“Shit happens.”
~~~~~
“There’s a prophecy about you and it’s why Voldemort targeted your parents,” Sirius whispered in a rush. “It basically says that in the end- it’s you or him, one of you has to kill the other.”
Harry was hidden out in the Forbidden Forest, hidden beneath his cloak, warm from the charm he had cast before leaving the castle. His heart beat so quickly, and pounded so hard, that Harry was sure the creatures snuffling around in the dark could hear it. “So if he comes back he’s going to kill me? It’s literally bloody prophesied?!”
“Allegedly,” Sirius said the word slowly, “the kid who’s supposed to be his downfall was born to parents who ‘thrice defeated him’. He also ‘marked them as an equal’, which I guess makes it more plausible with the scar and all.”
“And my parents defeated him three times?” Harry asked, his mind racing as quickly as his pulse. “I’m dead then.” He let out a bitter and unamused laugh, sounding mildly hysterical, before Sirius could even speak. “I called you to ask for advice about who to ask to the fucking ball, Sirius!”
“Ooh, who are you thinking?” Sirius asked eagerly, his mood shifting quickly as always. “One of the Weasley boys? That other Hogwarts champion? Maybe—”
“Cho Chang,” Harry interrupted him. “She’s pretty and plays quidditch.”
“Harry, she makes it sound like that’s a female.”
Harry raised a brow in the mirror, “And?”
“And you’re gay,” Sirius laughed. “Don’t take some poor girl to the ball because you’re scared to be yourself, kiddo. It won’t work out well and it’s not fair to her.”
Harry scowled. He never should have told Sirius about his confusing dream about Bill Weasley after the Quidditch World Cup. “I said maybe I’m interested in blokes, Sirius. Maybe.”
“And I’m saying ‘definitely’,” Sirius smirked. “Maybe send Bill an owl? Ask him to come?”
“Piss off.” Harry sighed and slumped against the tree and tried to focus on what was important. “How’d you find out about the prophecy?”
“Dumbledore told me.” Sirius’ face got dark quickly. He sometimes had a shadow in the back of his eyes, an ever present haunting from his time in Azkaban, but when he was furious, it seemed to cloak his grey eyes completely.
“Just like that?” Harry asked, surprised.
“After a fashion,” Sirius hedged. He sighed when Harry’s expression turned prompting, “I told him I was going to take you and leave the country. He said the signs look like Voldemort’s returning soon, somehow, and we had a row. I said fuck this country, we’ll move somewhere that I’m still your guardian but not a fugitive, and then he dumped the prophecy on me. I…” Sirius hesitated. “I don’t think James knew it, not as much as I know anyway, or… or he probably wouldn’t have believed it.”
Harry closed his eyes, exhausted. “Does it matter now?” he asked softly. “After a fucking dragon and… and everything else… I’m just going to die when Voldemort comes back?”
“Absolutely not,” Sirius snarled. “If he comes back, you’re getting the hell out of the battlefield, Harry. I won’t have you at risk playing Dumbledore’s games. Let them fight it out, like adults. Anyone can shoot an AK at the bastard, it doesn’t need to be you.”
Harry opened his eyes partially and peered at Sirius through his lashes. “Flee? That’s your advice, Sirius? I’d be a bloody coward, leaving these people behind. If I’m the one meant to kill him, then I’ve got to stay.”
“You’re not staying,” Sirius said, his voice dropping to a growl. “If or when Voldemort comes back, we’re leaving.”
“We?” Harry asked, too exhausted to hide the hope in his voice. “You’d- you’d go with me?”
Sirius’ eyes softened. “Kiddo, I’ll always go with you.”
Harry didn’t plan on fleeing, he didn’t plan on being a coward.
Then he watched Cedric die. He saw how hopeless and pathetic he was against Voldemort. He faced death that night and then ran as quick as he could from it at his first opportunity.
Like a coward.
He’d also taken Parvati Patil to the Yule Ball, which should have been a sign of his cowardice and utter worthlessness even then.
