DISCLAIMER: The characters aren't mine. I'm borrowing them from the esteemed Joss Whedon and J.K. Rawling.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from BtVS Season 1 to Season 6, AtS Seasons 1 to 3, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Reviews always welcome!
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CHAPTER 21:
SECRETS
Willow was dreaming again. It felt almost exactly like the dream in which she had dreamt she was Voldemort, though there was something different about this one. She couldn't place it. But she was dreaming that she was right where she had been, in the Atlantis restaurant, eating dinner with Harry, right when he had risen to his feet, drawn his wand, said something, and pulled the curtain back.
People were milling about, all heading for the rear exit of the restaurant, but somehow, it didn't occur to Willow that she might want to run, too. She was cut off, detached. Willow couldn't understand why people were running, until a few seconds later, when the doors of the Atlantis burst open. Peter Pettigrew strode in, flanked by four tall, eerie figures cloaked in black that covered all of their bodies save for scabrous, inhuman hands.
She heard Harry's voice shout nearby, "Expecto patronum!" However, Peter shouted something at the same instant, and a silver light that burst from Harry's wand scattered and flickered out.
She heard Harry try again, and again Peter countered the spell.
Willow felt her eyes narrow. She realized that she could disarm Peter fairly easily. Countering Harry's spells was taking all of his energy. There was no way he could stop her as well. But whenever the light burst from Harry's wand, the darkness around her roiled, and images of Tara swirled up through the darkness around her, disturbing her dream. She felt herself wishing that Harry, not Peter, would stop.
The cloaked figures had continued advancing into the room. She felt Harry's will to fight next to her suddenly break. The next moment, something seized her around the waist and tried to pull her away, following the rest of the patrons towards the rear exit.
Peter aimed a spell at Harry then, but Willow didn't feel like allowing it to happen. She realized that Harry had her around the waist. If Peter was as utterly incompetent as he had seemed to her during his pathetic duel with Buffy that weekend, he might well hit her. Of course, Harry's grip made getting to her wand impossible, as it was still tucked away in her dress, but that made little difference. She had been practicing magic for years before she had heard of little toys like magic wands. Peter's spell was snuffed out so quickly that his wand barely sparkled.
"Stop her!" Peter cried.
The nearest black-cloaked figures reached for her.
Sorry, whatever you are, but you're in my dream, Willow thought contemptuously. An unseen gale lifted the two nearest creatures and piled them atop their fellows. Willow smiled and closed her eyes as the power of the spell flooded through her. That felt good. She hadn't been able to do that in a long time.
"Stop me?" she heard herself laugh coldly.
"Willow!" she heard Harry calling, but it was distant, like all voices from outside one's vision in a dream. He had let go of her now. She stood alone. As always.
Peter picked up a large wooden podium with his artificial hand and flung it at her. Willow's eyes widened. She hadn't known the hand gave him that kind of strength.
Willow vaporized the podium an instant before it would have connected with her skull.
"Nice hand," she heard herself jeer.
"The Dark Lord's gifts are powerful," Peter said in return. He had such confidence. Such bravery. Such temerity. Such foolhardiness.
"I do hope it came with a warranty," Willow snapped. She leveled a shattering thought at it, and it reverberated like a small gong, but did not break.
Peter gasped, more in surprise than pain, but recovered a moment later. He raised his hand defiantly at her, building a spell of his own.
Willow found that annoying. With a flick of her mind, she shattered the nearest fish tank along the restaurant's walls. She let the water fall free, but held it together in a mass on the floor.
Reflexively, Peter aimed a curse at it to burn it away, but Willow was faster. She sent the water in a fountain into the air. Most of it was evaporated, but she wasn't interested in the water, and she had gotten a fish into the air, and it was quite a mad fish by this point. Willow grinned wickedly.
Engorgio, she heard herself think. There was no need for speech.
A split second later, a piranha the size of a St. Bernard locked its jaws around Peter's wand and artificial hand, swallowing both whole.
