Title: Stalking Death

Author: Knife Hand

Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated

Spoilers: None

Rating: R

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Predator. I would buy them but I am broke.

Summary: One Hundred five year old children, all around the world, disappear. It is the most mysterious Case of Amelia Bones' Career. Six years later, three of the reappear, and Amelia almost wishes they hadn't because the Wizarding World will never be the same again.


October 13th, 1985,

Amelia Bones sat at her desk, having to fill in for her boss as acting head of the Underage Wizarding division of the Auror department. She looked over the stack of reports outlining four cases of five year old witches and wizards who disappeared. The missing children included the Weasley's youngest boy Ron and the Longbottom boy.

"Hey Bones." A Wizard assigned to the division said, popping his head into her temporary office.

"Yeah, what is it Marcus?" she replied.

"We got some reports in from Scotland Yard and Interpol you might want to take a look at. Also some from the Magical Law enforcement around the world."

"Put them on the table. I'll get to them in the minute." She replied.

Six hours latter she was deeply troubled. All over the world almost one hundred children aged five and six had disappeared, given the differences in time zones, at the exact same time, and not a single person, magically or muggle, had seen anything even though several of the abductions had happened in crowded public places.

Over the next eight months every law enforcement agency would follow up leads and then eventually let the cases of the missing children go cold. But four names would be forever burned into Amelia's memory. Ronald Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Kathryn Creevey and Jenny Macintyre.

July 3rd, 1991

"An Owl just delivered this for you, Director Bones." Her secretary said. "It's from Hogwarts."

"Thank you." Amelia said.

She opened the long scroll and set about the long task of examining the names on the list. Every new first year who had confirmed their enrolment.


Six years had passed since the mass kidnapping and the names still burned bright on her mind. Now the children would be eleven, the same age as her niece Susan.

Two hours later she was stunned. Neville Longbottom was on the list, and one other name that had nagged at her, so she had gone through all the names and had found a match. Hermione Granger.

"Phillip. Get me Dumbledore on the floo." She called out. "I need to see him about two of his new students."

As she marched out of her office, the list of names from the original investigation sat on her desk. Ninety-nine children reported missing around the world on the one day. One child taken but not reported.


Human beings, no matter what venire of civilisation they had acquired, are still nothing more than social animals, and all social animals instinctively know when really dangerous predators are around, be they internal to the group or external. It is evidenced whenever there is a crowd, the way the tide of humanity parts to allow these individuals to pass, be they jocks in a high school or police in a raid. In the modern age, most of those perceived as truly dangerous have some outward sign of their status, be it a football jacket, a badge or an assault rifle.

The rare few have no outward sign, just that instinctive reaction in the primitive portion of the brain that tells everyone around them to be careful. This primitive instinct is why, on the First of September, in the middle of a crowded Kings Cross station, three eleven year old children strode in their own little space as they made their way to platform 9 ¾.

All three were dressed in black slacks, black combat boots, black tank tops and heavy, almost floor length, black leather jackets with slightly loose sleaves, carrying large duffle bags that looked too heavy for the youngsters to be able to lift, let alone carry any distance. The two boys had short, dark hair, while the girl had longer light brown hair held back in a ponytail.

Perhaps it was the way they held themselves, shoulders naturally set back, their backs straight, heads held high. Or maybe it was the way they moved, a smooth and flowing gait and manoeuvring their heavy bags with ease. But for most it was their eyes. Cold, clear and focused; never resting on one place for more than a moment.

One by one they walked through the barrier to the platform with no hesitation. The platform was fairly busy except for one island of calm that was centred around a middle aged woman with dark hair in a severe bun and a monocle. On one side of her was a large, solid black man and the other was an older Witch in a green dress with, of all things, a vulture decorating her hat. When woman with the monocle spotted them, a look of recognition flashed across her face and she made her way towards them with the other two following. The three recognised the authority of the Witch with the monocle, so they stood to attention, dropping their duffle's by their side and thumped their fists over their hearts.

"23, 45 and 72 reporting." The boy with green eyes said.

"Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom, I presume. And what is your name?" The Witch replied.

"Harry Potter, Ma'am." Harry replied.

"Oh my. The monocle Witch said. "My name is Amelia Bones. Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. My companions are Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt and Dame Augusta Longbottom, your Grandmother Neville."

Neville did a half bow to his Grandmother.

"Is there a problem, Ma'am?" Hermione asked.

"Miss Granger, you and Mister Longbottom were reported kidnapped six years ago, along with over ninety-five others. Can you tell me where you have been and what happened to you?" Amelia asked.

"Makes you wonder how they knew it would be us." Neville said.

Hermione bent down and pulled a bundle out and handed it over to Amelia.

"We were far away." Hermione replied in a low voice, handing the bundle over to Amelia.

