As much as I would wish it were true, I do not own Harry Potter. If I did then he wouldn't be the wimp who trusts too easily in the books and in the movies.

Please let me know what you think.

The Hell of Fourth Year.

"Excuse me," Charlotte walked up to a man, thankful she had changed her outfit in order to better fit in with her surroundings rather than just appear in her normal outfit whenever she got out in the city.

The man turned, surprised. He had a nasty retort on the tip of his tongue but when he turned and saw who was speaking to him, he instantly swallowed his words. He was a tall man dressed in an expensive suit with iron-grey hair. He blinked in surprise as the teenage girl dressed in a red jumper, black jacket and a shirt approached him while she held a map. However, the thing which had him entranced were her emerald green eyes underneath her glasses and her long, shapely legs which gave him dozens of dirty ideas…

"Yes?" He replied, pushing those ideas aside. Why did teenage girls have to be so sexy, and why was it they were more gorgeous than older women? He knew several of his age group would disagree, especially since they had foxes for wives, but he had always preferred younger girls with their smoother skin, and their more… adventurous dress senses, and while this girl wasn't dressed like a slut, she was still attractive.

The girl smiled at him, her smile making him more attracted to her while she held up her map. "Yeah, I'm trying to find Canary Wharf; it's on the map but I'm having problems seeing where I am on here…"

The man grinned although he did his level best not to leer at the girl while he took the map, making a big show of examining it while at the same time he tried to work out what he could say to the girl in order to keep her here and hopefully ask her out on a date; sure she might be younger than he was, but he hadn't lost his touch in all of his life.

"Certainly, let me have a look….," he said slowly, trailing off while he made a good show of looking over the map. In truth, he knew precisely where Canary Wharf was since he knew the area quite well, and he guessed this girl was new to the financial district otherwise she wouldn't need help. At the same time, he had the chance to look her over and daydream of what he'd like to do with her. "Mmm, we're here," he pointed at a spot on the map, "you take this left…. And then that right…."

The girl nodded, moving a step back while a smile played across her face. "I see, thanks," she said, grinning. She had an interesting lopsided grin, which somehow brought out her features in a way he found mesmerising.

The moment the girl stepped back the man knew he would need to step up his own game. He wasn't going to give up, especially since he would love to take this girl out to dinner, followed by a long night of sex.

"Anyway," the man smiled, hoping to snag her before she left. He was a successful banker, and he had become used to getting his own way over the years. Unfortunately deep down he knew, while he was good in his field of work and expertise, he was just awful with women and every time he needed one, he needed to get drunk and appear more confident. "Do you have any plans for tonight? I can show you other parts of the city…"

The moment he began to trail off he had realised was going to lose the girl and he resisted the urge to jump up and down in frustration at how unfair it was. Seriously, why was it he had never ever been good with attracting girls? Did he leer at them, was that it? Every time he schooled his face into a charming expression, was he actually sneering or leering instead?

The girl was staring at him. The man… he just frowned inwardly as he studied her expression. There was something there, a kind of unimpressed, pointed look sprayed with a molecule thin layer of amusement.

"Sorry, but yeah. I've got a night studying. Bye!" The girl said and she walked away, leaving him behind upset. It wasn't until half an hour later he realised somebody had picked his pocket, and when he would inform a police officer of the theft, only then he would realise who the thief was. By then it would be too late. The girl was long since gone.

XXX

As she walked away from the man whom she had just robbed, Charlotte mentally shook her head while a snort escaped her lips. Well, as far as pickpocket marks went, she'd had much better over the years but she had never liked hanging around the marks for too long. It was a recipe for disaster since they could discover they had a missing watch or their wallet was gone. As far as basic cons went, the misdirection pickpocket con was her favourite since it guaranteed the mark's attention was fixed elsewhere and not on the pickpocket's wandering hands. Usually, such a con - placing a hand on the marks' shoulder, holding out a map for them to point out a place you claimed you wanted to reach - only took a few minutes to open and close, and when it was finished and you had their watch or money, then it was a good time to just bugger off before they'd discovered they'd been robbed.

But that guy… Charlotte hadn't needed legilimency to even read his mind, she could see what he had wanted the moment he had locked eyes with her, which had only made the robbery easier for her to pull off; he had stepped so close to her getting into his pocket for his wallet had been a joy for her. He had been so insistent for a date, Charlotte had been worried the bugger might notice he'd been robbed. As she walked away from the mark, knowing it was only a matter of time before he noticed the wallet was missing in his pocket, Charlotte took a few moments to think. It had been three weeks since she had burgled Dolores Umbridge's London home and discovered she was a long way from being the experienced thief she had been for a long time and realised she needed to get back in the game, to recover her wits and her skills with basic theft.

