After Study Hall, Amy found Simon and took him to the floor where she had taken him the evening before — the floor where she had sat with him as he revealed his secret to Lacy.

  “Let’s be quick before anyone sees us,” she said. She produced her wand and chanted, “Somamorpho renovatio”. A beam of grey light shot out from the tip of her wand. She aimed the wand until the beam hit Simon’s chest, enveloping him in a subtle grey aura. “Et hic subiectum,” she chanted, and a set of numbers appeared in front of him — in mirror image as before from his perspective, but undoubtedly not so from hers.

  This time, she kept glancing at her wristwatch as she adjusted the numbers. Finally, she paused for several seconds while fixing her gaze at the watch before chanting, “Formam nunc retine.” Simon’s grey aura flashed brightly — but only for a moment, before vanishing entirely.

  “Okay,” said Amy. “In a few minutes, I’m going to need to borrow your watch for a moment to sync it with mine.”

  “Why?” asked Simon.

  “Because your transformation’s going to expire at six-fifteen tomorrow morning,” she explained, “and you have to make sure you get to somewhere that nobody will see you - or else that green aura will give you some explaining to do. If one of your roommates is holding up the bathroom, this place is usually pretty good around that time.”

  “So you’re sure you can’t give me more time?” asked Simon.

  “I’m sorry,” said Amy, sympathetically. “It’s for your own safety. But soon you’ll have your own wand.”

  Despondently, Simon reached toward his wristwatch, ready to take it off and hand it to Amy.

  “Not here,” she stopped him. “Let’s go to the Common Room for that.”

  * * *

  “Something’s different about you today,” said Samantha as she sat down next to Simon at the dinner table. “You’re glowing.”

  “I’m in a good mood,” he answered.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “What is what?” asked Simon.

  “What’s got you in such a good mood,” she explained.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Simon, not sure if he could trust her with his secret.

  “He’s been like this since homeroom,” said Tom, inquisitively.

  “It’s nothing,” insisted Simon — but he could tell that neither of the other two were convinced.

  “Okay,” said Tom. “Whatever.”

  After dinner, Simon went back to the Common Room and resumed his studies. He had, of course, his desk in his own room - but somehow, even though nobody could see how he physically was different, he didn’t want to spend his precious time in female form cooped up in his room.

  Being in a female body gave him a peace of mind which allowed him to focus on his studies even more intensely than he would have been able to otherwise. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the subject-matter he was studying was interesting as well. Most of Study Hall he had been studying from ‘The Amazing World of Enchantment’ and had only begun to read the first chapter of his history book. But reading it now, he was blown away by its discussion of the earliest known magical enhancement technology of the late Paleolithic, and the earliest precursors of wands in the Mesolithic.

  At a certain point, Ethan came down, and Simon had a chance to ask him about keeping his schoolbooks in his locker. “Of course!” responded Ethan. “I do all the time!”

  Come late evening, Simon went into the bathroom and was especially careful to lock the door before changing into his pajamas. When he went to bed, he slept more peacefully than he could ever recall having slept before — but he was woken at 6:05 the next morning by an alarm on his watch.

  Dreading the change that was soon about to come on him, Simon began assembling his uniform for the day in a stack on his chair, glancing nervously at his watch on occasion while doing so — a bit concerned that the bathroom door was closed and locked, and Ricky was nowhere to be seen.

  Luckily, at 6:11, he heard the toilet flush, and by 6:13, Ricky opened the bathroom door. Simon rushed in immediately and locked the door behind him. Once inside, he just stood there despondently for a minute or two until he saw the green aura overtake him and felt his body rearrange itself under his pajamas back into the form that he dreaded.

  Crestfallen after the reverse transformation, he slowly changed into his school uniform. By the time he was done, Jesse was knocking on the door, demanding to know how long Simon would take in there. Upon hearing this, Simon hurried up a little bit - as much as he could bring himself to. When he finally got out, Jesse ran in even faster than Simon had after Ricky had vacated the bathroom earlier.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  * * *

  “Hey, liven up,” said Tom as he sat down at Breakfast in the Great Hall. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Not as bad as what?” asked Simon.

  “Not bad enough to be so,” he paused, pointing his fork up and down as though it were scanning Simon, “so down.”

  “Down?” asked Simon, confused. “I can’t eat upstairs! That’s the library!”

  “I mean,” said Tom, and then after a moment’s paused continued, “you know what I mean.”

  It was indeed beginning to occur to Simon that by “down”, Tom meant “sad”. And frankly, Simon was “down” - but he also was sure that Tom had no idea what Simon was “down” about now and “up” about the day before — and he certainly wasn’t about to tell him. After all, he hadn’t forgotten the joke he had made about Simon turning into a girl the very first time the two had met less than a week before. To let him know that yesterday it had actually happened for several hours was a risk he simply wasn’t ready to take.

  In Enchantment class, Simon’s resentment of being in male form again was somewhat tempered by the fact that the class focused a lot that day on preparations for the upcoming field trip - a trip that would bring him closer to never having to assume a male form ever again.

