AN~ Happy belated birthday, Spotsgalfrom1899! Sorry I didn't get this up in time! Another note: I don't really know if this is Sabrina's birthday, I just sort of guessed.
In their next class, French, the Frong Prince was the teacher. Sabrina looked at Bella and winced sympathetically. "I forgot he was a teacher."
"So did I." Bella said dryly. "But I'll survive. If I'm lucky, he'll get in a snit and ignore me."
"He does that?" Sabrina asked.
"He was my third grade teacher." Bella said. "He ignored Toby the whole second half of the year."
"Wow." Puck said dryly. "Even I think that's immature."
Normally Sabrina would have laughed, but this time she just looked anywhere but at Puck and waited for Mr. Amphibian to assign them seats. This whole crush thing was shaping up to be very embarrassing. Fortunately, Renee was in the class also, and she was seated between Sabrina and Puck, giving her an excuse not to talk with him.
"Welcome to French I." Mr. Amphibian said. "We will be moving through this class at an average pace, as opposed to many f your other classes. However, you will most likely not need as many years as you normally would, because we will pick up right where we left off next year. Also, this is a high school level class, with an extended review period for those of you who may have studied a previous language in another school, or no language at all, as the case may be."
Sabrina, who had taken Spanish in New York City, was grateful for that. She tried to concentrate on what the teacher was saying, versus the proximity of Puck and Renee's chairs.
"We will begin tomorrow with pronunciation. There will be no textbooks in this class, but there will be an extraordinary amount of handouts, so make sure to bring a large three-ring binder tomorrow." Mr. Amphibian said.
He began on a list of class rules, then, but Sabrina tuned him out, trying very hard to retain an urge to kick Renee. What was WITH her? She hadn't been this weird before!
Finally, the bell rang, and Sabrina picked up her things and headed out, following Puck and Renee.
"What class do you have next?" Renee was saying."
"Study hall." Puck said.
"Me, too!" Renee said cheerfully. The two walked ahead of Sabrina, who lagged behind, fuming.
"You look cheerful." Bella said dryly."
"Shaddup." Sabrina glared at her.
"Renee getting a little too clingy for you?" Bella asked. "It's disgusting. I mean, they aren't even DATING!"
"He doesn't LIKE her." Sabrina said. "He TOLD her so yesterday!"
"Maybe she's hopeful." Bella said.
Sabrina rolled her eyes, pushing open the library door. "That's delusional, not hopeful."
They entered the library and Sabrina stopped. "What happened here?"
The Scarecrow, wobbling past at the moment, stopped, too. "I didn't want the books destroyed." He said cheerfully. "So Snow and I made an agreement. We moved all the books in here."
"Wow." Bella grinned. "That's pretty awesome."
Sabrina nodded, going to sit by Puck and Renee at one of the library's tables.
"I told you already, give it UP, Renee!" Puck was saying. "I'm never going to go out with you, because you're nothing more than a friend and never will be!"
"But, Puck-" Renee started to say, but was cut off.
"What do I have to do to get it through your head? I don't like you!" Puck snapped. Sabrina held in a smile as Puck got up, saying, "I'm going somewhere else before these books give me hives."
"This is YOUR fault!" Renee hissed at Sabrina.
Sabrina stared at her. "MY fault? Look, just because he doesn't like you doesn't mean he automatically likes me!" Not that she would mind...
"If it weren't for you, he would have stayed in the city!" Renee shrieked.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "Don't hate me because he doesn't like you. He didn't before, and he doesn't now. He came back to get away from the responsibility. You're messing with reality to suit your whims. It's NOT cool."
"I am NOT!" Renee said.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "Yes, you are. And if you'd just calm down and look at things, you'd see that things aren't nearly as bad as you think they are. There are plenty of other fish in the sea, and some of them may just be waiting for you to get your head out of the clouds and away from Puck."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Renee asked.
"Get over him." Sabrina said. "Easier said than done, I know, but there are other guys, and I've seen the way some of them look at you. You're a pretty girl, Renee, you can do better than an immature fairy prince."
Renee stopped and looked at her. "Like who?"
"Not telling." Sabrina said mildly.
"Tell me!" Renee said.
"No." Sabrina said. "Once you're over Puck, maybe."
"That'll take AGES." Renee said.
Sabrina smiled. "Ah, well. Now you have a goal. 'Course, you could always try and figure it out yourself."
The rest of the period, during which Puck didn't appear at all, Renee tried different ways to convince Sabrina to spill, to no avail. They headed off in separate directions with Renee still shouting names at Sabrina.
Bella chuckled. "That went well."
