Angel clenched his fists at his side, wondering if, were he to really, truly want to strangle Spike, he’d be able to manage it somehow.

He kind of doubted it, though.

Why he had let Spike convince him to make the call on the speaker-phone, he’d never know. But he had, and it was turning out to be nothing but an exercise in frustration.

Though, Angel supposed, Spike had a right to hear first hand what was going to happen to the teens that he considered family, and that, in the end, was what led Angel to calling Buffy and allowing Spike to listen in.

Although, had Angel realized that a mute Spike had the same capacity to annoy him as a speaking Spike did, he might have chosen differently.

Because of all the things that Spike was currently doing to aggravate Angel, speaking wasn’t one of them. After all, it would never do for Buffy to hear Spike’s voice, to know that he wasn’t really dead.

Well, not entirely dead, at any rate.

But that didn’t stop Spike from making faces, rude gestures, and other such things. In fact, if anyone were to look through the large windows and into Angel’s office, it would seem to them that Spike was doing an entire mime routine.

Not to mention the fact that Spike could now focus his energy enough to move small objects, like the pen he was now writing with. When he was done, he picked up the paper with more than a little effort, and caught Angel’s attention so he could show it to the other vampire.

Angel wondered if, were he to focus his own energy enough, he could throw a punch at Spike and have it connect.

Not that that would do anything other than alleviate some of Angel’s frustration. But then again, if it didn’t work, he’d just be more frustrated, in the end.

The dark haired vampire looked at the paper that Spike was waving in his face, and read the one word written there – wand.

“I know, I will,” he mouthed at Spike, and motioned to his desk, where the speaker phone was still emitting the diatribe the original slayer had launched into nearly five minutes before.

“ . . . besides which, Angel, those kids fought side by side with the slayers during the battle with the first, something you didn’t do, by the way.”

“But you . . .” he tried to interrupt.

“Sent you away, I know. But that’s beside the point! I wasn’t finished! They fought the Turok-Han, which are supervamps. If I didn’t trust them around normal vamps, I wouldn’t have let them go to the mall after dark. Yeah, Dawn and J.J.’s methods may be a bit unorthodox, but that’s the way we work at Champion Industries. That’s the way I’ve always worked. And yeah, the kids were put in danger by driving your car, but no more danger than all those teens are in simply by existing. I trust my kids, Angel, and you should too. If I didn’t trust them, I certainly wouldn’t be letting the Brit invasion go to public high school with them in the morning. Speaking of which, get them home. Now! ”

Spike frantically motioned at Angel again and then back at the paper. Angel just gave him a frustrated nod.

“Buffy, are you done?” Angel asked, his exasperation evident in his tone.

“For now,” she replied. “But you’d better remember that you have no right to yell at them for doing exactly what we’ve been training them to do. Lord knows, they had a hard enough time convincing us to let them fight in the first place. They shouldn’t have to convince you too.”

“Fine, whatever,” Angel agreed, with no intention of backing off of the kids. They were, like it or not, his family. But he couldn’t afford to spend the rest of the night arguing the point with Buffy. They had other business that they needed to discuss, business about the teens. The teens that, if the conversation continued in the same fashion it had been, would be back at the Hyperion before they were done conversing.

At that time, Buffy would have to speak with them. So Angel set aside the argument for the time being, and moved on to more pressing matters.

“What I called you for was for something a little more important than discussing Dawn and J.J.’s fighting habits,” Angel paused, waiting for Buffy to accept the change of subjects.

“Well?” she demanded when she had gotten nothing but silence from the stoic vampire for more than a minute.

“Harry drew his wand during the fight,” he paused, hearing Buffy’s intake of breath as she grasped the situation. “I know that he is a legal wizard, Buffy, but he can be tracked if he uses his wand. You have to make that clear to him. To all of them.”

“Oh, don’t’ worry,” Buffy told him, in a tone he recognised as her ‘fighting the apocalypse’ voice. “I’ll make it perfectly clear. Send them home, Angel. It’s time, I think, that those kids were let in on the situation. The whole situation. Even the things that Dumbledore thinks that they shouldn’t know.”

Angel tossed a glare at Spike and mouthed the word ‘satisfied’ to which the blonde had to, albeit reluctantly, nod his head.

“They should already be on their way.”

By the time that Dawn had caught up to J.J., he’d nearly been to the elevators, and on his way out of the building.

