A/N; this is not the Ollivander scene!

I intended to post Buffy's wand, however, it was getting far too long so I decided to post this first. Consider it part one, part two may be posted later in the week.

Thanks to the reviewers on the last chapter Guests, Katescats, CallaRose4ever and RaSulli.

We do get the wand scene next. :)

…...

Close Encounters of the Lestrange Kind

"Isn't that the Minister who was with Aunt Joyce last night?" Lovell asked as he, Buffy, and Peregrine stood blinking in the bright sunshine outside of Gringotts bank.

Sure enough, standing outside Flourish and Blott's book shop was the Minister for International Magical Law, Bracius Lestrange.

"Should we go over and say hello?" Buffy asked, hoping her uncle would say no. The alley was getting busier, and she wanted to explore all the interesting shops and not waste time making polite chit-chat.

"We need to go into that shop for our schoolbooks," replied Lovell. He gave her a lopsided grin, "Buffy's got the longest list of textbooks I've ever seen. Best to get them out the way first."

"Ugh, don't remind me," said Buffy, she went to poke her cousin in the ribs and Lovell jumped and curled out of reach.

"Hit a nerve, have I?" he laughed.

"I'm trying to forget the future and live in the moment," she replied. "That perfect moment where school does not exist and only shopping does."

"Well, whilst you live in your moment," said Peregrine. "I'll call in at Slug and Jigger's to see if their last order arrived safely. I'll meet you at Ollivander's in a couple of hours time." When he'd seen Buffy withdraw such a large amount from Gringotts, Peregrine had suspected the shopping trip might turn into a nightmare. A business trip to his friend's apothecary shop was the perfect chance to escape it.

They set off in different directions, Lovell and Buffy for Flourish and Blott's, and Peregrine heading to his friend's shop. As Buffy and Lovell approached the shop door, Minister Lestrange was using his reflection in the window to adjust his tie. He glanced over at their greeting, gave them a disinterested nod and went back to examining the shop window.

Buffy hung back and allowed Lovell to enter the shop without her. She hadn't intended to start a conversation with the Minister, but something puzzled her. "Mr Lestrange? Don't you recognise me?"

Lestrange frowned, squinting at her. "Should I?"

Buffy took a step towards him. Was the man short-sighted? Why didn't he recognise her?"I met you last night at the hospital. You were visiting my Mom, Joyce Summers."

On hearing her mother's name, he jumped. "Oh! Buffy! I'm so sorry for not recognising you. My mind is elsewhere today with a small problem at the Ministry. Will you forgive my rudeness?"

At her nod, he stepped right up to her. His eyes running across her features, searching for something. Buffy eyed him warily, hoping he wouldn't try to delve into her brain again. A slow smile spread over his face, and there was calculation in his emerald eyes.

"My son insisted on collecting a book from here. May I escort you inside?"

"Um, sure," Buffy replied, not sure how to refuse since she was going in anyway.

When Lestrange pushed open the door, a shop assistant rushed over to greet them. "Welcome to Flourish and Blott's, Minister! How may I help you today?"

With a politician's easy smile and practised charm, Lestrange put a hand on Buffy's shoulder. "This young lady is the daughter of a good friend of mine. I'd appreciate it, if you gave her special attention."

Buffy's eyes slid across to Lestrange. Two minutes ago he'd acted as if he'd never seen her before and now he claimed she was the daughter of his best friend? The man's behaviour was definitely venturing into the weird and unstable territory.

"Certainly, Minister Lestrange." The shop assistant went on. "What is the young lady looking for?"

"The young lady is looking for her schoolbooks," Buffy replied, annoyed she'd become invisible. Despite standing directly in front of him, the shop assistant acted as if Lestrange was the only customer in the shop. Putting her sack of money onto the floor, she felt in each of her coat pockets trying to locate the book list.

"Here it is!" She pulled the folded parchment from her pocket. "Professor Dumbledore told me I need to buy all the books on this list." Determined to make the young shop keeper take notice of her in future, she bestowed one of her special thousand-watt smiles on him.

The effect was immediate.

The shop assistant's mouth dropped open, and he went from cool salesman to flustered schoolboy. "Y-yes, Miss." He tugged his eyes from gazing at her lips and tried to focus on the list she'd handed him. "Oh, yes, c-certainly. R-right, I'll do it straight away." Still slightly befuddled, he hurried away, casting a little glance behind him as went.

"Cruel," whispered Lestrange with a smirk, "But nicely done."

"Huh?"

Lestrange chuckled softly. "Turning on the charm, like that. You've left the poor man wishing he was back at Hogwarts. Try not to turn the heads of too many boys while you are there, Buffy. It will only upset your father if he hears of it."

