“Let’s go hunt a sicko!”
Monday, June 13
Tony slept like shit, and thus was not in the mood for nonsense. He sat in the window seat of his jet and stared moodily out the window, ignoring the quiet conversation of the others who joined him on his personal mission.
“Awfully silent over there, Stark,” Natasha said. She shot a straw wrapper at Tony, accurately nailing him right above the ear.
“I’m trying to decide the best way to kill you and Ramsey both,” Tony mused aloud seriously. “I think I should let you kill him, then kill you, claim I saved the streets from a vicious killer, accept my award, then go home and order dinner.”
Natasha snorted, “You’re in a lovely mood.”
“Unfortunate side effect of hearing my kid have nightmares that you caused,” Tony snapped, turning to give her a dirty look.
It really had been a long, shitty night. Tony’s own Natasha-induced insomnia (side effect of seeing his son look completely terrified and lose his witty humor in favor of stammered speech and wild eyes) had led him to the kitchen late at night. He peeked in on Harry while he waited on the coffee to brew, just reassure himself the kid was still there and breathing, and found him thrashing in his bed, drenched in sweat, murmuring something indecipherable.
Tony had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do, so he settled for sitting in Harry’s doorway with a cup of coffee. It was the equivalent of being useless, but Tony couldn’t just leave him laying there alone either.
He hadn’t left the doorway until the first rays of light began filtering through the window and he only left then to exact some revenge on his son’s behalf.
Natasha didn’t look ashamed of herself, since she never did, but she did raise her hands harmlessly. “I said I was sorry. Like I was supposed to just somehow know that the kid going through your cabinets was your actual spawn and not some child sized spy sent to collect intel and disable the team?”
The guys were all nonplussed by her paranoia, it was paranoia well earned, but still misplaced.
“You could have checked before you went pushing him around,” Steve chided her, much softer than Tony would have. “The kid is skittish, Nat, you’ve probably made it worse.”
“You made him cry,” Bruce added, really driving home that guilt trip at the reminder of Harry and his red-rimmed eyes last night. “You have to watch your temper around him, abused kids are always on the lookout for angry adults.”
Tony felt the anger he was becoming familiar with rise up at the reminder that his son was one of those vague and mysterious ‘abused kids’.
“At least we’ll have someone to take it out on,” Clint said cheerfully, reaching over to tap Tony’s coffee mug with his own.
“And we definitely decided that plucking this shitbag off the streets, killing him, and hiding the body is the best way to handle the whole ‘Tony’s kid is in love with a pedophile’ situation?” Natasha asked. She rolled her eyes at the pissed look that Tony gave her, “I didn’t say I wasn’t game, I’m just making sure this is a done deal.”
“Actually…” Steve spoke up and Tony turned his glare on to him. He knew they should have left the old man with the stick up his ass at home. “Look, how’s Harry going to feel if we just kill this person? He’s bonded with him, obviously, and he might be even more terrified of us if he finds out we killed the guy he considers his family.”
“What? We let him roam the fucking streets?” Clint snarled. “Maybe find a new kid to prey on?”
Steve didn’t even bother to correct Clint’s language. “No, I think we should have him arrested, let the justice system handle him.”
Tony scoffed, “We are the justice system.”
“And what if Harry heals enough to one day want to face down his abuser?”
Tony hesitated. “Why would he want to do that? See that guy that- that abused him?”
“To kick him in the dick?” Natasha suggested.
“It’s a pretty common thing, actually,” Bruce said thoughtfully. “It’s supposed to bring closure to the victim.”
“He’ll get more closure if he knows the guy is six foot deep,” Clint argued, Natasha nodding firmly by his side. “Plus, we might not have enough proof for a legal case anyway, not without Harry’s testimony, unless…” Clint tilted his chin and looked at Tony, “Anything incriminating in the texts?”
“A threatening bomb emoji,” Tony said dryly. “Maybe we’ll get him prosecuted as a terrorist.”
Clint snorted and the team fell silent as the jet began to descend on the landing.
“What are we doing here, Tony?” Steve asked gravely as the jet landed and the team got to their feet. “Your revenge or Harry’s justice?”
