Happy Christmas.

I'd hoped to get a good upload for Christmas as a present for all of you out there who like my stories. I barely made it, but I hope you enjoy what I've written for you.

Not for Sirius fans, this chapter. Also, a big Happy Christmas for Kourtney Uzu Yato - without them, I'd never have been inspired to write this into a planned storyline and made it work, blowing a fire into an inferno.

Please let me know what you think.


The Hell of Fourth Year.

Now the First Task was over with, Charlotte had earned a few days to herself. She had relayed to the Founders that she didn't want to spend all of her time training, and worrying about the Tournament, and while the Founders hadn't liked it they understood her reasonings. Personally, Charlotte didn't really care; she had been planning on this for some time ever since the day she had stumbled across the Founders.

Anyway, in the meantime, she had the House-elves to spy on the organisers of the Tri-wizard tournament to discover the ins and the outs of the Second Task. They already had a few leads, thanks to Bagman, but they didn't know which option the organisers were going to use although they had the same theme. The Champions would have to rescue something or someone important.

Charlotte had little doubt in her mind Dumbledore would use the opportunity to try to make her forgive and forget someone who had betrayed her when her name had been drawn out of the Goblet of Fire, but her rational mind had made certain she decided to wait and see although her irrational side had immediately refused. She knew Dumbledore would try to plant Ron Weasley in the middle of the Tournament, even after she had told him after he had nearly tried to kill Nightstar.

But Dumbledore never listened to anyone. Even with his whole world falling down around him, the old fool still lived with his head in the clouds. Living in a parallel universe where everyone forgave everyone, even if someone murdered the children of somebody else. Dumbledore had probably heard what she had said to him during the Wand Weighing ceremony about what she would have done to the Weasley family if Nightstar had died, but he had probably discounted it, believing in his flawed philosophy again.

Charlotte grabbed one of her wands and she headed over to the wardrobe in her room, and she pulled out a pair of shorts, donned her old socks and shirt, and pulled on a jogging jacket. Slipping her wand into the holster only another witch or wizard could see, and grabbing her stopwatch and slipped on her green-tinted sunglasses, Charlotte went downstairs and opened the doors and locked them tightly so she could begin her jog. She wasn't really worried about a muggle getting inside since there were wards to prevent that happening, but old habits died hard and besides, she felt reassured with this basic type of security.

Charlotte had chosen her home very carefully. She had wanted to live in a more or less isolated location which would make hiding her magical identity even easier, but she had also wanted to live close to a town where she would have access to a supermarket and other shops, as well as access to the railway network of the country. The trains in this part of the world had a train leaving for London every hour, and there were other trains heading to other parts of the country, so she wasn't completely isolated.

But the second pro to living here was the fact she had miles of private roads and dirt tracks, some of them leading into the town which was over a mile away from the windmill, and there were other roads and back alleys near it.

As Charlotte finished her warmup exercises, she began slowly jogging away from the windmill and she began the five-mile jog around the area she started to think about what she was going to do, going over her immediate plans. She was going to spend the next few days committing burglaries, and keep her skills sharp even with the loss of her eye.

"Morning," she waved politely to a dog walker who was walking his dog.

The older man smiled at her as she approached closer. "Cor, I wish I was as fit as you," he said admiringly, his eyes roving up and down Charlottes' petite frame, focusing more on her chest than anywhere else. "Well done," he said quickly before she noticed, although he didn't know Charlotte had already picked up on it.

Charlotte just smiled and went on, inwardly annoyed by how the man had stared at her. She had been tempted to curse him, but that would have left marks.

The jog did her good, she enjoyed feeling the fresh air on her although the loss of her eye and the necessity of the sunglasses which magically compensated for the loss of half of her vision had its ups and downs.

