The Disappearance of the Boy-Who-Lived
By Ryuuohjin

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Disclaimer - I do not on any way own Harry Potter or any of its world or characters. They all fully belong to J.K. Rowling and her affiliates.

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Chapter 5 – Ponderings

Soft, calm breathing echoed through the small house, which was located somewhere in a suburb in northern London. It was about in the middle of the night, a young girl of the age of fourteen had woken up after vague hours of sleeping, to the breathing of people sleeping and dead silence. Her long mane of unruly bushy brown hair, making her peaceful looking, as her brown eyes stared and scanned the ceiling above her. She was currently quite deep in thought, as hundreds of unanswered questions raced through her mind. Although, unlike the last couple of days it wasn't Harry that was on her mind, well not entirely anyway, as most of her thoughts were currently on her newly gained friend, Sara Saionji, Harry's mysterious and up until now unknown cousin.

Hermione didn't know what to think about the mysterious and strangely familiar teenage girl, especially since she still couldn't figure out why the girl was so familiar. Which was confusing her, and Hermione had always hated being confused. And her new friend's so familiar behaviour made her quite confused, but that was nothing new, at least for the last couple of days, much to her recently growing annoyance. Though after having spent several minutes of trying and failing to go back to sleep, Hermione realized it wasn't working. The mounting frustrations and confusion was webbing at the edges of her mind, making it so she spent most of the night in nought, as she pined for the sleep that never came. Pulling out her latest letter from Sara, Hermione absentmindedly began to skim it through. That was when a thought suddenly struck her, making her dig out some of the letters she had received from Harry through the years.

After comparing the letters for a while, Hermione came to the stunning realization that Sara's handwriting seemed to be identical to Harry's handwriting. She was somewhat amazed, and a bit disappointed in herself, that it had taken her this long to notice that. Laying in her bed, Hermione was processing the information she had gleaned in her recent discovery. It gave her an odd feeling, as she started thinking about all the facts and events over the last couple of day. She could almost see how the various bits of random information began to slowly fall together and mesh together somewhat, almost forming something in her mind, though she still couldn't figure out what it was yet… As felt as if she was still missing too many large pieces of something quite vital, for her to really begin to create a somewhat clear picture. Though what it was that was missing was she didn't know, at least not yet... And didn't that annoy her more than was really willing to admit...

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Hours later and hundreds of miles away from the restless girl, Amelia Bones was having her morning tea as she was contemplating the events from the most recent days. She had been having quite the trying week. Aside from everything that had been happening over the last couple days, what with the suspected Death Eater attack in Diagon Alley and the following death of Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. Then there was the mess with Sirius Black and what to really do with him, along with everything that had been revealed at the will reading of Harry Potter. Amelia rubbed at her forehead, just knowing that this was going to be complicated. Amelia Bones was, in a word, frustrated. She briefly entertained the notion of maybe bringing it to Fudge, and getting the whole thing out in the open, but dismissed that thought because she knew that wouldn't happen.

Fudge would declare the matter closed, suppress it and cause more problems than he would solve. Why was that idiot minister again? Oh, that's right, the dark aligned families found him easy to bribe and Dumbledore had supported him because the idiot asked for all sorts of advice from him, probable even on how to go to the toilet and other things. She had known since that morning that things wouldn't be easy, and by Merlin she was right. Her job was normally more than stressful enough, and what with the inter-department politics that were a standard of the Ministry of Magic, the sometimes incompetent subordinates, and miscommunication between different parts of the DMLE. So Amelia had done some bit of quiet digging herself into the trial of Sirius Black, and she had been quite astonished to find - absolutely nothing! At most, she had found an incident report and Black's transfer order, but not anything else. She had been careful to not leave any traces, as she didn't want to alert anyone until she had looked further into this matter, but she was gonna get to the bottom of this, one way or the other she gonna find what had really happened back then.

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The summer evening felt long and slow at the Griffin's Nest, with the heat of the sun fading in the salty wind from the ocean, the sky painted blood orange and plum, and the air heady with different flora and birds. Sara was alone in the master bedroom in the large fortress, window shades open and lamps off, as the sun slips behind the sea, and her schoolbooks and jewellery boxes and sponge-painted walls all glow. At the moment though, Sara was sitting, naked, as she watched herself in the mirror. It was gilt-framed and larger than her, and she's been doing this a lot these days, because, personally speaking, while she has slowly been gotten more used to her new body, she was still not quite there yet. Especially her breasts, even though she had been told that they are moderately sized, they kind of annoying the hell out of her. Honestly, she doesn't see how women do anything with them in the way like they are... But she guessed that they just work around them.

