Harry Potter and the Ties that Bind

Chapter 15

Harry Potter sat on the ground in his compartment.

It hadn't taken much to slip onto the Hogwarts Express unnoticed. While he'd been tempted to apparate to Hogwarts and sneak in through one of the passages, Harry wasn't certain enough in his ability to remain undetected to risk it. Humans, even magical ones, he could easily slip past. Dementors, however, were not something that he had experience with. Yes, it was better to be safe than sorry in this instance.

Scattered across his compartment were several notebooks, all of them containing advanced notes on alchemy. While he didn't necessarily need the notes, as everything he learned was imprinted within his memories, he found that having notes helped him compare circles. It was a way of alleviating the mental stress that came from calling up two or more informational references, thus allowing him to get work done faster.

The current circles were all on the creation of a homunculus--a true homunculus and not those defective versions that potions and spells created. Each transmutation circle was highly advanced, incredibly complex, and would require hours to properly draw. The dynamics between the lines that transmitted power and the symbols that contained power were far beyond the sum of their individual components. Most people would have never been able to understand these notes, not even many a would-be alchemist. Flamel would, but that man was scary good at alchemy.

This circle would offer more stability to the homunculus, but it's downside is that it would require a piece of my soul to create. Meanwhile, the one that invokes the five elements would only be capable of creating a homunculus that lasts for a few weeks, but it comes with less drawbacks and doesn't require a piece of my soul. The third one, which involves using the Three Essential Principles, would be the easiest to create in theory, but the most difficult to do right.

The problem with creating a homunculus was several fold. The first issue was the matter of gaining the material necessary to create a human body. The average 70 kg adult human body contained approximately 7 x 10^27 atoms and at least detectable traces of 60 chemical elements. About 29 of those elements were thought to play an active role in life and health in humans.

The relative amounts of each element varied by individual, mainly due to differences in the proportion of fat, muscle, and bone in their body. Persons with more fat had a higher proportion of carbon and a lower proportion of most other elements.

The adult human body averaged at 53% water. This varied substantially by age, sex, and adiposity. In a large sample of adults of all ages and both sexes, the figure for water fraction by weight was found to be 48 ±6% for females and 58 ±8% water for males.

Water is 11% hydrogen by mass but 67% hydrogen by atomic percent, and these numbers along with the complementary percent numbers for oxygen in water, are the largest contributors to overall mass and atomic composition figures. Because of water content, the human body contains more oxygen by mass than any other element, but more hydrogen by atom-fraction than any element.

After learning all of this, Harry had discovered that the average human being contained the elemental compounds of Oxygen (65%), Hydrogen (10%), Carbon (18%), Nitrogen (3%), Calcium (1.5%), Phosphorus (1%), Potassium (0.25%), Sulfur (0.25%), Sodium (0.15%), Chlorine (0.15%), Magnesium (0.05%), Iron (0.006%), Fluorine (0.0037%), Zinc (0.0032%), Copper (0.0001%), Iodine (0.000016%), Selenium (0.000019%), Chromium (0.0000024%), Manganese (0.000017%), Molybdenum (0.000013%), and Cobalt (0.0000021%).

Of course, this was just the elemental composition. There were still two components that Harry didn't know how to replicate: Magic and the soul.

Magic would be easier to supply. He could just use his own. The problem was that he didn't know if his magic would work to create what he wanted. Would the magic of one person transmute into someone else's magic? He wasn't sure. This was territory that had never been touched before. Nicolas Flamel might have the answers he sought, but Harry didn't want to ask him for help.