Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter or DC Comics
Chapter 03
The young wizard had to admit he was actually enjoying his day. The clouds that had plagued his head for weeks were thinned by the amusing banter between Clark, Diana, and Bruce, as they liked him to call them. He ran his hand through his new hair cut, still amazed that they had made it even messier to make it less messy. Somehow, the flawed logic worked and now it looked like a rat's nest where the rats hired a contractor. He smiled as he bit into a big beefy burger, enjoying the rich taste of red meat after the months of living off of stolen bread and water found in puddles.
Carefully, Harry glanced at the blond goddess sitting to his left, her smile lighting up the room, and he could see that he wasn't the only male throwing looks at her. In fact, there were a large number of jealous looks thrown toward the men at their table, and several thrown at the women. Harry suspected it was because of the two impressively sized men at the table, both of who sat protectively close to the two women. They certainly did seem happy together, like a large family genuinely just sitting back and having a meal.
The messy haired teen felt out of place, but welcomed all the same. Other than the gaggle of red heads known as the Weasleys or at Hogwarts, he had never been welcomed at the table while the family ate. Silently he cursed the Dursleys into oblivion and back, just so he could curse them to oblivion again. Reaching forward to grab the salt for his fries (I'm American so they are fries, but the Commonwealth calls them chips), he found himself in a vice like grip from the surprisingly strong Diana. "Harry, whatever happened to your arm?" She asked, turning it around to look at the other side.
Unable to suppress the wince at the question, he thought of the first thing he could think of. "I was a bitten by a snake, no big deal." He said, waving it off with a smile and popped a french fry into his mouth, not seeing the look passing between the adults at the table. "Honestly, I've had worse." He admitted, shrugging as he remembered the Basilisk fang piercing his right forearm. Though they didn't question him about it, he knew it was a tough pill to swallow, even if it was basically true. After all, what sort of muggle snake could bite clean through someone's arm?
Harry stayed rather quiet after that though. The fang was in fact the most dangerous wound he ever had, but he had much larger ones. His left shoulder had been torn apart by a dragon's tail, the scar from Voldemort's resurrection was only a faded line on his arm, easily missed if you weren't looking for it. Then, there was the oval shaped scar on his chest from where the locket horcrux had tried to fuse with his skin in a freezing pond, with other scars branching out from it. Then there was the scar on the left side of his chest, from taking a Killing Curse a second time, because of the adrenaline, he hadn't realized the damage that curse had done until Madam Pomfrey got a hold of him the next day.
The muscle in his chest had been shriveled up and decayed, the skin burned to a charcoaled, black mess. Luckily, potions had helped him regain his muscle tissue, and lessened the burn, though it was still a raw pink tone. But not even those covered the scars from Vernon's beatings as he was growing up, crisscrossing his back from leather belts, or where his aunt had burned his inner thigh with a curling iron when he was two, because he wouldn't stop crying because Dudley kept pulling his hair.
And that list went on and on. In truth, the wounds made it difficult for the wizard to get up sometimes, but he kept reminding himself that everytime he got back up, he was giving a big 'Fuck You' to the people who had done it to him. "So Harry, any girls back home in England keeping you tethered down?" Bruce asked smirking at him as he brought Harry out of his thoughts. Blushing Harry shook his head. "Did you hear that, Kara? Available and rich, should claim him before he decides to go home." The billionaire winked at the blond and received a smack upside his head from Diana.
"Bruce, stop trying to play matchmaker." Diana said, with a shake of her head. "After all, they're too young to date." She said, smiling as Bruce threw his head back and laughed as the two teens blushed. Kara was giving the other three a very dirty look while Harry buried his head in his hands, forgetting he was holding his burger and ended up smearing it all over his forehead. An explosion of laughter went around the table from all five of them as Diana and Kara helped Harry get the ketchup off his forehead much to the disapproval of every other male in the restaurant.
After eating, the group left the restaurant for the clothing stores. Harry groaned, as Kara seemed to hop up and down nearby. "Come on, Harry, it will be great! We'll get you a whole new wardrobe and you'll look so debonair and with your accent, people will think you're the next Bond or something." Kara spoke very quickly, her voice like wind-chimes blowing in a breeze to the wizard's ears.