Peter let out a shriek to wake the dead, but it was still not enough to drown out a powerful laugh echoing around the room that sounded quite a lot like Willow's. The fish fell to the floor, already dead, but Peter's arm was completely gone just below the elbow. The screaming Death Eater fell back onto the carpet.
Willow felt herself advancing, a deadly gleam in her eyes. A curved dagger like a serpent's fang ringed with ghostly flame was in her hand.
Peter screamed.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" a mighty voice behind her called. A brilliant flash of white light erupted in the chamber, and a dazzling silver animal raced past Willow. She reflexively threw up a shield around herself, but the animal was not aiming at her. It was aimed at the gangrenous, black-cloaked creatures that were just getting to their feet again. They were driven back out the door like leaves in a fierce wind.
Willow suddenly felt herself backing up, her hands pressed to her forehead. She could feel the sleepy darkness around her fraying. Then Tara was there again, and all the memories that she had remembered just before … just before what? … then the darkness returned, only of a different kind, and she felt herself falling into a different kind of sleep, one untroubled by dreams or nightmares. At the last moment before she lost consciousness, she felt something firm and warm wrap around her, then she knew no more.
* * * * *
Willow awoke groggily. There was quiet around her, and something soft beneath her. She was lying on a cushion of some kind. A moment later, she realized she was no longer wearing the evening clothes that Harry had made for her; they had returned to normal. She opened her eyes tentatively. She was in a modest bedroom of some kind, apparently on the third or fourth floor of a building, as she could see the moon, two days past full, high in the sky through the window.
"Are you awake?"
She rolled over to see Harry sitting in a small wooden armchair in front of the door. His expression was unreadable. Just about every emotion Willow had ever heard of, and some she couldn't even name, were flashing behind those deep brown eyes of his.
"Yeah, I think so," she said. She put a hand up to touch her ruined hair. "I think I was having a bad dream."
Not so much as a flicker of a smile crossed his face.
"Harry, where are we?"
He shrugged. "Ron's brothers' shop. The guest room. They're out partying, but I have a key."
"And why … why are you looking at me like that?"
He looked at her incredulously, as if to say, You don't know? Willow's mind raced. Bits and pieces of her dream started to come back to her, then more. Her thoughts picked up speed, and a horrible suspicion grew beneath them. Oh, dear Goddess … it wasn't a dream …
She turned and vomited noisily over the far side of the bed. Fortunately, there was a wastebasket there.
She turned back to Harry. He betrayed as much reaction to her gastrointestinal antics as he might have to her waving hello. The look of complete horror on her face as she turned to face him again, however, seemed to reach him. He did not get up from his chair, however.
He reached into his robe and drew forth his wand. He left the fold of his robe open, however.
"Wingardium Leviosa," he whispered. Another wand floated out of his robe and hovered near his left hand. He looked at it with undisguised trepidation.
"You have an interesting wand," he said. "I never really looked at it before. Yew, thirteen-and-a-half inches, if I'm seeing this right."
Willow nodded. "You know your wands," she said.
A humorless grin touched the corners of his mouth. "No, I really don't," he said. "But this one looks awfully familiar. And when I touched it … well, I haven't seen a show like that since Fred and George set off several crates of enchanted fireworks in the school last year."
"It recognized you?"
"Almost like my own wand." He did not seem happy at the thought.
Willow slumped. You are connected to the Heir. And so was he. It shouldn't be too surprising, at that.
"I promised Dumbledore I wouldn't talk about it."
He looked surprised at that, and cast a furtive glance over his shoulder for some reason. When he turned back to look at her, his face was thoughtful. He clearly hadn't expected her to say that.
A moment later, he added, "Then don't. But please … I really want to understand here. What I saw tonight … what I feel …"
"I promised Dumbledore I wouldn't tell anyone about that wand, or where I got it. I'll tell you anything else, I swear."
He thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "All right. Why are you at Hogwarts?"
