The next time Matti blinked, or so it seemed, she was several more websites deep, the sky outside her dorm room window starting to grow dark, and her hand between her legs.

She blushed, very glad that she'd been able to get a private room this year, that nobody had seen what had just happened. She felt so dirty, so perverted, and yet, when she was realized what had finally broken her out of her almost hypnotic state, poring over diaper stories and diaper pictures and whatever she could get her hands on, was an achingly full bladder, she was very tempted to try letting go in her pants, soaking her now sticky underwear like a naughty little girl.

She didn't, of course. There was nobody around that was going to catch her, punish her, put her back in diapers for that, as much as that, suddenly, was what she fantasized about happening. It would just be a big mess that she would have to deal with, and that was no fun.

She stumbled out into the hall, blushing as she scurried to the bathroom, terrified that somehow, despite the headphones she'd put on when she'd started watching videos, someone had overheard them. Or her, as she moaned, some of the things she'd seen too hot for her to resist. If nothing else, her desk chair was getting old, and creaked if she leaned it back, so they easily could have heard that as she rubbed and squirmed.

It wasn't until she was on the toilet, in the knick of time to avoid an accident, that she fished her phone out of her pocket, seeing all the messages she'd missed, reminding her to get to the cafeteria on time, for the second day in a row. Her stomach was grumbling pretty fiercely, to the point where, when she stood up from the toilet, she actually felt a little light-headed. And no wonder, she thought. She'd had a quick bowl of cereal before she went to the store this morning, and that was all she'd eaten today, she'd been so engrossed with what she was finding online.

Luckily, the cafeteria stayed open a bit later on the weekend, or she would have missed it entirely. As it was, she thought she had missed her friends, not spotting them among the few groups left sitting at the various tables around the room, but after going through the line, and finding nothing left that she was interested in other than pizza yet again, she spotted Percy sitting by himself.

She was almost disappointed, although she felt guilty for it immediately. It wasn't that she disliked him, or any of her friends, but part of her had wanted to be able to sit by herself, scarf down her food, and return to her room. She knew that was being ridiculous, because she'd already spent the majority of the day going down this particular rabbit-hole, but she couldn't help it. She'd never found anything that made her feel the way this did, and that made her want to take in as much of it as she could.

They weren't supposed to take dishes out of the cafeteria, though she'd never seen one of the workers stop anyone. This late on a Saturday, especially, they wouldn't be paying attention. She could slip out, take her supper up to her room, and eat it there, then, if her friends asked, tell them she hadn't been feeling well that day.

Before she could settle on doing that, however, Percy looked up from his plate and waved. Reluctantly, she waved back, trudging over to sit with him. "Wow," he said when she was settled. "I was late today, but you're really cutting it close."

"Y-Yeah," she nodded, feet swinging beneath her, not quite long enough to reach the floor. She wouldn't have minded being taller, but it hadn't bothered her that much. Now, feeling herself do that automatically, all she could think about was all the cute girls she'd seen in grown-up nurseries, doing exactly the same thing in their high chairs as they were spoon-fed big bowls of mushy baby food.

She turned bright red, realizing her hand had been moving downwards, back between her legs, and she forced it to stop, clinging to her cup of soda instead, while her other hand moved to her pizza. Plain cheese had been all that was left today, but that was okay. It meant she didn't have to worry about which toppings she did or didn't like. And that was exactly the kind of pizza most little kids liked, from what she could remember from pizza parties in her younger days, which meant it was perfect for a silly little baby like her.

"Everyone else went off to Erik's room," Percy told her. "They're having a Smash tournament. I'm heading up there in a minute. So, if you want to play..."

Normally, she would have loved to do that, and she knew she she probably ought to, that it would be a good way to let herself cool off, but, almost without thinking, she heard herself say, "No, not tonight." After a moment, she added, "I have a big test on Monday that I totally forgot about, and I haven't studied at all."

