Chapter 52: Grand Finale Part Three: Fortress

Six minutes and thirty nine seconds, six minutes and thirty eight seconds, and Harry was in his element, or at least wanted to hang onto the illusion that he was in his element. The wizard thrived in these high pressure situations where most would find it hard to even function logically. He drew in a deep breath and focused, focused, yes he had to focus. It would not be wise to lose his mind out of the fear and panic now. Harry saw that Bastion was down and out, smashed by the combined attacks of himself, Rachel, and Jean, which allowed them to focus on the problem.

"Okay, everyone….we don't need a riot, come on now, easy does it," Iron Man responded, trying to keep himself calm. For Tony Stark he was really serious. Reed edged over which allowed Harry a chance to speak to him.

"Have you been able to figure anything out?" Harry asked to Reed in a voice that he tried to remain calm about.

Reed looked thoughtful before he brought up the calculations on the screen and nodded slightly, his head inclining a slight bit. "The good news is that I'll be able to stop the meteor shower, it is a simple enough process of misdirecting the meteors."

Ms. Marvel helped move some debris and ushered civilizations out of the way before she turned and looked over her shoulder. "So that's the good news, what's the bad news?"

"The bad news is that it will take fifteen minutes to do so," Reed answered as he saw the chaos forming around him. The Human Torch and the Thing did the best they could to work crowd control but they were out of their element.

"Oh is that all?" Harry asked in a casual voice when Kitty moved towards him, with Harry putting his arm around her and pulling her in close. "Did you guys all get out okay?"

"Yeah, but Ororo, Laura, and Kurt are still trying to track Logan down, wherever they have him," Kitty stated as Harry tightened his grip around her.

Rogue edged over to join Harry and the others, a smile crossing her face. "But everyone got out okay."

"There's still the meteor shower, in case you forgot," Rachel responded as she looked up to the sky and she almost sensed it coming. "Four minutes."

"I know, four minutes," Harry answered as he hovered above the ground and looked high in the sky. "Which means I've got four minutes to pull a miracle out of my ass."

"Do you think you can do it?" Natasha asked after she got done talking with the SHIELD agents. She tried to figure out if Harry ever lost his nerve but if he was not about to lose it during a meteor shower, than he was not going to lose it now.

Harry shrugged his shoulders before he offered her a smile. "Miracles happen."

Harry took a moment to watch them but Jean grabbed his hand holding him back. A frown and also a worried expression crossed her face before the red head decided to speak with him about the situation. "Harry, I've got…I've got a bad feeling about this."

Harry would lie if he lacked a bad feeling but that was not something that he could focus on. All he could focus on was saving the day and getting everyone out safely. Even if this ended badly for Harry, at least he knew that he could save as many people as he could. He always suspected that the end would come with a bang; even if that end would be his end.

"I know what I'm doing," Harry responded in a rather stubborn voice, before spinning around on his heel. The mage stepped forward, before performing a few charms. They numbed the minds of the people around them and got them moving faster, more receptive to the suggestions of getting out of there and less prone to mindless panic.

The wizard flew up into the sky, putting spells around him to shield him when he got further and further up into the sky.

"Do you think….do you think he'll be okay?" Amara asked as she watched but Kitty offered a smile, trying to remain more confident than she really was on the surface.

"Of course he'll be okay, he's Harry," Kitty offered in a confidence voice but she watched his progress, her nerves were shooting into over drive.

'What is he doing anyway?' Kitty thought to herself, with Jean, Rachel, and Rogue watching his progress but they all had a job to do.

"Three minute warning."

They better move quickly, time was running out for all of them and they all understood that there was so much on the line. The group edged themselves forward, smiling a little bit when they moved around the city, there was huge explosions that echoed. There were a few impacts of meteors clicking satellites.

Harry closed his eyes when he flew up and saw them flying at the Earth's atmosphere. The good news was that the charms held, which proved the theory that magic could be in space. Granted he had to concentrate enough to focus on everything that was happening around him but the flickers of the meteor rocks burning through him, which pushed him back and there was a slight feeling of dizziness as he got closer to a few of the larger chunks of the green meteorites.