Tony rubbed his eyes then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Odds on Harry ever actually wanting to face this bastard again?”
“Even if it’s 1%, would you take that opportunity away from him?” Steve asked.
Tony threw his hands up and got to his feet so he could jab a finger in Steve’s direction. “I knew I should have left you at home.”
“God damnit.” Clint snatched his bundle of arrows from the weapons compartment above the seats. “I would have stayed home if I knew we were going to go soft on a pedophile.”
Steve clapped Clint on the shoulder before he descended the jet with Bruce. “I didn’t say we weren’t going to give Tony some time to chat before we leave him to the cops.”
Tony brightened up a very small amount at that. “I never would have left you, Cap!” he called at his retreating back. “You’re my favorite hero, you know that!”
Natasha gave Tony a look that he sneered at.
“You I’m not even a little fond of,” he warned her. “Paranoid little psychopath.”
“You’ll forgive me eventually,” she said confidently.
“Doesn’t look like that day’s any time soon,” Tony said. “Maybe when Harry willingly hugs you, we’ll talk.”
Natasha laughed shortly, amusement gleaming in her eyes. “You’re on, Stark.”
“In the meantime,” Clint strapped a dagger to his forearm and held it up to catch the light in the cabin, “let’s go hunt a sicko.”
~~~~~
Sirius was having an excellent day.
He woke up to a message from his godson, a smiley face and a taunt that if Sirius didn’t send him money soon that Harry would give him ‘a bloody shit name’ on his fake ID.
Sirius sent back a pumpkin.
He knew Harry assumed that he was too magical, too pureblooded, to understand the fine art of ‘texting’, but it wasn’t all that hard to learn once he got the phone. It was just more fun to click random little pictures and let Harry ponder his meaning.
And, considering Harry sent back a lot of angry faces and middle fingers, Sirius assumed that he wasn’t as subtle as he thought he was. Which was fine, Harry was clearly acclimating to the new place, and that was all Sirius wanted. He’d even sent him photos and videos of a group of puppies he’d befriended.
It had been the hardest struggle of Sirius’ life to not find a way to print those photos off and plaster them all over his parents’ gloomy house, but protecting Harry came before bragging about his adorableness.
Sirius did get a message around eleven o’clock pm Harry’s time though, a simple little ‘I miss you’ that broke his heart. Sirius missed his godson as much as a man would miss his limbs (if the man wasn’t Alastor who hardly counted as a man since Sirius thought he was at least part-machine), but Harry had other family to comfort him. And maybe one day Sirius would be able to slip away and visit him. If he found a way to do it without getting tossed right back in Azkaban, that was.
Hopefully the pumpkin made Harry laugh and he’d have a better day than the one he clearly had the day before.
Apart from the message from Harry, Sirius also got to smugly watch as Snape and Tonks returned from an overnight shift of ‘Harry hunting’, both looking wretched and exhausted. Tonks was a little less wan than Snape, but she was always energetic and peppy. Sirius just hoped she’d put that energy to use in annoying Snape and not finding any trail of Harry’s.
Sirius was in such a good mood in fact that he offered the two of them breakfast, something Tonks accepted and Snape denied with a furious snarl that didn’t bother Sirius at all.
“Sirius, I’m sorry, but- but it’s like Harry’s just disappeared into thin air,” Tonks said quietly after Snape left and she tucked into the meal Sirius made. “We still can’t tell if he’s been taken or ran away.”
Sirius sighed and poked at his eggs. “I have to think that he’s just ran off, ya know? Hiding out from Voldemort, but…”
“But there’s a lot of people who would have loved to take the Boy-Who-Lived,” Tonks said. “It’s just… if Albus can’t find any leads, then it had to be someone pretty powerful, right?”
Sirius kept his head ducked to hide his amusement and pride, “Right.”
Tonks put a gentle hand on Sirius’ shoulder after she ate and prepared to head home to sleep. “You’re taking this a lot better than I would,” she said. “Just keep it up and Harry will be home before you know it.”
Sirius nodded morosely and waited until Tonks left to smile to himself.
“You are taking this rather well.”
