fandomtownies | Aereopagitica: Friday [9-22]

Well after Lana locked up, Giles managed to get downstairs and open the store back up. It had been a very long night. But that wasn’t due to any supernatural terror: just the extraordinarily mundane ones working at Heathrow and Dulles airports. First, he’d been bumped from the original flight. Then, he’d been seated next to a two-year-old named Jeffrey who could give a Xaloc demon a run for its money for sheer decibel level. Giles didn't even want to discuss the...stickiness. Then the flight had been delayed for three hours in Philadelphia, and they’d circled Dulles itself for two hours. Customs had been even more protracted and tedious than its usual nightmarish self thanks to Willow slipping a bag of very undeclared clotted cream into his luggage, unbeknownst to him. Of course this was all four hours after the airline had informed him that they had lost that same luggage.

Giles had stumbled into his flat at around six o'clock in the morning and slept like the dead. Now, showered and refreshed, he sat in the shop perusing the new stock, sipping tea, and waiting for a certain embodiment of a certain energy souce to wander in and give an explanation for a certain portal...

Dawn walked innocently into Giles's shop, slurping an iced mocha. She waved chirpily, “Hi!”

Giles was playing it cool.

"Hello, Dawn."

Giles surreptitiously checked Dawn out for major wounds of any sort. Finding none, he permitted himself a smile. This could be fun.

“Have a nice trip?” Dawn asked, leaning against the counter.

"Oh, yes. It was lovely. I rode, I annoyed your sister, and I frightened the pants off of Roger Wyndam-Pryce. You know, my usual amusements."

Giles gave her a completely innocent, concerned-mentor-like look as he asked, "How was your summer?"

“It was good! There were cabins and jell-o monsters, and I helped research the mummies once the pond turned into coffee.” Dawn, completely unaware of any potential lectures headed in her general direction, took another sip of her drink.

"Coffee, you say? Most interesting. And mummies? You must have had quite the infestation."

Dawn nodded. “Oh, yeah. Someone read out loud from a book. You know how it goes,” she said with a shrug.

"Yes, yes I do know how that goes. What I don't know is what transpired so dire, so drastic, so terrible that you felt the need to open a vein and a portal."

To punctuate his point, Giles dropped the pile of books he'd been sorting onto the counter with a cracking THUD.

Oops. So much for her idea that she could open a portal without a lecture. She backed away slowly. “Um, soooo, you heard about that, huh?”

Giles snapped his fingers. One of the joys of being "out," so to speak, about his magic use was the ability to cut off the escape routes of any and all recalcitrant teenagers in the vicinity. The shop door slammed shut.

Giles leaned on the counter, looking at Dawn levelly. "Yes, I do know about that. In fact, I would like to know more about it. Now."

“Cooool...” Dawn always forgot that there was another side to Giles. “Er, I meant....er, well, you see, it's like this...”

Giles polished his glasses.

He tried to pull himself together.

"Yes?"

“Er…” Dawn fidgeted, “Someone got sucked into an inter-dimensional portal, and we needed to get him back. There was no other way, Giles. I checked.”

"All right, then," Giles began, warming to his subject, "you of course consulted with Ms. Calendar or one of the other, more experienced magic users at the school? And of course they were present to assist on the off chance something went wrong when you cut open one of your veins and unleashed a power source that gods and demons have destroyed worlds to obtain.

"You of course consulted more experienced magic users before you went ahead and crossed the one line that your sister and I always declared uncrossable: that using you as a source of power was not an option, and that we would fight to the death anyone who tried to use you in such a way. You of course took every possible precaution before you went ahead and put the fate of the universe in complete and total jeopardy?"

Dawn meeped.

“Of course,” she pouted reflexively, “I'm not a baby, Giles.”

"In my dreams you are an infant. I'd have some measure of control over your behavior if you were."

Giles took a deep breath.

"All right, then. Explain to me exactly what you did, the protections you cast, and how it worked."