'Not good, not good at all,' Harry thought to himself, closing his eyes and feeling himself falter, swaying from one side to the next, before he tried, vainly, to steady himself.

The rocks were tinted green and Harry pushed himself forward but the shields faltered around him a little bit. He felt the rocks weaken him slightly, although much slower than they would without the use of magic. Still he felt dizziness that caused him to sway back and forth in the air, feeling a slight stabbing motion in the side of his head. The wizard carefully took a moment to adjust himself before he descended back down to Earth but at least he did not fall with a crash.

Norman Osborn sat in the underground bunker, waiting, watching, and quite frankly pondering what happened. The Sentinel plan did not go as planned but he managed to escape in the confusion, while Trask was grabbed. No one would even connect him to this, no matter if Trask stooged him out or not.

As far as the world knew, Osborn was in the hospital and in critical condition, but he subverted a sympathetic doctor to cover for him. He seduced her with problems, using that Osborn charm to really get her over to his side. Women were easy to manipulate, especially when a man listened to them a little bit and acted like they were considerate to their problems. Even if their problems had very little to nothing of relevance to them, but that was beside the point.

Osborn smiled, a twisted grin going across his face, with any luck, there would be mutants that he would be able to capture and hold captive. They would be dissected and he could use their DNA to fine tune the latest match of the goblin formula. He would be stronger than ever before and twisting malevolence crossed his face as he kept an eye on the situation.

"Monitor the situation,' Osborn stated to his men and said man nodded in response. "I want to find out if any opportunities present themselves."

His men nodded but Osborn stopped them, before he added.

"Make sure to do so until after the meteors hit, I feel that there is a chance that more mutants may perish, leaving them ripe for the taking," Osborn answered as he watched the countdown clock, having hacked into the SHIELD database to do so.

Two and a half minutes until the end, clicking down, one number at a time, second after second. Osborn waited and Osborn watched, and he would have the day.

He would know what opportunities that the meteor shower would present when they blew through town. Norman could arrange his recovery as well and no one would be the wiser. No one would complain about his pass misdeeds if he offered them help. Osborn plotted to become the white knight that would deliver the people of the city from the destruction and pick up the pieces. A little demonization would go a long way to affect the mutant race and put Osborn in a role as the savior of humanity.

Time stood still but Osborn was a patient man who would wait when the time inched by. His nasty expression turned around and he waited for everyone around him. His knuckles cracked a tiny bit whilst he edged forward. Time would pass but there would be no one around them that would mater.

'It's time,' Osborn thought to himself, nastily glaring through his eyes, when his heart beat more heavily. The goblin formula enhanced his mental processes, his stamina, his strength, while warping his looks and his sanity, not to mention removing every inch of hair on his head. Osborn cracked his knuckles and kept waiting, each tick of the clock drumming in his ear.

Harry fluttered down on the city but edged off to the side, looking up with widened eyes. He saw a great majority of the people evacuated from the area where SHIELD calculated that the worst of the impact was about to land. The wizard hoped that they were right, because if they were incorrect in any way, it was going to be an issue. The young wizard closed his eyes and focused on the problem before he snapped them back open. He did not even begin to think about how problematic this situation was.

Time was a torment that delivered them the trouble all in the end and Harry saw the flares from up above. Despite the dizziness that he suffered from the meteor rocks, there was determination that fluttered through and he knew that he had to try to stop it, one more time.

'One more time, that's all I need,' he thought as he stood up straight and proud, trying to summon the determination and iron will that a wizard would need.

One minute thirty seconds, one minute twenty nine seconds, one minute twenty eight seconds, one minute….

Harry could not focus on how much time he had left, he closed his eyes and everything slowed down around him. Civilians were in a panic and Harry summoned all of the magic that he could around them.

Pop, pop, pop, people disappeared one at a time. It was a terrible strain on Harry's body to transport these many people at once but he stood tall and proud, despite the fact of the searing pain through his body. There felt like there was much time that was passing but yet Harry held onto his sanity and himself when he kept moving as many people out of harm's way.

Fifty eight seconds, fifty seven seconds, he could see them flying over the skies of New York, about to impact down at any second. More people were transported from the blast zone.