But tonight that was not the only reason she staring into the mirror, no tonight was special, as once again a new type of body jewellery was now decorating her body. Although, this time it would be much harder to spot them, which was kind of Sara's main intentions in the first place this time. They were actually a pair of barely visible sub-dermal implants, and her skin was still somewhat sensitive. Sub-dermal implants were a type of body jewellery were silicone or metal were placed underneath the skin. Which allowed the body to heal over the implant, creating a raised design, such as; bumps, ridges, horns, and similar textures and alterations. As the process to do this was similar to plastic surgery, it was much more risky than any tattooing. Which why also, Sara was once again for a short became a temporary guest in the Gringotts infirmary. It also the reason why she really hadn't had the time until now to really inspect the additions to her body.

Although, Sara hadn't gotten her jewellery just for fancy, or on a whim. No, the reason for the new alterations on her body was quite simple, they were precautionary measures. From the memories had gotten from Voldemort, and from own experiences, she knew Voldemort was able to possess other animals and even people. To prevent something like that from ever happening to her, Sara had pitched the idea of helping to create something like a ward against possession to the goblins, as she, herself, had no idea how to do anything like that herself. Sara was still somewhat marvelled at how much easier it had been to get the goblins to help with that, compared to when her Gate of Babylon tattoo had been created. She had only need to pay a really huge amount gold this time, which was not something she was currently hurting for exactly a moment. Especially since she had by emptied the vaults of Voldemort followers and selling their contents overseas.

The implants were made of high-grade surgical titanium with intricate silver runes inscribed into them. They were designed around the number of three, as three was not only a well known and prominent, not to mention strong, magical number in the magical world, but also the muggle world as well. Which also why the traditional Celtic Knot, a.k.a. the infinity knot or the triquetra had been chosen as a motif. Although Sara had made some minor alterations to the original design, in which the traditional triquetra was opened to include a heart, that went through the three interconnected loops of the triquetra. Three of them were made, with two being placed on the back of each of her hands, and the last one being implanted at her sternum, just below her collarbone.

They had all also been quite heavily enchanted to cause her as little pain and discomfort as possible, while also making them immune to all kinds of summoning or banishing spells, along with some quite subtle notice me not charms. The only real problem with the implants at the moment was that were that was completely untested and slightly experimental. While the theory behind it was quite sound, they didn't really know if they really worked or not, nor what kind of effect they would have if something would try to possess her, as she had yet had had and any opportunity to test them out properly. Because items that had shown being able to possess people were often destroyed or sealed away as soon as they were found. While she was somewhat curious about it, Sara really was not that eager to try to get possessed on purpose just to try it out, even if she could.

But was not all she had done, as she had also gotten some implants that very subtly made her ears look slightly longer and a bit more pointy. And just like the others, this was not done for looks or fashions sake, this was another experiment of her, an attempt to create something akin to eyes in the back. They worked almost like a super sensory charm, although not as powerful. Sara thought they would be really useful in a tough fight if she only could get used to them of course.

As there was a reason so few wizards or witches got used the supersensory charm, and if it wasn't used for any prolonged period of time. Firstly it was a really quite a strange sensation to experience, that really took some time and effort to really get accustomed too. The second was that most of the time prolonged use often lead to dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and in some extreme cases, vertigo and vomiting. Though why this occurs wasn't really quite know, or much less fully explored.

One of the more prevalent theories suggested that it was the result from a sensory conflict arising in the brain from differing sensory inputs, that was somehow triggering the brain to activate the body's natural defence mechanism against neurotoxins. It claimed that when the brain detects a discordance between what is seen and what is felt, the brain will come to the conclusion that you are hallucinating. It would then further conclude that the hallucination must be due to ingested toxin of some kind. Which the body's response is to induce vomiting, to clear the supposed toxin.

Another theory suggests that it was because of mental fatigue, as the human mind simply isn't made to be able to process that kind of information for long periods of time. But some claim this had been proven wrong when Wendelin the Weird supposedly had spent over a decade under a super sensory charm, although Sara was not really quite sure about that, but then again...

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Albus Dumbeldore was in a conundrum, and actually, he hadn't felt the urge to break out the fire whisky this strongly since the death of his sister. How... how could things have possibly gone so wrong. With the death of young Harry, the prophecy couldn't be fulfilled and the dark lord would run amok unopposed. He could not allow this to happen, and so he had no choice but to go to his next course of action... Neville Longbottom, the other possible boy that the prophecy could about, but Albus wasn't sure. From he had seen and heard about the boy, there was nothing really that special about him, nothing that really stood out.

Although, he had to admit he really know much about the boy, having spent most of his time observing Harry. What he knew about the Longbottom boy was he was shy and clumsy, about average at best in most subjects, except for potions, were he was amongst bottom, and herbology were he was at the top. Along with that, he had lived a very sheltered life thanks to his grandmother, Augusta. But maybe it was time to change the tune, and look closer to what young Neville may have to offer. Maybe he had just simply missed something or just hadn't looked hard or deep enough. Though if he found anything, Albus may have to consider that had he had been wrong and made a mistake all those years ago. Maybe, maybe not, only time would tell.

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TBC

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