In case you were wondering, no, I'm not a TimKon shipper. I think it's a cute ship, but I've never been a fan of any ships between Kon, Bart, Cassie, and Tim, just because I think their platonic relationships are more interesting. But I can't tell you how to interpret my work, so if this chapter screams TimKon to you, then by all means take it as such.

Floating in front of Tim, Kon-El's fake frown disappeared, replaced by an enormous grin. "Hey, Tim. How's wizard life treating you?"

"See for yourself," said Tim, gesturing behind himself to Aruna and Neville, who were both slack-jawed, eyes glued to the flying boy before them.

Kon lowered his teashades and grimaced, looking at Neville's wound. "Yeesh." Then his gaze switched over to Aruna, and, unsurprisingly, he nodded at her, giving her a wink. "Hey, beautiful."

"Can you not?" said Tim, though he couldn't find it in himself to be even the least bit annoyed at his best friend right now. God, I've missed you, Kon.

Kon rolled his eyes, turning back to Tim. "What can I say? I'm just that—whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell happened to your ribcage?" He ripped his sunglasses off of his face and shoved them into one of his jacket's pockets. "Dude, why didn't you tell me you were injured?"

X-Ray vision—Tim's mortal enemy. "Because I'm fine, Kon. Seriously."

Kon groaned, flying down to step into the ship. "Ugh, can you not?"

Tim shut the door behind him. "Whatever. Listen, I need your help."

"Yeah, why else would you call me?" Kon grumbled, crossing his arms. "Not like I haven't seen you in three months."

"For the last time," Tim sighed, "it's a magical boarding school. You wouldn't even be able to find it."

"Excuses, excuses." He looked back at Neville and Aruna. "Anyways, what's this all about?"

"Were you…flying?" Neville whispered, wide-eyed.

"Yup." Kon smirked, running a hand through his dark curls. "See, I can do a little something called—"

Tim narrowed his eyes. "Don't you fucking dare—"

"—'Tactile Telekinesis,'" Kon finished, putting his hands on his hips and hovering a couple inches off the floor just for show.

"I swear to God, Kon…" Tim muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. Remembering that he had yet to introduce everyone, Tim cleared his throat. "Anyways, Kon, these are some friends from school, Neville—" he gestured to Neville, who lifted up an arm to wave at Kon meekly, "—and Aruna." She nodded at Kon, who looked mildly taken aback by how stoic and not head-over-heels for him she was.

"Neville, Aruna, this is Kon," Tim continued, "also known as the Metropolis Kid."

"Excuse me?" Kon guffawed, looking at Tim like he had personally betrayed him.

"…also known as Superboy."

"Thank you."

"Kon here is going to get us to West Newby within the hour."

Neville looked rather surprised. "He is?"

Kon raised an eyebrow. "I am?"

"Can he make a Portkey, or are we Side-Along Apparating?" asked Neville hopefully. Kon looked to Tim for an explanation.

Tim shook his head. "Neither. Kon's not a wizard. But we can talk on the way. Let's move back into the cockpit."

"The what?" Neville squealed, his face turning bright red.

It was a tight fit, but not too tight for the four of them. Tim was back in the captain's chair, with Neville beside him once again. Through some of his Tactile Telekinesis nonsense, Kon had managed to seal up the boy's wound, and for that, Tim was immensely grateful. To Tim's left, Kon himself leaned on the dashboard gripping it tightly with one hand but looking otherwise quite relaxed. Aruna hung in the back near the door, as she was wont to do.

What had once been a solo interrogation by Neville was now 'Twenty Questions with Tim and Kon.' Of course, Kon took a solid ten minutes explaining his Tactile Telekinesis and how incredible it was.

"And you're moving this whole contraption just by touching it?" Neville asked.

Kon nodded, grinning. It had probably been a while since he had been able to explain his powers to someone again. "Yup. We're going at about Mach 7 right now."

"What's that?"

Kon hesitated, cocking his head. "Uh…it's…really fast…?" He looked to Tim for support.

What was the fastest object Wizards had? "Okay, Neville, so, you know Harry's Firebolt?" Neville nodded. "So, that has a top speed of two-hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, right?"

"—and it can go from zero to two-fifty in ten seconds, which is leaps and bounds above the Nimbus 2001, which had a top speed of only two hundred—" Huh. Maybe all that Quidditch trivia Cordelia dumped on him was actually useful for something.

"Right now, we're flying about—" Tim took a moment to work out the math in his head, "—thirty-five times faster than a Firebolt."

