The first thing Harry noticed about being unconscious while having his genetic code rewritten by alien technology was that it was surprisingly conversational. And surprisingly well-furnished.
He stood in what appeared to be a perfect replica of the Hogwarts library, complete with Madam Pince's disapproving portrait glaring down at him from behind the circulation desk—though even she seemed slightly more benevolent than usual, which was deeply unsettling. The only differences were that this version had significantly more books—roughly seventeen thousand more, by his conservative estimate—and the comfortable reading chairs had been replaced with what looked like crystalline meditation cushions that hummed Beethoven's Ninth when touched.
"Well," Harry said aloud, his voice carrying that particular tone of resigned acceptance that had gotten him through seven years of magical impossibility, "this is either the most elaborate lucid dream I've ever had, or alien hibernation technology comes with remarkably sophisticated interior decorating skills. And frankly, given my luck with supernatural experiences, I'm leaning toward the latter."
He picked up a book titled "Advanced Theoretical Applications of Magical-Scientific Integration: A Beginner's Guide" and flipped through pages that seemed to rewrite themselves as he read. "Though I have to say, the reading material is considerably more interesting than anything Binns ever assigned. And that's saying something, considering his idea of riveting historical analysis was 'Goblin Rebellion Number Seventeen: Now With Even More Tedious Political Ramifications.'"
Pev-Rell materialized beside him with the casual elegance of someone for whom reality was more of a polite suggestion than an actual rule. Here in the mindspace, he appeared younger—closer to Harry's age, though his eyes still held that weight of centuries like accumulated starlight. His presence radiated the kind of quiet confidence that suggested he could bench press planets while discussing the weather, and his smile held the warmth of someone genuinely delighted to be having this conversation.
His robes shifted between the familiar black and crimson of House Rell and what Harry was beginning to recognize as traditional Kryptonian formal wear—somehow managing to look both timelessly elegant and practically indestructible, as if they'd been designed by someone who understood that looking magnificent shouldn't come at the expense of surviving cosmic disasters.
"Welcome to the Memory Palace," Pev said warmly, his deep voice carrying the kind of gentle authority that made you want to both trust him completely and check that your wallet was still in your pocket. "I thought you might be more comfortable learning in familiar surroundings."
Harry examined a nearby bookshelf, which contained what appeared to be the complete works of everyone from Aristotle to Zygmunt Budge, plus several volumes that definitely hadn't existed the last time he'd checked the Restricted Section. One particularly intriguing tome was titled "So You've Discovered You're Part Alien: A Practical Guide to Cosmic Inheritance and Tax Implications."
"Thoughtful of you," Harry said with the kind of dry appreciation that suggested he'd long since stopped being surprised by impossible things. "Though I have to ask—while my body is presumably busy growing alien superpowers and probably doing all sorts of biologically improbable things that would make Madam Pomfrey reach for her strongest headache potions, what exactly is my mind supposed to be doing? Because if this is some sort of cosmic study session, I should warn you that I'm absolutely rubbish at revising for exams. Ask Hermione—she's got seventeen different color-coded study schedules that can attest to my complete inability to retain information under pressure."
Pev's smile was genuinely amused, the kind of expression that suggested he'd been waiting centuries for someone with exactly this sense of humor. "Nothing so mundane as examinations, young heir. Think of this as... practical application. Your body is changing, yes, but consciousness must learn to direct power. Strength without wisdom is simply destruction waiting to happen, and I've seen enough civilizations make that particular mistake to last several lifetimes."
"Ah," Harry said with the air of someone who'd heard similar speeches before and found them wanting. "The 'with great power comes great responsibility' lecture. Had that one from Dumbledore, thanks. Though his version involved significantly less alien technology and rather more cryptic metaphors about love and sacrifice. And considerably more twinkling. The man could have powered half of London with the sheer voltage of his eye-twinkle."
"Dumbledore was a wise man," Pev acknowledged with the respect of someone who'd watched human civilization from a distance for centuries, "but his understanding of power was necessarily limited by human perspective. He dealt with magic as your species comprehends it—finite, bound by natural laws, requiring careful study and gradual mastery. Kryptonian abilities operate on entirely different principles. We don't so much learn to use power as learn to exist in harmony with it."
