Worth It

Chapter One

It was an ordinary summer day, and Willow Rosenburg was fighting for her life. The heat had driven her to leave her balcony doors open over night, something anyone who had grown up in Sunnydale should know better than to do, but she'd grown over confident in her abilities as a witch, and this was the price she would have to pay.

Her screams brought her best friend – Buffy Summers - to her aid, at the expense of her newly varnished bedroom door. As Buffy's slayer training kicked in she dropped into a fighter's stance, and then creased up laughing, leaning back against the now slightly splintered door.

"It's not funny Buffy!" shrieked Willow, trying to bat away a rather enthusiastic owl. It had been sitting on her bed head when she woke up, and dived straight for her when she'd made to leave the room. Now it was fluttering round her head, it's wing tips brushing past her cheeks and hair. Even more disconcertingly it was making little hooting noises.

"Aw, is our big bad wicca afraid of a li'l bitty owl?" Buffy teased as she neatly caught the bird mid orbit. Willow huffed at her and closed her balcony doors, before doing a stomach flop onto her bed. Turning the little owl over in her hands, and settling its ruffled plumage Buffy noticed it was clutching a cream coloured object in its talons. "Hey Wills, it's holding something."

Willow didn't even glance up; "Is it a frog?"

"Uh… no."

"Okay, day is getting better. Is it evil?"

"The bird?" Buffy examined the feathery bundle in her hands.

"The something."

"I don't think it likes being held still for so long."

Willow peered at her quizzically, "The something?"

"The bird. The something looks kinda… lettery."

Twenty minutes later Giles found himself on the phone to a babbling, yet very annoyed witch; an experience that never gets more fun.

"Ah, Willow, perhaps you should come round and we can talk about this, um, properly."

When the young witch finally arrived, over an hour later, Giles had had suitable time to ponder whether inviting a pissed off, and very powerful witch over was really something he should have done. Opening the door to have her storm past him, brandishing a piece of parchment, and a confused barn owl rather cemented the thought that it –hadn't- been one of his cleverer plans.

"You're so in the poop Giles!" Buffy announced as she followed Willow in, finishing off her frapuccino.

A pissed off, powerful witch on a sugar high. –Definitely- a bad plan. Giles tried to look apologetically at Willow, and managed somewhere between 'Oops' and 'I have to change my underwear…' He sat down in a chair opposite the sofa, where she'd thrown herself, and watched the barn owl warily, before realising the worst it was going to do to him was possibly try to remove a finger. It seemed an almost welcome alternative to dealing with Willow.

"So. Yes. Willow." Giles glared at Buffy, who was grinning happily at him from her vantage point out of Willow's vision. "Willow, would you like to explain to me exactly what has happened?"

"It's from Hogwarts, Giles. You know, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Albus sends his regards, by the way."

"Ah." He took the letter, and studied its contents, not allowing a flicker of emotion to cross his face, lest it betray what he was thinking.

"I don't get it Giles. You saw how much trouble my magick got me in. Why didn't you tell me I could go somewhere and be taught how to use it?"

Giles sighed, removing his glasses and cleaning them absent-mindedly. "It would not have worked Willow. Students start in Hogwarts at the age of eleven, having shown signs of magickal ability before then. You started so late, and you taught yourself Wiccan magick."

"What difference does that make? So our Wills is a jew-wiccan, so what?" Buffy chimed in, pushing away from the table she'd been leaning against, and walking to sit on the back of the couch, next to Willow.

"Wiccan magick is never as powerful as wand magick. I mean, it should not be as powerful, though Willow is proof that that is no longer the case. The point is, Wiccan magick is not respected in the wizarding world, with Wiccans being seen as barely above squibs."

"Squids?"

"Squibs, Buffy, do try to listen," said Giles, cleaning his glasses on a handkerchief he'd removed from his top pocket, "Squibs are people who are born to wizarding parents, yet have no magickal abilities themselves. Sending Willow to live and learn with these people would not have helped her. I thought that perhaps I could try and guide her," Giles turned to face Willow, meeting her gaze, "I thought I could teach you Willow, but you surpassed my abilities long ago."

The watcher fell silent, looking at the girls he'd come to regard as his own. When Willow had first shown signs of magick he had thought that it would be nothing more than a passing flirtation with the occult. Wicca was the fashionable religion now, and he knew how much Willow had always wanted to fit in. Then he'd been so caught up in Buffy's life and her training that he hadn't noticed Willow's advances into the world of magick. Didn't take the time to notice, did you Ripper? He asked himself. For all you think they're your kids, you thought the only one you had to teach was the slayer.

"You should go to Hogwarts," he murmured under his breath.

Buffy stopped chewing the frappucino straw and fixed him with her usual quizzical look, "Giles, did you like, -read- the letter? They want her to teach at this place!"

"I can't do it!" Willow wailed, switching in an instant from pissed off to unconfident and apprehensive. "They want me to teach this class called Defence Against the Dark Arts. I may as well give them my life story and say 'Don't do this and you'll be fine!'"

