Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter or Catwoman. I just write these stories.

Please feel free to let me know what you think. I hope you're all keeping safe with the current crisis.

Rose Potter: the Catwoman.

Dawn of the Catwoman.

Rose looked around curiously, wondering where she was in this dream, although at the same time she was curious about whether this was indeed a dream or not since it didn't feel like one. No, it felt a little bit too real to be a dream. She knew about lucid dreaming after once coming across a reference in a library and learnt that many people could take control of their dreams by design whereas some cultures regularly practiced some kind of pseudo magic in order to take control, although she wondered if it was magic given the fact she knew she was a witch, and yet she had never really been able to take control of a dream.

No, this does not feel much like a dream to me, she thought to herself as she looked around, everything seems a bit too solid, and I don't feel as if I am wrapped in a cloud where I can barely think, never mind do anything. So what is going on?

Rose looked around in the hopes of answering her question. She noticed she was surrounded in a place which was both dark and light, misty and yet clear, but what surprised her the most was the fact she knew she was dreaming.

It was the Christmas holiday, and she had taken advantage of the season to commit a number of burglaries. Some burglars might bulk at the thought of stealing this time of year, but Rose didn't care about that. Indeed, with the amount of food being consumed and the number of drunk nights, it was a burglar's paradise to just break in and steal whatever there was, and with the parties messing with the brains of everyone, it was pathetically easy for Rose to swipe whatever she could find.

In her mind, Christmas was just another month. Why should it matter to her if people would be heartbroken their time of year had been fucked up? Christmas had never been a wonderful experience for her, and while some would say she was lashing out, Rose would disagree. It was just another time for her.

But she couldn't explain this. She had a clear memory of falling asleep in her bed, but where was she now?

Suddenly she heard a sound, and she stiffened at once, slipping her body into a kickboxing stance. "Who's there?" she demanded, although a part of her wondered if she was imagining hearing someone when the sound could have been something different.

"Hello Rose, don't worry. I am not going to hurt you," the voice of a woman which sounded so musical to Rose's ears said, although the young girl could certainly hear the ringing tones of intelligence in the woman's voice.

Rose turned and she found herself staring at a tall young woman who couldn't have been any older than her early twenties looking at her with a smile on her face. She was classically beautiful, with long dark-red hair which came down to her shoulders, with a heart-shaped face with emerald green eyes.

Rose gaped. She knew those eyes, she saw them every time she looked into a mirror. They were her eyes. "Who are you?" she asked, knowing she sounded both cautious and yet she was curious as well, unwilling to just trust this woman even if she didn't seem threatening. "Where am I?"

The woman didn't seem offended by her attitude. Instead, she smiled. "My name is Lily Potter," she replied, a smile on her own face, although Rose could see she was worried about her reaction. "I'm your mother."

Rose looked at her sceptically; she might have accepted the fact she was a witch, but this was pushing the boundaries of belief. "What, are you a ghost?" she asked.

"No. I don't blame you for your…scepticism. I'd share it too, but I am your mother, and in the morning when you wake up you will accept it was me, and you will have my memories and my knowledge in your head. This is just an introduction, a nice little meeting between mother and daughter. I had hoped this wouldn't have happened, but with Voldemort after you, I needed to take precautions," Lily explained.

Although Rose was surprised this manifestation of her mother, if it was her mother, was not even going to try to persuade her that she was whom she claimed to be although she knew that it would be hard to prove, she stiffened at the mention of Voldemort. "What do you mean, precautions?" she asked, hating to sound nervous but the sudden inclusion of the Dark Lord who'd started this entire mess had her worried.

"You know about Dumbledore from reading those letters you found in Mrs Figg's house, and you know about the war," the manifestation of Lily said, not saying anything about the death of the Dursleys even though Rose was prepared to say she didn't care one way or another about what she had done since it had been a matter of her own survival. "Well, he told us about a prophecy concerning you and Voldemort. I don't know what it says, so don't ask; Dumbledore liked keeping secrets, and this was one of them. But he told us enough to give the basic gist of what it meant. It's essentially saying that at some later date, far into your future, you are going to kill Voldemort."

