I've been so stressed lately what with exams and all that I've had no desire to write anything which is annoying. This is the last of my pre written stuff so you're gonna have to bear with me for a while. Hopefully my updating should be more regular when I finish exams next week.
P.S Sorry if the formatting of this is a complete mess, I've been trying to fix it for ages but it just won't work. I do know how to paragraph and write dialogue, it's just the document manager keeps screwing it up. Sorry!
Thanks to:
Charmed-angel4 - Dawn's slightly younger than that, say about 17 or 18. I know it doesn't quite work but I've meddled around with the timeline to make sure Buffy fits in with the HP verse.
Jackie – I'm so sorry but I was on holiday when I got your review and so couldn't send you the chapter! I hope you got to read it anyway!
Erak – Nope, Buffy's feelings remain the same towards Dawn and Joyce. I mean for me to change that would be mad, completely OOC after Buffy gave her life for Dawn to live. As far as Buffy is concerned, Joyce brought her up and she will call her mom. And Dawn is her sister; she was brought up with her. As for Sirius and Remus, it's sort of complicated. There's a lot of hostility there because she left but I don't want to go too much into it because hopefully things relating to that will becoming clear later on. And I loved the long review!
Becks89 – Maaasive review! I'm not sure about the Dumbledore protection spell stuff, need to check OotP, you could be right, but can't be bothered to get it right now! A bunch of my friends did World Challenge to Costa Rica last summer and loved it so I hope you have a good time too! As for the pairings thing, I'm so torn right now. I had decided one way but now am worried I will upset too many and then I start thinking about another pairing which really appeals to me! Argh, if I get really torn I might email you for advice if you don't mind. If you want to be surprised then that's okay, but if not, I could do with some help! And update TYE!
Botticelli'sVenus – Ah poor you, I'm glad the chapter helped! Hope you're feeling better!
Just me – the Evan's thing was a last minute addition but something I've been thinking about. It might be a later storyline, I don't know yet! Thanks for the review!
David J.Oates – I like the ideas about the fighting and I've been thinking about it and thinking about how to get round the underage wizardry decree. I'll see how that works out but I agree about the helplessness thing. Scooby confrontations is gonna be in a while. I decided to put the initial Buffy telling them scene aside and, in a few chapters time, show the meeting between Harry and them. I hope people aren't too disappointed.
I have discovered my formatting problem – I'm using MS Word. Most of my stuff is written up on here so I'm gonna leave it. It annoys me because my paragraphing isn't bad when I write the stuff, but at least its readable I guess. If you wanted to beta the formatting that'd be good but if you can't then don't worry.
Thorn of blood – bless you for reviewing since you hate the genre! Seriously though, if you aren't going to like it then it would make me happier if you don't read it and just read redeemed when I update. I want you to like what I write and not feel obligated to review. If you hate it, then just leave it!
Also: CelticHeiressFiona, Swishy Willow Wand, Goddessa39, General Mac, vixen519, manticore-gurl071134, Maleficus Lupinus, spikesanguination, gaul1, sierra, gatesy
Chapter 4
Harry dragged his trunk behind him roughly, the bottom scraping on the linoleum floor of Leonardo Da Vinci Airport in Rome. The signs ahead pointed him towards the arrivals lounge so he turned right and followed the crowd of people, all of them eager to reach it. He was less eager. His goodbyes hadn't been easy. He had so badly wanted to stay the summer with the Weasleys but at least now he understood why he couldn't. He didn't particularly want to stay with any of his relatives any more, Petunia had been enough and Sirius didn't seem to have much more love for Aunt Buffy.
The glossy arrivals sign hung ahead and he passed through the archway into the brightness of the arrivals lounge. It was full of people, Italians, waving excitedly at their friends and relatives who came through. No one was waving at him, Harry realised sinkingly, no smiling version of his mum, just taller and more muscular since she was a slayer. No one.
He pulled his trunk further along and then sat in one of the curved seats, feet resting on his trunk. He was absolutely exhausted from travelling all the way as a muggle. Flying really wasn't all it was cracked up to be, Harry decided grumpily, not in an aeroplane anyway. And now his aunt was late.
People began to leave the arrivals lounge, heading to their homes or hotels but Harry still sat alone.
It felt like a long time had passed with him just sitting there but when he looked at his watch it had only been a few minutes. A few people passed and threw him pitying looks which made him feel like cursing them, but there was no Aunt. A tiny blonde woman walked towards the lounge now, an early-twenty-something he decided dejectedly and not his Aunt. His Aunt would be tall, built with bulging muscles, all used for fighting demons he decided and much older looking
He was proved wrong however when the blonde woman halted in front of him.
"Harry?" she asked softly. He stood up hastily, nearly falling over the trunk under his feet. A huge smile blossomed on her face and she leaned forward to clutch him in a bone crushing hug.
