Chapter 1
This is a continuation of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, as I imagine it. I've read the entire HPMOR story twice now, despite never reading canon. It's by far my favorite story, and I desperately want it to continue, so here it goes!
"I fear we're missing something, Hermione," said the glowing humanoid figure, lips unmoving, in the voice of her wise old wizard, who was actually a year younger than her. The figure turned to survey the barren, cratered landscape, peppered with dark crescent shadows cast by the two human shaped patronuses in all directions.
Hermione's patronus made no reply, as it gazed upward at the black sky. The patronuses stood in silence for a while, their masters each cycling through the seemingly endless list of dead ends, turning over every stone once again, but still coming up empty handed.
"Perhaps, Mr. Potter" Hermione finally spoke, "we're simply wrong. Maybe this time we've given him too much credit. After living for so long in the Muggle world, his priorities must have shifted." Her patronus turned to regard it's glowing companion.
The patronus shook its head. "The last time someone thought a Malfoy wasn't planning something, innocent people were sent to Azkaban." The word made her body tense, even her patronus appeared to reflexively shift its stance as if to brace itself, despite all these years.
"Well," Hermione sighed, letting go of the stress in her shoulders, "we've falsified every test we've devised. If we're missing something even now, we can't find it with the information we have. We'll just have to wait see what comes of these-" Hermione searched for the right word , "technological advancements."
"I suppose you're right," Harry breathed a deep, frustrated sigh, while his patronus rubbed the bridge of its nose. Hermione still couldn't get her True Patronus to move like that, like it were an extension of her own body. For her, the True Patronus was like a conduit, something she could use, and was shaped like a person, but ultimately had no real control over. "I'm going to have to suspend our research for a bit while I get caught up on how these things work exactly. Actually, I have a lot more to catch up on it looks like. The muggle world hasn't seen this kind of innovation since the industrial revolution, and I've been..."
"Distracted?" 238,900 miles away, a woman with an aura innocence and grace, sitting peacefully on a small cushion in a meditative like state of partial consciousness tilted her head and smiled.
"Hey!" said the glowing young wizard "I'll have you know I am this close to isolating nuclear DNA damage from mutation and I-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah whatever you say Mr. Potter. Anything I can do here?"
"No, but since you're in the area, check in with the Salem Witches Institute and see what their current theories are related to the Post Information Age on muggle society. Or perhaps one of our American counterparts have a few muggle contacts that can point me in the right direction."
"Roger that. I'll see you soon, Harry." And with that, the glowing humanoid turned as if to walk away, before winking out. Harry's patronus clasped it's hands behind it's back, then looked up into the blackest of skys, and at the blue sphere that hung in the distance. Finally, after some time, the light which had cast many crescent shadows across the grey cratered surface winked out.
"That's fascinating, Mr. Malfoy!" The reporter crossed her legs and straightened her black skirt while she leaned onto the the arm rest of her leather bound chair. She wore a well honed smile on her face that served to put her interviewees at ease. Her relaxed posture too was practiced, meant to make it feel as though they weren't broadcasting to millions of live viewers, but rather having an intimate conversation in Draco's study- an impressive recreation considering it was built by hand and not conjured. "And is it true that you yourself don't actually own an mPhone? Are you not concerned as to how that might look for your brand, that the genius behind it doesn't actually use it?"
Draco chuckled, and put on a face of a subtle bashfulness, though inside he mocked the woman who thought he didn't catch the accusation. "Ms. Johnson, the mPhone is first and foremost a tool for communication. At my level," he paused for a moment, letting the condescension linger, "let's just say I have to be very careful as to how accessible I am. Something my father taught me."
Ms. Johnson maintained eye contact for as long as she could, her head bobbing slightly. Then made a show of looking down at the notepad resting on the edge of her skirt, while her gaze seemed as though to look behind her. Looking up, she could see behind Draco her producer, who held up two fingers and mouthing something inaudibly. She looked back at the Tech Giant, "One final question, Mr. Malfoy." Draco nodded, then his eyes widened ever so slightly, his lips forming a wry smile. "You'll forgive me if I go off script just a bit."
"By all means," Draco replied, his hand beckoning her to continue, while internally he scrambled to find a response. How had she hidden that question from his legilemency this entire time- then he realized, and brushed aside his anger to focus on the problem at hand.
"How do you respond to a video that went viral just moments ago appearing to show you using a wand to allegedly fill a glass of water from nothing?" The woman smiled mercilessly, knowing the cameras would be focused completely on Malfoy.
Draco smiled, then laughed. "Ah yes," he replied joyfully, "well as you know, it's becoming more and more difficult to be the most eccentric billionaire out there these days. Some of us have to resort to more," Draco paused, giving the illusion of searching for the right word, "creative pranks." Then he locked eyes with the reporter that sat across from him, who suddenly felt as though something was preventing her from looking away- forcefully.
Suddenly, Ms. Johnson couldn't contain herself, she tried desperately to push away the urge to laugh, to avert her eyes, to do anything but start giggling, but she couldn't. Draco to began to laugh loudly, though it sounded a bit hollow to her ears. Her eyes began to water, and she rocked back and forth in what looked to be the beginnings of hysteria. Her abdomen tightened- unbearably so, and she could feel that she was not getting enough air, her lungs unable to expand for long enough before her body tightened and expelled what little air she could get. Gasping, she made the sign to cut camera, and then Draco could hear a faint hissing sound of someone shouting very loudly, coming from the hidden ear peace.
