“It gets worse.”
Tony tapped his foot impatient as he waited on the police department to finish ‘bagging and tagging’ Ramsey’s belongings.
Clint and Steve stood beside him, both solemn and grave. Clint stared Ramsey down, cowardly little creep was sniveling in handcuffs by the door, and Steve watched the officers closely, making sure no mistakes were made.
Bruce and Natasha had taken off to grab lunch around the same time that Tony called for the police to handle Ramsey before he lost his patience entirely and put the bastard somewhere he’d never be found, Harry’s ‘closure’ be damned.
“I think we’re finished here,” one of the officers said, stepping over to Tony. “Are you wanting to press charges, Mister Stark?”
“Him?!” Ramsey shrieked. “He assaulted me!”
Tony smiled brightly at the scum. He had assaulted him. Broke his nose, knocked a tooth out, Clint even took a swing and hit one side of his face with the full force of his considerable muscle.
Tony hoped he bruised black and blue just as Harry had.
“Shut the hell up before I assault you,” the cop beside Ramsey said gruffly with a disgusted look at the man.
“What other charges do you have?” Tony asked the detective in charge, thinking quickly. He’d told them about his son having contact with Ramsey, offered them the video of their goodbye at the airport (Ramsey denied being there, but cameras didn’t lie). He couldn’t find whatever burner cell that Ramsey used to text Harry, but the video linked them despite all his protests.
If he could avoid pressuring Harry to testify though, let the kid work out his trauma on his own time, then that was the preferable route.
“Just for the shit on his computer?” The cop snorted and shot a glare at Ramsey, “He’s never seeing the light of day again.”
“Then I will not be, currently,” Tony stressed. “I’ll contact you if that changes.”
Because if Harry decided he wanted to add his name to the list of other victims they’d gotten off Ramsey’s computer, then Tony would support him.
Easy.
The officer accepted his decision and Tony watched as they began moving evidence and Ramsey to their cars.
“You did the right thing,” Steve said. He tried to put his hand on Tony’s shoulder, but he shook it off.
“I don’t need brotherly reassurance from Mister Justice,” Tony scoffed. “Let’s just get back to the jet before I change my mind.”
The guys nodded and led the way out of the little creep’s house. Tony pulled his phone out, planning on calling Pepper and checking on Harry, when one of the older cops came jogging up to him.
“Mister Stark, I’m sorry, sir, I just wanted to talk to you for a moment.”
Tony sighed and waved the guys off. “Yes?”
If they wanted to talk about assault, then Tony would find every single instance where they’d ever used excessive force, send it to the media, and still try and make it home in time for dinner with his kid.
“I don’t want to step over any lines, sir, but I wanted to ask if you’d found a good therapist for your son?”
Tony’s mental plan on the best way to blackmail the police department fizzled out. “A therapist?”
The cop nodded, his face grave and his eyes sympathetic. “I’ve seen a lot of kids after they go through stuff like this, and the ones who have support and see a therapist? Those are the ones I don’t usually see again.”
Tony hesitated, then decided that it was something to consider later. He held a hand out and shook the officer’s hand gratefully. “Thank you, I’ll look into it.”
The cop nodded once more and rejoined his coworkers while Tony pulled up a text from Pepper and rejoined his.
“Awe,” Tony’s anger at the entire situation melted some when he saw the picture Pepper sent. “I’m a grandpa! A young, handsome, grandpa to be clear,” he added smoothly. “Not like you, Steve.”
Clint chuckled, “The kid knock someone up?”
“Mm…” Tony looked at the boy in the photo next to his boy and smirked. “I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. Looks like Pepper took him to adopt a dog.”
Steve looked at the photo Tony showed them and smiled, no doubt seeing the same look of joy in Harry’s features as Tony did.
“That’s the boy and the dog from the event,” he said, as if Tony needed their identities clarified. “It’ll be good for Harry to have something to be responsible for, help him work through everything, I guess.”
Tony shot off a text to Pepper, thanking her for the photo, proposing they elope in Vegas the next morning, then climbed in a cab Clint waved down with the other two.
“Speaking of working things through… either of you fine images of sound mental health ever see a therapist?”
