Disclaimer: I don't own HP or DC in any way. They are the property of DC Comics, JKR and probably a dozen other companies
A great many thanks to Lordlexx, Bakkughan and Rezurex and BBertie for their help as the editors, you guys are great!
Chapter 3 is already available on my discord, so hop on for an early read. I am also available along with many others to chat and talk. The link is on the profile!
I am also a part of a group of authors who have formed a community to help each other and budding writers. The Discord group name is Emerald Library and the link is on the profile!
A punch slammed into his gut making him double over in pain before a hand grabbed his wrist and twisted the limb behind his back. Harry pushed through the pain while using the slipperiness from the sweat on his skin to twist his wrist and press his fingers into the area between his opponent's thumb and finger with all the strength he could muster. Finding his wrist free of the grip, Harry immediately ducked and swept out his leg and caused his adversary to fall on his back. He followed with a sideways flip before an axe kick landed on his fallen opponent's stomach.
Kneeling there on the floor with sweat pouring off him, Harry channeled the magic within him, a little easier than the last time, and the eldritch red light of a Stunning Charm rocketed towards the half-kneeling woman, slamming into her face and sending her falling back down once again.
"Faora-Ul, fight at the speed shown by the human but increase your strength to double of his. The energy spike this time was larger than the last time and more stable as well." A powerful voice echoed through the room, its tone unwavering and used to commanding others.
Looking up past his sweat-soaked curtain of hair, Harry watched with fear and anger in equal measure as a beautiful woman clad in just a simple bodysuit entered the room, a probe floating beside her dragging the fallen woman in front of him out of the room. Her black eyes alight in amusement with her ruby red lips split into a smile, Faora-Ul looked devastating with her looks alone, to say nothing of when her flawless combat was included in the equation. While her body was built for sin and stopping hearts, Harry knew from personal experience that she could throw him around in ten different ways within half that time and a single finger used to do so.
Kneeling down in front of him, the Kryptonian woman smirked. "Ready for the fight Harry, I promise I will go easy this time, after all, we don't want to break your hands again do we?"
Snarling in defiance, Harry planted his hands on the grey surface beneath him and pushed himself up, his muscles screaming in protest at the slightest movement. Staggering slightly to a bout of vertigo, Harry assumed one of the many combat stances he had learned during his captivity aboard this ship over the years. His left leg was quite a bit ahead of his right and his right hand was behind his left as both were raised in front of his chest.
While he had never had any formal training, experience and pain quickly taught him many things during the months—or was it years?—he had spent here. One moment Faora was standing in front of him with a sultry smile on her face, the next her foot slammed into his jaw with more force than usual, breaking his teeth and causing him to spit out blood.
"Harryyy, come now, surely you can do better. I remember the way you broke my wrist a few days ago." Faora drawled as she shook her head and ran her hand through her hair, a smirk on her face as she gazed at the kneeling man at her feet. Growling at the mocking remark and his own inability to defeat her, Harry lowered his Occlumency completely, allowing his rage, sadness, hatred and, to his shame, lust for the woman in front of him flow through his veins as the heightened emotions allowed much more free usage of magic, similar to the bouts of accidental magic a magical child uses.
Intent on removing that smug look on her face and making her actually regard him as a real threat, as well as causing her to eat her mocking remarks, Harry blurred through the space between them with his right hand raised for a punch. He shot his fist forward at speeds too great for even him to see clearly but Faora stopped it with just a raised palm, showing why she was one of the deadliest Kryptonians, though the surprise that came over her face was a welcome one.
"That...was unexpected, now if only we could know how to make you use this power consistently and aid us in our efforts," the man's voice once again echoed all around him, increasing Harry's rage even more and with a mental scream of Fulmen, red lightning lanced through his arm into the Kryptonian woman.
While Kryptonians were considerably more durable than ordinary humans, even without bathing under yellow solar radiation, they had surprisingly little to no defence against most magics. Instantly, Faora was screaming off her throat hoarse, the lightning flaring up her nerves and burning her much like normal electricity would do for a human. As Harry took grim satisfaction in seeing the seductive Kryptonian as the one screaming in pain, he had no idea of the strike to his temple which sent him crashing down on the floor until it was too late.
