The Eighth Weasley

Notes: Resisting the urge to say 'back at the batcave', this is just a short and fairly dull filler chapter, which leads into the yummalicious plot that I have all detailed now. Did I mention that this is going to be a huge story?

If not, it is - its going to be bleeding massive and I plan to try and post at least 4 chapters a week (Heck, they take me just over an hour to write (that's a tiny amount of time in my book) , so why not keep my readers happy?) :) I am also VERY keen to get to the main chapters, cos so much fun is coming up!

And, as usual, none of this is mine. Especially the Buffy aspect here. And apologies if this doesn't sound quite 'right' - I haven't seen S5 of Buffy for ages, so I kinda lose track of what exactly happened and who said what etc...

Also, I'm speeding up the content of what happened in general in S5, simply because I can't mix-and-match very well, plus the whole Willow/Tara witchy spin is missing for obvious reasons and I'm thinking Joyce is going to be diagnosed much earlier and not-die - just be a wee bitty sick (Note - that was a blatant Season 5 spoiler - oops too late. Spoiled it.), cos this is NOT an angsty story (Good Lord! I'm not writing angst! Someone just kill me now!)

On a slightly sidelined note, I've created a site where all my HP-crossover things will be archived as well from here on in - http://www.geocities.com/hpcrossover - just in case my account gets frozen again.

And now, onto the fic. And I apologise for Dawn if she doesn't sound like herself, but like I said, I haven't seen S5 in ages and I'm using my own 14-year-old sister as the model for this. And no animals/bird were harmed in the making of this fic - Mr. Gordo does, in fact, remain in one piece.

___________________________

The Key.

Her sister.

Huh?

Buffy was turning things over and over in her head, trying to make sense of what she had been told by the weird Monk-guy before he died. And the super-powerful Gucci-bitch who had kicked her ass.

It was turning into a seriously weird month.

Sitting on her wide bed, she stretched with a wince, her body still healing the bruises and cuts that had been inflicted on her by firstly, psycho-blonde-super-bitch and second, by the building almost crushing her a few days before.

Carefully lying down on the bed, she grimaced as she stretched out on her back, the South Californian afternoon sunlight rippling in through the half-open curtains.

The Slayer sighed.

As if finding out that her sister wasn’t really her sister but a ball of energy that was really a key to dangerous interdimensional portals and was being hunted down by a well-dressed, entirely insane psychopathic blonde wonder-woman wasn’t difficult enough to come to terms with, there was the fact that her mom could have been seriously ill.

Joyce Summers had been having a lot of headaches of late. She had collapsed a few days earlier when making breakfast for Dawn in the kitchen, after remarking on her head hurting and had been rushed to hospital.

Scans and checks had been done right away. It had turned out to be a small tumour just inside her skull, but the doctors had operated immediately and removed the lump, which - after testing - had proved benign.

Buffy had never been more scared in her life, than when she had been taken in to the Doctor’s office and told the news. Even though the tumour had been benign, the fact that her mother had been ill...

It was something that she - the Slayer and fighter of all things dark and deadly - couldn’t fight against and that was what scared her the most.

They had kept their mother in for a day or two, then ordered her home to rest and recover, which she was doing presently, downstairs, lying on the couch with Dawn keeping her company and providing her with a running commentary on the soap operas they were watching on TV.

Unfortunately, the whole situation had been made a lot worse by the fact that - seconds before she collapsed - Joyce Summers had looked at her younger daughter and asked who she was.

Something about the affect of the tumour on her mind had gotten past the spell that was apparently on them and Joyce had known for a fact that Dawn Summers wasn’t her true, biological daughter.

She had questioned Dawn’s existence in front of her.

Not a good thing to do in front of a normal teenager, but a paranoid one...

Joyce hadn’t meant any harm, though. She simply had been bemused by this strange girl she was seeing.

She had even asked Buffy what it meant, when Dawn had been out of the room at the hospital, but the Slayer had been unable to think of anything to say in response to the question.

Which brought the subject back to Dawn, now that mom was going to be all right.

Buffy was trying to understand it.

Her sister wasn’t her sister.

Not really.

But she was!

Buffy could clearly remember the day that they had brought the newborn baby Dawn, complete with wrinkly red skin, a button nose and tiny wisps of dark hair, home from the hospital, she could remember watching her sister grow and become the annoying brat who currently made her life Hell.

She could remember the vacations they had taken as a family. She could remember hiding in her closet with Dawn, hugging her crying sister, when their parents were screaming at one another before they got to the stage of divorcing.

She could remember everything!

Was it all created?

Was everything she remembered about their family a lie?

Had it all been made up for them by those monk-guys? If none of that had really happened to them, what had happened?

It wasn’t just her and mom, though.

