I peered at my reflection in the mirror. The skirt fitted fine; I still had hips, after all. The shirt, not so much. My school had been quite clear that while I was welcome to return, I was not exempted from any of their regulations. For the most part, that didn't matter. There were no rules against flying on campus, for example, simply because students couldn't normally fly, so the issue would never arise. The problem was the school uniform, which I was still expected to wear, but was now anatomically incompatible with.

The uniform explicitly called for 'black shoes' too, which would be even more of a pain than the shirt. Aside from my talons not fitting into any of my old shoes, my feet were effectively my new hands! Covering them would leave me unable to get things out of my bag, or write, or open doors. Well, I could still open doors the easy way, I guess, but that would probably fail the destruction of school property regulation.

In the end, I sliced the sleeves off the shirt, and mum tied a few black ribbons around my talons. The rules only said that my toes needed to be enclosed, and I had no toes, so no problem there, right?

There was indeed no problem. While the administrators were completely happy to insist on perfect uniform over the phone, they suddenly found my modifications perfectly acceptable once dealing with me face to face, especially once the lightning started to crackle around my horns.

Thus it was that after a little over a month away, I stepped back into my classroom for the first time. It was the first time in a lot longer than a month in which I stepped into the classroom alone. Samantha and Alicia were no longer with me, a fact that depressed me even more when I thought about the way I could have at least saved Alicia. I'd never mentioned to anyone that I had found her at B site. That knowledge would do nothing but renew the pain felt by her family.

As expected, I was the focus of attention the moment I stepped in. That attention was divided mostly into three groups; pity, curiosity and nervousness. The nervousness was especially strong around the delinquent group at the back, who were forever making suggestive comments at the girls in the class, and engaging in borderline bullying. I flashed them a toothy grin, but my heart wasn't in it. I needed no pity, wasn't here to play the role of a circus freak, and wasn't about to murder anyone, so none of the attention was relevant. Maybe I'd 'play' with the delinquents at break time, if I felt up to it.

More important than dealing with my classmates was working through my next logistical problem; my desk. I could sit down perfectly well, but the desk was at a height suitable for people with arms. Giving it a more careful inspection than I ever had back when I was human, I decided that trying to raise my feet above it wouldn't be possible. Keeping my books on the floor then? The desk would be in the way, and I wouldn't be able to see what I was doing. Maybe I should have taped a pen to one of my wing-claws? Or maybe I could use small bolts of lightning to scorch letters onto a page?

Okay, lesson learnt; not every problem can be solved with the liberal application of electricity. Fortunately, I'd managed to put out the resulting fire by the time our teacher arrived. Alas, the smoky smell was still very obvious, and when the teacher's eyes narrowed the moment he stepped through the door, the entire class pointed at me. The traitors.

I ended up sitting at the back of the room, away from any desk and working on the floor. Not that I'd been sent to the back as any sort of punishment or ostracisation, but simply because everyone behind me was complaining that my horns were in their way, and they couldn't see the blackboard. This school really wasn't designed with harpies in mind. Maybe there's some accessibility regulation I can take advantage of, since they like regulations so much?

The actual contents of the lesson made it clear that I had a lot of catching up to do, but I felt confident I could manage it. My struggles also helped to reassure the other students that I was taking this seriously, and wasn't about to eat anyone, with the result that some of my friends dared to come and speak to me, rather than staring from afar.

"Are you okay?" asked one, my partner in floral names, Rose. I struggled not to roll my eyes at the question, the lazy opener that it was.

"Yup, perfectly fine," I answered honestly. Why wouldn't I be? I felt sad for Alicia and Samantha, but I didn't feel guilty. What happened to them wasn't my fault, and while in retrospect I could have done something for Alicia, there was no way for me to know that at the time. Never mind rescuing a vampired Alicia, with the benefit of hindsight I could have led all three of us into a store before we were ever ambushed, and hidden there till the kidnapping squad decided to go for another target. Alas, time travel is not a power I possess.

And as for myself, I could fly and shoot lightning. Yes, my brain got a tad scrambled in the process, and I had to worry about silly things like how to fake wearing shoes and how desks worked, but in my opinion it was totally worth it. I wonder if old-Lily would have agreed? I couldn't remember her ever daydreaming about shooting lightning, but she certainly did about flying. She probably wouldn't have willingly gone through with it though; she'd have been too scared about losing her mind. She wouldn't have approved of becoming me, given a choice, mostly thanks to my flagrant disregard for human life.

"Are you sure? You're just kind of staring off into space."

"Sorry, was just thinking. I'm doing great."

"What's it like?"

I opened my mouth, but no snappy answer came to mind for that one. "It's... different?" I hazarded. "It certainly has its advantages. Can't even say I missed my thumbs until this class. Being able to fly is amazing."

"How can you fly, anyway?" asked one of my more intelligent friends, a bespectacled girl by the name of Briany. "With your wingspan, there's no way you should be able to get off the ground."

"Magic," I answered, simply. "I can, whenever convenient, pretend that myself and anything I'm carrying don't weigh anything. Don't bother trying to make sense of it."

"Wait, anything you're carrying?" asked Rose speculatively. Uh-oh; I recognise that face. It's the same one Ben keeps staring at me with.

"If you want to try, at least wait until after school, please," I begged.

"Aww."

"So, changing the topic," said the third member of this little group, a tall, athletic girl by the name of Linda. "Are you still staying in the swimming club? Can you swim at all?"

"That is a very good question, actually. I have no idea." I could probably manage something, surely, given that I could fly. Isn't swimming basically just flying underwater? I wasn't sure how fast I'd be, and I doubt I could manage a style that would be recognised by any official competitive organisation, but I'd only joined the swimming club for fun. I wasn't planning on representing the school in any competitions to begin with.