She thought of that for a moment. Why am I at Hogwarts? To learn magic? No, she knew that. To get her away from Sunnydale? But that had been more her reason for leaving, not their reason for asking. Demanding.
"To learn to control myself, I think," she said. "Control what I can do."
Harry's mind worked. "And what I saw earlier tonight was you when you aren't in control?"
Willow nodded morosely. I lost control. Again. "Pretty much," she admitted. "Those … things … came in, and for some reason, I couldn't think, I couldn't even feel …" She shivered at the memory. "Goddess, what were those things?"
Harry relaxed a little. Willow guessed that she might have said something he could relate to. "Dementors," he explained. "Horrible things. They suck all the happiness out of people and leave them with the worst, most horrible memories of their lives. They used to guard the Azkaban prison before they revolted and joined Voldemort."
"But everyone else … I mean, they were afraid, but they just ran. Why did I …?"
"I used to be the same way," Harry explained. "They affected me worse than everyone else. I fainted the first time I met one. Malfoy didn't let me hear the end of it for days."
"But why?"
His voice was ice over iron. "Because my worst memories were worse than anyone else's. I never met anyone who could feel them before me, or felt them worse than me, before tonight."
"Oh, Goddess … Harry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up like that …"
"No, it's fine," he said, giving a dismissive wave of his hand. "I have bad memories I need to learn to deal with, too."
"Well, I'm sorry, anyway."
"I know," he said, with the first true smile she had seen on him since awakening. "That's why I'm not making a big deal out of it. And I know what it's like to lose control. When Bellatrix Lestrange killed my godfather a few months ago, I lost it, too."
"Did you kill her?"
Harry was quiet for a moment, then said, "No, but I think I would have if I could. I used an Unforgivable Curse."
Willow's eyes widened. Not only was that surprising to hear, that was a daring admission. He had just told her earlier that night that that carried a life sentence in Azkaban, though with the war brewing, those rules might be loosened a bit. Of course, he knew enough about her by now to know that there was no risk of her running to tell anyone. Nonetheless, despite the suspicious distance he had put between them, that had to take a lot of trust to tell her.
"Warren wasn't so powerful," she said bitterly. "And … and I was." That was the first time she had said his name in a while. She noticed Harry flinch slightly again as the memory dredged up within her drifted across her mind.
"Warren?" he asked cautiously.
"The boy who killed my best friend," she explained, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. "I killed him."
It was Harry's eyes' turn to widen. Willow looked away. It was the first time she had said that aloud since it had happened, even when she had been in Sunnydale and everyone else in the house knew. Some of them had even seen her do it. I'm a murderer.
"Were you going to tell me that?" he asked softly.
"I … don't know," she admitted. "I said more than I ever thought I would, earlier."
"I did, too," Harry admitted in return. "Ron and Hermione know most of it, but I don't even talk about it with them, much."
Willow nodded. "Buffy knows, but we don't talk about it much, either. After I lost control, after I killed … well, I didn't come back once I … and then I started hurting people I cared about."
"Buffy?" Harry asked.
"Buffy. Giles. Just about everyone."
"And she still came with you?"
Willow nodded. She had tried thanking her several times for that, but it had never felt like anywhere near enough. "She didn't have to, but she did. We … well, we'd never heard of Hogwarts, didn't know what it would be like …"
"And she didn't want to send you off to some strange place in another country?"
Willow nodded again. "Dumbledore seemed like he knew she'd want to come from the beginning; he had letters for both of us."
"Dumbledore delivered your letters himself?" Harry's eyes were wider at that than they had been when she had confessed to murdering Warren, drawing an involuntary smile from Willow. She found herself thinking whimsically that she needed to have a serious chat with him about priorities sometime … if he ever felt like talking to her again.
"Yeah," she admitted. "Him and two other guys—a friend of his, and a really stuffy guy called Fudge."
"Fudge?!"
"Crazy, isn't it?" She hadn't known what kind of title 'Minister of Magic' was when he had appeared at Buffy's house, but she had been reading the Daily Prophet for a month now, and she had seen enough to get the picture. "I didn't know who he was at the time, either."
