An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Fifty-Four

I just stared at the readings for another few minutes, trying to think. What could this mean? This person had muggle technology doing something to them, which pretty much ruled out any of the wizards I'd ever met. But what was the technology doing? And what on Earth did this person hope to gain from it?

I sighed in frustration and whipped off the glasses. I had absolutely no answers, and there was no way for me to change that without giving myself time to think things through.

Unfortunately, time was the one thing I didn't have.

"Okay, Ana, let me know if you get anything else. Anything new from the footage and readings, or if we finally get some results on that blood sample."

"Will do."

"Thank you. In the mean time, go back through the Hogwarts books we scanned and see if you can find anything referencing muggle technology like this implant. I feel like that would've stood out on the first read through, but it can't hurt to double check."

I sighed and leaned back on my bed to where I was before, in the middle of a million things I had to do with a rough schedule in front of me. As much as I wanted to devote all my time and energy to finally solving this stupid mystery, I couldn't. I had other things that needed to get done. I'd just have to trust Ana and my subconscious to work on the problem while I was tearing my hair out over OWLS and AP tests.

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The next week of my life was basically hell. I had a million homework assignments piling up, and six different AP tests on the horizon. It was killing me to be ignoring a lead on the storm mystery, but I just didn't have the time or energy to devote to it. All my focus was going towards memorizing all the muggle stuff I could while still scraping by in all my magical classes.

I'd just have to trust Ana to take care of the investigation efforts for me.

After the longest week of studying in my entire life, it was time for the AP tests to start. Thank God for the time difference between England and New York, or else I would've had no way to take any of my tests. As it was, only the morning tests overlapped with my Hogwarts classes (8:00am in New York was 2:00pm in London). Fortunately for me, I got insanely lucky and the only morning AP tests I had were on Monday and Tuesday. Monday I had double History of Magic, where Professor Binns wouldn't notice if I was gone or tap dancing on the desk. And Tuesday I had Flitwick for double Charms, but as long as I didn't fall behind he didn't mind me missing class once I explained the reason.

My real challenge came after the AP tests. If I thought it was hard to summon the focus required to make a sling portal before, it turned out to be a million times harder to do after a three hour exam. Every time I got back to Hogwarts after my tests I just collapsed on the couch in front of the fire in Gryffindor Common Room and didn't move, except to go upstairs to bed.

Somehow, I managed to survive testing season. After those two weeks were over, basically all my muggle classes stopped assigning work. With that and Quidditch off my plate, maybe I could finally put some thought into solving my mystery.

After sleeping pretty much all day on Saturday, I left my dorm early on Sunday to head to the library. I was going to sit down and focus on finding a way to explain that implant, and I wasn't going to stop until I succeeded.

At least, that was my plan. My plans quickly changed, however, when I was stopped in the middle of the hallway by a human blockade of all my friends.

"Alexa!" Cedric was at the head of the group, and he put both hands on my shoulders to stop me from continuing to the library. "We've hardly seen you for the past three weeks. We're staging an intervention."