A/N: I don't know if it's Valentine's Day yet for some of y'all , but it is v-day here and so here's a lil oneshot , from yours truly. fair warning: this kind of sucks , but , well , I tried. happy reading xx
It was an unusually peaceful day. The students of both schools didn't have class that day, as it was a weekend. The Three Witches of Room 66 were huddled in their room, each doing their own thing. Hester was doing her homework at her desk. Anadil was reading on her bed. Dot was throwing bits of chocolate at Anadil's rats. Everything was tranquil.
"I HAVE AN IDEA." Sophie burst in all of a sudden without knocking, shattering the peace and shocking Hester into spilling ink all over her homework. Her demon jumped off her neck and shot towards Sophie. Anadil quickly shot a stun spell towards the demon and it dropped like a fly. Grumbling under her breath, Hester summoned the unconscious demon back onto her neck.
Sophie ignored the brief assault and waltzed into the room, shutting the door behind her. "I have an idea," she repeated, sitting on the edge of Hester's bed and crossing her ankles daintily. "What," Hester snarled, crumpling up her ink-stained parchment and throwing it over her shoulder.
"You know how Evers only have one ball?" Sophie began. "Yes, the Snow Ball. You ruined it for them during our first year," Anadil replied without looking up from her book. The Evil Dean waved her hand dismissively. "The past is the past, darling. Anyway, I thought of a great way to one-up them this year." Her green eyes sparkled as she paused and waited for someone to ask her her brilliant idea for dramatic effect. The room was silent for a moment, till Dot piped up softly.
"What's your idea?" She asked. Sophie beamed at her. "I thought you'd never ask. We host an Evil Valentine's Day Dance this year!" She exclaimed.
"NO!" Hester and Anadil yelled in unison.
"That is the worst idea you've ever had," Hester said. "By far," Anadil agreed. Sophie shook her head, leaning forward eagerly.
"No, no, hear me out! It's only the start of the year, which gives the boys plenty of time to work up the courage to ask the girls! And it gives us all enough time to find our dresses! We should all go dress-shopping together! It'll be so much fun!" She said excitedly, clapping her hands.
"How is this supposed to be fun?" Anadil frowned. "No way in hell am I participating," Hester growled. "I think it sounds fun. I wonder if Hort would go with me, even though he's a teacher and all," Dot pondered, chewing on a chocolate lizard.
Sophie stood up and walked to the door, pausing for a moment as though she'd forgotten something. "Oh, and one more thing. If you don't manage to get a date for the ball, you'll be transferred to the bottom of the class. Good luck, dears!" She said, bestowing a dazzling smile upon the witches before sashaying out.
"This may be the year I finally snap and kill her," Hester said to no one in particular. "Let me know when it happens. I'd like to watch," Anadil replied. The two witches sighed in unison.
Hester thought Sophie's Evil Valentine's Day idea would not take off, since it was, well, a terrible idea. She was dead wrong. The next day, she noticed that everything had changed.
Usually, the boys stuck together and ignored the girls, and vice versa. Today, boys were sidled up to girls, forcing conversation while the girls blushed various shades of red, pink, and in Mona's case, green.
"Has hell frozen over?" Hester murmured to Anadil. Dot looked around at the other girls a little jealously. "Wish someone would give me some attention," she muttered. Just as she spoke, Vex jogged up to them, his pointy ears swaying with his movements.
"Good morning, Anadil," he said with what Hester assumed was a smile. It looked more like he was doing his best to show off all the teeth in his mouth. Even the ones at the back. It was not pleasant.
"Good morning," Anadil replied seemingly calmly. Hester had known her long enough to tell that she was screaming on the inside.
"May I walk you to class?" Vex continued, blushing all the way to the tips of his pointy ears. He'd clearly planned this moment in his head, as he seemed to know what to do, only something had gone wrong along the way.
"No," Anadil answered, and walked away with her coven-mates. "I can't believe a boy just tried to flirt with you," Hester said with a snicker. "Me neither," Anadil sighed. "Well, at least he won't bother me again."
Oh, how wrong she was.
When the three witches assumed their usual spots in class, Anadil noticed several flowers on her desk, some black, some white, and some dead, each with a card attached to it. "I'm not even sure what to say," she said, dropping her rats onto the flowers and letting them go wild.
