FicWad

Jason was in the Leaky Cauldron finishing breakfast when Harry walked in. He had last seen him the previous evening, lying on a stretcher with a shattered leg. He looked again. It was definitely Harry. He was tired and worn but he was walking on his own legs without any signs of a limp.

“Good morning,” Harry said.

“You look like to had a rough night,” Jason replied.

“I did. The bone was so badly broken that the healer had to vanish it and grow a new one with Skele-Gro potion.”

“That sounds nasty.”

“You get used to it. I had to have the bones in my arm re-grown after a Quidditch accident when I was twelve.”

Harry to Jason took see the Minister of Magic. Kingsley Shacklebolt had trained as an Auror under Edgar Bones and he was delighted to meet Jason. For half and hour he told him stories about his father’s exploits. Jason tried to seem suitably impressed. Then they got down to business. Jason was being offered asylum. The British Muggle authorities had agreed to leave him alone. There were no promises from the Americans but Jason would be perfectly safe as long as he stayed in magical areas. The Bones family house was rented out and he could live off the income. There was also a special fund for families of Death Eater victims he could apply to. He would be expected to remain in Britain and abide by wizard law.

In Washington, Pamela Landy scanned the incident file again, trying to make sense of it. The two pilots and two agents all told the same story. They had landed to deal with a mechanical problem. Bourne had asked to be allowed to go to the toilet. When he was out of his seat, he slipped his handcuffs and knocked all four of them cold. The hired killer told a different story. He had seen signs of a struggle through the windows of the plane. Bourne had been there along with a young man with glasses. The killer had fired and hit the young man in the leg. That was the last he remembered. The best interrogators she could find, were not able to get any of the men to change their stories. The most incredible fact was the one thing they all agreed on – Jason Bourne was alive and somewhere in the United States.

In another part of the CIA headquarters Septimus Brankovitch was also reviewing Jason’s file. On the CIA payroll he was merely an internal security analyst who had no business anywhere near this file. However, he was also a wizard and a special security officer for the American Department of Magic. He had two roles: to prevent the Muggle world from breaching the secrecy of the magical world and to prevent foreign wizards from interfering with American affairs. He seemed older than his twenty five years, and in a way he was since he had used a Time Turner to allow him to study both magic and computer science. The Bourne / Bones file had always troubled him. One of his predecessors had slipped badly. Or perhaps, and this was more disturbing, there had been no slips. In any case, Bourne was safely in London. Maybe the Brits would keep him out of trouble.

In London, Jason was trying to settle in. Kingsley Shacklebolt had presented him with his father`s old wand but it didn’t suit. Harry took him to Ollivander`s and he was fitted with a new one. The Ministry provided him with a tutor who introduced him to wizard customs and taught him some basic spells. He met his cousin Susan and her family, and was invited to spend Christmas with them. He had not had a real Christmas since his adoptive parents had died. It was everything that a Christmas should be with lots of food, gifts, warm fires and family, and yet he felt completely flat and dull. He was a stranger, connected to these people by nothing but blood.

Early in the new year he moved to Hogsmeade. The social life of wizard London was starting to wear on him. Jason had discovered that he was a pure blood wizard and that a pure blood with no Death Eater connections was considered a great catch on the marriage market. A witch named Mrs. Parkinson had been especially persistent in trying to match him up with her daughter Pansy.

He rented a cottage and began a punishing training routine. Every morning, whatever the weather, he did his run before breakfast. The afternoon was for weight training and in the evenings he studied magic. His tutor still visited, but he was starting to seem more like a probation officer. Jason had mastered the basic spells he needed to live in a magical household. Now his tutor was encouraging him to learn a trade. Jason was not ready for that, just yet.

The village had two pubs, one cosy and one seedy. Jason avoided them both. He did not like the taste of Butterbeer and he had no intention of drowning himself in a bottle of Fire Whiskey. Then, one evening Jason was passing the rough looking pub. It was closed but he heard voices from inside, young voices. So, the old goat who ran the place was serving drinks to minors after closing?

He looked through a crack in the shutters and saw that the tables had been cleared away and a group of students were in the centre of the room. They seemed to be practising some sort of duelling . Jason saw the flash of a stunning spell as it bounced off a shield charm. He knocked on the door. The peephole opened and he heard a young voice say, "Who is it?"

"It's Mr. Bones. Shall I let him in?" another voice replied.

A small girl opened the door. An older boy and the bar keeper greeted him. There were half a dozen other teenagers in the room. Some were in jeans and sweaters while others wore black robes.

"Hello, Mr. Bones," the boy said. "My name is Dennis Creevy. This is Dumbledore's Army. It's a sort of self-defence training club for students at Hogwarts. Mr. Dumbledore lets us use this place once a week."

"It's named after my late brother," the old barkeeper explained. "Harry Potter started it early in the last war and Dennis here wanted to keep it going."

"We'd be really grateful if you didn't say anything about this. It's not illegal to learn these spells but we really shouldn't be out of school at this hour."

