"So you found your way back all right?"
"Actually, found my way to the bench and pretty much stayed here." Oz
smiled faintly up at Giles, who was weighted down with a handful of bags
from the magic supplies shop. "You know you're going to get arrested for
all that stuff, right?"
The former Watcher chuckled. "Well, it has been a while since I updated
my criminal record."
"Not quite the reassurance I was looking for. You seen Anya and Xander?"
The older man grinned slightly. "Something tells me that we're not going
to see them again, until all the shops are closed." He replied, freezing
when someone tapped him once one each shoulder, then poked him in the
middle of the back. "If you remember that..."
The former Watcher's bags were dropped in Oz's arms and he swung around
with a savage haymaker, which Arthur Weasley quickly ducked under, before
both men straightened up, laughing and embraced one another. "How could I
forget that?"
"Don't tell me that's the normal wizard way to say hello." Willow
muttered.
"You're saying that our dad is a normal wizard? Or Mr. Giles?" Ginny
laughed, shaking her head. "I'm guessing that that was their... er...
equivalent of a secret handshake, when they were at school."
"After seeing what Giles does to Ethan whenever they see each other," The
younger girl stated. "It doesn't surprise me at all."
"Look at you, Arthur! I thought you looked bald in the fire, but this!"
Giles exclaimed, reaching up to tap on Mr. Weasley's bald palate. "This is
just bloody priceless! There are charms to stop balding you know...just
look at old Dumble! He never did bother uncharming himself."
"This coming from you, with your receding hairline? And the short hair I
might add!" Arthur laughed, shaking his head at his old friend. "What
happened to the 'I'm-always-going-to-have-long-hair-and-sod-the-
consequences'?"
"Council sent a demon after me." Giles grinned faintly. "It was a choice
of give him my hair or let him take my head. Since I have this peculiar
attachment to my head..."
"Its called a neck, Ripper."
"I am aware of that." A broad grin crossed the former Watcher's face, and
he clapped the balding Arthur on the shoulder. "God, its good to see you
again! Its been too long since we insulted each other properly."
"Nice to see that some things never change with you lot." Molly remarked
with a smile. Giles spun and stared down at her, a strange emotion crossing
his face. "Good to see you again, Rupert." She approached and hugged him.
"Its been a long time."
He gazed down at her. "It has." He murmured, then shook himself and
looked around to Willow, smiling again. "So, Willow, what do you think of
this insane family of yours? Are you ready to do the respectable thing and
throw yourself under a bus?"
"They're great." She shot a grin at her twin, the around at the group
behind her. "I'll probably still get everyone mixed up for a while. I mean,
one brother is a lot for me to take in, but actually having six to
remember..."
"Plus, Fred and George aren't exactly going to help." Bill gave his
youngest sister's shoulder a squeeze. "Just remember that Bill is the good-
looking one." He peered past Giles, to the spot where Oz had just stood up,
putting Giles' bags onto the bench. "Hi."
"Hey." The werewolf rounded Giles.
Willow moved to his side, looping her arm through his. "Everyone, this is
Oz, my boyfriend."
"The werewolf..." Percy breathed, staring at him.
"Well, human for most of the time." Oz shrugged. "They're all your
brothers?" He nodded to the red-haired men. They all eyed the short, green-
haired man with interest, their curiousity only matched by Oz's own. "Huh."
"Yep." Willow grinned.
Oz nodded. "Quite a few of them, huh?"
"Don't brother-in-laws get a say?" A deep voice remarked from near the
group and Ginny squealed, as her husband stepped behind her and caught her
around the waist, hoisting her off her feet.
"Harry! Put me down!"
"No!" Fred and George yelled in mock-despair, clapping the backs of their
hands to their foreheads in an overly dramatic gesture of horror. "Don't
say the name aloud! We'll have the reporters all over us again!" One of
them grinned at the other. "You know, we might have to start calling him
You-Know-Who now, so no one'll annoy us for autographs."
Ginny scowled at her brothers. "That's not funny." She struggled out of
her husband's arms and steered him around to face Willow. "Willow, this is
my husband, Harry Potter. Harry, this is Willow, my sister."
The youngest Weasley couldn't help staring at the man she had read so
much about. As it had been in the books, his black hair was unruly and
sticking up in all directions with a distinctly wind-swept look. Brilliant
green eyes glinted from behind gold-framed glasses, a cheerful smile on his
open face.