"Hey, Anadil." A boy walked up to them. This time, it was Ravan, his hands shoved in his pockets. Hester figured he just wanted to ask her for homework or something, and rummaged in her bag for something. When she emerged, he was still there, only he was blushing and stuttering and smiling and making a fool out of himself. And on top of that, several other boys were with him, also acting like nimrods.
"What are they doing here?" She whispered to Dot, who was munching on half a chocolate cockroach. "Obviously they want to ask her to the dance," she replied. Hester furrowed her brow. The Neverboys who were pathetically attempting to flirt with the pale witch were either oily, pimply, or just plain ugly. She knew Anadil would never go for any of them, even if they were handsome princes. The pale witch simply loathed romance, which was something she could understand.
What she couldn't understand, however, was why were so many boys trying to ask Anadil out? Was this all some elaborate dare to see who could get her to say yes?
She supposed that by Never standards, Anadil was rather attractive, in a pale, ghostly sort of way. At least all her facial features were intact, and proportioned quite pleasantly. And her eyes were a really nice shade of red. So perhaps they just wanted to take the prettiest girl in class to the dance.
Even so, she was surprised that she got that much attention.
"Sucks for you, Ani." Hester grinned as the bell rang and the crowd of boys dispersed from her desk. "Don't forget, if no one takes you to the dance you fail," Anadil replied swiftly. The grin slid off Hester's face.
"This whole thing is just pointless and a little sexist," she mumbled. Anadil grimaced. "Well, Sophie didn't say the boys had to ask the girls. You could ask someone if you want," she offered.
"That's helpful, since I'm so very fond of boys," Hester replied sarcastically. "Just trying to help." Anadil made a face at her friend. "I see Vex approaching again. Let's go," Hester said, dragging her friend away, and that was the end of that conversation.
Over the next few days, Hester thought the craze about the Evil Valentine's Day Dance would die down. She was dead wrong. That first day was just a small taste of what life would be like for the next few weeks.
Evers glared at the Nevers resentfully as they passed, no doubt jealous that they got a Valentine's Day Dance. Professor Dovey had pointed out that pulling a Valentine's Day event out of nowhere would be impossible, while Sophie had clearly been giving this a lot of thought, and already had every last detail down. It was almost impressive, how perfectly she'd managed to plan the entire thing.
Neverboys were still flirting with the Nevergirls, with disastrous effects. Luckily for Hester, no one tried to ask her to the dance. Well, that wasn't strictly true, as a few boys had tried striking up conversations with her, only to be shot down brutally. Dot was fretting about how she wouldn't be able to find a date since no one had asked her, and she really did not want to fail.
Anadil's problem was the precise opposite. She had never gotten this much attention from boys before, and seemed like she was not exactly sure how to rid herself of them. Hester never knew she was this popular amongst the Neverboys, who usually avoided her and all the other girls like the plague.
It was also getting increasingly impossible to speak to her friend. From the moment they stepped foot into the halls, boys would be springing up everywhere, offering to carry Anadil's books or bringing food for her rats. During class, the pale witch spent all her time trying to focus on the lesson while simultaneously zapping magical paper airplanes containing sappy love notes away from her. This Evil Valentine's Day thing was bringing out the romantic side of the boys, and it was not pretty.
Watching various boys flirting with her best friend as though they had a shot with her just made Hester laugh. It was pathetic, the way they drooled after her, and quite aggravating too. She'd like to have a normal conversation with Anadil without some moony-eyed boy ogling her.
Speaking of which, the two witches barely had time to talk these days, an occurrence which Hester blamed on Anadil's ridiculous troupe of admirers. Something about them just made her so angry, but she didn't know what it was.
That anger had spilled over from the Neverboys onto Anadil as well. At times, even looking at Anadil irritated Hester now, which was odd and a little sad, since she was the only person whose company she always enjoyed. But at the same time, she yearned to spend time together with her again, like the good old days. It was like Hester wanted to be with her, but she couldn't stand being with her. She decided to just give her the cold shoulder instead of sorting out her own tangled mess of feelings.
Eventually, after days of being very snippy towards her best friend, Hester decided to just hide in library till late at night, to make sure she didn't have to see Anadil. She ended up alone a lot of the time, which she was completely fine with.
