InsaneJournal

FIC: A Series of (mostly) Un-Apocalyptic Events--BtVS/HP 6b/?
full header & previous parts:
an unexpected meeting || unusual conversations || un-imaginary friends and places, really || unlikely coincidence || unplanned vacation || unsanctioned dragon(s) 1


~unsanctioned dragon(s) 2

"Well, you're kind of in it, mate, DNE or not, unlicensed apparition and illegal dragons." Ron frowned.

"I was trying to get these guys, who showed up on their own I might add, out of London before mommy and daddy showed up and started making people-flambé of people that don't even know dragons exist!" Xander glared.

"That doesn't change the laws,"

"Who is that bonehead?" Xander asked George.

"My youngest brother Ron." George snorted.

"It's about lunch, let me floo and see if Bill can join us." Charlie said a bit warily.

Xander raised an eyebrow at George.

"There were seven of us. Bill, Charlie, Percy, Me and Fred were twins, Ron, then Ginny's the youngest. We lost Percy and Fred in the Battle of Hogwarts when Harry defeated Voldemort. Harry is Ginny's husband." George said quietly.

Xander gave George a sympathetic look. "Must miss them, I still miss Jess like crazy and it's been, nine years..."

George nodded.

Snape tried to find the energy to--Xander wasn't finding out what. Both little dragons were put on an overstuffed chair and ordered to nap or else.

Ten minutes later a fourth redhead came out of the fireplace in a hurry.

"Well damn, how ya doing?" Xander smiled tiredly recognizing the half-werewolf that had been with the Goblin's during the ruby mess.

"Good." Bill managed. "Charlie, what in Merlin's name is going on?"

"Snape decided he wanted his hit wizard and turned up in Muggle London. Hagrid followed him." Charlie said pointing to the sleeping dragons in the chair. "Xander flooed George. We met up with him in the Leaky and came back here. Xander doesn't have a British apparition license and we apparated from Diagon Square. One of the Transport department caught Ron on his way to lunch and figured Ron might want to deal with it since it was George and I."

Bill stared at his brothers in disbelief a long moment, then looked at the two dragons curled up sleeping in the chair.

"So...am I under arrest or are you just writing me a ticket that I got to send in some money and call it good like a traffic ticket."

Ron's eyebrows shot up. "Traffic ticket? Like--a muggle traffic ticket? Is that what you mean? My in-laws are muggles."

"Yeah like that. I have an international driver's license if that helps."

"Driver's license"

"For a car--" Xander said.

"Right, well what good does that do you?" Ron frowned. "Why don't you have an international apparition license if you're DNE?"

"DNE? Like Henry and Wolfgang used to be? The Dress-wearing Mojo UN's version of the CIA or whatever? And apparition? I can't do the teleporty thing. I can hang on, and I kinda concentrated really hard because that one didn't think it'd work with the brats over there, but --" Xander pinched the bridge of his nose. His headache was worsening by the second. It always gave him a headache when he rode along on a teleportation spell with Kafu, and George gave him a worse headache than Kafu, probably as simple as he was used to Kafu's mojo. "You think I'm mojo CIA?"

"You've never been to Hogsmeade before?" Ron asked. If the man was DNE and had orders not to admit it, he wouldn't and facts he could use to make sense of all this were by far more welcome than Dress-Wearing Jomo UNs and CIAs and Teleports, whatever any of those were.

"No." Xander shook his head.

"So you couldn't have apparated." Ron frowned. "George?"

"It was like I was pushed but yeah, still sort of felt like I was taking someone side-along." George agreed.

"I want to know how you got into Diagon Alley without a wand!" Charlie said. "He just told the entrance that he didn't have time for the tappity tap thing and it opened!"

"Kafu said it should do that for me, let me in even if I didn't have a wand."

"Where's your wand?" George frowned.

"I don't have one."

"Did it get broken or--" Bill frowned. "You didn't use a wand the entire two weeks with the cursed ruby situation..."

"I don't have a wand. I have never had a wand." Xander grumbled. "Me. Not Magic. Me and magic not mixy. How much simpler do I have to put it?"

"WHAT!" all four Weasley brothers shouted.

Xander winced and willed the little dragons to stay sleeping. They needed to sleep, they both felt dangerously exhausted and were just babies.