He gestured with the fluid grace of classical sculpture come to life, and suddenly they were standing not in the library but on what appeared to be the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch. Except this version stretched on for miles in every direction, the goal posts rising like golden spires into a sky that held three different suns and what looked suspiciously like a small moon that had been painted with racing stripes.
"Your first lesson," Pev said, settling into a teaching stance that somehow managed to be both relaxed and ready for anything, "is speed."
Harry looked around the impossible playing field with the calculating gaze of someone accustomed to supernatural sporting events and their tendency to involve mortal peril. "Right. And when you say speed, you mean the sort where I run slightly faster than usual, or the sort where I accidentally break the sound barrier while trying to catch the morning post?"
"Observe."
Pev moved.
One moment he was standing beside Harry in perfect stillness, radiating that particular quality of contained power that suggested he could remain motionless for centuries if required. The next moment he was simply... everywhere. A blur of motion that circled the vast pitch seven times in what couldn't have been more than a heartbeat, leaving trails of silver light in his wake like captured aurora. The air itself seemed to sing in his passage, a harmony of physics and possibility that made Harry's enhanced senses ring in sympathetic resonance.
When he stopped—appearing exactly where he'd started with not so much as a hair out of place and looking as though he'd been standing there the entire time—Harry was staring at him with the kind of expression reserved for genuinely impressive magic tricks and particularly well-executed Quidditch maneuvers.
"Bloody hell," Harry breathed, his voice carrying the reverent tone usually reserved for discussing particularly spectacular crashes or Hermione's more inventive study methods. "How fast was that exactly? Because I'm fairly certain you just violated several laws of physics, and possibly a few traffic regulations as well."
"Roughly seven hundred miles per hour," Pev said conversationally, as if discussing the weather rather than speeds that should have required significant paperwork and possibly a license from the Ministry of Transportation. "And that was barely above a casual jog. When I'm in a genuine hurry—say, trying to catch a falling star or reach a good restaurant before closing time—I can circle the Earth in minutes. The son of El, once his abilities fully manifest, will be considerably faster. I suspect he'll be able to outrun light itself, though I imagine the relativistic effects will be rather inconvenient for social scheduling."
Harry absorbed this information with the philosophical calm of someone who'd spent his formative years accepting impossible things before breakfast and occasionally before dinner as well. "Right. So superhuman speed. Got it. And I suppose you're going to teach me to do that without running face-first into buildings, accidentally creating sonic booms in populated areas, or showing up to conversations three days before they start due to temporal displacement issues?"
"Precisely." Pev's eyes glinted with approval and what might have been paternal pride. "Speed without control is merely the ability to reach disasters faster, and I've found that most disasters are quite capable of managing without additional acceleration. Your mind must learn to process information at superhuman rates, to think and react in fractions of seconds that would be meaningless to ordinary human consciousness. It's rather like learning to read seventeen books simultaneously while juggling and composing symphonies."
"That sounds absolutely mental," Harry said with considerable enthusiasm. "When do we start?"
Pev snapped his fingers with the satisfied air of someone about to demonstrate exactly why his teaching methods had been legendary on Krypton, and suddenly the pitch was full of obstacles that appeared to have been designed by someone with both unlimited imagination and a deeply vindictive sense of humor. Hoops of fire spun in complex patterns, their flames shifting between every color Harry had ever seen and several he was fairly certain didn't exist in normal visible spectrum. Spinning blades the size of carriage wheels whirled through the air in mathematical precision, while walls appeared and disappeared in sequences that seemed to follow some sort of cosmic rhythm.
Projectiles shot across the field in trajectories that definitely hadn't been calculated by anyone bound by conventional physics—some moved in straight lines, others curved through dimensions Harry couldn't quite see, and a few seemed to be moving backwards through time just to be contrary.
"Your task," Pev said with the casual tone of someone assigning homework rather than potential suicide, "is elegantly simple. Cross the pitch without being hit by anything. Easy enough for someone who survived seven years of Hogwarts, I should think."
Harry studied the chaotic maze with the analytical intensity of someone who'd survived seven years of Defense Against the Dark Arts classes taught by homicidal maniacs, possessed professors, and at least one lycanthrope with anger management issues. "And I'm supposed to do this at superhuman speed, I take it?"
