A/N: Well, it's yet another Whitetigerwolf challenge, this one being about Batgirl. I tried to ignore it, but then got bitchslapped by my imagination again, so here I am, writing this.

A few things to be aware of before starting to read this: Barbara was born in 1987 and the two arrive in Gotham in April-May of 1989 as a double blind, baby and decoy secret keeper both stashed safely away, half-way around the world while everyone but James and Lily believe them to be hiding out with or close to the Potters. Sirius believes that this was only a six-month assignment while James and Lily pretty much planned for the arrangement to last for as long as the war did. Voldemort, not finding the Potter girl at the Welsh Deathtrap, goes and attacks the Longbottoms to deal with a known quantity. The Longbottoms don't die and Neville is still stuck with them as vegetables, except that he now has the scar and the media after him at the same time. The Potters are just forgotten about. Sirius is assumed to have died with them, though the Goblins and some of the more observant American wizarding authorities know better... and don't plan on telling anyone. Neville goes through all the canon Hogwarts events but is only really introduced into the Gotham nightlife once i've figured out whether he's meant to be a villain or not. Just take canon Harry and stick Neville in his stead, an emotionally stunted grandmother and a mad scientist unspeakable grand-uncle taking the place of the Dursleys. Same emotional scarring, more mad skillz to use against Voldie. But that's background for the first few chappies. Now, it's growing up Gotham style for the little Prophecy-Girl-That-Wasn't.

Disclaimer: Do not own, do not really care, having fun, come along for the ride.

One can only move heaven by courting hell.

Excerpt from Gotham Alley; an eyewitness account.

Seventy years ago, Wayne Enterprises was a growing building and infrastructure-oriented company gearing up for America's official involvement in World War 2. Like many of its ilk, the company dealt with a bunch of small-time, one-off contracts when dealing with the Armed Forces, often building things like airfields, dockyards and roads to and from bases dotted across both the north and south American coastline.

Then, in 1943, a new project came from an undisclosed department in the US military. Wayne Enterprises hit the big time with this one and made the jump to becoming Wayne Industries on the back of it. The project was, put simply, to build a fully featured barracks/command centre that could be used by any branch of the US Army, Navy, Air Force or 'Special Services' that cared to use it. This included a camouflaged airstrip, a medium-sized docking yard, training grounds capable of turning recruits into soldiers, Marines and Sailors, a communications array, radar network and defensive positions that would defend the base from an attacking force ten times the size of the base's capacity of fifteen thousand men.

Wayne Industries was, at the time, far from the perfect company to turn to for this project, except for two things: first, it had a well-deserved reputation for secrecy under pressure, having built government facilities with a minimum of fuss and leakage in the past. Second, their headquarters was sitting slap-bang in the middle of the construction zone. Put simply, Wayne Industries was tasked with building this monstrosity in the middle of Gotham City. Alexander Wayne, always a fan of both the efficient use of resources and Occam's razor, fielded what at the time seemed like a peculiar solution to this problem. The docking yards and the airstrip would be built as any other military airstrip and naval ship yard, but with a thin veneer of civil use painted over it. Everything else, the defensive positions, warehouses, training grounds, barracks, housing for the soldier's families, the mess halls, the science labs, the entertainment venues etcetera etcetera etcetera would be built underground. The above-ground portions of the base were connected via pre-existing maintenance tunnels whose only indication that anything had changed was an extra blast door or two at the lowest point of the shafts themselves.

Work started in March 1943. On January of 1945, a quiet opening ceremony took place with the mayor of Gotham, Alexander Wayne and an unnamed, non-descript man of uncertain descent wearing a gray business suit attending. And if the man offered no details about himself, everybody understood and nothing further was spoken about the matter. It was a different time, after all. All the personnel involved in the construction were sworn to secrecy and, if any Gothamites took notice of the strange events that occurred from late 1943 to late 1944, nobody commented on it. Gotham was already well-known for its 'don't ask, don't tell' approach to mystery solving and rarely batted an eye when something not quite kosher occurred under any circumstances. A few memories lingered after the end of the war, but even they disappeared when the last of the skeleton crew was reassigned to more modern facilities at the outbreak of the cold war. After all, nobody knew if it could stand up to a Soviet nuclear bomb, and it wasn't like anyone was too eager to find out at the time.

