Running down the corridor, she skidded to a stop just before the open door of the potions classroom. As much trouble as she’d be in if she was late to one of her sessions with Snape, he would find it equally amusing to chastise her about running in the corridors. On entering the room she found, instead of a sneering Snape pointedly glancing at the clock that would show she had missed all of five minutes of her torturous time in the dungeon, an empty room with a large pile of papers on the desk. Walking over to read Snape's work, she immediately wished she hadn’t. On every page of the heap of papers was an assignment Snape had set her, with a note on top of the bundle telling her that he’d been called away. Flicking through the sheets, she almost wished he was still here. Each page held a list of questions on a different vampire.

Buffy’s shock grew as she found names she recognised on the pages; ‘William the Bloody’, ‘Drusilla’, ‘Darla’… Buffy felt her hands begin to shake as she turned to the next page. Knowing what was coming but not really wanting to believe it was true until she saw ‘Angelus’ written in Snape's awkward script at the top of the page. She glanced down at the questions ‘What part did Angelus play in the massacre of…’, ‘What set Angelus apart in his method of killing…’ all the things she had avoided finding out about her lovers past set down in ink.

It was almost as much of a shock as finding out about Drusilla had been, except now she had met the side of him that could commit the atrocities she had only before heard him talk of. She had seen how well he could lie to you with that beautiful face, then transform into the monster he truly was inside, shattering the illusion along with your heart.

She told herself that it wasn’t Angel, he hadn’t done these things, but it was still the hands that had caressed her that had enjoyed the bloody slaughter of thousands, still his lips that had kissed and then sucked the life out of countless lovers. She saw his taunting face as he dared her to kill him, to cause the body she had worshiped pain, the look of love and disbelief in his eyes as he fell into the vortex. That bought her back to the present. Those things were past, dead, long buried. Angelus wasn’t a problem anymore and Angel… was suffering for his evil counterpart’s crimes.

Buffy quickly stifled any emotion that rose at that thought. She couldn’t let herself be found like this. If Snape had been here, as he had so obviously planned to be, when he set this work, he could have found out everything. In her shock at seeing Angel’s name she would have answered any question he had asked without a second thought. She gathered up the rest of the pages that had fallen to the floor as she clung onto the only one that made a difference. Placing the questions on Angel at the bottom of the pile she started to the Library.

Later, surrounded by books that recounted centuries of history from the view of vampires, Buffy was beginning to get annoyed. She had looked up half a dozen different master vampires, each of whom had been alive for centuries, and found no mention whatsoever about Slayers. She may not have wanted the wizarding world to find out who she was, but that a magical community with full knowledge of vampires and demons completely ignored the existence of the slayer riled her in a way she hadn’t expected. In a way she had hoped that, even though the muggle world couldn’t find out about how slayers put their lives on the line to protect them, at least this magical community would acknowledge and appreciate slayers work.

Finally she found a vague reference while looking up an obscure 15^th century vampire lead her to an old tome that by far outdated any of the others she had been reading. Whereas they had been relatively new copies, though of older books, this was an original edition of a book that had, no doubt, long gone out of print. Signs of repair could be seen on the cover and a number of pages fluttered to the floor when she opened it up. Scanning the scattered pages as she collected them together, she was astounded to see that on one of the pages whole chunks of text had been blacked out.

‘On the night after the massacre in the town of Gualdo in Italy, there came to the township a champion of the people …’ The next block of lines, no doubt describing said champion and what she did in the town, for Buffy had no doubt that the ‘champion of the people’ was referring to a Slayer, were all blacked out, the next legible line reading ‘… The Sect of Peccatori all perished that day along with their Master Calogero as did the town’s saviour…’ again the text was backed out. She couldn’t believe that these people had known about slayers and chosen to get rid of the information, preventing anyone from recognising the battle young girls took part in to keep the world safe.

She glanced at the book that the pages had come for, intending to look for more similar passages, and found on the front cover the words ‘Certain passages have been blacked out in accordance with Clause 75 of the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy’ and a date 1759. There was an international law that made them get rid of information on the Slayer? Why would the wizarding world want to ignore their existence, she would have thought it would make them feel better to know that they were being protected.

Perhaps it was the guilt they couldn’t handle. If they knew they would feel obliged to help these children sent out to protect them; sent to die for the safety of others. If you looked at it that way it didn’t seem so strange. Who would want the reassurance of knowing you were safe, if it also meant you knew that out there, somewhere, there was a sixteen year old girl in the battle of her life, just so you could feel that way.

Buffy dejectedly returned to her work, finding the information she had initially been looking for. Which, unsurprisingly, was riddled with sections blacked out in order to fulfil the requirements of Clause 75. She vowed to find out what was in that law, and how they had justified leaving Slayers alone.

For the next month she was left alone to her studies more and more as the teachers grew busier in whatever constantly took them off the school grounds. Snape and McGonagall were particularly elusive, merely popping in occasionally to glance at her pile of completed work and set more topics to research and write long scrolls on. This absence luckily left no time for Snape to cross examine her about her bite.  Flitwick was around much more often, but the Deputy and Headmaster’s constant absences meant that he had to take on many of the jobs that would have normally be done by them and had no time for lessons. Bored by the lack of anything to do after weeks of hard study, and her complete inability to find any other references to the mysterious Clause 75, Buffy decided to take matters into her own hands and get out from under everyone’s feet.

She knocked lightly on the Ravenclaw head’s door, causing a startled shriek to come from inside. The door swung open to reveal the small professor kneeling on the floor trying to collect back together a pile of papers that had fallen off his desk. Part of his problem was that the whole of the surface was covered in mounds of paperwork all teetering on the edge of collapse. Buffy knelt down to help the professor and ended up putting the pile on the spare chair in the room, allowing the professor a very small space on his desk to work on.

“Sir… I was wondering… since everyone’s so busy…” the professor looked at her quizzically from under his bushy eyebrows “couldIgotoLondon?” she blurted out her question. He paused for a moment, trying to sort out the sound into a sentence.

“I need some more clothes, and there’s some…” Buffy trailed off as she saw the professor’s amused smile.

“Of course you can go, Miss Summers, this isn’t a jail you know. I’m sure you have many things you’d like to attend to before the term starts.” He suddenly had an idea, and started rummaging through one of the heaps, knocking yet another to the floor. As Buffy knelt down to collect up the sheets, he found what he was looking for and proudly handed her a train ticket.

“That’s for the Hogwarts Express, go to Diagon Alley for a week and come back on the 1^st with all the other students. It’ll be a good way to make friends.”

Smiling at the thought that all her peers wouldn’t already know people, Buffy read the ticket “Platform Nine and Three Quarters?” she looked quizzically at the professor; no station had quarters of a platform.

“Right, you go through the barrier between platforms nine and ten. It’s a gateway to the wizarding world a bit like the leaky cauldron is to Diagon alley. Just don’t doubt that you can get through, otherwise you’ll crash”

Buffy looked at the ticket dubiously, but decided that the professor hadn’t had enough time to play a joke on her, besides stranger things had happened since she’d entered the school.

“If you just go pack your bags, I’ll get a carriage sent to take you to Hogsmeade.”