Three weeks was a long time.

Three weeks ago, Charlotte had believed herself to be on top of the world, believing she was a master burglar and while she was good at what she did especially since she had been doing it for so long, she had lost sight of how she had gotten there.

Three weeks ago, Charlotte had made a serious faux pas with that damn post office and she had decided to sort it out before she made an enormous mistake she couldn't walk away from.

Three weeks ago, Charlotte had decided to go back to basics.

And over the course of those three weeks, Charlotte had indeed gone back to basics. She had committed a number of robberies by picking pockets, using misdirection, walking into her victims by accident, asking for the time, or, as she had done with that man back there who had worn his inner frustration on his sleeve, asking for directions. Occasionally she had slept rough on the streets, knowing from long experience gleaned long ago thanks to Voldemort's bloodthirsty desire for power and Dumbledore's carelessness how to survive, and then used the lack of sleep to keep herself alert during the next day.

Sure, while the first robbery with that obnoxious American dickhead had gone on okay, Charlotte had discovered it was not going to be easy with her other marks. The only reason the American had been easy to steal from was that he had wanted to have an argument and she had given it to him on a platter. Others… not so much. On the Tube, Charlotte had nearly been caught out by three or four of the passengers while she was distracting a few of the marks, but once she had been practicing her moves, she found herself getting more success than failures, but it was a 50/50 thing.

Burglary wise, it was much the same thing.

The good thing about burglary was it was relatively easy to go about instead of pickpocketing. All she'd needed to do was find a few houses, watch them, study them and see just how easy it would be to get in. She had found a house which had a massive metal pipe, and she'd managed to climb up to the open window. Granted the climb had been almost impossible due to Charlotte being so used to using her animagus form to get into places while she used her magic to help her climb in the past, and she had fallen once or twice, but she had managed to get hold of herself and she had climbed up and succeeded in the burglary.

After showing off her travel card Charlotte boarded the Tube and she sat down in a seat, still contemplating the last couple of weeks before she snapped out of it when she noticed, to her side, a young boy who couldn't have been older than seven or eight at least slowly sneaking a hand close to her coat pocket while he held up a large comic book to hide what he was doing. Charlotte waited until she saw his hand pull out one of the wads of money she was carrying from one of her victims. Noting his surprise when he pulled out the wad of money from her pocket and the expression he was wearing on his face as he had just struck gold, and quick as a cobra strike, she had her left hand wrapped around his thin wrist. The boy jumped, but he managed to keep control over himself so he didn't throw the comic away and he didn't scream. The fact he didn't cry out at all spoke volumes and she wondered how long this kid had been doing this to be this good.

She didn't care.

Charlotte leaned over him, already cursing herself for letting her guard down. "Good technique, kid," she whispered. "Next time, choose your target carefully; they might be a professional like me. "

The boy looked up at her, frightened. Charlotte sat there for a long moment, dragging the silence. In the end, she silently let go. "You can keep the money," she went on. "But find a burglary gang instead; you'll get taught a lot more, and you can make it a career so long as you don't get caught. Be cunning, full of tricks, and you will never be caught out. Now get lost."

The boy, unable to believe his luck, jumped out of his seat and rushed away. Charlotte sighed as she watched him go.

"I need a lot of help," she sighed to herself, disgusted with herself for letting her mind drift off like that. It looked like her problems were worse than she imagined. She stuck her hands in her pockets and found they were full of money and watches she had stolen from the marks she'd robbed from today.

"Damn it," she snarled, annoyed with herself. Now she was going to have to put them somewhere where nobody could reach without her knowing about it. It didn't take too long for the train to arrive in Central London. When she arrived at a stop she knew wouldn't be far from where she wanted to be, Charlotte got off. She immediately went to the ladies toilets and she took out the odds and ends from her pockets, mentally checking them off of her list in case another pickpocket had witnessed her successes and decided to relieve her of them, but she had everything.

After another - fortunately uneventful - Tube journey, Charlotte found herself at the station she wanted to be. She smiled as she took in the familiar sights of this part of the city. She walked into a shop and spoke to the cashier, an oldish looking woman with long grey hair.

"Hello, Ellen."

