Tony Stark's Son (Rework)

“Where is he?” Was the first thing Harry heard when his dreams melted away. It was annoying,  exhaustion clings to him like frost on a winter morning, and he just wanted to drift back off into the comfort of fantasy. “My son! Where is he?”

“Tony, calm down.” Another voice joins the mix, this one familiar enough to stir Harry from sleep. He opens his eyes.

A lab greets him. For a moment he didn’t understand what was going on. He almost believed he had fallen back into a dream. Then, the familiar scent of sweat and oil reached his nose. He wasn’t asleep; he was in New York. 

The day comes crashing down on him like an iron. Harry’s exhaustion just triples at the thought. 

“Calm down? Pepper JARVIS just sent me a DNA test confirming I have a son.” The first voice all but hisses into the room behind him. This must be Tony Stark. “Tell me again to calm down.” 

“Sir, please.” The disembodied voice spoke again and this time Harry did flinch. He had forgotten about that. It seemed to speak from everywhere at once, though Harry couldn’t see any speakers along the roof. “He is here. He is safe. He can hear you.” 

Harry chooses this time to sit up, twisting to see behind the couch he was laying on. A blanket falls from his shoulders. Someone must have covered him up when he fell asleep. 

Pepper Potts is the first to meet his eyes. She looks just as tense and worried as she had when he fell asleep. Did she ever calm down? Beside her was an older man Harry knew from television and movies. 

The iron man stood beside her. He wore the body of the suit, red and gold gleaming in the light of the lab. It was ironic, actually, how Gryffindor the machine looked. Maybe they really were related. From the clips Harry had seen, Tony Stark was as brave as anyone in his house. 

Tony notices him a moment later. He stands frozen, looking over Harry with a crinkle in his eyebrows. 

“Harry, is it?” 

“Tony Stark,” Harry confirms, nodding to the man in the suit. Tony lets out a sigh, tapping a button that makes the plates of armor dissolve into nothing. Hermoine would have a field day with that; it looked as impressive as any magic he had ever seen. 

“Why are you sleeping on my couch? Surely we have extra rooms for my son.” He glares at pepper. 

“The DNA test needed to go through. We can’t be too careful.” 

“He’s still a guest. And a kid.” Tony steps closer to the couch. “How old are you, Harry?”

“Sixteen yesterday.” Harry shifts on the couch. His head was pounding and he could feel his skin stretch over the sunburn. It wasn’t a nice feeling. 

“And who is your-“

“Lily Evans.” Pepper answers for Harry. “Deceased.” 

“Damn.” Tony’s face seems to fall with the news. Harry doubted he even remembered his mother after all these years. “Is that why you’re here?”

Harry shakes his head. 

“My mom died when I was a baby. So did my dad.” Harry winces at the word. “Oh, well, the person I thought was my dad.” 

“How did it happen? What happened after?” Tony seems suddenly very worried. “Please tell me you didn’t go into the foster system.”

Harry had heard horror stories about the American foster system. The concern laced in Tony’s question makes Harry laugh. 

“No, no foster system.” He looks down, away from Tony. “My mom and dad died in a car crash. I was the only survivor. My mom’s sister took me in. When I’m not at school I live there.” 

“Not at school?”

“I go to a boarding school.” Harry shrugs and stands from the couch. The world spins when he stands up, so he just sits right back down. 

“Careful, kid.” Tony twists his head up as if listening to the sky. “JARVIS? Give me a rundown on the status of the kid.” 

“Harry suffers from a moderate case of sun poisoning, dehydration, and continuous malnourishment. I would advise a regiment rich in vitamins and minerals and some water, sir.” 

Tony nods, his face grave. He turns from Harry then. 

“Come on, kid. Let’s get you some food.” Tony steps around the couch and heads for the elevator. 

Harry turns to Pepper behind him. She nods, as if in approval, and Harry hops up to follow Tony. 

The elevator opens for the two when they step up to it. The two-step inside and the door slides closed. What follows next is silence. 

