You'd be forgiven if you thought the girl on the left (a preteen Anne) is the younger self of the girl on the right (Bloom in her mid-teens). In this fanfic, they are.
Her happy place was a very tangible thing, to her, at least. [...] The setting of Madame Morgana's would first fade… then slowly, a new world would appear.
— Excerpt from You Were My Best Friend.
Ten-year-old Bloom Anne Peters is a dork— a total nerd. She reads fantasy novels and draws manga and skipped two grades. But she also dances, and one day her hobby takes her to new worlds that she's never read about... never even dreamed about.
You Were My Best Friend (found in AO3
and Fanfiction.Net), by Tabby Kattene, is a Winx Club fanfic set before the events of canon (when the titular characters were kids) that exploits the similarities between Bloom and Aisha's Childhood Friend, Anne.
Additionally, it's a prequel of sorts to The Darker Side of the Flame, a Rewrite fanfic of the series.
If you dance hard enough, this fanfic can transport you to these tropes:
- Adaptational Intelligence: Bloom is stated to have skipped two school grades, thus hinting at a superior intelligence to her canonical counterpart. At least, in the Book Smart department.
- Adaptational Skill:
- Queen Morgana is proficient enough at dancing to not only be a dancing instructor but also own her own studio.
- In the same vein, Bloom takes dance classes for three years because Mitzi, her friend at the time, started attending ballet classes. It's only ballet first, then jazz, and finally, whatever little she gathered about hip-hop moves.
- Amnesia Missed a Spot: When Bloom turns seven, her dance teacher, Madame Morgana, suddenly disappears and everyone else forgets the woman existed in the first place. Everyone but Bloom. Seeing Bloom is actually a fairy from another dimension, it makes sense she'd remember.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: When Bloom and Aisha meet again at seventeen, Bloom dismisses the similarities between her Childhood Friend Layla and this mysterious princess called Aisha. It's true Aisha is not wearing a beautiful dress but, at this point in canon, Bloom has dealt with all sorts of unexpected, weird magical events — some of them even being about meeting a real person through dreams. Worse even, Layla introduced herself with her full name: Laylaisha.Layla was prim and proper. She would never have been allowed to wear those ratty pants.
- Bizarre Dream Rationalization: When Bloom gets transported to the fairy realm of Andros, she blames her hyperactive imagination. After all, she's just going to her "happy place" by losing herself in dance. The real reason is that her fairy magic, which she doesn't know about, is fueled by positive emotions and thus has been accidentally activated. Since she's a kid, she doesn't really think much about it. Funnily enough, as a teenager and after discovering that fairies are real, she still thinks her encounters with Princess Layla were just products of her imagination.
- Career-Ending Injury: Downplayed and double subverted. Bloom bumps her head on a recently-bought baby piano while performing her usual dancing routine at Madame Morgana's studio. The accident knocks her out for a whole day but it's not really threatening to her ability to dance. However, her overprotective dad freaks out and forbids Bloom from ever dancing again, effectively ending her career. Ironically, she later receives dancing classes in Alfea.
- Childhood Friend: As it turns out, Layla's canonical First Friend Anne was actually Bloom, so the two of them have been friends since they were eight years old even if they had to terminate their friendship rather abruptly — Bloom was forbidden to attend her dancing classes after an unfortunate accident.
- Composite Character: The fanfic's entire premise is based on the idea that Bloom Peters and Anne, Aisha's First Friend, are the same person. Justified given both girls are white-skinned redheads with blue eyes that know how to dance. Regarding this last point, the Winx girls are shown practicing artistic gymnastics in season three and Bloom doesn't seem to struggle at all. Neither Aisha, for that matter.
- Dance of Despair:
- Although downplayed, this is how Bloom initially accesses Andros. After having a rough day in school, where she's ignored because of her geekiness and intelligence, she dances until her problems fade away. Literally.
- A straight example occurs later when Bloom has had enough of her class bullying her and her teachers never acknowledging her. Unfortunately, this leads her to miss the recently-placed baby grand piano on the dance floor, therefore bumping her head on it.
