Chapter 2 - Truths and Consequences

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry


"Albus, I've just received some terrible news! The Ministry found James and Lily Potter's bodies at their Godric's Hollow home and little Harry is missing!"

It was obvious the grim-faced, dark-haired woman speaking was upset about the news she had just delivered, despite her attempt to project a calm demeanor. The elderly, white-haired and bearded man seated behind the large desk paused in the middle of whatever it had been he was writing, almost dropping his quill as he stared up at her in shock.

"Are they completely certain about the identifications, Minerva?" he asked.

"According to the Aurors, there is no possibility of a mistake, Albus," the witch shook her head regretfully. "From what I was told, Peter Pettigrew was the one who called the Ministry; he apparently witnessed everything that happened."

"Did he say anything about what might have happened to Harry, Minerva?" the older man inquired, a concerned expression on his face.

"No, Albus, none of the Aurors mentioned him saying anything about Harry, at all."

"Come, Minerva," he said, as he rose from his desk much more spryly than would normally be expected for someone of his apparent age. "We need to proceed to Godric's Hollow, immediately.

"We need to find little Harry," he went on. "The poor child is much too young to be able care for himself. We must locate him as soon as possible."

~~~

Janna Kalderash School for Exceptional Young Women
Cleveland, OH


A brief burst of emerald light heralded the return of the two Scoobies currently on detached duty, and the two Slayers, the Watcher and the witch on duty shifted their weight slightly as they waited to make sure that the returning travelers were actually the people expected, and that they were returning both voluntarily and without any uninvited or unwelcome companions.

"I sense three souls," the witch warned as the light show began dimming, and both Slayers were moving to flank the newcomers even before their eyes had readjusted to the again-normal levels of light in the room, their swords and police batons at the ready.

That was most certainly one advantage of possessing augmented senses and the training to best make use of them; a Slayer could still fight better than most normal human beings even if they were blindfolded; their hearing, sense of smell and their kinesthetic perception allowed them to compensate much faster than most people, and most demons, would expect.

"Whoa, hold up there, Rona! You, too, Lizbeth," Xander called loudly as he noted the two girls eyeing him and Dawn doubtfully.

"Everything's cool, ladies," he added, holding up his right hand in the universal gesture of peace, while trying not to disturb the bundle he was cradling in his left arm, "but I think you need to call whoever's on medical duty and have them come down right away.

"There were some...unexpected developments while we were retrieving that amulet Willow sent us after," he said quietly, as he looked down to check on the status of the now-slumbering baby in his arms as the young-looking Watcher (Tim, an older brother of Martina, one of the newly Awakened Slayers, if he remembered properly) immediately got on the phone with whichever one of their privately-hired doctors was on call tonight.

"And I think you might want to call Giles - and maybe Willow, too," he added as an after thought as he noticed Dawn, a wide grin on her face, beginning to explain to Rona and Lizbeth what had taken place while the two of them were on amulet-retrieval duty.

~~~

"We really can't let you go anywhere without adult supervision any more, can we, Xand?"

The wide grin on Willow's face stretched from cheek to cheek and he realized that she was merely enjoying the latest opportunity to twit him about his proclivity for unusual things to happen around him. Sitting on the other side of the conference table next to her, both Giles and Kennedy were wearing equally wide grins as they listened to Xander and Dawn describe the 'unexpected developments' he'd mentioned first-thing upon their return to the newly reformed Council's headquarters.

"Hey, first off, there is no possible way that you can blame me for this!" the founding Scooby reflexively protested his innocence of any responsibility for the unforeseen appearance of the infant that who was currently making his extreme displeasure at the physical examination he was undergoing next door in the examination room known to all and sundry within the confines of the school's first three floors.

"Second, for all we know, the kid could have been intended for Dawn's arms," he pointed out in an attempt to spread any potential accountability as widely as possible.

Besides, he owed her for dumping all of the equipment packing on him while she was soaking in that admittedly palatial tub that the apartment had been equipped with, he reminded himself with self-righteous justification.

After all, it was always better to give than receive.

Especially when it came to things like guilt or blame.

"She was standing right next to me, remember," he noted, smirking when he saw the panic that had instantly blossomed in Dawn's eyes at his words, "so it might have just been pure chance that Harry ended up in my arms and not hers."

"Oh, no, Xand!" the now-defensive brunette was vigorously shaking her head in vehement disagreement. "You're not dumping a baby on me! The note said that Harry was being sent to someone who could protect him and not try to use him for their own purposes, and that describes you a whole lot better than it does me!

"You're twenty-five old years old, you've got your own apartment right here on the compound with an extra bedroom that you could turn into a bedroom for Harry, and you've got a job that pays quite well, like you keep telling me, so you can afford to hire a nanny to take care of him if you can't be around to watch him for some reason, like if we're busy with the latest apocalypse or something like that, and I'm still in college and busy working on my undergraduate degree and I probably won't be finished for at least another three years, minimum, since I'll almost certainly need to get my doctorate or at least my Master's degree, and I'm not at all ready to be stuck trying to raise a baby, because most guys aren't interested in going out with a girl who's got kids, which would make my social life suck even more than it does now, so you've got to be the one who Harry got sent to, so please don't try to shove him off on me, p-l-e-e-e-a-a-s-s-e-e, Xand?" she finished off her frenzied babble with the most soulful 'puppy-dog eyes' expression he'd ever seen her use.

