120 Blind Dates... And Other Short Stories

My Friend, the Dragon

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.