"Wow," Harry breathed. "I never actually liked Fudge much, but that's still seriously not normal. Just out of curiosity … who was Dumbledore's friend?"
"It was an alchemist. Nicholas Flamel."
"Nicholas Flamel?!" Willow wouldn't have believed Harry's eyes could get any wider, but they did. "You met Flamel?"
Willow nodded, and it was then that she remembered that she had one more secret that she hadn't yet told him. "He was there to give us a potion to help me and Buffy blend in at Hogwarts."
"A potion? Not Polyj … oh, wait a minute …" he looked at her again as if seeing her for the first time, and his jaw dropped. He rose partially from his chair. "You're not seriously saying …"
"The Elixir Vitae?" Willow said. "Nah, just a weaker version."
"How … how old are you?"
"Just twenty-one. And I feel like I'm sixteen for real again half the time."
Harry eased back down into his chair. "'Just' twenty-one? I'm only sixteen here, you know." He breathed deeply. "But still, I'm glad you aren't really seventy or something." He looked at her then, a light, piercing gaze, and the grin spread back across his face. "I'd hate to be growing this fond of someone old enough to be my grandmother."
Willow nodded absently, then froze as the message behind those words reached her. She looked up at him again, slowly, as if seeing him for the first time. "You … what?"
He laughed, seeing the shock evident on her face. "Did you expect me to hate you?"
"Well … I sort of didn't think you'd want to talk to me again. Ever."
His laugh took on a predatory note. "Willow, when my father was at Hogwarts, he and Sirius were friends with a boy who turned out to be a werewolf. There was no cure, not even a half-cure, back then. Every full moon, Lupin lost all control … he became one of the most dangerous creatures in our world. Dad didn't care. Trust me when I say that he would have cut off his own arm before letting that stop him from being Lupin's friend." His voice softened. "And Lupin needed that. Dad and Sirius' friendship helped take away a lot of the pain."
Harry got up, slipped the wands back into his robe, and walked over to her. He sat down beside her on the bed. "From the day I first found out I was a wizard, people have been telling me I take after him. I guess they were right."
Willow turned to look at him. Tears were welling up in her eyes, but the sadness in them was fading. "So … you still want to be friends?"
"Friends," he said softly. Then, suddenly, he took her hand, and placed his other hand on top of it. "Or something more," he said, still softly, but with far more force.
Willow's heart jumped, and the tears that had been welling in her eyes flowed. She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes; she just sat there, her hand in his, staring at her lap, at his hands, at the floor, letting the tears fall.
"So … do you want to?" he asked, uncertainly, but with an undisguised note of boyish excitement and hope.
She did not look up, but she had finished crying. Suddenly, she began to laugh, softly at first, then louder. She looked up at him, then, to see a warm—though confused—smile lighting his boyish features.
"What?" he asked.
With a last, delighted sigh, she scooted over and lay down against him, letting the feeling of being close to someone again wash over her. It felt like forever since she had felt anything like it. She looked up at him, smiling at the odd angle of his face from her vantage.
"You're going to be a great Auror," she laughed. "You're going out with one of the darkest witches in history."
* * * * *
Dumbledore lowered his wand, smiling as he did so. With a quick thought, he dispelled the X-Ray Charm that he had been using for the last few hours. A moment later, Moody lowered his wand as well.
"I thought that lughead gave us away for a second," the one-eyed wizard growled.
"Perhaps," Dumbledore added. A moment later, he added casually, "You might want to turn both of your eyes back in my direction, Alastor. I might think you're ignoring me."
"One moment, Albus … our future Auror seems to be quite imaginative finding new punishments for dark witches. I never believed tickling could be so effective."
"Alastor," Dumbledore warned before Moody had finished speaking, though his voice was patient.
