A year after Voldemort's death Harry Potter and his friends are called to the United States by the Secretary of Magic who believes some of Voldemort's death eaters had fled to the United States to escape the British Aurors. The U.S. officials want Harry to tell them everything he knows about Voldemort's followers in the hope of preventing them from starting their pure blood policies over in the states.
Harry Potter and the Washington Wizards
Chapter I – How Can Muggles Fly?
For the first time in his life Harry Potter was nervous about flying. He admitted to himself he had been nervous for the first minute when he got on a broom at age eleven, but only for a minute. The thrill of flying on the broom took the nervousness away quickly. The same thing happened the first time he rode on a Hippogriff and on a Thestral; one moment of nervousness then exhilaration. In the last year he had learned to soar as smoke through the sky like his now dead enemy Voldemort had. However he flew before he was never nervous for long; but this was different.
Today he was flying in a muggle airplane controlled by a muggle pilot. All the other times he had felt that he was in control of his own destiny, and now his life depended on a machine he didn't understand and a person who couldn't even levitate a feather with the best magic wand in existence to help. He wanted to keep himself calm in front of Ginny, Hermione, and Ron. Ginny and Ron also looked a little unnerved but Hermione was perfectly calm. She had flown on planes with her muggle parents several times while vacationing and was quite used to it. He had to make them think he didn't have a care in the world; that nothing upset him. He closed his eyes as if to take a nap and began to think of how he could have gotten into this situation.
It was over a year since his duel with Voldemort and he was tired and ready for a rest. The new Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shackelbolt, had offered him and his best friend Ron Weasley positions as apprentice Aurors. It seemed like a dream. He had wanted to be an Auror for several years but didn't think he would make it. Only the best graduates were accepted as Aurors and the war had prevented him from finishing his last year of schooling at Hogwarts.
When the minister of magic said his practical knowledge of fighting was superior to what he would have learned in school and he could start as an Auror apprentice without returning the Hogwarts he was thrilled. What he didn't know at that time was what being an apprentice Auror meant; another three years of schooling that made Hogwarts seem like a vacation.
Only five people were in this Auror class. Harry and his best friend Ron who like Harry never finished Hogwarts because they were together fighting Voldemort. The third person was another friend of Harry's, Dean Thomas, who also missed his last year at Hogwarts because of Voldemort. Dean was the top boy in Harry's year at Hogwarts and overall second only to Harry's friend and Ron's fiancé Hermione Granger.
The fourth member was Angelina Johnson who was once on the house Quidditch team with Harry and had tried to become an Auror when she graduated but the ministry did not run a class that year nor the next because of the war. She was accepted into this first class now that Voldemort was dead and the war was over.
The fifth member of the class was James McGregor, a Ravenclaw that Harry had seen but never talked with while at Hogwarts. He had graduated with Angelina and also had to wait for a new Auror class to begin. Angelina said he was the top boy in her year and according to everybody the most logical Ravenclaw ever which was saying a lot about a member of a house known for being logical.
Classes ran from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon five days a week with just a forty-five minute lunch break. They made up for the forty-five minutes by having night sessions some evenings. These were dedicated to infiltration of simulated dark wizard strongholds using disguises involving spells and potions that change your appearance. This didn't include the time you needed to mix the potions and learn the spells; that was homework time.
Other homework consisted of reading muggle newspapers and watching muggle news programs on the telebox. Students were to watch for muggle reports of odd incidents and unexplained happenings that might be cause by magical action. Harry had tried doing this the summer after Voldemort's return, but his muggle aunt and uncle who he was living with at the time didn't understand why a wizard was interested in muggle news programs and made it difficult to continue watching.
Thankfully the Auror instructors avoided weekend classes, most likely because they wanted to spend some time with their own families. Harry and Ron used most weekends to study, but when Hermione and Ron's sister Ginny, who was Harry's fiancé, had a Hogsmeade weekend and they could get away from Hogwarts and into the local town Harry and Ron would apparate up to the tiny village to be with them.
Harry had proposed to Ginny on her seventeenth birthday, the day witches and wizards are considered to become adults and she accepted immediately. Although they put the wedding off until Harry could finish his Auror training they tried to see each other whenever possible. Ron and Hermione became engaged on the same day and had the same arrangement. The two couples were planning a double wedding in two more years.