So, underneath the streets of Gotham, lower than its subway stations, sewage network and pipelines filled with the obscure and rather toxic lifeblood the city ran on, a small, fully furnished city lay to rot for twenty years. Then, in the seventies, a fugitive bank robber stumbled upon it. Having somehow managed to bypass all the deadlocks, tank traps and silent machine gun posts in his head-long dash away from the police, he looked up and found himself on what he first assumed to be a film set. Three months later, his old pals got an invitation. The Underworld town of Dante was born.

Then the recession hit. With it, a massive crime wave swept the streets of Gotham clean of what was once a bustling middle class. In its wake, the shops closed, workers left, once proud street corners filled up with the destitute and unwanted, the policemen found policing to be difficult and, in the end, Gotham Alley, once the go-to shopping district for Salem students, closed up shop and moved to Boston. Put simply, during the recession, the magic died.

Dante, on the other hand, became a boomtown like many of the other US cities. While Gotham existed in this sort of strange depressive bubble, the rest of the US was high on junk bonds, cocaine and a floundering Soviet Union fighting the 'freedom fighters' in the Afghan highlands. Drug Barons, Arms dealers, shady middlemen of the international variety flocked to Gotham City looking for cheap labour and even cheaper secure warehousing. You could buy the entire police force for a tenth of what it cost to nab yourself a Miami chief of police. None of the landlords bothered to make the trip back to Gotham to look at housing estates that were now worth pennies to the dollar it had cost to build them, meaning that the bolder squatters simply picked a house and bribed the local real estate agent to file false reports and set up water & electricity supplies. Hell, the girls were so cheap there, the porn industry in Gotham could easily have rivalled California's... if the various companies had ever bothered to file financial statements.

Gotham City was a free-for-all, with the only light in the city coming from the gargantuan art-deco obelisk holding Wayne Industries. Even as the flanks broke and routed, somehow, the centre held. When Wayne Senior was killed following a performance on the steps of the still somehow world-famous Gotham Grand Theatre, the centre held. When Bruce showed less and less promise at being the renowned industrialist and shrewd businessman his father had been, still the centre held. Nevertheless, those ensconced in the marble, glass and somewhat ivory tower knew that, sooner or later, something had to give.

And into that mess wandered a strangely dressed man clutching a baby girl in one hand and a briefcase in another.

Gotham Alley; an eyewitness account, pages 15-17, "Where most of it started."

Chapter 1: Settling in.

They always said that the future was bright. Something to look forward to, to relish, to anticipate. But when what you saw as The Future was right in front of you...

The train station had been clean, at least. That was a blessing of sorts to your average traveller, who tended to grow up in places where clean public spaces had become something of a luxury as of late. The streets, on the other hand, were a completely different matter. One could smell the tension in the air, the stench of nerves, anxiety and, dare one say it, a little bit of fear. The tall buildings sprouting out of the ground like monolithic mushrooms seemed to hem in any pedestrian caring to look up, hoping to catch a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off the forbidding glass facades that characterised the upper reaches of the towers stretching in a straight line beyond the perceived curve of the horizon. The atmosphere, foreboding as it was, was only made worse by the pitch-black tint of the lower level windows, seeming to suck up any light that touched it before it could reach the ground. It was like standing in a shoal of small fish trying to escape a feeding frenzy; everybody hustling, bustling and wanting to get away from something, most likely the very atmosphere their nerves were helping to perpetuate.

In the middle of all this stepped a young man with strange eyes and a weary scowl that talked of deep exhaustion, a bundle of blankets with a tuft of red hair sticking out of it in one hand and a non-descript black leather briefcase in another. To him, the fear, borderline panic and suppressed anger at, if he were forced to take a guess, everything, had the tang of familiarity about it. He'd experienced it often enough in one form or another, been the cause of it a number of times himself and was mostly a distant observer of such feelings when it came to others. He could live with it. Barbara, on the other hand... He just hoped he had time to check into the house that had been set up in advance before she woke up. Setting a brisk pace, he never noticed the tuft of hair poking out even further, revealing a face (so much like her mother's that it made the man's heart ache) that was staring up at the metal and marble behemoths towering above them in something akin to awe.

"Evans residence."

"Miss Evans?"

"Yes?"

"This is-" Sirius Black almost slipped out of his mouth"-Castor Grey from the Primal Colours Credit Union. Can you pass a message on to Lily Evans-Potter for me please? It's urgent."

