Magic All Around
Chapter 1: Magic is real
"Suddenly there is a dragon in your way. There is no way around it and the cave-in that happened behind you earlier prevents you from turning around which would be dangerous anyway. Your only choice is to fight it. What weapon do you choose to use? Your sword, your bow and arrow, the axe that the friendly dwarf gave you or your bare hands?" It was an important decision for me to make, one that could change the whole game around either in my favor or against it. Unfortunately, my other older brother, Tyson, chose that exact moment to come barging in and destroyed the carefully built LEGO board that we, my brother Nathan and I, had worked all day on and had been using for our game.
"HehHehHehHehHeh" he laughed evilly.
"MOOOM! Tyson wrecked our game." I yelled out as I ran to go find her. Right at that moment she came in the front door with the mail in her hands. She sighed.
"Tyson, stop bothering your younger siblings. Honestly, I can't go out of the house for five minutes with out some crisis happening. Go to your room and no more video games for the rest of the week. We'll talk about this more later when your father gets home from work. And where is Andrew? I haven't heard him all morning." said my mother.
"I don't know." Nathan, Tyson, and I all said in unison. That didn't happen very often. Right at that moment there was a massive crash from the kitchen. Our mom ran into the kitchen looking very concerned. So did the three of us. There was Andrew happily sitting in the mess he had just made with the mix we used to make chocolate milk. He was eating it all up. My mom sprang into action. She ordered the three of us to help her clean up the mess while she tried to separate our little brother from his new best friend, the chocolate milk mix. He kicked and screamed fighting her every inch of the way and just got a time out for all of his trouble. When we were finished. Mom marched Tyson to his bedroom and threatened to lock him in there if he didn't stay in there until she told him he could come out. She then went and locked up his video games so that no one could get to them except for her and our dad. Once Andrew's time out was over, Nathan and I told him we could go outside and play with him once we cleaned up the mess of LEGOs. We just thrust them into the bins without bothering to sort them, we decided to do that later. We would have tried to continue our game, but we both knew Andrew would just get into more trouble if he didn't have something to occupy him, so we decided to finish up later on.
Just then our mom frowned and separated out a thick envelope made out of some type of paper that was definitely not printer paper. It was addressed to Tyson. Nathan and I looked at each other and Andrew got impatient and insisted on us playing with him. So Nathan and I took him outside to the backyard. We played games with him all the rest of the day until our mom came out and told us that Dad was home and that it was time for supper. We went in and all sat down together at the table. The first thing Tyson decided to talk about was what was in the letter that he had gotten in the mail today. That was way better than yesterday. Yesterday he had talked almost nonstop about all the nasty things that might be in McDonald's food and tried to convince me that what I was eating was actually ants.
"The letter was an acceptance letter to a school of magic. It's probably someone's ideal of a joke. Everyone knows magic isn't real." Tyson said. I got upset at that but didn't say anything. I believed in magic even if Tyson didn't. He was always making fun of me for that. When everyone was finished with their supper, Tyson was sent back to his room and Andrew was about to fall asleep. So Dad helped him with getting ready for bed and put him to sleep.
The next morning, I was woken up by the doorbell ringing and Andrew mimicking a fire truck's siren. I sleepily got out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen for a late breakfast. It was 9:30 a.m. and much to early for anyone to be up and about. While I was eating my cereal, our mom was leading a very old looking man into the living room. I was far to groggy to pay any attention to what was being said in there. Tyson was also up and in the room with the strange man and Mom. Andrew came by going, "WeeWoohWeeWoohWeeWooh!" I was getting more and more annoyed by him by the minute. I was just about to yell at him when Tyson exclaimed, "You mean magic IS real!?" That caught both Andrew's and mine attention immediately. I stopped my breakfast and Andrew, thankfully, stopped his mock fire truck siren.
"Yes, and you have been identified as having the rare ability to perform it." the man said. Tyson demanded, "Prove it. Prove that it's real." I had to see this and ran into the living room with Andrew trotting along behind me as fast his little toddler legs could carry him. Right as I got into the room the air in between the man and Tyson exploded into a ball of flame. I screamed out, "I knew it! I told you so, Tyson." Mom scolded me for interrupting and for my attitude towards my older brother. Andrew's eyes were wide with shock. Tyson disparagingly said that he had already known that, that he was just testing me all those times before. I could never win with him.
"I am the deputy headmaster of a boarding school that trains young wizards like you in the magical arts. The year starts on September 1st . Your ticket for the train that takes you to the school is with your acceptance letter. You will have to go with an escort to New York City to get your school supplies. I'm afraid there isn't really a closer place where you can get the special supplies you will need for school. There is a special bank there where you can exchange your No-Maj money for Dragots, which is what we call our currency in the North American wizarding world. The wizarding sellers don't accept your No-Maj currency." the man explained.
At this point my stomach growled so loudly, that I knew it had to have been heard at least by our next door neighbors. I apologized as everyone in the room had clearly heard it and went to go finish up my breakfast. The man talked for a long time, answering my brother's and mom's questions about the wizarding world of North America and Ilvermorny, which was the name of the magic school. In the end my mom was very happy to send Tyson to the school and stop homeschooling him. It seemed exactly like the sort of school she liked. Tyson was also happy to be going there. Finally, he could be around other kids like him and no longer have to deal with the other kids in the neighborhood calling him a freak. I was even happier because I hated hearing the other kids in the neigborhood bullying my older brother and it meant that during the school year Tyson wouldn't be around to ruin our fun or to make me sick to my stomach while I was supposed to be enjoying food. I was also overjoyed at the thought of magic being real. Maybe all those fantastic creatures I kept reading about were real as well. Now if only there was some little girl my age to play with that lived nearby. Things would be perfect. Or at least that's what my five year old mind was thinking at the time.
