The Best Laid Plans of Headmasters

Timeline: Buffy, Post Chosen (aka after Season 7). Harry Potter is after Book Five,
Order of the Phoenix. Just cause.

Note on Magical Abilities: Xander is not a Wizard. Xander will not be a Wizard.
The end.

Woot, an update!



*************** Gee, Thanks for All the Love: Chapter Two ***************


“He’s everything they say he is, you know.”

Xander gave the tentacle one last pat before he looked up at his visitor. Draco Malfoy was looking much less like his father these days. The split lip, broken nose, and burned off eyebrows gave him the appearance of a clown who was perpetually surprised at his own good fortune of surviving. The cosmetics were fairly temporary, especially thanks to Mediwitch healing, but Xan would have bet half the reason that Malfoy the younger hadn’t made the trek to the Infirmary had to do with the fact that he was ENJOYING not looking like Daddy Dearest for once, even if the new look was sans eyebrows. Right now, even if he HAD still been the spitting image of dear ol’ dad, the slumped posture and tense shoulders would have given him away. Malfoy was deeply determined, and deeply uncomfortable, about having the following conversation.

It was flagellistically endearing of him to try though.

Draco sat after he finally seemed to realize that towering over Xander wasn’t probably the best approach. The younger man stared contemplatively out at the still grey waters of the lake before continuing, voice soft, “He’s overbearing, sadistically cruel at times, sarcastically snide, a bully… and the only person who’s ever really cared about me.”

Xander looked sharply at the younger man, who met his gaze briefly before looking back over the water.

“My Mother, bless her heart, never had the strength to be anything but what she was made into, a calculating trophy wife who cared about nothing that could be taken away.” Draco’s lips curled into a self-depreciating smile. “She hugged her money more than me as a result. And I believe you’ve met Father on one of his better days. That was my family, to a tee, the extended relations were paler imitations of Mother and Father, pardon the pun.” He self consciously reached up and tugged on his white blonde locks.

“Snape… he is not an easy man. He has not had an easy life. He makes very few allowances for others, even fewer for himself. He is, for all intents and purposes, a Greasy Git. But for all that, he’s a GOOD man. Not a nice man,” the laugh this time was sharp and biting, “but a good man. One of the best I’ve ever met. The only one, aside from Dumbledore, to ever really care what side of the battle I lived and died on. And I rather think Dumbledore would have preferred if I hadn’t lived out the last Great Battle.”

This time it was Xander who laughed, surprising even himself. “Less paperwork likely,” the older man offered up, and Draco shot him a grateful, rueful grin.

“Yes, that whole blanket pardon thing is making life rather more difficult than the old man expected when it truly looked like we were all going to die. Right rude of you lot to show up and save the day.”

“I’d watch what you say, or Willow might go back in time and take it all back.”

Draco shuddered. “Don’t joke on that. That woman is a menace. I mean… do you know HOW powerful she is?”

Xander stretched and laid back on the sun warmed rocks so that he could stare up at the low hanging clouds with his one good eye. “Powerful enough to go back in time and reverse the effect of our presence in the last Great Battle.”

The younger man swallowed visibly. “No one should ever have that much power. I used to think I wanted it. Hell, I wanted more than life itself to be in control, just once, of my own life. Even if it meant I had to be the bloody Dark Lord to do it.”

Xander closed his eyes, let the weak Scottish sunlight warm his eyelid as well before replying, softly, carefully, with the measured response of someone who had lived at Destiny’s feet for far too long to have survived as long as he had. “It’s an illusion. Control. The more power you have, the less control you have over everything. Because either you’re born powerful, like Wills, and then its all ethics and wrong decisions that scar your soul and atonement. Or, you’re made powerful, like Buffy, and its all fate and prophecy and bobble-headed deities telling you that you can’t just live by their will, you’ll die by it too. Or, you make yourself powerful, like Voldemort. And you’re so desperately afraid that everything you’ve built will spiral out of control that you go insane trying to hold it all together and get your head lopped off by a seventeen-year old boy.

