Disclaimer: I do not own Little Witch Academia

A/N: And here we have my submission for Diannakko week, Day one (Prompt: Stars / Astrology). Somewhat fresh off of Whiterose Week 2017 (which was a blast, btw), I felt like doing a couple contributions to another OTP of mine, namely Diana x Akko. I came up with this on a whim, namely because I studied quite a bit of Chinese Astrology during my tenure over there. I plan to continue this little plot line throughout Diannakko week 2017, hopefully hitting each of the prompts in succession (maybe not on the days themselves, I may be a little late here and there... but fingers crossed!)

Enjoy

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Red and Blue, I See You

Day 1: Cookie In The Sky

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"Ta-da! Guess who scored the goods? This girl! Akko - that's who!" Atsuko Kagari crows, unceremoniously dumping a plastic bag on the table in front of everyone.

The entire group looks up, their expressions varying forms of bemusement and incredulity. Lotte is perhaps the most open; her large eyes blinking rapidly from behind her thick glasses, her lips curling up into a friendly smile as Akko nonchalantly slides into a seat beside her. Sucy, barely turning away from a smile pile of minced mushrooms on a tray only inches from her nose, hums noncommittally at her roommate and friend's arrival.

Their other friends Amanda, Constanze and Jasminka, all look up from their lunches, confused.

"Um, what?" Amanda asks, both wrinkling her nose and starting to edge away as Sucy stares more intently into her pile of mushrooms. "What goods? What're you on about?"

Lotte opens her mouth to say something, but too slow, Akko beats her to it. "I said I got 'em!" She declares, thrusting her finger out towards the plastic bag she had dumped in front of them. It is a simple, white, thin plastic shopping bag one might find at a grocer's; it was entirely likely she had even gone to town earlier and bought something, but no one had any idea when she had gone, or how. She hadn't, mind you, but the others didn't need to know that just yet. Not that it mattered - everyone's curiosity had been successfully peaked.

"What's in the bag?" Jasminka asks, leaning forward to peer into it, her eyes alight with delight. "Food? Snacks?"

"Well, you're half right." Akko grins, and then pinches her face. "Well, actually, no. You're all right. Darn. Well, here…" She pulls the bag back towards her and rummages around to pull out her 'goods', "My parents sent them to me this morning, so I figured I would share the wealth!"

She grins again, and finally pulls out her prize with two hands.

"Oh wow!" Jasminka cheers happily, clapping her hands together. "Fortune cookies! Can I have your parents, too?"

"Pffft. No." Akko puffs out her chest proudly. "They're my generous cookie-giving parents."

Indeed, laid out in front of everyone were a large pile of sand-colored cookies, wrapped in clear plastic. Jasminka giggles and snatches one from the pile, but the others regard the treats with more skepticism.

"Um… fortune cookies?" Sucy is the first to ask, picking up the plastic wrapped cookie and examining it closely.

Akko nods, immensely pleased with herself because, heck, it wasn't every day you find yourself with a surplus of deliciousness. And Akko, the benevolent young lady she is, finds it in her abnormally large heart to share her bounty with her friends. "Yup - fortune cookies! They give 'em to you when you eat at Chinese restaurants." She adds, as though such a thing was news to everyone.

"They're soooo tasty!" Jasminka adds, already opening hers up with shining, gleeful eyes.

"Pfft, tasty? They taste like cardboard." Amanda pokes at hers, though her small grin is obvious.

"Um… well, duh," Akko demurrers, rolling her eyes. "But that's not the important part. Who cares about the taste? The fortune's the important part of the cookies!" Her tone is scandalized, as though she could not imagine anyone not appreciating the awesome wonders of fortune cookies!

Truly, her friends had lived boring lives before she blessed them all with her presence.

"I think they taste great!" Jasminka adds, and Constanze snorts from beside her.

"Bleh!" Jasminka sticks her tongue out at her friend, but laughs anyway.

Their curiosity getting the better of them, each of Akko's friends reaches out and picks up a fortune cookie, pulling them from their wrappers. A few moments later Akko watches as her friends slowly, but surely, start into the cookies.

Lotte breaks hers in half, clearly intent on eating hers in smaller pieces. Sucy pokes her a few times, licks it, and then crushes it into tiny pieces next to her mushroom pile. Jasminka and Constanze follow Lotte's lead and break theirs into separate pieces. Amanda shrugges and simply bites into half of hers, crunching the treat loudly between her teeth.