Through his dimming vision, Harry saw the man behind his imprisonment and current predicament kneel down by Faora and inspect the burns on her skin, her supernatural healing which had healed a broken arm in moments in front of him now going at a snail's pace.
"Take him back to his cell Faora, I have the data I need for today."
Before he could hear her response, Harry finally blacked out, the pain and exhaustion from numerous fights finally overwhelming him. As he slept in his cell while his magic repaired his body, Harry dreams weren't dreams in the conventional sense, rather the memories of the day when he had walked into the Veil and landed in something called 'The Phantom Zone', a place where the worst scum of the known 28 galaxies were sent to, a prison, without even the slightest hope of escape in which they would be trapped for all eternity.
He had released his magic much like Hermione's ghost had told him he would, but even she had been mistaken about what would have happened. Harry had released that buildup of magical energy quite explosively, only for his core to recharge at a more sedate pace, with the earlier buildup having increased both his sensitivity to the magical energies and his own power reserves.
When he had finally become conscious, he had been lying on what looked to be a surgical table, much like the ones used on Earth, with a dozen unrecognizable figures surrounding him. He had subconsciously read one of their minds, only to recoil violently at what he learned within the next ten seconds. The scientists surrounding him were Kryptonians, a race of humanoids much more powerful and advanced than humans. Hailing from a planet named Krypton, they had developed abilities by processing and absorbing radiation from stars, the different wavelengths of red, blue, yellow and white stars giving them different powers.
Even without the extensive powers the yellow, blue, and white stars granted them, Kryptonians had greater physical abilities than humans, with the increase in their strength and other superhuman abilities directly related to the amount and power of radiation pumped into their cells. The planet had been destroyed due to their overuse of resources and such but before that the crew of the vessel he was in had been banished to the Phantom Zone by the High Council of Krypton for their crimes.
General Zod, the man standing front and center in front of him, was the best Krypton had to offer in military distinction and martial prowess, having brought many civilizations to heel under Kryptonian forces and his own brilliant mind. He had blacked out once again, and this time he had realized what had happened when he had finally destroyed Voldemort for the final time. He had absorbed Voldemort's soul completely, much like he had done to Ginny after he had used up her benefits completely.
He had absorbed the magical potential of Voldemort and much of his power, making his proficiency for wandless and powerful magic increase, with magic becoming less taxing on his concentration and power. But Voldemort had still left his mark on Harry, with the Dark Lord's attempting to take over Harry's body. His soul and memories had been pushed into his own soul and mind in an attempt to merge their power and knowledge together, the famed Black and Potter libraries having been a topic of interest to Voldemort since his teenage days.
Granted, not all of his powers were fused with Harry, but Voldemort's instincts, personality, and all of his memories were merged with his own. As he had built up his Occlumency following his capture to prevent random hallucinations and memory flashes, he had been forced to watch all the memories from both of them and the merged personalities had made him view his own life in a vastly different manner. His sacrificial tendencies tempered by the self-serving nature of Voldemort, his optimism dimmed by a realistic outlook born from struggle and darkness in Tom Riddle's mind. The appreciation and value of any life easily forgotten if his own was threatened.
When he had finally awakened after gaining some semblance of stability in his mind, the first person he had seen was Faora-Ul, the second-best Warrior of Krypton and one of the accomplices of General Zod when he had tried to attempt a coup against the High Council of Krypton. The woman had told him about how they had found him by detecting a surge of energy relatively unknown to them other than a few instances of Kryptonians interacting with an energy channeled by a few species capable of changing reality.
Many of them were extinct now, the Kryptonians having eradicated entire planets in the pursuit of removing threats to their regime. Turns out, magic could harm a Kryptonian despite any level of superhuman powers they developed in varying levels of radiation, their invulnerability meaning jack shit to magic, the ultimate middle-finger to physics and laws of Order everywhere.
General Zod, while in the Phantom Zone, had come across a total of four wizards and witches from Harry's Universe, with two of them dying instantly due to the stress placed by the dimensional change on their bodies. The others were more familiar to him, having personally seen the send-off of Lucius Malfoy and Tiberius Nott, both of the Death Eaters getting the death penalty from the Wizengamot. In their perceived arrogance against the Kryptonians, Lucius had cast the Cruciatus Curse on Zod, making even the war-hardened general fall to his knees with only a shout of pain to show for all his efforts. Unfortunately for Malfoy, the general wasn't alone, the next second Lucius had been nothing but a bloody smear on the floor, Nott following soon after. Only their physical descriptions telling Harry the identity of the previous tenants here. Despite the Kryptonians having no enhanced defense against magic, they had learned to fight against the users of the arcane.