~~~~~
Harry laid back on his the bed in the bedroom Tony gave him and tossed the apple he nicked in the air, over and over, as he automatically caught it and let his thoughts consume him.
Harry was named after a brave man. James Potter, despite whatever prattiness he had in his school days, had joined the aurors and the order and tried to fight against evil in the world, he tried to make it a safer world. James Potter died on his feet, like a man, staring Voldemort down in an effort to save his wife and son.
A brave woman gave birth to Harry. Lily Potter, the bright and vivacious muggleborn who stood up against bigotry and never once let the world tell her how she was supposed to be, never let it tell her who it thought she should be. Lily Potter could have fled, Voldemort offered her three chances, but she didn’t take them.
And Tony Stark, ‘Iron Man’, the man who fathered him. Harry watched that video. He looked between the fight scenes and the news coverage and he saw Tony. Tony sacrificed a lot, had made the ultimate sacrifice right at the end (saved only by a lucky chance), and was a hero. He didn’t fly away from death, didn’t save himself with his Iron Man suit and his power, he just…
He was a good man, just as Steve Rogers said. He was a good man like James was a good man and Lily was a good woman. All good, all brave.
All had a hand in creating Harry, who was a pathetic coward.
Harry scoffed and caught the apple from the air. He swiped angrily at his face with his jumper sleeve and then grimaced at the wet snotty mess he just smeared all over it.
He was doing swell here, really. He’d refused to eat, wary about trying to eat in front of all those… those incredibly huge people who looked like they could do a hell of a lot worse than a few smacks. He refused to go shopping with the guy who he was depending on to help Sirius. Then he’d went and exiled himself to his room, like a hungry and grimy feeling idiot.
Harry rolled onto his side and pulled out the instructions Sirius wrote him, ‘so he wouldn’t forget’. It had the information on Tony Stark, reminders about the things they all went out and did as a group to jolt Tony’s memory, and a firm note right at the bottom:
Don’t forget to write this time.
Harry had asked how he was supposed to send a letter to Sirius when Sirius was the one keeping Hedwig while he was gone, and Sirius had cheekily wrote his home address at the bottom and told Harry that letters addressed the muggle way would work.
They argued a bit.
Someone could block Harry’s letters just like they blocked Sirius’. Sirius told him not to worry, that he’d sit on the stoop as Snuffles and catch any letters before they were delivered through the slot.
Harry asked what if they didn’t get delivered period but were intercepted in the mail? Again, ‘don’t worry, I’ll handle it, kiddo’.
Harry asked if Sirius if one magical mirror would honestly bring down an entire mechanical airplane?
‘Do you want to be on the plane when you test that question?’
Sirius scowled when Harry only shrugged, so Harry just accepted the muggle method.
He felt naked though, exposed and uneasy, without his wand, mirror, or owl. It seemed daft, with Voldemort back, but if Harry could trust anyone to watch out for him, it was Sirius. And now Sirius was depending on him to write, assuring him that he hadn’t been murdered, and so Harry would.
Harry forced himself off the bed and began quietly sifting through the drawers of the nightstand, the dresser, the shelves of the ridiculously large walk in closet, he even peeked under the bed and didn’t even find a spec of dust.
If he wanted to write to Sirius, he was going to have to travel out of the bedroom and track down some paper, a pen, an envelope, and some stamps. He wanted to do it stealthily, having no desire to run into any of the heroes who lived in the tower. And he was either going to have to do it in his tshirt or wear the jumper with the proof of his snotty tears on it for everyone to see.
It was a real dick move of Sirius to not even give Harry time to grab some potions from Diagon Alley to heal with. Sure, he’d taken the time and effort to check Harry over and heal any true injuries, as sparse as they were, but he claimed to not know a spell for the bruises and they didn’t have time to grab a potion.
Privately, Harry thought that Sirius was somehow punishing him for something by making him show up at Stark Tower looking like a punching bag, but Sirius swore he had no ulterior motives.
Regardless… Harry rocked on his feet by his door as he warred with himself.
Jumper or tshirt?
He grimaced at the snotty sleeve, and what reason did he have to cry really?, and shed the jumper quickly.
