She didn’t notice her stomach start to rumble until more than half of the lunch break had passed, but by then it was groaning with a vengeance. The slayer’s metabolism had made quick work of her early breakfast and was now demanding more sustenance. Making her way out of the tower, ignoring the whisperings of students in the common room still gossiping about the new addition to their house, she found herself wandering towards the painting which marked the entrance to the kitchens, before she realised that with the occasional clusters of students in the corridors there was no way for her to sneak into the house-elves’ realm without being caught. Reluctantly she continued down the corridor to the Great Hall.

As Buffy walked down the aisles between the long house tables of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws the rowdy chatter died down to a whisper, only to resume at a fierce pace behind her when she had passed the gossipers by. Not that any of the tactless attempts of the students to hide the subject of their discussions would have worked; with her enhanced senses she could hear all of the conversations around her without effort, and caught the occasional snippet from the other tables.

The only table that seemed, if not oblivious, at least to consider themselves superior to the excitement of the new arrival, was the Slytherins. Though she was sent a number of enquiring glances from that table, their self imposed seclusion from the rest of the school had obviously prevented them from being party to either the partial ‘truth’ or the extraordinarily exaggerated rumours that were being spread around about the arrival of an American at Hogwarts.

Luckily for Buffy the awkwardness with the fifth years left by her earlier outburst allowed her some respite from questions, allowing her to get a quick meal and then rush off to find seclusion in the potions labs as she waited for her next lesson.

Snape swooped into the classroom and started to sort through the notes on his desk, oblivious to the pupil in the back row of his dank retreat. Having found the scroll he was looking for, he made his way up the aisle between the desks, his opinion of what was written on the parchment exhibited by an occasional grimace or sneer. Reaching the back of the room, he paused for a moment as he finished the page, then unlocked the cabinet and began a quick inspection of his stock of ingredients.

It wasn’t until he turned around following his inspection of the cupboard that he noticed the student already seated in his classroom. It took even longer for him to connect the girl comfortably seated in Hogwarts uniform to the one he had met in the summer.

Without the assistance of the California sun and some help from dyes, the bright blonde of Buffy’s hair had lost its radiance and showed large chunks of hair at the roots that betrayed her natural hair colour, a much darker almost dirty blonde that somehow managed to make her expressive eyes stand out more from her face. Her features, though still gaunt, had gained some substance through healthier eating; and her skin no longer seemed drawn tight over her bones. Since she was no longer wracked by her grief, her strength of posture, economy of movement and constant awareness gave her a strong presence without any conscious effort on her part.

In the time it took the professor to find and identify the intruder, Buffy too had been observing the man who had tried hardest and come closest out of all the people she had met in the wizarding world to uncovering her secret. The changes would be unnoticeable in anyone less well versed in the study of human movement, something any true fighter needed to do in order to anticipate their foe’s attacks; but it was obvious that the man was exhausted, if not physically, at least mentally, and perhaps, though she hadn’t yet had enough time around wizards to be able to identify it, exhausted magically as well.

This was especially evident in his reaction to her. Where he would have been ecstatic to get a chance to torment her alone in the hopes of extracting a snippet that could reveal her past, there was no eager spark in his dark eyes; even his face didn’t move far past its fixed sneer.

“Miss Summers, so nice to see you. I was pleasantly surprised to find your work was barely worse than a Gryffindor second year’s when I returned.” The flash of anger that rose at his description of her, though not good, at least adequate potions skills made several of the glass jars on the wall beside her rattle on their shelves.

Without nightly slaying to both ease her frayed temper and expend some of her seemingly inexhaustible energy supply, Buffy had found that more and more often a strong emotion or need would cause magical repercussions. While these had primarily made her teachers treat her like a young child still unable to control its bladder enough to keep its sheets dry, she had seen some looks of worry on the faces of the teachers as these outbursts hadn’t decreased significantly in either frequency or intensity.

These flares of power, Buffy had read were the result of large amounts of magical energy manifesting in young pre-school wizards. Without any way of using the power up routinely as it was in lessons at school and in the daily course of life for adult wizards, the power would overflow and be expended when the child felt bursts of emotions. Unfortunately for Buffy her Slayer power, now that it was no longer used in enhancing her senses and strength during hunts or to heal battle wounds, was using magic as a way to escape from her system. As the tremors subsided, Buffy turned back to the professor to see a satisfied smirk cross his face. The childish associations of such outbursts had made them a thing of great amusement to the potions professor.

“Now now, we wouldn’t want to break anything  would we?” Buffy heard the first true emotion in Snape’s tone: his enjoyment of the reaction he had managed to cause in the usually unresponsive girl. In every other encounter Buffy had fought hard to control herself in the presence of the potions Professor, having to keep her face fixed and magic restrained so that he wouldn’t extract any clues to her secret. She saw triumph cross the features before they settled back into a hungry sneer.

He glanced at her shoulder at the place where the scar which had seemingly confirmed his suspicions about the girl was hidden under her robes. “I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine in International Muggle Relations while you were away. It seems a ‘Buffy Anne Summers’ ran away while under charges for murder from Sunnydale California. The suspect was expelled by her school due to her delinquent behaviour and managed to add an attack upon police officers to her… extensive record before she disappeared.”

