I don't own Harry Potter, so I have to make do with Fanfiction.

I am sorry for how long it has taken for this story to be updated, but I have been busy with the writing of new stories and old ones, and the writing of my own novel. I hope every one of you is okay, and I hope everything goes back to normal soon.

In the meantime, Enjoy!

Harley Potter the Black Cat.

As soon as she stepped through the gates of the school, Harley knew things were going to be rough.

It would have been the height of stupid for her to say ever since she had entered the foster home, things were going well for her. Sure, the foster home was nice, the staff were nice although she tolerated them rather than liked them, and she didn't reveal anything about herself in casual conversation - she was not stupid, she didn't know what they would do if they knew the truth about her (the Dursleys, not the fact she was a real witch), but what worried her the most about them was if they discovered her past with the Dursleys, one of them in a well-meaning but completely ignorant about the long term results would alert the authorities, and drag the Dursleys back into her life.

Each time Harley spoke to them, she thought through everything she said in her responses.

But other than that, everything was cool. She got to read what she liked, and she was able to watch TV. Like a normal kid.

Harley had grown to hate the word normal. Seriously. Each time she heard it, she wanted to cut the tongues out of the mouths of the people who even spoke the first syllable. There were no normal people in the world, at least not as the Dursleys had seen the word. To them, normal was living in a nice house, eating lots of food, insulting or bullying people, beating up little kids just because they were the ones doing it while looking down on others because they didn't have what the Dursleys had.

In her case…

Harley had tried to be normal, but it hadn't worked. All she'd earned for her trouble was a lot of pain and mental injury. As soon as she entered the magical world, Harley planned on seeing a mind healer to help her repair the damage the Dursleys had inflicted psychologically on her. She was not going to enter the wizarding world or her future with a damaged mind.

In any case, after what she had learnt about abused children abusing their own kids, it had made her even more determined to meet up with a mind healer frequently.

Anyway, that was in the past. Harley had a good life even though it would be, in her opinion, perfect if she knew where Vanessa, Liam, and Colleen were; she was a burglar, she had discovered her magic and she was mastering it every day, and her powers were growing with each day. She was also enjoying school, and although she was too standoffish towards the other kids, Harley was kind to them but she was not close to them.

Like every good thing that happened, there was a bad thing as well. She had exchanged one bully for another, however, this one was not like Dudley. This was was a girl, Jenna Cole. Like most victims of bullying, Harley genuinely had no idea what it was about her which had attracted the attention of Jenna. And after a while, Harley had just tuned the girl out. It was hard though, Jenna enjoyed lashing out at people, picking up little bits of their appearance.

Jenna had been bullying Harley for months, but the dark-haired girl had mostly taken to ignoring her. Harley had stopped caring about petty things like bullying for a long time now after living on the streets where she had endured things much worse than ignorant little bastards and bitches who honestly made such a big deal about things as trivial as whether or not your hair was curly or you had braces supporting your teeth. Sure, when she had first left the Dursleys it had been a leftover problem, one she had needed to learn to deal with.

She had gotten better. She had also learnt some basic martial arts moves and she had been taught the basics in self-defence, and as a result, she tuned Jenna out, knowing if the girl did try anything she would lash out. Fortunately, however, the girl seemed to be content with her bullying methods which were to creep up behind her victims, surprise them from the side, and what she did during those times were just as simple; Jenna would throw their stuff to the ground, or she would throw you to the ground, all the time spotting off nasty abuse.

All that had happened to Harley, and sometimes the other girl would be in an awful mood which just made things even more unpleasant.

"Hello there, Shorty," Jenna leered as she approached with her friends (Harley had not gotten their names, or more accurately she had but she had simply forgotten them because they weren't worth her time; they were just doing for Jenna what Piers and the others had done for Dudley, but they weren't as extreme) who followed after like the good little minions they were.