"Who's Bond?" Harry asked innocently, completely confused as to what the girl was talking about. Looking at the other three people in the group, Harry realized he had just put his foot in his mouth. Diana seemed willing to wave it off, while Bruce merely shrugged, though his eyes were calculating, and Clark seemed genuinely taken aback. "I'm sorry; I was raised by really strict guardians and spent most of the last seven years in boarding school." The tanned youth said quickly, hoping that it would cover his tracks.
"It's quite alright, Harry." Clark said, putting a hand on Kara's shoulder when the eighteen year old looked ready to speak up. "James Bond is sort of a big thing in America. I would guess a British secret agent movie wouldn't have the same appeal back in England where the accent is pretty common." The reporter said with a smile at the youth, who looked back at him gratefully. "Speaking of England, I've been there a few times myself. I was in London when Superman fought against some whack job bounty hunter from space called Lobo." He said casually, though he knew Bruce was paying extra close attention now, not that he wasn't before.
Harry's eyes widened as he racked his mind trying to think of having ever heard anything about it. His eyes darted back and forth for a distraction, something that Bruce noticed immediately as he had seen it many times interrogating thugs on the streets. "Oh, um, yeah, I heard that was something." The wizard fumbled before looking away and up the street. "I lived in Surrey, its quite a distance from London, about an hour out, so news doesnt really travel all that far." He hoped he explained.
"Not that big of a deal, Superman isn't all that great anyway," Kara teased, as she turned around to look at the group. "Now come on, are we going shopping or what?" She asked, placing her hands on her hips. Smiling the group disappeared into several clothing stores, spending more money than Harry thought was decent. He knew he had some money, and could only pray that his finances would cover the suits, shirts, pants, ties, shoes, and even socks and underwear that had been pressed down on him.
As night began to come on, Harry, loaded with packages, grinned at the four people who had been only strangers that morning. "Thank you, this has been one of the happiest days I can remember in a long time." A rustle of bags as he picked up his new purchases, his body pulling at the impressive weight as he pulled it up, "I suppose I'll see you later." He said, sounding sad, honestly he was quite depressed that, by the odds of it he wouldn't see these people again in such a big a city as Athens.
"Are you going to be able to get everything back to your room alright?" Diana asked worriedly as she hovered nearby twisting her hands. "After all we wouldn't mind helping you." The Amazon Princess looked around the hotel where Harry was staying, it was on the outskirts of Athens, and wasn't in the best of conditions, not like the hotel Bruce had booked for them closer to downtown.
"He'll be fine, Diana." Bruce said, putting a hand on her shoulder to calm her. "Besides, we need to be going. We have that meeting in the morning with your mother." He reminded her of their trip to the legendary Themyscira the next day. "And I have a few calls to make before bed, so we really do have to leave." He added, before smiling at Harry, in truth, with the boy's build and height he could have been Dick, his first ward, at seventeen all over again. "Harry, how about dinner, just the five of us, maybe a few friends, on Saturday, we'll call the hotel and leave them a message for you."
"That sounds fine, Bruce." Harry said with a genuine grin. He liked spending time with them and somehow couldn't help but notice how much they seemed to be how he thought his family would have been like. Diana and Bruce seemed close, and with Bruce and Clark teasing each other, it was rather easy for him to see Lily and James Potter with his Godfather, Sirius Black. Kara was much like Tonks when she had still been alive, just not as clumsy. "I'll see you guys Saturday." He tried to wave, but only managed to flicker his fingers at him.
Giggling, Kara gave Harry a kiss on the cheek, and smiled at the blush that appeared on his face. "That was for such a wonderful time today, Harry. If it wasn't for you I would have been stuck with these old people the entire time." She grinned and watched as a stunned messy haired teen walked in a daze toward the hotel lobby, the sliding doors closing behind him. "I think I broke him." She said happily.
