I don't own Harry Potter.

Please let me know what you think. This is the final chapter for this block, the next one will be much longer and it will feature Rose's adventures as she commits burglaries but also encounters events which will shape her life. If you have suggestions for what she could do, please let me know in a nice, mature, helpful review and not something offensive.

Rose Potter: Catwoman.

Rose had a smirk on her face while she bent and twisted and contorted her body in many unnatural shapes that, if she were an ordinary person then she'd be tearing apart her bones, her flesh, and her muscles, but thanks to her magic and her metamorphamagus capabilities she was able to transfigure her body into the biological equivalent of rubber.

That was what metamorphamagus' were, really, they were walking sources of transfigurative magic. They could change their appearance easily, but they were capable of so much more, including contortionism. Rose had known she could change her appearance for a long time ever since she had regrown her hair after that bitch Petunia had cut it all off in one of her petty little schemes.

As she unfolded her body Rose bent herself to the side, wrapping one of her legs around her arm, she had time to think.

Three months ago Rose had not known a great deal about herself, never mind who her mother was. But now she had access to every scrap of knowledge Lily Potter possessed.

And now she did, everything had changed.

Granted, while her mother hadn't given her access to some of the more powerful curses as she wasn't yet strong enough to take it as her magic needed time to develop, which would happen as she grew older, Lily had allowed Rose access to the basics of her magical knowledge. When Lily had gone to Hogwarts the first time, she had devoured a vast amount of knowledge in only a few weeks. By the end of the year, she had not only mastered the first year spells, but she had also even gone further, and she had already developed a good little base for her spell repertoire.

The memory of Lily Potter had encouraged her daughter to not only study her knowledge, but she had also encouraged her to develop on her own with the belief the only way to learn was to do things for themselves. To do this, Lily had taught her how to master wand-less magic since at this current time it would be too easy to spot a child who was not yet eleven to acquire a wand.

Rose had tried for a while to figure out how her strange powers were and while she'd developed some ideas, her mother's aid helped. All she needed to do was focus her mind on the ambient magic to perform her spells. Once she had mastered the basics, Lily had held back some of her knowledge to give Rose the chance to develop on her own. She wanted her daughter to be as self-sufficient as possible, and the plan had worked brilliantly since Rose had developed her magic a great deal over the last few months, focusing primarily on spells aimed at unlocking doors. As a burglar, Rose wanted to have the best method possible for gaining entry into a property.

Forget those heist movies where the thieves were shown to use lock picks, most real criminals preferred simpler methods for gaining entry into a house. And so did she. But Rose got the impression while her mother was pleased with her interest in magic, on the whole, she also got the impression that Lily was just upset with how things had turned out for her daughter. After all not many mothers would want their children to become thieves, but while it was nice for Rose to finally have a parent, even a virtual one, worried about her and was very comforting since she now had another Potter in her life after being alone for so long even if technically Lily had been dead for a long time, and in so much pain from the abuse she'd gone through, Rose had no intention of letting Lily interfere with her long-term plans.

Besides, her life was her show now.

She had long since become addicted to the thrill of breaking into someone's home and taking money which didn't belong to her until she had reached the safety of her bedroom.

And then there was her metamorphic ability. Of all the things she had now at her disposal, Rose found her metamorphic ability to be one of her most useful.

When Rose had found out the reasons behind her mother's work in implanting her memories and her knowledge in the mind of her daughter, she had merely assumed that was as far as Lily Potter was willing to go, but apparently not. According to her mother's memory, Lily had been fascinated by the metamorphamagus abilities, and thanks to her father who was related to the Black family where the ability was famous, she had determined that Rose had the gene for it. But it was limited. Fortunately, Andromeda Tonks, a disowned cousin of Sirius Black, had a daughter, Nymphadora, who was slightly older than Rose was who had it, and she used it constantly to change her appearance. One day Lily had extracted some of Nymphadora's blood and she had used a ritual to transfer the elder girl's metamorphamagus abilities to Rose. Lily had blocked off all but a portion of the ability from Rose, so as not to attract attention from others.

