So... I wrote this like 3-4 months ago after having the idea for half a year ahaha. I know it's been done before but I wanted to do my own version of if Diana got the Sleeping Witch illness, though as you'll see it isn't quite the one we saw in the show (cuz that's been done to death, I'm sure). Canon AU/relationships, no shipping (for once).

Disclaimer: I do not own Little Witch Academia.

An Unprecedented Collaboration

Chapter 1.

It's well into the night at Luna Nova Academy. Curfew has long-since passed, and the night patrols are out roaming the empty hallways.

And for once, Diana isn't one of them.

As Hannah and Barbara sleep peacefully across the room, Diana is up at her desk toiling over books, having asked the fairy in the lamp to keep its light soft.

It's no secret that she's always rather busy, even when she's already completed her schoolwork and assignments, and even when she doesn't have assigned watch guard duties or hall monitoring patrols. Even then she creates work for herself.

The current one is more of a personal side project, one she's been trying to perfect for her own intents and purposes as a Cavendish.

She's trying to re-create a spell her ancestors would have used back in times of the war for their hospitalized and injured patients. When Diana does eventually return to the Cavendish estate and successfully complete the ritual to become head of the household, she plans to refurbish and reopen their clinic, and turn it into a modernized magical infirmary of sorts.

Though that reality is still very very far away, so much so that it's hardly even imaginable, she has her heart set on it, along with many other things.

But she's determined to put her bit of free time during her academic semesters to good use. If she waits until after she graduates to start working on these spells she'll already have set herself back a pace. Getting them finished, practiced, and perfected sooner rather than later will always be beneficial.

So she's been up every night until midnight, and oftentimes later, scanning the pages of various books from her personal library, and many times checking out tomes from Luna Nova's archives as well.

She's taken journals full of notes already on this particular spell, not only on how it might be revived, but the ingredients necessary, the words that must be spoken, and the history behind it all. She is a firm believer that history will always play a highly significant role in any spellcasting, and failing to understand the original circumstances for which a spell was created can result in a devastating misunderstanding of the magic, which could prove to be dangerous.

She's been putting extra hours into this project in recent weeks because she feels she is getting close to her breakthrough at last.

The spell is intended to ease an agonized patient into slumber without the use of anesthesia or other medicines. Victims who are in excruciating pain often cannot be held down easily, even by several people, in order for a nurse to inject needles or administer any sort of serum.

The purpose of Diana's spell would be to allow a single witch to put a patient into a temporary state of sleep without so much as touching them. It would only be accessible and possible coming from the hands of the most highly-skilled medical witches.

Of course this magic would have a high rate of abuse if it got into the wrong hands. People with ill intentions could put anyone they saw fit to sleep for whatever nefarious reasons they might please, be it to rob, defile, or even murder.

Diana has deliberated on these facts many many times. She knows full-well the dangers of such a spell, which is why she has chosen to keep her research a secret from everyone else and conduct it at night.

Of course she doesn't expect any of her fellow classmates or professors to ever try to exploit such a spell, but Diana can't help but be cautious in case of unwanted eyes or ears sneaking around campus.

And of course she needs to come up with the cancelation spell as well. Figuring out the sleep spell would do no one any good - in fact just the opposite - if there was no spell to successfully reawaken the patient afterward.

Diana had worked on the cancelation spell first and foremost in order to avoid such an incident. She fully believes she's figured it out through her readings and translations of ancient medical texts. But she isn't able to test out the reawakening spell unless she has used the sleep spell first.

Over the months she's been gathering the necessary ingredients and putting them into a small jar on her desk. Various plants, herbs, extracts, and crystals remain on standby, yet to be of use. She's been trying for so long that several times the leaves she'd procured had wilted and she'd had to go back out to collect fresh ones. But she always has them ready in case she ever figures it out.

She believes she has all the ingredients. She just needs the words.

A healing witch could easily keep a compact vile or jar of these things on her person as she traverses the battlefield or hospital wing. Upon drawing her wand and speaking the correct words, the ingredients would unleash their magic in time with the spoken linguistics and activate the sleeping spell.

The fact that the user must not only have an advanced level of both medical and magical practice, but also be holding onto those specific ingredients at the time of the spell-casting further lessens the threat of unauthorized parties from misusing it.

She's thought through it all extremely carefully, time and again, hour after hour, for months upon months.

She has the cancelation spell. She has the ingredients. She just needs the words to activate it.

It's a matter of translation at this point, which can be extremely grueling even to the most seasoned of archeologists.

But she's come this far. She's only got a few characters left to research. And she's determined to finish it tonight.

She checks through every book in her possession, using her wand to select them from the shelf behind herself and draw them out and over to the desk. Her eyes and mind are sharp in spite of the hour, her focus heightened by the thrill of almost having achieved her goal after countless nights of study.

When she doesn't find what she's looking for in her current book, she places it aside on top of the stack of them on the floor she's been piling up and draws over another. Her notes are immaculate, and the magical words needed to activate the spell are almost complete.

She can't stop now. She can almost feel the energy in the plants and crystals resonating with the written words even though they haven't been spoken yet.

She knows she is close.

She opens another book and scours the pages, making sure she doesn't miss a single word.

And at long last her eyes come across a familiar character.

This is it. This is the one she'd been needing to translate.

She puts down her feather pen and quickly turns the the index of the book, then goes through the stack of other encyclopedias and dictionaries on the floor until she finds the linguistics tome. She flips to the glossary there, finds the correlating historic years in which she'd found the other character in, and turns directly to that page.

And she finds it.

Her mind translates it into her known magical language as she picks up her pen and writes it down in her notebook.

And she can feel the relief, the accomplishment, the excitement. She's done it at last.

She doesn't even fully realize it herself, but as she reads the final product over she lets herself speak the words.

"Nemconturinna... em... Zillen..."

A strangely pleasant feeling washes through her. At first she believes it is the feeling of elation at finally having her research bear fruit.

But all too quickly she realizes what she's done.

The ingredients in the jar have begun to glow softly. When she glances, down she finds her wand is in her lap and has also began to resonate with the magics of the sleep spell.

With a gasp Diana quickly tries to turn the pages of her notebook, searching for the words of the cancelation spell.

But the sleep magic activates before she can get there. It consumes her in a soft, peaceful glow of light, draining the tension and exhaustion from her body, replacing it with comfort.

She tries to fight it, but the reborn magic is too strong. Her arms fold over on top of her books on the desk and her body slumps forward. Her eyelids flutter shut against her will, and she can feel her conscious fading.

And in that split second before she loses herself, she can at least be proud that her spell is successful.

But now she can only hope the cancelation spell works just as well.

The spell takes her into the world of slumber and keeps her there throughout the remainder of the night.

A/N: So yes, as you can see, not exactly the Sleeping Witch illness we know. Let's see how the others handle it. Also there's a good reason for the absurdly long title, I promise.

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