“Fucking wizards.”
Tony cussed Sirius out in his head with every swear he knew in every language he’d ever bothered to memorize.
Stupid, useless, traitorous, fucking—
“I’m not here to steal your son, you know.”
Tony ended his mental rant and moved his carefully blank face from Sirius’ sheepish one to Albus Dumbledore’s openly smiling one.
“Interesting opener there, Gandalf,” Tony said lightly with a hand still firmly on his son’s shoulder. It felt as if the muscles beneath Tony’s hand were quivering, though if it was fear of the wizard with the long white beard and gaudy purple two piece suit or at Tony’s continued touch, he wasn’t sure.
“When I show up uninvited to people’s homes, I also usually start out by saying I’m not there to steal their kid.” Rhodey stepped up beside Tony, his eyes a calm reassurance that if it turned in to a fight, Tony wouldn’t be fighting alone.
“Maybe you guys should talk somewhere private,” Pepper said.
It was Pepper’s suggestion that reminded Tony that there were three teenagers in the room possibly about to be caught up in a fight between at least one wizard, and god help Sirius if he fought against Tony, and six avengers.
Tony liked Sirius, but he’d feed him to Bruce if he came with that old bastard to steal Harry away.
“Steve, why don’t you take Harry and his friends to your place?” Tony suggested in a way that wasn’t really a suggestion at all without looking away from Dumbledore (even if the suit he wore was burning Tony’s eyes). “Pep, Happy, go with them.”
Harry twisted his head around to glare at Tony. “I’ll stay, thanks.”
“You’ll go,” Tony told him firmly. He didn’t really have time to toe the line between ‘fun dad’ and ‘good dad’ just then. The entire room had the potential to turn real ugly, real quick, and Tony would rather not have his kid caught up in it. “Take your friends to walk the dog, or whatever. Just give me a few minutes to talk to our friends here.”
Dumbledore had the audacity to smile at Tony, as if Tony wasn’t silently sending up the rest of his suit with a button inside his wrist piece.
“I think it would be best if Harry were present, as it is a conversation rather pertinent to his life,” he said.
“And I think Tony is his father and Harry should come with me,” Pepper said coolly.
The ‘Future Stepmom Voice’ seemed to be a universally understood language because Dumbledore nodded his head at Pepper with his annoying little smile.
“Correct you are, ma’am, I apologize. Harry, it was wonderful to see you, dear boy, I hope to see you again soon.”
Tony heard someone growl, and he was pretty sure it was Bruce, which meant that either Dumbledore needed to shut the hell up or Tony needed to resign himself to buying another new TV.
Pepper put her hand on Harry’s other shoulder and nodded toward the emergency exit leading to the stairs. “Come on, Harry, let’s take your friends down and have cake.”
“Wait! Sirius, I solemnly swear…?”
Whatever anxiety rocked through Harry’s body when he asked Sirius his nonsensical question drained away instantly when Sirius answered him.
“I am up to no good,” Sirius told Harry.
Harry’s shoulders slumped and he pushed Tony’s hand off him.
“Brilliant, fuck you then, Padfoot.”
Sirius winced, but he didn’t bother apologizing.
Harry turned toward Pepper and made some face at his friends who… who were probably pretty damn confused. “Er… you guys coming?”
“You have the weirdest friends,” Gwen whispered to Harry.
Gwen was a funny girl, Tony might offer her a job in his media department when she graduated school.
Tony angled his body sideways so he could see Pepper leading the three teens, and the yipping puppy, down the stairs with Steve and Happy following behind before he decided the direct approach was, as usual, the best.
“You have twenty seconds to tell me why you’re here before I kill you.” Tony turned quickly and raised his wrist up and aimed a light at Dumbledore’s beard just as he heard a familiar little- snick -that had to be one of Clint’s arrows aimed and ready to fly.
