(written to fit into the Victoria and Bree Cullen au)
here’s how it goes. you’re a quiet kid. polite. bookish. mature for your age. when you introduce yourself with a nod and a “nice to meet you,” adults smile like you’re a performer in a play and notify your parents of what a little grown up you are. your glasses are too big for you. they slide down your nose. when class breaks, nobody wants to play games with you. well, you don’t really like games anyways. you like books, you tell yourself, you like learning, you like things that other kids don’t. you’re hardly a kid at all.
you spend your recesses in the library, or huddled in a corner of the field with books in your lap. you read nonfiction, because you’re hungry, because you yearn to know more, because you’re starved for something new. you read fantasy books, because they’re given to you on holidays, and you couldn’t bear to let it sit in your room with no one to read it. and you grow to like them too. they’re a different kind of nourishing. these kids are like you. smart kids. mature kids. kids that don’t play games at recess.
it doesn’t matter to them. these kids have magic.
magic probably isn’t real. they haven’t totally proven it either way.
the instructional books written about it are thinner, flimsier, and make your parents grimace. they have silly blue and purple graphics on the front, speckled with galaxies that don’t actually exist, people sitting cross-legged, glowing white numbers that are never mentioned in the books themselves, or digital art of white women with shoulder-length brown hair and flowers in their hands in a style that reminds you of ads at the doctor’s office. they’re filled with anecdotes about trips to the navajo desert. you stop reading these books.
magic isn’t real. but it’s interesting. and the idea had to come from somewhere. you stop reading the instructional books - your parents are visibly relieved - and you start reading histories. you learn about druids, about the oracle at delphi, about the origins of tarot and how astrology became astronomy and you skim through the visions of nostradamus. you read about the witch hunts. they hung them, burned them, drowned them, and god, people sucked. historians mourn for these poor midwives and medicine women who were killed for the crime of keeping to themselves and knowing too much.
but when you read about the made-up, fantastical things that people thought these women did, one specific detail crops up and sinks its teeth in your brain: the book. the witches wrote their names in the devil’s book.
you don’t just read about history, growing up. you read about math and the stars, too. you read about science, medicine, the history of both - they used to call real plants and herbs things like eye of newt, then macbeth goes up at the globe and suddenly it was a warning sign for women to list the ingredients in jars on their shelves. you apply what you learn. you make yourself salves and lotions. homemade candles and silly, sentimental good luck charms for your mom. that rune means torch, it stands for truth and knowledge. this one means gift.
you couldn’t say where it comes from, if someone put it there or if it put itself there. maybe it was always been there. maybe you’d only just noticed, like when you suddenly hear the washing machine after the buzzer goes off. you want to think you left it there yourself, and you just didn’t remember doing it.
it doesn’t make a difference. the book is on your night stand. you haven’t read a word of it, but your place is saved with a red ribbon of a bookmark. you don’t open it right away, but you don’t get rid of it either. the book, on its part, is very patient with you. it sits by your alarm clock quietly. politely. content to wait. you don’t even look at it, an uninvited guest you can’t bring yourself to throw out in the cold.
a new family moves to town. no one knows much about them. they’re weird, and don’t get out much. it doesn’t bother you like it bothers some.
still, the book sits. you’re in high school. you’re not a kid anymore. you make friends, and mistakes, and you’re busy with assigned reading.
a new girl joins your class, the sheriff’s daughter. she’s quiet, too. you sit together sometimes, in a circle with your teenage friends around the lunch tables. she likes shakespeare. she almost gets hit by a car. she starts dating one of dr. cullen’s kids. she runs away to arizona and her partner brings her back with a broken arm. the other kids wonder if she had a mental breakdown, or is having one. they go to prom together. when you look up, a red-haired girl you’ve never seen before is watching them. they leave early, and she with them.
you go home. you don’t look at the book. a few days pass, and you do research, at the library and online, and you learn a little more about albinism, but nothing that explains how a red-haired girl could have red eyes. her eyes remind you of the cullens. how none of them are related, but they all have the same eyes. not red, something jessica calls hazel-gold-honey, but what has always looked to you like yellow. like a cat. or something else you’d find in the woods.
one thing leads to another. of course you open it.
