Aug. 9th - Talking
Title: Talking
Author: 3am_moonlight
Crossover: BtVS / Harry Potter (J.K.R.)
Rating: Gen / Teen
Word Count: 1,829 1,831
Timeline: BtVS: Post-Chosen & HP: Prisoner of Azkaban
Disclaimer: The Buffyverse belongs to Joss Whedon and HP belongs to J.K.R.
Summary: Buffy, Sirius, and some explanations.
Author's Note: Written for Day 09 of the 2019 August Fic-A-Day.
A/N: Follows 'Narrow Escape', 'Hiding Places' and 'Fly Away With Me'.
Edit Aug. 10th: I'm back from vacation and I have run this through a spell-checker. :)
Flying on a hippogriff was… interesting. It wasn't like riding a horse but wasn't all that different either. Mostly the feathers kept throwing her off, and the flying part was of the weirdness, too. There wasn't a whole lot of talking while they were flying, despite Sirius Black's obvious confusion and curiosity.
The situation must be almost as weird to him as it was to Buffy. Harry made sense. Harry bringing along a friend/classmate also made sense. But a random American woman escaping with him? If she hadn't been a Slayer she never would've done it, or even considered it. But there was something off about that Dumbledore guy, and from what she'd heard about the British Magical Community, it left a lot to be desired.
Sirius, on the other hand, didn't give off a weird supernatural vibe so she had made a snap decision to cautiously trust him. Her inner Slayer approved, so she would go with it. For now. He was flirting, more as a reflex to seeing a woman who wasn't a guard she was guessing. She had heard about how many men would find a woman, any woman when they were released from longer sentences. Or escaped. Buffy gave the back of Sirius' head a stern look, he better not expect benefits out of this.
The wizard prepared for landing nearly four hours later. She had no idea where they were, but one moment there was nothing but grass, hills, animals, and an assortment of rocks, and the next there was suddenly a two-story house in front of them. She blinked but didn't get a chance to ask as they were disembarking. Sirius tended to the hippogriff while Buffy looked around trying to figure out where the house had come from.
They had passed through a magical ward of some kind, but that couldn't hide the building. Could it? The magic she had encountered here was different from the magic she had been in contact with before. It wasn't like Willow and Tara's magic, it didn't have the taint that Giles and Amy's magic had. It was also different from Miss Calendar's Gypsy magic, so Buffy came to the conclusion that this was yet another kind. A kind of magic that required a magical focus.
Well, the easiest way to get answers was to ask... "Where did the house come from? And where are we?"
"This house belongs to my family, or me. I think. I have access at any rate and we can hide here without anyone knowing. It's a vacation home we haven't used in a few generations so no one will think to look here." Then he clearly realized he hadn't actually answered her first question and added, "There are heavy wards on the property, including making it invisible to anyone who isn't either a Black or who isn't brought here by a Black."
That would've been nifty to use on her home in Sunnydale if it could be reworked so demons and the undead couldn't find it or see it unless they were given special permission. Adding it to Willow's, Xander's, and Giles' apartment would be of the good, too.
"And where is this fancy protected house located?"
"Wales." Still adjacent to the Land of Tweed then, just from a different angle.
Sirius had let Buckbeak go while they were talking and it was now looking for food with one of its claws in the unkempt lawn. Which probably meant they had sort of, accidentally gotten themselves a pet. If a mythological creature could be a pet.
"Now it's your turn. What happened? How was Harry flying to rescue me when I had been told he was unconscious in the Hospital Wing?" He mentally reviewed his questions and then added, "And who are you? I don't think there's been a Yankee at Hogwarts in a very, very long time."
Buffy smiled wryly and stopped herself from saying 'someone lied to you?' Aloud, she replied. "Well, it's a little complicated and I'm not sure I understand it. Scratch that, I don't understand." Sirius gave her an amused grin as he entered the house. "But the gist of it is that Hermione was given this little hourglass thingy, a Time-Turner, so she could get to an absurd number of classes."
"Harry's a Potter alright. Potter's are always going for the smartest girl in their year. James was the same. Lily was a very bright and kind witch with a wicked temper. She had a Time-Turner in her Third Year as well, it drove us batty trying to figure out how she did it. They were Harry's parents."
"What I don't understand is why someone would give a teenager a device that gives them the opportunity to mess with time. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen." If someone had given the average American teenager the chance to go back in time, even if it was only an hour, all hell would've broken loose. Depending on where the teenager was located it could even have been literally.
