fic: In Which Willow is Certain About Quite a Number of Things
This week's story for tamingthemuse. I keep calling them ficlets, but this one really isn't a ficlet at all, is it? It got a little bit out of control. This week's prompt was sarcasm.
Additionally, this is my (first) offering for Challenge 11.2 at the womenverse, which is taking a quote by a fictional woman and using it in a fic/graphic, so that a female character from a different fandom uses the quote. The quote I used was "That's ridiculous. I never threatened him." (Jessica Fletcher, Murder, She Wrote).
Finally, this is my entry for my au100 table, for 085. Missing.
Title: In Which Willow is Certain About Quite a Number of Things
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Willow Rosenberg, Daniel "Oz" Osbourne, Spike (with cameos by Ethan Rayne, Charles Gunn, Buffy Summers)
Pairing: Willow/Oz, some Buffy/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Words: 5,167
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this unofficial fanwork, nor do I claim to or profit in anyway.
Summary: When Oz starts going missing, Willow becomes absolutely certain that he's secretly a werewolf and that, because of this, he is in certain danger. So, she decides that it up to her (with back up from Spike) to save him. Hogwarts AU.
A/N: This is for tinpra, who encouraged me at the 3 Sentence Ficathon to actually write a BtVS Hogwarts AU, instead of just talking about all of the head canon I'd already established for this. So, basically, this is the Hogwarts AU you never knew you wanted. But with more Willow. Feedback is always very, very welcome!
It had been a routine for five years and two months now, ever since they met as newly sorted Ravenclaws, that each morning, when Willow came down the stairs to the Ravenclaw common room, she would find Oz sitting on a couch reading, waiting to walk to breakfast with her. This morning, just like clockwork, Oz was waiting for her on the wide blue couch by the window, but as Willow rushed down the stairs, she quickly realized something was off about him. He was slumped against the back of the couch, his face was ghostly pale as he stared listlessly at a faded portrait of Adalbert Waffling, who was beginning to eye Oz with some concern as well.
“Oz, are you feeling alright?” Willow asked him in place of a greeting as she approached. Willow sometimes worried that Oz didn’t take proper care of himself, so she worried about Oz for him. She really thought that somebody ought to, and since she was his best friend, she was entirely certain the duty fell on her.
“Morning, Willow,” he smiled half-heartedly, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“Are you sure?” Willow fretted, reaching out to feel Oz’s forehead. It was warm, incredibly so, as if his skin had been wrapped around a cauldron or a fireplace. “Oz, I’m serious! You ought to go to the Infirmary. You really don’t look too good.”
“Relax, Will. I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all.”
“If you’re sure...”
“I am,” Oz smiled and started tugging her by the hand to the doorway to the Ravenclaw Common Room. Even Oz’s hand was uncommonly warm, but Willow benched her concern to be reviewed at a later date. She blushed at the feel of his hand laced around hers, reminding herself that they were best friends and this was the sort of harmless, affectionate gesture exchanged between friends, but she couldn’t dampen the giddy, excited squirm in the base of her stomach. Willow liked holding Oz’s hand in hers, and she thought that maybe it would be nice to hold Oz’s hand as something more than just friends, but she was far too terrified of ruining their friendship to say anything. It was far better to have Oz as her best friend than to lose him over unrequited affections.
“Wanna watch Quidditch practice after classes today?” Willow asked, in place of all of the things she wished she was brave enough to ask him. “Wesley told me that Dawn Summers, our new Chaser, is really good.”
“I don’t think I can,” Oz shrugged apologetically, not offering any more information.
“Well, alright.” That was curious, Willow reflected as they walked down a slowly moving staircase to the Great Hall. Oz had been inexplicably busy the night before too, leaving her to study in the library all by herself. There were only so many things to do in the evening at Hogwarts, and there was absolutely nothing to do that they hadn’t done together in the past. Oz had no reason to be avoiding her unless something was wrong and he didn’t want her to know.