Harley gave them a bored look. Height jokes were boring. In any case, the other girl was only a few inches taller than Harley was herself. "Good morning to you too, Jenna," she said in a could not give a damn kind of tone. Her bored expression only made Jenna angrier.

"You think you are so smart? Poor orphaned little Harriet, I am an orphan so everyone must feel sorry for me, no parents although they probably dumped you," Jenna mocked, laughing her head off as if she imagined she had just made one of the funniest jokes ever in the history of humanity while sending a glance at her two friends while unaware what Harley was thinking to herself, who were looking uncomfortable with this line of bullying since it touched a very touchy subject. But they were more frightened of Jenna, and so they laughed when she looked at them.

"My name is Harley to you," Harley glared at the girl. If there was one thing guaranteed to piss her off it was someone mocking her name, or giving her a name which wasn't right. The Dursleys and their fucked up friends had done it, and they had the hatred into Harley's mind. Years and years of being called 'freak' or 'Girl' had made that all the more true.

However, that old hatred went hand in hand with all the times she had been mocked in the past by the Dursleys, who had shoved the propaganda down her throat her mother was a whore and her dad was a good for nothing unemployed drunk in order to make her meekly bow her head and willingly done her own chains.

Harley was forever grateful that her mother had had the foresight to take steps to ensure her daughter's long term future instead of swallowing the crap of that fucked up family, and Dumbledore's never-ending lies.

But right now Harley just wanted to make this bitch pay.

"What?" Jenna gave her a bemused look, but it was bellied by the nasty-looking sneer crossing her mouth.

"My name is Harley, not Harriet. And you know nothing about my parents, so don't make assumptions," Harley repeated, clenching her fists while everyone in the playground looked on in anticipation. Young or old, the prospect of a fight never failed to make people excited. She didn't care, she wanted nothing more than to beat Jenna up. She did not care how the school saw it, she didn't care about the consequences…. She also didn't care if Jenna lashed out and pointing out the flaw in her retort; in Jenna's mind, how would she (Harley) know about her parents, but then again she might just, with luck, ignore it as it was a touchy subject. Whatever Jenna did, Harley was prepared. In the meantime, she prepared herself for a fight.

She wanted to commit murder. She wanted to not only make this bitch pay for what she was saying and doing not just to herself, but to every other kid who crossed her.

"Harley, Harriet, what's the difference?" Jenna smirked. "You're still an orphan. My dad says people like you are draining the economy, that's why everyone gets shitty jobs, which is bad 'cause I really want to have the best in life, like a mansion house, servants, and a pony."

Harley sneered. "Nothing to stop you whoring yourself out, Jenna," she spat, although she wondered to herself if Jenna was actually telling the truth about what her daddy had said. The fact the other girl was forced to attend this particular school spoke volumes in itself, but she didn't know enough about the other girl's life to be sure. She also didn't care.

Everyone stilled as everyone gasped at what Harley had just said. The school itself was quite close to a rough neighbourhood in Whitehawk, so every kid who came here were more than aware of the realities of the world. They knew precisely what Harley had just said. In any case, there were rumours about Jenna's family which no-one had proven. A sudden and startling change came over Jenna. Her expression froze, her mouth parted an inch as if she were about to say something but Harley's retort had snatched the wind out of her lungs, while her friends looked at each other in terror.

"What did you say?" Jenna whispered.

For a moment Harley thought she had gone too far. She could see that the words she'd used against her enemy had affected her, although she had no idea just how badly. "I told you there was nothing to stop you from whoring yourself out, Jenna," she replied, refusing to back down, and why should she after what the other girl had done.

However, she was taken by surprise when Jenna shrieked like a banshee and threw herself onto her. Harley gasped as she felt a pair of hands wrap around her throat, squeezing tightly. Everything seemed to drift into slow motion, and Harley was distantly aware of people shouting on the peripheral of her awareness, but she felt she was falling. And then she felt an impact with the grainy texture of the playground, and then the world resumed its original pace. Jenna was strangling her while straddling her. Harley gasped as she struggled to breathe with the other girl sitting on her chest.

