That evening, Rosemary studied the casting ritual for somamorphic spells in ‘The Body Transformed’ more intently than ever. She had read it through several times by now and had it practically memorized — but now she read it with the knowledge that, since she finally had a wand, she was just about ready to perform it. She prepared a cheat sheet for the casting ritual and another for the renewing ritual, folded each of them in half, and placed them both in the book. She then kept reading until finally, just over an hour before the usual time, she put the book in her safe, showered, changed into her pajamas, and went to bed.

  The next morning, she was awakened an hour and a half before her usual time by relentless paws pulling her sheets back and kneading her face. She opened her eyes and saw Luna pawing at her, meowing brokenly.

  “What is it, Luna?” she asked, lazily climbing out of the bed. She opened the feeding port on the side of her bed to check Luna’s supply of food and water. There was plenty of each.

  And then, suddenly, she remembered why the cat was so intent on waking her up. It wasn’t that Luna needed Rosemary to wake up early — but that Rosemary needed for her own sake to wake up early. What was strange was that this didn’t seem like a realization that came from within. Rather, it seemed to come from the cat, almost as though the cat had said something to remind her of this.

  “Good girl, Luna,” she said, scratching the cat under the ear.

  Quietly, she went to her closet and fetched her uniform. She then went into the bathroom to change. When she was done, she opened her safe, took out her satchel, and filled it with her copy of ‘The Body Transformed’. She then took the trait imprint stone from its place in her safe and put it in a special compartment of her satchel. Finally, instead of returning her pajamas to the closet as she did most mornings, she packed them into the satchel as well. She didn’t have the smock that she had worn the time that Amy had transformed her — but the pajamas, which fit more loosely than her day-clothes, would probably suffice in its stead.

  As she went to the door, she fretted a decision that she would have to make. She needed to get to a room where she could find privacy, and was most likely to find that in the basement of Hamilton Tower. Still, she was unsure whether to travel there through the wall walks, the hallways, or the underground tunnels. On the one hand, traveling by the wall walks would incur quite a risk of being caught out-and-about at an odd hour by a member of the faculty — and the hallways even more so. On the other hand, the run-in with rock gremlins the previous day was still fairly fresh in her mind — and the last thing she wanted was another such encounter.

  Suddenly, she heard a faint meow as she began to turn the knob.

  “Don’t you familiars have your own ways of getting in and out of rooms?” asked Rosemary.

  Luna said nothing. She nodded, looked around, and stared at Rosemary. Yet, somehow, in a way that Rosemary didn’t fully understand, the cat gave the impression of saying, “I’m coming to help you.”

  This wasn’t the first time Luna had sent thoughts to Rosemary’s mind without the use of speech. She even got the occasional mysterious non-verbal comment from Sammy, Jesse’s raccoon, and Blowfish, Ricky’s owl. But up till now, it had been nothing like this. And the only such messages she had previously gotten from Luna had been little things, like demands for food — or attention — or other things that just about any cat might ask for. Even the reminder she had gotten moments earlier that she needed to be up early hadn’t seemed too strange. This insistence from Luna that she was coming along to help, however, was clearly a sign that communication with the cat had reached a new level.

  “What do you know about what I’m about to do?” asked Rosemary.

  Luna meowed. But in that meow, Rosemary got the distinct impression that she was saying, “Trust me. I can help. Bring me with you.”

  “Okay,” said Rosemary, quietly. “You can come.”

  As she and Luna approached the alcove where the stairs passed through the floor, Rosemary knew it was time to make her dreaded decision. If she was to travel through the tunnels, she would have to take the downward stairwell — but if she was to travel through the wall walk, she needed to take the stairs upward to go to the fifth floor where the wall walks connected to the towers. Right then, Luna dashed in front of Rosemary’s feet, ran to where the upward stairs began, looked at Rosemary, and meowed. “Take the wall walk,” she seemed to be saying. “I’ve got your back.”

  Before long, the two of them were walking on the wall walks of Misty Peaks castle. Occasionally, Luna would shoot ahead of Rosemary to check out a possible turn in the walls. She would always come back a moment later to let Rosemary know that it was clear.

  However, shortly after they reached the wall walk outside Hancock Tower, Luna froze at the sound of footsteps. The footsteps were heard to the left — and suddenly stopped. The footsteps were coming from outside, just around the corner — but Rosemary crouched down in case someone would look out the window.

  “I’m telling you, Hank,” Rosemary heard a slightly gruff female voice say. “We’ve got a problem. We need to do somethin’ about it.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “I don’t know, Janet,” replied the male voice — presumably that of Hank. “You had Professor Parker warn the kids not to go down to the basement of Montrose Tower.”

  “I did,” replied Janet — who apparently was none other than Ms. Simmons, the Head Enchantineer. “But you know that ain’t gonna be enough. I mean — you know what they say. If you want somethin’ done, forbid the kids from doin’ it. And I just know some kids were there some time yesterday — just lookin’ for trouble. We’re gonna have to do better than we’ve been doin’ to stop them.”

  When Rosemary heard this, she was grateful to Lilith for deciding to say nothing to Mrs. Carter about the encounter with the rock gremlins. Had that been reported, then Ms. Simmons without a doubt would now know exactly who had been to the basement of Montrose Tower. Slowly and quietly, she and Luna withdrew. Luna guided Rosemary as far back as Franklin Tower.

