Chapter 4
Summer vacation went by very fast once we were at the Weasley's. Before I knew it we were packing for school to start. Last year we didn't own anything and our trunks were just packed and coming back from school was just packing the few things we owned. Until I started trying to put everything in the trunk I didn't know I bought so much over the summer.
Well it wasn't that I had too much, I just had stuff. Before vacation we barely had any muggle clothes so the Vincents got us a lot of clothing, specifically me. And even though I could have left my stuff there over the school year since I didn't need normal clothing very often I really didn't want to. Thankfully I had super strength to help me fit everything in.
"You're still packing?" Angel asks as he walks into the room and I jump in surprise.
Going over to him I hit him in the chest, "You idiot, that scared me to death."
"Sorry," he smiles in that way that shows he wasn't actually sorry. "Why do you find the need to have so many clothes?"
"Um are you really asking me this?"
"Buffy, I went for a hundred years with only getting new clothes when mine were literally torn to shreds, and even then I still wore them."
"Well we can't all be vampires with no fashion sense. And we don't all have practice living like a hobo."
"As I recall in hell we both only were one pair of rags for three centuries."
"That's different," I groan. "If you're going to be mean to me just get out!"
He dodges the underwear I throw at him and in a perverted fashion smirks and puts it in his pocket before walking out of the door. Seriously what the hell! Since when has Angel acted like a normal hormonal jerk of a guy?
I don't have time to think about that though and just finish packing all of my stuff. By the time I'm done it's time for dinner and I walk down four flights of stairs to the kitchen.
The next morning rushes in a blur. With eight people going away to school there was so much to get done and so many things to pack. All in all it was frickin insane. Percy was being an ass and trying to get everything done himself since of course he's that much better than us. The twins were trying to undo everything he was doing and the rest of us were just thoroughly entertained. By the time we all pile into the car, which we all fit in thanks to magic, everyone is yelling at each other over the twins latest prank. We leave pretty early but due to Mr. Weasley's car that drives itself, and not very well, we make it to King's Cross with only about five minutes to spare.
My friend and I are the last ones to go through the barrier and am only slightly surprised when we run into a solid wall. Thankfully it doesn't hurt any worse than when I run into a fist, so I'm fine but Ron and Harry's heads are bruised from the fall. I laugh at them and they glare at me, "Sorry but you did fall onto your ass."
"Sorry we can't all be graceful like you," Ron spits out.
Angel snorts, "Buffy and graceful don't go together."
"Shut up," I hit him.
"I know I may be pointing out the obvious here," Harry speaks up, "but we missed the train."
"That could be problematic."
"Let's just wait by the car for your parents Ron," Angel suggests. "They can help us get there."
I shake my head, "I don't get it though, why would it close in the first place. Percy just went literally a second before us."
"It doesn't bloody matter why," Ron says in aggravation. "No matter what we still missed the train and have no way to get to Hogwarts."
"People are staring," Angel hisses at us. "Let's just go wait by the car."
Ron's face lights up, "The car!"
"No way!"
"Come on Buffy."
"No Ronald, you can't even drive let alone work that car. Unless I'm mistaken none of us can drive."
"Actually I find driving to be fun."
I ignore him and look at Harry who's been silent, "Buffy has a point. But what if the barrier isn't working the other way either. Then we're stuck here."
"I could call my uncle. Last time I checked he was staying in London." Well not really, but saying that he can teleport I figure it wasn't that much of a lie. That brings me to the problem of how to actually get in touch with him though. Reaching into my pocket I take out my cellphone, which Ron is staring at as if it's an alien, and pretend to dial a number and silently pray for him to come.
To my astonishment his voice appears on the other line and when I tell him what's happening he tells me that he'd come but is in the middle of something. With that idea done I groan.
"He can't come?"
"Nope," I pop my p. "But I have another idea. All we have to do is somehow open up the barrier."
"Which is magically sealed shut," Angel reminds me.
Harry laughs at him, "And if we do magic outside of school then the ministry will come and expel us. I already have a warning because of the house elf incident."
Ron shakes his head, "Plus all we have is a first year education and I doubt even you and Angel are strong enough to tear brick from brick."
I snap, "Not helping you guys." Suddenly I hear a loud growl and turn around to see fifteen foot tall troll coming our way. I point at it and we all scream. Muggles turn to look at us and I can't figure out why no one else can see it.
Instinct kicks in and I run to the other side of the troll and kick it in the shin. Only to my dismay it doesn't even notice it. I punch it a few times as hard as I can and end up with a broken hand. Probably wasn't a good idea to hit a thing made of rock, but whatever. The thing takes the giant club in its hand and tries to hit me. As I dodge it he aims at Harry and he too manages to roll under it.
