I don't own Detective Conan, though I wouldn't mind it at all if I did. I wouldn't mind owning Snow White either, because sometimes I want help with chores, but I don't own her either.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Part Two

(Very Revised and Greatly Altered)

Now you must not imagine, Dear Reader, that the witch-queen had been quiet all the time Princess Snow White (hereafter to be known as Princess Aoko) was settling in and attaining a reasonable level of happiness. Indeed, she had been pleased enough when the Henchman (whose good side was not large enough to cover occasions when speaking the truth would get him killed) had returned with a bloody heart. As a matter of fact, it was a pig's heart, but she didn't know that. This was just as well, since she really did eat it. All the same, just to be sure, she went to visit her mirror and asked it her customary question; and what was her delight when it replied, "You, O Queen, are the fairest in all the land."

This was technically true, since at the very moment the queen posed her question Princess Aoko happened to fall face-first into a mud-puddle, and the result of this fall was not pretty in the least.

It was no more than a month later, however, that she went back to question the long-suffering mirror again, and as Aoko generally kept her face clean when she was staying with royalty the answer she got was different. I don't like to mention the rage she fell into when the poor, brow-beaten thing mumbled "Snow White" in answer to her customary question. (I don't understand why she didn't realize that no one who could make such horrible faces could be the fairest in the land.) When she had recovered, she demanded to know where Snow White was, and when the mirror replied to that question she began plotting at once.

This time circumstances (or perhaps what people used to call Providence) did not favor her as much as formerly, for the day after that the king returned home, accompanied by the army and Prince Kaito, and bearing the cheerful news that the Crimaldean Empire had learnt to keep its armies to itself. At least, it ought to have been cheerful news, but the queen, who was not very interested in politics, heartily wished that the Crimaldean Empire had not been so precious teachable at its lessons, so that she could have had more time to plot.

However, what's done is done, and she had to think very quickly, for the next topic of conversation suggested by the king and prince as they stood beside their horses in the courtyard, was Princess Snow White: to wit, her location, whereabouts, and current vicinity.

"Well," said the witch-queen, as winningly as possible, "- don't be too upset, darling, but the fact is, we think she's been eaten by wolves. Isn't that too sad? She disappeared the day you left and we've not seen her since. We did find a bit of a blood-stained dress, though. Are you upset, dear?"

He was, rather.

So was Prince Kaito. Prince Kaito was also very suspicious. His blue eyes were not only good for looking at, they were good for looking out of, and through them he had noticed a number of very interesting things about his hostess, one of which said things was the amount of time she spent shooting Glares of Death (TM) towards her step-daughter. It was a considerable amount of time, I can tell you.

As he was not one to waste time, he resumed his seat on his horse and politely informed the queen (for the king was, at the moment, a rather noisy puddle of salt-water) that he was going to go visit his older brother, Prince Shinichi. This did not please the queen, since Prince Shinichi had a reputation as an amateur detective; and quite a good reputation it was, too. There was nothing she could do to keep him from leaving, but once he had clattered out of the courtyard she lugged her heartbroken, sobbing husband up to his room and left him there.

A few moments later a broom shot out of the queen's bedroom window. On it was the queen, disguised like anything and carrying a covered basket full of unpleasant items, also disguised.

Well, what had Princess Aoko been doing all this time? Cleaning house, for one thing, and for another, making friends with the seven inhabitants of the bloated, gilded cottage. I've mentioned before that they were all very kind and polite; they were also very friendly, and Princess Ran took a particular liking to this odd maid. (They had their faces in common.) Princess Aoko spent almost as much time chattering with the two older girls or playing or reading to the children as she did dusting and making beds and washing dishes.