“Eighteen… seventeen…”
“Woah,” Sirius held his hands up and wisely shuffled away from Dumbledore. “Let’s not fight if we don’t have to.”
“Yeah?” Nat stepped forward, empty handed, but threatening enough, and got nearly right in Sirius’ face. “I’m sure you’ve got a stellar excuse for showing up, unannounced and uninvited then?”
“First off,” Sirius stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and smirked at Nat, “Sirius, pleasure to meet you.”
Tony was counting down the last few seconds of Dumbledore’s life, so he couldn’t laugh, but damn if he didn’t want to just a tad. Only Sirius Black would show up at Tony’s, start a fight with the Avengers, and then flirt with Nat.
“Wish I could say the same,” Nat said in her scathing and cool tone. “Why are you here?”
“Ah, I believe that was my doing,” Dumbledore said cheerfully, acting for all the world as if he wasn’t worried at all. And if it wasn’t an act, then ‘the most powerful wizard in the world’ was as dim as his clothes were bright. “Please, why don’t we all sit? Perhaps…” Dumbledore looked around at Tony’s fellow Avengers, his friends, and smiled. “Perhaps introduce ourselves?”
“Great idea,” Clint said, his arrow aimed at Sirius while Tony and Rhodey were focused on Dumbledore. It was nice to see all those team building exercises finally paying off; divide and conquer and all that crap. “I’m the guy who’s going to kill you if you don’t get the hell out right now.”
“Hey, guys, why don’t we wait to start ruining Tony’s decor before we hear them out?” Bruce held his hands up and shuffled in the middle of the tense stand-off, though not in the way of Tony’s laser.
“Wonderful idea,” Dumbledore said. “Mister Stark, I’m afraid I would prefer to not fight you and inadvertently destroy your electronics. Though, if anything I say is not to your liking, I will accept being tossed out to never darken your doorstep again.”
“Tony, hear him out,” Sirius said over Nat’s shoulder. “Trust me, if nothing else.”
Tony looked toward Sirius, saw the pleading look in his eyes. Twenty minutes ago, Tony would have said he trusted Sirius Black when it came to Harry as much as he did Pepper. And Tony didn’t want to think Sirius would do anything to risk Harry’s safety, but it wasn’t a risk Tony wanted to take either.
He just got his kid, he wouldn’t lose him.
“Five minutes,” Tony said. He moved his laser from Dumbledore’s chest to the loveseat in the living room.
“Have you lost your mind?” Rhodey whispered when Dumbledore and Sirius moved to the loveseat. “Kick their asses to the curb.”
“Five minutes,” Tony told him. “I’ll hear what they have to say about Harry and then they can go. Oh, hey, by the way,” Tony fixed Sirius with a look as unimpressed as he could, “good job texting the kid for his birthday.”
“Been a bit busy,” Sirius said with another grimace. “I’ll talk to him before I leave, try and explain.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.” Nat moved to stand alongside Tony and Rhodey against the wall facing the two wizards while Clint and Bruce stood behind the couch. Tony saw Clint’s bow was still armed and raised so he figured he wasn’t the only one who didn’t see it as some friendly chat.
“Talk, now,” Tony told Dumbledore. “You might not care about crashing Harry’s birthday, but I’ve got plans that don’t include you.”
“I’m afraid we didn’t have much of a choice,” Dumbledore said in a grave voice that Tony didn’t like at all. “How much do you know of Harry’s past, Harry’s world?”
Tony didn’t look toward Sirius, keeping a poker face, but it seemed like whatever Sirius spilled, he kept his and Tony’s never ending communication out of it.
“Let’s assume we know everything,” Nat said with a cold smile. “So don’t bother trying to lie to us.”
“Certainly not.” Dumbledore looked toward Sirius and they shared a frown before they both turned to Tony. “Then you are aware of a wizard who calls himself Lord Voldemort who is after your son?”
