When Rosemary awoke, she found herself in an unfamiliar room. She was lying not in, but on a bed — in that she was on top of the covers, still dressed in the girl’s uniform she had been wearing before, though with her shoes removed. She was on a bed — but not her own bed. Instead of the red covers that adorned all the beds in her dorm room, this one had white covers and, from what she could tell, a white frame. Everything about this bed was white other than the grey metallic guardrails that were on the sides, like those of a hospital bed. But what was more odd than her unfamiliar bed was the fact that the space which the bed was in was not bounded by walls like a normal dorm room, but by a white curtain.

  She wiggled her arms and her right leg, and noticed that they didn’t hurt anymore. Feeling safe doing so, she propped herself onto her elbows and looked around. There was a small table in the curtained-off space with two chairs pulled up to it. There was a closet, a dresser, and even a large white plastic box next to the dresser.

  As she looked around more, she noticed that overhead in front of her, a clear crystal ball was mounted above the curtain rail. She also noticed that the curtain to the right was a separate sheet from the curtain to the left. She lay propped up on her elbows for a few minutes before the curtains in front of her parted and a slightly heavy-set middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform came in.

  “Oh, I see,” Rosemary thought to herself. “I fell — so they must have brought me to the hospital.”

  “So I see you’re awake, Mr. Corbin,” said the nurse energetically. “Or should I say — Miss Corbin?”

  Rosemary said nothing.

  “Don’t be coy,” said the nurse. “The jig’s up. It’s not a costume. We know all about the somamorphic spell you’ve been under for the past seven weeks. We found that out real quick after the sex that turned up in your admittance scan yesterday didn’t match the one in your file.”

  “Yesterday?” asked Rosemary in astonishment.

  “Yeah,” answered the nurse. “You’ve been out for over twenty hours. We had to put you under to treat some broken bones. But it looks like you’re all healed now.”

  “Am I in trouble?” asked Rosemary.

  “Not my place to say,” said the nurse. “Being under an unauthorized somamorphic spell during school term is pretty serious. But I hear they might cut you some slack.”

  Rosemary raised herself just a tiny bit, unsure what to say.

  “Thanks to Miss Kaya letting us borrow her copy of your trait imprint stone, we were able to verify while you were out that the somamorphy spell you’re under is safe and indeed does nothing but change your sex,” continued the nurse. “If it weren’t for her, we’d have to start with that now. But before we can let you go anywhere, you’re going to have to talk to Dr. Fletcher to see if you’re getting any slack.”

  “Dr. Fletcher’s coming?” asked Rosemary.

  “Yes,” answered the nurse. “According to our records, he’s the school metapsychologist assigned to you. I let him know you’re awake moments before I came in. He should be here some time in the next hour. In the meantime, I’ll have some food sent in. You haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday! You must be starving!”

  “Yes, I am hungry,” said Rosemary.

  “Anyway,” said the nurse, lowering the guardrail on the bed, “I don’t think you’ll be needing this no more. And you’ll find everything of yours from your old dorm’s been transferred here.”

  “What about the things in my safe?” asked Rosemary.

  “Your safe’s been transferred here too,” explained the nurse.

  Moments after the nurse left, a covered tray appeared on the table the same way that food normally appeared on the tables of the Great Hall at meal time.

  “Can I come in?” asked a familiar voice while Rosemary sat eating.

  “Dr. Fletcher?” asked Rosemary.

  “The one and only,” replied the voice.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  As the curtains parted, Dr. Fletcher stepped inside in his brown robe and mage’s hat. Rosemary could see that underneath his robe, Dr. Fletcher was wearing his usual white Oxford shirt and a yellow necktie with pictures of orange pumpkin jack-o-lanterns on it.

  “So, I hear some of your friends now know you as Rosemary,” he said, as he tapped his hat with his wand and hung it on the outer side of the closet, where it remained as though it were on a hook despite no hook being present at that location.

  “How did you know?” asked Rosemary.

  “Well, since they knew your somamorphic spell would be discovered by the infirmary’s admittance scan,” he answered, “your friends filled Madam Sutton in on that bit about your name. But don’t worry. Your situation is not going to be public knowledge unless you want it to be.”

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  “So who knows?” asked Rosemary.

  “May I?” asked Dr. Fletcher, gesturing at the empty chair opposite the table from Rosemary. She nodded.

  “Well,” he said as he sat down, “I know — the nurses and their supervising doctor know — and anyone you may have told before knows. As for who else will know — that’s part of what I’m here to sort out. But I think I should begin by asking you why you cast the spell in the first place.”

  “So I could be a girl,” answered Rosemary.

  “Then you prefer being a girl?” asked Dr. Fletcher.

  “Yes,” said Rosemary. “As long as I can remember, I always wished I was a girl. But I thought it was impossible until after I found out that magic is real and …” she trailed off.

  “I know how you found out about somamorphy,” assured Dr. Fletcher. “Amy told me all about it. She came clean on everything. Making a big case on why you don’t deserve to get in trouble.”

  “Am I in trouble?” asked Rosemary.

  “Well,” said Dr. Fletcher, “not as much as you could have been. It seems like that kind of somamorphic spell you’re under is one that would be approved for cases like yours. The only thing you did wrong is you went on your own and did it without clearing it with the right channels first. And that’s a pretty serious thing. Ordinarily, you’d be looking at being suspended from school for a while — which would set you back quite a bit.”

