I am so sorry for the lateness of this chapter. It's been a while since I've uploaded but I've been having so much trouble writing it and now I think I've perfected my plans for it.
As usual, I don't own Harry Potter.
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New Direction.
Hayley was sitting behind a desk, idly looking at her nails and barely paying any attention to the teacher who was trying to get them to master a piece of film music she hadn't heard before, or even wanted to listen to. She wasn't interested in learning or mastering music, maybe in the future she would change her mind and decide she would like to learn more about music and decide to play an instrument. Perhaps an electronic keyboard or something like a harmonica, but right now she was bored of the lecture and she wanted to get out of the class.
As she sat looking at her nails, concentrating on making sure nothing of her appearance changed (it had become even more important for her to learn not to change the length of her hair, but major and more obvious things like her hair and eye colour became even more important, especially now when she was trying to keep her head down.
It was hard though.
Despite her age, there were many people interested in her for her physical beauty, sometimes they were augmented by what she called her 'changeling' skills.
After two years of living on the streets and being well away from the Dursleys coupled with better food and warmer clothes and attending those illegal martial arts clubs in Central London where she built her strength and agility and reflexes up until she was much healthier than she had been when she had left Privet Drive.
After she had left the Dursleys, Hayley had gone straight into London where she had begun using her powers to steal food and money and clothes. Hayley had quickly realised that when she had gotten into London things were totally different. She was no longer living in an abusive house, she was living on the potentially dangerous streets of a city where anyone or anything can happen. She would need to learn how to survive or she would be destroyed.
She spent a lot of time trying to avoid people in the early days because her control over her changeling skills had suddenly gotten out of hand for some reason. And she didn't know why. She had always been able to control her abilities but for some reason, they almost ran out of control, and it made many people stop and stare at her when they thought they saw her hair either grow longer, or become short, black, red, or blonde. So she had taken to wearing a hat over her head to stop people from looking at her head, but in the meantime being a changeling did help her with her crimes because she could change her appearance. Thanks to those crimes, she became increasingly better at stealing things other than food and money. Soon she was stealing jewellery to sell for hard cash.
She had given up her fantasy of becoming a femme-fatale.
She had stopped this shortly after she had been living on the streets for a while, and it had occurred to her she hadn't bothered once to look at the notes kept in her backpack about the movies she had been watching before her escape. What was the point of becoming one? It was nothing more than a fantasy for her when she grew older, but she had bigger concerns at the time. Where she was going to sleep. What she was going to eat and drink. Basically, all the needs in a daily struggle to survive.
In any case, she was just a young girl, and she was far too young to seduce men. On top of that Hayley decided she truly did not care about becoming a femme-fatale at all.
Hayley only discovered that she stopped caring when one day she was going through her backpack and she realised she hadn't taken a look at her notes, never mind practice anything written on them for a long time now, indeed she took one look at them and she was just apathetic.
As time had passed she had found it much simpler for her to just become a cat burglar, using her changeling abilities to disguise herself so nobody would ever notice her comings or goings, and she could simply vanish from sight because she was hiding in plain sight.
It was so simple. With her powers, Hayley had learnt how to walk into places with just a wave of her hands while she shut down the security systems, and she would just be in or out.
No alarms blaring.
No witnesses.
Becoming a femme-fatale… nothing but a childhood dream compared to that.
The sound of the theme for Mission Impossible snapped her out of her thoughts and she resumed playing it, although she didn't bother masking her aura of total boredom from anyone. After a few more tries and the lesson was over, and Hayley was allowed to head for lunch.
"Hey, Hayley," a girl smiled at her although it didn't reach her eyes, "you must tell me how you got your hair like that. It's incredible."
"Thank you, Sarah," Holly's voice was tart and disinterested. She and the girl had never gotten along. Before Hayley came to the school, Sarah had enjoyed the top spot for the prettiest girl in the school, but Hayley didn't talk badly of other kids like Sarah did who had let it go to her head. After the kind of life she'd had at St Gregory's where everyone just avoided or spat at her because of Dudley's threats to pummel them into submission, Hayley had long since stopped caring about that kind of clique.
Hayley walked past the girl and the few friends she had left and she overheard Sarah muttering to her friends, "Arrogant bitch." Hayley snorted. Sarah had that backwards.
"Hey, Sarah," one of the so-called princesses began, "you're better than her. At least you have parents."
Hayley wanted to gouge the girls' eyes out for that remark. Her parent's deaths didn't matter to her, but the knowledge she was truly alone in the world was never a particularly nice reminder. But she decided it wasn't worth it. Still, she glanced down at her hands briefly, and to her horror, the fingernails were now longer. With a brief surge of frustration, Hayley closed her eyes and concentrated hard. When she opened them again, she smiled in relief when she saw how short her nails were now.