“Noseless and crazy?” Tony repeated the general description he got from Sirius, who got it from Harry. “Yeah. I’m all caught up there, Gandalf.”
“Wonderful.” Dumbledore clasped his hands in his lap and leaned forward. “Then you may be unsurprised to know that he has managed to track Harry to this location.”
“That is news,” Tony said with forced lightness. The last he knew was that Voldemort, which, by the way, was about as ridiculous a name as Dumbledore was, tried to track Harry and Sirius was certain it wouldn’t work because all of Harry’s possessions were either with him or with Harry.
“I’m afraid that it is a rather easy, if illegal, potion to brew,” Dumbledore explained.
“Fucking wizards,” Rhodey sighed under his breath.
“All that was needed was something of Harry’s to locate him.”
“See that’s really strange to me actually because I didn’t know Volda-whatever had anything of Harry’s.” Tony raised his eyebrows mockingly. “What? Did he keep Harry’s socks as a memento of the good times they shared in a graveyard?”
“His blood,” Sirius said. He ran a hand through his black hair, pulling it free from the tie he’d had it held back with, and sighed. He looked like hell actually. Which suited Tony just fine because he still didn’t know why Sirius brought Dumbledore over to begin with.
“Voldemort used Harry’s blood to build his body,” Sirius said. “They apparently have the same blood now.”
Bruce jerked to a stop where he’d been pacing behind the sofa.
“Repeat that,” he said in a snappy way. When Sirius and Dumbledore turned in their seats to look at him, Bruce pointed a finger between them both. “Did you just say this- this ‘evil wizard’ has Harry’s exact DNA?”
“I’m afraid so,” Dumbledore inclined his head at Bruce.
Any other time and Tony would crack a joke about his other new son, but even he knew it wasn’t the time.
“More unfortunately for Harry, it means that the protection his mothers sacrifice gave him is gone.” He turned back and faced Tony. “There were protections on his relatives home, blood wards, but those are gone now as well.”
Tony was preparing to blast a hole in Dumbledore’s head for implying that anything about those damned abusive pieces of crap was ‘safe’ for Harry, but Clint beat him to it.
Clint took half a step forward and had an arrow pressed to the back of Dumbledore’s head in an instant.
“Your magic spells didn’t keep him safe at all.” Clint’s face was angrier than Tony had ever seen it.
And to think, Tony used to worry that Clint would try and kill Harry in his sleep.
This was the real team building exercise.
“You left him there and counted on your bullshit magic to protect him and what happened? Kid gets treated like a dog for his whole life,” Nat spat.
“I wouldn’t treat my fucking dog like that,” Clint sneered.
Dumbledore raised his hands placatingly—
Tony had the sudden realization that Dumbledore must be as powerful as he was confident. Not many people could have an arrow brushing the back of their skull held in place by Hawkeye, the bird with aim so perfect it was damn near a super power, and not even break a sweat.
—and gave Tony a look that was probably meant to be sorrow.
“If I had known then what I know now, please believe that I world have torn the world apart to ensure your son came to you when James and Lily died. As it was,” Dumbledore sighed and suddenly looked less confident, more old. A terrible look for him. “I worked with the information I had.”
“And the information you withheld,” Sirius snapped.
Dumbledore nodded wearily. “Even with all my best intentions, many mistakes were made. I wish only now to share with you what I know and then perhaps we can move forward together to keep Harry safe.”
“Hold up.” Nat stepped forward and held her hand up. “You said this big bad wizard knows where Harry is? Should we be preparing for an attack?”
“No,” Sirius and Dumbledore answered simultaneously. Sirius was suddenly grinning and Dumbledore looked entirely too amused for Tony’s comfort.
“And why not?” Clint asked, lowering his bow at Tony’s tiny gesture. “Let me guess, he knew better than to pick a fight with the Avengers?”
“Afraid not,” Sirius chuckled in some piss poor timing. “He tracked Harry here then had Snape do some digging, right? Well Snivellus did the first useful thing he’s ever done, he gathered information on your team and shared it with his boss.”
