going against nature

It’s been a difficult semester here at McMutton’s Dumb Magic Academy for Stupid Idiots (not the official name of the institute, we must admit), but finally, today’s classes are the last to go before school lets out for the big holiday vacation. For once, the often lax and unmotivated lycéen student Stumpy is in high spirits. Anyone would think it were a Potions day — or better yet, Programming — but no. His mood simply speaks to his eagerness to get the hell out of this creaky castle for two months.

It’s fair to say that magic is not his passion in life. He has not happily scampered down these halls in many a year, it has been too long spent in a dead-end field such as this. Even some of his sisters’ footsteps have begun to slow; a part of him feels vindicated by this, but another part…sad. It’s for this reason that he doesn’t pay much attention when he comes across any of them, and thankfully with them all still being collégienne students in their cinquième year (minus Lavender, whose natural talents earned her being moved up a grade) their paths don’t often cross.

His sisters still have years ahead of them to go, but after these holidays, Stumpy only has to do one more before graduation — and he awaits this day with bated breath. He can finally break out from all this boring tradition and enter the modern world. The modern world with its beautiful, shiny screens and graphics, fabulous typing keyboards that make calligraphy obsolete, little miniature computer devices that don’t require a whole room to keep its machinery; and all these other wonderful things that magic has failed to provide. He’s gotten into trouble for getting lost in daydreams of technology before, but that’s exactly why he came early to class today, for privacy so that he may have his thoughts. Even the teacher isn’t in yet, but Stumpy knows they can’t be very far, because up at the head of the classroom, perched primly on the podium from which the teacher delivers their lectures, is their familiar.

He’s had to face that damn frog all year. The frog has done its part and looked right back at him. Its scrutinous gaze is capable of intimidating even the students who have not seen its power in action — which Stumpy has, as his teacher enjoys putting on demonstrations to the repeated despair of the school cat. Total freak, this guy.

Stumpy prepares his desk, then gingerly removes his own familiar from his deep robe pocket, where it is safe and warm, and sets it down on top of his books. The duckling, blinking sleepily, barely seems to notice the change in surroundings. Stumpy’s familiar, Quack-Quack — his best friend and dearest companion — was one of many eggs that Stumpy and his classmates were instructed to choose from at the beginning of the year. Which they did. The students were told that the eggs would hatch into their first ever familiars, and the school would train them to utilise them. Which they did. The eggs hatched into healthy ducklings, and soon shed their yellow down and grew into slender, white-feathered juveniles capable of strengthening the magic of their masters. The students got to experience this together, and so it had been a great bonding opportunity for all of them. All except Stumpy.

His egg had not hatched. It hadn’t even cracked. He was weeks, eventually months , behind on this crucial year-long assignment, and severely socially handicapped as a result. And academically too, but like, he didn’t care about that as much.

It’s not worth any worry now, though. Quack-Quack may have been late, and he may be smaller and weaker than all the other duck familiars, but none of that mattered from the very moment he hatched. Stumpy loves him and wouldn’t trade him for the world. So he tucks Quack-Quack into the corner of the desk where he can stay for class, and looks forward to all the fun things they’ll get up to during the holiday break.

So, yeah. Magic isn’t all bad, Stumpy supposes.

He looks back up the front and makes eye contact with the teacher’s familiar again. The frog looks like it’s smiling at him. Stumpy buries his head in a book and pretends to read.

It is not a day of learning so much as it’s a day of test scores and feedback getting passed out, a day of reflection on the semesters gone by, stuff like that. The students don’t care about any of that, and lots of them are taking the opportunity to socialise, which the teachers allow because they’re basically checked out too. No toad transformation today. Stumpy just sits at his desk, drawing comics on the back of his graded test papers.

Sure, Stumpy would like to engage with his peers, it’s not that he hasn’t tried to. He’s gone to plenty of lengths trying to make friends in this miserable castle — but no one likes him. Everyone thinks he’s stupid and ugly and dumb, not that anyone has said such a thing, but Stumpy is sure of it all the same. At least the cat lets him scratch its chin every once in a while.

(Although it’s pretty much always been a ploy to try and snatch Quack-Quack. Unsuccessful so far, except for that one time and it was only for a second and it wasn’t a big deal. )

The final bell of the school year rings, and the students are let loose. Hundreds of magically gifted kids and teens, going to and fro, organising days to meet up with each other, or finishing up their packing, or getting ready to make use of the castle while there’s less people around. Not all students go home for the holidays, you see — boarding is still available to those who wish to take it. Lavender prefers to stay at the school during the holidays, short and long, and Stumpy doesn’t know how she can possibly stand it. Thankfully the others know better: home is the place to be. The plan, such as it is, is for the remaining siblings to meet up at the front gate and wait for grandma to pick them up in the minibus, where there’ll no doubt be a fierce battle to the death (that Stumpy almost always wins) over who gets to sit shotgun. He wonders, will Lavender see them off, or will she have gone straight to her room for immediate ghost summoning?

As Stumpy goes over his luggage, his roommate leaves and ignores him when he tries to say goodbye. Quack-Quack nuzzles Stumpy’s hand and he nods in agreement. That guy’s a jerk anyway.

In ten more minutes, he hears whispering outside the dorm room door. Faint, feminine voices of indeterminate number. Stumpy rolls his eyes and wonders just how many of his sisters are out there, complicit in whatever stupid prank Crimson haphazardly decided she wanted to pull on him. Snitchy probably not, but they are all prone to trouble. Leaving Quack-Quack on the bottom bunk bed, Stumpy hunkers down and sneaks across the wooden floor, hand outstretched to grab the handle and fling the door open to ambush the girls before they get to him first.

The door flings open right as his fingers brush the handle, the wood cracking directly into his face, sending him flying back. Bad play on his part; a hit to the head takes you out immediately, and Stumpy is dizzy as he stumbles down on one knee, straining to peer past the smoky, smelly fog that has burst into his room, obscuring his assailants. The ringleader emerges to stand smugly above him, plumes of bright red magic dancing in her hands. Stumpy thinks he hears a song of encouragement — Mimi for sure — and a wail of disapproval — probably Violet — as Crimson points a glowing finger right onto her big brother’s nose.

“I call shotgun,” she says.

There’s a bright flash, and Stumpy sees nothing more.

It’s dark out and the sky is twinkling with stars by the time he awakens; many hours have passed. Stumpy is curled up on a mostly comfortable surface, no doubt the worn-out leather seats of his grandma’s minivan, and his head hurts like hell. On either side he feels crowded, which also makes sense. His brat of a sister…she must have knocked him out so she could sit up the front, dooming Stumpy to the long drive cramped in one of the back rows.

There is an issue with this theory, and it’s that there is no motion, no rumbling of the walls, no hum of the engine. No grandma stink. No silly little sisters around him. His view into the sky is unobscured by the ceiling of any vehicle, and he realises he’s outside. Had they just dragged him out of the van and left him out the front of the house?

Stumpy turns his head, his vision clearing, and sees the wrought iron of the school’s front gates, closed, shutting off the outside world. They’re oddly bigger and thicker than he’s ever seen them, but it figures, it’s probably just some security spell he never noticed before. Although the gaps between the bars…are bigger too? But, as Stumpy climbs up onto his feet to get a better look at his surroundings, he quickly sees that that is not the most pertinent issue he’s facing. He’s on one side of the shut gate, alright. The inside . He was lying on the grass lawn out the front of the head office. At school .

They left without him?! And took his bags and Quack-Quack, too, it seems, because none of that is out here with him. A rotten trick to delay him getting home for the holidays. Stumpy’s furious , and he stamps his foot and jumps up and down, opening his mouth to shout and swear.

He doesn’t hear his own voice, though, only the strangely loud chittering of a squirrel. Good God, he thinks. He’s become selectively deaf. Oh, he’ll get Crimson for this, that’s for sure. He’s going to march right into the head office and have the remaining staff call his grandma back, and this time, he will win the shotgun wars if it takes every ounce of strength in his body!

Now, you and I already know that there’s more to this that Stumpy just hasn’t worked out yet. There’s plenty of merit to having a story told directly from his point of view of confusion and ignorance, but surely it does get tiring after a while. Let’s talk plainly for a minute. Stumpy has not just been left behind, he’s also been transformed into a squirrel; small and red, ecureuil roux, completely incapable of communicating in any spoken human language, as is the nature of most animals. We’re all clear on the details here, but still our dear protagonist must go through the motions of realising his predicament. As he attempts to straighten himself to march on over to the head office, he quickly finds that it is much further away than it should be, nor can he stop himself from hunching down and using his hands to scamper along more easily. And that’s not even mentioning his tail, it’s so big and bristly and he can hardly pay any attention to what…

Tail?

Stumpy knows that he does not, should not, have a tail.

Panic sets in quickly. To anyone out on the lawn, or looking out of their windows, it would seem that a rabid rodent has squeezed through the gate to commit havoc upon the grass, which is a dangerous situation to be in if you’re the rodent in question — any human might feel entitled to move you along, or worse. Stumpy can’t even begin to think about that right now, he’s much too busy freaking out. Where’s his clothes? Where’s his luggage? Where’s Quack-Quack? His sisters did take all this stuff with them, right? Otherwise…

“You there!”

A voice in the darkness. Stumpy’s heart leaps in his weird furry chest under the assumption that he will be saved by some miracle witness to all of these events who’ll surely fix everything for him. He stops running in circles as best he can, visibly shaking as he swings his head all around. He shouts out, still hearing that chittering, as that is now his voice — but he can understand the words. “Help!” he’s shrieking. “Help me!”

“Oh, dear,” says the voice, but still no sign of its owner, just these steady hops through the grass, coming closer, that are so loud and unpleasant now that he’s nearer to the ground. “I’m sorry, I assumed you were trespassing. Are you lost?”

He cries out, “Where are you?” It’s not that he can’t see — his vision is better than it’s ever been, quite frankly — it’s more that his mind is swimming too much to comprehend what he’s seeing. There’s grass. The blades are too big. There’s ants crawling along, and they’re too big, too. Still smaller than he is, but not proportioned right, and it’s weird and gross and weird and—

A frog leaps down in front of him, right in his personal space, peering curiously at him. A green tree frog, about half the size of a red squirrel, but still too big .

The frog says, “I’m right here.”

Stumpy screams.

The frog winces and rears back more on its hind legs to raise its webbed hands up in a placating gesture. “Please calm down, sir! There’s no need to fear. I can take you indoors to safety, would you like that?”

Still at the top of his voice, Stumpy says, “YES.”

“Alright, then.” The frog smiles and begins to turn. “Come with me, and don’t worry about a thing. Everything is going to work out for the best.”

The trek is long as the frog leads Stumpy to the building that contains the dormitories, both for students and teachers alike. The teachers have the highest floors to themselves with the nicest views, while some students are even delegated to the underground levels. Stumpy knows that’s where Lavender, Mimi, Vitamin and Slater’s rooms are, them sharing bunks in pairs of the latter and the former (leaving Lavender alone for the holidays).

