Disclaimer: See part one for details.
Notes: So here's at least one of the scenes many of you have been waiting for. Also, there's the answer to a question a lot of you asked. I could have come up with more 'alone' examples but, quite frankly, if I were to start listing everything it would turn into a summary of Buffy episodes. And since we're, most of us, fans enough to know what happened I'm not going to waste everyone's time by rehashing in detail the whole first two seasons. Yes, I borrowed from the '92 movie as well. It was just too good to pass up. Any complaints? Leave a review.
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The months settled into routine. Classes went on with the students baffled about why Buffy couldn't seem to cope with her house leader, but was so friendly with Snape and Buffy went out hunting every night, came back and had nightmares of Angel being tortured. Hermione took to waiting for Buffy to come back into the girls' dormitory through a window she shouldn't have been able to get in through without a broomstick. Finally one afternoon she caught the blonde between classes, meals and everything else and dragged her into an empty classroom. "Where are you going every night?"
"What?" Buffy asked.
Hermione frowned. "You know very well what I'm talking about, now start explaining why I shouldn't simply hand you over to Professor McGonagall for breaking the rules." She stood, arms folded, waiting for Buffy's response. Before the Slayer could even try to explain, Harry and Ginny Weasly came through the door into the classroom, groping each other. Hermione cleared her throat three times before the pair against the wall even noticed her. "Would you two mind doing that somewhere else?"
"How about you two find somewhere else to do what you're doing?" Harry replied, "This was Ginny's and my spot first." The three girls just stared at him, rolled their eyes and waited. "What?" he finally asked. Then he frowned himself and said, "What *are* the two of you doing in here anyway?"
A sigh escaped from Hermione's lips. "I was trying to find out why and how Buffy is climbing out of the Gryffindor tower in the middle of the night." She glared at the couple and was again interrupted by Ron bursting through the door.
"Harry! Ginny! I know you're . . ." he trailed off as he saw the group now gathered in the classroom. "What's going on?"
Turning away, Buffy headed for the door and freedom. "Well, since I'm not really sure anymore I'll just catch you guys later-"
"Not so fast," Hermione said and grabbed Buffy's arm. "You wake up crying from nightmares every night and lie about it constantly, you're always out and I think you've been going into the forbidden forest every night and you are going to tell me why or so help me-"
"I'm hunting demons."
A silence filled the room with that remark. Finally Ron came up with something to say in response. "You're what?"
Buffy looked at each of them, her normally lighthearted demeanor gone and said, "I'll tell you everything, but only if you promise not to tell anyone." She fixed her gaze on the four facing her. "That means absolutely no one. Not Dumbledore, not Hagrid, not even Aragog even though he and I have an agreement."
"You have an agreement with Aragog?" Harry asked incredulously. "He's a big spider! What possible agreement could you have with him?"
Calmly she replied, "He and his buddies don't snack on anyone while I'm around or attack me, and I let them live." Her voice was absolutely deadly, and even Ron seemed to understand that she wasn't merely threatening, she was speaking fact. She was *letting* the giant spiders live. Which suggested she could stop letting at any time. The notion floored the group. Another lengthy quiet spell later and Buffy asked, "Do I have your word you won't tell anyone?"
"Will you kill us if we do?" Harry asked quietly.
She sighed. "No. I don't kill people. But you would be making my life unnecessarily hard if you try explaining it to anyone. You also run the risk of letting Voldemort," Ron, Ginny and Hermione all cringed and Buffy rolled her eyes turning to them. "Oh please. You people are like, phobic or something! 'He-who-must-not-be-named' ooooooo," she said and waved her hands in a parody of spookiness. "It's a name. A stupid name at that. Get. Over. It. It's not going to make him appear out of thin air." Now exasperated she tilted her head, "Where was I?"
"Letting Voldemort something," Harry replied easily, sparking another round of cringing from his friends and girlfriend. "She's right you know," he added absentmindedly when Ron shook his fist.
"Thanks," Buffy replied. "If you tell people Voldemort," She turned to the others, "Stop it," she turned back to facing the bunch as a whole, "Might find out about resources other than the ones in the wizarding world and then we're really in for it." She watched as that sank into their heads and waited.
Finally Hermione spoke. "How about if we reserve the right to tell someone should it become important to do so, such as if someone were in danger from us not telling another person."
"Cool," Buffy tilted her head in agreement.
A practically vibrating Ron blurted, "So what's this about demon hunting?"
