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Willow was still shaken from the day's events when she came home. Having her locker gone through, having been walked through the crowd of students as though she were the kind of person who did something wrong, that meeting with Principal Snyder where he was just waiting for her to say the wrong thing and get Buffy in trouble … All she wanted to do was throw herself on her bed and try to sleep.

But in the living room, she found her mother, sorting through a pile of things on the coffee table. Willow's things. Witch things.

"Oh, sit down, honey," her mom said distractedly.

Willow did so, shrugging off her backpack. "Principal Snyder talk to you?"

Still not looking at Willow, her mom said, "Yes. He's quite concerned."

"Mom, I know what this looks like and I can totally—"

"Oh, you don't have to explain, honey. I mean, this isn't exactly a surprise."

Willow was startled, and confused, and maybe even a little bit relieved. Maybe her mom had been paying attention to her after all. "Why not?"

"Well, identification with mythical icons is perfectly typical of your age group. It's a classic adolescent response to the pressures of incipient adulthood."

"Oh. Is that what it is," Willow said, deflated. Her mom hadn't been paying attention after all. And here was Willow, checking off another box on her mom's worksheet, just like she was a toddler hitting some milestone.

"Of course, I wish you could have identified with something a little less icky, but … developmentally speaking …" She was looking at a bag of herbs, as though Willow wasn't even there, a person, sitting in the same room.

"Mom. I'm not an age group. I'm me. Willow group."

"Oh, honey. I understand." Her mom got up and came over to sit down on the couch next to Willow, stroking her hair. So she wasn't a toddler anymore; now she was five.

"No, you don't!" Willow turned to her mother, eagerly trying to put into words everything that had been happening to her the last several months. "Mom, this may be hard for you to accept , but—I can do stuff. Nothing bad, or dangerous, but I can do spells."

"You think you can. And that's what concerns me: the delusions."

"Mom, how would you know what I can do? I mean, the last time we had a conversation over three minutes, it was about the patriarchal bias of the Mister Rogers show."

"Well, with 'King Friday' lording it all over the lesser puppets …"

"Mom, you're not paying attention!"

"And this is your way of trying to get it. Now, I have consulted with some of my colleagues and they agree that this is a cry for discipline. You're grounded."

"Grounded?" She had consulted with her colleagues? She couldn't even parent Willow as if she knew anything about her—it was all in consultation with people Willow had only met at awkward parties. "This is the first time EVER I've done something you don't like, and I'm grounded? I'm supposed to mess up! I'm a teenager, remember?"

"You're upset," her mother said, "I hear you."

"No, Mom, hear this!" Willow got to her feet. Somehow she needed to break through, somehow she needed to make her mother see her, for once, Willow, not some representative of her age group. "I'm a rebel. I'm having a rebellion."

"Willow, honey," her mother protested, laughing, "you don't need to act out like this to prove your specialness."

Maybe that's what she thought, but Willow wasn't sure how else to do it. "I'm not acting out; I'm a witch! I can make pencils float, and I can summon the four elements. Okay, two, but … four soon. And I'm dating a musician!"

Her mother's face scrunched up at that one. "Oh, Willow." She got up and went to the coffee table to clean up the mess.

But Willow couldn't let it go. "I worship Beelzebub! I do his biddings. Do you see any goats around? No, because I sacrifice them."

"Willow, please," her mother snapped, and there was a perverse pleasure in having gotten through her academic detachment even that far.

She stretched her arms out dramatically. "All bow before Satan!"

"I'm not listening to this."

As her mother walked away from her, Willow lost her self-control completely, following her mother and shouting, "Prince of night, I summon you! Come fill me with your black, naughty evil!"

"That's enough!" her mother barked. "Is that clear?" She got hold of herself with a visible effort. Willow felt powerful, like she'd just done a challenging new spell. She'd been listened to; she'd been seen. Her mother continued, "Now, you will go to your room, and stay there until I say otherwise. We're going to make some changes," she went on. "I don't want you hanging out with those friends of yours. It's clear where this little obsession came from." She looked at Willow, fully at her, but it didn't feel powerful any longer. "You will not speak to Bunny Summers again."

Willow tried to protest, but her mother's ears were closed again, and at last she went to her room, as bidden.

If she had been different—if she had been like Buffy, or Cordelia, or even Harmony, would her mother have seen her then? She had tried to be good, to do what she was told, to get good grades and go to school on time and brush her teeth and everything that was expected of her. She had liked being that girl … but somehow it had never been enough. And now it felt as though it was too late.