"You freak!" Jenna was hollering. "I'll kill you for that!" With that, she began choking Harley harder while the other kids hollered "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!"

Harley was gasping, opening her mouth desperately to suck in as much air into her mouth as she possibly could when Jenna threw that threat, but what really pissed her off was the use of the word freak. She didn't understand why people felt that they had the need to use it on her, especially since thanks to her mother's memories about her practicing magic she had grown very good at preventing outbursts of accidental magic. It seemed the word was just used by people brazenly against those who seemingly had nothing.

Harley felt her temper flare-up, but she caught onto it, using her occlumency to make sure the anger didn't activate her magic and do something which would be very hard to explain. Instead, Harley used her occlumency and channelled the anger she was feeling while she poured it into her hands. Her magic, restrained as it was by her mental control, fought every step of the way, wanting nothing more than to break out and punish the one harming the witch.

But Harley held onto her control. She pushed the magic into her hand and arm muscles, strengthening them. She grabbed onto Jenna's hands which were currently still wrapped around her throat, choking the life out of her, and she effortlessly pulled the other girl off of her.

"Hey, how are you doing that?" Jenna's eyes were wide with surprise, and she wasn't the only one surprised either.

Harley didn't bother to reply, her mind was already focused on the hurriedly assembled plan. She dropped one of the hands before she lashed out with a solid punch to the gut, making Jenna clutch it with a choked shriek of agony.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!"

Harley looked around, and she groaned when she spotted two of the teachers hurrying towards them. Even for where she was lying, watching as the teachers ran towards her and Jenna, her brain becoming disorientated since the view was upside down.

One of the teachers grabbed hold of the still sore Jenna and pulled her off of Harley's body before another took Harley's arm and yanked. Harley yelped and shakily got back on her feet.

"I saw what you did," the teacher still holding her said, face red with anger.

Harley said nothing. She wasn't sure if the teachers would see Jenna as the victim, but if they did, and if they heard what she had said to the girl, they would see her as the bad girl. Harley had never complained about the bullying. She had learnt that lesson a long time ago in Little Whinging, and while things were different here, Jenna not living with her and her family never bothering her the way Dudley and the others had, Harley had never let go of that conditioning.

She was better off on her own.

No-One was going to help her.

The only person who could help her was herself.

It was a creed that she had lived by all her life, why should her future be any different?

XXX

"What were you thinking, Harley?" David's voice was low, but she had known the man who ran the foster home long enough to know he had worked out the best way to get his point across was not to shout but to whisper.

Harley sighed. She'd had nothing but grief all day today. First, after Jenna had been prised off of her chest, she'd been shouted at by the teachers. Second, she was hauled off to the headmaster, and she was shouted at as well before everyone avoided her at school, although she wasn't really bothered by that. She wasn't sorry she'd gotten back at Jenna, but even she knew she'd sunk fairly low when she'd insulted her.

And now she was sitting in front of David, the manager of the foster home (she was not really sure what the real title was, but she just thought of him as the manager), and lastly Sarah, who was standing in the back of the room with her arms folded. Sarah was a social worker. She was annoying and seemed to think all problems in life could be solved by her. It was a nice thought, but she never really that her involvement was truly not wanted.

Harley, despite her longstanding distrust of people in general, had known from the moment she had met the woman she did not want her digging in too far into her life.

She was grateful that she had never given her full name to these guys, ever. Knowing her luck, Sarah, who was as annoying as 'Elaine the Pain' from the Tracey Beaker stories, would delve in deeply and try to find any records of another kid with her name who'd gone missing. And she would likely find the Dursleys. And then Sarah, believing everything she was doing was for the best of intentions without any consideration of the consequences and utterly ignoring the questions of how Harley had gotten her scars, or even why she had run away in the first place, would contact the Dursleys and then it would happen all over again.