Again, Tony corrected Sirius silently. Sirius told him this guy he hated, Snape, was also the one to pass along some half-ass ‘prophecy’ that sent Voldemort after Harry in the first place.
“And it’s useful to give the enemy information on us?” Rhodey asked Sirius disbelievingly. “Because that’s really the opposite of helpful.”
“Aah, but the information he found was quite the deterrent for Voldemort,” Dumbledore told them all. “I believe you all are friends with Thor?”
Tony closed his eyes and tilted his head up to the ceiling for a moment.
Thank Odin for Thor Odinson.
“Seems like we owe the big guy a thank you,” Rhodey muttered, sharing Tony’s exact sentiment.
“Oh he’s getting a hug for sure,” Tony agreed. “So Harry’s safe as long as Voldemort thinks Thor is here?”
“Mm, unfortunately that was true until this morning when my Order member alerted me that Voldemort would be sending some of his other followers here to assess the situation,” Dumbledore said.
“And you’re just now telling us that?!” Rhodey snapped, once again sharing Tony’s mind in the way Tony suspected only someone as secretly fucked up as Rhodey could do. “For the love of god, man. Jarvis! Lockdown!”
“Nat, go check that everything’s good downstairs,” Tony ordered quickly as Jarvis confirmed lockdown initiation. “Tell Happy to contact Peter and Gwen’s family. It’s too risky to leave with them, not if we have wizard bogeys on our tail.”
Tony pulled his phone out and ignored the string of irritated texts from his kid to send one to Pepper, but Dumbledore interrupted him before he could send it.
“They are not a current concern,” he said, drawing Tony’s eyes from his phone to his own blue eyes. “When I arrived, I made a small show of entering the building, and Carrow and Yaxley left quite quickly.”
Tony looked to Sirius, silently asking for confirmation.
“That’s why we came,” Sirius said quietly, meeting Tony’s gaze head on. “Albus wasn’t going to come until Snape sent him his report.”
“As I said before, Mister Stark, truly I have no intentions on stealing your son.” Dumbledore smiled and Tony felt himself relax the tiniest amount.
“However I believe you should discuss him returning to Hogwarts in September.”
And there it was.
Tony kept his phone in hand while he crossed his arms and glared Dumbledore down. Poker face be damned, if Dumbledore was going to show his cards, so would Tony.
“However nothing,” Tony said. “Harry’s my kid and he’s staying here. With his family.”
Dumbledore laced his fingers together and touched his chin.
“Mister Stark, has Harry been experiencing any strange dreams? Pains in his scar?”
“Depends on why you’re asking,” Tony hedged easily. Harry had chronic headaches, but Tony wasn’t going to say that since it had nothing to do with Harry’s education.
Dumbledore looked as if Tony confirmed it anyway, which was pretty damn annoying actually.
“Your son and Voldemort have a connection,” Dumbledore told Tony. “How far this goes, how deep—”
“Pretty damn deep if they have the same DNA,” Bruce muttered.
“We can only guess at,” Dumbledore went on. “I have some theories, a few that fit better than others, but I will say that Hogwarts is the safest place for Harry.”
“Safer than with us?” Nat scoffed. “I doubt that.”
Dumbledore smiled at her, “I did simply walk inside, my dear.”
Even Nat didn’t have a smart response to that.
Tony didn’t have magic, he didn’t have the ability to keep wizards from showing up or attacking. He could, and would, fight them, and he felt pretty good about winning, but if he was asleep? If he was at work or in his lab or the damn shower?
What then?
“It doesn’t matter,” Tony said, answering his own question and flipping his hand blithely. “Harry doesn’t want to go, I don’t want him to go, we can keep him safe. He’s staying.”
