Harry Potter-Stark?

Harry’s life sucked, but then, when had it not? There were moments, like when Hagrid came on his 11th birthday and told him he was a wizard. That was the first time he thought he could go to a wizarding school and never see his aunt and uncle's faces again (he was wrong, of course). Or when he first saw Hogwarts, when he met Ron and Hermione, and when he became acquainted with the Weasley family. Overall, he thought the wizarding world had been his salvation.

And he wasn't exactly wrong, but he wasn't entirely right either.

His life before Hogwarts had meant nothing to him; he hated it. He had no friends. His cousin Dudley and his friends bullied him at every opportunity. His aunt and uncle despised him (and how could they not? Harry had been thrust into their lives without their consent). So, even though Harry didn't like his relatives, he couldn't really blame them for all the things they did to him—starving him, occasionally beating him. That's what he probably deserved. He learned from a young age that no one wanted him and that he was only a burden. Some nights, when his stomach hurt more than usual from hunger, he would dream that his parents came to save him. That, of course, was childish thinking.

But then, his 11th birthday happened, and his life changed forever. He discovered what it felt like to have friends, to eat as much as he wanted, to realize he was good at something (Quidditch really was the best thing in the world). He even discovered that learning could be fun, despite sometimes being too lazy with his classwork and homework. All in all, the wizarding world—being a wizard—brought Harry something he didn't know he could feel: happiness.

But it wasn’t all like that. While the wizarding world brought good things to him, it also brought bad, really bad things. He learned what it felt like to have the weight of the world on his shoulders, to meet people's expectations (he couldn't fathom how people expected anything of him), and to experience betrayal, sadness, and grief.

For the past four years, Harry had been in many life-or-death situations and had somehow survived (he really didn't understand how he was still alive). But this past year, specifically, had been the hardest of his life, and it seemed it would only get worse from here. This year, he had been forced into the Triwizard Tournament; his best mate Ron had been an asshole to him at the beginning. In the end, he saw his friend (could he call him a friend? They didn't really know each other) Cedric be killed by someone his parents had believed to be one of their closest friends. That rat. Harry's blood boiled just thinking of him.

But that wasn't the end of it. Voldemort, the most feared and powerful wizard (behind Dumbledore, of course) of these times, had come back to life, or rather, back to his body because he never really died, did he? And somehow, Harry was his target. Why? Because Voldemort couldn't kill him when he was an infant, apparently. Harry didn't know what he did to deserve the attention and hatred of the most powerful dark wizard of his time. It wasn't his fault that snake-face couldn't finish his job properly. But somehow, he made that everyone’s problem.

Harry turned on his bed to look out the window of his room (more like Dudley’s second bedroom). It had been two weeks since he left Hogwarts, two weeks since Cedric died, and Voldemort was out there somewhere. The thought made his stomach hurt. Since that incident, he hadn’t been able to sleep well, managing only 2 or 3 hours before nightmares woke him. He hadn't heard from his friends, nor from his godfather Sirius, or Remus, or even Hagrid. Heck, at this point, he would appreciate a letter from Snape (and THAT is saying something). Even Hedwig had not returned in two days. He truly felt disconnected from the world.

Turning in his bed for the millionth time, Harry let out a frustrated sigh and sat up to look out the window at the street below. It was all quiet, all peaceful, but instead of calming him, it only made his uneasiness grow. What was preventing Voldemort from coming here and blasting him into oblivion? Somehow, the thought of Voldemort in all his glory with his snake face appearing here on Privet Drive seemed so absurd that he found it funny. A movement in the sky caught his eye, and with his heart beating rapidly, he opened the window to realize it was Hedwig.

The snowy owl arrived at his bed with poise, and Harry hurried to grab the letter attached to her claws.

"Hey girl, thank you. Here, have some water." With his other hand, Harry patted the desk where Hedwig’s birdcage, food, and water were, and the snowy owl quickly moved.

