August 7, 1985
Title: August 7, 1985
Author: Manchester
Rating: FR15
Crossover: Harry Potter
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters and Harry Potter characters are the property of their original owners.
Summary: Only Spike could have his arse thoroughly walloped by someone’s total figment of their imagination.
The four-year-old girl with a fifth birthday coming up next month danced in the moonlight, twirling and hopping and skipping with total delight in her nightdress. It’d been a rare warm week of constant balminess for a climate better known for its damp and drizzle. As a result, the garden where a tiny blonde was blissfully gamboling tonight had the grass underfoot dry and temperate when Luna Lovegood wriggled her bare toes in this normally moist lawn.
After going to bed earlier, Luna had eventually woken up to sense it was well into the late hours of darkness. Not that it was presently very dim outside, what with the moon shining brightly enough in the clear skies above to give Luna a well-defined shadow for a playmate. The little girl had spent a happy while chasing her uncatchable silhouette around the garden after first leaping out of bed and next slipping through the back door of the Lovegood family’s magical house as quietly as possible.
Mummy and Daddy were sleeping so soundly in their own bedroom that they should be left to this and not disturbed, Luna virtuously thought to herself then. This was why she hadn’t told them beforehand going outside, after standing on tiptoes to grasp and pull down the door-latch and then closing very carefully the door behind her.
Eyes sparkling after coming to the end of her happy dance, Luna looked around the garden for some more fun things to do tonight. The girl’s gaze fell upon the gate for the path leading to the road by the house. Luna had been strictly instructed not to use this unless one of her parents accompanied the small child, but again, they were fast asleep and so couldn’t be asked for their consent to leave by the opened barrier. This meant since Daddy and Mummy didn’t tell her “No,” she obviously had actual permission to explore!
Beaming at what she’d worked out just like a big girl, Luna skipped over to the gate, pushed it open, and walked along the path. During this, she ignored the familiar tingle of passing through the muggle-repelling wards of the magical house named the Rookery.
Spike the vampire grumpily wondered how much further it was to civilization. At the very moment, his exasperated definition of this entailed an actual pub and a lot more folks around than the couple in their camper a few miles away he’d devoured earlier tonight. Well, this rural road he was walking on had to eventually lead somewhere with a bloody telephone! Just let him make a quick call, and the whole idiotic situation of him being lost in the isolated depths of the English countryside would be over and done--
“Hullo!”
Taken completely by surprise, Spike whirled around to gape at who’d just spoken to him from behind. Hardly believing his eyes, Spike stared with disbelief at the kiddy in her nightdress just a couple of yards away. Glancing around with growing perplexity, the vampire didn’t find any answers to the several questions which had just occurred to him. Such as, where the hell had that nipper come from? There weren’t any cars in sight on the road, or any houses in the surrounding fields and woodlots by this deserted lane.
Plus, wherever she’d popped up from, why hadn’t Spike heard her before this? His enhanced ears were now filled with the sounds of her breathing and heartbeat, but there’d been no indication at all of that little girl’s presence right up to the moment she’d greeted him. It was like she’d appeared out of thin air!
Deciding prudence was called for at the nonce, Spike warily replied, “Er, hullo, love. Where’s your parents?”
“Home,” was matter-of-factly delivered by the kiddy. She then went on to declare much more indignantly, “And I’m not a love, I’m a lovegood!”
“Oh,” blankly responded Spike, not quite sure how to deal with this last statement made by that child. On the other hand, she seemed to be out here completely on her own. Maybe she’d wandered off from her house or a campsite, like the one where Spike had carried out his latest slaughter? Pausing at this thought, the vampire took another, much slower and careful gaze around at the vicinity. He also listened as hard as he could manage, throughout all the normal nighttime sounds. Eventually finishing in this search with his heightened senses, Spike failed to find any signs whatsoever of other people around.
Besides him, of course.
And the wee lass.
Who looked extremely tasty.
Putting his friendliest smile upon his countenance, Spike squatted down, held out his arms, and jovially called, “Well, lovegood, let’s have a look at you, then! Come here, why don’t you?”
Without the least bit of hesitation, the little girl skipped right over and jumped into Spike’s cuddle. Straightening up with this child in his arms, the vampire and the young human studied each other at very close range. It was the latter of the pair who spoke first while attentively examining Spike’s hair, “We’ve both got yellow hair! But mine’s prettier!’
