I'm sorry it's taken so long to update, but I am back now. As usual, I own nothing, you should know the drill by now.
Please let me know what you think.
Harley Potter: The Black Cat.
Harley smirked while she skipped through the streets of Brighton.
She had never really skipped through streets like this before. It stemmed mostly from the need to go by unnoticed while she had been homeless, but her fortunes had really risen in the last few months, and her personality had brightened up as a result.
Finally, she arrived at the front of a jewellery shop, and she stopped. She looked left and right before she waved her hand over the front of the jewellery shop, opening the shutters and shutting down the security alarms while she unlocked the door and she slipped in while waving her hand again to make sure anyone passing by noticed nothing about what she was doing.
Once inside the jewellery shop, Harley waved her hands again and unlocked every single case and cabinet. She dug into her pockets and pulled out her gloves. The black cotton gloves were turned inside out, so then she wouldn't get her fingerprints on the inside of the gloves. She slipped them on, and she gently went about grabbing every piece of jewellery she could lay her hands on and slipped them into a plastic bag she'd brought with her.
As she worked, Harley let her mind wander. She was delighted she had managed to finally get some semblance of control over her magic. In the past, it hadn't been easy because she had been working on using the emotions she remembered from every single occurrence of her magic whenever she had been bullied by Dudley, or scared by the prospect of a beating or being caught when she had found herself on the streets.
Ever since she had discovered the truth about her past, the lies the Dursleys had been allowed to spread about her mother and father, Harley had desperately struggled to understand her magic and use it to help her. Unfortunately, she had never really had much luck, even when she had tried to use the memory of the emotions she had felt each time she had lost it.
Harley had been inspired by the film and book Matilda, hoping to use them as a template. Unfortunately, they hadn't worked. It had occurred to her that perhaps her magic only responded to her real emotions, but she couldn't be sure. After trying and failing to master her magic, Harley had almost given up hope even if it was the last thing she wanted to do, considering the fact she had no idea what Dumbledore would do to her if she didn't have some degree of protection from him and his schemes.
But then she had the dream.
She had dreamt of her mother. Harley had been so stunned and amazed when she had encountered this spectre, this echo of the woman who had given birth to her, the woman whom she had once believed was a whore who cared only for sex and drugs and didn't really give a thought at all about her daughter, thanks to the lies perpetrated by her sick relatives.
Harley had been in denial about the image, at first. Why shouldn't she be? While she knew magic existed, she also found it hard to believe it couldn't play with peoples minds by disguising others. But the strange thing was she felt she had believed the woman who claimed to be Lily Potter within seconds, which surprised Harley considering her cynicism.
But…something about the spectre had made Harley accept the truth. She had no idea why. She only knew she did not like it. She didn't like the thought of her mind being tampered with but after a brief talk with her mother, who told her she had been afraid of her only child being killed by Voldemort in cold blood she decided to do something about it.
Harley had wondered what had possessed the woman to send a message of herself and implant it in her daughter's brain. Naturally Lily had said nothing. And no matter how persistent Harley had been the woman refused to reply, but when Harley had woken up she knew precisely why.
There hadn't been any point because when she had woken up, Harley had the memories of her mother in her mind. Every memory; she remembered Lily growing up, Severus Snape, Petunia's spiteful jealousy which transformed very easily and quickly into uncompromising hatred for her own sister, Hogwarts, James Potter and his gang of bullies, Voldemort, the Order of the Phoenix, the war.
And the prophecy.
Lily had not believed in Divination. She didn't believe in the crap, and after seeing things from her perspective and what she knew of tarot cards and crystal balls and the bollocks that was astrology, Harley could honestly say she couldn't blame her mother for thinking the subject was junk. You only had to read the horoscopes in newspapers and in magazines which all told different predictions for different people born under different star-signs to see that, but many people believed them in the magical world.
Her mother had apparently thought the same thing, dismissing the whole subject as worthless when there were so many more subjects in magic which were infinitely superior.
When she had heard about the prophecy although she never heard the full wording of the damn thing thanks to Dumbledore, and his need to keep secrets, Lily's estimations about her old (literally) school headmaster's intellect plummeted.
But, as Harley recalled from the time she had spent going through the memories Lily had transferred over to her, she had quickly gathered while people like James Potter worshipped the ground Dumbledore walked on and likely the toilet he pissed and crapped in in equal measure, her mother had viewed the wizard from a backseat perspective; she was ready to acknowledge he was a great wizard, but she was observant enough to see the flaws behind the so-called legend.
And there were dozens.
Harley shook her head mentally as she remembered watching from her mother's perspective the situation from Hogwarts as the war with Voldemort had escalated slowly while the Dark Wizard had gained more and more support and ground; students from one house lashing out while Dumbledore refused to properly punish them, letting them off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist while ignoring anything major while giving the image to the students the teachers didn't care.
Like her mother, Harley didn't like the impression it gave; to the supremacists, it likely meant Dumbledore didn't care about the muggle-born students one little bit, and they could get away with whatever they wanted. To the muggleborns like her mother, they'd get the impression they were never going to be protected.
But Lily and Harley, both exceptionally intelligent, couldn't help but feel that there was more to it than that, and when she had joined Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix and witnessed firsthand the questionable policies of Dumbledore ordering the Death Eaters, the twisted followers of Voldemort who thought they could do whatever they wished because of their powerful master and the fact they were pureblooded witches and wizards who knew they'd never be punished by the useless Ministry, only be stunned and locked up….Lily had wondered if Dumbledore wanted the Death Eaters to be allowed to live for a specific reason.
