I don't own Harry Potter, I just own this collection of stories and everything else I have planned for the future.

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The Hell of Fourth Year.

Charlotte was jogging through the woods near the mill the next day. It never failed to amaze the teenager that around this time the day before she was breaking into Dolores Umbridge's house and an hour or so later she was sending off everything she had nicked to the ICW. The newspapers hadn't come out with the report yet - Charlotte guessed the ICW was busily going over every memory with the toad and heaven only knew who else before they made the final arrest stick, but she knew Umbridge was part of a nasty organisation and the ICW would need time to get everything prepared for a mass arrest - but she wasn't thinking about that.

To her, whatever happened to Dolores Umbridge meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Her mind was on what she'd realised yesterday.

Magic had made her lazy. Yeah, she knew as a witch she was meant to use magic constantly but at the same time when she was younger, she had relied more on her wits. Her guts. Yesterday she had nearly been caught out by that woman in the Post Office. Even now Charlotte was left cringing to herself at how she had walked slap bang into that inevitable wall.

Why the hell had she gone to the Post Office in the first place? What had possessed her to even tell the woman at the counter it was for the ICW when there were so many other departments in the Ministry? While she didn't like Amelia Bones and liked Susan even less, Charlotte knew the woman would get the job done and would take everything that was sent to her to the ICW. Hell, she could have sent the lot to the Daily Prophet (alright, deep down she would never send anything to that lot; Fudge might be under investigation, but the pompous idiot would tell his contacts in the newspaper to destroy the evidence. Everything), but she hadn't.

No, she had just taken the lot to the bloody Post Office, and she had blabbed about the ICW. What was wrong with her? Had she forgotten her training as a burglar, a pickpocket? Charlotte honestly hoped she hadn't forgotten any of her old skills, or they had atrophied away like a steam engine rusting away in the scrapyard, beaten down by periodic wind and rain and snow, the paintwork peeling away revealing the exposed and untreated iron underneath, the wheels locked solid by the corrosion while the firebox remained stone cold, blackened by years of fires blazing away inside.

Years ago when she had been on the streets, Charlotte hadn't had anyone but herself to depend on, and despite occasional cases of accidental magic, she had relied on her physical skills and her intellect more than anything else. But now she relied more on her magic than she had ever done, and she was now worried.

Anybody else - Weasley, for instance, someone who was raised in the magical world, and had never truly bothered to understand muggle methods or attitudes - wouldn't care. They would look at her as if she was mad now she was realising one of her biggest problems, but since people like Weasley had lived their whole lives in the magical world, and were used to it sorting out their problems they didn't know that it was possible to use their brains.

Charlotte herself had needed to use her own mind more than once when she was much younger, and as she jogged through the woods, Charlotte reflected on all the burglaries she had committed in her life, the ones where she had known about her magic and her heritage against the ones where she hadn't even known why the Dursleys were abusing her in the first place, and she came to the horrific conclusion. While her magic had made the burglaries much easier, whether it was because she was using her animagus form to break into houses, or using spells to clamber up walls and drainpipes whereas before she had simply used the hard skills she had learnt long before Hogwarts, Charlotte had always felt satisfied with the results.

Whenever she had planned a burglary, Charlotte had always felt like a painter who was taking things step by step, with the delicate pencil drawing starting as the framework - her planning; studying the mark, watching the house, timing their movements, breaking in to get an idea of the layout of the property if she was lucky enough to have a mark who was irredeemably careless enough to leave a French door opened and she'd have a few minutes to sneak in and have a look before she went in for her night or day burglary, the assembling of everything she would need before she began the burglary itself. They were the paint strokes, each one ticking off nicely everything she had originally planned.

And now she realised she hadn't made one of those plans in a long time - Umbridge didn't count, although the Tower of London and the Louvre came very close, and yet she hadn't used her intellect or the skills she had learnt before magic came knocking on her door.

And why not?

She missed those days. She missed the days where she would spend her time planning out, forming a strategy and then executing them all like she was a movie actress running through a script. Actually, Nah. She didn't like viewing herself as a mere actress, a director was more up her street… Actually that made no sense, yeah she was an actress - the script had been written by her, which was the simile hadn't worked.

Nowadays all she did was go to a house, wave her wand, she was in the place and she was out in less than a few minutes. There was no plan, little thrill… Nothing.

When Charlotte returned to the windmill, she went to the drawers of the dresser in the kitchen, and she went through everything she had in there, and she came out with a railway timetable and a local map of the town she lived in. She took both of them upstairs and she dropped them onto her desk before she went and had her shower. When she was dried, she had a nice hearty breakfast of cereal and fresh fruit before she went through everything in front of her while she kept her eye on the clock. She had a few hours training with the Founders' ghosts this morning, and she didn't want to be late. However, when she returned she would get back to her planning.

XXX

After spending four hours with the Founders, Charlotte was panting with exertion, although she knew this was more magical exhaustion rather than just being physical exhaustion. The Founder's lessons varied between teaching her much like the teachers in Hogwarts did, with them telling her things and practical work such as this where they helped her develop and enhance her duelling capabilities while encouraging to her to master a more varied spell repertoire and use of spells from different fields of magic; Slytherin explained it was designed to make her into a more unpredictable combatant, while Ravenclaw had countered it was to discover which field was working appropriately with the duelist.

The last one made sense. From what she knew of Flitwick, the Charms master used his skills with charms to even things out during one of his own duels, while likewise, McGonagall used her fluency in Transfiguration. However, Charlotte favoured both magical fields with her own duelling style, and the Founders always went on the offensive to make her a better fighter.

"You seemed distracted today, Charlotte," Hufflepuff commented.

Too exhausted, Charlotte barely managed more than a nod. Although she had managed to keep concentrating and focusing on the task at hand for today, she had been putting a lot more thought into what she felt she needed to do.