Harry did a quick check of his arms and was relieved to see that the only bruise he really had left was from where Uncle Vernon had yanked him by the upper arm. It was faded and his short sleeve covered most of it though.
He’d just be quick- go find something to write with, get back in.
Easy.
Harry opened his door slowly, relieved when he couldn’t hear anyone talking and stepped out on quiet and careful feet.
The sitting room was empty now, so Harry started his search there. He sifted through drawers that were built into the walls, but all he found was a bunch of video game equipment. Harry had a hard time imagining any of the guys flying around, killing aliens, saving civilians, playing video games, but someone there must.
Harry planned on looking through the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen too, even a scrap of receipt paper or a page from a cookbook would suffice, but then he got caught.
“There’s not much food in there, we order take out a lot, but you should feel free to help yourself to whatever you want.”
Harry spun around from the cabinet he’d been peeking in, his heart lodged in his throat, and saw Tony standing in the doorway now.
“I wasn’t looking for food,” Harry denied quickly, a touch too defensively. He closed the cabinet and leaned against it.
Tony gave him a grin, one that Harry suspected came easily to him, and tossed Harry a bundle of something soft and black that he carried. Harry held it up and saw it was a tshirt. It had a logo on it, for a muggle band, Harry presumed, and was small enough to fit Harry.
“Go ahead and keep that. I was actually on my way to ask what size jeans you wear,” Tony said. He mimicked Harry’s pose, leaning against the wall he stood beside, and looked Harry over slowly. His eyes hesitated near Harry’s shoulders, causing him to pull self-consciously on his shirt sleeve. “I might have some sweats in your size. So you can wash your clothes, kid,” he added when Harry’s confusion must have shown on his face.
“Oh.” Harry looked at the shirt he held and felt an irritating swell of something in his chest. “I… er… thanks.”
Tony shrugged his shoulders and his grin was crooked. “Don’t thank me yet, the only sweats I have on hand that fit you will probably be pink, bedazzled, and Pepper’s.”
Harry didn’t want to ask, but… “Who’s Pepper?”
“Gorgeous woman.”
“Ah.” Harry nodded. “So you two are…?”
“It’s embarrassing really, for her, not me. She’s been in love with me for years, kid, just obsessed. Calling me, texting me, following me around with a boom box and romantic songs playing.” Tony sighed and Harry got the impression he was being toyed with. “You’ll see when she gets here, it’s all pretty gross, the lovesick faces she makes at me all day.”
“Right,” Harry said skeptically.
Tony’s grin turned a little more mischievous and he wiggled his eyebrows at Harry. “How about you? Is your ‘good friend’ also good looking?”
Harry couldn’t have held back the startled laugh that left his mouth if he tried. “No,” he said, shocked and amused. He hadn’t even considered that calling his godfather ‘a good friend’ could be so terribly misconstrued. “Well, he thinks he is,” he amended himself, “but it’s not like that.”
“Hey, no judgement from me,” Tony held his hands up and moved to plop down on one of the bar stools. “Even ugly guys need love, I guess.”
“Siri— my friend and I are not in love,” Harry scowled.
“Anyone else special in your life then?” Tony propped his chin in his hand and seemed to be giving Harry his complete attention, something that caused Harry’s neck to feel hot. “Any little British girlfriends I can claim will never be good enough for my son?” He waved his hand at the cabinet Harry still stood in front of, “And feel free to keep looking for food while you tell me all about them. Steve might have left a granola bar or something equally healthy and disgusting in there.”
Harry automatically took a step away from the cabinet. “I think your ears might be injured, probably from the bloody alien invasion, but I said I wasn’t looking for food. And- and I don’t have any ‘little British girlfriends’.”
“Boyfriends then?”
The heat on Harry’s neck traveled to his face. “No,” he said firmly. “Do you have any paper?”
“Paper?” Tony looked surprised by Harry’s relatively innocent question. “You were looking in the kitchen cabinets for paper?”
“No, I was looking for the stamp and envelope that I need.” Harry rolled his eyes then took a deep breath and tried not to start an argument with the guy who probably had paper so he could write to Sirius. “My friend is going to be worried if I don’t write, so… so could I please have a piece of paper?”
