Disclaimer: I don't own DC or HP. Though, if did, I would travelling in a flight instead of this…train.
AN-1: You know the drill by now, for those interested, Chapter 12 will be available on my discord for an advance read, and you can also chat with me and the hundreds of readers there. Oh, and keep up with the updates too.
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AN-3: A heartfelt thanks to Lordlexx for the edits—TBH, I think he does just because he gets to read all this months in advance.
AN_4: A very big, very large, and very teary (happy ones) thankyou to Gerald, Arman Darklich, Known ART, Mrmeme101 and Russell Taylor for their heart-stopping, brain-frying support as the Celestial level Patrons.
You guys are the best.
"Alright, now breathe in slowly, and imagine the air in front of you turning into sharp blades," Harry said as he stood behind Kara, bending down to murmur in her ear.
"Think about how those blades will move through the air, how they have to stay firm and unyielding in the face of air pressure and other atmospheric conditions. How they have to be sharp enough to cut through steel, and yet fast enough to land quicker than the fastest winds."
A second later, he felt a burst of magic from Kara and the air in front of them wavered slightly. With a faint whistling sound, the dozen or so blades she had created sped through the air easily, and reached the steel plate he had conjured about a hundred feet away. Deep gouges and slashes appeared on the metal, and in some places, the blades had completely passed through the sheet, allowing both of them to see the trees beyond it.
"Damn," he exclaimed, his eyes looking at every slash and gouge made by Kara's attack. "Great work. Now that you can cut half-an-inch, let's go for two, along with a small breeze."
Before Kara could protest about the abrupt rise in the difficulty of her task, a small breeze started to blow over the area as Harry manipulated the climate of the island. At the same time, he repaired and thickened the steel plate, simultaneously increasing the distance to around one hundred and fifty feet. The crimson-blond-haired girl looked at him with a scowl at that, but she didn't say anything, knowing that any protests would only make Harry increase the distance even more.
Patting Kara on her head, Harry gave her a thumbs up and moved away from the area, leaving Kara to her task as he decided to go for a swim. Removing his clothes, Harry jumped into the air, easily reaching the height of about fifty feet. Mid-air, he began the self-transfiguration, reaching a state like the one gillyweed had given him back in the fourth year.
Gills opened up on his neck, and his limbs transformed accordingly, before, with a small splash, Harry dove headfirst into the ocean.
Speeding through the cold waters randomly, Harry felt a burst of magic from behind him, and a grin overtook his face as he felt Kara's joy through the bracelet he had given her. Made from enchanted silver and inlaid with small emeralds and sapphires, he had gifted it to her about a month ago, the thing doubling as a beacon to track her and monitor her emotions in case anything like New York happened again.
Kara knew this of course. Harry had told her about the runes carved into the interior of the bracelet as soon as the girl had put it on, and unexpectedly, Kara hadn't raised a fuss about it. Once again, Harry was struck by the changes she had undergone after her miraculous survival, because there was no way the Kara from before the attack would have agreed to it.
After that, he had started her magical education along with physical combat. Due to her not going to any school, and Harry working at a new food truck at the night, they had a large amount of free time every day. Time which was spent at the island he had warded several years ago. Back when he was new to this Universe and he had mistakenly broken into…
Shaking his head to dispel the thoughts better left alone, Harry swam deeper into the Pacific, schools of fish distorting and zooming away as he pushed himself faster and harder by the second. As he slowed down to a leisure pace after a few minutes of non-stop swimming, Harry's mind returned to Kara, and her ongoing magical studies.
Kara was a prodigy. A freak of nature who came along only once or twice in a century. Because as much as Harry disliked that word…there was simply no other way to certify her growth curve. Normal wizards and witches, no matter how powerful, wouldn't be able to complete the first two years of standard magical education in a single month.
Oh sure, the fact that Kara's brain was more powerful than a hundred humans put together, and could work faster than a computer without even trying certainly helped her with retaining information. But the way she used magic? The way she took to Mysticism? With the amount of power she possessed and a brain that would have made Hermione look like an infant—to be honest, even his mind nowadays would have made his brunette friend seem like a bumbling kid—Harry was sure that before the year was up, he would run out of things to teach his sister. With her Kryptonian powers—she could still fly, how was that fair?!— left mostly unchanged by the transformation into a magical being, and her magical reserves easily on par with the likes of Dumbledore and Voldemort, Harry was quite happy with the way things were proceeding.
"I still don't like the fact that you get to keep your heat vision as well as flight," Harry sullenly remarked as he watched Kara fly through the air, twisting and turning this way and that as he created hoops of fire and balls of light for her to pass through randomly in her path. "I mean, how fair is that?!"