The day her father and Prince Kaito returned to the castle, it happened that everyone except Princess Aoko and little Conan had taken the gilt carriage from the gilt carriage-house, harnessed the pure white horses to it, and gone through the forest to a nearby village. The week before Princess Sonoko had been there and had seen a beautiful gold-and-glass coffin which she absolutely had to have, but unfortunately at that time she had just spent all of her allowance, so she had been forced to wait a week to buy it. The others were going along with her because they were all frightfully bored, except for Princess Ran, who was going to make sure her sister didn't see a beautiful gold-and-glass house that she absolutely had to have, too; but Conan had a book he wanted to finish, and Princess Aoko had decided that it would, on the whole, be more prudent to stay as far away from public eye as possible. She therefore made some excuse, the gist of which I forget, but which probably had something to do with evicting the dust-bunnies under the beds - which was an unusually cruel thing for a kind girl like her to do. What had the poor dust-bunnies ever done to her?

So Conan wandered off with his book, and Aoko, giving the innocent dust-bunnies a respite (most likely because she, too, had already forgotten what her excuse had been) wandered out to the front of the cottage and sat down with her knees drawn up to her chest and her chin in her hands. I imagine she was thinking of a certain blue-eyed prince (don't you?) but, whatever it was, she had only been thinking about it for a few minutes when she looked up and saw an old woman with a large, covered basket on her arm trudging toward the cottage.

Guess who that old woman was.

You've guessed right, Dear Reader, but Princess Aoko had no suspicions whatsoever. She got up and helped the old woman sit down on the doorstep, like the princess she was.

"Thank you kindly, dearie," said the old woman. "It isn't often a traveling peddler like myself gets kindness from strangers. Would you like a discount on something? How about a nice apple?" - And she held up a round, red-cheeked apple.

"No, thank you," said the princess, politely. "I don't really like apples."

"What about a little trinket, then?" said the old woman, undiscouraged. (She had quite a lot of interesting things in that basket.)

"No, thank you," said Princess Aoko, politely. "I don't wear jewelry."

"Well, well," said the old woman, crinkling her wrinkled face into a smile that was more like a grimace, "would a nice young lady like yourself be interested in a harmless little spell?"

Of course that should have alerted Princess Aoko instantly, but it didn't. It just made her curious. That is understandable, but still, you must admit, rather irritating.

"What does the spell do?" she asked.

"Oh," said the artful old peddler, "nothing much. It makes you grow older a little more quickly until you reach about twenty, that's all. And to you, dearie, I'll sell it for only three silver coins."

So Princess Aoko handed over three silver coins and the old woman took out the spell - which looked remarkably like a strip of white cloth bandage - and tied it around her wrist, just as Conan was coming around the corner of the cottage with his book; and the princess gave one tiny gasp and fell down, stone dead.

As for the queen (for of course is was she) she gave a hideous cackling laugh, dropped her basket, pulled her broom out of nowhere, and leapt onto it. She passed the others as they were returning, though none of them saw her. When they got to the cottage they found the princess lying still and silent, quite dead but still warm, and Conan bending over her trying to ascertain the cause of death and muttering something about corpses following him around.

"What happened?" cried Princess Ran, jumping down from the carriage.

"All I saw," said Conan, "was an old woman selling something to Aoko. And then she got on a broom and flew off."

"Aoko did?" asked Mitsuhiko, looking very impressed.

"No, stupid," said Genta, "the old woman."

"Nonsense," said Princess Sonoko. "What do you think this is, a fairy tale?"

"That's what I saw," said Conan.

"Now see here - " began Princess Sonoko.

"Oh, this is no time for quarreling!" said Princess Ran. "I'll go for a doctor. Sonoko, get that silly coffin out of the carriage so I can go faster. Ai, you come with me - you can hold the horses. The rest of you go get smelling salts and see if you can revive her. Come on, Ai!"

Off they galloped. As for the rest, they first put Princess Aoko's body in the coffin (this was Princess Sonoko's idea) and then they all ran about getting things they had heard were good for reviving people. All, that is, except for Conan, who knew a dead body when he saw one. Princess Sonoko tried pinching, and the other three children experimented with shouting in her ears in varying degrees of volume, and they had reached an unprecedented height - especially Ayumi - when they heard a gentle, discreet, would-you-please-hurry-up-and-turn-around-and-notice-me-because-I've-been-stading-here-for-ages sort of cough (I don't know how they heard it through all the racket they were making) and when they turned around there was Prince Kaito.