“Sure.” Tony didn’t look bothered at all by Harry’s rudeness or his request. “You could also just call your friend. You might have missed it, I do try and keep it on the down low, but I’ve got some decent tech here, I’m sure I can find a cell phone for you to use.”
Harry grinned against his will. Obviously Tony was into technology, which meant that perhaps Sirius holding on to Harry’s wand had been a good call after all. Sirius said only large amounts of magic would mess with muggle technology, but there was a bloody lot of it here.
“I don’t know his number,” Harry admitted. “Just an address.”
Tony picked his head up and looked truly pleased with Harry’s answer for some reason. “Kid, if you’ve got a name or address, I can find a phone number before you can say ‘I’m not hungry’.”
“Why would I say that?”
“Want me to order something for lunch?”
“I’m not—” Harry cut off his automatic response and glared at Tony’s quick grin. “No thanks,” he said instead. “And I don’t need his number, he doesn’t use a phone.”
“Hmm…” Tony hummed and scrutinized Harry closely. Harry held his gaze evenly, he wasn’t lying and he wasn’t worried about what Tony was searching for. “So this friend of yours, the criminal—”
“I never said he was a criminal,” Harry interjected quickly.
Tony grinned wryly and batted his lashes at Harry. “You’re right. Most guys with nothing to hide often run off to countries without extradition treaties.”
Touché.
Harry jerked his chin, neither confirming nor denying it.
“So you’ve got a criminal friend who has an address, but no phone number, and wants you to write him?” Tony asked.
“Thats quite a presumption,” Harry said carefully with a blank expression. “I was hoping you’d say ‘here, Harry, I can spare a sheet of paper,’ but guessing games are good too.”
Tony threw his head back and laughed. “Hang tight, kid, I’ll be right back.”
Harry twisted the fabric of the tshirt while Tony strolled casually away, hands in his pockets, a jaunty tune whistling from between his lips. Harry held the shirt up again, looking it over more carefully now that he was alone.
It was… it was genuinely just a normal shirt. It had a faded logo for something called Metallica across the front, a small nick in the collar of it, proof it had been worn, and…
Harry closed one eye as he counted.
It was the fourth thing he owned that belonged to someone in his family, Sirius notwithstanding.
A cloak, a map, a mirror, a tshirt.
His family heirlooms.
Except Tony isn’t really family, he reminded himself firmly. Blood doesn’t mean family.
He did grin, if only to himself, when Tony came skipping back in the room with a hand full of stationary.
“You remind me a bit of my friend,” Harry admitted as he gratefully accepted the notebook, ink pen, and pre-stamped envelope from Tony.
“Yeah?” Tony hid his head in the fridge. “He’s also a talented genius with a flying robot suit?”
“Annoying cheerful, actually,” Harry said sarcastically, yet entirely truthfully. He moved over to the counter and set the supplies down with the shirt. “He’s a moody bastard though, a real pain in my ass.”
“We have so much in common then!” Tony cried. He pulled two cans of soda out of the fridge and tossed one high up in the air to Harry. Harry snatched it easily and nodded at him in another silent thanks.
Tony moved over to the bar and grabbed an apple out of the bowl of fruit still sitting there and began absently tossing it in the air while he watched Harry slowly take a seat and sip the soda.
“Give me a bone here, kid, tell me literally anything about yourself.”
Harry watched as Tony tossed the ball higher and higher and still caught it, he’d have made a decent seeker if he was a wizard. “I’d rather not.”
“Best friend’s name?”
“No.”
“Where do you stay when you aren’t on the run?”
“Nope.”
“Best day of your life?”
“No.”
“Worst day of your life?”
Harry smiled mirthlessly. “No.”
Tony tossed the apple up and both their eyes followed its descent. “Favorite flavor of ice cream?”
“Raspberry.”
Tony’s eyes flew to Harry and his hand wavered, so Harry lunged across the bar and caught the apple before it hit.
“Damn, you’ve got good reflexes,” Tony said, sounding approving. “Play any sports?”