The old woman, Ellen, looked up at her in astonishment, squinting her old rheumy eyes at her. "Who are you-? Charlotte, Charlotte Potter, is that you?" Ellen suddenly laughed. "God girl, its been years! Where've you been all this time?"

"School, mostly. My parents enrolled me into their old school, and somehow they managed to track me down," Charlotte explained while she hoped Ellen didn't demand more answers. "I'm just returning to my roots. Ellen, is Tony in?"

"Yeah, he is. He'll be glad to see you. It's been a long time," Ellen got up and pulled Charlotte into a hug. "Please tell me you haven't been using other fences?"

"Nah, I'm just storing everything away for a rainy day!" Charlotte warmly laughed as she hugged the older woman back; Ellen despite what people assumed when they saw her, actually took good care over herself while she tried her best to look unattractive. It was a holdover since she had been raped once weans he had worn very little. "How's it going, Ellen?"

Ellen snorted and she pulled away. "Same as ever, although more kids are trying to pull fast ones on us. The Old Bill is also looking for various burglars in the city, ever since the day the crown jewels went missing and then returned."

Charlotte had to hide her feelings behind her occlumency barriers at the mention of the burglary she'd committed what seemed like a lifetime ago, but she was very careful not to let her expression of familiarity or smugness at a heist well done and executed appear; while she trusted Ellen, Charlotte had learnt over the years to be immensely careful about what she said about her crimes. While she could hide from the police and prevent them from finding her, Charlotte did not want any of her contacts to be compromised. Okay, she did not give a damn if people found out she was breaking into jewellery stores or houses in Essex, but the less, or the least in the case of the crown jewels, they knew, the better.

"How bad is it?" She asked.

Ellen sighed. "It's quite bad. The police have been giving a zero-tolerance policy, and they are cracking down hard on any reported burglary. The Queen and the PM were, by all accounts, pissed off when they heard what had happened to the crown jewels. They're pushing the police into cracking down on burglars in the city, and it's not just here, but in Manchester, Liverpool, everywhere in Britain."

Charlotte had been feeling a growing sense of guilt and horror with every single word coming out of Ellen's mouth, and by the end of it all she was now feeling horrified she might have caused problems for every burglar and thief in cities all over the UK. "Shit," she whispered, shaking her head. "So, what's going on?"

Ellen didn't answer immediately - she turned her head left and right in case there were invisible coppers in the same room as they were - and then she stepped closer to Charlotte. "Many of the grifters and major burglars have decided to lay low," she hissed, still thinking the walls had ears, "but I know there are a few jobs being planned-."

"Ellen? What have I told you about-? Charlotte? Charlotte Potter, is that you?" A man's voice spoke from behind, and the two women turned and found Tony standing in an open doorway although there was no way of knowing just how long he had actually been standing there. For all, they knew he could have been standing there the whole time.

Tony was a fence. He had once been one of the biggest grifters in his time before he had gotten tired of constantly confusing and misleading his victims, so he had become a fence. Occasionally he did break into houses and flats, but it was very rare. However, there was a legend about Tony, although Charlotte didn't know for sure if it was the truth or just a lie spun in his favour since she had learnt very quickly to be very careful about what she considered the truth. The legend went Tony had faked his own death and he had gone away for a bit before he set up shop again in London, except this time he was a fence and not a full-on grifter. For Charlotte, it would make sense since it would be seen as the perfect retirement, but somehow she couldn't see it since he regularly used his contacts which had been collected gradually over the years to help him in his operations. Okay, maybe he had faked his own death, but Charlotte had never gotten the full story and she doubted he would. His connections as a con artist had been a godsend for him since he was able to find the perfect deals. At the same time, Tony was often looking for new talent to be trained up. Once, a long time ago, he had done the same thing for Charlotte.

While Charlotte had become a burglar in her own right and it was something where you learnt by doing, there were dozens of burglars and other criminals willing to take on new talent and train them up. Tony had been doing it for a long time, and when he had found Charlotte committing a burglary herself, he had seen her skills and how she had crept, ninja-like, through a house and she had the right ideas of what to do and what she should be taking. But sometimes Charlotte believed the real reason for his decision to take her and train her up was because of her age and height. She wasn't sure if that was the case; she preferred to think it was because he had seen her and realised she needed training up to iron out the things she did wrong. Whichever one it was, Charlotte was going to be forever thankful to the man for taking her and giving her hints and tips on how to burgle, for taking her out and how to choose the right houses.

Charlotte grinned at him. "Hi, Tony," she said casually.

