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Juggling her cardboard box and her travel mug, Willow hurried into the faculty lounge. Oz was standing on a chair, which was unusual, and pinning up a banner that read “Happy Purim!” which was also unusual. Appropriate, given the gift-baskets tucked into her cardboard box, but unusual.
“Oh, hey!” she said, not at all awkwardly, which of course made everyone look up.
“I heard you talking to Anja, when she picked you up,” Xander said, sliding up to give her a quick side-hug. “And the words “hamantaschen” and “mishlochei manot” kind of jumped out at me.”
Buffy smiled, her finger still jabbing at the copier’s buttons even without looking. “So we decorated.” Her free hand gestured at the streamers that had appeared overnight.
“Awww, guys!” Willow said, her heart squeezing with messy feelings. “You are all so sweet.” She set her cardboard box on the table and started taking out the baskets. She was glad she’d gone all-out with the ribbon now. Earlier she’d been worried she’d overdone it.
“Not as sweet as these hamantaschen, am I right?” Oz said, picking up his basket.
She shook her head, holding a laugh behind a smile.
Principle Giles leaned into the room. “I’ve ordered in a few treats that should arrive around lunchtime, so be sure to leave room.”
“Thanks, Giles,” she said, pressing his basket into his hands.
“Yes, well,” he said, shifting back from the doorway. “First period starts soon, so I won’t keep you.” And then he hustled on back to his office. She thought she saw him peering into his basket as he closed the door.
When she turned back to the table all the baskets had been distributed and Buffy had made a much larger basket, wrapped in sparkly cellophane, appear.
“We figured if we each got you something you wouldn’t have enough hands,” Xander explained.
“We solved that by getting a bigger basket that everyone contributed to,” Buffy said.
“The chocolate’s from me.” Oz pointed to some promising looking bars.
“Thank you!” Willow said, accepting the basket. She really wanted to go through it and see what was in there, but there wasn’t really time before first period.
So after they all dispersed she wrestled her way through the computer science room door, travel mug in one hand, basket clutched to her chest, and tucked it away beneath her desk. She had lab time for seniors first, so other than a few dedicated kiddos she expected them to trickle in over the period.
That meant no grading that required concentration, not that she could concentrate with that many internet connections open anyway. She had the room warded, but that only did so much when every computer was a threshold and the people “guarding” them were curious teenagers. Yeah. Easy to imagine how that turned out sometimes.
In fact, the wards were doing their job and letting her know about a presence crossing one of her thresholds right now. Stacy was frowning at her screen and click-clicking the mouse in an agitated manner, so that was where Willow headed, bag of components in hand.
“Having trouble?” she asked.
Stacy looked relieved and rolled her chair back from the computer station, making room for Willow to pull one up and sit down. “Sorry, Ms. Rosenberg. I was doing research for my paper on how white nationalists recruit, and I think I picked up something nasty from one of their sites.”
“Well, there’s no shortage of nasty on those kind of sites,” Willow said, flipping over the mouse pad so the sigil hidden on the underside was in direct contact with the mouse. “You go grab a snack while I check this out.” Another great reason to have a snack station in your classroom: distraction.
With Stacy homed in on the granola bars she was free to pull out some herbs and start the incantation under her breath. Things summoned by people whose introduction to the occult was WWII fanfiction were usually really annoying, but also really satisfying to smack down. She pulled out a crystal, propped it on top of the monitor while she keyed in a few commands, and sat back as the screen went wibbly for a few seconds.
She almost thought she heard a despairing little “Nooooooo….” as her wards registered the presence from earlier draining away. She couldn’t help a tiny smirk as she picked up the crystal in a square of black silk and tucked it into her bag.
“There you go!” she said, standing up and beckoning Stacy back over. “That should take care of it, but let me know if it gives you any more trouble.”
“Thanks, Ms. Rosenberg, you’re the best.”
Willow smiled and headed back to her desk. That was going to be a fun story to tell over lunch.