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Hannah hated her family.
To be honest, it was a rather recent development. Just last year, she'd have told you her parents were the smartest and most business savvy people she knew, and that they were hard on her because they knew that money was everything, and that Hannah needed to be raised to make that money. Hannah had agreed, as well. She would become an elite, practical witch, like her mother, and her grandmother and her great grandmother, and every matriarch in her family before them. Then, she'd marry a wealthy aristocrat, politician, or other wealthy figure's son, and she'd be set for life and bring her family more business opportunity than they had ever imagined.
That was the plan.
But then, Akko came into the picture. Well, 'came into the picture' was too subtle sounding for the hyperactive girl. A more accurate description would be crash landed into Hannah's life with three sticks of lit dynamite. One in each hand, and one between her teeth.
Akko and Hannah hadn't exactly gotten along, at first. Akko had been a rowdy trouble maker who butted heads with Hannah's idol, and Hannah had been a snobby elitist who looked down on those less competent than her.
It wasn't exactly a fairy-tale fit. The two hated each other from their first conversation. But as the year progressed, Luna Nova began to see another side of Akko than just the loud, lazy, idiot that she was passed off as. Hannah and her best friend—Barbara—had been some of the last ones to come around to Akko, but after she saved the world, and Diana declared Akko to be her best friend publicly in front of every news network in Europe, they didn't have much choice but to agree to stop being mean to her.
That was the best choice that Hannah ever made in her life. She had found herself rapidly growing more and more smitten with Akko with every passing day that they were friends. It started out awkward, but within weeks, the once bully had to admit that Akko was really a great person. Sure she was clumsy, and not always the most wise, but she had a bigger heart than any stuck up jerk that her parents had tried setting her up with in the past.
It took five weeks, six days and eighteen hours of Hannah and Akko being friends before the European witch confessed to Akko. Apparently the rest of their friend group had already taken bets on when it happened, and Amanda had profited the most of the group.
Either way, from there, things were pretty great. Hannah showed Akko how to be more polite and diligent (Well, she tried, at the very least), while Akko educated Hannah on the wondrous world of self love and being nice to other people. They went on dates, laughed alongside the rest of their friend group, and never looked back to the days in which Hannah had seen Akko as someone to hate.
Until that choice was taken away from her.
"Honestly, Hannah! I knew you were always short sighted, but this is just ridiculous! Have you no shame?" Hannah's mother had scolded, the teenager's stolen phone visible in her hand, Akko's contact open and shown off to the rest of her family.
"Our daughter is not some queer that will waste her life on some moron who got famous for good deeds that don't pay!" Her father screamed at her. He and her mother weren't the type to hit their kids, but that did not mean they stopped at shouting.
Hannah had been locked in her room for two weeks now. The servants still brought her food, and her parents still came in for daily 'talks', but otherwise, she was entirely isolated. No phone, no computer, no mail, no friends coming and going. Even Diana and Barbara got turned away at the door due to her being grounded. Hannah never got to speak a word to them the few times they came up to the door of her family's mention, but the fellow aristocratic heirs always just ended up being sent back to their limousine.
Her next year at Luna Nova would be beginning soon—in three weeks, she would go free. Surely her parents wouldn't be spiteful enough to stop her from returning to the school that they had built her entire future around?
Though even if they let her go back, she knew something would be different. They wouldn't just let her go unsupervised so that she'd end up spending the whole time with Akko again. She knew that they were planning something: Some way to keep them apart and ensure Hannah married young and married rich instead.
Hannah hated Akko some days. She hated that bubbly heroic idiot for coming into Hannah's life and making Hannah think that she mattered. Hated Akko for making Hannah believe she could make her own choices. Hated Akko for being someone that Hannah couldn't help but love, even knowing what awaited her back home when her parents found out.
But even more days, Hannah hated herself. It wasn't Akko's fault that Hannah's parents were so terrible, something she only truly understood when she heard the stories of how all the other witches in her friend group's families acted.
Hannah had gotten defiant, spoiled by a found family made within the walls of Luna Nova, and now she had to pay for forgetting her place.
She refused to concede to her parents, to agree to break up with Akko, to agree to give up her sexuality. But she did surrender to one aspect of their tormenting.
Hannah agreed she had deserved it.
"Chu!~" A small chittering sound became audible somewhere out of sight, and Hannah looked around in confusion as she was startled out of her reverie. The noise was rather familiar, and Hannah's suspicions were confirmed when she spotted the little grinning mouse sitting on Hannah's windowsill, tapping the pane to be let in.
Hannah felt her eyes widen in shock, hurriedly checking her door to see if anyone was coming down the hall, before opening her window as quietly as possible and whisper screaming at the mouse who kept giving her that same adorable dumb expression. "Akko!? What the heck are you doing here!?"
