Thanks again for the reviewers!

Just to clarify what year in HP verse, it is after book 5, book 6 hasn't happened because when I started writing this the first time book 6 wasn't out yet. I will incorporate book 6 probably though, so you will definitely see a change from the first time I did this story.

Chapter 5: Fire Starter

Buffy looked around in frustration. Was this some kind of joke? It was three days after she had first come to the Leaky Cauldron and now it was time to go to Hogwarts. But her ticket didn't make sense. It had to be a mistake.

"Excuse me, sir?" she said stopping a station worker. "Do you know where platform 9 and three quarters is?" The man laughed at her when she showed him her ticket.

"You've got a fake ticket or something, miss. There's no such thing," he said walking away and leaving her by herself.

Buffy stomped on over to platform nine and sat down with her stuff. She didn't know what to do. She should have looked at her ticket before she got to the station. She decided she'd go back to the Leaky Cauldron for help, even if it meant missing the train, when she noticed four red heads heading right towards the area between platforms nine and ten. The teens were dragging trunks. She cocked her head curiously.

"C'mon Ginny, hurry up!" shouted a tall boy. The girl struggled with her heavy trunk.

"I'm coming. I'm not the one who's missed the trained before you know," she said to the boy. They both disappeared into the wall. Wait, disappeared? Buffy walked to where they disappeared and studied it as the other red heads approached.

"Do you need something, dear?" a motherly looking woman asked.

"I'm looking for platform nine and three quarters. Is this it? How did they get through?" Buffy asked. The man laughed.

"Hogwarts?" he asked. When she nodded he continued. "An American! You seem old for a first year. Are you an exchange student? Wonderful!" he exclaimed not giving Buffy a chance to answer. Buffy decided to like the man, even if he was strange.

"Actually not. I'm kinda new to all this. How do you get through though? I don't wanna miss the train..." she trailed off.

"Oh, muggle raised! Tell me, how do-" the man started before the woman cut him off, his wife Buffy deduced.

"Arthur, really! I'm Molly Weasley and this is Arthur Weasley. What's your name, dear?"

"Buffy. Buffy Summers," Buffy answered. The woman definitely had a mom vibe, making Buffy warm up to her immediately.

"I'm sorry, Arthur is just fascinated with muggles and muggle things. Don't get him started. Now, to get through, you simply walk straight through. It's easiest for first timers to take a running start," Mrs. Weasley explained. Buffy looked doubtful.

"Okay, here goes," she said. She grabbed her stuff and took a few paces back. What's the worst that could happen besides slamming head on into a brick wall? It's not like she hasn't taken a good beating before. Come to think of it, she's been slammed into brick walls before anyways. Here goes. She ran and braced herself for impact. It never came and she skidded to a halt on the other side. She took a moment and turned and thanked the Weasleys who had now joined her.

"Not a problem, Buffy. Good luck this year. You'll be fine," Mrs. Weasley said. Buffy smiled at the couple. She thanked the couple before heading off and boarding the train. She looked around, feeling out of place again, and finally found an empty compartment. Buffy sat down and waited for the train to go. No turning back now. She was soon joined by a group of three students.

"Mind if we join you?" asked a pretty girl with bushy brown hair.

"No, go ahead," replied Buffy. While she didn't really feel like talking, she figured she was in a new country, new culture, new school, new world. She should probably socialize some. She didn't want everyone here thinking of her as the weird, violent, or freakish new girl like people often thought of her in Sunnydale. Maybe it could be different here. Besides, didn't she used to be good at socializing and making friends? She smiled.

"I'm Buffy. I'm new."

"I'm Hermione Granger. This is Ron Weasley and Harry Potter." She paused waiting for Buffy to react to Harry's name. She didn't. If anything, she smiled slightly when she heard Ron's name. "Are you transferring from the Salem Academy?" she asked.

"Oh, no! I've never been to wizarding school. I just got my wand a few days ago. I've been raised muggle," Buffy said.

