Three days later, three days of not speaking to each other again, of everything staying exactly as it had been for the past month, he stopped her as she was about to leave the shop.
“Oh, um, Willow. I need to talk with you.”
For a second, she half-expected it was a mistake, that he’d slipped up and would remember that they weren’t speaking. She gave him an out as best she could, saying, “Me? Oh. Ok. Sure. Now?”
She took a few steps towards him, and hugged her books to her chest, and he didn’t quite look at her, kept half his attention on the money he was... well, supposedly counting, although he didn’t seem to be paying quite *that* much attention to it.
“Um, no actually. Could you stop by my place, a little later? Say sevenish?”
Her heart leapt. His place? He was letting her come to his house? This... this was big. She forced herself to play it cool.
“Uh. Sure. I mean, not like I have *plans* or anything.” Seeing as it was *Valentine’s Day* and she was well and truly dumped. She thought for a moment, her mind buzzing from Giles to Valentine’s Day and back again, then she added, oh so calmly, oh so subtly, “So... what’s this about?”
He was frowning at the money now, and reshuffling it, obviously realizing that he hadn’t actually counted any of it.
“Oh. Glory,” he said, distractedly, “A spell I found. It may be able to hurt her. I’d like to go over the details with you. See how plausible it sounds?”
She was disappointed. For a moment. Then realized what this meant.
“A spell? I mean, you’d want me to... do a spell?”
He looked up, really saw her this time.
“Of course. There’s nothing wrong with magic, Willow. So long as you control it and understand it. And... I believe you have been making sincere efforts in those regards.”
“Yeah! I mean, I have. I really have.”
“Wonderful. Seven o’ clock, then? Oh, and, um, don’t bother eating. I’m sure I can find something.”
Dinner. At Giles’s. Talking about magic.
It wasn’t everything, but it was a start, and that... that was all she could really hope for; all she even needed, for now at least.
“Yeah, I’ll-- I’ll be there.”
But then there was nothing to do but go back to the dorm and wait.
She agonized for an hour over what to wear, finally settling on khakis and a tank top with a cardigan over it. Something soft. Touchable. Even though she knew that chances of *that* were... pretty much nonexistent.
Then, she had another hour to kill. It loomed before her like the vast Sahara desert.
She sighed. She was too wound up to do homework or read or even sit still. So she wandered around her dorm room until her roommate glared at her once too often, and then she left the dorm and drifted around campus until finally, her watch said it was fifteen ‘til. She might be a little early, but she couldn’t wait any longer.
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