"Me. Boring normal guy. No magic. No superpowers. I carry the gear, carve the stakes, keep Nat from bouncing off trees into quicksand or something. Catch Medraut when he tries to pass out from visions and am attempting to get Digger to stop his damn groveling. It makes me nervous."

"Digger?" Bill frowned.

"The goblin? They're funny about their full names so we just call him Digger."

Bill nodded. That made sense enough to him. Goblins did get as protective of their full clan-given names as they were of their magic. Goblin horde-magic was as effective on their protectiveness of their full clan-given names as it was on the treasures they protected.

"Well, if you're not a wizard, what the bloody hell are you? You can't side-along apparate unless you have magic, wizard magic since it's a wizard-spell! Full Veela can't side-along with a Wizard. They can do a Veela version of apparition but..." Ron shook his head. "Who taught you to side-along?"

"Kafu."

"What school did you go to?"

"Sunnydale High. And some drafting classes as Sunnydale State before the town kinda fell in a sinkhole, and I ended up in Africa not too long after that. I've been in Africa over two years. Medraut and Kafu ended up with Nat and I within the first couple months of being in Africa."

Ron scrubbed his hand over his face with a sound of frustration. He was not looking forward to writing up this report at all. Because if Xander wasn't a wizard, then it wasn't side-along and if it wasn't side-along he was back to apparition without a lisence.

"Does this help? It did in Monaco when the locals got their dresses in a bunch and called Henry and Wolfgang's old bosses." Xander pushed up the sleeve of his t-shirt to reveal the small vertical line of runes on his upper arm.

"You're--bloody hell," Bill breathed. "You're T'bori--at least adopted and T'bori trained. I worked with a T'bori named Thalu in Egypt for about a year."

"What?"

"The tattoo. The T'bori don't have schools, they follow a master/apprentice or informal groups and fostering more than anything else like before Hogwarts or Durmstrang or Beauxbatons or any of the other schools really existed." Bill rolled his eyes. "It's more complex than that, and if they have any major talent in a specific area tend to concentrate more on that after the basics--say through fourth year Hogwarts are covered. But--that's the T'bori equivalent of a NEWT certificate on his arm." Bill said.

"A What?" Xander frowned.

George shook his head. "Never took the NEWTs. Fred and I left Hogwarts before we finished our seventh year, mum went absolutely spare over that but we'd had enough of what was going on at the time, and neither of us were ever going to work for the Ministry."

Xander pinched the bridge of his nose at a sudden spike in his headache and stumbled back toward the couch. He dug blindly in his satchel for his phone, and glared at the stubborn malfunctioning magicked thing to work like he wanted it to as he dialed Kafu's phone.

"ALEXANDER LAVELLE HARRIS YOU ARE ON VACATION! AND WHERE ARE YOU MY TRACING SPELL HAS GONE ALL WONKY AND I CANT FIND YOU ANYWHERE AND WHY WERE YOU TRYING TO CALL THAT GUIDE GUY! YOU ARE--" the outraged voice started shouting at him, not sounding the least bit repentant or sheepish about magically high jacking his damned phone

"WILLOW. DO NOT! START! NO SPELLS ON ME! MY HEAD IS READY TO EXPLODE. YOU KNOW HOW MAGIC GOES WONKY THIS ONE IS TRYING TO GIVE ME AN ANUERYSM AND WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY PHONE THIS TIME!!!"

"All calls come to my phone" She had the nerve to sound pleased with herself.

"WHAT!! WILLOW!!"

"You're on vacation! That silly Wolf man--"

"WILLOW!!" Xander screamed. And ended the call before he said or did something he really regretted later. He tossed the thing in the fireplace. "One of you want to burn the damn thing? It's now dangerous and worthless."

"Dangerous?"

"Gods only know what Willow decided was helpful, it's at the very least has tracking spells that could be picked up on that could make it dangerous as far as bad things following Willows magic and try eating whoever's on the other end of the phone. And useless since she's made it utterly worthless in that it can only be used to contact her, and everyone who wants to contact me, gets told to go jump evidently by her because she's somehow rerouted the number. Willow's going to kill me being helpful long before a demon or poisonous snake ever does."

Ron didn't hesitate. "Incendo!" If some bloke who is even suspected of being a DNE tells him to burn something, he's would, it was as simple as that. Even if the guy was just plain off his rocker, well the little mobile telly-phone wouldn't be dangerous if it was ashes, and if it wasn't dangerous, well it was the man's telly-phone and if he wanted it burnt so be it.