They entered through the gaping wooden doors of the Great Hall and slipped into the teeming, shouting mass of students, congregated around House tables and slipping through the empty places in the Hall.
Almost immediately, Buffy caught Willow’s eye from the Gryffindor table, waving her arm like a windmill and grinning widely. She was Willow’s best friend after Oz, but Willow didn’t always get Buffy, who was far more interested in captaining the Gryffindor Quidditch team than keeping up with her studies, in the way that she didn’t understand most of Gryffindor House. Buffy had an excited, giddy look on her face, almost as bright as her smile had been when caught the Golden Snitch in last years Quidditch Cup, one that almost definitely meant Buffy wanted to talk about Spike. It was unusual for a Gryffindor and a Slytherin to date, but Buffy and Spike had always been unusual, so Willow supposed it made an odd sort of sense.
“I’ll save you a seat,” Oz said, nodding at Buffy, and disappeared into the crowd. Wondering what on Earth could be wrong with him, Willow watched him weave around a crowd of giggling Second Year Hufflepuffs until he was hidden from view, and then she turned to find Buffy.
* * *
Ravenclaw had Transfiguration with Gryffindor that morning, so Buffy walked to class along with Willow and Oz. It was good, because Buffy’s happiness now that she and Spike had decided to make things official between them was infectious, so much that Willow couldn’t stop grinning the entire walk to class, and even Oz cracked a smile. It was less good, though, because Willow didn’t get the chance to discover just what exactly was eating at Oz or to see if his fever had gotten any better. He absolutely hated making a fuss, and, as long as Buffy was there, he would completely refuse to admit there might be a problem, much less confess what that problem was. And talking to Oz in class was not even remotely a possibility, as Professor Rayne had the tendency to transfigure misbehaving students into whatever animal struck his fancy. On Tuesday, he had turned Freddy Iverson into a marmoset for doing his Divination assignment instead of taking notes, and Willow had no desire to discover first-hand what animal Professor Rayne was feeling fond of today.
“Open your books to page 493,” Professor Rayne announced as strolled into his classroom and perched on the edge of his desk. “I’ve got quite the treat for you lot, today.”
It turned out that Professor Rayne’s treat was “Personal Transformations: Metamorphagi, Animagi, and Lycanthropes.” Willow turned to nudge Oz, thinking that, as a metamorphagus, he had quite the edge on their classmates, just in time to see him stiffen like a startled rabbit, staring at Professor Rayne as if their professor was a hunting dog. The professor winked at Oz, giving him a sharp edged smile that reeked of chaos and madness, and then began class in a whirl of motion, staring all the students down equally, as if he’d never taken the time to single Oz out.
Professor Rayne was nothing if not deliberate. He was unpredictable and quixotic and had an uncanny predilection for chaos (like that time he turned half of the chairs in the Great Hall into miniature horses, for no reason other than proving to the students that he was not to be trifled with), but he was also calculated and very, very precise. For a man who liked bedlam as much as he did, he certainly took great pains to be in control. Professor Rayne was not one to waste gestures or to do anything without a motive, an ulterior motive, and a cleverly hidden plan that would undoubtedly result in further pandemonium. So, it followed that his blatant wink to Oz, one that Willow saw clearly, as if the professor had meant her to, was something altogether more sinister or important than a simple acknowledgement that Oz was a metamorphagus. He had no reason to reference that only in a wink; after five years of changing his hair color weekly, their fellow students had grown accustomed to Oz shifting his appearance at will. Willow would bet a dozen bronze Knuts that wink had some meaning that she wasn’t privy to.
That, of course, begged the question, what did Professor Rayne know about Oz that Willow didn’t? And just why did that make Oz so uncomfortable? As Professor Rayne paced in front of his desk, pointing at the image conjured from the tip of his wand of a wizard turning into a wolf, Oz sat rigidly beside her, hands as still as if he’d been petrified, instead of taking notes like the rest of the class.