Rose gaped at her. "I am destined to kill Voldemort?" she asked, her mind already thinking on making plans and counter-plans to ensure she won, even though her knowledge of the Dark Lord was very basic. "So why am I not being trained how to use magic now? Why was I put with the Dursleys, turned into a slave? How is that going to weaken or kill someone like him?"

Although the mention of the Dursleys visibly made the manifestation of this woman angry, she kept calm. "I have no idea, but knowing Dumbledore he had some kind of master plan," Lily's already displeased expression became even more annoyed. "Dumbledore had an unlikeable habit of sacrificing people in the name of some Greater Good, and no matter what happened in the war, he refused to allow anyone to kill the Death Eaters. But before I tell you anything else, I want you to hear me out; by morning you will have all my memories, my experiences, right at your disposal, but I think its a good idea if you get the basics from me."

Rose folded her arms and tried to give the air of someone extremely patient, but inwardly she would keep her eyes open for any sign of escape.

Lily smirked, knowing what her daughter was thinking. She wasn't really surprised by her daughter's suspicious nature, especially after all she had gone through. She cursed Dumbledore for what he had done, and she was furious with James for being so taken in by the old wizard's legend and his black and white view of the world, he hadn't considered the prospect of thinking about his daughter's wellbeing.

No, James had been more interested in having a saviour as a daughter.

She sighed under her breathe and she began pacing slowly to gather her thoughts.

"I first learnt about the magical world a few years before I received my Hogwarts letter. I was living with Petunia, who is actually my adopted sister, although we never discovered that until I was eleven years old. I found out about my powers because of a disturbed boy called Severus Snape. I say disturbed because Severus had many issues; his father was an abusive bastard, and his mother didn't help, but those issues would eventually turn him into a Death Eater, one of Voldemort's twisted followers.

"I first met your father on the Hogwarts express - yeah, it's hard to believe a magical school would use such a non-magical method of travel, but it works - and I disliked him for his arrogance, his inability to take things seriously, but what I really hated as time passed was the fact he was obsessed with me for some reason I never worked out, but another thing I despised was the fact he was a bully.

"There are four Houses at Hogwarts - parents and older siblings by tradition aren't meant to tell you how you are sorted into them, but since I am dead those traditions mean nothing to me - where you spend seven years learning magic at different levels. The Houses are Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor," she said the last one with disdain, "and you are sorted into one by wearing an enchanted hat which reads your personality. All Houses are elites; the Ravenclaws are scholars, essentially, the Hufflepuffs are hard workers although they have a reputation for being cowards, although it isn't necessarily true, the Slytherins are the cunning, ambitious minds. The Gryffindors are the so-called knights in armour. They charge in and pretend they're all heroic. In truth, they bully everyone who they think is evil, thinking they're doing a good thing. The Slytherins have a reputation for being evil, but while that's true, there is a fair number who just want to get on with their lives...only to get bullied by the Gryffindors. I was a Gryffindor. Looking back it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Why? I didn't realise at the time the Gryffindors were a moronic bunch, who think charging in headfirst where they'd risk their lives without looking to the long term consequences; you will have my memories of what the Gryffindors were like, Rose, but there is so much for me to get through right now, I don't have the time. I've got so many memories of the different Houses, and right now they don't matter that much right now.

Lily took a moment to gather her thoughts. "Voldemort began rising to power slowly. It began with a few political machinations, promises in the right places, but as time passed, people began to get attacked and these were terrible attacks. To help you understand the basics of magical society, there are wizards and witches who believe they are better than others because they are seen as pureblood. I am a muggle-born, but more than once I was discriminated against because I didn't come from the magical world; it was hard dealing with it at first, especially since I realised I had lied to-."

"Lied? You mean this Snape guy lied to you?" Rose interrupted.

Lily nodded slowly, her expression dark with the memory of the fight she'd had with Snape. "He told me the magical world was more progressive than that, and I had heard the same thing from the Hogwarts professor who came to tell my parents and me about magic. Hogwarts has a policy where new students entered from the muggle world, that's the term for non-magical, by the way, would receive a visit from a teacher who has been trained to go into the muggle world to break the news, and to demonstrate the existence of magic.