"What the hell are you doing Debra! Get a hold of yourself," the voice screamed in here ear. But then, she heard another voice, Draco's voice, seemingly deeper inside her head than any ear piece could reach, but through her blurred vision, she could only see him laughing.
"Do not ever test me like this again, Ms. Johnson. I shall clean up this mess you've set into motion, with your cooperation of course, and then, I will deal with you. Test me again, I'll simply skip the first part."
Slowly, the uncontrollable forced laughter began subside. She could feel her muscles loosen, and lungs receiving air once more. Her hand, still shaking, wipped the tears from her eyes. "Quite-" she breathed heavily, "Mr. Malfoy," She said wearily, trying desperately to regain control in front of the camera. "Thank you- for your time." She made the cut sign frantically once more, and when the red light behind Draco turned to green, she leapt from her chair and walked briskly off stage. Her producer stepped forward to intercept her, his eye's glaring, his mouth opening to yell something, but she pushed him hard out of her way, causing the heel of her shoe to snap. She didn't halt her escape in the slightest. Simply kicked off the damaged shoe and picked up the pace, slamming the door to the dressing room hard behind her.
Draco rose from his chair, smoothly and smiling broadly. He nodded first to the producer, then made his way off stage towards the fire exit where two men stood guarding the door, wearing crisp black suites and glasses much to dark for the dimly lit studio. As he passed through the door, the two men folded one by one behind him. The producer, mouth still hung open, looked around at the empty set, and lifted his arms and let them drop loudly against his sides in confusion.
Meanwhile, roughly 100 million kilometers away, a satellite completed it's final revolution around a very large rock as it hurtled through space. As it's final program completed, final images sent back to Earth, it diverted it's glass eye away from the giant astroid and began the two year journey to its next home. Unbeknownst to that scrutinizing eye, a tiny flake of superfluous metallic coating began to take the form of a black metallic sphere. Then, slowly the sphere now detached from it's host, grew in mass and became heavy enough to fall silently back down to that empty rock its host had spent so many weeks meticulously studying. Studies that found absolutely no strange anomalies related to black magically transfigured spheres.
Hogwarts hadn't changed much (as far as living castles that rarely stayed the same shape or configuration are concerned) since Hermione had graduated- but her perspective had shifted considerably. As she gracefully slipped around the last corner of the corridor on the way to the Potions classroom, she did a mental check of the days topics and the assignments from last week. With a twitch of her hand, the door to the class room swung open, and her students quickly hustled back to their desks. Conversation died down abruptly as she gracefully passed the rows of students franticly pulling out their potions text books.
"Apologies for my tardiness, children. Please open your books to page 212. Ms. Carter, can you tell me what this potion ought to do, given its ingredients?"
"Um," the first year Ravenclaw read through the list of ingredients quickly, finally coming to the magical ingredient: pureed roe of a babel fish. "It enables the user to translate any language into their native tongue?"
"Very close Ms. Carter, but not quite. Would anyone like to suggest an alternative?" Professor Hermione scanned the class from behind the teachers podium. It still felt strange to her, the class room from the angle. Constance's hand shot up eagerly, bringing a smile to Hermione face. She nodded, but ultimately called out a different name, when no other hands appeared. "Edward? Any thoughts?"
Edward shifted his gaze away from something that wasn't quite his textbook to look at the potions master, then looked back down at the ingredient list.
"Uh," he paused for a moment, willing his mind to comeback to reality. Constance's hand reached further into the air. "It enables you to speak in the native tongue of whoever you're speaking too?" Constance lowered her hand and sighed.
"Well done Mr. Snow. One point for Slytherin. Today class, we'll pickup from where we left off on Friday. Now I know I promised we'd begin brewing simple potions today, but I.." The potions masters voice slowly melted away into background noise as Edwards gaze once again shifted back to not quite his textbook. A paper thin, translucent screen hung in the air just above the ingredient list, enchanted to keep it's angle perfectly parallel to any professors gaze so that only the smallest edge of the perfectly clear device would be exposed, but not seen, to the professor.
On the left side of the screen, messages poured in from the top, pushing the older messages down so fast he couldn't read half of them. The result of his most recent project, posted completely anonymously just an hour ago. As with any project, every precaution had been taken to insure it didn't trace back to him. In fact, he'd taken further measures on this one in particular, setting up multiple false trails that led directly to plausible scapegoats (no one in Hogwarts, of course. That was too close to home even for Edward.). When he saw the project go live during herbology class that morning, he'd only had one worry in his mind: that his greatest achievement would be something he did at 11 years old, and no one would even know it was him.
On the right side of the enchanted screen, a chat window with a single message beckoned his reply, but he couldn't stop shaking long enough to respond.
Unknown: You've been a sly little Slytherin, Edward Snow.*
Unknown: You found something you shouldn't have, and then you shared it with the world...
Unknown: I'm very much looking forward to our meeting.