Giles, Xander and Anya could all remember her and in detail. They could remember her almost getting snatched by Angelus when she hadn’t known he was no longer Angel. They could remember her getting Buffy in trouble. They remembered her.

Willow could too.

It was written right there in her last letter - ‘give Dawn a noogie for me’ - and she hadn’t even been in Sunnydale, or even in America, when the spell was cast by those weird monk-y guys.

How could it all be made up?

Yeah, that spell she had done had shown her Dawn wasn’t real, but she felt real. She looked real and acted real and smelt real and really annoyed real well. There was no way she was just a figment of their manipulated minds.

Buffy closed her eyes.

The Monk-guy had explained it, that Dawn was her sister, that the memories were shared by everyone involved, that - in spite of the fact that she was made of that supernatural energy - she was now human and now connected to the Slayer by the connection of blood.

They were sisters.

There could be no question of it.

No matter where Dawn had come from, no matter what she had been and why she had come to be, Buffy knew that - no matter how she tried - she wouldn’t be able to see Dawn as anything other than a sister.

Her sister.

And she knew that she would give her life to protect Dawnie, even if she was the most annoying brat in the world at times.

A clatter from the window-sill made her jerk upright, grabbing for a stake, before she remembered it was daylight and released a sigh, turning to look at the window, where a barn owl perched on the window-ledge.

“Merlin!”

Willow’s barn owl had a letter securely tied to his leg - Willow had explained in an earlier letter that the bird had decided that it was meant to fly over toilets and drop anything it was carrying down them, so she had resorted to tying all mail to the bird’s legs - which Buffy snatched and opened.

An indignant hoot from the bird made her look around.

“Oh! Right! Food!”

Letting the owl hop onto her hand, she got to her feet stiffly and walked down the stairs, glancing in on her mother, who was apparently asleep on the couch in spite of the television blaring at full volume, and her...

Huh?

Where was Dawn?

A clatter from the kitchen alerted her.

Holding onto both Merlin and the letter, the Slayer hurried through, to find Dawn scrambling down from a stool, onto the kitchen floor.

“What were you doing?” Buffy demanded, a little more sharply than she intended.

Dawn held up a jar of peanut butter. “Needed to get some peanut butter. I’m making mom a sandwich,” she explained, moving to the island in the middle of the kitchen and to a sticky-looking... mess on the counter.

“A sandwich?” The blonde stared at the heap of bread, pickles, jelly, salami and blobs of ketchup and mustard as Dawn used a spoon to scoop peanut butter on top of it. “Dawn, I don’t think mom would want that.”

Licking her fingers, the slim brunette girl grinned. “Mom always eats everything I make her,” she said proudly, squashing another slice of bread down on top of the gooey heap. “This is the Dawn-Day special.” She stopped short at the sight of the bird on Buffy’s arm. “Uh, Buffy, why do you have an owl?”

“Uh...” Sticking the owl-occupied arm behind her back hastily, Buffy tried to feign ignorance and ignore Merlin’s indignant squawks and pecks that were being landed on her bare arm. “What owl?”

Only their close-knit group knew about Willow attending Hogwarts and they had thought it safer not to tell Dawn, especially since she had fallen in love with the Harry Potter books.

It would definitely be a thing of the not good variety for a hyperactive teenage brat to learn that her favourite books were real.

The accuracy of that assessment was only emphasised when her sister put two and two together. Owl = bird for delivering mail = stupidly unrealistic = therefore, could only possibly come from Harry Potter.

It was so easy to follow the thought processes that Dawn went through.

Buffy started to count, to see just how long it would take. She reached five...

“Omigod...” Her blue eyes grew enormous. “Omigod! It’s like in Harry Potter!”

“No it’s not!” Giving Merlin a firm shake behind her back, Buffy hissed in pain as he pecked on her finger. Hard.

“It SO is! Let me see it!”

She tried to peer around Buffy, who was trying to back away towards the door and keep a grip of Merlin, without squashing him on purpose, although - if he pecked her again - she might ‘accidentally’ squeeze him a bit too hard.

“Dawn!”

Fending her sister off, Buffy yelled as she tripped over one of the stools and fell to the floor hard, Merlin breaking free of her grip and swooping out of the kitchen with an indignant screech, while Dawn squealed with excitement.

“I knew it was an owl! I knew it!”

Sprawled on the floor, her bruised back feeling much worse than it had moments before, Buffy glared at her sister as she struggled back onto her feet.

“Yes, Dawn, it was an owl,” she said. “It flew in my window to bring me a letter from Hogheads.”

Dawn assumed the standard sulk-pose that all teenagers seemed to have in-built in their brains, crossing her arms over her chest, chin down, mouth in a severe pout.

“I don’t care if you think Harry Potter is dumb,” she scowled, grabbing the plate with the sandwich she had made for their mother. “I like it,” She stormed past her sister, turning back to snippily say. “And anyway, its Hogwarts.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, Buffy couldn’t help grinning a little.