Charlotte pushed those thoughts aside as she came through the woods near her home and the town, and she focused on her animagus form's far more flexible skeleton and agility. With a grin, Charlotte leapt into the air and she grabbed a low hanging tree branch and wrapped the back of her legs around it tightly in the same way as a python constrictor around its prey, and she let her body flop upside down. The blood began rushing to her brain and for a second Charlotte continued to hang like that before she placed her fingers gently to her temples and she began performing stomach and ab crunches while he kept her mind opened up to her animagus' more flexible skeleton. It might be cheating, but she didn't care.

As she heaved herself up slowly for her twelfth crunch, Charlotte gasped a little bit as the pain washed through her abdomen, but she kept doing them. While she worked, Charlotte thought a little bit about the upcoming task.

She had no intention of doing anything until both Dobby and Winky came back with some information. In the meantime, when she wasn't committing acts of burglary on top of finally selling all of the fake Mona Lisa's she had forged for those private collectors who would fill her bank accounts with a lot of cash, Charlotte decided to continue training with the Founders.

Charlotte finally unhooked herself from the tree after she had performed over fifty crunches. Still relying on her animagus form's flexible spine, Charlotte reached up and grabbed the branch and pulled herself upwards until she was walking on top of the branch itself. She hugged the trunk and jumped down after running a basic scanning charm around to make sure there wasn't anyone watching.

Shit!

There was someone there, watching her open-mouthed.

Seeing no other way around it, Charlotte jumped off of the tree and twisted her spine in the air to right herself as she landed on all fours, like the cat she often became.

Her jump down had startled her observer, who jumped in shock when he saw her land.

"How did you get up there, and how come you haven't done yourself in?" he asked.

Charlotte actually paused to give the question thought. "Because I am good," she said.

She waved her wand at him, erasing the last few minutes of his memory

The jog took Charlotte a good two hours, and by the end of it, she was doubled over breathing hard. Charlotte cursed herself, she had been spending so little time doing her basic physical exercises recently but she was definitely going to rectify that. Charlotte stood upright again and she began the jog back home.

After getting back to the windmill and getting into the shower, Charlotte sighed with relief as she washed under the hot water and rubbed the shower gel into her flesh before she washed her hair. After washing the soap out, she added in the conditioner and let it lather for a bit before she washed that out as well. Once she had wrapped her head in a towel, Charlotte waved her wand and dried herself before she put on a shirt and trousers on, and she went downstairs for breakfast.

Charlotte had just sat down when Dobby appeared with the morning edition of the Daily Prophet, a few letters, and a parcel. "Morning, Missy Char," the elf squeaked. "How's your jog?"

"It was lovely, thank you Dobby," Charlotte smiled, not saying a word about her encounter with the man she had encountered. "Do you know anything about who sent those letters?"

"No, Miss," Dobby shook his head, making his large, bat-like ears shake. "Nor does Dobby know anything 'bout the parcel, except there be no curses on it."

Charlotte was reassured by that, and at the same time, she had to guess Dobby was including the letters in with the statement. The House elf laid the mail down in front of her. "Dobby and Winky now be investigating the second task."

"Okay, Dobby," Charlotte said, looking at the House elf fondly. "But you two be careful."

"Dobby will." With that, the House elf vanished.

Charlotte checked the Prophet first. Unsurprisingly the news was centred on her performance in the task more than anything else. Charlotte shook her head as the phrases "dark witch" "dark magic" "clearly dabbling in the dark arts" jumped out at her. She was actually kind of amused by the comments, and while she was a bit irritated by the calls for her arrest for what she'd done, calls made by people who didn't realise in the tournament the Champions could not be punished for their use of magic unless they had actually killed the other Champions, but Charlotte had not done that, there was nothing they could do.

There were even protests about her cheating because she'd hidden her second wand, but cheating was part and parcel of the whole shebang, and unless someone brave or stupid came along to try to confiscate her second wand, which would never happen since she would send them back in a million blood-covered pieces, Charlotte wasn't going to worry.

