A/n: Fair warning: I'm not that familiar with the Monster High franchise so please don't be too surprised when I appear to gloss over big chunks of the MH franchise… I don't really feel comfortable with putting in characters that I know nothing about in too great a detail.

This started out as a faint idea in my head and then Cross-over-lover232 helped me come up with some more concrete ideas (thank you for the input btw).

So the whole idea for this is; what if the Evil Queen wasn't so evil? What if she decided that she has had it with the whole fairytale business and just left Snow White waiting to be poisoned in the woods and moved to the monster dimension where no one would think to look for her? And though some near misses where they were almost caught where Raven was visiting her auntie Red's cabin with her mother at the same time that Snow White and her family had made a surprise visit to the area and through a series of unexpected events it was revealed that not only is the witch who was supposed to play the Evil Queen role still alive, but that Raven also exists! And now everybody in Ever after is freaking out because they can't find them anywhere and at least once or twice a year there is this big hubbabaloo over some "sighting" and it all goes crazy all over again.

I got a touch stuck on whether or not Briar should exist or not though… seeing (as far as it is to my understanding) that in cannon Briar only exists because her mother was woken up early by the Evil Queen and therefore that whole story got turned on it's head… so since in this fic the Evil Queen… isn't so evil (grouchy, irritated, mad scientist who probably swears right, left, and center just for the hell of it, but not evil) or interested in fairytales at all and therefore would have no interest in stealing one I considered using inspiration from the original Grimm's Tales version (by the way, do not read original fairytales in all their dark, twisted glory at night, you will not be able to sleep afterwards… this is from personal experience) but I was also tempted to do a little foreboding "introspection" like have constant mentions of Sleeping Beauty here and there and like have Apple be all like; "But what about the fairytales of the future? What about Sleeping Beauty's need to be awoken by a prince in a hundred years or what happens to the fate of Sleeping Beauty's daughter when she is born?" and the like just to drive it home that without the Evil Queen's meddling… certain people would not be there…

So I flipped a coin (always handy to have around when you're making a decision).

Briar exists FYI but her whole role is completely different and you will see why later (I just wanted to explain why I decided to have her there -via a literal coin toss- when in cannon she would not have existed if the Evil Queen was actually a good guy).

Also more of the Headmaster secretly being Raven's grandfather because to me personally that has not gotten old yet and as long as it stays amusing I will use it with a gleeful grin and I don't care what other people think because I'm just too amused by it so there (I honestly laugh myself into a fit every single time, it's just too precious, I swear)!

I'm just amusing myself at this point really. All these possible alternate universes and scenarios really just make me burst out laughing because they're so absurd.

XXX

Raven Grimmbook did not know very much about the fairytale dimension that her birth father lived in, even less than she understood Wonderland and that was saying a lot, and to be honest she was quite curious about the place to a certain extent… it was only natural after all, to want to know your roots, where your family history came from.

However she wasn't curious enough to ever try her hand at attending Ever After High, much to her family's immense relief, and to her own credit her mother had at least attempted not to cast the entire place in a completely negative, paranoid, and bitter tone, her grandmother filling in more positive stories about the culture and traditions of their family's home dimension had helped color many aspects in a more cheerful light, and her father's two merged kingdoms were wonderful places to spend the holidays with an atmosphere so unlike that of the monster dimension. The whole place seemed to almost glitter to be perfectly honest and gave her feelings of sugary dreams and fancy white virginal lace, and according to Maddie, Raven's father's kingdoms, as much as a fairytale dream that they were already, were almost utterly dark in comparison to the glam of the Ever After kingdom and it's point of pride which was Ever After High. Maddie described to place to be as artificially sugary as Wonderland's special patented so-sweet-you'll-be-up-for-days cotton candy and everyone and everything looked like they had jumped directly out of a human child's storybook, with the school's strict codes to stick to conservative clothing that represented the student's ancestral themes (something Raven's mother darkly accused of being on the verge of being some sort of kinky fetish enabler whenever she was particularly down about the past) and requiring it's students to "act the part" of their predecessors whenever possible (brainwashing and child abuse Raven's mother would snarl while Raven's grandmother merely sighed and pointedly reminded her daughter that neither one of them had ever even attempted to act like their predecessors so it was just as well to take their wins and let the past, and the memory of a certain annoying princess's plans, die a pathetic and scandalized death).