There’s a rickety, old elevator that only the teachers are allowed to use, because this awful academy is a classist dump, and that is what the frog takes Stumpy toward once they’re inside. Expertly, impressively, in a single swift jump, the frog presses the buttons to take them up to the top floor. Once the elevator is moving, the frog turns back to Stumpy.

“Feeling better?”

“No,” he answers honestly, and the frog laughs.

“I’m Kaeloo,” it tells him. “Feel free to use whatever pronouns you like for me. And you?”

Stumpy answers with his name and he/him, but it’s entirely on autopilot, as his mind is back to racing again with new information. Kaeloo — that’s what his teacher calls their familiar. No wonder those piercing eyes seem so familiar (pun not intended), they’re the very same as the ones that have watched him all year! All at once, Stumpy actually does feel a little better, being in the company of this animal…and also so much worse.

His teacher has consistently used she/her for Kaeloo while in frog form, switching to he/him under transformation circumstances. Stumpy supposes he’ll adhere to the example that’s been set.

“Kaeloo,” he tells her, trying not to babble, “I’m not really a squirrel, I’m human, I’m a human dude person. Uh, a boy. I mean, I guess , that’s how I usually…” and failing, for the record, “Forget it! I’m not myself! This isn’t how I’m meant to be! I’m a guy! I’m a student! I’m in your class, I know you already! You know me, you know I’m not a squirrel! I can’t be a squirrel! This is so messed up, it’s all wrong, something’s gone so wrong, how could this have—” And he stops.

Kaeloo leans in. “Mm?”

“Crimson. My-my sister,” Stumpy murmurs. “ She did this to me.”

“Oh, no! Why, that’s so mean,” sympathises Kaeloo. The elevator stops, and she pulls the lever to open the cage-like door. “I’m so sorry, Stumpy.” She ruminates on his name for a moment. “Stumpy, yes… I do know you. Back of the class, the hair, the teeth…” She smiles wryly at him. “What an appropriate form you’ve taken.”

“This isn’t funny!” he cries. “I need to change back, I need to go home!”

“Of course, of course,” she says, patting him on the back at an attempt at assurance. Her moist hands are weird against his fur. His fur which is also weird, just in general. “I was only trying to lighten the mood. You’re in a terrible state of shock, Stumpy, and that’s no way to tackle a problem like this.”

“No, no. No! I need to fix this now! ”

The gentle hand slowly but surely becomes a firm, unyielding grip. Kaeloo holds a fistful of Stumpy’s fur in her hand as she continues to smile placidly at him, and Stumpy is filled from top to toe with cold, cold dread. He ought to know better. His teacher’s familiar is not a beast to be trifled with. She may be just a little frog now, but he’s seen time and again what she can become with a wave of a wand.

She doesn’t even have to say anything. Stumpy starts amending his statements right away. “I-I mean, um, no , you’re right. I need to fix this…stress! I’m so stressed.” He wipes away nonexistent sweat off his brow. “Whew.”

Kaeloo’s smile becomes much less strained, much more genuine, her eyes softening. “Don’t worry about a thing,” she says. “Everything is going to work out for the best,” and there’s something about the repeated phrase, the exact words from only just a few minutes ago, that unnerves Stumpy in a way he cannot place.

Their destination is a place Kaeloo calls daycare , a set of two rooms connected by a wide arch in the separating wall. She explains, while perched on the door handle before they go in (Stumpy doesn’t understand why they don’t just go through the catflap), that it is a sanctuary for familiars; if a familiar is lost, they come here to be found by their human master, or rehomed. It’s also a place for animals to test and train themselves, to see if they are appropriate and magically inclined enough to be called a familiar at all. And finally, there are some students who cannot take their familiars with them during the holidays for one reason or another, and so those familiars are housed and cared for here as well, until their master returns to school.

“But of course, we will make every effort to get you home as soon as possible,” Kaeloo says.

Stumpy never knew this place existed, and marvels at the grand enormity of it all before he remembers that he’s a squirrel and the rooms are probably normal-sized. He’s going to have to get used to that, he fears, just hopefully not for forever — the thought comes unbidden, and Stumpy hiccups in an attempt to swallow his distress. Forever. No . No one said anything about forever ; Kaeloo is going to help him, he is going to get turned back to normal.

The first room is boring. Places to sit, books to read, all human size. A big desk with no one sitting there at the moment. There are some animals here — a snake and owl are the most noteworthy — who look over at Kaeloo and Stumpy with mild interest as they enter, but there’s no more activity than that. Stumpy keeps his eyes glued to the ground for now, not liking snakes even at the best of times. Further along into the second room it’s much more interesting, with plenty of toys and activities, places to run and jump and sit, tunnels to play in — food dispensaries of all kinds, and Stumpy’s stomach rumbles as he catches sight of the assorted nuts that are available. The moment passes and he retches in disgust, imagining having to share meals with these actual, real life animals, and hits himself in the gut to tell it to pipe down.

Kaeloo directs his attention to one of the walls, lined from the floor to the ceiling with mounted pens, cages, dens, beds, even dollhouses. An animal apartment complex. Then she points up even higher, and he sees it, knowing full well that he’d never have noticed if she hadn’t shown him. The light in the centre of the ceiling is beautifully crafted, blown and coloured layers of glass in the shape of a lotus flower, hanging a little like a chandelier. But that’s not the fun part. Following Kaeloo’s green finger, he sees shapes inside the glass, and though he cannot see it from this angle he’d bet his new tail that there’s a hatch up at the top to get in.

“That’s my room,” Kaeloo tells him. “I’m never far away, so don’t be scared. If you have any worries, any at all, just call out and I’ll hear you.”

“How do you fit?” asks Stumpy, and Kaeloo laughs politely.

“It’s just the right size, don’t worry.”

Before he can stop himself, “Even when you’re a toad?” and the polite laughter stops dead, as does the chattering of every animal in the entire room, whether they were within earshot of this conversation or not. In one second, it’s all become tense and silent. Stumpy’s ears twitch and fold back without any conscious input — even without seeing the wide, fearful eyes of the rats and lizards, the various birds, some rabbits…a dog? Just one dog? (don’t get distracted, Stumpy) — as he bows his head apologetically, much the same way he does as a human when he knows he’s about to be scolded.

After what feels like an excruciating age, Kaeloo says, “I have plenty of accommodations for my different forms,” in a much lighter and more airy tone than Stumpy could have anticipated. It looks like it’s the same way for all the other familiars, as the dozen or so animals in this room all visibly sigh with relief and return to their business.

Slowly, Stumpy cracks his eyes open one by one and raises his head. “Sorry,” he says.

“For what?” Kaeloo asks, entirely rhetorically — this is not a topic up for legitimate discussion. She hops onward, to the animal apartments, and any familiars in her way quickly get out of it. “Come on, Stumpy,” she calls back at him, “I’ve already decided the perfect spot for you to sleep, and I have a special surprise for you!”

He takes another big look around the room, at the different animals in here, all of whom seem to have an eye on him, and feels just as unwelcome as he does in class. In class, out on the lawn, anywhere where there’s anyone, and now here. They’re already lining up to reject him. The glorious room and its many mazes and games cannot bring him any joy for as long as he knows he’s ostracised. Stumpy inhales deeply, smelling the world anew, with far more detail and clarity than his human nose could ever provide, and exhales out his mouth. Resigned to be an outcast, Stumpy plods along after Kaeloo, to the dollhouse fashioned in the shape of a cut log.

Whatever this surprise is, it couldn’t possibly be…

A sound. Like a bird call, but not quite right. A little peep, resembling a quack.

Stumpy jerks to attention, ears pricked and tail fluffed, scanning his surroundings, but he needn’t look far at all. Kaeloo sits proudly beside the log dollhouse, and out of the three-walled rooms pops a yellow-feathered head. The next thing Stumpy knows, there’s a duckling, the size difference being about the same as his sisters are to his human body, waddling towards him, and he’s running over to the duckling to meet him. They clash and embrace each other.

“Quack-Quack! Buddy!” Tears have sprung to Stumpy’s eyes. He feels Quack-Quack hugging him back with his little wings. “It’s me! And you’re here!” He breaks the hug and takes in the sight of his familiar — no, his friend — on this brand new scale. “Say something to me, pal! I can understand you now!”

Quack-Quack does a proud sort of shimmy, like straightening out his back and puffing out his chest for this moment of triumph. He says, “Quack.”

Wow. Amazing.

Having moved to Stumpy’s side, Kaeloo explains, “Quack-Quack is different from the other familiars. He’s a late bloomer, as you know. Taking so long to hatch, well…it was a big effort for him. When he speaks, you’ll only hear his animal sound. But in time and with practice, you should be able to understand him fluently despite that! Isn’t that exciting?”

“I don’t care how long it takes, buddy,” Stumpy says to Quack-Quack, not even looking Kaeloo’s way. “I’ll understand you.”

Previously, Stumpy has wondered if Quack-Quack, being an animal with magical capability and all, has been able to understand his human words. There hasn’t been a way to tell such a thing. But now as a squirrel, he knows that Quack-Quack can, no matter what form Stumpy is in. Because they’re best pals, and will always know each other without question.

Kaeloo seems pleased that her surprise went down well, and bids the two of them goodnight; the light goes out at 11pm and plenty of familiars are nocturnal in nature, but she encourages Stumpy to keep his normal sleep schedule unless he finds it too difficult to ignore his animal instincts. Quack-Quack, naturally, joins him. They keep in close quarters with Stumpy settling himself in a doll’s bed that’s slightly too small but has a comfortable, quilted cover, and Quack-Quack nestling into a small but fluffy towel.

Stumpy gets some sleep, and wakes some more hours later. It’s still dark and the daycare is quiet, and his heart thumps with fear and anxiety. It quells quickly enough, as Quack-Quack awakens alongside him and keeps him company. The two chatter back and forth, as quietly as they can, to get a handle on communicating more fluently, and Stumpy is amazed to find that it’s coming quicker to him than he expected. It’s not a perfect translation, but he can get the general idea of what Quack-Quack is trying to tell him.

Which is good, because Quack-Quack has something important to share. Again, it’s not perfect, but Stumpy listens carefully, and hears the rest of his own story.

In a flash of bright light, Crimson cast a sedation spell that would leave Stumpy prone, defenceless, in a daze. Violet and Mimi entered after her, and proceeded to unpack his luggage, which mostly consisted of opening up bags and dumping the contents on the floor. Crimson took a comic and the secret stash of savings he’d been hiding in a sock. Witnessing the horror, Quack-Quack was quite distressed, but he stared at Stumpy’s limp body and focused hard, giving his best effort to strengthen Stumpy’s magic. It worked — to an extent. Stumpy was able to stand, but he was delirious and unaware of himself.

Mimi and Violet noticed and squealed and scampered out, Violet having to pick up her bags that she’d brought along on this devious excursion. The rest of the sisters had already placed their luggage out the front of the school, where they were running now (if only Vitamine had been on this mission, it would have gone a lot faster). But Crimson wasn’t going anywhere yet. She stayed to face down her brother and his sudden capability of standing. She cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders in preparation, and Quack-Quack could only watch helplessly as she blasted Stumpy with another spell, one that did not take immediate effect. It was while the two of them were tearing out of the dormitory building and across the lawn to the front gate that Stumpy changed. One moment, a young man (not necessarily all the time, but that’s his business and not yours) and the next moment, a squirrel.