Swimming also had the advantage that the swimming costume would still fit me.

It turned out that I could, in fact, swim. Pretty darn well, too. My unphysical wings let me fly through the water in ways that seemed to spit in the face of such concepts as drag. Not that that prevented me from being permanently banned from the pool only half an hour in, when my fur clogged up the filter and caused a not insignificant amount of damage. It wasn't my fault that I moulted, or that my fur was as invulnerable as I was. I was thankful it degraded so quickly once detached from me, or I'd no doubt have government agents stalking me everywhere to collect the stuff.

So, swimming club was out. What other clubs could I join? Any sort of athletics was out; I wasn't all that fast on the ground, and we didn't have a flying club. Sports mostly required arms, as did gymnastics. Was there anything active I could do? I could join the literature or science clubs, possibly? The literature club took their books far too seriously for me; I just wanted to read and enjoy the story, and not spend twice as long as it took to read them analysing them afterwards. Given some of the people in the science club, Briany included, they'd probably try to dissect me or something. I suppose there was always the chess club, if I ever became that desperate.

The afternoon lessons went very slightly better than the morning, now that I didn't waste any time trying to make a desk work, and before long the school bell rang out the end of the school day. Tomorrow would be worse; today I only had written lessons, but tomorrow had a practical chemistry class. I might be forced to outright skip it...

Rose caught me before I had a chance to leave, staring silently with puppy-dog eyes. It was painfully obvious what she was after... "Fine then," I conceded. "Want a lift home?"

"Yesplease!" she exclaimed, forgoing the concept of individual words in order to get into the air a few milliseconds faster.

We walked out to the front gate, where I pondered how best to do this. She was far larger than Ben, and couldn't just cling to my back without getting in my way. I could hold her by the wrists, but would probably end up dislocating her shoulders when I took off. Holding her elsewhere would damage her clothes. Should I rush home and grab the contraption that Tommy's dad built?

"Well, what are we waiting for?" asked Rose, excitedly.

"I'm trying to figure out the best way of doing this. Normally, when a harpy picks someone up, their condition upon landing isn't relevant, but I assume you'd prefer to remain in one piece."

"Ah, yes, I would definitely prefer that, please."

We ended up with her clinging to my legs, her arms and legs both wrapped tightly around mine, and sitting on my talons. It didn't look at all comfortable, and she wouldn't get much of a view without awkwardly twisting her neck, but she still insisted on going through with it.

"If I'm going to be giving people lifts, I'm going to need some sort of harness, or a collapsible basket I can carry around," I mused, once we were up in the air.

"Argggg," Rose answered, having decided that heights had seemed much more appealing back when she was on the ground.

"Don't worry, I'll catch you if you fall," I said in reassurance, without mentioning that my idea of catching would result in some fairly nasty claw wounds. Fortunately, she didn't live very far away, and managed to successfully hold on for the distance.

"That was awesome!" she shouted out the instant we landed.

I blinked in surprise. "Who are you, and what did you do with the terrified girl I've been up in the air with for the past ten minutes?" I asked.

"What? People scream on roller-coasters, don't they? The terror is part of the fun!"

"Get the fuck away from my daughter!!!"

Huh? I turned around to see a man charging out from the house we'd landed in front of, while a woman was staring at me from the doorway with a look of such terror that it made Rose's mid-flight jitters look like a stroll in the park.

"Wait!" shouted Rose. "She was just giving me a lift home!"

The man, presumably her dad, ignored her, charging up to us at top speed and punching me in the face with the full force he could muster. I was too gobsmacked to even dodge.

Not that I needed to. "Would you like a lift to the hospital?" I asked politely, still very much upright and noting the unnatural angle at which his wrist was bent. There was no way that wasn't broken, and it looked like it needed immediate attention. He responded by repeating his misguided attack with his other hand, similarly breaking it. It seems like I won't be the only one around here trying to cope with daily life without hands.

"So, now that you're out of hands, are you going to calm down a bit?" I asked, without too much hope.

"Get away from that monster!" he shouted at Rose, at which point Rose kicked him in the balls. Even I couldn't help but wince as he fell to the floor, twitching.

"You idiot!" she shouted at the prone body. "You too," she yelled at the woman in the doorway, who I assumed was her mum. "What do you think you're doing, attacking Lily after she was nice enough to fly me home?"

She apparently has a rather different parent-child dynamic going on here than I do with my family. Perhaps I should just leave? But her dad really does look like he needs to get to hospital. And no doubt someone will have called the police by now. What a pain... This is what I get for being nice to someone and taking them for a ride.

"Thanks for the lift," Rose said to me, thankfully toning the volume down a little. "I'll deal with these two idiots, so no need to stick around."

"Are you sure? Your dad looks... kinda out of it."

"It's his own fault. Don't worry about it."

If she says so. I wasn't going to stick around if Rose was giving me permission to leave, so I took back off, and left her to deal with the fallout.

The police did turn up at my house later in the evening, very politely asking for a statement. Given what I'd done to the police department recently, I doubt there was a single cop in the city who would try anything. At least, not so long as I wasn't actually guilty. There were probably a few heroes around who would try it if they thought I was actually at fault, despite knowing it wouldn't achieve anything, and I respected them for that. The two that turned up tonight were not heroes, however, and nor was I guilty, so after a five-minute statement they left us in peace.

"Is that how every school day is going to end?" asked mum once they left.

"I hope not," I answered.

The following day, we did indeed get another evening visit from the police. It turned out that Bunsen burners are really difficult to operate with claws. I didn't mean to set the bench on fire! Or our teacher, either; he just happened to be walking past at an inopportune moment.

This whole going back to school thing is hard.