In class there was none of the usual fumbling through her brief case for her pen – she found it clipped on the inside pocket of her jacket. She sat in her chair differently. For the first time ever, she had good posture.

 

The first lesson was History and her eyes were bright and attentive as she watched Mr Old talk about the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It was the last time England was invaded, and William the Conqueror lead his Norman soldiers to victory against King Harold and the Saxons. Actually Katie wasn’t listening. She was thinking about whether she should take the hem of her skirt up a centimeter or so that evening.

 

“Katie,” said Mr Old, “can you give us four reasons why Harold lost the battle?” Without hesitation Katie replied:

 

“He was late, his soldiers hadn’t had breakfast, and they weren’t dressed as well as the Normans.”

 

She had given only three reasons, and all of them were wrong. She obviously hadn’t done her homework very well – but she spoke with such confidence that even Mr Old was almost convinced for a moment.

 

“Not exactly,” he said.

 

“But close,” replied Katie with a smile. It was almost cheeky, but she just veered on the right side of being charming.

 

“Maybe,” said Mr Old and he asked Isis if she could give some reasons, which she did, because she remembered the history book word for word. She liked to get things perfect.

 

When the school bell rang to change lessons, Katie found herself walking down the corridor alongside Samantha. Normally Samanta had something horrible to say to Katie, but today she seemed to be short of evil inspiration.

 

“Nice weather we’re having,” said Katie.

 

“Hm, yes,” said Samantha. She wasn’t quite sure why she was agreeing with Katie when actually it was bitterly cold.

 

At lunchtime, Katie sat down on a table by herself, but it wasn’t long before Andy, who was one of the most popular boys in school, sat down opposite her and started talking to her about the band he was playing the drums for. Two of Andy’s friends sat at the table too, but he took no notice of them, and carried on chatting to Katie. This did not go unnoticed by Samantha, Arabella, and others.

 

After lunch, Isis asked Katie if she would like to stop off for a milkshake with her on the way home from school. Katie took out her pocket diary, which she had never actually used before, thumbed through the pages, and said:

 

“Sorry, I”m busy this week, but I could do Tuesday next.”

 

“Hm, suit yourself,” said Isis, and went off huffily. “No matter,” thought Katie. “It’s about time she learned she can’t take me for granted.”

 

In fact, as the week went on, Katie found that she was talking to more and more people about less and less. She never tired of making remarks about the weather or the latest boy band. Several people asked her over to have tea with them. None of the teachers seemed to mind when she got answers wrong in class, or even when she didn’t do her homework. She found that she was able to avoid any unpleasant consequences with a smile or a funny comment. If anyone else had tried it on like that, they would have been in hot trouble as fast as you could say “Detention!” But not Katie! And she wasn’t even using any magic to work her charm!

 

Yes, Katie was more content with herself than she had ever been. The only person who wasn’t really talking to her was Isis – but Katie didn’t mind about that, because she had so many new friends.

 

Her mother though, was not having such a good time. She had been out with Shumash and ended up having some prickly words with him. She felt rotten about it, because she really liked Shumash. Her shop had problems too. She had paid for a big consignment of tribal statues from Indonesia, but they hadn’t arrived. She was spending all day on the phone to the shipping company, getting more and more frustrated. To top it all, her car was broken down, she couldn’t afford to get it fixed, and she was having to walk or go by bus everywhere. Late on Saturday morning she decided to close the shop early and take the rest of the day off. She texted Katie:

 

“Come and meet me in town. We can stroll around the covered market and have tea together.”

 

And Katie texted back:

 

“Sorry Mum, I’m busy. See you when you’re home.” When she said “busy” she meant that she was still thinking about when she should get out of bed.

 

“Come on darling,” replied her mum. “The sun is shining and it might not last.”

 

“Okay,” texted Katie. “But give me a little time to take a shower and get ready.”

 

An hour and a half later she met her mum. It had turned quite bitter and gloomy and her mother was cross about waiting for her. But Katie did not seem to mind. She was thinking about the invitation she had received to go to the cinema with Andy.

 

That evening, when they were at home, her mum asked Katie if she would sort out the recycling bins. Katie looked up from her mobile phone and said “Sorry Mum, I’m busy.” A little later she stood up and walked airily across the kitchen and went upstairs to her room. Her mother sighed. Solomon the cat said:

 

“What’s got into Katie? She used to be such a nice girl?”

 

“It seems like she’s suddenly become a teanager a year too early,” said her mum.

 

Up in her room, Katie thought “Hmm, my desk looks messy.” – which was not something that would necessarily have occurred to her before she had changed her personality. “But we’ll soon fix that,” she thought, and she she snapped her fingers. Normally the pens would have hopped into her pencil case, and the papers would have climbed on top of each other and formed a tidy pile. But that evening they just refused to obey orders. She snapped her fingers again – and still they refused to budge.

 

“Mmm – Be like that then!” said Katie annoyed, and she went to clean her teeth.

 

She didn’t think much of it, because even a witch can have an off-day when the magic isn’t flowing quite as it should. But the following day at school there was another sign that her powers were clogged up. At lunch time, a little speck of tomato sauce splashed on her white shirtfront. She could have been able to clean it off with the stain removing spell, but today it just stayed there and she had to rearrange her tie to hide it.

 

Poor Katie’s mum! She had enough problems on her plate. An American collector was coming to her shop. He was very interested in the magical statues and masks she was shipping over from Indonesia – but they ah! They were still lost! If he flew back to New York without buying them, they would be clogging up her storage for a whole year! And she had paid good money for them already!

