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Beyond the Veil
Scorpio
SERIES: Beyond the Veil
TITLE: 1 – A Warm Welcome
FANDOM: Harry Potter/Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Multi)
RATING: PG (Varies)
SUMMARY: Sirius Black falls through the Veil at the DOM. Contrary to popular misconception; it does not lead to the Realm of Death.
Beyond the Veil 1 – A Warm Welcome
A jet of burning red light leapt from Bellatrix’s wand and headed straight for him. Cackling with mad laughter and feeling more alive than he had since the night James and Lily were murdered, Sirius ducked under the curse as it sizzled the air above his head on its way past. His still slowly healing mind dredged up a thousand different memories from his childhood and in each one, Bellatrix was teasing him with her innate cruelty and with his mother’s full approval. It felt good to finally be able to turn the tables.
“Come on, you can do better than that!”
Laughter bubbled up out of him as he watched her once beautiful face twist up into a macabre mask of hatred and frustration. Her wand flicked again and sent another sizzling blaze of burning red light. This time, however, it was faster and stronger. Sirius’ mind screamed at him to duck, but his Azkaban withered body simply couldn’t respond the way it did when he was still in his prime. The curse hit him squarely in the chest. Acidic pain burrowed in under his skin and ate away at his raw and screaming nerves.
He was shocked, not so much at the pain, but at the fact that his cousin actually managed to hit him with her curse. Somewhere in the back of his mind Sirius had maintained a core of arrogance that he, along with his best friend James, were somehow better, smarter and more worthy than the hateful Slytherins they had faced in school.
The pain and shock coupled to steal his balance and he began to fall. Harry appeared in his field of vision, horror and loss stamped across his face, making him seem an old man trapped inside a child’s body. And that was all it took for Sirius to have a much needed epiphany. Harry wasn’t James and this wasn’t some game, nor was it another in a long line of pranks targeting the petty bullies and demons of a child’s nightmare. It wasn’t about who was right or wrong, it wasn’t even about who was good or bad. It was about bloody and deadly war. It was about both Voldemort and Dumbledore doing everything in their individual power to drag his godson directly into the middle of that war.
He, Sirius Black, had been a fool.
Sirius’ expected impact with the ground never happened, instead he saw a flash of a strange stone arch with a fluttering gauzy material slide past him and then he was enveloped in pitch black icy nothingness. There was no light, no heat, no up or down, left or right. The only thing that pierced that blackness was the tingling and burning aftereffects of the curse Bellatrix had hit him with. He could feel the nerve-endings in his chest and arms twitch and jump with lingering pain, but that was all. There was no air to breathe, no gravity to pull him to the earth. Just endless spinning black twisting and turning about him for eternity in all directions.
A sudden and brief flash of light blinded him followed by the soft fluttering of gauze brushing past his face. Heat and air rushed in to sting his numb body and gravity asserted itself wildly, making him feel heavier than he should be. Without warning, Sirius slammed into the ground, knocking the wind out of his lungs and sending him tumbling. His wand fell from his deadened hand and skittered across a smooth cement floor even as he grunted and moaned through his injuries.
Somewhere overhead an alarm began whining its shrill whistle and he heard a feminine voice mutter a startlingly dirty word followed by footsteps running his way. Confused, angry, frightened and wondering where in the name of Merlin he’d ended at, Sirius tried to push himself up off of the ground. He made it all the way to his unsteady knees when a young woman with long light brown hair and wearing muggle clothes darted around a free-standing shelving unit that held all manner of bric-a-brac.
“BUUFFFF-FFFEEEE!”
Sirius had half a second to wonder what a ‘buffy’ was and why the young woman was screaming for it at the top of her lungs and then she deftly planted one foot solidly on the floor and lifted the other in a round-house kick aimed directly for his head. Pain exploded behind his eyes to match the blaring white light exploding in front of them. Then the world faded away into a soft warm darkness, so different from the one before and Sirius Black knew no more.