Jason thought for a moment and said, "All right, but on one condition. I want to join."

Harry returned to the United States to look for leads on the horocrux. To locate it, he would have to find out which murder had been used to create it. That was a problem. The Ministry of Magic dossier had only the sketchiest outline of Jason’s career and Jason himself refused to talk about it. That left the CIA files.

It was late evening and Harry was in Langley, Virginia walking through the halls of the CIA headquarters. Compared to breaking into Gringotts, penetrating the most secure building in the Muggle world was laughably easy. His invisibility cloak shielded him from the closed circuit cameras. The high security doors yielded to simple unlocking charms.

The building security office monitors showed doors opening and closing for no reason. The officer in charge assumed it was an electrical malfunction and made a note for service to check it out in the morning. One alert staffer noticed that the door openings were not random. There was a wizard in the building and he was heading for the records centre.

Harry reached the record centre and saw that he had a problem There were hundreds of shelves, each a hundred feet long and twenty feet high. The files were indexed only by code number. He assumed that there was a computer record somewhere that would find what he was looking for, but he had no way to get at it. His knowledge of computers was limited to a few stolen gaming sessions on Dudley’s machine. He would have to leave and get help. It would take some time, but the hardest part was done. Now that he had found the room, he could Apparate back any time. He formed a picture of his hotel room and concentrated. He felt the crushing sensation of Disapparation and then reappeared exactly where he had started. The room had an Anti-Apparation jinx on it. He would have to return the way he had come.

Harry put on his cloak and headed for the door. The guard, still under the influence of a Confundus charm, did not notice anything. Three figures were in the hallway. They wore robes and carried wands.

“This is the Magical Bureau of Investigation. Take off the cloak very slowly and put up your hands.”

In Hogsmeade, Jason's magic lessons were progressing well. The first few sessions with Dumbledore's Army had been constant humiliation. The clumsiest fourteen year old could stun him without difficulty. He arranged for some private tutoring from Aberforth Dumbledore and improved quickly. He also began to teach the students some unarmed combat and physical training.

He also kept up his official magic studies. His tutor arranged for him to take Apparation lessons and passed the test easily.

By Easter, he could hold his own with most of the students in a duel. He was no match for Dennis Creevy, though. The boy used his wand with exceptional speed and skill. More, he reminded Jason of the child soldiers he had encountered in Africa. The boy fought with a ferocity of someone who had faced real combat.

Jason was almost reconciled to a life in the magical world. The children in Dumbledore's Army might be breaking school rules but they were unfailingly polite. They always called him Mr. Bones or sir, even when they left him sprawled on the floor. He could almost imagine settling down with Nicky and raising a brood of little witches and wizards. He knew it was not to be, at least not yet. He remembered the look on Harry’s face in the bar in Montreal. Harry became evasive whenever Jason asked him about it. There was some unknown horror that Jason would have to face.

Harry was back in London catching up on paperwork. The Americans had let him go with nothing more than a polite warning. Better, there had been shift in the balance of power in the Department of Magic. The Death Eater sympathizers were out. Kingsley Shacklebolt decided to share Harry’s information with the Americans and they agreed to cooperate fully. Tiberius Prince’s wand was seized and examined. The tests confirmed that it had cast the suspicious spell but Prince denied having made a horocrux or even knowing what one was.

Hermione came into Harry`s cubicle with a glum look on her face said, “I just got some bad news. The Prince brothers are going to be questioned under Veritaserum.”

“Why is that bad?” Harry asked.

“Under American wizard law, no one can be given Veritaserum without his consent. If they agreed to it they must have nothing to hide.”

“Or they’ve figured out a way to hide it.”

“You can’t hide things when you’re under Veritaserum. Didn’t Snape once tell you that Voldemort himself couldn’t resist it?”

As Herminone predicted, the results were a disaster. Both Tiberius and Gaius continued to deny that they had ever made or attempted to make a Horocrux.. The Americans were furious. The Princes were a wealthy and influential family. There was no official reprimand but Harry and Hermione both noticed that they were receiving more than their share of boring and time consuming assignments. Ron and George were having unusual trouble with their import and export permits.

Harry and Herminone met in the Ministry of Magic cafeteria to assess the situation.

“They must be lying,” Harry said.

“Harry, for the last time, you simply cannot lie under Veritaserum,” Hermione insisted.

“There are ways. They could have used the Fidelius Charm. They could have had someone modify their memories. Maybe they didn’t know what the thing they were making was called.”

“You have no proof. The investigation is over. There’s nothing more you can do.”

“But we have to. We have to help Jason.”

"Let it go, Harry. Jason chose to become what he is. No one forced him to commit all those murders."

"You don't know him, Hermione. He didn't set out to be evil. He thought he was going to serve his country, but he was misled and used. He's felt terrible remorse but unless we get the horocrux, his soul can never be whole and he can never be free. Whoever has the horocrux will always have a piece of him."