Quack-Quack did not directly see that last part, but now that he’d seen and caught up with Stumpy, it goes without saying that he didn’t need to.

Stumpy asks him, “How did you know it was me? When I showed up?” Perhaps Kaeloo could have told him, but the timeline of that doesn’t quite make sense. Whatever, it doesn’t matter.

“Quack.” But of course. Quack-Quack just knew. As surely as he knows himself, he knows Stumpy.

Filled with renewed hope and faith that Kaeloo is right and everything really will turn out for the best, Stumpy curls back up, grabbing hold of his tail both in acceptance and for comfort, and drifts into a much more peaceful sleep.

It is difficult to go against one’s nature. This is the case for humans and animals, magical and not. Problems often arise when a being isn’t fully aware of their nature — knowledge of it may not be needed, but it certainly helps . Most of the time, I’m sure we can agree, it’s good to have an idea of what’s going on with yourself.

Mr Cat knows his nature. His belief goes that he’s happy with it and doesn’t have a need for it to be validated by anyone; he’s got his life completely figured out. This gig at the school with all the annoying human children — it’s not perfect , but he’s got what he needs. Plenty of space to sleep and play; food to eat and a roof over his head. Soft hands to pet him. Better than being alone out on the streets, a potentiality that he remains ever-anxious about even at his most clear and sober moments. He doesn’t feel worried now, though. Why would he? Not when there’s a new toy to play with.

It’s late morning when Stumpy’s eyes snap open and he finds himself face-to-face with the school cat. He thinks, oddly enough, of the ants from last night out in the grass. Having completely changed size, everything looks new. Those ants, they were like the size of mice — and now this cat… Practically as big as a truck! Being true to his own nature, when Stumpy sees this he screams and scrambles to hide, and the cat laughs at him, snapping his jaws in mocking threat.

Quack-Quack bravely flings himself in front of the fearsome beast to protect his friend. Mr Cat switches his attention to the easier prey, swiping swiftly and mercilessly at him with his paws. Now that is just unacceptable. Stumpy may be a coward, but he’ll never back down when it’s someone he cares about (times like these he’s kinda thankful there aren’t many) getting hurt. Shrieking a desperate and vengeful war cry, he turns back and launches himself at the huge cat’s face, kicking and clawing in an all-out attack.

“I’ve got him! Run while you still can!” Stumpy cries, wriggling and squirming as Mr Cat redirects again. He chomps on Stumpy’s tail so when he loses his grip and drops, he’s left dangling above the carpet. Still swinging his fists as best he can, to his credit. Then Quack-Quack comes in with a little ducky haymaker. It does nothing.

And, well, Mr Cat gets bored easily. He drops Stumpy and sits, licking his paws clean. “Relax,” he says all casually. “I’m just joking around.”

Having landed right on his head, Stumpy needs to get himself realigned, but that doesn’t stop him from snarling, “You attacked me!”

“I was welcoming you,” Mr Cat corrects him. “Get a sense of humour! You’re almost as bad as the frog. Who, by the way,” he lowers his head to examine and sniff Stumpy closely, “told me we’ve met, but…” Sniffs again, then wrinkles his nose in distaste. “I’ve never seen one of your kind here before.”

Quack-Quack helps Stumpy up to his feet, and they dust each other off before turning back to glare at the cat looming above. Tall and menacing, orange with brown markings, and a swishing tail that betrays a great deal of thoughts behind those eyes, unlike his many famous internet video counterparts. He looks like a nasty piece of work — but also, from this angle, a lot cooler than when he was just the random cat that would sleep on classroom window sills and knock people’s stuff off their desks for no reason other than his own amusement.

Cooler…but still a menace that’s tried to run off with Quack-Quack, and now him! So Stumpy will definitely be keeping a close eye on this fellow.

“We have met,” he tells Mr Cat. “I’m usually a human.”

“Eh. I don’t care for humans,” Mr Cat replies. “Except the hot librarian. From where I’m sitting, nutcracker, you’re probably way better off staying this way. I could always use a sidekick.” He tilts his head down at Stumpy, licking his chops. “Or a snack.”

“I’m not staying this way.”

“Suit yourself,” says Mr Cat with a big, full-body stretch. “But you won’t have access to every inch of this castle without me. How else are you gonna find someone to transform you back, huh?”

A stark rebuttal; “Quack!”

Mr Cat hisses at the duckling. “Kaeloo’s not gonna get it done for you. Trust the professionals .”

Stumpy takes a good minute to consider this. The thing that ultimately tips him over the edge into accepting Mr Cat’s weird and counter-intuitively hostile offer of help is the simple fact that Kaeloo isn’t around. She hasn’t shown up, coming down from the lotus chandelier, even when she promised she wouldn’t be far away. Stumpy doesn’t mistrust her or anything, but every moment he’s not trying to fix his situation is a moment wasted. He turns to Quack-Quack and gives him a firm nod, which Quack-Quack returns. He doesn’t trust Mr Cat for a whisker, but he does trust that he and Stumpy can handle themselves if the need arises.

And so the three of them leave the daycare through the catflap in the first room, and walk the long halls of the dorms, searching for a worthy mage to solve Stumpy’s problem.

It would be so much easier if 98% of the population hadn’t gone home for two months. They traverse almost all of the building — not bothering with the underground dorms, after Mr Cat warns that they’re a cold and a waste of time — looking for help, but some additional problem always crops up. For one thing, none of the few remaining students can understand what a travelling trio of a cat, squirrel, and duck could possibly want from them. None of them speak a human language, and they don't have anyone around with enough of a magical connection with them to understand the familiar language, either. Mr Cat isn’t even a familiar, he’s a normal cat with no magic to him at all.

“What? That’s nuts!” says Stumpy. “If that’s true, how can we be talking to you right now, huh?”

“Because cats are superior beings, even when they’re not magic. Everyone knows that.”

“ Quack .”

Mr Cat slaps him down. “Watch your beak!”

Most kids react favourably to the trio. They stop to give one or three of them a pat, taking a moment to note their collective cuteness before going back on their way, but that’s about it. None of them can do any transformation magic because it’s much too advanced. Even Stumpy hasn’t learned any, and doubts he ever will even if things get put back to normal. As we’ve established, magic is not his passion and this whole experience of it being used against him isn’t doing anything to help matters.

In the end, the whole day goes by with no progress made, just a terrible ache in Stumpy’s feet and a long way back to the daycare. Maybe once he’s more used to this body, he could move much faster and easier, but it’s not like he was born a scampering squirrel. He has to take the time to learn. And he doesn’t want to learn — what is this, some kind of school for animals? No, it’s a school for stupid witches, and he needs to get back to being one of those as soon as possible, so he can get OUT of here as soon as possible.

More than anything right now, Stumpy misses his bedroom at home, but second to that comes his room here. The campus surroundings may be known to him, but it’s all wrong; if there’s anything that would feel right, it’d be his own space. So, he asks Mr Cat to take them back to the dorms, where they can stay in Stumpy’s room instead of the daycare.

“Just stick with me,” Mr Cat says. “I’ve got good spots all around the place. We can get you back to your room, or your precious kindergarten or whatever, tomorrow.”

“But—” A crucial piece of the puzzle returns to mind. “Aw, man. Daycare . Kaeloo told me to stay there. What if she thinks I’m not serious about turning back, or… Do you think she’ll be mad at me?”

Mr Cat laughs, a fondness permeating his voice. “Yeah, probably. Go toad on you.”

“Well, she’ll need my teacher to do the transformation magic for her,” scoffs Stumpy. “So maybe I’ll ask them for help, who knows?” Through the sarcasm, it’s mostly terror at considering getting pummelled until he’s nothing more than a squished, fuzzy stain — but there’s a solution to be found in the fog as well. When Stumpy glimpses it, he can hardly keep himself from jumping in excited and nervous energy. “My teacher!”

Mr Cat snorts to make his disinterest in this particular breed of human known. But Quack-Quack is fast on the uptake, and claps his wings together in shared confidence.

“Quack!” After this whole day of more time spent hearing him, Stumpy grows more certain that he understands his best friend even better, and what he means now is, “If your teacher can change Kaeloo, they can change you, too!”

Stumpy twirls in a circle, his tail following after as he taps his little feet. “I have to get back and find her, even if she is mad at me. This is my ticket to freedom! Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”

“Because you’re afraid of the toad,” Mr Cat says very matter-of-factly, lying down on his side, “and your brain is the size of a peanut.” He rolls on his back to be facing away. “Accept your fate, nutcracker.”

Stumpy cannot help but wonder what fate he means by that — staying a squirrel forever, or getting torn into pieces by a feral amphibian? At the moment, it doesn’t matter. Once again he feels a ray of hope shining from above, warming his head much like sunshine, like a beam from the setting sun. Which is what it is; from where the three of them have stopped on the outside pavement pathway, the sunset falls upon them for a short spell of its pleasant temperature.

It’s the little things. Stumpy didn’t really appreciate them before. Funny, that.

Mr Cat leads the way to one of the ground floor dorms, where he yowls at the shut door and knocks his side against the wood. Stumpy and Quack-Quack watch him do this, and he looks back at them like they’ve insulted him. Before a discussion on conduct can begin, the door opens and a young woman steps out. Stumpy doesn’t know her personally, but does recognise her as one of the students a year ahead of him, which makes no sense. She definitely should have gone home; she should have graduated . Yet here she is all the same.

The inside of the dorm room is extremely customised, the furniture and items here all very pink and sparkly and fluffy. There’s fairy lights strung on the walls rather than an overhead ceiling light, which gives the place a dim look, which lends a cosy quality to the place, but Stumpy can’t help but also find it…foreboding.

He and Quack-Quack figure out the story pretty quickly, and it’s that this (ex?) student gets to have all the comforts and trimmings she wants (daughter of a teacher?) and Mr Cat has opted to take advantage of these perks as often as he pleases by establishing a rapport. He’s clearly a familiar face to the girl, as she picks him up in her arms right after opening the door, nuzzling him in greeting and taking him straight over to a plush lounge. Before the door shuts again, Stumpy and Quack-Quack slip inside and promptly find themselves lost in a shag rug, which isn’t ideal, but not bad .

“Quack?” Quack-Quack wants to know if this is the librarian Mr Cat said he liked, and gets ignored entirely. Stumpy’s sticking by his theory of this being a teacher’s kid.

There’s a cage under the bed. Two cages.

“Hey, don’t make me debase myself for nothing,” Mr Cat says down to them from his perch on the student’s lap. “I’m going to all this effort so you two can sleep comfortably tonight. Find some pillows to crawl in and it’ll be over faster.”

“Thank you for visiting me,” says the student, to which he replies, “No problem, toots,” and both Stumpy and Quack-Quack freeze in fear.

But there’s no reaction from her, and Stumpy remembers the whole language barrier thing. Phew! He thinks, maybe once all of this is over, he’ll tell this girl about his adventure and they can both laugh about it. Or maybe she’d freak out and he’d get punished for sneaking into the room of a fellow student. After all this trouble he’s already been in, he decides hell no to that.