Tony doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He fixes his shirt — a grease-stained, white t-shirt — and clears his throat. His eyes gaze over Harry and turn away. He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. Harry thinks he looks like a fish. 

“Do you remember my mom?” Harry breaks the silence. It doesn’t seem to be what Tony expects, as he goes still beside him. The silence stretches out in the space around them. 

“I can’t say I do, no.” Tony clears his throat. “At the time we must have gotten together I was a much different person.” 

Harry gives Tony a long look and sees the truth there. There is guilt, there, too, which eases the anger and pain of his answer. 

“My godfather knew about you, though. So what- how did he know?” 

“That’s a question for you godfather.” Tony lays his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Why do you have a sunburn? You come all the way from England in the direct sunlight?” 

“Took a boat.” Harry offers, shrugging off the hand the inventor laid on his shoulder. He couldn’t exactly tell Tony freaking Stark about the magical world even if he was his father. That seems like a very bad plan. 

“And your aunt and uncle? Why didn’t they bring you here?” 

There it is. The dreaded question. Harry had no idea what he was supposed to say. He couldn’t tell him ‘oh no my aunt and uncle don’t give a shit about me and would rather see me dead in the ground than worry about me going all the way to America.’ At the same time, he couldn’t not tell Tony. It would look more suspicious that way. 

“They let me go.” Harry shrugs. “Sirius — my godfather — wrote a letter to me explaining everything and they let me go. They were just as surprised as I was about it all.” 

“Just like that? Let you go all the way to America?” 

“Just like that.” Harry steps out of the elevator when it opens up. He’d rather be wherever it was taking them than be stuck answering questions he couldn’t with Tony all day. 

They had been taken to what Harry had to guess was a living room, and what a living room it was. Once again harry was sure he had stepped into a movie. Everything looked pristine, clean, and modern to the point it was scary. The homiest things hanging around were a discarded jacket — leather — on the back of the couch and the meadow scene of Twilight playing on the TV in the middle of the room. 

Said TV watcher turns when the elevator opens, and Harry sure knew who that was. 

The woman who turned around had flaming red hair, like a fire, and a death stare in her eye that gave Harry the creeps. Something about her was just so familiar. He was sure Ron had a picture of her hanging somewhere in his room. When the woman’s eyes find Harry she examines him for a moment. Her shoulders relax and lower from their tense position. 

“This your kid, Stark?” The woman stands. Harry looks over her very cozy sweatpants and too-big shirt to the leather jacket on the couch. She looked like she could kill everyone in the room in less than a minute. 

“Yes. Natasha, meet Harry Potter.” Tony places his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Don’t scare him.” 

“Why do you look familiar?” Harry looks from the woman back up to Tony. “I’ve seen her somewhere before.” 

“Good eye, kid. I’m the Black Widow.” Natasha says it with a smirk on her face as if she was amused by the question. “You know. Best Avenger?” 

That made a lot of sense. Ron was obsessed with the avengers following the invasion of New York. He had talked Harry’s ear off about them for hours back at Hogwarts. Harry had ignored him, of course now he wished he had paid a little more attention. 

“Oh.” Harry purses his lips. There wasn’t anything more he could say to that without sounding stupid. 

“That’s all? You meet Black Widow and it’s just ‘oh’?” Natasha rolls her eyes. “I bet you’re an iron man fan.” 

“Uh, neither actually-“ 

“Oh don’t tell me you like that nerd Hawkeye!” Tony crinkles his nose up. Harry feels his face flush more than it had been before. 

Was it really so unheard of to not know about the Avengers? 

“I’m not a big fan of the avengers, actually.” Both adults pause, looking down at Harry with their eyebrows raised. 

“Really? I thought the UK made a big deal about us in the news?” 

“They did,” Tony answers Natasha. “I got calls all week about it after Steve broke that statue in London.” 

Harry lets out a loud sigh. Of course, once again, he was a freak. 

“I just don’t watch the news very much. My best mate at school was obsessed with you, though.” 