"Shut up you crybaby!" Kara shouted back, bending backwards at ninety degrees to avoid a sharp sword that suddenly appeared in front of her, all the while flying through the hoop he had conjured at her right. "And don't you forget that I lost my physical powers in proportionality! I am only about 70 percent as strong as I was before!"
"Meh," Harry scoffed, "Seventy percent of a Kryptonian's power is still more than what 99.99 percent of this planet can handle, Not much of a difference if you ask me. All right, enough aerial maneuvering, for now, get down here for some CQC!"
"I have always wanted to kick your ass," Kara smirked as she floated down, assuming the stance of Torquasm-Rao. "Maybe now you will stop being such an arrogant jerk all the time!"
"Brat", Harry snorted, standing with his hands inside his pockets and looking utterly unconcerned about the fact that the 'Nation-destroying' force was about to come at him. "I learned from the two best combatants Krypton had to offer and I have mastered dozens of martial arts styles from around the world." He paused for a moment, tilting his head to the side as he grinned at her, "Now tell me, how high are your chances of kicking my ass?"
In response, the earth beneath Kara's feet cracked and heaved as she jumped at him, a sonic boom resounding all over the area as she covered the two hundred feet between them in a single moment. Her fist shot towards his face, the speed of it enough to create a shockwave of its own as it moved through the air.
The next second, an earthquake shook the whole island as Harry turned on his right heel, and brought his left leg down on Kara's head in a brutal axe-kick, driving her head into the ground. The land cratered around them, bits and pieces of it rising in the air from the impact before they fell down and a spider web of cracks spread out for meters in every direction,
"Lesson one, Never rush in," he calmly said, his voice utterly at odds with his relaxed posture, every word serious and seeming to echo around them. "Your emotions and your well-found, but ill-thought, arrogance will make you charge without a plan, fight without thinking…but you are going to reign them in."
Letting up on the pressure, Harry wasn't surprised at all when the ground beneath him erupted in a shower of earth and dirt as Kara blasted up into the air. Tracking her movement with his eyes, Harry sighed and shook his head. While he knew that a single kick wasn't going to cut her curb her recklessness and attitude, Harry had hoped that on some level she might recognize and understand his words. Looking at the frustration and anger on her face, Harry sighed once again, feeling sick with himself for what he was about to do…but understanding the necessity of it as well.
She rushed towards him, the sound of the air getting displaced overlapped by the sound of her fists crashing into his chest. Reinforcing his body with his magic, Harry still felt three of his ribs crack from the impact. Taking back a single step to stabilize himself, Harry caught Kara's wrists in his hands and started to push her hands away from him. Looking Kara right into her eyes, Harry started to force her back, using his full strength after so many years that for a moment even he was taken aback by it, to say nothing about Kara's astonishment as she felt herself get overpowered. A single foot, then a couple of feet, then two meters. Bit by bit, Harry started to move her back as he forced her hands apart.
Tightening his grip upon her hands, Harry gave her no time to react before his foot slammed into her torso. In a moment that seemed to stretch forever due to their superfast minds and eyes, their eyes met for a single second. The next moment, the world resumed its speed as Kara seemed to fold over his leg, before she flew back with enough force to carve a trench in the Earth…despite being airborne.
Before she could gain control of her flight, Kara's hands automatically crossed in front of her face, and her forearms screamed in protest as Harry's fist crashed into them. Yet another shockwave blasted out from the mind-bogglingly strong punch, and Kara felt her body pick up more speed due to the added force from Harry's attack. A few milliseconds later, she had just about stabilized her comet-esque journey across the air when a hand caught her by her leg, and pulled her into a right hook that laid her flat out on the ground, the earth around her cratering in several feet deep and equally as wide expanse.
"Lesson number 2," Harry called out as he walked towards her. "When your opponent is of the superpowered variety and is easily capable of beating your ass into the ground…you think of a plan or you retreat. There is no third option Kara, especially out there, where a single shard of Kryptonite is enough to end your life."
There was a weird throb in her mouth, Kara absently noticed as she tried to get up after the devastating blow Harry had dealt her. Her tongue pushing against the source of the dull sensation, the fog in her mind immediately cleared up as she felt her left canine move slightly. It wasn't a big problem really, with her regeneration it would be fixed within the next second itself. But as she prodded at her loose tooth, Kara felt the soft footfalls through the ground as Harry made his way over to her.
Tensed and ready to spring into action at the slightest hints of movements from the still man, Kara was surprised as Harry gave his 'Lesson number two' to her. His words angered her, and the truth in them angered her even more. She had quite possibly been the second strongest being on this planet before she had been attacked in broad daylight by those mercenaries. She had been fast enough that before they could have even realized it, she would have defeated or killed them in so many ways.
