Author's note: Harry P doesn't belong to me or any of its characters. Only Bella! And she's fake anyway(: This whole thing's just for fun. Please please please R&R if you liked. I'd love to write more for you!

Chapter 1
Misery

Bella looked up from her books to see a group of unruly Slytherines heading her way. All four of them wore smirks that made her whole body tense from fear. They were up to something, and she was afraid of what that something would be.

"Hey Bellabutt," one of them jeered pathetically. "Wanna trade cards?"

When Bella was a first-year, she'd been obsessed with the Muggle-movies Star Wars. She'd been the worst kind of obsessed, too; she traded cards with characters on them and wore t-shirts under her robes and everything. The Slytherines, especially Blake, this group's "leader," never let her forget her past.

Behind Blake, another boy was murmuring a spell. Bella noticed only a little too late, and though she yelled, "Hey! Don't!" The spell was already beginning to do it's damage. One by one, the pages from her Transfiguration books were being ripped from their bindings. This book cost 11 galleons, and Bella was an orphan, left absolutely no wizarding money from her Muggle parents.

Another incantation resulted in her robes being ripped from her arms, torn into shreds, revealing her plain grey shirt and too-small ripped blue jeans. Bella gasped as her eyes watered, pulling out her own wand.

"Expeliarmus!" One of the boys yelled, and her wand was plucked from her hand.

"Stop it!" She shouted, wanting desperately to get the attention of anyone who would be willing to help her. But Bella knew she was virtually invisible, a blank spot in the castle to anyone who was friendly at all.

"Stopit, stopit," Blake jeered.

Bella yelled at them, but she knew it would do no good. They'd just been bored, probably picking on someone less entertaining, so they fell back on someone they knew they could always depend on for a good time: her. Now they'd traumatize her until someone rescued her, or they did something a little too bad and had to run away.

Gabe, another one of the boys, summoned up a swarm of mosquitoes to attack Bella while they shuffled through her bag, emptying her potions and stealing the money she'd been saving for something from the trolley on the way back to London.

"Get them away!" she howled in anger, wanting desperately to be able to defend herself.

She could barely hear through the cloud of mosquitoes around her as they dug through her bag, snickering at the pictures of her parents, tearing through notebooks and making assignments burst into flames.

Finally she dove for her wand, and caught it. But Gabe was faster: he murmured a curse under his breath, and then everything went black.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Miss Shanks! Miss Shanks, wake up." A soothing voice sounded in Bella's ears. She slowly came to consciousness and remembered exactly what had happened to her.

She blinked her eyes open and looked up at the starry sky. She'd been laying outside long enough for it to get dark?

She looked to the ground and saw a picture of her parents—her only picture—torn to pieces. It hadn't been a moving picture, like the ones the wizard's had, but it was the only picture that had been saved from the fire that killed them.

She scooped the pieces up in her hands and looked up at the person who'd awaken her. Dumbledore peered down at her, blinking calmly. "Are you alright?"

"I…" Bella looked down at the ruined picture in her hand, and looked around at the empty grass. Her books and bag were gone, except for the one book that had been totally destroyed.

Dumbledore offered her a hand, and she accepted it, blinking back tears. "My dear, don't worry about these things. I'll see to it that you receive new books by the morning, okay? A you'll be excused from all assignments you lost."

She nodded, wiping away a rogue tear that gotten past her eyelids. "Thanks, professor."

"Here," he whispered kindly, "Give me that."

She handed him a picture, and he waved his wand over it, probably putting a silent spell over her parents. In front of her eyes, the picture was mended. "Don't worry about these little things. Those boys will never have a life as complete as you will." He handed it back to her.

She nodded at him but didn't believe a word. "Thank you." She meant it this time. At least the picture had been repaired.

"Now please go to your common room, unless there's anything else I can do for you?" His kind eyes studied her, almost reading her mind, she was sure.

"No, sir."

"Then goodnight, Isabella."

"Goodnight."