The main issue that she had with attempting to find out about her ancestral origins from Ever After High lay with the whole "evil queen" destiny thing and recreating fairytale stories at the expense of her species. She understood that it was the culture of that dimension and that there was a great deal of honor to being a fairytale villain, and just because the story called for a bad end to the fake evildoer it did not necessarily mean that it would automatically lead to a bad life afterwards. Her childhood friend/person-her-mother-made-her-hang-out-with/partner in mild mischief (even though the witch's friend really itched for some actual crime), Faybelle seemed quite keen on following her mother's example as both the Evil Queen and Evil Fairy, very excited about it actually despite apparent grumblings from certain individuals that Raven hoped she'd never have to meet back in the fairytale dimension about how it was only a temporary arrangement until Raven and her mother could be located and dragged back.

And that was the main reason why Raven held no desire to be trained to become a fairytale character; Raven, who was half raised on Wonderland warrior values thanks to her mother's very good friends and allies the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat, was a big believer in consent in all aspects of life and from the vaguely hunted look that her mother and god-uncle Bane Bad Wolf could never quite suppress whenever the topic came up and the knowledge of the full story of their pasts coming to light… it just didn't sound like something that was worth the heartache if it all went south.

It did rankle, oh did it rankle, in a part of her that would forever be conditioned to be royalty, that she'd very likely be unable to inherit her parent's home kingdoms as herself, it itched that if she were to pursue the life of an Evil Queen then she'd have to turn her back on her father and his portion of the kingdom…

But most of all it was the fate of her grandmother's romantic relationship with her biological grandfather that never failed to cause Raven's heart to break painfully and her blood to run cold. Raven didn't know who her biological grandfather was, nor did she care, but the thought of anybody abandoning her with a loomed witchling growing in her womb just because she wasn't of proper maiden breeding stock, just as her grandfather had done to her grandmother, leaving her the moment he found out that Elenore Queen and his unborn daughter was more of a liability to his reputation, for her grandmother to raise a child all by herself out of necessity because the man she had loved willingly abandoned her was… like a harsh slap to the face! That's what it was! She didn't even hold any desire to find out what her mother verbally felt about it; if that familiar bitter scowl was anything to go by she wasn't at all pleased at her absent father either.

And also the whole "you are a witch and therefore you must be evil" thing was soooo four or five centuries ago, completely medieval and utterly barbaric in such modern times.

And besides that, she liked who she was as she was right now! Why go around constantly being referred to as "The Dreaded Evil Queen" (capital, boldfaced letters and all) when she liked just being… well Raven. Raven who had parents who had conceived her on a drunken bet (as far as she had unfortunately overheard) and since they were more friends than romantic partners never married, her parents consisting of a genius mad-scientist mother with a pumpkin flavored caffeine addiction, a father who lived far away but always made the time to call her every day and visit as often as possible, a grandmother who was part of what seemed to be every witch or sorcery guild in Boo York, a foster sister who once reduced a full grown hydra to tears because it had once frightened Raven so bad that she accidentally turned everyone in the immediate vicinity's hair pink from a practice spell gone awry, and a whole bunch of foreign friends and unrelated uncles and aunties who had either taken her mother's example and fled the fairytale realms or were in on the wicked joke of this whole conspiracy and were more than happy to let things continue (the Evil Fairy and especially the Cheshire Cat more often than not creating false sightings whenever they were bored).

She was happy this way, her family was happy this way, and they all had wonderful lives just as they were.

And so what if they were almost caught by Snow White's men when Raven was eight? That whole complicated glitch in her mother's carefully crafted "letting the fairytale bastards think that I'm dead" plan, and had apparently caused such an uproar that the area that they had last been seen while getting that scared little blonde girl out of that abandoned well was now some sort of tourist trap (Raven's mother had muttered some rather uncharitable things about Snow White's drama queen attitude being the real thing that they needed to sell tickets to see) but they had gotten away! And no one had chased them back here so it was all just fine!

