Chapter Text
The headmistress frowned at Crowley’s barely legible signature, scrawled on the Behaviour Contract, and frowned.
Crowley barely suppressed an approving nod. It seemed this one knew a bad omen, when she saw one.
The desk between them was stacked high, with various folders and piles of paper. Mentally, Crowley imagined sweeping them all off, onto the floor, and jumping up and down on them. She imagined doing this, more or less on principle. But escalating wasn’t wise.
This Ms Tracey hadn’t done anything yet, after all.
“Right then,” the head sighed. “I suppose, I’ll show you to class then, shall I?”
Crowley swung her legs, innocently. “Oh, you can’t possibly have time for that, do you? You are the headmistress, aren’t you?”
Ms Tracey paused, and squinted behind her glasses. “It’s me, or Mr Shadwell, dear.”
This was evidently some sort of threat.
“Who’s Mr Shatwell?” Crowley asked sweetly.
Ms Tracey gave a long hard stare down her nose. “That’s Shadwell, dear. Mr Shadwell with a D.”
Crowley tilted her head. “With a D, you say? I’m so sorry.” She definitely wasn’t.
Ms Tracey continued to stare. Crowley threw a slouch at her. The uniform she was wearing was almost as unbearably peppy, as it was unbearably scratchy! But, Crowley could throw a slouch in anything. It drove a certain type of teacher mad, how well Crowley could slouch. “Pull your socks up,” they would snap. “Straighten your tie. Tidy that ponytail.” Crowley would do each, and every one, of those things, and somehow manage to look exactly as untidy as she had before she started.
Yes, Crowley could slouch for England.
It was her very special skill, and it drove a certain type of teacher mad. Alas, it seemed Ms Tracey was not that sort of teacher. A brisk, “Come along, dear” was all Crowley earned.
“You’ve been placed in Mr Hastur’s class,” Ms Tracey was saying, as if the name should mean something to her. “And, I think you’ll find he won’t tolerate any of your nonsense.”
“Hasta la vista,” Crowley muttered, because she couldn’t think of anything cleverer. They were wandering past classrooms now. The doors were decorated with things cheery robots, and cartoon pineapples wearing headphones, and various other cheery things. Each robot and pineapple bore a name, presumably of the child in the class.
Unfortunately, there was no handy rubbish bin to feign being sick in, so Crowley satisfied herself by rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses.
“And, this is you,” Mrs Tracey said stopping abruptly. “5H.” The door of 5H was not nearly so cheerily decorated as all the others. In an apparent sop to the fruit theme, there was one large Avocado in dull, accurate green, tacked to the glass. Each child’s name had been carelessly inked onto a white rectangle of paper. One name was so long that the last several letters had been barely squashed in.
“What sort of name is Aziraphale?” Crowley asked, blinking at it.
Ms Tracey sighed. “Aziraphale is a lovely girl. Excellent student. Very polite. You would do well to follow her example.”
Crowley grinned back as tightly, and as widely, as she could. “Oh, jolly good! I’m sure we will be the very bestest of friends!”
With this, apparently, Ms Tracey was done, because she just rolled her eyes, opened the door, and scooted Crowley through it. And, after the barest of introductions, she turned on her not quite sensible heels, and marched back down the corridor.
Abandoned in the classroom, Crowley threw a chin up at Mr Hastur.
Mr Hastur glared.
The class boggled. Crowley slouched.
Crowley looked her new teacher up and down. He was tall, unnecessarily ugly, and something of a kindred spirit in the slouching department. There was long-division scrawled on the board, spittle on his lip, and a metre rule clutched in his hand, like a weapon.
Crowley let out a long disinterested sigh and waited. As she did, a fraction of the class, maybe a third seemed to lean forward in their seat expectantly.
“Sit down!” Hastur snapped, more spittle appearing, and the metre rule used to indicate a seat next to a pale, soft-looking girl, with a halo of blonde curls, and a look of rictus terror.
Crowley sauntered over. Maybe this wouldn’t be so...
“Glasses off!” Hastur snapped.
Oh.
Crowley turned around very slowly. “I’m allowed to wear them in class. I have accommodations. An official plan...”
One of these days, Crowley thought, something like this would happen, and the the teacher would stop, apologise politely. And let Crowley just, fucking, get on with it. One of these days. It had never happened yet.
“Glasses. Off.” The ruler slammed loudly against the board. Never mind just the most skittish third of the class, now EVERYBODY was watching her.