"Eventually. For now, simply try not to die. The mind learns through experience, even in simulation, and I'd rather not have to explain to your friends why you failed to survive your own education."
"Comforting," Harry said dryly, then stepped forward with the kind of reckless confidence that had gotten him through the Triwizard Tournament and approximately seventeen other situations that should have required significantly more planning and considerably better life insurance. "Right then. Let's see what happens when the Boy Who Lived meets Kryptonian physics. This should be educational, humiliating, or spectacular. Possibly all three simultaneously."
What happened was spectacular, educational, and mildly humiliating in roughly equal measure, with a side order of what Harry would later describe as "creatively painful."
Harry's first attempt resulted in him running directly into a wall of fire that appeared to be burning in colors that hadn't been invented yet, emerging from the other side with his eyebrows significantly shorter than when he'd started and his hair doing things that defied both gravity and good taste.
"Well," he said, patting down his smoking fringe with the calm of someone accustomed to magical accidents, "that was illuminating. Literally. I'm fairly certain I briefly achieved some sort of glow that would make a lighthouse jealous."
His second attempt ended when he dodged a spinning blade with such enthusiasm that he performed what could generously be called an aerial ballet and less generously described as "falling with style," ultimately sliding face-first into a muddy puddle that definitely hadn't been there a moment before and seemed to have materialized purely for the purpose of adding insult to injury.
"Right," Harry said, spitting out what appeared to be luminescent mud, "note to self: superhuman reflexes apparently don't come with superhuman grace. Good to know."
His third through fourteenth attempts resulted in various combinations of singed clothing, creative bruising, and what he would later remember as "a truly impressive collection of landing positions that I never want to repeat but am oddly proud of achieving."
By his fifteenth attempt, however, something began to change.
His movements became smoother, more fluid, as if he were learning to dance with physics rather than fight against it. His perception shifted subtly, time seeming to slow as his enhanced reflexes began to engage. The obstacles that had seemed impossible to avoid suddenly became navigable—not through brute speed alone, but through the kind of supernatural awareness that allowed him to process dozens of variables simultaneously while maintaining what he privately thought of as "dignified forward momentum."
"Better," Pev observed with approval as Harry managed to cross half the pitch without acquiring any new burns or contusions. "You're beginning to think in enhanced time. Most humans find this transition challenging—they try to speed up their thoughts rather than expanding their awareness."
"It's rather like Quidditch, actually," Harry said, ducking under a spinning blade with newfound grace. "You don't try to see everything at once—you learn to feel the patterns, to anticipate where things are going to be rather than where they are."
By his twenty-third attempt, he crossed the entire pitch without taking a single hit, moving with the fluid precision of someone who'd learned to read the language of motion itself.
"Well," he said, breathing only slightly harder than usual and looking remarkably pleased with himself, "that was... actually rather brilliant. Though I have to say, it's deeply unfair that alien superpowers make me better at athletics. I spent six years being terrible at everything except flying, and now I'm apparently capable of superhuman parkour. Hermione's going to be insufferable when she finds out I've become competent at something that doesn't involve books."
Pev's smile was proud, carrying the warmth of someone watching a beloved student exceed all expectations. "Your reflexes are adapting faster than I expected. Most Kryptonians require months to achieve what you've just accomplished in minutes. Then again, most Kryptonians didn't spend their formative years dodging homicidal vegetables and cursed objects."
"Probably all that practice dodging hexes and homicidal professors," Harry said with characteristic modesty that didn't quite hide his satisfaction. "Though I admit, this is considerably more fun than running from giant snakes or three-headed dogs. Less chance of actually dying, for starters, and significantly better scenery. Though I do miss Fluffy—he had character."
"Don't be so certain about the dying part," Pev said with dark amusement that suggested long experience with the educational value of mortal peril. "Your next lesson involves learning to control strength that could accidentally level buildings. That carries its own risks, particularly for the buildings."
The training ground shifted around them with the seamless fluidity of dream logic made manifest, becoming something that looked like a cross between an ancient temple and a modern gymnasium, if both had been designed by architects who'd never heard of structural limitations and had possibly been under the influence of geometry-altering substances.
Massive stone blocks sat scattered across the floor like the universe's most challenging jigsaw puzzle, each one carved with Kryptonian symbols that pulsed with soft light and seemed to respond to Harry's presence with subtle warmth. Some were the size of bricks, others larger than carriages, and a few appeared to exist in several dimensions simultaneously just to make things interesting.