Natasha looks between Harry and Tony. She seems to see a lot more than Tony himself did, almost like she was looking right into his soul. Harry found it uncomfortable. 

“Well, maybe it’s just not popular outside of that. The kid was probably doing finals or something when Steve beheaded the marble.”

“The sales say otherwise.” Tony hums, giving Harry a look he didn’t like all that much. It reminded him too much of Hermoine when she figured out a plan. “Why don’t you know the avengers?”

“I know them.” Harry shrugs, walks into the kitchen and looks around the room blankly. He was just too tired to really take it all in. “Just don’t have the time to follow them. My school doesn’t have internet or anything.” 

He was lying, of course. More than not caring enough to read the news about America, he just really didn’t like to hear those stupid hero stories. 

How many times had he wished Iron Man would come to save him when he was young? And how many times did he? It was a pointless story in an endless stream of helpless people praying that one day some hero would look down on them and see someone worth saving. Harry would never be that. 

“No internet?” Natasha lets out a snort from the couch. “Well, now I know you’re lying. Everything has internet these days, even the primary schools.” 

Harry pauses, thinking through his following words. He couldn’t give too much away, and if Tony did look into his background he wouldn’t see anything about Hogwarts. His record would end right before his uncle was going to send him to the other school. 

“It's a school for troubled kids.” Harry finally settles on. “Having no internet is supposed to teach us respect, or whatever.” 

Both adults turn to look at him, obviously assessing the reply. 

“No offense but you look about as harmful as a squirrel.” 

“Says the literal Black Widow,” Harry grumbles. “I just don’t-“ 

Harry pauses again. He did seem to get into a lot of things he shouldn’t at Hogwarts. Most of them were forced on him, though.

“I’m not a big fan of rules I guess.” 

“Sounds about right.” Tony gives Harry one last long look before turning back to the fridge. “What do you want? I got stuff to make whatever and if you’d prefer takeout I have millions of dollars so I won’t sweat it.” 

“Whatever is fine.” Harry sits down at the island, looking down at the clutter under him. There was a textbook open in front of him; an advanced physics book. There were pen markings throughout the text as if the person using it wrote in it like a journal. Beside it was a bracelet of sorts with a wire and a button attached. There was a jar full of some odd liquid, too. When Harry picks it up and tilts it, it sticks to the sides of the jar, resembling the webs of a spider. 

“Might I suggest a light soup, sir? Harry might have trouble eating with the sun poisoning.” A hologram pops up out of nowhere in front of Tony. On it, Harry could just make out lists of ingredients and steps outlined in bold. “He does not have any allergies.” 

“How do you know?” Harry looks up at the ceiling as if he would see a person hovering there. He didn’t. 

“I have access to all of your medical records, including any and all allergies, injuries, and illnesses you have ever had.” 

“Isn’t that illegal?” 

“As Tony is your father, no.” Tony twitches at the word. It seems both Harry and Tony were ignoring the obvious. “Even if he was, sir isn’t too invested in rules.” 

“Starks don’t listen to stupid things like the government.” 

Harry hums at that, looking away from Tony. His eyes fall on the textbook in front of him once again. He reads a few lines, they were talking about atoms and lets out a sigh. He was so behind in muggle learning. How was he even supposed to fit in with his inventor of a father? He would appreciate Tony Stark’s brilliance since they shared genes and whatnot, but he would never live up to that level of smartness. 

Tony Stark was his dad. That was a fact proven by the DNA test. Nothing Harry did could change that, and did he even want to? He wouldn’t ever worry about money again. 

He didn’t have to worry about money before. 

Harry picks at the edge of the page. Whoever owned the book had obviously gotten bored and doodled a few sketches into the side. There was a frog and a smiley face, along with a comic of some weird hero with webs on his face. 

“You like physics?” Tony asks. Harry looks up at him. He was flipping chopped veggies in the skillet better than Harry would have guessed a millionaire could. 

“Oh, no.” Harry pokes at the bracelet beside the textbook. “Never really did well in those kinds of subjects.” 