Rose had been practicing with the ability ever since, enjoying every moment of her time with it, changing her appearance in front of a mirror when she had enough privacy, and seeing her face alter; skin tone, eye colour, eye shape, the shape of the face, and length of hair, and hairstyle…. The possibilities were virtually endless, especially since with a whole diversity of choices for disguises, it wouldn't be hard for her to slip into a house wearing the face of another individual. The police would be running all over like headless chickens, trying to work out the identity of the thief while she just sat it out.

She could work with that.

Rose could set up little experiments, changing the aspects of her appearance from her hair colour to her physical age. Once she had gotten the form she wanted or believed ideal, then she would commit a few crimes and once she had gotten away, she would change herself back to normal and go on her way completely innocent as if nothing had happened.

She already had a few experiments planned in the works, but she wanted to experiment with her metamorphamagus abilities and master them properly so then changing her appearance would be as simple to her as walking from one room to another. At the moment her expertise was growing each day, after all, she wouldn't have been able to perform these contortionist moves without practicing her metamorphamagus skills, right?

Changing her face and knowing how to unlock doors and windows with a single spell was not the only thing Rose did with her magic. She learnt how to read other people's minds and how to shield her own, and while Lily wanted her to learn on her own and develop her own knowledge in those magical fields, Lily had insisted on teaching her everything she knew about the mind arts because apparently they were very dangerous, and any mistake by a novice could result in permanent and fatal mental damage.

Lily had immediately taken the reins of Rose's training there, and now each morning she had woken up refreshed and her mind sharper than ever. Thanks to her new occlumency barriers which her mother had helped her to design, Rose was able to remember things with incredible clarity as if they'd only been recorded in her brain the day before. Thanks to her occlumency, Rose was able to absorb knowledge - written or spoken - into her mind, where it would then be stored for later. Thanks to her occlumency Rose was developing a highly ordered library of knowledge and information, and likewise, she was putting in her experiences as a witch from her experiments in developing her wand-less magic to future reference to help her develop her skill set.

At the same time….

Rose grimaced as she remembered how, thanks to her growing skills with the mind arts, she had discovered large amounts of her memory seemed to be either locked away or sealed off - she didn't know the precise term to describe it, but it was like the memory had been sealed off.

Not anymore.

Her grimace became worse as she remembered with sudden clarity her previous attempts to escape the Dursleys. It had always mystified her that she had never tried to escape before she had committed murder, how, despite everything the bastard family had done to her she had still seen the place as home even if it was nothing but evil.

Now she knew the truth.

Albus Dumbledore, detecting her escape attempts, had tracked her down. Each time was the same. He would find her after she had managed to make her escape work, scold her and tell her in that grandfatherly voice of his which he had practiced all his fucked up life which sounded more condescending than kindly, that the Dursleys loved her. And then he would wipe her memory of the event and then place spells on her to make sure she never escaped again.

Rose had already known the details. But now she had unlocked the memories and saw for herself what the old bastard had done to her, Rose wanted nothing more than to rip out his throat and pour all her own memories of the abuse into Dumbledore's brain to entertain and to amuse the old fuck as he passed on. She had considered doing the same to Voldemort to make him pay the price.

She shook her head. There was plenty of time for her to do that. Right now her primary task was to practice her magical abilities and become stronger through the use of her own grit and ingenuity while her mother's knowledge was just a guide. Rose was learning large amounts of herself as she practiced her metamorphamagus skills in small, controlled experiments. Lily didn't know the first thing about what a metamorphamagus could do even when she was alive, and her knowledge of the subject was limited now she was reduced to nothing more than a memory.

Rose sighed and she unfolded her body and she stumbled around for a little bit as her limbs still felt rubbery, breaking the concentration as she did. Once the concentration was broken, her body felt as it had earlier before she conducted the experiment. She walked over to the window and peered out over the street. However, her eyes drifted over to a block of flats in the distance.