"But, getting back to my story, there were many purebloods who believed the muggleborns were destroying magical culture, and so they believed the charismatic statements of a man going by the name of Lord Voldemort. Voldemort won a lot of support, and there were dozens in the Ministry of Magic itself who were compelled by his promises, but there were many who saw him for what he was. Voldemort revealed his true motives and his colours soon enough, and he launched an all-out war of violence and destruction. The Ministry was taken by surprise, and they had to work hard to make sure the war did not leak into the muggle world otherwise it would risk destroying the Statute of Secrecy," Lily carried on.

"The Statute of Secrecy?" Rose repeated, having a good idea of what it meant since the name gave it away, but she wanted to know more about it.

A smile crossed Lily's face, and Rose got the impression her mother could tell what she was thinking, although if it was her mother and this was her mind, it wouldn't have been too difficult at all.

"The Statute of Secrecy exists to ensure the separation of magic from the non-magical. You have experienced the prejudice of the Dursleys, and more than once when your magic bled out whenever you were threatened, you were treated badly. While there are exceptions, the predominate reaction towards what people don't understand is fear, and when people are terrified they lash out," Lily explained grimly. "Imagine what would happen if magical creatures were seen. They would be hunted down, killed, slaughtered, even experimented on. I may be muggle-born but I am not blind of the dangers, and with people like Vernon and Petunia out there it's even more dangerous. It doesn't help muggles have designed weapons without looking to the long-term consequences of what they do to the landscape, the air and the water whenever they're used. Unfortunately, Voldemort is one of many wizards who refuses to take a good long hard look at the muggle world and they refuse to collectively think 'ooh, shouldn't we leave them alone if they have weapons capable of totally destroying a city, reducing said city to a burnt-out wasteland, where the air is poisoned and those who have survived would be better off dead?' But no, they refuse to take it onboard.

"The magical world simply cannot coexist with the muggle world, Rose. It's impossible. And I think you know that," she added, looking at Rose with a certainty that told Rose that this wasn't any old manifestation.

"As Voldemort was on the rise, I continued my studies. I was still ignoring your father as best I could; I never understood why he and the other Gryffindors started so many fights with the Slytherins instead of ending their stupid feud. I was still friends with Severus even if his issues were driving my own friends away, or making them unnerved by him."

"What do you mean, unnerved?"

"Severus was studying the Dark Arts. He had a tremendous knowledge of them, and how they worked. He also hung out with a gang of Slytherins who would go on to become Death Eaters themselves. I did my best to keep our friendship going, and for nearly five years I succeeded although I am still not entirely certain why he remained my friend, especially since he would throw these jealousy tantrums and act like a spoilt brat at times. But we were still friends. And then it happened," Lily looked down, but Rose caught sight of her mother's expression, and it worried her.

"Why, what happened?"

"Severus called me a mudblood after an important exam. Your father and his gang of idiots were bullying him, and when I tried to help, he just lashed out, and called me that filthy name!" Lily finished with a low growl before she gathered control over herself. "Mudblood means dirty blood. It's a disgusting name used against muggleborns. Someone who has no magical heritage, like me. It's the type of thing blood supremacists utter, with no creativity whatsoever, and its the type of thing Death Eaters say. Suffice to say, I never forgave him and our friendship died. I figured if he wanted to become a Death Eater so badly, let him. I didn't know and by that point, I found I didn't care what had possessed him to want to be one in the first place."

Rose listened as her mother spoke, unsure of what she should be feeling even though she was getting a lot of information about her mother's history which she had never received once from Privet Drive, although she had tried to discover it.

"I won't bore you with how your father courted me, Rose, but I will tell you when I graduated I discovered something about Dumbledore I didn't like, although I hadn't liked a lot of it, if I'm thinking about it," Lily went on, adding the last bit darkly.

"What do you mean?" Rose asked, frustrated that her mother refused to arrange her thoughts in a linear pattern.

