Dan gulped. He felt like his guts were turning to water, but he wanted some agency here, damn it.
"I...look. I want to know I can trust you not to do anything...irreversable. I mean, I want to know that *you* won't do it, not that Mom won't let you. We're brother and sister, damn it..."
Kat looked at least a little contrite, then raised her hand solemenly.
"I, Katherine Spellman, swear to you, Daniel Spellman, that although you are an annoying, stubborn, interfereing, smelly, and generally infuriating weirdo, I am still your sister and I still love you, honest. If not may Rhiannon Of The Horses trample my soul into the dust."
Dan blinked.
"Wow, that last one's pretty...dark."
"Eh, it's traditional, so of course it has a dark edge. Like 'may God strike me down' - most folks think of that as being, like, struck by lightning, but the Jewish tradition was always pretty clear that Adonai preferred casting Fireball to Lightning Bolt..."
Dan nodded along absently, and Kat slowly trailed off, eyeing her brother subtly.
Kat really did love her brother, it's true. She absolutely, positively, did NOT want him permanently maimed or hurt, and DEFINITELY not killed...
...permanently, anyway.
Kat would be the first to admit she had a mean streak. Probably, if she was honest, she was a bit of a sadist. But she was, normally, a very ethical person, and scrupulously avoided causing suffering. Except with Dan, who she delighted in needling as much as he, at least in her eyes, enjoyed needling her. And now her brother was able to be turned into various lowly beasts, and treated like them - and all with perfectly valid excuses her parents would accept, 'learning opportunities'. To top it off, she didn't have to worry about Dan getting hurt in a way she couldn't fix...
Dan had become her perfect stress reliever. But she needed him to trust her, and to keep trusting her, which meant...
'Ugh, I'm gonna have to actually behave myself when he *isn't* lower on the food chain. Oh, well, nothing's perfect...' Kat thought idly.
Dan was still clearly mulling the idea of being in the tank at the party.
"There are...other lobsters there...?"
"Technically. There's a tank in the restaurant that we booked, yeah, but you're too big for it still so we'll magically expand it to fit."
"Too big...?"
"Oh, yes, brother dear, you're going to shrink a good deal. A regular Maine lobster after all..."
Kat leaned in slightly, making her voice just a tiny bit sultry. This wasn't magic, really...more like psychology. Tease him, and his subconscious, into doing what she wanted - and, she was now convinced, what he really wanted to do too.
"Just a regular lobster. Like the others in the tank, once you get smaller, smaller...don't you feel too big, Dan? Isn't there something in your little lobster soul that wants to be a more...appropriate size?"
Dan sweated, licked his lips, tail thrashing slightly as his attenae twitched.
"W-well-"
"And remember what I said about the gills? You'll never make it in water without them, you need them, don't you...to be your best lobster self..."
"My...birthright as a lobster..." Dan said, almost in a trance.
Kat raised an eyebrow. That was a weird way to look at it, but she'd take what she could use.
"Yes, your birthright as a lobster...you want to swim in a tank, Dan...Don't you...."
"...yes..."
"On display for everyone..."
"...yes. Yes, I want to go to your p-party..."
Dan gasped suddenly, his breath feeling short.
"W-what's going-"
"Shhh...gills, not lungs. Just breathe through it, the magic will keep you safe. I'm right here if you need help," Kat said soothingly.
Dan felt lightheaded, having difficulty breathing as his lungs shrank within him. He felt something growing, pushing out at the top of all his appendages - including his claws. Soon he was breathing through those spaces, and he felt his lungs vanish from within. His voice when it came out sounded hoarse.
"That was weird...what's wrong with my voice?"
"Well, your fellow lobsters are not exactly known as sterling conversationalists."
"Har har."
"Heh, just teasing. Really, it's that you're not really built for speaking anymore. Your gills don't actually connect to your mouth at all, but magic has...odd relationships to the human voice, and tries to preserve it of its own accord when it can. Only when your mouth changes shape will you lose the ability to speak, and even then most magical folk will be able to understand you telepathically."
Dan raised his crusher claw as high as he could, observing the small hair-like structures of his new gills.
"...this is...really cool, actually."
