Another flash of Apparition.
Kathoom and Bruce vanished from view and reappeared inside the Hog’s Head Inn.
It was summer break, and Hogsmeade was eerily quiet.
The inn’s owner, Aberforth Dumbledore—Albus’s brother—was dozing near the hearth. His long white beard draped across his chest as he snored softly.
“Stupefy!”
Bruce wasted no time. Even asleep, Aberforth might still pose a risk. He sent a Stunner flying his way.
Aberforth slumped deeper into his chair, now in an even sounder sleep.
“You love picking on old men, don’t you?” Kathoom teased from the side.
“That’s not the point,” Bruce replied sharply. “We need to get into his bedroom and look for any of Credence’s belongings.”
They were primarily searching for anything like letters.
“Picking on old men and stealing their son’s stuff now?” Kathoom remarked sarcastically but followed Bruce into Aberforth’s room.
“Aparecium!”
Once inside, Bruce cast the revealing charm to dispel any concealment spells Aberforth might have placed. Then, he systematically began searching every corner, ensuring that anything he disturbed was restored to its original state.
Bit by bit, he combed through the room—even finding a stash of magical girl magazines hidden under Aberforth’s bed.
“You’re disturbingly good at this,” Kathoom noted, eyes wide. “If you told me you used to be a thief, I’d believe you.”
“Stop gawking and start helping!” Bruce barked.
Time ticked by.
After thoroughly searching the entire room, Bruce found several items belonging to Credence: a photo album documenting moments he shared with Aberforth, as well as personal items stored alongside it.
They even uncovered a neatly folded red suit buried at the bottom of a wardrobe.
The suit bore a lightning bolt insignia on its chest.
“Aha! What did I tell you?” Kathoom exclaimed, visibly delighted. “I knew the Flash existed in this world.”
The absence of historical records about this Flash wasn’t due to his operating in secrecy like his DC counterpart.
No, it was because this Flash was a wizard.
And he knew how to cast memory-erasing charms.
“I don’t know why you’re so happy,” Bruce said, carefully refolding the suit and returning it to its place. “We didn’t find any useful clues.”
No letters or anything resembling instructions had turned up.
“It’s not here,” Bruce concluded. “Next, we’ll check Dumbledore’s place. If there’s nothing there either, it means your theory is wrong. Barry Allen didn’t leave us anything.”
“Oh, he definitely did,” Kathoom said confidently. He trusted the Speed Force to provide exactly what they needed.
“Let’s go, then.”
Bruce and Kathoom left the Hog’s Head Inn.
Aberforth remained slumped in his chair by the fire, snoring peacefully.
—
Hogwarts without its students was nothing more than a grim, ancient castle.
For Bruce, it was a haunting reminder of the bloodshed that had occurred there only a day earlier.
It felt like returning to the scene of a crime.
“Alright,” Kathoom began, “Dumbledore has surely changed his office password by now.”
“We can’t enter through the front door. We’ll have to use our old method.”
Window climbing.
A year ago, Bruce and Kathoom had scaled Hogwarts to sneak in.
Compared to the protective enchantments on the main entrance, those on the windows were much weaker.
Bruce tapped the glass with the Elder Wand, shattering the enchantment before slipping inside.
Once through, he repaired the window as though it had never been touched.
No sooner had Bruce entered than the portraits of former headmasters stirred.
“Bruce Wayne?” one of them exclaimed. “What are you doing here? And in such a manner!”
“I’m looking for Dumbledore,” Bruce replied without hesitation. “Haven’t you noticed he’s gone missing?”
The portraits exchanged uneasy glances, realization dawning on their faces.
Fear crept into their expressions as they grasped Dumbledore’s disappearance.
“Don’t worry!” Bruce reassured them. “I’m here to bring him back. But I need your cooperation.”
He scanned the room.
Dumbledore’s office was as cluttered as ever, filled with peculiar silver instruments that spun and emitted tiny puffs of smoke.
Turning to the portraits, Bruce asked, “Do any of you know if Dumbledore kept something hidden here? A letter, perhaps? Or anything that made him look particularly solemn or sad when he saw it?”
The portraits looked at each other until an elderly woman nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s in the third drawer of his desk. But he set a password, and I… I can’t tell you.”
“This is no time to be holding back!” Bruce pressed. “Dumbledore is missing. If I’m going to find him, I need that password.”
His tone left no room for argument.
The woman hesitated, then sighed.