Clint nodded in agreement and Rhodey clapped a hand to Tony’s shoulder. Sirius winked in a way that made Tony wonder what reason he even had for coming asking if he knew Tony wouldn’t just hand his kid over to some white bearded shit who wanted to put a fifteen year old in a magic war.
Dumbledore just looked thoughtful which was really pissing Tony off.
“Harry doesn’t want to go to the school his parents went to? He doesn’t want to obtain his OWLS, scores he would need if he ever wished to pursue a job in the wizarding world? Learn magic to protect himself from those who wish him harm?” Dumbledore gave Tony a piercing stare over the top of his glasses. “I was under the impression that Harry was rather fond of Hogwarts, proud to be a wizard, and quite attached to the friends he has there.”
And Tony was suddenly under the impression that he barely knew his son at all.
“He’s going to be mad as hell at you, rightfully this time,” Tony told Sirius. “Don’t expect a hug and some happy reunion, not when you brought Dumbledore to his door.”
“Albus already knew where Harry was,” Sirius hissed. “He was going to come with or without me. I just came to try and keep it from being a whole thing.”
“Great job,” Tony drawled in a sarcastic whisper. “Really, Sirius, this is probably top ten greatest ideas you’ve ever had.”
“Hey,” Sirius jabbed Tony in the shoulder as the two of them walked down the stairs to Steve’s floor while Dumbledore waited upstairs, heavily supervised, “I’ve had way more than ten bad ideas.”
Tony refused to laugh.
“You could have called,” he said instead. “Or sent a text. I’m pretty sure you know how to do that.”
“Mate, any idea how much work it is to sneak out of the country and apparate in a new country without getting caught?” Sirius paused on the stairs long enough to roll his eyes at Tony. “The last thing I wanted to do was melt the phone because I tried using it while apparating.”
Tony huffed and pointed at the door on the next landing, the one for Steve’s place.
“Remind me to get you a Stark Phone. Then there’s no more surprise visits.”
“Aye, aye.” Sirius winked and saluted Tony sarcastically. He stopped just before opening the door and turned around the face Tony. “What are your plans for Harry? About… school?”
Tony crossed his arms with a frown.
“I don’t like Hogwarts and I don’t trust Gandalf,” he said bluntly. “What’s the real reason he wants Harry at Hogwarts?”
Sirius looked around them, squinting in the shadows of the stairwell, before he leaned a shoulder against Steve’s door and tapped his boot on the floor.
“Albus likes to have everyone under his thumb,” Sirius said quietly, his voice still echoing in the empty stairwell. “Harry’s a big player in the war, Albus wants him under his watch. Albus isn’t a bad guy, but he’s winning a war, you see. He’s looking at the big picture, not the individuals. And it’s going to be hard to involve Harry in anything now, which is good,” he added quickly when Tony looked unimpressed.
“Mate, look, I don’t want Harry caught up in any of it. If it were up to me, I’d have Harry in bloody Asia acting like a muggle and keeping him out of it all.”
“It’s not up to you,” Tony reminded him, “it’s up to me.”
Sirius nodded and relaxed from his stiff pose. He grinned as if Tony had washed away five years off his shoulders along with a heavy weight.
“So you’re going to tell Albus no?” he asked eagerly.
“If that’s what the kid wants,” Tony said. He smirked and gestured to the door. “I’m not asking him tonight though. I think you’ve ruined his birthday enough.”
Sirius let out a bark-like laugh that sounded enough like the dog he could change in to that Tony wondered how much animagus were linked to wizards’ personalities.
“Let’s get the cold shoulder over with, eh?”
The two of them entered Steve’s apartment through the kitchen entrance and Tony threw his head back with a silent groan when only Steve and Pepper were at the table with an untouched birthday cake in front of them.
“Where’s Harry and his friends?” Tony asked Pepper, shaking his head at the questioning look she gave him.
They’d have plenty of time to talk about all of it. Once Sirius had a minute with Harry and Tony got Dumbledore out of his place.