“Every week,” Steve said without even a hint of the embarrassment that Tony would have felt at saying something like that. “All the guys down at the center do it. We do group sessions sometimes and individuals other times.”
And since Steve should be dead by all rights, Tony looked toward the more sane (though not entirely sane) member of his team.
“Once a month,” Clint scowled at his boots. “SHIELD rules for all agents.”
“Is it… helpful?” Tony asked, trying, for once, to be tactful. It wasn’t like he was a stranger to hard times, and God knew Pepper recommended he ‘see someone’ more than once since the whole ‘nearly dying thing’, but Tony couldn’t imagine sitting in a room and talking about his feelings.
Clint said no while Steve said yes.
“It’s really helpful, guys, seriously, thank you.” Tony sighed and closed his eyes as he laid back against the headrest.
“Couldn’t hurt to try,” Steve said, as if logic would work against Tony. “You should set Harry up with someone. I can get you a list of people from the center? Those guys should know someone who understands what the kid’s been through.”
Tony flipped him off for a response then groaned. “Fine, send me the list, I’ll talk with Harry about it.”
“You mean you’ll talk at him about it,” Clint said, supremely unhelpfully. “If he won’t tell you his favorite food, there’s no way he’s going to talk about his little sad feelings to some overpaid counselor.”
A fine point. One Tony didn’t bother to dispute, but he listened as Steve did for the rest of the drive to the jet.
“You guys want to grab lunch or wait for the others on the jet?” Clint asked, interrupting Steve’s tirade as their car approached the private airport they’d left the jet at.
“Jet,” Tony said immediately. “If Bruce and Natasha aren’t back, we’ll send someone to grab something nearby, but I need a drink.”
Something preferable whiskey related to wash the bitter taste of his son’s childhood from his mouth.
And, as the others were still off probably sightseeing or some other ridiculous thing, Tony grabbed a glass bottle from the onboard bar and proceeded to try and convince himself that Harry was safe, Ramsey was locked up, and things could move forward.
He’d always sucked at convincing himself of things when they weren’t logical.
“We’re here!” Natasha was jubilant as she dove on the jet and pulled Bruce along behind her over an hour, half a bottle of whiskey, and an overpriced and under seasoned lunch later. “Tony, you’re a damned idiot. Bruce is the real genius on our team.”
“Don’t credit me, it wasn’t my idea,” Bruce said quickly.
Tony exchanged a curious look with Steve. He’d been cursing Natasha out for the last hour, certain he wasn’t going to get back in time to have dinner with his kid, and now she shows up and insults him?
It was no wonder the damn woman didn’t have any friends outside of the team.
“What wasn’t your idea?” Steve asked Bruce.
“Interrogating Petunia Dursley,” Natasha said, her smirk as arrogant as Tony had ever seen it. “Where we got the real dirt, not the bullshit she fed Tony on the phone.”
“What?!” Tony sat up and studied the two of them closely. “What the hell did you do, Natasha?”
Petunia was going to sign off her rights as guardian the next morning. If Natasha went over there all ‘pissed off psycho’ then Petunia would put up a fight, thinking Harry wasn’t in—
“Oh, stop worrying,” Natasha scoffed, mocking Tony’s genuine concern. “Petunia isn’t going to do shit in Harry’s life, never again.”
“Maybe you should start in the beginning, guys,” Clint said, shooting a look at Tony before he straightened in his seat and prepared himself to break up an impending fight. “Why the hell would you go to her place to start with?”
“Because of this.” Bruce pulled a piece of thick paper from his pocket and handed it to Tony before he sat down and buckled his seatbelt. “Someone must have slipped it in my pocket on our way to Ramsey’s.”
Tony scoffed, there was no way someone slipped something in Bruce’s pocket and none of them noticed, but then he forgot that mystery in favor of the one in thick black ink in front of him:
You’ve got the wrong guy. You want revenge for H.? Go talk to Dursleys, 4 Privet Drive, Surrey. Ask about the cupboard.
“What…?” Tony looked up at his friends. “What the hell is this?”
“Scooby-Doo would call it a clue,” Natasha smirked.
“Bruce?” Steve turned to Bruce after rolling his eyes at Natasha. “What happened?”