"It's been a long time," Buffy said beaming at him. "To say you've grown since I last saw you would be a huge understatement." Harry smile, feeling slightly awkward with the deep level of scrutiny this woman was giving him.
"You are my Aunt Buffy right?" he said suddenly, his face reddening. "I have a lot of enemies…you know how it is…."
"You have no idea," Buffy said shaking her head. "Yes I am Buffy, less of the Aunt. Figure we might as well get to know each other on a friend basis. Dumbledore gave me this." She showed him a picture of himself and Harry relaxed.
"Sorry, but I had to check," he said apologetically. Buffy nodded.
"Course you did," she said comfortably. "Sorry I'm late by the way. Something you'll get used to I guess. Come on, let's go."
She hefted up his trunk easily and he followed her obediently out of the airport where a taxi was waiting. She put the trunk in the boot and they climbed into the back.
"We can't really talk in here," Buffy said quietly to him, once they had pulled out and begun driving. "We'll wait til we get to my apartment."
They drove through the bustling streets of Rome, Harry barely taking everything in. A pale sunshine lit up the faces of the Italian people that filled the city. Harry had never been on holiday before; the Dursleys had never taken him anywhere. Now he could see why people actually went.
He turned and glanced at his Aunt and saw that she was watching him, a small wistful smile on her face. She caught his gaze and blushed slightly.
"Sorry," she apologised. "I just can't get over the fact that it's you, Harry, my godson after all this time. I thought I'd never see you again."
"It is pretty strange," Harry agreed, grinning. "I mean up til about a week ago I thought Petunia was my only living relative. Buffy's face darkened.
"Not my choice," she said grimly. "Hey, we're here." The taxi drew up outside a large white apartment block, sunny and drenched in flowers climbing the walls. It was idyllic.
Buffy paid the driver and with a quick 'grazie,' she took his trunk and led him into the apartment block. They climbed stairs to the second floor and Buffy extracted a key and let them into her apartment.
She led him into the living room which was decorated in a modern style, clean marble floors, light coffee coloured walls and large over stuffed sofas.
"Mi casa es su casa," Buffy said proudly. "This is what I'm calling home nowadays and what you'll be calling home this summer." She put down the trunk and led him further in. the living room had a small kitchenette attached and various doors led off of the airy room.
"It's amazing!" Harry said impressedly.
"I indulged," Buffy said brightly. "Last few years we've had money trouble but that's all sorted now and I wanted to splurge. Come on, sit down. We've got so much to talk about."
They sat on opposite sofas, a glass coffee table between them. A silence fell and Harry couldn't think of a thing to break it. Buffy laughed nervously.
"Guess we really are family," she said smiling. "Awkward silences and all. Okay here we go? How have you been for the last thirteen years or so?" Harry smiled; he liked this woman already, even though he wasn't entirely comfortable with her yet.
"Alright I suppose," he said reflectively. "Growing up with the Dursleys hasn't been fun."
"Petunia's still a tight-assed bitch?" Buffy asked efficiently and Harry's eyes widened and then he laughed.
"I guess she always has been," he said raising his eyebrows. "It doesn't matter anymore really, I mean summers aren't great but when I got my Hogwarts letter it was my ticket out."
"How long have you been there?" Buffy asked lounging back on the sofa and curling her feet up under her.
"Four years now, I go into my fifth year in September."
"And you like it?" Buffy asked. Harry nodded vigorously.
"It's my favourite place in the whole world when people aren't trying to kill me," he said wryly. "I've got some really good friends there."
"I met my best friends at school," Buffy said reflectively. "Of course, I hated the place. So I blew it up." Harry looked at her oddly, not sure if she was joking or not. Buffy grinned.
"No, I really did," she said lightly. "On my graduation day. Of course there was a big demon snake in it so I had an excuse." Harry didn't know whether to laugh or look sympathetic so he settled for smiling indulgently.
"I've got no plans to blow up Hogwarts," he said.
"That's good to hear," Buffy said comfortably. "I wouldn't recommend it. Do you make good grades?" Harry shrugged.
"They're alright. My best friend Hermione, she's the clever one. If it weren't for her, me and Ron, my other best friend, would be lost. She really enjoys the lessons, and I do too I suppose…just not all of them."
"That's okay," Buffy said smiling. "There are more important things. Do you stay out of trouble?" Harry shrugged embarrassedly but Buffy seemed oddly pleased.
"Yeah….well…I try to stay out of trouble," he said ashamedly. "It's just that…well….trouble seems to find me." His face darkened and Buffy noticed the change.
"You had a rough year didn't you?" Buffy said softly. Harry looked at her sharply and their eyes met.
"You have no idea," Harry said ruefully. Buffy frowned sympathetically.
"Really do," she said quietly. "If you need to talk…." She trailed off and he looked at her gratefully.
