So, overall you have a very nice story. A story needs to say something and what you are saying is that Dawn is tough in a way that Giles couldn’t be. The problem though is that as a reader I am left unsure of her motive. You touch on various possibilities by implication and suggestion – is she trying to outdo Giles and the other men ‘blinded by love and power’? Does she truly believe as Lydia does that the Cruciamentum is necessary to the slayers? Or does she have a darker motive, as hinted in the opening scene of somehow needing to lay her own demons after Buffy’s Cruciamentum.

So at the moment your story consists only of the emotion of having reintroduced something dangerous that evokes bad memories, and the questions it provokes. Emotion can make for a good story, and you have a good story. But emotion with understanding (for the reader) of the root of that emotion can make a good story better. If you settle for the harder option of both posing the questions and then answering them, you will take this story up a significant notch.