Palma de Animus: Chapter 3

By: PhoenixStAr

November 14, 2003

Longer than ordinary A/N: Many thanks to Cookie Monster, Lala, ladyofthedragons1, Calli, Village-Mystic, smile7499, Philip, Kristi, Erro, and dancetdplc for your wonderful reviews. They always bring a smile to my face -- and more often than not, giggle loudly. ...even if I'm in the middle of a quiet computer studies room. :)

@ Village-Mystic: O.W.L.s are the fifth-year evaluation marks that the Hogwarts students receive in order to determine which classes they can take the next year and to narrow down their career choices.

Thanks especially to Pam, tigerlily25, and Rosie W for their continuously constructive reviews. I am utterly, absolutely amazed at the depth and dedication of your reviews. ^^ I wouldn't have expected such great reviews from my measley little fic. ^^;

I'm glad all of you like my characterization... I do my best to keep them in character, or I'd be a hypocrite -- I myself can't stand OOC-ness. ^^; A lot of the humour is based on my own snide remarks and behaviour, so I'm even MORE glad that you guys like the wit I'm using! Cookies for all of you! XD

I just realised that I haven't included a disclaimer in any of the chapters of this so far.. *sweatdrop* So here goes, an all-encompassing cover-all DISCLAIMER: Absolutely none of the characters, settings, and background plots that are used in 'Palma de Animus' belong to me. Buffy belongs to Joss and Harry to JK. Any claims that I may or may not make to them later on in the fic can be blamed solely on insanity and delusion.

Thank you. :)

Spike? Sirius? Did someone say something about extremely sexy dead people being in my fic?

This fic is posted at Fanfiction.Net and Twisting the Hellmouth.

Ice cream for anyone who catches to Card Captor Sakura reference!

**

FIC STARTS HERE

"I can't find it!"

Buffy looked up from the letter she was writing with a look of amusement to be greeted by the sight of Willow frantically searching through a pile of antique-looking books. Her best bud's red hair looked ridiculously mussed -- probably from the frustration she was going through -- but matched quite nicely with the deep red decor of the Council's library office. "What are you looking for?"

"I need the name of the first recorded Slayer -- that's all! I can't find the Watcher's Diary anywhere on this shelf -- it should be here, but my skimming spell just isn't picking anything up!"

"Long Ying Fa," Buffy replied, almost absently. "16-year-old Chinese girl in 221 B.C, the beginning of the Qin dynasty. Her watcher's name was Lee Kum Xing. He found her after she accidentally killed two vampires outside a steamed bun stand with a pair of wooden chopsticks and began to help her control her powers." The light haze filtered out of her head, and she shook herself back to an alert state to see Willow staring at her in astonishment. "Oh, man... this spell is the total definition of oddness. The transition gets smoother and smoother every time. Give me a week or so, and I don't think I'll even feel the difference anymore."

When ownership of Wolfram and Hart transferred to Angel Investigations, the whole of the law firm's legal and operational information had been transferred to Gunn through some spell -- how it was done or what it was, however, was not disclosed to them. Angel had refused to tell them. Willow had been able to catch the gist of it, though, on a trip back to L.A., and had been able to recreate it with Fred's help, following the structure of the colossal spell and tweaking it to transfer centuries of Watcher information into Buffy.

And now, here she was, Buffy Summers, Slayer Extraordinare cum Walking Encylopedia. She really, really could've used this spell during her history tests back in high school.

"So, while I'm in Encylopedia-mode, is there anything else I can tell my favourite Willow-shaped friend?"

"That's absolutely amazing," Willow muttered, still in awe at the efficiency of the spell. "I didn't know it would work so well!"

A loud clacking of shoes drew the two Hellmouth veterans' attention to the office door. Buffy was able to spy a flurry of dark-blonde hair huffing away. "Dawn."

"She thinks you're ditching the Watcher's Council, you know."

"Ditching?! She has absolutely no clue what she's talking about! Once school starts, my schedule's gonna be full of the hecticness! I'm teaching in the mornings, sleeping in the afternoons, Watcher's-Council-ing in the evenings, and Slaying in the nights! She knows so well that the Council's broke Queen C-style, so she --"

"She just wants her sister, Buff. You know how she's always with the worrying about you leaving her."

Buffy closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. With a sigh, she asked, "Did she tell you all this?"

"Well, no," Willow grinned sheepishly, combing through her hair with her fingers. "But I'm pretty good with the guessage."

**

"Hey Buffy," Dawn greeted her sister cheerily, cookie in one hand and milk in the other. "Cookie?"