"I'm okay," he said, pasting a smile on his face. "I'm fine."
"You will be," Buffy said, watching him carefully.
A silence grew again and Harry broke it this time.
"Can you tell me about you?" he asked. He gestured around the room. "Like how you came to be in Rome when Dumbledore said you lived in California. And about being the Slayer?" Buffy grinned.
"Looong story, I'll give you the highlights," she said amusedly. "Okay so how I came to be here, right. Well last year we had some trouble with an evil thing. The First Evil to be exact, the root of all evil. It had got power and decided that it wanted to wipe out the slayer line. You know the slayer legend, one girl chosen from a bunch of potentials right? Well the First Evil's agents were travelling across the world, killing all the potentials and watchers they could find, so they could get rid of all of them and then me and Faith, the actual slayers. The ones that survived came to us in Sunnydale on the hellmouth."
"I thought there was only one slayer?" Harry asked in confusion. "You said you and Faith?" Buffy nodded, eyes twinkling.
"I died for a little while a bunch of years ago," she said brightly. "In that tiny time Faith was called but then my friend Xander brought me back with CPR. Anyhow, all the potentials were in Sunnydale and there was this evil preacher man trying to kill us all. It was crazy. So we came up with this plan. My friend Willow is a mega powerful witch, Wicca though, not your kind, and she used this scythe made for the slayer to call on the power of the all the potentials to make them into fully fledged slayers. All across the world, potentials became slayers. And we took the slayers in Sunnydale right down into the hellmouth and wiped out the forces of evil down there. Confused much?" Buffy asked and Harry nodded fervidly.
"We did that and then…..something happened and the hellmouth was destroyed. Sunnydale sunk into the ground and now all that's left is a big ass crater. Hence why I'm in Rome." Harry nodded, eyes fixed on his Aunt who was rapidly turning out to be amazing.
"As for why I'm all moneyed now, that's part of the tale. The first evil's agents blew up the Watchers Council HQ, which is basically a bunch of stuffy British guys – no offence – who train potentials. The headquarters held practically every watcher in the world and their funds were passed onto whoever was left. In this case, me, my watcher and all the slayers. And these stuffy British guys had a lot of money."
"Why Rome?" Harry asked frowning. "Why not England?"
"I was travelling and liked it here," Buffy said reflectively. "Me and my friends, we all took part of the world, me and Dawn in Europe, Willow in South America, Xander in Africa, Faith on the new hellmouth in Cleveland. We've got slayers all over, all reporting to me. It makes me feel pretty powerful," she said with a proud smile. Her smile faded. "But that wasn't what you meant was it?"
Harry met her even gaze.
"You want to know why I didn't come and get you from Petunia?" Buffy asked tightly and Harry nodded slowly. "And why I didn't stick around? Because I couldn't. I don't trust those people, as far as I'm concerned, I lost my sister so she could save all their skins and then they took you away from me. I helped them and then they turned on me. It wasn't my fight and it wasn't hers. I've been to England and thought about getting you. But what would've been the point, would you have trusted me if Dumbledore hadn't told you about me first? You would've thought I was some wacko."
"You could've stayed in England," Harry said frowning. "Even if you couldn't have raised me, you could've been there."
"Don't blame this on me," Buffy said darkly. "You want to blame anyone, blame Dumbledore, it was his choice. I had no choice; I couldn't leave Sunnydale while the Hellmouth was active." Harry rubbed his forehead, fingertips moving over his scar.
"I'm sorry," he said heavily. "I'm not angry at you, it's just so confusing. The whole thing is." Buffy stood up and walked to the window, staring out over the rooftops of Rome.
"It's okay, I get it," she said finally. "It's not easy for me either; your eyes – it's like looking at Lily. It's hard…to remember sometimes. Forgetting is easier."
Images flashed through Harry's head; a skeletal figure rising from a cauldron, a man clutching a bloody stump of an arm, Cedrics face, slightly surprised, mouth ajar. He clenched his fists, willing his mind to stop thinking, just stop for a while so he could just be.
"Forgetting isn't so easy," he mumbled and Buffy turned, concern flooding her eyes.
"You're right," she murmured and moved over to sit next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Look, this isn't gonna be easy. There's a lot of bad stuff here, bad memories, blame and all of that junk. But let's just focus on you and me and how we've finally got the chance to get to know each other."
-----------
Dear Ron and Hermione,
Hope you're having a good summer, I just arrived in Rome, Italy so thought I would write so you know I'm okay. My Aunt is pretty cool, nothing like Petunia, thank god, though I suppose being a slayer means you can't be anything like Aunt Petunia. She's been really nice to me but I think she really misses my mum.
As for why I'm in Rome, instead of California, turns out my Aunt made her old town fall into a big crater so she moved to Italy. Was thinking about doing the same to Privet Drive but thought Dudley might get stuck in the hole.
