," Buffy explained.  "She was heartbroken, so…she left England and headed to America.  She didn't want me to know about magic or anything even remotely supernatural, but…fate it seems, has a funny sense of humour."

George's eyebrows quirked slightly in confusion.  Buffy paused momentarily, swatting away a large beetle that was walking in front of them.  It landed a foot away and slowly crawled back towards them.

"When I was fifteen, I met a man who told me that I'd been Called as a Slayer," she explained.  "Giles is my Watcher.  That's why he's at Hogwarts…so he can keep training me.  That's why I know him so well…why I spend so much time in the library."

George's eyes were wide.  They'd been taught about Slayers in their third year, and he'd never forgotten the lessons about vampires and demons and Slayers.  It was one of the very few subjects that had ever interested him outside of causing havoc.

"Mom never knew until she saw me kill a vamp right in front of her.  We had a massive fight, and after that…well, then I met my dad for the first time.  I had no clue that he was a wizard or that I was a witch or that my cousin was fricken famous."

George chuckled slightly and reached across to squeeze Buffy's hand.  She smiled gratefully at the contact, thankful that he hadn't turned away.  Yet.

"You see, my dad…he was meant to be in prison.  But he escaped, and the guy who framed him got away."

"Escaped…wait…you don't mean-"

"Sirius Black," Buffy said.  "My name is Eliza Anne Black.  My mother is Joyce Potter-Black.  And my step-father was Hank Summers.  An accountant, strangely enough."

George grinned slightly at the random comment, before remembering one of his and Fred's initial questions to her regarding her father.

"Sirius is innocent though," Buffy continued.  "He never betrayed James and Lily…he never killed that group of people.  Peter Pettigrew did."

Strangely, George believed every word that Buffy had said.  He knew the story about Sirius Black's escape from Azkaban, and hearing from Buffy's lips that Sirius was innocent was enough for George to believe it.

"Okay…so, you're a Slayer, your dad's Sirius Black, and you dated a guy named Angel," George prompted.

"Angel…he's…he's kind of a long story," Buffy hedged.

George shrugged.  "We've got at least half an hour before my stomach starts eating itself."

Buffy grinned and looked up at the clear blue sky. 

"His name was Angel and…he was a vampire.  He'd been cursed with his soul about a hundred years ago, forced to carry the guilt of a hundred and fifty years of destruction," Buffy explained.  "We met and I fell for him."

"And then what happened?"

"We…he and I made love and…his curse had a loophole in it.  The gypsies didn't want Angel to ever be happy, except they kinda forgot to inform him of that part.  If he ever had a true moment of happiness, his soul would be gone, and he'd just become the vicious soulless killer he'd been before."

"And you being the Slayer…you had to kill him," George said.

"Yup.  Fun huh?"

George shifted closer to Buffy and pulled her into a hug, neither of them saying a word as the sun shone down on them. 

Long moments passed in silence, only the sound of their hearts beating and the gentleness of their breaths could be heard.  Buffy slowly took hold of George's hand and opened his fingers up so that his palm was lying flat, the ring glinting in the sunlight.

"I don't know if I'm ready to wear another ring like this," she confessed, picking the ring up out of his palm.  She gently turned the ring so that the heart was facing in towards George.  She slipped it onto his pinkie finger, the only finger it would fit on.

"They say you should only wear it with the heart facing in if you belong to somebody," he whispered.

Buffy smiled and kissed his cheek.  "I know."

George smiled and nodded, helping her to stand.  He picked up his cloak, shook of the snow and flicked the large beetle that Buffy had been harassing earlier off his cloak.  He engulfed Buffy in a warm hug, the two of them standing there for several minutes before finally separating and heading back to the castle.

Buffy felt considerably lighter now that she'd told George about her father, about being the Slayer, and about Angel as well.  She was grateful that she could trust George to keep what she'd just told him in confidence (with the exception of Fred of course), and that while she'd now divulged her biggest secrets, at least none of the other students knew.

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After the feast and an impromptu snowball fight out on the grounds between the Weasley's, Harry, Buffy, Angelina, Alicia, Katie and Lee, the girls ran off for their dorms, needing as much time as possible to get ready for the Yule Ball.  Ron was still annoyed that Hermione was being so secretive about her partner, while he was also worried about his dress robes being incredibly dated.

Katie was fairly quiet for the night, upset that Cedric Diggory, the boy she had a massive crush on was going with Cho Chang, who strangely enough, Harry had a crush on.  The Weasley twins were, as always, rambunctiously loud throughout the entire evening.  For the opening dance for the champions and their partners, George had grabbed a long-stemmed rose off one of the tables, torn the thorns off and placed it in his mouth, tangoing wildly across the floor with a laughing Buffy.

The Slayer was further convinced that the twins had absolutely no shame about anything as they danced up a storm, Fred tap-dancing circles around Angelina. 

After the opening dance for Harry, he'd sat himself firmly at his table and silently declared he would never dance in public again.  His partner was fuming, and eventually she and her twin sister, who'd been partnered by Ron, who was glaring daggers at Viktor Krum, who had asked Hermione to the Ball, had wandered off to chat with some of the boys from Durmstrang.

For an entire evening, Buffy found herself laughing hysterically at the twins antics, and at the way George could make her laugh even after what had happened earlier in the afternoon, and the deed conversation they'd had.  The laughter was one of the very reasons that she was in the process of completely falling for George Weasley.  And part of her couldn't have cared less.  She was laughing, and she was happy, something that had been very rare in Sunnydale, and she wasn't about to play the martyr and give up on what happiness she had found in life.

For that one evening, life couldn't have been better

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Awww, mush.  Yeah, lotsa talking, hence the name of the chapter.  Many thanks for all yoru feedback and stuff.  Hope you enjoyed, yadda yadda yadda.

Toodles.

DKG.