"Oh, all right. Spoilsport," Moody said, turning his artificial eye back towards Dumbledore. A vicious grin split his face. "She's the greatest danger in the building, isn't she? So you can't blame me for wanting to keep an eye on her. Constant vigilance!"
"If you insist on continuing to look through that wall, you might find that young Miss Rosenberg is not the greatest danger in this building," Dumbledore added pointedly. He mouthed a quick Silencing Charm as he turned down the stairs; not a sound of his footfalls could be heard.
"Your age is showing, Albus," Moody said as he followed.
"And yours is not."
Moody grinned roguishly. "Yeah, I'm still deciding what I want to do when I grow up."
"You know, I've never actually used the Impotence Jinx, I wonder how strong I could make it …"
"Albus!"
"Simply academic curiosity."
"Let's keep it that way."
"What happened down at Atlantis?"
Moody was immediately all business. "You cloaked the area against a Recall Charm. Not even Flitwick could break through that. People remember seeing Harry there, and Willow, but no one saw what happened. A few people were perceptive enough to sense dark magic, but no one's going to look at Willow with Peter and four dementors around."
"And Peter?"
"Aurors are holding him now. Dawlish talked to Snape by Floo; it takes a month to brew Veritaserum, but Snape started some couple of weeks ago just in case. It's about half done."
"And the dementors?"
"Left by Floo at a place they broke into in Knockturn Alley. Destroyed the fireplace behind them. No tracing them."
"The Prophet?"
"Knows Peter's been caught, and that Harry was there. I don't think they'll look much beyond that. Oh, and they saw the fish. That was one heck of an Enlargement."
"So it was."
"Albus, the hand?"
"Oh, this?" Dumbledore wondered absently, withdrawing a gleaming silver hand from within his robe. "Really, I know you like these kinds of things, but it's really not your color …"
"Albus."
"I'm putting it down in Gringott's tonight."
"What are you going to tell Fudge?"
"Probably hello. Then probably goodbye."
Moody grinned. "That should about cover it."
"For the moment, all Fudge will know is that Harry captured Peter. It's what Peter might tell them that could cause problems. Our good Minister is all too ready to believe the worst about Miss Rosenberg already."
"I hate to get political about things like this, but Harry and Willow's … new relationship … might well protect her from that."
"It might protect her from quite a bit more than that," Dumbledore agreed quietly. "But I'll speak to Fudge tonight about this anyway. It will be better coming from my lips than Peter's."
There was a muffled thump from the ceiling above them. Moody's eye spun upwards.
"Alastor, if you don't keep that eye where it belongs, I'm going to have to give you detention."
Moody grinned wickedly. "You aren't just a little bit curious?"
"Come along, Alastor," Dumbledore said, continuing on his way to the door.
"Aha! See! You are!"
"I most certainly am not."
"Oh, I think you are."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not," Dumbledore finished flatly as he clicked the front door softly closed behind them.
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AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to everyone on my AuthorAlert list for sticking around with me for 21 chapters now!
And thanks again to all reviewers! Love you all!
To all those reviewers that got a little kick about seeing Willow's dark side come to the fore again … well, there's some chance we might see that again eventually … ;-)
To the several reviewers who expressed a desire for more Buffy/Draco attention, you'll get that, too, but this is a primarily Willow-centered fic; I generally think that the straight-up "Buffy at Hogwarts" angle has been done enough, and I always like to tell about the more minor characters. My other [currently abandoned] fic centers on Faith; I've actually got the seeds of one started right now that focuses on Vi, that I might pick up in earnest once this one is done.
COMING SOON: Chapter 22, "A Punctured Soul." Lupin returns, and Buffy gets her first encounter with Voldemort's soul-sucking quasi-undead henchcritters.
SNEAK PREVIEW:
Several hooded, cloaked figures were visible within the first few rows of the trees. For some reason, the sight of them made Buffy's skin crawl. Every so often, a ray of white light would flash from deeper in the trees, and the dark figures would flinch away from it. Then they would move towards the source of the light, until it came again, when they would flinch away …