Remembering the letter she'd found from Hank Summers, Buffy doubted it. "He won't care. I have it on good authority that Dad has washed his hands of me," she said it carelessly. The letter would have hurt more if she'd had any good memories of him.

"I sincerely doubt he-," began Lestrange. Whatever he'd been about to say was lost as a tall boy with dark wavy side-parted hair appeared at the top of the stairs that led to the next level. From their similar colouring and even features, it was obvious he was Minister Lestrange's son.

"Dad?" called the boy, surprised to see his father in the shop.

"Ah! Here's someone I want you to meet, Buffy." Bracius Lestrange beckoned the boy over. "This is my son, Marcus."

The boy smiled politely, his eyes moving from Buffy's face to her Muggle clothing.

Bracius continued formally, "Marcus, let me introduce the daughter of an old friend of mine. This is Buffy Lovegood Summers, she'll be attending Hogwarts with you this September."

The boy had manners, he held out a hand and said politely, "How do you do, Miss Summers."

As their hands met, Buffy's Slaydar registered the usual tingle of a magic user. She noticed that Marcus's magical vibe was nowhere near as strong as Lovell's, nor was it as powerful as his father's. In fact, he -. Her line of thought skittered sideways as a light bulb went off in her head. Buffy tensed. Now, she understood why Bracius Lestrange seemed so different to her, although knowing why made the discovery even more mystifying.

Last night when she'd met Lestrange, his magical core had thrummed with restrained power. Today that power felt different, more muted, and distant somehow. Was he ill? Was he suffering from stress? Still holding his son's hand, Buffy gave the minister a sidelong look. Apart from a high spot of colour in each cheek, he looked healthy and very much a man at ease.

Buffy felt a tug on her hand. Confused, Buffy realised that she was still gripping the Minister's son's hand and the boy had been trying to break the handshake for a while. She let go, cringing with embarrassment. All too aware of the way father and son exchanged a speaking glance at her bizarre behaviour.

To cover her faux pas, Buffy looked around the shop seeking the assistant. She eventually spotted him behind the shop counter, half-hidden behind a towering stack of books. As Buffy watched, he waved his wand at the bookshelf and a slim volume slid out, it flew over a browsing customer's head, dodged an oblivious Lovell (he was walking with his nose stuck in a book), and finally landed on the shop counter where the assistant ticked it off the list. A list that looked similar to hers.

"Are all those books," Buffy's voice squeaked in the middle, "mine?"

She wasn't a slow reader, nor did she think herself especially stupid, but those books weren't the sort you could read in a day. Some were so big Buffy thought they would take a lifetime to read them. Suddenly, that cold feeling formed in the pit of her stomach again. The one that told her she didn't have a chance of catching up on her magical education and she was going to make a huge fool of herself even trying.

Next to her, Marcus chuckled. "That is rather a lot of books. I take it the Hogwarts's curriculum is different from Ilvermorny's then?" He kept pace with her as she moved to the counter.

"Ilvermorny?" Buffy asked, perplexed. The young sales assistant added another book to the pile. "All those books... Are they mine?"

The assistant nodded. Buffy swallowed the panic. How did Dumbledore expect her to read and study all these books, practise magic and be ready for the 1st September? He must have had a spell backfire onto his brain.

"Isn't Ilvermorny the magic school you attended?" pressed Marcus, scenting a secret. "I take it you're a transfer student?"

Buffy picked up the topmost book, buying time before answering. The cover bore a picture of the moon surrounded by clouds and the title 'Unfogging the Future by Cassandra Vablatsky'. Just holding it caused a strong reaction in her. Bile rose in her throat, and Buffy disconnected from her surroundings...

'She was back in Sunnydale and had gone to see Giles about the increase in vampire activity. She'd heard him talking, his voice quiet and sombre - as if someone had died – and she crept closer. He mentioned a book of prophecy, then she heard her name and that she was destined to die at the hand of the Master the following night. Buffy could tell from his voice that he believed it would come to pass and she felt the world tilting beneath her feet.

There was a sharp pain at her throat, her lifeblood was draining away, and she couldn't get her breath.

Buffy blinked as the memory faded. She was back in the book store and Marcus Lestrange's eyes were on her. She'd zoned out again, and he was waiting for her to answer him.

"Transfer student?" Buffy repeated, her voice hoarse. She still feeling disorientated from what felt like a memory of dying. She fought to keep a grip on reality and not slide back into reliving the horrific memory. The boy was waiting for her answer. Should she pretend to have gone to this magic school or admit her ignorance? "I'm new to the magical stuff," she confessed.

"New?" Marcus Lestrange smirked. "What are you? Eleven?"

