Interlude One

My baby sister was born with a speech impediment. We fixed it with time, but when she was first learning to talk, she could not say my name. Annie told her to just call me Chase. Between my close friends and family, the name stuck.

Annalise and I had three goals life: Be successful, improve the world a little bit, and not end up like my Aunt Pansy, middle aged with only cats for company. In that order. There was no secret agenda or grand ambitions. We just wanted to be the type of people our parents were, because we were used to their lifestyle and they seemed to be happy.

Right before I turned seventeen, in the summer before my sixth year, I got in a huge fight with my dad over letting me join the Triwizard Tournament. The Triwizard Tournament had been reinstated nine years before, to a rousing success. No one actually died over the last two tournaments and with Karkaroff the Death Eater gone and Madame Maxine working with Hogwart's late and former Headmaster Albus Dumbledore over the course of the War, the competitiveness turned a bit more friendly than in the past. In light of this, the Triwzard Committee chose to lower the age to anyone in sixth year and above, as long as those not yet seventeen received permission from a parent or guardian.

He would not let me, even though Annalise could. I did not want to compete one bit. I just wanted to see France and spend the year at Beuxbottoms, cheer for my champion and even meet a foreign hunk.

I went for a walk in the woods outside my house to clear my mind before immediately flooing Annalise to bitch about it. The night was dark and cool. The last thing I remember is the howling of a wolf in the distance.

Then lying on the forest floor, coat torn from my chest and blood slowly drying and freezing on my back.

When my screams called my parents over, at first they didn't know what happened. They did not know until the Healer told them at the hospital. I'll never forget my mother's face. She quickly turned to me and saw me not as her little girl, who she had held in her arms after ten hours of labor or straightened her hair as she departed on the Hogwart's express for the very first time, but as a monster.

My father told me I should enter the tournament. He did not add that maybe, hopefully, it would kill me, but he did not have to. To them, I was already dead.

The man who bit me visited me in the hospital. He came in sobbing and trying to apologize, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers and offering to pay my medical expenses. I got out of bed and screamed at him. What were flowers, money and words going to do when you ruined someone's life and taken away everyone who's ever loved them. I became so angry I punched him in the face. He left in silence, with a bleeding lip and a black eye. Looking back later, I think he thought he deserved it.

I kept it from Annalise for half the year. The teachers were actually really cool about the whole lycanthropy thing. They let me go to Beuxbottom's and made up dumb excuses as to where I was during the full moon and even arranged for me to take wolfsbane and sit in this little comfy room to transform. Lying wasn't even that bad, at least not until the Yule Ball. Eve Conway was with us and an aspiring fashion designer. We all pooled our money for the material and she designed these beautiful matching dresses for the Hogwart's girls in shimmering gold fabric with scarlet accents, as our champion was a Griffindor. They were sleeveless and showed quite a bit of back though, so I told Evie I get cold and asked her if she would be offended if I put a matching shawl over it. She didn't mind at all. In fact, she bought a beautiful red lace to make me a custom one out of.

I don't think I had ever felt so beautiful in my life. Beuxbottoms covered their Great Hall with unmetlting ice sculptures and delicate blue glass baubles, opened at the top for air circulation for the fairies lounging inside. Then there was us, the Hogwarts students, walking in like a set of collectable dolls, each a part of the group but, thanks to the subtle differences Evie worked into each accent, an individual.

At dinner Annalise asked why I had a shawl on. Our table was right by a fireplace carved from ice, magic keeping both the warm and cool alive. I told her I liked it on.

When we started dancing, Annalise pulled on my shawl, telling me to take it off so I could move better. I told her not to touch it, but she and her date laughed and it became a game, as things like that usually do. I did a pretty good job of not panicking, playing and teasing as if there was nothing really under my shawl, laughing whenever they almost did pull it off. Eventually, Annalise took out her wand and just summoned the damn thing. It flew from my shoulders like the blood that once flew out of the scars. Annalise and our dates went silent. She just stood there, holding the crimson shaw in her hand.

"Annie," I said, reaching out for her shoulder.

"NO!" She yelled. "DO NOT TOUCH ME, YOU MONSTER!"

Everyone around us stopped dancing and turned around to see what Annalise was yelling about.

"She's a werewolf!" Annalise screamed, pointing at me.

Everyone in the room stops to stare at me. In shock, I run from the dance, through the halls, to the top of a nearby tower, desperately trying to keep the tears from my eyes. It wasn't until I got to the top that I noticed someone had followed me.

"What do you want?" I cried. I turned to see none other than Ted Lupin, Annalise's…nemesis? Is that too dramatic? He had the scarlet we were using as one of our school colors on his hair and in his hand, coloring my shaw.

"Evie's happy you were wearing this," He said, draping it over my shoulders. "She's really proud of it."

"I want to jump," I told him simply.

"Don't do it."

"Why? No one cares about me anymore."

"I don't doubt that," Ted Lupin says, to my surprise. "But I think I'd want to. Would you like to dance?"

We did. He was even dating this pretty jerk he later broke up with, but he danced with me for a whole song.

After a while, his friends became my friends and my old friends became my enemies. I used to think bad things about my new friends, because Annalise did and before we shared beliefs. It was odd, being friends with so many free and popular people when everyone in the school sees you as a werewolf loser. Really, Teddy and his friends seemed to be some of the most popular kids in the school, just because they were so friendly and outgoing. Robert was kind of the quiet one, but he had a great personality once you had just one conversation with him. He looked to be all muscle and could hit a bludger across the entire field with his beater's bat. When he entered his name into the Goblet of Fire, everyone thought he would be our champion. And we were right. Robbie just seemed to live life as if everything was possible. I think he's the manliest free spirit I've met

Evie was the artsy one. She wrote and drew on her white canvas shoes and wore her hair in a different style every day. As early as her fifth year, she was selling custom made clothing to other students. We became fast friends. I spent the next summer at her house since my parents made it clear that they did not want me to come back.

When I returned for my seventh year, Teddy introduced me to Victorie. The two of us just seemed to click the moment we met, even though we were two years apart. I did not even get jealous when she admitted to me that she was having feelings for Teddy, whom I have to confess, back then I had feelings for too. How could I not? Seconds after my old friends left me, he gave me new ones.

That's done now. I hate to admit it, but now I'm starting to have feelings for Russell Baker. Don't tell Teddy.

When Teddy dragged me to Annalise's house, I told her mother all the things I've wanted to tell the people from my old life. I didn't think I'd get through to them, but I did think I'd feel better.

I was right. I did. My words bounced off of Mr. and Mrs. Lytton as well.

Annalise heard though. She ran out of the house after me and apologized again and again.

Flowers and money may not make up for ruining someone's life. Sometimes though, words can be a start.

All afternoon Annalise and I sat on the lawn and talked like we were young again. For a few hours, it's like the last eight years never happened. I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm an exception. That most werewolves are still the evil monsters she sees them as, but somehow I kept myself when I got bitten. It's a start. When I left, she promised to see me again, and bring my sister along so we could catch up too.

That night Russell flooed me up and asked if I wanted to come over for dinner. This time, I said yes. He led me through the fire to see that he had decorated his apartment with red candles and turned down the lights. He even enchanted rose petals to fall from the ceiling, but yet not fall on our dinner of grilled salmon, sun dried tomato risotto and roasted green beans. I asked him if he really thought all the cheesiness really worked on women. I did not tell him it already had.

The next morning I visited the werewolf who bit me. Not only did I accept his apology, I apologized myself for what I said and did all those years ago.

I work at an ice cream shop and all I've ever done for the world is bitch about it. I'm not alone though.

And that's what's important.