That voice wiped the smile off Sirius’ face immediately. He turned in his seat and saw that Harry’s best friends, Ron and Hermione, standing in the opposite doorway with eyes narrowed and wands in hand.
Cute, really. Sirius assumed they thought because they bested him when they met in the Shack that Sirius was afraid of a couple of teenagers with wands.
There was a big difference between Sirius a little over a year ago and now.
“Should I destroy another bookcase?” Sirius asked Hermione, adding a rough edge to his voice as both warning and evidence of his supposed unhappiness.
Destroying that bookcase had been a blast and Sirius sort of hoped he’d get another chance to do it again. Sure, his ‘mad with worry’ routine had seemed to terrify Hermione and the youngest Weasley girl, but Sirius didn’t really care much about them.
“Or you could tell us where you think Harry is,” Ron said, stepping up in front of what Sirius suspected was his little girlfriend. The wand in his hand tapped his thigh and Ron probably thought he looked dangerous.
He didn’t.
Albus could be dangerous.
Voldemort could be dangerous.
And Sirius spat in both their faces when he shuffled Harry off to America.
So, no. Sirius wasn’t scared of these defenders of the friend they didn’t write.
“I think he’s ran off and he’ll write me soon,” Sirius said, not resisting the urge to needle these kids and repeat the same story he’d given the Order as an excuse for his lack of madness over Harry’s disappearance.
“If Harry ran off he would have wrote to us,” Hermione said, thrusting her chin out stubbornly. “I think you know where he is and all we want to know is if he’s safe, Sirius, surely you can understand that.”
Sirius got up and nodded solemnly. “I can,” he said honestly. Then he added rather snarkily, “Perhaps you should write to him and see if he replies, eh?”
Sirius then walked around them with his hands in his pockets and his head high.
Bloody kids. The only one Sirius liked was Harry. And he was off in America, Sirius ducked in the closest loo to check his phone and smiled, apparently missing Sirius as much as Sirius did him.
By early afternoon, Sirius found himself laying on the front stoop again, solely out of habit as he didn’t expect a letter from Harry to arrive now that they had a different form of communication.
It was nice, everyone being terrified to set Sirius’ infamous temper off, because they all avoided him like Dragon Pox and hardly noticed when he slipped out the door disguised as Padfoot. Except for the twins. Sirius’ tag wagged and his tongue lolled as he thought of the charmed dog treats he’d found outside his bedroom door. No doubt the twins were trying to cheer Sirius up through pranks.
Those two were a lot more tolerable than most other kids were.
Sirius entertained himself by playing the part of a lovable stray and getting the muggles walking up and down the sidewalks to stop and scratch his head. He barked and growled at the muggle who lived a few houses down from him, #10 Grimmauld Place, and tried to take a nip out of his arm as he scurried away from the dog. Aside from being a creepy sort of man, he’d also tasted disgusting when Sirius used his hairs for Polyjuice.
Yeah, maybe Sirius didn’t have to use the guy’s hair, but the stupid muggle creep dropped his work bag that had a brush in it one day early on in Sirius’ imprisonment there, and the freely given hairs had been too much to resist.
Regardless though, Sirius huffed out a raspy dog laugh when the muggle turned pale and ran from Sirius to seclude himself in his house.
Prat.
Sirius was content though, chasing a bird for the amusement of a giggling little girl, up and down the sidewalks, even doing some spectacular leaps to make her laugh more.
The little girl tugged on her mother’s hand. “It’s funny doggy!” she giggled. “I want him, Mummy! Peaseee?”
Sirius sat and woofed at the girl and refrained from growling at the disgusted look the mother shot his way.
“He’s probably infested with fleas, honey,” she told the girl. “Come on, let’s leave the mangy dog alone.”
Sirius chased his tail one last time to make the girl giggle as her mother pulled her away toward the bus they’d been waiting on.
For that woman’s information, Sirius did not have fleas, thanks so much.
Disappointed with the lack of people to swindle laughs and scratches from, Sirius drug himself to the stoop and put his head on his paws as he wondered what his godson was up to. Knowing Harry, it was probably hilarious or horrible, there was no in-between in anything Harry ever did.