"Could you do me a really huge favor?" Xander looked at Ron.

"Depends."

"You said your in-laws were non-magic?"

"Ye-eah," Ron agreed warily.

"Could you pop over to their house and call Kafu? He can back up that if just having the tattoo isn't good enough, and tell him that the phone business was entirely Willow and he can't kill her. He can maybe get here through Gringotts in Cairo to London soonish?"

"You won't go anywhere?"

"No."

"How do T'bori have muggle telly-phones?"

"The T'bori don't, Kafu does. Willow made mine and he made the ones the rest of the team use."

"Right, and what do you know about muggle stuff? You're some kind of wizard or magical being..."

"My parents were as unmagical as it came, magic could have bit them in the ass and they'd be looking for a stray dog instead."

"Wouldn't send you to school then? That why you're T'bori trained?" Ron pressed.

"If you mean hocus pocus school? No. Mom and dad only went for what the state of California required. Actually make that two calls--if you would. The first is necessary, Kafu. At least I'm betting it is if European Wizards are as shit for brains as he insists they are..."

Bill barked out a laugh. He'd heard the same sentiment expressed more than once, by both the T'bori wizard he had worked with and several members of the North African Goblin Horde. "I've heard that one before and been told I'm less stupid than most of my ilk, and was expected to take that as a compliment."

Xander gave Bill a tired smile, then turned his attention back to Ron. "The second would be of the good but nothing all that critical. Call Giles and tell him to start checking the phone and computers for spells and probably himself or Dawn too. Willow's fixing things, or at least trying to fix me and has been pulling crap intercepting phone calls and putting tracking spells on me."

"You want to press charges?"

"I don't think an American Wicca with a 'make it all better' obsession is in your jurisdiction."

Ron frowned and shook his head. "No. Wicca aren't usually bothered with unless they bother British Wizarding citizens."

"Which I am not." Xander pointed out.

"True."

"So you can't do anything about her."

"Probably not." Ron admitted.

"Giles will yell, she'll cry and promise to be good and never do that again. It'll last a few months until she decides someone else or something else needs fixed. Way it always goes. And I'm her favorite thing to fix, especially since she's been effectively stopped from casting any spells on Buffy-types after the little oopsie getting pissed at Kennedy so..." Xander shrugged and lowered his head into his hands with a wince. That had been an accident, the Kennedy thing. Pure blind hurt angry uncontrolled accident, but it had also gotten her put under a massive geis once Kennedy had been de-bunnied.

"You all right, Xander?" George frowned.

"Doing the follow along always gives me a headache, and it's worse than usual. Not used to your mojo, and they've got their own kinda mojo."

"You will be here when I get back?" Ron frowned.

"Yeah, I will. If I leave the apartment before you get back it will only be to help if their mommy or daddy shows up, and then I'll come right back here provided I don't end up extra-crispy."

"Wizard's oath?"

"Yeah," Xander agreed not looking up.

Ron looked to his brothers in askance. George and Bill both nodded. Charlie shrugged. "Right then, I'll be back." Ron said.

*

Charlie was the first that broke the silence. "You didn't use a wand when Norbert--"

Bill nodded. "All through that business with the ruby, I never saw you with a wand once."

"I don't have one." Xander repeated.

"You're--you're like Delacroix." Bill frowned. "Aren't you?"

"Who?" George asked confused.

"French Cursebreaker in Egypt. He'd been hit by so much over the years he couldn't use a wand anymore. He knew his stuff, better than anyone really. I worked with him the first two years I was down there. He hadn't been reduced quite to a squib but not much more than, and had so many curses on him that if he tried to do anything with a wand or any spells most times it went spectacularly bad. He was the craziest man I ever met because he would go down on digs and just feel his way through, and hope someone following was quick enough with a wand if a curse got tripped. Ended up with blinding headaches whenever he tried to do much with his magic."

"What sort of curses have you ever been hit with, Xander?"

Xander raised his head and stared at George. "Uh...I have no idea of most of it. What I do know...well, you got a month or two?" he snorted. His headache was getting worse, and it felt like Willow. He wasn't particularly concerned what the three of them decided his reason for not having a wand was, as long as they did it quietly.