Warning up ahead in advance - some adult themes, quite nasty.

Rose Potter: Catwoman.

Tonight was the night. Tonight was the night where she would end the lives of the Dursleys; she had opted against using poison, although what she had done instead was to get her hands on some sleeping pills. They weren't easy to get hold of, either.

She had needed to go into the nearby pharmacy to get them, and while she had needed to slip the box into the pocket of the woman she was following out of the shop and had to slide it out of the handbag quickly before a shop assistant came to investigate, the operation had been a success. Rose had managed to buy the one thing she needed the most in order to deal with the abusive Dursleys even more.

As she stood in the kitchen, keeping a careful watch over the dinner and making sure nothing burnt to a crisp, Rose had a moment to think. It was just so…bizarre, so unexpected. She was not only going to win her freedom from the Dursleys, but she had also committed a theft which she considered entirely justified, but more than that…she knew who and what she was.

For the first time in her short life, Rose knew more about herself than before. She knew who she was, and she knew the Dursleys had known the whole time and wanted nothing more than to keep it hidden away from her.

She was a witch. That was the big reason why all those weird things kept happening around her, it was magic. She was a witch, and there was a whole community of magical users somewhere out there, hidden away from the non-magical - muggle - world if the weird slang word was right. When she had been in Mrs Figg's room, Rose had discovered physical evidence to back up her discovery magic was real. The old woman had a number of photographs in her house, which she understandably kept hidden from anyone who came around to her home because the photographs moved. It was incredible, it was like seeing a movie, or a TV screen in a smaller, flexible medium.

But Rose had also found something else that concerned her. Mrs Figg had apparently been sent to the street to watch her specifically. She had been despatched by a wizard known as Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore was, apparently, the same man who had left her at Privet Drive.

Rose had been furious about that. But if she had been angry then, that was nothing compared to just how she felt when she found out from the letters Dumbledore had frequently healed some of her worst injuries. What was worse was it was Dumbledore who had interfered with so many people who had tried, with the best of intentions, to get her away from Privet Drive. What's more, he even had other people do the dirty work as well.

"You'd better not be daydreaming, Girl. I don't want our dinner to go to waste because you have let it burn!"

Rose turned and found herself face to face with Petunia. She turned back to the meal and checked it carefully, making sure nothing was burning. Just a little bit more time, she told herself as she stirred the food. Rose had the sleeping pills in her pocket, and she was waiting for the chance to put them in either the Dursley's food or in their drinks; she preferred the former rather than the latter since the Dursleys sometimes locked her inside that damn cupboard and there was no way she could get out of that if the Dursleys fell asleep.

Waiting for Aunt Petunia to walk off so she could tend to her son didn't take too long, but then Rose knew it wouldn't; Dudley wasn't incapable of doing anything for himself, he did, but he preferred being waited on hand and foot by his parents. In any case, Petunia hated being anywhere near her niece, so Rose didn't have long to wait for her to leave. Moving herself to the side so she could both keep a lookout in case one of the Dursleys walked into the kitchen and so she could pour the sleeping pills into the Dursley's food, Rose worked quickly. She had carefully ground up the sleeping pills into a powder and put it in a makeshift cling film package she had prepared beforehand. Once the powder was in the food although she kept some of it behind in the bag just in case, Rose stirred the food.

XXX

"Hurry up with our drinks, Girl," Vernon snapped, looking at her through bleary eyes. He felt tired for some reason and he had trouble focusing. Vernon glanced at his wife and son and saw that, despite the hour, they were just as fatigued as he was. Dudley was already snoring away in his spot on the sofa while Petunia looked like it was taking a lot of effort just to keep herself awake.

"Yes, Uncle," Rose whispered.

As the tiny girl walked over softly with a tray laden down with drinks and Vernon reached out one of his meaty paws for the steaming cup of coffee on the tray without a 'thank you'. He was too busy staring at Rose.

Ah, in a few more years, I will make you a decent woman. Then you will make me some money, Vernon thought to himself lecherously as his eyes roamed up and down Rose's body even though he was a grown man lusting after his own niece, but the girl was already the spitting image of her mother. While his sister-in-law had been a bitch who wouldn't give him the time of day, Vernon had planned on breaking the girl and turning Rose into his own little whore. Yes, that was the perfect revenge against the prissy bitch. Vernon smiled with delight every time he pictured her face as she watched from the other side as her daughter was forced to be his slut since he would make sure she would never go to that school.

He had already begun taking photos of her to share with his friends, but he would wait until she had begun developing before he showed them off. He had already had the pictures developed by another friend, so there was no chance of the police finding out.

Vernon chortled at the vision again as he took another sip of his coffee, completely unaware he would never see his plans fulfilled since his eyelids became so heavy he couldn't keep them open anymore.

Yes, I'll just have a quick sleep and hopefully, I'll dream of seeing the little bitch where she belongs, on her knees looking up at me as I shove my dick in her mouth!

