Title: The Monster's Alphabet

Author: alliterator

Summary: A series of vignettes, from Adam to Zookeeper. Spoilers for all seven seasons.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything belongs to the great and power Whedon.

Catherine Madison

Spoilers for Season 1's "The Witch."

"Her nickname was Catherine The Great: she took that team and made them tri-county champions; no one's ever done that before or since."

- Amy Madison in The Witch

She wasn't beautiful; she was too scrawny, too much of a stick figure. In those days, that counted against you. She was teased by all the popular kids and when she heard about cheerleading tryouts, she saw it as a way to get them all back.

She worked out morning, noon, and night. Her mother had died when she was seven and her father was always at work, so she had a lot of time to herself. She practiced the cheers over and over again, often working until two in the morning.

But when tryouts finally came around, she knew she wouldn't win. It didn't matter about skill, only if you were pretty and popular.

So she cheated. She had learned about magic from her grandmother a few years back. When her grandmother had died, she had left her book of spells to Catherine. The night before tryouts, Catherine desperately looked through it for a spell to win. In between two stuck together pages, she found the ingredients for the "ambitio aura": a spell that would grant her deepest desires of popularity. She mixed the potion and won a spot on the cheerleading squad the next day.

The rest seemed like a blur to her. Winning the tri-county championship, becoming King and Queen of Homecoming with the star quarterback, getting married to him. For the first time in her life, she was genuinely happy, even though her popularity was not real.

And then she became pregnant. Having a baby took away her strength a bit, made her magic waver. The spell faded a little bit; not enough for her to notice, but enough that if people looked at her closely, they could almost see her real face.

Over the years, the spell slipped further and further, until twelve years after Amy Margaret Madison was born the spell disappeared. Her husband, seeing her cold and vicious face, immediately left and tried to get Amy to come with him, but Catherine held onto her, fought him in court, and won.

After all, Amy was her own flesh and blood.  She wouldn't let her own daughter go; especially not after she learned the mind-switching spell would only work between blood relatives. It was her legacy to be a cheerleader.