punch_kicker15

Willow flipped through the spellbook with trembling hands. She needed to find a solution to her Oz-missage right away. She couldn’t take waking up one more day feeling like her heart had been dusted. Or feeling like a failure because she couldn’t be her usual cheerful self for her friends.

She’d seen the worried looks from Buffy and Xander and Giles, and their oh-so-subtle private conversations when they thought she wasn’t looking. They couldn’t handle Willow’s depression any more than she could.

She turned a brittle old page of Spells of Jazia, and silently wished that the spellbooks had better indexes. Spells to banish angry ghosts were useful, of course, but not relevant to her current predicament.

She could always use the Thy Will Be Done spell, but that seemed like shooting the proverbial mosquito with a cannon. Thy Will Be Done was kind of breathtaking in its scope, and her heartbreak was fairly specific.

Then, right between a spell to cure ringworm in cats and an invocation to remove stains from clothing, she found it: A Spell to Mend a Broken Heart. It looked easy. Only one caster required, could be self-administered, and she had all the ingredients right here in the dorm.

It took less than ten minutes to prepare the ingredients, thirty seconds to recite the spell. The hardest part was keeping the marigold powder from staining her bedspread. It was like an enormous weight instantly lifted from her chest, and she could finally breathe normally again.

She thought about Oz, and about Veruca, and about the way he left. She could remember all of those events with perfect clarity, but from a distance, like she was remembering something that happened to somebody else.

Then she remembered that she’d promised to bring some ingredients over to Giles for a truth spell.

She hurried over, and performed the truth spell without a hitch. She could see the approval in Giles’ eyes, and she knew she’d made the right decision about the heart-mending spell.

***

The weeks that followed only bolstered Willow’s certainty that the heart-mending spell was the right call. Her classes seemed interesting again. Buffy and Xander stopped looking worried, once they realized that Depressed Willow was really gone for good. The spell had been good for everyone.

There was only one small problem in her life: the girl she’d met at the Wiccan group. Tara was smart and knowledgeable about magic, but she was also beautiful. Sometimes when Willow looked at her, she’d feel a sort of overheated excitement, kind of like the way she’d felt about Oz and Xander.

Tara was friendly, sure, but Willow didn’t see any signs that her more-than-just-friendly feelings were reciprocated. Did she really want to go down the “hopeless crush on a close friend” again? The crush on Xander meant she got her hopes up, and then dashed, too many times to count. And it led to the clothes fluking, which led to breakups and Cordy nearly dying and so much badness for everyone.

The question haunted her for days. How much better would it have been, for everyone, if Willow had been able to successfully cast the de-lusting spell, before Spike had shown up?

Spike was chained up in Giles’ bathtub, so Willow felt safe trying the de-lusting spell again, though she made sure to do it in the privacy of the dorm room, on a night Buffy was patrolling with Riley. No friends or angry vampires interrupted her.

The next time Willow saw Tara, that overwhelming sense of excitement was gone. She was just a fellow witch, and one of the kindest people Willow had ever met. She was also still beautiful, but Willow could appreciate that in a detached way, without the terror of falling in love with someone who couldn’t love her back.

They tried the rose-floating spell again, and it worked, though it seemed like their combined magic was missing a little bit of oomph, compared to the last time with the rose. Maybe the crush on Tara had made the past magic seem more powerful that it actually, objectively was. Or maybe she was just imagining things.

***

Oz came back, and said all the right things about trying to be a better man and starting over again. The pain he’d caused was over. There was no reason not to take him back, so Willow did.

Some days, it seemed like her love for him didn’t burn quite as bright as it used to, before he left.

She started researching spells that might help. She’d find one eventually. There was always another spell.