“I found the note, figured ‘hey worth a shot’, and then—”
“Then you didn’t bother to tell me?” Tony asked, his annoyance high. “You’re already off to a great start, buddy.”
Bruce looked ashamed, but not remorseful. “I didn’t want them to recognize you, especially if it turned out to be nothing. I took Nat because I figured if there was anything to the note then maybe I’d need someone to get answers.”
“Which I did.”
“To what questions?” Steve asked.
“I started with when the last time she saw Harry was, and guess what?”
“I’m not in the mood to guess, surprisingly,” Tony snapped. “Tell me what she told you before I wring your fucking neck.”
Natasha raised a challenging brow. “No, wait, let’s see you try that.”
“Nat,” Bruce all but growled, “quit taunting him. Tell him what she told us.”
“Fine,” Natasha sighed dramatically then crossed her legs. “Harry was there this summer, every summer, in fact. She tried to tell me the same bullshit she told Tony,” Natasha adopted a whiney high pitched voice, “‘We haven’t seen the boy in years! Some freaks came and took him!’ But the little fat son of hers looked panicky and a few suggestions quickly had her singing a new song.”
“A few threats against the kid to get Mom to talk?” Clint guessed with a hint of approval to his tone.
“Precisely,” Natasha winked and began swinging her foot, obviously relishing in the limelight. “Supposedly Harry goes to a boarding school during the school year, something his parents paid for.”
“No,” Tony interrupted her, “Harry wasn’t registered in any schools past St Peter’s Primary School before he turned eleven.”
“I don’t think she was lying,” Natasha said. She looked at Bruce and he nodded in agreement. “Why lie about that then tell me the truth when she said her husband used to smack the kid around?”
Tony dropped the glass he’d been holding and ignored sound of it shattering. “He did WHAT?”
“It gets worse,” Bruce said solemnly. “Tell them the rest, Nat.”
“How does that get worse?” Clint muttered.
Tony wasn’t sure, but it did.
“The woman clammed up and the husband was gone, but the fat kid was surprisingly helpful. He said, despite the fact that he weighs more than Bruce when he’s angry, they didn’t feed Harry. They worked him like a slave. Called him names, and tried to ‘beat some normalcy in him’.”
Clint tried to lighten the dark look burning in Tony’s eyes, “As if a Stark could ever be normal.”
Tony hardly heard him. He focused on Natasha with the same single-minded focus he applied to every problem in his life, “What else?”
Natasha picked at her nails and shrugged as she avoided eye contact. “They have a four bedroom house, Stark.”
“And?”
“And…” Natasha released a loud breath and gave Tony a pitying look. “And they made your kid live in a ‘cupboard’, Tony. The fat kid, Dudley, said Harry lived in this tiny little closet under the stairs until he turned eleven and went off to boarding school. It was full of spiders and shit when I looked in there.”
“AND YOU FUCKING SHOOK HIM!” Tony yelled abruptly, his fury spiking. He jumped to his feet and lunged for Natasha. Clint grabbed his arms and held them in a vice grip. “YOU UNGODLY, IDIOTIC, STUPID, B—”
“I fucked up!” Natasha shouted over Tony’s insults, not even bothering to get up from her seat. “You’re not pissed off at me, Stark, you’re pissed at them! So let’s do something about it!”
“No!” Bruce yelled, getting to his feet and blocking the exit. “Tony, think rationally. I didn’t take you or mention you at all so there weren’t any complications tomorrow with the paperwork. If you go charging over there, throwing fists and assaulting them, regardless of how much they deserve it, do you not think that might make your case a little more complicated?”
Tony didn’t give a damn, truthfully. He had the best lawyers money could buy, he could probably blow Little Whining to pieces and his lawyer could still spin it to make him look like a hero.
“Go home and eat dinner with little Stark Junior,” Natasha said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Get your legal shit in order, then we’ll handle the bastards, alright?”
“Not alright,” Tony sneered. He yanked his wrists from Clint’s grip and threw himself in his chair. “When’s the last time she saw Harry?”
