Why Save only 9?

The characters and setting used in this story are not owned by me. Only the arrangement of ideas is.

This story starts when a young girl with bushy brown hair is carefully peering around the corner of an old Scottish castle with a hand mirror. She has a tightly scrunched piece of paper clenched in her fist, and is accompanied by a slightly older girl, who is looking in the same mirror. What they see in that mirror changes their lives, but it is not these two upon which this story focuses.

Instead, in the long-term care ward of Newgate General Hospital, off the coast of the North Sea, lies a man in a coma. He has been there for several years now, and is a mystery. His fingerprints are not in any database, though as much can be said of many upstanding citizens. He was found without any identification, and thus he is referred to by the staff as Jon Doe V.

At the precise moment that Hermione Granger and Penelope Clearwater are petrified by the basilisk, Jon Doe V wakes up.

A cacophony of alarms and mechanical noises go off, rousing all sorts of attention. Jon Doe himself opens his eyes, as the monitors attached to him show active brainwaves for the first time in almost half a decade. He squints against the light, and feels the aches and pains of long term muscle degeneration and bedsores, but breaks into a strange smile.

"Well," he croaks with a voice rusty from disuse, "this is different."

It is May now, and Jon Doe V is doing well. He claimed amnesia, not an unexpected side effect of a long coma, but it was still disappointing to the staff. They were pleased and amazed at how quickly he recovered, seeing his rapid weight gain and healing as almost miraculous. Several papers were started on his recovery, but the doctors involved got side-tracked, or lost their notes, so nothing really became of them.

Jon has decided on the name Joshua West, a seemingly common name, thought he smiles when he says it, as though it has some significance. While not about to run any marathons, he's back on his feet and ready to leave. The government has come along and issued him identification of the right sort so he can go about existing in England of 1993. The hospital staff passed the hat and have raised one thousand pounds as something to start him off, for which he is very grateful.

Handshakes are offered all around to the staff who come to see Mr. West off, and he promises to come and visit, or to phone and let them know he is well. He waves as he walks away, but no sooner is he out of sight then he ducks down an alley, checks to make sure he is unobserved, turn on his heel and vanishes. The temptation to remain in Newgate is high, but right now, Mr. West knows that to avoid problems, he has to avoid the English coast near the North Sea, and Surrey as well, or he won't be able to resist temptation. Besides, he has business to attend to.

August finds Mr. West living comfortably in a flat in Kent. He's started to acquire a reputation as a canny investor from those few who know him, though some of picks inevitably fail, allowing him to make money, but not to be investigated for fraud or insider trading. He's sold off his shares of Starbucks following the split, knowing that the future coffee giant won't be making significant jumps in the market until July of 1995. Joshua West needs serious capital before then, so he ditched it, took the money and has put it into a variety of other short-term projects. He plays the ponies, losing more frequently than winning, but still walking off with more than he started. He knows that Australia will be winning the Ashes this year, and the next, so, as much as it breaks his heart, he unpatriotically bet against England.

As a matter of fact, Joshua West knows the outcome to most of the major sporting events for the next four years. He doesn't advertise this fact, and when betting, is just as likely to bet on the loser. Because having a reputation for being lucky sometimes is much better than being thought of as a seer. Besides, Joshua West hates divination, and couldn't stand being associated with it.

Joshua knows that Harry Potter is currently making his way to the Leaky Cauldron after inflating his aunt Marge. As tempted as he is to casually bump into the young man, he instead makes his way to Scotland, near one of the few castles that has no tourists visit, to find a very specific cave, which he spends several hours making livable, including leaving several large furs poorly hidden behind a pile of rocks, and carving runes to attract small animals such as rabbits once a magical core is near enough to passively charge it. Sighing, and wishing he could do more, Joshua vanishes to see if the BBC has anything worth watching.

It is January, and the New Year means it's time for Joshua to take the next step of his plan. He visited Newgate General Hospital over Christmas and gave them a generous donation to show he was doing well, but from that touching scene he is now somewhere in the Transdanubian mountain range, warming himself by the fire in the extremely remote cabin of Katalin Gregorovitch. Cast out of her family for some reason he's never managed to figure out, Katalin is nonetheless an extremely talented wand crafter, and most importantly, she takes custom orders for those who make their way to her, and have the means to pay. Joshua smiled at the irony of a Chimera scale core, though raised his eyebrow at the Ash wand. He fails to comment, having learned to trust professionals with their work. Once he has his wand, he has an errand further into the former Soviet Block that he refuses to do unarmed, but will certainly make things easier in about a year.

Once the elderly wandcrafter is finished, he thanks her and goes along his way, leaving behind two shrunken cases. The first filled with exotic foods under preservation runes, and the second one hundred wooden blocks from trees all across Europe.

Lurking around a graveyard in northern England in February is not considered to be good for one's health, but that is exactly what Joshua West was doing. He spent a great deal of time closing his eyes and concentrating, and a much smaller amount of time transfiguring parts of gravestones into water, and then banishing the water. He ended up with about three dozen holes roughly the size of a shoebox in various grave markers, all radiating from a central point. That central point happened to be next to the grave he had defiled, digging it up, banishing the bones, and replacing them with those of an orangutan that had died of natural causes a few months back. He had purchased the ape bones though a series of cut-outs, greatly increasing the price, but he felt confidentiality was key. He reburied the casket, and covered the grave, making sure that it appeared exactly as before. Hiding the holes he had made with thin sheets of rock, he apparated away, leaving the freshly replaced grave of Thomas Riddle behind.