Buffy gestured at the desks. "Why don't you guys sit down. This could take a while and I certainly don't want to stand the whole time." She sat down and waited for the others to do so as well. Once they were all settled she began her explanation. "Okay, millions of years ago, there were like, demons everywhere. Earth was their home and humans were pretty much just the prime snack food. Well eventually something sucked most of the demons out of this world and into an alternate universe. You could call them God, the Powers that Be, whatever. The point is, whatever it was, was powerful enough to get rid of the demons and stuff.
"Unfortunately, some of those demons wound up stuck here, and another one of them managed to create the first demon vampire before it got sucked away." At that point Hermione started to speak, but Buffy shushed her. "Just a sec Hermione. Can you let me finish explaining before you ask?" The other girl nodded and Buffy thought for a moment before picking up the thread of her explanation. "So anyways, these demons were still stronger than most humans and normal ones didn't have any effective way to defend themselves. So the Powers decided that they would pick a girl to be the Slayer. This girl would be given super-strength, reflexes, speed, an increased healing rate and all kinds of stuff so that she could fight the demons on even turf."
Eyebrow raised in skepticism, Ginny said, "And you think you're this Slayer girl."
Smiling, Buffy took out a stake. "Hermione, would you confirm that there are no spells of any kind on this thing?" She tossed it to the witch who took out her wand and waved over the stake several times muttering.
Finally she looked up and asked, "I assume you're trying to prove something here?"
"Yes," the Slayer replied. "Could you transmogrify that into a steel bar? Something really thick and strong." She waited while Hermione finished the transformation and then took it back. "Okay, now check me over. Do any test you want to be sure I'm not hiding anything magical on me, that I'm not doing a spell or drunk a potion."
Again, the other witch started waving and muttering, until finally Ron couldn't stand it any more. "Is there some reason you're doing all this?" he demanded impatiently.
Harry, Hermione and Ginny all rolled their eyes at the question. "Ron, she just said that the Slayer person has all these superpowers. She wants to show us that she's actually got them instead of having drunk a potion or something to make her superhuman," Ginny told her brother with a superior smirk. "Honestly. What would you have said if she'd just, I don't know, bent that bar in two . . . like . . . that." She trailed off as Buffy indeed took the steel and easily bent it until the two ends met.
"You had to have done a strength spell!" Ron shouted.
Harry blinked at his friend. "Uh Ron? The whole point of that bit where she was asking Hermione to check everything was to prove that she hadn't." He wrapped an arm around Ginny. "Your sister just explained that."
Eyes narrowing Ron glared at his friend. "And when did you and Ginny become so chummy anyway?" he demanded suspiciously. "If I didn't know better I'd think . . . You *are* dating!" he shouted, then lunged at Harry. "You gerroff my sister you!"
Hermione gaped at him "Ron honestly!" She lunged at him in turn trying, and failing, to restrain him. Ginny's efforts at holding Ron off Harry were hampered by her efforts to protect her boyfriend as well as hold him off of her brother. The whole mess came to an abrupt halt as the two combatants found themselves forcibly pulled apart, their feet dangling in midair as Buffy held them off the floor. Ginny and Hermione exchanged looks while Ron made a curious squeaking sound.
"Okay, that's enough," Buffy said calmly. "Ron, Harry is your friend right?"
The two stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded, until Buffy shook the redhead slightly. "Yeah," Ron squeaked again.
"And you like Harry right?"
An affirmative squeak emerged.
"And you trust Harry with your life right?"
Another 'yes' squeak.
"So exactly why is it that you object to him dating your sister?"
Ron's mouth opened and shut but no sound emerged. Finally Harry spoke. "Umm. Could you put us down?"
Buffy shrugged and let the pair down. Then she turned back to Ron. "You still haven't answered my question."
"I . . . well . . . just . . . I don't like it!" he said emphatically. The others just looked at him until he wilted. "Alright. Fine. But if you hurt her Harry-" Ron started.
Harry interrupted. "I know Ron," he told the other boy, "You'll call your mother and there'll be seven wizards with muggle shotguns after me."
"Now that we've sorted that out," Hermione's voice oozed annoyance, "Might we get back to the real issue?" she glared around impartially, "That Buffy is some sort of bizarre dragonslayer?"
A small cough emerged from the blonde's throat. "Vampire Slayer."
"Right, vampire slayer," Hermione accepted the correction. "What exactly does that mean?"
Buffy sighed. "Man I wish Giles was here. He's way better at this than me." She shook her head as she spoke and flopped into a chair.
"What does your high school librarian have to do with anything?" Harry asked curiously. It was an odd choice.