As a result Harley just did not tell them anything about her past. They already had a good idea thanks to the scars that crisscrossed her back like a grotesque lattice of torn flesh, but then against Sarah was not very bright.

But Harley was confused about why the woman was here. It was likely the school had contacted her because she was a social worker. It was typical of the school and the general attitude of everyone here to just push issues and problems onto the shoulders of somebody else. Their idea was good in theory, especially since Sarah could do a great deal, but the truth was there wasn't anything the woman could do, not unless she found some way of stopping people like Jenna from bullying others. Harley knew there was a better chance of a witch sending a pig into orbit than Sarah persuading Jenna from bullying her.

"Harley, what possessed you to do all that, insulting Jenna like that was spiteful enough, but to punch her like that was nasty," Sarah interrupted, earning an annoyed glare from David, a glare the woman ignored.

Harley wasn't annoyed. She knew Sarah wasn't popular.

"I can handle this, thank you, Sarah," David said pointedly. Sarah looked abashed, ignored by David who turned back to Harley.

"Well, Harley, what happened?"

Harley was torn, really; she had never imagined she would ever encounter adults she liked, but while she was very guarded against them, she did respect David. He wasn't like the bastards she'd dealt with in the past, but while she didn't trust him she did respect him. At the moment she wondered whether or not to tell him everything that had happened.

"You didn't hear her, David," Harley whispered.

"Oh, what did she say?"

"Well, aside from calling me short which is as imaginative as thinking a saucepan made of chocolate can cook, getting my name wrong, mocking me for being an orphan, what did she expect me to do?"

"I know what you should have done, you should have gone to a teacher. You shouldn't have punched her like that," David scolded.

Harley only just managed to stop herself from lashing out, using her occlumency to control her irritation. Unfortunately, she hated it being shoved in her face about what should have happened rather than her, heaven forbid, taking the law into her own hands. These people knew only the basics of her story, how she had left the streets.

Sometimes Harley felt like one of those people who'd been raised by animals like their own children, and was forcibly removed and put into a civilised society where they would be looked down upon for failing to act the right way, or been punished because other people had attacked them and they'd responded the only way they knew how…

She hated that.

The rest of the meeting didn't offer anything insightful, so she was eventually let go and she went upstairs to her bedroom where she would spend the rest of the night by herself. She didn't care, she liked the silence and the solitude. As she looked around her room, however, Harley realised she really had no idea what she was going to be doing now by herself. Biting her lip as she looked around for inspiration, Harley spotted her collection of Catwoman and Spider-Man's Black Cat comics arranged in their neat piles.

She had purchased the comics from Dave's Comics, a comic shop in the Laines. She had gotten them mostly for inspiration for her cat burglary career, although she knew female burglars didn't dress in skintight black leather costumes with cat-like ears rising above their heads. No, burglars were more like Harry and Marv from the Home Alone franchise, albeit not as stupid. They were ordinary people, who used tools like blowtorches or crowbars to get into places, coming up with various schemes to get rich. They didn't race across rooftops into tight high-heeled boots or use bullwhips.

Harley walked over to the comics and picked up the piles and walked back to her bed, and she began to read after she flipped one open. As she read through the comics, snorting mentally at what the writing team devising these stories had come up with, she tried to put herself into the shoes, or boots, of Felicia Hardy and Selina Kyle, forcing herself to forget how the two women dressed, Harley just shut down her brain and focused on the comics.

While she liked both characters, she preferred Selina to Felicia; while she liked the platinum blonde-haired thief, who had worked long and hard to become a successful career cat burglar, Harley was just mystified by the reason why the writers of her character had changed her so drastically into a superhero.

Harley knew enough about the two characters, their similarities to guess Marvel comics had realised they had copied too much from DC comics' Catwoman to make the differences credible. But Harley felt the character, despite having several interesting arcs and stories which developed her character to incredible degrees, should have remained a criminal. Instead of fancying Spider-Man like Catwoman had a thing for Batman, Felicia could have perhaps had a fascination with the wall-crawler, but nothing more than that.

