Taemin gazed dreamily out of his second story bedroom window, watching as Kai (the most beautiful boy in the entire world according to Taemin, and also coincidentally his neighbour directly across from him,) rolled out from underneath his black 1963 Pontiac Catalina and wiped some grease off his forehead with the back of his hand. 

Heaving a deep sigh, Taemin stared happily, letting his eyes follow the curved of Kai’s toned arms digging through a rusted out tool box. 

Kai turned around and sauntered back to his car, satisfied in his choice of wrench. Catching Taemin gazing at him from across the street, he gave him a teasing wink before flipping his shaggy black fringe out of his eyes and sliding back under his car.

Taemin felt himself go red from his toes to the tips of his ears.

“TAEMIN!” His mom called rather abruptly from somewhere downstairs.

“Yeah, mom?” Taemin squawked awkwardly, having very nearly almost pissed himself.

“Are you getting any homework done up there? I don’t hear any spellcasting?”

‘Yes mom!” He replied hastily, tossing a mess of scattered notebooks and papers aside looking for his wand. “I’m a very responsible student, remember?”

“Riiiiiight,” She laughed sarcastically,  “Of course, how could I ever forget?” 

Finally digging his wand out from under a pile of chemistry notes,Taemin steadied himself in front of the full length mirror on the other side of the room. Watching carefully, he squared his shoulders and planted his feet firmly on the worn grey rug, making sure his stance was stable enough for him not to get knocked on his . 

He took a deep breath and extended his wand arm with a dramatic flourish, “Experinytum!”

…… Nothing.

“Experinitium!”

Nope.

“Uhhhhh Experinoctum?”

Nada.

Taemin whacked his wand into the palm of his opposite hand a few times, “Come on, you silly thing. How does that spell go?”

Taemin flicked his wrist one more time, “Experinictum!”

A bolt of purple blue light zipped explosively from the tip of his wand. Taemin hit the deck with a startled yell, narrowly dodging the spark as it bounced off the mirror in front of him and rocketed out his bedroom window. 

Taemin quickly scrambled to the window in time to see his rogue spell fly across the street and into Kai’s open garage door. A distant yelp sounded from across the street. 

His blood ran cold, “Oh Kai- WHAT DID I JUST DO?”

“Ohohohpiss-” Taemin panicked as he bolted down the stairs and out the front door, making his way across the street in record time. 

Skidding to a halt, the young wizard stared in abject horror, The only thing left of his gorgeous neighbour was dark grey t-shirt, some ripped black skinny jeans and a pair of heavy leather combat boots.Taemin sank to his knees, staring blankly at the slightly smoking scene on the garage floor. 

“Oh my god… I VAPORIZED HIM,” He sobbed dramatically, “The cutest boy in town and I ING EVAPORATED HIM!” 

Taemin, now on his hands and knees, balled his fists into the still warm fabric of Kai’s shirt. He crumpled into a pathetic heap on the cement, still crying and trying to figure out how to tell his mom he’s wanted for magical manslaughter. 

His downward spiral of thought was suddenly cut off by the dull sound of one of Kai’s chunky leather boots tipping over. 

Startled, Taemin stopped crying and slowly lifted his head and peered intently at the now sideways combat boot. 

“Bbrribbit.”

Taemin’s breath caught in his throat, “K- Kai…?”

A sizeable green toad wobbled out from the opening of the boot with another low croak.

Taemin crawled a little closer and squinted his eyes at the toad, “Kai, is that you?”

The toad gave the white haired wizard an awkward nod.

 “Ribbit.”

Taemin all but himself, “Kai, you’re a TOAD? I mean thank I didn’t accidentally kill you but YOU’RE A GODDAMN TOAD!”

Kai, the toad, even without the appropriate facial muscles to actually emote, managed to look very surprised, albeit a little exasperated. He hopped clumsily towards Taemin, still trying to make sense of his new amphibious legs. 

“Brrrbit,” Kai croaked in a tone that Taemin understood as ‘You can fix this, right?’

“I- uuuhhhh,” Taemin stuttered, resetting himself from his crumpled position on the cement. His eyes darted desperately back and forth across the garage. 

“Yeah, uhh, no- yeah I can fix this, it’s fine, totally fine,” Taemin trailed off, quietly mumbling something to himself about Professor Steele never having showed him the ‘undo’ spell. 

“I mean I’m sure my notes have something, right?,” He stared apologetically at the toad in front of him.

Kai just stared blankly. 

Taemin scrabbled not so gracefully to his feet and glanced around the garage, his eyes landing on a discarded shoe box sitting on a shelf. 

“Perfect.”

He snatched the shoe box and knelt down in front of the toad.

“Sorry,” He peeped inelegantly, scooped up Kai (who was beginning to feel increasingly more like a science project) and put him gently in the box. 

“I’ll fix this, I promise,” He turned to leave and was cut off by an indignant croak from Kai. 

“Right! Sorry again!” Taemin flushed slightly ,awkwardly turning around to gather up Kai’s clothes with his free arm and finally scittering back to his house and up the stairs to his room. 

Taemin carefully placed the box on his desk amongst the slew of study notes and textbooks.

“Do you uh, need anything…? Want me to go outside and find some bugs for you to snack on?” 

“Rrurbit.”

The wizard laughed uncomfortably, “Focus on the matter at hand, got it.”

He flipped through the indexes of his textbooks looking for anything that looked like a reversal spell.

“Growth spell reversal, nope. Invisibility spell reversal, no. Curse reversal? Maybe. Death reversal??? Really? There’s a death reversal spell but no turn-a-toad-back-into-a-hot-boy spell?”

Kai let out an amused croak, reminding a now embarrassed wizard that he was in fact sitting right in front of him.

Taemin gave box toad an awkward side eye and promptly re-hid his face behind his spells and charms textbook, “I’ll figure something out, don’t worry.”

A few hours had passed and nothing in any of Taemin’s textbooks mentioned any toad reversal spells, or even any transmogrification reversal spells for that matter.

Taemin leaned back dramatically in his desk chair, a textbook draped over his face, “I dunno man, I can’t find anything in my notes.” He lolled his head to the side and let the book slide off his face and onto the floor with a muted thud. He started uncomfortable at Kai, who was now sitting atop a stack of scribbled notebook pages, skimming them quickly with his toad eyes, “I done ed it up this time, huh?”

Kai croaked something to the effect of ‘For ’s sake, just try something.”

“Alright!” Taemin flung both his arms up in the air in defeat, “I’ll just make some up I don’t know.”

Taemin got up from his swivel chair and swiped the toad off his desk, placing him back in his shoe box and onto the floor. Squaring his shoulders once more, he flicked his wrist and aimed his wand at the anxious toad, “Uhhhhh, take-backsis!”

Kai, obviously still a toad, cocked an unimpressed eyebrow at Taemin.

“Alright alright, I’ll keep trying. Don’t look at me like that! Uhhh in… Expelitoad! Ah, nope, still a toad. .” 

“Man I don’t know!” He lazily extended his wand out again, “Redactoad!” 

Another erratic bolt of blue purple light erupted from Taemin’s wand, creating a mini explosion on the floor in front of him. Taemin coughed, dramatically flapping the purple smoke out of his eyes.

Once the smoke had cleared, Taemin finally opened his eyes, blinking the blurriness out a few times. His bull, made up spell had somehow worked, Kai was somehow back in his human body. He was also wearing nothing but a shoebox on his left foot.

“Y’know if you wanted to see me to badly, you could’ve just asked.”