I wasn't able to force myself to stand up to come inside, so her dad ended up having to carry me. He put me down on the couch in front of the fireplace, where they bundled me up in all the blankets and just held me for what felt like hours.

Finally, I manage to choke some words out. "She's alive. Syl's still alive."

I can feel her dad visibly relax as her mom starts crying all over again.

"Where is she? Where's my baby? Is she in the hospital? I'll go start the car right now, the military has to let us through, we're her parents-"

"She's not in the hospital. She's... there's... there's something you need to know."

A minor cantrip to lower my friction and I slip right out of their arms and the blanket cocoon, to stand in front of them. Then, before they have a chance to say anything, I shut my eyes with embarrassment and activate my transformation.

When the music and lights finally fade, the reactions are... not exactly what I expected.

"You see, Oskar! I told you they were magical girls! You thought they were sneaking out of the house to have premarital sex, but I told you, I said they must be magical girls. That's why Hazel was always covered in bruises."

This was the most embarrassing moment of my life. Worse than when I asked the kindergarten teacher if she could be my mom. Fuck, I could feel the warmth of Sylvie blushing under my uniform.

Technically, her dad was right too. More right, actually, since only one of us was a magical girl and most of those bruises probably came from Syl. But there was no way in any of the underworlds I was going to tell them that, especially not now.

"Syl..." I say, interrupting, and her mom immediately falls silent. "She was there with me last night, fighting. We were out at the construction site, where the alien attack happened." Hazel's #1 Rule of Lying: Tell the truth as much as possible, but creatively. Everything I just said was technically correct, just leaving out the bit where their daughter was the alien I was fighting and all the other kinky stuff. "Everything was going okay until... an accident."

Time to start the actual lies. "The alien had some sort of... self-destruct mechanism we hadn't seen before. It just barely missed me, but Syl couldn't... she was right in the way... didn't have time to react..." No, no more crying. I need to get this out before they assume the worst again. "But she's still going to be okay! She's going to be okay. It's just... she needs time to come back."

"Come back?" Sylvie's mom asks. "What-"

I quickly cut her off. "You know phoenixes? The Mediterranean firebirds that come back from their ashes?"

They nod. 

"Well, there's a magical girl spell based on them." The truth. Fire Invocation: Rising Phoenix is a real spell. "Syl's going to be just fine, her soul's alive and safe, but it's going to take a little while to regrow her body." Still technically the truth, but extremely misleading. In truth, Rising Phoenix is just an extremely fast acting and potent, albeit excruciatingly painful, self-regeneration spell.  If it actually worked that well, it would be one of the Big Spells and I wouldn't be able to talk about it. 

Like Darkness Invocation: Soul Vessel, which pretty much does actually work like that, but which the Asterism barely lets anyone use. Turns out, unless you have an extremely flexible sense of self, the spell tends to cause dissociative disorders and really messy existential crises.

"Any-" My voice catches in my throat, and I force a cough to try and clear it. "Anyway, I'm going to put in the paperwork to go on family leave from school, and do everything I can with my magic to help bring her back sooner."

Her dad seems to be satisfied by this, sinking back into the couch with his forehead wrinkles mostly uncreased. Of course her mom's still fretting, but almost back to her normal amount. I look towards the fire for just a moment and, just like that, she's on her feet and fussing over me, telling me how brave we are and... I kind of just tune it out, letting her benevolent attention wash over me.

"...and you look so adorable in that outfit, you'll have to let me take a picture, oh wait, you're not allowed to have pictures, right? That's what Janet said. You remember Janet, my friend from pilates? Her sister's niece is a magical girl too. Have you met her? Anyway, that's not important now, you must be so exhausted after everything. Just make yourself at home, you know you're always welcome here. Do you want to stay in Sylvie's room? I mean, it's practically your room too, with how many sleepovers you two had. Which makes so much sense now, you must have been going out and having adventures every night. I'm just glad it didn't affect Sylvie's grades. Or her skating. Oh, she's going to be so disappointed, she's been so excited about her skating competition..."

All of a sudden, Sylvie starts itching aggressively at me.