"The challenge of Kryptonian strength," Pev explained, settling into what Harry was beginning to recognize as his 'profound wisdom' stance, "is not learning to hit harder—it's learning to hold back. Your body will soon be capable of generating force measured in tons. Your handshake could break bones, your casual gestures could shatter glass, and your attempts at applause could level city blocks. Every interaction with the ordinary world becomes an exercise in restraint."
Harry examined one of the smaller blocks, running his fingers over symbols that seemed to respond to his touch with gentle warmth and what might have been approval. The stone itself felt alive, as if it were somehow aware of being handled and was politely cooperating with the experience.
"And how exactly does one practice restraint with superhuman strength?" he asked with the kind of practical curiosity that had gotten him through seven years of magical education. "Seems rather like trying to whisper with a bullhorn, or attempting to perform surgery with a broadsword. Theoretically possible, but requiring a level of finesse that borders on the supernatural."
"Through precision," Pev said, approaching one of the massive blocks with the fluid grace of someone who'd never met a physical law he couldn't negotiate with. He lifted the stone—which had to weigh several tons—as if it weighed no more than a feather, cradling it with the kind of careful attention usually reserved for newborn creatures or particularly delicate magical artifacts.
"The key," he continued, beginning to juggle the blocks with movements that belonged more to poetry than physics, "is to think in terms of pressure rather than force. Not 'how hard can I hit' but 'how gently can I touch.' Not 'how much can I lift' but 'how carefully can I hold.' Strength isn't about domination—it's about the ability to be infinitely gentle when gentleness is required."
Not just the small stones—all of them. Stones the size of carriages spinning through the air with fluid grace while he maintained perfect control over their speed, trajectory, and rotation. It was beautiful, hypnotic, and absolutely impossible by any reasonable standard of what juggling should involve. Each block traced perfect arcs through the air, never colliding, never faltering, held aloft by will and precision rather than mere force.
"That's..." Harry watched the display with the kind of fascination usually reserved for particularly spectacular Quidditch moves or Hermione's more impressive academic achievements, "...that's not just superhuman strength. That's superhuman artistry. You're not juggling stones—you're conducting a symphony in three dimensions."
"Exactly." Pev caught all the blocks simultaneously with movements so gentle they barely disturbed the dust on the floor, each stone settling into place as if it had always belonged there. "Your magical training will serve you well in this regard. You already understand that power without finesse is simply destruction waiting to happen. The difference is that magical power can be contained—Kryptonian strength is always present, always waiting, always requiring conscious control."
"Right then," Harry said, approaching the smallest block with the cautious respect of someone who'd learned to be wary of seemingly simple tasks. "Let's see if I can pick this up without accidentally turning it into the world's most expensive gravel."
His first attempts were... educational in the most humbling possible way.
The first block crumbled at his touch like ancient parchment, reduced to powder by strength he couldn't yet properly gauge. The second block developed a hairline crack that spread across its surface like a spiderweb the moment his fingers made contact. The third block simply exploded when he tried to lift it, showering the area with fragments that tinkled musically as they settled.
"Hmm," Harry observed with the philosophical calm of someone accustomed to magical disasters, "I appear to have developed a talent for unintentional demolition. This could be problematic for social interactions."
The fourth block cracked straight down the middle when he tried to lift it with what he'd thought was extreme gentleness. The fifth disintegrated entirely when he squeezed too hard in frustration, which only increased his frustration, which led to the sixth block suffering what could only be described as "complete structural failure."
"Perhaps," Pev suggested with the patience of someone who'd had centuries to perfect his teaching methods, "you're still thinking like a human who happens to have enhanced strength. Try thinking like a Kryptonian learning to interact with fragile things."
"And the difference is?" Harry asked, eyeing the seventh block with newfound wariness.
"Humans with enhanced strength think 'I must be careful not to break this,'" Pev explained, his voice carrying the authority of long experience. "Kryptonians think 'I must be precise enough to preserve this.' One is defensive, focused on fear and limitation. The other is proactive, focused on intention and protection. One approach fights against your strength—the other harnesses it for delicate work."