But what did annoy Charlotte the most were the comments Rita Skeeter had thrown into the article about her and Cedric Diggory having a sexual tryst, using dark magic to ensnare him.

Charlotte ground her teeth together. While she was attracted to Cedric, not just because he was gorgeous, she didn't like the thought people would suspect the main reason why she liked him was that she was manipulating his mind. Charlotte stood up and walked over to the drawer and she pulled out two sheets of paper and two envelopes.

She spent the next ten minutes writing two letters, one for Gringotts, the other for the Daily Prophet. Once she had finished writing the letters, she placed the Gringotts one in the Goblin message box first. The letter would be sent to her accounts manager who was in charge of the Potter family estate among others. The goblin would then make the arrangements, and send off a very very nasty wakeup call the Daily Prophet would not forget anytime soon.

She placed the letter she'd prepared for the Prophet near the message box. She would send it to the paper in a couple of hours once she had received the notification from the bank her orders had been obeyed.

Once she was finished with that she took a look at her other mail.

One of the letters was from Dumbledore. Charlotte sneered as she read the letter, but she also took a good look at the yellow coloured piece of parchment which had been delivered with it. The goblin message box screened out charms and curses all the time and they always recorded them for the recipient so then they would not trust the sender ever.

Sure, the goblins could have simply disposed of the letters, but that wasn't their function. All they did was let their clients who owned the box know who to trust.

She was unsurprised by the spells Dumbledore had placed on the letter since he had used them before but he never learnt from the experiences. What would it take for Dumbledore to accept the fact he couldn't track her down?

The letter basically asked her to come and meet him, so they could discuss matters that - surprise, surprise, Dumbledore had not seen fit to include in the letter itself, but Charlotte could read between the lines. She knew Dumbledore wanted to get into her good books, but he was too late.

Charlotte dropped the half-read letter on the table and waved her wand at it and she vanished it before she picked up the second one, this time reading the card on the back. This time the card was purple. Charlotte instantly dropped the letter and decided against reading it. The goblin message boxes had a colour coded series of threats beginning with green and ending with purple which indicated really dangerous curses, or hazardous magical substances; while Dumbledore had questionable motives, he never placed harmful curses in the letters.

The third letter was much the same, but she shuddered when she took a look at the name of the senders and nodded while she stood up and picked up another piece of paper and she added their names to the list of people she needed to get even with. One of the letters contained a nasty curse which caused sterility, and if she had opened it she would never have children.

The thought alone made her want nothing more than to kill them since she had wanted to have kids since she had been a child, and had no-one to love her, so she had decided if no-one loved her, it wouldn't stop her giving love to someone else.

The next letter had a card which was uncontaminated by spells or potions, which was suspicious in itself. Charlotte sat up straight when she saw the seal of the Ministry of Magic. She opened it and read it. The letter was from Amelia Bones, the aunt of Susan Bones, and the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Surprised it had taken the woman this long to get in touch with her although she guessed Bones had been trying to straighten out the mess Susan had caused.

Charlotte was in two minds about opening the letter, given her anger towards the Bones family for what had happened to her eye, but she decided to see what the woman had to say to her.

"To Miss Charlotte Potter,

I am sorry to be sending you this letter to you at this late date, but I and other members of the family alliance of which the Potters are a part of need to discuss several matters. There are matters which are too numerous to be disclosed in a single letter, and so I would like to invite you to a meeting before this Christmas.

I hope you do decide to come - the Potters have been an important part of the alliance for generations.

Please send a confirmation by return post, but on a personal note; I am truly sorry for what Susan did to injure you. If I can offer you any compensation, then I will."

"Short and sweet, I never thought I would live to see the day when a witch or a wizard would use their common sense and keep it straightforward," Charlotte murmured to herself as she read the letter again. Amelia Bones seemed different compared to others; instead of foisting the blame off on others like others, she was willing to accept responsibility, but the cynical part of Charlottes' mind wondered if she was getting those words out in print because Bones didn't want her to be angry.