“And now, class, which one of you little scourges can tell me the difference between an animagus wolf and a werewolf?” Professor Rayne called, sounding all too gleeful at the chance to humiliate a student. “Mister Osbourne, perhaps?”
“Animagi get the choice to turn,” Oz answered after a pause, and his voice was as calm as it always was, but Willow almost thought she could hear an undercurrent of anger, underlining his words like a riptide. “Werewolves don’t.”
“Very good, Mr. Osbourne,” Professor Rayne answered in that same taunting tone, before turning to one of the Gryffindor Prefects and barking, “Ms. Chase, another difference, if you will?”
Willow stopped listening, staring fixedly at Oz instead. He didn’t notice, his eyes locked on the corner of Professor Rayne’s desk, glassy and unfocused as if he was looking through the desk to see something hidden from her. Oz was keeping secrets from her, that much was obvious, but was he really hiding this from her? This was terrifying and nonsensical and, really, the only thing that made actual, logical sense. Lycanthropy was the only secret she could imagine, because it made perfect sense (disappearing for two-three if he disappeared tomorrow night, as well-nights in a row, acting moodier and quieter than usual, being unusually tired and running an inhuman fever), but it also made no sense at all, because, after five years of friendship, wouldn’t she have noticed something before now?
And then, with the ease of the alohamora charm, everything slid into place. Tonight really was the full moon (and, that reminded her, she needed to finish that 11 centimeter scroll for Astronomy on Friday) and Oz had been sick like this just one month ago, and, over the summer, he had mentioned that he had been bitten (by his cousin, maybe, or perhaps by a wild dog) in one of the letters he sent to her by way of his barn owl, Johann (short for Sebastian Johann Bach, he told her, a composer his Muggle father loved). Oz was a werewolf.
And Professor Rayne knew, and he wanted Oz to be sure that he knew. Professor Rayne loved things that were out of control, things like werewolves, and he looked far too gleeful at Oz’s discomfort for him to not have some mischief in store. Professor Rayne was planning something, and that was even scarier than her best friend possibly being a werewolf, because Oz could be in trouble without even realizing it.
So, Willow decided, she was just going to have to save him.
* * *
“Spike?” Willow called a little uncertainly, capturing the Slytherin’s attention. He was sitting in a deserted corner of the courtyard, arguing with Charles Gunn. There was shouting and hand waving and cursing, and Willow was reasonably sure she had just heard Spike threaten to do something anatomically implausible to Gunn with a quaffle and beater’s bat, so Willow assumed that they were arguing about the upcoming Gryffindor v. Slytherin Quidditch game. Oz’s safety took certain priority over Quidditch in Willow’s mind, so she had no qualms about yelling, with a little more urgency, “Spike!”
“Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a bloody argument, here?!” Spike shouted and turned on the ball of his foot, his robe swirling around him in a manner that seemed unfairly dramatic, to face Willow. “Oh, uh, sorry, Red,” he muttered, abashed at the sight of his girlfriend’s best friend. “Something I can do you for?”
Willow wasn’t always entirely sure that she liked Spike, but they were friends, more or less. She (mostly) trusted him, and she certainly had to admit that she needed his help right now. The older boy had once intimidated her, just a bit, with his bleached hair, blatant disregard for everything her shiny, new Prefect badge stood for, and the rumors of dark magic that clung to him like a shroud; still, he was almost definitely the only one in this school who could help her, who actually would help her. “Yes,” Willow announced, squaring her shoulders and looking the Seventh Year Slytherin in the face. “There really is.”
Willow peeked at Gunn, trying to think of a polite way to ask him to leave, and he quickly noticed. “Right, then. See you around, Willow,” Gunn smiled, giving her a nod, and walked off, shouting, “And I’ll see you on the pitch on Sunday, Pratt!”
“You better bloody believe it, wanker!” Spike shouted at Gunn’s retreating back. “Right, sorry, Red. You were saying?”