In addition to classes Harry occasionally met with the Minister of Magic and other officials to go over what had taken place in the last seven years. With Dumbledore dead Harry knew more of what happened than anyone else and it was important for history to get the facts. Ron and Hermione were sometimes there since they were with Harry most of the time during the past seven years and the historians wanted to double and triple check all the facts.
During one of these meetings Lucius Malfoy was present. For many years Lucius was Harry's sworn enemy, second only to Voldemort. He was one of the few surviving members of Voldemort's inner circle called death eaters and could describe to the historians what had been happening from the opposite point of view. In the final battle of the war, Lucius, his wife Narcissa, and their son Draco abandon Voldemort after Harry saved Draco's life. Since then Harry and Draco had reached a truce under which they were civil if not friendly with each other.
Lucius took this opportunity to stop Harry and thank him for saving Draco. Harry explained how Draco had save him, Ron, and Hermione by not identifying them when they had been captured during the war. This gave them time to escape and he considered things even with Draco. Lucius nevertheless felt he owed Harry something and offered to teach Harry to fly without a broom like Voldemort did; turning your body into smoke while retaining control to soar through the sky. Harry had seen Voldemort and some of his death eaters do this and thought it was a skill an Auror could use.
Apparating was faster, but one could only apparate as far as your mind had the energy to send you. It was difficult and many witches and wizards couldn't do it at all. This sounded even more difficult, but Voldemort had traveled across Europe by this soaring method and it would be worth knowing. It took all his spare time on several weekends but Harry finally mastered the technique though he could only maintain his body this way for minutes before tiring; he knew he would get better and be able to do it longer with practice. Harry was now teaching Ron, Ginny, and Hermione the technique.
Ginny always a quick learner was hesitant to try at first. For some reason she wouldn't explain to Harry, she said she was worried that changing her body into smoke and back again might cause some type of damage to her. Harry tried to assure her that he had been doing it for weeks and Lucius Malfoy for years without damage, but for some reason Hermione backed Ginny. Although Hermione thought soaring would prove useful and she wanted to learn, she insisted Ginny should check with Madam Pomfrey who ran Hogwarts hospital wing first just to be sure. After being assured it was as safe as apparating Ginny learned to soar faster than Harry. Ron, and especially Hermione who didn't mind muggle airplanes but disliked magical flying in any form, were a little slower to pick up the technique but were now able to fly for several minutes at a time and travel several miles in this form.
Now after a year of this continuous activity things finally got a little easier. Ginny and Hermione finished their last year of school and moved in with Harry and Ron at the house Harry owned at 12 Grimmauld Place, London. Harry and Ron no longer had to take time to apparate to Hogsmeade to see them. Harry had inherited the house at Grimmauld Place several years ago after his god-father Sirius Black was killed by Bellatrix Lestrange during the war.
Originally in terrible condition; with the help of the house elf Kreacher they fixed the old house up and made it into a respectable home. It was close to the ministry and their classes and now that Ginny and Hermione were also taking jobs at the ministry it would be an ideal arrangement. The neighborhood was not the best part of London but they spent almost no time outside and both couples planned to get nicer places in the country once they were married and ready to start families.
On the last day of June after meeting with the historians, Kingsley Shackelbolt stopped Harry in the hall and asked him to come to his office to discuss something important. He explained that his counterpart in the United States, the U.S. Secretary of Magic, had requested that Harry, Ron, and Hermione come to the United States to be interviewed by the American Aurors who were referred to as Fleas (Federal Law Enforcement Agents)
Incidents had occurred over the last year that made the Fleas believe some of Voldemort's death eaters had escaped, moved to the U.S., and were trying to build up an organization similar to what Voldemort did in Great Brittan. Since the three of them knew more about what Voldemort had done than any other source available, the Fleas wanted to debrief them like the British had over the last year. Kingsley said the Secretary of Magic had assured him it would take only a few hours a day for a few days and they would be free to travel about and see the sights in the U.S. He added that Harry should think of it as a working vacation and arrangements were made for them to have two weeks off with full pay to make the trip. Kingsley impressed on Harry how important good relations with the Americans were an asked him to discuss it with Ron and Hermione and let him know tomorrow if they would go.
