#omg these pictures nearly gave me an aneurysm

[heartthroblopez]

The way his hair sticks out from his hoodie?! Gahh, how is he possibly so adorable no matter what he does?!

[my-miraculous-headcanons]

The Sorceress AU

In which everything is almost exactly the same... except Marinette was born into a family of sorceresses, and knew about the magical world ever since her abilities bloomed when she was a child.

Background Stuff

     • Tikki was honestly baffled by the Guardian’s decision, at first. A Guardian has never chosen someone already in possession of magical talent— it’s dangerous to even consider it. It’s too much power in the hands of someone who already has power to begin with. 

     • She quickly learns that she shouldn’t have been so wary of the Guardian’s choice. Marinette is an exceptional Ladybug, with a heart of gold, who, despite having such an abundance of power, never lets any of it go to her head. 

     • It’s not really so much as the Guardian’s choice that she’s so wary about now, so much as how the miraculous will... interact with Marinette’s already existing abilities. 

     • In the end, both Tikki and Marinette agree to not use any of her magic while in the Ladybug suit. They don’t really want to test anything out, since magic is... well. Dangerous. Experimentation with magic is especially dangerous. 

     • However, that doesn’t stop Marinette from experimenting outside the mask. In fact, her family is known for experimentation. The Cheng family in particular has a long history of discovering and creating new magic spells, whilst the Dupain family has a book filled with the different potions that had been created with each generation. 

     • Marinette made her first spell when she was four. She shows it to Tikki— the spell that plucks stars out of the sky and weaves them into your hair, turning it into the night itself. Nearly a decade later, and it’s still her favourite spell. She’s trying to figure out how to alter it so she can use it on a dress she’s making.

     • Marinette made her first potion when she was seven. She lovingly calls it the “Muse Potion,” a potion that conjures the perfect image in a waft of smoke that inspires any person who sees it. It has certainly helped her through design slumps.

     • Ladybug never tells Chat Noir or anyone that she’s a sorceress (in training). Chat Noir remains oblivious to her abilities, since she never uses it in battle. (Even when she’s really, really tempted to, sometimes.) 

     • Marinette never tells anyone as a civilian either, not even Alya. There’s strict rules on keeping the nonmagical out of the magical community. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t use magic often— in fact she uses it all the time, sometimes unconsciously. For example, she had accidentally infused the lucky charm she gave Adrien with a minor good luck spell. 

     • After becoming Ladybug, Marinette had discovered a purification spell completely by accident. She saw an akuma flying about the park, and as it passed her while she sat under a tree, she reached out and grabbed it by the wing. It turned white where the wing and her fingers touched, spread, and suddenly the evil color was just... gone.

     • This gets Marinette wondering what other spells from her Ladybug life she can replicate. Tikki usually wouldn’t ever allow this, but as long as Marinette doesn’t record these particular spells, she will let it slide. 

     • Marinette created almost a perfect replica of the Ladybug Lucky Charm spell, except the items she gets are completely red, never spotted. She also created a Miraculous Cure spell, except it’s nowhere near as powerful as Ladybug’s, and it doesn’t specifically focus on damage caused by akuma. She used it on her room, and it fixed pretty much everything that was broken, soiled, etc. 

Story time!

     • Ladybug’s secret as a sorceress remains intact, but... it turns out as a civilian, she’s not as lucky.

     • Marinette performs a purification spell on an Akuma she finds fluttering about in the school hallway, thinking that no one is around to see her. False. Adrien, who had just got back from a photoshoot, sees her, and nearly has an aneurysm. 

     • Adrien quickly hides under the stairs and watches as Marinette walks back into the classroom, and has a silent freak out. He asks Plagg if Ladybug can purify akumas outside of the suit, to which the kwami replies hell no, which just makes the whole thing a thousand times more confusing. 

     • He asks if Hawkmoth can purify his own akuma. Plagg says yeah, technically, and Adrien is even further dying because omg is Marinette Hawkmoth and if she is why the fuck did she just purify her own akuma??? WAS THAT OLD MAN’S FACE AND VOICE FROM THE BEGINNING JUST A COVERUP SO THAT NO ONE WOULD SUSPECT HER??? HOW COULD THE SWEETEST GIRL IN THE WORLD BE A TERRORIST WHAT IS GOING ON???

     • Adrien has to walk into class, sit down, and go through the rest of the day pretending as if absolutely nothing is wrong. Plagg, for some reason, finds this entire thing hilarious, but Adrien is not fucking laughing. 

     • At the end of the day, he transforms into Chat Noir, runs to her place, sees her in front of the bakery, and pretty much kidnaps Marinette. Like, straight up snatches her off the street. 

     • She has quite a few Words for Chat Noir when he finally puts her down on some random rooftop a far distance away from her home, but he doesn’t really let her start, instead immediately interrogating her.

     • “Are you Hawkmoth? What are your reasons for terrorizing Paris? How did you come into possession of the butterfly miraculous? Why on earth would someone as kind as you ever twist the negative emotions of the very people you care about? What—”

     • “I’m sorry, but what the fuck?”