“I need your help,” Willow rushed, shooting her words at him rapid-fire to communicate just how important what she was saying was. “I think Oz is in trouble!”
“And what exactly do you want me to do about that?”
“He went missing last evening and he’s running a fever and I think that something’s wrong, but he won’t tell me and I’m really starting to worry that he’s in some sort of danger!”
“He’s ditching you at night?” Spike raised an eyebrow at her, looking infuriatingly skeptical. “Hate to tell you, luv, but have you thought that maybe your lover boy there’s found himself a new girl?”
“He’s not my lover boy!” Willow exclaimed, flushing a bright crimson, darker than Gryffindor banners. “And, no! Oz hasn’t ‘found himself a girl!’ This is serious!
“Besides!” Willow continued on, not noticing that Spike had tried to respond. “I wouldn’t even care if Oz did have a girlfriend! We’re friends, best friends, and that’s all, honest! So, he’s certainly not my ‘lover boy,’ I’ll have you know! Absolutely not!” She stomped her foot and crossed her arms in a show of disapproval, and willed herself to believe her own words. They were just friends, after all, and things were best left that way.
“Right,” Spike smirked, “You’re just friends.”
“Completely!”
“And I believe you,” Spike deadpanned. “Honest.”
“Well, thank you for that, Mr. Sarcasm! But that is entirely not the topic we were discussing, so, if we could just get back to that…”
“So, get back to it, then. How do you think your boy’s in trouble?”
Willow visibly hesitated, biting her lip in an attempt to bring order to her thoughts. “Spike,” she began slowly, “if I tell you something, something that’s really important, can I trust you to keep it a secret?”
“I suppose that depends on the secret,” Spike answered slowly, absently twirling his wand between the fingers of his right hand. “But, I doubt that you’ll have any secrets that I’ll feel the pressing urge to share. So, sure. You can trust me.”
“That’s not really reassuring,” Willow hedged, but remembered that Professor Rayne probably had some incredibly sinister plans for Oz, and that Spike really was the best person to help her. “But, you promise not to tell?”
“Yeah, pet. I promise.”
“If you tell anybody, I’ll do something really nasty, okay?” Willow threatened, leveling her best menacing glare at him, which in all honesty was more of an attempt at menace than an actual success. “I’ll hex you blind or I’ll set your hair on fire or I’ll transfigure your broom into a Bowtruckle! Or, oh, this is better! I’ll tell Buffy that you betrayed me and Oz and I’ll let you deal with angry, defending-her-friends Buffy!”
“I already promised, didn’t I?” Spike winced, no doubt imagining the pain his girlfriend would have in store for him if he betrayed her friends.
“I think Professor Rayne is planning something, and I think Oz is in danger because there’s a chance that he might secretly a werewolf! And, I’m 100% sure…okay, well, I’m fairly certain that Professor Rayne knows and that he’s up to something, because Professor Rayne is always up to something. And he’s usually harmless, but, Spike, I’m worried that this time he won’t be so harmless!” Willow paused to gasp for breath, having momentarily exhausted her supply of words.
“That’s…not what I was expecting, I’ll admit,” Spike replied, twirling his wand just a little bit faster. “You’re sure Rayne’s plotting something?”
“Well, no,” Willow admitted, “but if he is, Oz won’t be in any condition to protect himself, not once he takes the Wolfsbane Potion. I need to make sure he’ll be okay.”
“And if Rayne is planning something?” Spike questioned, looking the most concerned Willow had ever seen him look. “You’re gonna take him on yourself, pet?”
“If I have to,” Willow said bravely, trying to feel just as courageous as her words made her sound. She was so scared at the idea of standing up against a professor that the bones in her legs were starting to feel watery, as if she’d been hit with the Jelly Legs Jinx, but the thought of Oz getting hurt was enough to keep her upright. “Somebody needs to keep Oz safe.”
