Chapter 4
Jason and Alicia appeared outside Little Hangleton, and took in their surroundings curiously, only having seen the place in a memory
"So, this is where it all began," Alicia muttered, and Jason snorted.
"It's interesting to think how things might have been different if Tom Riddle Sr. hadn't been such a prick, Merope Gaunt hadn't used magic to bind Tom Riddle Sr. or if she'd stayed alive for the kid," Jason said. "So many things could have been very different, at least possibly."
"Yeah, he might have ended up just as much of a crazy, delusional wanker as he currently is," Alicia summed up, causing Jason to laugh and shoot an amused look at his wife.
"Well, let's go see if this horcrux is here," Jason said, and Alicia nodded.
They proceeded to walk up to the route that would take them to the Gaunt Shack, careful to look for magical traps or alarms. Finally, they made it to the shack to find it as rundown as ever, and clearly home to many nasty traps designed to keep people away or kill and trap them if they tried to get in.
"Well, we know where one is," Alicia said. "I wonder if all the horcruxes are the same?"
"Truthfully, the only one that I think might not be is the snake," Jason said. "Old Voldie won't have accidentally put a piece of his soul into a child in this world, so he won't have seven horcruxes, so it all depends on how long he's had Nagini."
"Well, let's go quickly check out the cave," Alicia said, and Jason nodded before the two of them apparated away.
It didn't take them long to confirm that the cave was home to a horcrux as well. They'd have to penetrate the defenses to see if the horcrux was still there, but with Regulas alive and a Voldemort supporter, it seemed likely that it was.
"Well," Jason said. "Time for the real fun."
Alicia chuckled darkly, as the two of them took Shadow Robes out of enlarged dimensional pockets in their clothes and put them on, concealing their identities. They then summoned their swords from their tent at the Potter home and put them around their waists.
Jason and Alicia had both picked up sword play while in Japan and had continued it in Taiwan. While they had learned in Japan, their swords were modeled off of European designs just because they liked the feel of them better. They'd crafted their own blades using a book on creating magical swords written by Salazar Slytherin himself. Their swords weren't quite as good as the Goblin's work, but still very finely made. They could block most every spell except for the Unforgivables (which Goblin work could block) and some of the most powerful curses and charms. They would never need sharpened, could absorb poisons, and could cut through damn near everything, and they couldn't be used by anybody except Jason and Alicia, and they could be summoned to their hands if dropped or disarmed without actually using magic. The swords had certainly changed their style a bit. They didn't always use them, but for going up against multiple opponents, they were great. They could block unfriendly spells with their blades while moving and casting, plus most witches and wizards froze when you ran at them with the intent to harm them physically rather than magically, and the split second pause could be the end of the fight.
"You know, when we came home for the anniversary, I never thought we'd somehow end up in another Bukavu situation," Alicia said with a chuckle.
"Oh, come on! This is not nearly as bad!" Jason protested than paused thoughtfully, ". . .yet."
"Yet is correct," Alicia said, the corner of her mouth twitching up as she raised one eyebrow at him.
"You always bring up that shitshow," Jason grumbled good-naturedly. "We survived!"
Alicia snorted, and leveled a look at her husband, "Barely."
"You thoroughly enjoyed my apology to you the next night though," Jason said, causing his wife to blush.
"You overestimate your abilities," she said, trying to look haughty but failing miserably as her lips twitched towards a full smile.
Jason laughed, walked over and pulled her close, her breath hitching as he closed in.
"I . . . don't . . . think . . . so," he whispered slowly before kissing her, and then pulling away, feeling pleased with her befuddled face.
She shook her head and shot Jason a mock stern look. "You better watch it, or I might go find that cute guy from that bar in Rio."
Jason laughed. "What was his name again? Pablo?"
Alicia smiled and laughed; her hand placed on Jason's chest. "Yes! Pablo. He reeeally wanted me to leave you, and he promised me oh so many nice things."
Jason chuckled. "He had good tastes."
Alicia rolled her eyes. "Such a charmer."
She pulled the hood of the Shadow Robes over her head, disguising her voice and features, and activating the other benefits of the robes, as Jason did the same.
Jason's voice came out all gravelly, disguised by the magic of the robes.
"Ah, you know you love me."
Alicia's now gravelly voice answered. "Yes, I do," before they apparated away.
**HP**
Harry smiled over at Ginny who was just wrapping up the last bit of destructive patronus teaching. They'd been at it for a little over an hour now, and nearly the entire Order was able to do the Destruction variant, and at least had been briefed in the basics of Shadow Travel even if none except Professor Dumbledore could do it and even he only flickered. Harry hadn't expected it to be different though. Shadow Travel took a fair amount of practice to learn. Dumbledore had quickly left afterwards to start gathering the information the four travelers had requested.