"Easy there. It's heavily regulated. They are given rules for how and when they are allowed to use the Time-Turner. They're told all of the things that can go wrong and how to avoid them. They are also not allowed to tell anyone." The Slayer just gave him the look that answer deserved.
"Lily didn't tell us until after we had graduated, and yes, it was because she knew we would've found some… creative ways to use it." He gave her the shadow of a roguish grin before he winked. "She didn't like us at the time, so that was probably also a factor."
"Not love at first sight, then?"
Sirius laughed, "It was for James, but all Lily saw for most of our time at Hogwarts was an entitled, rich bully. She came around in our Seventh Year when James' head deflated some."
She nodded, it was irrelevant and something his godson would maybe be interested in knowing. He asked. "How did the hippogriff get involved?"
"Some bratty kid in Harry's class couldn't follow simple instructions and it attacked the boy. In revenge, the boy blabbed to his father who arranged for the creature to get executed. Dumbledore gave instructions in riddle form, basically, save Buckbeak to save you, and off they went."
"You don't like Dumbledore?" Oops, she needed to modulate her voice a little better.
"He gives me bad vibes." Sirius just looked confused again. "There's something about him that isn't right, and until I find out why I won't trust him." An understanding nod and the man changed the subject again.
"What about you? How did you get involved if it wasn't through Dumbledore?"
Buffy winced a little. "Conflicting magic, I think. Or colliding magic. I don't know, it shouldn't have happened. I was… going through a portal and somehow I ended up in a corridor at Hogwarts standing much too close to a couple of teenagers with a thin, golden chain around my neck." Don't ask why I was going through a portal, don't ask why I was going through a portal.
"Why would you going through an ornate door send you half-way around the world?" Images of Narnia popped into her head for absolutely no reason and she began laughing. Sirius first looked surprised and then he began looking upset, so she quickly apologized for her inappropriate behavior.
"It was a magical portal, a gateway if you want, from where I was and to somewhere else. But that somewhere else wasn't in Britain, so I shouldn't have ended up here at all." Avoiding the real reason, check.
"When magic does something like this there's a reason, and apparently it has something to do with you. Or I think it might. You needed saveage and now we're both somewhere else."
She gave him a calculating look and crossed her arms under her chest. "Why were you in prison and why did you escape?" Hermione had already given her the cliff notes version, but she was curious about how he would explain the situation.
"I fucked up. We all did." He suddenly looked like a kicked puppy. "We all trusted the wrong person. It was supposed to be a big prank. No one would suspect that Wormtail was the Secret Keeper since everyone knew I was James' best friend and the most likely person to keep them safe. But that traitorous rat had already been one of You-Know-Who's servants for a year without any of us knowing. .It-"
"I don't know who," Buffy interjected when he inhaled.
The former prisoner gave her shocked eyes. "You don't know who He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is?"
"No."
"But you said you were a witch. All magical people know who he is."
"I didn't say I'm a witch, and I'm not. I said I was going through a portal. Not the same. And you're dodging the question."
"He. Um…" The conflict in his mind was clear as day on his face. "Muggles aren't supposed to know about magic."
This was getting her nowhere. Every time she asked a question, he'd say something incomprehensible. "Muggle?"
"Non-magical person."
"I'm not a witch, but I'm not non-magical either. And that word sounds offensive."
Sirius opened his mouth to say something and then changed his mind. Instead, he found a piece of parchment of all things and wrote the name 'Voldemort' on it.
"Don't say the name, it breaks magical protections."
"Right, so your friend was a follower of Flight From Death, and then?"
He ignored the bait and continued. "The Potter's used a spell called the Fidelius Charm. It uses a Secret Keeper to hide a secret within their soul. The secret can only be told voluntarily, so torture doesn't work. I convinced them to change to Peter at the last minute, it would have been a good laugh at You-Know-Who's expense if it had worked."
"He betrayed them. When I came to their cottage I found James right inside the door, dead. Lily was in front of Harry's crib, also dead. But Hagrid was holding Harry and he was alive, said Dumbledore had told him to bring the toddler to him. Blinded with grief and a need for revenge I accepted it and went after the rat instead."
If Harry and Hermione hadn't made with the explanations earlier she would've been completely lost. As it was, she believed him.
"I caught up with him on a muggle street and we argued. He tried to defend what he'd done, and then he cut off his own finger, sent a blasting curse into a crowd of muggles, and changed into a rat and escaped down into the sewers during the chaos. The Aurors arrived right after and I was carted off to Azkaban and left there to rot."
That was a raw deal and another major point again the insulated community.
"I escaped to protect Harry from Wormtail."