But for all of her power…she had still been on that road, dying and gasping for breath as she had felt her organs deteriorate more and more with each passing moment. Kara knew that she was different than before. Her eyes constantly flicked about at every corner they could find, her ears were strained to their maximum capacity at every moment of the day, and she had trained her control over it to the point that she could keep it up even during the night.
But that hearing came with a cost. Despite losing her Kryptonian side a bit, her ears were still powerful enough to easily cover the whole continent if she so wished. And the first time she had done so…she had been horrified and scared into another bout of paranoia and past memories within the confines of her room. For a single nanosecond, she had heard the cries of millions of humans shouting, screaming, wailing, and sobbing all over the continent. From Mrs. Peterson's sobbing in an apartment above them to the man crying out for his dead wife in Metropolis, she had heard it all.
For the next few days, whenever she so much as focused her super hearing to check her environment, the memories of that time would come back to her, and unthinkingly, she would once again reach out to all corners of the land. After a dozen times of hearing, mother and daughters cry out as they were raped, hearing innocents die because of some gang lord, of hearing a child's screams as his parents were killed in front of him…it took its toll on her. With her own simmering anger due to her near-death and the fact that it was only now that she was able to hear the suffering of the humans, Kara hadn't slept for a month.
While she didn't really need any sleep to keep her brain from becoming like a zombie in the mornings, she had quite liked sleeping as an activity all those years on Argo and then on the subsequent months on Earth—thankfully, her brain hadn't been changed much by the magical transfusion. Now, whenever she closed her eyes, images of her own body bleeding on the road, of fires and blasts claiming human lives, or the screams and the cries and the shouts invaded her thoughts.
She had decided to become a 'superhero' like her cousin a few days ago, the decision seemingly lifting off weight on her shoulders that she didn't know existed. But with that decision came a realization too. She couldn't go out there just with her physical powers, because as good as it would be to help as many people as soon as possible, Kara knew that it will only tell her would-be-kidnappers—or killers—that she had survived, and that may possibly bring their attention to Harry too.
Her best bet was to learn and master all the magic Harry had to offer as soon as possible, and then she would go out into the world to help as many as she could. The fact that it would finally allow her to meet Kal-El without worrying about any of the 'super-villains' coming at her was also good.
"Hey!" Harry's voice suddenly came from above her, his fist tapping the back of her head. "If that was enough to send you to la-la land then maybe we should stop?"
Growling through the earth on her lips, Kara blasted off into the air, the sudden shift removing the dirt from her clothes as the ground once again shook and cracked. Reaching halfway to the clouds in mere moments, Kara looked down at Harry, her eyes glowing an ominous red.
"Not even close!"
Hours later, both of them were just lounging on the beach, Harry dressed in black shorts and Kara sitting on the sand in a bright red one-piece. Her pale form was utterly riddled with bruises, and despite being in an ample amount of sunlight, they weren't fading at all. The reason? The glowing glyphs currently revolving around her, the golden letters apparently forcing down her photonucleic regeneration, as well as the phoenix tears she now had in her blood. Evidently, until she learned how to heal herself using her magic, that runic script was going to be bound to her at all times on this island.
Which meant all the bruises over her body were going to be healed by her without relying on her Kryptonian powers. And if that wasn't enough to kick down her mood—who knew a finger to her ribs would hurt so much?!—the fact that Harry was sitting there half-naked in all of his unblemished and un-bruised glory was just the icing on the cake. And it wasn't that Harry had cheated by keeping his solar regeneration on.
No, as shameful as it was to accept it…in the three hours that Harry had fought her—more like beatdown, no way that was a spar!—she hadn't managed to land a single hit on him. All of her punches? Blocked expertly or redirected before they returned with twice the speed and power. All of her lunges? Avoided and turned into slams and chokes, and all of her kicks? Ducked or stopped before she was punted back in the face or chest.
Smug prick was even smiling more than he had ever done so. Except for maybe when he and Diana fucked. Probably. Unable to contain her irritation and anger at that stupid, wide smile on his face, Kara turned towards him and withheld a growl of annoyance at the way he cheekily winked at her.
"Why are you smiling so much?" She asked irritably, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Nothing," he sighed, his smile somehow turning even brighter as he looked at her warmly. "I just…I am very happy you know. Ron and Hermione were my siblings in all but blood…but then my friendship with Ron ended, and as good as Hermione was…she still had a tendency to look down on others or try to run my life for me sometimes. Though to be fair, she was quite a bit smarter than most and when I was younger and I admit that I didn't mind her bossiness as much because I was lost most of the time anyway—but when we got older, it had become such an ingrained habit of hers that she stopped seeing the issues it was causing others. Of course, the fact that she had her own life to live also kept us apart most of the time, both of us barely managing to meet twice a month." He paused after that, and shook his head a little as he came down and sat behind her. Wrapping his arms around her, Harry put his head on her shoulder and hugged her tightly.
