Chapter Text
It took everyone a while to notice.
They knew the Fentons were weird. They knew Danny Fenton was weird. But they didn’t realize just how weird he was.
They knew he wasn’t always this way. Back in middle school, he was actually normal compared to the rest of his family. But he was gone for a few days at the beginning of freshman year, and when he came back, he was different.
It started with small things. He seemed to leave the room right before a ghost showed up. That was explainable, his parents had tech that could track ghosts, Danny probably carried something like that on him, and he was so scared of ghosts that he just left the second he knew they were coming.
But then there were other things, things they couldn’t explain away so easily.
Whenever he left the room in the middle of class, it suddenly got… warmer? And that was weird. They’d heard of ghosts turning a room colder, but the lack of a specific human turning the room warmer was very odd.
Sometimes, the classroom would get warmer without Danny raising his hand, and someone would look back at his seat to find it empty. That raised some questions about how he was leaving the classroom without people noticing, because someone would see if he went out the door, right? And the school’s windows didn’t open, so he couldn’t have left through there.
People started to pay more attention to him, and that was when they noticed the really weird things.
It had been a few months since the beginning of freshman year, and it was now the middle of winter. Danny was in his usual Christmas Grinch mode, which was expected by now. His entire class was used to his attitude around Christmas time. But what was unusual was the fact that he showed up to school every day without even a jacket. Everyone else, including his two friends, came to school wearing a coat and gloves, maybe even a scarf or hat, and this kid walked in with short sleeves and jeans. He never once looked cold.
He actually seemed to be thriving in the cold, looking more refreshed than he had in the previous seasons, like maybe he was getting more sleep.
He also started to keep weird company outside of school. Someone swore they saw him and his friends at the Nasty Burger hanging out with that biker couple Phantom used to chase around. They were pretty sure that guy used to date Danny’s sister, and was presumably a ghost since Phantom used to hunt him down, so what was he doing hanging around with them, especially as afraid of ghosts as he was?
At this point, a group had formed around these conspiracy theories about Danny. They shared information, held meetings, and even had a Discord server. One might even call them a cult. When Wes Weston started yelling about his theory that Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom, the group laughed at him. Not in disbelief, but in pity. They knew better than to let anyone know of their suspicions, and if Wes didn’t shut up soon, they’d have to teach him that being discreet was the best way to keep being able to investigate.
At the end of the year, the weirdest thing of all happened. Danny Fenton started… acting normal? He stopped skipping class, started dressing normally again, and was acting much more like a fully functioning human being. Suddenly, the only weird thing about him was his hair, which had white streaks in it now.
When news of the asteroid was announced two weeks later, the group knew Danny Fenton was somehow going to be involved in whatever came next. Especially when both the Fentons and Tucker Foley became directly involved in trying to solve the issue. The reveal that Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom came as no surprise to anyone involved.
Wes Weston, of course, was bragging about how he was right, but no one paid him any mind.