FicWad

Harry struggled helplessly in Bourne’s grip. He had received some basic self-defence training but it was useless against a man like this. His wand was in his pocket. He would have to talk himself out.

“My name is Harry Potter, I’m from the British Ministry of Magic. I’m I wizard. I need to talk to you.”

“A wizard! So, I suppose you flew here on a broomstick?” Bourne snorted contemptuously.

“I did, actually, at least part of the way,” Harry replied calmly.

Jason couldn’t decide whether he was dealing with a lunatic or part of some bizarre scheme by Dr. Hirsch to mess up his mind. However, the boy seemed harmless and was not armed. He let him go.

“Thank you, can we go in?” Harry asked.

“After you.”

Harry entered the cabin. It was a single room with a table in the centre and beds along the side. A hurricane lamp glowed on the table.

“Just a minute, I’m cold,” Harry said. He took out his wand and conjured a fire in the fireplace.

Bourne’s conscious mind was raced to make sense of what he had seen. The grate had been empty. He had searched the cabin when he arrived and there had definitely been no sign of any sort of electronic device that could project an illusion of a fire. Besides, this fire was definitely real. His primal instinct took over and told him to get the stick.

This time Harry was ready. His wand was safely put away and he easily sidestepped Bourne's lunge. They eyed each other warily and Harry slowly moved until the table was between them.

“Would you like something to eat?” Harry asked politely.

“Sure, why don’t you just get out your magic wand and conjure us a feast,” Bourne said, trying to display some confidence that he certainly did not feel.

“Well, I can’t. You see, food is one of the five exceptions to .... Never mind, have this.”

Harry pulled out a couple of apples and some beef jerky from his extensible wallet. Ever since those weeks of near starvation while hunting horocruxes, he had always carried a cache of food. After a few bites from the apple, he took out the dossier and began to read.

“Your real name is Edmund David Bones. You are the youngest child of Edgar and Ethel Bones. Your father was an Auror, that's a wizard secret agent, and one of the best. Then he and your mother and your brother and sister were murdered by dark wizards.”

“What about me?”

“Your body was never found. Eventually the American Department of Magic found that you had been adopted by a Muggle couple named Webb. The Ministry of Magic checked you out and found that you were being well looked after so they decided to leave well enough alone. It was agreed that when you turned eleven you would be told about your past and given the choice of going to Hogwarts or the Salem Institute. Those are schools for wizards.”

“So why didn’t I go to one of those schools?”

“We don’t know. You never responded to either letter and just dropped out of sight. You had an aunt who was quite high up in the Ministry and she kept your file open but there were no leads. Then a few months ago the Muggle Prime Minister contacted our Minister of Magic and told him about an incident at the Waterloo Station where a journalist was killed. He agreed to share some top secret files. The unspeakables went through them and decided that the rogue American agent Jason Bourne and lost wizard Edmund Bones were one and the same.

“What?”

“Well, an unspeakable works for the Department of Mysteries. We call them that because their work is so secret no one even speaks of it. Anyway, the unspeakables looked all of the incidents involving Jason Bourne and realized that he had been doing wandless, spontaneous magic. They magically aged an old photograph of Edmund Bones and it matched your picture. Then everything started to make sense”.

Absolutely nothing was making sense to Jason. "What are you talking about?" he snapped.

“You see, wizard children do magic spontaneously when they’re angry or frightened," Harry continued, calmly. "It’s a protection mechanism. If you drop a wizard child out of the window, he’ll bounce back up again. They don’t mean to do anything, it just happens. Spontaneous magic starts to fade at ten, when you start school, and by the time you reach fourteen or fifteen it's gone. After that the only way you can do magic is by casting proper spells with a wand.”

“But you say that I can do magic without a wand?”

“We’re not exactly sure how. We think that it has something to do with your training. Not a lot of wizards go through Muggle military training. Your were put through very intense but highly controlled stress. You were also completely unaware of your magical ability. Your body responded by tapping into its inner magic. You learned to draw on it in ways that no adult wizard can and it enabled you to do things no Muggle can.”

Bourne was getting impatient. "Stop talking nonsense," he said. "I'm not a wizard and I don't do magic. Magic is for kid's fantasy stories. This is real life."

"In real life, who can do the things you've done?" Harry snapped back. "You walk away from major car crashes without a scratch. You run for miles on a broken ankle and be good as new the next day."

"That's just training. I'm fit and I look after myself."

"Other men had the same training as you and you've beaten them all. You're wanted in fifteen countries on charges ranging from dangerous driving to murder and yet you can wander around the world at will. Locked doors are never a problem for you."

"I was trained to pick locks!" Bourne shouted.

"But you never have to when you really need to get away. Doors just open to your touch. The only places where Muggles do the kinds of things you can do are Hollywood action movies."

Something in Bourne’s fragmented memories began to make sense. He remembered a happy childhood with loving parents. He had been good and school and good at sports. Then his parents died and his world fell apart. The Marine Corps became his new family. He rose quickly to the rank of Captain but he always felt that he was missing something, that there was some inner power that he had not tapped. In Treadstone, he thought he had found the outlet for that power.

"Could I do some magic right now?" Bourne asked.

"Probably, but you'd need a wand," Harry replied. He thought for a moment and decided to take the risk. He took out his wand and handed it to Bourne.

"This is the first spell we learn at school. Just hold the wand like this and say Wingardium Leviosa."