Whoever this girl is, she’s living the high life. Stumpy never expected a television to be capable of existing on these grounds, that’s why he hadn’t thought anything of the box she had up on a shelf, but as soon as she turned it on—! It’s the light at the end of a dark tunnel. He’s gone far too long since he last watched television. Far too long since he’s been home.

His grandma springs to mind. Watching television with her after a long semester away…that had been their routine for many years now. And it would have been exactly something like what’s on now, some trashy, fake, shallow reality show competition — Stumpy’s grandmother has a great sense of humour, Mr Cat actually kind of reminds Stumpy of her. She sticks it to those vapid supermodel people every time in just the perfect way, leaving Stumpy laughing and laughing, even as he’s gotten older. His sisters have joined the two of them on some of this deliberate watching of bad TV, but the girls all have their own interests and their own special way of spending time with grandma. This is Stumpy’s.

Mom told them, grandma only has a few years left in her, and to take advantage of any time they could spend with her before it was too late.

That’s how he should have spent last night. It’s what he could be doing right now. Instead, he’s wrapped himself up in a discarded t-shirt, sitting huddled under the bed of a stranger as he peeks out to sneak a look at the screen too high for him to see all of. And most importantly, stuck in a shape that is not his own.

Quack-Quack must sense the sadness that grips at Stumpy in the chest, because he comes over and sits down. Stumpy leans on him and feels a little better. He’s just going to have to put these thoughts of home aside for now and try to enjoy the dumb dating game without grandma’s quick wit.

The television is on for about two hours before the girl goes to sleep. Mr Cat is curled up on the lounge with a mouse toy she gave him. The fairy lights are still on, just on a dimmer setting, so Stumpy ventures back out to the main floor of the room, keeping an eye out for anything of interest. It takes some getting used to, but he successfully climbs up onto the desk and starts to rummage through what’s there, looking for some kind of phone, computer, or fax machine. But no such luck. He shimmies back down via the pole of the swivel chair and lands safely on the ground — and his heart just about stops.

Under the bed. In one of the cages. There’s a sharp set of eyes, glinting in what little light there is. But with his new night vision, Stumpy doesn’t require any at all to be able to see the outline of an animal only a little bigger than him — and the outline of a monster that dwarfs them all, even Mr Cat. These must be the girl’s familiars, but Mr Cat hadn’t mentioned there were any! Stumpy wouldn’t have come in if he knew he was treading on someone else’s turf, that would be a total jerk move to do on purpose. But it’s too late now, of course. There’s nothing for it but to try to make amends for this terrible offence.

Stumpy goes to the opening of the cage, staring into it. “Hello?”

“Hello yourself!” snaps back the smaller of the beasts, hopping forward and headbutting Stumpy right in the face. A flash of fur and a flapping of floppy ears — it’s a rabbit. A rabbit is attacking him, smacking and kicking wildly. She’s not being very effective at actually hurting him, but she’s definitely making a statement with all this action. “Back off! This is no place for a stinking squirrel!”

Stumpy sees no better way to respond than start hitting her back, and in no time it has evolved into an all-out slap fight between them. Just like her to him, he doesn’t seem to be doing any damage at all, but it’s the principle of the thing; there must be a winner, and neither participant can back down now. In any other context such an immediate competitive spirit might just be a good foundation of friendship between strong-willed folk, but clearly we’re getting caught on the wrong foot here.

“I’m not a squirrel!” Stumpy cries as he jabs the rabbit in the nose. “I’ve just been turned into one, you dumb bunny!”

Pretty growls and doubles her assault. She grapples Stumpy and the two of them go rolling out from under the bed, scratching and biting all the way without pause.

“Get out of here!” she demands.

“I didn’t come on my own!” he snaps back.

“Yeah,” Pretty says in an unimpressed huff. “I saw your chicken back there.”

“He’s not a chicken!” Stumpy accidentally elbows himself. “And I’m not here to fight!”

“Then stop fighting!”

“You stop first!”

Neither do. Truly, this would make for an entertaining sight for a human observer; two small animals seemingly trying to kill each other but failing terribly. Are they putting a serious effort toward committing homicide? Unlikely, but they’re also not not trying.

“I’m here to win,” Stumpy amends.

“I can go all night,” Pretty retorts.

“I can go all night and all day! I’ve got sisters, sister!”

“I’m no sister of yours , mister!”

The two of them have been so absorbed in their fierce battle, Stumpy had no opportunity to notice the giant creature coming out of its cage and approaching them. He has no idea that with his next push, he’s knocking Pretty back into Eugly, who now has a reason to take over for her. The much larger rabbit advances, making a move to flatten Stumpy under her feet.

He goes, “Eek!” but really need not be concerned. Not only has Quack-Quack thrown himself in the mix, but they can all hear Mr Cat yawning and waking up atop the lounge. He’ll come in and break this up, but the only problem with that is that both pairs think he’ll be siding with them against the other.

All heads turn up to look, then back at each other, the four of them trading significant and varying degrees of savage glances. Then Mr Cat jumps down on the floor, in that very graceful way that cats do, to put himself in the centre of it all.

“Couldn’t wait to get the bloodbath started without me, could you?”

“Mr Cat,” grumbles Pretty, retreating a little further into her sister’s endless fluff. “The agreement was that you could visit, not any filthy animal you find off the street!”

“Listen here, lady,” begins Stumpy, only for Mr Cat to whap him in the face with his tail.

“You mean these animals? Oh, such poor wretches,” says Mr Cat, shaking his head. “I was only trying to provide them shelter for the night. Wouldn’t you do the same? Don’t you have any sense of charity?”

“ Charity? ” Pretty spits. ”Don’t crap on my floor and call it a treat!”

Mr Cat just laughs like everything is all squared out, and steps back beside Stumpy. At least he’s indicating that he’s on their side and Pretty doesn’t seem to be pushing the issue any further than continuing to glare, but Stumpy is all riled up. He bites down on his own tail to keep from starting an argument with this rabbit for no good reason. She rubs him the whole wrong way, but he couldn’t begin to describe how. Maybe it’s just because rabbits shouldn’t be pink, but if that’s the issue then he’s entirely forgetting that magic has done far more unusual things than changing an animal’s colour.

Quack-Quack clears his throat before he joins in the negotiation. Very calmly, he holds out his wing in an appealing gesture. “Quack.” There couldn’t possibly be a better thing to say in this situation. His argument is flawless, no one in their right mind could disagree with him; even the stoniest of hearts would be swayed.

Eugly makes a rumbling sound, and Pretty crawls out from underneath her, peering at Quack-Quack and Stumpy with fresh eyes and much less hostility. After having a long think and a short sniff, she says, “Okay. I guess I accept your apology. I’m sorry, too. You guys can stay the night, as long as you don’t bother me or my sister.”

“What about your mistress?” asks Stumpy, pointing up at the bed. “Can we bother her?”

“She’s no mistress of mine,” hisses Pretty (without acknowledging the follow-up question, so technically they have permission to bother the human). “I’m just stuck with her.”

With a note of irritation in her voice like a healed-over angry scar, this sounds like the talk of a familiar that’s been rehomed. Stumpy feels kinda bad, but he’s not entirely sure for who. “If it helps any, I’m not really a squirrel,” he confesses as if he hasn’t been saying it repeatedly and often. “I’m a student, like her. Quack-Quack here,” he wraps his arm around his shoulders, “is my familiar.”

“Quack,” repeats Quack-Quack, to reiterate that the story is true, and they really don’t mean any harm upon the bunnies and this whole thing is a misunderstanding. The large one makes a receptive sound like she believes it, but Pretty’s face contorts as if she’s being forced to taste something awful.

She asks, “Did Kaeloo put you up to this?”

Stumpy is baffled. “To what?”

“To come here and make fun of me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I told you already, I brought him. He wasn’t sent,” says Mr Cat, kneading the rug. “If Kaeloo’s doing anything it’s just to help the kid get back to normal.” He rolls his eyes. “Allegedly.”

Pretty hates this even more, gritting her teeth as her whole body begins to tremble. “That’s ridiculous, you’re talking nonsense. I can’t… I don’t believe a word of it!”

“You don’t have to, funny bunny. It’s got nothing to do with you,” Mr Cat replies. “We can all just hang out until morning, then we’ll be on our way. No more harm, no more fowl .” He grins, showing off his fangs, looking at the others in turn for anyone who’ll appreciate his joke.

No one does. Tragic. Instead, Pretty says to Stumpy, “Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me. By the time I’m up in the morning, I want you out of here.” She turns her cotton tail on him, and makes quick work heading back under the bed into her cage. Before disappearing, she adds one last instruction. “And don’t come back! ”

Eugly lingers for a moment. Stumpy gets overall better vibes from her, that she’s more patient and pleasant — but nonetheless loyal to Pretty, and so after a couple more muttered communications with Quack-Quack, she also returns to her cage. No matter what, she must stay with and support her kin.

“We can hang out without them,” Mr Cat suggests. “Right, boys? Huh? Nutcracker, I caught you watching the TV. I can work the remote. Come on, it’ll be a guy’s night.”

It’s a generous offer and in a better state of mind Stumpy might be able to appreciate that, but he’s not. His state of mind…it’s low indeed, so he doesn’t reply. Doesn’t say anything more. He just plods away, dragging his feet through the jungle of the shag rug. There’s nothing left to do apart from relocate his t-shirt blanket and wait for the night to pass.

Quack-Quack looks at Mr Cat like he’s trying to communicate something extremely important. Mr Cat doesn’t pick up on what it’s supposed to be. Whatever it is, words can’t suffice for now. And in the morning when Pretty emerges again from her cage, the guests are gone just like she ordered, only for her to find that she’s not happy about it.

It’s true what they say about thinking before you speak, and it’s something Pretty struggles with. Such is her nature, and we know what it’s like to go against that, don’t we?

Kaeloo isn’t mad. In fact, Kaeloo is relieved. She tells Stumpy that she was very worried, but glad to see him still in one piece. Mr Cat makes some joke about her wanting to pull Stumpy into pieces herself that everyone pretends they don’t hear. Kaeloo thanks him for looking out for her friends and dismisses him, in quite an offhand manner as well, so it’s almost certainly because of that that Mr Cat makes a point of not leaving.

“We’re friends?” Stumpy asks Kaeloo.

“Of course we are,” she says. “We’re more than a teacher and student, right? Don’t you want to be my friend?”

“You’re not my teacher,” Stumpy points out. “You’re not a teacher at all.”

She waves him off with a short laugh of ambiguous sincerity. “Oh, you know what I mean. Now, come on! We’re off to the library to see if there’s any books on your condition.” And she starts to hop away.

Stumpy is reluctant to follow along with those instructions. “We’re not going to see my teacher? Your master?”

Kaeloo freezes in her tracks. “Why would we do that?”

“Well, they know transformation magic. They do it to you all the time. It should be easy.” His words are left hanging. “Right?”

