Chapter 51: The Really Amazing Long Distance Whatever-It-Was

Fallen Hawk: Crouching Tigress, is that you?

Crouching Tigress: Yup. Who's this? You sound far away.

Fallen Hawk: It's Fal. Are you in Hogsmeade now? I didn't see you up there earlier.

Crouching Tigress: Ugh, not you too. I've already had about a million owls on the subject of Hermione Weasley and the Really Amazing Long Distance Apparition That Doesn't Show Up on Apparition Records, and how I wasn't up here watching her every move when she did it.

Fallen Hawk: Haha... is that what they're calling it? A long distance Apparition?

Crouching Tigress: Is that what it looked like to you?

Fallen Hawk: I wish I'd had a better look. Unfortunately they were indoors and I had my hands full not getting trampled into the sidewalk when all the excitement broke out. I want to say I should have heard her if it was an Apparition, though, and I didn't. Unless it was a soft one maybe?

Crouching Tigress: A Really Amazing Long Distance Soft Apparition? You're killing me.

Fallen Hawk: Just calling it like I saw it. I actually have no idea what she did. It all happened pretty fast. So you really weren't there then?

Crouching Tigress: Hell no, I lost her sometime yesterday evening. She went back and forth between her parents' place and St. Mungo's at least four and a half times. I finally lost her around St. Mungo's and spent the rest of last night and all of this morning driving myself mad trying to figure out where she went... right up until the first Really Amazing Long Distance and possibly Soft Apparition related owl arrived.

Fallen Hawk: I hope you've found her again now?

Crouching Tigress: No. For all I know she's gone back to London. Meanwhile here I am stranded up here in the Hogsbackside of Hogsnowhere gathering evidence.

Fallen Hawk: But evidence of what exactly?

Crouching Tigress: Of course I have no idea. That would make it too easy. Is there something I can help you with, since you called?

Fallen Hawk: I'm afraid not. I'm just bored stiff. I've been watching Himself try to do Batwing paperwork for hours now.

Crouching Tigress: He really does do actual Batwing paperwork?

Fallen Hawk: Maybe not. It's hard to tell, because he may just be holding a quill and staring blankly at various papers while getting extremely drunk.

Crouching Tigress: Merlin save me, here is another damned owl from Nesbitt.

Fallen Hawk: What does he want?

Crouching Tigress: Nesbitt still, again, really very much would like to know the details of Weasley's amazing new "Apparition" powers in case they're really Apparitions, so that he can use it as evidence against Malfoy during his Apparition Restraint hearing tomorrow. On the assumption that Malfoy could have, must have, or at least theoretically might have taught Weasley how to do whatever-it-is. If it's really, you know, an Apparition.

Fallen Hawk: You don't sound like you think it's an Apparition.

Crouching Tigress: Apparating through St. Mungo's wards? Apparating from London to Hogsmeade? Apparating right in between Malfoy and her kids from nowhere nearby? All of this without showing up on the Apparition records?

Fallen Hawk: Well, when you put it that way. So what is it then?

Crouching Tigress: I guess that is what they brought me back from Egypt to figure out.

Fallen Hawk: You said you already eliminated Portkeys for certain. What about time travel?

Crouching Tigress: Definitely not time travel either. I spent several hours going through the summary reports on her records, and although there are numerous cases of her vanishing in one location and reappearing there later without having been anywhere in between, it's never in exactly the same spot or even in a spot where she'd have been carried by momentum, which probably eliminates forwards time travel. For backwards time travel you'd expect to see arrivals and disappearances in equal numbers and in the same locations but all out of order. Hers are pretty random. She arrived at Segal's Roost twice in a row, and then left twice in two days, for example. If the first leaving had been travel back in time to the second arrival, she would have to have been there twice in between there right? But the tracking on her broom registered her as being either there once, or not there at all. Never twice.

Fallen Hawk: Hmmm.

Crouching Tigress: I've also eliminated tampering with the broom sensor as a likely cause, or at least it would not explain very many of the disappearances. Many times she hasn't got the broom with her when it happens, even in the cases where she's outdoors and without witnesses. To say nothing of when she's traveling via recorded Apparition or Floo and somehow vanishes halfway through.

Fallen Hawk: This reminds me of that Mad Muggle episode. What was it called... do you remember the one I mean?

Crouching Tigress: Cult of the Inanimagus? I already thought of that. Alas, she doesn't reappear where gravity would have carried her had she free-fallen from her broom's last location. And anyway, what would she have been lurking as in the ice-cream shop? A ceiling tile? How would she have known to be waiting right there at that very spot?

Fallen Hawk: Oh no! Haha I didn't even think of that one! I meant Martin Miggs and the Sizeable Sneeze.

Crouching Tigress: Ah, so she'd be sneezing herself into an alternate dimension?

Fallen Hawk: Anything is possible!

Crouching Tigress: Supposedly she told her boss she might be suffering from "intermittent losses of planar adherence".

Fallen Hawk: You may be onto something. Snot is pretty slippery stuff. Also stretchy, so you could have an elastic effect that brings her back...

Crouching Tigress: Hang on a moment, I'm going to relay this bogey-bungee multi dimensional sneeze theory to Nesbitt just to piss him off.

Fallen Hawk: Haha, well, it sure was nice knowing you.

Crouching Tigress: I'm telling him it's from you! You were looking for some excitement, weren't you?

...

Crouching Tigress: Weren't you?

...

Crouching Tigress: Fal...?