Either way…Charlotte was tempted to go.

She had a lot of questions she needed to ask the Alliance members. When she had discovered it and her family's part of it, she had wondered why nobody had come to her before especially Neville Longbottom. The nervous and shy boy had known her for a long time, they had worked together, and they chatted together, and yet Neville had never mentioned the ties between them. She wanted an explanation. With that in mind, Charlotte prepared another letter, and she sent it off via the message box. She had basically written that she would be happy to attend, but it would be held at the windmill, under her own terms and if the woman and her associates did not like it, then she would publicly withdraw from the Alliance. Charlotte knew they wouldn't like that, but she didn't care. If they wanted to keep it, then they would need to follow it on her terms. She wasn't going to follow their terms - in the magical world, they would hold the cards, at the windmill, it would be a totally different story. Sure, she would need to be careful about how she organised it, but she knew she would get there.

Next came the parcel. She checked the card, and she was surprised when she saw the card was blue. This parcel contained an enchanted mirror that was used for messaging, and when she saw the sender her first instinct was to send it back in pieces.

It had been sent by Sirius Black.

Charlotte had not received any word from the man, not since what had happened to her eye, and while she was curious about what was making him suddenly get in touch with her now, she wasn't going to forget their betrayal. With that in mind, she wanted to get answers but while it was clear Sirius wanted to get in touch with her, he might not answer her questions. After giving it some thought Charlotte decided she didn't care if her former godfather liked what she was going to say or not, especially since much of it would be verbal abuse.

She sighed and opened the parcel, revealing a mirror with an ornate silver-gold border. There was a slip of parchment inside the package. She picked it up with a manicured hand and read the words, "Say, Sirius Black."

Charlotte sighed. "Sirius Black."

The image on the mirror showing her reflection altered and shifted and finally Sirius appeared in the mirror. The moment he saw her, his expression brightened a little but it faltered when he took in her icy expression underneath her sunglasses. Charlotte took a second to study him. Sirius looked rougher, more haggard, even more since he'd escaped Azkaban and they met for the first time in years since they'd last met when she'd been a baby.

She spoke over Sirius before the older wizard could even get a word out. "I want to know why," she said with all the warmth of a sword sharpened with a whetstone dunked in the icy waters of Antarctica. "Why did you ignore my messages, and you had better make the explanation phenomenally good, because if it isn't, then I am going to find you, and I will skin you alive and send your remains to the DMLE. I don't care at this point."

Sirius looked startled by the threat and he needed a few minutes to get his composure back on track. "I…we saw your performance yesterday," he began.

Charlotte waved a hand impatiently and cut him off with a cat-like snarl, suddenly angry with the older man. "If you're going to bore me with saying that I'm turning dark and I'm no goddaughter of yours…do not waste your breath. What I did was for my own survival. That is what I care about, my survival. That is the end of it. Amen. I don't care about your pathetic philosophies, Sirius. Now get on with it, tell me why you broke my fragile trust in you."

Sirius winced, although she wondered whether it was because she'd had a go or if it was because she had said she didn't trust him anymore. Either way, she didn't care.

"Please don't say that Charlotte," he begged, tears coming into his eyes which Charlotte noticed for the first time were red-rimmed but her sympathy was nonexistent. "I didn't want to just leave you to the mercy of the Tournament."

"Then why did you?" The icy tone in her voice disappeared and Charlotte leaned forward curiously.

Sirius sighed. "It was Dumbledore. He called me and Remus. Said he had some big plan to help you with the Tournament but it wouldn't work if we kept in touch with you."