"Uh, sure. Just wait a moment while I go and fetch a notepad please." A slight clonk could be heard as Rose put down the phone. Sirius waited patiently for the lady to fetch whatever it was that needed fetching, absently drumming the table in a four beat rhythm he'd heard during one of Lily's muggle studies crash courses ('how to pass as a muggle. Lesson one: Doctor Who') and wondering how long this six month-long game of 'hide the baby from the murderous psychos' would subjectively last. He perked up as he heard a faint rustle on the other end of the line. "Right, go ahead."

"Please tell her that her transaction has been finalised without any issues and that she will receive the returns on investment after the six months are up."

"Right. Got that."

"Thank you, Miss Evans. Is it alright if we keep using this number as Miss Evans-Potter's emergency contact? Only, we seem to have mislaid her phone n-"

"Suresuresure! Don't worry, she'll get the message!"

Sirius smiled to himself at a prank well-pulled. You could always count on Lily's mom to be highly paranoid when it came to her darling Lily's little magical quirks. It may have been petty, childish, cruel and just a tad asinine, but he was jet-lagged, still slightly hungover from his temporary farewell bender and beyond pissed that he'd been put in this situation in the first place.

"Brilliant. Have a nice day, Miss Evans." the phone clicked as it was put back on its receiver. He was far from being as lost in the muggle world as he would have been before Barbara's birth, the year of intensive Lily-tutoring had seen to that. Well, that and when compared to being trained, needled, harrassed and pushed on a plane by his two best friends with their daughter in his hands, a pureblood knowing how to use a phone was the least baffling thing about this whole situation. He sighed, reminding himself that, if this protected Barbara from the ravages of prophecy and daft old men with more power than sense, then it would all be worth it. But still.

A shrill wail came from the baby room the Potter funds had kindly arranged to have installed in the rather snug apartment. He went to check on his goddaughter, a smile punching right through his sulk.

He took a cab back home, little Barbara sleeping away on his lap. He'd changed an awful lot in the last six months. He'd gone from a quiet, polite, clean-shaven graduate to a mustachioed clerk with a cowslick hairdo, a long jacket covering the pinstripe suit he'd worn to work today. It had been his last day of hustling and bustling around the office of Dunbar & Associates, having handed in his resignation letter two weeks ago. He no longer needed the cover his work afforded him, since today was the eleventh of November. Armistice day, the day where he would finally be able to call home and get the all clear to come back. He smiled at thinking about seeing his friends & impromptu family again, imagining the whitened fields and dark-blue sky of a deep Welsh winter as he stared out at the Gotham cityscape. God, to be back home! To be around those he'd missed. To finally be able to do magic again! Back before this little trip to the States, he would have jumped in joy and promptly hit his exuberant brainpan against the car's top, waking up little Barb and pissing off the driver in the process. Now, he just looked forward to getting on a plane, setting down at Heathrow and stopping by Greasy Joe's on the way back home for a full-on English breakfast at midnight.

The little girl in his lap increased her grip on him, the hug starting to bruise his ribcage. She was a strong little bugger. He didn't mind.

"They are dead, Mister Grey." Sirius fell onto the floor, his ass connecting with a large whump.

"Moony? Moony, it's me, Padfoot. Moony, pick the fucking mirror up right the fuck now!"

He stopped screaming at the mirror, hurrying towards Barbara's faint cries coming from the other room in a panic. She was all that was left of his former life now. None of his friends were answering his calls, all reported either dead or missing according to whoever picked up the phone. She was his responsibility now. His daughter. It was not a matter of being her godfather either; it's simply that there was no-one else left. He was afraid now.

A few thousand kilometres away, Remus Lupin is administered the Kiss for the murder of 13 muggles and Peter Pettigrew. The Aurors found him chowing down on the rat animagus's remains. He had no regrets.

Close by, a witch with a rather put-upon expression brought her two year old grandson, the one hailed as the boy who lived, to meet his parents. The two people on the bed didn't recognise them.

A few days later, Sirius Black emerged from his funk, strangely because he realised that there was no more milk left in the fridge.

The plan was shot to hell, he knew that. He didn't know what had happened to his friends, he didn't know how the war was going, he had no means of finding out and there was no way in hell that he would endanger his god-daughter by haring off to wherever it is the American wizards hung out these days in order to catch up on things. Above all else, the Black funds he'd pilfered from his neglected old trust vault would barely last a week, he didn't know how long the Potter Gringott's account would continue to ply his numbered account with funds and the money from his old job was going to disappear fast.

So, he built a list.

First, he needed a new job.

Second, he needed a new job.

Third, he needed a new job.