For the rest of the day, Hayley just went about the lessons. When school was out, she went back to the foster home.
"Hi, Mark," Hayley smiled at one of the boys she saw in the foster home.
"Hi, Hayley," Mark was a boy a year older than Hayley and he smiled at her. "How was school?"
"Same old," Hayley shrugged casually with a happy smile; just because she wasn't practicing her femme-fatale thing did not mean necessarily she was going to pass up the chances to practice the art of seduction. "Anyway, I'm off out."
Hayley stepped away from Mark and was about to go upstairs when the boy asked, "Do you wanna come with us?"
Hayley turned around, a smile on her face (she had become very good at concentrating on her changeling skills, it barely bothered her). "Oh, that's nice of you, Mark. But no thanks. I'll be gone for some time. But maybe some other time."
With that, Hayley walked upstairs and she got out of her uniform. She put on a pair of loose trousers and got her running trainers, and after she put on her leather jacket she told the carers she was popping out.
After grabbing the Tube, she went into London and arrived at the library.
Hayley spent the rest of the afternoon popping into various shops where she looked over books and videos before she went to the library, where she took a look at the history books, notably the books on spies. She read the different books, flipping through them and assimilating some of the details, sometimes stopping when she caught some of interest.
Hayley and her time in the library had caught the interest and attention of the library assistants. To them, she was a girl who had varying interests, but nothing truly constant. One day she was interested in Roald Dahl. Next, she could be interested in H.G Wells.
"If we knew what you were looking for, Miss Hayley, we might be able to help you," one of the assistants commented to her.
Hayley lifted her head and smiled at the assistant. "You are helping me. You're letting me in."
As she read the books on spies, Hayley learnt a great deal about the spy networks in the last two world wars and throughout history; it was interesting reading about the network Cardinal Richelieu formed at the peak of his career, but as she read the books concerning spies, she found some of the things spies did to be interesting.
Okay, granted, she didn't like some of the things they used to play games with other people, mind games that she had problems working out, but some of the ideas were interesting.
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Hayley had to admit sneaking out of the foster home was easier than the people who staffed the place had a right to claim. All she needed to do was open her bedroom window and she just had to leap down to the ground; with her changeling abilities she was able to twist her spine, or she was able to make her body extremely springy and spongey enough to withstand impact so she didn't suffer any broken bones. Discovering she could do this had been a nightmarish discovery for Hayley, but it had worked.
Arriving at the Tube station, Hayley bought a ticket and boarded a train. She had a short time scale but she knew she could get what she wanted to do done quickly.
Recently Hayley had been casing a jewellery shop in Oxford Circus. When she arrived, Hayley waved her hands, mentally shutting down the stores' security systems and the cameras protecting the place while she did the same thing to the neighbouring shops along the streets so none of them caught an image of her. With a bit of luck, the police would assume the burglar, or burglars had simply gotten hold of the systems in the street and found a way to shut them down.
Companies would spend hundreds of pounds worth of taxpayers' money trying to investigate what happened before they dreamt up new ways of sealing the systems before marketing and guaranteeing nothing could go wrong with the new model of security system. But it was a total lie. Hayley knew she could get past any security system in the world, no matter what.
Every time she committed crimes like this she always chose something that had a degree of risk to it. But she always chose something where the security was top quality, and she felt herself moving up a ladder to come to the realisation there was no security system that could defeat her.
That was one other reason why she didn't care about becoming a femme fatale over the years; in the movies and in history, femme-Fatales always killed and seduced for money, not usually in that order, and they plotted and schemed for it. Why would she do that when she could just break into a bank without any effort? It was just a game.
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It amused Hayley when she waved her hand and made the door swing open like she was a customer. As she stepped inside the darkened shop floor, she waved her hands and held out her backpack. Like a tour guide ushering a particularly stubborn group, Hayley waved the jewellery that came from the opened display cases to fly into her bag. The back room door opened and a stream of unused stock that came from the storerooms came into the room and flew into her bag as well. It wasn't alone. The money from the safe in the main office flew into her bag.
All in all, a heist that only lasted a few minutes when for ordinary burglars they would last for a few hours was over.
Hayley went to one of the glass cases and she closed her eyes, visualising the face she wanted. When she opened her eyes, Hayley smirked in delight when she saw her black hair become blonde while her skin turned a shade darker, like she had spent an entire month sunbathing on a particularly sunny stretch of beach. She walked out of the shop, again like a satisfied customer who had gotten what she had wanted and she went back to the Tube station.
Aside from garnering a few looks from boys who wondered how such a pretty girl could walk around unaccompanied, she returned to the foster home perfectly safely.
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