Buffy and the Boggart.

Buffy covered her yawn as she rubbed the last plate dry and placed it onto the kitchen counter. On the other side of the kitchen, Martha was checking on the tins and packets of food in the store cupboard, and making a note of what was running low. Stifling another yawn, Buffy lifted the plate stack and took them over to the cupboard to put them away. She took care to stack them neatly, knowing Mrs Cole would appear later to check on her work.

Once she'd finished putting the plates away, Buffy looked out the window. It was a nice day and most of the orphanage kids were outside playing in the sunshine. A row of giggling girls were doing handstands against the wall while the boys played ball. Over in the corner, two young girls sat on a bench taking it in turns to cuddle a fat, white rabbit.

"Would you like to help me kill rabbits, Buffy?

Buffy wondered if she'd misheard. She hadn't had a lot of sleep recently and after last night's visit to the hospital and her fight with the vampire, she was tired. Had Martha just asked her if she wanted to kill rabbits?

Seeing Buffy's blank expression, Martha asked again, "You do know how to slaughter rabbits, don't you?"

"Slaughter... rabbits?" Buffy repeated confused. Did Martha mean as in a demonic ritual? She gave the woman in the floral pinny a dubious look before she realised that Martha meant slaughter for the table.

Rabbit meat was often served in the orphanage. In fact, Buffy had learned not to ask what sort of meat was on her plate as finding out put her off eating it. So far, they'd given her brawn (pig's head scrapings), tripe (cow's stomach), pig's trotters (feet), and rabbit.

"Yes, we need to kill, skin, and gut some," replied Martha, happily, putting away her shopping list. "I'm making pies for dinner tomorrow."

"Where are the rabbits coming from?" Buffy asked. There was a butcher who sometimes called at the orphanage, he never seemed to have much to offer beyond sausages. Did he carry livestock?

Martha pointed to the rabbit hutches in the yard. "There."

"But... those are the kids pets!" Buffy gasped. One of the little girls held the docile rabbit on her lap whilst her friend tied a red ribbon around its neck. Those kids were going to be devastated if they found out their friend was going to be served in pastry.

Martha raised an eyebrow at her, pulled out a packet of cigarettes from her pinafore pocket, and lit one. Either she had no sense of hygiene or there was no rule banning smoking in a kitchen.

"Those are bad for you," pointed out Buffy, trying to dodge the smoke.

"They're for my nerves and all the film stars smoke." Martha took a puff and waved her cigarette around. "Those rabbits aren't pets," she continued. "We've always raised rabbits for their meat. Now there's a war on it's more important than ever to produce our own food." Martha took a long drag of her cigarette and nodded to the two little girls sitting stroking the rabbit. "The kids know why the rabbits are here. They don't get attached."

Buffy leaned over the sink to watch the kids. One of the girls was kissing the rabbit's face. "Are you sure about that?"

Martha sighed. "We had trouble over a rabbit once. Little Billy Stubbs got attached to one and..." she trailed off, watching Buffy. "Well, we think Tom killed it. Mrs Cole was furious. Locked Tom in his room, she did. Said he could stay there until he confessed to his crimes. Course, he never did and she had to let him out eventually, but we never did find out how the rabbit died."

"Are you sure Tom killed it?" Buffy asked. She knew he'd a dark vibe going on, but she couldn't see him going to the trouble of killing a rabbit unless... "Was this Billy Stubbs a bit of a bully? Did he touch Tom's books?"

Martha shrugged and took another drag from her cigarette. "I can't remember. There were a lot of little boys arguing at the time and I didn't take much notice. All I know is Mrs Cole was in a foul mood for a long time afterwards. Tom always seemed to attract trouble, but Mrs Cole could never prove he was the one causing it. The other kids learnt to keep away from him." She stubbed the cigarette out on the metal sink and threw the remains into with the waste bin. "They said he was weird."

"Tom doesn't bother me," replied Buffy. "I've got bigger problems than him glowering at me."

"That reminds me," Martha said, walking off to the laundry room that lay just off the kitchen. She came back holding the blue coat Buffy had arrived at the orphanage in. "I've got most of the dirt out," she explained, showing Buffy the much cleaner coat. "I've undone those repairs you tried to do." Buffy blushed, knowing her stitches weren't up to much. "Then I resewed them up while I was sat listening to the wireless last night."

Taking the coat from her, Buffy squinted at the almost invisible repairs Martha had done. "Thanks Martha! I never thought it could look this good again!" Impulsively, Buffy drew her into a quick hug. "I was risking a vagrancy charge when I wore it before."