The only thing that would convince him to stay was Dawn pointing out that they were on a job, and, regardless of the fact that Angel had stepped in, they were still responsible for his old schoolmates. Well, they were until they got back to the Hyperion, and traded off with someone else at Champion Industries, at any rate. No matter how much J.J. despised the Gryffindors, he wanted to prove to everyone, and perhaps to himself most of all, that he could accomplish something on his own. That he had talents of his own. That he was good for something apart from being Lucius Malfoy’s heir and whipping boy. If he had to save the lives of people that he hated in order to do that, then so be it.

After Dawn had calmed him down, it was because of this that he’d realized she was right. This was, first and foremost, an assignment, one from the Powers That Be, no less. He couldn’t let any resentments get in the way of the mission, whether they belonged to him, or Spike.

But that didn’t mean he had to let them go. In fact, he was still cursing up a storm at his surrogate great-grandfather. Dawn was just glad that she had managed to get them out of the hallway and into the deserted coffee room before he’d really got going.

Of course, Angel might still be able to hear him, regardless of the enclosed space. He did have the vampire hearing, after all. And, it really wasn’t as if J.J. was trying to keep quiet. In fact, Dawn wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to be heard.

“ . . . I just cannot believe that he’s that big of a git, you know? I seriously thought Spike had to have been exaggerating. That Angel really couldn’t be as much of a prat as Spike claimed . . . “

“J.J.!”

“. . . of course he’s not the prat Spike described. He’s twice the prat Spike said he was . . .”

“J.J.!” Dawn repeated, trying to interrupt his rant, as she had been doing for the past five minutes, since she had actually convinced him not to leave the building.

They really needed to get back to their assignment, but Dawn knew that he would never want to be out of control like this in front of the others.

“. . . how can he think it’s a bad thing to be like Spike? After all, Spike saved the world, didn’t he? . . . “

“J.J.!”

“. . . and furthermore, all I can ever remember hearing about Angel is that time he tried to end . . . “

“J. J.!!” When her friend ignored her yet again, Dawn decided that it was time to do something drastic. She was prepared, and when he had paused to take a breath in order to continue with his ranting, she thrust a balled up fist into his gut, stealing all of his air so that he couldn’t speak.

When he finally was able to breathe again, he straightened and shot her a glare worthy of Spike himself. If one of the other teens presently at Wolfram and Hart had seen it, Dawn was sure that they would have called it the patented Malfoy glare. But not Dawn; she could tell the difference.

When J.J. had first arrived on the Summers’ doorstep in Sunnydale, and had still been the Draco Malfoy that the Gryffindors had known and loathed, he had still had that Malfoy glare. It had been full of superiority, hatred, anger and disdain. It had been cold. It had been heartless.

The glare which he now bestowed on Dawn was something else entirely.

It was still cold, still hard, still scary enough to make J.J.’s enemies pee in their pants, as Spike’s had been.

But, like Spike, if J.J. were to turn that glare on a friend, that friend would be able to see something entirely different in those icy eyes. A friend would be able to see that the anger was there, but it would be mostly a front. Something he put there to back up his bad boy reputation. A friend would see that, even though he was angry, he wouldn’t hurt you. Well, at least not permanently. A friend would see that there was a kind soul under the tough exterior.

A friend would be able to see his heart.

Being as that was what Dawn saw when she met his eyes, she wasn’t at all worried. The look he gave her now was pure J.J. Summers.

But she still cringed a little. For appearances sake, of course.

“Bloody hell, Sunshine!! What did you go and do that for?”

Dawn crossed her arms and returned his glare defiantly. She had learned a thing or two from Spike herself.

“You wouldn’t stop ranting, all right? And we still have that job to do, you know? The one that convinced you not to storm out of the building in the first place?”

He sighed, hoisting himself up to sit on the edge of one of the room’s tables, and kicked his feet in agitation. “I know, I know. I should concentrate on our job. Get it done.” He stood again suddenly, as if the mere thought of his argument with Angel drove him to move. “He just made me so angry, Dawn. How could he say those things about Spike? It’s like he’d never even met him. Not like they were family.’

She stepped towards him and laid a comforting hand on his arm.

“There’s a whole history between the two. I’d tell you all about it, but it’s too long of a story to get into right now. Suffice it to say that he’s proud of Spike, but he won’t let himself admit it.” Her hand tightened on his arm, and pulled him towards the doorway. “But, like I said, we have something else we should be doing, and now is not the time to be going into the convoluted dynamics of their relationship. We have to go back to work.” She gave his arm another pull, and motioned with her head towards the door.

