He smelled something burning and looked down to see a plume of smoke rising from his book bag. "Oh, no!" muttered Percy under his breath.  

Just then there was a loud "Kerchoo!" and the book bag burst into flames. Percy tossed his cloak over the book bag to douse the fire, but he couldn’t hide the squirming figure that wiggled its way out from under the cloak.

“Percy Norbit!” said Mrs. Wiggins, stomping her way across the classroom towards Percy. “What is the idea of this? There are no dragons permitted in school!”    

“But Mrs. Wiggins, he’s just a baby,” said Percy, holding up the little dragon for Mrs. Wiggins to see.

The corners of her mouth turned up just a little as she looked at Percy’s tiny pet.

“He is cute,” she admitted.

Suddenly, the dragon sneezed again, spewing flames from his nostrils which singed Mrs. Wiggins’s eyebrows and melted the rims of her plastic spectacles.

“Take him away now!” she ordered.     

Percy sighed and carried the baby dragon out of the classroom. A dragon is an excellent pet, he though, unless the dragon has a cold.

© 2008 Suzannah Hayes. Original for CCF  (Hayes grants CCF  first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).