Ok, first off, sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, I've written loads actually, it's just all kinda crap and not going anywhere. I know I should be finishing Lost or Runaways not starting anything new but technically this isn't new, and it's been running around my head for ages so I had to just get it out/
As the Buffy storyline follows Season Two on the whole, I may use Buffy chapters to tell Hermione stories through her dreams. If that makes sense, 'cause you can just go watch season two. This story is more about Hermione for now.
Of course that's just the preliminary notices; I may change my mind and start screwing everything up by tomorrow!
So enjoy, and please review.
Chapter Three: Training
I've never really been a sporty person. I never got into Quidditch and at primary school I just tended to be bad at sports. I came last in races and I never even seemed to be able to hit a ball.
You wouldn't believe that if you saw me now. It's funny, this summer I had planned to read through some school books in preparation for next year but I haven't had time to do that yet. Ron and Harry would laugh at that, four weeks in to the summer holidays and the only books I've picked up had nothing to do with school. Well they might help in Defence against the dark arts a little but I doubt it.
That hasn't even been the focus of my lately. After all there's no point knowing how to kill a demon if you can't get near enough to do it. No, for once I've had to accept that books don't come first. Instead I've been learning how to fight.
The first training session wasn't all that fun. I was still shell shocked from discovering I was the slayer. I wasn't even sure if I believed it. So how does my watcher decide to prove it to me? Simple. I walked into the training room, a little apprehensive about meeting this guy alone and he threw a knife at my head. I caught it just in front of my face.
"What the bloody hell did you do that for?" I shouted throwing the knife at the opposite wall. I usually don't condone swearing but in my defence the man did throw a knife at my head. I decided the situation warranted the reaction.
"You caught the knife" he said as though trying to murder people was no big deal. "Any doubts you're the slayer now?"
I was so caught up in the fact that he had just thrown a knife at my head that I hardly noticed I had caught it. I had just been working on instinct. I reacted, and it was a good thing, you don't have to be clever to know having a knife thrown at your head would be a painful way to die.
Adrian (as he insisted I call him) started by asking me what I would do if I came across a vampire.
"Run?" I tried.
"No"
"Um, well fire kills them so if I had my wand I would…"
"You don't have your wand" he interrupted.
"Lately I always have my wand" I argued.
"Hermione, you are the slayer" he told me. "You have to stop thinking like a witch and start thinking like a slayer"
"I've been a witch five years. I've been a slayer for five minutes. I can't help thinking for a magical option first"
"Why didn't you use a spell to stop the knife?" he asked. "If you have your wand you could have frozen it. If that knife had hit you you'd be dead"
"I didn't have time" I told him, aware I was losing this argument.
"But you caught it in time. Your slayer instincts reigned. Listen to them"
Then we came to an understanding when he threatened to snap my wand in half. Since then I've not been talking about magic around him.
Adrian explained to me that the reason I wasn't trained before now, the reason I'm so behind is because I'm a witch. I was detected as a potential slayer when I was very young, but I was also detected as a witch. It turns out the Ministry of Magic are wilfully blind (they're good at that), to the concept of the slayer and therefore highly object to the Watchers Council attempting to train witches to become mythical creatures, muggle born or not. From what I can make out it's happened before and it ended up messy.
So they all just stay out of each others way. The Ministry pretends the Council doesn't exist and the council just keep their fingers crossed that the magically gifted potentials don't get called as slayers.
But lucky me. I did get called. So I have a lot of catching up to do. It amazes me how natural it all feels. Unless you count that one time I hit Malfoy I'm not a violent person and as I said before I'm not a sporty person. But here doing this, it's just natural. I seem to spend all day training but have no problems with that, it kinda feels good.
Not as good as slaying for real feels though. It was two weeks of training before I was actually allowed out, armed only with a few stakes. I've trained with other weapons but I'm still learning to use them all still, I'm not as confident with them yet.
Adrian watched my fight from the sidelines. Well he actually does that with all my fights. He's always there when I patrol and he's always got some comment to make. He generally follows the negative with something positive though, which stops me going mad. Patrol can be pretty uneventful though; there aren't a whole lot of vampires and demons locally.
My first slay was a fledgling, fresh out of the grave. The only thing that stopped the fight being easy was my nerves, but you'd be scared too if you were in my place.
I was perched on a gravestone waiting for the guy two foot forward and six foot under to rise and my heart was beating faster than I thought humanly possibly. I tried telling myself all those logical things like I have the strength, I had the skill, he was as new to this as I was and I could surprise him. Logic didn't work. I was terrified, I kept thinking, maybe I wasn't strong enough, maybe I hadn't had enough training, and of course there was still that part of my mind that said maybe I'm not the slayer.
Then the vamp rose, and he attacked. We fought and there is nothing that can describe it. For a moment I thought I'd lost when he threw me on the floor and came down for the kill, but then I managed to stake him and it was all over and I got a covered in dust, and by the way, vampire dust is pretty disgusting, especially when you get it in your hair.
"Vampires are like animals" Adrian told me as he offered me his hand and pulled me up from the ground. "They can smell fear. Your fear was slowing you down"
Well that dampened my 'I just killed my first vampire' happy mood; it was almost destroyed until he added;
"But a lot of slayers tend to miss the heart the first time so you weren't doing too badly" he smiled at me.
That first fight destroyed all my doubts that I could be anything but the slayer. It was all instinct, the moves I had been taught came out when I needed them to, I knew exactly when to duck when to block. It was exhilarating and it was a feeling in my blood, the slayer calling to me. That's the way all my fights feel now.
I wonder if Buffy felt like this. I know Buffy was the name of the blonde girl because I asked Adrian. She was the last slayer and she died drowning the way I saw it. It's weird though; I had another dream about her the other night. A completely different one. She was with a man, her father I think, and they were shoe shopping. It wasn't as vivid as the other dreams. I don't think this one is anything real, I think this is just what I'd like her to be doing right now, something normal and happy. The reality of it is, she's dead. She has to be for me to be the slayer, that's how it works, one dies another rises.
Sorry it's kinda short, and it took forever to get out, but I'm working on the next one already and trying to plan the whole thing out so I know where its going. I'm planning to keep it fairly short, but I'm also kinda planning a sequel because if things go to plan then buffy and hermione are not going to meet in this story. But as I said, I could have changed my mind by tomorrow
Last notice I promise. I've had some comments on my spelling and grammer so if anybody wanted to offer it would be great if they could check through the new chapters for this and my other fics for any mistakes before I post. Please E-mail me if you can help.