  “I know you had a room in that other tower in mind,” Luna seemed to say as she meowed, “but there’s one in the basement of this one that will do fine.”

  “Okay,” said Rosemary, and entered the tower door.

  As soon as they were inside, they went to a spiral staircase that ran through the middle of the building and started heading downward.

  * * *

  The trip down the stairwell of Franklin Tower was uneventful. When she was on the stairs with Luna down to the first basement level, Rosemary stopped for a moment. Luna paused and waited. Slowly, Rosemary withdrew the wand from the gem in her bracelet and transferred it to her right hand. She then circled it in front of her and chanted, “Fiat lux.” As she had hoped, an orb of light appeared right in the area she had circled around and rose to sit right above her head, giving her a clear vision of the path in front of her. Though it wasn’t exceedingly bright, hardly any shadow could be seen — only adequately lit stairs and hallways.

  When they reached the fourth basement level, Luna got off the staircase and led Rosemary to one specific door.

  “I think this room will do,” Luna flashed with her eyes. Rosemary pushed down the door handle and found that it was unlocked.

  “Okay, Luna,” she said as she opened the door. “Can you stand guard?”

  “Not a problem,” Luna flashed back.

  Rosemary lit the lanterns on the walls by directing an “accendit lucernam” spell at the copper disk in the middle of the ceiling as she had seen Amy do before. She then extinguished the orb above her head with the “non sit lux” spell. Meanwhile, Luna searched around for a vantage-point that she could keep guard from.

  Luna meowed. In that meow, Rosemary could hear her ask, “Can you unlock the cat door?” Rosemary turned and saw her cat nodding toward a cat door that Rosemary hadn’t noticed before at the bottom of the room’s main door.

  “Not a problem,” said Rosemary. After inserting her wand back into the gem of her bracelet, she went and slid open the latch that held the cat door shut.

  As Luna left the room to patrol the hallway, Rosemary went into a corner and changed back into her pajamas. Upon finishing to do so, she took the trait imprint stone out of her satchel, went to the front of the room, and placed the trait imprint stone on a desk in the front row.

  She then stood up and took a deep breath. “This is it,” she said to herself — butterflies filling her stomach — and for that matter, her arms, legs, and entire body. She stood there for a moment — overwhelmed as the conflicting emotions of excitement and sheer anxiety washed all over her.

  Finally, after another deep breath, she withdrew her wand again from her bracelet, pointed it at the trait imprint stone, and chanted: “Somamorpho initio”.

  As soon as the green beam of light was clearly formed between the wand and the trait imprint stone, she pointed the wand at her left hand. The faint green aura covered not only her hand, but her entire body. “Hic est subiectum,” she chanted, and another beam of light appeared connecting her to the stone.

  In front of her, she could once again see the four zeroes form as on the day that Amy had transformed her, complete with a colon between the two on the left and the two on the right. Now, however, she suspected that they were facing her direction rather than away from her. This was confirmed when she pushed the numbers up with her wand. She raised all the numbers up to nine. She knew that the stone probably wouldn’t give her an initial transformation time of more than twelve hours — but it didn’t hurt to try.

  When she was done, she chanted, “Formam nunc assume.” No sooner had she done this than did the nine on the far left turn into a one, the next nine into a two, and the two nines to the right of the colon into zeroes. Clearly, the stone’s limit was not to be exceeded.

  A moment later, the numbers in front of her disappeared, as did the beams of light connecting her, the stone, and the wand. However, as on the day of her first transformation, the glow around her intensified for a few seconds before vanishing — during which time she could once again feel her body rearrange itself under her pajamas.

  A smile came to Rosemary’s face. She stashed her wand back in her bracelet and put the trait imprint stone back in its compartment in her satchel. She then changed from her pajamas back into her school uniform, gleefully as could be. Yes, it was a boy’s uniform that she was putting on — but she put it on knowing that she was now all girl underneath, and this time would remain that way. And as she and Luna made their way back to Hemlock Tower, she had a bigger smile on her face than ever before.

  * * *

  By the time she reached her dorm room, Ricky had just left and Jesse was in the shower. Tom, who was in the middle of buttoning his shirt, was the only one there to greet her.

  “Well, you’re sure in a good mood,” he said. “Do I even need to know what’s got you so happy?”

  “No, you don’t,” said Rosemary, still grinning.

  She opened her safe and placed her trait imprint stone in its special place there. Then, after transferring the cheat sheet for the renewal ritual to her magical history textbook, she placed her copy of ‘The Body Transformed’ back in the safe as well. Quickly and discreetly as possible, she took her pajamas out of her satchel, returned them to the closet, and began packing for that day’s classes.

  “So?” said Tom, who was now adjusting his necktie.

  “So — what?” asked Rosemary, having already moved on from her prior conversation with Tom.

  “What happened?” asked Tom, “to put you in such a good mood?”

  “I said,” answered Rosemary, as she finished packing her satchel, “you don’t need to know.”

  “Well, as long as it makes you happy, Simon, and you ain’t hurtin’ nobody” said Tom, “it’s all good.”

  “Thanks,” said Rosemary, as she headed out the door for breakfast.