After that when they had verified his power was similar to them and even distantly related by blood, they had told him to use magic, only for him to point out he had lost his wand. As his luck goes, it was that moment his hand had lit up with lightning unconsciously in aggression.
Realizing his emotions triggered his powers and wanting to know more about how Kryptonians were affected by it in a controlled manner, Zod had Harry fight his soldiers daily to the point of exhaustion, his injuries, and sustenance handled by his magic completely. Days bled into weeks with fighting, electrical burns from torture, and Faora's daily dose of seductive behavior towards him with the Kryptonians having gotten much of his life story either through their own form of psychic contact with other minds or his own inane babbling when strapped to an electrode.
He had attempted to feel out his magic using Tom Riddle's memories of learning to wield his magic as a child, and it became astronomically easier than it would have been for him normally. It was then that the true difference between the likes of Dumbledore or Voldemort compared to him became crystalline in his mind. While he had always been powerful, a patronus capable of repelling more than a hundred dementors at thirteen years of age was ample proof of it, he had never taken the initiative or an overt interest in magic as a whole despite his fascination.
To him, Hogwarts had been a way to be away from Dursleys and be with Ron and Hermione, the true value of those galleons his father had paid, or that humongous library having never reached his heart until he had graduated. He had become the best duellist in Europe for three straight years, and learned much of what the Black and Potter families had to offer in terms of knowledge, but Voldemort hadn't even needed to know the spells for what he did half of the time.
Having trained his magic since his early days, Voldemort simply willed his intent into being while pouring power into the thought, something which Dumbledore also did. An advanced form of magic only a few were capable of throughout history. It was known as Mysticism, something more advanced than even Silent Casting and Evocation and equally taxing on the mind as well.
He had attempted, day after day, to cast the spells, planning to go up the ladder from his first year to his seventh, gaining proficiency with wandless Mysticism each time he did so without words or motions. The Levitation Charm, by far the most used charm and one of the easiest, had taken him forty straight days to perform without evocation, silent casting or wand motions and after that, he had simply stopped checking the time it took to master a spell absolutely. While not sure of the exact time, Harry was sure he had been on the ship for more than three years at this point. Each day was a monotonous, yet almost tortuous, experience for him, the most perplexing thing being that nowadays he had come to like the fights! Fights where he fought people far stronger physically than him, his meager experience infinitesimal in front of their training, and his magical usage was studied extensively by the General.
Now as he sat in his room/cell while his magic healed the bruises and minor cracks in his bones while also providing energy to his body, Harry raised his right hand and red lightning cracked into being between his fingers, the effort this time as negligible as it was for him to breathe. Grinning slightly, Harry mentally checked off the Fulmen spell from his ridiculously long list of silent wandless casting.
The next second, Harry focused on the feeling of the lightning as it had danced over his hand yet not harming him, the way it crackled over anything, the way it could hurt anything and anyone. Closing his eyes, Harry breathed in deeply and let the thought of lightning fill his mind before a soft static noise caused him to open his eyes. Red sparks of light rose up between his fingers for a moment, before dying down like the embers they were and in the dying light, Harry's grin turned positively demonic as once again red light filled the room, this time more pronounced than before.
"His power is increasing with each fight, the readings from Faora's incapacitation were significantly higher than the time he used fire against Nam-Ek. Is it wise to let him have free reign during combat General? Your usage of Torquasm-Vo revealed much of what his race was capable of, and the subject is vastly more powerful than them."
"He won't be able to do anything without me knowing about it." Zod said. "I am always present during the combat exercises and at the slightest sign of lethality on his part, sedatives and submission are always available. How are the odds of adding his ability in Kryptonians coming along? Or a way to remove our non-durability against his attacks?"
While he didn't do so often, Jax-Ur couldn't help but internally curse the General or Jor-El. Both men were the bane of his existence now, one having been breathing on his neck since they found those two humans in the Phantom Zone, while the other was the one who created this Rao forsaken place.