So the list was rather short. Huh. What could he do with this cover identity of his?

Sirius bit back a curse as he looked at the classifieds. Obviously, something strange was going on in the jobs market in Gotham. He'd re-applied for the clerk position he'd just left, only to be told in no uncertain terms that the company could no longer afford to recruit people. And now that he looked at the paper, he found nothing, zilch, nada, niente, rien, zero, no jobs that he had even a modicum of experience in.

What the hell? He'd been gone two weeks. Granted, Gotham was in the midst of a record-breaking recession, but most of the companies he was looking for jobs in did business in other parts of the US. What was going on?

Then he looked at the local business section of the paper and cursed. Loudly. Vehemently. Continuously. He'd heard about the mini-crash from last month, but he'd had no idea that it had had such an effect on Gotham. Every single financial and legal firm seemed to have had its fingers firmly lodged deep in the junk bonds pie. With that market gone for now, most financial companies in Gotham faced bankruptcy. While Wayne enterprises was buying up as many minor brokerage houses as it could afford, the vast majority of legal & financial firms were shoved out into the cold right now. No more relatively well-paying positions were to be had. 1989 seemed to be the year where the Universe decided to make one Sirius Black its bitch.

He sighed, once again firmly pulling himself out of his self-induced sulk and attacking the classifieds & ads section with renewed vigour. He found what he was looking for at the very back of the paper. 'Join the Gotham Police Force. Insurance & Salary guaranteed on recruitment.' Well, suspiciously worded, but he did have experience with criminals & psychopaths. He grew up with some of the worst of them, after all.

He sighed to himself, sipping on his coffee. Barbara would need to be picked up from kindergarten soon.

January 1990 held auspicious beginnings for one James Peter Gordon. Dressed to the nines, he enrolled in the Gotham State Police Academy. After making sure that Barbara was well cared for by the babysitter, he took the bus (he didn't dare touch the piggy bank and hail a cab anymore) and left the limits of Gotham City for the first time in close to nine months, excitement, apprehension and a blasé attitude vying for attention.

"Dada!" The little green-eyed redhead screamed, pouncing from somewhere behind the doorway. He picked her up and twirled her around, her excited giggling mixing with his relieved chuckles.

"Well look who we have here." Alicia Kyle said, her back against the corridor wall. "What's up, officer?"

"Heh." he offered, a lazy grin adorning his moustachioed face. "Just checking in, ma'am." The dress uniform of a newly minted policeman itched. He really didn't care at this point.

Her name was Alicia Kyle, 25 years old, sister to one Selina and Jeremy Kyle, daughter of Hadrian and Annette Kyle, one meter eighty three, Barbara's former babysitter who was willing to look after Pumpkin for him when he was working late, youngest manager of the Gotham Archives department and unofficial mother figure to Barbara Anne Gordon nee Potter.

He was currently staring at her upper torso, trying to look for clues everywhere whilst avoiding the look of surprise and fear on her face. Her legs lay twenty five metres away from her body, the odd twitch still visible an hour after the 'accident'. That was it; torso on one side of the road, legs on the other and what looked like a swimming pool's worth of blood everywhere else.

How was he going to explain this to Barbara?

Four-year-old Barbara was crying. He could hear pain, anger and rage in the little voice of hers. A picture of Miss Kyle's blood-covered face was splashed over the front page. The late babysitter's empty-eyed gaze followed him to sleep that night. Turns out he never had to tell Barbara. Alicia had taught her how to read.

The new nanny came to him one night.

"Mister Gordon?"

Even after two and a half years, it still took a tick too long to register that she was talking to him.

"Yes?"

"It's about your daughter."

He sighed, the initial panic reflexes he'd had when his daughter (and she was his daughter now, damnit) became a conversation subject in the early days now buried under a layer of occlumency he'd spent the past six years working on. It was wonky, it was fragile, it did its job. "Go on."

"Well... She keeps asking after Alicia."

"Ah, yes. She was Barbara's first babysitter. She died a few months ago."

"And the mother?" The lady asked, having seen no photos of the girl's mother anywhere in the house.

"Dead. Gas main explosion two years ago."

"I am sorry for bringing that up."

"No problem. I still attend grief counselling sessions every now and then, so I've gotten used to it."

"Still..." And there the woman nibbled her lip nervously, an easy tell that she was about to bring up something unpleasant. "I think that maybe young miss Gordon should see a professional as well, sir."