“The night before he showed up,” Bruce offered, taking his own seat as Tony conceded the points. “Neither of them knew Ramsey either. They thought he ran off. The kid said Harry looked rough all summer, twitchy and anxious.”
“No mystery why, is there?” Steve said. “Poor kid.”
“Jesus Christ.” Tony had the urge to break something. “So did Harry run off, happen to run into Ramsey, or…?”
“Or did he already know Ramsey and he went to him when the abuse got too bad?” Bruce asked, following Tony’s train of thought with creepy accuracy. “Ramsey knew you were Harry’s dad, and Harry didn’t have any money that Petunia knew of, so someone had to buy the plane ticket for him.”
“Harry was probably easy pickings for a creep like Ramsey; abused and neglected kids usually are.”
“Shut up,” Tony told Natasha, mental exhaustion creeping over him. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend that he didn’t get rid of one piece of shit from his son’s life only to gain two more. “Oh, wait.” Tony pulled his phone from his pocket and called his business manager.
“Hey, Morris, how are you? Great, do me a favor. There’s a company based out of London, Grunnings, they’re a drill manufacturing and sales company. Buy them, today, whatever the cost. Don’t call me until it’s done.”
Tony could feel the curious eyes of his team on him as the jet took off for New York, but he wasn’t explaining.
Vernon and Petunia Dursley would beg for death by the time Tony finished with them. The longer he had to wait to ruin the people who hurt his son, the more creative he was going to get.
And Tony’s brilliance was only equal to his creativity.
The others talked quietly about who slipped Bruce the note, and how they managed to do it. The leading theory was that it was Ramsey himself when they first arrived, though that was a weak theory that Tony didn’t even have to speak for them to see the multiple gaping holes in it.
Tony sat in silent contemplation as they flew, watching the sun dip lower and lower, wondering how he was supposed to handle having a kid with as many problems as his had.
The one thing he did though, after receiving confirmation of his new business acquisition, was send out a mass email, redirecting all questions and problems for the week to be directed to Pepper and emphasizing that he didn’t want to be bothered even if the aliens returned and the entire business burst into flames.
He had plenty to do and finally getting to spend time with his kid, even if they just sat glaring at walls together, was top priority.
Tony stepped off the elevator and the first thing he heard was the one thing he needed more than anything in that moment.
Harry laughing. Not his little sarcastic laugh or his quiet and nervous one, but a truly happy sounding one.
It ended almost immediately when Tony stepped in the living room and was graced with the sight of his son sitting cross legged on the floor, a little black and brown puppy on his lap chewing on a bone bigger than its entire body. Harry had stopped laughing when he spotted Tony, and he moved his hand protectively over the pup when he caught Tony looking at it.
Probably worried that Tony would rip away that tiny little source of comfort, as everyone else ripped happiness from Harry at every given opportunity.
A depressing thought, honestly.
“Hey, you’re back.” Pepper smiled up at Tony from where she was nestled in a cozy blanket on one corner of the leather couch. “They delivered the new fridge today, we saved you dinner. Harry said you wanted lamb-kabobs.”
“That doesn’t sound very evil of you,” Tony said, referring to a joke Pepper made on the phone earlier. He sat on the floor, facing Harry, but with plenty of space between them. “Puppies and kabobs? I think I’ve met babies with more evil plans than you’ve got, kid.”
Harry scoffed and pulled the dog up in his hands. “We’re the good guys, actually. Some of us don’t go around breaking buildings and attacking innocent aliens.”
Tony laughed at Harry’s sarcasm, juggling to match this abrasive and prickly kid with the one he’d found out so much about that day.
Tony reached out to pet the dog, “Does it help if I told you I paid for the repairs?”
“Not especially, no.” Harry kept the dog out of Tony’s reach and hastily got to his feet. “As I’m still here, I’m going to sleep.” He hesitated as he hugged the dog to his chest, bone and all. “This- he can stay while I’m here, right? Like you said?”
“Yeah.” Tony leaned back on his hands and nodded up at Harry. “That’s fine. I mean, I think I’m much too young and handsome to be a grandpa yet, but he’s pretty cute, so I’ll let it go this time.”