"He's my Watcher," Buffy replied. That got her several blank stares and the other four opened their mouths, no doubt to ask her what a watcher was. "Okay." She held up her hands to ask for silence. "How about you give me a minute to explain this stuff and you guys hold your questions again until I'm done?" she asked. They nodded in response and Buffy explained it all. She told them about how there was a second world of the arcane unknown to the wizarding world, about how the demonic vampires she killed nightly and watchers came about and about her calling since she'd become the Slayer.
By the time she'd finished her audience was stunned and silent. Ron spoke first. "You died?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Well, since another slayer was called after the whole 'prophecy foretelling my death' thing I would have to say . . . yep."
"So even though the prophecy came true it didn't turn out the way it sounded like it was supposed to," Harry said musingly. "Do you suppose . . . " He trailed off and looked at his friends for support. Hermione seemed the only one who had caught on to his idea and she smiled.
But before she could reply Buffy, ignorant of parts of the subtext, responded. "Well the Master said that prophecies are tricky things." She tilted her head at him. "I think there's sort of a . . . mouldability to the things. Y'know, foreknowledge of the future can change the future and all that stuff." Suddenly Buffy's eyes narrowed. "There's more here isn't there?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" Ron asked her looking confused.
"I mean," she said laying great stress on the words, "That there's a prophecy about Harry, isn't there?" The others exchanged looks. "Oh please. It's completely obvious from the way Harry and Hermione were acting that something's up."
The others stared at each other in a silent conference. Finally those looks settled on Harry clearly leaving the decision of whether or not to tell Buffy about the prophecy up to him. He glanced around at his two best friends and his girlfriend one last time before gazing at the Slayer again. She simply stood there, waiting for him to tell her or not. He had come to trust her over the past month, the story she had told was convincing and he desperately wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that there was someone else out there who had a ridiculously difficult destiny thrust upon them by uncaring fates. Someone who understood what it was like to do so many terrifying and impossible things with barely a word of thanks from anyone and to do it all without ever having a chance at a peaceful, happy and productive life.
He made his choice when he looked into her eyes. There he saw a girl forced to go out every night and kill creatures that were once human, once her friends. Forced to fight and struggle with no hope of rest or an end and to do so while the world around her went on unaware of her sacrifices and punished her for her violations of rules that should never have applied to her. He saw someone like him, who found herself facing things down alone because she was the only one who could. Lothos, Luke, the Master and so many other demons and monsters that, although she had help, she had to face them alone. He knew how that felt. After the trials to get to the Philosophers' Stone he was left to face Quirrel alone, after all his friends' help he had to face the basilisk alone and he had never felt more alone than facing off with Voldemort after Cedric was murdered by death eaters.
The same guilt he felt for Sirius and Cedric's deaths was reflected in Buffy's face for all the deaths she couldn't stop. Mostly though, it was that knowledge that there was no one else to do what they did and that no one could ever truly understand what it was like to face down something far more powerful than themselves and know that there was no one coming to the rescue. Harry could see himself in her. It decided him.
"Months before I was born, Trelawney had a real vision. She told Dumbledore a prophecy that turned out to be about me." Harry paused, his mind flying back to his fifth year when he was finally told about it. "She said that either I had to kill Voldemort, or he had to kill me, but one of us had to die at the hand of the other." He nearly smiled in relief as he saw Buffy begin to contemplate his story. There was none of the pity he saw from his friends, just a simple understanding of how he felt. Terrified of dying, terrified of failure, determined to stop this evil at any cost all mixed in with a desire to be left out of it and not have to hurt anyone.
"Do you have a copy of the prophecy?" she asked finally. "I can't make any guarantees, but maybe if you look at the wording you'll get some hints about other ways it could go."
Hermione's response was prompt. Her eyes slitted half-closed in concentration she began to recite from memory. "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches . . . born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies . . . and the Dark Lord will mark him his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives . . . the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies . . ." Her eyes opened fully again and she noticed the slack-jawed stares of the others. "What?"
"You said that by memory," Ginny said. "How did you memorise that?"
Hermione just shrugged and turned to Buffy who said, "Whoa. I mean that was almost completely comprehensible. No speaking in tongues, no 'five hundred years after the fourth invasion of the city of whatever the origins of the situation at hand will cause a mystical upheaval one thousand years from then.'" At the funny looks she got from the others she said, "Giles usually has to spend like, days doing calculations in the library to figure out how to match the Aztec Calendar to the Julian, and how that matches to the Gregorian and then back again before he can even start to figure out what the hell happened when. Like I said, this is almost straightforward."
Finally exploding Ron snapped, "So can you help Harry or not!?"
