Thanks to (most of) the reviewers:
JenH: Thank you for the review. You should write your story, I'd read it!
Caprice-Ann Hedican-Kocur: An unusual guess, but you'll find out in a couple of chapters!
LovesBitch2: Thanks for the interest. People will know who she is for definite by chapter 5 at the latest.
Charmed-angel4: Now there's something I hadn't thought of- it's amazing how much thought you put into this :) Can we say that she didn't know? Just block those few lines out of our heads for this story? Would that work?
Cataclysmic: Now it has two chapters! Hooray! You've bet your ice cream on Hermione? Well I tell you…in a few chapters evil grin
Akalea: Thanks for reading and reviewing
Juzblu: One quick update just for you. grin Keep reviewing!
Allen Pitt: She will keep her memories, but I'm still working on the appearance thing. Thanks for your interest.
Aynot: I have one thing to say: Thanks for the feedback :)
W1cked angel: Was that a hint? If so, sorry to say that this isn't really a pairing fic. I'll see if I can squeeze in a couple of scenes just for you though!
Anne: Thank you. I hope you like this chapter.
Tap dancing willow: First off, really cool pen name :) Secondly, the vessel's identity will be shown in the next few chapters (I liked your guesses, very original)
At this point I feel that I ought to say that while constructive criticism is appreciated and welcomed, outright flames are not. For example:
jesus christ is anyone else getting tired off these freaking harry pothead, buffy crossovers? … somone ban these mindless pityfull exuses for fanfics. thy are taking up so much fing room its like trying to find a god dam needle in a fing haystack when looking for good x-overs...
Reviews like this will be ignored completely. Not only is the spelling and grammar terrible (even worse than mine!) but what is the point? Is anyone forcing people to read this? No. So why read it if you're not going to like it? If that's all you have to say then don't bother. To all the other reviewers who reviewed NICELY, thank you- it's greatly appreciated. That's my rant over, on with the story…
A/N: Everything has happened as in the TV series or as in the books (what little it tells you anyway). Imagine this chapter, and the end of the last one. Happen in the current day. I'm not so good with futuristic fics.
The Harry Potter-verse will play a bigger part either starting next chapter or the one after
Woohoo for Matt! He's the beta and I couldn't do it without him!
CHAPTER TWO: DÈJA VU
"Good Morning Dawn!" Giles said crisply as the girl in question stumbled down the stairs; slayer grace she had not.
"Umhff" Dawn grunted in reply. Why did mornings have to happen so early? Especially when one's sleep had been plagued by nightmares. Even when she had ten minutes of comfortable sleep, those bloody slayers would come home from their patrol and wake her up. It was a no-win situation.
Giles grinned. "Sleep well?"
Dawn glared at him in reply. "Damn slayers woke me up again last night."
"Ah. Yes, well that is a problem, but Dawn, you know how slayers get when they've been, well, slaying."
"Hungry and Horny?" Dawn questioned innocently.
"Excitable." Giles replied irritably as he reached up to clean his glasses, until he realised that they weren't there anymore. It had been over six years since he had switched to contacts, but old habits die hard. He noticed Dawn smirking at him knowledgably. "Oh shut up."
Dawn's grin widened. She'd been staying at the Slaying Centre for just over a year, ever since she'd travelled to England in a bid to become more independent and get out of Buffy's shadow and realised just how expensive it was to be independent. Giles had taken her in gladly; happy to have a part of his family staying with him amongst the slaying teens that he was training.
Ever since the fight with the First, there had been a massive lack of watchers for three main reasons: the first, obviously, being the old council being blown skywards; the second was due to the long training process that all watchers had to go through before they could be trusted with a slayer (eight years); and third being that there would never have been enough watchers to deal with all the slayers that were activated at any one time, even before almost a hundred exploded.
Now, seven years later, each two trained slayers had their own watcher or, in a worse case scenario and only with the more experienced slayers, they had a watcher between three. That meant thirty-seven trained watchers were on hellmouths or other supernatural hot-spots leaving just eleven others and several trainees for the one-hundred-and-twenty-odd untrained slayers situated in five so called slaying centres around the world.
Each 'slaying centre', like the one Giles managed in England, was to have its own fully trained watcher, but that was still short so the former librarian was more than happy to have Dawn to help him, she was probably more use than the trainees who were destined to become watchers anyway.
He knew that it was a temporary arrangement, only until Dawn could scrape enough cash together to pay off her student loans and find a place of her own, but he couldn't help but hope that that would take a while, and not just to give upcoming watchers time to be trained, he loved having her company; not that he'd admit that to her.
