Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Author's Note: I've always been curious about why Amy Madison chose to go into magic despite what her mother did to her. Obviously there's the draw of being able to use it to get out of homework asignments, like she did in Bewitched, Bewildered and Bothered, but still. Her mother violated her with magic, stealing her body. Her initial experiences with it were far, far from positive.

This is a standalone oneshot, based on my interpretation of Amy's personality and mindset. It's meant to fit in the canon as it is. However, this fic is also basically my official headcanon about how Amy came be using magic, so if you read my Iron Coin Chronicles series, or my New City, Same Enemy fic, then this part of her in those, as well as any other fic I might write in the Buffyverse that features Amy, bar really radical AUs (like Red Moon Rises)

The Spellbook

By Alkeni

August 4th, 1997

1420 Truman Drive, Sunnydale

Amy tensed when she felt her hands pass over the leather cover of her mother's spellbook. For a split second, she was frozen in place, as if unable to let go. Then, almost violently, she wrenched her hand back, out of her closet, taking several hurried steps away from it, breathing heavily for a moment.

When she'd moved in with her dad after... after her mom... vanished, Amy hadn't packed much. There wasn't much that she had wanted to bring with her, to keep from living with her mom. And she was sure she hadn't packed that spellbook.

But it had been there, in her things anyway, just... sitting at the bottom of a box. She hadn't wanted touch it... obviously throwing it away wasn't going to work... and...

And she hadn't wanted to risk... burning it or...

God knows what kind of... what if mom put some kind of curse on it?

So Amy had just... shoved it in the back of her closet and tried to forget about it. And... mostly she had.

But it was still there.

Amy sat down on her bed, taking a deep breath to calm down. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting out another long, slow breath, then opened them again.

She'd be lying if she hadn't wondered it was like, to do magic. To... have power like that. But... having that power is why her mother had gone so... completely overboard. Well, that and she was... a total bitch. She'd have never actively thought of her mother like that before she'd moved in with her dad. Afraid 'Catherine the Great' would figure it out, that'd she'd said that in the privacy of her own head. Even before she'd realized that her mother was using magic – when she'd woken up in her body – her mom had always had this... scary way of knowing what she was thinking and doing.

Of course, Amy knew how she'd had that, now.

Living those months in her mom's body, watching her own body moving around and... without being in control of it. Easily the worst months of her life. Ever. Her mom had used magic to... violate her like that, steal control of her body...

I guess I'm just lucky she never decided to have... Amy shook her head, shuddering, trying to banish the unwelcome thoughts. This was why – among hundreds of other reasons – she tried to hard not to think about all that. Why she'd just avoided the spellbook so much.

Her mother's magic had made her so... powerless. Weak. Her mother had always been strict, and sometimes Amy was a little afraid of her, but... those months, she'd been terrified. One wrong step, and Amy had quickly come to believe that her mother really would kill her.

And in the end, she really had tried. And now she's gone.

Or... or maybe...

No. That was just... she's not in that trophy. She's gone. Totally gone. Dead. Yea. Dead.

Dead sounded good. Better... the other option.

Unconsciously, Amy's eyes drifted back to her closet.

She'd known magic was real, but it hadn't been until... well, until the Spring Fling when she'd realized the rest of it. She'd known that it wasn't safe out in the dark in Sunnydale. That you didn't invite people into your house generally, no with a 'come in', most of the time. But that was just... unconscious.

After the Spring Fling, when... vampires had attacked the school...

She'd also been right in her guess that Buffy had been involved, when she asked Willow about it a few days after the school year had ended.

Magic was just the tip of the iceberg. Vampires, demons, slayers... Hellmouth. All really pleasant things to know existed...

Her mother had to have known about them. Really, once you knew magic was real, it wasn't really much of a stretch to realize that other things that you thought were just... imaginary monsters from out of horror stories. But no. They were all real.

Another... terrifying revelation.

To be terrified was to be weak. To be... to lose control. To lose yourself. To be weak to be terrified.

Her gaze drifted to the closet again, this time less unconsciously, less... unbidden.

Mom had power, and she went... crazy... but I'm not her.

Amy didn't want to be weak. She didn't want to be... terrified again.

And there as a solution to that. Right there, in her closet.

And if Mom's really not dead... then... then I need something to defend myself...

Amy shook her head violently, banishing the thought from her head. No. No. She didn't - she couldn't... she stood, shaking her head some more.

"I need... I need some air." Amy thought aloud, stepping out of her room, heading down the stairs. She needed to be away from... from her closet, and what was in it.

Two days later, Amy's resolve crumbled.

She wouldn't be terrified again.

Two days later, she opened the spellbook.