The utter annihilation of Krypton and the resulting destruction of the High Council had freed them all from their cryogenic stasis, and they had even begun to leave the zone to find a place to rebuild Krypton while trying to find the Codex which had been stolen by Jor-El, the man having sent off his son with the codex inside him. But now they were here, in the empty space just shy of Phantom Zone with Zod wanting their prisoner's powers for himself and the Kryptonians while also removing their weakness to it.
"It is a delicate process General, we don't know anything about what we want to do."
Zod walked out of the room without a word in response, no doubt to blow off some of his anger on the soldiers still in the ship. Shaking his head, he returned to the sample of DNA they had taken out of the subject today, something which they should have done when they had first captured him. Sometime later after reading the energy output from both of those and also the reaction of the sample to metal he immediately rushed out to share his hypothesis with the General, knowing this could be a breaking point in their research. It was easy to find the General, since most of the time he was either training with the remaining Kryptonians or was either plotting out their next move in the known galaxies, their primary focus being on Kryptonian outposts, space stations, and planets with known Kryptonian activity in the past.
Alighting behind Zod as he stared out in Universe, Jax spoke, "General, I have managed to come to a conclusion regarding our subject. He is not entirely human due to some added substances in his blood. Some sort of degenerative substance which managed to melt a few of my instruments as well as some sort of hyper regenerative compound. Neither can be isolated from his blood and yet despite their contradictory nature, he remains not only alive and well but entirely unburdened by either. Though not unaided, I seriously doubt any poisons would last any length of time in his system. "
"And how does it help our cause Jax-Ur?" Zod asked as he turned around. "We don't need regenerative abilities anymore! What we need is protection against the energy this human and those like him have wielded in the universe. The energy which is capable of negating and outright ignoring our considerable durability even with the empowering photonucleic effects and stopping our regeneration for a considerable amount of time!"
"The subject has a remarkable affinity to adapt to foreign substances injected within his body, the energy or 'magic' inside him is helping him by changing his genome and body's constitution slightly. As he is, if we were to inject his blood or stem cells within a Kryptonian, there is a high chance of his blood and the degenerative substance within it harming and potentially even crippling our race permanently."
His interest piqued, Zod motioned for Jax to continue, the scientist nodding and showing him a simulation he created while he explained, "It is possible that the subject may survive the addition of Kryptonian cells inside his body, making his physiology change to be more Kryptonian and thus possibly make it non-toxic and compatible with our race as a whole."
For a moment silence reigned in the room, the silent backdrop of the cosmos perfectly showing the insides of Zod's mind.
'Great Rao this is...this is the creation of a hybrid, something which hasn't been done in Krypton's history. Jax-Ur certainly deserves the title of 'The Mad Scientist', but this...this could change the Kryptonian race completely. When we are successful in harnessing the powers that Potter possesses, no one will be able to stand against the might of the New Krypton! Not those Guardians of Oa, the Tamaraneans, Almeracians, Thanagarians, or any other race who have proven themselves nearly as mighty as the Kryptonians. Each and everyone will kneel in front of me, even that Rao damned son of Jor-El!'
"Proceed with further testing and tell me of your results. But we have to find a way to make him malleable to our cause. His energy is known to lash out without his prompting if he is in danger, I don't want what happened to Tor-An to happen to anyone else."
"Yes, General." Jax nodded and walked out with a shiver running down his spine at the last words of Zod. Tor-An had been a soldier under Zod and subsequently imprisoned with them inside the Phantom Zone. Sometime after Harry Potter had been brought on their ship, Tor had attempted to torture the human while he had been delirious and unable to answer the General. All of them then bore witness to Tor slowly freezing into stone without the man bound at their feet even opening his eyes or giving any semblance of aggression.
When they had questioned him, he had revealed that sometimes his magic may act out in response to any danger either he subconsciously recognized or magic itself deemed it a danger to him. The concept of semi-sentient energy that ignored their enhanced durability and would instinctively defend its.. host.. for lack of a better term, without any input from the said host was utterly frightening. It wasn't something they could fight or even fully comprehend. Kryptonians being the prideful beings they were, that was unacceptable.
"You are to seduce him and convince him that he is now completely safe from harm, since we were just testing whether he was any danger to us remaining Kryptonians or not due to his similar energy as one of our old enemies. He has free reign inside the ship and everyone is told to be cordial with him, but not overly so to cause suspicion."