Martha let out a raucous laugh. "Go on with you! Vagrancy indeed. I've no idea where you get these things from."

A small cough from the doorway had them both freezing and the laughter died away. Mrs Cole paused at the threshold, regarding them both coldly. No one laughed around Mrs Cole, she was the sort of woman who sucked all the fun and life from a room.

"Buffy," she called over. "I've had a call from the hotel where you and your mother were staying. It seems they've let your room and are requesting that you collect your belongings by noon tomorrow or else they'll be thrown into the street. You can take a tram in the morning and collect everything."

"Thank you, Mrs Cole," Buffy replied politely. She felt annoyed. If someone had told her earlier she would have paid the hotel bill and then she wouldn't have needed to panic about their things being thrown away.

She took a deep breath. At least it meant that tomorrow she'd have more clothes and maybe even find clues and information about her past life. Where was her Dad? Where was the family her Mom had come to England to meet? Why was no one looking for them? Did they even know their ship had docked? Buffy knew that they wouldn't know about the accident she and her Mon had been in, the newspapers hadn't printed their names, she'd checked.

"If that's the coat Martha has repaired and ironed," Mrs Cole said sourly, nodding to the coat Buffy had forgotten about and was crushing against herself, "you should hang it in your wardrobe before it creases."

Leaving the kitchen, her mind thinking about her Mom and the hotel, Buffy headed towards the rear stairway. As she passed the small sitting room, she glanced in through the open door and noticed Tom sitting at the table with a book open in front of him, busily making notes. He looked up, his eyes taking in the coat she carried. Buffy waved cheerfully to annoy him and he surprised her by smiling back.

That threw her. Buffy slowed her steps, feeling suspicious. What was he so happy about? He'd been cross with her for waking him last night and he'd sulked all through breakfast. Did he plan on throwing her in to Mrs Cole for sneaking out last night? Buffy decided that if he did, she'd deny everything and try to look innocent. She instinctively knew that she'd come across as a lot more innocent than Tom. Mrs Cole would believe her over him.

'That's because you've had a lot of experience of lying,' whispered her mind. 'All those times you snuck off behind your Mom's back to patrol grave yards, slay vampires, and hunt demons in Sunnydale.'

The thought made her feel ill. She didn't want to be a slayer. Why was she even getting those memories? They couldn't be hers. According to the paperwork she'd found in her Mom's purse she'd never attended Sunnydale High or lived in Sunnydale. Buffy gave herself a little shake, knowing that if she kept dwelling she'd drive herself crazy.

Inside her room, a trickle of sunshine came through the window and lit up her desk. The two dark-covered books Tom had given her still lay on the desk unopened. She opened the wardrobe door, inside it was completely bare apart from a couple of empty wooden clothes hangers and the strong smell of camphor used to ward off moths.

"Eww," Buffy coughed, her eyes watering. "That's kind of strong." Leaving the door open she meandered over to her desk and idly picked up each book to read the titles. They were Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.

"Ha, ha, Tom. That's very funny," she muttered darkly, for both books were about orphans. Putting Oliver Twist to one side, she pulled out the chair and sat down to read Great Expectations.

'My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.'

Something scratched in the wall behind her. Buffy ignored it. She'd heard rats and mice moving about in the ceiling and walls before. They were always worse when they thought no one was around.

'I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone...'

A loud bumping stopped her reading. It had come from somewhere near the door and it was definitely louder. Buffy shuddered. There must be rats inside the wall cavity. It didn't surprise her that the place was infested with vermin. There were rabbits outside, the bin of food waste in the kitchen, and kids who constantly left the door to the rear yard open. Deciding the rat problem was not hers to deal with, Buffy went back to her reading.

'...and my sister — Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.'

Buffy stopped. The hairs on the back of her neck stirred as a chill descended on the room and a cold tingle of awareness ran down her spine. 'Something' was beside her. Every muscle in her body tensed, she turned sideways in her chair.

Her Mom lay on Buffy's bed, pale and unmoving, her eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"Mom!?" Loud buzzing in her ears drowned out all sound. Inside her chest, her heart hammered against her ribs. Her Mom – dead.

The world tilted and Buffy almost fell from her chair. Her hands that were still clutching the edges of the book, pressed so hard together that the book slammed shut with a loud bang.

She started. The spell of terror she'd been under breaking. Why would her Mom be in her room? This wasn't right. This wasn't real.

The Slayer rose gracefully to her feet, no longer a child terrified of her Mom dying, but something much older and more deadly. How dare whatever this thing was invade her private space and pretend to be her mother!

Buffy moved.