"Who are you?" said Princess Sonoko.

"I'm Prince Kaito," said Prince Kaito, and then, to Conan, "Sorry about barging in like this, but I need a little detective help, and I thought that since you - "

"COUGH," said Conan, pointedly, with a sideways look at Princess Sonoko.

" - Er, I mean, I thought that since you keep in touch with my brother - and I don't - at least, not at the moment - I thought I'd come and ask you, um, where he is, so he can help me with my detective problem," finished Prince Kaito, somewhat uncertainly.

"Can't you see we're busy?" demanded Princess Sonoko, rudely. "Our maid has just died, and you think you can just barge in here and ask for directions? And who says you're Prince Kaito, anyway? I've never seen you before."

"That," said Prince Kaito, as politely as he possibly could under the circumstances, "is undoubtedly because we've never met, Princess; but I happen to be who I say I am, and I'm very sorry about your maid," this with a vague glance in the direction of the glass coffin, "but I'm in a great hu-- saints preserve us!"

"What?"

Prince Kaito waved an arm or so in an agitated manner. "That's Princess Aoko!"

"Well, and who else would it be?" snorted Princess Sonoko. "Wait - did you say Princess Aoko?"

"What's she doing here? What happened to her?"

"An old woman put a spell on her," piped Conan.

"Nonsense!" said Sonoko, again.

"That witch!" siad Prince Kaito, wrathfully. (He meant the queen, of course.)

"Aoko's not a witch," protested little Ayumi.

"Now, look - " began Princess Sonoko.

"Hey," interrupted Prince Kaito (who was, no doubt, half out of his mind with worry about Princess Aoko at this point, and thus in no condition to make requests of people; at least, not with his usual tact and poise). "Give her to me."

Four pairs of incredulous eyes stared at him, and four mouths dropped open. One pair of eyes and one mouth worked together to make an extremely exasperated expression on Conan's face.

"Give her to you?" asked Princess Sonoko at last.

"Yes, please," said Prince Kaito, politely.

Princess Sonoko exploded. "How dare you, you insensitive wretch! Give her to you? Does she look like a piece of meat to you? Do I look like a butcher? What do you think this is, an auction? 'Give her to me' - I'll give it to you, you rogue! How dare you come and stick your ugly nose" (this was patently untrue; Prince Kaito had quite the nicest nose I'd ever seen) "in where it doesn't belong, and then you have the gall to ask me to give Aoko to you? Villain!"

Conan sighed.

"But if you let me have her I can - "

"'Let me have her'?" roared Princess Sonoko, in a tone more appropriate for a dragon than for a princess; "No! Over my dead body you'll have her! Aoko's a free woman, alive or dead, and not for sale. 'Give her to me'! In this day and age! What would Susan B. Anthony say?"

"Who's Susan B. Anthony?" asked Ayumi.

"But the spell - " began Prince Kaito.

"Charlatan!" retorted Princess Sonoko.

"If you'd just let me explain - "

But the princess was in no mood for explanations. She crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes, and rebuffed him with two simple, stern words:

"Go away!"

And after this brilliant example of the kind of repartee that makes history, she would not listen to a word he said. Prince Kaito gave up within a minute of her final piece of witticism (and within two seconds of an almost imperceptible shake of the head that Conan gave him). He mounted his horse and rode off; and if he had not had a trick or two up his sleeve, that would have been the end of Princess Aoko, and it would have been the evil stepmother who lived happily ever after.

However, Prince Kaito did have a trick up his sleeve - and it was quite a good one, at that. This trick was the result of his apprenticeship, which, you see, had not been under a lock-pick or a circus clown as the witch-queen had heard, but under the master Kaitou Kid, thief extraodinaire, who daylighted on the side as a master magician.

So presently a fantastic white figure came swooping over the trees on a white hang-glider, and by playing a very simple trick which involved a ball of yarn, a leaf, three marbles, and exactly half a loaf of bread (and also through the timely intervention of Conan's foot in a place where it would do the most good) Prince Kaito was able to steal away the body of Princess Aoko, coffin and all, and remove it to a clearing a little less than a mile away in a little more than five minutes.