At those final words, the girl grasped a strand of her pale blond locks with one hand and lifted this up to shake it into Spike’s amused features. Now genuinely beginning to enjoy himself, the undead Englishman chuckled in evil glee, “So I see. Now, let me show you something I think you’ll find really amazing.”
Imperceptibly increasing his clutch of that kiddy so there’d be no chance of her getting away when she screamed for help at what was going to happen, Spike’s face suddenly shifted into his horrendous vampire manifestation.
Her rosebud mouth falling open in surprise, the little girl then stayed motionless in Spike’s arms -- until she reached out with her own hands and started gently stroking the demon’s ridged features with her soft fingers, all while burbling with actual delight, “Oooooo! Does it hurt, doing that?”
Now it was time for Spike’s own jaw to drop in sheer amazement at this extremely odd reaction. A second later, he felt that kiddy tapping a finger against one of his exposed fangs! Jerking his head back in abrupt disconcertion, Spike incredulously studied with his glowing yellow eyes the girl he was still holding, only to have her look back with equal interest upon her innocent face.
Feeling the things had gone seriously off-kilter in the last few seconds and should be properly returned to their original outcome, Spike squared his shoulders. Right, enough with the getting-to-know-you stuff. It was the moment to once more be a vicious demon sod, so let’s be about it and bite off her whole head at one go, eh?
With a purposeful glint in his lambent eyes, Spike started to open his jaws wider. Except, both of the persons there in the country road now heard a loud Whumf! coming from close by and much lower down.
Their heads snapping around in perfect synchrony, Spike and Luna gazed in shared astonishment at what had made this unexpected noise. Who was itself beadily looking back at them from its position standing on all four legs in the exact middle of the lane.
So far, it’d been a fairly peculiar night for Spike, and it had now just gotten even stranger. He wasn’t all that knowledgeable about what went on in farming country, but surely they didn’t have purple sheep roaming around there!
It was a bloody big one, too, nearly the size of a pony, and with a thick, heavy fleece colored a medium-dark plum. On opposite sides of its head were greyish horns the thickness of Spike’s biceps at their base and ending in needle tips at the ends of these narrowing bone projections curled nearly into a complete circle. Just when the vampire noticed this, he watched with disbelieving eyes while the round horns began slowly straightening themselves, with muffled crinkling sounds during all this. It finished with the horns pointing out horizontally over the ground -- and aimed right in Spike’s direction.
At that moment, the kiddy announced at the top of her lungs straight into Spike’s ear, “MINE!” while reaching out with both hands towards the sheep. Before the vampire could recover to ask if she’d really meant that, that girl now looked over her shoulder at behind Spike, and she repeated herself with matching volume, “MINE!”
That last shout nearly drowned out this second Whumf! coming far too near at rearwards of him for Spike’s liking. Beginning to hastily turn around, Spike got only halfway in this before managing to flinch away. This meant that instead of having both straight horns stabbing him in the left leg from the other lunging purple sheep also recently appearing from out of nowhere, Spike escaped with nothing more than a nasty slash running along the far side of that leg from one goring horn.
“Yaaaahhhh!!!”
That pained howl from Spike was accompanied by him leaping away from the sheep galloping past him. Just as reflexive for this vampire was swiftly getting rid of his burden, in order to free up his arms in preparation for tearing that soddin’ sheep into lambchops. Without further ado, Spike hurled up into the air by all his demonic strength the little girl he’d been carrying.
Completely indifferent to what he’d just done, Spike instead glared at where that damn animal who’d dared to wound him had stopped, turned around, and was having another go. Galloping along the road as fast as all four hooves would take it, the sheep rushed unswervingly at Spike, head lowered to present those deadly horns. A savage snarl twisting his lips, Spike leapt forwards with equal ferocity, arms outstretched in his shallow arc that brought him diving down unstoppably upon the sheep’s back.
As if it’d been nothing but intangible vapor, Spike’s body passed entirely through the mauve animal. It happened all too quickly to prevent him from belly-flopping with stunning force onto the surface of the roadway, hard enough to spread yard-long cracks throughout the upper asphalt at the point of impact. The immense THUD! of the vampire’s landing overwhelmed the Whumf! of the sheep utterly vanishing from sight.