2 – Red Haired AngelA sense of movement jolted his dormant mind into stirring. Nauseating vertigo as gravity flipped him over, pulling down at his back instead of at his stinging chest. Echoes of movement shimmered along his nerves even after he was sure that his body was stopped. An iron band squeezed his skull tightly, pain crackled along the skin of his chest, the scent of burnt hair and ozone filled his nose and his hands and feet were encased in blocks of ice. Voices in the distance murmured above him, but they were too soft, too far away. He drifted back into unconsciousness with a groan.
*
He slammed into a surface made of cotton and pain, a gasp of breath escaped his lungs as a cry for mercy. Voices shouted above him, his head throbbing with every syllable.
“Careful! Don’t drop him like that! Just… just shift him up higher on the bed. Gently!”
Hands grasped him and began to pull him. Weakly and with desperation, he twitched his arms to try and escape. An image swam up out of the darkness of his battered brain. A tattered and dusty dark gray cloak pulled low over a ghastly white face with deep sunken hollows for eyes and a large insatiable gapping maw. The image frightened him horribly and a name rose up from some half buried memory. Dementor. He began to struggle harder.
“Move it! Let me through!” Some of the hands let go. The sound of shuffling echoed around him and then a sharp pin-prick stabbed in his arm. Warmth flowed from that small pain; moving up his arm and dragging him back down into the darkness. The image of the Dementor faded away, taking his panic with it.
*
Soft choral voices chanted in unison around him. Magic washed over him in a warm wave smelling of sea air and green growing things bathing in the sun. Suddenly, a weight lifted up off of his chest and out of his mind. A weight he hadn’t even noticed until it was missing. Relief and warmth flooded through him and he sighed his appreciation as all his remaining aches and pains also began to fade away.
His eyes fluttered briefly before opening. Bright white light blinded him and made his eyes water. Blinking rapidly, Sirius gazed up blearily to see deep dark red hair falling in a cascade of vanilla scented beauty swirl past his face. Pale creamy skin and green eyes which gazed back into his own blue ones. He smiled at the blurry out of focus face.
“Lils… am I in heaven? Where’s James?”
Sirius never heard her answer; however, as he drifted off into the first bit of peaceful sleep he had enjoyed since the night James and Lily were betrayed and murdered.
*
Frowning in his sleep, Sirius tried to roll over again. His wrist was stuck and he couldn’t shift over onto his side without leaving his hand behind. Grunting, he tugged at it, hoping he could free it without actually having to wake up all the way. His wrist stayed stubbornly stuck.
“Shhh. It’s all right.” A soft feminine voice spoke nearby. “Let me get you some water.”
A straw was placed gently at his lips and gratefully, Sirius took a long sip. The cool clean water washed away the dryness in his mouth and woke him up the rest of the way. Blinking open sleep sticky eyes, Sirius watched as the world slowly came into focus. He was in a clean white walled room with a large window letting in plenty of sunlight. He was lying on a soft warm hospital style bed with his wrists tied to the metal railing on either side. He frowned down at his hands a moment before looking up… at Lily Potter.
Jerking his head back with a gasp, Sirius gaped at her for a long moment until his eyes began to catalog several differences between his long dead friend and the woman before him. This woman’s hair was the correct color, but it hung in one long straight length. Lily’s hair had been a mass of waves and curls. This woman’s eyes were green, but it was the green of newly budded leaves on the trees, not the deep emerald green of Lily’s. She was also shorter and a lot thinner than Lily Potter.
“You’re not Lily.”
The woman shook her head, “No, I’m not.” She smiled gently at him. “I’m Willow.”
Sirius thought about that and concluded, “Does that mean that I’m not dead? And that this isn’t heaven?”
The woman, Willow, laughed then. It was a surprisingly cheerful sound. “No. You are most definitely not dead.”
3 – A Beautiful Dawn“Mr. Black?” A young woman with long straight brown hair and the most amazing eyes he had ever seen peeked around the privacy curtain pulled up around his bed. She seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t remember why. He smiled up at her and she smiled back.