“Man. Man-boy.”

That startled a rough laugh out of Draco before he wryly responded, “Potter is a boy.”

Xander sat up at that, looked at the young man at his side, and quietly asked, “Wouldn’t you rather be too?”

And just for an instant there was a hint of tears in Draco Malfoy’s surprised eyes before Ginny Weasley’s voice called distantly to him from the castle. Xander watched him watch her. Watched the small curve of a smile stretch his cracked lip before Draco, ever the consummate actor, schooled his features into their usual roughish charm, sans eyebrows. “Only some days Xander, only some days.”

And then he was off, striding across the castle yard to meet with Ginny. And even if the stride was stiff from the wounds of the Great Battle, there was a bounce in his step that many would be surprised to see. A bounce that may make Dumblemore more at ease with the fact that Draco HAD survived the Great Battle. Although the answering beam of Ginny’s smile might cause its own set of worries.

But Xander’s wouldn’t be among them.

***************************************************

Albus Dumbledore had been orchestrating this last week for most of his adult life. Which was several decades longer than even the average wizard, and then some. So of course it had gone nothing like he had planned. The best outcomes rarely did.

"Well Severus, I didn't see most of this coming. You must be tickled pink by that." Albus frowned as a shadow of pain crossed the unconscious man's face before he settled back more deeply into a sleep that was part exhaustion and part mediwitch induced. To heal some of the wounds that had been lingering for years because Albus hadn't been able to spare Severus from Voldemort's tender mercies long enough TO heal. "Well," he continued brusquely, "you're pink already from the second degree burns so that hardly counts, but, I know you're laughing at me on the inside." If Severus laughed of course.

The older wizard reached out and carefully patted the slender folded hands of one of the only men he respected as Albus gazed absently out of the window of the private infirmary. The main school infirmary was far from empty even now, three days after the Great Battle. Beds were still filled with moaning students and a few Slayers too injured to move, but their losses and injuries were so much less than he had expected. Mostly because Albus Dumbledore hadn't expected to win three days ago.

Hadn't honestly expected either he or Severus to survive the final encounter with Voldemort. Albus had known too much about his opponent. About the forces of darkness one of his old students had marshaled. Of course, in his dotage, he had forgotten to pay the same attention to his own side. Albus had spent nearly seven years cultivating Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger with quiet, purposeful determination, sure in his knowledge that because of Lilly's sacrifice, because of the prophecy, Harry Potter was their best chance. And Harry had clung to his friends with a desperation that had made Albus loathe to separate them.

But he had never dreamed of Buffy Summers and company. Never imagined the sheer force for good that the mythical Slayers could be. Or the sheer unadulterated power possible in Willow Rosenberg.

The thought of the young witch sent a shudder through him. Albus Dumbledore had met many of the greatest witches and wizards of all time. Had talked with portraits of most of the rest. Was considered one of the greatest wizards of all time. And they ALL paled in comparison to Willow Rosenberg.

She wasn’t one of theirs. No, Willow Rosenberg’s magic was a different breed. There were Muggle witches from time to time, who didn’t come from wizarding stock and didn’t belong in the wizarding world. They mostly had smaller magics, could bend the elements and nudge energy around, not, melt time. But for all that Willow Rosenberg could reorder the universe to her whim, she was still not of the wizarding world.

She was a gift to them, certainly, especially in light of the Last Great Battle. Maybe in another time she would have been theirs, but, Albus personally thought she was always meant to be Ms. Summers’. It only seemed right that she strongest Slayer of all time should have the strongest Muggle witch and friend with the strongest heart. Alexander Lavelle Harris.

Severus’s son.

Albus reached over, patted the injured man’s hand one last time and shook his head, a slight twinkle in his still weary eyes. Severus’s son, alive and well, and helping to kill Voldemort. He hadn’t planned that one either. Albus only hoped that was for the best.