The stories were over with, the fairytale royalty and the Headmaster couldn't technically make them do anything that they didn't want to anyway (but all the hiding out was mostly just so that they wouldn't have to be dealing with the annoyances that come with fanatic traditionalists hounding you relentlessly), and they had already technically banished themselves from the fairytale realms so… well really nothing much anybody could do about things now really.

And besides, who would find her and her mother's absence worth a care anyway after so much time had passed?

XXX

"Oh, phooey." Apple White pouted as she threw a manila folder into the trash. "Another dead end! How many false sightings can there possibly be?"

"Maybe they aren't even in any currently known fairytale world." Blondie suggested her sleuthing instincts kicking in. "I mean, my new roommate coming in a week or two is supposed to be the daughter of god from somewhere called Olympus. I never even heard of the place before I got a letter from her asking if we could be pen pals until she arrives so we get to know a little more about each other, which is terribly sweet come to think of it, and very smart since now I feel like I practically know her already!"

Apple groaned in despair despite her friend's cheery attitude, flopping back down onto her bed dramatically.

"But if that's true then they could be anywhere!" The princess despaired. "I have to find her before it's too late! I don't know how the Evil Queen has managed to stay alive for this long, and that's assuming that she still exists right now, but surely the Evil Queen's daughter must still be alive! We're already well into high school, if she doesn't get the proper schooling then she can't become a proper villain, and if she can't do that then-…" Apple trails off, unwilling to voice her fears. "So many fairytale characters have disappeared, Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, The Witch from Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio… all of them, just one day and they're all gone!"

"But what about Faybelle? She's your designated villain now after her mother, the Evil Fairy, swooped in to poison your mother after the Evil Queen disappeared." Blondie asked. "I mean if the Evil Queen was able to survive this long without disappearing then maybe-"

"I can't take that risk Blondie!" Apple shook her head in maidenly despair. "Faybelle's mother may have taken up the torch in an emergency but that does not make Faybelle my villain, the Evil Queen's daughter is destined to be my villain, and she and I were supposed to be best frienemies forever after, it just wouldn't be right if it's not the right villain! …And besides that there is no proof that the Evil Queen and her daughter aren't in danger, that we all aren't in danger, I mean just look at all those fairytale characters who disappeared without a trace!"

"What will you do if you find her?" Blondie asked morbidly curious. "That is if the Headmaster doesn't find her first."

"Save her of course!" Apple took a deep breath and nodded to herself. "I'll warn her, smuggle her back here if it comes to it, I could help her become who she was born to be."

"I managed to find her once." Apple sat up with determined vigor. "And that was at the bottom of an abandoned well in the woods! I can find her again, I know that I can!"

XXX

"MMMPH!" Raven complained into her bedding as someone attempted to shake her awake.

"C'mon Ray-ven mama-witch wants us up early to tell us somethin'" Briar Grimmbook emphasized her words with attempting to yank away the covers from the teenaged witch, only being partially successful seeing as how Raven clung on even when she was pulled briefly upright before falling one her side to the opposite end of the bed.

"Lazy creature." The human teen accused.

"You sound like the Evil Fairy." Raven's voice was muffled due to her refusal of taking her face away from the warmth of the blankets.

"Evil-mother is often very wise about these things lil' sis." Briar pointed out.

The Evil Fairy kinda became Briar's second foster mother (the first being a combined effort between Raven's mother and the Hood-Wolf family) the moment the girl was born; apparently the virtuous Sleeping Beauty could not bear to stay virtuous for a hundred years, the result of her affair with a man that has still as of yet to be identified resulted in Briar, and since the spell used upon Sleeping Beauty and her family was designed to keep youthful life in it's victims, and not freeze them under suspended stasis… Briar sort of kept growing inside Sleeping Beauty's womb.