“Please, call me Sirius. Mr. Black was my father and a more churlish lout you’d never find.”
The woman’s smile softened a bit, a flash of sadness in her eyes. Nodding her head, she stepped up next to his bed and sat down on the chair stationed there.
“Deal. I’m Dawn Summers, by the way.”
“Charmed. A lovely name for a beautiful woman. It suits you.”
Her eyes widened slightly and then she flashed him a brilliant smile even as she almost seemed to be laughing at him. “Oh, you’re a flirt, I see. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
Sirius wiggled his fingers at her from where his hands were cuffed to the bed. “I’d shake your hand, but…” his voice trailed off hopefully.
Her smile dimmed then and she became serious as she leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “I’m sorry. That’s not up to me.” She blushed lightly and frowned. “I know that Willow spoke to you briefly earlier when you first woke up. Do you remember what you two talked about?”
An image of the pretty red haired witch rose up in his mind and he had to actively work to keep it from morphing into a vision of Lily Potter.
“Yes. She explained my arrival here from her point of view. She said that I just appeared out of nowhere and that I was subdued as an invader. Once captured, everyone realized that I had injuries and wounds that couldn’t be explained. So, they brought me here to the infirmary and healed everything that they could in the hopes that I could explain what had happened.”
Dawn nodded her head in agreement and then gave a short little wince and shrugged apologetically. “Uh… I’m actually the one that captured you. I sorta kicked you in the head and knocked you out. Sorry about that, but it was pretty scary. I was down in the artifact storage area looking for something when all these alarms started blaring out about an intruder. When I ran around the corner you were kneeling down and pointing a stick at me. I thought it was a weapon, so…” Another apologetic little shrug. “Sorry.”
Sirius could feel the faint throb from the fading bruise on his temple and grimaced. His head still hurt even though they had given him some muggle potion to help the pain. “That’s okay. I understand. I probably would have done something similar if I had been in your place.
Dawn nodded and shifted in her chair slightly. “So… can you tell me a little about how you got here? You weren’t able to tell Willow much before you drifted back off to sleep. The only thing she really learned was that the big spell-burn on your chest was from a curse and that you had been in the middle of a magical battle. No real details though. You were pretty out of it.”
Sirius leaned back on his mound of pillows that were propping him up and thought back to what happened before he woke up in this half-muggle half-magical hospital. Images and sounds flashing in his head, he tried to explain something he only half understood.
“We were in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. There were several of us and we were trying to stop Vol-Voldemort from getting his hands on Harry or the Prophecy. My cousin Bellatrix was there, insane and evil as ever. We were dueling.” Memories rose up in his mind; Bellatrix’s hate filled face, his taunting laughter, Harry’s horror and fear. “I messed up. I got arrogant and sloppy and she took advantage of that. She hit me with a pain curse right in the chest.”
Sirius glanced at his bandaged chest, the echoed memory of pain skittering down his spine. Glancing over at Dawn, he saw understanding and sympathy without pity.
“I fell. I didn’t hit the ground though. At the time, I thought that I had fallen through The Veil, but that’s not possible. It leads to the Realm of Death… and this place isn’t it.”
An odd look flickered across Dawn’s beautiful face, her eyes lighting up with an intensity that made him catch his breath.
“This Veil thingy… is it a big stone arch way with a thin tattered looking curtain hanging from it?”
Sirius blinked in surprise. “Yes, actually. How did you…”
“That’s it!” Dawn shouted even as she popped up out of her chair. “That’s what you fell through. We have one of those things down in the artifact storage room, but we didn’t know what it was so we left it alone.” Turning on her heel, she began to pace along the length of his bed. “Giles needs to know this. We have to research it and figure out how that Veil thingy really works. If it sent you here, maybe it can send you home!”
Sirius blinked. Then he blinked some more. Finally, in a strangled whisper filled with hope he asked, “I might be able to get back to my godson Harry?”
4 – The New NeighborSirius was beginning to worry about making a mess in the hospital bed he was tied to when a tall dark haired man with a black leather eye-patch and an easy smile walked around the privacy curtain. “Hey man, you Sirius?”