"It's not that simple Ron," Buffy said gently. "I will do what I can to help Harry, but the fact is, no one ever really knows exactly what a prophecy means until after it's already gone down." She laid a hand on the redhead's shoulder. "I know it's hard, but all anyone can do is take things one day at a time and be ready for the worst while hoping for the best."
"So nothing then."
Sighing, she fixed her gaze on him. Ron blinked as he saw the pain and grief that she normally kept well-hidden. With a start he realised that he had come to be used to that expression on Harry's face. It was so much like the way Harry got every time Voldemort came up in conversation, or death eaters, or any number of other topics, that Ron blinked expecting her eyes to suddenly turn green and her hair black. Then she spoke and he felt even worse than when she was just looking at him. "I will do everything in my power to protect Harry. It's my duty as the Slayer, as his friend and as a human being. I can help you search for alternate meanings to the prophecy and help you try to make them come true. I can't ultimately guarantee anything about anything but the stuff that I personally control. And that means basically me." Ron let his eyes fall away and he mumbled an apology. She squeezed his shoulder briefly before letting her hand fall away. "It's okay," she said. "And I'll do everything I can to make sure Harry comes through," she promised.
After a moment of quiet, Ginny spoke up. "So . . . um . . . From that prophecy, is there a chance it could mean something else?"
"Sure," Buffy's mood snapped to a fully businesslike exterior startling the others. "For starters, that whole death thing could turn out to be a metaphorical death. Y'know, kind of a 'live life to the fullest' thing." She frowned. "I've had it pointed out to me repeatedly by many people that living and survival are very different things."
The startlement on Hermione's face had faded almost immediately as Buffy became businesslike and her mind began to examine the various angles and meanings to the prophecy. "What about the part where he has 'a power the Dark Lord knows not'?" Hermione inquired. Her face had a concentrated look on it as her mind sorted through repercussions. "Do we have any clue what this power is?"
"Love or friendship I think," Harry said. When the others just looked at him he expanded. "Dumbledore mentioned something like that when we went to . . . " he paused and cleared his throat, "Save Sirius."
"But what exactly does that mean?" Buffy said when the respectful quiet stretched too long. "Does it mean that your love of someone or something will be enough to beat Voldemort? I mean, there's the whole pragmatic thing that people would be following you into a fight because they cared about you and your cause so they wouldn't take off if things started to go the bad guy's way. I mean, just because he's got an idea doesn't mean he knows everything." Harry, Ron and Ginny looked completely stunned at the notion of Dumbledore not knowing everything. The discussion continued until they were forced to head for their next class.
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Miles away Voldemort's followers finally tired of the sport Angel provided them and hauled the nearly catatonic vampire into the nearby woods. One of the masked figures hurled the killing curse at him. Angel slumped to the ground and the death eaters left him for dead, laughing as they walked off. Minutes before dawn he roused from his stupor and staggered toward a nearby cave to hide from the sun. He spent the day there, shivering in confusion and fear as his tormented mind struggled to make sense of where and what he was.
When the sun set he knew only one thing. Somewhere to the northeast of where he was something called him. The feral vampire sniffed the air and set off at a lope toward that call. Something in his dimmed memories told him that feeling meant safety, home and his mate.
Buffy woke up with her usual gasp of shock, this time purely from habit. Her dreams had been confused and filled with images of darkness, but there was no pain in these. There was only a constant pull toward something. She quietly dressed and went to the window, pausing as she stared into the night. Buffy hoped that the dream meant Angel was safe and well, but ultimately she was still unsettled by the images. The soft sound of Hermione and Ginny coming to stand behind her pulled Buffy from her thoughts. "Are you going out hunting?" Ginny asked in a whisper.
Turning back to the girls Buffy smiled a little. "Yeah. I really need to get out there tonight." She glanced out at the darkness of the forest. "Things have been getting a little hairy out there-"
"You can't sleep, can you?" Hermione interrupted.
A shoulder hitched up in a minimal shrug. "That too," Buffy replied. "I'll be back in a while." Before the other two could protest she slipped out the window and dropped to the roof below and took off at a run. The other two exchanged glances and watched as the Slayer took a ten metre drop as though it was nothing then run further to do the same thing again. She vanished from sight only to reappear at a distance, vanishing into the darkness of the forest.
"Should we go after her?" Ginny asked.
Hermione looked at her for a moment, then replied. "I don't think so. For one thing, she's been doing it for months and she's still fine." The frizzy- haired witch glanced back into the dormitory room. "For another, we don't know what we're getting into at all and I'd prefer to have some more answers before we go traipsing after her." Ginny frowned slightly, but she nodded and the pair went back to bed.