The cab ride back to their hotel was quiet, as the super-heroes each wondered about the young man that they had met. Reaching the hotel, they quickly went up the elevator to Bruce's room. "Something's not right." He said, looking around the group with dark blue eyes. "The James Bond thing I can forgive, but living in Surrey and not hearing about the Superman fight with Lobo a few months ago, it's suspicious." He remarked looking at the other heroes in the room. "Did anyone else notice anything?"
"Scars." Kara said quietly, as she wrapped her arms around her body. "Not just the one on his head or arm." She said, seeing them all looking at her. The lithe, but powerful girl sat on the edge of the bed. "Sitting beside him at lunch, I could see his left arm was pretty torn up at one point, like he had his shoulder wrapped in barbed wire or something and had it sawed into him. From what I could see of his back through the open holes for his arms, he had crisscross pattern scars along his shoulder blades." Her voice choked, wondering how anyone on Earth could do something like that to another person.
"He's certainly been through something." Clark said, falling into one of the plush seats around the suite. "He walked like someone who knew he could take care of himself, but his eyes were constantly shifting around, searching the shadows for anything to leap out at him. Maybe a war isn't too far off from the truth." Superman said, as he watched the man who doubled as the Batman, open his laptop and begin opening frequencies for the Watchtower in space and Oracle back in Gotham.
"Kara, come here." Bruce said, looking at the teenage girl with slightly narrowed eyes. Knowing better than to question one of the Trinity, even if he was merely human, Supergirl stepped forward, only for him to take out a cotton swab and rub it across her lips. "You kissed him, so it's possible some of his DNA is still there." He explained, before wiping the swab on a glass plate and inserting it into a machine nearby. "We don't know what we're dealing with, but we do know he can teleport to another location and back again. It's possible he's related to a member of the League."
Opening a window, he could see Barbara Gordon, the light red headed woman who used to be Batgirl, sitting in front of a mass of computer screens, surrounded by telephones, and wiring. "Oracle, it's me." He growled before getting her attention. "I need any information you can get on a boy from Surrey, England, going by the name, Harry Potter. It might be a reach, but he's got black hair, green eyes, and a scar shaped like a bolt of lightning on his forehead. Get me any information that you can."
"Well, it's nice to hear your voice, too." The red head grumbled, as she began to click away at her keyboard. Several times, she stopped and typed something in before after several minutes an, "Aha!", was heard from her. "Full name is Harry James Potter, parents are Lily and James Potter, they were murdered when he was fifteen months old, and he went to elementary school in Little Whinging along with a cousin Dudley Dursley." She recited as she scanned over a form on a lit up computer screen. "Multiple hospital stays when he was younger, for broken bones and deep lacerations, official story is, he fell down some stairs."
Hearing Bruce snort, she knew he didn't buy such a lame excuse any more than she did. "List of problems included malnutrition, stunted growth, and a lack of immunizations that had to be caught up before he started school at five." The red head said, before looking up at the webcam over the top of her computer. "I don't really think a flight of stairs or he's a picky eater quite covers these, Bruce."
"They rarely do." The Dark Knight growled ominously, perfectly aware the Amazon and two Kryptonians were listening in. "What else does it say, Oracle?"
"Kid started off with good grades until the first report cards went home, then he fell behind, just behind his cousin. Aunt and Uncle probably didn't want him showing up their kid." She grumbled before continuing on. "Multiple incidents involved in his schooling, a teacher's wig turned blue when she was yelling at him, decided the kid must have dyed it somehow without her noticing, found on top of the school roof, says he had just been jumping behind some trash cans and the wind must have caught him. After he turned eleven all reliable information on the kid simply disappears. It's quite possible we're looking at a runaway metahuman here Bruce."
"It's never just that simple, Barbara, you know that. Batman out." Bruce said, before closing the feed without so much as a goodbye and the machine next to him dinged. Opening a file next to the small window, his eyes narrowed. "And it just gets more complicated. Kid's DNA came out, but it's fuzzy and hard to lock on. It pushed my sensors to the fringe by producing some sort of counteracting frequency." He said scanning the information from the machine more closely. "Nearly an identical, perfect strand of human genetics, there's only one hitch." He said before turning to look at Diana over his shoulder. "Somewhere in his family tree is an Amazon."
