Bonfire night was a night I would never forget.

Seeing the brightly coloured explosions illuminate the night sky was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity and I was glad that I had the opportunity to witness such a thing. It's strange, the things you miss when you spend so long on your own, isolated from the real world. I had seen films, plenty of them which showed the extravagance of the day, perhaps some more extreme than others, but they were nothing compared to experiencing it. It was a little bit like Halloween, you can see it in films time and time again, but it is nothing in comparison to seeing the real thing. Home might have been nice, but real life was so much.

If only everything could have been like that night. Chilling with your friends in a field watching the night sky, drinking cold drinks and just having a laugh. Unfortunately, it wasn't always that simple and my Maths lessons were enough to prove that. Mrs Reynolds had been like a hawk hunting for its dinner whenever I entered the room. She watched me with her beady little eyes, following my every movement as though I was doing something wrong. It was so annoying, but there was nothing I could do about it, I just had to ignore her and hope she found something else to become fixated by, though that didn't seem likely.

Not only did I have to put up with the Devil watching my every move, our entire Drama class had to put up with Jason and his annoying, over the top, and dare I say dramatic, pep-talks. Not that they were pep-talks. They were rants with the idea of getting us excited for another lesson of rehearsals for the show. We were all getting sick of them, but there was nothing we could do to get him to shut his mouth, though Ant tried. He was the only one gutsy enough to make a comment that had any sort of impact. We were all too scared about getting screamed at by Jason to say anything. Although he was the most laid back teacher we ever had, he was scary when he got angry and no one wanted to see that.

"Remember, you have way over a month to finish and polish your pieces before the big showcase at the end of the year! I want to see you working hard over these next few weeks and prove to me that you deserve to be in this GCSE group! Now, the other teachers look down on Drama, they don't think it's a real subject, some even go as far as to call it the easy option, for those who aren't academically gifted. I know for a fact that some of you are academically gifted so I want you to prove those teachers wrong! Plus, I have a bet going with one of the other teachers and I don't want to be out twenty quid," Jason said, trying to get us hyped up for the lesson.

A collective, silent groan appeared to ripple around the room when we found out we were being used as nothing more than pawns in a bet between Jason and several other teachers. He was using us to gain some extra cash, and we weren't happy. I mean, would you? We'd spent weeks on these performances and still had a little while to go, yet he was using it to get some money, it was infuriating. Luckily, we had Ant to vent our frustrations, he seemed to know what everyone was thinking without us even saying it.

"Is there any point in us doing these performances if you're just doing it to earn some money?"Ant said, leaning back on his hands and raising an eyebrow at a now shifty look Jason. Where would we have been without Ant to help us stand our ground?

"I'm not using this as a way of getting some extra money, though that's an added bonus. I want you guys to give a good impression on the rest of the school and prove that the Drama department isn't an easy option. Aren't you sick of the other teachers looking down on you because you're more of an Arts kid, Ant?"

"S'pose so," Ant said.

"There we go! We're doing this to prove a point. Let Drama rule the school for once rather than sport or Maths. I know we're a predominately Maths and tech school, and no offence to the Maths nerds." Jason looked at Joel. "But we need to do this to prove a point. Are you with me on that, at least?"

"I guess."

Ant was someone who rarely spoke when he has been proven wrong and this was certainly one of those moments. Whilst a fair few people were definitely more academically gifted, Ant was not one of them and half the time he spent his other lessons messing around because he couldn't get his head around the material. He was certainly more of a triple threat than anyone else in the room, not that he ever took any of it seriously. Ant was a music man, quite literally. It didn't matter what instrument you put in front of him, he could play it and it was really cool. Just seeing him whip out a comb and some tissue paper and be able to play a tune was impressive. Unfortunately, Ashbury was not an Arts based school so Ant's talents often went ignored.

He might've been the one to stand up for an entire class, but Ant was a sweetheart half the time, he just needed the opportunity to show it. If this was his opportunity, then he was going to take it and use it to its full advantage, though Drama was not the same as Music.