His heart skipped a beat. He had dreaded this possibility. "Why do you say that?" He winced internally at the harsh sound that sounded so much like his own father's. Externally, he forced himself to relax and drop the scowl a bit. "Please, tell me. None of this will impact your continued employment with me, I swear." He hoped that the girl didn't see the flash of magic the Minor Vow gave off.

"A-alright. Ever since I've come here, she's been distant. Not just to me, mind" she fidgeted, addressing a possible protest avenue "but to everyone. I talked to a few people that knew her from before when I pick her up at the kindie's. She used to be such a sweet and open girl... Now the most anyone's gotten out of her is a drawing." She took something out of her back, holding it up to him, prompting him to take it. "This drawing."

He took it in trembling hands, wondering what he would find when he unfolded it.

A stick figure lay on the ground, the upper body separated from the lower one by a tire track. The ground was coloured in red. Underneath it were the words 'Best Friend' done in yellow crayon. He dropped the paper.

He burrowed through the archives of the police station, focusing on 'Hit & Run, Jan. 1991- Dec. 1992 - current'.

He didn't find what he was looking for.

"Hey, Darmhurst."

"Yeah?"

"Legilimens".

Thankfully, the investigating officer knew a little bit more about the situation.

"Detective?"

"Yeah-oh, Corporal Gordon. What can I do for you today?"

He dropped a file on the detective's desk, the pictures of Alicia spilling all over the place.

"You can tell me just why this is a hit and run when nobody can find any tire marks."

"I don't know fucking know, now do I!"

"Yes, well obviously. Read the file." The detective frowned and opened the Manila cover. Inside were witness statements, sworn affidavits and details on the locations of a dozen security cameras that could have captured the action. Nothing on who owned, operated or taped them, but a start, at least.

"That's not the file I was given. Where did you find this?"

His expression did not change. "Down in the records department, Sir." alongside the details on who bribed Riefenstahl to keep quiet, but that's up to you to find out.

"I see. Well thank you, corporal Gordon. I'll take it from here."

When he was sure that he'd put enough distance between him and the slimeball that was now officially on record as having received the correct dossier, Sirius allowed himself a rictus that would have made anyone who knew Jim Gordon shit their pants. The Black Blood was boiling again and the list of prisoners to be taken had been lost en route.

It took a little bit of behind-the-scenes anonymous prodding of several law enforcement and media officials, but the hunt was finally on. He'd kept his magic to a minimum for everyone except the editor of the Gotham Daily, whom he had given a good, late night hexing for daring to piss all over Alicia's memory the way the paper had. He'd even stayed as far away from the investigation as was possible, only dropping in out of the blue when needed, procuring this piece of evidence or exposing that piece of trash 'potential witness' whose payday had been a lot higher than it was supposed to be and just keeping a close eye on the investigation in general.

Now came the wait. He started to take on as many patrols in the old middle class suburbs as he possibly could which, thanks to the confundus charm he'd placed on the roster sheet, was a lot. Listening to his partner's bitching, you'd have thought that he'd confunded the roster to have them patrol the moon.

The first few sessions between Barbara and the paedopsychologist went fairly well, until one day Barbara had been asked to go play in the waiting room's playpen for a while.

"Well mister Gordon, I can honestly say that you dodged quite the bullet by bringing her here." Jason Bauer said, scribbling something in a notebook as he talked to him. "Abandonment issues, fear of death, fear of loss, fear of pain... She was shaping up to be quite the hermit back there." The man's bright brown eyes bore right into his silvery blue ones, disapproval writ large. "Well, I can honestly say that while the list of issues she has is nothing to sneeze at and that I expected better from one of our city's law enforcement officers, she is going to be alright. But!" He said as he saw corporal Gordon lifting himself out of his seat in relief. "She needs more time with her father. She needs more time with you, Mister Gordon. She needs to know that you are there, that you are NOT going away and what her mother was like."

"What? Her mother? But-"

"But what, Mister Gordon? The whole reason she latched onto Miss Kyle was because she knew nothing about her mother. She had even started thinking of her as her secret Mom. Her death... Was seen as confirmation that her mommies all left her before she was ready for them to go. She needs you, Mister Gordon, but she also needs her mother, even if it's only in memories."

All Black could do at that point was nod.

They caught the guy, but corporal Gordon was conspicuously absent from the action. Jim had been taking little Barbara for a walk in the local park at the time. He looked up as a dozen squad cars sped by, pursuing the car that he'd seen on CCTV footage less than a week ago. Sirius wanted to charge after them and hurt the bastard who'd dared to hurt his little girl, however indirectly. But James Gordon, newly minted police corporal and single dad, was spending time with his little girl. Nothing was more important than that.