I'm hoping I can find some of the Rome Wizarding community; it would be good to keep up with what's going on where you are. I've sent off for a Daily Prophet subscription so I can read about what's going on, if nothing else. I can't help but keep thinking about what Dumbledore is doing. I wonder what Voldemort's up to. Let me know if you find out anything.
I'll keep in touch when I can, but I might not be in Rome all summer. Buffy's talking about visiting some of her friends so I might be anywhere in the world. It's pretty exciting. I'd better go, Buffy and I are going out for lunch and then I'm going to meet my other relative, my cousin Dawn.
Keep in touch,
Harry
-----------
"You all ready?" Buffy asked as Harry came out of one of the four bedrooms in the apartment that was to be his indefinitely. He nodded.
"Ron's mum worries about me," he said awkwardly. "Just wanted to let them know I'm okay and I got here safely and stuff."
"Plus you wanted to tell them all the gossip about your new Aunt Buffy," Buffy added, smiling. "No worries. Come on."
He followed her out of the apartment and down the stairs to the outside.
"The only way to get around here is by moped," Buffy said, leading him down a ramp into a garage underneath the apartment block. Three mopeds were lined up by the far wall and she led him over to them.
"I'll get Dawn to teach you how to ride your own sometime," Buffy told him. "But right now, hop on and I'll show you around."
He climbed on behind her and they sped out of the garage, zooming up into the sun drenched cobbled streets.As they drove, she pointed out a variety of things, tourist attractions, good restaurants and places where she'd fought demons and vampires. Finally she drew up in front of a small restaurant where Buffy ordered them salads, wine and freshly baked bread. She extracted a pair of oversized sunglasses and put them on.
"I don't really know anything about you," Harry said reflectively, tucking into the delicious food.
"What do you want to know?" Buffy said, raising an eyebrow. Harry shrugged.
"About your part in my mum and dad's lives I guess. You'd know more than anyone about my mum I guess." Buffy's face darkened and she ran a hand through her wavy blonde hair.
"She was a good sister. Really sweet, and you could never meet a kinder person. She was always there for me when I needed her. And she was a talented witch from what I hear. Would help anyone if she could. What else do you want to know?"
"I don't know," Harry exclaimed exasperatedly. He wanted so much to know his parents, if not himself then through someone else. But he never quite felt it, no matter what people said about them he felt as distanced from them as ever. "I never knew her. What she was like?"
Buffy sighed and stretched in her metal chair.
"She was a good sister," Buffy said lightly. "I loved her to pieces and I'd like to think she felt the same way about me. She was a way of escaping when stuff was difficult for me." She sighed and pushed the sunglasses to the top of her head so he could see her brown eyes. "This is difficult and strange, I haven't thought about her for a long time. It's easier that way sometimes. My friends didn't know about her and I didn't tell them. That world, it was mine and then when it was gone; there was no one to ask me about it."
Harry nodded slowly.
"But you've got me to ask about it now." Buffy's eyes sparkled and she smiled.
"I do," she said brightly. "I can't tell you how much it means to me to have you here finally. I thought about seeing you so many times but then things got in the way or I was afraid." She paused briefly. "Afraid of you actually."
Buffy pushed her glasses down again and Harry frowned.
"Why?"
"Because you could reject me," Buffy said honestly, pulling at a strand of her sun bleached hair. "You might not have wanted to know me. It was easier thinking that you couldn't know me than knowing that you wouldn't know me."
"But you're stuck with me now," Harry said grinning. "Tell me about your life, what about your friends. What are they like?"
"Well, me and my best friends, Willow and Xander, go back to high school," Buffy began. "We met on my first day and since then, they've been helping me do my job. The scoobies, our little evil fighting team. They're my strength. Willow's a mega powerful Wicca like I said. She has so much power, sometimes too much, but now she's so in control that she scares me sometimes! And Xander used to be a carpenter but now he's finding slayers in Africa and some of Asia. His girlfriend…or ex-fiancée…or….I don't know what she was; she was killed in the final battle. He misses her a lot but he's healing I think. And then there's Giles, my Watcher. He was my sort of father-figure and he always kept me grounded. Now he's training potential watchers and slayers."
"How many slayers have you got?" Harry asked interestedly. Buffy considered.
"Pushing 200 now," she said after a pause. "And there's more to be found, everywhere there's slayers. It's an incredible thing."
"And you run this thing?" Harry asked in amazement. Buffy smiled.
"Officially, yes," she said. "Officially, all the girls answer to me since I'm head slayer. I get ultimate authority. But basically it's me, Giles, Willow, Xander and Faith running it. We put in the work for this and we gave up our lives for this cause. I wouldn't do anything without them agreeing to it."
She glanced at her watch quickly.
"Wow it's late," she exclaimed. "Come on, Dawn'll be at home. I want you to meet her."
-----------