 

On Monday morning, she rang the shipping company, and they finally admitted that the cargo had left two weeks late and was still off the coast of West Africa. She was furious – but what could she do?

 

When Katie got home from school, she found a note on the kitchen table from her mum saying she would be home late and that her dinner was wrapped in tin-foil in the fridge. She assumed she must have gone out to the Theatre with Shumash.

 

Around 9pm, she heard the Crystal Ball ring. It had a deep sonorous sound like an old Grandfather Clock. The only person who ever called them on it was Great Aunt Chloe, and Katie wasn’t in the mood for speaking to her. But the Ball carried on ringing:

 

Bong! Bong!

 

And eventually, she put down her magazine, and went into the back room to answer it. She looked into the ball and saw not Great Aunt Chloe, but her mother. She was speaking breathlessly:

 

“Oh Thank Goodness, Katie you are there. I need your help. Put your hands on the Crystal Ball and make me invisible.”

 

“Why?” said Katie, “what’s up?”

 

“There’s no time, just do it!”

 

Katie sighed and put her hands on the ball. What kind of trouble could her mother be in? Was she playing hide and seek with Shumash? She said the magical spell for invisibility but she had a funny feeling that perhaps it hadn’t worked.

 

“There,” she said as confidently as she could. “That’s done, you’re invisible now. Let me know when you want to be visible again.”

 

Her mother replied, “Oh Thank you Katie!” and then: “Actually, I don’t think it’s worked. Try again…. quick… !”

 

“What’s going on mum? Are you in trouble?”

 

“Just do it!” called her mum.

 

Katie tried again. But when she pulled her hands off the ball, she could see that it hadn’t worked. She zoomed out of the picture on the ball to see what was happening at her mothers end. And I can tell you, she was enormously surprised by what she saw:

 

“Mum, what are you doing on a broomstick?”

 

“No time to explain,” called back Mum. “But there are fighter planes on either side of me. They want me to land on an airfield in Senegal!”

 

“In Senegal! Where’s that?”

 

“West Africa. If you must know, I was trying to get my lost statues off the cargo ship – but I’ve been picked up by radar as a UFO and the French Air Force has been scrambled. I’m lucky they didn’t shoot me down. Now please – Katie – focus – make me invisible I can’t do it myself while I’m flying just under the speed of sound on this bloomin’ broomstick.”

 

And with that, she swerved off to the left, but the fighter planes easily tilted their wings and kept alongside her.

 

Katie tried one more time – she tried ever so hard – she concentrated more than she had ever done before – but it was no use, the magic just would not work.

 

“Mum!” she called desperately “I can’t do it! My magic powers aren’t working!”

 

“Well, call Great Aunt Chloe!” shouted back her mum.

 

And Katie saw that there was nothing else for it – she was going to have to ask Great Aunt Chloe for urgent assistance. She got through to her Great Aunt right away, which was fortunate, because at this time of evening she could be in the middle of a long seance with her witchy friends from way back when.

 

“Aunty, this is an emergency. I need to you to make Mum invisible right away!”

 

“Can’t you do a simple spell like that yourself dear?” asked her Aunt.

 

“My powers aren’t working. Please do it. Really, she needs your help right now.”

 

And so Great Aunty Chloe summoned up Katie’s mum on her ball and did as Katie asked. Suddenly the French Air Force lost contact with their Unidentified Flying Object. The planes were ordered back to base. The whole incident was written up and sent to the President of France in a file marked “Top Secret” which funnily enough, is French for “Top Secret.” He read it as part of his briefing over croissants and coffee at 6am the following morning, and then forgot about it entirely.

 

Just a couple of hours earlier, an extremely weary Katie’s mum had arrived home safely and flopped on her bed. She realised that she had done a very silly thing. But just before she fell asleep she thought “I wonder what has happened to Katie.”

 

But in the morning Katie would not say much. She really did not want to admit what she had done to her mother. She just said that she was feeling strange, and asked if she could go on her own to stay with Great Aunt Chloe at half term, which fortunately was coming up. She wanted to recuperate in the countryside. Her mum worried that she might have glandular fever, but she agreed that what she probably needed most was a good rest. And so Katie took the train by herself to her aunt’s. As she sat on the train, feeling very down and sorry for herself, she was clinging to one little bit of hope. It was a very good thing that she had written down all the ingredients she had used for her personality spell, and their exact quantities. In this respect at least, she had followed witch’s best practice.

 

“Oh dear Katie,” said Great Aunt Chloe when she admitted it all to her. “Didn’t you read the introduction to that spell book? It explains that witches need creative and original personalities. You can’t just be ordinary and expect to do magic you know.”

 

And fortunately, as Great Aunt Chloe is an extremely skillful witch, she was able, after a few days of experimentation, to reverse Katie’s spell and undo all the damage. Katie went back to being just a little bit different. It’s not really fair that some people call her peculiar. In fact, she is warm hearted, witty and original. She isn’t the most popular girl at school. She doesn’t have swarms of friends. But the friends she does have, love her very dearly. And that is so much more important than popularity.

 

And that was the second and final part of Katie’s Magical Personality. Bertie would like to thank everyone who leaves comments and ideas for Katie stories at storynory.com. In this case, the initial spark came from a comment by Eliza who said:

 

You should totally do a story where Katie wishes to be popular then her wish works and she never gets left alone and everyone is always taking pictures of her and wearing I love katie shirts and stuff that would be a good story pls do that.

 

And although Katie is not the most popular girl at school, we are really glad that she is so popular with storynory listeners.

 

For now, from me, Natasha.