June had rolled around again, leaving Joshua fretting with inaction. He longed to be in Scotland, if not helping, at least ensuring that his help was not needed, but feared changing things to the point he could no longer predict what was to happen. So he waited, and wrote and re-wrote a letter to the man he wanted to hire as his solicitor. He had achieved the perfect level of intriguing and straightforward in the letter three drafts ago, but was dithering about to stay busy. He knew not only what was going on now, but what would happen in a years time, and how important it was. Later, he would be calm, but for now, he sat down to try and explain why he needed a barrister with a very boring voice, and a manner of speech that could send a sugared-up five year old to sleep.

The 1994 Quidditch World Cup. An event Joshua avoided like the plague. He knew what would happen, and knew that he wouldn't be able to resist interfering, and that doing so would make it impossible to predict what would happen after. Instead, he was back near the North Sea. After a visit with his friends in Newgate, he made sure he had his well-hidden and well-secured packages, before taking a speedboat far off the coast on a dangerous and deadly errand. Several hours later he returned, packages gone, but with almost a dozen signed scrolls in his possession.

It's amazing what a Wizard can learn from a stage magician. Sleight of hand, misdirection, picking locks, all fun stuff. Joshua had started taking lessons once he'd built up a cash reserve, and he put it to good use this September 1st at King's Cross station. A paid distraction allowed him to quickly enter and change a few things in the trunks of a pair of teenagers, hopefully for the better. He was off and long gone by the time they looked back at their luggage, and neither of them noticed the changes until they were unpacking at Hogwarts. The dark-haired boy was puzzled by the books he found, but he decided to read them anyhow, after checking them for spells, and the red-head was elated that his horrible formal robes had somehow changed into a sharp, well-cut set in a conservative black.

Joshua West fell in with crowd leaving after the first task of the Tri-Wizard tournament. No-one had noticed him creeping around Hogwarts, their eyes riveted to the champions and their dragons. It hadn't taken him long to get to the seventh floor, and find the two things there that he needed, before sneaking back out. An invisibility cloak had kept the portraits from catching him, and evading Filtch and Mrs. Norris was simplicity itself. Once he got home, though, he'd need a fortifying drink. Sneaking around in Dumbledore's domain was still nerve-wracking.

The second task was in full swing as Mr. West lugged a heavy wheelbarrow supporting a massive block of spell-resistant iron down a decrepit old street. He stopped in front of one particularly disreputable house and sighed, looking at the steep incline. Several minutes later, he sat down on the front steps, exhausted from dragging his barrow. He waited a few moments to recover his breath, before knocking a complex pattern on the door. A shimmer went through the air as the door opened, revealing a small, evil looking thing scowling at him. Joshua spoke one sentence, causing a look of shock to come over the creature's face, before it popped off, returning a moment later with a gaudy necklace. Joshua gestured to the makeshift oven, and opened the top door to let the necklace get dropped in. He took a deep breath, and cast a single, though dangerous spell through the small hole in the top. The flames that sought escape took the shape of monsters of all sorts, but after a few minutes there was a very muffled scream, and evil-looking smoke escaped the top. Joshua allowed the flames to die out, and was immediately assaulted by a deranged house-elf hugging his leg. He gently pried the creature off, before extracting an oath of secrecy, and taking his leave. The house elf looked at the huge block of metal left behind before shrugging and levitating the barrow carrying it around back to hide it behind the shed. Just goes to show that even the most rational of Wizards can overlook the obvious.

The Easter gathering of the Wizengamot was the most poorly attended, since by long tradition people spent the time with their families. Even the Chief Warlock was absent; spending his time making sure all was in readiness for the Third task. In fact, there were five old hardliners, two junior members, an auror, and the court clerk in attendance when Amarion Dewy took the floor, with a distressingly large stack of paperwork. No one was all that eager to pay attention, as without quorum, no laws could be passed, or votes taken, but many families used this time to get boring procedural paperwork signed. Mr. Dewy was particularly disliked at this time, since he spoke in a complete monotone, and had won several court cases simply by refusing to stop speaking until the prosecution dropped the charges out of desperation to escape from the mind-numbing boredom. He was in fine form today, going over family business from the Havershams relating to wool production. Even the Welsh can only listen to someone talk about sheep for so long before passing out as their brains shut down in self-defense.

Noticing that his audience was completely out of it, he surreptitiously switched to a very special folder, and continued onwards in his monotone, not missing a beat. When he finished, the clerk and duty auror signed the documents without reading them, not realizing that in the middle of the pile was a very interesting set of papers that had just been made official, and would cause no end of trouble in the reasonably close future.

At Hogwarts, the final preparations were being made for the start of the Third task. In his parlor, Joshua West snapped his pocket watch shut and stood up with a grin.

"Showtime."