Sirius was daydreaming about Harry flying around in one of those suits he’d seen Tony Stark build when his ears pricked up and he heard people trailing down the block.
“…part of town,” a woman said.
“…grew up here?” a man replied.
Sirius was on all four paws when he heard a familiar voice say a familiar name.
“Petunia didn’t know…”
Sirius lunged off the steps, his internal alarms going haywire, as none other than Tony Stark himself walked around the corner.
No, no, no… Sirius desperately prayed that Harry hadn’t told Tony where Sirius lived. Tony shouldn’t be able to find #12 Grimmauld Place, with as many muggle repellent charms as the place still had, but he couldn’t be standing outside chatting with his mates about Harry Potter either. If anyone heard him, that would be that. And unless Tony already established his custody over Harry, then Albus would undoubtedly find a legal way to bring Sirius’ godson right back in to the middle of a war.
Sirius trotted up to Tony and his mates; a redhead woman that made Sirius actually drool, a tall guy with broad shoulders and neat blonde hair, another guy, more burly, with tattoos up his arms and a weapon of some sort strapped to his back, and a smaller guy with wire framed glasses and a swotty look to him.
Sirius recognized them after a moment, with as much research as he’d done on Tony Stark, he’d have to be an idiot to not recognize the muggle-ish superhero team he’d built.
That didn’t answer what the fuck they were doing in London though.
“What number?” The ridiculously attractive woman asked as Tony pushed Sirius’ head away from him. His movements caught her attention and she smirked down at Sirius. “Another stray to add to the family, Stark?”
Tony, who did look just as good then as he did nearly sixteen years ago, narrowed his keen eyes at Sirius as he played off the stray dog desperate for attention act.
“No…” he said slowly. “Harry said that his friend had a big black dog, he said it looked mean as hell but was sweet.” Tony held a hand out toward Sirius, “Are you sweet?”
Sirius barked as snarled as viciously as he could, fruitlessly hoping it would scare them off before someone caught wind of them.
All it would take was one person to take a good look at Tony Stark to link him to Harry.
Tony wasn’t scared off, though he did yank his hand back quickly.
“Trust the kid to think that beast is sweet,” the tattooed guy whose name Sirius didn’t care about snorted. He didn’t look at Sirius, so he missed Sirius baring his teeth at him, instead he pointed toward the row of houses and caused Sirius’ stomach to drop when he said, “That one.”
Of all the people on Tony’s team to have magic in their blood, the tattooed weapon guy was the last one Sirius expected it to be.
Sirius tried barking, growling, even biting the swot looking bloke’s trousers while they got closer and closer to Sirius’ home.
Were they planning on ringing the bloody doorbell?!
And all he got for his troubles was a quick kick in the side from the redhead when he went to bite her leg.
“Don’t you dare,” she snapped, her eyes all furious and sexy. She turned her head and stormed up the steps to…
To house number ten.
Sirius slunk back and his eyes flicked nervously from the creepy muggle bloke’s front door and his own.
There was no way it was a coincidence that Harry’s father and his team were in London, on Sirius’ block, two doors away from his own house.
The blonde guy (did he wear a costume and carry a shield in the articles Sirius read?) pounded on the muggle’s doorway and the five of them made an impressive grouping as they stood there with stony faces and radiated cold anger.
The muggle opened the door slowly after the blonde guy knocked again and barely poked his face through the crack. “Yes?”
“Alexander Ramsey?” Gorgeous redhead asked the muggle.
… Sirius had no idea what was happening. Perhaps it was a coincidence that they were there? Maybe the creepy guy was some sort of terrorist or something evil on a muggle level that Tony’s superhero team came to destroy?
“Yes?”
Tony shouldered the redhead away and smiled at the muggle, though he didn’t really seem all that happy. “I think you know my son?”
… Nope. Sirius was right back to not having a bloody clue what was happening.
“No…?” The muggle looked nervous and tried to close the door, though Tony’s informal high-top trainers kept it from closing.
“Let’s chat about it inside,” the redhead said in a falsely saccharine tone. She pushed on the door, knocking the muggle back and giving their team entrance to his flat. “Banner, you and your sensitive delicacies are on lookout,” she snapped. “Rogers, are you with us or him?”