Harry considered this, adjusting his mental approach with the kind of careful thought he usually reserved for particularly complex Transfiguration homework. When he reached for the eighth block, he tried to think not about restraining his strength, but about directing it with surgical precision.
The difference was immediate and remarkable.
When he lifted the block, his touch was so perfectly calibrated that he could feel the individual grains of stone beneath his fingers without disturbing their arrangement. The stone felt secure in his grasp, protected rather than threatened, held by strength that had learned to serve precision rather than overwhelm it.
"Much better," Pev said with approval that carried genuine warmth. "You're beginning to understand. Strength in service of gentleness rather than strength despite gentleness."
"It's rather like magic, actually," Harry mused, carefully setting the block down with movements so controlled they would have made a master clockmaker weep with envy. "Intent matters more than raw power. The difference between a Cutting Curse that removes a splinter and one that cuts through steel isn't the amount of magic—it's the precision of purpose."
"An excellent analogy," Pev agreed. "Now, let's discuss heat vision."
The training ground shifted again with the casual disregard for architectural possibility that Harry was beginning to associate with Kryptonian engineering, becoming what looked like a firing range designed by someone with both unlimited resources and a deeply dramatic sense of aesthetics.
Targets appeared at various distances—some made of paper that seemed to flutter in a breeze that existed only for aesthetic purposes, others of stone carved with intricate patterns, and a few that seemed to be made of crystallized light itself. Between Harry and the targets, delicate glass sculptures hung suspended in the air like frozen dancers, each one a masterpiece of impossible beauty that probably cost more than most people's houses.
"Heat vision," Pev explained with the tone of someone introducing a particularly dangerous but useful tool, "is perhaps the most dangerous of Kryptonian abilities. Concentrated solar energy, focused through your eyes and directed by will alone. Theoretically capable of temperatures that could melt steel, cut through solid rock, boil oceans, or..." He gestured to the glass sculptures with the reverent care of someone who genuinely appreciated art, "...destroy everything you're trying to protect while attempting to hit your intended target."
Harry studied the setup with the analytical gaze of someone who'd spent years learning to cast spells in combat situations without hitting innocent bystanders. "So it's like the Cutting Curse, but with my eyes instead of my wand, and considerably more potential for collateral damage and awkward explanations to insurance companies."
"An apt comparison, though I suspect most insurance policies have clauses about 'acts of superhuman ocular energy discharge,'" Pev replied with dry humor. "However, in your case, the ability will be rather different from standard Kryptonian heat vision."
"Different how?" Harry asked with the kind of interest that suggested he was hoping for 'different' to mean 'less likely to accidentally melt important things.'
Pev's smile carried centuries of anticipation, the expression of someone who'd been waiting a very long time to share particularly exciting news. "Your heat vision will be golden rather than red. The solar energy will be filtered through your magical core before manifestation, creating something that is part Kryptonian science, part terrestrial magic. It will be capable of effects no purely Kryptonian heat vision could achieve."
Harry's eyebrows rose with the kind of interest usually reserved for new and potentially dangerous forms of magic. "Such as?"
"You'll be able to cut through magical barriers that would stop conventional energy," Pev explained, his voice warming with genuine enthusiasm. "Your heat vision will carry the properties of spells—you could theoretically create a cutting beam that only affects dark magic, or a healing ray that mends what it touches rather than destroying it. You might even be able to project protective shields, transfiguration effects, or complex charms at the speed of light. The applications are essentially limitless."
"Bloody brilliant," Harry said with genuine enthusiasm that made him look several years younger. "Laser vision that can cast spells. That's either the most useful ability in the history of magic, or a recipe for the most spectacular disasters known to wizardkind. Possibly both."
"Almost certainly both," Pev agreed cheerfully. "Though I suspect the learning curve is going to be rather steep. How does one practice superhuman eye-beams without accidentally setting everything on fire, melting the landscape, or turning the local architecture into abstract art?"
"Very, very carefully," Pev said with the dark amusement of someone who'd had centuries to appreciate the irony of teaching controlled destruction. "Begin with the closest paper target. Think of it as lighting a candle—focused heat, controlled intensity, precise duration. Don't try to destroy it—try to warm it just enough to accomplish your goal."