A short moment that feels like a long eternity passes, then Kaeloo turns back around to face him. Her eyes are wide and sad. “Oh, Stumpy. I’m so sorry.” Gentle, but firm. “That’s exactly the thing I hoped you wouldn’t say. I didn’t want you to be disappointed. You see, a mage can perform transformation magic on their familiar with practice, but it takes many years and a great deal of power to use it freely on anyone. My…” the word catches in her throat, “ahem, master — is strong enough to do it to me, but only to me. Do you understand?”

What comes after hopelessness after it’s practically all you can feel? Stumpy’s mind begins to tick as it searches for the answer.

He says, slowly, carefully enunciating each word, “My kid sister did this to me.” He goes quiet, then says, much more loudly and disjointedly in a way to emphasise each part of the sentence, “My kid sister. Did this. To me.”

What comes after hopelessness? Oh, right. Fury.

“And you expect me to believe this bull? It makes no sense!” Stumpy shouts, “That my stupid brat of a sister is strong enough to do this to me and your guy is too weak to reverse it?!”

“Ah, well,” Kaeloo muses, doing something of a shrug, as if Stumpy weren’t a step away from screaming in her face. She smiles toothily at him, and through the blind rage Stumpy still knows basic biology. Frogs do not, shouldn’t have, teeth. “Gifted children crop up at the most inconvenient times. I suppose you’ll have to learn more about it when your sister gets back from vacation. It would be fascinating to see what else she’s capable of! Until then, there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do. Aside from escorting you to the library, naturally.”

Stumpy feels like he’s going to vomit up all of his internal organs, or that they’ll come spewing out the other end. His fists are clenched so tightly that his hands, his whole arms, are shaking. Quack-Quack places a wing on his shoulder, but the contact makes Stumpy roar unintelligibly as he lashes out, shoving Quack-Quack.

Kaeloo’s face twitches into a stern look. “Now, Stumpy, that’s no way to behave.”

“ Aarrghh! ” cries Stumpy. “Listen to yourself! You don’t even care! ” and gets down on all fours and hurries away, as quick as any natural-born squirrel, much too fast for any of them to catch up — even Mr Cat. He goes all the way down the hall and turns, out of sight of the animals he left behind.

Quack-Quack quietly peeps to himself, hanging his head. Kaeloo goes over to him and pats his head.

“Don’t worry, he’ll come back.”

“Will he?” asks Mr Cat incredulously, continuing to gaze down the hall where Stumpy tore off. His ears turn back on his head as he does this, clearly thinking much more than he’s saying.

“Of course,” says Kaeloo.

“You sound pretty sure of that.” Mr Cat’s ears reset as he turns his head to face her, hunkering down into a partial loaf. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Plenty of things, Mr Cat, and all of them for good reasons.” She starts leading Quack-Quack through the open door into daycare, saying over her shoulder. “You’re not a member of staff, for one.”

“Then make me one!” Mr Cat calls.

Her voice carries through the door, “Give me a reason!” right before it slams shut.

Stumpy runs and runs, and eventually goes flying off a balcony. It’s entirely by accident, he just wasn’t paying enough attention to where he was going or where he was to begin with, and the next thing he knows he’s soaring through the air, sailing away. The rush of wind against his fur, the intense whistling in his ears, and his own screams of terror. This is the end.

It’s not really. He’s a squirrel, he can survive a three-storey drop no problem — and he doesn’t even go that far, because the school courtyard has plenty of trees to land in, and that's exactly what he does. Also entirely by accident, but this time for the better.

Stumpy takes some time to hyperventilate and put his hands on every part of his body to check that he’s really alive. He looks down and briefly sways on his feet, but apart from that he finds that he’s standing firmly on one of the tree branches without any issue, impressively so. His balance is pretty good, helped out a lot by his tail. After sitting for a few minutes, to fully catch his breath, get his bearings and clear his head of the madness of the past 48 hours, Stumpy stands, shakes himself, and starts reverse climbing down the trunk (not quite ready to face the ground head on, understandably). Little by little. Branch by branch. It takes a while, but he’s not in a rush. After all, it looks like he really will be stuck this way — maybe not forever, but two months may as well be.

And that’s only on the condition that Crimson would be willing to break the spell. What a joke. That’ll be one ticket to forever , please — coming right up!

The thought of her smug face breaks Stumpy’s concentration, and his feet slip and he’s falling again, too far down the tree to find a fresh branch to grab onto, and flailing too wildly to go for the trunk. Well, that was fun for the five seconds it lasted. It’s not like he needs a win in this trial of consecutive failures or anything.

He drops like a stone onto the grass below, belly on the ground and limbs comically splayed, foot twitching a little. He grazes some foreign material and picks himself up enough to lean on his elbows, and turns behind him to see he’s landed right next to a bookbag, carefully placed against the bottom of the tree trunk — and sitting not far away at all, the owner of this bag sitting cross-legged in the pleasant shade of the tree as the sun shines directly down on the rest of the school courtyard. She has an open book in her lap but she wasn’t so absorbed in it as to not look up when something fell from above her, and lets out an, “Oh,” of dull surprise.

Stumpy leaps up onto his back feet in a single motion without any thought, his heart pounding with excitement. “Lavender!” he cries, and his sister shoots him a faint smile.

“Hello there, little friend,” she says. “Are you hurt?”

“No!” He’s laughing but also feels tears pricking his eyes as he jumps up and down and starts to run in circles all around where she’s sitting to be sure it’s not a hallucination. “And I’m not your little friend,” he goes on, finally coming to a stop back in her line of sight. “I’m your big brother!”

Lavender looks at him for a few moments, blinking her wide eyes. Her sullen face is the same as always, her skin far paler than her siblings from vitamin D deficiency, her features both delicate and haggard — an old soul, plenty have said over the course of her life. And as soon as Lavender had more of an idea of what made her this way, she would start telling people that it wasn’t her soul that was old.

Now, she doesn’t look like’s bought it just yet, which makes Stumpy wonder how often she finds herself being lied to by mysterious visitors, but he will not be discouraged. He straightens his back and holds his arms out at his sides. “It’s me!” he reiterates. “Stumpy!”

Lavender’s mouth twitches into a smile as she giggles. “Okay.”

“You have to believe me,” Stumpy begs. “I can tell you anything you want to prove it! I read comics. It’s been 19 months since my last seizure. I hate this stupid dumb magic school!” He points up at her. “You’re Lavender, you’re my kid sister! You’re not the youngest or oldest, you’re right in the middle. There’s me, Vitamine and Mimi, then you, and after that Crimson and Slater and Snitchy.”

Her expression goes a little blank. If anything this is good news, being more or less her default look. It means he has to be getting somewhere. He’ll have to tell her something only he would know.

Stumpy says confidently, “You cried when we watched The Exorcist together because you thought that’s what was gonna happen to you.”

Lavender scoffs like an old wound has burst back open. “Because you told me that’s what would happen!”

He throws his hands up in defence. “I was only joking!”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “And I was only eight!”

“Oh, come on, lighten up. I was eight when I first saw The Exorcist and there’s nothing wrong with me .”

Lavender looks at him with raised eyebrows, as if she’s making a point that is so evident that she doesn’t have to explain it. Stumpy narrows his eyes back at her, keeping strong eye contact until he starts to shake, at which point he quickly blinks and looks away lest those aforementioned 19 months get wasted in an instant. Lavender’s shoulders loosen back up as the conversation fizzles away from this seemingly unresolvable years-long running argument. Stumpy looks at the ground, head bowed, chastised for the time being, before he looks back up.

“You believe it’s me, don’t you?” His voice is much quieter than intended.

Her eyebrows furrow as she shakes her head with a renewed little smile. “‘Course I do.” Lavender closes her book and sets it aside, and offers her hands cupped together to him on the ground. Stumpy smiles back and climbs aboard, allowing her to carry him up to sit on her shoulder. Already things feel a whole lot better. Giving him a scratch under the chin, she asks, “What happened to you, big brother?”

He tells her the story. You can read it again if you need to refresh your memory.

“I don’t understand,” Lavender says. “How come Snitchy let them do this?”

“What? She had nothing to do with it!”

“No, I mean how come she didn’t stop it happening? She knows everything, she should have been able to—”

“She doesn’t know everything ,” grumbles Stumpy in a sulk.

Lavender sighs. “I guess not.”

The two of them stay out there on the courtyard for quite some time, covering both the basics and the details, and everything they think they need to share. Lavender had thought it was awfully strange the way that Mimi specifically reminded her that Stumpy definitely was going home and definitely not staying at school over the holidays. This is good information to have, as it confirms for Stumpy that this wasn’t a horrible mistake — Crimson didn’t just plan to take shotgun; she never intended to let Stumpy in the minivan at all, and at least told Mimi as much. Violet, he knows, is disturbingly passive. She probably hadn’t known what she was going to be party to until it was too late. He can’t help but feel newly disappointed, another remaining shred of hope taken away. A piece of him really wanted all of this to have been a prank gone wrong and not a premeditated plot, but alas.

Alas. However, if anything…

It was all the more reason not to give up. All the more reason to wrest control into his own hands. All the more reason not to rely on Crimson reversing the spell once she gets back. Kaeloo was wrong. Stumpy clenches his hands into determined fists as he knows what’s right.

What comes after hopelessness and fury? Inspiration.

Stumpy catches his sister’s full attention by putting his little hands on her big face. “Lavender,” he says, “you’re the best person at doing magic I know. You’re the best student in the whole school! I just know with your help I can go back to normal.”

She looks away. “I’m not that good.”

He pinches her cheeks and shakes emphatically. “Who even cares! Help me anyway!”

Which she already was going to do, but still it’s important that he makes absolutely clear that he wants her on his team. Lavender shrugs her shoulders, pretending like she’s not sure, but it’s only a joke — of course she’ll help him. They’ve always been on the same team. A big grin breaks out on her face.

She gathers up her book bag and makes sure Stumpy is secure on her shoulder, then scurries off the courtyard and into the library. The two of them have got a lot of work to do.

Days pass.

The first order of business was to pick up Quack-Quack from daycare. Next to set up a research headquarters and slumber party venue in Lavender’s dorm (where Stumpy felt no remorse making himself at home on Mimi’s side of the room), with their secondary location in the library. The extended cram session was fuelled by snacks both salty and sweet, and a lot of caffeinated drinks. The librarian noticed the lone student and her two animal companions on the first night; she and Lavender were already well-acquainted, so the librarian had no problem trusting the girl in the facility after hours. By the second night, the librarian was caught up on the purpose of this venture and wished everyone good luck.

It was the most magical theory Stumpy had read all of last semester. He scanned page upon page to no avail, at least until Lavender pointed out that it would help if he checked the titles for if they were relevant — magic for growing flowers wasn’t going to help in this situation. As for finding specific information within the book more efficiently, she introduced her brother to the concept of the index, which fascinated him greatly. These primitive yet helpful tools reminded him of its technological counterpart: the hallowed search bar.

Stumpy missed his computer at home more than ever, but he was determined with his sister’s help, and bolstered to help her right back. It was a great training opportunity for them both. Next school year, Lavender would be assigned her first familiar, and as for Stumpy, he could feel himself connecting a little better to his own magic. The way Quack-Quack could give him a boost when he concentrated, Stumpy found himself learning to do the same thing for Lavender — it was the most progress he’d ever made with his powers during his tenure at this darn school.