Well, she couldn't fault him for that.
Author: 3am_moonlight
Crossover: BtVS / Harry Potter (J.K.R.)
Rating: Gen / Teen
Word Count: 1,829 1,831
Timeline: BtVS: Post-Chosen & HP: Prisoner of Azkaban
Disclaimer: The Buffyverse belongs to Joss Whedon and HP belongs to J.K.R.
Summary: Buffy, Sirius, and some explanations.
Author's Note: Written for Day 09 of the 2019 August Fic-A-Day.
A/N: Follows 'Narrow Escape', 'Hiding Places' and 'Fly Away With Me'.
Edit Aug. 10th: I'm back from vacation and I have run this through a spell-checker. :)
Flying on a hippogriff was… interesting. It wasn't like riding a horse but wasn't all that different either. Mostly the feathers kept throwing her off, and the flying part was of the weirdness, too. There wasn't a whole lot of talking while they were flying, despite Sirius Black's obvious confusion and curiosity.
The situation must be almost as weird to him as it was to Buffy. Harry made sense. Harry bringing along a friend/classmate also made sense. But a random American woman escaping with him? If she hadn't been a Slayer she never would've done it, or even considered it. But there was something off about that Dumbledore guy, and from what she'd heard about the British Magical Community, it left a lot to be desired.
Sirius, on the other hand, didn't give off a weird supernatural vibe so she had made a snap decision to cautiously trust him. Her inner Slayer approved, so she would go with it. For now. He was flirting, more as a reflex to seeing a woman who wasn't a guard she was guessing. She had heard about how many men would find a woman, any woman when they were released from longer sentences. Or escaped. Buffy gave the back of Sirius' head a stern look, he better not expect benefits out of this.
The wizard prepared for landing nearly four hours later. She had no idea where they were, but one moment there was nothing but grass, hills, animals, and an assortment of rocks, and the next there was suddenly a two-story house in front of them. She blinked but didn't get a chance to ask as they were disembarking. Sirius tended to the hippogriff while Buffy looked around trying to figure out where the house had come from.
They had passed through a magical ward of some kind, but that couldn't hide the building. Could it? The magic she had encountered here was different from the magic she had been in contact with before. It wasn't like Willow and Tara's magic, it didn't have the taint that Giles and Amy's magic had. It was also different from Miss Calendar's Gypsy magic, so Buffy came to the conclusion that this was yet another kind. A kind of magic that required a magical focus.
Well, the easiest way to get answers was to ask... "Where did the house come from? And where are we?"
"This house belongs to my family, or me. I think. I have access at any rate and we can hide here without anyone knowing. It's a vacation home we haven't used in a few generations so no one will think to look here." Then he clearly realized he hadn't actually answered her first question and added, "There are heavy wards on the property, including making it invisible to anyone who isn't either a Black or who isn't brought here by a Black."
That would've been nifty to use on her home in Sunnydale if it could be reworked so demons and the undead couldn't find it or see it unless they were given special permission. Adding it to Willow's, Xander's, and Giles' apartment would be of the good, too.
"And where is this fancy protected house located?"
"Wales." Still adjacent to the Land of Tweed then, just from a different angle.
Sirius had let Buckbeak go while they were talking and it was now looking for food with one of its claws in the unkempt lawn. Which probably meant they had sort of, accidentally gotten themselves a pet. If a mythological creature could be a pet.
"Now it's your turn. What happened? How was Harry flying to rescue me when I had been told he was unconscious in the Hospital Wing?" He mentally reviewed his questions and then added, "And who are you? I don't think there's been a Yankee at Hogwarts in a very, very long time."
Buffy smiled wryly and stopped herself from saying 'someone lied to you?' Aloud, she replied. "Well, it's a little complicated and I'm not sure I understand it. Scratch that, I don't understand." Sirius gave her an amused grin as he entered the house. "But the gist of it is that Hermione was given this little hourglass thingy, a Time-Turner, so she could get to an absurd number of classes."
"Harry's a Potter alright. Potter's are always going for the smartest girl in their year. James was the same. Lily was a very bright and kind witch with a wicked temper. She had a Time-Turner in her Third Year as well, it drove us batty trying to figure out how she did it. They were Harry's parents."
"What I don't understand is why someone would give a teenager a device that gives them the opportunity to mess with time. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen." If someone had given the average American teenager the chance to go back in time, even if it was only an hour, all hell would've broken loose. Depending on where the teenager was located it could even have been literally.