  Rosemary squirmed.

  “That said,” confirmed Dr. Fletcher, “Amy explained how you were not just desperate, but scared. That doesn’t excuse what you did, but it does mitigate it. So we’re prepared to let you clear your transformation with the school retroactively. That means, after the fact. But to impress on you that you should have gone through the right channels from the get-go, you will have to serve a little bit detention.”

  “And what about Amy?” asked Rosemary.

  “Well,” said Dr. Fletcher, “we appreciate that she was trying to help a fellow student in need. But she, too, went about it the wrong way. She should have helped you have the courage to go to Madam Sutton, to Professor Brown, even to me. Any member of the school faculty would do, actually. She could even have gone with you. But she shouldn’t have taken it on herself to help you transform without getting proper clearance.”

  “She was only trying to help,” reminded Rosemary.

  “That’s true,” said Dr. Fletcher. “And even though she went about it the wrong way, there are mitigating factors for her too. So she also won’t have the book thrown at her. But like you, we can’t just completely let her off.”

  “Detention?” asked Rosemary.

  “Yes,” Dr. Fletcher nodded, “but if it makes you feel any better, she’ll be doing a bit less of it than you will.”

  “It does,” said Rosemary, “but I wish she didn’t get in trouble at all.”

  “Unfortunately that can’t be,” said Dr. Fletcher. “But anyway, there’s one thing more to discuss. The boys you were rooming with — we need to figure out if they in any inappropriate way took advantage of living with a girl.”

  “My roommates?” cried Rosemary. “They didn’t even know!”

  “Well,” said Dr. Fletcher, “from what they tell me, they at least suspected something — at least in the last few days.”

  “Well,” said Rosemary, “Ricky gave me trouble about not wanting to go back to a boy’s hairdo the other night.”

  “That’s not what I’m concerned about,” assured Dr. Fletcher. “Did they in any way violate your privacy while changing? Or touch you in any inappropriate way?”

  “Ooh no!” said Rosemary. “Yuck!”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Dr. Fletcher. “So let’s get back to talking about you. Do you see yourself in your ideal future living as a girl — or just changing your body and otherwise continuing to live as a boy? Either answer is okay.”

  “I want to live as a girl,” affirmed Rosemary. “The name of ‘Simon’ is dead to me. As a matter of fact, when I went out to get a core for my wand, all the creatures that I introduced myself to as Simon sensed deceit and ran away.”

  “That’s fine to know,” said Dr. Fletcher, “but all I really need to know is what you want to live as.”

  “I want to live as a girl,” said Rosemary. “But I’m afraid to.”

  “Well,” said Dr. Fletcher, “I can’t tell you when to feel safe. But I can assure you that Misty Peaks Academy is one of the safest places in the nation to make such a change. The others being the other five academies that the United States Board of Magical Education runs.”

  “But what will my parents say?” asked Rosemary.

  “I can’t make any guarantees how they will react,” he answered. “But you know I’ve met them, and they strike me as very loving and intelligent people. It’ll probably be a lot for them to take in, but I think they’ll come around. But again, I can’t make any promises.”

  “Will they find out if I don’t tell them?”

  “Well,” said Dr. Fletcher, “I can’t guarantee that some other student won’t tell their parents and then your parents hear of it from theirs. But nobody from the Board of Magical Education will tell them — nor will anyone from the faculty or staff of this school. Not unless you say it is okay for them to do so.”

  Rosemary sat there silently.

  “Not going to rush you to decide,” said Dr. Fletcher. “But you’ve been using Halloween as your excuse to dress as a girl without telling anyone. I suppose I don’t need to tell you that that’s only going to work through Thursday. If you show up to classes Friday dressed as a girl then, well, people are gonna know.”

  “I want to be a girl,” said Rosemary. “But I’m scared.”

  “I’m here to help in any way I can,” said Dr. Fletcher, “but I can’t tell you what to do here. I can guide you through your options — but in the end, you’re going to have to figure it out yourself.”

  Rosemary sat silently.

  “Anyway,” said Dr. Fletcher, getting up and removing his hat from the non-existent hook, “I believe that by now Professor Hathaway has surely taught you how to send messages by mail. So here’s where you can reach me if you need me.”

  He placed on the table, beside Rosemary’s tray, a copy of the same business card he had given to her parents on the evening when he had come to her home to deliver the invitation to Misty Peaks. He then tipped his hat and left the curtained-off area.

  * * *

  Shortly after Dr. Fletcher left, Madam Sutton, the nurse, came into Rosemary’s curtained-off space to discuss the details of coordinating her somamorphic spell with the infirmary.

  “You’ll need to check into the infirmary once in a while,” she said, “so we can check on the transformation spell. We’re always open. If I’m not here, one of my staff’ll be able to help you. And when we’re done, we’ll tell you by when you have to be here next.”

  Rosemary nodded.

  “You’ll need to keep coming in here,” explained Madam Sutton, “for as long as you remain both enrolled in this school and under the transformation spell. However, as time goes by, the frequency with which you’ll have to come in for these check-ins is bound to decrease.”

  She spent a bit longer, giving Rosemary a few more instructions, and then left the curtained-off area — before leaving her on her own.