New Version 12/12/17

Prologue – From Saviour to Hero:

Harry Potter had spent the last seven years of his life adjusting to living under the public eye. If there was one thing he'd learnt from all of it, it was that the general public flocked together, and their opinions were as fickle as the weather – mostly unpredictable and constantly shifting. So, once the shock and excitement that flooded the wizarding community upon Voldemort's death wore off, Harry had been biding his time, waiting until the tide inevitably turned against him.

One thing about wizards: you could count on them to fear power. That was clear as day, even going off of what little he actually knew about their history. Harry, a seventeen year old who hadn't even graduated from school (though through no fault of his own), had managed to defeat the most powerful dark wizard of the late twentieth century. That made him dangerous. In a society that had been running on fear and adrenaline for longer than Harry cared to ponder, it had only been a matter of time before they stopped seeing him as a saviour and started eyeing him nervously, as though any day he might decide to go dark side.

While Harry himself took the eventual change in stride, his friends weren't afraid to express their discontent about the issue. Many an afternoon was spent listening to aggravated complaints about the Daily Prophet and the Ministry and whoever else had had a bad word to say about him since the last time they spoke. For a time, he found that amusing. It was nice, after all, to have verbal confirmation that the people he called friends weren't so easily swayed by majority opinion. Eventually, however, it began to grate on him.

Sometimes they had suggestions. Possible ways to try and garner back his good image in the eye of the public. Go make a speech, they said, rally a protest. Do something, don't just sit there and take it.

But Harry wasn't interested in winning the public over. Not when they'd change their minds again as soon as someone whispered a semi-believable reason into their ear. While he might not have enjoyed having people fear him or glare at him in the streets, he had accepted that that was the way things were going to be, and he was fine with it. What he wasn't fine with was the way his friends seemed to believe that his own self-worth could only be proven by fixing this apparent flaw in their society.

Being publicly hated wasn't exactly fun, but being loved hadn't been any better. The limelight was the limelight, regardless of which way people looked at you. He'd rather they didn't look at all.

No one could understand why he wasn't fighting to save his reputation. He couldn't understand why everyone thought he needed to.

oOoOo

Harry left England when he was nineteen.

He did it quietly. There had been minimal planning involved, nothing incriminating left around to accidentally be read by the visitor of the week, and he told no one of his intentions.

He didn't really have a goal in mind when he made the decision. All he wanted was to spend some time in a place where he didn't mean anything; where he could do as much or as little as he pleased and be known for himself, not for the legend people made of him. Was a little freedom really so much to ask?

At first he stayed relatively local. He wandered about parts of Scotland and Ireland, reacquainting himself with muggle life and learning about all the different things he'd missed over the last two years of near-complete isolation. It was such a breath of fresh air to be just another face in the crowd, an aimless traveller with no goal or expectations. But it quickly became apparent to him that he wasn't cut out for the whole tourist thing. Taking time for himself was great and all, as was finally being free of his own self-imposed quasi-imprisonment in Grimmauld Place, but in the end, 'taking time for himself' was what he had been doing from the moment Voldemort left the land of the living for good.

What it all boiled down to was this: Harry was bored. In one way or another, his entire life up until that point had been a near-constant flow of low-level adrenaline – strategizing ways to survive, fighting for his life, investigating mysterious goings-on – and while it was easy to give the British Wizarding Community the finger and run off, it was far less so trying to live a calm and quiet life.

And so began his world tour of self-discovery.

oOoOo

During his travels, Harry learnt a lot of things that had slipped his notice during his years living with the Dursleys.

For one, they were living in an age of superheroes. The thought had never even crossed his mind – Dudley had never been interested in comics and so, ultimately, neither had Harry – until he saw an article in a newspaper about the apparent rise in vigilante justice in major cities. It called out to him, to the part of him that wasn't satisfied with doing invisible favours for people in passing as he travelled from country to country, to the part of him that had been a little reluctant to hammer that final nail in Voldemort's coffin because it would mean losing his sense of purpose.