A few seconds ago, while all the above had been ongoing, the first purple sheep lifted his head to watch how Luna was now reaching the apex of her twenty-foot toss upwards (and whooping with absolute elation throughout it all). Another turn of this beast’s head had him looking behind at a certain spot in the road. There, with a dozen now-familiar Whumf! sounds, a corresponding number of domesticated animals colored in a matching lavender shade materialized from out of thin air. They were all crowded up close to each other, forming a continuous circular pad of soft wool -- right under where Luna was descending.
With a happy shriek, the little girl landed onto the springy mass of hair, and then she rebounded back up again almost as high again. After a few more bounces, a giggling Luna came to rest onto her guardians, completely unharmed by it all.
Satisfied, the first sheep looked back at where a dazed Spike was shakily lifting himself up on his hands and knees while facing away down the road. Lowering his head, that sheep’s straight horns moved again. This time, they swung inwards, to form a protruding, solid, iron-hard horizontal lump of bone. Giving a meditative stroke of one hoof against the ground, the sheep then rapidly sprinted forwards with all his might, the brand-new ramming horns aimed in scrupulous accuracy at the main target for tonight.
Spike’s arse.
It was a thing of beauty, that dead-on strike with massive punching power in it. Ten yards, no less, was Spike launched further down the road, screaming in agony all the while. Only when the still-pursuing sheep caught up and dove in for another attack did the moaning vampire scramble onto his feet from the ground and start running away without stopping for the next two miles, until his wooly foe ceased in both this chase and its existence.
Back at where Luna was now perched atop one of the landing crew sheep, slim legs dangling past the neck of her ride, she watched in mild interest while the other eleven animals vanished with accompanying Whumf! effects. The last sheep carrying Luna then carefully walked to the garden gate hidden from muggles by the wizarding world’s spells. Without her touching it, this barrier moved on its own, allowing Luna and the sheep to pass by, and it closed just as automatically after the pair.
Luna’s mount went through the garden all the way to the back door of her house. Sliding off the sheep, the little girl gave this cherished manifestation of her accidental magic one last fervent hug around his neck, with soft, warm fur brushing against her cheek. As she let go to then step back, the young witch waved goodbye while this purple sheep then slowly faded from view. Sleepily yawning, Luna Lovegood returned to bed without disturbing her parents. This slumbering child spent the rest of the night contently dreaming about crumple-horned snorkacks.
Author: Manchester
Rating: FR15
Crossover: Harry Potter
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters and Harry Potter characters are the property of their original owners.
Summary: Only Spike could have his arse thoroughly walloped by someone’s total figment of their imagination.
The four-year-old girl with a fifth birthday coming up next month danced in the moonlight, twirling and hopping and skipping with total delight in her nightdress. It’d been a rare warm week of constant balminess for a climate better known for its damp and drizzle. As a result, the garden where a tiny blonde was blissfully gamboling tonight had the grass underfoot dry and temperate when Luna Lovegood wriggled her bare toes in this normally moist lawn.
After going to bed earlier, Luna had eventually woken up to sense it was well into the late hours of darkness. Not that it was presently very dim outside, what with the moon shining brightly enough in the clear skies above to give Luna a well-defined shadow for a playmate. The little girl had spent a happy while chasing her uncatchable silhouette around the garden after first leaping out of bed and next slipping through the back door of the Lovegood family’s magical house as quietly as possible.
Mummy and Daddy were sleeping so soundly in their own bedroom that they should be left to this and not disturbed, Luna virtuously thought to herself then. This was why she hadn’t told them beforehand going outside, after standing on tiptoes to grasp and pull down the door-latch and then closing very carefully the door behind her.
Eyes sparkling after coming to the end of her happy dance, Luna looked around the garden for some more fun things to do tonight. The girl’s gaze fell upon the gate for the path leading to the road by the house. Luna had been strictly instructed not to use this unless one of her parents accompanied the small child, but again, they were fast asleep and so couldn’t be asked for their consent to leave by the opened barrier. This meant since Daddy and Mummy didn’t tell her “No,” she obviously had actual permission to explore!
Beaming at what she’d worked out just like a big girl, Luna skipped over to the gate, pushed it open, and walked along the path. During this, she ignored the familiar tingle of passing through the muggle-repelling wards of the magical house named the Rookery.
Spike the vampire grumpily wondered how much further it was to civilization. At the very moment, his exasperated definition of this entailed an actual pub and a lot more folks around than the couple in their camper a few miles away he’d devoured earlier tonight. Well, this rural road he was walking on had to eventually lead somewhere with a bloody telephone! Just let him make a quick call, and the whole idiotic situation of him being lost in the isolated depths of the English countryside would be over and done--
“Hullo!”