Harry was considering taking Ginny to go check out the cave when Alicia and Jason entered the magically enlarged room causing the Order members to gape in surprise. They both bore the unmistakable signs of having been in a battle, Jason having a nasty cut on his cheek, and his robes bloody, and Alicia looked all scraped up as well, but they were both alive and if neither were freaking out over the other's injuries, they must not be too serious, though Alicia did look angry, while Jason looked weary.
Maybe Harry thought they were okay too soon because Alicia immediately guided Jason over to a chair and sat him down, pulling out her wand as Jason slowly removed his robes, revealing his chest that had clearly taken a couple cutting or piercing curses.
Harry and Ginny along with most of the Order hurried over to the pair, and Harry just managed to overhear Alicia chastise Jason.
"You take a curse like that for me again, and we're going to have a serious problem," she scolded softly. "I'm not going to become a widow after only three years of marriage."
Jason chuckled, wincing slightly. "Yes, love."
"Looking a little worse for wear, Jace," Harry said with a grin. "Must be getting rusty to let some measly Death Eaters hit you."
Alicia leveled a glare at Harry, but it had little effect. Harry just smiled at her until she rolled her eyes and turned back to healing her husband.
"You actually attacked Diagon Alley and survived," Moody said, sounding actually impressed.
"We also confirmed that a horcrux is at the Gaunt shack, or at least it's a site for one," Alicia responded blandly. "As for Diagon Alley, it wasn't that bad. If we'd had you and Gin, Harry, we would have been fine."
"W-wasn't that bad!" Molly exclaimed. "You look like hell."
"We've seen much worse, I can assure you," Jason said with a wry grin. "Like I suspected, the Death Eaters are arrogant believing that they're basically untouchable. Security was shit. Yes, there were a large number of wands against us when we started, but no leadership or direction, and many of them only were putting half effort, though that was probably because they didn't think we could get away. That'll stump them, since we did so without them seeing us Shadow Travel. They could have easily killed us if they'd just organized a proper retaliation."
"I'll put my memory of the event in the pensieve so you all can watch it," Alicia said, standing up and walking over to the pensive, already pulling a memory out of her head with her wand. She quickly deposited the memory and then went back to Jason, who had now pulled out his own wand, and was prepared to heal Alicia.
Harry turned away from his friends and with Ginny and the Order they entered the pensieve and found himself in front of the Leakey Cauldron. Alicia and Jason were wearing Shadow Robes with their masks up, and they had swords on their belts.
"Shadow Robes," Moody grunted. "Nice touch."
"They don't know if the versions of themselves are alive in this world, so they don't want Death Eaters to go hunting them if they are," Ginny responded.
They watched Jason and Alicia confidently enter the Leaky, to find it had a small crowd of just over a dozen or so people, with five at the bar wearing the trappings of the Death Eaters. Everyone in the Leakey turned to look at them and Harry could see the confusion or surprise appear on everyone's faces before the five Death Eaters started reaching for their wands.
Jason and Alicia beat them by a mile deploying their wands with lightning speed and launching their first spells. Jason hit one of the Death Eaters with a concentrated explosion curse which blew the man into one of his companions and they both flew with enough force to crack the bar as they collided with it. Alicia launched three conjured knives that impacted one of the Death Eaters before he ignited on fire and started screaming. The two remaining Death Eaters were too shocked to even protect themselves as Jason hit one with an enhanced lightning bolt and Alicia hit the last one with a cutting curse to the throat.
"They're good," Kingsley said impressed. "Brutal but efficient and accurate."
"They're wands should have been out before they even walked in," Moody growled. "That's sloppy.
"They're going for intimidation," Ginny said in disagreement. "They want people to talk about how they were able to draw their wands faster than anyone and take them all down. They want people saying how the two strangers were powerful, calm, fast, and dangerous. Both Jace and 'Licia are Masters of Sensing. They knew how many people were in the bar before they even walked in. Trust us, they knew exactly what they were doing. The goal is intimidation to start building a reputation."
With the five Death Eaters out of the fight, only Tom (who Harry was a little surprised to see still managed the Leaky) and roughly eight patrons were left to be contended with. Jason and Alicia didn't strike just waiting to see what they would do. Tom raised his hands in a gesture of surrender as did most of the patrons but a group of two in the back corner attempted to go for their wands before Jason nailed both with a strong wind blast that threw both men into the wall hard enough to crack it and dropped them to the floors unmoving. Jason and Alicia then nodded curtly to the rest of the them and proceeded to start walking towards the back alley and the entrance to Diagon Alley.
Harry, Ginny, and the Order trailed after the couple in the memory as they entered Diagon Alley to find it fairly packed with shoppers. A couple people glanced at Alicia and Jason's entrance before their eyes widened in surprise, fear, or even a couple that seemed hopeful to Harry.