XXX

Rose sighed with relief when she saw the Dursleys beginning to nod off before they fell asleep. Vernon had been the only one who had really taken a large amount of the drink she had offered. Petunia had had some of her tea, but Dudley had been out like a light. Cautiously she approached them. Hesitantly after examining them all with just her eyes, Rose nudged them slowly to see if they would wake up.

They didn't. "God, I thought they wouldn't fall asleep," she muttered to herself as she walked out of the living room and back into the kitchen where she looked at the large knife she had pulled out of the drawer while she had been doing the Dursley's drinks. As she looked at the gleaming metal of the blade itself, Rose wondered if she should get this over with now or wait until after she had eaten something. She decided to wait. Giving the meal she'd prepared for the Dursleys an obvious miss, Rose grabbed some eggs and milk, and some bacon and cooking oil. She cracked the eggs into a bowl after she'd set the bacon on the frying pan, and added in a pinch of salt, and poured some milk into the bowl before she mixed the mixture in the bowl with a fork before she grabbed another frying pan and added a piece of a butter and let it spread across the pan before he added the egg mixture.

A few minutes later Rose was tucking into her plate of scrambled egg and bacon with some fresh, cool water. Once she was finished she went upstairs and she went into her uncle and aunt's bedroom. Rose grimaced as she looked at the frilly, girly decorations. It seemed a bit too feminine, even for her tastes since Rose thought them a bit too tacky; Lord knew what Vernon had thought….

Rose went over to the bedside table on Vernon's side of the bed and pulled open the drawers and she found what she was looking for very quickly. The pig hadn't even bothered to hide it properly. She pulled out the little wallet and she opened it up and she frowned in anger as she saw the pictures Vernon had taken of her. Some of them were naked, taken when she was in the shower, although how he'd gotten his grubby paws on a camera small enough to be placed in the shower as she'd washed, but what sickened her the most were the implications.

Her uncle was a pedophile. Somehow that wasn't unbelievable since the man had looked at her with interest many times, particularly those moments where Petunia whispered furiously "she's just like her" making Rose wonder if Petunia was comparing her to her long-dead mother. Somehow whenever Rose heard the horse-faced bitch say that she'd always felt pleased because she was spiting her equally spiteful aunt many times over. It had occurred to Rose the first time Petunia had said that as she had grown up that her aunt had been jealous of her mother for reasons she didn't really care about, but it was irrelevant now. But Rose knew her aunt had never gotten over the jealousy, but truthfully Rose wondered to herself many times over the years why Petunia hadn't tried to make something of her life. It wasn't as if the woman wasn't smart, and even if other people wouldn't notice her since Rose's mother was in the foreground, Petunia could still be pleased she had gotten an achievement doing something she enjoyed.

But it had never happened.

Petunia had been a sad, miserable old bag, and now she was dead. All of that potential wasted because she hadn't wanted to grow as a person. But Vernon...

Rose breathed in and out slowly through her nostrils. She wasn't truly surprised; she remembered how she had once caught her uncle coming into the bathroom as she was in there, but he had not shouted at her, but he had just looked at her with a sick twisted smirk on his lips. He even licked them. As for these pictures…well, she had noticed him taking pictures of her, snapping away with a camera for some time, and she had seen him bring this wallet upstairs once. She had followed him to the bedroom door and heard him opening the drawers of the bedside table. Fortunately, Vernon hadn't seen or heard her.

She picked up the wallet and she went back downstairs.

XXX

Detective Sergeant Barclay shook his head as the SOCO officer snapped another few rapid-pictures of the murder scene. The living room resembled a day in an abattoir with the Dursleys having their throats cut open. However, the two males in the room had their mouths slit open as well as their necks, and their clothes were darkened with blood from the stab wounds to the chests.

"DS Barclay?"

Barclay turned and nodded as his boss and partner, Detective Inspector Bonnar walked over, looking at the scene with cool grey eyes that took in everything. "Paul," Barclay greeted.

Bonnar nodded and looked around. "Take me through it."

"It was one of the neighbours who was heading for work. She saw the front door open and the lights on, and after a bit of time, she walked into the house. Saw the bodies, ran out again screaming murder. She's currently being spoken to now by Karen. She's in her home, just next-door. Unsurprisingly she didn't want to be in this house," Barclay said.

Bonnar nodded, not really surprised. "What do we know about them?"

Barclay gestured to the older male. "Vernon Dursley, one of the directors of Grunnings. The drill-making company, and one of the biggest employers in Little Whinging. His wife, Petunia, and their son Dudley. Dudley has been reported as a bit of a hellraiser, but his parents kept saying it was their niece, Rose. Rose Potter. I've spoken to a few of the neighbours about her; they give us a very weird picture because the neighbours are split into two groups. One group says the Dursleys told them she was a delinquent whose mother was a whore, and her dad was an unemployed drunk who'd both died in a car crash."