It was true; Harry hadn’t ever had any interest in muggle schooling. Sure, he liked English class and liked when they talked about animals all those years ago. Everything else outside of school had kept him from really enjoying anything. Harry had always been far too concerned with what happened when he got home to dive into his studies. 

“What subjects do you like?” Tony asks after a beat. Harry gets it; as the genetic descendent of the smartest, richest man in America he would expect his son to be brilliant. Unfortunately for him, the only thing Harry really could do was fuck up. 

“Sports, I guess.” Harry shrugs. “I was one of the youngest on our- on our soccer team back at my old school.” 

“A jock? Interesting.” 

“Tony has no athletic ability,” Natasha calls out from the couch. “That’s why he wears the suit.” 

“I have saved the world many times.” Tony points at Natasha with the veggie-covered spatula. “I think that qualifies as athletic ability.” 

“I’d say it does.” Harry shrugs, tucking his arms under his head. 

“Hah! At least one person’s on my side!”

— 

The rest of the evening was pretty boring if Harry was being honest. 

Tony takes him from the main floor up a few to his own level. The room was more like an apartment, with a built-in full bathroom and a somewhat stocked kitchen. There was a living room bigger than the Dursley’s entire house when the elevator first opened. Overall, it was a bit much for someone like Harry. 

The two had bid each other goodnight with awkward waves, and Harry had been left alone to his own devices. 

At first, Harry just wandered aimlessly through the apartment. The couch was too soft, the bed too big, and the kitchen too cold for his liking. He missed Hogwarts and the burrow. Oh, how he wanted Ron to come jumping out of the shadows. This room, this whole tower, was a whole different world. 

Harry ends up on the couch as the sun sets. Golden rays stretch their fingertips over the city skyline, twinkling and shifting against the metal in a way that made it look molten. This was a new sight for Harry. The Dursley’s home was nothing more than a carbon copy suburban house. If you had seen one, you had seen them all. When Harry looks out his window there the most entertaining thing he could see was a dog shitting on somebody else’s lawn. At Hogwarts, there was always something to see, and that was something magical or surrounded by nature. The magical world was just so removed from the cement maze that was New York City. Harry found it beautiful. 

The sun sets a few minutes later, casting the living room in a gloomy shade. There was a TV, but Harry didn’t really like to watch television. The Dursleys had never really allowed it. Whenever Harry would try and sneak a few minutes of a show in it often ended in chores or outside time. Harry hadn’t really seen a point in arguing for that one when he got his wand. Hogwarts hadn’t had TVs. The best they had was a newspaper, and the news on that revolved around anything but what was going on on muggle television. 

To put it simply there just wasn’t much for Harry to do here. More than that there wasn’t much Harry could do that he had the energy to attempt. The day wore heavy on his sunburned shoulders, memories of Sirius and Lupin and Nick Fury swirling up into one big headache that pressed against his skull. He wanted nothing more than to sleep, but every time he tried to let his mind rest he thinks of Tony Stark. 

Tony Stark. Iron Man. Tony Stark. Harry’s dad. The words just didn’t seem to click in his mind. What was all this talk of them being related? The whole day had played out like a dream. Once upon a time, when he was but a child under the staircase, Harry had dreamed of someone coming in and taking him away. In those dreams, it was heroes just like Iron man. They would kick Vernon in the ass and whisk Harry away to a castle high up in the mountains. 

Eventually, he had gotten his castle, full up not with heroes in capes but friends with warmth. He had found a family away from blood and ancestry. He was happy with that and had been thrilled at the idea of a life with them. Now he was once again in the dark about it all. 

What if he woke up and it was all a dream? Harry wasn’t sure which he would prefer, the Dursleys or New York. Both seemed like alternate versions of hell from the place he was standing. 

There was no Hogwarts here and no way to tell Tony he needed special schooling without breaking a few laws. If the ministry of magic wanted Tony Stark to know about them he would. Harry doubted letting his dad know about his magic would help anyone. So, if he really did stay here for the rest of his teenage life he would never see the magic world again. Harry would be, for lack of a better word, invisible. 

