Hi, my name is Luna, and welcome to my story!
I go to only the best school ever- The Great Witch's School for Talented Young Witches! (It's a bit of a mouthful.) We have classes exclusively for Familiar training, spell casting, enchanting, and my personal favorite, potion brewing!
And the best part? It's built like a freaking castle! Fancy rugs, torches, random paintings of important people in hallways- we even have a throne room for the high witch! The only things that are a bit different are the rooms for sleeping and classrooms.
While standard, regular-people classes get regular classrooms, with old wooden tables and chairs lined up neatly in front of a chalkboard, the magic-classrooms are all custom to what you're doing!
Most of the sleeping areas are built with a bunch of bunk-beds so that most witches have to share, but I get a room all to myself, like the teachers do! (Don't ask me how I know where they sleep. That's a different story.)
Anyway, this story takes place on a particularly important day for my class. We were all supposed to brew up a special, relatively harmless potion for the Great Witch to test on a guinea pig of sorts (depending on the potion), as well as submit a report on our process and any side-effects that can occur. Brewing a potion for an assignment was pretty typical, but having the Great Witch herself test us was a pretty big deal, and my classmates were pretty nervous.
We begin when my classmate, Lacey, AKA the sweetest and most adorable person I have ever met, stopped by my room. She had been assigned to collect the potions and reports and hand them over to the higher-up teachers so they could prepare the testing subjects.
I was busy brewing up a potion to enhance my broom's flight when I heard a faint sound of knocking on my door.
"H-hey, have you, er... Finished your potion assignment, yet..?" Lacey timidly asked, just barely standing in my doorway.
"Yup! One sec, lemme just finish adding this ingredient." I said, lowering an enchanted pigeon's feather into the brew.
"W-wait, Luna, I don't think you're supposed to use-"
Boom.
The beaker I had been using shattered, and I was left with glass on my table, ringing in my ears and smoke on my face. I coughed, still tasting remnants from the potion.
"-pigeon feathers." Lacey sighed.
"Ah-ha-ha-ha, looks like I'll need to continue working on that recipe." I reached for a towel I had nearby to wipe my face off. "Anyway, let me get that report and potion for you." My vision still a little blurry, I wandered over to where I had left a folder next to a yellow, corked potion.
Lacey leaned against the doorframe while waiting. "Trouble really does follow you everywhere, doesn't it..." She looked over my room.
"Hm, say something, Lace?" I said, ears still ringing, and unsure if I had heard her correctly. I handed her the items of interest.
"N-nevermind. I'm going." Lacey set the items down in a tray she had placed on the floor outside my room, and flicked her wand, which looked like a unicorn horn, to levitate it into the air. "Just make sure you aren't late this time, Luna."
"I'm never late if I'm on Luna time!" I said, flashing a cheesy grin.
"Y-yeah, but I think that.. Well, the teachers don't um, 'like it' when you're on Luna time.."
"Hm..." I put my hand to my chin and made a thinking expression. "True, they always seem anxious for whatever reason... Which is weird, because I'm only ever late for good reasons!"
"L-like the time you chased Ryu through the halls?"
"Yeah, like that! It's rude to not have your familiar with you, you know! So I made sure he came with me, if I had to chase him while he was cranky in dragon form." I put my hands on my hips triumphantly.
"R-right... Well, see you later, Luna." And with that, Lacey left, leaving me alone in my room with my broken beaker and Ryu (who was currently an otter) pretending to be asleep on the floor.
"Shall I eat her for you?" Ryu asked me with his telepathy.
I spun on my heel to glare at Ryu. Sure, having a shape-shifting Familiar isn't normal, and having one that communicate with you telepathically is even weirder, but I had enough of his attitude.
"No eating anyone. And suddenly you feel like chatting?" I huffed out my chest in irritation.
"Hmph." Was all I got as he resumed ignoring me.
I shook my head and started to clean up the glass shards on my potion table. Not having anything to clean it with (the only broom I had was strictly for flying!) I was just using my hand to scoop the fragments into a trash can.
So naturally, just when I'm about to finish, I mess up and cut my finger on a tiny shard that had escaped my vision. "Ow!" I hold my finger and rush over to a cooling cabinet I had to store potions with healing properties. Meanwhile, the cut was starting to produce blood. "C'mon, where is it- ah, there we go!" I grabbed a potion filled with a light blue liquid and poured it onto my finger. The cut closed up instantly.
"Man, Amanda's so good at these healing potions. The ones I make are always messed up." I sigh, and put the potion back. "Now, where was I- hm?" A green potion hiding in the corner of the cabinet had caught my eye. Feeling like it didn't belong there, I pulled it out of the cabinet and turned the bottle over in my hand, trying to figure it out- and then I saw a small marking I had made on it.
This was the potion I was supposed to hand over to Lacey, which meant...
I face-palmed when I realized I had handed her something completely different. But what even was it? Hopefully not one of those potions-
Just to be sure, I walk over to the table where I kept my dangerous experimental potions, checking for anything that might be missing. Just my luck, one of them was gone. I started to panic and pace the floor.
