Emily checked and rechecked her trunk, making sure she still had everything. She would hate to have to send an owl back to her parents to ask them to send on anything, her father would point blankly refuse and her mother would go on about how hopeless she was and why they continued to "bail her out".

Which was total crap, she had never needed bailing out in her life, she had always stuck up for herself, she'd taken care of herself when her parents had either been at each others throats or too drunk to notice her, and she had always let someone know if she had a problem with anything, even though that usually led to her getting beaten up.

That was her problem, at her old school she had been branded a nerd as soon as she arrived, just because she had actually paid attention in class and didn't constantly gossip about the love lives of the various teachers.

Then when the teasing and practical jokes had finally taken their toll she had lashed out and given one boy a concussion and several other life long scars, she had always hated being picked on, those who did knew when to stop. They didn't want to end up like their friends. But that single act of violence had not only branded her a freak but also a psychopath.

She had disappeared into books, hiding in the library and constantly studying. She had lasted about a month doing this before the names started again.

This had sent her over the edge. She had packed up her trunk wrote a letter to her parents demanding they picked her up from Bordeaux and stormed out of Beaxbatons without another word. When she arrived back home she received a letter informing her of her expulsion from Beaxbatons Academy.

She couldn't have cared less.

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Severus tossed the final items of clothing into his trunk and sat down on his bed. He didn't need to check it over, he had never forgotten anything before and he wasn't likely to start now.

He looked around his bare room, the walls were a plain grey colour and the entire room looked more like a guest room rather than a place where he had slept in for fifteen years.

He stood up and strode over to his bookcase and ran his finger over the faded spines of the old books that he knew inside out.

Well you would if you'd spent most of your life locked in your room with nothing else to do but read.

He wasn't looking forward to going back to school; torment and eternal embarrassment were all he had to look forward to.

It wasn't that he was totally alone, he had several people that he hung around with after the lessons were over, he just didn't have any real friends.

No one would stick up for him when Potter started his "lets torment the loner just because we're bored" game, no one cared that the years of bullying had taken quite a toll on his slowly diminishing sanity, no one could ever stop the fate that awaited him as soon as he arrived back to school.

But there was one girl who was going to try.

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So what do you think?