An Unexpected Meeting

title: A Series of (mostly) Unapocalyptic Events
author: lisa roquin
rating: 15ish, nothing too far out of the realm of possible for canon, nothing overly graphic.
fandom: Buffy/Harry Potter
characters/pairings: Xander & George Weasley friendship, and a side of everyone else
disclaimer: all copyrighted characters and their "universes" belong to their respective authors, writers, creators, production companies, producers and long lists of people that are so very much not me. Quite simply, if you recognize it, it isn't mine. No profit made, no harm intended, just having fun.
summary: Leave it to Xander to blunder around a four-hundred year old curse.
warning: Deathly Hallows Canon compliant
author's note: for Dulcinea, 2007 TtH Holiday Ficathon for Dulcinea who wanted word humor (like puns and witty quips), a happy ending, canon compliance (both BtVS and crossover should be in character and they should meet in a believable way- no human AU pool boy rich widow scenarios).
I tried, and I hope you enjoy. They're merrily babbling along stupidly, hopefully the entirety will be up within the next day or two.
word count:

Apocalypse Season Spring 2005

~An Unexpected Meeting~

"Firecall, Professor"

"Thanks, Tom," Neville stifled a groan and hurried toward the small floo at the end of the bar.

George sipped his Old Ogden's and waited, figuring the night was about to be cut short by some student-mauling vine.

"I--"

"Save me any good bits to experiment with," George shook his head Neville's wide eyed frantic look was all he needed to know. "I'll floo you sometime next week and you can tell me all about it."

Neville hurried to the public transport floo shaking his head and muttering under his breath. "Three Broomsticks!" he shouted tossing a handful of powder into the fire and was gone.

Well too bad Neville missed that George thought as the man walked in. He wasn't quite sure how Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood had become his best mates. Just sort of happened with everyone else paired off right and left almost the minute the war was over, at least the ones that were still there to pair off. And Ron and Hermione and Harry and Ginny so diligent about including them in everything. George, Neville and Luna had stood about at the edges of all the couples at gatherings, family or friends, spoiled the ever increasing horde of nieces and nephews, real and honorary, sending them back to parents over-tired, over-sugared, and positively monstrous causing their parents to curse them. Sometimes the cursing not just figurative if things from the WWW product line were amongst the sweets fed the tots. The three of them met up once a month or so and had dinner and a drink.

Tonight Luna had hared off no sooner than she got there, her protégé, who was possibly even more cracked than she was, was seeing fluugle nuts or something. Merlin only knew. Now Neville had his greenhouse emergency. George couldn't bring himself to be upset. Luna was Luna after all, and perhaps a bit more off than she'd ever been since the war, prone to positively frightening depressions at times. If she was happy trying to photograph fluugle nuts then so be it. She'd been bouncing and babbling when she left, it was hard to be upset about that. He certainly couldn't be upset over some emergency of Neville's. If Neville had an emergency, Merlin only knew what had happened in the greenhouses of Hogwarts. The curriculum plants, the plants needed for the hospital wings supplies, and Neville's private experiments--the possibilities were endless, positively terrifying, and probably had a few upper years in the infirmary or on a months detention, or both, before the night was through.

*

"'Go to London, Xander, get the what's-it from the whoever-the-hell,'" Xander muttered to himself and tossed the remote down on the bed. He couldn't find anything remotely interesting on television, it wasn't that late, even if the car had broke down--he could swear Willow mojo'd it or something since the mechanic didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with the car--which meant probably a few thousand dollars, or pounds, or whatever, to fix a nonexistent mojo-problem because Willow was so totally planning something along with Dawn.

Or at least Xander was pretty sure what all the head scratching and baffled translated to. He was better at understanding Demon languages than some of the versions of English in England. And Giles complained about them?

Considering his birthday was going to happen before his scheduled return to Africa, it didn't take much to guess what was up. He wasn't sure if that was reassuring or terrifying. His girls were less scary planning for an apocalypse than they were for a party of any sort.

Of course no one could come and get him because of the Grungy-whatevers that infested somewhere and he was stuck in London for the night. Set up. Oh yeah. Definite set up. Willow and the stealthy didn't mix all that well, which, unfortunately was probably a good thing if she ever went all Darkside on them again.

Xander checked his wallet and shrugged, he had enough cash, and a Council issue credit card. Might as well find something to eat and a beer. He wasn't all that hungry, but it beat staring at the TV and he was too awake to sleep.


*

"Weasley!"

George raised a surprised eyebrow but made his way over to where Tom was frowning at the dark haired, more or less muggle dressed bloke. "The yank says this is money"

"Yank?" Xander frowned and took a look around...oh boy. Yeah, trust him to stumble into a not average-human pub even if it didn't look like they were demons...looks could be deceiving.

George studied the piece of paper. "Yeah, it's a pound note of some sort I think. Muggle money Tom. Look, I'll buy you a round for some company--my friends abandoned me, can't blame Nev though, emergency at the school, and Luna was giggling when she buggered off so..buy you a drink."

"Does the offer of buying a drink include any funky potions, soul-stealing, soul-claiming, drugging, making into thralled butt monkey-ness, or sex before becoming demon spawn's first meal?"