Tony grinned back but then his eyes crinkled. "While its good to see you again after such a long time, Charlotte, I don't want you both to talk about burglars or grifters; the coppers have been pressing people for a while, and while I doubt they know my operation, that doesn't necessarily mean its safe to talk."

Charlotte wondered how her old friend was going to take what she had for him. She silently reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of watches.

Tony groaned. "Oh, for fuck's sake! Leave it out. Charlotte, you've kind of chosen the worst kind of time for me to fence things."

Charlotte raised a brow. Silently she continued to hold up the watches.

Tony groaned again. "Oh, all right!" He said melodramatically, turning and walking into the backroom of the shop. "C'mon, then."

Charlotte grinned at Ellen while she followed Tony into the backroom. "Works every single time," she whispered impishly.

Ellen chuckled. "Fuck it, Charlotte, it's good you are back."

"I never left."

With that Charlotte followed Tony into the back room of the shop after walking down a dark corridor. She wasn't expecting anything to go wrong since she hadn't seen anything wrong with the body language of the two old friends she'd just met after what seemed like a decade. Finally Tony led her into what he called his office. It was not like the rest of the shop. The painting was fresh, a gleaming white which made it very bright. On the desk was a large desktop PC and there was a pile of Star Trek books there, one or two opened and left flat on the desk while held open by small paperweights.

With the large ornate couch lining the wall, the place looked like a stripped-down solicitors office who preferred reading science fiction compared to legal documentation.

Charlotte took a seat and watched patiently as Tony shrugged off his jacket and threw it carelessly over the couch before he began examining the watches. Charlotte watched him nonchalantly, knowing that one or two of them were likely to be cheap ripoffs of more expensive brands, but she didn't care. Part of the reason she had come here was to see if there were any burglaries that were going on, but after what she'd just heard from Ellen, it was unlikely there would be any major jobs.

"Authentic. Fake. Fake. Authentic. Authentic. Fake. Not a bad amount, although it's gonna take a miracle for me to get rid of them," Tony fixed her with a look. "I will need time to pay you, Charlotte. Somehow I doubt that's what you want, right?"

Charlotte chuckled. "You know me too well, Tony," she commented; while that might be a problem with others, Tony wouldn't be able to compromise her in any way that she'd consider serious. "And you are right. I know you hear things, and that you also fix jobs for people."

Tony knew what she was asking him. "You want me to check if someone's planning something."

It wasn't a question and they both knew it.

"Yes."

"It won't be easy, Charlotte. Thanks to that bastard who nicked the crown jewels and returned them, the police have been cracking down hard on burglaries in the city. Every single event and exhibition is guarded by teams of armed guards, and everything is checked and double-checked so then nobody can con their way in," Tony said.

Charlotte forced down the urge to punch Tony for calling her a bastard, but she could understand his frustration. At the same time, while Ellen had given her a nasty picture of what was going on with the burglars in the city, Tony had only painted an even nastier picture. Charlotte could understand the man's frustration, though.

"How bad is it?" She asked.

"Truth be told, if I were you, I'd commit a burglary of your own. It's likely going to take a long time for the police to become complacent again if they ever do," Tony said, adding the last bit almost as an afterthought but they both knew it wasn't. And truly that last sentence told her just how foolish it was to burgle anywhere big in London. Still, she had to try, she was never one to give up.

"Okay, but could you keep your ears to the ground anyway?" She asked.

Tony shot that down quickly. "No, Chaz. I told you it wouldn't be easy, but what I actually meant was the police are cracking down hard on the city. They are pressing every contact they have, and if they find anyone doing anything suspicious officers are hauling them in for questioning. Trust me, its not a good idea. The best thing you can do is either go abroad or take up something else for a hobby."

XXX

"Damn it, how the hell do you write a letter to someone who has thought you were dead but you yourself thought was dead too?" Lily cursed herself as she viciously scrunched up the latest attempt to draft a simple, straightforward letter to her long lost and heavily abused daughter.

She had known it would have been difficult even before she put pen to paper, but as each attempt failed after her initial spark of enthusiasm and inspiration died out faster than the dinosaur, Lily had nothing to show for her efforts except a growing pile of scrunched up bits of parchment littering the room.

She knew the problem was she didn't know what she could say in the letter that Charlotte would take as genuine. Even worse there was the chance Charlotte, in her current frame of mind considering just how violent and vicious she had been in the Tournament so far after her fourth year of Hogwarts had turned into a living nightmare for her, would send a truly nasty curse back to them for even daring to pretend to be her dead parents.