J.J pulled his arm out of her grasp just far enough so that her hand slipped into his own, and then he gave it a little tug. It caused her to turn back and look into his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Sunshine. My mind should have been on the job the entire time. I shouldn’t be letting the personal stuff affect me.”

She saw that there was something else he wanted to say, something deeper than his simple words and the stoic return to the professional front he always tried to present when they were working. There was something under that surface, something he needed to say to her.

She didn’t know how to convey to him that whatever he needed to tell her, it was safe to tell her. Since she didn’t have the words, she just allowed the sentiment to shine in her blue eyes, and looked at him steadily, hoping that he understood.

He sighed deeply, and fought the urge to look away from her.

“I was so angry, Dawn, and I couldn’t stuff it away anymore. I’ve been fighting against thinking of him all day, and then Angel brings him up, and cuts him down when he does. I just couldn’t shrug it off anymore. But I can’t let them see that, you know?” He looked down at his shoes. “I couldn’t let them see me be weak. I can’t let them see who I am now. They won’t understand like you all do. They didn’t know him, they don’t know how he was able to change things.” J.J. looked back up at Dawn then, and she could see his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I just miss him so much, Dawn. More than I thought it was possible to miss anything. More than I ever missed Lucius when he went to Azkaban. I just miss him.”

She rushed forward and enveloped him in her arms, her own tears flowing freely down her face. “I miss him too, J.J. So very much.” She leaned back, intending to wipe away the tears she had been sure would have fallen by now. But his cheeks were dry, his face resolved. The small amount of Malfoy that still lived in him, the aloofness that Lucius had forced into him, would not allow him the luxury of tears. Not once had he cried since she had known him. Since he had lost so many of the things he had come to care for. Since he had lost the man he loved like a father.

“It’s not a weakness to miss someone you love that’s gone, J.J.” she told him as she slipped out of his arms. “It’s a strength that you love them to begin with.”

She grabbed his arm again, and dragged him with her to the door. “C’mon, let’s get back and get them to the hotel. I want to hand this job off to Buffy.” She looked again into his face, which was resolutely set in a guarded expression. “And I think after Giles talks to her about what’s going to happen with this job, Di might be up for a little sparing. Maybe she’ll help you work out some of that anger.”

Giles was stalling, and he knew it. He was listening to his slayer rant about the phone call she had just finished.

He really should go now. He’d only been in the office with Buffy to hear that J.J. and Dawn were all right. To know that they had been successful on their first mission. To know that J.J.’s previous life had not conflicted too badly with his present one. . That the kids that he considered his family were safe.

Of course, he knew he couldn’t wait for them to return to have the conversation that he had to have with one of the many slayers who were now his to guide. It would go very badly for all of the people involved in this new assignment if he allowed J.J. and Dawn to arrive at the hotel with their new charges and they were seen by the girl before Giles had his conversation with her.

He should have had this talk with her the minute J.J. had opened up and let them all know that he knew the teens who were the subject of the latest vision from The Powers That Be. But he had been putting it off, using excuse after excuse for delaying the inevitable.

The truth was that he just didn’t know how to approach the subject. It was bound to cause turmoil in the girl’s life, the arrival of these teens. He had wanted her life to remain as stable as it could, for as long as it could, so he had kept it from her. Between leaving the life that she had once had for Sunnydale, the fight with The First, being activated as a slayer, and having the home that she had known for months swallowed by the earth, Giles had been of the opinion that her life had suffered enough upheaval in recent months. He really hadn’t wanted to be the cause of any more.

He had even asked that the staff at Champion Industries not discuss the new case with any of the slayers until the children had arrived at the hotel. Giles had even gone so far as to ask J.J. to not speak to the girl in question about the Hogwarts students until after he had had a chance to talk to her about them himself.

J.J., though counting the girl as a friend he was almost as close to as Dawn, had done as Giles had asked, and not said a word about the job he had begun today. It had to be eating away at his new found sense of loyalty to be keeping a secret like this from someone he had allowed to become a friend. But he had done it, because Giles had told him it was in both of their best interests.