Dawn so rarely believed anything Buffy said to her that she - on matter of stubborn teenage principal - didn’t believe it when Buffy did actually give her an honest answer about what she was doing.

Limping a little, her bruises aching again, Buffy opened the fridge, searching for something to give to Merlin, liberating the last of the salami that Dawn had left.

She returned up the stairs, letter in hand, to her room, and stopped short, her mouth falling open at the sight of Merlin - sitting on the desk to the right of the door - pecking viciously as Mr. Gordo!

“Get off him!” she shrieked wildly, hurling the chunk of salami at the bird. No one, especially not Willow’s maniac pet bird, was allowed to harm a thread on Mr. Gordo’s stuffed-piggy body.

Merlin dodged the missile, then - picking it up - fluttered over to the bed and started pecking at it instead.

“Dumb bird,” Buffy muttered, crossing the floor to sit down at the desk. She looked Mr. Gordo over, but there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage, so she tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter from Willow.

***

Hi Buffy!

I just thought I would write to you before I leave for school, because I don’t think I’m going to have much time when I get there. I leave for Hogwarts tomorrow and I’m really nervous now, especially since I’ve been to the stores to get all the stuff I need for my classes.

I hope everyone is all right and that there hasn’t been too much slayage. I mean that you’ve been slaying a lot, but there hadn’t been too much of it for you to do and that made so much more sense inside my head...

How is everyone? Ron told me to say hi to you (He still goes red whenever I mention your name. I think he like likes you!). Mom and dad are great and I’ve been meeting a whole lot of other people that are friends.

Oh my God! I have to tell you about friends of Harry’s! I met Sirius Black, you know that guy Professor Dumbledore told us about? He is HOT! I mean whoa! I mean, not my kind of guy, but still...and he actually reminded me of Angel, because he was in a place called Azkaban and it’s kinda like Hell. They have these demon-things that suck out happiness and make most of the people there go nuts, kinda like Angel was.

Hey! I just thought of something! Maybe Angel wasn’t in Hell at all! Maybe he was in Azkaban! I mean, it would explain the crazies when he came back and the whole magic appearing-out-of-nowhere thing.

Ack! Babbling on paper now!

Anyway, there’s another guy I met called Remus Lupin and he’s really sweet. He reminds me of Oz. Maybe it’s cos he’s quiet or cos he has the whole werewolf thing going for him. I don’t know, but he’s so nice. I think he’s my teacher in Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.

OH! I met Hermione Granger!

She’s kinda like the High-school-me of Hogwarts. At least that’s what Ron thought, cos apparently she’s really smart and she does lots of research all the time. She lived in the library at Hogwarts, like we did at High school.

I don’t think they kept a werewolf in their library though.

Mom just called! I better go now cos I have to finish packing for tomorrow. Give Xander and Dawnie a big hug each from me and give my love to Giles and tell Anya that Merlin is behaving well now.

Love, Willow.

P.S. You guys have to come and see me some time! I bet Professor Dumbledore could arrange it! Love you all!

***

Laying down the letter, Buffy sat back in her seat, staring blankly at the wall in front of her for a few minutes, her thoughts drifting back to the super-strong Gucci-ho who had almost beaten her.

If she was after the Key, Dawn, then Buffy knew she would be in trouble, if she didn’t have magical back-up to help her fight and now that Willow was gone, she definitely didn’t have nearly enough of that.

She looked down at the letter and the invitation, almost smiling at the thought of seeing her best friend again. It was times like this that she realised how much she missed Willow, when she was gone.

And by now, Willow would be at a boarding school for witches and wizards, with a whole lot of powerful witchy and wizardy teachers to protect her and it, which was always a good thing.

A thought crossed the Slayer’s mind, making her brow wrinkle a little.

Then, she smiled.

That was it.

If the worst came to the worst with wonder-woman, she could always ask Willow if Dumbledore would be able to provide a helping hand and, if not, Dawn could always visit Hogwarts, to get her out of the way.

A blissful look crossed Buffy’s face at the thought of even a day without her sister.

However, the moment was broken by a yell from downstairs.

“Buffy! Mom says you have to stop teasing me about Harry Potter!”

“Yes, Dawn,” the Slayer muttered darkly, then snickered, wondering what her little sister would say if she knew that Buffy had met the infamous Harry Potter only a few weeks earlier.

Well, if she ever had to resort to telling Dawn about Hogwarts, Harry Potter, Willow being one of the Weasleys and the books being real, she knew that she would make the most of it as only a big sister knew how.

In the way that would annoy her little sister as much as possible.

The analogy of rubbing salt in an open wound came to mind for some reason.

A wicked grin crossed her face.

She really didn’t know why.

Really.