“I have accommodations.” Crowley growled back.
Hastur shot forward, still brandishing the ruler, and it took every single bit of Crowley’s will for her not to flinch at the towering man, flying towards her.
Her eyes must have shut involuntarily, because for a moment, she was confused when blows didn’t rain down on her.
Instead, her glasses were ripped from her face.
“Hey!” she shouted stunned, snatching for them, and coming up empty. The Too Brightness stung her eyes. A heavy, squirming sensation settled in her gut. She felt....
She couldn’t name it. But, she refused to let her arms fold across her chest.
“I need those,” she growled.
“You’ll get them back at the end of the day,” Hastur replied his voice now light.
What the fuck good will that do me? The end of the fucken day?! I’ll have two burning coals for eyes by then! Crowley screamed in her head.
“Sit down!” Hastur barked slamming the ruler down, on the desk at which she had been directed to sit. The blonde girl, already sitting there, leapt into the air at the sound of the crack, and somehow managed to sit up even straighter.
Crowley glared at Hastur, for a moment, and then slunk to her desk. This wasn’t over. She had accommodations. An official document. She would be Making A Fuss.
Hastur turned back to the board, and continued shouting about long-division. Crowley already knew long-division, and so she glared at Hastur’s back, and imagined stabbing it with forks. Fancy ones. From those velvet trays they had in fancy shops.
If I have 234 forks and I want to make 13 rows of forks in a dickhead’s back how many forks do I use per row?
No. Not 234. 235. A remainder of one fork to stick right into his smelly...
A gentle tapping on her foot shook Crowley out of her thoughts. She glanced over at the blonde girl next to her. She was staring straight ahead at the blackboard, but her finger was tapping, just ever so slightly, on the margin of her work.
There, written in faint pencil and loopy bubbly script...
I’m sorry about your glasses. I will back you up if it comes to it....With Ms Tracey.
Crowley stared. She couldn’t help it. This girl had lept half a storey in the air, when that ruler had slammed down on the desk. Even now, right this moment, she was quivering, very clearly terrified of the man at the front of the room. And yet, her pale, short-nailed finger was determinedly tapping at the message.
Crowley felt... something. Still slouching, she slid an eraser out of her pencil case, and slowly slid it over into the girls hand.
There was just the faintest nod of blonde curls.
Crowley glanced over as the message was subtly erased and the girl picked up the pencil.
Aziraphale, she wrote. She went to dot the eye with a heart, and then apparently thought better of it, and covered it up with an over heavy circle, instead.
Crowley almost smiled.
Journal, dear!
The most amazing day! The most amazing girl!
Her name is Crowley, and she is tall and beautiful and so brave!
I simply must tell you about her breathtaking hair, but first! The poor dear had no sooner set foot in the classroom, when Horrible Hastur stole her sunglasses, right off her face! Beastly, beastly man!
She tried to stand up to him (she was so brave!) but you know what H.H. is like!
And the worst part, she needs those sunglasses, for her poor eyes. She has some problem with them. An affliction, of some sort. I didn’t ask about them, because we’d just met, and I didn’t want to be rude, but they were watering like anything on our way to Ms Tracey’s office. I thought she was crying at first. (And you know, journal dear, I’d be crying like a fountain if anything half so beastly had happened to me.) But, it wasn’t crying.
Is affliction a rude thing to say? I must remember to check...
Crowley said, I didn’t have to come and see Ms Tracey with her, but I’m glad I did! Because Ms Tracey didn’t believe her, that she told H.H. about her affliction, or that he ripped the glasses right off her face, until I said I saw those things too!
And then, Ms Tracey got the glasses back, and Crowley and I sat together at lunch, and it was so wonderful.
I know, I know. I do this every time. Get too excited. Especially, in this case, because, any minute, the beautiful girls are going to realise she is beautiful, and the cool girls are going to realise she is cool. Sooner or later, someone will take her away.
But, it’s so nice to hope! I’m almost tempted to pray about it, as, well, Journal dear. But, I know it would be wicked, to bother God with something so trivial. Gabriel and Father would be furious, if they knew.
(I am going to pray that H.H. gets in trouble for taking Crowley’s glasses, because that’s not trivial, that’s justice! And important!)
So, no praying. But there is nothing wicked about counting one’s blessings, so I am going to do that.
- Just for today, I had a true friend