“Should’ve been a bloody Gryffindor, pet,” Spike chuckled, “You’re too noble for your own damn good.”
“Well, are you going to help me, then?”
“Meet me here an hour before sundown. We’ll find your boy.”
* * *
“Are you sure this is the best idea?” Willow hissed for the sixteenth time so far, as Spike peered around a corner and beckoned her forward. “I’m serious, Spike! We’re breaking a lot of rules right now. And I’m a Prefect! I can’t break rules!”
“Do you want to find your boy or not?” Spike snapped back, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her along as he slipped down a corridor. He stopped when they reached a misshapen statue of a humpbacked witch (Willow couldn’t remember the witch’s name; she blamed the high stress of her current situation) and pulled out his map again. Willow had protested when she first saw it, speckled with footprints of the castle’s occupants, crawling around the crackling sepia parchment of the map like a colony of ants. It was almost certainly on the list of magical artifacts students were forbidden from having and, as a prefect, she felt obligated to report it. She squelched that urge rather quickly, once she realized that this map was her key to finding and protecting Oz. Some times, she acknowledged, there were things more important than following rules.
“What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Spike muttered crossly, staring intently at the map while Willow tried to peek over his shoulder. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
“What? Spike, what’s going on?” Willow tugged the map out of his hands, searching the magical map for a sign of Oz. It was difficult to locate anybody in the tumultuous mass of dots that filled the paper halls of Hogwarts, each jostling dot obscuring the ones around it. After a moment of searching, she found Oz’s. His was the only dot outside of the castle and the only dot moving away from the castle as far as it could.
“Look,” Spike breathed, tracing a path from the Whomping Willow, it’s branches rustling ominously even on the map, to the route Oz’s dot seemed to be following. “There’s a secret passage here, love. Through the Whomping Willow, see?”
“Oh,” the witch gulped. “That’s not very safe, is it?”
“I suppose it’s not,” Spike agreed, checking the map once more to insure that their path to the castle doors was clear. “Let’s go.”
It turned out that the Whomping Willow was surprisingly safe, much to the delight of both students, frozen in place as if it were a regular tree. Less to her delight, Willow discovered, as a rabbit raced out of it, that the passage was no more than a gap between the roots and the base of the tree. She wasn’t entirely sure what she had been expecting a secret passageway in a tree to look like, but she would have liked it if this passage was a bit bigger. And cleaner.
Once inside, the passageway wasn’t nearly so bad, much bigger and with far less dirt than she had expected. “Lumos,” Willow whispered once they’d both come to their feet, and held her wand to the map. Oz’s dot had stopped moving some distance away from where their two dots stood, huddled just beside the Whomping Willow. Now, it sat still in the Shrieking Shack.
“That’s the Shrieking Shack,” Willow pointed, staring at Oz’s dot.
“Good thing you pointed that out, pet. I hadn’t noticed that, myself.”
“Okay, your sarcasm? Not appreciated!” Willow snapped, stalking off down the tunnel. She usually didn’t have a problem with sarcasm (because, really, she wouldn’t have survived five years of Oz if she couldn’t deal with that type of humour), but her nerves were wound as tightly as a spiral staircase, her thumping heart echoing in her ears.
“Well, I’ll be sure not to use it then,” Spike snapped back. “Can’t imagine anything worse than making you testy.”
Willow picked up her pace with a huff and decidedly ignored the blonde wizard at her tail. Without the distraction of her conversation with Spike, Willow was left only with terrified thoughts of Oz, stuck in a werewolf form and at the mercy of Professor Rayne and other, even more sinister, figures. The idea that she might be too late, that Oz could be in trouble, or hurt, or even worse, right now, sped her steps until she was practically running.
The race down the narrow, earthen hallway felt like just a handful of heartbeats and it felt like an entire winter, all at once, but finally, Willow reached a door, old and sturdy in its frame. She blindly reached for it, still holding her brightly lit wand in her hand like a beacon, not stopping to consider what might be on the other side.