Why had she gone with that? She'd already had an excuse ready! "Oh, you'll be fine," he chuckled. "You always are!"

"I'm not sure," she shrugged. For as good as her grades were, she rarely had to put much extra effort in it, so supposedly spending a whole day on this was definitely odd. If she'd just stuck to her 'feeling sick' story, she doubted he would have said another word about it. "Next time, though!"

He did stick around while she wolfed down her plate full of pizza, asking her again as they walked out of the cafeteria together. "Are you sure?" he asked. "It's gonna be fun!"

Matti knew that she should. They'd lost a couple members of their little group when they'd gotten girlfriends, or boyfriends, and started to use all their spare time to hang out with them, instead. Wasn't that what she was doing? Except that her significant other wasn't a person, it was the idea of diapers, and being put into them and made to use them, which made it so much more humiliating.

"N-No," she shook her head. "S-Sorry, not tonight."

She rushed back to her dorm room, giving the doorknob a jiggle to ensure it was closed and locked, plopping down in her chair and throwing on her headphones, seeing that the videos that she'd started downloading before she'd gotten up to go to the bathroom had finished. Looking over the filenames, she remembered what they were about, a giggle escaping her lips as she eagerly moved her mouse to click on one.

Before she could, however, she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she was being watched. She paused, glancing around her room, even though it was small enough that there was no way, even in her excitement, she could have missed seeing somebody standing there when she walked in, and there was too much junk stuffed under her bed for anyone to hide there.

Was it just that she'd come from seeing one of her friends? Or that she'd left her room, and thought about how close it was to her neighbors? After a few moments, she decided that was probably it, and, as long as her headphones were connected, which she double-checked to be sure, she wasn't really in any danger of anyone figuring out what she was into.

But the feeling didn't go away. She frowned, unable to make her finger click on the video. She stayed still, staring at the screen, and the preview image, taunting her. And then, from the corner of the eye, she saw movement.

"H-Hello?" she called, the word sounding distant outside of the cheap noise cancellation of her headphones. She minimized her file browser, and then the web browser underneath, which had a much bigger, more incriminating photo open in it, sliding off her headphones. "I-Is somebody here?"

With the headphones off, she could pick up a faint rustling, a sound the videos she'd already seen had made her very familiar with. That was definitely what a diaper sounded like as it was being moved around in. Had she left a video playing in the background? She looked at her Bluetooth settings again, wondering why the sound was seemingly playing over her speakers, however quietly, but her headphones were supposedly still connected.

And that was when, finally, she glanced over at the box sitting beside her computer that had started this all, at the impossible doll. After having seen how much AB/DL merchandise was out there, the fact that it existed didn't seem quite as strange, though it was definitely still odd to see something so high quality made for such a fairly obscure character, and especially for it to have been sitting on the shelf at a regular store.

What was much, much weirder, however, was that, as she stared at it, she saw it was moving, struggling against the wire ties holding its arms and legs to the cardboard backing. She gasped, taking her glasses off and rubbing her eyes, positive she had to be imagining things, but when the glasses went back on, the little toy Sierra was definitely still in motion.

A part of her didn't want to do anything, scared about what this could be, what it meant. The rest of her felt bad, however, seeing the poor thing fighting like that, so tiny and helpless, that she felt like she had to do something. "It's okay," she said, not knowing if the doll could hear her or not. "Don't worry." Gently, she picked the box up, opening up the top, sliding the contents out.

It definitely hadn't been her imagination. Out from behind the box's plastic window, she could see the movements even cleared, and could see that, indeed, the doll was just as realistic as she'd thought at first glance. Maybe even more-so, its skin looking like, well, skin, not plastic. Tentatively, she brushed her finger against the doll's arm, the hair on the back of her neck standing up.

"H-Hold on!" her heart pounded as she fumbled with the wire ties, freeing each of the doll's limbs, one by one, until it was able to stumble forward onto her desk, diaper crinkling beneath the short, puffy skirt of her dress, pouting and rubbing the spots where it had been held in place.