"But you?" He began once again, his voice hitching slightly, "You are just so wonderful Kara. I couldn't have asked for a better sister. You may be a brat sometimes, and you are terribly, offensively critical about some of my habits…but I love even more for it. My princess from the stars."
"Oh, Harry," Kara sighed, putting her hand on his head and ruffling his hair a little, "I love you even more you dolt."
"Saving you that night was the best decision I have ever made." He sniffed, squeezing her even tighter. "Or maybe the second best if your snark is taken into account."
"And what is the first?"
"Making my bike," he said in a completely serious voice. "Had I not done that, I never would have reached the clouds, and had that not happened? I wouldn't have been there to save your escape-pod now, would I? That bike really makes up for a lot of my good memories here you know? Riding with you. Riding without you. Going on long dates with Diana after whi…?"
"Harry," Kara sighed, turning her neck to look at him, "You know you need to tal-"
"No."
"Harry!" She exclaimed, pushing off the ground and standing in front of him, "You can't just push this off! Diana went away crying that night too! You need to stop sulking and go talk with he-what?"
She stopped at the raised palm from him, and she watched with confusion as Harry seemed to tense immediately, his eyes glowing crimson and green at the same time.
"Kara," he said after a few moments, turning to look at her. "We are going back to our home. And then you are going to get a belated Happy Birthday present, before we kill some Imperium ass."
Before Kara could so much as wrap her head around that statement, Harry grabbed her arm and apparated both of them back to their home. Arriving into the living room, Harry snapped his fingers once, removing the runes floating around Kara, and summoning her 'birthday present'. As Kara felt her injuries disappear almost instantly at the removal of the inhibiting magic, she turned towards Harry for some much-needed explanation, only to get smacked in the face by a…Kryptonian bodysuit?
"Same as mine," Harry spoke up as his own battlesuit materialized on him, followed by the robes he had stashed inside his personal dimensional space. "And it can look like anything you want so that your 'superior fashion sense' remains alive. We are heading off to DC. Use magic as much as possible, and if you use your physical powers, then do so in a way that can be explained away as magic. Use lethal force, kill anything that looks non-human, and for Merlin's sake, don't you dare announce yourself as Supergirl or something similar if someone talks to you."
Once again, before Kara could do anything, they were teleported across the country once again, and this time, they emerged into the airspace above Washington DC, the capital city sprawled in front of them. Harry and Kara just floated in the air for a moment, both of them shocked beyond belief as they saw the dark smog covering the whole sky along with raging fires all across the city. The loss of sunlight then hit them both, the absence of light leaving them momentarily dazed.
"All right, so no more Kryptonian powers," Harry sighed as both of them started to fly forwards under their own magical power. "Look for white, mud-like things. They don't like sunlight, so just imagine a ball of sunlight above you if you need it. Otherwise, just blast them apart or something."
With that, Harry disappeared from her view, his whispered' 'Stay safe' echoing around her mind before her eyes turned back to the chaos below her. Teleporting herself to the nearest source of screams, Kara immediately raised a shield in front of her as she saw a bright red laser head for her, or rather the hundred or so humans she had just appeared in front of.
High above her, Harry watched the superheated, nuclear level attack slam into Kara's hastily raised shield. Her shield held easily in front of the attack, because as strong as the beam was, that shield was strong enough to deal with a heat based attack like that. Knowing that Kara could handle herself and the spidery things easily, and if by some small chance something bad was about to happen, then the runes on her battlesuit would transport her back to their apartment. Giving one final look at Kara as she changed into her battlesuit in less time than it took a human to blink, Harry let a small gasp escape him as he saw what she had worn.
Her attire consisted of a robe much like his, only hers was skintight and showcased every curve of her body with her hood being the only part of it that wasn't glued to her body. A slit ran up her right leg, ending around mid-thigh, and beneath that, grey pants were there. But it wasn't her risque choice or the amount of cleavage on display that gave him pause. It was the symbol on her chest.
On her chest was the symbol of House Peverell, the white lines and curves contrasting beautifully with the black robe beneath. And above those were grey-colored Kryptonian letters, her homeworld's language displaying 'House of El' in straight, simple glyphs. And on her back…on her back was the insignias of the House of Potter and Black both, the latter's crow painted in black inside the silvery dragon of the Potters.
Finally managing to remove his eyes from her, Harry turned towards the west, and a small frown made its way on his face as he let the rage and anger inside him slip through, a dark crimson glow emanating from his body as his eyes became alight with emerald and red fire.
"You better hope I find you are speaking the truth J'onn, I was really enjoying my day!"