The Beast Within

Holiday Games

It didn't seem like winter. I assumed they had used an enchantment to keep the plants alive. It was bright, colourful and full of life, however it was very cold. We spent most of the holidays inside, playing wizards chess (which I found I was quite good at), exploding snap and gobstones. They had a kneazle called Ben who would keep trying to fight Armin, but got scared whenever he flapped his wings. Mr and Mrs Lupin were like parents to us. They made the best food and always made sure we never went hungry. They let us play quidditch outside sometimes which me and Brendon kept winning in and they even occasionally joined in with our games. Their house was in the countryside so it was out of sight of muggles. I noticed Brendon was spending a lot of time with Ava. The triplets and Sam, the Hufflepuff boy, arrived. Sam was a muggle-born and knew a lot about muggles. We had fun telling them lies about the muggle world. We had told them that Jammy Dodgers were explosives, designed to look like innocent biscuits and extremely deadly. We were explaining to the triplets what a phone was when Brendon burst in.
"Who wants to play a game? I'm really bored right now!" He announced.
"What type of game?" I asked.
"Truth or dare? I don't know?" He replied.
"Let's do truth or dare." I said. "REMUS!!!!" I yelled at the top of my voice, making everyone jump. He came stumbling into the room.
"You and Ava wanna play Truth or Dare with us?" I asked.
"Sure, why not." He said before going to fetch Ava who had been playing chess with him.
"I won." She said as she walked in.

"No, that's not fair! I had to see what Phoenix wanted." Remus said.
"Yeah, yeah." Ava spat.
"Oh shut up you two." I laughed. "Okay let's go, who wants to go first?" I asked.

Sam stood up, putting three fingers to his lips then up into the air screaming,
"I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!" taking us by surprise. Me, Ava and Brendon doubled over laughing, the others looking around at each other, confused.
"It's a reference to a muggle book and film series." I explained, still giggling. "Okay Sam, Truth or Dare?"
"Dare!"
"Okay, I dare you to spend tonight and tomorrow with donkey ears." I said.
"Come on, that's easy." He replied.
"Okay then, kiss Jack!" I grinned.
"Donkey ears!" He exclaimed. We couldn't use magic so we got Mrs Lupin to do it for us. She looked at us like we were insane when we asked her. We ran back upstairs giggling.
"'Kay, now you go. Truth or Dare?" Sam said, looking at me.
"Truth." I said.
"Have you eve kissed someone?"
"Yeah." I answered.
"Who?" He asked, curious. I pointed at Remus whose ears were going pink along with his hair. Brendon pretended to be sick. We laughed.
"Brendon, Truth or Dare?"
"Well, I'm not gonna be boring like you, Phoenix, so imma go dare." He grinned. I shot him a dirty look and stuck my tongue out at him. He did it back.
"I got one," Remus added. "Brendon, I dare you to kiss Ava. Make it last more than five seconds."
"What! No!" Brendon cried. I could see him blushing.
"Either that or you snog Ben. Your choice." Remus chuckled. "It's so obvious you like her, you're always looking at her and you're constantly talking to her. Don't think I haven't been watching."
"Fine." Brendon sighed. Ava shuffled across the floor towards him. They leaned forward. Ellen pushed Ava forward. She fell into his arms. They stared into each others eyes for a while. Suddenly, they began to kiss. I felt like I needed to protect Brendon, but at the same time, I also felt slightly proud of him. So many thoughts were racing through my head. Without warning, I began to feel sick. That was my brother kissing my friend. Now I knew how Brendon felt when he saw me kissing Remus. It was my turn to pretend to be sick. The kiss lasted more than five seconds. A lot longer.
"You gonna let us carry on?" Remus coughed. I began to laugh and had to leave the room. When I came back, they were back in their places but Brendon and Ava were both blushing furiously. We continued the game until we got tired and had to go to sleep. The rest of the holidays we spent like the start, playing exploding snap, chess and gobstones. Christmas arrived and we sent and received presents.

Even though there wasn't much to do because it was winter, it was the best holiday I'd ever had. Eventually, however, we had to go back to school. The remainder of the year flew by, I had no more transformations and, even though it was different without Aurelia, I knew it would never change and that was how it would be from then on. It seemed that as I grew older, my transformations lessened. On the way back after our second year, I noticed that I could now see the thestrals and, as Brendon had said, they were amazing. Reptilian in appearance but with thin, coal black skin and bat-like wings. I decided to call one of the thestrals Bruce, confusing everyone but Brendon. Sam became a good friend and we wrote to each other often.

When our third year started, we had to choose our lessons. I chose to do Divination and Care Of Magical Creatures. It was almost tradition for the Scamander family to at least study magical creatures. In our first lessons of Defence Against The Dark Arts, we were learning about werewolves. I answered every question correctly and impressed our professor, Professor Parkinson. She obviously was unaware that I was a werewolf. We laughed and joked through the lessons much to the annoyance of our professor. Then the Divination lessons started.