Disclaimer – J.K is a very talented, intelligent gifted writer. Unfortunately I'm not her and she owns pretty much everything. Bugger.

Chapter 1- Distinguishable Features

The soft glowing afternoon light drifted into the dark and dusty attic, making an afternoon of hard work even less bearable. How could nature be as cruel to put the perfect day on when she was stuck working? What made it worse was a large wooden chest that seemed determined to mock her. Katie shook her head. Wood doesn't have distinguishing features, so it can't mock me right?

Katie Bell's fingers itched to pick up her wand and smash the chest to pieces with a good Reducter Curse. Her sorely missed wand, 12 and ¾ inches, cedar with a female dragons heartstring was currently locked away in her father's study with a number of wards around it.

Only a curse breaker could get through the assortment of jinxes, hexes and curses. The next time she would be seeing her wand was the morning she left for her last year of Hogwarts.

Cleaning the attic, with years if not decades worth of junk, without her wand was a punishment thought up by her father who believed hard work the "muggle" way cured everything. Especially disobedience. She had gotten involved in a huge fight with her father three days before. The words still raged through her mind

It had started with her nine year old sister Blake, snooping in on her letters from her best friends Angelina and Alicia. Katie had been forbidden to play quidditch at the start of the year due to her supposedly low O.W.L.S results.

As far as Katie was concerned, she did well with 2 Oustandings in Transfiguration and Defence against Dark Arts. The rest of her marks were around "Exceeds Expectations" and she thankfully received an "Acceptable" in Divination as she loved stirring Trelawney up. Especially ever since she predicted Katie would be turned into a large billywig and would accidentally be sat on.

Her father expected high results, just because he was "Head Boy" and a prefect. She had to agree with the twins when they said most head boys turn into Humongous Bigheads, Bill Weasley excluded.

Then later in the year she receives a letter from her father telling her not to get on Umbridge's bad side and in his words to suck up to her so he could continue to further his career in the Department of Financial Management.

Katie broke both rules of course. No one could stop her playing quidditch, although it involved a lot of sweet-talking to Madame Pomfrey not to send a note home when Fred accidentally gave her a Blood Blisterpod to stop her bloody nose. She also joined the D.A, not just to spite her father even though it felt wonderful, but because she believed Harry too. You don't spend hours training in the early morning and not gain a little insight to a person.

Then a year full of careful planning was all bought down in a single swoop when her sister blurted out what she had done that whole year. Stupid younger sisters. Just because Katie wouldn't let her put her hair in pigtails, she told.

Needless to say her father threw an absolute wobbly.

"How dare you disobey me? I cloth you, feed you and provide you with an education and you repay me with sabotaging my position at the ministry and flying on those infernal broomsticks". Her father looked like he had popped a vein and his usual expression of neutrality had been replaced by a far scarier almost comical expression of pure unfiltered rage.

"Quidditch is what I love and nobody will stop me playing it, not even you. You're the one who sets unachievable goals for me then gets mad when I don't achieve them. I'm not you; I don't want all outstanding results. And for the record, your job must be pretty shit if you have to crawl to Umbridge" Katie's heart felt like it was going to explode. She had never gone that far before and to tell the truth it felt pretty damn good.

" Is that so, Kathleen" her father was wearing a smug smile that worried her and he had called her by full name. It was troubling.

"You see why I'm the head of this house, YOU WILL OBEY ME." With that he grabbed Katie's broom and with all his might smashed it against the silver paneling of the fireplace. The broomstick cracked in half, with tiny pieces of wood scattered along the floor.

" It looks like I stopped you from playing quidditch, I guess you'll have to study instead".

Katie felt like she was going to cry. The tears were starting to well in her eyes but she brushed them off. She was a Gryffindor, and she would avenge herself, maybe not now but one day. He would see.

Her father had taken her wand and given the attic to clean. She wasn't allowed to visit her friends, not even tomorrow on her birthday. The only time she had been more miserable was in second year when Gryffindor where thrashed in the final without Harry to catch the snitch.

So here she was trying to move a chest as heavy as a ton of galleons. No matter how hard she tried, it wouldn't budge. "Stupid chest" Katie grumbled. She grabbed the lid and yanked it up revealing her Mother's Hogwarts gear.

Everything was stacked and piled neatly and all of the items were dusty except for a photo lying on the top. It was in a silver ornate frame with moving dragons spitting out tiny silver frames.

There were three girls in Hogwarts uniform. She recognized her mother on the left with her soft golden curls. She had linked hands with the other two and they were all smiling and giggling at something past the camera. Katie noted with some irony that she looked more like the total stranger in the picture than her mother at all.

Katie hadn't inherited her parent's looks. Her straight brunette hair, currently with red and yellow streaks, provided by the Weasley Twin's celebrations of Umbridge's encounter of the centaurs didn't match her father's short ash coloured hair of her mother's soft bouncy curls. She didn't have her mother's plump cuddly figure or her father's short and broad shouldered stature either.