Would that be a bad thing? It seemed like every year Harry wants more and more to just be some random kid. Being the chosen one all the time got stressful, and it made homework seem like paradise when It got bad enough. How bad would it be to leave Hogwarts behind if he was leaving his damned scar along with it? Harry could just turn a blind eye and leave all of that behind him. No more Voldemort, no more death eaters, no more drama. Harry could be Harry. 

Harry would be alone if he stayed here. Ron and Hermoine weren’t there. Tony was surrounded by a bunch of superheroes with much more important things to do than hang around some random kid from England. Harry would have to get used to sitting in front of a blank TV here. That would never have happened at Hogwarts. 

Harry slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out the letter Lupin had given him. It was crinkled beyond repair, and the edge of one side was ripped from rough treatment. It was still his letter, though, and he sure as hell wanted to read what it said. 

Would now be a good time to attempt to read it? The day weighed on him like nothing else. Maybe it would be best to just set it down on the table and rest for a while. There was still a deep-seated exhaustion in his bones from the long travel, and it wouldn’t go away unless he took a break. Then again could he even let himself rest without reading it? Now that everything else around him had calmed down and Tony had left him to his one device Harry could think of nothing else but Britain. 

Harry rips the top of the envelope and pulls the letter out. It was a pretty hefty thing, and when harry opened it a single flask falls into his hands. It looked like something the fake Professor Moody would drink out of. When he pulls the two pieces of paper apart he sees very familiar handwriting on a potion recipe. Snape’s perfect cursive mocks Harry. 

Dear Harry, 

I know Sirius already wrote and sent his short-breathed letter, and I know I will see you in two weeks' time, but I am sure we will not speak of this issue. Sending you to America was Sirius’s idea and he is heading the project as your godfather. Though I am sure you will be furious at both of us, I need you to know we only did it because we believe you to be in danger. 

Sometime after the Triwizard tournament and your return to the Dursley household, it came to our attention that Dumbledore is not the man we all thought he was. He made a mistake and we all saw through the cracks in his armor. With this discovery, Sirius decided you needed to leave. I will not go into detail on this issue, not now. All you need to know is that your ex-headmaster does not have your best interest at heart. 

Sirius, I, and Molly all meet and discussed the course of action. We could keep you here under the rule of someone who would do anything for their own means, or we could let you go. It took hours and a lot of heartbreak, Harry, but we all concluded it was best for you to be away. The war will go on without you, but we are not sure we could last if you were lost.

It is easy to forget that you are just a kid. With Voldemort and the Order taking so much attention, it slipped my mind these last few months. Harry, you’re only sixteen. You should never have gone through what you have and you should never have to do it again. If it were up to me I would make sure it never could. I am not that powerful, though, and neither is Sirius or Dumbledore. 

In the future, the wizarding world will need you. In the future, your hand may be forced to act. Right now you are but a kid fighting in an adult’s war. I can’t have you waste your childhood fighting in a war of our creation. Leave the war to us, Harry. Be a kid for once. 

That being said, America is not the best hiding place. The legend of Harry Potter is worldwide, and if word gets out that you are there it could mean trouble for you. I’ve included a potion and instructions on how to make more of that. In your luggage, which Fury has delivered to you, there are enough ingredients to make the potion for a full year. It will hide your scar. Get a haircut. Eat some food. Don’t let the world know you’re Harry Potter. Please, for me and everyone over here, be Harry Stark. Forget about the wizarding world. Be happy in America. 

And don’t forget how much we miss you.

Love, 

Remus Lupin

Harry tilts his head up to the ceiling, wetness welling in his eye. 

Just like always, the world was making him do something he would rather not touch with a nine-foot pole. Wherever the wind blows it seems Harry gets tossed to the side. He couldn’t ever win, couldn’t ever really just let go and relax. 

He crumbles up the letter and tosses it across the room. The flask falls to the carpet with a clunk. 

Once again, Harry was running blind.