"Right, if we've settled that, shall we get to it?" Jason asked, clapping his hands together to wake up whoever had fallen asleep. A low, monotonous response was all he got, none us were particularly into the idea of standing up and actually having to do work. "Just get on with it you lazy bunch."

With a small ripple of laughter, and at a very slow pace, the room began to shift, with people pushing themselves up into standing positions and stretching their legs. My group was one of the last to move. In truth, we didn't have much left to do, but we had a lot of time left before we were due to perform them. Since putting Joel in charge, our workload had decreased and we only had about five planned scenes to go until we were finished. Then again, according to Jason, we weren't going to be finished until we had run it at least fifty times to make sure it was perfect. I didn't know if I could stand running it that many times.

But, we pushed through, we worked meticulously through scene after scene until we had an outline of the performance, a way in which we could perfect it before time was up. The only problem was, we weren't focused enough to keep doing the same thing over and over again. Instead, we wrapped up the few scenes we needed to block, ran the whole thing through once and then stopped, acting like we were working on it when in reality we were talking about things that were completely irrelevant. Just like the first session, the topic of conversation went to me. I had known these people for a month now and it was as though they knew nothing about me. Though most of them didn't.

"So you've done your first Halloween and your first bonfire night. Any other big events you haven't done before?" Leo asked. He appeared to have forgotten about the baking incident the day before, though I knew he was going to bring it up eventually when the opportunity presented itself.

"Not that I know of," I shrugged, pushing my hair off my forehead.

"There's the Christmas fair," Niska butted in.

"Christmas fair?" I asked, curious. I knew it was common for towns to host small fairs around the holidays, but they were never considered to be a huge affair. Just something the townspeople could go to enjoy themselves, have a night off and watch the lights being turned on ready for the festive season. I didn't think they were that big of an affair, though judging by the excitement in Niska's voice, it was a big deal.

"Yeah, it's this big fair they put on in the town in the weeks leading up to Christmas. They switch the lights on, there are floats and games and all sorts! It's amazing and I'm sure you'd love it when you saw it."

"I dunno, the hype of Christmas is a little extreme for me, a Christmas fair doesn't sound like something I'd be interested in."

Although my curiosity had peaked at the chance to see how normal people celebrated Christmas, I was over the big Christmas celebrations and all they entailed. Halloween I was fine with, the extravagance of the event was something I had never had the opportunity to experience, but Christmas was a whole other matter. Christmas was something I had dealt with three-hundred-sixty-five days a year for my entire life and I was sick of it, hence why I made the decision to leave. Despite something within me telling me to try it, that it would be a different experience to what I had grown up, what I was used to, I could not see it any other way. Being a Claus had ruined whatever joy for Christmas I might have had.

"Ya never know 'till ya try it, Kenz," Joel said. A small smirk appeared to make its way onto his lips, as though he was keeping from laughing at a joke no one had even made. I was curious, but I didn't ask him. Figured it would be too weird to bring up the fact that I was staring at him.

"Maybe," I shrugged.

"Are you lot actually doing anything over there? I heard you mention the Christmas fair and from what I've seen, there is no Christmas fair in your piece, at all," Jason yelled, pulling himself away from Ant's group long enough to make a comment. How he managed to overhear us will always be a mystery to me. It was as though he had bionic hearing, considering how often we spoke about his annoying streak, wasn't necessarily a good thing.

"We were just taking a break, that's all," Niska replied, though he didn't believe her.

"Get on with it, you can talk about the Christmas fair in your own time, or, I don't know, closer to Christmas?"

For once, I had to agree with him. I wanted to enjoy the next month without having to think about or worry about what was going to happen at Christmas. I didn't even want to think about Christmas until it reared its head. Christmas was something to look at on a different today in a different month, it was not even on my radar. That, and I didn't even know if I was going to be staying for Christmas or if I was going to decide to go home, that was a matter I had yet to figure out and time was slowly slipping through my fingers.