Jason and Alicia both launched explosion curses that destroyed two Dark Arts stands that were near the entrance causing the vendors to be blasted back in the explosion and fall to the ground, neither of whom got back up. Alicia turned around and did several complicated motions with her wand, pointing it at the entrance to Diagon Alley while Jason had her back.
Jason was casting spells quickly, mostly stunners and paralyzing hexes or bodybinds, dropping people without killing him, though there were a good dozen or so who started running towards him, all wearing the trappings of the Death Eaters.
Jason quickly pulled out his sword and assumed a ready position as Alicia finished what she was doing and did the same. The couple quickly shielded themselves from a volley of spells from the Death Eaters that had gotten close enough and fanned out around the alley before Jason responded with an area shock spell causing several of the closer Death Eaters to stagger.
Alicia ran forward casting two quick cutting curses that dropped one of the close Death Eaters before she used her sword to block two spells. She got within striking distance of two Death Eaters who were too stunned about someone rushing them to properly respond, and she cut them down with her blade without hesitation, using her wand to conjure a wall that she ducked behind.
Meanwhile, Jason had done a similar move rushing towards a group of five Death Eaters, but he stopped short and then quickly transfigured the ground in front of him up towards the Death Eaters into quicksand. The Death Eaters started sinking and three of them pointed their wands towards the ground to undo the spell, but whatever Jason did wasn't undone easily because nothing happened when the Death Eaters cast their spells. Their attempts to do so had cost them as Jason quickly manipulated all the broken glass that littered the alley and formed it into thin knife-like shards and launched thousands of them at the Death Eaters. One Death Eater shielded himself but the other four were quickly impaled with thousands of glass shards and dropped. The fourth who had been shielding himself took a shield destruction curse which shattered his shield and attempted to launch him, but his legs being stuck in the mud meant the force wasn't enough to free him, and he fell on his back with extreme force and Harry could hear a loud snap come from the man's legs as he screamed in pain. He didn't get to scream for long before he was hit with an advanced stunner and was silent.
Jason and Alicia easily and fluidly danced out of the way of the spells that came from the remaining four Death Eaters as well as some reinforcements they had gotten. Harry turned as the entrance to Diagon Alley opened and he saw three people come running in only for a wall of lightning to appear causing hundreds of bolts of electricity to arc through all three. They screamed for a moment before it was too much, and they died as the spell ended.
"Merlin, so that's what she had been doing," Bill said in shock.
"Not just that," Harry said grimly. "She put three more traps on the entrance. They all probably won't be triggered if the Death Eaters start to properly organize, but if they keep coming in groups of two or three like that, they will."
Jason and Alicia started pushing forward further into the alley as the Death Eaters started to fall back, though Harry was sure that was just to regroup and get more reinforcements. Death Eaters liked having extreme number advantages. Whenever they weren't trading spells with Death Eaters, they were launching reductor, blasting, or explosive curses around the alley, completely trashing the place.
Harry turned as a group of Death Eaters entered the alley. He could see maybe a dozen or so. The first three however were caught in Alicia's second trap, which was a wall of fire that quickly engulfed them in flames. The other nine Death Eaters tried to put out the flames, but it didn't matter.
The Death Eaters started attempting to examine the entrance to Diagon Alley from the other side of the entrance, obviously wary to enter for fear of more traps. Harry ignored them as his friends made the push and reached the turn that would lead them to Knockturn Alley.
Apparently, this is where the Death Eaters had wanted them to reach because what seemed like dozens of figures started coming out from various buildings launching spells at Jason and Alicia. The Witchers were now very much on the defensive, shielding themselves or conjuring walls and items to take unforgivables.
Jason and Alicia conjured a smokescreen and then rushed down Knockturn alley, doing their best to avoid the large volley of unfriendly spells at their backs, but Jason had a cutting curse slice his cheek open. They reached Borgin and Burkes and didn't continue to move on, now trading back spells, rather than just going on the defensive. Harry could see when things got unlucky for them. A wildly cast explosion curse hit the shop causing a massive detonation that peppered Alicia with shrapnel and threw her to the ground. She didn't have time to shield herself as a couple piercing and cutting curses and two unforgivable came her way. Jason jumped in front of her conjuring bricks to take the two unforgivables, but unable to stop the cutting curses and piercing curses from hitting him in the chest causing him to gasp in pain and drop to a knee.
Alicia launched Ginny's tornado curse towards the group and the tornado grew and started destroying the alley taking the closest Death Eaters and hurling them around like ragdolls as they were engulfed in the cyclone. Jason and Alicia quickly rushed into the destroyed shop taking the time to stun the injured and downed shopkeepers before they Shadow Traveled away.
They all exited the pensieve as the memory ended.
"As much as you say it wasn't that bad, you were struggling near the end," Moody growled. "You got lucky."