It was real. Or, rather, she was real. This wasn't a doll at all! Could it possibly really be Sierra?! Matti stared down at her, entranced, thinking back to all the stories where the little witch had been shrunken, or regressed. In fact, she could recall some where she had been turned into a doll, like this. Was it possible that they hadn't been fiction after all?

It seemed impossible, but she had no other idea how to explain what she was seeing. Her mind reeled at the implications of it, wondering if that meant magic was real, too, and Hogwarts, since Sierra had gone there in some of her stories. What even was reality anymore?!

"Oh," she thought out loud, blushing. "I can just ask, huh?" She leaned over, getting closer to the doll-sized girl, who flinched away. The pacifier gag in her mouth explained why she hadn't said anything herself, and also, to Matti's defense, why she hadn't thought to ask her what was going on before. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you! Could you turn around for me?"

Sierra looked up at her, brow furrowed, but, probably realizing she didn't have much of a choice, did as she was told. Matti rolled her chair closer to the desk, lifting up Sierra's hair and examining the back of the pacifier gag hidden underneath. Everything else looked like a perfect, miniaturized replica of the real thing, so she'd expected a buckle of some kind that, if she was careful, she could undo. Instead, it just made a perfect loop, with no visible way of removing it.

"Huh." She ran her thumb along it to see if it would move, to try to tell if it was loose enough that she could perhaps slip it off, but it seemed to be very tight. So tight that she didn't dare attempt to get her scissors underneath, for fear of hurting Sierra.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I know! Silly me!" She flipped the cardboard Sierra had been attached to over, removing the wires around the wand, gingerly picking it up and offering it to the witch. "There you go!"

Sierra stared up at her with an incredulous look at right about the same time that Matti noticed the wand, unlike Sierra, felt like plastic, like an actual toy and not, she assumed, what an actual wand would feel like. "That's not your wand, is it?" she asked. Sierra shook her head.

"Sorry," Matti told her. The girl's position in the box, reaching for the wand but unable to touch it, had made her assume it had been shrunken down, too, but apparently, that had been one final indignity, making it appear that way, while robbing her completely of her ability to undo this spell, even if she got free of the wires. "I'm not really sure what else to do. I'd love to talk to you, but I guess that's not going to be easy, huh?"

Sierra shook her head, then gave her diaper a pat. Matti blushed. Of course she'd want out of those! Matti hadn't even thought about that because she'd spent so long today fantasizing getting into them herself, but she knew that wasn't what Sierra would want. "I could take it off," she said. "I don't really have anything else for you to wear, though." Sierra pouted, stomping her foot. "Sorry."

Sierra sighed, flopping down on the desk, legs splayed wide by her diaper, as Matti stared, fascinated. There were so many things she wanted to say, to ask, but, the pacifier gag made all that pointless. "I really would like to help," Matti told Sierra. "But I'm just a Muggle. Actually, it's more complicated than that, but, yeah, no magic here." She shrugged.

Sierra looked up at her, tilting her head, then pointed to the door. "Do you want to go out?" Matti asked, the girl nodding. "I mean, sure," Matti said. "It's just a regular college campus, though, I don't think there's anything there that's going to help."

Sierra scrambled across the desk, Mary Janes clattering across the wood, then pointed at Matti's car keys. "Oh," Matti said in surprise. "You want to go somewhere else." Sierra nodded again. Matti glanced at the window, seeing that it was now fully night outside. What else did she have to do, though? It was Saturday night, and she'd already told her friends she was studying. And when was she going to get an opportunity like this again?! "Sure, okay. I'm not sure I can just carry you out in the open, though." It would definitely be weird for her, of all people, to be seen carrying a doll around campus, but if anyone saw Sierra move, that would be even weirder. "Would you be okay in here?" she asked, grabbing her messenger bag.

