Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-29195016-20160724182401/@comment-24674051-20160724212316

I'm personally all for the idea that she is a Were-dragon that learned magic. And from statements made in show, Mal is a very ancient character (possibly pre-dating Rumple). So it could be possible that her bout with depression after the Sleeping Beauty incident, combined with extreme age, could have caused her to temporarily lose the ability to transform into her beast form (or at least be able to transform at will), and it took encouragement from Regina to regain that form. (Encouragement from a friend is, by the way, a very good tool in overcoming depression).

And being a were-dragon could also be used to explain a 'human' baby hatching from an egg. particularly if she got pregnant as the dragon and not the human. We really don't know that much about were beasts. And the only ones we know at the moment are Granny, Red, and possibly Mal. All of the other known were beasts have been killed or scattered.

Also, as we saw with Red's story, learning to control the shift into the alternate beast form and maintain mental acuity is not a simple task, and probably did take Mal many, many years to master.