Harry straightened up and he was the one tossing the apple now. “No,” he lied. It wasn’t like he could talk quidditch with a muggle.
Tony grinned and backed up from the counter. He held his hands up and there was a bit of a challenge in the way he looked at Harry now. “No time to start like the present.”
Harry lifted an amused brow as he looked at the undoubtedly expensive electronics filling the room behind Tony. “If you miss, you’ll whine that I’ve broken your toys.”
Or worse. And it wasn’t like Harry could just run off from Tony’s place either, he’d have to grit his teeth and bear it until he got the papers he needed.
“Then I won’t miss,” Tony said with what was beginning to seem like rather characteristic cockiness. “Double dog dare you.”
Harry laughed quietly while he got to his feet and then tossed the apple as lightly as he could toward Tony.
He didn’t care how confident Tony was, Harry wasn’t going to be the one to break an expensive electronic.
“You throw like a skinny fourteen year old,” Tony said, his tone playful, when he easily caught the apple. “Best movie of all time?”
Harry caught the apple when Tony threw it back. It was a decent throw, but the apple was much slower and larger than a snitch, Harry didn’t plan on missing any throws. “No,” he said shortly, unwilling to give up more information than he already had.
He didn’t forget Tony’s little addendum to their deal. Harry already abandoned his friends, he wouldn’t leave Sirius as well. And he wouldn’t let Tony act like he wanted to get to know him, then use the information against him in some way.
“Wrong answer,” Tony said seriously. “It’s the Breakfast Club closely followed by Lord of the Rings.”
Whatever the hell that meant. Harry vaguely recalled hearing Dean Thomas and Hermione talk about Lord of the Rings before, but it wasn’t as if Harry had ever seen it.
Harry irritably threw the apple at Tony when he raised his hand for it. It smacked directly in his palm. “If you say so.”
“I do, and I never lie, not to my son anyway,” Tony winked. “What’s your favorite band?”
Harry’s arm stretched to catch the returning apple quickly. “Metallica.”
Tony looked surprised and thrilled. “Are they really? They’re in my top five!”
“No.” Harry threw the apple back and smirked when Tony had to lunge to catch it. “And that’s the question to all your questions.”
Tony stuck his lip out and batted his eyes at Harry. “My feelings are hurt, kid. Don’t ever joke about Metallica. If they’re not in your top list then we need to run that DNA test again.”
Harry looked over the man that he so closely resembled.
Whoever all told him that Harry looked like James Potter had clearly never met Tony Stark.
“Feel free,” Harry said. Sirius was confident in who Harry’s biological father was, just as his parents had apparently been the day he was born.
“Nah.” Tony laughed and threw the apple to Harry, sending it in a soaring arch. “You’re definitely mine. Do you like school?”
Harry said no, which was both truthful and taken as another evasive response.
The two of them kept it up for a bit, tossing the apple in increasingly dramatic moves, as Tony asked questions and Harry evaded them. They’d eventually had to span nearly the length of the flat with Harry in the kitchen area and Tony in the sitting room. Once they’d gotten going, Harry could see that Tony was rather competitive as well, and they kept one upping each other with trick shots.
Harry answered harmless questions, such as his favorite color (red), favorite season (fall), and Harry even slipped up and said no when Tony surprised him by asking if Harry used a passport to fly to New York.
In Harry’s defense, he’d been distracted by actually having to jump in the air to catch what seemed to be a purposefully high throw.
“How’d you get past customs?” Tony asked curiously as Harry scowled fiercely at the apple clenched in his hands. “Stow away in a suitcase?”
“None of your fucking business,” Harry snapped. In his moment of anger at his own loose tongue, he threw the apple much harder than he meant to- and with pretty bloody terrible aim.
Harry’s eyes went wide and his hands automatically clenched into fists as he saw the apple fly right over Tony’s head and smack straight in the center of the telly.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Between Harry’s hateful tone and the way the apple struck the dead center- there was no way that Tony was going to believe it was an accident.