“Very well. The password is ‘Order of the Phoenix.’”
Her words gave Bruce pause.
It seemed like she had misunderstood his request, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.
Approaching the desk, he spoke the password aloud.
“Order of the Phoenix!”
The protective enchantments on the drawer dissolved, allowing Bruce to pull it open. Inside, it was crammed with letters and papers.
He began sifting through them.
On top of the pile was a group photo: men and women standing together, some smiling at the camera, others exchanging glances.
“This is a group picture of the Order of the Phoenix,” Kathoom noted, pointing out a few individuals.
“These two are Harry’s parents—you can tell. That’s Lupin; he always looked so miserable. This one’s Sirius—pretty handsome, huh? And these two…”
Kathoom paused before recognition lit his eyes.
“Oh, right! These two are Neville’s parents.”
“Neville’s parents?”
Bruce recalled Neville’s behavior during the worst of times and asked, “Are they dead?”
“You seriously don’t pay attention to other people, do you?” Kathoom quipped.
“I’ve told you before—they were tortured into insanity by Death Eaters, but they’re still alive.”
“Maybe I wasn’t listening,” Bruce admitted, lost in thought.
How had Ares, with his powerful brainwashing, turned a timid but kind-hearted boy like Neville into someone capable of betraying his friends?
For some reason, Bruce felt that Neville’s parents might be the key.
“We’ll keep this in mind,” Bruce resolved before refocusing on the letters in the drawer.
He read through them one by one.
“Dumbledore, Lily and I had a baby. We’ve named him Harry…”
“Dumbledore, I’m sending you a picture of little Neville…”
“Dumbledore, I’ve been feeling down lately. The werewolf community won’t talk to me…”
The letters were old and mundane—sharing personal updates, expressing frustrations, or simply exchanging pleasantries.
Yet Dumbledore had cherished them enough to preserve them like treasures.
Bruce was certain that Dumbledore had responded to these letters with great care.
But now, the passage of time had left them as poignant relics.
Sigh.
Bruce exhaled softly and continued searching.
Finally, at the very bottom of the stack, he found a piece of parchment that stood out.
It was plain and unsigned, with a lightning bolt symbol penciled in the top-right corner.
“Found it!” Bruce called to Kathoom. “Look at this lightning bolt!”
Kathoom pulled himself away from another pile of letters and inspected the symbol.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” the owl warned. “Harry has a lightning bolt scar, too. That doesn’t mean this is a clue from Barry.”
They decided to examine the parchment’s contents.
When Bruce unfolded it, he found it covered in intricate writing.
“Chemical formulas!” Kathoom exclaimed. “And at least eleven—no, twelve of them!”
“Is this from Barry?” Bruce pressed.
“Without a doubt!” Kathoom declared, his voice brimming with excitement. “I know exactly what this is—it’s the origin of the Flash!”
The Flash’s powers stemmed from a freak accident: lightning struck a rack of chemicals in Barry’s lab, soaking him and granting him the Speed Force.
Though the true cause was Barry’s future self, the formulas on this parchment confirmed that Barry had left behind a method to recreate the event.
“It’s all set,” Kathoom said. “We just need to prepare these chemicals!”
The owl raised a wing dramatically.
“Then we’ll summon lightning to strike them. When the chemicals mix and hit us, we’ll gain the Speed Force!”
“Is this really possible?” Bruce wondered aloud, already brainstorming how to proceed.
“Preparing the chemicals is easy. I can buy a lab for that. As for lightning, we can use a kite during a thunderstorm—or even create one ourselves.”
The portraits on the walls exchanged bewildered looks.
Chemicals? Was that some new form of magic?
“Let’s get moving, Bruce!” Kathoom urged. “We need to finish this before the school term starts.”
Bruce nodded, bidding the portraits farewell and assuring them he’d found what he was looking for.
As he prepared to leave through the window, the elderly woman called out to him.
“There’s no need to climb out,” she said, pointing to the door. “You can leave through the front.”
—
Bruce stood outside the gates of Hogwarts Castle.
Staring at the familiar Black Lake, he felt a profound shift in his mindset.
The horrors of that night would not repeat themselves.
“Let’s go, Kathoom. To America. We’re buying the best chemical lab money can buy!”
Kathoom tilted his head. “The best chemical lab? Will three billion be enough?”
It didn’t matter.
When Bruce Wayne decided to spend money, the money would inevitably find its way to him. That was never an issue.
