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Virginia was humming slightly to herself, and looking through her wedding magazines. She looked up every so often to make sure that no one was coming after her.

She didn't care what Wolf said. She wasn't going to be paranoid. She wasn't going to hide. She was going to live her life, deranged weirdos or not.

She was, however, going to be careful, and aware of her surroundings.

Which, honestly, wasn't much different from what a single woman had to do in New York, biking to and from work alone and all.

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Xander smirkety-smirks.

"He's Ron Weasley, of Lightning Scar Kid fame." And he pauses, backtracking a bit. "Whoa, whoa-- tried to what your grandma?"

Ron frowned and looked petulant at Xander. He may have gotten over being in Harry's shadow back in fourth year, but he still didn't like being introduced as a sidekick.

He suddenly turned back to Virginia.

"Wait, what? Your grandma? What he said." Ron pointed sideways at Xander with his thumb.

"Um, well, the grandma thing is a long story. And before I tell it...so you're Ron," Virginia said, grinning bemusedly at the boy. "Wolf's told me all about you."

She went on, "Lightning scar kid?" Her face crinkled up as she thought carefully. "You mean those kiddy books with the kid who's a wizard? Never could get into them. Rowling's got good ideas, but her prose is awful."

Xander grins contritely at Ron, then says to Virginia, "Well, yeah, Rowling may not be terrific, but Ron is so much more than the prose!" He nods.

Ron wrinkled his nose. "All I care is if she got the chess scene right," he said stubbornly. "And the eat of the grandma? Can we stay on that weird subject? Considering that I was out alone by the lake the first night I met with your fiance, I'd like to hear about this eating people thing."

"He didn't eat her. He just tried," Virginia said, biting her lip. "And! And that was after he spent years and years locked up in prison for sheep worrying, being fed beanstalk soup and not being allowed to run anywhere. The wolf in him was going nuts. He mellowed out and changed. Calmed down a bit. He's a lot more at peace with himself now. Plus, if you knew my grandma..."

Xander nods. He knows how it is with the whole werewolves-freaking-out-and-needing-to-find-the-serenity deal. He just hopes that Wolf doesn't relapse-- or, if he does, that it's far away from everyone else.

"So, how's that working for you now?" he asks Virginia. "We used to keep our werewolf friend chained up when things got hairy for him-- well, actually, he did it himself. He's a good guy."

"There's a potion for that in my world. There's...someone we know that uses it. Makes the change easier, even if it still happens," Ron said.

"Actually, he had himself locked up for the first full moon here, but for the second he just spent the night hunting demonic bunnies and he was fine," Virginia said, almost surprised at it herself.

Xander looks at Ron, interested.

"Really?" he says. "And it really works?"

To Virginia, he says, "Oh! Um, doesn't he ever ... run into people, though?"

"Far as I know, yeah," Ron said to Xander and then he looked back to Virginia for her to answer Xander's question.

"Well, see he's not a werewolf, he's a half-wolf. There's a difference. Wolves in his world can walk around as humans. Most of the time? Just means he's got a large appetite, likes meat, has a almost-supernatural sense of smell, and is completely horny nearly every minute of the day."

She added, "Plus he has a tail. And other than that he's pretty normal. When the full moon comes, the animal instincts come closer to the surface. If he doesn't try to fight them, he actually has a pretty good grip on them. He just runs around in the woods and hunts a bit and he feels fine. It's when he tries to be human all the time that he has trouble. The more he fights it, the more the wolf fights back during the full moon."

Xander nods and listens, wincing at the part about horniness.

"... Other than that being way too much information, that's cool," he says. "Different from my world, I guess. As far as I know, Oz doesn't have a tail. Nor is he-- okay, not going there, la la la!"

Virginia laughed. "Oh come on, don't tell me you're one of those repressed individuals."

"Xander's just awkward about it 'cause he thinks he's--"

Xander grabs Virginia's wedding magazine and smacks Ron on the side of the head.

"Do you mind?!" he hisses. He looks at Virginia sheepishly. "Uh, changing the subject! Boy, I had a weird dream a few nights ago! This giant crab was chasing me ... in loafers! Weird, huh?"

Virginia chuckled. "You two are like Abbot and Costello or something. Or two Stooges bereft of your proper Curly."

Xander glares at Ron.

"I'll Curly you, you little-- hey, get back here! I wasn't done threatening you!"

He hands Virginia back her magazine. "Uh, here you go."

Virginia laughed as Ron ran off.

"So what was it you were smacking him over?" she asked pleasantly. "Whatever it is, I promise I'll keep it a secret better than he was about to."

"Sorry, Virginia," Xander says, "but I've learned the hard way that no one can be trusted-- not your friends, not your other friends, not angels ..." He sighs dramatically. "I wish I could, but you know how it is."

Virginia just chuckled at him as Ron came running back from the room with a book in his hands. "What's that you got there?"

"It showed up with a bunch of other books in my bookcase. It's about dreams," Ron said. The title was A Diviner's Guide to Dream Interpretation.

"What was your dream about, Xander?" Ron asked, opening the book up.

Xander eyes the book with interest.

"Well, let's see ... there was a giant crab wearing loafers. And it chased me down this beach, and then it caught up with me." He realizes what he just said and stares at Ron. "Oh, come on, that doesn't mean anything! Except maybe that I should avoid seafood."

"Lemme see what crabs mean." He flipped some pages, read a bit and looked up at Xander nervously.

"Er."

"What?" Xander says. "'Fear death by water'?"