“Steady, love,” Spike spoke up quietly from behind her. “Let’s be careful, alright?”
Willow nodded and whispered “Nox,” extinguishing the light of her wand, and slipped the door open cautiously, imagining that it was made of brittle glass. There was nothing but a hollow looking darkness through the gaping doorway, with the faint outlines of walls and further doorways peeking through the gloom. Emboldened, Willow crept in.
“Lumos,” she whispered once more, lining the inside of the shack with pale, golden light. The main room was musty and unkempt, clearly forgotten and left behind, with faded, peeling wallpaper and dust practically ground into the floorboards. Willow didn’t stop to take in the sights, but, instead, rushed from room to room, searching for Oz.
Finally, she found the form of a wolf, its body distorted and stretched grotesquely so as not to truly resemble either wolf or man but some mystical amalgamation of the two. The werewolf looked up as Willow skidded into an upstairs bedroom, blinking sleepily at her from his ramshackle den of blankets on an ancient four poster bed, before giving a sad sounding whine and laying his head back down. Slowly, Willow approached the bed, provoking no response from the Oz-wolf as he watched her approach. She sat beside him cautiously, and leaned against the headboard. Oz was safe and, sure, he was a werewolf, but that was in no way the weirdest thing that had happened to either of them so far that year.
“Spike, I found him” she called quietly, so as not to disturb the wolf. The Slytherin poked his head around the door, spotted her beside the wolf and smiled. “He’s alright,” Willow sighed in relief, giving Spike a grin wide enough to split her face. “He’s safe.”
“Think I’ll stay downstairs, just in case something does happen. Alright?” Spike asked, already backing out of the doorway.
“Okay,” Willow smiled, combing her fingers through Oz’s fur. “And, Spike?” she called again, waiting until she could see him through the door again. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” the blonde shrugged, and vanished downstairs.
Oz shifted to lay his head in her lap, and Willow smiled and, clutching her wand, she tiredly leaned back against the headboard. Oz was safe and not out meeting other girls (and, now that she knew that he really wasn’t, Willow could admit, just within the safety of her own mind, that the idea of Oz having a secret girlfriend really had been a huge concern), and Professor Rayne wasn’t here hunting him or anything, and everything was absolutely alright. She shifted around on the blankets, threading one hand through the fur between Oz’s ears, the other holding tight to her wand, in case she needed to defend him. Slowly, Willow fell asleep under the warmth of werewolf Oz, telling herself an imaginary bedtime story about princesses who went on quests and fought dragons to save their handsome prince, instead of the other way around, so that they could ride off into the sunset together and live a mutually supportive and equal happily ever after. As she drifted off, Willow sleepily decided that she liked that sort of story much better, and that Oz really would make quite a nice handsome prince.
* * *
Willow woke up sore, unable to feel her legs, and completely disoriented. She was in a room she barely recognized, she was wearing yesterday’s clothes, and Oz was asleep in her lap, completely naked.
“Good morning, Oz,” she said quietly as she threw a blanket over him, really just wanting to cut right to the chase. It was entirely possible that Oz wouldn’t be at all pleased to see her here, an outcome that she really hadn’t considered in her panic the previous day. She probably should have foreseen that, but she had been so busy panicking and worrying that Oz wouldn’t survive the full moon that she hadn’t considered what might happen in the event that he wasn’t in harms way.
“Willow?” he murmured, rolling onto his back to look up at her. “What’re you doing in here?”
“We’re in the Shrieking Shack, Oz,” Willow murmured, absently running a hand along his hair. And, just like that, Oz suddenly understood exactly what was happening. He sat up with a start, jumping back away from her with a quickness that belied just how recently he had been asleep.
“You can’t be here,” Oz insisted, shaking his head in disbelief and taking a few steps further away. “Will, you’ve got to go.”
“Relax, Oz,” Willow soothed standing up to look at him. “It’s morning. The moon’s set.”
