Teddy Bear Terror

It was awful. No one will ever understand the terror I felt on that day. No one will ever understand how deep this scar runs. It was the day that changed my life forever. I was a happy-go-lucky kid, not a care in the word until my teddy bear started moving. In a wizarding household, you would think a moving teddy bear would be normal. I can assure you, nothing in my house is normal.

It all started with an accident.

When I was three, my big brothers would always fly around on their toy broomsticks. It looked like so much fun, and I wanted my own so badly. However, Mum thought I wasn’t old enough to ride one yet, so she wouldn’t buy me my own. One day when my brothers went in for lunch, I hung back. I picked up the broomstick and mounted it like I had seen my brothers do so many times before. I kicked off the ground and began the flight of my life (at that time). All was going well. I was zipping around the yard, staying out of view from the windows, when I heard my mother yell my name. I was startled and forgot to turn, causing me to crash into a tree. There was a snap, and I felt the broomstick break beneath me. My immediate thought was, “Oh, no. Fred is going to kill me.” So I did what any terrified three-year-old would do. I hid the evidence and walked inside to have lunch.

I made it through lunch without attracting any attention. Then my stomach fell out of my body when I heard my brothers say they were gonna go fly for a bit. As soon as I was excused from the table, I ran to my room, grabbed my teddy, and hid. I slipped into the clean cooking cauldron, hugged my teddy, and waited for the fireworks.

No sooner had I slipped into my hiding place, Fred yells my name and starts tearing through the house looking for me. Mum stops him, and I hear him explaining what he found. Mum calmed him down, but I heard him vow revenge under his breath after she left. I shook in my cauldron.

Half an hour passed, and I hadn’t heard anything else from Fred. I was about to crawl out of my hiding spot when I heard footsteps approaching. I held my breath until the footsteps passed. I breathed a sigh of relief and hugged my teddy. All of a sudden, my teddy started moving with twice the normal amount of limbs. I turned to look at it and was staring at hundreds of eyes. Where its mouth should have been, there were sharp pincers. I screamed and toppled out of the cauldron. At the sound of my scream, Mum came running.

I tried to tell her what happened through the tears, and she gathered enough to glare at Fred. While he was trying to deny it, scuttling sounds were heard from the cauldron. As the spider crawled out of the cauldron, I cowered behind my mother’s robes as she turned to Fred. “I didn’t do it on purpose! You know I can’t control it!” Fred said in his defense.

For Fred, the day ended with him having to catch the spider and release it outside. For me, it ended with me hiding in my room, terrified the noises from the ghoul in the attic were spiders coming to get me. I will never be the same.

Happy National Teddy Bear Day!!