"Merlin's beard," whispered Neville, staring at Kon in awe.

Kon checked out the windshield to see if they were still on course, then turned to Tim with narrowed eyes. "Okay, Tim, time to spill. Why were you and two random wizards stranded in an airplane in the Middle East?"

Tim sighed. "Ra's al Ghul."

"Well, shit." Kon grimaced. "And what did the old perv do this time?"

"He kidnapped us so that I would help him with some Lazarus Pit nonsense."

"Was that before or after breaking your ribs?"

"Oh, that happened in the middle. Ra's and I were sparring, and he was being an asshole."

"Shocker."

"I was kind of an asshole to him first," Tim admitted unabashedly.

Kon snorted. "He kidnapped you, bro, I'd be more concerned if you weren't being an asshole."

"You're brothers?" Aruna asked, brows furrowing like the thought of them being related was unlikely.

"Yes," Kon said, just as Tim said, "No." Tim gave Kon The Look, the one that said 'I'm way too tired to be in the mood for this right now.'

Kon rolled his eyes. "No, but I know everything about Tim, so if you want to know all of his deepest, darkest secrets, just let me know."

"What Connor here fails to mention," Tim added pointedly, putting emphasis on Kon's other name, "is that I, too, am intimately familiar with his deepest, darkest secrets, and that if he tells you about me, he will be opening himself up for a world of pain and embarrassment."

Aruna nodded, like this answered her question.

"So, the reason my letter haven't been going through is because I need to send them by fucking owls?"

Tim put his head in his hands. "Yes, Kon. Geez, didn't you, like, ask someone at the Manor before you started sending those?"

Kon rolled his eyes. "I know how to send letters, Tim. Sorry for not realizing the wizards still lived in the middle ages. Plus, where the hell was I supposed to get an owl anyways?"

"So, how do you two know each other?" Neville asked, interrupting their riveting discussion.

"Our dads are madly in love with each other," Kon immediately replied. Tim replied by punching Kon in the shoulder harder than he would any normal human, but not nearly hard enough to break his fingers on the tough-as-steel skin.

"Our dads are both married to different women. But they're good friends."

"Or are they?" Kon blurted out, grinning.

"Kon, stop confusing them!"

Kon laughed. "Okay, okay, fine. His dad's Batman, and my dad's Superman."

Aaaaaaaand that just happened. My best friend just revealed my dad's secret identity to a pair of civilians. Tim had thought Kon capable of more subtlety, but then Tim remembered that this was Kon he was thinking about.

"Kon!" Tim hissed under his breath, just loud enough that his Kryptonian-hybrid of a friend could hear him. "What part of 'being undercover' don't you understand?" Not that Tim was doing a very good job of that, what with getting his friends kidnapped and inviting a human-Kryptonian hybrid onto their plane, but it was the principle of the whole thing. It wasn't Kon's place to reveal such sensitive information!

"Oh, come on, they're wizards," Kon said, much louder than Tim despite knowing that Tim could just read his lips. "They're basically superheroes."

"Superheroes?" Neville repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Your fathers are rogue wizards?"

Aruna shook her head. "Different magic," she said.

This was not nearly enough context for Neville to piece together what was going on. "There are different kinds of magic?" This was then followed by Tim giving a half-hour-long explanation of the Justice League and how, no, they weren't rogue wizards, but, yes, some of them had abilities that seemed like magic.

"And your dad is a part of them." Neville was finally beginning to piece things together. "He fights crime."

"And so do you," Aruna added, nodding in Tim's direction.

"And so do I—wait, what?" Tim had started out agreeing with her automatically before he actually registered what he had basically admitted to them.

"Of course!" exclaimed Neville. "That's why you're so good at fighting."

Tim tried weakly to defend himself. "No, I—"

"And you're a superhero, too!" Neville realized, pointing at Kon, who threw back a wink. "That's why you can fly. And do that Tackle Telly—"

"Tactile Telekinesis," Kon corrected instinctively.

"Yes, that."

Tim threw a nasty glare at Kon, who swallowed tensely and looked out the window.

"Ah, look, here's Britain!" he chuckled nervously. Neville looked back and forth between Tim and Kon, and then he let out a little gasp.

"Oh, Merlin, you were trying to keep all that a secret, weren't you," he sighed, brows drawing in close together. "Gosh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"It's not your fault," Tim assured him, keeping his gaze on Kon.

Kon, the little bastard, just kept on grinning in Tim's direction.