The blonde bloke squared his shoulders and followed Tony, the tattooed knife bloke, and the redhead inside, “With you.” He glanced toward the swot looking guy over his shoulders and murmured, “If only to make sure this creep ends up in jail and not a morgue.”
The swot guy, Banner, apparently, chuckled quietly after the door firmly closed behind him. “As if Tony’s going to leave any pieces for a morgue,” he muttered to himself. Well, to Sirius as well, except he might not have been aware of that as Sirius looked like a dog.
Sirius had no bloody idea what was happening, but as it seemed to involve Harry somehow, he knew he needed to find out.
And he had just the cloak upstairs in Harry’s trunk in his room to help him do so.
Sirius sent one last confused look toward where Banner stood in front of the muggle door before racing to his door, sliding through the magic doggy door, and changing back to his own two feet just in time to crunch a pile of dog treats and throw open his bedroom door.
He ignored Hedwig’s hoots and Buckbeak’s whines as he removed the disillusionment charm on Harry’s trunk and threw it open. He snatched James’ old cloak from beneath a pile of actual rubbish (Harry was an adorable slob) and stuffed it in his pocket to storm back down the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Molly stopped him with a half-sympathetic, half-exasperated look. She stood in the sitting room doorway with her arms crossed and her curious red-headed children grouped up behind her. Her curious ginger kids and one suspicious looking brunette, that is.
Sirius wasted another precious moment of being nosy to be dramatic. “If none of you will find my damn godson then I’ll do it myself!” he roared, waving his wand around and generally looking entirely mad.
“And what if you get caught?” Molly demanded. “When we find Harry he’s not going to be happy if you’re in prison or kissed!”
Sirius scowled and really tried to channel the Black madness that surely still lingered in the grim house. “I don’t care! They can send all the dementors they want, but I am finding my godson!”
Sirius spun on his heel before he could lose anymore actually valuable time and stormed right out the door as Molly said something about ‘Dumbledore’.
Sirius didn’t know how many times he was going to have to snarl, mutter, yell, and, on one memorable night, scream it in French: he did not give a damn about what Albus bloody Dumbledore had to say.
Sirius was a grown man capable of making his own poor decisions. The last time he followed the word of Albus, he let Hagrid take his godson and drop him off with some abusive muggles. Never again did Albus get to dictate Sirius’ choices.
While he was still protected by the wards, Sirius tossed Harry’s cloak on, momentarily nostalgic about the times he wore it as a student, and crept silently down the sidewalk toward his neighbors place. Sirius practically held his breath as he got as close to the front window as he could, keeping his presence hidden from the body guard on the stoop, and tried to peer through the window.
He refrained from snarling in annoyance when his view was blocked by curtains and his hearing was blocked by the thickness of the walls. He pulled his wand from his pocket and touched his ear before touching the wall and intoning a silent Marialos spell.
“I said how do you know my son?”
Wham!
“I don’t know! Please! I swear!”
Sirius winced in sympathy as the muggle sounded as if he were crying through a broken nose. Then he stopped feeling sympathetic as Harry’s father obviously had reason to believe this creepy muggle did something to Sirius’ godson.
Either that or Sirius sent his godson off to live with a complete nutter, making him the worst godfather to ever live.
“Hey, listen, we don’t want to hurt you, okay? Harry said you’re worried about him, do you want me to call him?”
Why… why did Harry think this bloke was worried about him? Sirius got the distinct impression that someone, probably himself, was missing an important piece of information.
“I DONT KNOW ANY HARRY!”
WHAM!
“Enough!”
“You don’t like it, you can wait outside! I want to know what this god damned pedophile did to my kid!”
Sirius felt the air leave his lungs and his entire chest contracted. Did someone- did Harry- was Harry fucking molested?!
If Sirius hadn’t been entirely confident that Tony was about to kill that piece of shite then he’d burst through the window and do it his damn self.
Sirius listened to Tony and the tattooed guy interrogate the muggle, with occasional input from the redhead, while he carefully slid his phone from his pocket and checked it for any messages from Harry.