Wielding Great Expectations like a weapon, Buffy raised the book over her head and slammed it down into the doppelgänger's face."Do not." She brought it down again. "Take my." Buffy brought the book across, hitting the doppelgänger in the forehead. "Mom's form!"

The doppelgänger jumped away, wearing a bewildered and slightly cross-eyed expression. Holding both hands over its head to ward off more blows, it backed away from the Slayer. Buffy spotted another opening. She swung the book upwards, striking the creature in the jaw so hard that its head jerked and fell back into an unnatural angle.

There was a snapping sound the doppelgänger changed, shimmering, and spinning into the form of a younger woman. A woman with an arrogant expression and long, golden, curly hair.

"Glory!" Buffy recognised the Hell Goddess from her nightmares.

Incensed that the doppelgänger had access to her private memories, Buffy dropped the book. She grabbed hold of the doppelgänger by the front of its red dress and headbutted her in the face before throwing her against the wall. The shapeshifter changed with another sudden and loud crack. This time it took the form of a crying Dawn Summers.

"Do NOT! Go there!" Buffy's eyes flashed gold as something inside her snapped. The atmosphere crackled with danger.

The shapeshifter panicked. It changed again. This time it wore the face of a snarling Angelus. Without hesitating, Buffy wrapped her hand around the vampire's throat and pressed it into the wall.

"What are you? What do you want?"

Buffy had enough memories from her time as the Slayer to realise that this shapeshifter knew how to read minds to extract nightmares. The answer came to her - Fear. The shapeshifter fed off her terror like a vampire fed off blood.

She narrowed her eyes at the thing she'd pinned against the wall. "Are you some kind of fear demon?"

The thing shimmered, trying to transform, and Buffy tightened her grip. As long as she kept hold of it, it couldn't change.

"Are you related to..." Buffy stopped, the memory and the name hovering tantalisingly out of reach. "Um, the little demon guy? Dark Lord of Nightmares. Blusters a lot. Whatsisname? Gachnar! "

Realising that it wasn't able to speak due to her hand on its throat, Buffy released it. Angelus disappeared, and this time a dark, smoky orb appeared. Looking like an angry pufferfish it hovered in front of Buffy and shook its head.

"You aren't a demon?" When Buffy had faced the vampire the darker part of her, the part she thought of as the Slayer, had urged her to kill the vampire recognising it as dangerous. Now her slayer part had lost interest.

The pufferfish shapeshifter shook its head. It didn't think it was a demon either.

"Are you... some kind of ghost?"

It hesitated, shaking its head one way and then nodding – no and yes.

Buffy wrinkled her nose, feeling perplexed. What the heck did that mean? "Ghosts are things that have died," she said slowly.

It nodded.

"You've never been alive?"

The not-a-ghost nodded.

"What were you doing in my clos-, er, wardrobe?"

It obligingly flew to the wardrobe, peered around the edge of the door, and then slid back out of sight.

"You were hiding?"

It flew out again and hovered in front of her, staring at her expectantly with large round eyes.

A wave of frustration went through Buffy. What she needed was a library with lots of books on the supernatural world. Also, a friendly librarian who enjoyed research would come in handy. Since she had neither, she had to keep guessing. "So some sort of spirit. You feed off a person's fear. Are you a bogey-man?"

A small, hesitant nod, then a head shake.

Not quite a bogey-man, but similar. Buffy didn't voice her next question which was should she kill it and, if so, how?

The bogey-man pufferfish thing looked nervous and Buffy remembered that it read minds and fed off emotions. Her inner Slayer scared it.

"I'm not letting you stay here," she said firmly. "There's little kids here who you could traumatise for life. They've got enough going on without you causing them mental health problems. I'll have to relocate you."

But where? She could take it to a bomb site and leave it inside the ruins. Or... She smiled, a dark thought occurring to her. The hotel had threatened to throw all her stuff out in the street. She could take the bogey-man thing there and leave it either in their cellar or attic.

The little bogey-man seemed to like that idea. It bobbed up and down excitedly.

"Buffy?"

It was Tom, sounding as if he was stood directly behind the door. "Are you alright? I heard you screaming and there was a lot of banging."

"I'm fine," Buffy called back. Natural cunning providing her with a quick lie. "I dropped a book on my foot and it hurt my toe. I was hopping around and crashed into the wardrobe door. I banged my head and swore a lot."

There was silence. Tom mulling over her reply. "Are you quite sure you are alright? May I come in and assure myself of your safety?"

He asked in such a formal manner that she found it hard to tell him to go away. Buffy wrinkled her nose, silently groaning. Why was he so determined to check on her? Had he heard her talking? He probably thought she'd snuck the grocer's boy in here and they were having a passionate smoochy session. If she told him that she was talking to a bogey-man he'd definitely think she was crazy.