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "I was getting tired of the whole you-took-my-love theme, so I decided to nip it in the bud."
"It worked." Bella said. "Where are we headed now?"
"Different spots, I think." Sabrina said. "You already had science, didn't you?"
"Yeah." Bella said. "See you later!"
Sabrina headed off to Science on her own. She waited through the seating assignments, then took her seat quietly. This was the first class she hadn't known anyone in, and she was NERVOUS. It didn't help that Mr. Sheepshanks was the science teacher and he knew exactly what she was feeling and would probably do his best to turn those feelings up to the maximum.
"Hi."
She turned to look at the speaker, a redheaded boy around her age with mischievous eyes and a crooked, gap-toothed smile.
"Hi." She said warily. "Who are you?"
"Peter pan." The boy grinned at the expression on her face. "I'm assuming you're Sabrina Grimm, then?"
"How'd you guess?" Sabrina asked.
"Well, partly the fact that I heard from Robin what you look like, but mostly that people who give me that look have usually spent a lot of time around Puck, and I know you live with him." Peter said
Sabrina smiled at him, feeling calmer already. She thought she would like this kid. "He is very vehement about that. I think he got confused for you one time too many. You should have seen him the time my dad asked if he was you. He blew the roof off our car."
"Seriously?" Peter asked.
He was about to continue when Mr. Sheepshanks spoke up.
"Listen up, kiddos!" He said. "We've got a big year ahead of us, and lots to learn. We'll go at a normal pace, since there's nothing magical I can teach under a science heading. You know all the basics by now, of course, but let's go over the class rules once again, shall we?"
Sabrina and Peter both tuned him out around then, and set about whispering quietly through the class. On her way to math, Sabrina decided that while Peter was fun, he was even more immature than Puck, and nowhere near as cool. And too fickle.
"Hello!" Miss Muffet said as Sabrina entered the room. "Please write your birthday on this sheet of paper! We'll be making the seating chart in order of when you were born, not by name!"
"When's your birthday?" Bella asked Sabrina.
"March twenty-ninth." Sabrina whispered back. "You?"
"January seventh." Bella replied. "I doubt we'll be sitting together."
As it turned out, they were about five seats apart. Then there was a hug gap in birthdays, nothing between Sabrina's at the end of March, and Alice- of Wonderland- on May fourth.
"Hi." Sabrina whispered to Alice as Mrs. Arachnid began explaining how the math class would proceed- at an ordinary pace-, how they were NOT to call her miss Muffet under any circumstances, and the class rules, all things Sabrina already knew.
"Hi." Alice whispered back.
"You're a little young physically for this class, aren't you?" Sabrina asked. Alice looked about ten, at the most.
Alice nodded. "But Charles Dogson- you know him as Lewis Carroll- he was a math teacher, and he taught me quite a bit. I didn't feel like relearning that information, despite the fact that Snow thought it would be better for me to be with people more like my age."
"Well, there's less than ten people in this school that are their actual age in this entire town, so it doesn't really matter anyway." Sabrina said. "And there's only one teacher who doesn't know about everafters."
"That's what I said." Alice replied with a smile. "Snow decided to put me in normal classes the rest of the time and I'd be ahead here."
The two girls talked for the rest of the class, albeit quietly, and at the end of the day Sabrina filed her way out to the bus, sitting down purposely next to Bella instead of Puck, though there was an open seat.
"Now what did I do?" Puck complained.
"Nothing, at least that I know of." Sabrina said, still not looking at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You haven't even looked at me, let alone said anything, since lunch! What's going on?"
"Not a thing." Sabrina said. "I'm just tired. Relax." That was said as much to her heart as to Puck. She decided to change the subject. "So, does anyone know how the buses are divided up? It looks like it's mostly like, native towners on this bus, New Yorkers on another one, and everyone else on the last one, but Mustardseed is on this bus, so that ruins that."
"I believe that is how it is arranged." Mustardseed said. "But I am on the edge of the citygoers camp, so I was probably included in the least populated bus."
"True, there aren't as many kids from here as from other places." Sabrina said. "Most of the people here decided to grow up, at least a little."
"Puck not included." Bella said.
"Well, it's probably easier to fit in with humans if you at least PRETEND you are one." Daphne said. "That's hard to do if you're a kid forever, and here, you can't really hide or get out."
"True." Bella said.
"We should make a study group." Mustardseed said. " noticed that many of the classes require group work, and we all have different strengths which we could use to help each other. I suggest we all meet during study hall and actually work, as much as it may seem a ree period to the rest of you."