Harry closed his eyes, this would be something that would be hard to determine. There was an entire group at a shopping mall off of the side. His palms sweated and his face reddened, the combination of the meteor rocks that seemed to harm him being so near along with the strain of performing forced apparation on hundreds of people started to get to him.

'Jean, Rachel, get them of there, Kitty help them,' Harry thought to them with a shaken thought, when his eyes closed tightly and his heart beat heavily, when there was the whirling around them and he saw the meteors flying around him.

The situation was dire.

The biggest one was about to slam down on the back of his head, which was not good. Yet if he moved, the impact would cause debris to take out anyone close to him. With the last ounce of strength Harry was able muster, he pushed every bit of his power, and crossed his arms together. The wizard rattled everything on the ground beneath him and hoped that everything would hold itself together, but it was not working as he wanted.

"EVERYONE MOVE IT!"

That shout was not only heard by Harry but from everyone around him. The wizard rubbed the side of his ear, before stepping back a little bit. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the glowing light, the humming nose up in the sky before him. Harry shifted; the meteors were not the only thing coming down onto all of their heads. He could not quite make out what it was, but it had a silver glint, with a symbol on it, that resembled both the one on the box and the statue on Nova-Roma.

There was no time for Harry to really take a closer look at the ship; it was time for him to take decisive action. The wizard carefully stood on his heels, and peered up in the air, before watching the flying rocks spiraling down towards him in a virtual demonic cyclone of terror. The whirling and hissing sounds in the air put him on even more edge, because a sonic signal echoed through his ear and caused his ears to hurt.

Jean, Kitty, Rogue, and Rachel, among others, tried to edge over, but Harry put up a shield, with his last bit of energy, he protected them, along with all overs, despite throwing himself into the eye of the storm. Wanda tried to counteract his magic with her own but there was a blinding bright light.

The meteor rocks began to fly, but they only left dents into the mostly abandoned street, before they settled to the ground. Harry dodged the rocks, still feeling dizzied and slowed down half of his speed before when one of the jagged pieces of rocks pierced him in the side of his arm, causing him to be injured. Another impacted him in the chest and another in the side of the neck, he could not apparate, he could not fly, he was too weak to escape as they began to knick the side of his face. The pieces of debris falling down on him was not going to help matters and given that Harry drained himself teleporting thousands of civilians out of the blast zone, he could not save himself.

The silver ship was among the last thing to come down along with the meteor shower and there was a huge explosion. Next to the ship, a final rock, this time silver, with a black growth of goo attached to it, landed down on the ground with a sickening thud!

Harry flew backwards; his head cracking back against the pavement. The box flung over his pocket, with no one able to see what happened in the smoke. A purple crystal slid out of the box and laid to a still before it hummed, rattling, before engulfing Harry in a bright light.

The bright light wrapped around Harry's body and absorbed him, before bringing him out of the debris, causing him to flash into a blinding light where no one saw where he went when he disappeared. From their points of view, he was vaporized by the ship.

The silver ship rested to a stop when it was on the ground, moving back and forth, with a shimmering sound from within it. It remained still when the last of the meteors barely hit the ground. The green rocks rested on the ground, with the people coming to a stop. There was a gasp of terror when the full scope of the terror sank in.

Kitty's eyes widened, she tried not to freak out, because freaking out was going to be a really bad thing. The brunette had a moment of time when she lapsed into shock but something distracted her. Granted the fact that she was distracted did not improve the situation in any way whatsoever but Jean dropped down to her knees on the ground next to her.

The red haired girl gave a tormented scream, causing her cries to become rather dangerous. Wanda felt a presence around them as well and felt something happening. Her mystical abilities were unstable even though that Harry managed to help her control them a little bit. The magical mutant breathed heavily, her heart thumping along her chest, and her powers flared up. Edging closer to the edge of everything, Wanda watched with trepidation and bent down her knees, feeling the pain around her.

Meanwhile despite not having the flares of powers, Kitty was going to freak out a little bit more with what happened to Harry. The brunette mutant ran it over in the back of her mind, trying to reconcile everything but she was totally flipping out. Logically speaking, her mind was going to be a wreck and she shifted herself a little bit. The brunette watched them all and carefully edged herself over towards the wreckage.