Bella followed Dumbledore's instructions and went back to the Gryffindor tower. She climbed into bed, but she couldn't sleep. Images of her past had been chasing her lately, probably because of her first-hour class: Events in your life, and what they mean for you. It was a new class at Hogwarts, basically one that forced you to study your life and make the best out of it.

She was failing.

Bella was good at remembering everything in her life, but all she could find in the events was bitterness and pain. As she fell asleep, she dreamt about that fateful night when she was only eleven years old:

"Bells, turn the stove off, will you?" Bella's dad sat on the couch in the living room, changing the channels as fast as he could. It was a lazy night, one of those nights when no one wanted to do anything.

Without looking, Bella turned the knob on the gas-burning stove and returned to the living room to sit next to her father. Her brother, Jack, was sitting in the chair next to him, but he was so absorbed in the show that he didn't even notice her enter.

"Bella, Bella. You excited for school to start?"

"Of course!"

"Even though you're going to that Special Ed school?"

"Dad," she purred. "It's not Special Ed. It's a school of witchcraft and wizardry. Duh." He wrapped an arm around her, smiling.

"Oh yeah. How could I forget that? You've only been talking about it every day since you got the letter and the headmaster showed up."

She grinned at him. "Soon I'll be able to make you and mom do whatever I want you to do. Make me fabulous lunches, cater to my every need… all while I sit in bed and watch TV."

"Well, I don't know about that," he said, chuckling. "I'm sure if I wanted him to, I could tell Professor Dumbledore to teach me a few of his tricks."

"I'm going to be stronger than Dumbledore."

He father stroked her hair. "He seems pretty powerful to me. What makes you so sure?"

"I don't know. I can just tell I'm going to be good at this whole magic thing."

"I hope so. I hope you make lots of friends and learn a lot of cool stuff to impress me and mom with."

"I don't know. What if I don't have any friends?"

"Bells!" He got up from the couch and faced his daughter. "What happened to your confidence? You're Bella. Of course you'll have friends. I don't know anyone nicer, or more compassionate, or more understanding. Sweetie, you'll be fine."

"I hope so, Dad."

Suddenly her dad stiffened. "Do you smell that?"

His last word was drowned out by the sound of the smoke alarm and a loud blast. Suddenly the whole kitchen was engulfed in flames. With another puff of smoke, the living room was in flames. Both of them jumped from the couch. "Isabella, run outside right now and call the police! Jack, you too!" I'm going to get your mother and I'll be right behind you!"

Bella didn't even think to not follow instructions. She ran outside and called 9-1-1 on her cell. As she stood at the end of her driveway and looked back, talking to the dispatcher, she could see that he whole entire house was covered in hot flames.

"Help us! Help us!" She gave her address and watched in terror as her house was completely destroyed, and inside of it, the two people who loved her the most. Jack stood in wide-eyed terror, and neither of them could do anything.

Bella woke from her dreams, sweaty and crying. No one else in her dormitory had noticed her suddenly flying up from the horizontal position, breathing heavily with tears streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them away, embarrassed at her self. That was six years ago, she said to herself. Time to get over it.

Three weeks after their parent's death, Jack had committed suicide. Jack and Mom were incredibly close, and he couldn't take it. Bella was left alone with her abusive foster parents, whose weird son was the only friend she had.

He'd been obsessed with Star Wars and a show called Pokemon. She couldn't help but like him, he was the only person who ever talked to her. Even after he knew she was a witch, he still played with her. He was her 8-year-old best friend.

Bella knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. She got up and went into the bathroom, flickering on the old light switch. She leaned over the sink and let her tears run into the porcelain basin. She looked at her reflection, disgusted with herself. He long, auburn hair was cascading down her face, messy and curly. Her emerald eyes were swimming with unwanted tears, her cheeks reddened with embarrassing tears. But worst of all was the long scar that ran through her right eye and down through her lips—the scar from when Jeff, her foster father, had taken a knife to her face, in one of his drunken rages. It was ugly and mysterious, and she hated it. But it would be there forever.

