WWDD: S1E4 “TEACHER’S PET”

Dawn’s first introduction in the episode happens when Buffy gets home from the Bronze with a new leather jacket, which Dawn notices seems to be far too large for Buffy until she puts it on and it mysteriously shrinks to fit her body. Both Summers girls are undisturbed by this leather jacket shrinking magic and are focused on more important things—Buffy, weirdly on her biology homework and Dawn, on devising a plan to sneak into Buffy’s room to “borrow” her brown leather jacket (she can’t wear them both at the same time!).

The next day, Dawn gets up for school and makes herself a classic Dawn sandwich—salami with peanut butter, much to Buffy’s disgust. Buffy tells Dawn that she makes the grossest sandwiches, which upsets Dawn and prompts her to declare that she is no longer speaking to Buffy. When Dawn gets to school, she, too, has a substitute teacher in her science class. The substitute introduces himself and tells the class that he also went to school at Sunnydale Elementary and was taught by some old lady who retired in like 1972. Ms. France or something? Dawn was distracted by overhearing one of the girls in her class, Kirstie, tell a group of students that it’s a rite of passage to make the substitute cry—something that Dawn will later repeat in Season 5, Episode 4, “Out of My Mind.”

When Dawn gets home from school, she learns that Buffy’s biology teacher was found dead at school and missing his head. Dawn starts to suspect that something is off about Sunnydale because someone dies or something weird happens every day at Buffy’s school and no one seems to think this is a big deal. They didn’t even cancel gym! However, because she is a child and none of the adults seem worried about it, she puts it out of her 10-year-old mind…For now.