     • Marinette is furious. Furious enough that she just fucking decks the superhero in the face, and attempts to stomp away, because she refuses to deal with a fucking idiot. Unfortunate, the cat has other plans, so he grabs her wrist and keeps her in place.

     • “Let me go!” “Answer my questions!” “I’M NOT ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS OF AN IDIOT WHO’S ACCUSING ME OF BEING SOMETHING I’M NOT WITHOUT ANY PROOF OR REASON!” “YOU ABSORBED THE ENERGY OF A FREAKING AKUMA IN YOUR SCHOOL HALLWAY!”

     • Everything’s quiet for a moment while Marinette settles that information in her head. She lets out a quiet, but heartfelt ‘fuck’ from under her breath. Chat takes this as a sign of admission and demands that she hands over the butterfly miraculous.

     • So... at this point, if she wants to clear her name, she really doesn’t have any other option than to... out herself. And technically, the rules apply to nonmagical people, and Chat Noir... has magic. So it’s not really breaking the rules, right?

     • “Chat. It was a spell. I performed a spell. I don’t have the butterfly miraculous, I’m the fucking real-life version of Matilda here. I figured out a spell replicating Ladybug’s purification magic. I’m a sorceress, Chat.”

     • Chat’s response is “You’re a what?” Quite frankly, this is beginning to sound eerily similar to Harry Potter, except the conversation is somehow inverted.

     • “The Dupain and Cheng families are two extensive families with a knack for magic, and are both well-known in the magical community. I’m a sorceress in training.”

     • Okay. So. He may have a magical ring, and he may run around Paris in a magical skintight leather catsuit, but this is a little too much. So, in response, he demands that Marinette proves it. On a random rooftop. In public. With people down below taking pictures of their local superhero. Yeah, great idea Chat, you fucking moron—

     • She proves it by zipping his lips shut and refusing to undo it until he brings her back home. Not before loudly wondering if she would do Paris a favour by leaving him like that. (In her defense, he seriously pissed her off.)

     • She undoes it the moment her feet meets the floorboards of her balcony. 

     • “I believe you now.”

     • “I’d call you a fucking idiot if you didn’t believe me at this point.”

     • Chat Noir goes home that day and proceeds to scream into his pillow.

Adrien Knows Now

     • Turns out, hiding the fact that you know someone else’s secret is, like, a million times harder than keeping your own secret. He can’t help but focus on Marinette wherever she goes now, because, well... What other magic has she been doing without anyone noticing? 

     • He notices that she talks to her bag sometimes, which would be weird if he noticed that before he found out she’s basically a witch. (Sorceress, she said, but really? She’s a witch. It’s easier to call her a witch. Just... not to her face.) He wonders if she has some magical being in there, or a familiar, or maybe she even enchanted her bag so it has a soul or— or something. 

     • He catches her conjuring up a mock-up version of Lucky Charm and nearly has a heart attack. The item isn’t spotted, so he knows it’s not a real one, but that’s still... wow. 

     • He realises one day after leaving his Marinette Lucky Charm at home by accident that his luck all of a sudden got worse... And then he comes to the abrupt realisation that it may actually be fucking lucky. Marinette gave him an ACTUAL good luck charm. 

     • Does Alya know? He keeps trying to make sly conversation with Alya about what... other things Marinette can do, but he’s come to the conclusion that Alya definitely doesn’t know. In fact, he’s pretty sure he accidentally gave her the impression that he was asking if Marinette can do... stuff in the bedroom, which is why Alya’s been high-key hating him since that conversation. She doesn’t let him go anywhere near Marinette now. (Plagg finds this hilarious. Plagg can shut the fuck up.)

     • He corrects the misunderstanding later by saying he was asking if Marinette can crochet, too, and that he forgot the word for it. Alya believes him, but he’s on thin fucking ice now. Watch yourself, Agreste.

     • Now every time he tries to talk to Marinette, Alya’s glaring at him over her shoulder. Which makes things infinitely harder, because at this point, he doesn’t think he can keep the fact that he knows Marinette’s secret from her any longer. He needs to tell her but... How is he supposed to do that with Alya always there, silently threatening to skin him alive???

     • He finds his answer shortly after. He knocks on the Dupain-Cheng’s front door, gets invited in, and— and apparently, they forgot that they had a floating flowerpot beside their window. He doesn’t need to confront Marinette at all. He just needed to catch her parents in the act. 

     • They’re freaking the hell out, and Adrien realises now that he doesn’t really need to make up an excuse as to how he figured out Marinette is a witch. (Sorceress. Whatever.) He’s pretty sure if he confronted her about cleansing the Akuma, she might suspect that he’s Chat Noir. Because she’s smart like that. (Lmao Adrien... you have no idea how oblivious this girl is.)