Nodding in compliance with the Order, Faora-Ul, the second-in-command of General Zod's forces as well as the top soldier after Zod himself went towards Harry's room to...seduce him. While Faora was no prude and certainly not inexperienced in carnal acts, the thought of seducing Harry left a strange taste in her mouth and a sort of reluctance within her mind.
Still, an order was an order and Harry's cooperation with the procedure would be needed, so this was the best way to secure that. It wasn't as if seducing the male would be a difficult task. Faora knew she was visually very pleasing to the man, having felt and seen him giving her lingering glances from the front and behind both. He was also starved for positive emotion and touch for quite a long time and humans had a much shorter lifespan than Kryptonians, it made sense for them to be much more prone to baser acts and be more sexually active in order to reproduce so Faora was sure that she could easily attain her objective.
"So, the General was just ascertaining whether I am a threat to you guys or not by forcing me into isolation and combat scenarios to reveal my true nature."
A nod from Faora with a small smile on her lips made him almost smile back before he asked her, "Now that he is sure that I don't represent any danger I am allowed freedom inside the ship?"
"Yes Harry," a hand landed on his knee, squeezing lightly as Faora sent him an absolutely breathtaking smile that made Fleur and other Veela look like normal witches in comparison. Having been on a dry spell as long as he had been, his body immediately reacted to a touch of a woman that wasn't actively trying to kill him, only to be embarrassed that he had to utilize Occlumency and force down his arousal.
Besides, for all the seductive actions Faora performed, and all the nice words she was speaking, a single use of legilimency was enough to tell him their plan. While it was a solid plan, and if it were Harry from years ago then Faora would have had him eating out her palm within moments. But now, with his manifold increased capability in legilimency it was a child's play to bypass the psychic shields she possessed, and know her intentions without alerting her.
However, if playing nice was going to get him respite from the daily fights and a modicum of comfort in this ship, then he had no problems with it. And it definitely wouldn't be hard to fake his interest in Faora, especially when all she wore was a skintight bodysuit, which left not a single one of her curves to his imagination. Shaking off his thoughts on the Kryptonian woman, Harry looked with awe at the ship. While he had been a resident here for a number of years at this point, he had never seen the rest of the ship due to his cell/room being directly connected to the combat area.
"This ship is named Black Zero, it was created by Jor-El to transport prisoners to the Phantom Zone. General Zod and all of us were encased within stasis inside the ship itself. Jax-Ur, one of the best scientific minds of Krypton, managed to use the Phantom Zone projector, a device created by Jor-El and change it into Phantom Drive after the destruction of Krypton released us from the Phantom Zone."
A frown came over his face and he said. "Faora, I never asked, but why did you rebel against the Council? I only know of the coup because when your General used that technique of his, and we battled on a mental level I saw some of his memories as he saw some of mine."
Shaking her head, Faora tucked her hair behind her ear and answered, "Krypton was dying, Harry, and in one of the very few times in their history, both the General and Jor-El agreed upon something and they both wanted to save our race. However, the Council, Jor-El and the General all disagreed about how to go about it, so we staged a coup, but it was foiled, and we were imprisoned. Now we are the last Kryptonians we know about other than Jor-El's son."
When put it that way, some part of Harry could understand the situation the Kryptonians were going through, he himself had no hope of going back to his planet if the way Faora casually talked about how Kryptonians had captured worlds and Phantom Zone was a prison for 28 known galaxies. For all he knew, he could be on the other end of the universe from the Milky Way!
"These are your new living quarters Harry," Faora said as she arrived at a seemingly blank stretch of the wall before the wall fell away and revealed a sparse room with just a bed inside it. "These are the rooms the Military Guild used when transporting prisoners. The room across from you is mine, if you need anything, just call me."
Faora swiftly moved backward while keeping eye contact with him and disappeared into the wall behind her, the surface disintegrating and reappearing just as quickly. Still slightly baffled and more than relieved that no more testing was going to be done on him by fight-happy aliens forcing him to use his magic to stay alive while others watched on, Harry walked inside the room and fell forwards on the bed a muffled moan sounded through the room as Harry promptly turned into a puddle of tiredness and comfort.
"Definitely worth the acting and trust I am going to have to show them."