George stared for a second stunned then burst out laughing. "No, I promise. Just a drink. My friends and I were to meet up and they had to leave."

"My friends kicked me out for two hours so they could plot, or rig something up."

"Plot? Plotting friends is rarely good in my experience" George grinned, "Especially Neville and Luna, they can bollocks up just about anything, and the more they try to make something perfect the more bizarrely wrong it will go."

"Well, Willow and Dawn are pretty good usually. Plotting is far better than shopping excursions with them." Xander snorted.

"So drink?"

"If you take a drink of this first."

"What is it?"

"Water."

George studied the flask, with a shrug reached for it silver with a muggle cross on it. He sniffed, and took a swallow. "Water." he said a bit surprised.

"Holy Water. You're not vampire, lycanthrope, sidhe or demon. Silver, the cross on the flask is blessed wrought iron, and holy water."

"Paranoid bugger, now drink?"

"Persistent alkie aren't ya? And--nothing but a non-mojo'd or drugged drink."

"Deal"

"I'm telling your brother the next time I see him, Weasley!" Tom snapped, he'd seen George Weasley occasionally pull some stupid stunts, especially this time of year as the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts neared. He regretted calling the lad over but he was the only one present who might stand a chance of identifying the paper the yank had tried to say was money, after all his sister-in-law was muggle born and his father had worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department since before any of the children were born.

"Which one?" George snorted.

"Whichever I see first," Tom shot back, though that most likely would be the Auror, but the Dragon-Tamer and the Curse-breaker met up for lunch now and again in the Leaky.

George shrugged.


*

There had to be a catch. George was pretty cool company. So of course there was a catch. He was the demon magnet after all.

Though George wasn't a demon.

He was a Wizard. Duh. He could have slapped himself in the forehead when he finally noticed the fireplace stumbling out of, and the wand George pulled to clean up the mug of beer that got spilled by accident somehow.

Kafu was a Wizard, though Xander was fairly sure Giles didn't know that. Kafu didn't think much of European Wizards at all. And they seemed to spit out Dark Lords every Generation or two. That Kafu was a wizard only came out after the whole Goblin thing. That had been messy, and the redhead with the scarred up face and fang earring, that had been messier because Natalia had gone tweaking that the redhead was something nasty. Her Slayer-Spideysense was kinda on crack at times, and mixed with being more high strung than Willow on Cappuccinos Natalia got kinda exhausting. Xander had to guiltily admit the break from Natalia was kinda nice. Still the nice redhead involved with the goblin mess had only been a curse-infected Werewolf, and only a half-curse-infected werewolf.

Xander thunked his head on the table. "Damn it."

"What's wrong?" George frowned.

"I knew I was forgetting something."

George raised his eyebrow.

"Werewolf report." Xander sighed.

"Werewolf report."

"Yeah boring stuff, types of infection and characteristic differences. I really should make Kafu write it, but he'd do it in squiggles and runes and shit and then I'd hear it for it not being readable and Kafu wouldn't give me the crib sheets to translate either because he hates paperwork worse than I do."

George frowned. "What do you do with Werewolves?"

"Nothing if I don't have to." Xander shrugged. "As long as they're safe on the moon, not out chomping on the locals...oh well there's worse. Maybe I can email Oz. That would be up his alley to research that, and he'd make more sense of it than I would."

"Oz?"

"Friend. Hangs out in Tibet again these days. If he didn't have a WillowandAndrew ubersuperduper mojo'd deluxe laptop he probably wouldn't be in contact range."

"Deal with werewolves a lot?"

"Nope. Not really. They're mostly self-contained once they know what happened and what they are. It's the ones that don't give a damn or like it that are the problem, or the occasional one that goes nuts cause they can't handle it, but for the most part, weres aren't a major problem. And as long as they keep their munching to Clarabelle or Bambi or even Shenzi, Bonzai and Ed it's cool. Bigger things to deal with."

*

"Munching who?" George repeated incredulously. The subject of Werewolves certainly had his attention, what with Bill, and an edict fussing about Werewolves children and the possibility of the curse being bred into next generation because there were no known offspring of Werewolves until recently. Teddy, and Bill and Fleur's girls. Though Bill wasn't fully infected, despite the massive damage done by Fenrir Grayback, Bill had never actually been bitten.

"Don't do Disney around here, huh?"

"Do what?"

"Disney movies. Or old cartoons. Clarabelle Cow. Bambi's the boy dear with the slutty cheerleader name and Shenzi, Bonzai and Ed are the hyenas in the Lion King."

"You're stark raving loony aren't you?" George gaped.

"No--if they're out hitting wildlife in the forest or somewhere unpopulated, or even the stray bit of livestock, they're so not on the to-do list. Lot bigger, lot badder, and most of em are decent enough people that I've met. The ones that like the people eating and killing give em all a bad name."

"Too right." George nodded. Remus Lupin had been a good man. Bill was a good man, a bloody brilliant curse-breaker and his brother besides. Teddy and his nieces weren't half-beasts or whatever that loon at the ministry making noise was on about. Fenrir Grayback and his lot driven away to that sort of thing.

*