Harry vanished, disappeared, around the time that ship touched down. Kitty edged forward towards the ship but Rogue held her back, shaking her hand and biting down on her lip. The mutants watched with trepidation when they watched everything around them. Anxiety worked around them, with all of them carefully edging themselves forward.

"So, what's the deal with the ship?" Rogue asked but Kitty was a bit too depressed to answer the question. In fact, she was in complete and numb shock.

Kitty turned to the SHIELD agents that walked over and snapped at them angrily. "You know, if you were doing your jobs right then Harry wouldn't be put in this situation!"

Kitty placed her hands on her hips but Natasha shook her head, she was a bit annoyed about how Fury handled this situation as well. But now was not the time or the place to not show solidarity. In fact, it was now time to band together and figure out if there were any casualties.

"I feel your pain," Captain America responded as he kept his eyes narrowed before holding the shield. This was one of the biggest catastrophes. He turned around and saw a figure move in. "Spider-Man, see what you can do about clearing that debris over there."

Spider-Man's eyes widened, honored that he was addressed directly by Captain America, who was somewhat of a hero for him. The web slinger felt honored, but he would have enjoyed it more had it not been such a serious situation. Still he managed to remain on his feet, edging himself and walked over towards the rubble, but thankfully there was no one underneath it. Spider-Man kept rigid and released his breath in a sigh.

"We found him!"

Kurt yelled over his shoulder, with Jubilee, Laura, and Bobby helping Logan be dragged over. The mutant felt his legs drag behind him but he shook his head, before remaining careful on his feet.

"Hey, I'm fine," Logan growled as he brushed them to the side and sure enough the healing factor was enough. He sniffed the air; there was something different now than there was before. "Where's Potter?"

A sad expression crossed Kitty's face when she slumped her shoulders and tried not to go to pieces. Rachel was the one who was in sound enough mind, with everything that happened with the red haired telepath turning to Logan.

"He….he didn't….he didn't make it."

Rachel, who had experienced loss her entire life, found her voice shake a bit more than she thought it might. A knot twisted in her stomach, it hurt to stand on her feet but Rachel swayed herself.

"I don't believe it," Laura responded as she looked around, sensing for something, anything.

"I know, I don't…I don't want to believe it either," Rogue answered as putting her arm around Laura to try and give her some comfort. "But I know what I saw and….Harry got vaporized by that ship."

"Well let's make whoever's inside answer," Laura stated, as she edged forward, claws bared and ready to go. Her eyes narrowed slightly when the girl tried to make her way towards the ship.

The dark haired girl slashed against the ship but it did not even scratch against the ship. There was nothing that indicated that ship was anything of this Earth, in fact, with Laura's claws, she should have been able to scratch it and rip it open in time. Yet, there was nothing, not even a scratch, not even a….

"First mutants, than some alien ship!"

"Fucking Friends of Humanity, why won't they shut up?" Kitty swore as she balled her fists in anger, about ready to rip their heads about now.

"Kid, I feel your pain but we got to get out of here, there's going to be police, government officials, and all kinds of other shit moving around here," Logan stated as the other heroes nodded, with Captain America trying to pacify the crowd. Logan stopped to address his old friend. "Best of luck, Steve, you're going to need it with these guys."

Captain America acknowledged Logan with a brief nod, inclining his head enough to acknowledge Logan before he pushed himself out of the way. The Spirit of the United States of America eyed all of the people before him before he responded with a deep voice. "Back off people, you need to focus, there are lives on the line."

"Yeah, get back, you don't want to be around the fallout, for all we know these meteor rocks could turn you into mutants," Hawkeye responded as he stood by the side and that caused a few of the Friends of Humanity members to step back. Of course, Hawkeye was not sure if he was completely wrong, who knew what these glowing green rocks could do. They could give people super powers.

Fury kept walking forward, keeping an inventory on everything that was around him. The last thing he wanted or needed was any of this alien technology to fall into the wrong hands. Of course, his agents struggled with the ship which rested dormant in the middle of the street. One of them spun around to face Fury.