you start at the first page. you don’t know what you were expecting - instructions, maybe? a prologue? an arcane curse? but it’s just a big, blank page with a name, and a little sprinkle of red. the next page is just the same, only a different name and a few less speckles of red. you start flipping through.
you thought it would be the names that caught your eye, and it’s interesting, the penmanship, the languages, the variation in formality - some of the names were preceded by titles, followed by epithets or dates, but one signature consisted of nothing but a small, black, lowercase ‘v’. but what really strikes you is the red. usually it’s a couple drops, but just as often it’s more, a puddle, a handprint, a sentence or drawing, an entire page soaked so thoroughly the page is stiff and wrinkled and warped.
you reach the bookmarked page. it’s blank. the page preceding you had been signed in glittery green gel pen, - ‘Kristen, de Lyon, 1993′ - and was sprinkled with a line of delicate dots from one corner to the next. you imagine a french girl sitting at a desk in her bedroom, slicing her hand with a kitchen knife. your parents are in the kitchen, though. you grab a pencil, then toss it aside and scrounge up a blue sharpie. you go downstairs, rummage around in a cabinet, pull out a mini sewing kit your parents had once used for emergency costume repair on halloween, and run back.
you sign ‘Angela Weber’ then steel yourself to prick your finger with a needle. just a few drops. there’s no goats, no strange men, no shadows or cackling laughter. you don’t feel any different. but then the blood sinks into the page and moves. you flip through the book again. pages and pages of red text overlaying names... centuries of secrets at your fingertips.
you never meant to learn so much, you weren’t looking for magic or monsters, but it doesn’t feel like a deal with the devil. it just feels like turning to the next page, the red leaves smudges on your fingers but the letters don’t smear, so what does it matter?
eventually, the monsters will find you on their own but for now, you’re content to wait, keeping to yourself and knowing too much.
So I know this is not what people probably signed up for but I got an ask from @hottwilighttake that bit me with the drabble bug, and witch!angela is a part of the VBC au, so I thought I’d tag you just in case! If you’d prefer to be taken off the list, lmk, but otherwise thanks for your interest I love you all very much
I have no idea what specific headcanon ask this is for so I’m just going to humbly offer you this: in my head (and in my au) witch!angela is not a hp kinda witch. twilight makes it clear that paranormal powers like alice’s exist in normal everyday humans, even if it is, as is typical of the series, criminally underused. this is not what angela has. being a witch isn’t the same as having powers. it’s a combination of what contemporary witch rituals look like with awful outdated historic depictions. deal with the devil stuff - only it’s not like, the devil... or at least angela is pretty sure it’s not.
To the anon that asked: Angela Weber as a witch fanfic? Here you go! -Mod Alex-
To her peers Angela Weber was kind, helpful, optimistic, and reserved. Of course she was all of these things, why wouldn't she be? It was how she was raised after all.
Of course, like everyone who resided in rainy Forks, Washington she has her own secret.
Are you ready? I do hope you're sitting down.
She's a witch!
Why do you look so surprised?
Oh that's right! You didn't know! Well, to be fair no one knew and they still don't. So keep that to yourself, will you? I would hate for her and her family to have to relocate once more.
What's that? Did she know what the cullen children were when she saw them at school for the first time?
Why of course she knew! Witches know a supernatural creature when they see one, you know.
Hmm? How can she be a witch?
It began with her ancestor who was an actual witch and was executed during the hysteria of the salem witch trials. A story for another time, I'm afraid.
Oh? What about potions, wands, flying brooms, and cauldrons?
My my! You certainly have many questions. Don't apologize. It is human nature to be curious. Angela is excellent at making potions. The cauldrons and flying brooms have gone out of style. She prefers to use her teleportation amulet, far away from prying eyes of course.
Hm? Does she have a familiar and spell book?
Of course she does! Her familiar is a black cat named Sebastian. As for her spell book, it doesn't look like how spell books looked for witches back in the 1600s all leather bound with pages similar to parchment paper. Now it just resembles all of the other books that are on her bookshelf.
Oh! I am very sorry but it seems our conversation has come to an end, since Angie has arrived home from school.
Until next time.
{I really enjoyed writing this way! I may write this more often! Tag list: @ylove-bandaesthetics }