Bonnar shook his head in wonderment as he guessed how the neighbours had treated the girl. The problem with suburbia was everyone was very judgemental and didn't really use their common sense. "And the other group?"

Barclay's expression was grim. "When you were coming in, did you notice how SOCO was going through the cupboard under the stairs?"

"Yes, but I was hoping you would give me the picture," Bonnar's voice was slow with dread.

"Come with me. There have been rumours for some time the Dursleys were abusing the girl, but we never took it too far since the accusations seemed unsubstantiated, but now we know its true. That same group has spent a long time trying to stop this from happening," Barclay was saying as he led the way into the hall and gestured at the cupboard.

Bonnar gasped with horror when he caught sight of the darkened bedsheets in the little cot, only he had no idea if it was blood or something else staining the sheets. He clenched his fists. Bonnar had been an abused child himself, but he had managed to prosecute his parents, but the very notion of child abuse had made him join the Force so he could ensure no other child went through it. Seeing this brought back the memories of abuse he'd endured at the hands of his sick bastard parents. Seeing this and hearing how the police themselves had not even bothered to investigate the accusations made him ill.

If Vernon wasn't dead, Bonnar would likely have murdered him himself.

"Do we know where the child is?" Bonnar whispered.

"No. But I think she did this; we found a number of fingerprints on a knife which so far match fingerprints found inside the cupboard," Barclay replied, "but we don't know yet how she managed to overpower the Dursleys to kill them."

"Get their autopsies rushed through. I've got a few ideas of what she could have done, but besides that, I don't have a clue just yet," Bonnar privately felt he wasn't really going to bother trying to find the little girl.

XXX

Albus Dumbledore felt physically ill as he received the news straight from Arabella Figg about the latest mess on Privet Drive. He couldn't believe what he'd been hearing.

The Dursleys were dead, and Rose Potter was suspected as the murderer. News of the cupboard under the stairs, and a wallet full of photographs showing the girl naked which gave the muggle Aurors the theory Vernon Dursley was a paedophile, as well as an abuser of the Girl Who Lived, had liked out and there was nothing Dumbledore could do about it.

There was no way he could go to the muggle police station and cast memory charms to clean this mess up.

There was no chance he could speak to the Dursleys, and stop them from abusing Rose. More than once over the years, he had done his level best to stop the abuse from getting out of hand, although truthfully he had never stopped it although he had placed a spell on the house to stop the girl from getting killed whenever Vernon had lost control of his temper.

He had needed Rose to be abused, so when he saved her he would have someone who had grown up in a manner similar to Tom Riddle but was willing and eager to do whatever he told them to do out of gratitude. For the love of Merlin, he had even ensured one group of people on that whole street had viewed the girl as a nuisance, or a delinquent, so then she wouldn't have too much help. But the Dursley's abuse of the girl had taken up so much of his time, although it had lent credence the girl was lying about what the family were doing to her. With a lack of support on the street, in theory, Albus would have been able to make the girl into what he wanted the most. A witch who was willing to lay down her life for the magical world needed, becoming a martyr. Indeed he had gone to a lot of trouble to lay down the foundations of the plan, getting Black sentenced to Azkaban, although the idiot had only condemned himself and made his job easier, and he had ensured the girl's image went into those childish fantasy stories children loved to read. When Rose came into the magical world, she would need to work hard to measure up to the expectations of others.

Albus now saw those ideas had been blasted out of the water. Rose was gone and she had murdered the Dursleys. Not even Tom Riddle had gone that far as a child. Yes, he had been sick in the head. Malevolent, but he had never killed anyone in the orphanage.

The thought of the Girl Who Lived, his weapon, his trump card in the war against Voldemort going dark…made him sick.

Arabella also reported money was missing from the Dursley house, but what Rose planned to do with it no-one knew. Already, reports were stating the girl had left for London, but there was no word about whereabouts in the city she was. Still, it gave both the police and the Order a lead.

Arabella had known he had spent a long time expending time and energy trying to stop Rose from being taken away. He had known the family were not ideal, but he hadn't even suspected Vernon was a paedophile. But with this latest fiasco, there was nothing he could do about it, and in truth, he didn't want to get involved since he would need to rally the Order into finding Rose.

Dumbledore closed his eyes. He had worried for a long time about Rose becoming another Tom Riddle, but in this case, where Tom had lashed out at the other muggles in the orphanage he'd grown up in when Merope Gaunt had died giving birth to him there so many years ago because he believed they were mistreating him, Rose's motives were more justified.

Rose had been abused and injured a lot over the years, but what it did for Dumbledore's plans to push the blame off of himself for not helping Riddle and getting him a better life instead of constantly making him go to that orphanage to forgive and forget, he had no idea. But he knew when they did meet when it was time for Rose to attend Hogwarts, he would need to do a lot of damage control to make her the ideal Light witch.