The Slayer had found her sister sitting at the impromptu kitchen that they'd set up in one of the Council building's old training rooms. Willow had used her magic to help revamp the room a bit when they first moved in, and since then, they'd added a refrigerator, microwave, coffee-maker, and of course, mini-bar -- solely for business use, Giles had assured them.

"Sure." Buffy grabbed a cookie of her sister's plate and sat on a nearby counter. "How goes it?"

"All's well in Dawn-land." The youngest watcher-in-training munched on another cookie, revelling in its soft, chewy state of goodness before she realised that her sister was watching her with a familiar look. "You're worried about something. Spill."

"Will says you're all unhappy-like with me working at Hogwarts."

Dawn nearly spit out the milk that she'd been sipping on. "She does way too much of the Dear Abby-ing," she choked out inbetween laughs. Apparently, Willow wasn't as good with the guessage as she thought she was. "I think it's so way cool that you get to work there. After all, teaching a bunch of prepubescent kids waving around magic sticks can't be that much more dangerous than fighting demons and hell goddesses. And we need the money, 'cause we can't use the Council's back-up funds forever."

A pause fell over the kitchen.

"Okay, who are you, and what have you done with the illogical teenager that is Dawnie?"

"I ate her," Dawn replied, looking Buffy very seriously in the eye before rolling her own. "I can manage to be mature once in a while, you know. Hard to believe, but yeah."

Before Buffy could make a witty retort, Cassidy, one of the newly recruited Slayers from Australia, barged in, informing her of a visitor. She shrugged, mildly wondering who it could be. Outside of the Slayerettes, she could count the number of people who would -- or could -- visit her in the mornings on one hand, and half of them were in LA at the moment. She picked herself up off the counter and walked towards the main entrance with Cassidy and Dawn trailing behind her, the latter still wiping cookie crumbs off her lips.

She passed by one of the newly-appointed recruitment rooms that Xander was currently holding a session in with the Slayerettes he'd discovered in some Asian countries ("Chinese chicks that can kick my ass Zhang Ziyi style? No problem.") and made a mental note to have a private talk with her cyclops-ed best friend when she overheard a questionable 'Now, most of the Slayers I've met have worn tight leather pants.' Somehow, she didn't think that the translation spell Giles and Willow set up over the building was meant to be abused that way.

**

Minerva was astonished with the changes that had been made to the Watcher's Council building. When she had arrived, the outside looked the same as ever -- rigidly well-groomed and stately. The inside, however, was now void of the stuffed shirts that had once roamed the Watchers' grounds. Instead, it was loud with muffled fighting sounds -- presumably from the training, or so she hoped -- and brimmed to the top with young girls, some wiping off sweaty brows with towels, others dealing with clipboards and piles of paperwork.

"Ms. Summers," she greeted, as the young girl reached the main hall. No, just as Buffy would never deign to call her 'Minerva,' she would never deign to call the girl 'Buffy.'

"Min-min! What's up?"

"Albus has set up a Floo connection to the fireplace in your study. I am here to assist you on your first Floo trip to the school."

"Oh, the flying powdery thing," Buffy grimaced. "Always gets my clothes all sooty and dirty. Good thing I already know how to get ashes and dust out of my outfits. I can't just fly to the school via broom?"

"Back and forth every night, Ms. Summers? I can't possibly think of any way that could presume to consume more of your time than that. The Floo will be temporary, for however long it may take you to acquire Apparating skills."

"Are we leaving now? I thought the opening night wasn't until September," Buffy queried, as the older witch followed her into the study.

It was Minerva's term to grimace. "There have been... complications in our fight against the Dark Lord. Of course, one can never really expect complications to cease when fighting evil, but Lucius Malfoy has somehow managed to escape from Albus' stronghold."

"What?" Buffy stopped from her task of gathering her trunk and broom.

"Dark Lord? That sounds so cool," Dawn grinned, oblivious of Buffy's obvious state of surprise. "Who's Luscious?"

"Official occult leader of those worshipping the Ugly," Buffy replied offhandedly before returning her attention to the professor. "How did he get out?"

Minerva looked like she desperately wanted to be hit over the head with an extremely heavy and blunt object. "We really just don't know. It seems like they've somehow managed to channel some sort of energy. It certainly wasn't wand magic."

Channeling energy that wasn't wand magic? That was enough to send alarms off in Buffy's head. "Let's go." She effortlessly picked up her trunk in one hand and held the broom in her other. "Dawnie, get Willow and Giles to do a scan for recently tapped Hellmouths and Hellmouth energy. I'll be back later." Nodding to Minerva, she dashed a pinch of Floo powder into the fireplace and said, "Hogwarts Floo Port," just as she'd been informed of earlier.