Directing his attention to the letter again, Harry saw Hermione's handwriting and felt excited for the first time since leaving Hogwarts two weeks ago. Excitement that quickly vanished and transformed into anger as he read the letter. Hermione only asked about how he was, how he was coping, and things about him—nothing about her, Ron, or the others. Throughout the letter, she did not mention anything about what she was doing, which she usually did. That felt suspicious to him. She talked as if she hadn’t ignored him for two weeks, with no explanation as to why she or Ron hadn't answered any of his letters or why they had actively ignored him.

Being frustrated after only two weeks without contact may sound dramatic to some, but he had just seen Voldemort return and battle him, and then had returned to his relatives' house as if nothing had happened. So sue him for wanting to know what the hell was going on outside his neighborhood. With a frustrated growl, he threw the letter away.

His anger rising, Harry decided he would not answer her. In fact, if Ron, Remus, or even Sirius took the time to write to him, he would ignore them. If they couldn't take a moment to write to him and explain what was going on, fine, he wasn’t going to take a moment to respond either. With his anger still simmering, Harry resigned himself to another night with no more than 3 hours of sleep. He grabbed the Muggle newspaper he had stolen from his uncle that morning. It had become a habit, listening to the news when his aunt or uncle were watching and grabbing the newspapers from the trash.

While he had copies of the Daily Prophet delivered to him, he only really scanned them briefly to see if there was any news about Voldemort (so far, nothing).

For the past three years, Harry had found a hobby in listening to and reading Muggle news. It all started in the summer of 2012 when he heard a guy on the TV talking about an alien invasion in America and some people who had stopped it. That had really piqued his interest. I mean, he was a wizard, so he shouldn’t really be surprised about the possibility of other forms of life out there, but he was. There were aliens.

Aliens.

And the thought of people existing with abilities other than magic left him in awe as well. He didn’t know much about what was going on in the Muggle world, nor did he understand almost anything about technology. He couldn't even learn the faces or names of the group involved (he had a lot going on in his life, thank you very much). But Harry found that during his summers since that year, when he had nothing else to do, or when his uncle locked him in his room for days without food after a beating, or simply when everything in his life became too much and he wanted to get his mind off it, he enjoyed reading and hearing about those people and their fights.

So, he sat on his bed with the newspaper and read about some type of fight that had taken place in a country named Sokovia a few months ago, and slowly forgot all about his anger at his friends.

Harry didn’t know how he had managed to complete all the chores Aunt Petunia had left him, but somehow, he did. That had become his life motto, he thought. He didn’t know how, but somehow, he ended up doing things—like surviving a killing curse, fighting Voldemort, or finishing chores at his relatives' house with only a piece of bread for breakfast and no sleep at all.

It was 5 o’clock when he finished painting the garden fence, his last chore. All in all, this day had been okay. His uncle was out, Aunt Petunia usually left him alone, and Dudley was nowhere to be seen. After putting all the tools away, Harry contemplated his options. He could go back to his room and take a shower, or he could take a walk to the nearby park. Making up his mind, he decided to walk and enjoy the sunset in the park. He would shower later at night while everyone was having dinner.

The weather was nice, too.

Feeling himself relax, Harry took his time walking, looking at every detail of the houses he passed and the birds in the sky. He was about halfway to the park when suddenly he tensed and stopped. Feeling someone watching him, he turned around, scanning every corner of the street but finding nothing. There were only a few cars and mostly kids running around the street.

Maybe he was being paranoid.

Taking a deep breath, he resumed his walk, but even when he arrived at the park, the sensation of being watched didn’t go away.

Harry had been in the park for only a few minutes when he heard the voice of his cousin Dudley calling him. So maybe that was why he felt someone watching him. Sighing in frustration, he tried to ignore him. He just wanted one moment of peace—was that too much to ask?

"Hey, four eyes, I'm talking to you, or are you deaf too?" Dudley's voice sounded behind him, accompanied by laughter.

Harry turned in time to see Dudley just a few steps away with his friends, and he rolled his eyes.

"What an original thing to say, Diddykins." Dudley suddenly blushed at the nickname. "What? Isn't that what your mom calls you?" Some of Dudley's friends coughed to hide their laughter. In the first week of summer, Dudley had arrived home with a trophy after winning a food-eating competition. Aunt Petunia had seen him arrive and ran squealing outside to engulf him in a hug while shouting, "My Diddykins is a winner! I'm so proud!" All his friends had been there to hear it, and needless to say, they had all broken into hysterics at the name.