"Eleven?" she snorted affronted at the suggestion. "As if! I'm fifteen! I'm just a late developer." When the teenage boy's eyes dropped down to the curve of her breasts, she groaned silently. "Hey! Eyes up here, Buster! I'm not talking about that kind of developing!"

He flushed, hastily looking away. Buffy could see his father standing by the door, an open book in his hand, pretending to read and watching them. Buffy had the feeling that he would ask Marcus everything they had spoken about.

"I had a building fall on me," Buffy explained. "After I crawled out from under the rubble I found that I'd lost my memory and my magic flared to life. My uncle thinks that the near death experience sort of... 'uncorked' my magical core."

"So you were a Squib and now you aren't, and it leaves you with four years schoolwork work to catch up on? Plus they will expect you to take your OWLS at the end of the year?" He grinned unsympathetically. "Poor you."

Buffy glared at him, but the boy missed her expression as he was examining her book stack.

He redeemed himself in Buffy's eyes by pointing at the large book at the bottom of the pile. "Hogwarts, a History. Dumbledore always recommends that everyone reads this. It isn't required for any of the courses. I wouldn't bother."

Buffy went weak with relief. She'd been eyeing that book and dreading having to read it.

Marcus picked up a book with numbers and letters on the cover. His eyebrows shot up. "Arithmancy? Arithmancy isn't a core subject! It's an elective and not one of the easy ones either."

"Professor Dumbledore wants me to read up on all the subjects before deciding what to take. He's tutoring me in the basics before I go back to school." Buffy was getting nervous again.

Buffy took the book from him. Was it some kind of Math textbook? With a sinking feeling, Buffy flicked the pages to see charts, graphs, and numbers. They looked nothing like the math she must have studied in America and more like... With a jolt of surprise, she turned back to the first chapter, eagerly scanning the familiar charts with growing excitement. Numerology! She knew this subject! They were using the Chaldean system to forecast the likelihood of events in the same way Giles's books did. Feeling encouraged by what she had found, she put the book back down and picked up the Rune dictionary.

"Hey, I recognise all these!" Buffy said excitedly, her finger on the first list. "These are Futhoc runes! Giles didn't like them, he said that they never translated to anything of use for dem- er, what he wanted." She turned to another section. "Oh! Cirthic runes, Pictish, Elder Futhark, and look, Gothic! I've had dealings with these types of Runic inscriptions before. Honestly, they aren't as difficult as the Sumerian texts I've had to deal with..."

Excited now, she turned more and more pages. "That's totally strange," she muttered. "It completely misses out the Hungarian and Turkic ones runes." She let out an excited laugh. "Guess they must have run out of pages."

Marcus looked incredulous that she had recognised them. "You know these?"

Buffy waved his astonishment off. "It's no big. I'm no brain-box like Willow. She can understand anything, but I'm guessing something must have soaked in when I wasn't looking."

Lovell came to the counter and dumped his textbooks down next to Buffy's. He looked over at Marcus, seemingly unsure whether he should greet him or not.

"Hello, Lovegood," Marcus's tone was cool. Buffy guessed they weren't friendly. "Buffy's your cousin? I can't say I'm surprised, although she's much prettier than you are. She says she's an expert..."

"I didn't!" objected Buffy.

"... on Runes and Arithmancy already. Do you think she will find herself in Ravenclaw?"

"Are you two in the same House?" Buffy asked, looking from one boy to the other.

"No!" both protested with such fierceness that Buffy guessed their Houses were rivals.

"Perish the thought. I'm a Slytherin and proud of it," added Lestrange, sounding offended that she would think differently.

Marcus's father had come over to stand beside his son and caught the tail of their conversation. "The Lestrange family have been sorted into Slytherin for many generations. If the Sorting Hat had put me into another House, I believe my father would have disowned me." With a hand on his son's shoulders, he apologised, "I'm sorry, we need to go. There's a Ministry meeting that I can't be late for. Come Marcus, we need to apparate out."

They left, and Lovell suddenly remembering that he hadn't paid, began going through his pockets looking for the money his father had given him to pay for his textbooks. Buffy put out a hand and stopped him.

"I'm paying for these," she said firmly. She ignored Lovell's objection, putting more galleons on to the counter. "It's the least I can do after all the help you gave me last night." She didn't add 'cleaning the crime scene of vampire ash'.

"But that's what families are for," Lovell protested. "We look out for one another." He smiled, adding with a touch of sarcasm. "And even if you aren't put in Ravenclaw, we'll not disown you."

As they left the book shop, leaving the books to be sent on, Buffy linked his arm and said, "You need to tell me more about the hat and the sorting ceremony."

…...