Yes, most people would say he'd earned his peace, and he should probably just be grateful for it after the disaster of danger that had made up his childhood, but he wasn't content with the idea of just giving it all up. What would he do with his life if he wasn't partaking in outlandish plans to protect some portion of humanity? He hadn't taken his NEWTs, so his prospects in the wizarding world relied solely upon how each individual employer felt about Harry Potter, Defeater of Dark Lords, and he hadn't attended a muggle school since he was ten, so regular work in the mundane world was out too.

It was a good thing he didn't have his heart set on anything quite so normal.

Something else he'd noticed was just how easy it seemed to be to get away with using magic. He carried his wand with him at all times, but – to the probable horror of every pureblooded wizard ever – he had transfigured it into a ring which he wore on his right hand. Even if he was caught essentially red-handed, no one had ever looked at him and screamed bloody murder about magic and wizards and whatever conspiracy might come to mind involving the two. Because the world, this world that had no clue it was inhabited by a group of wand-waving magic users, was already privy to far stranger things – metahumans and aliens and strange powers that would honestly put wizards to shame.

When you put two and two together, Harry decided that that was as good as it was going to get. These superpowered muggles, these aliens and people from places Harry had never heard of, they were split into two basic categories: heroes and villains. And oh, Harry was so used to being a hero that the thought of passing up the chance to use this knowledge, to take advantage, to forge himself a new place in the world, never even crossed his mind. That was the only thing that Harry could do which would give his life a purpose again.

He was going to become a hero.

oOoOo

His decision to get back into the hero business didn't put a stop to his travels, not in the beginning. All it meant was that his old policy of trying not to get involved was torn to shreds.

If there was a problem, Harry stepped in. He'd learnt subtlety with his magic somewhere along the line, and he wasn't half-bad at hand-to-hand combat, so he took it upon himself to act when others couldn't. He caused ripples, and then waves, until he started arriving in new cities only to hear that whispers of his exploits had beat him there.

It was with these whispers that Harry found rumours. People wanted to know what was happening, so they were building their own explanations. Was he a rogue crime-fighter, doing as he pleased in disregard of the law? (Yes.) Was he affiliated with someone? Was he part of a team? Was what seemed like one person actually the work of many people in many different places? Was he a new member of the Justice League?

Up until then Harry had never heard of the Justice League. Well, never in so many words. It was the rumours about his membership status that connected a lot of the dots between different reports of vigilantes and heroes that he'd stumbled across here and there (he only read newspapers occasionally, and mostly only to check that the world was still intact). They weren't exactly a Big News thing – the rumours only cropped up in certain circles (mostly criminal circles and wannabe heroes who kept their ears to the ground for things like that) – but it was enough to catch his interest, enough to call it quits on the years of continent hopping that he'd been engaged in and decide to get stuck in with investigating the ins and outs of hero team-ups in the US.

Truth be told, the whole roving vigilante thing was a lonely business. He wasn't afraid to admit that he was interested in making some like-minded companions to ease the isolation he'd placed on himself.

oOoOo

It wasn't until later that Harry started wondering about the detrimental effects of his solitary travels. He was twenty-five, an adult in his own right, searching the country for a group that was pretending not to exist, but he found himself adverse to the idea of trusting in other adults. His childhood, his teenage years, they'd all been one manipulation after another. Being ignored, dismissed, betrayed; those sorts of things left a mark. He'd been a kid looking for guidance only to find it impossible to figure out if anyone was going to take him seriously, and then he'd more or less refused to make any new connections with anyone once the war was over.

How long had it been since he actually tried to make a friend?

oOoOo

In the end, it was the League that found him. A string of right-place right-time incidents had drawn their attention to him as he drifted from state to state – stopping a robbery in Metropolis, helping contain an industrial fire in Central, hexing a would-be rapist in Gotham. Even though they were still trying to keep their Super-Secret Superhero Alliance on the down low, it seemed there were some things they couldn't outright ignore.

