The key to living a normal life as a witch is understanding that "normal" is a scam.
No, really. It's just a word. A vague, suspiciously flimsy word. Like "refreshments" on an invitation they served boiled cabbage water and one confused-looking biscuit or "just curious" in a letter from Lady Pomfrey, which, for the record, is never just curiosity. It's surveillance with lace trim.
"Normal" doesn't mean what it says. It never has. It means whatever people need it to mean at that moment. It's a social placeholder. A decorative bowl of fruit made of wax. Looks harmless. Tastes like regret. Which is exactly why it's perfect for lying.
You want to be normal? Easy. Just pretend harder than everyone else. Smile like your life isn't full of cursed millinery and judgmental poultry. Say things like, "Oh no, I've never brewed a potion in my life," while a sentient teacup glares at you from under your cloak. Bake bread. Attend garden parties. Pretend you don't hear your hat whispering ancient hexes into your ear while you sip elderflower cordial. In other words? Embrace the performance. "Normal" is a costume, and witches, well, we've always known how to dress for the occasion.
In reality, everyone's a little odd. Scratch the surface of any so-called "normal" person, and you'll find a delightful little gremlin of absurdity just below. Even the nobles, especially the nobles, with their glittering silks that cost more than my entire cottage and their names long enough to be small poems. They prance around like elegance incarnate, but don't be fooled. I once watched a duke spend fifteen full minutes berating a poor waiter because his water was too reflective. He claimed it made his cheekbones look "melancholy." I don't even know what that means. I just stood there pretending to examine a fig.
Meanwhile, perfectly ordinary townsfolk are out here living symphonies of strangeness. Bakers whistle off-key while kneading dough, as if the flour needs moral support. Blacksmiths hum lullabies to their anvils: "Hush now, my sweet forge baby" and no one questions it. And then there's Lady Pomfrey, who talks to her potted roses in perfect, confident French.
She does not speak French.
She says things like "bonjour, emotional support marigold" and "je suis une scandalous daisy" and somehow, the roses look more smug every time. I don't know if they understand her or are just embarrassed on her behalf, but either way, they bloom like they've studied abroad. So yes. Everyone's weird. The trick is to wear your weirdness like perfume. subtle, confusing, and strong enough that no one questions the faint smell of burnt sage coming from your sleeves. So, the real trick isn't being normal, it's pretending you're not odd enough to notice.
It's walking around like you don't see the haunted portrait in the hallway blink at you every time you pass. Like you haven't tasted lightning on a dare. Like you definitely didn't just come back from gathering graveyard moss at three in the morning, armed with a rusty shovel, a lantern, and a wildly misplaced sense of optimism. You must, at all times, look like you belong. Seamlessly. Effortlessly. Blissfully unaware of the spectral tap-dancing in your attic or the fact that your socks occasionally whisper things like "you peaked in potions class" or "you should've hexed her when you had the chance."
You smile. You nod. You make small talk about the weather, even though you helped summon it. And if someone raises a brow at the faint green glow leaking from your handbag? You say, "Oh, that? Just enchanted beetroot jam."
And keep walking. Because the secret to surviving as a witch in plain sight isn't perfect concealment, it's perfect confidence in your very obvious lies.
For me, "blending in" means keeping my witchy instincts on a tight leash. No glowing eyes, no twitching fingers, no muttering ancient incantations at uncooperative bread dough. And absolutely no floating. You levitate once, once! to grab a jar of cinnamon from the top shelf, and suddenly the baker's wife is giving you side-eye and telling the candlemaker you're channeling the spirit of the Dark Queen Elsinora. I should be so lucky. Elsinora had power, presence, and immaculate footwear. I'm still dreaming about those boots.
Blending in also means dressing like I lost a bet with a doily. I wear dresses with buttons. Buttons, specifically. Buttons are trustworthy. Respectable. The stitch-and-fastener symbol of "nothing to see here."
Laces? Suspicious. They hint at secrets.
Capes? Don't even try it, too theatrical.
Hoods? Might as well yell "Fugitive Enchantress at Large!" in interpretive dance.
But buttons?
Buttons are the unsung heroes of normalcy.
Buttons whisper, I pay my taxes and only talk to crows recreationally.
Buttons say, I've never hexed a tax official, even if you absolutely have.