- Dancing with Myself: Justified since, like any person learning how to dance, kid Bloom practices on her own. She mainly dances ballet and jazz, though it's implied she's tried her hand at other styles (such as hip hop).
- Dimensional Traveler: Although accidentally and unknowingly (she thinks she's just imagining it all), Bloom is able to travel to Andros via dancing. For context, Andros is located in the Enchanted Dimension, a portion of the universe (with planetary systems and even galaxies) existing in a different dimension than the magicless Earth — the latter being where Bloom currently lives. The why is probably a mix between Bloom's canonical ability to open interdimensional portals, the fact a fairy's magic is activated by positive emotions, and the place she goes from is owned by a fairy. Additionally, Bloom can only get there if she's in Madame Morgana's dancing studio and, at first, she can only remain there if she keeps dancing.
- First Friend: Kid Bloom is this to Aisha, who up until then, only interacted with her nanny, the royal servants, and, very rarely, her parents; never with kids her age.
- Girl of My Dreams: Subverted. Bloom believes her trips to Andros were products of her imagination, therefore making Layla her Imaginary Friend. Following that, Aisha is a girl Bloom met first in her dreams, as the former is a real person, even if the latter doesn't recognize her. However, both girls were very much awake whenever they interacted with each other as Bloom got there thanks to her magic. It's still a romantic usage of this trope, nevertheless, as this fanfic is the setup for a Bloom/Aisha rewrite of the show.
- Happy Place: Even if she thinks it's all imagined, Bloom's happy place it's the very real Royal Tower of Andros. The reason is that there she can dance without a care for the world and, later, because she met her first best friend there: Laylaisha.
- Have We Met?: Averted. The fanfic ends when Bloom and Aisha meet again but given Bloom's reluctance to believe Princess Aisha is her childhood best friend Layla. Add Aisha's unconscious state and the opportunity to ask this question is left hanging.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Close friendships are something both Bloom and Aisha canonically longed for before meeting the other Winx girls. In You Were My Best Friend, this is given a (positive) twist in the form of allowing the two girls to befriend each other long before the events of canon by means of Bloom's canonical dimension-traveling powers — just with the requirement of dancing to get there.
- I Know Your True Name: Invoked by Bloom but ultimately averted. Thanks to her love for fantasy stories and fairy folklore, Bloom is wary of giving her true name to a person she stumbled upon in a magical world (giving her middle name, Anne, seems to be fine, she reasons). While it's true Aisha is a fairy, fairy magic doesn't work like that in the Winxverse.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: The reason why Mitzi first stops being Bloom's friend and then starts bullying her, bringing the whole school with her (teachers included). Bloom is maliciously nicknamed "little nerd".
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: In the Winx Club canon, the Wizards of the Black Circle only wiped Klaus' memories of his wife Morgana, which left a plot hole — did not anyone notice she was missing? In You Were My Best Friend, this is fixed by extending the amnesia laser to everyone who ever met Morgana. Her dance studio passes ownership to one of the instructors, Ms. Matthews, with no one remembering it used to belong to Madame Morgana.
- One Last Field Trip: After being banned from her dancing classes, Bloom sneaks out to Madam Morgana's studio to say goodbye to Layla, knowing it probably will be the last time they see each other. Especially considering that, as time passes, Bloom starts believing it was all a dream.
- Overly Long Name: Downplayed with Aisha's full name: Princess Laylaisha. However, it's justified since Bloom is a little kid when she decides to just shorten it to Layla because it was too long.
- That Was Not a Dream: Regardless of Bloom's thoughts on the matter, she did visit Andros and met kid Aisha by dancing hard enough. Initially, she's doubtful but she sets her mind after bumping her head on a piano and as she grows up.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Even though Bloom correctly identifies the place she's landed in as a magical land where fairies live, said faires are quite different from the Fair Folk of Earth's mythologies. As a consequence, security measures such as never giving her true name are rendered moot.