"So who are you going to go with?" Hester asked Anadil, while watching her incinerate yet another love letter in their dorm room. She was in a pretty good mood, because their morning class was cancelled, and the two of them were lounging around in their dorm room with Dot, who had gone back to bed as soon as she heard the class was off.
"I haven't decided yet. Who are you going with?" Anadil asked, dropping her rats onto the pile of ashes. Her rats scuttled off, scattering the dust. Hester frowned. She hadn't really thought about that, because she'd been very preoccupidd. She just assumed she could bully someone into asking her at the last minute, but come to think about it, the boys took this stupid dance much too seriously, so she started to think that maybe that wouldn't work.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll ask Ravan. We had fun at the No Ball in our first year," Hester mumbled unenthusiastically. She knew he wanted to ask Anadil, but maybe he wouldn't mind going with her instead. She rolled her eyes at the thought. Ugh.
"Oh. You may want this then." Anadil viciously kicked the ashes towards Hester. "That was from him," she said, her voice flat. She got up and left their room, leaving a very bewildered Hester to wonder why she seemed so angry.
Hester leaned back in her seat, wanting to yell at the throng of boys crowding her coven-mate to go away, but also finding some sort of cruel satisfaction in watching Anadil struggle to turn several persistent boys away at the same time. Oddly enough, while she felt a sort of glee at her friend's suffering, there was also that familiar anger that she didn't quite understand.
Though judging from the fire in her red eyes and the way she pressed her lips together, that smile was clearly forced and hiding a desire to snap all their necks. Of course, it wasn't like anyone could tell. Hester was the only person who knew and cared about her enough to pick up on these things.
'I'd be a much, much better date than these boys,' she thought to herself, watching Anadil's forced smile, a bitter smile playing on her own lips.
"Will she just accept one of them already so the rest of them will leave us alone?" Hester snapped to Dot, after a boy sidled up to Anadil out of nowhere and dragged her away from them. "She's barely even had time to speak to us these days," she added.
"Oh, she and I've still been talking. Well, not that much, since Ani doesn't talk much, but still," Dot responded cheerfully. "But she barely speaks to me now," Hester said, surprisingly hurt by this news.
"Haven't you been avoiding her? You always leave when she comes in, and when she speaks to you you just sort of grunt back at her," Dot answered, nibbling on a chocolate pop.
"I am not avoiding Anadil. She's just been so caught up with her admirers that she's barely had time for her coven," Hester said bitterly. "That's not true. You know, I think you're just jealous. She only ever paid attention to you, and now she's got lots of people paying attention to her," Dot said wisely. Hester stared at her for a while, trying to refute that theory, and just called her a very rude name when she couldn't.
The day after her conversation with Dot, Hester decided to try talking to a boy to gear herself up for the dance. At least, that was what she told herself. During lunch, she walked up to a boy whose name she didn't know or care to remember, and tried her hardest to be nice to him. Throughout the horrible ordeal, she kept sneaking glances at Anadil to see if she was looking, and she was. Anadil's red eyes were filled with a sort of unhappy hatred as they bore into Hester and the boy, as though she was trying to incinerate them with her eyes.
The corner of Hester's mouth lifted upwards in a tiny, satisfied smirk. She walked away from the boy, feeling as though her mission was accomplished, even though she still didn't have a date.
While she was in her room alone, Hester decided to try and figure out once and for all why she didn't like seeing Anadil with boys. Since she rarely had the room to herself, she might as well start thinking while she had some peace. She flopped onto her bed, lying down and staring at the ceiling.
It wasn't like Anadil liked any of the boys, so it wasn't fear that they would steal her from the coven.
It also wasn't the fact that Anadil was rubbing it in her face, because she wasn't. She seemed very tired and irritated a lot of the time, and became increasingly withdrawn.
It wasn't jealousy either, since Hester didn't like any of the boys. And yet, what Dot said about her being jealous seemed to make sense. She supposed she was just used to being the star in Anadil's universe. She most definitely didn't want to share her with anyone else.
Hester also decided to start thinking about who she'd go to the dance with. She thought about it for a while, and the only person she could stand to spend time alone with was Anadil. But that was ridiculous, as she wasn't a boy, therefore Hester couldn't go to the dance with her.