However well intentioned Giles had been at the time, it had become far past the time when he should have told her what was about to happen. In fact, he needed to leave now if he even had a shot of telling her before they arrived at the Hyperion. With the penchant for curiosity that all of the new slayers seemed to have, he was sure she would be in the lobby with the rest of the girls to see their guests if he didn’t go speak with her promptly. Angel had said that they had left the Wolfram and Hart offices, and that gave Giles half an hour before they arrived at the Hyperion. He could no longer afford to stand here and listen to Buffy complain.

He was well aware that the original slayer was only using the constant bickering with Angel to fill the empty space she now had after the fall of Sunnydale. But he didn’t have the luxury of time to psychoanalyze her at the moment, and he really wasn’t ready to accept what he suspected was the cause of her feelings of loss.

“Buffy, I understand why you’re upset with Angel, but there is really nothing that I can do about it. If he won’t listen to you on the matter, he certainly isn’t going to listen to me.” With that, he turned and headed towards the door. “I’m sure you’ll sort it out,” he told her before leaving the office.

He heard her exclamation of “Thanks for the help Giles” just as he started up the stairs. Buffy may have been exasperated at the moment, but there was no trace of a childish whine in her tone. She would have had one before he had gone back to England to try and force her to grow up. And grown up she had.

Giles soon found himself in the hallway some of the slayers had dubbed “Witch Wing.” They had named it this because of the people who lived in these rooms. J.J. lived up here, as did Dawn, who wanted to be close to him. She had shown some magical talent of her own in the last little while, and he had asked Willow to help train her so that she would learn under the controlled environment that Willow had not had. Another girl who had a talent for Wiccan magic, Cassidy, lived on the floor as well. Her family followed the craft, so she had more control and a lot more training then Dawn, but Giles had asked Willow to take this girl under her wing as well. Since she was giving the girls guidance, as well as helping J.J. with the work he was receiving regularly from Dumbledore to keep up with his studies, Willow had decided to take a room in this wing as well. Four empty rooms on this floor were made up for the arriving students.

And there was the occupant of the room he was now standing in front of. The other slayers believed the room to be the only one occupied by a non-magic person in this part of the hotel, but given the girl’s extremely close friendship with J.J. and Dawn, they thought nothing of it.

They didn’t know that she too had been receiving lesson work from Hogwarts. That she too was a witch. Willow had helped the girl study for her O.W.L.s, which the American Ministry of Magic had tested her for in an empty and secret office at Wolfram and Hart. She had been allowed to take them late because of the extenuating circumstances of her situation, and some persuasion from Angel and the law firm.

She had scored well, and had set an American record for the O.W.L. in Defence Against the Dark Arts. So well, in fact, that Dumbledore wanted her to do some of the course work that J.J. and the others would be receiving, to see if she was up to the task. The other courses she would be studying with Ginny. J.J. had told Giles that he didn’t think it would be the first time that the girls had done their schoolwork together.

Giles knocked on the closed door in front of him, only opening it when he had heard a dreamy “It’s opened” from the other side. He made note that she hadn’t actually said anything that could be construed as an invitation, and was proud that she was being careful of her room, even If the hotel was filled with slayers.

When he stepped through the doorway the girl looked up at him with her prominent blue eyes. She was lying on her stomach on the bed, facing the door. A copy of the wizard magazine ‘The Quibbler’ was held loosely in her hands. Angel had arranged to have the magazine delivered to his offices shortly after they had arrived in L.A. and had them forwarded to the hotel. Giles was not sure how the vampire had known to do it, but the smile that had been on the girl’s face at the arrival of all of the issues that she had missed since leaving home for Sunnydale had been enough for Giles to be happy that Angel had done it.

She sat up and ran a hand through her blonde hair. It was very different from how it had been when she’d first arrived. The California sun had painted streaks of lighter blonde throughout it, and she had cut its length before the final fight with The First. It now hung to just below her chin instead of all the way down to her waist. She had said it would be more practical, being a slayer, and the way she had said it had broken Giles’ heart a little. She had sounded so resolved to her new life, and despondent about leaving her old one behind.

“Oh, hello Mr. Giles. I thought you might be Dawn or Drake. I’m not sure where they are. They didn’t tell me where they were going when they left.”

“They’re on a job for Champion Industries, Diana, and I asked them not to tell you. That’s why I came up here to talk to you.”

She paled considerably as he closed the door behind him. The young slayer moved to the edge of the bed and set her feet on the floor, motioning for Giles to sit in the chair by the table.

“Are they all right? Please tell me they’re all right.” She looked near tears, and Giles felt like a cad. He shouldn’t have said it that way. It had made her think that something bad had happened. He was messing this up left and right.

