Sally was sure she could do this. Or couldn't she?
The end of her junior year was approaching fast, but even the School of Magic was closed due to COVID-19. Her final exams were coming up nonetheless, so she did what every other teenager would have done in her situation: She met with her friend Daria, who lived next door, in her garden at night. They couldn't practice in broad daylight because some of their neighbors were normal human beings, and they were suspicious of the two strange families that lived in their community as it was.
"Wow, it's cold outside!" Daria exclaimed when she stepped outside that night.
"Yeah, and it's supposed to snow in the wee hours of the morning," Sally added. She hated snow because she loved flying through the night on her new broom, a Christmas gift from her parents, and couldn't fly fast if the weather conditions were bad.
"Which spells do you want to practise tonight?" Darla asked, but she already knew the answer.
"We need to, like, practise all of them. If we don't, we will probably fail Spells 101 and will have to retake Strangletoff's class."
Darla sighed, although she knew that her friend was right.
Dawn Strangletoff was the teacher most students at the School of Magic hated with a passion. Nobody had ever heard of a student who had made any effort to stay focused in her class as she had long earned the reputation of being the worst teacher at the school, if not in the country. Therefore, the girls had done what everyone else was doing in Strangletoff's classes, and that included homework for other courses, playing games on one's cell phone and chatting with one's neighbor. Naturally, they had not made any progress with their spells in the past school year, which in itself was alarming.
"Okay, let's start with something easy tonight... I'm going to use my wand to melt the snow," Sally said and took out her wand. Then, she mumbled in her broken Latin, hoping she was using the correct spell, "Calida fi!"
And just like that, the snow beneath her feet, at which she had directed her wand, disappeared. Sally smiled because this gave her hope that she was not an entirely hopeless case and could still pass the class.
Darla felt encouraged by her friend's example and started practicing the same spell. It should be noted though that Darla was clumsy: Whereas she succeeded in melting a bit of snow beneath her, she then accidentally pointed her wand at her right foot. The result was not the one she had anticipated to say the least. "Ouch!" she screamed because her foot felt as if it was on fire all of a sudden. Her whole body seemed to be on fire and stretching, no, growing. Before she knew what was happening to her, she had lost the ability to speak and was transforming into another being.
"Darla?" Sally asked a few seconds later, still unable to believe that she had just witnessed her friend transform into a dragon.
Darla obviously tried to speak, but the thing that came out of her mouth was not a word. It was fire.
Sally managed to jump behind a tree just in time before Darla could set her on fire. "Darla, it's okay. It's just me, Sally. Remember that we used to be friends until you became a dragon?"
Sally didn't know what to do, but she knew what she just couldn't do: Leave her friend outside in the cold. After all, she loved her friend, which meant that she would always be there for her, no matter what had happened to her or whether she had just tried to kill her. There were so many bad things in the world as it was. Therefore, one should be able to rely on as friend in a time of need.
On the other hand, Sally didn't know the spell that could transform Darla back into a human being. Actually, she didn't know if such a spell existed at all. Apparently, Darla had just thought the same thing because the dragon seemed to be on the verge of freaking out, turning this way and that, observing its green body.
This was the point when she should have called her parents or Darla's parents. But then again, their parents had explicitly forbidden the girls to use magic outside the house, and they would definitely get into big trouble if their parents ever found out what had just happened here tonight.
Moreover, someone from the neighborhood who was not a witch or wizard could spot the dragon in Sally's garden and alarm authorities. Her father, who was in the Secret Magic Service, would then have to step in with his colleagues and erase everyone's memories. So they would get into trouble in that case as well.
Perhaps Miss Strangletoff knew what to do. Sally knew where she lived because Darla and her had thrown old eggs against her home on Halloween, and other students had wrapped the entire house in toilet paper. Naturally, Strangletoff had never discussed this in class, nor had she ever found out who had been behind this bad "joke." Sally had to admit that whereas it might have been fun to do this while they were at it, she was not proud of it. As a matter of fact, what they had done to Strangletoff's house that night had been very cruel and disrespectful. And right now, her best friend needed the teacher's help.
"Okay, Darla. I got this. We need to pay Miss Strangletoff a visit," she said, trying to reassure Darla that she knew what she was doing even though she wasn't. "Do you think you can fly there?"
Riding a dragon was something most kids at her school dreamt about since most of them had never even encountered a dragon. If the circumstances had been different, Sally would have enjoyed herself more. But since she felt responsible for the situation and needed to see to it that Darla got to Miss Strangletoff's house safely, she couldn't stop worrying.
Apart from that, Darla was not good at flying either. Of course, she had never been a dragon before, and one couldn't expect her to be perfect at flying at once. But she almost crashed into a tree with Sally sitting on her back during her first two attempts at flying, and Sally was almost thrown off her back when Darla took her first sharp turn to the right while in the air.
They landed in Miss Strangletoff's garden, or they rather crashed in her new swimming pool when Darla attempted to land.
Miss Strangletoff was outside at once and screaming at Sally even though she looked ridiculous in her pink nightgown, which looked like something Sally's grandmother would have refused to wear. "You freaking kids! What is wrong with you? Why can't you leave me alone!"
"Miss Strangletoff, we need your help!" Sally started.
"Who is we? You and your pet dragon?" Miss Strangletoff asked suspiciously. "May I remind you that you are actually supposed to wear masks if you leave the house... At least you are supposed to do that, Sally. I don't think they make them in a size that would fit a dragon."
"That's the problem. The dragon is Darla," Sally explained.
"I'm sorry?"
"We were practicing spells, and a spell went wrong. I was wondering whether you can help us!"
"Why are you practicing transformation spells at home? There is a 50% chance that they will go wrong even if you have done that as often as I have!"
"We didn't want to fail your class," Sally said matter-of-factly. "The spell she used was the one you use to melt ice, but I think she accidentally pointed her wand towards her foot."
"Of course, you can trust her to be stupid enough to do something like that!" Miss Strangletoff exclaimed, obviously not caring at all how mean she sounded.
Sally ignored the nasty remark. "Is there anything we can do to reverse the spell?"
"Short of praying for her soul, no, there isn't," Miss Strangletoff stated. "One of the basic things you should have learned in my class is that if you use a transformation spell to transform yourself, only you are the one who can change yourself back. That's why you usually add something like a time limit to a transformation spell, or you connect the spell to someone you trust and whose touch can change you back."
"Okay, sorry, we might not have paid attention to your teaching all the time," Sally admitted.
"I know. Nobody does," the teacher said with a sigh. "But on the bright side, you have a really nice pet here. Not many kids have a dragon at your age. I wanted a pet dragon when I was your age."
Sally had an idea. "Perhaps we can teach her how to speak. Then she might be able to transform herself back."
"Have you ever met a talking dragon? Well, I haven't. Sorry," Miss Strangletoff said.
Darla's parents were inconsolable when their daughter didn't return home. They were about to go to the police when Sally told them what had happened and showed them the dragon she had hidden on her grandparents' haunted property outside town. For the next couple of weeks, they tried every spell they knew, but their magic was not strong enough.
When school was about to start again, Darla's parents informed the headmaster that their daughter was a dragon now and would thus be unable to attend school.
"Well, then we need to change her back! It's really simple!" Mr Wyse exclaimed.
Darla's mother didn't know what to make of this at first. "But Miss Strangletoff said that's not possible!"
"That old witch! She likes to mess with kids because they don't like her! Now, I need a few ingredients for the spell, but trust me that this is not the first time something like that has happened to a student at the School of Magic."