(no spoilers, this is old enough I believe, but I still tried to avoid spoilers in the title)
In Harry Potter Methods of Rationality, Hermione dies. Harry seeks to revive her and as the first step, he transfigures her into something and also produces a decoy body to leave behind. Final form of Hermione was a toe-ring looking exactly like the portkey one. All of this was told/confirmed in ch 111:
Then Harry took off his left shoe, and his left sock, and took off the toe-ring that was Hermione Granger, the Transfigured shape identical to the toe-ring that had been given Harry as an emergency portkey.
And:
It was as Harry had seen before in the hospital's back room, the image burned into his brain during thirty long minutes of Transfiguration, the image he had reproduced during four even longer hours to Transfigure the decoy.
However, back in ch 94, during inspection at Dumbledore's office, Harry was wearing the true portkey ring: "It was verified that the magic radiating from the toe-ring was indeed the magic of a portkey, and not the magic of a Transfiguration. The rest of Harry was deemed clear."
So, where was Hermione's body at the time of inspection? I have three semi-plausible options:
- Transfigured in that ring holding the rock. Rock being different color is masking the fact ring is transfigured. However, this is incredibly risky especially after initial lies, so I don't think Harry would go for that. Besides, Harry fiddles in bed before going, presumably to reapply transfiguration or to leave the "Hermione ring" behind.
- Under invisibility cloak somewhere. More likely and hard/impossible to detect. This also explains why Harry is in a hurry to get back to dorm. However, Dumbledore knows that Harry has invisibility cloak and would presumably notice it missing from his collection of magic things and wonder where it is gone to.
- Time-turned Harry. After inspection, Harry looped back to before Flitwick's arrival, took the Hermione's body and kept it somewhere safe. Easy and quite safe, but why would Harry want to hurry back to his dorm? He will have enough time turns left no matter how long this all takes.
So, is there any hint where is the body during inspection or is this a mystery we can't solve?
(If this is a problem that is possible to solve, please just give me a hint about what did I miss. I tried going with "Harry never outright lies except for Azkaban" but I didn't see any scenario that would have Harry always speak the misleading truth during questioning.)