Sierra nodded, letting Matti pick her up and gently put her into the main pocket. Still having a hard time believing what was happening, Matti picked up her keys and headed out of the dorm, going out to her car and setting the bag on the passenger's seat, then lifting Sierra up onto her dashboard. "Can you see out okay?" she asked, the girl nodding. "Hold on!"

She started up the car and backed out of her parking spot slowly, trying to keep Sierra from slipping around too much. "Where are we going?" Sierra paused, closing her eyes for a moment, like she was trying to concentrate on something, then pointed in a direction. Matti followed her instructions as best she could, though she really wished she could have just had an address to type into the Maps app on her phone. She wasn't particularly good at getting anywhere without it, even if she'd been there a dozen times before, so in no time whatsoever, she felt hopelessly lost. She had a feeling that, even if she had given Sierra her phone so she could try to put a destination in, she wouldn't have been able to. It looked like even she wasn't completely sure of where they were going, like there was just something there she was sensing, and following.

Finally, Sierra's tiny finger pointed not to another road, but a building, one that looked, even before Matti saw the sign, like a school. "I-I'm not really sure we're supposed to be here," she told Sierra, but the witch was insistently jabbing her finger towards the building. Matti parked her car, grabbing her bag and slipping Sierra inside, leaving the flap open so she could see out as they crept closer. This was definitely a boarding school of some kind, she could tell, as there were still several lights on despite it being a Saturday night.

The front door was, unsurprisingly, locked, but a little investigation took her to a side door that wasn't. She paused for a second, worried about how much trouble she might get in if she was caught here. On the other hand, she thought, whatever Sierra was taking her to was probably magic, and when was she going to get a chance to see that again?

She opened up the door and slipped inside. The other side of the door led immediately to a set of steps going down, another door at the bottom of those. Was the first door open because that second door was the one that was locked? She had a bad feeling that was going to be the case, but she crept down the stairs anyway, crossing her fingers as she reached for the doorknob.

"Well, look at that," she smiled down at Sierra. "Maybe you ought to hang out with me more often. I think I must off-set your bad luck." Sierra tilted her head, confused. "Don't worry about it," Matti blushed. Maybe Sierra didn't know about those stories that had been written about her. Maybe she wondered how Matti could possibly know about how everything always seemed to go wrong for her. That made Matti wonder about whether Sierra had been active earlier, when she'd been gawking at her computer, enjoying herself, the thought making her very self-conscious about the tiny girl riding around in her bag. She hadn't noticed anything, but she'd been so enthralled, she easily could have missed it. Hopefully, Sierra had just been asleep or something. With the box turned the other way, there was no way she could have seen what Matti had been looking at, though, either way, she felt guilty. How was she supposed to know that those stories were not only real, but she had the protagonist of them sitting a foot away from her the whole time?!

That good luck seemed to continue, as Sierra pointed at the first door they came across. Matti paused and saw that it was labelled 'Laundry Room'. "In there?" she frowned, Sierra nodding in response. She couldn't imagine there was some mystical artifact hidden there, but she'd come this far, so why stop now? She held her ear to the door for a moment, hearing the sound of a washing machine on the other side, but no voices, so she opened it up and saw that there was nobody there.

She could also see, however, by the many laundry hampers, and the counters laden with clean, freshly folded ones, that this school had a uniform. "Oh, good call," she told Sierra. If she was going to be wandering around, it would be better to be able to be mistaken, at a glance, for one of the students, rather than some random person who had wandered in off the street, even if that was exactly what she was.

She wrinkled her nose as she looked through the clean uniforms, spotting almost instantly that this was either an all-girls' school, or at least, that only girls' uniforms were being washed at the moment. While she had put her hair clip in this morning because it was annoying having to correct strangers when she was out and about the fact that she was a girl, this was one case where she wouldn't have minded having a guys' uniform to slip into. She was going undercover anyway, so there was nothing wrong with an extra layer of deception, in case anything went wrong. That, and it would keep her from having to put on one of the black and white plaid pleated skirts she was faced with.