"That's it, and you believed him?" Charlotte asked scornfully although privately she felt the excuse was too pat and there had to be more to it than that, and she wondered if Dumbledore had tampered with the marauders' minds. "The old son of a whore didn't help at all; he just let me take abuse every day. If it wasn't for where I live, I'd be stuck at that dump! And you believed him, you spineless, gutless waste of space!? You abandon your own goddaughter, knowing the reputation of the Tri-wizard tournament. Sirius, people have died because of this thing, and yet you don't think I might need help? Me, a fourteen-year-old girl who just wants to be left alone without dark lords and self-important idiots meddling in her life? You know how dangerous the tasks are, and yet you don't seem to care. What were you thinking? Oh wait, you weren't thinking. It's the story of your life, isn't it? After all, your desire for revenge got us both locked up - you with the Dementors and me with a bunch of muggles. You didn't think then, and you made the same mistake again! How stupid are you?!"

Sirius winced. "It was hard for us to ignore those messages-."

"Oh, yes," Charlotte laughed scornfully. "That's right, care only for yourself. It didn't occur to you to say no to Dumbledore, did it? If the old bastard tells you to jump, then you ask him how far down, right? You are pathetic."

Sirius recoiled at the shout but Charlotte was only just getting warmed up.

"Which message hurt the most? The fact I reminded you of how much you fucked up with my childhood? The fact your wonderful prank which involved Pettigrew taking your place at Dumbledore's insistence since everyone would suspect you blew up in your fucking face? That Dumbledore didn't help you, only for you to do what he says."

"That's not fair," Sirius snapped, getting angry. "I care about you, I always have-."

"Since when?" Charlotte asked mildly, thankful that at last, they were reaching a part she wanted to get to.

The question knocked Sirius off balance. "What?" the wizard asked, aghast she would even ask that. "Charlotte, I came out of Azkaban to protect you-."

"No, you only came out because you saw Wormtail in a photograph," Charlotte's voice was so bitter Sirius knew nothing would sweeten it. "Once you saw him, you escaped by using your animagus form. The point is you didn't give a thought about me, who should have been at the top of your list of priorities. Face it, Sirius - you could have broken out anytime you chose. You had an animagus form and had the advantage of knowing Dementors couldn't affect animals. You didn't use it. You could have changed into a dog, waited for them to open your cell, and slipped out before swimming to the mainland. If I had an animagus form," Charlotte smiled inwardly ironically, "then that's what I would do if I'd been accused of a crime I didn't commit. You, you just waited in prison for a decade! You didn't give a thought about me. Even when you caught Wormtail, you planned on killing him instead of taking him into custody so then you could be free. You are so shortsighted, it's incredible. Why, and don't fuck me around anymore by yakking on about the Dementor's effects?"

Sirius was stunned by the coldly spoken, bitter rant.

"What? You haven't got an excuse this time? You're not going to claim it as one of your pointless and stupid pranks, are ya?" Charlotte asked sarcastically.

Sirius recovered quickly. "My pranks aren't stupid-!"

"And I notice you care for your pranks, proving my point." Charlotte's face became dark and expressionless. "My parents died thinking they were safe, but the all the time you were laughing you had pranked the Death Eaters. Were you still laughing when you realised you'd made a huge mistake? The problem with so many people is you never learn from your mistakes. Want to see another of your stupid decisions?"

She slipped off her sunglasses and exposed her empty eye cavity. Sirius recoiled at seeing the empty hole so close, making Charlotte smile in satisfaction. She felt no sympathy in return. "My dad is dead, but it's amazing to know without him, the once incredible marauders are nothing more than a pack of liars and fools. I see no more reason to speak to you, Sirius. Goodbye."

With that, she waved her wand and vanished the mirror. As it faded, freezing Sirius' horrified expression.

Charlotte sighed. A part of her was annoyed by herself for lashing out like that because she had wanted to interrogate Sirius for a little bit longer, but she was so angry with the man for caring only about his own pleasures and not accepting responsibility like an adult. Anyway, the deed was done.

Still, she wasn't going to worry about that now. She was going to deal with those Mona Lisa copies, and she was going to commit some burglaries before she focused once more on the Tournament.