A/N Syg, yeah the road to competent Giles is a very, very long one, which is why I limit myself to addressing just a few different issues in my stories. If I address every single one of his issues in a single story that's all the story would be. But when you think about it, for a supposedly intelligent and educated man, Giles failed to be competent at every job he tried in one way or another. Even owning the Magic Box, an 1100 year old former vengeance demon who's sole experience with running any kind of business was shown to be raising rabbits that she wanted to give away to her neighbors was more competent at the job than he was. He left himself, his Slayers and their friends vulnerable and when those vulnerabilities were exploited he never addressed the hole the bad guy exploited, not one single time. As evidenced by the fact that another bad guy would exploit it.

Okay, I take that back, there was one time, when he did eventually remember the disinvite spell.

I see complaints on discussion boards about Xander never bothering to learn a martial art, but Giles is listed on the Buffy wiki as knowing jujitsu and aikido and could have taught the sixteen year boy he allowed to help his Slayer and never did. Why blame the boy when it was the adult's responsibility, as a reasonable human being who should have had the training, experience and common sense to know that? Although, in Xander's case since his arc was continuously rewritten it's possible that Joss had originally intended Xander to know some form of martial art from the retained military knowledge, since soldiers are taught CQC (close quarter combat). The military knowledge was supposed to play a bigger role, but got forgotten with the constant rewriting that was done as a result of the constant backlash from the audience.

I wonder, if Willow had been the one written to be 'the voice of reason' as Xander was, would the backlash have been as bad? A number of essays I've found written by fans do point out that Allyson Hannigan is a master at playing characters who do terrible things, but is constantly forgiven by the audience simply because she's cute. Whereas Xander's flaws are exaggerated by the audience, his actions, statements and motivations are constantly misinterpreted by the audience and no matter how many times Joss gave a statement saying that, such as in the case of the Lie, the audience's interpretation of the Lie was totally wrong, the audience insisted and still insists on seeing it their way.

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Harmony passed several police officers as she made her way down the corridor to the room the nurse had told her Johnathan was in. She overheard them discussing a man found dead outside his office.

"He's tore up bad, almost like a wild animal clawed him up. Autopsy should tell us more." People died in hospitals, she knew that, but in just the short amount of time she'd been here she'd overheard two separate conversations about people dying, the first one being two nurses discussing a child that had died of the flu. She felt bad for their families and it made her more worried about Johnathan and him having the flu on top of his asthma. She passed two children standing in a doorway watching the nurses or whoever they were, wheel away a guerney with a small shape covered by a sheet on it.

"It'll come again tonight." She heard one of them, a boy maybe eight years old, say. "It comes every night."

"I know." The other, a girl a little younger, answered.

"What will?" She asked, not sure why she was even asking. Maybe it was because they both looked so scared.

"Death." The boy mumbled, before shuffling back into his room, the girl followed leaving a stunned Harmony in the corridor.

"Death? Just how many people are dying in this hospital that little kids think it happens every night?!" Now not just worried for her boyfriend, but scared for him. She hurried down the corridor to his room, checking to make sure the mask that totally made her look like a doctor on tv that her mother had insisted she wear during her visit to make sure she didn't catch the flu too, was firmly over her mouth and nose before going into Johnathan's room.

"Hi, Johnathan." She said cheerfully, determined to keep his spirits up and tried to convince herself he'd be just fine. 'I finally get a good boyfriend who listens to me and likes me and doesn't flake on me and I could lose him because of the flu.' She thought. "You look totally gross," She told him. "but even if you didn't I couldn't kiss you right now, 'cause I don't want to get the flu too. Are they taking good care of you? Because if they're not, I could get my Dad to like, hire you a doctor of your own maybe."

"Yeah, they are, don't worry about it." Johnathan smiled as Harmony began to fuss, after setting a vase with flowers in it on the table in front of him.

"See, I remembered that real flowers make you sneezey." She told him. "And you're already having trouble breathing 'cause of the flu and your asthma. But hospitals can be so depressing and I had to do something to make it brighter for you."

"I appreciate it, Harm. "Johnathan smiled at his girl, that was Harmony, the real Harmony, the one he was getting to know. Someone who was cluelessly honest to a fault, who cared and wanted to do nice things. The last time his asthma had flared and he'd had to go to the doctor she'd brought him real flowers because that's what you do for someone in the hospital and she hadn't known that pollen could make things worse for him. She'd been so upset when she'd realized she made things worse when she had just been trying to make things cheery for him.

"I can't stay long, Mom could only drop me off for a little while, but I bought you a book on tape and your assignments so you don't fall behind." She pulled a tape recorder out of her bag, followed by the rest as she continued to chat brightly, doing her best to cheer her guy up. Her visit was the highlight of Johnathan's day.