Lily could well understand if that happened; Charlotte had spent her entire life believing she and James had died shortly after they'd believed Charlotte was killed before that Halloween night described in the history book which had lauded Charlotte as this super magical hero when she was nothing more than an innocent baby. To make the whole thing worse, Dumbledore had shoved Charlotte into an abusive home when the celebrations for the supposed fall of Voldemort were taking place. Lily grimaced as she thought about the magical world, inwardly disgusted with the whole lot of them regardless of what James might deep down think.

They had created this problem, with their disgusting beliefs on blood purity. Allowing Dark Lords like Voldemort to come while sticking their heads in the sands and pretending nothing was going wrong while refusing to get off their arses and do something about it.

And since Charlotte had grown up on the cruel streets of London, Lily wondered just what kind of things Charlotte had done in order to survive.

There was no doubt in her mind Charlotte would have adopted the survival of the fittest ideas which went hand in hand with those kids who lived on the streets in every town, in every city on the planet. Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed.

Steal or never eat.

Personally, if Charlotte were forced to be a thief, well Lily wouldn't like it, but then again what else would Dumbledore expect?

Thinking of her daughter's life and what she'd gone through…. Lily wondered what had possessed Petunia and Vernon into abusing her in the first place; her sister and her pig of a husband must have known Charlotte was going to go to Hogwarts. Didn't it occur to them Charlotte, after years of abuse, would come back armed with seven years worth of curses of the vicious variety, and kill them all?

Was that why they had done it because they were trying to protect themselves? Somehow it made little sense to Lily that Petunia would think of something like that without thinking through all the longterm consequences, but while Petunia was smarter than Vernon, she was blinded by her arrogance, her envy towards her own sister for being intelligent and beautiful at the same time. Tragically and predictably since her pettiness knew no bounds, Petunia had transferred those feelings onto Charlotte, who did not deserve it.

But surely it had occurred to Petunia they were making a mistake.

If that had happened, well Lily wouldn't have been surprised. Nor would she have shed many tears; she and Petunia had never been close, regardless of whatever passed for thoughts in Dumbledore brain, and if he thought family would never hurt one another, then he lived in some kind of fantasy world since she had heard many stories of child abuse over the years, and it killed her on the inside.

Lily closed her eyes and made a face, wishing she had put her arrogant sister in her place a long time ago instead of letting Petunia spout off her poisonous rubbish about her, or whenever Petunia went poking around in her room when they moved out of Cokeworth. If she had, damning what mum and dad said, maybe Petunia would have realised getting on the wrong side of another witch was a bad mistake. Then again Vernon wouldn't have cared since he was nothing more than a weak-minded thug who thought he was better than everyone else. She wondered just how Dumbledore was coping with the news Charlotte had not only been violently beaten, most likely for being a witch and during moments of accidental magic but had also been raped by that filthy animal.

She hoped they kicked Dumbledore out of his lauded occupations. And quick.

Dumbledore was responsible for this whole mess - the magical world had just gone along with it, while the old fool had lived in his ivory tower, believing he was the king of his own world, and Lily was going to be more than happy to reveal herself to the magical world along with James and their son, proving they hadn't died and had in fact been forced to quietly leave Britain after being conned into believing Charlotte had died when in fact she was still alive and was being primed into being turned into Dumbledore's little weapon.

Lily grimaced as she thought about the prophecy. She still couldn't believe Dumbledore or Voldemort would ever believe in something as ridiculous as a prophecy when everyone with a gram of intelligence in the magical world, rare as that was given how thoughtless so many people were, knew prophecies rarely went fulfilled, or they did get fulfilled during unrelated incidents without the participants even knowing about it. The Department of Mysteries had been studying prophecies for uncounted centuries, and they had learnt they weren't set in stone and it was impossible to tell when something was going to occur which ran concurrently with a prophecy.

Voldemort she could understand. Like so many insane megalomaniacs, he didn't want any kind of competition to try to overtake or displace him, but Dumbledore… Lily had given it a little bit of thought after sneering about the prophecy when she had first discovered its existence, and her only best guess would be Dumbledore had taken advantage of something he had heard, and he had tried to fit the prophecy around his manipulations.

Lily shrugged her shoulders and looked down at the piles of parchment around her. James had told her it might not be a good idea to send a letter, and it looked like he was right. Not only was she finding it virtually impossible to write something to Charlotte, but there was also the chance their daughter wouldn't believe it.

Still, she had to send something, something short and sweet…

Until the next time.