Nothing particularly eventful happened for the rest of the trip, save for Aruna asking out of the blue if Kon and Tim were dating each other, to which Tim had turned a bright red and Kon had laughed so hard he started crying.

"Wait 'til I tell Cassie and Bart about this…" he kept on repeating to himself in between breaths.

"Kon, please shut up right now."

Aruna didn't even have the nerve to look ashamed at her assumption; if possible, she looked almost skeptical, as though the way they were interacting with one another could only be construed as a romantic tête-à-tête.

"So, tell me again about this cloud?" Kon asked Neville once he'd finally stopped laughing.

"The Clud," Neville corrected. "It's this old, abandoned religious temple for Muggles, St. Alkmund's Church, but everyone calls it the Clud because it's on this really high hill and also it casts a huge shadow on the town for a good portion of the day. It's all crumbly, you'll know it when you see it."

"Oh, I see it. I can read the signage from here," confirmed Kon, staring out into the vast expanse of sky before them. It's about three minutes away."

Tim nodded, moving over to check Neville's injury again.

In his haste, he almost didn't here Aruna say, "There are religious wizards."

Neville, Tim, and Kon all turned to face the usually silent girl.

"You said that it was a church for jyesh," Aruna continued, looking at Neville. "But wizards can be religious, too."

Neville blinked, looking genuinely surprised by this news. "O-oh. I guess I've never really heard anyone talk about their religion before."

"Just because no one talks about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist," Tim pointed out. "You have a pretty small friend group, Neville." Upon seeing the way Neville's face sagged, Tim quickly added, "Not that that's a bad thing. I just mean that, even though none of the Gryffindor fifth-years have any religious affiliation doesn't mean that nobody else does. Anthony's Jewish, right?" Tim said, aiming his question at Aruna, who nodded.

"My parents raised me in a Hindu faith that acknowledges the existence of magic," Aruna explained. "And there are temples on the outskirts of Hogsmeade to all the major religions of the world."

This was news to Tim, an atheist who grew up in a vaguely Christian household and sometimes had the urge to enter a church, any church, really, just to remember Christmases and Easters with his birth parents. Knowing that it was just a walk away was comforting in a vague way that Tim didn't really understand.

Tim wondered how a student got permission to go on religious trips to Hogsmeade, especially first and second-years, and he thought about asking Aruna, but she seemed like she'd said what she wanted and was considering the conversation done. The fact that she'd even spoken at all on the subject pointed to a deep passion for it that he admired.

Kon placed a hand over his mouth and made a bzzzt noise, like someone had just turned on an old walkie-talkie. "We will now begin our descent," he said into his hands, giving it that same radio-like effect that somehow still got a laugh out of Tim. "I'd say to fasten your seatbelts, but I don't actually give a shit about what you do while I'm landing."

Tim hurried over to the monitor just to make sure that stealth mode was still on. On high-tech planes like this, there was actually reflective technology that made it camouflage with its environment, so if Tim could avoid the civilians gawking and calling the police, he'd do it.

They ended up landing about half a mile out of town in a grassy clearing. Kon and Tim both helped Neville out of this ship and onto the ground, Aruna hopping out to join them.

"Our house is in the woods over there," Neville said, pointing to the nearby village and cluster of trees that came right up to the outskirts of the town.

Kon gave a thumbs-up to Neville. "We cool? This a good place to land?"

"We're cool," Neville giggled, giving a thumbs-up back.

And then Kon just turned around and headed back to the ship, which made Tim's chest tighten. He quickly reached out and grabbed the boy's shoulder.

"Thanks for coming, Kon," Tim sighed. "It—I—I really missed you." Kon twirled back around, shrugging Tim's hand off of his shoulder and floating a couple inches off of the ground so that he could ruffle Tim's hair, the traitor.

"I missed you, too, Rob," he admitted. "And if you ever need anything else, I'll be here in a heartbeat. Promise." Tim would have swatted the boy's hand away if it wouldn't have been such a literal pain to do so. As it was, he yielded to Kon's actions, though he gave his friend a thoroughly perturbed frown.

Kon flicked out his pair of teashades and put them on, grinning. "So…" he said slowly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, "what am I supposed to do with this thing anyways?"

Tim shrugged. "I'd say take it to the Batcave. Bruce would love to get his hands on one of these."

"Sounds about right." Kon flew over to the aircraft and placed a hand on the windshield. With seemingly very little effort, he lifted the plane up into the air, palming it like one would a basketball. "All right, goodbye for real now." He lifted up his unoccupied hand and gave Tim a mock salute. "Superboy, signing off."