Inside that block of flats were a number of rich people who lived on the Thames. And between them were dozens of houses, shops, and banks. As soon as the last one popped inside her brain, Rose instantly dismissed it; while she wanted to get rich, she didn't think or feel that she was ready enough to take on a bank. In any case, she was uncertain if the banks between the children's home and the block of flats even had vaults as they depicted in movies. If there was one thing she'd learnt it was some aspects in movies were not the same in real life.

Now the shops and the houses, they were fair game, and as she looked out over the city, Rose saw the whole thing as a race track with the enormous block of flats as her grand prize. As she looked at the houses spread out in front of her, Rose knew it would take a while to reach even the second floor of the block, but the time would be perfect for her to gain experience with committing burglaries with her new knowledge. As she went along she'd do what she always did, learn from her experiences and make herself as better as she could.

It was a philosophy which had always worked for her in the past, and she saw no reason why it wouldn't help her now. Rose looked down at the street below, watching as a car drove past before two people walking a dog came into view. Three minutes after they had passed by, she watched a cat pad its way across the road. She pushed the horrible memories of what had happened to the cat she'd foolishly taken into Number 4 out of her mind, deciding not to look at her past but to focus on her immediate future.

Out there, somewhere between here and that block of flats, were houses and shops that would have the money he wanted to steal from. As the thought emerged in her head Rose knew she would need to ride her bike out a little further than normal just to find potential possibilities. Granted, she had already marked a few possibilities within a few miles of the children's home. Indeed, a few possibilities sprang to mind already, and a few question marks appeared for a few more. It looked like she would need to go out much further to find more.

Rose rubbed her nose, looking over the horizon towards the tower block of flats and the numerous houses and shops in between as she tried to estimate the time it would take before she even reached the point where she'd reach the tower block itself. In the end, she gave it a year, a year and a half at most. Rose wasn't in a hurry. Yeah, she would probably have to commit a few burglaries close to the block to throw the police off the scent and make them think the burglaries were random rather than chosen carefully rather than starting out close to the children's home itself and then moving slowly towards the tower. If the police picked up on that fact, they'd have little trouble guessing where she was going to burgle next.

Big mistake and a bad idea in the long sad history of truly atrocious bad ideas, giving the police clues of where she planned to burgle next.

Rose continued looking over the horizon, knowing that planning her first burglary was going to take time and energy, she had little doubt in her mind she'd reach it eventually.

She'd start tomorrow.

It was a school day, but she could return to the Children's home and grab her bike before she went out as far as she dared, and then look for decent houses and shops that she felt would be good enough for her to burgle.

XXX

As she cycled through the streets while making sure she didn't travel too fast in case there was an accident, Rose studied each house she passed with just a mere glance, taking note of whether or not there was foliage growing around them to give her extra cover, or if there was something else to provide cover like high walls. Getting out of the children's home for this particular jaunt hadn't been tricky; Rose had always gone out of her way to appear as an angel even if she wasn't, and because all the kids were in the same boat there were none of the same levels of bullying that Dudley and his gang had heaped on her shoulders. The fact she always usually helped the younger kids with their homework and the fact she did well herself had done wonders for her credibility as well.

It had always been her plan when she had gotten into the children's home to keep her head down and at the same time be as respectable and as friendly as she could without causing problems. It had paid off for her more than once so convincing them to let her out for an hour or two on her bike was no biggie.

Rose went down numerous streets, confident the tracking charm she had placed on her pillow would be enough to guide her back. In the meantime she travelled down numerous streets, making notes in her mind for analysis later. She noted down everything, from the street names, the number, what was outside the houses and what cover there was and how dense the cover happened to be if there was any and if it blocked out the view from the rest of the street.

When she returned to the children's home, she would make plans to find it all on the local maps so she would chart out shortcuts, and estimate the distances before she looked out even further.

And she would do it again.

She would head out again and again to different places, gradually drawing closer to the tower block while using the knowledge she had gained during her time here to guide her.

It would only be a matter of time before she began her new series of burglaries. In between those moments, she would practice her magic in preparation.