"Well, you stopped replying to my texts, and you wouldn't answer my calls, so after a few days, I got worried and started looking for you!" Akko chirped in that same 'Isn't it obvious?' tone that she always used when she was talking about friendship. To Akko, that was just what you did when your friends stop responding to you. Hannah found it both adorable and ever so slightly creepy. "Now, I realized you never told me your parents' address, so I had to go all the way to Diana's house—which isn't a short trip—and ask her, and then she said she hadn't been let inside cause you were grounded, and then I remembered how you helped me get out of laundry duty a few times when I got in trouble at Luna Nova, so I—"
Hannah cut off Akko's run on sentence short with a firm "AKKO!" When the small mouse 'eeped' at the serious tone and quieted down, Hannah took a deep breath, and pressed a tiny kiss to the top of Akko's fuzzy head. "I'm sorry for shouting, but if my parents see you, I'll get in a lot of trouble. Can you just say why you're here?"
Akko did a little twirl on one stubby mouse foot, before gesturing out the window. When Hannah peeked over the edge, she saw a mountain of magically summoned pillows. "Ta-da! I was gonna break you out for a little bit! We could go for a walk, maybe hit a restaurant for a quick date, I really missed you, Han! You've bailed me out of lots of trouble since we started dating, I wanted to return the favor!"
Hannah had to wipe a tear from her eye as she pulled herself back into her room and shook her head. "I'm... I'm sorry Akko, but my parents are a lot harsher than Finnelan is. If I sneak out, then they'll just ground me for another month, and I may not be allowed to go back to Luna Nova."
"What!?" Akko shouted out, her tiny high pitched mouse voice might have been adorable if not for the grave tone of the conversation. "That's insane! What did you do to even get grounded? You're the second most rule obsessed person I know, behind Diana of course."
That brought a slight smile to Hannah's face as she picked up the little mouse off her windowsill and set Akko on her shoulder, going to sit on her bed. "Because... I love you."
"I love you too, but what does that have to do with the punishm- ohhhhh..." Rage filled Akko's face, and suddenly, the cheerful mouse seemed more akin to a rabid sewer rat with how furious she suddenly was, red faced and violent looking. "Why do they get to punish you for who you like!? That isn't anyone's choice but yours! No one should tell people who they can and can't love!"
Hannah petted Akko absentmindedly to try and calm the mouse down, staring at her door like any moment her parents would barge in with a mousetrap in hand and tell Hannah that they were very disappointed in her. "I know that, and you know that, but it doesn't matter to them, Akko. I'm supposed to help them get richer by getting together with someone important, powerful, and male. A female first generation witch who can still barely ride a broom doesn't meet a single one of their standards. I'd love to run away from my family and go have fun with you, but I can't."
"Why not?" Akko stared up at Hannah, once again looking truly dumbfounded.
"What do you mean 'why not?' Akko, I'm the sole heir of the England family name! If I were to run away, my reputation would be in shambles, my family would forsake me, I'd lose any social standing I have left!"
Akko was oblivious, and crass, and oftentimes unable to comprehend the most basic notions of high class, but sometimes, she could say things that were much wiser than anyone gave her credit for. In Hannah's opinion, this was one of those times. "Hannah, that all sounds like a lot of silly rich people talk. You listed a bunch of reasons why you have to stay, but none of those include that you love your family or that your family loves you! Are the opinions of a bunch of rich old losers that your family wants to make deals with more important to you than your own wants?"
Hannah hugged Akko to her chest, tears welling in her eyes as she laughed a broken sound. "Oh Akko... You lovable idiot, you. I can't just go run away with you, where would I even go? Luna Nova is out of session, it's not like I have somewhere else to live, dummy."
Akko rolled her eyes at those words, like the answer was the most obvious thing in the entire world. "Come live with me! My parents really wanted to meet you, and if we live in the same house, that means we can do whatever we want every day! We could stay up late practicing spells, or I could teach you how to play the Shiny Chariot TCG while you show me your lesson plans and notes!"
As Akko often did, she was in her own world by then, jumping out of Hannah's grasp and towards the door. "Drop whatever you want to keep into the pillows, I'll be back when I'm done!"
"Done with what!?" Hannah shouted back, disbelief lacing every word she spoke.
"Giving your parents a piece of my mind!" And with that, Akko squeezed under the frame of the door, leaving a dumbfounded Hannah behind.
George and Eliza England were considered to be prickly, if you asked the nicest of their guests. If you asked Akko, they were stuck up abusive jerks that made Diana's Aunt Daryl seem somewhat sweet.
Akko knew very little about them, as she suspected Hannah had kept most details secret from her, but Akko wasn't as dumb as a lot of people seemed to think she was, and she could pick up on the little things that Hannah, Barbara and Diana had mentioned. And now with the revelation that Hannah had been put into effectively a solitary confinement for weeks on end, Akko had no issues with making herself known to them.
"Hey! Big fat bullies!" Akko shouted, standing on the railing of the top floor and peering down at Hannah's parents, who had been discussing something with a butler in the lobby just below. When she had their attention, she untransformed, revealing her full size as a teenage witch, and a very angry one at that.