TBC...
Notes: So here's at least one of the scenes many of you have been waiting for. Also, there's the answer to a question a lot of you asked. I could have come up with more 'alone' examples but, quite frankly, if I were to start listing everything it would turn into a summary of Buffy episodes. And since we're, most of us, fans enough to know what happened I'm not going to waste everyone's time by rehashing in detail the whole first two seasons. Yes, I borrowed from the '92 movie as well. It was just too good to pass up. Any complaints? Leave a review.
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The months settled into routine. Classes went on with the students baffled about why Buffy couldn't seem to cope with her house leader, but was so friendly with Snape and Buffy went out hunting every night, came back and had nightmares of Angel being tortured. Hermione took to waiting for Buffy to come back into the girls' dormitory through a window she shouldn't have been able to get in through without a broomstick. Finally one afternoon she caught the blonde between classes, meals and everything else and dragged her into an empty classroom. "Where are you going every night?"
"What?" Buffy asked.
Hermione frowned. "You know very well what I'm talking about, now start explaining why I shouldn't simply hand you over to Professor McGonagall for breaking the rules." She stood, arms folded, waiting for Buffy's response. Before the Slayer could even try to explain, Harry and Ginny Weasly came through the door into the classroom, groping each other. Hermione cleared her throat three times before the pair against the wall even noticed her. "Would you two mind doing that somewhere else?"
"How about you two find somewhere else to do what you're doing?" Harry replied, "This was Ginny's and my spot first." The three girls just stared at him, rolled their eyes and waited. "What?" he finally asked. Then he frowned himself and said, "What *are* the two of you doing in here anyway?"
A sigh escaped from Hermione's lips. "I was trying to find out why and how Buffy is climbing out of the Gryffindor tower in the middle of the night." She glared at the couple and was again interrupted by Ron bursting through the door.
"Harry! Ginny! I know you're . . ." he trailed off as he saw the group now gathered in the classroom. "What's going on?"
Turning away, Buffy headed for the door and freedom. "Well, since I'm not really sure anymore I'll just catch you guys later-"
"Not so fast," Hermione said and grabbed Buffy's arm. "You wake up crying from nightmares every night and lie about it constantly, you're always out and I think you've been going into the forbidden forest every night and you are going to tell me why or so help me-"
"I'm hunting demons."
A silence filled the room with that remark. Finally Ron came up with something to say in response. "You're what?"
Buffy looked at each of them, her normally lighthearted demeanor gone and said, "I'll tell you everything, but only if you promise not to tell anyone." She fixed her gaze on the four facing her. "That means absolutely no one. Not Dumbledore, not Hagrid, not even Aragog even though he and I have an agreement."
"You have an agreement with Aragog?" Harry asked incredulously. "He's a big spider! What possible agreement could you have with him?"
Calmly she replied, "He and his buddies don't snack on anyone while I'm around or attack me, and I let them live." Her voice was absolutely deadly, and even Ron seemed to understand that she wasn't merely threatening, she was speaking fact. She was *letting* the giant spiders live. Which suggested she could stop letting at any time. The notion floored the group. Another lengthy quiet spell later and Buffy asked, "Do I have your word you won't tell anyone?"
"Will you kill us if we do?" Harry asked quietly.
She sighed. "No. I don't kill people. But you would be making my life unnecessarily hard if you try explaining it to anyone. You also run the risk of letting Voldemort," Ron, Ginny and Hermione all cringed and Buffy rolled her eyes turning to them. "Oh please. You people are like, phobic or something! 'He-who-must-not-be-named' ooooooo," she said and waved her hands in a parody of spookiness. "It's a name. A stupid name at that. Get. Over. It. It's not going to make him appear out of thin air." Now exasperated she tilted her head, "Where was I?"
"Letting Voldemort something," Harry replied easily, sparking another round of cringing from his friends and girlfriend. "She's right you know," he added absentmindedly when Ron shook his fist.
"Thanks," Buffy replied. "If you tell people Voldemort," She turned to the others, "Stop it," she turned back to facing the bunch as a whole, "Might find out about resources other than the ones in the wizarding world and then we're really in for it." She watched as that sank into their heads and waited.
Finally Hermione spoke. "How about if we reserve the right to tell someone should it become important to do so, such as if someone were in danger from us not telling another person."
"Cool," Buffy tilted her head in agreement.
A practically vibrating Ron blurted, "So what's this about demon hunting?"