But before they could continue—
Kathoom’s mocking retort froze on his beak as his eyes widened in alarm.
“Careful!”
With reflexes honed by countless encounters, Kathoom cast a Disillusionment Charm, vanishing himself and Bruce from sight and sound in an instant.
“What’s happening?” Bruce whispered, only to be silenced by Kathoom’s telepathic warning:
“Don’t make a sound!”
Above the Black Lake, the empty void shimmered as arcs of lightning began to crackle.
Two distinct colors flared: bright blue and an unsettling black.
Bruce remained still as Kathoom layered charm after charm to muffle any noise or trace they might leave behind.
Suddenly, a portal tore open in midair.
Bruce could only watch as the intertwining bolts of lightning connected sky to water and then back to the heavens again.
Finally, the lightning struck the lakeshore, not far from where they were concealed.
When the light faded, two figures stood where the lightning had been.
Bruce’s eyes widened in disbelief.
One figure wore a gleaming silver armor that covered every inch of their body, wreathed in blue lightning.
“Savitar,” Bruce muttered to himself.
The true form of the God of Speed was a closely guarded secret.
Even in the worst timeline, when Cedric had acquired the Speed Force, Savitar had never revealed himself.
Yet here he stood, battered and hunched, as though gravely injured.
And the person facing him—Bruce’s heart skipped a beat.
It was Cedric.
Or rather, the Cedric of the worst timeline: the Batman crowned with the Speed Force and the knowledge of the God of War.
The fastest, the strongest, the darkest version of Batman.
“This… can’t be,” Bruce whispered, turning to Kathoom.
“You said time was reversed! How is Cedric here?”
Kathoom sighed. “It’s complicated. Before the time reset, Cedric must’ve used the Speed Force to travel even further back in time, escaping the effects of the reversal.”
But this created a paradox.
The timeline that birthed this version of Batman no longer existed.
“Cedric has become something that defies all logic,” Kathoom said grimly. “He is now a Paradox-Batman.”
By severing all ties to his past, Cedric had transformed into a Batman who roamed freely through temporal paradoxes.
The revelation weighed heavily on Bruce.
Savitar was already a formidable enemy, and now they faced an even more dangerous one.
But then Bruce noticed something strange.
“Why are Cedric and Savitar fighting?”
He thought to himself, Shouldn’t they be allies? Cedric’s Speed Force came from Savitar.
Before Bruce could voice his confusion, Savitar’s distorted, electrically enhanced voice filled the air.
“Cedric, I can’t fathom why my future self would ever choose someone like you!”
His words dripped with fury and betrayal.
“I gave you the Speed Force, and you dare use it against me?”
“That’s your own fault,” Cedric replied, his voice chillingly deep and calm.
“You are the source of the Speed Force. You can create it at will. But I can only use it.”
“This reliance on you… this vulnerability… keeps me awake at night.”
Cedric’s eyes were icy. “Savitar, the only way I can sleep soundly is by becoming one with you.”
With that, black lightning erupted from Cedric’s body, and in an instant, he vanished.
Savitar disappeared just as quickly, leaving only a trail of blue arcs.
The clashing bolts of black and blue tore through the sky before vanishing completely.
Only then did Bruce and Kathoom dare to breathe again.
“Savitar can’t defeat Cedric,” Bruce muttered, still shaken.
“The God of Speed… beaten by his own creation?”
“That’s no ordinary creation,” Kathoom pointed out.
“Batman. Old God. Speedster. Combine the three, and Cedric is now an unbeatable force in this world.”
Completely invincible, with no discernible weaknesses.
Cedric was the pinnacle of power—a transcendent figure among wizards.
“But I just realized something interesting,” Kathoom said suddenly, a glint in his eye.
“Savitar is cunning, no doubt. He’ll suffer some setbacks, but he’ll survive.”
“And when he does, he’ll need a place to recover.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “And where’s that?”
“Malfoy Manor,” Kathoom replied.
“Draco’s counterpart, the Alchemist Julian, is one of Savitar’s most loyal followers.”
“If his earlier betrayal didn’t clue you in, this will.”
Kathoom’s mind raced.
The enemy of their enemy could become their ally.
Despite his disdain for Savitar, Kathoom saw an opportunity to pit him against Cedric.
The Paradox-Batman had become too dangerous to handle directly.
—
This is a fan translation of 蝙蝠侠的猫头鹰教父 by 巴巴罗萨光年. All rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!
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