It was a man clad in black – Batman, apparently – who tracked him down. As far as Harry could tell, Batman had taken offense to an unknown party involving themselves in Gotham's underworld, regardless of the fact that Harry had only been in the city for a handful of days, just another stop on an endless road-trip. He might have been content to let bygones be bygones once Harry left, considering he'd only tripped up a few criminals and hadn't harmed any civilians, but reports from other cities, and from other heroes, about his exploits had placed him on Batman's watch list.

It wasn't that he was considered a danger, necessarily, Batman explained in short sentences from the darkest depths of the shadows in the alleyway he'd cornered Harry in; he was simply an unknown entity that required investigation. An investigation which apparently had already been conducted and concluded, without Harry's notice. Back in Britain Harry might have scolded himself for letting such a thing happen without ever catching on, but he doubted Batman had actually been shadowing him in person – if he was so on edge that he flinched from security cameras he'd never be able to get anything done.

Batman didn't go into any details about the investigation. Instead, he listed off a time and place and said that if Harry could get there – making it sound like a goddamned challenge – then, and only then, would they explain things. Harry agreed, and Batman disappeared in the blink of an eye, an impressive feat for someone without magic.

oOoOo

Mount Justice was not exactly what Harry had been expecting when he made it to the coordinates Batman left him. It wasn't that he'd had anything specific in mind, it just hadn't occurred to him that the coordinates might actually have been to their Super-Secret Base and that that Super-Secret Base was inside a mountain.

It did, however, confirm his suspicions that it was a Justice League thing, and not a Batman thing. He'd been a little unsure about that, because surely their little hero crew had someone more sociable than Batman who could've come to fill him in. Intimidation tactics were probably the best way to go about it though.

He'd like to say they'd laid out the red carpet welcome for him, but it was more of an all-hands-on-deck-in-case-we-misjudged-this-guy deal instead. The group was ten strong; even if they'd just been wizards (or plain, non-powered muggles) Harry would've had his work cut out for him in a ten-on-one fight, but they were all unknown elements, just as he had been (and likely still was) to them. Even if he'd come here looking for a fight, only a fool would antagonise that many people without information to back them up.

Surrounded on all sides, in the middle of a mountain, Harry had his first encounter with aliens, and started a probationary partnership with the still semi-unofficial Justice League.

oOoOo

For a while after their initial meeting, Harry practically lived in the Secret Sanctuary. Since he'd constantly been drifting from city to city across the country – across the world – he'd never made a point to put down roots anywhere, so he didn't exactly have anywhere to go home to. Plus, it made it easier for everyone else to monitor him (which Superman assured they weren't doing, but Harry knew someone – likely Batman – had eyes on him at all times).

The first month felt like a test. Harry was on a code-name only basis with all the Leaguers, and he was dragged all about the mountain each day for various assessments and training sessions. He tried not to feel too annoyed about it; he knew they only wanted to get a feel for his powers, his physical strength, his reliability, but he didn't always like the way they looked at him. Searching, calculating, like they were trying to decipher the secrets of his existence.

Magic, it seemed, even in the company of aliens and winged people, was still considered an anomaly. So he never showed anyone his wand – not its true form at any rate – and cast nonverbally at all times (anything he hadn't mastered silent casting for by then was generally unnecessary for combat, defence, or stealth, the three things he'd been using his magic for the most since leaving the wizarding world behind), and eventually the novelty of his magic seemed to wear off. As long as it wasn't being used against them, they seemed perfectly happy to take his existence at face value. (He was also 110% certain that Batman had taken some of the blood from his medical examination to try and analyse whether his magic was in his genetic make-up. Harry wasn't even annoyed about it – he'd kind of like to know himself.)

After the first month things calmed down a bit. Training sessions were no longer assessments but actual practice. He learned more actual physical combat than he ever thought he would have. Martian Manhunter and the Flash introduced themselves properly. Harry bought an apartment in Happy Harbour. He started going out on assignments with other Leaguers – but never the really risky stuff; that wasn't a level of trust a month of acquaintanceship could conjure up.

Green Arrow (potentially under threat of death from Batman) was seemingly appointed the task of convincing Harry that a superhero uniform was in his best interests.