"It won't budge, sir," the agent responded and Fury kept a careful eye on this agent.

"See if you can make it budge then, any way you can manage," Fury answered in his most gruff voice and they reached the ship, putting their backs into it, when the ship burst open and smoke filled it. "Back off men, back off."

The shadowed figure escaped the ship and she zipped around, staggering because of the green rocks a little bit but the adrenaline pushed her to resist that, as she flew into them, attacking them like a cornered animal. She knocked them down, a wide eyed expression on her face and speaking in a language that none of them could understand. The SHIELD agents could not see who she was or rather what she was, for she shot into the air like a cork and flew off into the distance, leaving her ship opened in the middle of Time Square.

One of the SHIELD agents stepped forward and tried to place a hand on the ship but a jolt knocked him back.

"Failsafe," Fury grunted, as they needed to find a way to haul the ship away. "Have you found our visitor?"

The SHIELD agents shook their heads, one of them double checking the radar. "I think she went in the direction of the Artic, but why would she go there, sir?"

Fury did not answer but he was determined to find out one way or another, no matter what.

Spider-Man pulled himself forward, joining the rest of the team, unaware that a little black friend hitched a ride on his costume in the confusion. The web slinger was tired and haggard like the rest of them, so they did not notice anything.

"What was with…the freak out?" Rachel asked as she snapped her fingers but Jean stood there, catatonic. She took a step forward, but it was in a zombified state. Rachel snapped her fingers but Jean did not say anything.

Jean Grey could not voice what she saw but when those rocks came down, she could feel the psychic backlash of millions of lives being snuffed out. Their very last thoughts when they died and there was something encoded on that ship as well. Whoever the visitor was inside the ship, she was connected to the Phoenix Force, at least in some minor way.

Said Phoenix Force was not responding to Jean, not that the telepath responded to anyone now, even the calls of her name.

"Jean, are you alright?" Ororo asked her and Jean nodded her head, but her eyes were blank and her pupils were milky white. "Are you certain? Do you need medical attention."

"I am fine!" Jean yelled, her temper flaring and causing people to step back. She was capable of intimidation without the Phoenix Force.

The X-Men moved off, there was still the matter of Magneto and his Acolytes that slipped away into the night. And the fact that there was an alien ship sitting in the middle of Time Square.

From the alien ship, a silver fluid that had been attached to the bottom it drained off the ship and down the nearest storm drain.

Harry was cold, and miserable when he was face down in the Artic, it was almost like something took away his powers. The piece of the green rock impaled into the side of his shoulder and into his chest, not to mention the side of his neck, making it completely hard to get up to his feet. He was going to die here, completely frozen and buried in the snow.

If he was perfectly honest, he would have expected the ending to be a lot less more….well it would have been a lot more exciting if he had the choice. Not that it really mattered, when Harry shook his head and carefully inched his way to a standing position, for a few seconds at the very least. Then his knees buckled and turned before he collapsed in the snow, breathing heavily.

'Fuck not good, fuck not good, fuck not good, fuck not good,' Harry thought to himself with a shiver feeling cold like he was certain that he should not, but he managed to dig the jagged pieces of green rock out of his arm. He could barely perform a warming charm and since he was still drained from the mass teleportation, he rested in the snow.

He heard a loud boom in the air and Harry wondered if anyone would even see him in this snow and ice. There was an abundant amount of it and he saw the purple crystal that flew out of his box in the snow. A swirling of light surrounded it and he could barely keep his eyes open to see the progress of it seemingly sinking into the snow.

Harry faded from existence, giving himself a small shuddering breath, before he blacked completely out. He never blacked out this badly, not even from the Dementors. He never came this close to dying, not even from the Killing Curse. His few, tortured, tormented, and fragmented thoughts caused hands to twitch together. He felt the icy cold around him but suddenly his body warmed up.

A pair of hands gently lifted Harry up above the snow, but his head fell back as he sank into the cold dark abyss of his mind.

Had Harry been able to see something, he would have seen a huge crystal fortress erupting from the snow, with security the likes of which the world had never seen. The flying figure trafficked him towards this crystal fortress.

"Hang on," she breathed in his ear, even though he was scarcely could be awake and the rocks weakened her as well. "I can't lose you…this soon after finding you."