Getting annoyed the creature aims at Ron and even though he is spared from injury his wand is not and it snaps in half. He sits there cursing the damn thing as Angel and I take turns feigning attacks on the thing to confuse it, but it doesn't work as well as we hoped. Apparently trolls aren't as stupid as we believed them to be.
Violence apparently is not the key for this to work so the next time the club comes swinging towards me I jump onto it hoping to grab it but find that the thing is too strong and get picked up with it. Pissed off that I'm on it he starts swinging it around. If my grip wasn't so amazing I would be flying through the air right now. Instead I manage to grab onto its neck and stick the dagger I keep attacked to my stomach into its eye.
The troll screams out in pain, but doesn't manage to fall. Harry's on the floor with a black eye and Angel is trying to dodge its hits. Without a wand Ron is hopeless so I throw him mine. He seems to understand what I do and points it at the club before screaming, "Wingardium Leviosa!"
His spell works and the cub floats into the air before falling onto the troll's head. It falls to the ground with an echoing boom and of course I end up under it. Great this thing is insanely heavy and on top of a broken hand I'm pretty sure I broke a few ribs as well. Years of broken bones have trained me to not feel pain so I don't scream. Angel, Harry, and Ron walk over and help push the giant troll off of me.
The everyday muggles around us have disappeared and have been replaced by security and police officers. Whatever they're seeing obviously makes us look psychotic because the police start towards us. Not even realizing what his actions are, Angel hits one of them in the head when he get too close and the rest suddenly draw their guns. When I'm on patrol and slaying demons I do run into the cops and have had my good share of altercations with them. And it sucks. I hate having to deal with them, especially when it's for no reason whatsoever!
They yell at us to drop our weapons, I mean I know I have a knife but that's hidden again and I had it out for about a second so they couldn't have seen it, plus no one else has a weapon. They repeat themselves and I realize they're talking about our wands. Harry realizes this and drops his, the other two figure this out and drop theirs as well.
Great so now we have no way to protect ourselves. Casting a spell would have been easy, they wouldn't have known what we were doing but if I physically attack them it would be a bit conspicuous and obvious that I mean them harm. Not that I want to hurt them, but we kind of need to get away.
Without seeing another option I raise my hands and surrender. Angel gives me a look of disbelief but follows my lead and so do Harry and Ron. They handcuff us and take us outside and into the police cars. And even though we're in England the experience is just as mortifying as it is in the States.
Processing us takes an unbelievable amount of time. It takes about five minutes for Ron and Harry but even two hours later Angel and I remain unprocessed. As hard as they try our names don't come up in the computer. Ron who knows nothing of muggle law doesn't even flinch by this but I can tell Harry finds it strange. We tell the dude we're American and he still cannot find us. They blame it on a communication and computer error but we know differently. When the powers brought us here they obviously didn't see us getting into trouble with the law and didn't worry about creating the false documents.
None of us take a phone call. Harry's aunt and uncle wouldn't help, we had no way of contacting the wizarding world, Ron didn't know how to work a phone, and well Angel and I were alone. Without anyway for an adult to help us the police scramble to find people to deal with us.
We're stuck waiting for a long time. The only thing that keeps me sane as we sit there is watching Ron. Since he rarely, if ever, travels to muggle London he had no idea what anything was. He looked at everything with an appraising eye and even confessed that the computer was even cooler than magic. I don't agree with him there, but I guess in his mind this stuff is magic.
Four hours after we arrive the police come over to our cell and grab Angel and me. As they pull us over to the main lobby I push down the urge to kick the guy carrying me, I don't like being manhandled. But I can't imagine that would help out case and find the will to not act on the impulse. Looking around the front of the station I see Whistler waiting for us.
He looks as if he's torn between amusement and exasperation towards us. I don't blame him though, the situation is incredibly funny yet he had to go out of his way to help us get out of the mess we made. "You two are impossible."
"Hey," I stomp my foot and put my hands up. "It's not our fault a troll attacked us."
"Angel didn't have to attack a police officer."
He looks down sheepishly, "I thought he was a demon working with the troll, sorry."
"We would have been arrested anyway," I assure him. "So can you get us out of here?"
"Of course I can, I got you out of hell didn't I?"
Oh right I forgot about that. "Please hurry then," Angel pleads. "Prison is not fun."
"When have you been in prison before?"
"Long story. Let's just say Angelus found getting arrested to be quite fun and had a blast killing all of the inmates."
I shudder and Whistler laughs at my reaction, "Your friends are getting out as soon as I leave. The Weasley's were notified of your whereabouts and a man from the ministry is coming to escort you via floo powder to the school."