"How can you tell?" Wonder Woman asked, suddenly excited as she leaned forward to look at the man-made contraption. Though she understood how to use a computer now from her work in Washington D.C. and the Justice League, Batman's computers were in a league all of their own. In fact, she would have to say that not even Captain Atom or the Oracle's set up held a candle to what Bruce was usually seen packing. She followed his finger as he pointed to a place on the screen where the lines and blocks which made no sense to her seemed to move along fine, but Bruce must have noticed something else.
"That strand, it shouldn't be there." He muttered, as he typed in his keyboard and bringing it closer. "In fact, the only other person in my entire database who has similar DNA is yours, Princess." Batman said, turning his blue eyes onto the Amazon's tanned face. "However, your DNA never gave my system such a run for its money. No one's has." He remarked darkly before turning to Clark. "The girls have a long day ahead of themselves tonight; I don't suppose you want to join me on lookout duty tonight."
"Are we going to spy on our new friend?" The tanned reporter said, before undoing the buttons on his shirt, displaying a broad chest in a skin tight blue material with what appeared to be an 'S' symbol if one wasn't really certain what they were looking at. Taking off his shirt, pants and socks, he revealed the legendary outfit of Superman, cape and all, before sitting on the bed to tug on his boots.
"Something similar to that, farm-boy," Bruce said, and when Clark looked up it was to see the face that most of Gotham City feared, the Batman. Seeing Clark's confused face ,he smirked. "I'll teach you when you're older." The Dark Knight said, as he moved to the window, reaching for his utility belt for his grappling hook. "We'll be back before dawn and meet you on Themyscira tomorrow afternoon." Bruce said, before pushing the window open. "I'm not as young as I once was, and a full day of shopping and then watch duty, I'm going to need to sleep late tomorrow." He said before pointing his grappling hook at a nearby building and firing. Hearing the TING of metal biting concrete, he leaped from the windowsill, a blue and red blur following behind him.
Harry sat in his room eating a bag of Doritos he had saved away and staring at the television, though all it showed now was the hole where he had put his foot through the screen earlier that day. His eyebrow twitched to the steady rhythmic beating of a headboard against the wall behind him. His holly and phoenix feather wand sat beside him on the bed, and he was quite happy he had managed to put the room under the Fidelius Charm, to keep anyone from locating it or him. It was a powerful charm that worked wonders when you served as your own Secret-Keeper.
Munching away at his bag of chips he got up, putting his wand in his pocket and walked up to the window and throwing back the curtains. He was tired and would probably be going to bed soon, only for the nightmares of the war to wake him up early enough to go and watch the sunrise again. Staring up at the moon he couldnt help but feel the pang of loss of Remus, his parents last living friend from their school days. The Last Marauder now lay in the graveyard in Godric's Hollow, next to his beloved Tonks and Harry's own parents.
He had left Teddy with Andromeda Black, receiving the older woman's blessing to go out into the world and find his own way now. She seemed to understand exactly what the war had cost him, and she probably did. After all, she had lost her three cousins, her daughter, and her husband, it was surprisingly easy for Harry to let her have Teddy Lupin, the grandchild she would dote over probably much like Neville's Gran did him.
A flicker of movement caught his eye and the young wizard look toward a nearby rooftop. There, a man in black and that weird guy with red underwear were standing and watching his hotel. Green eyes narrowed as they seemed to look from window to window, and the tanned wizard was happy that they seemed to pass over his without stopping. But they did stop. Raising an eyebrow he watched as the man with pointy ears picked his finger up and began doing a number count on the windows, then on the floor beneath.
The wizard's eyes widened, as he ran a hand through his messy, recently washed hair. He should have guessed that someone would come along and add a whole new difficulty to his hiding. The obvious muggle man stood, before turning to the guy in blue and talked. The blue man's eyes opened wide before he also counted the windows. The obvious flaw in Harry's plan, anyone who knew how to actually look and not just see, would be able to figure out where he was. Grimacing he closed the curtain on his window, never noticing a snake coiled in a nearby alley, its tongue flicking in and out of his mouth as it also gazed up and counted the windows on the seventh floor.