It wouldn't have come to anyone's attention until much later that something was growing inside Sleeping Beauty if Raven's mother had not decided to hide out in the tower where the princess was being kept in an attempt to evade the people who were looking into why the Evil Queen had yet to show up and poison the future Snow White and soon-to-be queen of Ever After. They were already searching high and low for Simone Hood, the girl who was supposed to play Red Riding Hood who had gone missing in the woods before the Big Bad Wolf could meet up with her (Raven's mother had become close friends with Simone while the two had been roommates for four years and like the witch Simone was hell bent on not becoming a fairytale character so when Raven's mother had discovered a place for them to run off to Simone, who had already had a strained relationship with her family and therefore had nothing to lose, asked to be spirited away somewhere along the trail to her grandmother's place so that everyone would assume that she just took a wrong turn and got lost forever or something).

Red Riding Hood wasn't the only character that had mysteriously gone missing, while Raven's mother had been on her way to Sleeping Beauty's tower Cherrie Breadhouse, the witch who was apart of the Hansel and Gretel story and who was a member of Raven's mother's secret coven back at school, had asked her fellow witch to help her… "disappear" into the oven.

Cherrie, being the kind soul that she was and is, didn't have the heart to leave her counterparts without their story but she couldn't bear the thought of the witchling growing within her womb to be subjected to the same harsh treatment of being labeled both a villain and a cannibal (even though she did give her counterparts plenty of ways to escape; leaving the door open, having a map leading back to civilization tacked up to the privy, giving the two siblings equal amounts of healthily prepared foods, constantly "losing her glasses and she just could not see a thing without her glasses", leaving them alone with the door wide open for long periods of time, making Hansel's cage out of a simple upside-down large box of cardboard with a large rectangular hole on one side and the words "cheap prison that was on sale" written over the hole in magic marker, but to their credit the siblings were bound and determined not to let any of that deter them from their mission of being the "victims" of the dreaded cannibal) so a simple glamour spell for the illusion of fire (even though anybody with half a brain… a half that Gretel obviously didn't have… could feel the lack of heat coming from the oven) and a handy hole, leading to a tunnel, leading to an abandoned well that led to the outside world at the bottom of the big oven (the small oven was where all the real food was cooked), with a brief spell cast to seal the hole leading into the house back up with brick, and to everyone who had not bothered to look very closely (Gretel) the witch had been vaporized by the heat of the flames, never to be seen again.

So now caught in the dilemma of a princess's unplanned pregnancy the Evil Fairy and Raven's mother struck up a deal; nothing would be breathed to anybody on the topic of Sleeping Beauty's illegitimate child (which may complicate the willingness of the future prince that was required to awaken the girl and there was no way that the fairy was going to wake the princess up and risk dishonoring her role as the villain) and a safe place far away from the fairytale realms would be provided as long as the Evil Fairy did not turn in Raven's mother (and later on the deal extended to other unrelated fairytale characters as well once the Evil Fairy became aware of them) and took up the role of Evil Queen in the witch's stead (which had been done with extreme enthusiasm and glee).

So the Evil Fairy left Raven's mother to watch over the progress of Sleeping Beauty's pregnancy, the fetus's development could in theory progress to full term with nothing but the excess magic in the room to help progress it's development however that did not guarantee that the child born would not end up malnourished or with developmental defects due to absorbing magic that was only meant to serve the purpose of keeping everybody in the tower asleep and youthful and not to aid the proper development of a child, and then there was the matter of assisting the birth and then setting up a safe place to raise the child where no one would think to stumble over it or the now not-so-evil, Evil Queen.

It was decided at that juncture to bring in the Good King, a known ally to both women, to help ferry in supplies and food for Raven's mother as well as some company in the months of the third trimester (Raven didn't like to think about it too much- neither did Briar for that matter because she and her mother weren't far away at the time- but it was known that it was somewhere along that point where Raven had been conceived) and aiding the witch and the Evil Fairy during the birth.

As a result Raven and Briar were so much closer with each other than with the other fairytale refugee kids, since it was Briar who mostly grew up in the Queen household and up until she had been old enough to fully understand everything Briar was under the impression that she had come out of her witchy-mama's tummy just like her baby sister Raven had, and even after she finally understood what the adults had been exasperatedly telling her all along (because it had been decided long ago that nothing would be hidden from Briar and Raven) she was fiercely adamant that Raven was still her baby sister and that they had always shared a mother or two in a sense.