Harry had his hands empty and by his shoulders when Tony turned and looked at Harry with a curious gaze that Harry also thought was probably characteristic for the man.
“That was an accident,” he stammered quickly. “I’ll pay you for it. My friend can send money as soon as I write to him. And- and if he doesn’t hear from me real soon he’s going to freak out and he can be really dangerous sometimes and I swear it was an accident. You said you wouldn’t miss,” he tacked on desperately.
“Woah, calm down,” Tony once again mimicked Harry’s pose, holding his empty hands up while he tilted his head and furrowed his brows at Harry. “Your good friend you want to run away to Russia with is dangerous?”
Harry backed up a few steps, his back bumping into the fridge. “If you hurt me, he will kill you,” Harry said truthfully. He ducked in an audible breath and used it to steady his nerves. He clenched his hands into fists and quickly jammed them in his pockets. “I’ll pay for it. Tell me the cost,” he said, still sounding more than a little desperate, but working to keep from rambling any more.
Tony’s frank and curious eyes didn’t seem to miss any of Harry’s movements, but he slowly lowered his hands just after Harry did.
“That TV was crap, it needed updated anyway,” Tony said casually. He turned his back to Harry, allowing Harry’s breath to come a little more freely. He snagged the apple out of the center of the telly, leaving behind a perfectly apple sized and shaped hole, and turned to grin at Harry before looking it over and taking a bite from it. “I think the plasma improved the flavor.”
Since that was a mad thing to say, Harry didn’t respond.
Neither of them said anything then, both just watching the other.
Harry, warily. Tony, curiously.
Harry was the one to eventually break the suffocating silence. “What do I owe you?” he asked hoarsely. Sirius would send the money, Harry knew he would. He could probably buy a thousand of those tellies and never bat an eye.
“Lunch.”
Harry’s eyes flicked from Tony’s hand to his perfectly serious face. “What?”
“And shopping,” added Tony.
Harry thought he misheard, so he said ‘What?’ again and Tony repeated himself.
“You’re…” Harry shook his head. “Shopping for what? I’ve told you I haven’t got any money.” Harry refrained from asking again about his hearing, certain that now was not the time to push the surprisingly unflappable man.
“And I’m loaded,” Tony said without a bit of humility. “You need clothes, we need a TV, trust me you don’t want to see Bruce without his soaps, and I’m starving and we’ve established that besides apples, there isn’t a damn thing worth eating here.”
Harry blinked. “I broke that,” he said dumbly, waving a hand toward the telly. “You’re not pissed?”
Tony laughed, “Kid, I’ve broken the TV so much that I think I’ve single-handedly kept Best Buy in business by replacing it. Shit happens,” he shrugged, “no use crying over it.”
“Shit happens,” Harry repeated, gobsmacked. “And instead of crying about it, you want to go shopping?”
“I definitely mentioned lunch as well,” Tony said, his face breaking out in a wide smile. “Come on, let me buy you some food and clothes, no catch. Oh! I know! I’ll even teach you to drive.”
Harry would have refused, even if that was a brilliant and odd offer, except he didn’t quite feel like pushing his luck any further today. He glanced uneasily at the stationary on the counter and bit his lip for a moment.
“If you want, I can have my assistant add overnight postage to that,” Tony nodded toward the envelope. “You can write to your ‘good friend who is definitely a possibly murderous criminal and is worrying about you’ tonight and I’ll make sure he gets it tomorrow.”
“You can do that?” Harry asked sharply.
Tony held up one hand with his palm facing Harry. “I swear.”
He didn’t look like he was lying, he looked genuine. And Harry was usually pretty good at detecting bullshit, he thought anyway.
Harry snatched the stuff off the counter and tried to inch around Tony toward his the bedroom he was staying in temporarily. Tony looked truly upset when Harry silently opened the door until Harry glanced uncertainly at him over his shoulder.
“Let me change my shirt and I’ll be ready.”
~~~~~
Dear Snuffles,
I made it. I’m fine.
My new friend isnicefine.
I’ve got a phone now. Get a phone and call me.
(212)793-5995.
-You-Know-Who
PS: send me some money, please, you prat.