She could have started travelling the world, stealing from all sorts of people, and going through dozens of incredible adventures. Instead, she had become one of those two-dimensional superheroes who didn't realise they could not save everyone. For months, Harley had written dozens of stories featuring alternative versions of Felicia doing just that after she had learnt of the theories of the multiverse in the hopes of making someone better.

She had come up with several stories already; in one story, Felicia Hardy never even met Spider-Man, therefore she couldn't have become a crime-fighter, and she travelled the world committing one theft after another. In a second story she had written, she had depicted Felicia as a girl who had begun committing small-time thefts as a kid, then she would become a master cat burglar who again travelled the world, picking up new skills as she went. In a story where she did meet Spider-Man, Black Cat would still fancy him, but she would become so frustrated by his constant whining about how miserable his life was after getting close enough to him so she'd know who he was so his past would unfold for her so she'd know about what happened with Uncle Ben. Yes, she would feel sad, but she would wonder why Peter wasn't at least trying to enjoy life even if he had the annoying voice of his uncle telling him time and again With great power, comes great responsibility.

Harley understood and approved the philosophy, but there was taking something seriously and not trying to enjoy life. In her mind, Peter Parker was a whiny, insecure individual who, despite having a better social life to what he had before, as a kid, he wasn't even trying to have a life. Oh, he went on a few dates, had some friends, but his life as Spider-Man consumed his entire existence.

But as she read the collection of comics depicting Black Cat's existence in Spider-Man's life, Harley ignored those issues, guessing someone in the future would come up with an alternative version of Spider-Man who would make him strike a balance between his guilt-ridden super-heroics which were a result of what had happened when he had failed to use his powers to stop that crook from escaping, and going on to murder Uncle Ben.

As Harley went through the comics, studying each speech bubble and picture closely so she could pass the time, she came across the parts where Black Cat rigged up several traps in order to take advantage of the superstition surrounding black cats and making everyone who triggered them she herself was bad luck incarnate. Harley had always been fascinated by that aspect of the Black Cat's methods; in her mind, it was a strike against Catwoman, who only succeeded thanks to experience and skill, but this showed intricate planning.

And then she realised something.

Bad luck.

What if she used the same methodology in her burglaries, particularly the bigger ones? For instance, if she got into an art gallery, not impossible although Harley preferred stealing from houses, small businesses, there was still the possibility of breaking into a block of flats where someone might still be inside; instead of smacking them with a baseball bat, a sock full of sand, she could use her magic to simulate moments of bad luck.

As she sat back, lifting her head, Harley thought about the possibilities.

Yes, she could do it. She could use her magic to create illusions where someone could either be tricked or distracted so no-body even realised she was there. The means she could put that work to was in the comics in front of her. It shouldn't be difficult to use what was there, rework it all for the real world where she used magic, and there were millions of new possibilities. Harley stood up, dropping her comics on the bed and she walked over to the window and looked out thoughtfully.

Harley's control over her magic was good enough, so there was almost no limit to what she could do. But she knew she needed to be realistic; without a wand, she would need to make the tricks as simple as she could. Would she need to compensate for that? The children's home had access to UK Gold, so she'd watched a few Jonathan Creek stories, where the main character was a creative consultant to a womanising dick who was a stage magician. But Jonathan was an analytical individual, able to look at an illusion and knowing how the trick worked. Likewise, he had found it pathetically simple to use the same expertise to help him solve seemingly unsolvable crimes.

What if she used simple illusions to make crimes work for her, using either a combination of magic or simply no magic? Why not? It was possible. However, she would need to experiment with it. All she knew was she would need to make each experiment as small scale and as simple as possible. Harley smiled. She loved conducting research, developing hiker knowledge and learning her boundaries. She honestly believed it was one of the best ways of learning, and in any case, she loved getting new ideas and developing them until she came to the next one. Thanks to her research techniques, she had quickly learnt how to unlock simple padlocks to more complicated safes, all with one spell, which she had learnt to manipulate to make it either weak or strong.