"And can you tell the court just who paid you to... perform this service?" The young assistant DA asked, his first court appearance dissipating any dumb blonde comments that were thrown his way after turning down a job at his uncle's prestigious lawfirm.

"Well..." The young man said in the box, his hands pressed together as if he was sitting in a confessional which, in a way, he guessed he was. "The guy's name was-"

The tinkle of broken glass was the only indication that something was wrong. That, and the rather large pool of blood and cranial matter now decorating the floor behind the erstwhile accused. This marked the last time Gotham's courts used this courtroom when trying murder cases.

"Corporal Gordon, can I talk to you for a second?"

With those innocuous words, James Gordon underwent a chain of events that ended with him staring at a new badge and permission to take time off in order to study and formally qualify as a detective. Funny how life works. Sirius had been thinking of resigning before this.

"Daddy, look what I can do!" the little girl squealed, carrying her six-year-old body higher and higher in the air. Sirius just looked on, mumbling an old tune as she kept driving the swing ever upwards.

And the swing keeps swinging, swinging, swinging.

He looks on as Barb is level with the swing bar.

And the kids scream higher, higher, higher.

He frowns, seeing that she is concentrating on something as she rockets past him.

But what must go uuuuuuup must then come down.

At the top of the arc, he almost screams as he sees her let go... and stops when he sees her floating back to the ground.

She's in his arms before he's even aware he'd moved, hyperventilating at the thought of what would have happened had she failed. She giggles and hugs him tightly. "See Daddy? I can do magic tricks! I'm a magician!"

"No darling." He says, still catching his breath from having broken the magical all-time land speed record to get to her. "You're a witch." He can't be mad at her for this, but he'll probably ground her out of principle for doing something so stupid, reckless... James would probably have been proud.

The little girl put on a disgusted moue. "But witches are ugly."

Sirius snickers at her. "No dear, witches are pretty. It's the hags that are ugly."

"But aren't witches hags?" She asks, setting off a muffled rant about Tudor-era bards and their bloody ignorance.

"No dear, they're not. They're pretty and generally don't eat people."

"Ah, okay then. I'm a witch! Witch! Witch! Witch! Witch! Witch!"

He knelt down in front of her, looking her in the eye. "I know sweetie, but you can't tell anyone, okay? It's our little secret."

She looked around, seemingly considering the question with an 'mmmm'. "mmmmokay!" She skipped in place as she said it and Sirius extended his right hand in front of her, the smallest digit wriggling in place.

"Pinky promise?"

Suddenly looking completely and utterly serious, not to mention appalled that he'd called for such a strong bond, the girl used her little finger to hook onto his little finger and shook both of them up and down. "Pinky promise."

He smiled at her, took her hand and the two of them walked home.

Barbara looked at the thin wooden rod her Daddy had gotten her, curious about what it really was and why Daddy had insisted on taking her to that strange shop to get one. She didn't know what to make of it.

Daddy said it was a wand, but she knew that wands were all sparkly and cute and had stars on the end of them. This thing was a dark, ratty, foreboding thing that still managed to feel like one of her teddy bears at the same time. How such a strangely revolting wand could still make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside... it was creepy. It just felt wrong to her. So she decided to just use her hands instead.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" the high-pitched voice squealed again and again and again, willing for the rock in front of her to move. It was easy to do with the wand, but she wanted to do magic without needing to resort to using one, so she needed to do this. She didn't really know how to do it right, so she just did it like she would using the magic stick. It's not like anybody would hear her in the attic anyway.

She shouted the spell again, thinking about how it would feel to pick up the object, push it upwards and play with it. It didn't work.

Getting frustrated, she shoved her hand, palm out, towards the rock sitting on the floor, roaring the incantation as she did so. All of a sudden, she felt as if something heavy was pushing down upon her and almost yelped in surprise. Looking around sluggishly for the source of extra weight, she panicked and balked backwards, her back hitting the wall of the attic in the process.

A small thump reaced her ears, making her look in the direction of the noise instinctively. There the rock lay, its uneven edges causing the thing to sway side by side as the force of impact dissipated. A small dent marked the point where the rock had hit the floorboards after seemingly falling from a great height. She had done it.

A/N: Right, next stop, Dad Sirius, puberty and Gotham High.