Katie was the odd one out; it was especially obvious when the Bell's had a family portrait taken. She was not one of them.

Katie shook herself out of daydreaming. Her mother wouldn't appreciate her looking at things from her past, as she never talked about it. She assumed her mother had lost friends and family. Katie never asked, not even Blake the nosy one asked.

Katie, after 20 minutes of hard work and threatening the chest, had managed to move it to the side, leaving the attic neat and tidy. With much relief she walked down the stairs and into the kitchen were her mother was preparing dinner.

"Have you finished the attic dear?" asked Mrs Bell as Katie grabbed a butterbeer from the fridge. "Yes Mother" "Good, you can help me by going to the patch and grabbing some vegetables, the lists on the counter." Her mother then went back to "Lockhart's Scrumptious Feasts and How He Made Them" cookbook. Katie rolled her eyes her Mother still loved the tosser. She sent him a letter every week at St Mungo's.

The vegetable patch was a 100 metres away from the backdoor. It was on the other side of her mother and father's prize garden. It had won many awards but Katie preferred the woods that bordered the property. It was more natural than the calculated petunias.

Katie had always loved the outdoors. There was nothing like playing a game of quidditch on a glorious summers day. Then again she still loved playing quidditch in the pouring rain, snow or mud.

Katie got to work digging up vegetables, planning her revenge. Burying coins in the garden and setting a Niffler lose to run riot seemed like a great idea. Her brother Kent would love a Niffler as a pet.

Katie looked up and saw a large grey owl swoop down from the Horizon, coming to rest on the peeling white picket fence. It wasn't Alicia or Angelina's owl and she was pretty sure that it wasn't from the post office either; it was plump and appeared to be well loved.

The owl extended its claw and Katie picked up the letter. She sat down on the swing outside the patch and opened it. The handwriting was all too familiar.

Katie,

An owl just came for you. Dumbledore read it and asked for you to come straight away. We told him about you wand situation so we're busting you out in 20 minutes. Go grab all your stuff and leave your window open. I don't know what's happening but Dumbledore seems to be surprised, fancy that. Its weird, don't worry about your wand, Bill's going to get it for you. You can stay at our apartment over the shop for the rest of the summer.

Fred 'n'George

Katie chucked the vegetables away and sprinted to the vines that climbed to her bedroom window. She scaled them and jumped across into her window and frantically packed all her clothes, and Quidditch gear into her duffel bag. She also chucked in her photo albums, diaries, Pride of Portree Official book and other items that she treasured, as it sounded like she wasn't going to be coming back for a long while.

Which was quite all right for Katie. After piling all her stuff near the window she peered out wondering how the hell they intended to pick her up. Then all of a sudden out of a cloud popped a remarkable thing. A large motorbike and taxi were flying towards her. Fred and Angelina were on the bike and George was driving the car with Bill, Alicia and Mr. Weasley in the passenger seats. The motorbike landed past the garden were her mother wouldn't see it. The taxi hovered next to her window.

"Your knights in charming armor have come to rescue you from the accursed monster of housework, my lady". Katie couldn't help but laugh. It may have been one of George's least funny jokes but at least she was getting out of here. Mr. Weasley opened the back door and he and Bill slid into the window.

"Katie, load your stuff into the back, George and Alicia help her please. Fred and Angelina are distracting your mother why we retrieve your wand"

Katie nodded at Mr Weasley. He has always been very nice to her in the previous times that they met. With some effort, "What have you got in here Katie, an Iron-Belly Dragon", all her trunks and duffel bags were loaded in to the Boot. Katie climbed in the back seat and was engulfed in a giant hug from Alicia.

"You're finally here, we were planning to bust you out tomorrow anyway but Dumbledore gave the official green light to rescue you so we got here as fast as we could". Alicia was normally quiet and thoughtful about her words but when she got excited or upset her words would come out a mile a minute much to her friends amusement.

Katie was just happy to be escaping, but she was worried. Why would Dumbledore get a letter addressed to her, why would he be surprised with it and since when did Mr. Weasley come along on one of Fred and Georges mad adventures. It was worth thinking about.

Mr. Weasley and Bill returned running up the steps. Bill made a flying leap into the car as Blake came running into Katie's room, clutching a large piece of Bill's dark blue robes. She looked surprised as George hit the accelerator and they zoomed of in the taxi.

Down below Fred was being whacked over the head by her mother with her trusty broom while Angelina was trying not to laugh as she helped him escape onto the flying bike. They launched off with her mother and sister staring up at the escaping vehicles.

"Any last words Katie" asked Alicia. "Yeah, Good riddance"

End Note- The end of chapter one. Well it took long enough. Please review. I need some of validation for missing precious hours of sleeping. Feel free to complain about spelling and grammar too. My English teacher does it all the time.