He couldn't help it - he burst out laughing, as he watched the girl he'd come to regard as a little sister make the most blatant effort to manipulate him that he'd ever seen her attempt, while Willow and Giles tried not to join him in doing so, and Kennedy watched with unconcealed admiration at her gall.

Before he could make any response to Dawn's unashamedly self-serving plea, the night-shift doctor came in to join them, carrying with her the still-loudly howling toddler, who was making it clear that if he wasn't happy, then no one else in a large radius around him was going to be, either.

"C'mere, Har," Xander reflexively reached out for the squalling child as the doctor approached, and she eagerly transferred the squirming baby to him.

To everyone's surprise and relieved delight, Harry stopped screaming the instant he was deposited into the former carpenter's arms.

"Looks like that settles things right there, Xand," Dawn took advantage of the blessed silence to cement him with primary (or complete and total, if she could get away with it) responsibility for their young guest.

"Harry seems to like you best, and I don't think we should argue with him!" she declared with a wide satisfied smile.

The frustrated, narrow-eyed look the tall brunet shot her told Dawn that the argument was over as far as the two of them were concerned.

Convincing Giles and Willow about the wisdom of keeping him might take a little longer, but everything was in the bag, now, and she knew it.

~~~

"I'm keeping him, Giles."

Xander's flat-out statement didn't surprise the head of the New Watchers and Slayers' Council. He had, after all, known the young man sitting across from him for the better part of ten years now, and he believed he had at least a passing understanding of his younger colleague's mindset as well as a better than fair chance of predicting his reactions in the vast majority of situations a person might be expected to encounter.

Not that he had ever expected to find any of his former charges/ current colleagues in this particular situation, mind you.

Although, if he had ever had to predict which, if any, of them might find themselves in these circumstances, he would most likely have predicted it would be Xander, if only because the propensity for weird things to occur seemed, at times, to approach near certainty when compared to pretty much anyone else he had ever met.

And, yes, that statement did most certainly did include that overbearing, bloody idiot, Ethan Rayne.

Giles noticed that the Assistant Director of the Watcher's Council was beginning to stare at him with the least bit of concern in his eye, and realized that he had been sitting and apparently staring blankly at his subordinate for a long enough period of time to disturb the younger man. And that in itself was good to see; since Anya's death and his maiming, Xander had appeared to care little enough about anything outside of 'his girls' safety. Worry implied having caring about something and he'd seen far too little of that from the now rather gaunt man.

"Sorry, Xander," he apologized as he leaned forward and propped his elbows on his desktop.

"There is nothing to become alarmed about; I was merely woolgathering," he said, shaking his head with incredulity as he considered the current situation. "I'm still finding it hard to accept the idea that a set of parents supposedly well-versed in magic cast a spell and sent their child out of their lives, in the not-at-all certain hope that whoever it might be who received their son would be an acceptable substitute for them in the raising of their child."

"Try being the one who catches the kid when he falls out of thin air, Giles," Xander responded with a weary nod of agreement. "I can hardly believe it myself. And then I think about how bad the situation must have been, if that was the only solution Harry's parents could see as having any chance of success at all..."

His voice trailed off for a moment as he again considered what he had just described, and shook his head again with mixed dismay and reluctant admiration at the courage Harry's parents had shown in making such a decision.

Knowing that they were either dying or about to die, they had gambled everything they could in the desperate hope they were saving their son from the same Big Bad who was responsible for killing them, and that gamble had ended up with their child being sent to him for safekeeping.

That kind of hope was something he and his companions saw far too little of, anymore, he reflected somewhat bleakly, and he'd let himself be damned to Hell for all eternity before he'd turn around and betray it by refusing to accept the responsibilities the baby's appearance had thrust upon him.

He was going to raise Harry the way the kid's parents had asked him to do, and he'd do his best to protect him from the bad things in life, just like any other parent would do. The kid might never get a mother, Xander reflected, since he really couldn't see any woman being attracted to a disfigured ex-carpenter, but on the up side, the little guy would definitely have a lot of really overprotective Slayer-aunts, not to mention Aunt Willow the super-witch.

And anyone and anything that might come looking for Harry to try to complete the job they'd started when they killed his real folks was going to find out exactly what kind of mistake they had made, just before they were introduced to his council issue Kimber TLE semiautomatic and then the business end of his axe.

No one screwed around with his family and walked away unscathed.

Actually, they tried to make sure that no one like that walked away, at all. It kept the number of things (and people) they needed to worry about to a minimum, and that was entirely okay with him.

After all, you could never be too careful when it came to getting rid of bad guys. They'd learned that lesson the hard way too many times. There was always another would-be Big Bad strutting around, trying to show what a badass they were, so it wasn't like they'd ever have to worry about running out of evil assholes, now was it?

He realized that he had let his own thoughts run away, and he refocused his attention on what Giles was telling him.

"...and I want you to know that you can always feel free to call on me for any assistance you might need," the Englishman was saying.

"Unless, of course, it involves changing nappies," he added a moment later with a sharp grin. "Then you should most definitely feel free to impose on anyone else. Preferably, someone like Dawn or Kennedy."

"Gotcha, Giles," Xander grinned back as various possible scenarios involving those two and toxic-waste-level diapers played out in his head. "You've got nothing to worry about on that front, I promise you."

"Very well, then, lad," Giles got up and headed for the door. "Let's get going; we'll need to stop by their rooms and pick up Dawn and Willow. There are a vast number of things we need to pick up before my grandchild will be able to use his room, so we shouldn't waste any more time blathering."

~~~