They each find their fortunes, pulling them from the crumbs of the cookies like buried treasure from mounds of stones and dirt.

"Heee… my favorite part!" Lotte grins happily, looking around to see who would be first to read theirs.

"Mine too!" Akko agrees. "When I was younger my parents would always bring me a fortune cookie when they went out. That's the thing I loved best about fortune cookies; the fortune was always fun. They can say something like, 'vast riches are in your future', or 'you are sure to succeed academically', or neato stuff like that!"

"I dunno, it always sounded like such a scheme to me," Amanda grunts, though she picks up her fortune and wipes off the cookie crumbs from it. "I mean, we all know that fortune-telling is a real academic field for witches, but coming from a piece of paper? I never bought into it."

"It's real," comes a voice from behind Akko. She jumps because holy heck someone snuck up right behind her, squealing aloud as she whirls around and blinks up at the speaker. Standing there, her ever-present expression of focus and serenity on her pretty face, is Diana Cavendish.

"D-D-D-D-D-Diana!" Akko stammers out, perhaps needlessly. She can feel her cheeks heat up in embarrassment at being surprised, and by Diana no less.

The girl blinks and tilts her head slightly, considering the girl before her. Akko always acted pretty awkward and nervous around her, so her reaction to Diana suddenly appearing behind her wasn't too odd in and of itself. Still, though, there were times - during class and passing each other in the halls - that Akko would look up and see Diana walking beside her friends, and they would lock eyes.

She didn't really know what that meant, but Akko took stock in first impressions. And so far, they hadn't had very positive interactions. Perhaps it was time to change that.

"I mean, fortune cookies are real." Diana says calmly. She holds her hand out, her eyes on Akko's face. "May I?"

"Um," Akko mumbles, nodding slowly and reaching out behind her. She blindingly fumbles around for the plastic bag until someone - maybe Lotte - slips a plastic wrapped cookie into her hand. She holds it out for Diana. "S-sure. Help yourself."

"Thank you," Diana says, opening the package with slender fingers. "As I was saying, fortune cookies are real. They are based off of an old method of Chinese Astrology - stargazing, if you will, which flourished during the Han Dynasty between the second century B.C. to second century A.D. Taking patterns from the stars and their constellations, it is closely tied in with Chinese philosophy and the principals of Yin Yang, the natural elements, Wu Xing teachings, and the Lunarsolar calendar."

"I'm sorry, is this a history lesson?" Amanda grunts, her paper still clutched between her thumb and index finger. "Because if it is, I can get this stuff from a teacher."

Diana fixes the girl with a level stare, and then turns her attention back to Akko. "What I mean to say is, witches in ancient China started the practice of telling prophecies by using the stars, and corresponding that to shapes in the sky, much the same as we do in the western world. Tea leaf reading is a similar western practice."

"Ooh, Chinese star signs? Like the zodiac?" Akko gasps, and at Diana's nod, she beams. "I know those! I'm year of the Monkey!"

"Wow," Amanda's voice drawls out slowly, like the siphoning of liquid from a wet towel. "Somehow, I'm really not surprised."

"I know about Yin Yang," Sucy adds, much to everyone's surprise. "What? It's closely tied in with traditional Chinese medicine. They have millions of uses for mushrooms of all kinds." She cackles softly, sending a collective shiver down everyone's spine.

"R-right." Akko clears her throat. "So. These are real fortunes?" At Diana's nod, she snorts, "What, are you telling me that there is a little old Chinese witch somewhere, making thousands of prophecies a day and sending them out to all the Asian restaurants of the world?"

Diana's cheeks color slightly, and she cracks open her cookie, picking out the small slip of paper from within. "That's not what I meant," She murmures, shifting her blue eyes down from Akko's crimson ones to examine her fortune. "I simply said that these are derived from a true form of ancient fortune tell-"

She suddenly stops, her lips shifting to form silent words as she reads from her piece of paper. Akko watches as the blood slowly drain from Diana's face, making her complexion - which was already fair and quite flawless - even more pale than it already was. Diana stares down at her fortune, eyes wide.

She reads it again, slowly, before her eyes finally snap up to Akko's.

"…What?" Akko asks after a long moment, shifting shyly under the girl's powerful gaze. She's somewhat used to being stared at from time to time, but there is something about the way Diana is looking at her that she just isn't sure of. "What, um, what does your fortune say?"