Buffy gestured at the desks. "Why don't you guys sit down. This could take a while and I certainly don't want to stand the whole time." She sat down and waited for the others to do so as well. Once they were all settled she began her explanation. "Okay, millions of years ago, there were like, demons everywhere. Earth was their home and humans were pretty much just the prime snack food. Well eventually something sucked most of the demons out of this world and into an alternate universe. You could call them God, the Powers that Be, whatever. The point is, whatever it was, was powerful enough to get rid of the demons and stuff.
"Unfortunately, some of those demons wound up stuck here, and another one of them managed to create the first demon vampire before it got sucked away." At that point Hermione started to speak, but Buffy shushed her. "Just a sec Hermione. Can you let me finish explaining before you ask?" The other girl nodded and Buffy thought for a moment before picking up the thread of her explanation. "So anyways, these demons were still stronger than most humans and normal ones didn't have any effective way to defend themselves. So the Powers decided that they would pick a girl to be the Slayer. This girl would be given super-strength, reflexes, speed, an increased healing rate and all kinds of stuff so that she could fight the demons on even turf."
Eyebrow raised in skepticism, Ginny said, "And you think you're this Slayer girl."
Smiling, Buffy took out a stake. "Hermione, would you confirm that there are no spells of any kind on this thing?" She tossed it to the witch who took out her wand and waved over the stake several times muttering.
Finally she looked up and asked, "I assume you're trying to prove something here?"
"Yes," the Slayer replied. "Could you transmogrify that into a steel bar? Something really thick and strong." She waited while Hermione finished the transformation and then took it back. "Okay, now check me over. Do any test you want to be sure I'm not hiding anything magical on me, that I'm not doing a spell or drunk a potion."
Again, the other witch started waving and muttering, until finally Ron couldn't stand it any more. "Is there some reason you're doing all this?" he demanded impatiently.
Harry, Hermione and Ginny all rolled their eyes at the question. "Ron, she just said that the Slayer person has all these superpowers. She wants to show us that she's actually got them instead of having drunk a potion or something to make her superhuman," Ginny told her brother with a superior smirk. "Honestly. What would you have said if she'd just, I don't know, bent that bar in two . . . like . . . that." She trailed off as Buffy indeed took the steel and easily bent it until the two ends met.
"You had to have done a strength spell!" Ron shouted.
Harry blinked at his friend. "Uh Ron? The whole point of that bit where she was asking Hermione to check everything was to prove that she hadn't." He wrapped an arm around Ginny. "Your sister just explained that."
Eyes narrowing Ron glared at his friend. "And when did you and Ginny become so chummy anyway?" he demanded suspiciously. "If I didn't know better I'd think . . . You *are* dating!" he shouted, then lunged at Harry. "You gerroff my sister you!"
Hermione gaped at him "Ron honestly!" She lunged at him in turn trying, and failing, to restrain him. Ginny's efforts at holding Ron off Harry were hampered by her efforts to protect her boyfriend as well as hold him off of her brother. The whole mess came to an abrupt halt as the two combatants found themselves forcibly pulled apart, their feet dangling in midair as Buffy held them off the floor. Ginny and Hermione exchanged looks while Ron made a curious squeaking sound.
"Okay, that's enough," Buffy said calmly. "Ron, Harry is your friend right?"
The two stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded, until Buffy shook the redhead slightly. "Yeah," Ron squeaked again.
"And you like Harry right?"
An affirmative squeak emerged.
"And you trust Harry with your life right?"
Another 'yes' squeak.
"So exactly why is it that you object to him dating your sister?"
Ron's mouth opened and shut but no sound emerged. Finally Harry spoke. "Umm. Could you put us down?"
Buffy shrugged and let the pair down. Then she turned back to Ron. "You still haven't answered my question."
"I . . . well . . . just . . . I don't like it!" he said emphatically. The others just looked at him until he wilted. "Alright. Fine. But if you hurt her Harry-" Ron started.
Harry interrupted. "I know Ron," he told the other boy, "You'll call your mother and there'll be seven wizards with muggle shotguns after me."
"Now that we've sorted that out," Hermione's voice oozed annoyance, "Might we get back to the real issue?" she glared around impartially, "That Buffy is some sort of bizarre dragonslayer?"
A small cough emerged from the blonde's throat. "Vampire Slayer."
"Right, vampire slayer," Hermione accepted the correction. "What exactly does that mean?"
Buffy sighed. "Man I wish Giles was here. He's way better at this than me." She shook her head as she spoke and flopped into a chair.
"What does your high school librarian have to do with anything?" Harry asked curiously. It was an odd choice.