He was wearing casual muggle clothing, a pair of black jeans and a blood
red and gold rugby shirt that, on closer inspection, transpired to actually
be a Gryffindor shirt, complete with embroidered badge on the left breast
pocket.
Thrusting a hand towards her, he shook her trembling one. "Nice to meet
you, Willow." He said, his smile doing little to calm her nerves. She could
easily see why her sister had fallen for the striking Wizard.
"L-likewise."
"Let me guess..." Raising his hand, he pushed his hair back from his
forehead, revealing the still-clear lightening-shaped scar. "You wanted to
see it, didn't you?" She nodded, then looked down at his shirt again.
A wrinkle furrowed her brow. "Is that normal part of the school uniform?"
"This? Nah. Its the merchandise for the Rawlings books." He shook his
head. "You should some of the merchandise they came up with. I didn't even
get any credit, but I still went out and bought the stuff." He grinned.
"Imagine that. Harry Potter going into a shop and buying Harry Potter
merchandise...sounds a bit cheesy, eh?" He touched the badge on the pocket.
"I couldn't resist though."
"Excuse me," A rough, accented voice put in. "Can you not block the path,
please?"
Harry rolled his eyes, looking over his shoulder. "Viktor, if you wanted
in on the introductions, you just had to ask."
"No," A slightly shorter, darker young man stepped around Harry with a
suggestion of a smile on his surly face. "I am needing to go to the
Quidditch shop before it closes." He shook Harry's hand once, gave Willow a
cursory look and moved away into the crowds. "I will be seeing you at
training, yes?"
"Unless I decide to go on another Honeymoon!" Harry called after him.
"And I will beat you with your own broomstick, Potter!" The Quidditch
player called back.
Harry chuckled, shaking his head. "Typical Viktor." He remarked. "He is
right, though. We should probably sit down somewhere, so we're not blocking
the road." He motioned to the cafe behind them. "Shall we?"
It took a good deal of negotiation and fighting with the charmed tables
that didn't want to be pushed together.
Eventually, though, all ten Weasleys, Harry, Oz and Giles had managed to
wedge themselves around the four chastised tables. The family barely able
to breathe from being squashed together, but they were all laughing and
chatting anyway.
A chair or two had been saved for the missing members of the group, but
Giles insisted that Anya was unlikely to show up again, until she had spent
the whole sack of money she had taken from Gringotts.
As for the whereabouts of Buffy, none of them dared to even guess.
Almost an hour after he had told her to meet them back at the cafe, the
petite blonde Slayer sauntered up, humming cheerfully to herself. Her shirt
was mussed and wrinkled with smudges of dirt on it, her hair tangled.
"Hey Giles!" Swinging into the vacant chair between Giles and Oz, she
looked around at the Weasleys, who were all gazing at her with polite
confusion. "Uh, hi Willow's family." She nodded around at them.
"You must be...Buffy?" Molly hazarded with a tentative smile.
"Yep! That's me! Slaygal and all that." Charlie, Ron, Fred and George -
who hadn't bothered looking at the photographs of Willow and her friends
before they met their sister - stared at her in astonishment. Buffy gave
them a lop-sided grin. "I guess you were expecting someone bigger, huh?"
"Ron thought you'd be as big as a football... er...rugby player." Willow
said, her eyes dancing. Ron blushed crimson to the roots of his hair,
ducking his head over his drink.
"What can I say?" Buffy claimed a bottle of some kind of drink from the
middle of the table and examined it, before easily flicking the lid off and
drinking some. "Good and super-powerful things come in small packages."
"You're really the Slayer?" Charlie was staring at her. "I mean, you're
the one that goes around, bumping off the things that go bump in the
night?"
Buffy nodded, flashing a grin at Ron, who - if possible - went even
redder. "That's me." She replied. "At least six halted Apocalypses under my
belt already." A frown crossed her brow, as she accepted a chunk of toffee
from one of the twins. "Or would it be Apocalypsoes...Giles? Whats the
plural of apocalypse?"
Giles, though, was suspiciously eyeing a reddish smudge on the short
sleeve of the Slayer's shirt. "Buffy, is this blood?"
"Hmm?" She finished the piece of toffee, looked at her Watcher, then down
at the patch. "Oh. Yeah." She licked at her teeth trying to dislodge a
sticky piece of toffee, then added. "Don't worry. Its not mine."