So when I walk down the street with a bustle dress full of secrets, a smile that's 60% nerves and 40% tea, and my cursed hat quietly lurking somewhere near my spine, I trust in two things: One, that Lady Pomfrey is too busy fake-flirting with the butcher to notice I'm glowing faintly again. And two? That my buttons have my back.
So I perform. With enthusiasm. With flair. With just a sprinkle of panic. I nod thoughtfully when someone explains how tea is brewed. I pretend I don't hear the flowers gossiping about Lady Marchand's scandalous garden affair. I clap politely when the local bard sings off-key about turnip harvests, and I do not correct his ancient rune pronunciations even though they're so wrong it's physically painful.
Because here's the thing: people don't want the truth.
They want consistency.
They want their weirdness in socially acceptable packaging.
They want their witches quaint, quirky, and preferably selling love charms in pastel paper, not hiding sentient accessories in their bustle and charming their way past soup inspectors.
So yes, I smile. I curtsy. I say things like "what a lovely vase" even when I know it's actually a cursed soul jar.
And when someone says, "You're not like other villagers here," I say, "Oh, thank you!" instead of "Correct, I'm worse."
Because normal isn't real.
But survival is.
And frankly, I have better things to do than get burned at the stakes.
So yes, if you ever see me in the street, bonnet on, skirts modestly wrinkled, smile carefully curated to say "I absolutely did not just exorcise a teapot" just know this: I'm normal. I am painfully normal. So normal it hurts. So normal that I should be in textbooks under "Standard Human, Definitely Not Magical" with a footnote that says "Not even a little bit suspicious." The kind of normal you write essays about. The kind of normal that makes people squint and say, "Was she always here?" because I blend in like dust on a bookshelf. A perfectly average girl with modest handwriting, a totally unremarkable life, and absolutely no history of alchemical misdemeanors, thank you very much.
I attend the market like it's the grand event of the week, comparing turnips with furrowed brow, debating bread prices like a woman whose soup relies on it. I nod politely when people say things like "the moon's been strange lately," and I never, not anymore, respond with "yes, she's been mourning." I wear neutral colors, I say neutral things, and I make neutral expressions when someone accuses the blacksmith's daughter of communing with birds. I only slightly twitch.
I wave at children like I haven't recently enchanted their father's shoes to squeak every time he lies. I drink tea like it hasn't been steeped in clairvoyant leaves. I sit in church on Tuesdays, not Sundays, that's too conspicuous, because Tuesday services are emptier, quieter, less likely to erupt into accidental smitings.
I compliment pies I didn't bake and plants I didn't bless. I laugh at jokes I don't find funny. I never, ever levitate in public, even when the apples are too high on the tree and my boots are muddy and I know, I know, I could just float for half a second and no one would notice. But I don't. Because normal girls climb. They grumble and get scraped knees. They fall and they swear and they definitely don't levitate.nI am the picture of social adequacy. A mural of mundane. A living, breathing advertisement for "just another girl."
So if you ever pass me by, tip your hat and nod. And I'll nod back. We'll share that moment, that mutual agreement to pretend the world is just what it seems. That there's no hat stitched into my bustle, no spell inked under my collar, no fox familiar watching you from behind the bakery with judgment in his eyes. Just a girl. Just a bonnet. Just another day of being remarkably, excruciatingly, exhaustingly normal.
Probably.
Back in my cottage, I unpacked my herbs and made tea. The hat was still sulking under the table like a moody cat with opinions, but honestly, it didn't have much to complain about. We'd blended in. We'd curtsied. We'd avoided suspicion and managed not to spontaneously hover while reaching for pears. I call that a success. Another day had passed, and we were still alive.
Well. Mostly ordinary.
The hat still hums sometimes. usually when the moon's lopsided or when someone nearby is lying about being left-handed. But I ignore it. It thrives on attention. Anyway, that's a story for another day. Right now, I'm just a totally normal girl sipping tea in a perfectly uneventful, absolutely non-magical evening. With whispering socks. And a judgmental hat. You know. Normal.
I sat down on my favorite chair, the one with the squashed cushion that always made a sound like a sigh when I sank into it, and held the warm teacup to my chest like it was some sort of divine relic. When Lady Pomfrey cornered me near the carrot stand and asked why my "rear end chirped."
"It's the fashion," I said. "Birdsong bustle. Very exotic. From Velméria."