Sirius nodded. The man seemed friendly enough, but the look in his one visible dark eye was intense and disconcerting. It reminded him of Kingsley Shacklebolt a bit. Not that Kingsley wasn’t a great guy, because he was and Sirius would hex anyone that said differently. Sirius was only free of Azkaban because Kingsley’s personal ideals of justice were stronger than his loyalty to the Ministry. Still, that did nothing to change the fact that Kingsley was one of the more dangerous and deadly fighters that he knew. And something about this dark haired man reminded Sirius of his Auror friend.
“Yeah. I’m Sirius.”
“Cool.” The guy’s smile widened. “I was told that you can get outta those cuffs. Dawnie & Wils have been researching that creepy Veil thing-a-ma-bob and they said you most likely didn’t come here on purpose to steal anything or kill anybody. So….” The man clapped his hands together loudly in front of him and bounced once on his heals, “ready to get sprung free?”
Sirius nodded and smiled back even as he stretched his hands towards the man as far as he could in his restraints. “Hell yes! And if you could show me to the nearest loo, that would be great ‘cause I gotta piss like a race horse.”
The man barked a loud laugh and quickly pulled out a key and unlocked both sets of shackles. He then helped Sirius climb out of the bed and steady himself on his feet before leading him out of the patient ward and into a hallway filled with desks, and medical equipment and other odd stuff. It was only a short walk to the nearest loo and Sirius dashed into it with a sigh of heartfelt relief.
When he came back out moments later, the man was standing there waiting and holding out a blue and gray striped terry-cloth robe in one hand and a pair of brown slippers in the other.
“Here. This’ll get you through the hallways on our way to the dorm areas. They assigned you to the room across the hall from me.” He paused and shrugged with a smile, “And I’m Xander Harris by the way. I’ll answer to Xander or to Harris, but none of that Mister crap if you don’t mind.”
Sirius quickly put on the robe and then held out a hand. Xander shook it. “Nice ta meet ya Xander. I’m Sirius Black. Call me Sirius ‘cause I try hard to forget I’m a Black.”
Xander nodded in understanding although Sirius wasn’t sure why since he didn’t seem to recognize the name Black. That wasn’t so surprising if this really was some strange world on the other side of the Veil instead of Heaven or, Merlin forbid, Hell. Although, Sirius was pretty sure that if this were Hell then the name Black would be very well known.
“Come on, I’ll show you how to get to your room and then we’ll get you changed into real clothes if we can find any that fit. Mine’ll probably be the closest until we can get you some of your own.”
Xander started leading him off through various halls and up a few flights of stairs while pointing out different things and introducing him to the people they ran into. Sirius found it odd that most of them were women. Well, teenage girls actually. It was more than a little odd.
When the finally reached the room that was to be his, he saw that it was just a simple, if clean, bedroom and an attached bathroom. It was all muggle in nature with no real magic anywhere except for the wards which he could feel all over the entire building. That was just another strange thing in a long list of strange things about this place. They obviously knew about magic since they had wards, but there were very few enchanted items that he’d seen in the walk to the room and none in the room itself.
“So... tell me about this place. Where am I? What do you do here? How did you end up with a copy of the Veil in the basement? What’s to happen to me?”
Xander blinked rapidly with his one dark eye for a moment before taking a deep breath.
“Well, this is the main headquarters of the Reformed Watcher’s Council in London England. The Veil has been there for as long as the Council has existed and no one really knows where it originally came from.” Xander gestured for him to sit on the bed right before he flopped into the chair by the desk. “Best that Dawnie and Wils can figure so far is that it’s a sort of magical doorway, a portal between worlds. Some of them, like yours, is a lot like ours, but others are wildly different. I’m sorry to tell ya that you’re stuck here and can’t go home, but until they figure out a way to pick a specific place and determine that it’s really your home world, they don’t want to send you back through.”