Harry’s eyes flashed with some sort of indecipherable emotion, but his face was blank as he nodded at Tony. “Er… thanks.” He looked over at Pepper and smiled more genuinely, “I’ll see you later?”
“Any time we need a meeting, shoot me a text,” Pepper winked. “Goodnight, Harry.”
“How’d you get him to like you?” Tony whined the moment Harry’s bedroom door was shut. He climbed off the floor and slumped on the opposite armrest from Pepper. “I’ve been trying for days!”
“It’s because I’m cooler,” Pepper said, adorably serious. “It might help that I don’t look like you all do.”
“Oh yeah?” Tony grinned and raised his brows, “And how do we all look?”
“Intimidating,” Pepper said bluntly, wiping the smile off Tony’s face. “You ready to tell me about your secret mission now?”
“You could have said hot, I could use the ego boost,” Tony scoffed. He rolled his eyes as Pepper lifted one of her brows at him, “Fine. Don’t interrupt until I’m done or I’m not going to get through it all. I warn you, it’s not a pretty story.”
Pepper was a good audience, really. She huffed and sighed and rolled her eyes every now and again, but she looked savagely happy when Tony described their encounter with Ramsey. And, apparently she had fallen in love with the kid during their single day together, because her eyes filled up with tears at the end of the story.
“Poor Harry,” she whispered. She sent a sad look toward Harry’s closed door. “He’s a good kid, Tony, not like you at all really.”
“A good kid with a shit story,” Tony said, too down to even banter with her. “His best friend is a pedophile and I’m going to have to explain to him that there is no Russia-ever-after for them.”
“Mmm… I think you’re looking at this all wrong,” Pepper said as she stretched her legs out and wiggled her socked feet in Tony’s lap. “I don’t think Ramsey is Harry’s friend. Does Ramsey even have any connection to your old friends?”
“Lovers,” Tony corrected her with a wink he didn’t feel. “And I have no idea, why?”
Pepper smiled her perfected ‘for a genius, you’re an idiot’ smile. “Because whoever Harry’s friend is, they knew his parents pretty well. So they must have been close friends with him, right?”
Tony had considered that, but then he disregarded it. “Or, as Harry got older, the guy recognized me, I am pretty famous you know, in his features and sent him here on a good guess.”
“You’re wrong,” Pepper’s smile stretched wide. “He definitely knew them well enough to know that they both hooked up with you.”
Tony ignored the opportunity to think about the young, pretty, couple he’d once spent time with in favor of looking up and studying the ceiling contemplatively.
“Jarvis!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Is Harry asleep?”
“He is in bed, sir. As is Mister Arsehole.”
Tony snickered quietly, trust Harry to have told Jarvis that was his dog’s name. ‘Arsehole’, the kid was a riot. Actually- Pepper was studying her light pink manicure with a small smile -maybe it wasn’t Harry at all who told Jarvis that.
“Excellent,” Tony told Jarvis. “Can you cross reference Alexander Ramsey with Lily Evans-Potter, James Potter, and all their known relatives or associates? See if there’s any overlap?”
“Yes, sir, checking now.”
Tony waited as patiently as he was able until Jarvis spoke up again after less than a minute.
“There is no known overlap that I can find, sir. Aside from living in the same country, they don’t seem to have crossed paths.”
Tony frowned. “Then I need you to find everything on every acquaintance of Lily and James Potter you can and send it to me. Prioritize the names, the closer they were, the higher up in the list I want them.”
Tony and Pepper waited for a few moments for Jarvis to work, then she crowded her head beside Tony’s as files began popping up on his phone.
“There,” she pointed at the very first name on the list, “Harry called his friend ‘Siri’ a few times.”
“Which is either a nickname for one Sirius Black, or it’s…” Tony trailed off after he clicked the name. “Fuck,” he breathed. “I remember him.”
Tony had five files for Sirius Black: a birth certificate, two parking tickets, a report of arrest for an act of domestic terrorism, and a report of his escape from prison. The photo attached to his escape showed a crazy man with hollow eyes, stringy hair, but those aristocratic facial features were hard to forget.