Buffy was careful to control her anger at his intrusion into her life to a slow simmer which merely made the whistle of a draft in the corridor outside. If Buffy hadn’t been able to tell that it was her power, she doubted it would have been noticeable as anything other than the usual creaks and groans of the castle.

“If I’m wanted for murder, why was I let out of the country?” Buffy’s calm response caused a flush of anger on Snape’s pale complexion. “Because,” he sneered “the charges were dropped before you were captured by the Bureau.” His tone clearly displayed his disgust at this oversight. “I’m on to you though, burning down buildings, skipping lessons, murder. You’re more than you seem and I will find out what.” By the end of his rant Snape’s eyes were flashing in his rage.

Refusing to rise to the obvious threats, Buffy thought about the charges laid at her door. If Snape knew about her past actions why hadn’t anyone called her up on them? Suddenly the reason for the professor’s bile was obvious. “I’m sure you’ve told Dumbledore everything I’ve been accused of.” A flash of his eyes was all it took to confirm her belief that the Headmaster knew and didn’t care about her past. “It was the lifetime dream of my principal to expel me and it took him more than a year to do it. Do you seriously think you’ll find out anything more than he did? He couldn’t even make the murder charge stick.” There seemed no point anymore in denying that there was something to hide, but it was definitely enjoyable to put the greasy man in his place.

Before Snape could splutter out a retort the lunch break ended and a sullen group of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs trouped silently into the classroom. Buffy ignored the flashes of anger that were directed at her throughout the class and concentrated on making a passable version of the deep-numb which Pervy the Prefect had accurately predicted would be their first assignment.

Entering the Great Hall after the last class, Buffy was pleasantly surprised that, though she still got interested glances from many in the Hall, she no longer seemed to be the talk of the school. She had paused for a moment to look down the Ravenclaw table for a place to sit away from overly interfering students when she was hit into from behind.

With only her natural balance as a slayer keeping her on her feet, she turned and had to force herself not to move into a position ready to fight. The grace of her movements afforded her an appreciative look from the boy that seemed determined to dog her steps.

“…try to look where you’re going, we don’t want people thinking you belong in Hufflepuff” He finished berating one of his gorilla-like friends that seemed to almost constantly follow the blonde boy around before turning to Buffy. “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t think we’ve been introduced, I’m Draco Malfoy” Buffy looked in disgust at the hand that the boy extended. When it became obvious that the boy intended neither to go away nor leave her alone she replied with a simple “Buffy.”

“It’s wonderful to have students from overseas visiting our school, The Minister told my father…” his pompous small talk was interrupted by a confused grunt from his companion.

The large boy was staring into space with a dazed and confused expression twisted onto his features and his leg bent as if he was about to move. “It looks like your clockwork bodyguard’s tried thinking and walking at the same time and been overloaded. You might have to reboot him.” Buffy was about to move off as Draco attempted to decipher her sentence when a large girl interrupted them, looking at Buffy with eyes full of jealousy and scorn.

“You’re not talking to this mud-blood are you, Draco? It’s bad enough they let in British Muggles, let alone foisting American scum onto us too.”

Buffy escaped the Slytherins as Draco stared at her in horror, making her way to the opposite end of the Ravenclaw table where she ended up seated next to some of the girls she’d been talking to earlier that day. Though they hadn’t been talking about her, they quieted their conversation when she sat down and looked around awkwardly, unsure what to say to the girl they’d reminded of her boyfriends demise.

Padma sat down with the group, seemingly oblivious to the extended silence, and immediately started talking quickly at the group. “Did you hear what Harry said?” She continued, obviously not expecting anyone else to answer, “He called Umbridge a liar.” Her voice dropped from almost happy to fearful, “Said You-Know-Who was really back and that it was him that killed Cedric.”

Silence extended over their whole section of the table at those words before it was broken by a derogatory snort from further along the table. “Of course Harry says that. The boy’s plain barmy. Thinks he’s duelled You-Know-Who” the boy paused for effect “and escaped. Who does he think he is, an Auror?”

Curious Buffy turned to Padma “Why do you call someone You-Know-Who; and who’s Harry?”

After the initial disbelief that anyone could know nothing about Voldemort’s reign, the group started explaining. Through the jumbled comments and constant backtracking as they realised how little Buffy knew about the dangers of their world, the story came out. It sounded like a fairy tale, it sounded unreal, it sounded like every explanation of the demonic world Giles had ever given her.

An evil wizard terrorising the wizarding world. His sudden demise caused by a child that hadn’t even learnt to form words. The child’s disappearance into obscurity. His sudden reappearance and his arrival at Hogwarts. The strange events that seemed to always surround him.

Buffy went to sleep that night with her head full of thoughts of spells that could control your mind, cause searing pain, kill. The darker side of the wizarding world had been uncovered and, though she tried, she couldn’t get rid of an ominous feeling. If she had the dates right, the Potter kid claimed this evil wizard had returned to life on the very day that she had prevented Acathla from sucking the world into hell, that she had run away and all this had started. Leprechauns might exist, but no-one would believe in a coincidence that big.