"Ugh," she wrinkled her nose, picking one up. "Stupid skirts." Sierra, who she'd set on the counter, gave her a pointed look, glancing down at her own babyish dress. Matti blushed, trying not to think about how much she'd rather be in that, to be honest, how she'd fantasized about having someone do exactly that to her at multiple times that day. She couldn't imagine Sierra understanding that, though, so she said, "Fair point," and, reluctantly slipped out of her shorts and into the skirt.

A baby blue button-up shirt later, and she couldn't imagine anyone here looking at her twice, or thinking that she didn't belong. It was embarrassing that, as an adult, almost out of college, this uniform fit her so perfectly, but, in this case, she was grateful for it. She stuffed her old clothes into the pocket of her messenger bag, slung it back over her shoulder, then put Sierra back inside, turning to head out of the laundry room, tugging self-consciously at the skirt.

And then, to her horror, right before she got to it, the door opened, leaving her no time to try to hide, or do anything, before a pair of tall women spotted her. She froze, swallowing nervously, praying that she was right, and that her disguise was going to work.

"What are you doing in here, young lady?" one of them demanded.

"I-I was just..." Matti squirmed.

"You know you're not supposed to be here," the other woman said. "We already picked up your hampers for the week. There's no reason for you to be here. Unless..."

Matti backed away instinctively as the woman stepped towards her, her companion smirked. "You don't think it's her, do you?"

"Just look at her," the other woman smiled, in a way that made Matti uncomfortable. "She's definitely hiding something. And she seems like the type, don't you think? Why else would she be down here?"

"I-I..." Matti's mind went blank as she frantically attempted to concoct a story.

One of the women grabbed her by the arm, pulling her closer, lifting her arm and giving the shirt a sniff. "That's what I thought. This just came out of the dryer, didn't it?"

"M-Maybe," Matti admitted. It had been slightly warm.

"I knew it!" the other declared, after walking from hamper to hamper, finally stopping at one, picking up a pair of underwear, inspecting it, and letting it drop. Matti yelped as the woman returned to her side to grab ahold of her ear, pulling her forward by it, leaving her no choice but to follow as she was dragged out of the laundry room and down the hall. "You've been quite the nuisance, young lady! Don't worry, though, I'm going to make sure this never happens again!"

"I-I didn't do anything!" Matti insisted, stumbling forward, trying to keep up with the woman's much longer legs. "I-I'm sorry!"

Finally, after going up a flight of stairs, and down a few hallways, the woman stopped at another door, giving it a rap before bursting in, pushing Matti inside in front of her.

"What is this?" the woman in the room inside asked, looking confused, and a bit concerned.

"We found the little brat who's been wetting herself, then sneaking fresh uniforms straight from the laundry room," the laundry woman declared, Matti's breath catching in her throat as she heard the accusation, a part of her knowing exactly where this was going. "I think you know what to do, Nurse Miller."

"N-No!" Matti squealed, wincing as the excitement of the moment crept into her voice, making it that much harder for her to sound convincing. "I-It wasn't me!"

"Nice try," the laundry woman sneered. "I found your wet clothes, and you in a uniform right out of the dryer. You're not fooling us, little missy."

"There's no need to scare her," the nurse said, her voice gentler. "I am upset you didn't just let me know, but I'm sure you must have been embarrassed. Not to worry, though, dear, now that we know, we'll get it all taken care of."

Matti turned to look at her, a tiny squeak emerging from her mouth, her head spinning, as she saw the large, white diaper the nurse was holding, her knees going weak as the woman gave it a squeeze and she heard the crinkle.

Maybe she'd been wrong, she thought as she watched the nurse open up the diaper, spreading it out on her exam table, squirming as it started to fully sink in that it was for her, a hint of fear edging into her excitement. Maybe she wasn't off-setting Sierra's bad luck after all. Maybe Sierra's bad luck was rubbing off on her.