Unfortunately Lily had never discovered what the reason was. Looking through her mother's memories, Harley found she was not surprised in the least that her mother had been bemused and then frustrated by Dumbledore's policies; more than once Lily had argued with Dumbledore, one of a small group who felt the war was not being fought logically, they should fight the Death Eaters with fire. More than once Lily had argued with Dumbledore about why the Order never seemed to arrive in time to stop the Death Eaters from murdering people.
It was a relief to Harley her mother had not been the only one to be frustrated, although she was disgusted that her own father had not been one of them. It seemed to Harley that her father needed to have a few brain cells put in his head, not only had the idiot no common sense about what war actually entailed, but he also wasn't very bright if his stupid petty pranks against the Slytherins didn't have long term consequences.
But then again whoever said the Marauders were bright?
Oh, they might have been good at magic, but not with common sense.
Harley was left wondering just what the old wizard's plans for her were. Clearly her parents were meant to be killed, of that there was little doubt in her mind considering what she had seen, and her mother's memories which showcased Dumbledore's delaying tactics against the Death Eaters, how the Order never seemed to make any difference, how the Order always seemed to stun and petrify the Death Eaters and the ineffectiveness of the stunning curse and how it didn't last long and allowed the Death Eater to get back up again…
It was almost as if Dumbledore not only wanted the war, but he was going out of his way to prolong it and now she was the principal player.
Harley may not know what the prophecy actually said, but she could guess that in the end there was bound to be a showdown between herself and Voldemort.
From what she could work out from her mother's memories, Voldemort was the prideful, arrogant type. He believed in his own power, so it must have been too much for the bastard that he had been defeated by a baby girl.
With that mindset Harley had no doubt in her mind at all the Dark Lord would come after her again, it was just a case of how and when.
She could almost understand Dumbledore's point of view she needed to be protected, but what offended her the most was he had placed her in an abusive environment, wiping her memories of her escapes from Number 4, spelling everyone in the neighbourhood to ignore the abuse, even going so far as to arrange for the firing of a compassionate teacher while at the same time making the police think the accusations of abuse was just a misunderstanding.
There was no way in hell Harley was ever going to let the old bastard get away with that.
Harley pushed that aside and concentrated on the burglary. While there was still so much she still was not sure about, especially since she only had her mother's point of view to work with, at least now she was more understanding of the situation. At the same time, she was grateful she had her mother's memories and her experience with magic because it gave her something to work with.
Dumbledore was sure to try to tamper with her mind when they met for the first time at Hogwarts, (okay, technically it wouldn't be for the first time, especially if Dumbledore, or one of his lackeys, had wiped her memories, but it would be the first time they met in a public place where he couldn't do any more damage) and she refused to allow it.
Fortunately, her mother knew of the mind arts and she had gained a lot of knowledge in them. The knowledge she had passed on to her daughter. Granted, Harley had no idea what strength her occlumency barriers were at, but the visualisation of her barriers as a mixture of mist and fog while her knowledge and memories were blanketed by a massive invisibility cloak (she had been inspired by the Potter cloak; she wondered what had happened to the cloak since it had gone missing and it had terrified her father since he was sure he had put it in a certain place carefully with full knowledge of where it was. And then it went missing), hiding a massive city on an island containing her thoughts and memories, shielded by an enormous sea filled with mythical creatures, like the Kraken, or prehistoric animals like the Megalodon while submarines, pirate ships armed to the teeth, prowled on patrol while massive dragons raining fire, acid, poisonous barbs would cause a huge amount of pain and carnage if anyone did manage to see through the invisibility barrier.
Harley had the choice of organising her thoughts in either an orderly or chaotic fashion. She had opted for the chaotic. She had disguised her thoughts and memories as a number of disordered pieces of junk. She had been inspired by a large shop in the Laines, where you could get old and new books, knickknacks, even clothes. She had taken the image after visiting the place again, and she had seen the contents laid out in an ordered but somehow chaotic manner as the building blocks of setting up her occlumency barriers.
Once she was finished, Harley left the jewellery shop…only to run into someone.
Startled, Harley struggled although she didn't notice the stranger was just as surprised as she happened to be, and as she did one of the looser pieces of jewellery in her bag fell out and dropped to the ground with a chink.
The stranger looked down. "Hey, are you stealing all this?"
Harley stubbornly said nothing.
The stranger chuckled, and Harley went still and took a good look at him while she prepared one of the karate moves she had gained from her recent lessons. The dim lighting didn't really give her a good idea of his features, but there was enough there to see he was tall, with short, close-cropped hair and sharp-featured while he dressed in dark clothes. She looked into his eyes, and she used her fledgeling legilimency powers to read his mind.
Harley quickly saw he was named Tommy Carver. He was a robber, had been for a long time in his life. Harley could see he wasn't a wizard, and he had no knowledge of magic, so she would need to be careful and cautious around him.
"What do you want?" she asked.
Carver smirked. "I was going to break into that jewellery shop when I saw the door was open," he said, nodding at the door. "How did you get in?"
"Would you answer the same question if it was directed towards you?"
"No," Carver admitted, a smirk on his face, but Harley kept a close watch over him, and she didn't retract her legilimency probe. She could see he was a little peeved by the lack of a good answer.
Harley stared at him for a long, hard moment. She watched as his eyes glazed over as she mentally wiped his memory of seeing her. At the same time, Harley looked through his memories and learnt of his contacts, fences, and his methods. She saw everything about his past, and what he had learnt, and what she was bound to have picked up herself later, but what she had just found in his mind had given her much more to work with for her future.
Harley walked off, leaving Carver behind.