Oz didn’t say anything, but his eyes widened slightly in horror and his almost nonexistent expression of anguish, just a suggestion of pain in the lines of his forehead and mouth, was more than able to communicate just how deeply he had feared Willow discovering that he was a werewolf.
“I wish you would’ve told me,” Willow smiled weakly at the wizard, trying to lighten the pain in his eyes. “You know you can tell me anything, Oz, don’t you?”
“This was different,” Oz disagreed hoarsely, clutching the blanket around his waist so tightly that his knuckles were white, stark against the grey wool.
“I don’t think so. I don’t care about lycanthropy or full moons or the Shrieking Shack, Oz. I just care about you.”
“I’m a monster now, Will. Maybe it’s best if you don’t care about me.” Oz met her eyes, his own firm with resolve. His eyes were dark with self-loathing, with the belief that he really was a monster, and it broke Willow’s heart just a little to see him hurting so much. She’d wanted to protect him, and here she was causing him pain.
“Well, maybe I don’t care about that,” Willow snapped back, taking a step toward Oz. “I figured out you were a werewolf without you having to tell me, and I still cared about you enough to come out here looking for you, just to make sure that you were safe! I care about you, Oz, not about your lycanthropy.”
“Will…”
“No,” Willow cut him off, “you’re going to let me finish saying what I have to say. You know, my first thought when I figured out what was going on with you was, ‘what if somebody else finds out and tries to hurt Oz?’ not ‘what if Oz accidentally hurts me?’ I was scared for you, Oz, not of you.
“So, don’t tell me not to care about you, because that’s not going to happen, mister.” Willow took another step closer to Oz, closing the gap so that there was just a handbreadth of room between the two. “I was terrified that somebody would find you and hunt wolfy you down, so I came out here to find you. I snuck out of the castle all night to make sure you were alright, and I broke a bunch of rules, all for you! I’m sorry that you don’t care about me enough to tell me when big things like getting turned into a werewolf happen to you, Oz, but don’t expect me not to care. Because I do care. A lot.”
Oz stared at her, something curious and new in his sea blue eyes, and then he cupped the back of her head in one hand and kissed her. Willow had never kissed a boy before, but she was almost completely sure that this was the best first kiss she could’ve ever experienced. Oz’s lips were warm and soft and gentle on hers, and she didn’t even notice that he tasted just the slightest bit like morning breath (just like she did) because she was so busy appreciating just how perfect of a kiss this was. “I care a lot about you too.”
“Okay,” Willow smiled, a little breathlessly. “Okay.”
“I care, Willow. Really.”
“Oz,” Willow murmured in sudden apprehension, “Professor Rayne knows you’re a werewolf.”
“I know. All of the teachers do. Headmaster Giles is the one who set me up with this place.”
“So does Spike,” she added, locking her hands, which she’d dropped onto his shoulders as he kissed her, around his neck.
“Spike?”
“He helped me find you,” Willow admitted with a blush. “But he promised to keep your secret!”
“What’d you threaten him with?” Oz asked, eyes sparkling with suppressed humor.
“That’s ridiculous. I never threatened him!” Willow insisted, giggling sheepishly when Oz merely raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her. “I may have threatened to set Buffy on him…”
“And now it makes sense,” Oz smirked. “Anything else you want to share?”
“Well,” Willow blushed, looking down at her black uniform shoes next to Oz’s bare feet, pale like the pinkish interior of a seashell. “I think I’d really like to kiss you again.”
“I’d like that too,” Oz replied, grinning as Willow pulled him into a second kiss.
And Willow would have smiled if she hadn’t been so busy kissing Oz, because here she was, getting her fairytale ending. And maybe she hadn’t gotten to slay any monsters, but she was going to save him from the fear and despair and anger that clung to him like a second skin. She was going to save him from anything he needed saving from, no matter what. Because that’s just what you did, for people you care about.
fin.