He turned to Kat, who quickly schooled her glee into a reposed face.
"Ok, so...how do we do this?"
"I teleport us there, and you appear in an enlarged tank. The staff are currently under a minor enchantment that lets them react to magic like it's normal but ensures they'll forget it afterwards. Everyone else there is either a witch themself or immediate family of one."
"Cool..." Dan said, lost in thought at the idea of being displayed in such a way. He shook himself.
"Hey...come to that, how come I wasn't invited, if it's not witches-only?"
Kat shrugged.
"You would have, actually, but for being a bit lobstery. Mom and Dad figured you'd want the privacy more than being included."
Dan nodded.
"Well...I like that they thought of me, but I also like the idea of, you know, supporting my sister at her...er...coming out of the broom closet?"
Kat snorted.
"Dork," she said with obvious affection.
'Which doesn't mean I won't enjoy what happens next...'
"Alright, Dan, I'm taking us to the party. Deep breath - next one you take will be in a restaurant's tank of seawater, like a proper lobster..." she said, in that teasing, tempting tone. Dan shuddered slightly while restraining a mixture of fear and delight. Kat snapped her fingers...
~~~~~~
The room looked odd from inside the tank. Kat was standing next to it, smoothing her skirt and beaming, but she looked hazy, slightly blue. Everything did. He could hear, muffledly. Something was off...he looked up to see he had a party hat attached to his head, and was apparently wearing a small bib-like sign that said "Happy Witchday, Kat! Love, Your Supportive Brother."
'...ugh. No good deed goes unpunished...' he thought wryly. Many people in the room looked surprised, but only mildly, meanwhile their mother was walking over rapidly, a rictus Polite Society grin plastered on her face. When she got close enough she whispered fiercely to her daughter.
"Katrin Rebecca Spellman, what the holy hell do you think-"
"He asked to be here." Kat said, also whispering and wearing a smile - though less fake than her mother's at the moment. "Ask him."
Dan's mother looked at him with slightly bulged eyes. Dan shrugged, gesturing to his sign.
"Er...we thought we'd try getting along, so I figured...well...might as well be supportive. And it was lonely at home."
His mother looked flabberghasted, and his father at the high table looked decidedly perplexed, but didn't rise. As Dan thought about it, his father and mother had always co-parented him more than Kat - not that his father was cold to her, far from it, but when Dan got in trouble it was clearly his parents deciding together what his punishment would be; Kat's discipline had always come from Mom, with Dad silently assenting by her side.
'Must have been because Mom and Kat are both witches...' Dan thought.
"Daniel," his mother said - he noted he could hear her clearly now, probably from magic.
"Daniel, I realize you were lonely at home but...you really want to be...Dan, Kat may have made it bigger but that's the tank *real* lobsters go in! That people *eat!* Is this really-"
Dan felt his heart racing, his mother unintentionally playing up every part of this that was both terrifying and arousing.
"Y-yeah, Mom, I know, look, just enjoy the party, don't cause a scene."
"Yeah, come on, Mom, you're making so much of this people are gonna start to talk..." Kat said pointedly. "Just trust Dan on this, ok?"
Their mother looked poleaxed for a heartbeat, then smiled a little exasperatedly.
"Well, I suppose anything that gets Kat to tell me I ought to trust Dan goes beyond magic and into miracle territory. Just one thing..."
She raised her hands, and Dan saw the colors of the room whirl. Nothing much changed, but the lobster tank was now behind the main table. Kat had was back in her seat of honor, and looked confused at her mother as the latter made a small declaration to the crowd.
"Nothing to worry about folks, Kat's still getting used to her magic and forgot to move the tank so Dan could sit with us. But she'll get the hang of it, we all did! Besides, look at her fine work helping her brother unlock his shifting abilities! I couldn't be more proud."
Approving murmers shot through the crowd, and Kat leaned back in her chair with a grin and whispered to Dan.
"Of course you realize, now you're at the focus of the room with us...everyone can see how natural you look in that tank...just a bigger version of the others..."
Dan gulped, torn further yet between his fears and his desires, looking around at how the...other lobsters scuttled around him on the floor of the tank.