"Not really," Alicia said with a shrug from where she was with Jason. "We were pulling our punches in some ways which did cause us to get hurt, but we didn't want to reveal some of our tricks or cause too much damage."
"What do you mean?" Sirius asked looking confused.
"I mean, obviously we were able to Shadow Travel," Jason said. "You've seen in the memories we can do snap Shadow Travels for short distances in duels, but we didn't because we didn't want them to know we could Shadow Travel. We also could have used our ethereal charms or clone duplication charms, but we didn't want the Death Eaters to know we could do those. We want to keep those as surprises for Voldie or his lieutenants like Bellatrix."
The Order member's eyes widened.
"If we'd really wanted to not pull our punches, we could have used our more destructive curses too," Alicia said, "but that would have destroyed the alley, and we don't want to do that."
"So, you let yourselves be cursed," Molly asked looking skeptical.
"Well, yes and no," Jason said evenly. "Obviously they managed to get us, but we made the decision to not use some of the spells we created on our own that would have helped us prevent that happening, so that put us at a disadvantage."
"That's all well and good, but now that you've had that successful attack, they'll tighten security at Diagon Alley. It'll be nearly impossible for us to attack there again," Charlie said impatiently.
"That's true, at least for now, but we aren't going to attack there again, at least not for a while," Jason said with a smile causing everyone to blink in surprise. "The next attacks will be on Death Eater homes. I'm pretty sure the diary is hidden in Malfoy manor. I want to attack there, and if we find it, we'll destroy it, but I don't want You-Know-Who knowing we know about the horcruxes, so we'll attack and destroy several homes so that it seems like the horcrux was just accidental collateral damage," Jason explained.
"Plus, it'll force the Death Eaters to start splitting their forces to protect their homes or putting troops dedicated to quick reaction reinforcements, which will in turn weaken other targets for us to attack, and start causing unrest and unsureness in the Death Eater ranks," Alicia added.
"You guys make it sound so easy," Edgar Bones said with a frown.
"Well, we basically found ourselves in a war while we were in the Republic of Congo. That was a little over six months ago when it ended, but we were embroiled in the conflict for four months and we learned quite a bit about war while we there," Alicia said softly. "More than we'd learned while fighting our own war against You-Know-Who."
"Based on the numbers you told us you have, and we only hope to gain more people," Jason said, "we have an idea of what we can pull off for attacks and what we have to work with to sow chaos in the Death Eater ranks."
"You've seen a lot for ones so young," Minerva said softly.
An awkward silence followed, but it was broken when Dumbledore walked back into the room.
"I've set up a meeting with Severus," Dumbledore said, looking at Harry. "He'll meet you in person tomorrow morning. Lily can escort you to their meeting spot."
"Good," Harry said, nodding approvingly. "Well, we've accomplished pretty much everything that I want to today, so everyone can go on their own ways, and we'll gather tomorrow evening so we can discuss the future operations after I've gotten some information from Severus."
People grumbled about being summarily dismissed, but everyone did indeed start clearing out, realizing they weren't going to get any questions answered, or learn any new magic."
Harry turned to Jason and Alicia, ignoring the other Potters, Weasleys, Sirius, Remus, Dora, Marlene, and Dumbledore who'd stayed behind.
"Did you check to see if the cave was the same?" Harry asked.
Jason nodded. "It's definitely still a site, though whether the horcrux is actually there, I don't know."
"Good," Harry said. "Severus will hopefully have all the answers we need to get things moving tomorrow. I'd like to start dealing with the horcruxes as quick as we can, and between all of your research and Hermione's research, we don't need to even face the basilisk or find the Sword of Gryffindor in order to destroy the horcruxes, though it would be nice to have."
"How is Severus going to help with that?" Lily asked hesitantly.
"He'll be able to tell us if or when You-Know-Who is outside of the castle or country or what might draw him out of the country, which will help us get the Diadem. Also, hopefully he'll be able to tell us where Nagini is at times so that we might have a shot at killing the snake and confirming whether it's the horcrux or not," Ginny explained. "We can easily get to the locket, ring, and diary without even triggering suspicion, but we don't want to go after the diadem or snake unless we can do it without You-Know-Who knowing about it, or they're all we have left, except for possibly the cup."
"Well, let's get some dinner, dears, and then get some rest," Lily said after a moment. "Sirius, Marls, how about you go grab Maddie and Becca, and come join us for dinner. You too, Remus, Dora. Molly, obviously we'd love to have you, and the rest of your family, and maybe Bill and Fleur want to bring Gabby."
"Sounds good, Lils," Marlene responded with a smile. "Fleur, I'll get the girls and we'll meet you over there."
Fleur smiled and nodded, and they all walked upstairs to start taking turns apparating out of Grimmauld Place. Harry was looking forward to meeting Sirius's kids. They might be products of this universe, but in a perfect world, they would have been like cousins to Harry in his own world.