Their situation was complicated but it worked.

As if to underline the bleary thoughts on the subject Raven found herself reaching a hand out to grasp at the back of Briar's nightgown as the two padded softly with bare feet through the rooms of their penthouse apartment, just like the witch had always done ever since the two of them were teeny tiny, Briar never commented on it, not even when Maddie Hatter had stayed over and mirrored Raven's actions or when Kitty or Faybelle was there to witness and snicker at the scene before them, Raven never quite knew why Briar never shook her off like she'd expected the human to do after a certain point but she kept it up anyway, if just to have a reliable guide to the kitchen and bathroom in the mornings and to prevent dimly walking into the walls or their mother's home laboratory because she was still half-asleep.

Even so Raven still managed to unexpectedly bump herself into the counter where their family usually ate breakfast.

"Maybe you should try dipping her toes into ice water, always worked with you." Elenore Queen commented to her daughter while she eyed her granddaughter in amusement.

"Oh yeah because I so enjoyed jumping a mile off my bed and shrieking like a banshee first thing in the day." Clawstorm Grimmbook (aka Clawstorm Queen, aka the runaway Evil Queen-who-never-finished-the-story) who looked half asleep herself cast her mother a wintery glare over the rim of her pumpkin spice extra strong coffee to which the elder gleefully ignored.

"We're going to have a teenaged ankle-biter stayin' with us for three days an' two nights starting on Thursday. The kid's father has reached out to us because he needs to have her stay somewhere while I make arrangements with our Wonderlandian friends to get this baby chick over to her new school without anybody being the wiser about her coming from the Monster Realm, or that she is a monster herself." Clawstorm spoke with her usual pre-second cup of coffee irritated bluntness, getting right to the point even though there was the faintest hint of reproach in her tone when the school was mentioned.

"You remember Miss C.A. Cupid from summer camp don't you?" Elenore kindly asked her grandchildren whilst also giving her daughter an exasperated look, clearly thinking that the younger woman's explanation left much to be desired. Raven perked up, suddenly feeling wide-awake. "You keep in touch with her, or so I hear, at any rate your friend will be attending Ever After High, the shock of the unrest that your mother and her little band of rebels has finally caught up with people and now Eros senses a keen need for a creature born and trained in the ways of love magic to be stationed at the school, there appears to be a rather quiet but growing movement of youth and their parents who do not believe in the age-old lie that we would merely disappear like pathetic little wisps if we do not conform to exact scripting or the stories and are turning their backs on either traditional matchmaking or on fairytales all together."

"But they can't know that she comes from here." Clawstorm emphasized gravely, sounding more than a little bitter in the undertones. "Their stances on things that are either too different than what they'd like or things that they consider inherently bad are still very strong to the point where her life might be in danger if they ever found out she was part bone elemental or even if they knew about her growing up in this dimension at all."

"Her reputation as a warrior for love might be in danger but I hardly doubt that they'd try to kill her dear." Elenore held up a finger before her daughter could speak. "And I highly doubt that your old foe Snow White truly understood the full scope of how she treated you would impact our family's standing with the other royal families or that it would harm the lives of others both under our kingdom's rule and those not under our rule, after all most villains who were not in the line of fire between you and her fixation on you made it out fairly well with their reputations and their respect intact if you will recall."

"I'm allowed to be jittery all I want mother, I was the one who was there when all this mess started after all." Clawstorm grouched, mournfully glaring down at the contents of her goblet with thinned lips and hooded eyes. "'M not saying that they're all bad, those fairytale types, but with so much politics and power struggles going on under the pretense of everything being just another day in a rich person's school it pays to be paranoid enough to leave them early before you get hurt, not go running in blindly with your arms out and all exposed for the flaming arrows."

Elenore merely shook her head at her daughter's doom and gloom theatrics. "Your friend will be fine." She emphasized to the wide-eyed children. "She's not a villain, nobody will be able to tell that she's part bone, and best of all she's the got the combined blood lineage of being both a god and a being of love, they'll love her I can guarantee it."