  “We will meet in the Adventure Room in the ground floor of this tower,” explained Professor Hathaway. “You will form groups of three or four - as we can’t have students going into the forest on their own. Each of you will be given three summoning chips,” explained Professor Hathaway. “It’s a small tiny brick like this,” she said holding a small one-inch rectangular piece of wood up for the class to see. “Except yours will be maroon in color, because this is just a wooden dummy. I mean, I don’t want to activate an actual summoning chip while showing you how to do so. Does anyone here know why you need summoning chips?”

  Simon raised his hand, as he had read the answer to this one the day before in Study Hall.

  “You, Simon,” said the Professor, pointing to him.

  “You need them,” said Simon, “because once activated, a summoning chip emits a magical scent that attracts magical creatures in the area that are potential donors of a wand core - and makes them more willing to listen to why you need a core for your wand.”

  “Correct,” said the Professor. Simon smiled, proud that he was able for the first time to raise his hand confidently in class when the teacher asked a question.

  “Once you activate one of these babies,” continued Professor Hathaway, “a bunch of creatures, some of which you might not see otherwise, will start showing up. And when they do, you can introduce yourself and make your case why you need a core for your wand. But it is important to be truthful — extremely truthful — because one effect of the charm-field is that a creature it summons will be repelled by any deception directed at it.”

  Simon tensed for a moment, as he realized that he had a big secret that he couldn’t tell anyone. Even if he could tell a woodland creature about his plans to permanently transform himself into a girl, he surely couldn’t do so with two or three other students around him. He immediately began to ponder ways that he could be fully truthful to the creatures he would be appealing to for a wand core without saying anything that he didn’t dare say in front of his fellow students.

  “Now the woods around here have plenty of gnomes, trolls, and a few other hominoids,” said the Professor. “If you see one of those, do not ask any of them for anything. This is important to remember because the core for your wand can’t come from anything that is even as close to being human as a gibbon is. As a matter of fact, if it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t have to be going on this field trip at all. We could just exchange locks of hair with each other and be done with it, since everyone in this room is magical. We’re all witches and wizards here. So in short, just remember — the core for your wand has to come from a magical creature, and one that is not too close to being human.”

  Simon didn’t seem to be in the least bit worried about this. He was worried about how to be truthful and open with the magical creatures of the forest to get the core he needed for his wand without exposing his secret to his classmates — but making sure he did not try to get it from a hominoid would be easy.

  “Okay,” said Professor Hathaway, “time to learn how to start up a summoning chip.” She sent a bucket around the room full of wooden chips like the one she had shown the class earlier — with instructions that everyone should take a few chips, no more than six, and pass the bucket on.

  “Here’s what you do,” she said, once the bucket had finished making its round around the class. “You hold the chip between your thumb and pointer finger like this, and confidently say, ‘Producite amicos’. Once you do it, the chip will turn from a dark brown to bright silver and stay like that until it’s spent - at which time it will turn into just plain wood, like what you should have on your table now. When your chip is bright silver, you can keep holding it or put it on the ground, whichever works for you. But you have to keep it in the open until it turns into plain wood. Don’t put it in your pocket or anything. So now, practice holding this chip in your hand and saying the words, ‘Producite amicos’. Then put it down on your desk.”

  As soon as these instructions were given, Simon began doing exactly as Professor Hathaway had instructed. It wasn’t difficult at all. Nonetheless, within a few minutes, he was distracted by something he heard one seat over. Jesse was doing the exercise too, holding the chip just as he was, but instead of flawlessly pronouncing the words as the teacher had instructed, he was saying something that sounded a lot more like “Pro-doo-si-tay am-i-cose”.

  This made Simon nervous. What would happen if Jesse used this flawed pronunciation during the field trip? It might fail to have any effect at all on the summoning chip — or worse, cause it to activate in an unpredictable way whose effects could not be foretold.

  “Jesse,” he said, nervously, calling to his friend and roommate. Jesse turned. “You’re pronouncing it wrong,” Simon continued.

  “How would you know?” he asked.

  “I heard the teacher say it,” explained Simon. “It’s ‘Producite amicos’.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” insisted Jesse.

  “No,” insisted Simon. “You’re saying ‘Pro-doo-si-tay am-i-cose’. That might not work.”

  “Okay,” said Jesse, clearly irritated. “‘Producite amicos.’ You happy?” He said the words with condescending emphasis — but as far as Simon could tell, he was now pronouncing it correctly.

  “I think so,” said Simon.

  Simon shuddered - but tried to remain confident, as he repeated the chant that Professor Hathaway had instructed the class. After a few minutes, the Professor told all the students to pick up their full stack of chips and practice the whole procedure standing up, placing each chip back on the table only after practicing with it. All in all, the rest of the class went well — but Simon felt uneasy. Now, in addition to being stuck in a body he was uncomfortable in, he had Jesse mad at him as well.