She didn't look convinced. Not even a little. Her eyes narrowed the way they always did when she smelled scandal, or improperly aged cheese. "Hmph," she said, tapping her parasol against the cobblestone. "Well, I suppose the Velmérians are odd. All that harp-playing and moon-bathing. I once met a Velmérian count who drank soup through a straw. Claimed it was 'refined." I nodded solemnly, as though I too had once dined with straw-soup nobility. In truth, I'd never even seen Velméria. But I'd seen a map of it once, and it looked like the kind of place where someone might invent chirping fashion. Besides, when in doubt, blame another country. That's practically diplomacy.
Now, in the safety of my own home, I could finally breathe. My bustle had stopped chirping. The hat rustled irritably from its hiding place beneath the table, as if deeply offended by its demotion to butt accessory.
"You're welcome," I told it. "That woman nearly poked you with her parasol. That is not how you earn the trust of sentient headwear." The hat made a sound like a sulky gust of wind. I took it as agreement. I took a sip of tea. It was slightly over-steeped, slightly bitter, and absolutely perfect. I wiggled my toes out of my boots and leaned back until the chair creaked like it might finally give up on me. I deserved this moment. I had survived another day of being tragically normal. Not one sigil, not one sparkle, not even a single suspicious whiff of enchantment.
Except for the socks. But we don't talk about the socks. I closed my eyes and whispered, "Tomorrow, we'll be even more boring."
The hat snorted. I ignored it. Normality was an art form.
Anyway. Back to my quest for normalcy, that elusive, shimmering illusion that everyone seems to master except me.
Looking normal, I've come to realize, is approximately 12% wardrobe, 8% posture, and 80% facial expression. It's an art form. A cursed one. I once spent a whole afternoon in front of the mirror, trying to craft the perfect "I'm just a regular girl with no secrets or unlicensed potion ingredients" look. The result? A face that rotated between "mild existential dread" and "I definitely buried something illegal in the backyard and it's humming now." I aimed for serene, I got haunted. I tried friendly, I got "possessed duchess from a murder ballad." My smile in particular is a special sort of problem—on a good day, it looks like I'm holding in a criminal confession; on a bad day, it looks like I've already committed the crime and plan to do it again with improved efficiency and a monologue.
The worst part? I know I look shady. The moment I pass a reflective surface, I catch a glimpse of myself and think, Who's that suspicious woman sneaking around like she replaced her neighbor with a broom and a glamour spell? Oh. Right! It's me.
But what am I supposed to do? This face is doing its best. And honestly, if you had to live every day pretending your enchanted hat wasn't sulking under the bed and your herbs weren't whispering recipes in the middle of the night, you'd look a little unhinged too.
Still. I take comfort in the fact that Lady Pomfrey only suspects I'm weird, not dangerous. Yet.
My tea steeped too long. Like, way too long. It had crossed the line from "comforting herbal infusion" to "swamp water with a grudge." I drank it anyway, because witches aren't picky, and also because I was already sitting down and the idea of getting up to pour a second cup felt like climbing a mountain in heels. Backwards. During a thunderstorm.
The fire crackled merrily in the hearth, sounding far too pleased with itself for something that hadn't helped with literally anything today. Meanwhile, the hat grumbled. Yes, grumbled. Like an old man in a queue who just found out they're out of lemon tarts. It was still sulking beneath the worktable, tucked into its basket of lavender sachets like it was in mourning.
I gave it a nudge with my foot. Gently. But firmly. Like, "we are not doing this again" levels of firmly.
"Stop sulking," I muttered, in the tone of someone who had tried reasoning with a magical object at least four times this week and had received nothing but silent judgment in return.
It didn't respond, of course. But I swear, and I will stand by this until my dying breath. it tugged its brim down lower. Not dramatically, just enough to say "you don't deserve me". Like a child pouting in a blanket fort after being told they can't eat soup with a fork.
I stared at it. It stared back. Not literally, but emotionally? Absolutely.
I sipped my bitter tea like it was fine, like this was fine, and firmly pretended I hadn't just spent the last thirty seconds having a silent standoff with headwear. Again.
One day, someone's going to ask me what it's like being a witch, and I'll have to smile serenely and say, "Oh, it's all tea and herbal lore and mystical intuition," when in reality it's arguing with a hat that thinks it's smarter than me and trying not to look like a walking felony in public.