Apparently, it wasn’t cool being called Diddykins by your mom as a 15-year-old.

"At least I have a mother to call me that." Dudley's smugness returned, earning another eye roll from Harry.

"Oh wow, another original. You’re really wrecking your brain with these remarks, huh?" How many times did Dudley think Harry had heard that before? At this point, the insults were just boring.

"If you have nothing brilliant to say, save it, yeah? And being that you’ve spent 15 years of your life without saying anything of that sort, I won’t hold my breath." Harry should have seen the punch coming. In fact, for a split second, as he felt the collision of Dudley's fist with his face, he thought, Yeah, this was predictable.

Harry fell to the ground with a grunt, his glasses falling off too. He was sure he had scraped his hands, and the glasses were broken. He could feel blood coming from his nose and hear the laughter above him, and all he could feel was nothing.

Emptiness.

Why did he expect he would have a nice and peaceful afternoon? Why did he expect anything different? This was his life; this was how it went.

Resigned to his fate, he picked up his glasses with one hand and with the other grabbed his nose to try and stop the flow of blood. He got up, dusted off his pants, and started to walk casually back to the house.

He might be almost blind without his glasses, but he knew the way from the park to the house by heart already. Without his glasses, Harry couldn’t see the perplexed faces of Dudley and his friends at his casual attitude and lack of reaction.

When Harry exited the park, he felt Dudley walking a few steps behind him. Apparently, it wasn’t fun to bother him if he didn’t react at all. They had only made it halfway back when suddenly Harry felt a car pull up beside them on the sidewalk.

He didn’t know what happened, but one moment he was trying to make out the parked car through his blurry vision, and the next a hand was grabbing his hair and pulling it.

"You freak! You had to make me look bad in front of my colleagues, didn’t you?" Uncle Vernon’s voice growled. Harry really didn’t know what was happening.

"What on earth are you talking about?!" Harry shouted, trying to free himself from his uncle's grip.

"Dad!" Dudley had never interfered before when Vernon shouted at him or slapped him, so hearing him call out to his dad surprised Harry more than Uncle Vernon arriving so abruptly to manhandle him. Maybe it was because they were outside where anybody could see, and not in the privacy of the house.

Either way, what on earth was going on?!

"Don’t play foolish with me, boy! You know what I’m talking about. I left my laptop on the dining table for a few minutes yesterday, and today, when I opened my presentation before the board, the first thing that popped up was a picture of that bloody cartoon wizard!" Laptop? Presentation? Cartoon wizard? What in the name of Merlin does any of that mean? Harry’s head hurt, and it wasn’t just because of his bloody nose or the pulling of his hair.

"What are you talking about?! I’ve never in my life touched a computer. How the bloody hell would I know how to use one?!" While they shouted at each other, they struggled. Uncle Vernon was trying to drag him by his hair to the car, and Harry was using all his strength to prevent that. One thing he had noticed while struggling and shouting was that Dudley had gone suddenly quiet, and Harry immediately knew he was the one who had done it.

Bloody bastard.

"Get your hands off him!" A voice Harry didn’t recognize shouted, and suddenly Uncle Vernon’s hand let go. Because Harry had been pulling away with all his strength, the sudden release propelled him in the opposite direction, and he felt himself falling.

The last thing he saw before his head collided with something hard was the blurry silhouette of two men.

That voice sounded familiar. Have I heard it before? Harry thought before everything went black.

Tony Stark was going to vomit.

"Tony, breathe. You're looking a little green there, and you're not the one with the Hulk," Steve said, trying to calm him down. So far, no good.

"Steve, how can I relax? How can I even breathe when I'm about to meet my son?"

Holy shit, he had a son. He still couldn’t wrap his head around it.

It was all last minute and hurried. Tony really hadn't thought this through. One minute, he had FRIDAY look up all the information on Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and the next, he had their home address and was on one of his jets on the way there, with Steve along for the ride. They hadn’t even packed a suitcase.