Sirius nodded. That made sense in a way. He didn’t want to go back through the Veil and end up someplace underwater only to drown or something. Still, he was worried about Harry and he wanted to go home. Well, maybe someday soon.
“So, Xander…. Tell me about this world. I mean, there are an awful lot of pretty young girls running around here, don’t you think?”
5 – Keeping the FaithSirius sat at a table in the dinning hall of the Reformed Watcher’s Council eating a lunch served up by the strangest blonde nancy-boy he’d ever had the misfortune to be flirted at by, Andrew something-or-other. He was wearing his brand new second-hand muggle clothes bought for him by his neighbor across the hall. But mostly he was simply being overwhelmed and confused by his circumstances.
His new neighbor, Xander, had spent the majority of yesterday afternoon trying to explain all about the world Sirius had found himself in while simultaneously learning about everything that Sirius had experienced in his own world. While a great listener, Xander’s explanations weren’t quite as easy to understand. The younger man’s grasp of the English language was tenuous and filled with unrecognizable slang. Xander had blamed that on growing up in Southern California, whatever that meant. It didn’t help that despite seeming to be the same in many ways, their worlds were different in the details.
Back in his own world, despite the rampant attempts of men such as Slytherin, Grindelwald and Voldemort, Light magic was the rule and the norm. Apparently, it was just the opposite here. According to Xander, sometime in the ancient past, Dark magic ruled over all in such a way as to actually damage the barriers between dimensions. This world became overrun with demons, monsters, and horrors of every kind while Dark magic swirled unheeded through all the lands.
Finally, the single remaining bastion of Light, pushed into near extinction and driven with desperation did the one thing that would save the world and, consequently damn their own souls. They bonded the power of a demon to the soul of an innocent child to create a being with the power and strength of both the Dark and the Light. They used this child as a tool and a weapon to push the Darkness and the monsters out of their world and seal it behind portals called Hellmouths.
Only remnants of the Dark remained, but there was also the legacy of their sins against the child and so this world was host and home to the Slayers, a legion of teenage girls with the power of a demon trapped within them. Sirius was too shocked still to be properly horrified by it all.
The sound of a tray full of dishes and silverware dropping onto the table across from him pulled him out of his thoughts and his head whipped up only for him to end up staring into a pair of lovely dark eyes. Soft full lips the color of ripe cherries quirked a lopsided smile at him and the beautiful woman with the most amazing curves plopped gracefully into the chair in front of the tray.
“Hey. You that Sirius guy that fell through the portal thing?”
Sirius nodded. The woman frowned and nodded back.
“Man, sucks to be you, huh?”
Sirius blinked in surprise. He wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, even if he did agree.
“Anyway, my names’ Faith.”
Sirius nodded and tried to smile even if he didn’t feel all that cheerful. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Sirius Black.”
Faith just shrugged and waved away the niceties as if she couldn’t be bothered with politeness and stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork.
“Look, I know that the Scoobies can be a bit much and getting dropped in their laps is not something that any sane person wants. They’re pushy, self-righteous and arrogant. There’ve been times I’ve wanted to smack each and everyone of them upside the head, but all that crap aside… they’re good people and they are damn good at what they do.”
Sirius vaguely recognized the term ‘Scoobies’ from his long talk with Xander yesterday, but he couldn’t quite pull the exact memory out of his mind. Faith took his silence for agreement and kept on chattering.
“Still, if there’s a way to get you home again, they’ll find it. Might take a while, but if there’s an answer to some mystery then either Red & the Squirt will figure it out or B will stumble upon it accidentally.” Then she shrugged and grinned wickedly, “Of course, you might not end up going home alone. I don’t know what you told X-man yesterday about your world, but he is in an almighty snit on your behalf stomping around and muttering about evil-idiots of doom and incompetent government stooges that need a good ass kickin’.”
Sirius didn’t know who Red, Squirt or B was, but he could easily deduce that X-man must be Xander. It was nice to know that his new neighbor agreed with his assessment of the Death Eaters and the Ministry. It made him feel not so alone here.
