~~~~ Spellbound (A Harry Potter Love Story) ~~~~

((SO! This is the start of a Harry Potter story I wanted to start a long time ago but didn't! Comment, Vote, Fan, all that good stuff! SHOW ME SOME LOVE! :) Thankies! Tell me what ya think!))

“Victoria Anne Michaels, get your ass down here.” I hated my name. I hated my mother. No, scratch that, I hated my life in general. I ignored her, continuing the drawing I was working on. “If you don’t get your ass down here by the time I count to five, there’s no way you’re going to that freak school.” She rephrased, and I flung my pencil across the room, knowing full well she meant Hogwarts. “Okay, okay! I’m coming! God!” I cried.

The first thing that I saw when I leaped down the last two stairs was my mother’s hand flying toward my face. I ducked, and her hand smacked with a sickening impact against the wall, adding another spot of chipping paint to the miserable looking walls. She gave me a look of annoyance, and grabbed my wrist. I resigned to the idea that I was, indeed, going to be hit. It still hurt, though, no matter how much I knew that it was coming. The sharp smack of flesh against flesh rang through the small apartment.

It was August 30th. That meant I only had a little over two days until I was free to go to Hogwarts. I was already packed. When I had gotten my letter, Mother had done nothing but sneered at me, taunting me, saying that she’d always known I was a freak.

Freak. That was always the word everyone decided to apply to me. Because of my clothes, my choice of books, even my hair. I was a freak. Not that I believed it. Everyone else, however, did. I hated the word, and my mother knew it.

“Are you packed?” She began a Spanish Inquisition-like analyzing of how prepared I was – I knew she didn’t care – she just wanted me out of the house. “Yes, Mother.” I replied. “Are you ready to leave?” I sighed. “Yes.” She nodded. “Do you have your ticket?” I rolled my eyes. “Yes! Oh my god, we’ve gone over this over and over! I am ready to leave!”

I didn’t even have time to flinch before her hand made contact again with my cheek. “Don’t sass me.” She snapped. I rubbed my cheek with one hand, brushing my hair out of my face with the other. How nice it would be when I could torture her with magic… Oh, that would be so nice…

Not as nice as when I was gone at some amazing school for magic, I decided easily.

“…Go to your room. Charles is coming over, and you know he hates seeing your ugly face.” My mother said suddenly. “The feeling’s mutual.” I said, rolling my eyes. Easily avoiding another slap in the face, I stomped rather childishly up to my room, slamming the door.

My new assignment, besides avoiding my mother, was finding my pencil. In my haste to get downstairs, I had simply thrown it across the room, and now I didn’t know where it was. My first instinct was to dive under the bed to look for it, so I did. My hands groped in the darkness below the bed for the small wooden pencil. Sure enough, my fingers closed it within moments, and I wiggled out from under the bed, a smile of triumph on my face.

My pencil in hand, I stepped over to my desk, sitting down on the spinning office chair. I spun around a few times, until I was too dizzy to even see straight. “Whee!” I squealed, laughing through my glum mood.

Charles was my mother’s boyfriend. I hated him, he hated me. I was pretty sure they’d get married soon enough, which would make my life even more of a living hell than it already was. Well, they’d get married, if they weren’t arrested for another DUI first, or child abuse. I wasn’t horribly abused, like the kids you saw on TV who were beat to a bloody pulp by their parents.

Personally, I hoped they’d be arrested. I hoped someone would save me from the hell-hole I called a house… But, I guess, going away for school every year was better than nothing. I glanced at the clock, counting the hours until I’d have to be at King’s Cross station.  Thirty-six more hours of hell, Victoria, just thirty-six, and then you’ll be at Hogwarts…

The only thing that worried me was my ticket. Platform Nine and Three-Quarters? That was impossible. There was Platform Nine, and there was Platform Ten. I’d been to the station before. There was no Platform Nine and Three Quarters. I sighed, deciding it was better to get a bit of studying done before I went to Hogwarts. I moved from the desk, the wheels of the office chair clacking over the cracks in the wood floor, to the other side of my room, unlocking my traveling trunk.

A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot sounded kind of interesting… I flipped the book open, scanning the first page. By the end of that one page, I was already bored. Shutting the book carefully, I tucked it back into my trunk, giving up that fast on the idea of studying. I rolled back over to the desk, deciding to go back to the drawing I had been working on previously.

I found even that boring. Sighing in resignation, I stood, lying down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep, and dreaming of the day, that was only a day away now, that I would escape my ‘home’ to a place much nicer… A place much more fun… A place that was truly magic.