... Or could she? Did she want to? But that was a romance-type thing. Unless...
Unless she wanted to take Anadil to the dance.
Well, of course she did, because she hated pretty much everyone else. But this was different. Suddenly, she understood. She wanted to be her date.
"Oh no," Hester said, and buried her face in her pillow.
The next few days weren't that much different, despite Hester's shocking realisation. She continued to avoid Anadil as much as she could, perhaps even more so now. She didn't quite know how to handle these feelings.
While people flirted with her, Hester watched them out of the corner of her eye, this time recognizing the jealousy lying beneath the anger. Maybe it was time to try talking to Anadil again. But how?
"Hey, Ani. Sorry I've been a avoiding you for a while, because I was jealous that so many people liked you because I liked you too and wanted to take you to the dance"? Absolutely not. But she had to try something.
"Hey, Ani," Hester said to her friend. "Yes?" Anadil's red eyes lit up, and Hester's heart lifted for a moment.
"I—" She didn't quite know what to say, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because Vex came up to Anadil and interrupted them. He took her hand and tried to lead her somewhere.
She yanked her hand away from him and whirled around to look for Hester, but she was gone.
After that day, Hester just went back to ignoring Anadil. Feelings were stupid and pointless and she decided she'd just wait till that damned dance was over to pretend they never existed.
She curled up in her favourite armchair in a corner of the library, her Evil homework in a messy pile on the table and a book in her hand. She always liked this part of the library, because it smelled rather odd and so Ever students avoided it like the plague, whereas most Nevers preferred studying in the comfort of their own rooms, so it was always deserted. This was also where she and Anadil usually went to study together. The two of them would huddle there for hours, whispering and swapping books and sharing quills, always enjoying one other's company. Hester sighed. She really missed her best friend. She knew it was partially her own fault, and that did nothing to help lift her spirits.
"Thought you'd be here," Anadil said, jolting Hester out of her thoughts. She slid into the armchair next to hers. Hester knew there was no point asking how she knew, because it really wasn't that difficult to figure out.
"You've been acting so weird lately, Hester. Why've you been avoiding me?" Anadil asked bluntly, leaning forward and fixating her red eyes on her friend's black ones. "I'm not avoiding you," Hester snapped defensively.
"Stop lying to me, you idiot," Anadil snarled. "Is it something I did?" She asked, softening and showing a rare hint of vulnerability. "Don't know what you're talking about," Hester mumbled, flipping to a random page of her book and burying her nose in it, refusing to give in. "Just tell me what I did," Anadil said angrily, all traces of vulnerability gone.
"No. Go away," Hester growled. "What's the issue, Hester? Why the hell have you been ignoring me?" Anadil pressed.
"Leave me alone, Anadil," Hester said, repositioning her book to hide her face. "'Anadil', huh? Not 'Ani' anymore?" Anadil said coolly. "Just tell me why you stopped talking to me, and I'll leave. I promise," she added. "Go talk to your boyfriend or whatever," Hester snapped. "I don't have a— wait. Are you jealous?" Anadil asked. Hester peeked over her book and saw that the corners of her friend's mouth were marginally quirked upwards in the slightest of smiles.
"I'm not jealous," Hester snarled, a sudden burst of rage engulfing her. She set her book down and glared at Anadil, who dropped her tiny smile immediately. "Okay, maybe I was jealous, but it wasn't because I wanted to go to the stupid dance with a boy." She snorted. "I wanted to go to the dance with you." She laughed bitterly, as though it was the most ridiculous idea in the world.
"I wanted to go with you too," Anadil said softly. "What?" Hester said, trying to ignore the lifting of her heart. She had to make sure she heard her right. "I wanted to go with you too. I just wasn't sure if you'd want me as your date," Anadil mumbled, looking down to hide her expression.
"I thought it'd be ridiculous to ask you, so I didn't," Hester replied, pretending she wasn't blushing either.
"You could still ask me, you know," Anadil said softly. Hester smiled crookedly, and leaned forward.
"Alright then. Anadil of Bloodbrook, will you be my date for the dance?"
Anadil smiled—a proper smile that she didn't bother hiding, one that lit up her pale face and made her red eyes sparkle like rubies. The kind of smile she reserved only for Hester.
"Yes."