‘Hi, it’s Harry, by the way I was abused by your neighbor in a wild coincidence, I still love you even though you didn’t protect me’, is what Sirius hoped to have in his ‘inbox’. What he had instead was nearly as good.
It was a photo of Harry, obviously taken by someone else. He stood beneath a yellow banner that said ‘ADOPTION DAY!’ and held a little brown and black puppy in his hands. Harry looked happy, really happy, even with the bags under his eyes. He had his head partially thrown back with a wide smile and Sirius wondered if it was because of the dog in his arms, or the kid (cute kid, kind of scruffy looking in the way that reminded Sirius of a younger Remus) standing beside him making a face at the camera. Harry didn’t explain his laughter, or who his friend was, he merely added a little caption:
Meet your great-godson, Jack the Arsehole.
Sirius felt his eyes well with heartbroken and furious tears. Why couldn’t Harry ever catch a break?! His parents dead when he was a baby. Raised by abusive muggles. Used like a pawn by his Headmaster. Never feeling like he fit in at Hogwarts with his peers. Kidnapped and forced to watch a classmate be murdered. And, somehow, between all the other traumatic events in Harry’s life, he also got mol—
“How did you get him on the damn airplane?!”
Wait.
What?
Sirius slid the phone back in his pocket as he focused on precisely what was being said. Harry said he never rode an airplane before Sirius put him on one less than a week ago?
… before Sirius, disguised as his plain looking muggle neighbor, put him on one a week ago.
“I saw you! You were-
WHACK!
-touching my son before he got on that plane!”
Sirius wracked his mind quickly, he didn’t…?
Oh.
Yeah.
He put his hands on Harry’s shoulders to reassure him, causing the poor kid to flinch, when they said goodbye before Harry left.
“P-please! Please! I didn’t do anything! I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re crazy!”
“So if we go through your phone right now we won’t find any texts to Tony’s son? Encrypted messages, maybe?”
Sirius grimaced. He didn’t know that Harry’s texts were monitored, which was bloody daft considering Tony himself was considered to be a wizard at muggle technology. At least he never sent anything more incriminating than—
“Tell me what a spider and a sailboat emoji means or I swear to god I’m going to cut your fucking hand from your wrist so you can never send another message again.”
Sirius had a sudden urge to laugh.
He didn’t think that Tony Stark would be the one puzzling over the random images Sirius sent Harry every time he asked for money. It was a bit of bad luck for the neighbor—
“Got it! Jackass used his own fucking birthday to lock the files. Check this out, Stark, pages and pages of child pornography.”
“It’s not m—”
WHAM!
“Any of Harry?”
“None that I can see. These kids are- they’re younger.”
Sirius bit his lip to keep from letting out a delighted laugh.
This wasn’t bad luck at all! This couldn’t have gone better even if he had actually planned it!
Harry wasn’t molested, Tony was still beating the piss out of a bloke who he thought hurt Harry, and the muggle was getting precisely what he deserved!
Sirius wasn’t an idiot at all (take that, Professor Slughorn), he was a genius!
Except… except Sirius didn’t exactly want Tony to extract revenge against the disgusting muggle creep, he wanted him to hunt down Petunia and Vernon Dursley, make them pay for actually hurting Harry, as opposed to the hypothetical situation with the muggle…
Sirius thought for a moment while the vigilantes in the house discussed the best way to have the muggle arrested. It wasn’t as if he could stroll in the house as himself, and polyjuicing as the muggle was out… but…
Sirius grinned and felt a true bounce in his steps as he quickly hurried home, stuffing Harry’s cloak out of sight, and raged up the stairs (implying to the other occupants of the house that he’d been unsuccessful in his short search) to grab a piece of parchment and a quill. He opened the window, slipped out on to the roof, and crawled around until he saw Banner in his line of sight. Sirius held his wand between his teeth as he scrawled a hasty note, then traded the wand for the quill as he performed a tricky little charm, apparating the note from his own hands to Banner’s shirt pocket.
The smile on Sirius’ face and the feeling in his chest were the same things he felt when he, James, Remus, and the Rat-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named finished the Marauders Map:
Smugly satisfied and immensely mischievous.