"Dumbledore openly favoured the Gryffindors, but I didn't discover that until two years into my scholarship at Hogwarts. And when I say favoured, I mean he was letting them get away with all sorts of things no other teacher in their right mind would ever dream of allowing," Lily explained, the disapproval showing in her eyes, "I found a few Slytherin first-years who had been seriously bullied by a group of Gryffindor students, and I do mean bullied. One of them wore glasses, and a Gryffindor summoned them off and then dropped them on the floor where the poor girl was forced to crawl looking for them. I told Professor McGonagall, the Head of Gryffindor, but she didn't do anything. I even tried to tell the Headmaster, but he just twinkled his eyes and ignored it, saying it was a prank or a misunderstanding."

"What?" Rose whispered, wondering if she was hearing a description of her own future at Hogwarts. At the same time, she had to accept it was significant given the interest Dumbledore had taken in her life, and how he had meddled with it by dumping her on the Dursley's lap.

Lily nodded seriously.

"My thoughts exactly. Anyway, after that, I kept as far from him as I could. I didn't have any contact with him at all, and at the same time I watched as the Gryffindors caused more and more problems for the other Houses, but then with the Slytherins, it was even worse," Lily said looking down solemnly. "More than once I watched young kids no more than eleven, or around my age, who just wanted to have ordinary lives, getting angrier and angrier, and when I went out into the world and fought the Death Eaters myself, I came across Death Eaters who were those students. You know, it's funny…Gryffindors are more than happy to claim and cry out Slytherins are evil, and yet they are more than happy to lash out against them, so when the Slytherins do the lashing out, its the Gryffindors crying foul. I never understood why the teachers didn't seem to care, why they didn't stop it. There were times, between my years at Hogwarts and when I went for my masteries in Charms and Potions, Ancient Runes, and Enchanting, I wondered if Dumbledore himself was knowingly helping Voldemort. He seemed to have stepped up the tension in the castle, allowing and encouraging the bullying so he could have an army and enemies to fight against."

Rose went silent for a moment while she mulled it over in her brain. She hadn't met Dumbledore yet, but the effects of what he had done to her were still felt even now. Somehow, hearing her mother speak…things were starting to make sense, at least in her mind. From what she was hearing, Albus Dumbledore struck her as a wizard who wanted more out of life, far more than anyone could achieve, and where some might just want a quiet life he wanted to be this or that. And he didn't care how he got it.

It was beginning to sound like when he had learnt Voldemort was on the rise, Dumbledore deliberately manipulated the entire school so then everyone would bully a certain group of people, in the hope, it would make the enemy stronger while he also began creating an army for himself to fight against the enemy he was secretly helping.

What made it worse was that he didn't care about what he was doing to children. Rose thought about the lives of the children who'd been manipulated into fighting in the war, her mother had described the situation briefly but it had been bleak enough to provide Rose with a very big picture. How many, she was left wondering to herself, had just wanted to be left alone, who just wanted to study magic and get good lives? How many of them had only joined Voldemort because they had wanted to lash out? Did any of them even care about the ideology being preached, or did they have their own opinions?

Rose closed her eyes while she wondered how much more of this was left. While it was fascinating, she didn't want to be here for eternity. "What did Dumbledore do to you?"

"He tried to stop me from gaining masteries in high subjects. To get a mastery in a magical subject, you need to be sponsored by an already existing master of any subject, and while its an archaic mode of attaining a mastery it works because you have received the sponsorship of someone," Lily replied. "In my case, I was lucky because I had two masters; Professor Flitwick who teaches Charms at Hogwarts, and Professor Slughorn, who teaches Potions.

"I went in for my masteries when I had just married your father, but Dumbledore interfered. He kept claiming I didn't need to study those subjects to mastery level, and I was surprised because it was none of his business since I had graduated and I wasn't under his jurisdiction anymore. But what made me angrier was the fact James was on Dumbledore's side. I refused to listen to Dumbledore since I was working long and hard to develop my masteries. He interfered, and he forced Slughorn into retirement, but he was too late to stop me attaining the masteries. Slughorn told me privately when I heard what Dumbledore was doing that he had been trying to limit the number of people who went in for masteries for years, I was the latest in a long line."