Now you may wonder, as I often have, how it is that so many princes seem to have a knack for figuring out how to break a spell without the least amount of help. Oh, occasionally you'll read about one who has to go to the old woman and be told to go through such-and-such a forest and up such-and-such a mountain to such-and-such a castle, and to enter that castle and go to such-and-such a room and lift up one of the hearthstones and take such-and-such a weapon or magic cordial from the space underneath, with which to break the spell; but more often than not they seem to know by instinct where everything they need is and how they are supposed to use it once they get it. Oh, you did? Me, too! Well, anyway, I wondered and wondered about this, until finally I hit upon it:

Princes take lessons spell-breaking!

If you'll think about it, you'll see that this must be true. How else could they know how to do all those astonishing things if there is not, somewhere, a textbook or a dour old tutor which can provide a list of all forty-six thousand types of spells and all the various remedies for each one? And of course no prince's education would be complete without at the very least a course in elementary spell-breaking. It makes sense, doesn't it?

Prince Kaito had always been good at his lessons (though he was far from a model student, as he had an inordinate fondness for playing tricks upon his teachers which they did not always find as amusing as he did) so once he had taken off the cursed bandage and identified the kind of spell, he had only to administer the proper antidote. In this case, the proper antidote was one of the most common yet powerful remedies known to man: the Kiss of True Love.

And Princess Aoko's eyes opened.

It was a very romantic scene for about five seconds, but then, I regret to say, Princess Aoko gave Prince Kaito a resounding slap for his impudence. She was still rather muddled from being dead, you see. Anyway, after he had explained the circumstances to her, she apologized for acting without waiting for an explanation, and he apologized for doing something which had caused her distress, and apologies flew back and forth in a stilted, almost belligerent manner, until Conan (who had followed out of curiosity) broke in with an admonition for them to kiss and make up.

His choice of words was perhaps regrettable, but after Aoko had pulled his nose, Kaito picked him up, ruffled his hair affectionately, and introduced him as his older brother Prince Shinichi, "who," he said, "has the most astonishing talent for running afoul of magic-users and getting turned into things. But," cheerfully, "at least it isn't an insect this time."

"At least I don't run around kissing dead girls," grumbled Prince Shinichi.

"Shut up!" said Prince Kaito.

Princess Aoko's cheeks went rather pink.

Quite soon, however, they were able to look at each other without blushing, which was fortunate, since they had decided to get married the next week, and it would be difficult to marry someone if you couldn't look at them without turning a very interesting shade of red, don't you think?

They had a magnificent wedding, to which everyone was invited; even the witch-queen. She, however, was not able to attend, because she was having a bit of trouble getting her disguise off. (It was the spleen-of-frog that did it, in my opinion. Frogs can be awfully sticky.) The witch-queen was much better behaved after that, and she and her husband lived together for the rest of their lives in a fair amount of comfort and tranquility.

As for Prince Kaito and Princess Aoko, after the wedding they settled down within an hour's walk of Prince Shinichi's castle (so that when the spell wore off and he could marry Princess Ran the two friends would be close together) and began living happily ever after; and if they have not died, then I suppose they are living still.

The End

A/N: Yay! Finished! And it didn't take me half as long as I'd expected. Most of the time I spent on it was getting it typed up - or trying to. I sometimes get a bit distracted. . Oh yes; I thought I'd mention this while I was thinking of it - I have a non-fanfiction story that I wrote around the same time as this one up on my livejournal, so if you want to see it, just go to my website and click on the tag "fiction (written)".

My most common spelling mistake at the moment seems to be writing things like "eaten" and "beaten" as "eated" and "beated". I guess I should be happy I didn't make the tag "fiction (writed)". I kinda like the way "eated" sounds, though.

Thanks to sweety-1914, 30Kyu, s2lou, and katiesparks for reviewing! Cookies all around. n.n

Thanks for reading!