And once Tony had a drink which he didn’t bother looking for in Steve’s cabinets.
“Happy took Peter and Gwen home, Harry’s in the gym,” Pepper said. She pointed to the spare room Steve had that Tony used as a lab on his floor and Steve used as an at home gym.
Tony waited until Sirius bound off to the gym before sinking in a chair and scrubbing his face with his hands.
“What happened?” Steve asked Tony. “Do we trust him alone with Harry?”
“Yeah,” Tony sighed. He forced a grateful nod to Pepper when she tossed him a bottle of water. Water was good, water was needed when heavy drinking was needed. “Long story short, evil wizard found where we live, sent evil minion wizards, Gandalf the lame came, scared away minion wizards. Now he wants to take Harry to Hogwarts to teach him to be a—”
“YOU’VE LOST YOUR BLOODY MIND, PADFOOT! DO YOU KNOW HOW WORRIED I’VE BEEN?”
Tony grinned smugly. He told Sirius that it wasn’t going to be all hugs and happy smiles.
It was always vindicating when someone else was on the receiving end of Harry’s defensive anger.
“Anyway, Gandalf wants Harry at Hogwarts. ‘Blah, blah, blah, legacy, blah, blah, blah, Harry’s a target, he shares DNA with the bad wizard, blah, blah, blah’.” Tony rubbed his chin and nodded. “Yeah, I think that covers it.”
“Oh my god.” Pepper rubbed her forehead with her thumbs. “Evil wizards.”
“Evil wizards,” Tony repeated.
“God damned evil wizards.”
Tony was too tired, too busy trying to listen to the dull sounds of Harry and Sirius arguing to even give Steve shit for using such naughty language.
The three of them sat for another fifteen minutes in a heavy silence that was only occasionally broken by muffled words and barks coming from Steve’s gym. Pepper looked as stunned as she had when Tony came home with a metal heart, Steve had his eyes screwed up in thought, no doubt planning out how he thought the team should handle the wizard. And Tony just felt overwhelmed to the point of being numb.
Tony wouldn’t trade all that made Harry who he was for anything. But it was hard enough protecting Harry from people who wanted to hurt ‘Iron Man’. He never factored on the kid bringing in his own list of enemies against ‘the Boy Who Lived’.
It was kind of funny, in a definitely not funny way. Tony and Harry had so much in common, but it was all just crazy shit. Both famous, both looked at as heroes, both with their own list of enemies.
Except Tony was a forty year man with a suit made of iron and shoulder broad enough to carry his weight. Harry was a scrawny (barely) fifteen year boy who had nightmares and enough baggage to keep a team of therapists busy for a year.
“Team meeting tomorrow at ten,” Tony told Steve just before the gym door opened. Steve nodded in confirmation. They’d need to find this evil wizard hunting Harry and take him out.
It would be an excellent time for Thor to swoop down to earth and lend a helping hammer, but Tony wasn’t too concerned with the teams odds without him either.
Harry and Sirius shuffled out in the kitchen, Harry with his head ducked, shoulders raised defensively. Sirius with a small smile that made Tony think Harry got over his anger pretty quick.
“Hey, kid,” Tony tried to give Harry a smile, but he grimaced instead when he saw Harry’s hands before the kid could stuff them in his pocket. “You take a swing at Sirius?”
Harry’s knuckles were bruised and, based on the swelling in one of them, probably had at least one break.
“I bloody well did not,” Harry snapped, lifting his head and flashing a scowl at Tony. “Steve’s punching bag is filled with rocks.”
“It’s really not.” Steve was already on his feet and grabbing an ice pack out of his freezer that he tossed to Harry. An idiot move considering Harry used his right hand to catch it, hissing when his fingers curled around it. “Come back when that’s healed and I’ll teach you how to throw a proper punch.”
Harry stuffed the ice pack in his back pocket and glanced up at his godfather.