"Why would he do that?" Rose asked, genuinely confused while she let her brain go over what she had heard and what her mother had told her about the Slytherins and the Death Eaters. An idea was starting to blossom in her mind, but she needed a bit more information before it truly came out.

"Slughorn didn't know. But after everything I saw, and what I experienced, everything I knew about Dumbledore…I began to think Dumbledore liked being the Big Cheese a little too much. He had been in that position for a long time. He had personally defeated another Dark Lord by the name of Grindelwald in the '40s, and he had gained some very high honours and positions," Lily explained.

"He didn't want anyone to usurp him," Rose said in realisation, "he wanted to remain the Big Cheese."

Lily nodded, openly pleased by her daughter's deduction. "Perfect reasoning," she said in agreement. "And my thoughts exactly."

"You wanted me to work it out by myself?"

"Yes. I am just eternally grateful you have a higher IQ than your father and his idiot friends," she replied.

"Why do you dislike my father so much? I mean I heard from you he was arrogant-," Rose began, growing annoyed and yet at the same time curious about her mother's dislike.

Lily sighed. "James was the only child of your grandparents. And they spoilt him a little too much. They gave him everything that he wanted, and it gave him a very big head. He was clever, smart in his own way, but he didn't even think about the long term. He was arrogant. He treated so many people as if they were beneath him, cursing and pranking them in equal measure, but he never stopped to consider what those same victims could become. More than once when we encountered Death Eaters, I found his victims. I doubt they really cared, deep down, about Voldemort's philosophy; they were just lashing out.

"But when we were married and he sided with Dumbledore about my masteries, he didn't even realise what he had done wrong when the Headmaster had gone from his visits. It was like he was nothing more than an automaton, who'd been programmed. It was pathetic, and it was worrying at the same time. I was worried because my husband just ignored my dreams of knowing more about magic, and he did it without thinking. I was even more worried because I knew he would do it again without a thought."

Rose was silent.

But then again, what else could she really say?

She could understand her mother's mindset of course, and she was starting to get the impression there was more to this manifestation than she'd expected. But she remained silent so then she could learn more.

"I went behind their backs, making sure they didn't know so then they couldn't interfere. I wasn't going to be treated like that, and I had Slughorn and Flitwick's support. That was enough. I got my masteries, and I gained a greater understanding of magic, far more than I imagined. Without them, I would never have been able to do what I did to you," Lily went on.

Rose instantly shifted into a combat stance, her mind instantly flashing with a warning at what she had just heard. "What do you mean? What did you do to me?" she demanded.

Lily had the gall to be shocked by Rose's reaction, and she hurriedly held up her hands desperately. "Nonono, you've got it wrong. I didn't do anything harmful. I transferred all my knowledge, my memories to you to protect you."

Rose relaxed a little, but it was starting to get darker. "What's happening?" she asked.

"You are starting to wake up. While we have been speaking, my little piece of work has been encoding my memories and knowledge into your mind. It will take time to assimilate it all, but don't worry. I will speak to you again when you fall asleep again," Lily's expression became sad, but she knew there was nothing she could do.

Rose began to feel as if she were being tugged away from her mother while the colours of the room began to swirl and blend together as if Rose were being washed down a giant plughole.

"I'll see you later, Rose," Rose heard her mother call before she suddenly woke up, feeling the material of her nightie, her pillow, and her duvet.

She sat up slowly, looking around the bedroom, wondering if what she had just experienced was a dream. But she quickly realised it wasn't, because she could recall memories she knew were definitely not hers.

They were fragmented, and there was no real time scale which made it even more disorientating for Rose to piece together, which was made even worse because the girl had dozens and dozens of memories pushing into her mind.

Rose closed her eyes, gasping suddenly as the memories began cascading into her brain with incredible force, and they were disorientating.

"God," she muttered. "How am I going to sort through all of this?!"