Unfortunately, the library didn’t have a great deal of variety when it came to the subject of transformation magic. The place must have been stocked under the assumption that it wouldn’t be relevant information for anyone who would come here, a further testament to the lack of consideration at this particular institute. There were three books and one magazine that held the most information for them, and Stumpy hated having to read the same paragraphs over and over, but Lavender was adamant that one could find new meaning reading the same words again.

Stumpy realised he understood exactly what she meant. It was just like when he reread his comics and picked up on the foreshadowing clues he hadn’t noticed the first time through.

In the comfort of the dorm, under a blanket of sweet-smelling incense and a dozen lit candles, the trio broached the topic of magic’s related but still distinctly different cousin — the paranormal, which was a totally different thing and absolutely not the same, no really we promise. Lavender prepared a summoning circle out of which came a dozen spirits, from the regular haunts that she’d been in communication with for as long as she could remember, to a gaggle of ghouls and gremlins yet unseen by human eyes. It wasn’t Stumpy’s first time witnessing a demonstration of this kind, but he found it no less unsettling and found himself looking away and plugging his ears. Quack-Quack, however, was rapt in fascination and made as many shorthand notes as he could. Writing was a new and exciting development for him, and Stumpy was very proud. He still struggled to hold a pencil in his hands.

(This brought them briefly to the subject of communication between humans and animals; Lavender’s ability to understand Stumpy without effort was rare and impressive. Her teachers and the librarian had told her plenty of times that she would excel even further once she was assigned her own familiar.)

The ghosts weren’t all helpful, but a couple of them revealed some fresh insights. As both magic and the paranormal existed, it stood to reason that powers and abilities in between and even outside these parameters could exist as well. A blob-like beast explained the concept of shapeshifting — similar but different to transformation magic in ways that can’t exactly be quantified but you’re just gonna have to go with us on this one.

After this came a reprieve from books and guests, but no less a day of study. It was time for Stumpy’s expertise to shine as he organised the ultimate movie marathon of animal transformation plotlines. Plenty of magic spells to choose from, as well as plenty of workarounds, which the trio tested out as best they could. The only ones that were off the table were romance-based, but everyone knows that familial love also counts as “true”, so Lavender peppered Stumpy with kisses on his little head. Even Quack-Quack got in on the action, and Stumpy he adores his sister and his best friend, so obviously it just meant this still wasn’t the right solution.

That evening, after dozens of movies but still no answers, the gang pays a visit to the head office with inquiries on getting into contact with some sort of fairy — godmother preferred — but the results aren’t good. According to staff records, the Potions teacher is quarter-fae on her mother’s side, but she’s out in the hinterlands for the holidays.

They take the night off to rest and recuperate. Stumpy doesn’t sleep a wink.

The librarian isn’t in the library today, but Mr Cat is sitting on her desk, his tail swishing. These days gone by, Stumpy has seen him hanging around a couple of times, and tried to take the opportunity to try to introduce him to Lavender and update him on the mission to return to humanity, but Mr Cat isn’t really interested in any of that. He just enjoys scratching up the furniture.

While Lavender is up getting fresh sodas from the vending machine, however, Mr Cat slinks on over to speak to Stumpy and Quack-Quack without her hearing.

“Kaeloo’s gonna come check on you later, see how you’re holding up.”

Stumpy grumbles a little. Understandably so, he’s still sore about how she left him to his own devices after claiming she’d help, but isn’t against seeing her. Being his teacher’s familiar and all, Kaeloo might be able to have a look at his progress and give some advice, and it would be nice to try introducing his sister. After all, next year Lavender will be in the class that Stumpy just finished, which means she’ll be the one feeling that watchful eye on her back instead.

“She’s a pain in the ass,” admits Mr Cat, “and a lot of what she does doesn’t make sense, but… She’s not bad. Even when transformed — maybe especially. I… Y’know, I really like her, and I’ve got great taste in people. Animals. Whatever.”

Stumpy and Quack-Quack exchange a look, and together make an “ ooh! ” sound, followed by a barrage of incredibly important queries, such as how often the two of them go on dates, if it’s serious, what it’s like dealing with the species difference.

Mr Cat hisses and swipes, just missing gouging out Stumpy’s eyes and succeeding in batting Quack-Quack off the table. Stumpy freaks out and looks over the edge, but Quack-Quack curls his wing to indicate he’s fine and unhurt. It’s at this time that Lavender returns. She scoops Quack-Quack up off the floor with intention to put him back on the table surface, then sees Mr Cat and she tucks her hand against her throat protectively.

“Not much of a resemblance,” Mr Cat says after a moment spent studying each of the siblings. “I see the buck teeth, but where’s her tail?”

“It’s right here.” Stumpy blows a raspberry at him that Quack-Quack snickers at from his position of safety. “ Gotcha .”

“Hilarious, nutcracker,” says Mr Cat, smacking him while he’s not expecting it, but not very hard. “You’re as bad as the bunnies, you know. Only hanging out with your dumb family.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t have one of your own,” Lavender says, entirely innocently, and Mr Cat startles, freezing in a position of great tension. He looks like he wants to say something, but no sound comes out of his mouth. Eventually he starts coughing, and is able to move enough to force up a hairball onto the open magazine in front of him. Lavender yelps as the flimsy pages already begin to stain. “Hey!” she cries. “Watch what you do with your mouth!”

“Watch yours ,” Mr Cat growls back, sounding hoarse. Sounding…hurt. He gets up and jumps down on one of the many free chairs, then onto the floor.

Stumpy’s chest pinches with pain, and he looks back at Lavender with something of a glare. She recognises the signifiers of being scolded and releases Quack-Quack to the table.

“I’ll clean this up,” she says of the hairball. The magazine is probably unsalvageable. “Let’s take a break.”

“Good plan,” agrees Stumpy, and hops down after Mr Cat, calling him. “Hey, come back!”

“To what, the teacher’s pet and the teacher’s pet’s pets?” Mr Cat scoffs and doesn’t turn back, if anything quickening his pace. “Your study group of failure? Yeah, right! I was trying to do you a favour, kid. I told you to accept your fate, and now look where you are.”

“The library?”

“Exactly. Going against your nature.” They’re at the library entryway; there’s a catflap in the door as there are plenty all around the school, and Mr Cat holds out his paw to lift it. Notably, not just hurrying through by himself. “You oughta be outside,” he goes on, not looking at Stumpy while he steps through after him. “Climbing trees and burying acorns or whatever. Being free. ”

The library is designed in such a way that there’s a small atrium standing between the facility proper and the rest of the property. There’s plenty of space here to hang coats, store umbrellas, leave bags — as far as Stumpy knows, no one uses it for this purpose. The double automatic doors open, blowing in a gust of fresh air from the outside world that Mr Cat speaks of. The beautiful, sunny outdoors. From where he and Stumpy are standing, they can get a good look at the whole courtyard, at the dormitory building across the way, at the head office. Not many people around, but some.

“You’ve had a second chance handed to you and you’re squandering it.”

Stumpy looks at Mr Cat. Mr Cat does not look back, spending another couple of moments gazing out before venturing forth. Stumpy follows.

“No disrespect, but you’re just a cat,” he says as the two of them stroll along the lawn. “You don’t know what it’s like to live as a human. It’s pretty cool, most of the time.”

“You hated it,” Mr Cat tells him. So bluntly, so matter-of-factly. “You didn’t have any friends. You didn’t pay attention in class. This place wasn’t doing anything for you as a human, but think of all the things you can do now .”

Maybe a fun quip will make the tight feeling in his chest go away. “Not having to poop in a toilet?”

“Now you’re catching on!”

It didn’t work. “I miss the toilet,” Stumpy admits quietly. “I miss being human.”

“And for that you’re a freak,” says Mr Cat with a confident nod, “but I forgive you. You’ll get used to it, nutcracker. It’s all for the best.”

He’s talking as if he knows, and that’s the thing that annoys Stumpy the most. He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. Mr Cat might’ve been around the block, he might be plenty experienced in life, but only in his life. Not Stumpy’s. And it sucks that Lavender hurt his feelings and Stumpy really wanted to make amends, but he just can’t when Mr Cat’s going around telling him what’s best .

The best. Kaeloo said that, too, and what happened? She also gave up! No — no more! Stumpy’s been a quitter all his life and he’s been miserable. After quitting quitting, he’s felt more motivated and energised than ever. Closer to his sister, to Quack-Quack, to himself . So he won’t give up. He can’t, and he steps in Mr Cat’s path to block him from walking any further.

Stumpy may be capable of eloquent thoughts every now and then, but clever words are more difficult to come by. “You’re a stinkbrain!”

Mr Cat laughs. Stumpy continues.

“You lick the same paws you put in dirty litter and you spray when you feel threatened! You’ve got no idea what’s best!” Stumpy whirls like he’s going to storm off, then turns back just as swiftly. “If it were you in my shoes, I’d help you! ”

“Ugh, don’t pull that card on me,” says Mr Cat with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “Nice try, but I’ve heard it all before. The insults, the accusations — then the grovelling, the appeals to the goodness in my heart. It never works.” He tilts his head back and forth as he gives each example, then leans in close to Stumpy’s face. “I’m gonna say it one last time, squirrel . Accept your fate.”

Stumpy holds his breath, just as he holds his convictions; so tight that it’s painful, and he must let it all out. With a sigh deeper than any dark well of magic, he hangs his head. Who did he think he was kidding?

Mr Cat is merciful. He immediately withdraws the hostility in his tone and gives Stumpy a friendly pat on the back. “There you go, see? All better now.” He steps past and resumes walking, Stumpy plodding along after him on autopilot. “It’s a good life, Stumpy. Like I told ya from the start, I’ve got connections. You don’t need a home of your own, you just learn to open all the doors. Don’t need a family, either, but I can tell you’re attached to that weird kid, so I won’t push the issue for now. Just listen to that voice inside telling you what you really want. That’s your nature. Listen! What’s it saying?”

Stumpy drags his feet for a few more paces, thinking. Thinking hard.

“TV,” he eventually says. “I wanna watch TV.”

Mr Cat whistles his approval. “That can be arranged. I know just the place.”

As much as Quack-Quack thinks he’d have liked to join Stumpy and Mr Cat, he’s perfectly happy staying in the library. He enjoys books, enjoys the feeling of turning the page, and enjoys learning. And the small tub of whipped cream Lavender got for him to snack on isn’t bad, either.

As they continue their shared research — regrettably, the magazine could not be saved, and Lavender would have to tell the librarian — Quack-Quack retells the story of the ambush in Stumpy’s room, as Lavender wants to make notes as well as hear his descriptions of what the magic Crimson conjured looked like. It’ll be more difficult having not seen it for herself, but some magic spells can be identified or reverse-engineered depending on what they look like. If she can work out what specific spells Crimson used based on Quack-Quack’s descriptions, then they might make some real headway.

“I have hope it’ll help, Quack-Quack, but I’m starting to run out,” Lavender admits. “Please don’t tell Stumpy. I was thinking I could practise transformation magic on objects first, because the book says it’s easier, but it’s missing the spell instructions!” She buries her face in her hands. “I always thought this library was so helpful! I don’t understand why there’s such a gap in knowledge!”