On the one hand, I wanted to stay. I enjoyed having friends my own age, experiencing things I would never have the opportunity to experience at any other moment in my life. I wanted to celebrate Halloween every year, sit down in a field and watch the fireworks, but most importantly, I wanted to have fun. But at the same time, I missed home. I missed the snow that covered the trees, that stretched out across the landscape so that all you saw was pure white ice. I missed sitting by the fire in the workshop drinking some hot cocoa and listening to the busy noises of the elves doing their Magic. To some extent, I even missed Nick and his annoying taunts, his snide comments and annoying laughter. One thing I didn't miss, was Papa.

Being away from his icy glare was a relief and I was not looking forward to the day that made an appearance in my life.

"We should go over it again, at least that'll keep Jason off our backs," Niska said, pulling me from my thoughts and back into the real world. She had a habit of doing that.

"Yeah, he's getting way too antsy about this project and I'd hate to get on his bad side," Leo replied, shivering slightly at the mere thought of getting on Jason's bad side. Even the thought was terrifying yet alone seeing the real thing. Jason was scary when he wanted to be.

So, as quickly as we started talking about the Christmas fair, the topic was dropped and we went back to going over our piece in an attempt to nail down the movement and dialogue ready for the performance. It was the dullest thing I have ever done and I used to read books on the laws of Magic. Honestly, if I had to choose between going over our performance piece fifty-five thousand times or reading a book on Magical laws, then I'd go for the book any day. At least those had moments that were mildly interesting, going over the same thing wasn't. Especially when you had to act possessed, that's never a fun deal.

By the time the bell rang and the lesson finished, I wanted to go home and sleep for at least half a century, I was that tired. It was just my luck that that wasn't even in a possibility, I still had several lessons and a lot of homework set by Mrs Reynolds to complete before I could even think of taking a nap. I wasn't the only annoyed with the overload of homework, Niska was also remarkably more annoyed than usual, and that was difficult. She wanted nothing more than to burn the work we had been set, but she couldn't risk another detention without being grounded for the next hundred years, at least according to her.

"They are trying to kill us, actually trying to kill us," Niska groaned, slumping down in her seat at the lunch table.

"This is GCSE's, Nisk, they're not exactly going to go gently on us, are they?" Joel replied, fishing in his bag for his lunch. He rolled his eyes as he searched and I couldn't help but laugh in response, his eye rolling was so dramatic, you couldn't help but laugh.

"So? I want to make it to the exams, not die of exhaustion beforehand."

"At least this isn't your first year being bombarded with work," Joel said, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't drag me into this. I have enough free time to cope with the workload, though sleeping is rather important to me," I joked.

"Sleeping is important to all of us, but not all of us have superhuman abilities to complete homework in a matter of minutes. Yeah, that's right, I saw ya."

"I'm just Magic."

Magic.

The one thing I had been using to complete my homework really fast since I turned up and, occasionally, I did it in front of Niska and Joel, though I didn't think they caught on seeing as it wasn't explicit. But apparently, you can't answer a couple of since questions within ten minutes without people thinking you're insane. It wasn't as though I didn't know what the answer was, I had some idea, but I didn't know all of them, so I cheated. Or used my initiative, whichever sounds better. Magic was just a simpler way of doing something, easier, but in a way, it made a situation a whole lot harder. Not only had Niska and Joel caught on, but so had Mrs Reynolds, or at least she thought she had.

I suppose, I needed to stop using Magic to get myself out of situations that were awkward, or just plain annoying, but it had become a habit I really needed to break. But once you get yourself into a cycle it's almost impossible to break out of it and although I had tried, I just couldn't find a way to answer my Maths homework without resorting to some outlandish tactics. Maths never was, nor will it be, a subject I am any good at, at least not the complex stuff they teach you in school. Addition, subtraction, I can do, Algebra was completely different.