Looking up into Faith’s beautiful dark eyes, Sirius smiled. “Thanks.”
6 – Little Stick ThingieA knocking on the door to his room interrupted Sirius from the task of cleaning up and getting ready to go meet with Xander in the main lounge area. Xander had offered to show him a real muggle movie on the TV. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but he had been promised that it would be filled with lots of beautiful half-naked women prancing about and many big fiery explosions. Sirius figured that anything else, like plot, would just be icing on the cake of fun that they were sure to have.
The knock sounded again and with a big grin, Sirius bounced over to the door and flung it open without looking, “Hey Xan! Almost ready for movie night! Just gotta find my shoes in the mess here….” He trailed off uncertainly at the smirking blonde woman standing outside his door. “Uh… you’re not Xander.”
Sirius could have smacked himself in the head for saying something so stupid as that, but the blonde just smiled bigger and nodded in agreement with his statement.
“Nope, not Xander. I’m Buffy Summers.”
Then she cocked her head at a slight angle and stepped into the room studying him with big hazel eyes that left him feeling a bit like a mouse being stalked by a hungry cat. She paced around him in a circle before coming to stop directly in front of him and giving him a look that was straight out of Professor McGonagall’s handbook of intimidation tactics for unruly children.
“Are you Seriously Black?”
Sirius blinked at her hesitantly for a moment until his saw the glimmer of mischief in her eyes. The earnest expression combined with the mostly hidden twinkle of mischief made him think of the time when Remus Lupin had turned to him and admonished him in perfect deadpan, ‘Be serious, Sirius! The NEWT’s are a seriously serious bit of seriousness. And you need to study seriously, Sirius!’
He grinned at Buffy wildly. “Nope. Seriously Black is my evil twin; he who studies, eats vegetables and cleans his room. I’m Ridiculously Black; the fun twin who eats too much candy, loses his house key and flirts with waitresses.”
Buffy smiled back just as widely before adopting an obviously fake sad frown. “Oh, pity. I was supposed to give this…” she pulled his wand out from behind her back and held it up, “little stick thingie to Seriously Black.”
The smile wiped from his face instantly to be replaced with shock. Little stick thingie!? Then it hit him; his wand!
“My wand!” His shout echoed from the ceiling even as his hand whipped out and grabbed it from her. He cuddled it close to his chest for a moment as the warm flow of his own magic rushed out from within his body to reconnect to the core of the wand. Once done, he held it out and gave it a gentle swish. Red-gold sparkles filled the air.
“Huh? So, you really can do magic with that thing?” Buffy looked between him and the wand, her expression partly amused and partly wary.
He nodded and grinned widely.
“Yeah.” Then he tilted his head and considered. “Well, at least, I can do more magic with it then without. I’m pretty much limited to internal magic and a few minor parlor tricks without it. With a wand I can do a whole lot more because the external magic spells are almost impossible wandless.”
“Internal?” Confusion shone in her eyes.
“Hmmm?” Sirius pulled himself from contemplating his wand. “Oh, internal magic is magic that a wizard can do to or on himself. I’m an animagus, which means I can turn myself into an animal. My animal form is a big black dog, but I don’t need a wand for that. It’s all internal. If I wanted to turn someone else into a dog, then I’d need a wand. It’s external magic to transfigure anything or anyone other than myself.”
Buffy nodded her head, but Sirius didn’t think she understood a word he had said.
“Okay….” She tilted her head again. “I guess that’s useful.” Then she shrugged. “I just don’t think it’s a very good stick to dust vampires with. It’s so skinny and little, it’d probably just break.”
Sirius gaped at her in horror, not even realizing that he was cradling the wand to his chest protectively. “No! Don’t ever stab a wand into the body of the undead! Who knows what all that necrotic dark magic animating the thing would do to a wand’s magical core. It’d corrupt it beyond belief.”
Buffy nodded her head again, obviously humoring him. “Yeah. Uh-huh, I knew that. No dustin’ vamps with your little stick thingie.”