He laid a fatherly hand on her knee and patted it gently. “I’m sorry, Diana. I didn’t mean to alarm you. They’re both fine.” He withdrew his hand and searched for the words he needed to tell her what it was he had to tell her. “What I have to tell you, actually, has to do with where they went and why I asked them to not say anything about it.”

He saw the flash of mild surprise in the girl’s eyes, but it was gone again quickly. Only a very small number of the slayers actually worked with Champion Industries itself. The rest were training how to be better slayers. There were a number of girls here now that had not even been with them in Sunnydale, but had been found after Willow’s activation spell. It wasn’t often that these girls were told the details of the jobs that Buffy and the others were doing to support them. If Diana had been expecting to hear anything about this job, it would have been because it was J.J. and Dawn’s first solo assignment. The surprise was probably from the fact that they had been specifically asked not to share with her.

There was now a look of puzzlement on her face, and Giles knew that she was wondering why he hadn’t wanted her to know what they were doing.

Giles removed his glasses and polished them absently with a cloth that he had drawn from his pocket. He struggled with how to tell her what was coming, and how to apologize for waiting this long to do so. “I should have told you this sooner, Diana. I know I should have. But I fear that it’s going to upset your life again, and I was reluctant to do that right after your exams.”

She saw his distress about the subject and wanted to assure him that she wouldn’t be upset. “I trust your judgement Mr. Giles. I assure you, my watcher prepared me for the fact that a slayer’s life is full of abrupt happenings that can change her life completely. It’s not as bad as all that, I’m sure.”

He looked at her, amazed at her maturity from a girl of barely sixteen. Diana was now about the age that Buffy had been when he had met her. But Diana at that age was about as different from Buffy at that age as night and day. Buffy had still been trying to escape her destiny. Diana, on the other hand, was resigned and accepting. She was grown beyond her years. That was what the war in their world did to people, he guessed. The others who were about to join her in “Witch Wing” were bound to have the same view of the world.

The moniker the others had given the floor, Giles thought, was now going to be rather fitting after all.

He looked into Diana’s eyes, and saw strength in them. She could handle this. He hadn’t wanted her to have to step back into the dangers of the world she had left. She and J.J. had enough of that in the new world they now lived in. He had wanted to keep her away from the fight, away from the Death Eaters that they were hiding J.J. from. It was why he had changed her name. It was why only a few of them knew who and what she really was.

No, the other slayers didn’t know she was a witch. But he knew that would not be the case for long.

“I sent them to the airport, Diana. The vision that Lorne brought to us was about some people from out of the country, and we are bringing them to us to protect them.”

Lorne. The girl smiled at the name. All of the slayers had been introduced to him so they wouldn’t harm him when he came to the hotel on business. She had liked him instantly. She’d love to be able to write an article about him for ‘The Quibbler.’

Giles noticed her eyes light up at the mention of the green skinned demon. He hoped that what he was going to say next wouldn’t make the light in them disappear.

“The vision was about four teenagers being attacked by various creatures. And, when J.J. heard the description of the vision, he was able to identify the people in it. They are who J.J. and Dawn went to pick up.” He paused here, waiting for her reaction, but she just nodded at him to continue.

“They are four teens that J.J. assured me you know quite well. But having them here puts you back in the middle of that war. You and J.J. If it hadn’t been a vision from The Powers . . . . “Giles trailed off, and the young slayer could tell that a part of him had wanted to turn the job down, to protect them first. But his conscience wouldn’t let him. Even if it wasn’t a vision from “The Powers”, the witch knew Rupert Giles wasn’t the kind of man who could turn his back on a person who needed his help. Especially a person that he considered a child. And he seemed to consider anyone under thirty to be a child.

But if these teems dragged her and Drake back into the war, then she had a pretty good idea who they were.

“I’ll bet Drake cringed at the thought of Harry Potter being his first solo mission.” She giggled at the thought. “But you said there were four of them? Who are the others?”

He nearly started in surprise at her statement. The young blonde slayer was far more astute then she led the world to believe.

“Well, Diana, the other people that are with him are . . .” he had started when she interrupted.