Quack-Quack gives her a pat on her hand with his wing. “Quack.” Don’t lose hope, he advises. He’s certain they’ll find answers — he can feel it inside him. The solution is closer than they think.

Lavender is sweet, but cannot muster the energy to entertain the idea. She asks for some time alone, and Quack-Quack retreats respectfully. Using his beak, he drags the plastic bag containing the wet, wadded-up magazine and hairball off the table, making his way over to the librarian’s desk to inform her of the unfortunate incident. He remembers her assuring them that they wouldn’t get in trouble if anything broke the other day, but still, he must do his civic duty. Responsibility must be taken.

Over to the desk he goes, and although it towers up above him he can clearly see that it is unmanned, as it has been all day. Carefully and gracefully, Quack-Quack climbs the chair leg. It’s actually quite easy, as small notches seem to have been taken out of the wood at intervals, a bit like a rock-climbing wall. A strange design choice that Quack-Quack has never heard of, but very useful in the event that a small animal would have need to climb up here.

Taking a break at the midpoint, the plush cushion on the seat of the chair, Quack-Quack admires the desk and its fine polish. Looking at it from a certain angle under the light, he can make out the impression of paw prints that betray a regular visitor. Observing with familiars in mind, Quack-Quack can easily see a bird perched here, or a guinea pig exploring the alcove and shelves beneath the desk, and he admires the librarian for having such presence of mind.

Finishing the ascent to the tabletop, Quack-Quack grabs a pen and locates a sticky note dispenser. Very sorry, he writes. Cat threw up on purpose. Will replace. He’s out of room on the note so he takes another one. Probably a copy available on the internet. And then he signs his initials, as well as Stumpy and Lavender’s. The librarian will understand. With the ruined magazine returned, Quack-Quack’s business here is complete, and he hops back down onto the chair, glancing back one more time at the shelves beneath the desk. He doesn’t know why, he just does. Like there was a tingle behind his head that made him turn. A magical instinct.

There’s a book tucked away in the alcove beneath the desk, which is nothing inherently unusual, as this is the librarian’s desk in a library, one would expect to find books all around the place. But which specific book would be here, he wonders? If he squints, Quack-Quack can read the spine.

“ Quack! Quack! Quack! ” His voice is distant but distinct over at Lavender’s base of operations. She lifts her head and wipes away a tear as magic translates the message in her mind: Lavender! Come here! Come quick!

She scrambles up from her seat and over to the librarian’s desk, seeing the baggy of magazine, the sticky notes — and Quack-Quack, poking his head out from the alcove as he struggles to take the book out from within. Lavender does a quick scout of the place, making sure they’re not about to be caught, and dives over the desk to help Quack-Quack retrieve the heavy tome.

The cover proudly displays its title. Shapeshifting: The Ultimate Encyclopedia.

Once everyone has gotten comfortable on the lounge and its many soft pillows, and the television is on and playing a dumb reality show, the tension lessens and the air turns calm. For a few minutes they sit in silence as the humans on screen attempt to navigate an obstacle course while blindfolded and covered in grease.

Pretty turns her head to Stumpy without compromising the comfortable position she’s lying in. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she says.

He’s surprised and needs to take a second to process this. Then he says back, “I’m sorry I beat you up.”

Her nose wrinkles. “You didn’t beat me up.”

“I’m sorry we fought?” he amends.

Pretty shrugs and turns back to the TV. “Sure.”

Some more minutes spent watching. Mr Cat is eating from a half-empty bag of pretzels that’s been left lying around, and Eugly is dozing, not paying attention at all. Only Pretty and Stumpy actually care about what’s playing on the television, and they return to conversation when the commercials come on.

“So,” says Pretty, eyeing him up and down. “Looks like nothing’s changed. You’re still a squirrel.”

Stumpy really would prefer not to think about that right now, so he just waves his hand and mutters incomprehensibly. Pretty nods.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Figures. I wish I could say it gets easier, but…” She shrugs again, adjusting her position into less of a lie and more of a loaf. “Where’s your chicken?”

“With my sister,” Stumpy mutters, his eyes glazed over, focused on the TV. No jokes from grandma. Probably none ever again. “Where’s your human?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s here another few weeks before she leaves, and then it’s back to daycare for me.” Pretty glances at Eugly. “For both of us, at least until Kaeloo dumps us in the lap of some other brat. I bet she’s already got one lined up for you.”

“Man,” says Stumpy, shaking his head sympathetically. “That sucks super hard, I’m sorry that— Huh? Wait. Hold on.” He shakes his head with purpose now, to wake up his brain from its funk, blinking rapidly to get his sight back. Smacking the side of his head before remembering that’s not where his ears are, and looking at Pretty properly now. Understandably so, she’s staring back at him with minor alarm. “What did you say?”

Mr Cat looks up from the bag of pretzels. “What’d I miss?”

“What,” says Pretty, ignoring him completely, “that Kaeloo’s gonna pick your—” she rolls her eyes, and the quotation marks are evident, “ master? ”

“Like a student?”

“Yeah, exactly like a student. Honestly, it’s probably going to be your sister. Are you really as stupid as you look?”

“Pretty,” warns Mr Cat.

“Wow, really?” She shoots him a look that Stumpy doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t need to. Pretty gets up and hits the power button on the remote, switching the TV off. As she hops in front of Stumpy to make sure she has his full attention, Eugly begins to rouse from her nap. “You know I’m a human too, don’t you?”

“What?” shrieks Stumpy. “Where? When? Why? How?” He catches his breath. “Who?”

Pretty scoffs, but if there’s one thing he can tell right now — and there aren’t a lot of those, considering the shock coursing through his system — it’s that it’s not directed at him. She sits up on her hind legs to put her front legs on her sides. A human pose if there ever was one. “ Me , you dingus! Remember I asked if you came here to make fun of me? Why’d you think I said that? Because everyone knows I’m the human that got turned into a rabbit. And now it’s you, too.”

He’s reeling. He’s dizzy. He’s seeing stars. “ Everyone knows that?”

“Jeez, I guess you really are the next big thing, huh?”

“Not everyone knows,” Mr Cat comes in a couple seconds too late. “Not the humans, that’s for sure.”

“And you , you jerk!” Pretty points accusingly up at him. “I bet you didn’t tell him so he’d give up easier!”

“Mr Cat?” Stumpy’s voice is strangled. His gaze darts between the two of them. Mr Cat is putting on a good front of zero remorse, but…there’s just a little something in his eyes. The way his whiskers are twitching. “Pretty,” he gasps, grabbing her paw. “What happened to us?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” says Mr Cat, stepping over Pretty and descending upon Stumpy, opening his mouth wide to pick him up. Stumpy tries to get out of the way, but he only runs into Eugly’s thick fur. He’s trapped.

Except — he’s not! Eugly is just as big as Mr Cat if not bigger, and she’s standing up to face him, all the while positioning her front legs protectively around Stumpy. Her point is clear.

“Gosh, now I just feel sorry for you,” Pretty is saying, but sounds like she can’t help but revel a little in the situation. “I hardly know where to begin.”

Mr Cat tries to make a grab for her throat and Eugly kicks him hard. He yowls and scrambles, his claws catching on the furniture, falling into a pile of clothes and other belongings. Pretty hauls Stumpy up onto Eugly’s back alongside her, advising him to hold on tight, as Eugly acts as a mighty steed on which they can make their escape. Mr Cat struggles to untangle himself, and by the time he’s succeeded, his prey have already fled.

As the late afternoon plunges down on the courtyard, the buildings and trees lit in a lovely sunset orange, Pretty tells the story; one of a lycéenne who was a popular girl but a terrible student, only getting by on the skin of her teeth and awaiting the day of graduation with bated breath. Though she truly had come to care for the rabbit familiar she’d been assigned that year, magic was never something that interested her. She didn’t belong at McMutton’s Dumb Magic Academy for Stupid Idiots, she wanted to be out in the modern world with all its shiny tech and toys.

She didn’t go home for those holidays. She’d never go home again. She found herself mysteriously transformed into a rabbit just like her familiar — who she considered practically her sister. As hard as she tried, as much as she searched and studied, and as much as her former teacher’s frog familiar claimed to want to help her, eventually the new school year was starting and she was no closer to returning to human form.

The frog urged Pretty to train to become a familiar herself. Her magic had been wasted on her as a human, but in this form she could provide extra power and energy to a student if she were assigned to one. What else could Pretty do? No one had come to rescue her, which meant no one ever would. She couldn’t survive out on the street like this. In the whole world, all she had was Eugly and the school.

Years went by. Then a few nights ago, a squirrel appeared in the dorm room of her ‘mistress’ , claiming he’d been changed as well.

The automatic doors open for Eugly, with Pretty and Stumpy on her back in tow, and Stumpy jumps down to hold open the catflap for everyone to get through. He has to find Lavender and Quack-Quack and tell them everything, and just his luck, Lavender and Quack-Quack have an everything of their own to tell him right back.

The five of them, one human girl and four animals, are back at base camp (Lavender’s dorm room) where they can safely convene to pool all their information. It takes them at least ten minutes to stop freaking out and settle in.

“‘ The shapeshifter is an incredibly powerful supernatural creature,’” Lavender reads from the book, “‘capable not only of changing their own form at will, but at maturity, the form of other living beings. ’” She nearly slams the book down open on the ground, pointing to an annotated image, a cross-section of an amalgamation of animals. “This is it. The thing that changed you both.”

Stumpy stares in horror at the illustration. “But Crimson…”

“Quack,” says Quack-Quack, and Lavender nods in agreement, reaching onto her bed and picking something up. From the looks of it, she’s doing an impressive job of miming like there’s fabric in her hand.

“You know how we couldn’t find the clothes you were wearing? Here they are.” Lavender presents the invisible material. “That’s the real spell Crimson put on you. Quack-Quack boosted your strength just enough to be able to follow a while longer, so she cursed your clothes to turn see-through once you were out in the open. She just wanted to humiliate you and sit in the front seat with grandma.”

Eugly speaks entirely in grunts and mumbling, but thankfully everyone present is capable of understanding what she’s trying to communicate. She recounts the morning of Pretty’s transformation, the last day of that school year. Pretty had been skipping her classes intermittently in the week, because all the exams were finished already and she knew they wouldn’t be learning anything new, so her teacher or their familiar would drop off her test scores by sliding them beneath the door. Eugly had watched that spot where the papers would usually appear, and saw some strange flickering lights that had bothered her ever since, and now she knows why. She’s confident that she witnessed the shapeshifter turning into some sort of small insect to sneak into Pretty’s room and cast the spell.

But it doesn’t matter how it happened. What matters is that it happened at all. There was, and still is, a being on school grounds both capable and willing to do such magic upon students at their most vulnerable moments, be it sleeping in bed, or apparently naked in public.

“There’s symbols in here to aid transformation magic for non-shapeshifters,” Lavender says, kneeling before the book and flipping through its pages to one already marked. She lifts her head to look up at Stumpy, then at Pretty, then back to her brother. “If we drew them into a summoning circle…”

“You could cast the spell!” Stumpy finishes for her, jumping up and down. Over at Lavender’s shelves, Quack-Quack is taking down her geometry set and pieces of chalk. Eugly goes over to assist. “You could turn us back!” He turns to Pretty with a wide and wild grin, only to see that it’s not being returned.