7 – A Sense of Purpose
“Um…not that I’m saying no or anything, but why would you want to hunt vamps if you don’t have to?” Buffy held out a hand palm up towards Xander to stop him from interrupting. “And yes, I know that there are a lot of people that want to help for their own reasons. But that’s what I mean. What is your reason, cause it’s not the sort of thing that one does just to avoid boredom.”
Sirius sighed and looked around at the panel of young folk that made up the top level of fighters and decision makers here at the Reformed Watcher’s Council. He had met and liked them all, individually and as a group. He also believed their cause was a good one. But there was much more to it than that.
“You’ve all heard about my world. I’ve mentioned that the Wizarding World is in a state of unrest, on the edge of a full out second civil war.” Everyone nodded and he sighed and leaned back in his chair. “There are three factions; the current corrupt official government known as the Ministry of Magic, the Order of the Phoenix and the Dark Lord Voldemort and his loyal Death Eaters.”
“At the end of the first war with Voldemort I was framed by a Death Eater for a crime I didn’t commit. I could have easily proven my innocence, but I wasn’t allowed a trial by the MoM, which is illegal. No one cared that I wasn’t given a trial though. People were angry and wanted to punish someone…anyone for the horrors they’d survived.”
“I escaped from Azkaban Prison and the Order of the Phoenix was hiding me from the Ministry, but…I’m still a wanted escaped prisoner. That meant that I was basically confined to the Order’s headquarters and rarely got to go anywhere or to help with the fight very often.” His eyes were haunted. “It’s sometimes harder to stay behind and do nothing when you know you can do good and help fight the evil stalking your friends and family, then it is to face danger and possibly death.”
Xander was nodding his head in total agreement.
“Now that I’m here, I don’t have to worry about being seen and arrested. I also have a lot of skills to offer. I have experience, magic and determination. Plus, I would like to believe that the mystery of the Veil will someday be solved and I will be able to return home. I need to be in tip-top shape, battle ready and able to fight on the front lines if I’m to be of any use to the Order.”
Sirius watched in a mix of confusion and amusement as the group began to talk together about his offer in a strange conglomeration of high speed babble, vague hand gestures, facial expressions, seemingly random phrases and code words. Eventually Buffy sighed, nodded and turned to smile at him.
“Okay, Seriously Black…we all agree that your heart is definitely in the right place. We also think that you have a fairly good idea of the danger and aren’t just looking for a fun little adventure or something equally stupid.” She made a vague gesture towards him. “So…what is it that you would like to do for patrol? What role do you see yourself in?”
Smiling, Sirius stood up and away from the table. “I would suggest that I be used for tracking purposes. Plus, I am very good at Incendio, so I could set vamps on fire.” He frowned in thought. “I was told they are vulnerable to that.”
Buffy nodded in agree. “Dusts them just as nice as a stake. But, how would you help track down demons?”
Grinning, Sirius melted down into his animagus form of the large black Grim-like dog known as Padfoot. He wagged his tail and barked happily. Everyone stood up from the table and walked over to him, looking down on him. They didn’t seem scared of him, which was good. The ‘Grim’ was a bad omen on his world, but not here apparently.
“Ooookay. Girl walking her dog is a good cover story.” Willow nodded her head thoughtfully. “Plus, super sensitive doggie nose for sniffing out tracks.”
Slowly, Buffy nodded her head too. “Yeah. Okay. But we have to do something about the snarled tangle of matted fur. And having him put a little more meat on his ribs won’t hurt either.”
“Not to mention he smells like a Fyarl Demon.” Everyone looked at Faith. “What?! He does!”
“I agree. Also, so not liking the whole ‘dragged backwards through a hedge’ look.” was Dawn’s comment.
Sirius transformed back into a human and pouted. “Well, sorry if I offend. That was how I stayed sane in Azkaban. The prison is guarded by semi-tamed demons and their ability to suck out happiness and joy doesn’t affect Padfoot as much. Dog brains aren’t compatible, I guess.”
Willow gave him a reassuring smile and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll just have to give you a doggie bath!”