In a dizzying swirl of ashes and images, Buffy landed gracefully on her behind in a dimly lit room. The stone walls radiated chills that reflected the lack of use that hung about the room. The brightest source of light was the roaring fire that seemed impossibly full of life in a room as dull as this. Minerva tumbled out of the fireplace before Buffy had any more time to consider her surroundings. "All right then, Ms. Summers? We're in the Floo Port of the school. It hasn't been used since the early 1800s. They closed it down when Grindewald, and later Voldemort, became a threat. This Port can _only_ Floo you into your Council study, mind you. If you try to Floo elsewhere, you'll suffer the Floo equivalent of being splinched. Understand? Follow me."

The path through the school was dark, signifying -- again -- an unused part of the building. Buffy's Slayer instincts picked up the general gist of the way -- left here, right there, and then right again before going up those stairs and avoiding those, left, left again, straight, right, growling behind that door, best go straight -- and then finally, stepping through a painting of a sleeping man that looked part-human, part-ostrich inscribed 'Boberich the Bird-like,' the pair reached the main entrance of the school.

"Dinner should have just begun," Minerva noted, and as she opened the doors to the Great Hall, Buffy had to blink back the tears in her eyes.

So many children...

As a Slayer, she'd always known that she was fighting for the Light, that when she stopped, the Dark side won. She'd always known that she was the avatar for the innocents, their warrior, their protector. She'd always known that it was up to her to show up in the nick of time, stake -- and sometimes sword -- in hand, ready to save the day. But never had it occurred to her just how many people's lives were at stake at any given moment, nor how many people were depending on _her_.

And there they were, sitting there, chatting aimlessly, seemingly ignorant to the impending war. "Have you tried the meatballs? They're bloody delicious tonight," one boy, who Buffy recognized as Seamus Finnigan, commented to the sparse Gryffindor table. Another girl -- Cho Chang, Hermione's voice told her in her head -- was sitting at the Ravenclaw table with a few others, heads bent closely together, chatting quietly. The Hufflepuffs had the largest numbers at the moment, and it seemed that -- Susan Bones, was it? -- Susan Bones was currently the one in the center of attention, saying things that inspired bolts of laughter from her housemates. The Hufflepuff table was a far cry from the Slytherin table, which seated but one lone figure.

Spike?

Buffy's heart skipped a beat and she blinked a few times to readjust her eyesight. It must've been a trick of light, and it was. It wasn't Spike that sat at the Slytherin table, but rather a rat-faced boy that looked very, very much like the late souled vampire.

She shook off all nasty thoughts towards the segregation of houses and remembered why they were all here. They weren't here for school, or for socializing. They were here because they were _afraid_. Buffy looked up from the house tables to the elevated platform that sat a queue of teachers. There were three empty seats.

"Ah, Buffy!" Dumbledore called, rising in his seat to greet his newest professor. "Come, enjoy the meager meal that I can provide you with." All the students' heads snapped up to stare curiously at the new arrival. Some, of course, stared longer than others, what with some being hormone-filled teenagers, and she not being hard on the eyes.

"Albus, I heard about the --"

"Surely, whatever the matter is, it can be discussed over dinner. Better yet, if it is urgent, then it is probably best left until after the desserts have been served." The tone in the old headmaster's voice was enough to prove to Buffy that he knew very well what it was that she wanted to talk to him about. "Sit, sit!" He gestured to the empty chair that was usually inhabited by Professor McGonagall by his side.

Minerva had left already, it seemed, as Buffy glanced around the Hall for the teacher. "If you say so," she sighed, taking the seat grudgingly. She hushed the nagging war-oriented voice in her head that hadn't been active since the fight with the First. If Dumbledore insisted on having dinner, then of course, they would have dinner. Stomach-aching worries would come later.

"Wonderful! Can I offer you some meatballs to go with your pasta? They're positively delectable tonight."

Nodding her head, Buffy snuck a peek into her cup to see a tempting glass of Butterbeer -- ah, the perks of being faculty. She smiled warily at Dumbledore as he spooned meatballs onto her plate for her -- gentlemanly as ever and without a care in the world -- and lifted her cup to him. "Cheers."

**

TBC...

A/N: Sorry about the more-boring-than-usual chapter. But some questions needed to be answered, and plot needed to be unravelled. :) Reviews are, as always, very much appreciated.

By the way, has anyone else been having problems with accessing Twisting the Hellmouth?