Diana blinks once, twice, a third time, and then shakes her head. She crumples the paper up and tosses it aside. It bounces once on the floor and disappears under a nearby table.

"N-nothing," The girl says shortly. "While some of them are true - or at least, taken from a true form of fortune telling - most are false. They are created in factories and only exist to bring in a profit." She nods decisively. "Thank you, Akko, for the fortune cookie."

"Hey, wait, you didn't even eat-"

And without even waiting for an answer, Diana turns on her heel and walks away. She doesn't stop even as she walks through the door to the cafeteria. In her wake she leaves six girls, all blinking rapidly at her sudden departure.

"That was weird," Amanda says, shrugging and reading off her fortune. "'Absolute power corrupts absolutely.' The heck does that mean?"

Constanze thrusts her fortune under Amanda's nose, who sighs and reads aloud, "'Your lucky numbers are twelve, twenty- five, and sixty-three.' Pffft!" She laughs at her friend's disgruntled face.

"Mine says, 'Take a walk in the wilderness for inspiration.'" Sucy receipts, and then giggles. "Why, that sounds like a fine idea. I'm always up for finding some new fungi…"

Lotte coos a little over hers, "'Spend time in a quiet area with a good book.' Wow! It's like it knows me!"

Jasminka swallows her cookie pieces, pushing the paper away from her on the table. "I don't get these for the fortunes."

"What's your say, Akko?" Lotta asks, and the others turn to watch as Akko shakes off the weird feeling she got after Diana's departure, picking up her own fortune from the table to read it.

"'Trust in yourself, and there will always be a way.'" She recites, grinning. "Wow. That's the best fortune I had in years. Looks like the stars are on my side today, huh?" She turns the fortune over and bursts into giggles. "And apparently, my lucky color is 'blue'."

The table erupts into laughter at that, and it takes a good minute to die down. When the others pile their read fortunes together in the middle of the table beside the used wrappers, Amanda asks, "What about Diana's fortune? What was that about?"

"Want to see what it was?" Lotte asks.

The others agree, all nodding in unison, and Akko gets up to get it. She kneels down to reach under the unoccupied table Diana had tossed the fortune under, and her fingertips pick out the balled up slip of paper. She reaches a little further and picks it up, climbing to her knees and her eyes flick down as she smooths it out between her hands-

Tell her how you feel. The stars show that you are sure to succeed.

Akko freezes up, her eyes locked onto the words on Diana's fortune. Two simple sentences, but carrying so much meaning in them. Tell her how you feel? Tell who? Tell who what? Was this really meant to be a fortune, or something more?

Diana had mentioned that these fortunes can be - and sometimes are - real. Akko had grown up with the idea that they were all in good fun, usually meaningless except for what you take from their meaning. But she also knew that magic was real; that fortune telling and prophecies were real. She would know, more that anyone.

Akko feels her mouth dry up and her stomach clench. Tell her how you feel. Tell her how you feel.

Tell her how you feel…

Somehow, deep down inside, Akko knew: This was a real fortune.

Before she even knew what she was doing, Akko clenches the small slip of paper in her hand and stuffs it into her pocket. She stands and returns to the table, back to her friends.

"Well, what's the dirt?" Amanda asks, her chin resting in her hands. The others all stare at Akko expectantly.

"Um," Akko pauses, and then shrugs. "Well, apparently, Diana's lucky color is 'red.' Go figure, huh? I dunno why that would freak her out."

"Huh." Sucy hums, confused.

"Strange." Lotts says, frowning.

"Yea, weird." Amanda remarks, and then snorts, wiggling her fingers dramatically. "Maybe she's scared of blood? Or vampires? Blood alllll over the place! Ooooooo….."

"Ugh!" Everyone collectively groans at that, but laugh all the same. Even Akko chuckles softly before sitting down, finally starting on her lunch. As she digs into her food, watching her friends talk and laugh, she reaches down into her pocket to finger the small fortune - Diana's fortune - and frowns.

Tell her how you feel.

The stars show that you are sure to succeed.

Somehow, Akko knew that this fortune wasn't fake. The question was, what would Diana do about it?

What would Akko do about it?

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To Be Continued on Day 2

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A/N: Thanks for reading!

***Will work for glomps***