Taken completely by surprise, Spike whirled around to gape at who’d just spoken to him from behind. Hardly believing his eyes, Spike stared with disbelief at the kiddy in her nightdress just a couple of yards away. Glancing around with growing perplexity, the vampire didn’t find any answers to the several questions which had just occurred to him. Such as, where the hell had that nipper come from? There weren’t any cars in sight on the road, or any houses in the surrounding fields and woodlots by this deserted lane.
Plus, wherever she’d popped up from, why hadn’t Spike heard her before this? His enhanced ears were now filled with the sounds of her breathing and heartbeat, but there’d been no indication at all of that little girl’s presence right up to the moment she’d greeted him. It was like she’d appeared out of thin air!
Deciding prudence was called for at the nonce, Spike warily replied, “Er, hullo, love. Where’s your parents?”
“Home,” was matter-of-factly delivered by the kiddy. She then went on to declare much more indignantly, “And I’m not a love, I’m a lovegood!”
“Oh,” blankly responded Spike, not quite sure how to deal with this last statement made by that child. On the other hand, she seemed to be out here completely on her own. Maybe she’d wandered off from her house or a campsite, like the one where Spike had carried out his latest slaughter? Pausing at this thought, the vampire took another, much slower and careful gaze around at the vicinity. He also listened as hard as he could manage, throughout all the normal nighttime sounds. Eventually finishing in this search with his heightened senses, Spike failed to find any signs whatsoever of other people around.
Besides him, of course.
And the wee lass.
Who looked extremely tasty.
Putting his friendliest smile upon his countenance, Spike squatted down, held out his arms, and jovially called, “Well, lovegood, let’s have a look at you, then! Come here, why don’t you?”
Without the least bit of hesitation, the little girl skipped right over and jumped into Spike’s cuddle. Straightening up with this child in his arms, the vampire and the young human studied each other at very close range. It was the latter of the pair who spoke first while attentively examining Spike’s hair, “We’ve both got yellow hair! But mine’s prettier!’
At those final words, the girl grasped a strand of her pale blond locks with one hand and lifted this up to shake it into Spike’s amused features. Now genuinely beginning to enjoy himself, the undead Englishman chuckled in evil glee, “So I see. Now, let me show you something I think you’ll find really amazing.”
Imperceptibly increasing his clutch of that kiddy so there’d be no chance of her getting away when she screamed for help at what was going to happen, Spike’s face suddenly shifted into his horrendous vampire manifestation.
Her rosebud mouth falling open in surprise, the little girl then stayed motionless in Spike’s arms -- until she reached out with her own hands and started gently stroking the demon’s ridged features with her soft fingers, all while burbling with actual delight, “Oooooo! Does it hurt, doing that?”
Now it was time for Spike’s own jaw to drop in sheer amazement at this extremely odd reaction. A second later, he felt that kiddy tapping a finger against one of his exposed fangs! Jerking his head back in abrupt disconcertion, Spike incredulously studied with his glowing yellow eyes the girl he was still holding, only to have her look back with equal interest upon her innocent face.
Feeling the things had gone seriously off-kilter in the last few seconds and should be properly returned to their original outcome, Spike squared his shoulders. Right, enough with the getting-to-know-you stuff. It was the moment to once more be a vicious demon sod, so let’s be about it and bite off her whole head at one go, eh?
With a purposeful glint in his lambent eyes, Spike started to open his jaws wider. Except, both of the persons there in the country road now heard a loud Whumf! coming from close by and much lower down.
Their heads snapping around in perfect synchrony, Spike and Luna gazed in shared astonishment at what had made this unexpected noise. Who was itself beadily looking back at them from its position standing on all four legs in the exact middle of the lane.
So far, it’d been a fairly peculiar night for Spike, and it had now just gotten even stranger. He wasn’t all that knowledgeable about what went on in farming country, but surely they didn’t have purple sheep roaming around there!
It was a bloody big one, too, nearly the size of a pony, and with a thick, heavy fleece colored a medium-dark plum. On opposite sides of its head were greyish horns the thickness of Spike’s biceps at their base and ending in needle tips at the ends of these narrowing bone projections curled nearly into a complete circle. Just when the vampire noticed this, he watched with disbelieving eyes while the round horns began slowly straightening themselves, with muffled crinkling sounds during all this. It finished with the horns pointing out horizontally over the ground -- and aimed right in Spike’s direction.