"Like a book club or something!" Daphne said. "We could read out loud and get done with the books Snow wants us to read, and help each other with homework and..."
"I think we should meet more than during school." Sabrina said thoughtfully. "At least once a week outside of school, maybe on Saturday night or something, at our house, or the Golden Egg or something."
"Every day would actually work better." Bella said. "That way if someone can't make it one day, they don't miss too much. And we could invite other people, ones we can trust."
"Like Wendell?" Red asked.
Sabrina blinked at her. Was she actually teasing?
Bella blushed. "Well, yes. And Renee, and those friends of Puck's, Art and Jonas. weren't they?"
"And Alice- the Wonderland one." Sabrina said. "Maybe- and don't kill me Puck, but maybe Peter Pan and his crowd, too. He's in my science class."
Puck didn't kill her, but he did give her-and everyone else- a death glare that stopped the conversation cold.
Bella finally broke the silence. "So... how was everyone's day?"
"Amazing!" Daphne said. "I met SO many everafters and my classes all are going to be amazing, and-"
Before she could start rambling, Sabrina cut her off. "How about you, Red?"
"It was... interesting." Red said. "Very loud. But fun, I guess, What about the rest of you?"
"It's all right, as far as schools go." Puck said. "But my last two classes were boring. Educational, but boring."
"Mine was not exceptionally illuminating, but the year is shaping up to be informative." Mustardseed said.
"I had fun." Sabrina said. "This actually might be the first school year I actually enjoy. Like, ever. How 'bout you, Bella?"
Bella gushed about the day with Daphne for the rest of the ride home, and then, when they arrived inside, the two did the same thing again for the adults. Sabrina, Puck, and Red all disappeared as soon as possible to let the other two do the talking for them while they went up to work together on their tests for the next day.
The rest of the marking period passed in a blur to Sabrina. She studied almost nonstop, meeting with the study group daily and working on whatever homework had been assigned, as well as doing group projects and getting help in subjects she wasn't good in. She even helped some of the lost boys- who had joined the group, despite Puck's protests- with their English work. She was determined to get the bare minimum of her work done in science, math, and Friench, and to work as fast as possible on the subjects that mattered.
When she wasn't working on her school assignments, which was rare, she was either doing chores, sleeping, or with Baba Yaga, experimenting with her abilities, mainly control. Baba Yaga insisted that she learn how to make her magic NOT do anything before she even atempted to make it do anything else.
"This way," She'd said, "You won't burn someone's hair off whenever you're angry, or cause earthquakes, or anything else that would give away your secret."
Sabrina had complied, and the house had quieted down somewhat, because Sabrina's work ethic had caught on, and everyone was exhausted from their schoolwork. trying to get as much done as they could in time for the impending war.
Snow called the adults in about it one day.
"Thank you for coming." She told the study group's parents as they entered the room. "I wanted to discuss your children's grades with you."
"They've been studying 24/7." Veronica said. "Surely they can't be so bad that you needed a parent teacher conference wtih ALL of us."
She gestured to the room, where Relda, Jacob, Henry, the Hamelins, Titania, and Wendy sat.
"I expected bad grades from Puck," Titania said, "But you said my CHILDREN, Snow. Peaseblossom and Mustardseed have always been excellent students, and they have already learned most of this. It has been a while since htey attended an establishment such as this, but-"
"There is no problem with your children's grades." Snow said calmly. "That's not the reason I called you here."
"What is it, then?" Mrs. Hamlin, an unremarkable woman who was supposedly from the town of the famous story, asked quietly.
"They ARE low, I admit, but the PROGRESS is what astounds me." Snow said, handing out sheets of grades. "The older ones have gotten through about half of their U.S. history book already, having skipped most of the revolutionary war and other segments. That's a high-school grade textbook. Hamlin, of course, you knew that already. This is only the end of the first marking period. They are shaping up to be done with that before year's end, and if they continue at this rate, well into world history before the end of next year."
"Before we are halfway through with the year, if I give them their books in the spring and they study over the sumer." Hamelin cut in. "However likely that is. I believe we are scheduled for skirmished over the summer."
"They are also well ahead in gym class- or health at the moment." Snow said. "They don't get very high grades, C's for the most part, and some B's and D's, almost no A's, same as history, but they are most of the way through the health book. The Beast reports that they take very good notes and will most likely not need even a full marking period of the subject next year, if they keep their notes and reread them next year. Their math, science, and French grades are low, and move at a normal speed. I have asked the teachers to go light on the work, as they have more important things to cover. It is their English grades that most surprise me."
She handed out more sheets and the adults gaped.