"What was on your mind?" Ravenclaw asked while Slytherin and Gryffindor looked on silently.

Charlotte closed her eyes and tried to push the exhaustion away, but while she had the words in her mind and ready to be sent to her mouth, she was still too breathless to get them out.

Finally taking pity on her, Gryffindor waved his hand and a bubble of moist oxygen appeared around her while conjuring a large glass of iced water for her to drink. Charlotte took the glass, sending the Founder of her former House a grateful look before she drank the water. Once she had drained the water and she had taken long deep breathes of the cool, moist air surrounding her, Charlotte felt fit enough to talk.

"You know how I went to Umbridge's house and broke in to get those books and those memories of her crimes?" She whispered in a hoarse voice.

"Yes, what about it?"

"Well, after I had committed the burglary I went to the Post Office in Diagon Alley," Charlotte panted, "but… I didn't lie to the server. I told her I wanted the package sent to the ICW."

"Why are you so upset about that?" Hufflepuff was puzzled, while Slytherin looked like he was beginning to understand her point.

Charlotte sighed. She should have expected the Founder of what was one of the most one-dimensional Houses Hogwarts had wouldn't have understood. "You don't understand. I have conned dozens of people in my time, lied to them, but in Diagon Alley yesterday I didn't lie to her," Charlotte hissed. "Hell, I could have wandered into the Ministry and shoved the damn thing in the ICW's office by making myself invisible or something. What did I do instead, I didn't use my brain."

By now Slytherin had absorbed what Charlotte was telling them, and he could certainly agree with her last part; sending off the evidence against Umbridge should have been carefully, and he couldn't help but feel disappointed she hadn't done more. "So what do you plan to do?"

Charlotte closed her eyes, and she wondered how the Founders would take this. These were not the real Founders, they were ghosts, memories imprinted into the fabric of the castle, but they were still witches and wizards and she had no idea how they'd take her mindset. "I'm going to commit a few burglaries and other crimes in London for the next few days, and I'm going to do it without performing magic. I'm going to leave my wands at home, so if I reflexively reach for one, I'll realise I need to go in with the tools of the trade instead."

"What? You want to leave your wands behind? Are you mad?"

"I can be. Look, years ago when I was committing my crimes, I carefully checked out the mark; I would look around the house and the wider neighbourhood, look for routes to escape; backstreets, back alleys. Ways to get in, how often they open a window at the front or the back, if they ever do. Do they own a dog, or more than one? Do they have kids? How long does it take to get them off to school? Do they work long hours, or do they work from home and are they only out of the house for five or twenty minutes?" Charlotte looked up at the Founders from where she was. "I've become complacent, too complacent. I don't want to just rely on my magical powers to help me get out of a jam. And when I went to the Post Office, I didn't even think. That's not a good thing for a thief."

Helga pursed her lips. She didn't like the thought of the girl they were training being a criminal. She glanced at her fellow Founders and longterm friends to gauge their reactions. Unsurprisingly Rowena looked pleased with Charlotte's analysis but at the same time, there was a degree of uncertainty which didn't surprise any of the Founders given how Rowena had grown up with magic all around her while she searched for the most esoteric knowledge imaginable. Godric was much like her in some respects in how he didn't like the thought of the implication the girl didn't want to be a witch anymore even though they knew that was far from the truth.

Salazar, on the other hand…

Helga knew, well they all did, how Salazar viewed muggles and their methods. However she had heard the displeasure in his voice when Charlotte had told them about the Owl Post Office. The Founders all knew Charlotte was something of a protege to Salazar, who viewed her as a girl after his own heart. To hear the way she had done something so mundane instead of something out of the box must have been disappointing for him.

Finally Salazar spoke, his voice low with curiosity and the Founders knew he was masking his inner feelings. "What do you plan to do, Charlotte?"

"I've given it some thought. Dobby, my House elf, will drop me off in Muggle London, from there I'll pick a few pockets before settling down for tonight with a sleeping bag, and I will sleep rough for one night. In the morning I'll board the London Underground, and go around the network. Once on the trains, I'll begin picking pockets."

"You're going to sleep rough?!" Rowena couldn't believe the foolishness of the plan.

Charlotte just shrugged her shoulders. "Trust me, a rough night and a coffee in the morning will keep me sharp for the job. I speak from experience."

"How often did you do that, sleep rough and then board the London Underground?" Godric asked in disbelief. All of the Founders knew what the London Underground was thanks to the Sorting Hat's ability to sift through the minds of the various students, and thanks to that ability the Founders had, in a way, seen the rise of muggle civilisation from the day the first students had been sorted to the present day. They knew what the London Underground was, and they were fascinated by the idea of the muggles to move massive numbers of their people through their city through tunnels, and it galled them magical people hadn't even come close to developing a similar idea.

"More times than I could count," Charlotte looked down as she remembered the various times she had ridden the Tube for the express need to pick some pockets.

She had chosen it for a reason anyway. It had been too long since she had last ridden on the Tube for this reason anyway, and she needed to know if her old skills had atrophied or not. At the same time, she had no desire to tell the Founders she planned on going out into London anyway soon after this while giving orders to her House-elves not to come for her until she commanded it or if they felt she was in danger. It was a bright, sunny day in London, which meant there were dozens of tourists. It was the perfect place to see just how badly her skills had eroded. In the open-air above ground, she could easily slip out of sight if they realised their pockets had been picked or not, and once she had done this a few times, Charlotte would see for herself just how bad her skills had eroded before she buckled down for the night.

She just wished she was looking forward to this, but after her stupidity with the Owl Post Office and her lack of foresight in that corner, she knew she would need all of her atrophied skill to pull this off while she hoped her skills hadn't atrophied as much as she felt they had.