"So, Dawn, what are you doing today?" Giles asked sipping his tea.
Dawn sighed. "Work."
Giles gave her a sympathetic look. Having been fired spectacularly by her last job for killing a colleague and having no other experience, Dawn had been forced to swallow her pride and accept Angel's offer of a job at the English branch of Wolfram and Hart. They wouldn't have given her a job either if not for Angel; she even managed to skip a few places up the career ladder thanks to the CEO of the LA branch.
She supposed that she were lucky, no-one else would employ her. It didn't seem to matter that she had no experience because she was fresh out of college when she got her first job and had worked there for nearly two years and that no murder charges had been pressed against her because the 'person' she killed seemingly didn't exist (due to him being a demon).
It also meant that, due to the slaying centre being in a small town in Surrey, and Wolfram and Hart being in the middle of the Greater London region, Dawn had to take a portal to work, which opened in the fireplace of all places! It was lucky she worked in the mystical division of the company, although the whole place was pretty mystical, so they probably would've given her that access even if she worked in accounting.
"I still can't see why I can't be a watcher like you." Dawn grumbled.
"We've been through this. Watchers are chosen, just like slayers are. They have special skills bred in them from birth."
Dawn frowned at the watcher. "Like the ability to pass out every fight?"
"I'll have you know that I have not passed out since-"
"Yesterday." Dawn interrupted. "The falrok demon and then last week it was that nest of vamps, the chaos demon and the gilet demon twice. Need I go on?"
"Actually, I beg you to stop. You have to find your own destiny." He said firmly.
Dawn sighed in annoyance. Why was she the only one without a destiny? She, apparently, had no future marked out in this world, yet she'd seen too much to leave it- yet another no-win situation. She fished a muffin out the bread bin and ate it in silence while Giles continued to read the paper.
Dawn stood and straitened her grey, sensible skirt and slipped into her uncomfortable black shoes. "How do I look?"
"Fine." Giles responded automatically, not even bothering to look up from the newspaper he was reading.
Dawn rolled her eyes and grabbed her bag. "I might come patrolling with you guys tonight; I have a feeling that I'll have some 'issues' to work through."
Giles nodded and Dawn headed to the fireplace. He had learned long ago to let Dawn patrol. Despite her klutziness in everyday life, she was a very good fighter, better than she should be without superpowers; but that probably had something to do with her being Buffy's sister. She was much older than Xander and Willow were when they started killing things that go bump in the night, besides she was an adult and if she wanted to patrol there was nothing Giles could do to stop her, as she'd told him…repeatedly.
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"Hello, Wolfram and Hart offices, mystical division, how may I help you?" Dawn said for the hundredth time that day in a false cheery voice.
"Yes…yes… no that will be fine Mr…? Mr. Dumbledore. Right… three thirty it is then… yes… you too…goodbye!"
Dawn got out the big blue diary that she recorded all the appointments in and scrawled a note: Dumbledore, 3:30, re. Fudge, before turning to her computer to record the same. Dumbledore, Dumbledore…where had she heard that name before?
Dawn did a swift search of the database. Nope, not a client. She was sure she recognised it from somewhere though… Maybe Fudge had mentioned it in between going on about 'you-know-who'. He'd had a bit of a shock when she'd replied that actually she didn't know who, maybe Dumbledore was who he was referring too.
She turned to the big clock on the wall, instantly forgetting the name, yesss! Lunchtime! The best part of the day!
She called over to the other assistant working in the spacious lobby, each of them making life easier for one of the top dogs at Wolfram and Hart. "Tom; I'm going on my lunch, kay?"
He nodded in response, never stopping typing at the breakneck speed- when Mr. Hart Jr. (and several more Jr.'s) wanted something; it was Tom's job to make sure he got it a.s.a.p.
Dawn practically skipped down the stairs, ignoring the glares she got from other workers for skipping so far up the ladder. But Dawn didn't see why they were jealous; she answered phones just like they did for crissakes! Okay, so she answered them for the second most important man in the company, but still, a phone was a phone right?
She left the building behind, preferring to spend her hour away from the evil lawyer firm and the twittering idiots that worked there. She walked into Starbucks for 'a little taste of home' and prepared herself for the battle for the comfy chairs, steadily ignoring the niggle in her mind that had bugged her since Mr. Dumbledore's phone call.
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"No…no…no…no…I'm sorry, sir, but we must decline. We have all the double glazing we need. Thank you." Dawn put the phone down firmly and turned around just in time to see a man with a long grey beard and bright purple robes appear in the middle of the marble flooring.