“Oh, will you let me guess? I mean, I was right about Harry, right?” He nodded in response to both questions and she continued. “So, there are three others. I’m guessing they’re always with him and that’s why they were in the vision. So Hermione and Ronald for sure . . . “she trailed off, and he was going to tell her the name of the other person when she went on. “Oh! Is it Ginny?” He nodded in affirmation. “Oh!” She gave a little bounce of excitement. “It will be nice to have someone in my year to study with.” She honestly looked happy about the news, and that wasn’t something that Giles had expected.

“Aren’t you mad? Or worried?” Giles was surprised by her reaction, and was a bit concerned that she was covering up some other emotions.

“Oh, yes. I’m worried some. But as a slayer I’m always worried about my life a little.” She giggled at the look of surprise on his face. “Besides, after fighting The First, you-know-who just isn’t as scary anymore.” The girl thought about that for a minute and shook her head. “V . . . Voldemort isn’t so scary anymore. Voldemort!” She puffed up, very proud of herself for saying his name. “See, it’s just a name. I can say it. Voldemort.”

“Well, you can say it better than Buffy, at any rate,” Giles told her wryly.

Diana had heard of Buffy’s penchant for slaughtering names. The favourite of the ones that she had heard was Kissing Toast instead of Kakistos. “What did she call him?”

“Roll the door was the latest one,” he told her, a hint of laughter in his eyes.

“We’ll have to make her say it as often as possible, and Harry can pick his favourite. That will be what we call him after that.” Her eyes took on a thoughtful look then, and Giles wondered about it.

“What are you thinking, Diana?”

She met his eyes with a brilliant smile on her face. “I’m really very glad that they are coming. If we’re meant to protect him, we’re also meant to help Harry with the war. Roll the Door,” she giggled at the name, “will never know what hit him.”

“You aren’t mad that I didn’t tell you sooner?” he asked her, truly puzzled that she wasn’t.

She shook her head. “Not really, Mr. Giles.” She tilted her head, thinking. “How long have you known that you were bringing them here?”

He inwardly cringed, hoping that, since she wasn’t mad now, she wouldn’t become that way after he spoke. “About a week.”

“Well, then I’m glad you waited to tell me until they were almost hear. I don’t think I could have stood the wait.” She smiled at him, and Giles felt greatly relieved.

He had risen from his chair and was almost at the door when she spoke again. “Mr. Giles, that many of us in one place, won’t we be easier to spot for someone looking for us?”

He was about to respond when she answered for herself. “You aren’t hiding J.J. and I anymore, are you? You’re really just going to protect us now.”

He turned around to fully look at the girl. “You really are not the dreamy girl you pretend to be, are you?”

“Let’s just say that I’m better at using a secret identity then Buffy was in high school.” Giles gave a chuckle at her words. “Since you aren’t hiding us anymore, can I use my real name now?

“Well, Miss Lovegood,” she smiled as she heard her name for the first time in months. “We may not be hiding you anymore, but let’s not make it easy for them to find you either, all right? You’ll still have to register as Diana McClay at school. I won’t change my mind about that. The others are going to have different names as well.”

Her smile faded a little, but what he said was practical. Luna Lovegood was a very uncommon name. Even Luna was uncommon enough to make it easy to find them.

“And at the hotel, can the others call me Luna?”

“If they want to Di . . . . Luna.” She smiled when he used her name again. “But the others all know you as Diana. It might take a while for them to accept the change.”

She gave a delicate laugh. “I meant Harry, Ronald,” she blushed the tiniest bit when she said his name, “and the girls. I don’t really mind if the other slayers still call me Diana.”

He smiled at her kindly. “I suppose that would be all right, Luna.” He turned to look at her when he reached the doorway. “They should be here very soon. Would you like to come down to meet them?”

She stood up and went to the small dresser in the room. “I’ll be in the basement with the punching bag. Tell Drake. I think he might need to work out some anger after being with four Gryffindors for so long.” She said it so matter-of-factly that it took him aback. She had blame in her voice for neither J.J. nor the others. She was friends with all of them. She just knew they were not friends with each other. Perhaps the girl could change that, and help the teens see each other for the people they really were, instead of the people that Hogwarts and other people had forced them into being.

“Perhaps you are right.”

“Mr. Giles, if they don’t know I’m here, and Drake hasn’t told them, will you wait for me to tell them myself?”

“Of course, Miss Lovegood. As long as you do it tonight. You all have school together in the morning.”

“Of course.”

He nodded, and shut the door behind him, leaving her to change for her anticipated sparing match with J.J. He sincerely hoped she’d be able to help her friends see J.J. for who he had become, and help them forget who he had once been.