Aubrey was used to living a life by sod’s law by now. Everything had gone wrong already; life couldn’t get much worse. So not much threw him off these days, considering. He lived in pockets and schoolbags and shoes, after all. He had pooped in shoes, too. He’d eaten worms. He had hedgehog children out in the forest somewhere, for crying out loud.

But the cat in front of him suddenly becoming a giant human in the small space of the corridor in front of him gave him such a fright he barely avoided the heart attack, and didn’t manage to avoid faceplanting into his half of the iced bun.

Licking sticky icing off his nose, Aubrey scuttled backwards in shock before he heard what the girl (who had owned a cat once, hadn’t she? He hadn’t known she was a bloody cat!!!) was accusing him of. An animagus.

Girl, if it were only that simple, Aubrey deadpanned in abject despair. It only came out in a snuffle, because he was still a hedgehog in body, and no amount of willpower was going to make him sprout human legs again and because able to relay this to her in the damned English language. She could yell at him to change back all day, if she liked. It would do no good.

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