"You need a disguise," he insisted, like a broken record, every time the two of them were together. "It's all well and good us knowing your civilian ID, but you don't want everyone else knowing. What if it endangers your family?"

Harry always laughed at that, though the sentiment changed from day to day. Amusement. Derision. A sarcastic snort of laughter that no one had the information to understand. Fond exasperation. Tired exasperation. Every laugh a story no one could figure out.

"I don't have a family," Harry always answered, which was true in several senses. His parents were dead. His godfather, dead. There was very likely no muggle record of his mother getting married, and so his aunt and uncle would happily pretend they had no relation to him, until the moment him being a superhero could somehow benefit them (and then, unless Harry acknowledged it, that same lack of records worked against them just as well). The only people he considered family were all family of the heart, self-made, and with no connections to him in the muggle world. Out here, Harry was less than a nobody – he disappeared off the radar at age eleven and never came back. What could anyone possibly do with that, even if they somehow managed to connect him to a vanishing child in the UK?

"At least wear a mask," Green Arrow eventually begged. Well, Harry imagined it was as close to begging as he would allow himself, and he was only pushing the issue because braver men than he still couldn't always say no to Batman.

Harry didn't have anything against the idea of a costume. He understood what they were for, why they wore them. But he didn't have it in him to design one, and he also didn't trust anyone else to design one that didn't have an uncomfortable amount of lycra. Mask though, there was nothing wrong with a mask.

"It'll need prescription lenses," Harry offered in lieu of an answer, gesturing at his glasses. He'd had his prescription changed and bought new frames since moving into the muggle world, but he'd never made an effort to seek out any magical vision treatments, and he wasn't fond of contacts.

Green Arrow grinned, obviously relieved to finally have made some progress, and more, to finally have something positive to report back. Harry liked to think of it as his good deed for the day.

Harry had felt like he'd won a battle when the costume debate ended with the delivery of his mask. It turned out, instead, that given his vocal and repeated opposition to the idea, all other decisions were being made without his input. That was how he ended up with the code-name 'Magician' – which he had hoped was a joke, when he first heard it, but eventually he gave in and let them have their way. It wasn't the worst thing they could've come up with, after all.

oOoOo

His full membership was confirmed in the aftermath of an attack which forced the Leaguers to abandon the Secret Sanctuary and Mount Justice. The official ceremony happened in space, because it turned out that they had another extra secret base that Harry hadn't been told about until he was being pushed through a zeta-beam transporter only to find himself staring down at the Earth.

With that, the Magician became the eleventh member of the Justice League.

As a full member, the rest of the team started lowering their guards around him and sharing bits and pieces of their lives (Batman aside – though Harry had never expected anything from him).

Green Arrow had become Oliver Queen (and had in turn been teased by Barry for a week because Harry hadn't realised Oliver was apparently someone he was supposed to recognise). The three of them became pretty good friends, once Oliver gave up the pretence of secret-keeping, and out of everyone in the League it was their company that Harry most often found himself in. They were the closest thing to familiar he had in a life that still sometimes seemed too strange to be real.

oOoOo

Harry was used to being a part of secret organisations, such as the Order of the Phoenix and the DA, but the Justice League was his first foray into an openly operating, publically acknowledged group. The shift from unofficial to official didn't change much internally, but it did confuse him just a little.

Was the Hall of Justice really necessary? Wasn't that sort of flashy?

Eight years in wizarding Britain and he still didn't know how best to deal with the media. Thankfully no one had suggested he be their PR guy – everyone was content for him to take a backseat in all their media dealings. He wasn't there to smile for the camera after all – he was there to protect people.

Barry thought his discomfort with the media was funny. He didn't talk about his past, ever, so Barry had to find all his teasing material in the present, and since Harry didn't snap at him about it it seemed like free game. Harry just rolled his eyes whenever he brought it up.

Oliver had a good poker face, but Harry could tell that he wasn't always a fan of the media either. By then he knew, of course, that Oliver had spent a lot of time in the limelight himself – he could certainly play them far better than Harry would ever have been able to. It was a little comforting to know that, even though they never discussed it, and Oliver would never know just how well acquainted with the media Harry actually was, he had found himself in the company of someone who knew exactly why Harry hadn't bothered fighting the reporters back home.