At that moment, the kiddy announced at the top of her lungs straight into Spike’s ear, “MINE!” while reaching out with both hands towards the sheep. Before the vampire could recover to ask if she’d really meant that, that girl now looked over her shoulder at behind Spike, and she repeated herself with matching volume, “MINE!”
That last shout nearly drowned out this second Whumf! coming far too near at rearwards of him for Spike’s liking. Beginning to hastily turn around, Spike got only halfway in this before managing to flinch away. This meant that instead of having both straight horns stabbing him in the left leg from the other lunging purple sheep also recently appearing from out of nowhere, Spike escaped with nothing more than a nasty slash running along the far side of that leg from one goring horn.
“Yaaaahhhh!!!”
That pained howl from Spike was accompanied by him leaping away from the sheep galloping past him. Just as reflexive for this vampire was swiftly getting rid of his burden, in order to free up his arms in preparation for tearing that soddin’ sheep into lambchops. Without further ado, Spike hurled up into the air by all his demonic strength the little girl he’d been carrying.
Completely indifferent to what he’d just done, Spike instead glared at where that damn animal who’d dared to wound him had stopped, turned around, and was having another go. Galloping along the road as fast as all four hooves would take it, the sheep rushed unswervingly at Spike, head lowered to present those deadly horns. A savage snarl twisting his lips, Spike leapt forwards with equal ferocity, arms outstretched in his shallow arc that brought him diving down unstoppably upon the sheep’s back.
As if it’d been nothing but intangible vapor, Spike’s body passed entirely through the mauve animal. It happened all too quickly to prevent him from belly-flopping with stunning force onto the surface of the roadway, hard enough to spread yard-long cracks throughout the upper asphalt at the point of impact. The immense THUD! of the vampire’s landing overwhelmed the Whumf! of the sheep utterly vanishing from sight.
A few seconds ago, while all the above had been ongoing, the first purple sheep lifted his head to watch how Luna was now reaching the apex of her twenty-foot toss upwards (and whooping with absolute elation throughout it all). Another turn of this beast’s head had him looking behind at a certain spot in the road. There, with a dozen now-familiar Whumf! sounds, a corresponding number of domesticated animals colored in a matching lavender shade materialized from out of thin air. They were all crowded up close to each other, forming a continuous circular pad of soft wool -- right under where Luna was descending.
With a happy shriek, the little girl landed onto the springy mass of hair, and then she rebounded back up again almost as high again. After a few more bounces, a giggling Luna came to rest onto her guardians, completely unharmed by it all.
Satisfied, the first sheep looked back at where a dazed Spike was shakily lifting himself up on his hands and knees while facing away down the road. Lowering his head, that sheep’s straight horns moved again. This time, they swung inwards, to form a protruding, solid, iron-hard horizontal lump of bone. Giving a meditative stroke of one hoof against the ground, the sheep then rapidly sprinted forwards with all his might, the brand-new ramming horns aimed in scrupulous accuracy at the main target for tonight.
Spike’s arse.
It was a thing of beauty, that dead-on strike with massive punching power in it. Ten yards, no less, was Spike launched further down the road, screaming in agony all the while. Only when the still-pursuing sheep caught up and dove in for another attack did the moaning vampire scramble onto his feet from the ground and start running away without stopping for the next two miles, until his wooly foe ceased in both this chase and its existence.
Back at where Luna was now perched atop one of the landing crew sheep, slim legs dangling past the neck of her ride, she watched in mild interest while the other eleven animals vanished with accompanying Whumf! effects. The last sheep carrying Luna then carefully walked to the garden gate hidden from muggles by the wizarding world’s spells. Without her touching it, this barrier moved on its own, allowing Luna and the sheep to pass by, and it closed just as automatically after the pair.
Luna’s mount went through the garden all the way to the back door of her house. Sliding off the sheep, the little girl gave this cherished manifestation of her accidental magic one last fervent hug around his neck, with soft, warm fur brushing against her cheek. As she let go to then step back, the young witch waved goodbye while this purple sheep then slowly faded from view. Sleepily yawning, Luna Lovegood returned to bed without disturbing her parents. This slumbering child spent the rest of the night contently dreaming about crumple-horned snorkacks.