Dawn managed not to jump with surprise like she had when that Fudge guy had done the same the other day, but it still gave her the wiggins, even though Willow teleported places all the time. She eyed the robes curiously. The guy must be a loon- she'd never seen any sane guy wearing a dress before. He didn't look crazy though. He looked friendly; at least he did compared to Fudge who had turned up looking like Quentin Travers in a bowling hat with, if it was humanly possible, extra tweed.
She stole a look at the clock, 3:30 exactly. She beamed as the man approached her smiling kindly; he seemed a lot nicer than that Fudge idiot. "Professor Dumbledore?"
Surprise flitted across the old man's face, he couldn't remember telling her his professor title, but he remembered every student or acquaintance he had met in the last ninety four years. There was something familiar about her eyes though…
Dawn noticed the professor staring at her oddly. "Professor Dumbledore? Mr. Jenkins is waiting for you."
"Ah, yes, of course my dear. It's this way isn't it?" He smiled, a playful twinkle appearing in his eye.
"Yes, I'll take you." That twinkle seemed so familiar to Dawn. "This may sound odd, but have we met?"
That settled things in Dumbledore's eyes- he couldn't know her, no-one forgot him, even the Longbottoms recognised him and they didn't even know their own son. "I don't believe so; I've never had dealings with this firm before. Miss..?"
"Summers, Dawn Summers." Dawn smiled sweetly as she knocked on Mr. Jenkins' door. "Sir; Professor Dumbledore is here to see you."
Jenkins nodded. "Send him in in two secs, thanks Dawn."
Dawn smiled as she backed out of the room; she had defiantly got the better deal as to whose assistant she was. Jenkins was nice, to her at least, while Hart was an ass to everyone.
"He'll be ready in a minute, professor." Dawn said flashing him a sunny smile which surprised Dumbledore- he was sure he recognised that smile, but surely she was dead...
"Y-yes. Thank you." Dumbledore stumbled.
His stumbling surprised him. What also surprised him was that he had been surprised twice in no more than two minutes.
It was kinda ironic when you thought about it.
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Across the office Tom slammed down the phone in frustration. He looked over to Dawn who was doing some paperwork. "Hey, Dawn. Where would you take a girl… or a guy in your case I suppose, if you wanted to give her a really good night out?"
"The Leaky Cauldron's always okay." Dawn responded automatically without looking up from her work. A moment later she did though. Where the hell was the Leaky Cauldron? She'd never been there in her life.
"The where? Never mind. I don't want an okay night, I want a great night."
Dawn smirked, pushing all thoughts of the mysterious pub to the back of her mind. "Tom, have you got a date?" His blush gave her the answer. "Aw, that's so sweet! If you want to give her a really good time, I'd have to say La Veno's."
Tom snorted. "La Veno's? They only pay us five fifty an hour, Dawn."
"You said you wanted a great night…but I bet you wouldn't even be able to get a table."
Macho pride stepped in. "Oh yeah? How much?"
Dawn rolled her eyes. "A knut."
"Huh?" Tom wasn't the only one confused.
What was a Knut? Why had she said that? "I meant a pound." She clarified, still confused.
"You're on." Tom picked up the phone. Thirty seconds later he put it down again.
"Told you so." Dawn gloated.
"I'd like to see you do better." Tom grumbled.
"Fine; double or quits?" Dawn picked up the phone and redialled the number. "Hello, I was wondering if you had any tables left for tonight...Are you sure? You can probably tell I'm not from around here and I'm going home tomorrow, so…I love your accent by the way…It's just for two little ones…No, we don't mind where the table is…eight o'clock? Perfect! Oh thanks, you're a lifesaver. Thank you, bye." Dawn put down the phone and grinned triumphantly at Tom who glowered back.
"What have you got that I haven't?"
"Well, two quid and a table at La Veno's to start with."
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"We get it!" An agitated slayer protested. "You don't need to explain again!"
Giles silenced her with a glare and she closed her eyes again, looking peaceful.
"Look for your centre; you'll find a ball of light." Giles said in a low voice.
He was teaching the slayers meditation. Dawn stopped by the entrance to the door and watched. She remembered her first attempts at meditation. She did everything Giles asked, and she found a ball of light. But apparently all she'd found was the key and the light was supposed to be white, not green, but Giles never said that before…
One by one the slayers gave up; each watching those around them to see if they'd managed it. The final slayer finally opened her eyes.
"I found a light!" She said excited. "It was red and-"
Giles cut her off. "It has to be a white light. That was probably just the fire from behind your eye lids."
"You never said that before!"
Giles seemed about to say something, but Dawn got in before him. "You'll never get it- It's like advanced algebra; if it makes perfect sense to you and you think you're getting the right answers, then you know you're doing it wrong."