"What do you..." Before Giles could finish the question, Buffy had turned
into a large, fluffy, white kitten. A puzzled-sounding mew escaped her.
Giles blinked as the kitten hopped into his lap. "Oh dear God..."
A puff of white fur exploded over him and he found full-sized Buffy
sitting in his lap, looking rather startled and confused. The Weasley boys
tried to hold in their laughter, but Fred and George fell against each
other, chortling.
"Uh...why am I in your lap, Giles?" The Slayer peered down then looked up
at her Watcher. "I was just a cat, wasn't I?" She hastily extricated
herself from the fur and her Watcher's lap, sitting back on her seat and
brushing fur from her shoulders. "Well, that was fun."
Giles raised a brow. "Are you going to-to-to tell me who the blood
belongs to?"
"You really want to know?"
"Actually, yes." He gave her the familiar severe look usually reserved
for when she was in serious trouble and she grinned weakly at him. "You've
been here less than eight hours and I don't want you being arrested or
anything like that."
"Here's the thing...he started it....well, he made them start it and..."
She sighed, rubbing her head. "Okay, start at the beginning. I got lost in
all the streets and ended up in somewhere called Knockdown Alley? Is that
right?"
"Knockturn alley?"
"That's it!"
Giles groaned inwardly. Possibly the worst place for any muggle to end
up. "What happened?"
Every one of the Weasleys seemed to be fascinated as well. Buffy rubbed
at the smudge on her sleeve and pulled a face.
"I was trying to find my way back and come guys came out one of the
stores. Two of them looked like that Frankenstein guy from High-school and
the other one with a vamp-pale face wouldn't tell me how to get back here."
"So you beat it out of them?" Giles smothered a moan.
"No!" The Slayer looked indignant. "I was being nice to them, until
Paleface decided to tell me he didn't like muggles."
"Just a second...what did this guy look like?" Harry asked.
Buffy shrugged. "Tall, thin, pale, pointy face, expensive black coat-
thing, looked like he could smell something bad." She grinned weakly. "I
thought he was a vamp at first, cos he didn't really look human."
"You don't think..."
Ron's eyes were sparkling with glee. "Malfoy." Leaning over the table,
even more interested, he asked. "What happened next?" He looked far too
excited about it. "Did you beat him up and teach him a lesson?"
"I think he was trying to hit on me, but he wasn't very good at it.." The
Slayer pulled a face at the memory of his cool fingers on her cheek. "I
told him to get lost and he did some kind of spell with his wand."
"A spell on you?" Arthur sat up anxiously.
"Yeah, but I broke his nose." She smiled brightly. "I did warn him not to
touch me or I'd break all his fingers." She shrugged with mock-innocence.
"I seemed to have accidentally missed his fingers and hit his nose
instead."
"So that was when he bled on you?" Ron asked hopefully, face alight.
"When you smashed the git's nose?"
Buffy shook her head. "That was when he set his two big pet poodles on
me." She replied, grimacing. "I've fought vamps bigger than them, but I
never thought human guys as thick as that would attack a girl."
"Crabbe and Goyle..." Harry murmured. "We went to school with them and
they never actually hit anyone..."
"They didn't actually hit me either. They tried, but they didn't manage."
The Slayer said. "If they had been able to, I would have been one dead
Slayer a long time ago. If I can't fight two humans, I would never be able
to fight groups of demons."
"So," Her Watcher was looking pale. "Not only did you get lost in
Knockturn Alley, but you beat up two wizards as well."
"Three wizards." Buffy looked down at her hands, then cried out in
annoyance. "Damnit! They broke my nails!"
"Three?" Giles asked faintly.
"Well, the blond guy tried to run off, after his boys didn't manage to
beat me up." A cool smile crossed her lips. "I taught him to be more polite
to muggles." She paused, then added pensively. "Broke every one of his
fingers as well." There was a pause. "Maybe a few ribs as well. And his
nose, of course."
"Oh dear God..." Giles moaned burying his head in his arms. "I'm going to
exiled for bringing a maniac in here."
"Well, they did start it, Giles." Buffy remarked calmly, wiping at the
blood on her sleeve with a napkin. "I dumped them all in the nearest trash
cans and that's when I ended up with the blood on my shirt." She raised her
eyes. "Lets just call it the revenge of the Muggles." She gave up on the
stain. "They deserved all they got for what they were going to do."
