I'd like to offer a tentative recommendation for The Key To Marauding by Anoron. In an alternate Buffyverse, Dawn dives off Glory's tower at the end of season five. But instead of dying as she expects, she finds herself in front of Hogwart's. Becoming a student there for lack of anywhere else to go (there's a Buffy in this universe, but she's a Cordelia-like non-Slayer), Dawn falls in with a bunch of fifth-year Gryffindor boys -- James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew.
The story is positively huge -- nearly 2 Mb in 42 chapters, and that just covers Dawn's first year at Hogwart's. The author is quite good at playing the perturbed-timeline game -- how much is Dawn changing of the future history we all know, and how much is she actually reinforcing? It's heartbreaking to see her being the best person she can be and still apparently help to push Peter toward Voldemort without realizing it.
My qualification of "tentative" for this recommendation is based on a few things. One is that there is a fair amount of angst, which when overdone drives me nuts -- and this story came very close to the line for me. The second is the author did something I generally don't like -- she shifted the timeline to suit her story -- by perhaps three decades. The Marauders are fifth-year students at Hogwart's in the 2001-2002 academic year. The date is never actually given but it's easy to determine -- Dawn never complains about old-fashioned clothing, Lily has been stealing CDs from Petunia's collection, and the analogue Buffy of this universe is the right age and attending college. I personally dislike this kind of thing in a fic -- there's no real story reason that the dates in both universes had to line up -- and I think that it would have been a lot more interesting if Dawn had had to handle a timeshift as well as a change in universes. But that's just me.
The author also has a habit of missing words and typos, but to be honest it's not a huge problem. Most are easily solved with context.
Anyway, I think it might be worth a try.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
The story is positively huge -- nearly 2 Mb in 42 chapters, and that just covers Dawn's first year at Hogwart's. The author is quite good at playing the perturbed-timeline game -- how much is Dawn changing of the future history we all know, and how much is she actually reinforcing? It's heartbreaking to see her being the best person she can be and still apparently help to push Peter toward Voldemort without realizing it.
My qualification of "tentative" for this recommendation is based on a few things. One is that there is a fair amount of angst, which when overdone drives me nuts -- and this story came very close to the line for me. The second is the author did something I generally don't like -- she shifted the timeline to suit her story -- by perhaps three decades. The Marauders are fifth-year students at Hogwart's in the 2001-2002 academic year. The date is never actually given but it's easy to determine -- Dawn never complains about old-fashioned clothing, Lily has been stealing CDs from Petunia's collection, and the analogue Buffy of this universe is the right age and attending college. I personally dislike this kind of thing in a fic -- there's no real story reason that the dates in both universes had to line up -- and I think that it would have been a lot more interesting if Dawn had had to handle a timeshift as well as a change in universes. But that's just me.
The author also has a habit of missing words and typos, but to be honest it's not a huge problem. Most are easily solved with context.
Anyway, I think it might be worth a try.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...