She pressed her palm onto the crystal fortress and it scanned every inch of her body. The Fortress also scanned for life forms around the snow but when it judged that they were alone, it allowed the two to enter it.

The blood of Harry Potter left splattered in the snow but his body, busted and battered from saving the day, would heal once again.

She entered the Fortress, feeling more at ease now that she was in a place much like the world that she left and not like a world that she barely understood.

Norman Osborn understood many things and understanding opportunity was something that made him one of the key businessmen in the world. Even with the set back with the goblin formula, Osborn remained one of the top of the mark and his tenacious attitude allowed him to accomplish successes that were barely known until this moment. His eyes narrowed before he saw his men.

"The ship, SHIELD tries to secure it, but they keep failing," Osborn remarked to his men and they nodded. A wide grin spread over his face. Many people would panic about little green men or whatever visiting, thinking they would be on the precipice of an alien invasion. Osborn sought opportunity to strengthen his defenses and potentially put himself in a higher standing. "If Oscorp acquires this ship, then we can build weapons, weapons that will put us light years ahead of anyone else."

The stooges nodded but Osborn did not care about their opinions, all he cared about was the success of the business. Time and time again, people tried to undermine him, people like Octopus and Spider-Man but now he had the last laugh.

"If they get to the ship before I do, Fury's likely going to squander its potential," Osborn added when he kept his eyes firmly on the crew. "We must wait until nightfall, so we can make a plan and get that ship."

"But if SHIELD cannot get the ship, how can we get it, sir?"

Osborn did not answer that question quite yet, although there were numerous possibilities rolling around in the back of his head. Carefully, the owner of Oscorp mulled over everything. He had left explicit instructions for his underlings that even a child could not screw up. His eyes closed and a wide grin spread over his face, sinister and it would send shivers down the spine of the most hardened of men in the world.

"Patience, you will understand, you will know," Osborn responded crisply as he brought up the scans around the area. He had a truckload of the meteors already which he would study.

Spending plenty of time turning over the circumstances of what occurred in his mind; Osborn would succeed where many had failed. Unlocking the secrets of life in other worlds would be his to accomplish and his alone. His eyes twisted in malice.

"Patience, that will win the day," Osborn responded with a rotting smile on his face.

"I'm sorry sir…."

Osborn held his hand up before he watched the underling. "No, don't apologize. That means you don't believe in what you do. Don't apologize, because I never do."

Osborn paused.

"Conviction will do you well. I must return before I'm missed. I will return before nightfall."

Norman Osborn plotted what he would do with that alien technology, feeling that the gift from the sky was his to claim. The first run as the Green Goblin did not go as planned but the second time around, it would be like magic. And all who wronged Norman Osborn would suffer. Pulling the split identity trick worked to fool people but make no mistake about it, Osborn was in complete and utter control of his mental facilities.

"I still can't believe it," Laura persisted stubbornly with a cross expression on her face.

"If it makes you feel better, I can't believe it either," Logan responded as the others stood by the side, in various states of mourning. While they all expected Harry to leave the Mansion someday, it was not as a pile of ashes in the middle of Time Square. "Too clean, too nice, too….easy for my liking."

Laura did not say anything but was glad that someone shared her thoughts. Wanda and Jean had something go wonky with their powers; even if for some reason Wanda was held better together out of the two of them than Jean did. She could not begin to understand what happened. If Harry was here, then Harry would know.

"He's….they never found anything did they, not even a body?" Kurt asked as he edged over, Rogue, Kitty, Rachel, and Amara were all in funks as they looked up at the sky with reddened eyes.

Gwen edged over to the side.

"So are you are holding up?" Kitty asked Gwen but Gwen shook her head.

"I'm fine because he's not really dead," Gwen responded in a nonchalant voice.

"Gwen, I know…denial and all that but we saw him," Rogue answered when she eyed the brainy blonde but said girl crossed her arms over her chest.

"I know what you thought what you saw but it doesn't mean that I have to believe everything that you think that you've saw," Gwen answered, but she looked up in the sky, thoughtful.