“You're not my father. Or my Giles. I did what I thought was best based on the information I had available at the time, the way he taught me to.”

"Then perhaps your Giles and I should have a chat. Perhaps he should know what's going on."

Dawn eeped, her eyes wide.

Giles continued, “Seeing as I am him, or me, or whatever, and that you seem to have grown in much the same vein as ‘my’ Dawn, I'm assuming he would be as displeased as I am.”

How many mes are there out there? Is there one who took Rayne's path? Giles briefly shuddered at the thought before returning his attention to the sorcerer's apprentice.

Dawn hung her head, and came mostly clean, “I drew protective ritual figures on the ground--the strongest I could find. And we used salt, to make sure nothing could get through to us. And...I mixed my blood with someone else's, so it would be a more directed portal.”

Brief pride flashed across Giles's features. That's my girl. But the pride was quickly squelched. He wasn't quite done yet.

“There's at least that, then. And the salt was good. But why your energy?” He threw his hands into the air, exasperated, “Dawn, you're the mystical equivalent of a nuclear reactor! You couldn't find a car battery?”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Of course not. This blasted island has everything else, but not a node or ley line for miles.” He polished his glasses again. “Who helped you? Ms. Calendar? One of the other teachers?”

Dawn shook her head and hoped a lot that this wouldn’t get Giles even madder. “No. We did the research ourselves.”

“Who's ‘we’?” He asked with much trepidation, Giles thought to himself. I put my money on Willow.

She winced, “Me, mostly. And Sam and Alec.”

“Your roommate? And who's Alec?”

Dawn nodded, then explained, “Dean's ~~boyfriend~~ doppelganger. He's very, very fast.”

Giles nodded his head slowly. “Right. So, what I can take away from this conversation is that you were the resident magical expert, and that no adults were consulted?”

“Sam knows magic, too,” Dawn said in a rush, “His dad's teaching one of my classes this semester--hunting ghosts and demons.”

“So he knows combative magic, but not much defensive, I'm assuming? Demon hunters tend to be very practical in the magic they spend their time on. Only the most useful spells are generally deemed important enough.”

“Sam's very careful about protective spells--you should see some of the stuff we've got around our room,” Dawn argued.

“I should, but unfortunately I'm not allowed on school grounds.

"Back to the portal, you're aware enough energy leaked to be felt by the Devon Coven in my dimension?”

Dawn looked chagrined, though whether it was because of what she’d done or because she’d been caught probably wasn’t readily apparent.

“...oops?”

“Oops indeed." Giles gave Dawn a rather shrewd look before turning to complete mentorly concern and parental innocence.

"Dawn, you have a magical education that frankly outstrips most of what I'm assuming this school can give you. I'm not surprised that you went ahead and took actions yourself.”

“Uh...huh.” Dawn was a little suspicious, but she relaxed enough to sip her drink again.

“And I feel a deep responsibility to your family, and to you personally.” He sipped tea, innocence dripping.

“Yeah, I know that, Giles. You're totally responsibility guy,” she nodded.

And then Giles lowered the hammer.

“That is why I would like to make up for not being able to oversee your magical education as closely as I should have. I'd like you to come into the store on...oh, Thursday afternoons should be good. You will work with the magical books and I will be available to tutor you and answer any and all questions.”

So much for my Thursdays of Laziness. She stifled the whine. “..I will?”

“Oh, yes, because we don't want to bother your Giles. He's very busy--still heading up the Council, I assume?--and we should be able to relieve him of this one duty. But if you think he'd rather see to it himself, I'm fairly certain I've figured out how these trans-dimensional phone calls work...”

“No! No, this is good,” Dawn said quickly, “Lots of reading and questioning. Yep. I'm all for it. Look at me, I’m bookstore girl!”

Giles smiled and sipped his tea. “Quite.”

“So...I'm...gonna go. Yeah. Bye, Giles. And welcome back.” She ~~fled~~ left quickly, before he could find out whatever else she’d done.

Giles waved after her.

Aereopagitica: Friday [9-22]

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