"He's my Watcher," Buffy replied. That got her several blank stares and the other four opened their mouths, no doubt to ask her what a watcher was. "Okay." She held up her hands to ask for silence. "How about you give me a minute to explain this stuff and you guys hold your questions again until I'm done?" she asked. They nodded in response and Buffy explained it all. She told them about how there was a second world of the arcane unknown to the wizarding world, about how the demonic vampires she killed nightly and watchers came about and about her calling since she'd become the Slayer.
By the time she'd finished her audience was stunned and silent. Ron spoke first. "You died?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Well, since another slayer was called after the whole 'prophecy foretelling my death' thing I would have to say . . . yep."
"So even though the prophecy came true it didn't turn out the way it sounded like it was supposed to," Harry said musingly. "Do you suppose . . . " He trailed off and looked at his friends for support. Hermione seemed the only one who had caught on to his idea and she smiled.
But before she could reply Buffy, ignorant of parts of the subtext, responded. "Well the Master said that prophecies are tricky things." She tilted her head at him. "I think there's sort of a . . . mouldability to the things. Y'know, foreknowledge of the future can change the future and all that stuff." Suddenly Buffy's eyes narrowed. "There's more here isn't there?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" Ron asked her looking confused.
"I mean," she said laying great stress on the words, "That there's a prophecy about Harry, isn't there?" The others exchanged looks. "Oh please. It's completely obvious from the way Harry and Hermione were acting that something's up."
The others stared at each other in a silent conference. Finally those looks settled on Harry clearly leaving the decision of whether or not to tell Buffy about the prophecy up to him. He glanced around at his two best friends and his girlfriend one last time before gazing at the Slayer again. She simply stood there, waiting for him to tell her or not. He had come to trust her over the past month, the story she had told was convincing and he desperately wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that there was someone else out there who had a ridiculously difficult destiny thrust upon them by uncaring fates. Someone who understood what it was like to do so many terrifying and impossible things with barely a word of thanks from anyone and to do it all without ever having a chance at a peaceful, happy and productive life.
He made his choice when he looked into her eyes. There he saw a girl forced to go out every night and kill creatures that were once human, once her friends. Forced to fight and struggle with no hope of rest or an end and to do so while the world around her went on unaware of her sacrifices and punished her for her violations of rules that should never have applied to her. He saw someone like him, who found herself facing things down alone because she was the only one who could. Lothos, Luke, the Master and so many other demons and monsters that, although she had help, she had to face them alone. He knew how that felt. After the trials to get to the Philosophers' Stone he was left to face Quirrel alone, after all his friends' help he had to face the basilisk alone and he had never felt more alone than facing off with Voldemort after Cedric was murdered by death eaters.
The same guilt he felt for Sirius and Cedric's deaths was reflected in Buffy's face for all the deaths she couldn't stop. Mostly though, it was that knowledge that there was no one else to do what they did and that no one could ever truly understand what it was like to face down something far more powerful than themselves and know that there was no one coming to the rescue. Harry could see himself in her. It decided him.
"Months before I was born, Trelawney had a real vision. She told Dumbledore a prophecy that turned out to be about me." Harry paused, his mind flying back to his fifth year when he was finally told about it. "She said that either I had to kill Voldemort, or he had to kill me, but one of us had to die at the hand of the other." He nearly smiled in relief as he saw Buffy begin to contemplate his story. There was none of the pity he saw from his friends, just a simple understanding of how he felt. Terrified of dying, terrified of failure, determined to stop this evil at any cost all mixed in with a desire to be left out of it and not have to hurt anyone.
"Do you have a copy of the prophecy?" she asked finally. "I can't make any guarantees, but maybe if you look at the wording you'll get some hints about other ways it could go."
Hermione's response was prompt. Her eyes slitted half-closed in concentration she began to recite from memory. "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches . . . born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies . . . and the Dark Lord will mark him his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives . . . the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies . . ." Her eyes opened fully again and she noticed the slack-jawed stares of the others. "What?"
"You said that by memory," Ginny said. "How did you memorise that?"
Hermione just shrugged and turned to Buffy who said, "Whoa. I mean that was almost completely comprehensible. No speaking in tongues, no 'five hundred years after the fourth invasion of the city of whatever the origins of the situation at hand will cause a mystical upheaval one thousand years from then.'" At the funny looks she got from the others she said, "Giles usually has to spend like, days doing calculations in the library to figure out how to match the Aztec Calendar to the Julian, and how that matches to the Gregorian and then back again before he can even start to figure out what the hell happened when. Like I said, this is almost straightforward."
Finally exploding Ron snapped, "So can you help Harry or not!?"