That afternoon, once the school day had ended and we had been released out into the wild, I settled down in the living room to tackle the worksheets given to us by Mrs Reynolds. Each one was harder than the next but I knew I had to answer them or she would find a creative way to punish me for not doing it. I had decided, since Granny and Grandpa were out, to tackled the homework in the living room since I had access to the TV and the kitchen. Nothing better than solving Maths questions with junk food and a marathon of Four in a Bed. That and they were great ways of procrastinating.

With my cookies and my TV, I set to work solving the equations, starting with the simplest of questions to the harder ones, the ones that no matter how much I stared at, I just couldn't find a way to answer them. Some of them were so stupid, I wanted to throw myself out of a window. I mean, find the length of a line on a triangle using some weird letters that don't make sense to anyone is just weird. I don't care if this Pythagoras guy was a genius, he was a pain to me and I hated having to answer questions because he had some kind of a genius idea. Here's one; use a ruler.

Glancing down at the sheet of impossible Maths questions, I realised I had no possible way to answer them without using Magic to solve my problems. Placing my hands over the worksheets, I closed my eyes and tried to channel my Magic, feeling it run down my arm and through my fingers, the tingling sensation feeling warm and familiar. When it passed, I opened my arms and glanced down at the page, expecting to see the answers to the questions, but for the first time in my life, there was nothing there. I furrowed my eyebrows and looked back down at the page, confused.

Placing my arm out for the second time, I concentrated harder on the answers, channelling all the Magic inside me in an attempt to succeed in the task. The tingling sensation ran down my arm, spread through my fingers like electricity, reaching my fingertips. I felt it travel from my fingertips to the paper before and without even opening my eyes I knew it had worked. Looking down at the sheet of paper, I saw the answers I had been looking for laid out in front of me, but that was too easy. Taking my eraser, I removed some of the correct answers and working out and changed it so that it made more sense. Handing in a sheet on Algebra that was completely correct would have made Mrs Reynolds lose her mind.

"You aren't using Magic to answer your homework are you, Ken?" Granny's voice pierced through the silence that descended on me, causing me to jump at the realisation that somebody else was in the room.

"No," I replied, dragging the word out in a way that was clear that I was lying about it.

"We talked about this, no using your Magic to answer homework or do anything that you can't do yourself," Granny said, taking her coat off and hanging it up under the stairs. We had had that conversation, but I never listened to it. The only time I used my Magic was to answer Maths questions so it's not like I was being reckless.

"I know, I know. It's just, Mrs Reynolds, my Maths teacher, thinks I'm completely mental and I'm trying to prove to her that I'm not some kind of witch. I get Magic isn't exactly helping my case, but it's better than having her stare me down trying to find a way to put me in detention." I began to shove my homework aimlessly into my bag, ignoring the glare that was coming my way.

"I get that Kenzie, really I do, but you can put us at risk by doing this, you know that don't you?"

"Yeah, I know."

"Just be careful, and stop stuffing your face with junk food. You might be a Claus, but we do enjoy non-sugar things as well," Granny laughed, changing the conversation topic.

"Try telling that to Grandpa," I muttered.

"I did. Now, finish up your work and go clean your room, I went in there this morning and I couldn't see the floor. No using your Magic, either. Promise?"

"Promise."

 ~~~

A/N - Here we go! Chapter Eighteen! This one took a while to write, I just finished writing it... Now that Uni has actually started, my time is pretty limited but I will try my hardest to stick to the schedule I put in place over the summer. If it does change, I apologise now but it is likely it will happen in the future. 

On to the Chapter! This one was calmer than previous occasions, the Drama project is underway, Kenzie is trying to make her mind up and her Magic failed? Hmmm.... What do you think? Will she stay or go home? Why did her Magic fail to work the first time? Will she keep her promise to her Grandmother?

Comment your answers before! Don't forget to vote if you enjoyed and add to your reading list so you never miss an update from me!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to Lilohorse who is just a nice person :D She's one of Wattpad's stars and I reached out to her after finding out she is in her third year at the Uni I now attend! Rather than ignore me, like most big stars here do, she took the time to reply to my messages and I thought that was super sweet! Check her out and say hello :)

Until next time!

First Published - September 28th, 2017