The young witch looked out of the window silently, her mind going over everything that she felt she could do. This was the primary problem with her own controlled experiments, she usually didn't know where to start. In this case, Harley was even more uncertain; the comics about Felicia Hardy's character showed simple ways how Felicia had spread the myth she was causing bad luck, but Harley felt her own approach should be more refined, calculating. The only issue was, how did she go about it?

Letting out a frustrated groan, Harley rested her head gently against the window, sighing with relief at the cold feel of the glass as she considered her previous experiments. They were still ongoing; in her mind, nothing she learnt or experimented on was closed off just because she felt she knew everything. Her mother had studied magic with a thirst for learning, she hadn't ever stopped even if others felt they knew it all. Harley had inherited the same attitude.

Harley mulled it over in her head for a few minutes before she walked over to her desk. Opening a drawer she pulled out a rubber, and she stood it up and walked back to the bed. When she was sitting down on the bed, Harley focused on the rubber; it wasn't much of a model, but it was a good place to start. She sat on the bed, focusing on the rubber while she visualised it as a person, someone walking down the street. Someone about to trip up over their own feet.

Harley sat back, looking thoughtfully at the rubber. It wasn't the most elaborate experiment, but it was the most basic experiment she could think of.

She knew there were others to carry out, but this one was, what she considered a good start. And it gave her ideas of what to do next to generate bad luck. The key was patience. She knew that while she'd have ideas and there would be simple and easy ways she could make someone experience a moment of bad luck, but she wasn't going to rush it. She had dozens of spells in her arsenal which she could use to make it seem they'd cause bad luck, but she was nowhere near the right level where she'd consider herself an expert.

At this point, she had only ideas of what she wanted to do, but she needed time to see how to make them work. She would begin her real experiments in the morning.

XXX

Harley's first experiment began in the morning as she went on her way to school. She watched as a newspaper boy was going from house to house, using a bicycle to move from street to street. Harley had seen him often enough, but she didn't know him personally; he was just somebody on the edge of her peripheral. As she watched him shove another newspaper through the letterbox of one of the houses she was passing, Harley considered using him as an experiment.

She watched him carefully, noted every single move he made, how he cycled from one house to another who had a subscription to the newspaper he delivered, how he pushed them through each of the letterboxes, sometimes he would push one through a letterbox, but once or twice he'd hand a paper over to somebody in person.

As she observed him go about his business, Harley's mind raced as she tried to work out how to induce a brief moment of bad luck into his activities. She only needed one small moment, that was it. Nothing big, just a simple trick. Logically, she could see ways of causing him bad luck just as logically she could see ways of making it all happen in the first place; the newspaper might get jammed into the letterbox, the cycle might get a puncture in the wheels, he might fall off…. Oh, there were so many ways, but she decided to go for something a bit more straightforward.

She concentrated on the bike, specifically the front wheel. Even from where she was standing, the wheel made a nice little popping sound just as he was about to wheel on to his next port of call. Harley watched in satisfaction as the newspaper boy almost flew over the top of his handlebars, but he managed to stop himself just in time. It was lucky he hadn't managed to build up enough momentum for that to happen, otherwise, he would have been badly hurt. Right now he was just frustrated as he examined the bike to see about the puncture.

Harley wasn't worried about that when she had cast the spell she had just wanted the tear to be very small. It was easily fixed, but it would take the paperboy a while. He would need to find a way to patch up the tyre or replace it altogether, and if he went for the original route he would need to pump it full of air.

Still, for a beginning, it wasn't a bad one at all. Sure she would need to really practice, but still, this black cat was on the rise.

Hmm, Black Cat, that has a nice ring to it, Harley thought to herself with a smirk as she walked to school.