They were a weird bunch, but this was his life now, and he was perfectly okay with it.

oOoOo

Meeting Giovanni Zatara was… amazing. A shock. Surprising. Confusing.

It was an experience.

Zatara was one of the newer members of the Justice League – after going public they'd slowly drawn the interest of, or discovered, a handful more like-minded vigilantes (although they were all technically heroes now). Harry hadn't met him straight away – he liked to stay busy, so he usually had a fairly constant stream of missions coming his way, even if a lot of them were often recon or surveillance – but when he did he'd been (perhaps unreasonably) surprised to find that he was a magic user.

He called himself a magician, though Harry had known even before he said it that he wasn't a wizard. Still, that term was no longer a reason to dismiss a person's legitimacy – Harry had spent the last ten years discovering all sorts of unreal things outside of his version of magic after all.

Harry had never really considered himself the sort of person who got excited about learning new things – that had always been Hermione's territory – but witnessing Zatara's own form of magic first-hand was a fascinating experience. It was so different to the way Harry had learned magic, and so much more flexible – if you had the imagination and quick thought for it. He was certain that, were he even capable of attempting Zatara's magic, he would be utterly pants at it.

There was also a period of time, when the fascination began to wear off, when Zatara's presence caused Harry no small amount of paranoia. As he himself had recognised, the differences in their magic were very obvious to any observer – that meant they had studied different things, in different places, and were all in all only similar in the fact that they could do a multitude of unscientific things.

Zatara called himself a magician, and Harry's codename was (still) Magician, but they were nothing alike. He had been worried that those differences would draw attention, and then curiosity, and then investigation. Eventually, however, he realised that he wasn't giving the League enough credit. They had done their checks on him, and they had accepted him, and they knew him. His magic being different to Zatara's didn't mean he was immediately a suspicious person, and it didn't mean they were going to go off looking for other people like him, just as they hadn't gone out of their way to find people like Zatara.

There would always be a small tickle of paranoia in the back of his mind, reminding him about the Statute of Secrecy and how he was in the public eye now and one day he might slip up and ruin everything, but for the most part he managed to ignore it.

oOoOo

Ever since he first caught wind of the fact that some of the Leaguers had young protégés, Harry had started making an effort to get to know them whenever he had some down-time. It made for a lot more travel – no more lazing about at home and taking a break from mission travel across the country (and the world) – but in the end it was no big obstacle. There were more important things in life than slow mornings and days off.

The idea had been an alarming one, with fear born from personal experience, right up until he actually met the kids face to face. Despite his own misgivings it was clear that the four boys knew exactly what they were doing, and that they hadn't been thrust, unknowing, into their roles. The evidence made him feel better, but Harry never did manage to fully shake the concern that their existence created deep within his heart.

No matter how hard he tried, Harry couldn't help but see a bit of himself in each of them, and so found himself unable to keep his nose out of things. He didn't pry, but he made himself available to them in ways that their respective hero mentors sometimes couldn't. They had guidance – more guidance than he'd had, for sure – but that didn't mean they couldn't use a friendly ear, or someone different to touch base with.

Although Barry and Oliver had become good friends of his over the years, Harry wasn't overly surprised to find that he found it easier to confide about some things to the teens instead. There existed between the five a certain sense of empathy and understanding that Harry didn't think he'd ever be able to properly create with someone he'd only met once they were older and jaded.

It was nothing like he'd felt around the Weasley clan, but nevertheless, Harry found himself developing a mildly familial affection for the teens. They weren't his responsibility, and they didn't want or expect him to protect them. All they wanted was someone to listen to them, and Harry was happy to be that person.

oOoOo

Harry was inching steadily towards thirty when the balance suddenly shifted.

Later, he would regret that he hadn't seen the signs sooner, but there was nothing he could have done to change the League's mind. All he could do was wade through the aftermath and do his best to try and hold things together.