"Hey, Phil! Phil, wait up!" called Dan. He raced across the hall to Phil and breathlessly held up a newspaper clipping from the Daily Prophet.
"Brilliant, innit?"
"What?" asked Phil, who hadn't bothered to read that morning's prophet.
"Read it!" said Dan exasperatedly.
Phil took the newspaper clipping and read:
"'I swear I saw it, just at the end of my street.' says Willie Winkons, 8, Westshire. 'It started towards me, so I yelled, and Daddy came out and it just disappeared!' This young boy and a number of other distressed civilians claim to have spotted a large, fire breathing, terrifying scaly bird with claws like hooves. The Ministry of Magic has Aurors all over Britain on the lookout, but they have yet to report anything. Cont. Pg. 8"
"Ace!" exclaimed Phil, who could already picture himself face to face with the creature, battling to the death.
Dan, with a similar vision in mind, said, "Yeah. Just imagine how cool it would be if we were the ones who found it instead of the Aurors!"
"Now that would be ace," said Phil. "But my mum would kill me, if the scaly-bird-thing doesn't do it first."
The boys jumped suddenly as they heard the headmistress's voice from behind them, "As lovely as being killed by a 'scaly-bird-thing' does sound, I'm afraid it's class time, and you don't have time for that. Hurry on, now."
The boys nodded and quickly rushed off to their lessons.
Phil's next lesson was divination, and as it was Monday, Professor Trelawney liked to prophesize the student's week ahead. While waiting for his turn, Phil's mind began to wander to him being awarded Order of Merlin First Class. After imagining the twenty minutes of applause, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
"Phillip, dear, are you ready?" asked Professor Trelawney. Phil nodded. "Right then, I need you to take a deep breath in, and a long breath out."
Phil complied.
"Okay, I see a good week ahead of you. You are destined to achieve something very great. But not alone, you will have help from- it is not clear whether friend or foe," Trelawney smiled. "Ah, I do love a mystery. That brings me to your homework for the day..."
As it would happen, Trelawney's prophecy wasn't long in the making. By the time evening rolled around, Dan and Phil were rather bored. They got to talking about lessons, and Phil mentioned his prophecy. Dan shot right up like a cork flying out of a bottle.
"What?" asked Phil innocently.
"Isn't it obvious what she meant?" asked Dan, barely able to contain his excitement.
"Um, no," said Phil
"She meant the scaly-bird-thing! I'm the person who's going to help you with it!" cried Dan
"Of course!" said Phil. "I don't know why I didn't realize that! But why do you even believe her? You're always calling Divination a 'whole load of crap'."
"Yes, but this time's different." said Dan, with a glint in his eye.
"Whatever you say, Dan," said Phil. "Anyway, we have to start planning how we're going to do this! Where should we go? How should we fight it?"
"Let's go to the library and look up spells and jinxes and curses and stuff, then we can construct a plan." said Dan rationally.
"Sounds good." Said Phil
By midnight, the two boys had a carefully constructed plan and many good tricks up their sleeves. They went to bed with high hopes for the next night, dreaming of terrifying monsters eating them alive.
The next day was just a very long day of staring at clocks for both Dan and Phil. At last, they heard the final bell. They raced from their classrooms to their dorms to change and quickly rushed off to their designated meeting point just inside the Forbidden Forest.
When Phil got there, Dan was already waiting there under the invisibility cloak he had snatched from the teacher's room. Dan wasted no time in grabbing Phil by the collar and pulling him under. Ignoring Phil's stifled cry of "Ow!", Dan quickly pulled out the folded up piece of paper from his pocket. That was their layout of the Forbidden Forest from their point of view. Just as Dan was pointing out different points to review their plan, they heard an odd noise coming from the forest. They looked around, saw nothing, and continued reviewing the plan. They soon heard the noise again, only this time it was closer.
"What the hell is that?!" asked Dan in frustration, his eyes searching the right of him.
"Um, Dan…" said Phil slowly. He gulped.
"What?" snapped Dan. He looked in Phil's direction. He nearly screeched. He saw a pair of the biggest, yellowest eyes he had ever seen. The eyes were followed by a ginormous red and white body of feathers and scales. It had wings as long as trees and was getting closer by the second. Phil, who had recovered from the shock already, wasted no time in shouting "Arresto Momentum!" granting them a few more seconds. Dan quickly shot a few stunning spells at the creature. The creature roared in protest. Dan and Phil jumped behind a tree just in time to avoid being scorched by the fire released from the creature's beak-mouth.
"What about the plan?" asked Dan
"Eff the plan!" said Phil
They could feel the monster right behind them. Dan shouted "Bombarde" to confuse it and Phil yelled "Avifors!" turning the monster into a tiny blue bird. Dan proceeded to shoot a stream of arrows from his wand, killing the small creature.
Breathing hard, the boys looked at each other and smiled. Dan picked up the crumpled plan, shook it off, and placed it back in his pocket. Dan and Phil turned their back on the dead creature and started walking back to the castle.
Dan looked at Phil and said, "That's gotta be the most exercise I've gotten in my whole life."
"Ace." Laughed Phil