Harry faced the target, trying to conceptualize how one went about shooting energy from one's eyes. It seemed rather like trying to sneeze on command, or make your ears wiggle, or convince your hair to behave itself—theoretically possible, but entirely outside normal human experience.
"Feel for the solar energy in your cells," Pev instructed with the patient tone of someone who'd guided others through this process before. "It's there, building even as we speak. Your magical core knows how to direct energy—trust that knowledge. Don't force it—invite it."
Harry closed his eyes, reaching inward with the kind of introspective focus he'd learned during those delightful Occlumency lessons with Snape. And there it was—a warm, golden presence nestled alongside his magical core like a second sun burning in his chest, patient and powerful and waiting to be acknowledged.
When he opened his eyes and focused on the target with conscious intent, twin beams of golden fire lanced across the training ground with the intensity of captured sunlight.
The paper target burst into flames. So did the three targets behind it. And the wall beyond those. And quite possibly something in the next dimension over, judging by the way reality seemed to ripple at the impact point and make sounds that belonged in no earthly physics textbook.
"Ah," Harry said mildly, watching the destruction with the calm of someone accustomed to magical accidents and their tendency to exceed expectations, "I may have overshot slightly. By which I mean I've probably just committed some sort of cosmic vandalism."
"Slightly," Pev agreed with amusement that suggested he'd been expecting exactly this result. "Perhaps we should work on 'gentle' again. Think warm summer afternoon, not surface of the sun."
The next hour was spent learning the fine art of superhuman restraint applied to laser vision, which turned out to be considerably more challenging than it sounded. Harry discovered that thinking "warm" rather than "hot" produced dramatically different results, that his heat vision responded to emotional state as much as conscious direction, and that frustration made the beams hotter while calm focus allowed for surgical precision.
"It's rather like Patronus magic," he observed after successfully lighting a candle at fifty yards without melting the wax or setting fire to anything within a three-foot radius. "The more you think about the technique, the worse it gets. You have to feel your way through it."
Frustration, he learned, made the beams hot enough to melt steel. Anger turned them white-hot and dangerous. But calm determination, focused intent, and what he privately thought of as 'protective purpose' allowed him to achieve effects that would have made precision engineering jealous.
By the end of the lesson, he could light a candle at fifty yards without disturbing the wax, cut through solid stone with hair-thin precision, and—most impressively—thread his heat vision between the suspended glass sculptures to hit targets beyond them without so much as fogging the delicate artwork.
"Outstanding," Pev said as Harry successfully carved his initials into a distant stone wall without disturbing any of the obstacles between him and his target. "You're learning faster than I dared hope. Most Kryptonians spend months mastering that level of control."
"Years of practice with destructive magic," Harry replied with satisfaction. "You learn to be careful when your mistakes can accidentally remove important bits of architecture. Or people."
Pev's expression grew anticipatory with the look of someone about to present the ultimate challenge. "Are you ready for the most challenging lesson?"
"Let me guess," Harry said, settling into the kind of wary alertness that had gotten him through seven years of supernatural crisis management, "flight? Because honestly, after superhuman strength and laser vision, flying seems almost mundane. Almost."
"Flight," Pev confirmed with a smile that suggested it would be anything but mundane.
The training ground dissolved around them like watercolors in rain, replaced by an endless sky filled with floating platforms that defied every law of architecture Harry had ever encountered, crystalline bridges that spanned impossible distances, and what appeared to be clouds made of solid light that probably sang in harmony when nobody was listening.
Far below—impossibly, vertigo-inducingly far below—Harry could see the curvature of a planet that looked suspiciously like Earth, though the continents were arranged in patterns that definitely hadn't existed the last time he'd checked a map, and the oceans appeared to be several colors that didn't exist in normal visible spectrum.
"Right," Harry said, looking down at the vast drop with the philosophical calm of someone who'd spent six years playing Quidditch and had developed a professional relationship with gravity, "and I suppose this is where you tell me that Kryptonian flight is nothing like riding a broom, despite both involving the apparent rejection of fundamental physical laws?"
"Nothing at all like riding a broom," Pev confirmed cheerfully, stepping off the platform they'd been standing on and hanging in the air as casually as if solid ground extended beneath his feet indefinitely. "Broomstick flight requires an external object to provide lift and propulsion—you're essentially a passenger. Kryptonian flight is an act of will made manifest, the conscious rejection of gravity through the manipulation of your body's bioelectric field."