     • M. and Mme. Dupain-Cheng give him a lesson on their history and stress the importance of keeping this a secret. In fact, they go into detail about their family and it’s— it’s fascinating. Holy hell is it fascinating. Marinette is, like, magic royalty or something, not just “well known.” And a prodigy, at that. Each member of the Cheng family even have their own titles, all written down in some ancient book with an unlimited amount of pages, including the achievements of each member. Marinette doesn’t have a title yet, she will when she completes an important “test,” but she has... a whole page worth’s of achievements under her name. Apparently, she’s beaten the record for inventing the most spells. “She’s just so creative,” Sabine says. “She’s always coming up with ideas, and she doesn’t like to leave a single one unfinished. She’ll always keep trying until she brings her idea to life.”

     • Marinette comes home to find Adrien flipping through her family’s super fucking secret ancestry book in front of her parents and nearly has a straight up heart attack. So. Her crush knows now. Along with the beloved Parisian cat superhero, but her parents don’t know that nor will they ever. She can,,, she can deal with this. 

     • She can’t deal with this. She has two different blond boys attacking her with questions at different times of day and, honestly, she never thought she could lose her patience with either one of them so quickly and horribly. Especially with Adrien. She’s three seconds away from snapping at him for asking her a question in public again. It’s a secret for a reason, you dumb sunshine child!!! You’re so lucky I love you!!!

     • Alya is baffled as to why Marinette is trying so hard to avoid Adrien now. It’s a... very new development. Her suspicions with him grow, like, 100000% and she goes to ask him what the FUCK did he pull with her best friend, and he desperately tries to convince her that he didn’t do anything for fuck’s sake Alya stop scARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME I SWEAR I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING

     • Chat Noir is trickier to avoid. In fact, she can’t avoid him. He comes to her and either kidnaps her off the streets or from school, or waits on her balcony and receptively knocks on her glass window until she gets so annoyed that she has no choice but to let him in, for the sake of her own sanity. 

     • She gets used to Chat Noir leaning his head on her shoulder while she makes potions for her training and tests. In fact, his purring is calming, although she’d never admit that to him. He only really knows for sure that Marinette actually enjoys his company when she invites him to her milestone ceremony, where she finally earns her permanent title through a test. It was an exciting night.

The Reveal

     • The reveal happens when Ladybug decides to break her promise to Tikki and perform magic whilst in the mask. She didn’t want to, but it was an emergency situation— her miraculous almost got destroyed. Oh, and, uh, herself too. She almost died along with the miraculous. Obviously, she had to do something. Tikki will understand.

     • She pulled the spell off without a hitch, but she does admit that it felt... very strange. She can’t put her finger on it. But whatever, she stopped the time surrounding a destructive beam, suspending it midair. She turns, ready to take on the akuma, and then she sees Chat’s face and— and there’s realisation there. He knows. He’s spent enough time with Marinette to know how a sorceress performs her spells. 

     • It doesn’t take long for him to piece together her identity. And it doesn’t take long for him to have an absolute freak out over it. Marinette Dupain-Cheng, remarkable sorceress, designer of a Jagged Stone album cover and glasses, winner of a Gabriel Agreste fashion contest, class president... and also, apparently, the fucking superhero of Paris. She is... so ridiculously far out of his league, it’s not even funny. He’s screwed. SCREWED. It’s over. He’s going to die alone, with, like, a million cats. (Hah.)

     • Once Adrien gets over his complete meltdown, he and Marinette are able to talk to each other. She sits him down in her room, wraps him in a blanket, gives him a mug of hot cocoa and a plate of cookies, and lets him meet Tikki. Everything is a lot less terrifying and awkward after that. They end up staying up late, Marinette now feeling as if she can share everything with Chat.

     • "My lady... Don’t you want to know who I am, too?” “You don’t need to reveal anything right now, chaton. Tell me when you think it’s the perfect moment. I don’t wanna overwhelm you. Or me. Either of us.”

     • He tells her after she finally gains her title, and asks her out on a date. Her answer is a resounding hell yes— except he shouldn’t be too excited, because apparently he’s been twice as annoying as she thought he was being, so he’s not allowed to see her at night for the next month. This is what he gets for badgering her as both Adrien and Chat Noir.

     • Alya is very, very confused by how Marinette suddenly goes from one day completely avoiding Adrien’s very existence, to telling her she and him are dating. What the hell happened, here?

I hope you guys liked this AU for Spoopy Month. If you’re wondering about Sabine and Marinette’s titles, it’s Sabine the Decisive and Marinette the Creative.

I can see Adrien as being the type to create... huge misunderstandings bc he keeps saying things that accidentally sound offensive, suggestive, or passive aggressive without meaning to. It’s a personal hc of mine. 

I had an entirely different draft for this exact AU with a different storyline, one that I may post in like... the far future. But for now, I like the way this one turned out. The other draft is significantly less organised. (Although, the other draft has sorceress reveals for ALL of Marinette’s friends, and it’s great. Uuuugh, I was so conflicted over which one to post. I might call the other one the Witch AU and keep this one the Sorceress AU.)