After discussing the matter they agreed if there was a chance of Voldemort's followers starting over they must do whatever necessary to help stop them. Ginny also agreed and urged Harry to go but Harry insisted Ginny had to go with him. They just got settled in together and he would not leave her alone; not even for two weeks.
The next day Harry went to the minister's office and explained this one condition. Kingsley didn't hesitate for a moment. He said he would arrange with Ginny's new supervisor to give her the two weeks with pay, and if the Americans who were paying all the expenses for the trip wouldn't pay for her he would see that the ministry covered her expenses.
This brought Harry to the point where this memory had started; how does a witch or wizard travel to the United States. It is too far to apparate or fly by broom. It would take hours even by the new soaring method and Harry had never done that for more than thirty minutes at a time. When he broached the subject the minister hesitated for the first time. "We travel by muggle airplane over such long distance." Kingsley answered, "It is perfectly safe and millions of muggles do it every year." He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself instead of Harry.
Nearly a week had passed and all the arrangements were set. Hermione suggested they should take a night flight because they wouldn't be able to look down and see how high they were. Also it would allow them to sleep most of the way and avoid something she called "Jet Lag". The idea seemed good but they had been in the air several hours now and none of them had slept at all. After going over the memory of how he got here Harry tried to think of the next two weeks and the fun they were planning between sessions with the American Fleas and when finished with the debriefing.
Ron wanted to see an American Quidditch match. Quidditch was the favorite sport of witches and wizards; played while flying on broomsticks with seven players on each side it was a worldwide sport. They had once attended the Quidditch World Cup the year it was held in Great Britain and Ron, Harry, and Ginny had played on the Gryffindor house team while in school. Ron kept telling Harry that American witches and wizards must be more out in the open then the British because muggle newspapers reported the Quidditch scores. While reading muggle newspapers he began to following the stories about a team called the Washington Wizards but couldn't understand why they played so many matches and how American scoring worked. In Britain each goal in Quidditch was ten points and catching the snitch to end the match was one hundred and fifty points but the scores reported for the Washington Wizards never went much over a hundred for either team and were often in the eighties and nineties. He wanted to see how American Quidditch differed from the British version.
The muggle woman who had brought drinks and food around every hour kept checking on the four young British travelers. They had both British and American diplomatic clearances allowing them to pass through security without being searched and containing orders that they might be nervous flyers so the first class attendants should see to their every need and comfort. She guessed they must be the children of some big wig in the British government. They were certainly too young to be government officials and if they were music or movie stars or she would have seen them on the news.
Now she announced to the entire plane that they were approaching Dulles Airport and would be landing in a few moments; then the fasten seatbelt light came on. Harry thought back to the takeoff when the lady helped him pull the belt tight and he thought he would have to stay strapped in for the entire flight. Being strapped in was part of what made him nervous at the beginning of the flight and now the trip was almost over it really hadn't been so bad just as Kingsley Shackelbolt had said. Harry felt the plane slant downward and feeling good about things, he decided to look out his window.
It was just starting to get light and Harry could see things on the ground getting nearer and larger when he saw something he that made him blink and think he was having a delusion. From the distance a wisp of smoke was approaching the plane like the first time he saw Voldemort soaring toward him. He called to Ron to look out his window but Ron, still nervous, protested that he was fine looking at the inside of the plane. When Harry insisted; something in his voice made Ron turn to the window and gasp. What looked to be Bellatrix Lestrange was soaring about fifty yards to the left of the plane. Ron yelled and Ginny and Hermione both leaned over to the windows to see what was happening. The soaring figure drew a wand and a flash of light hit the plane.
All the noise from the engines ceased and the plane lurched downward. The voice of a man came over the speakers and said the plane had been hit by lightning and they were going to attempt an emergency landing. Then a section of the wing with one of the engines broke off and the plane began to spiral. Harry grabbed Ginny's hand and felt someone else grab his other hand. He felt himself twist and apparate right out of his seat. He found himself in mid air falling with Ginny on one side and Hermione holding his other hand with Ron on the other side of her.