"That sounds suspiciously like complete nonsense dressed up in scientific terminology," Harry observed with the kind of healthy skepticism that had served him well throughout his magical education. "How does one consciously reject gravity? It's not like it sends you a formal invitation that you can politely decline. 'Thank you for your interest in my continued proximity to large masses, but I'm afraid I have other plans this afternoon.'"
"The same way you consciously cast magic," Pev replied with the patience of someone who'd had this conversation before. "You don't understand the underlying physics of how Transfiguration actually converts matter from one form to another, but you can still turn a matchstick into a needle. Kryptonian flight operates on similar principles—intention backed by will, directed through abilities you were born to possess but have never learned to access."
"So it's magic," Harry said with the satisfied air of someone who'd solved a puzzle, "but with more scientific jargon and presumably better theoretical frameworks."
"In essence, yes," Pev agreed. "The key is not to think 'up' but to think 'free.' Not 'fly' but 'move.' Gravity is simply another force to be navigated, like wind resistance or social expectations. You don't fight it—you negotiate with it."
Harry approached the platform's edge with the cautious respect of someone who'd had quite enough of unexpected falls during his Hogwarts career, but also with the confidence of someone who'd learned to trust impossible things when they were properly explained.
"And if I get this wrong?" he asked with professional curiosity.
"Then you'll discover that even Kryptonian durability has its limits," Pev said cheerfully, "though I should mention that this is a mental simulation—the worst that can happen here is a rather abrupt awakening, some bruised pride, and possibly a very awkward conversation about why you're shouting about falling while lying perfectly still in a hibernation pod."
"Comforting," Harry said dryly, then stepped into the void with the kind of reckless confidence that had gotten him through the Department of Mysteries and approximately seventeen other situations that should have required significantly more planning.
He fell like a stone.
The sensation was familiar enough from Quidditch—that moment when your broom failed spectacularly or you'd misjudged a dive and suddenly found yourself intimately acquainted with the concept of terminal velocity and its implications for continued existence. Except this time, there was no broom to remount, no backup plan involving creative use of magic, just the increasingly close planet surface and the growing certainty that this was going to hurt considerably.
The wind roared past his ears with the sound of impending doom, and Harry found himself thinking with unusual clarity that if this were real, he'd probably be screaming by now. Or composing last words. Or both.
At the last possible moment—and he meant the very last possible moment, when he could see individual rocks on the planet surface and was beginning to wonder if they had names—something clicked. Not in his mind, but in his body, in his bones, in the alien heritage that was rewriting itself into his cells even as he fell.
The fall became a controlled descent, then a hover, then actual flight as he figured out how to convince gravity that he had somewhere else to be and it was welcome to come along but shouldn't expect to be in charge.
"Well," he said, floating uncertainly in the alien sky while trying to work out which way was up when 'up' had become a relative concept, "that was terrifying, humiliating, and absolutely brilliant all at once. Though I have to say, flying without a broom feels distinctly unnatural. Like swimming through air, if air were considerably less cooperative and more prone to sudden changes in opinion about which direction you should be traveling."
"You're fighting it," Pev observed, drifting over with the casual grace of someone for whom three dimensions were merely polite suggestions rather than absolute requirements. "Flight isn't something you do, it's something you are. Stop trying to fly and simply... be airborne."
Harry tried to parse this advice, which seemed approximately as helpful as being told to stop trying to breathe and simply be oxygen-enriched. But there was something in Pev's words that resonated with his magical training—the understanding that sometimes the most powerful abilities couldn't be forced, only allowed.
He stopped trying to fly and started trying to simply exist in the air as if air were his natural element.
The difference was immediate and dramatic.
Suddenly he wasn't fighting gravity so much as negotiating with it in a civilized manner. His movements became fluid, natural, like three-dimensional swimming through a medium that offered no resistance and had apparently agreed to cooperate with his continued existence. When he thought "forward," he moved forward. When he thought "up," he rose. When he thought "fast," the alien landscape blurred past him in streaks of color and light that probably had names in advanced mathematics.
"Better," Pev said approvingly, keeping pace without visible effort, "much better. You're beginning to understand that flight is a conversation with physics, not a conquest of it. Now, let's work on precision."
---
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