"Um, just a minute, Tom," she called.

Buffy turned back to the... The name came to her with a surge of memory - Boggart. She could almost smell the old Sunnydale library around her as she saw herself reading an ancient book on European ghosts and spirits. It was the name for a small, mischievous spirit.

She lowered her voice and pointed to her bed, whispering, "Hide under there until he's gone. Don't make any noise. He mustn't know you're here."

She couldn't let Tom find out about the boggart. He was a normal kid and finding out weird things existed might freak him out. He'd tell Mrs Cole, she would speak to the doctors, they would blame Buffy and she'd be sent to a mental asylum. Buffy had a feeling mental asylums in the 1940s wouldn't be nice places to stay in.

Once the boggart was under the bed, Buffy opened the door.

Tom looked genuinely worried. He stared at her face for a long moment before peering over her shoulder. "Is everything alright? When I heard you scream and the loud bangs I thought you might have had an accident and fainted."

"I'm not the fainting kind." Buffy gave him an extra-perky smile. "Thanks for asking all the same. I'm all good. Now, if you'll excuse-."

Tom put his hand on the door to stop her from closing it and leaned over her, peering towards the open wardrobe. Using her heel, Buffy kicked the closet door closed.

"I hung up my coat," she explained, "and forgot to shut the door."

Tom scanned the room once again and this time spotted the book she'd dropped. Pushing past a bemused Buffy he went over to where the book lay and picked it up from the floor.

"Great Expectations," he mused, reading the title before offering it to her. "Are you enjoying it?"

There was a mischievous sparkle in his dark eyes and Buffy found eyes drifting down to his puckish smile. She wondered if he was popular with girls and if, at that special school of his, he had a girlfriend. Buffy guessed she would be pretty, popular, be invited to lots of parties, and she'd also be completely normal. You wouldn't find her battling vampires and talking to boggarts. She pouted, life was so unfair. Why did everything have to happen to her?

The boggart scratched beneath her bed.

Buffy blinked. "Um, yeah, sure." She'd no idea what Tom had just asked her. The boggart scratched again. 'Don't jump out, don't jump out, Buffy chanted inside her head. If it leaped out and transformed itself into Tom's worst fear, she'd be forced to beat it up in front of him

Tom's frowned which did nothing to mar his film star good looks. He tilted his head, listening intently. "Did you hear something scratching just then?"

"Nope," Buffy replied brightly, popping her 'p'. "Uh-no, never heard a thing. Could be mice. Place is full of them. Not that I've heard any," she added, "I was just told about them."

Tom's eyes searched her face. "Are you sure that you're alright? You seem rather pale and... distracted. Has something upset you? You can tell me."

The scratching came from underneath Buffy's bed again. "Um, yeah. I mean nope. I'm fine." She placed her hands onto his shoulders, turning him around, and pushing him to the door. "It's sweet of you to ask, but I'm about to do... er, girly things in my room. I'd ask you to stay but..."

"But you wish to do girly things?" Tom finished, the amused smile on his lips warring with deep suspicion in his eyes.

"Yeah, you're real sharp today, Tom-Tom." Buffy gave him a final shove. "Bye!" And she shut the door quickly on him, in case he tried to get back in.

Leaning back against the door, Buffy listened. Tom lingered around in the corridor for a lot longer than she liked before she heard him leave.

…...

A/N;

a few notes on the chapter.

Smoking was regarded as good for the nerves and elegant in the 1940s. We know better.

Flora pinnies were worn by lots of women doing housework and checking food supplies was a never ending task. Lots and lots of queuing.

Rabbits were often raised for meat. My grandparents kept rabbits, chickens and pigs on an allotment near their house. They also grew their own food. Check out the rations available to the average person in 1942, I honestly don't know how they survived.

Boggarts are part of my counties folklore. There are lots and lots of stories about them in Lancashire, usually they hung out near graveyards, on deserted roads etc and sprung out on the unwary. Sometimes they moved in with people and made their lives a misery.

I can find no mention of boggarts being able to speak, either in the wizarding world or in local folklore.

I was asked why Buffy went to the orphanage by one reviewer when she could have legally walked away. The answer is that although in our world kids were chucked out the orphanage at 14, in Rowling's dimension they weren't. Plus Buffy gets to meet Tom Riddle!

So... Buffy gets a warning about Tom, she deals with the boggart in a Slayer way, and Tom is feeling confused. Your thoughts?

Thanks to those who reviewed. Hope you are enjoying it.

If you do like it don't forget to recommend to others.