The Sirius that Tony remembered had been young, handsome, bright, and funny. He’d laughed about everything, been passionate about music and motorcycles, and…
“He’d been best friends with James,” Tony said quietly. His lips twisted in a wry smile, “I tried to convince him to go back to the Potters’ house with us once, and he and James both freaked out and cried that they were brothers and I was disgusting. They had another friend, Moon, I think they called him, and he looked interested, but he was shy, apparently.”
“You are disgusting,” Pepper said with a crinkled nose. “God, Tony, you were just going to sleep with all of them?”
Tony shrugged and read over Sirius’ very sparsely detailed arrest report, “I was definitely going to try. They were all very pretty and very… very free spirited,” he said as he struggled to find a way to describe the lively group of friends. “Hippy souls, really, hard to find nowadays.”
“Was Sirius free spirited enough to blow up a city block and kill thirteen people?”
Tony frowned, a reminder of something niggling in his brain. “Was it twelve or thirteen people?”
Pepper read the same line he did, “Thirteen.”
“‘Don’t kill any muggles while I’m gone, twelve was plenty’,” Tony said, quoting something Harry said to Ramsey before he left for his flight. “Odds on Sirius Black killing thirteen people and Ramsey secretly killing twelve?”
“Odds on your son befriending both a pedophile and a terrorist who escaped from prison, you mean?” Pepper snorted. “Low, but much lower than alien attacks. And with your genes at play, who knows?”
Oh yeah, because apparently Sirius Black was an escaped convict. It had been on every media outlet in England a couple of summers ago that Sirius Black was armed, dangerous, and there was a heavy reward that came along with his capture.
“This is him,” Tony sighed. He rubbed his eyes wearily as he felt confidence seeping in his bones. “This is the friend he’d always talking about. Harry said his friend was dangerous and would kill for him, I guess that’s true enough.”
“He also said that he needed to be somewhere that his friend wouldn’t get extradited for his crimes,” Pepper added.
“I guess a terrorist is a little less terrifying than a pedophile,” Tony said optimistically, uncertain how Ramsey fit in the new picture that was revealing itself. “It doesn’t explain where Harry was during the school years though, because I didn’t find any proof anywhere that the kid went to school past eleven.”
Which meant that Petunia had somehow managed to lie to the human lie detector.
Tony couldn’t wait to crush that family beneath the heel of his boot. Preferably, beneath the heel of his Iron Man boot.
“Hmm… so the theory is that Sirius told Harry about his parentage, then Ramsey drove him to the airport the night Harry ran away?”
“Or one of them kidnapped him, trying to help him?” Tony felt a headache beginning to build and wished that Harry would just give him the answers. Maybe he would, during their week together. Tony could build some trust, ask some questions, eventually maybe even get some answers?
Pepper snagged the phone from Tony’s unresisting hands. “When did James and Lily die?”
Tony rattled the date off automatically. It was hard to forget the date that his kid became a supposed orphan left alone in a shit world with shit guardians.
Tony had checked his calendar after he saw when James and Lily had died; he’d been in Malibu at the time. The morning after Tony’s son was left alone, orphaned, Tony had been in the paper with a couple supermodels he met somewhere.
It had been the first time he felt disgusting for his playboy behavior.
“So this guy who turned you down for sex because James Potter was his brother just went out and blew up a whole crowd of people hours after his brother died and his nephew was orphaned?”
“Give me that.” Tony snatched the phone right back from Pepper and read through the reports again. It hadn’t been such a long gap between when Tony partied with James, Lily, and Sirius and when the Potter’s died that Sirius was arrested. And, if Sirius was the one taking care of Harry recently or even talking with him, then Tony couldn’t understand why Sirius would go off and commit some act of terrorism instead of taking care of Harry right off the bat.
~~~~~
“This is my best mate, Sirius,” James shouted over the music pulsing in the club, his eyes were bright with liquor and laughter. Even without moving, James was thrumming with the endless energy Tony knew he possessed. He had his arm around the shoulders of another guy; young, handsome, sparkling grey eyes that gave the impression that he was up to something.
“Best mate?” The guy, Sirius, laughed and tried to ruffle James’ messy black hair, James ducked and Sirius laughed again. “I thought we were brothers, Prongs? I’m telling Effie!”
