Holly Potter: The Bookish, Burgling, Badass (Hp x Mcu) by Personfour

Chapter 6: Year Three

Summary:

Holly contemplates gun violence, has an unpleasant encounter, and meets a hoarder.

Holly arrived to Kings Cross several hours early and made her way through the barrier. For once the magical side was blissfully empty. After settling into a cabin, she pulled out her Muggle Studies textbook to absentmindedly skim through.

She wanted to know how much wizards understand about technology and normal people. Or if they even bother to pay attention to regular news. It'd be rather awkward if she got caught using magic to steal from people after all.

Plus, if there was a risk of Adult Tom coming back... do wizards even know what a gun is? Tom knew being muggle raised, but what about the average Death Eater? Wizards may love their overly dramatic and "honorable" duels but that was impractical. If she had to fight she'd do it smart.

She had struggled choosing her other elective but decided on Care of Magical Creatures. Care of Magical Creatures was nearly useless to her of course. Only Divination would be worse. Ancient Runes or Arithmancy seemingly would've been far, far more useful to her. What they were, however, was time consuming. By picking the 2 easiest electives she'd have more time to practice and plot in the Room of Requirement.

She didn't need to take Runes and Arithmancy to test in them anyways.

Besides, she already had Tom's memories of the classes. Why take the more time-consuming classes when it'd be review for her anyways? She had learned all the material from Diary Tom already. Sure, the curriculum could have changed slightly, but that was easily fixed with self-study. Her time would be better spent expanding what she already knew.

That's when it hit her just how advanced she was.

Tom had been fanatical in studies with his overwhelming need to prove himself. He was only a 5th year when he made the Diary but was years ahead in his studies. Plus, he was a better dueler than most 7th years. All his knowledge was hers now, without the megalomania blinding her.

Now as a 3rd year Holly probably could out duel anybody under 6th year easily. Likely could beat most upperclassmen. It was... kind of crazy now that she thought about it.

Good thing she didn't have a god complex like Tom.

Grateful for her lack of megalomania, she lowered her book and closed her eyes to focus on strengthening her occlumency shields.

Maybe it was inherited paranoia from Tom, but Holly was wary of Dumbledore. She did not want him in her head. There were too many things she needed to hide. Like how she'd run away from the Dursleys. Or how she was the one that killed the basilisk. Or how she'd assaulted Lockhart. Or, oh yeah, how she'd stolen the memories of a baby dark lord's horcrux.

So yeah, occlumency shields needed to be at maximum strength.

Her mindscape still wasn't anywhere near ready, so she'd have to settle for her façade of useless memories with a solid wall underneath. It'd look like she didn't know occlumency while protecting her secrets. While more than most occlumens bothered with, it still felt clumsy to her. If Dumbledore tried to delve deeper than her meaningless surface memories and found the wall she'd be screwed. Once that happened he'd know she was intentionally hiding things from him and never let it go. He'd find the Room, maybe even search her Trunk.

It was sometime later that Holly was abruptly pulled out of her meditation as the train abruptly jerked to a stop. Her eyes snapped open, looking out the window into the darkness. They weren't at Hogwarts, that was clear. A flick of her wrist and her wand slid from her new arm holster and into her hand. With hardly a thought she silently cast lumos and was surprised at what she saw.