Amelia took the bundle and opened it up to find a mass of small metal disks connected together by a leather cord. Amelia looked at one which had 'Peter Johanus' on one side and '38' on the other, the next one said 'Ronald Weasley' and '44'.

"Are these…?" Amelia asked, stunned.

"ID's of the dead. Eighty-nine in total." Harry said.

"How?" Augusta Longbottom asked.

"Five suicides, seventy-four in training accidents and ten killed during Hunts." Harry recited.

"And the other eight?" Kingsley asked.

"Returned to earth. In the US and China." Neville replied. "Now we need to board or we will miss the train."

"May I ask who took you?" Amelia tried one last time.

"They are several hundred thousand Light Years outside you Jurisdiction, Director Bones." Harry said and then made a swift hand motion.

In unison, the three picked up their duffle's and boarded the train.


The trio managed to find an empty compartment on the train and claimed it for themselves, locking the compartment door and drawing the blinds. Once the compartment was secure, they all took their long jackets off. What the jackets revealed was enough to give even hardened soldiers the chills, assuming they realised what they were actually seeing. All three had seven lines of a strange script tattooed into the top outside of their left bicep and around fifteen shorter lines on the outside of the right bicep. The script was made up of a series of short dashes, very similar to the way characters are displayed on an electronic typewriter, with all of the dashes being either vertical, horizontal or at a 45 degree angle, but none of the characters even remotely resembled any earth language. They were are history of where they had been and what they had done.

"What's the play, 72?" Neville asked.

"Let's see the lay of the land for the moment." Harry replied. "Keep your guard up and don't start anything."

"Got it, boss." Neville replied.

Hermione cocked her head at Harry. Harry had know her long enough to know that meant she had a question, but unlike Neville she would not ask without his say so. That had been beaten into her very early.

"What is it 23?" Harry asked.

"Armament?" Hermione asked her voice gravelly.

She had sustained a wound to her vocal chords that their trainers had not been able to fully repair, even though there was no visible scar. She was still as inquisitive and hungry for knowledge as the day Harry had first met her, but with the need to ask constant questions trained out of her, and the wound to her throat that made speech a bit of a chore, she was not as verbally bossy or overbearing as she once had been. Of course she had developed both a sign language and a coded language of clicks for use both when speech was to straining on her throat and in the field on Hunts. Both languages now had vocabularies in the tens of thousands of 'words'.

"Concealed." Harry replied. "Daggers, Wrist Blades. Your Combistick, 23. No Plasma Casters or Armour. And from now on, use names not designations."

Hermione and Neville nodded at the order. Their Pack had always used names when in the privacy of their bunk room, but all the… recruits, had been required to use their designation in public. When they had been allocated into Packs on their 'arrival', most Packs had contained ten to twelve 'recruits'. Three Packs, including theirs, were different, having smaller numbers. Their pack was the largest of these with six, the other two having five.

72, Harry Potter. 23, Hermione Granger. 45, Neville Longbottom. 44, Ronald Weasley. 19, Kathryn Creevey. 66, Jenny Macintyre. They all had what had been dubbed 'The Edge', and perhaps that was why they had been made a Pack. Sometimes, things happened around them that could make the un-survivable, survivable. But only sometimes, and the problem with having 'The Edge' was more was expected of them. Still, half their Pack had survived, and only one of them had died in training accidents, the other two had died on Hunts.

The Packs of four in the US and China were reconstituted, made up of the sole survivors of their original Packs, none of whom had 'The Edge'. The training attrition rate was high even for their Trainer's own species, but nowhere near the 9 in 10 of the human recruits. Apparently it had been an experiment, as some Yautja who had hunted on Earth had claimed that Humans could be formidable Hunters while others thought of them as 'soft meat'. The detractors had claimed that none of the humans would last more than six months, so technically it was a win for the supporters of the experiment, but it was not likely to be repeated anytime in the next few centuries, so the survivors had been retuned to Earth to fend for themselves.


Amelia Bones sat at her desk in the DMLE staring down at the horrifying metal disks piled on the desk, held together by a single leather cord. Every disk a child lost; a family who had spent six years not knowing and now would have to grieve. A letter she would have to write to the relevant law enforcement agency. Another child that could so easily have been her dear Niece Susan. She now also knew the names of the survivors, but somehow that seemed worse. After meeting the three at the station she knew they could not really be called children anymore. Something had been lost, something precious that had been taken from them that they could never get back.

A chill ran down her back as she remembered how they had introduced themselves, not by name but as numbers. Her eyes flicked across to a bottle of Fire Whisky that was almost begging her to drink it and, for a while at least, free herself from the horror of the knowledge she now possessed. Clamping down on that temptation, she began the work of sorting through the disks and making the necessary notifications.

TBC…