"I'm muggle born and Harry was raised muggle too," Hermione said, trying to make the new girl- Buffy, what a strange name- feel more at home. She didn't know Buffy was thinking the same about her name.

"Where are you from?" asked Ron.

"California. Good old Sunnyhe- I mean Sunnydale."

"So why here?" Harry asked, not noticing the slip. Harry had only been half listening before. This had been the worst summer of his life and he couldn't bring himself to care about much. He might have been interested in Buffy if he weren't still depressed. But as it was, he wasn't, although he felt a strange kinship with the girl. Still, he was always suspicious of strangers now. Never trust anyone. He couldn't afford to mess up again and get another person killed. He glanced at Hermione and Ron. He loved them, and he honestly didn't think he would have made it through the summer without them. Ron and even the twins and Ginny wrote him a few times a week. They all worried about him. Hermione had visited the Dursley's and invited him to spend the summer with her family. They were really nice. He spent a couple weeks there before Dumbledore made him return to his house and he wasn't allowed to go to the Burrow. That had made him angry. He was 17 years old now! (AN: I bumped all their ages up a bit) Anyways, after that he sank into depression and anger at life and was having trouble pulling himself out. Unbeknownst to him, Buffy was going through something similar. She didn't fear the Master quite as much as she did after the death ordeal anymore, after all she had been able to kill him (she still feared him some though and had nightmares). Her death had raised so many new questions and realizations about herself and what it meant to be the Slayer that scared her. It opened her up to the dark side of a Slayer, the one she would have been perfectly content ignoring the rest of her life.

"Dunno. Just where they sent me. I don't know if the American one would take me. Mom had a hard enough time finding a muggle school that would take me after Hemery High. Besides, Giles knew people here."

"Who's Giles?" asked Ron.

"What happened at Hemery," asked Harry at the same time, curiosity getting the best of him.

"Great," murmured Buffy. "Everyone just wants to know about me. Again." Then she spoke more loudly, saying, "Oh Giles is my wa- aaay cool librarian. Librarian. I know that sounds weird but my dad's been MIA for the most part since the divorce and I guess Giles is almost like a dad to me in Sunnydale. He watches out for me." Oops! She almost let Giles' role slip. Buffy didn't notice Hermione's frown at the word Sunnydale. It sounded familiar to her but she couldn't place it. And she had noticed Buffy slip up the first time she said the town's name. "And I kindagotexpelledfromHemery," she continued, saying the last part really quickly. She decided not to mention, just like she never mentioned to her Sunnydale friends the fact that also had to spend time at a mental hospital.

"Wicked!" exclaimed Ron. "What did you do?" Harry looked at her with interest. He wondered what she could have done. Hermione mentally sighed. Harry and Ron did not need another trouble maker; they got into enough on their own.

"It was nothing..." Buffy trailed off.

"Oh, c'mon, tell us! You should hear some of the stuff Fred and George have done. They're my twin brothers. They own a joke shop now, practically everything in there is made by them. You couldn't have done anything worse then they did! They kicked arse in pranking! They're the best since the Marauders." Ron continued to tell her about their now famous exit from Hogwarts last year. "And me and Harry have almost been expelled tons of times! If Harry weren't the Boy Who Lived, we might have been! Tell her about the car in second year, Harry," Ron encouraged.

Harry forced a smile at the memory. He couldn't bring himself to really mean it though. Every since Sirius died, nothing was the same. Life had lost meaning. "Ron's dad," Harry started with false enthusiasm.

Buffy noticed the falseness. She was the queen of forced cheeriness and putting on a brave face for others. She decided to interrupt him. And besides, with everything the twins had done...

"I burnt down the gym."

Ron's eyes lit up, despite not knowing what a gym was. Hermione frowned in concern. Even the twins didn't have arson on their record. Harry wondered why the pretty blonde would do such a thing.

"On purpose?" Harry asked.

Phew, finally got it out. That was a hard chapter to write, it just didn't wanna get done. Feedback?