"Are we in trouble?"
"No, it's not your fault although it's causing a lot of problems on my end. Just try to stay out of trouble." We both nod at him. "Okay then, your stuff is at the school and here are your wands."
He hands us our wands before walking out of the station. As soon as he leaves a cop brings a confused Harry and Ron over to us. They're un-handcuffed and the cop hands us over to a harsh looking older man in a suit who screams authority. I'm guessing he's the ministry guy and gestures for us to follow him.
The guy leads us to a back room in a pub across the street and lights the fire before handing us some floo powder. Before we each go in I give Harry his wand and Ron the two pieces of his wand. He frowns but steps into the fire first. Each of us takes a turn and before ling we are sitting in Filch's office. I guess the feast is still going on or else Dumbledore would be here.
Filch gets up and leaves except we aren't alone. The moment he exits Snape comes strolling in through the door, just our luck. "You four should be expelled. Revealing the wizarding world to hundreds of muggles, assaulting an officer, getting arrested, just because you all think this school belongs to you doesn't make it so you can do whatever you want."
"But sir, it wasn't our fault," I explain. "A troll was attacking us and the barrier didn't open and we were going to be killed. We were just protecting ourselves."
He throws a muggle paper onto the table, "There's still this to consider."
I look at the paper and frown; it's a picture of the four of us attacking a group of muggles. Harry' frowns, "Sir someone must have charmed the troll. We wouldn't hurt innocent people."
"It doesn't matter what happened, you still broke over fifteen wizarding laws and that is grounds for expulsion. None of you will be here come tomorrow"
"That's not your decision Severus," McGonagall says when she bursts through the door with Dumbledore right behind her. "It's up to the students head of house to assign punishments. And even if you don't believe their story I do."
"The ministry has investigated your claim," Dumbledore informs us. "They arrived to take care of the muggles memories and found the dead troll at the scene and that the barrier would only let people in and not out."
"I've decided that you will each serve detention for breaking the laws, but due to extraneous circumstances there will be no more punishment."
"Yes Ma'am," we all chorus and Dumbledore leads a fuming Snape out of the office.
"Don't repeat this but if I could I would give you points," McGonagall smiles. "Not many second years can battle a full grown mountain troll and live to tell the tale. It was foolish, but with no other choice you all behaved exceptionally well. Are you hurt at all?"
Ron answers first, "I damaged my wand but physically I'm okay."
"Angel and I have some cuts and bruises but we're okay besides that," Harry says.
"Peachy," I smile.
"She's not alright Professor," Angel tells her. "Buffy has a broken hand and multiple broken ribs. The troll seemed to take a special interest in her."'
"I'm fine it looks worse than it is," I assure them.
McGonagall ignores me, "Hospital wing all of you, I want Madame Peirce to check you out and straight to the common room after that, classes do start tomorrow."
We all nod and head down to the hospital wing to get fixed. She heals Harry and Angel in a second and it takes no time at all to fix my broken bones. In all honesty I didn't need it fixed; I'd be fine in a day or two thanks to slayer healing but whatever. Before we go back to the dorms she gives us dinner since we did miss the feast and I don't know about my friends but I was starving. The second we're finished we get the A-Okay to head to bed.
I was actually a little bit giddy to go to the common room. Over the past year the place had become home and I had missed it terribly. However all of us were tired and went to our respective dormitories only about five minutes after we arrived. Walking into my room I noticed my stuff was already waiting for me and everyone had left me the same bed I had before. It was just my year's girls still but more people would make it too crowded.
"Is it true?" Lavender asks the second I get to my bed.
"Is what true?"
"Rumor has it you're expelled," Pavarti explains.
I chuckle, "No just a detention."
"What trouble did the four of you find now?" Hermione rolls her eyes.
"A troll attacked us at the train station, no big deal."
They look at me as if I'm crazy but don't comment. I'm pretty sure they're used to it by now and after what Hermione went through last spring at Gringotts she understood that it wasn't as bad as it sounded and we could easily handle it. She still found us insane though.
"Aren't you all excited for Defense against the Dark Arts," Lavender says dreamily.
"Who isn't," Hermione replies such a girly manner it took me a minute to realize it was her that said it.
"Wait who's the new teacher?"
"Oh right you weren't at the feast. Gildoroy Lockhart is the professor for the year."
Yuck, I hate that guy. I don't tell them that though, I wasn't in the mood for a fight after the long day I had. Instead I just yawn and change into my pajamas before walking to my bed. For the rest of the night we all discuss our vacation before falling into a deep slumber.