When Eliza saw the intruder, she shot first, pulling her wand out from her back pocket and launching a stunning blast of light that Akko easily dodged, jumping from the railing to land behind George and Eliza, baring her teeth. "You both have been treating my girlfriend terribly! I demand you let her go!"
While Eliza was on the defensive, clearly not interested in chatting until the home invader was unconscious, George England did begin to speak. "She's our daughter, girl. It is our choice what happens to her, not yours. I don't know what you think to gain by entering this home except an arrest warrant, but it won't end well for you."
Akko stuck out her tongue as she ducked under a shot of light, her hat floating in the air a bit from the sudden movement as a hole was torn clean through it. "Hey! That was my favorite hat! You both are terrible parents! Hannah's way too good for either of you, I know that much! And anyways, what are you going to do, have the girl who stopped the Noir Missile Crisis arrested for saving her girlfriend?"
The England parents stopped for a second, affixing Akko with stern glares. "So that's where I'd seen you before..." Eliza muttered to herself.
"If you truly are the famous Atsuko Kagari, then..." Akko knew she was right. Even if politics bored her out of her mind, she was still best friends with Diana, Andrew, Barbara, and dating Hannah! Having four wealthy aristocrats in her friend group let Akko pick up on a few specific facts.
Some of the most important ones being that aristocrats don't care about morality nearly as much as popularity. The other thing she had learned, was that the girls who helped stop a magic nuclear bomb were a lot more famous than the family of old money witches who hadn't done anything notable in the past two centuries except invest in stock and give birth to the girlfriend of one of the aforementioned saviors.
"You can arrest me all you want, but the press will eat it up, and both the magic and non-magical worlds like me a lot more than they like you! I know that much, because I can barely leave Luna Nova without a stupid reporter stalking me! It's really uncomfortable, actually!" Despite the somewhat ridiculous and upsetting turn that the comment led to, Akko kept the same triumphant glare as she brandished her wand at them.
A burst of magic filled the air, as sweat beaded on Akko's brow as she tried to use the conjuration magic that she'd been practicing for ages. Today seemed to be her lucky day, as her spell finally worked, and she managed to summon a bouquet of flowers from her wand, filled with petunias. Throwing the bouquet at Hannah's bewildered parents, Akko gave them a showman's wave and suddenly transformed into a small mouse with the muttering of a simple spell. In a flash, she had already scurried out of sight, leaving George and Eliza in total confusion. "Bye bye, neglectful idiots!"
Finally, the patriarch of the family crushed the bouquet in his calloused hands, grunting to himself. "Wasn't she supposed to be the stupid one?"
When Akko made it back to Hannah's room, she found her girlfriend pacing worriedly, several suitcases near the window. "Akko, are you sure this is a good idea?"
Akko affixed Hannah with an expression that she had never seen the first generation witch wear before. It was uncanny, how separate it was from Akko's normal ignorant expression of confidence. Even as a mouse, she seemed full of a scary amount of conviction. "Is this the first time they locked you in here?"
Hannah stayed silent for a long moment, before shaking her head. "No."
"Then we're leaving." Akko returned to her human form, pushing Hannah's dresser in front of the door. "They aren't worth either of our times."
Trying to make some light of the experience, Hannah gave a light snort. "Who are you and what have you done with my Akko?"
Akko gave a flirtatious wink. "Don't worry, when we get to my house, I can make you watch the ten hours of Chariot performances that I video-taped! Serious Akko is just something that Diana's been training me to make. If I'm going to be a famous performer someday, I need to be able to keep a level head."
Stepping up to the windowsill, Akko took two of Hannah's bags in hands. "I'll see you at the bottom!" When Akko jumped off the windowsill, Hannah rushed forwards to stare out the window, taking a sigh of relief that the conjured pillows were still there, and they had successfully broken Akko's fall. Currently, Akko was standing in the grass, waving for Hannah to jump.
"Okay... Okay, I can do this! I can totally do this!" Hannah took hold of the rest of her bags, and took a deep gulp, before closing her eyes and jumping out of her window.
Falling was a brief, but horrible sensation. Despite the fact that she had flown hundreds of times on a broom, she had always been good with balance, and stayed out of the monster fights Akko would often get herself into with her other friends, so she had very little practice with plummeting. However, after only a few short seconds, she did land safely in the embrace of Akko's pillow pile.
"There we go!" Akko gave a whistle, and her broom flew up to her, floating at the ready. "Now, I'll be honest, summoning these pillows, transforming, and a little bit of conjuration magic that I tried have really drained my magic. Maybe it's kind of tacky for the valiant knight to make the princess drive them home, but do you think you could pilot the broom? I'll give you directions, promise!"
Hannah sighed fondly, as she and Akko hooked her bags to the end of the broom, and pecked Akko on the cheek. "I guess that's the end of Serious Akko, huh? Alright you big dork, let's get going."
Both of them climbed onto the broom, and Hannah took off silently.
They were about halfway through their journey to the Leyline, when Hannah paused. "Wait... We forgot to get my phone back!"