He had also left in such a hurry and without telling anyone, and he knew Pepper was going to kill him for leaving her to handle the meeting he was supposed to attend, without any explanation.

Again.

Well, this time he knew he had a great reason for leaving like that. She would understand once he explained.

"It's going to be alright, Tony."

"How can you say that, Steve? How can you be so sure? I didn’t think this through. We arrive at his house, and then what? 'Hey Harry, I just learned today that I’m your dad. Nice to meet you, by the way. How have your 14 years of life been?' How do you think that will go, huh?"

"First of all, you will not introduce yourself like that. We can work that out once we arrive."

"What if he hates me, Steve? What if he’s happy with his life? I’m sure he’s doing fine without me, and I’ll just show up and ruin everything for him. The person he thought was his dad suddenly isn’t, and this random American dude appears, claiming to be his father. That’s some heavy stuff, isn’t it? And let’s face it, my life is such a whirlwind. I’ll only bring chaos into his life. He could be in danger with me. Maybe the best thing to do for his protection is to keep away from him. I mea-" Tony’s rambling was cut short when Steve grabbed his face.

"Look at me, Tony." They made eye contact, and Steve rubbed his cheeks with his hands. The motion calmed him.

"If you do that, if you decide to keep your distance, you will regret it for the rest of your life, and you know that. You don’t really want that. I mean, it's obvious by the way you jumped on this plane and left everything without a second thought how much you want to meet him." Tony closed his eyes and let the feeling of Steve’s warm hands ground him.

Yeah, he really wanted to meet his son. Hell, he wanted to be part of his life. He had missed so much already, and he wanted to be there for him from now on. Even though a part of his brain was telling him that bringing a kid into his life would be selfish and dangerous, the other part, which was the majority, was screaming at him to bring that kid into his life. His kid.

He was a selfish man, after all.

"Sir, we have arrived in London." Tony opened his eyes at that and exhaled.

"Okay, let’s do this. I’m ready."

He was not ready.

Tony's leg was bouncing on his seat, and he could swear his heart was going to stop at any moment. When they arrived in London, a driver was already waiting for them (he was not about to drive on the other side of the road; that was confusing as hell), and they made their way to Surrey.

In fact, they were already in Little Whinging, having stopped a couple of streets away from Privet Drive, near a park at Tony’s request.

It was getting late, but he could not, for the life of him, find the courage to go to Number 4 and ask for his son.

"Take all the time you need, Tony, but the sooner, the better," Steve said with a playful smile on his face.

"Shut up, Rogers. I'm psyching myself up here; it's not like I'm about to ask for a Happy Meal or something," Tony muttered.

Steve opened his mouth to say something else but stopped as his eyes looked at something outside.

"What?" Tony turned to look at what caught Steve’s eye, and his heart stopped.

A kid with messy black hair (or could it be dark brown? It was hard to distinguish in the sunset light) and round glasses was walking on the sidewalk toward the park. In a moment, the kid stopped and started to look around, and for a second, his eyes looked in their direction. Tony gasped.

He had green eyes; Tony had seen those eyes once before on a redhead.

It was as if the world stopped and everything disappeared, everything but his son. Because that was his son, no doubt about it. They really looked alike; he had the same jawline, the messy hair (Tony's only way to handle that was by combing his hair with gel), and he even looked short and tiny for his age, just like Tony had.

His heart swelled, and he felt his eyes sting.

What was going on with him? Get a grip, Stark.

"Tony," he heard Steve’s breathy voice.

"I know." He could not take his eyes off his son. The boy continued to walk and entered the park, but the more Tony looked at him, a frown started to form on his face.

He looked thin, almost unhealthy, and he was dressed in clothes that looked three times his size. It looked like the wind could blow him over. From this distance, Tony saw a group of young men approach his son, one of them particularly large, clearly the leader.

"Okay, Tony, this is your chance," Steve said, and Tony had to make a great effort to tear his eyes away from his son to look at Steve.

"What?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"Go out there and meet him, approach him." Tony felt his stomach knot again. They stared at each other for a few more seconds, Tony feeling he could draw strength from Steve to do this and go out there.