"It's not that simple Ron," Buffy said gently. "I will do what I can to help Harry, but the fact is, no one ever really knows exactly what a prophecy means until after it's already gone down." She laid a hand on the redhead's shoulder. "I know it's hard, but all anyone can do is take things one day at a time and be ready for the worst while hoping for the best."
"So nothing then."
Sighing, she fixed her gaze on him. Ron blinked as he saw the pain and grief that she normally kept well-hidden. With a start he realised that he had come to be used to that expression on Harry's face. It was so much like the way Harry got every time Voldemort came up in conversation, or death eaters, or any number of other topics, that Ron blinked expecting her eyes to suddenly turn green and her hair black. Then she spoke and he felt even worse than when she was just looking at him. "I will do everything in my power to protect Harry. It's my duty as the Slayer, as his friend and as a human being. I can help you search for alternate meanings to the prophecy and help you try to make them come true. I can't ultimately guarantee anything about anything but the stuff that I personally control. And that means basically me." Ron let his eyes fall away and he mumbled an apology. She squeezed his shoulder briefly before letting her hand fall away. "It's okay," she said. "And I'll do everything I can to make sure Harry comes through," she promised.
After a moment of quiet, Ginny spoke up. "So . . . um . . . From that prophecy, is there a chance it could mean something else?"
"Sure," Buffy's mood snapped to a fully businesslike exterior startling the others. "For starters, that whole death thing could turn out to be a metaphorical death. Y'know, kind of a 'live life to the fullest' thing." She frowned. "I've had it pointed out to me repeatedly by many people that living and survival are very different things."
The startlement on Hermione's face had faded almost immediately as Buffy became businesslike and her mind began to examine the various angles and meanings to the prophecy. "What about the part where he has 'a power the Dark Lord knows not'?" Hermione inquired. Her face had a concentrated look on it as her mind sorted through repercussions. "Do we have any clue what this power is?"
"Love or friendship I think," Harry said. When the others just looked at him he expanded. "Dumbledore mentioned something like that when we went to . . . " he paused and cleared his throat, "Save Sirius."
"But what exactly does that mean?" Buffy said when the respectful quiet stretched too long. "Does it mean that your love of someone or something will be enough to beat Voldemort? I mean, there's the whole pragmatic thing that people would be following you into a fight because they cared about you and your cause so they wouldn't take off if things started to go the bad guy's way. I mean, just because he's got an idea doesn't mean he knows everything." Harry, Ron and Ginny looked completely stunned at the notion of Dumbledore not knowing everything. The discussion continued until they were forced to head for their next class.
************************
Miles away Voldemort's followers finally tired of the sport Angel provided them and hauled the nearly catatonic vampire into the nearby woods. One of the masked figures hurled the killing curse at him. Angel slumped to the ground and the death eaters left him for dead, laughing as they walked off. Minutes before dawn he roused from his stupor and staggered toward a nearby cave to hide from the sun. He spent the day there, shivering in confusion and fear as his tormented mind struggled to make sense of where and what he was.
When the sun set he knew only one thing. Somewhere to the northeast of where he was something called him. The feral vampire sniffed the air and set off at a lope toward that call. Something in his dimmed memories told him that feeling meant safety, home and his mate.
Buffy woke up with her usual gasp of shock, this time purely from habit. Her dreams had been confused and filled with images of darkness, but there was no pain in these. There was only a constant pull toward something. She quietly dressed and went to the window, pausing as she stared into the night. Buffy hoped that the dream meant Angel was safe and well, but ultimately she was still unsettled by the images. The soft sound of Hermione and Ginny coming to stand behind her pulled Buffy from her thoughts. "Are you going out hunting?" Ginny asked in a whisper.
Turning back to the girls Buffy smiled a little. "Yeah. I really need to get out there tonight." She glanced out at the darkness of the forest. "Things have been getting a little hairy out there-"
"You can't sleep, can you?" Hermione interrupted.
A shoulder hitched up in a minimal shrug. "That too," Buffy replied. "I'll be back in a while." Before the other two could protest she slipped out the window and dropped to the roof below and took off at a run. The other two exchanged glances and watched as the Slayer took a ten metre drop as though it was nothing then run further to do the same thing again. She vanished from sight only to reappear at a distance, vanishing into the darkness of the forest.
"Should we go after her?" Ginny asked.
Hermione looked at her for a moment, then replied. "I don't think so. For one thing, she's been doing it for months and she's still fine." The frizzy- haired witch glanced back into the dormitory room. "For another, we don't know what we're getting into at all and I'd prefer to have some more answers before we go traipsing after her." Ginny frowned slightly, but she nodded and the pair went back to bed.
TBC...