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I squint at the mirror, desperately hoping to spot some kind of change. But my little horns are still pointy, my wingspan is just as wide, my skin is the exact same shade of purple, my tail is still long and the tip is still a perfect arrow shape. And of course, I'm still precisely 2'11.4" tall. I'm still 100% imp.

Another failure.

"God DAMNIT!!" I thrash my tail across my worktable, glass beakers and vials shattering on the ground. Everyone is counting on me! Three years since this damn curse hit the town, three years trying to make a cure, and even this latest breakthrough turned out to be yet another dead end!! Am I really this bad of an alchemist..?

A knock at my door. "Uh, is this a bad time?"

Every moment in this damn lab is a bad time. I walk over and open the door to see the lumberjack. Well, former lumberjack; an imp body isn't cut out for hard labor. All the more reason for me to keep trying... "Hey. Careful of the broken glass."

She glances around at the mess that is my lab. "... Right, I just wanted to tell you a traveling merchant came to town. They've got some odd stuff in their wagon, thought you might be able to find something useful."

"*sigh*, thanks, I'll take a look after I finish sweeping this up."

"Here, let me help."

Though I don't deserve it, I appreciate her kindness. We spend awhile kneeled down on the floor as she helps clean up my mess... "I'm sorry."

"Hey, I get it, shit gets frustrating sometimes-"

"No, I meant... This," I gesture to her body. "I should've fixed this by now. Three years, and I'm still not any closer..."

"Don't beat yourself up. I know you've been working your ass off. This is just one hell of a curse."

"I know, I just... My latest potion should've been perfect! I know the curse doesn't prevent further transformations, so I used cardiacite fragments to- Ah, sorry, I don't mean to bore you."

"No no, go ahead. Dunno what cardite-sight is but I'm kinda curious how this stuff works."

Well, some rubber ducky debugging might help. "Right, so, the curse fully transforms the victims into imps, down to the deepest level. Our bodies no longer have any trace of humanity, so simply removing the curse wasn't enough to change us back. But, with the curse's magic gone, there's nothing preventing us from transforming again. Of course my earlier attempts were..."

"Your 'human transformation' potions." We both shudder in disgust. It's a good thing I made those temporary...

"Right. And even if I somehow perfected that, it wouldn't restore YOUR body, just give you a new, random human body."

"Anything's better than being an imp."

I frown. "... Well, I found a better method. The victim's body forgets its humanity, but the heart and mind remember. And last year I found a way to use that-"

"You've been working on the same potion for A YEAR!?!"

I sigh. "Yes... I really thought this one would work. A potion looks into one's heart and turns their body into their true form. So many iterations, so much improvement, and now it's... perfect." I gesture to the glowing bottle on my desk, sitting on a corner that my tail missed. "My perfect, useless masterpiece."

"... It looks tasty. Can I try it?"

I shrug, turning back to the pile of shattered glass. "Sure. I managed to work out all the side effects. It's so perfectly pure, so incredibly concentrated, yet even after weeks of drinking 3 bottles a day not a single change. I have no idea what I did wrong. The whole idea must've been flawed from the start-"

*POOF*

I whip around to see a new figure in the room, a human towering over me and the- The lumberjack's gone. No. That IS the lumberjack!

She looks down at her hands, reaches up to touch her face. She rushes over to the mirror, smiling and laughing so much it's contagious! "I'm human! I'm me again! Holy shit you did it!"

"I... I did it! It worked! I did it!!!"

The lumberjack lifts me up and hugs me, and we laugh together in celebration! Even if it only works on some people, this is a HUGE development! It WORKS! With more testing I'm sure I can make it work on everyone! So strange, though; I can't imagine why it worked on her but not me-

"Finally out of that awful body!" She returns to the mirror, running a hand over her head. "They're gone! No more ugly horns! No more horrible snaking tail! And I'm not the size of a damn garden gnome anymore! Finally, finally I..." She catches sight of my glare in the mirror. "Oh... Sorry, I uh... I probably shouldn't be celebrating until you're back to human too..."

"It's less the celebration and more that you're basically trash talking how I look."

"Oh. Well, you don't REALLY look like that though, right? Not deep down. That's just the body you're stuck in for now."

"Well this IS how I look right now, so I'd appreciate it if you'd stop calling me ugly."

"... Uh, okay. Sorry. A-and thank you! Oh my god, this is incredible..."

While she goes back to inspecting her restored body, I go back to pondering what could be complicating the potion. Maybe each person needs a different ratio of salts? But such a severe difference in effectiveness can't be explained by a mere mismeasurement-

"HOLY SHIT MY DICK IS GONE!"

"What!?"

"When you said it'd bring out my 'true form' I didn't realize it'd go this far! Ha ha, best potion EVER!"

... I step toward the mirror and look at myself. Not as a test subject, but as me... And I find myself smiling.