For a brief moment, he and Tim stared at each other, neither making the move to leave, and Tim smiled, taking in his last moments with a piece of his faraway home. And then, with a loud clap, Kon shot off into the clouds.

Tim stared up at the gloomy sky for another minute before he had to return to reality. "All right, then," he said, turning to Aruna and Neville. "Which way to your home, Neville?"

For some reason, Neville and Aruna were looking at him oddly. The former was giving Tim a pitying frown, while the latter cocked her head like she couldn't quite understand the young man standing in front of her.

"What?" Tim asked, though he didn't need their help to interpret their feelings. He had been acting like a homesick child for the past hour; obviously, they felt bad for him having to say goodbye to Kon so soon. Tim really needed to get a hold on his own emotions.

Neville flinched, averting his gaze. "U-uh—nothing, nothing. Follow me."

Due to Kon's medical intervention earlier, Neville was able to walk using Aruna as a crutch, with Tim flanking him on the other side, but it was still slow-going. Luckily, Neville lived on the edge of the village, meaning that they didn't have to duck behind alleys to stay hidden from passers-by; on the contrary, they didn't once run into another person except for a car that drove past them on one of the dirt roads. Neville led the three of them into a grove of trees, walking alongside a bright, babbling brook. Tim suddenly felt very paranoid about the possibility of accidentally stepping into a faerie circle.

But no such thing popped up, and they eventually found themselves on a cracked stone path which led them to a short, reddish cottage not unlike the one owned by the Seven Dwarves. It had several pointed roofs, each with several chimneys protruding from them, but the most interesting thing to Tim was that it looked like an unusually tall hawthorn tree was growing out of one of these chimneys.

Tim found himself walking ahead of his companions, and, when he turned to check on the two of them, he saw that Neville was incredibly pale and sweating fiercely.

"Are you okay, Neville?" Tim asked hurriedly, falling back alongside them. "I could run up and knock on the door, and then your grandmother could come out and levitate you in, if that's easier for you."

Neville's eyes widened, and he shook his head hurriedly, sweat flying off of him like a wet dog. "No—no, no, I'm fine…" he told Tim in a very unconvincing manor. "I just…I'm not really sure how Gran is gonna react to all this…"

"Well, I assume she'll be pretty shocked and worried," Tim suggested brightly.

"I hope so…" Neville muttered to himself. His eyes were squeezed shut as Tim grabbed the large brass knocker on the front door and rapped it thrice against the door. And then, two minutes later, he did so again, after having received no response.

Tim turned to Neville. "Uh, Neville, are you sure your grandmother's actually—"

"Daniel!" came a muffled voice from the back of the house, the volume increasing as the speaker approached. "You better not be standing there with another one of those pamphlets, or else I swear I'll follow you home and ambush your—"

The door swung in, revealing a spindly woman whose dress hung off her body with room to spare. Her hair was pulled back in an impeccable bun, she had on a pair of reading glasses, and her hawk-like eyes immediately zeroed in on Neville, who looked like he deeply regretted having opened his eyes.

"Neville," she said simply with a deadpan delivery.

Neville cleared his throat, his face already turning bright red within seconds. "Um…hello, Gran…Do you…um…can we come in…?"

Neville's grandmother snorted, rolling her eyes. "Are you asking for permission to enter your own home? And what on Earth are you wearing?"

Neville's head slowly shrunk back into his neck. "Yes—I mean, no—I mean—"

"Oh, just come in already."

"Yes, ma'am."

I refuse to believe that religious wizards do not exist in Britain, and I think it would make a lot of sense to have temples of worship in Hogsmeade which students could go to. I would go more into depth about specific religions and how they might function in a wizarding society, but, unfortunately, I am woefully uneducated in regards to any religion that is not Christianity or Judaism, and looking up religious beliefs online pales in comparison to actually talking to practicing religious peoples about their respective religion, it's really nuanced. I'd love to hear what people think about religious wizards, whether they be cultural or practicing, because it's not something I hear a lot of people talking about.
(Am I implying that many of Voldemort's followers are religious extremists? Maybe...)
(Am I implying that some of Voldemort's followers refuse to call Jewish wizards "purebloods" regardless of their magical bloodline? Maybe...)
(Am I implying that at least half of the cardinals in the Vatican are secretly wizards? Maybe...)
(Am I implying that-okay, okay, you get the point, there's a lot of potential here)