With a surge of revulsion, she punched the mirror with all her might. It shattered under the force, cutting up her hand. Ignoring the thumping pain, she returned to bed, not looking forward to the night of pain that was ahead of her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bella had fallen asleep in potions class—just about the biggest mistake in her life. She woke to a large bang, as Snape pointed his wand at her cauldron and burst it, causing her potion to run everywhere.

"Miss Shanks! I expect you to come to my class alert and ready to perform to your best abililty! This, I hope, is nowhere near your best ability!" He bent over her, sneering. "For your exhaustion, 50 points from Gryffindor. For your awful potion, another 50 points. And for your drooling, 10 points."

All of the Gryffindors groaned loudly at her. Although the Gryffindors had never been cruel to her, like the other houses, they certainly didn't consider her a friend.

"But Professor—!"

"Ah! Another ten points, Miss Shanks?"

Bella closed her mouth and said no more. Horribly humiliated, she looked at her broken cauldron, just another thing she couldn't afford. The last two weeks of her last year at Hogwarts were supposed to be good weeks. But everything seemed to be going horribly wrong.

Suddenly a spark ignited in Bella's chest. She looked at the board, examining the description of this horribly complicated potion. At the bottom of the board it said: excessive use of this potion has been known to cause immediate death.

Suddenly she found a way out. She looked at all the Gryffindors, as they glared, and all the Slytherines, and they jeered and mocked her, and finally she looked at Professor Snape. Even a teacher couldn't pretend to like her a little, his scowl was worst than everyone else's. The glimmer of contempt and amusement in his eyes for punishing her was enough to push her over the edge.

She took a vial out of her pocket, the largest she had, and collected the remainder of the potion in it. No one noticed. No one would have cared, anyway.

The bell rang, and Bella ran from the classroom. She found the nearest bathroom and stopped just inside. Panting heavily, she took the vial out.

Flashes of her life passed before her eyes:

"You're a horrible person! Isabella, I don't know why we even bothered taking you in!" Jeff's horrible breath smothered her as she cowered against the wall. "You're a waste of space, a waste of air, a waste of food."

His hand smacked her face, and she gasped. "You're worthless." He punched her in the stomach. "You can't even defend yourself." He lifted her bowed head and slapped her again. "You're a damn witch, defend yourself!" But she wouldn't. Even as he slapped her with the back of his hand, and drew blood from his rings, she didn't fight back. She felt the hot, crimson blood on her face and shuddered, but she didn't fight back.

He shoved her against the wall and slammed her head into it until she passed out.

Yet another horrible memory:

Bella walks into the bathroom, crying from Jeff again. He insulted his son until he started crying, and Bella couldn't help it. She felt bad for Brian.

She looked in the mirror at her pathetic face, and started crying more. It took her a few minutes, but then she looked over to her left.

Jack was lying on the floor, a halo of blood that was his own surrounding his head. His eyes were glazed, his lips upturned in a horrible smirk. "Jack!" she shouted. "Jack, God, no!" She slumped over her brother's body and felt his neck. Crying out, she wrapped her arms around his lifeless body. "Jack! God, no! No, no, no!"

Jeff kicked open the door, yelling, "What the hell's going on?" And then: "Shit."

Scene after scene of things that had gone wrong for her, her horrible life. She'd always had hope—always!—that things would get better. But they never did. They never had and they never will. She wasn't a self-pitying type of person… but life was just too hard. She didn't want to live it anymore.

Shivering, she slumped to the floor. She thought of Jack, and her loving parents, and of the life she'd had before. What was wrong with her? Why had she survived? What had she done to deserve all this misery?

With one last breath, she downed every drop of the potion. With a horrible scream, the pain overtook her body, and the last thing she saw before consciousness was stolen from her was Severus Snape, running to the rescue.

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So dyou think I should continue this? Please R&R!