"They'll get it." Giles said, but someone who knew him well could hear the doubt in his voice. Buffy, the most powerful slayer ever, had never mastered this technique so what chance did these 'newbies' have? "We'll try it once more and remember to focus!"
The girls obediently closed their eyes and breathed deeply, each trying to find their centre. Dawn sat down and joined them.
'In…out…in…out.' Dawn said silently to herself. She drifted inside of her mind, like she had before. She pushed deeper until she came across the bright green mist. In her mind she pushed through the mist, but she felt herself being strangled. She gasped for breath as she hurriedly pulled back.
After what seemed like an age she found herself back in the training room…with everyone staring at her.
"The green mist again?" Giles asked softly.
The slayers looked at her oddly. They had all seen her gasping for breath when she was in the trance.
"I tried to get through it, to my centre, but it strangled me."
"What? Could that happen to us?" One of the slayers asked fearfully.
"No." Giles assured them. "Dawn is…" he looked at her lovingly, ignoring the gagging noises from one of the younger slayers; "special. She's just very, very special."
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Dawn watched her lasagne spinning slowly around in the microwave.
"Dawn; what are you doing?" Giles asked stupidly; it was pretty obvious what she was doing.
"Hey Giles, does the name 'Dumbledore' mean anything to you?"
Giles looked surprised. "Where did you hear that name?"
"He came into Wolfram and Hart today, why? Do you know him?"
The microwave pinged and Dawn took out the steaming pasta. She dropped it onto the kitchen worktop as it became to hot to hold and decided it would be best for her too leave it for a while.
"Yes, well no." Giles answered mysteriously.
"Well," Dawn said impatiently when he offered no further information; "which is it?"
"I've heard of him, he kept in close contact with the old council. He quite often visited the place while I was training actually." Giles said with one of his silly grins on his face.
"What's he like?"
Giles looked at her curiously. "Why the interest?"
Dawn shuffled uncomfortably. "I don't know. When he came in, I felt like I ought to know him and I got a really weird vibe off him."
"A demon vibe?"
"I don't know," Dawn admitted; "maybe."
Giles studied her closely for a bit. "All I know is that he had some kind of dealings with the council, fairly secret if I remember correctly. I can look through the old files and see if I can find out anything else if you want."
Dawn squealed and darted forward, capturing his body in a hug. "Thanks you Giles!"
Giles smiled, he'd do anything for her, just like he would for Buffy, Willow or, god forbid, Xander. "Your pasta's getting cold."
Dawn released him with a smile and shoved a spoonful of the still smoking lasagne into her mouth, not bothering to test the temperature.
"OW!"
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The next day, Dawn was sitting at her desk doodling on a piece of paper. She wasn't really looking at what she was doing, but there was a rather large pile of filing to be ignored so Dawn was trying to look like she was doing something important as she scribbled mindlessly on the notepad.
She was yanked out of her daydreams by the phone ringing. "Hello, Wolfram and Har-" The caller cut her off and Dawn blanched as she realised who it was. It was Mr. Hart's youngest daughter, Melanie. Although the little darling was only ten years old, she already had her father's patience and temper. Dawn put on her sweetest voice and began sucking up to the brat. "Oh, hello sweetie, how's your mom?"
"My Mum's just fine." Melanie barked. She hated it when Dawn used the American pronunciation. "Why isn't Tom answering his phone?"
Dawn looked over the lobby to where Tom's desk was. "He's speaking to someone else at the moment, Mel. Do you want me to get your dad?"
Melanie sighed in annoyance. "That would be nice." She said sarcastically as if Dawn was the dumbest person on the planet.
Dawn put the phone down thankfully and transferred the call through to Mr. Hart. She glared at Tom, even though it wasn't really his fault that he'd been arranging an appointment when Melanie Hart had called.
Tom looked up at this point, still on the phone. He saw Dawn glaring at him and frowned. "What?" He mouthed.
"Nothing, don't worry about it." Dawn replied quietly.
She hated this dump. Not only was it evil, but she had no friends and got bossed around by ten year olds. The problem was that there weren't many jobs available in London and even less in Surrey, especially for someone with very little experience.
It was at this point that Dawn looked down to her doodle. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She didn't remember drawing that.
The 'that' in question was a picture of a boy on a broomstick. He had untidy hair which stuck out the bottom of a pointed hat. He was wearing a dress and had a long, thin stake in one hand. Dawn looked at the picture; what was with the dress fetish? First the dreams, now this…
The phone rang again and Dawn reached for it, preparing her 'phone voice'. "Hello, Wolfram and Hart offices, mystical division, how may I help you? Oh, hey Giles. What's up?" Dawn tapped her pen against her desk absent mindedly, well aware that across the room Tom was listening in to her side of the conversation- they weren't supposed to have personal phone calls. "Again?" Dawn was saying. "But we only finished one last month! ...Okay…I'll look it up…See ya later."