"Wingardium Leviosa."

Nothing happened.

"Try again."

"Wingardium Leviosa.."

After two or three tries, the apple core on the table floated into the air. Bourne stared, hardly believing what he saw.

"Now, to let it down you say Finite Incantem. You can use those words to cancel almost any spell."

"Finite Incantem."

The apple core fell to the tabletop. Harry quickly took back his wand and moved out of reach.

"So it seems I’m a wizard. What do you want with me?" Bourne asked.

“Two things. First, I was told to neutralize you.”

Bourne lunged but Harry held him back with an Impedimenta jinx and kept his wand at the ready.

“Neutralize!” Bourne shouted. “You’re all alike. Why don’t you have the guts to say what you mean?.”

“Say what?”

“Murder, assassinate, kill.”

“I don’t intend to kill you. I simply need to block your magic until you learn to control it properly.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“I think I’ve already done it. You see, the key to your power is that it depends your subconscious mind. I don’t really understand it, but it sort of means that you can do magic without knowing it because you don’t know you can do magic. Now that you know you can do magic, you will start to think about it and you won’t be able to do it without a wand and proper training.”

Bourne's mind was reeling. He needed to get out. He grabbed his bag and headed for the door.

“You can go if you want,” Harry said.. “But be careful, it’s going to be a different world for you now.”

Bourne headed down the road. His reason was overwhelmed. He was running on pure instinct and his instinct told him to run. Then he slipped on a patch of ice and twisted his ankle. No matter, this had happened many times before. He would just fight the pain and keep moving. Only this time the pain kept getting worse. He willed himself forward but after a few more yards he realized that if he kept going he would be seriously injured. Finally, he stopped and sat down on a log. Harry had followed him.

"I told you to be careful," Harry said.

"I don't understand, this has never happened before."

"Your self-healing magic has been blocked. It's still there but it needs a potion or spell to trigger it. Here, let me."

Harry knelt down and checked the ankle. He took out a potion and applied a few drops. The pain cleared up instantly.

Then there was a loud pop. Harry turned and saw a strange man who bore an uncanny resemblance to his least favourite teacher, the late Severus Snape. The stranger pointed his wand at Harry and said “Petrificatus Totalus.”

“So this is the famous Mr. Potter. It seems that you are as much of a nuisance as my late cousin always claimed,” the strange wizard said. The accent was New England but the tone was pure Snape. “You have nearly ruined thirty years of careful work. I suppose I shall have to wipe Mr. Bourne’s memory and hope that undoes the damage.”

The stranger raised his wand again. Bourne lashed out. His mind might be totally overwhelmed but one thing remained clear. No one was ever going to take his memory again. The stranger doubled over in pain as Bourne’s kick landed just below his rib cage. Then Bourne grabbed the stranger’s wand arm and pulled down hard. One more blow to the head, and the stranger was out cold. Harry was standing with his eyes open but not moving, as though he were under some kind of spell. Bourne thought for a minute and then remembered. He picked up the stranger's wand and said, “Finite incantem.”

“Good work,” Harry said and gripped Bourne’s arm. “Now hold on tight. We’ve got to get out of here fast.”

Bourne felt a sudden crushing sensation and everything went black. Then, just as suddenly, he was standing on a mountain overlooking a city. A huge illuminated cross glowed above him.

“What happened?” he asked.

“That was Apparation. It’s a type of magical transportation. It takes some getting used to but its great when you have to get out in a hurry,” Harry replied.

“Where are we now.”

“Montreal, Canada, at the top of the mountain.”

“Why Montreal.”

“It seemed like the best choice. Apparation only works for about a radius of 500 miles and you have to have a mental picture of where you’re going. It’s also a good idea not to Apparate somewhere there are a lot of people around. I saw a picture of this place on a travel brochure on the bus, and it looked like a good place to land.”

Bourne's mind registered the fact that he was out of the United States and safe for the time being. Nothing else in Harry's explanation made sense. The kid talked far too much to make a good agent.

“The man who attacked us, who was he?

“I have no idea, but he wasn’t friendly.”

Bourne had to agree. But the face was not unfamiliar. Something about the strange wizard, something important, was locked in his memory.

They found the road and began to walk down the mountain. After a few minutes Bourne asked, “You said that you were here to do two things. What was the second.”

“To bring you home. You still have some family alive in England. I was at school with one of your cousins. She’s very nice. You had any aunt who was very high in the Ministry of Magic but she was killed a few years ago. The Bones family had some money and a house in Hogsmeade, that’s an all wizard village in Scotland. You can live there and be perfectly safe. Even the CIA couldn’t find you.”

Bourne contemplated the offer. He would have preferred someplace warmer but a house in a Scottish village was a more attractive option than a bullet in the back or a federal prison. But he still had business at home. He might have been born in England but America had made him what he was. He had questions he needed answers to and those answers were on this side of the Atlantic. Still, there was one thing that might make it worthwhile. He owed Nicky Parsons something.

“There’s a woman who might want to come with me. Could I take her?” Bourne asked.

“Is she a witch?” Harry replied.

“No. At least I don’t think so.”

“That would be difficult. Witches and wizards can marry Muggles but they have to live in the non-magical world. It’s hard for someone who can’t do magic to live in a place like Hogsmeade.”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“Fine, let’s find someplace to stay.”