"Easy there. It's heavily regulated. They are given rules for how and when they are allowed to use the Time-Turner. They're told all of the things that can go wrong and how to avoid them. They are also not allowed to tell anyone." The Slayer just gave him the look that answer deserved.
"Lily didn't tell us until after we had graduated, and yes, it was because she knew we would've found some… creative ways to use it." He gave her the shadow of a roguish grin before he winked. "She didn't like us at the time, so that was probably also a factor."
"Not love at first sight, then?"
Sirius laughed, "It was for James, but all Lily saw for most of our time at Hogwarts was an entitled, rich bully. She came around in our Seventh Year when James' head deflated some."
She nodded, it was irrelevant and something his godson would maybe be interested in knowing. He asked. "How did the hippogriff get involved?"
"Some bratty kid in Harry's class couldn't follow simple instructions and it attacked the boy. In revenge, the boy blabbed to his father who arranged for the creature to get executed. Dumbledore gave instructions in riddle form, basically, save Buckbeak to save you, and off they went."
"You don't like Dumbledore?" Oops, she needed to modulate her voice a little better.
"He gives me bad vibes." Sirius just looked confused again. "There's something about him that isn't right, and until I find out why I won't trust him." An understanding nod and the man changed the subject again.
"What about you? How did you get involved if it wasn't through Dumbledore?"
Buffy winced a little. "Conflicting magic, I think. Or colliding magic. I don't know, it shouldn't have happened. I was… going through a portal and somehow I ended up in a corridor at Hogwarts standing much too close to a couple of teenagers with a thin, golden chain around my neck." Don't ask why I was going through a portal, don't ask why I was going through a portal.
"Why would you going through an ornate door send you half-way around the world?" Images of Narnia popped into her head for absolutely no reason and she began laughing. Sirius first looked surprised and then he began looking upset, so she quickly apologized for her inappropriate behavior.
"It was a magical portal, a gateway if you want, from where I was and to somewhere else. But that somewhere else wasn't in Britain, so I shouldn't have ended up here at all." Avoiding the real reason, check.
"When magic does something like this there's a reason, and apparently it has something to do with you. Or I think it might. You needed saveage and now we're both somewhere else."
She gave him a calculating look and crossed her arms under her chest. "Why were you in prison and why did you escape?" Hermione had already given her the cliff notes version, but she was curious about how he would explain the situation.
"I fucked up. We all did." He suddenly looked like a kicked puppy. "We all trusted the wrong person. It was supposed to be a big prank. No one would suspect that Wormtail was the Secret Keeper since everyone knew I was James' best friend and the most likely person to keep them safe. But that traitorous rat had already been one of You-Know-Who's servants for a year without any of us knowing. .It-"
"I don't know who," Buffy interjected when he inhaled.
The former prisoner gave her shocked eyes. "You don't know who He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is?"
"No."
"But you said you were a witch. All magical people know who he is."
"I didn't say I'm a witch, and I'm not. I said I was going through a portal. Not the same. And you're dodging the question."
"He. Um…" The conflict in his mind was clear as day on his face. "Muggles aren't supposed to know about magic."
This was getting her nowhere. Every time she asked a question, he'd say something incomprehensible. "Muggle?"
"Non-magical person."
"I'm not a witch, but I'm not non-magical either. And that word sounds offensive."
Sirius opened his mouth to say something and then changed his mind. Instead, he found a piece of parchment of all things and wrote the name 'Voldemort' on it.
"Don't say the name, it breaks magical protections."
"Right, so your friend was a follower of Flight From Death, and then?"
He ignored the bait and continued. "The Potter's used a spell called the Fidelius Charm. It uses a Secret Keeper to hide a secret within their soul. The secret can only be told voluntarily, so torture doesn't work. I convinced them to change to Peter at the last minute, it would have been a good laugh at You-Know-Who's expense if it had worked."
"He betrayed them. When I came to their cottage I found James right inside the door, dead. Lily was in front of Harry's crib, also dead. But Hagrid was holding Harry and he was alive, said Dumbledore had told him to bring the toddler to him. Blinded with grief and a need for revenge I accepted it and went after the rat instead."
If Harry and Hermione hadn't made with the explanations earlier she would've been completely lost. As it was, she believed him.
"I caught up with him on a muggle street and we argued. He tried to defend what he'd done, and then he cut off his own finger, sent a blasting curse into a crowd of muggles, and changed into a rat and escaped down into the sewers during the chaos. The Aurors arrived right after and I was carted off to Azkaban and left there to rot."
That was a raw deal and another major point again the insulated community.
"I escaped to protect Harry from Wormtail."
Well, she couldn't fault him for that.