Buffy rubbed her shoulder as Giles suddenly found another speck of dust on his glasses. "You know it's not like that Wills. You made a couple of bad choices and they set you down a bad path." Willow shrank down in her seat and grimaced. "But you pulled yourself out of it. You got better. Wills, you've got such power, and yes, you did bad things, we're not gonna forget that, but you've done good things too. Hell, you changed so many people's lives. Every girl who can be a slayer, –is- a slayer and that's cause of you."

Sitting on her bed, in the Los Angeles apartment she and Buffy shared, Willow couldn't keep her mind off the letter she'd received. When the girls had left Giles' flat Willow had been convinced that he was right and that she ought to go to Hogwarts, but with nothing but her own thoughts for company, her mind was her own worst enemy, and she was starting to think of all the things Buffy and Giles had brushed aside.

They want me to teach. Me. Shy little Willow Rosenburg, getting up in front of a class of strangers and teaching them. Well, not so shy any more I guess. But still. Teaching!

Willow reached over to the small blue CD player on the floor at the foot of her bed and pressed play. Run DMC started telling her how to Walk This Way. With a frustrated groan she threw herself back against her pillows and studied the swirls on the white ceiling.

They want me to teach children about the dark arts. Why me? I tried to end the world! Go Rosenburg, don't sugar coat it or anything.

She flipped onto her stomach and started absent-mindedly picking fluff off her purple pillowcase.

Dumbledore – what a name – Dumbledore must know what I've done, so why did he pick me? I can't be the best person to be shaping the minds of children. Alright, they're wizarding children, but they're still vulnerable.

An unwelcome image of Tara, with Glory's hands on her head, flickered through Willow's mind, and she shuddered as it was chased by the memory of her own invasion of Tara's mind. She shook her head, dislodging the thought and checked her watch, groaning once more as she realised it was past ten at night. Rubbing her eyes, Willow shrugged off her clothing, and crawled under the covers, making sure her balcony doors were shut before flipping off the lamp.

She didn't fall asleep easily, laying in bed instead and thinking over all the things that could go wrong, if she were to go to Hogwarts. When she finally drifted off it was to visions of herself, with black hair and eyes, standing naked in front of a class of students who were alternately laughing and pointing, or crying and cowering away from her.

"Willow!"

The banging on her bedroom door brought her abruptly out of her dreams the following morning.

"Willow Rosenburg! Get your witchy bum out here now!"

When Willow opened her door it was to a very red faced slayer.

"You left the damn owl downstairs! –You're- the one that can clean up after it," and with that Buffy flounced off to the bathroom. Willow wandered out to the living room to find a pile of droppings on the floor, and a barn owl pretending to be asleep on top of the bookcase. As she looked up at it, it quickly shut the eye it had been peeking at her with and assumed an owlish air of innocence. Just then Dawn breezed into the room, carrying a dustpan and brush.

"Oh man, you should have seen Buffy's face! It was classic," Dawn laughed and handed the dustpan and brush to Willow, who stared mutely at them for a minute, before growling at the owl, and sweeping up as much of the poop as she could.

"So," Dawn settled herself into the sofa, content to watch Willow work, "you're gonna be leaving us Wills?"

Willow nearly dropped the cloth she'd just grabbed from the kitchen. "Uhm, I don't know Dawnie."

"Cause Buffy said you were going to this, like, witchy school to teach."

"I don't know if I'm going yet, the message only came yesterday, courtesy of this little pest," she stopped her attack on the floor long enough to glare at the little bird, "there's a lot I have to think about."

"I think you should go."

Willow smiled at the simplicity of Dawn's statement. "It's more complicated than that sweetie."

"Well, I figure that you've got the smarts needed to teach, and it'd be cool for you to be with other magicky people who can help you figure magicky stuff out. You know, without random stuff going wrong."

"She's got a point Willow," Buffy chimed in from the stairway, "we're gonna miss you like crazy, but it would very definitely be cool for you to go."

"Uh-huh," Dawn nodded smugly, "cause then Buffy can bring me to visit and I can check out all the cute magickal hotties!"

"Dawn!" The two older girls chided her.

"What! I'm nearly grown up now! I can check out the eye candy if I wanna."

Willow gave up the assault on the carpet, and surreptitiously moved a coffee table over the mark. Plopping herself down on the couch next to Dawn she hugged the younger girl. Random stuff going wrong. That's one way to describe it I guess.

"So, I guess I should send a letter back with him?" Willow gestured at the owl, which fluffed up it's feathers and hooted at her loudly. It almost seemed to be glaring.

"Uh Wills, I think he's a she."

Snape found himself once more called up to the headmaster's rooms, along with Professor McGonagall. This time the door opened to reveal Albus beaming widely, holding what appeared to be a blank piece of parchment. On closer inspection it contained just two words, in a delicate feminine script; 'I Accept'.