I'm sorry it's been a while since my last short story, but hopefully, things will be different now.

Please let me know what you think and please remember, I don't own Harry Potter.

X

The Chamber of Secrets Heist.

Charlotte knew Dobby was shivering as he looked at the sight of the massive basilisk, taking in the massive snake with the toxic green scales and the long fangs. The smell of the dank chamber was thick with the scent of blood and many other scents she didn't even want to think about. She looked down at the House Elf.

Her new House Elf. It was strange, having someone many would see as a servant or a slave, but for Charlotte, she felt a strong kinship with the House-Elves thanks to her life with the bastard Dursleys, she saw how many of Dobby's race were treated by scum like the Malfoys. Charlotte had taken Dobby on as her elf, partly to apologise to him for refusing to stay away from the school although she knew Dumbledore would have gone out of his way to get her here regardless.

But Charlotte vowed one day she would make the Malfoy family regret what they had done this year. And she personally vowed to herself to make Lucius pay for his threat and his attempt to attack her, unaware she had been planning on wounding or even eviscerating him, but he would soon learn. She would have shattered his skeleton if Dobby hadn't got there first, though. In any case, the little guy had spirit and his heart was in the right place, even if she wished he thought through his tactics for protecting and saving her. Some of them could kill somebody.

This was not the time to think about that now. She had to think about the job she had to do at hand. And Dobby had already been a great help to her already, thanks to the way he'd protected her from Malfoy senior, and right now he and Nightstar were the only family she had.

"Ugly, isn't it?" Charlotte commented, gazing down at the elf.

Dobby stared at her with unhidden awe. "Miss Char really did kill….this?"

Charlotte chortled at the name. It was more manageable than the one he had given her before. "Yes, I did," she nodded solemnly, trying hard not to think of the fight she'd had with the basilisk; after the mess with the Philosopher's Stone and the disaster with the Polyjuice potion incident earlier in the year, thanks to the brainless way Granger had taken some cats hair and mixed it into the potion to Weasley's stupid temper in the Slytherin Common Room, the way she had lashed out before the fight with the giant snake was one she hadn't expected. "Come on, it's time to get busy."

"What iz we doing?" Dobby asked as they walked closer to the basilisk.

Charlotte looked down at the elf. "We're gonna take the basilisk and we're claiming it. I'm going to use it to buy a home."

She was thankful she had discovered the book on magical creatures which stated that the rarer the creature, the greater the return of profit, and Charlotte needed a lot of money right now. She had a vast amount on her mind right now, selling the basilisk and finding the right place to buy.

Dobby looked up at her again. "How's are we's taking it?"

"I'd like for you to help me shrink the basilisk and then put it in his trunk," Charlotte held out the trunk she had shrunken down beforehand and laid it on the ground before she resized it with her wand, and she tapped the lock. The trunk sprang open. "Do you think you can help?"

Dobby stared at her with determination and he clicked his fingers. The basilisk didn't move at first, but very slowly it started to move. Its flexible body swung to and fro, and more than once Charlotte and Dobby had to get out of the way whenever a part of the snake's body came a bit too close for comfort.

As the basilisk swung around, Charlotte was uncomfortably reminded of the horrible fight she'd had with the snake, she remembered how she had tried unsuccessfully to tell the great serpent the spectre of the younger Voldemort was just using her, but the basilisk had refused to listen to her. She remembered the brief chase through the side tunnels connected to the Chamber of Secrets after the snake was blinded thanks to the eye-bursting spell she had found in an old DADA book that was written in a time when the lines between accepted spells and dark spells were blurred. The spells had been strong enough to burst the snake's eyes, and she had told it she deserved it for coming after her. Charlotte was unsure if it was out of revenge and malice because it was written into the snake's DNA, or if the thousand years it had been stuck down here, alone, had just driven it mad out of loneliness and senility but Charlotte wasn't entirely sure if basilisks were social animals.

But the spectre of Voldemort…

Dumbledore hadn't been forthcoming about the spectre of the Dark Lord and how he was able to do that, but she had expected that. She decided to wait until later and focus on the basilisk. Getting it rendered down and sold was important and it was vital she had somewhere permanent to live without Dumbledore's interference. The old man was becoming increasingly tiresome with his statements she needed to be kept safe, the incident with the basilisk had only made it worse, but because she couldn't access the Potter properties she had learnt about until her 17th birthday, she would need to find somewhere else.

Charlotte already had some idea of what kind of property she wanted. It had to be somewhere fairly isolated to act as a base of operations for her own thefts but it also needed to be a place she could call home, but it needed to be close to a railway line that had good connections and a phenomenally good service to London where Charlotte conducted her crimes.

She didn't want to live in a neighbourhood or a city again. She had grown to hate Little Whinging with a passion, hating not only Privet Drive and everyone there, but she despised the kind of cultures that grew. In neighbourhoods, bored housewives would gossip with one another, spreading horrible rumours while everyone paraded their gardens and cars around as better than everyone else, making others buy something better. She wanted to avoid that. On top of that, she absolutely hated the way the houses were close together to the point there was zero privacy. City wise she had lived in London for much of her childhood and while she had become fond of the place, she felt it was time for a change.

She had no intention of making the mistake of moving back to suburbia.

No, she had wanted somewhere open for a long time, and ever since coming to Hogwarts, she had gotten the pleasure of walking on the grounds where there was nothing but unspoilt land and forest and a lake in the background. That was what she wanted. She didn't care if she found herself ending up with an old dilapidated farm barn or a cottage, she wanted a place for herself and Nightstar, and now Dobby.

Once the basilisk was safely locked in her trunk, Charlotte looked around the Chamber of Secrets again. This place would make a good base for her operations in Hogwarts should the need arise. On top of that, she wanted to return her someday and discover if there was more to the Chamber than what she could see. But for now, they'd need to wait. She turned back to Dobby. "Come on, Dobby. We have work to do," Charlotte said to her new House Elf.