There were so many things happening at once, that Gwen could hardly believe that anyone should trust their own eyes. Between the meteors falling, the flashes of light, the Sentinels, and everything else going on around them, there were huge explosions. The young wizard who saved them all, countless civilians, it seemed rather disappointing that he would have dropped completely dead after that sacrifice.

Gwen placed a hand on her eyes and whistled completely, before she saw a woman wearing glasses with her platinum blonde hair tied back, with a black jacket, t-shirt, and jeans.

"I don't think he's gone either, I couldn't really see it but I was there in the crowd," Felicia remarked when she inclined her head, to pay some respects in case she was wrong.

"And with no body, I don't think any of us can…well you know I don't know," Gwen responded, she did not want to cut in at this funeral with conspiracy theories. The blonde closed a pair of blue eyes and hoped that everything will turn out okay.

Kitty always feared that something would happen that would pull Harry back into his main universe. And Harry shared that fear in many ways, she suspected. But getting pulled into that world would be…well Kitty couldn't tell if it would be worse than dying. That was one thing that she could not fathom in her mind ever.

All they knew was there was a likelihood that Harry was never coming back. A couple of days passed since the incident and a memorial had been erected at the Xavier Institute.

Scott stood but said nothing, watching Jean sit there, apparently catatonic by grief.

Off to the side, unnoticed by anyone, a woman with dark hair and violet eyes, dressed in a black blazer, red blouse, and black skirt with high heels watched from the side. The intrepid reporter slipped off before she was noticed.

Harry's eyes flickered open when he was surrounded by an ice palace, his body completely healed by the energies around him. His fingers flickered a little bit when he brought himself back up to life, his heart beating against his chest.

"Welcome home."

This voice was remembered by Harry and he saw her standing there in the bright light. He felt a throbbing in the back of his head. She was there, the girl from his dreams, and she watched him, nervous but bold at the same time.

"Home, where is…."

She placed a finger to his mouth, shushing him, before throwing her arms around him a tight hug.

"We are the last two, the very last two," she breathed in his ear.

"So you're another survivor from the Wizarding World?" Harry asked to her.

She shook her head. "No, not that world, your real home, where you were born, but I'm sorry."

"Sorry about what?" Harry responded.

"I felt everything when I woke up, every pain that you ever felt during your life, and the despair…the longing to have things that others take for granted," she answered as she watched him. "You've been out for almost eleven days; the world thinks that you're dead."

She curled up next to him, resting her head down on his chest.

"I think about it all, and I miss it all, you don't remember them, your parents, mine, everyone else, even Zod," she responded, biting down on her lip, looking terrified and a bit vulnerable, with Harry pulling her into him. She wore white fabric around her body, a silver bracelet, a red headband, with flowing golden blonde hair and shimmering blue eyes. "But with you and with this place, I'm home."

She paused.

"It's down to the two of us to preserve our bloodline, our race," the blonde added, rocking back and forth against Harry. "Kal-El."

That name was not registered with Harry. "You must have me mistaken for someone else."

"No, no mistake, this Fortress would have admitted you," she responded, squeezing his neck tight in a hug. "Your father, your birth father, for all of his faults, built this place to give you everything you'd ever need."

The tears clung to her eyebrows.

"I missed you," she breathed as she brushed his hair away from her eyes. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you."

"Who are you exactly?" Harry asked her, when she shifted next to him.

"Kara," she whispered timidly in his ear, biting down on her lip. "I'm from Krypton, just like you."

Harry felt conflicted when he watched her.

"Are you displeased?"

"This is all new to me….I don't believe it," Harry responded but then he realized that nothing about him ever could be normal.

"Seeing is believing," Kara said when she leaned against his shoulder. "I'll teach you about Krypton, you teach me about Earth because….I really don't know much beyond the basics. Deal?"

Harry nodded with a smile, intrigued to learn more and besides he felt too weak to move too long or farwhich he suspected would be the case for at least a couple of days. "Deal."

There was another voice before the two survivors of Krypton could speak.

"Welcome home, Kal-El, my son."

Sirius Black was still before his eyes snapped open, to reveal a pair of slit like red eyes and then there was high cold laughter that would have chilled most who heard it to the bone.