Pretty’s voice is so soft. He almost struggles to hear. “And if she can’t?”

Loudly, “Don’t say that about my sister!” Stumpy spits back. “She can do it!”

“She’s right, Stumpy,” Lavender says tentatively, picking up the book and clearing the floor of anything else lying around. There needs to be a lot of free space for a summoning circle even under normal circumstances. “I… I don’t know if I’m good enough. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You're good enough,” he firmly retorts.

The gang gets busy setting up for the big finale. Lavender draws a smooth circle on the hardwood, and Quack-Quack copies down the easier sigils before getting started on the more complex ones. Pretty and Eugly light candles and incense, and place them about the room appropriately as Lavender instructs. Stumpy doesn’t do anything because he feels anxious, sick, shaky, the way he does right before a seizure. Is the 19 months of good health at an end already? He hoped he could make it to 20.

Breathing in (1, 2, 3, 4) and out (1, 2, 3, 4) Stumpy can hear the thump of his heart (1, 2, 3, 4) ringing his ears at an oddly steady pace (1, 2, 3, 4) almost like the enhanced footsteps (1, 2, 3, 4) of a person (1, 2, 3, 4) walking briskly down the hall of an underground dormitory.

There’s a single hard knock on the door, and everyone goes absolutely still. Petrified statues with all eyes affixed to the door, as if the force of five sets will allow them to see right through it.

Knock .

Don’t worry about a thing. Everything will turn out for the best.

Stumpy has a vision of the school year that’s gone by, of the many classes he sat bored and inactive. The many classes made up his teacher standing up the front and proudly presenting their frog. The many transformations they put the frog through, but none as frequent and clearly valued as the toad; three times the size of the tree frog, the toad that would chase the cat and pull its tail, and thoroughly frightened any student that laid eyes upon its warty and scarred visage. He sees every class, laid on top of each other like animation cells, and consistently there are eyes on him. Whenever not busy, at any given moment, the familiar observed him. When he awoke as a squirrel, the familiar greeted him. When the familiar brought him to the daycare, she’d already organised for Quack-Quack to meet him there, and that had bothered him because how could she have known to do that?

“Back of the class, the hair, the teeth.” But Stumpy sat right at the front. The teacher put him there on purpose after the first couple of weeks — to keep a better eye on him , they said.

Pretty was a slacker, too.

Knock. “Lavender?” The voice of the librarian. “Are you in there?”

Lavender looks at the animals and splays out her hands in a universal, “ what do I do? ” gesture. Quack-Quack, Eugly, and Pretty all rapidly shake their heads at her to indicate, “nothing! ” But Stumpy doesn’t, instead locking eyes with his sister, and gives her a short nod.

“Yes,” Lavender calls out (and Quack-Quack, Eugly, and Pretty all go “ nooooo!” ), and with a wave of her hand, the magical lock is deactivated. “C-Come in.”

The door swings fully open, but Kaeloo doesn’t step inside, choosing instead to occupy the space, effectively blocking the only way out. Mr Cat is tucked into one of her arms, anchored partially under her shoulder to keep him in place. Her eyes move over the dorm, taking in the sight, the occupants, the interrupted activity, and she opens her mouth into a big, wide, toothy smile.

“Oh, well done,” she says. No one says anything back, there’s only this heavy silence as she really takes it all in. She repeats, “Well done,” and sounds like she means it.

All of Pretty’s fury and pain bursts out of her at once, like a shuriken piercing through a shoji wall. Just as sharp and pointed, too. “ You did this! It was you! Why? Why? ” She may be a rabbit, but tears can still spring to her eyes. “Because I was a bad student? Because I didn’t respond well to a traditional school environment? Because I wasn’t good enough. None of us,” she opens her arms around her, to the others in the room, “are good enough. For you .”

Kaeloo’s smile doesn’t waver, but she does drop Mr Cat on the ground. He looks like he’s going to try to get out of here ASAP, and she blocks his way too, deliberately, with her hand. “That’s about right,” she says, “if you want to read it in bad faith.”

“Quack?!”

Kaeloo straightens once she’s sure Mr Cat will stay, placing her hand emphatically on her chest. “Consider my point of view. Before my eyes there sits a child with the potential to be brilliant, and they’re wasting it. Wasting the special spark of magic, not even wanting it, when right beside them sits another child who would make far greater use of this gift. Greater yet if the first lent them their unused power, but it won’t happen without my intervention.”

They all look at her in horror, and the corners of her mouth twitch as her smile turns a little uncertain.

“Can’t you see it?” In an instant, Kaeloo changes forms right before their eyes. A human into a frog, and it doesn’t even appear that she gave it a moment’s thought. “The nobility in your sacrifice? Because of you, Pretty, a young witch graduated with honours and will go on to dominate a productive career. Stumpy, look at your sister. Look at the talent oozing out of her every pore. When you work together, what fantastic things you can accomplish! What fantastic things you will accomplish.”

Kaeloo hops ever nearer, and the teens, animals, and animal-teens huddle ever closer together. She can see that they’re afraid, and raises her webbed hands to placate them.

“You think I’m a monster. I’m not blind. Please, please just try to see it the way I do. It’s for the best. It’s all for the best . For society, for the world. For magic.”

Stumpy swallows the lump in his throat. “The best,” he says hoarsely, “is something you make for yourself, not decide for others.”

Kaeloo’s grin comes back in full force. “Stumpy!” He realises now, she’s impressed with him. “In all the time you’ve been my student, that’s the most insightful thing I’ve ever heard you say.” It does not make him feel good.

“What is wrong with you?” Pretty whispers.

“She’s a shapeshifter,” Lavender answers before Kaeloo can say anything, pointing towards The Ultimate Encyclopedia . “And shapeshifters aren’t like humans, or animals, or anything else living. It’s something in their… oh, what’s the word…”

“Nature?” Kaeloo offers.

Mr Cat barks a laugh, startling them all, and Kaeloo redoubles her efforts to try to appear non-threatening, which is a super hard thing to do when you’re the antagonist of a story, but we’re all media literate here, we all know that an antagonist does not equate to evil .

“Listen, listen,” she says a little hurriedly. “I can see you’re all very upset with me. What can I do to make it better?”

Stumpy and Pretty, followed by Quack-Quack and Eugly, break out into various screechings.

“ Change us back! ” shrieks Pretty.

“ Let us go home! ” shouts Stumpy.

“And never do this to anyone ever again,” says Lavender. “Ever, ever again.”

Kaeloo nods as they say all of this. “Thank you. Yes. Thank you for your feedback,” she tells them. “I hear you loud and clear.”

“I don't believe her for a second,” Pretty says to the gang. “How can we trust her to stick to her word?”

Stumpy looks back at Kaeloo sitting there, and beyond the veneer of calm sees…shame. And standing behind her is Mr Cat, and when Stumpy meets his eye, he gives him a small nod.

“Accept your fate,” he murmurs, looking at his sister, then at Pretty, then down at the summoning circle on the floor. Finally, to Kaeloo. “You said Pretty succeeded at being a familiar.”

“She did,” says Kaeloo.

“So you two are totally square?”

She thinks about it for a minute. “Yes.”

“How about this,” he says. “I’ll stay a squirrel and be Lavender’s familiar for the next school year. I earn my freedom, too. But because I’m doing it willingly, now you owe me .” Stumpy looks around him at his friends. “All of us. And what you owe us is more than your word. Something that really proves you’ll never do this again.”

“Quack,” adds Quack-Quack, just to add a bonus to an already high Persuasion roll.

And Kaeloo even applauds a little. “I take back what I said, Stumpy,” she says, her voice full of warmth and pride. “You’re at the very top of my class.”

One year later, Lavender’s dorm room floor is drawn up with another summoning circle — that last one didn’t end up getting used. The symbols are prepared, the candles lit, the incense burning. None of it is required, but they want to put on an extra good show, one last impressive feat to really drive home their success.

Kaeloo witnesses her and Stumpy’s shared final exam; Lavender performing transformation magic all on her own, changing her squirrel brother back into his human shape. Not only did he fulfil his end of the bargain, he went above and beyond with the help of his sister, and they’re quick to remind Kaeloo that she, like, triple owes them now.

But Kaeloo never intended on going against her word. She’s accepted her own fate, and she’s not worried, because she knows everything will turn out for the best. In her frog form, she steps into the centre of the summoning circle.

Out at the front gate, Stumpy and Lavender await the family minivan with the rest of their sisters. Crimson looks like she’s going to try to stake her claim on the front seat, but Stumpy shoots her a glare and she smiles sheepishly, withdrawing without comment. No shotgun for her for a long time. Besides, the front passenger seat is already taken.

When the minivan rolls up, Stumpy helps his sisters pack their luggage into the trunk. They all start piling into the back seats while he comes up to the driver’s side window. Sitting at the steering wheel Pretty raises her sunglasses off her face and looks him up and down.

“Well, well,” she says. “I never would’ve pictured a stinky squirrel like you coming out so good on the other end.”

Stumpy grins. “You think so? I still can’t believe you’re the same dumb bunny.” He leans into the window to wave at Eugly and she waves back — humanity suits her really well, too.

Lavender calls out for him, and he rolls his eyes like it’s such a hassle. “Gotta go say goodbye. Do you have anything you wanna pass on?”

“No,” Pretty answers tersely, for which he can’t fault her. He gets it.

Back around at the gate, Quack-Quack has finally caught up, and Stumpy claps him on the arm in a half-hug.

“Not leaving you behind, brother!”

Quack-Quack grins and joins the sisters in the van. He can’t wait to finally experience the family home as a human and not a duck. Now the only ones standing out there are Stumpy and Lavender, with a cat and a frog sitting back inside the school courtyard.

The frog croaks and the cat meows, and Lavender nods along in perfect understanding. None of that magical animal communication stuff for Stumpy, though. That’s firmly in his past, like changing shapes is in Kaeloo’s. She must really enjoy being a frog, having chosen it as her permanent body. Stumpy wonders if she considered becoming a cat, but… Well, Mr Cat never minded having an interspecies relationship before, so why would he start now?

(They also could have both turned human like Quack-Quack and Eugly but obviously opted not to. Freaks.)

“Bye, guys,” Stumpy says to them both, crouching to give Mr Cat a pet on the head and share a last nod with Kaeloo. “Stay out of trouble.”

He doesn’t think he forgives her just yet, but he doesn’t not forgive her. Either way, with Mr Cat as an official member of staff, Stumpy trusts that the two of them will keep each other in check.

Lavender giggles and looks like she’s going to translate whatever it was that was just said, then she stops herself. It’s nice of her to want to keep him in the loop, but Stumpy doesn’t want to know. It’s not unusual for a graduate to want to stop thinking about school as soon as it’s over, and that’s just talking about regular kids going to regular places. This is a magic academy we’re talking about.

And it’s been a difficult semester here at McMutton’s Dumb Magic Academy for Stupid Idiots.

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