Wretched little beggar

Little Thief

M's shack had changed a lot in the last few months. It actually looked as if a teenager lived there now.

All the dust had been gotten rid of, and the broken furniture mended, or at least stored away in an empty room upstairs. Her bedroom was the liveliest of all, meaning even though she didn't have a lot of stuff, it was still messy. Clothes she'd "borrowed" from the other girls when they were supposed to leave for laundry (M suspected Hermione might have left a few on purpose for her) were strewn all around the floor, as she was often too lazy to put them in their respective drawers. Her desk was covered in an unorganized pile of notes from class, quills, and pieces of parchment covered in doodles.

It had more furniture, too, than when the young girl came in. Objects that had mysteriously disappeared from the Gryffindor common room or the Hogwarts halls, such as the lantern on the bedside table or the small red rug that covered a rotten board of the floor.

Sprawled on the four poster bed in the corner was M herself. And she was bored. And hungry.

It had only been a day since she'd left the castle, which would have been perfectly fine only a year ago, but her body had gotten used to a healthy three full meals a day. She was mentally kicking herself for not having thought of stocking up food from the house elves, and now she didn't dare reenter the castle.

She sighed, then stood up. She wasn't just going to mop around all summer.

Getting an idea, she went down the stairs and to the front door. She still didn't know where her shack was. Sometimes she heard the laughter of children from afar, but nobody ever came to bother her.

The door was boarded, obviously, like the rest of the openings, and even though the nails were rusted, they wouldn't give in when M pulled. So the young girl went over to each window, until she finally found one where the planks were loose. She yanked at them until it formed a hole large enough to pass her small body. In her usual blunt fashion, she didn't hesitate for too long, only to check that there were no sounds anywhere close, then stood on a chair and slipped out.

M landed nimbly on her feet and immediately looked around. She was at the far end of a village of cosy looking cottages, after houses became sparse then nonexistent. To reach the streets, you had to make your way down a windy path.

The village below looked utterly postcard-y; and M recognised it from Hogwarts: A History. It was Hogsmeade, the only all-magical village in Great Britain, where third-years and up were allowed to go to some weekends.

She turned around to face the house she'd just exited. Her house. It felt weird seeing from the outside for the first time, after having lived more than four months in its rooms. She recognized it too, and that revelation came as more of a surprise. It was the shrieking shack, reputedly one of the most haunted buildings in Great Britain. Well, spirits had never bothered her.

She turned back to the village. It looked calm, a single main street lined with shops and a few people walking around it.

***

The day was nice, and a warm summer breeze blew softly. Everything had a sort of peaceful and contented feel to it, from the men seated at the terrace of the Three Broomsticks to the joyful tourist families lingering around the displays in shop windows. All were magical, of course, dressed in robes and displaying wands. Overall, everything was fine.

Except the pickpocketing conditions were terrible.

The main street was far from crowded, making it almost impossible to "accidentally" bump into someone. And even if the girl could somehow pull it off, she still had the sour memory of the last time she'd stolen from a wizard fresh in mind. In this tiny village, it would be much harder to escape.