"What d-d-do you mean?"
"Well, they said I was a pretty muggle and that muggles could be used for
killing or for some kind of entertainment." She said, her voice cool and
level. "Something tells me that they weren't going to make me sing Karaoke
for them."
"Make you?" Arthur and Giles both seemed to go rigid, Bill drawing a
sharp breath between his teeth. Molly's hand came to her mouth and she
shook her head. Shocked looks passed between the rest of the family,
Willow, Oz and Buffy looking confused.
"Buffy," Giles seemed to have gone very pale. "Can you remember the words
of the spell he used on you?"
"Uh..." The Slayer frowned. "Imperial? Umpire? Something like that?"
"Imperio." Arthur whispered shakily.
"That's it!" Buffy nodded, grinning. Then, she noticed the grim
expressions on the faces around her. "Uh...I guess that's bad?"
"Its one of the unforgivable curses." Arthur said tightly, one of his
hands curling into a fist on the table. "It's meant to be illegal for any
Wizard to perform them, but some still do and seldom get caught..."
"Uh...why unforgivable?" The Slayer asked, curious. "It wasn't a real big
deal." She marked off the actions on her fingers. "I told him not to touch
me, he did the hocus pocus, then I broke his nose when he touched me
again."
"You fought the Imperio curse?"
Buffy gave her watcher a patient look. "Giles, you know I've seen what
badness spells can do. Remember the whole Vamp-Willow thing?" Willow went
crimson, ducking her head quickly. "I know what its like, I know its not
right, plus the guy was so sleazy I didn't want him touching me." She made
a backwards, upwards jabbing motion with her elbow. "Cracked his nose and
he looked like he was in shock. I guess not many people do that, huh?"
"We wouldn't even have the evidence to arrest him..." Arthur said grimly.
"You mean if I said that they did something to me, no one would believe
it?"
Molly nodded, touching her husband's hand to calm him. "I'm afraid so,
Buffy." She said, her face pale. "Even if we conjured the previous spell
performed by his wand, he's experienced enough to know to do at least half
a dozen other spells to nullify the evidence."
"I'm guessing that means I shouldn't have broken his wand, huh?"
"You...broke his wand?"
Buffy grinned weakly. "Uh...sometimes I forget how strong I was..." She
spread her hands in a helpless gesture. "He was saying Avara or something
like that and I didn't really wanna be at the receiving end of another
spell."
"Avada Kedavra...my God...surely he wouldn't..." Giles shook his head in
horror. He seemed unable to grasp what he had just been told. "Buffy, do
you realise that he was about to perform the killing curse on you?"
The Slayer raised a brow. "Its not like people haven't done stuff like
that before."
"No, Buffy, you don't understand this." The former Watcher's face was as
pale as Molly and Arthur's. "The killing curse can't be stopped by
anything. Not even being the Slayer could save you from it. Only one person
has ever survived it in wizarding history." He nodded to Harry.
The blonde seemed completely unruffled by what she had just been told.
"I'm still alive, so no biggie." She shrugged, drinking another mouthful of
butterbeer.
"Is she always this calm?" Arthur marveled.
"Normally she walks out of a fight with a few bumps and bruises." Giles
murmured, looking affectionately in the blonde's direction. "This has been
a good day for her."
"Someone trying to kill you is a good day?" Ron stared at her.
Buffy laughed. "People, usually vampires and demons and things, try and
kill me every day, so this was just a regular day for me." She replied,
raising her bottle to take another drink, but pausing. "Actually, that was
a quiet afternoon."
"So Malfoy's wand was broken?" Arthur asked quickly.
"Yup." Buffy smirked. "Both of them." Every man at the table winced. "I
thought you might wanna have a look at it, in case he was going to get in
trouble." Reaching behind her back, she withdrew a handful of splinters and
a stake. Picking out several pieces, she handed them across the table to
Mr. Weasley.
Bill eyed the stake. "So that's what you use to kill the vampires?"
"Yeah," Buffy looked at the stake with a faint smile. "My boring stick."
"May I?" The Slayer nodded, handing the stake over to the oldest Weasley.
"Man... you kill demons with a little thing like this?" Buffy nodded wryly.
"Remind me never to get on the bad side of you."
"Like Crabbe, Goyle and Malfoy?" Ron couldn't help sniggering, despite
the severe looks on his family's faces.
Bill nodded. "Exactly."