Dawn turned to her computer and put in some key words- "Avada Kedavra" Crucio magic curse- and hit the 'search' key.
"What are you doing?" Tom asked suspiciously from across the room. "Those files are private, you can't look through them."
"If you already know what I'm doing, why bother asking?" Dawn didn't bother to look up, but she kept scanning down the list of results that the search engine had found.
'The Unforgivable Curses- Avada Kedavra, Cruciaus; Imperious. Formally used by the wizarding community, they now incur a lifetime imprisonment in the…view more? Last Updated: 21.06.1872 82 Relevance'
Dawn read the article and noted down what she believed to be relevant information in her note pad, knowing that the system would notice if she printed it off.
She turned back to the computer screen, searched 'The Dark Lord' and clicked on the first result. To her surprise it was a former client, Mr. Riddle.
She nearly clicked out of it, but stopped when she saw something familiar.
"…one son who went by the name Tom Marvolo Riddle but is now the dark wizard Lord Voldemort or the Dark Lord, He-who-must-not-be-named, you-know-who…"
The rest was about Riddle senior. Dawn went back to the search page and typed in 'Voldemort'. Surprisingly, there was only one result. Dawn looked back to make sure it was spelled right. Voldemort- Vol de mort. She flipped over a new page in her notepad and made a few notes.
'Vol de mort French, fly from death--- immortal? OR Voldemortist Dark wizard who tried to destroy Merlin in mythology?'
She flipped back to her original page on the curses and translated them from their original languages as well:
'Avada Kedavra Aramaic, let it be destroyed.'
'Crucio Latin, torture.'
'Imperium Latin, complete control.'
Dawn clicked on the only result and found herself looking into the eyes of a fairly handsome young boy; Tom Riddle, and he was a totally different person to Voldemort.
There was a brief introduction, outlining his school days and journey to the dark side and then there was a paragraph that made Dawn jump with shock. It was about Harry Potter, the boy who had plagued her dreams for the last decade.
Dawn stared at the screen for nearly an hour. She should know this, what was she forgetting?
"Dawn?" Dawn looked up dazed and saw Mr. Jenkins standing before her. "I'm going home now. If anyone calls for me tell them I've gone home and take a message, okay?"
Dawn nodded dumbly and looked at the clock. Five fifteen already! As soon as her boss had gone she went back to the computer and scribbled as much of the information on Voldemort down as she could.
She'd just finished noting down the last paragraph when it was time to go. It was then Dawn remembered the stack of paperwork still sitting on her desk. Oops! Dawn gathered her bags quickly and rushed out her office before Tom could notice.
Tom looked up to see Dawn scurrying out of the room and started to call out to her. "Dawn, you haven't done the… all righty then."
Dawn heard Tom calling after her, but all she could think was that she had to get home. She headed to what, for a reason Dawn didn't know, was called the 'floo room' and ducked into her fireplace.
As she emerged through the other side, Jenny (one of the older slayers at the centre and Dawn's closest friend there) jumped violently, spilling her tea onto the cheap wooden table.
"Dawn! You startled me." Jenny picked up a dishcloth and dabbed at the spilt tea.
"Sorry." Dawn replied absently, looking around the kitchen and heading into the hallway. "Is Giles about?"
"He's upstairs. Do you want me to go get him?"
"Nah, I'll do it;" Dawn took a deep breath and yelled at the top of her lungs: "Giles!!"
Almost immediately Giles' head appeared over the banister as he looked to see what had warranted someone to shout his name so loudly that the windows rattled.
"What's wrong Dawn?" He asked, managing to sound both irritated and worried at once.
Dawn was clutching her notes from the office on the Potters. "There's something very wiggins-worthy going on here."
Giles rolled his eyes as another head joined his. Dawn gaped with surprise as she saw the white beard and luminous robes.
Dawn opened and closed her mouth a few times. Why was the crazy dress wearing guy from W&H standing upstairs?
Giles looked a little irritated. He still didn't have a clue as to what was going on and he hated not knowing. He glared down at Dawn who was still staring uselessly up at them. "Do close your mouth Dawn."
Dumbledore looked positively delighted, especially when he was standing next to the less-than-happy Giles. "Hello again Miss Summers!" He beamed. "How've you been?"
Thanks for reading and PLEASE review, nicely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!