James straightened back up and smiled over at his brother with unabashed love gleaming in his hazel eyes. “We are brothers,” he said earnestly. “One day we’ll have a little Padfoot or Prongs Junior to teach all our tricks to, eh?”
Sirius threw his head back, his black curls catching the club lights, and laughed, causing James to laugh as well.
“What’s that mean?” Tony had asked Lily, referring to the Padfoot and Prongs bit.
Lily threw back her shot of tequila like a pro and laughed brightly, always so bright. “It means they agreed to be godfather for each other’s poor kids when they were twelve and Sirius is going to spoil my future children rotten.”
Tony had shuddered dramatically, creeped out by the idea of children.
Lily had been pregnant with his child within a week from that conversation.
~~~~~
“Godfather,” Tony said absently, remembering the first time he met Sirius. “Harry said that his friend was- is his family. It’s this guy, Sirius.”
Pepper gave Tony a much appreciated sympathetic look. “So what are you going to do?” she asked quietly. “This is different, Tony, this isn’t some pervert preying on your son. This seems like someone who helped take him out of an abusive situation at real personal risk.”
“Yeah…” Tony groaned up at the ceiling again. “I can’t just have him thrown in prison, can I?”
“You could,” Pepper said slowly, “or you could find out why Sirius was building bombs the day his brother died?”
Tony laughed bitterly, why couldn’t his kid just come with a knocked up girlfriend or something simple? No, he had to come with a pedophile, abusive relatives, and a terrorist. “Sure, Pep, I’ll just call him. ‘Hey, Sirius, remember that time we raced our motorcycles and you cheated? Good times, anyway, why are you a terrorist now?’”
Pepper shrugged, “You have his number, right? If it wasn’t Ramsey that Harry’s been texting, then it has to be Sirius. Send him a message, see if he’ll meet you.” She put a gentle hand on Tony’s shoulder and smiled sweetly, manipulative woman that she was. “I think Harry cares a lot about him. Plus, that report stinks like something fishy, Tony. Who writes up terrorism so sparsely?”
The report was pretty damn bare. In fact… Tony double checked and saw that the prison Sirius broke out of wasn’t even listed.
“It wouldn’t hurt to find out more about this whole thing before making any decisions, would it? I know that’s not your usual style, thinking first,” Pepper winked, “but would you do it for Harry?”
Tony was beginning to think there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for the kid.
“You stay away from my son,” Tony told her playfully as he closed the folders on his phone and pulled up his his messages. “I don’t need him bossing me around with the whip. One of you is bad enough.”
Pepper smiled, probably happy with the description like the task-master she was, and leaned over so she could see the message Tony quickly typed out.
Hey, it’s Tony. Remember the time we raced our bikes and you cheated to win? Good times. Anyway, I think it’s time we reconnected in person, catch up, don’t you agree? Let me know when and where we can meet. I’ll come to you, obviously.
Tony clicked send and the two of them released heavy sighs.
“And now we wait,” Pepper murmured.
Tony glanced toward the closed door that his son slept peacefully behind.
“And now we wait,” he agreed.
***
3,500 miles away, Sirius Black laid on his bed in his bedroom, Hedwig standing on his stomach, as he stared at the message he’d just gotten. Not from Harry, but from Harry’s father, Tony.
“What do you think, girl?” Sirius whispered. He reached out and stroked Hedwig’s wing while he thought over this unexpected development. “Press that little block button and leave Harry to his new little family of heroes or message him back?”
Hedwig hooted softly.
“Not a damn thing,” Sirius said slowly, pretending that Hedwig asked ‘What have you got to lose?’ “Everything to gain though, eh?”
Hedwig hooted again and Sirius grinned while he reread Tony’s message.
He had actually cheated when they’d raced. He’d managed to pull off a small burst of wandless magic and moved a rubbish bin to block Tony, sending him veering off course and letting Sirius win the race.
I won fair and square. Give me some time to think of a time and place, my life’s a bit complicated as you might have guessed. We’ll talk soon.
Then, just to be annoying, Sirius sent a giraffe and a kiwi picture.
Let Tony puzzle over that while Sirius tried to figure out a way for them to meet that didn’t end up with a damp cell and dementors.