"He is leaving the park, sir," the driver’s voice snapped him out of his trance (he had forgotten he was there), and both he and Steve turned in the direction his son was going.

"What happened? Why is he grabbing his nose like that?" Tony was frowning again.

"The big guy smacked him in the face, sir."

"WHAT?! Why didn’t you say anything? Is it the one who is walking behind him?" Tony felt the anger rise. So those guys were bullies. Got it. Tony was going to make sure they knew what happened when they hurt his son.

"Come on, follow them," Tony ordered.

"Please," said Steve, throwing a side-eye at him. Manners be damned—a kid had just punched his son’s face.

"I have to make sure Harry is alright. If he’s grabbing his nose like that, it could mean it’s broken. That’s a serious injury." They were close to Harry and the other boy, who was twice his size, when a car sped past them and stopped abruptly beside the two kids on the sidewalk.

It happened in the blink of an eye. One moment the car parked beside the kids, and the next a large man was shouting and grabbing Harry by his hair. Tony saw red, and suddenly all he could hear was a ringing in his ears. In an instant, he threw open the car door and sprinted to the man and his son.

"Get your hands off him!" he shouted. Despite the fact that the man was bigger than him, Tony, with all his might, grabbed the man’s hand and yanked it off his son’s hair. The movement threw Harry off balance, and before Tony could do anything, Harry’s head smacked against the sidewalk.

"Harry!" Tony rushed to his side. The kid was knocked unconscious, and as Tony frantically touched the back of his head, he saw his fingers come away with blood.

No, no, no, no.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?!" the man shouted, but suddenly Tony heard him fall to the ground and grunt.

"DAD!" the other kid shouted. Steve had arrived and had thrown the man to the ground, holding his hands behind his back. Tony didn’t even spare him a glance. He started to pick up Harry as delicately as he could. He needed a doctor, NOW.

"Let go of me! You don’t understand. That is my nephew. He is mentally ill, so that is the way we have to handle him. I’m doing nothing wrong here." Tony felt cold all over.

He had never thought about killing another person.

Well, not really, anyway.

Sure, he had entertained the idea when he happened to see a thriller or crime movie, imagining how he would commit a murder and get away with it, but it was just messing around.

He had thought of killing someone only out of frustration and just as a passing thought, not really taking himself seriously. Not even when Obadiah Stane or Loki did what they did did he ever really think about it. He never meant to kill anyone. And sure, he used to make weapons for a living, and that was his life’s work, and he knew those weapons had destroyed and killed thousands, but the way he saw it back then was that he made those weapons to protect more than anything (at least that was what he told himself).

But in this moment.

Tony wanted to kill that man. He had never felt this much hate towards someone.

How dare he?

To his own nephew, hurting him like this, and the way he said that they handled him like this? So, this was not a one-time thing; they actively treated him this way. He looked at Harry’s face, with blood all over his nose, bags under his eyes, and he noticed how the kid was light as a feather. Suddenly Tony felt sick.

"You will stay silent. The police have been called already and are on their way," Steve said while keeping his hold on the man who apparently was Vernon Dursley. For a moment, Steve looked up and connected with Tony’s eyes. He looked fierce, like there was fire in the soldier’s eyes. He looked dangerous.

Even if Tony wanted to strangle that man with his hands, he knew he had more urgent matters at hand. He had to take his son out of here.

"Let the police handle him, Steve. Let’s go." With a nod, Tony hurried to the car with Steve right beside him.

"You can’t just take him. That is literally kidnapping," they heard the kid yell from where he was crouching, helping his dad to stand.

Tony only scoffed and entered the car. Steve had gone to the passenger seat to give Tony room to place Harry.

"A doctor is already waiting at the airport, sir. We figured you would want to leave here as soon as you could," the driver said once he started the car.

Tony could only nod. He could not take his eyes off Harry, watching the way his chest rose and fell with his ragged breathing. He had placed his son’s head on his lap; he did not care about his pants getting stained with blood. All he cared about was Harry. He had to be alright.

Suddenly Tony realized that he was trembling, and his eyes stung again. He had to take a deep breath to lessen the knot in his throat.

"I am so sorry, Harry. I swear I will not let anyone hurt you again."