Okay, so if my intended potion was supposed to be shaken and applied to a plot of grass for the intended effects, what was that potion going to do?
It only took me a couple of seconds, and I froze when I realized. The dangerous experimental potions were put in the farthest corner of the room from everything else because they were prone to causing explosions- and the one I had handed over did not like being shaken.
I ran and grabbed my broom, which had been leaning up against the wall, and the potion I had meant to hand over, attaching that to my belt with a bit of magic from my wand.
"Stay put, Ryu!" I called before jetting out the door and hopping onto my broom to take flight. Usage of a broom for flight was technically forbidden indoors, but this was an emergency.
I was not about to blow up the throne room!
Heading down the hall that would be the fastest way of getting there, I found myself suddenly knocked back by a magical barrier, with a sign behind it saying, 'Area Closed for Cleaning.'
I rapped my hand against the barrier, making a noise. "Hey, I need to get through here! It's urgent!"
The witch who was cleaning up the area, Susan, just scowled at me. "What, so you can make an even bigger mess for me to clean up? Forget it. Having to clean up the halls already sucks, I'm not letting you ruin it further."
"Argh, fine! I'll take the long way." I hop back onto my broom, getting ready to take the long way there.
"And quit flying around! You're making more work for all of us." Susan called out, but I was already speeding down the halls.
I grumbled as I flew through the fairly empty halls. This was going to take at least thirty more minutes, and they're bound to be almost done with the preparations by now- I have to hurry!
Just as I was about to speed up even faster, Ms. Gina, my Familiar-training teacher, turned the corner and caught me. With a swift motion with her wooden staff, she had stopped me and the broom from motion, dropped me onto the floor, and confiscated the broom in her other hand.
Ms. Gina shook her head. "Tsk tsk, how many times do I have to tell you Luna, no flying inside of the school-"
"Ms. Gina, please! It's an emergency-"
"You're receiving detention for a week and I'm banning you from using your broom for the rest of the day-"
"If you would just listen to me-"
Ms. Gina slammed her staff into the ground, emitting a small localized shockwave. "I've had enough of your excuses and stories. It's final. Now, since I've caught you, we're going to the throne room together, to make sure you aren't going to try to be late for it."
I wanted to tell her that I was planning on going there anyway, but figured she wouldn't buy that. "Fine, I'll meet you there-" I said, getting ready to sprint, when she suddenly grabbed me by the collar.
"We're going to walk, miss troublemaker."
Worried that she'd use magic on me if I kept trying, I stopped resisting and walked along with her, fidgeting with my hands. Since I hadn't heard any explosions, surely that must mean nothing had happened yet, right? Right?
I found myself completely incapable of settling down until we arrived in the throne room. Stained glass windows, a red rug leading up to a red throne with a gold trim and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling- anyone who'd never been here before would be impressed.
Not me, though. I'd been here so many times for one reason or another that I no longer found it all that impressive, and instead looked for faults, cracks, anything that made the place look less tidy.
Today though, it was a little bit different, with a bunch of small, sectioned off areas that were designated for each witch's potion testing. After thoroughly scanning the area, I found a grass plot with my potion sitting on a stand next to it.
Just when I was thinking that maybe it'll be okay as long as I can switch the potions, the experimental potion changed color, indicating that someone had already shaken it, and that there wasn't a lot of time left before it blew up.
I raced over and swapped the potions. I didn't know how big of an explosion it could cause, but I knew that blowing up the throne room would probably get me suspended, or worse.
Potion now attached to my belt and ready for detonation, I realized that I was going to need to get to my room and defuse it. I flicked my wand, using it to bring my broom back to me, and got on before flying away, much to a dumbfounded Ms. Gina's dismay.
Holding onto the broom with one hand and using the other hand to hold onto my wand, I used magic to form a barrier around me so that nobody would get blown up, and headed to the shortcut, hoping Susan was gone by now.
Well, she wasn't but I just used my magic to take her barrier down this time and fly by quickly, making a bit of a mess in my wake. She brought out her wand to inflict a curse or two on me, but I was going too fast for her to hit accurately.
I literally knocked down my own room's door to get in, and immediately got to work on adding things to the potion so that it wouldn't explode. After frantically adding things and putting a barrier around the potion, a few tense moments passed before it finally turned back to its original lemon color. I exhaled and let myself fall backwards onto the floor, relieved.
"That was too close, Ryu..." I muttered.
I sat up and dusted myself off... Just to notice Ryu now missing. Sounds of students screaming and a dragon roaring filled my ears. I had forgotten to feed him on time again.
I stood up and stamped me feet on the ground in frustration. Of course my familiar might as well be his own ticking time bomb. I grabbed my broom and got on, getting ready to defuse yet another situation.
That's the end of my story, did ya like it? It's a bit short, but settling Ryu down is something that if you've seen once, you've seen it all the time! In the end, the throne room got a bit torched, and I ended up with more that just a week of detention for my punishment.
But hey, that's the price you pay for going to a school like mine!
~~End~~
