She woke up in her bed, shaking in a cold sweat for the third time this week. Images of the reoccurring dream swirled through her head: the flash of light, her brother lying in a puddle of his own blood, her uncle walking in. She could almost feel the lashings that were to come. What time is it? she wondered to herself. She grabbed the bed table and found her wand. "Lumos" she muttered, the room grew light. It was a small and dingy room, her things all piled in an old trunk that she got at a secondhand shop in Knockturn alley while shopping for her first year supplies. She wiped the remainder of sleep out of her eyes and called for her house elf, Squeebles. There was a loud crack! and saw the blistered feet of the only thing she could call a friend.

"Master Stella called for Squeebles?"

"What time is it?" Squeebles shuttered, and answered the best he could.

"Well...master. Squee-Squeebles just woke up. Squeebles does not know the time" The poor house elf then started to bash his head into the stone wall. Stella hated to see the poor thing hurt itself when it has done nothing wrong. Stella was different than the rest of her family, and has been punished for it nearly her entire life. The girl threw herself towards the house elf, wrestling it to the ground.

"Squeebles, stop!" she said as loudly as she felt comfortable saying. If she awoke her mother, than she would sure to be punished. Maybe she would have to stand there and watch her little brother pass through gate 9 3/4 for the first time and not be able to join him. Maybe she will spend a whole year in this monstrous house with her mother and have to see the family that would gladly bind her to a pole five feet away from a Womping Willow if they had access to one.

Squeebles had stopped hurting himself and turned around to face his master. Stella looked into the big green eyes of her house elf, he was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. Stella grabbed the corner of her nightgown and started dabbing away at it. If Squeebles was a human, she knew fifty spells and potions that could fix it up, but Squeebles wasn't a human and she didn't know how the magic between them would react.

"Master Stella is too kind" Squeebles said. Stella disagreed, because the house elf was hers and she hadn't freed it from the horrid house she lived in. She left him here while she was off at school to be punished by her family. She's seen the scars that has been given to him, she hated it, but the house elf was the only one that was kind to her anymore, besides her little brother, Cygnus, and that was only when Mother wasn't around.

"I beg to differ" Stella said after she finished cleaning the house elf off. "Squeebles, will you help me pack for today?"

"Squeebles is honored to help master Stella." and they began to work together in the semi darkness to pack a years worth of clothing and other necessities for wizarding school.

XxxxX

"Stella! Merlons beard, where IS that child?" she heard her mother cry from upstairs "CHILD GET UP HERE NOW!" She dragged herself off of the dirty floor and headed upstairs. She found her mother in the kitchen, beating one of the house elves, one of her favorite pastimes.

"Sorry mother" she spoke in a distant voice. The one she tried to use around her mother. The quieter she was, the easier it was to control the anger in her voice, the easier it was to not get punished.

"Good heavens, where were you?" She said, stopping the spell that had the house elf in mid air and pointing the short wand of hers toward the child.

"Sorry mother." Stella said, walking over to the area of the kitchen where things were prepaired. "Would you like some tea?"

"Stupid fool!" her mother yelled. She felt the pain starting in her back and radiating through her entire body. She had experienced the pain multiple times, but nothing ever seemed to make her the slightest bit immune to it. The cruciatus curse was possibly the most painful thing that one could feel. After what seemed like hours of pain, she finally fell to her knees, gasping for air. "Go fetch your brother. And clean yourself up. You may be in a house of fools, but that doesn't mean that you should disgrace your family any more than you already do."

"Sorry mother" she sputtered out.

"And be ready quickly! You're meeting Draco at the station in an hour!" Her mother shouted as she walked up the stairs to fetch Cygnus.

He was already up and ready, sporting a pair of jeans that were too short on him, a button up shirt, and a green bow tie. He would make a terrible muggle, he looked nothing like someone today would dress.

"You would make a terrible muggle" She said, walking into the room. He looked her over a few times before replying.

"And you would do any better. You're wearing a night gown!" Stella hadn't realized that she had not changed her clothing. She turned too the mirror in her brothers room, she was a mess. Her hair was messy and knotted and dirt clinged to at least half of her face. She looked more like a servant or refugee than she did a member of a pure-blood family. She siged.

"Are you ready?" But she knew he was. He had been ready for weeks. He had ordered Pinky to pack and re-pack at least a dozen times this week. She took out her wand and forced the goblin made trunk hover in front of her and down the stairs into the mud room. She walked over to her little brother, who loved to watch anything magical, and put her hand through her his finely gelled hair.

"To think, later tonight you're going to be sitting at your house table, eating dinner and making friends. You'll be a proper wizard in no time flat!" he wiggled his way out of her grasp.

"Go clean yourself up, you're a mess." She backed off, walking out of the room. She heard him whisper to himself right after she left.

"I better make it into Slytherin. I don't want to be a disgrace" Stella's heart sunk a little bit, it wasn't her fault the sorting hat put her into Ravenclaw three years ago today. It wasn't her fault she was a disgrace to her family. It's not like she wanted to be a Lestrange anyway.