“Hands flat on the table, kiddo,” Sirius said cheerfully, pulling his wand out. He waited until Harry did as ordered before tapping the break lightly and healing it instantly with a flash of blue light. “Once more.”
Sirius ran his wand across both sets of knuckles, disappearing the bruises, and earning a shocked gasp of surprise from Pepper and a deep look of loathing from Harry.
“Suddenly you know a spell for bruises?” Harry asked Sirius as he absently rubbed his hands together.
“Crazy thing that was,” Sirius said with a tiny smirk that Harry clearly didn’t find amusing, “I just learned it the other day. I think it was Hermione who taught it to me. Oh! Speaking of which!” Sirius dug in the inner pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a manilla envelope that he handed to Harry.
“I told her what you said about pictures and she called her parents, had them dig out her scrapbooks, and I think they’re all in there along with some letters from your friends.”
“Changing the fucking subject,” Harry muttered, though he did open the envelope and grin at the contents when he peeked inside. He aimed that grin at Sirius for a brief moment, getting a full blown smile in return. “Thanks, Padfoot.”
Tony watched the easy way Sirius ruffled Harry’s hair with no small amount of jealousy. They were always like that; Harry was quick to anger with Sirius, but just as quick to forgive. They had a bond that went back over two years and Tony often felt like he’d never eclipse it.
If Harry had a choice, Tony was sure he’d still prefer to live with Sirius. They knew each other, they were so damn alike. Sirius understood magic and their war and Harry’s history and Tony was some foreign exchange student desperately trying to play catch up.
“I guess I’ll go get Albus and head out,” Sirius said with a disappointed huff. He winked at Harry, “Maybe next year we’ll celebrate on a beach, eh?”
“Yeah,” Harry laughed and held his smile all through the goodbyes. Tony watched it fade to a blank look the instant Sirius left though.
“He’ll be fine,” Pepper told Harry softly with a kind smile that only Pepper could make look authentic.
“I know.” Harry’s voice was flat and he began fidgeting with the envelope he held. He glanced around Steve’s dining room and bit his lip. “I’m going to go to bed, actually.”
Tony looked at the cake and felt a flash of anger and grief that the first chance he had to celebrate his kid’s birthday got ruined.
“You have a lifetime worth of birthdays after this,” Pepper reached over and squeezed Tony’s hand bracingly. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Yeah.” Tony patted Pepper’s hand and forced a smile. “And next year I can take him car shopping.”
“If the wizards don’t interrupt again,” Steve said, suuuper helpfully.
“Real nice, Steve,” Pepper snapped when Tony lumbered up the stairs after Harry.
Steve shrugged. “If Tony wants his kid to be safe, we need to deal with the wizards.”
“We do need to deal with the damn wizards,” Pepper agreed.
Tony took one look around the clean and no longer decorated apartment and scoffed quietly. He wondered who cleaned while they watched over Dumbledore? Probably Bruce or Rhodey. The threat of death couldn’t convince Nat or Clint to clean.
Tony shot a text off to Rhodey, thanking him for coming, inviting him to the team meeting the next day, then he moved to the liquor cabinet.
If ever he’d earned a drink, it was then.
It wasn’t until Tony was on his third glass of Johnnie Walker and aimlessly roaming the too-quiet apartment that he entered his bedroom and saw Harry’s gift on his dresser.
Damn. In all the wizard bullshit, Tony forgot he never even got to give Harry his gift.
Tony traded his glass tumbler for the wrapped book once he saw he still had an hour to give it to Harry. Knowing Harry, he was probably awake anyway.
“Come in,” Harry called when Tony knocked lightly on his door. Tony poked his head in and saw that Harry was sitting at his desk chair, his head tipped back, the ice pack covering his forehead. He had the dog on his lap, bird on his shoulder, and the photographs and letters from his friends spread across his desk top.
“Headache?” Tony asked lightly. He moved to sit on the foot of Harry’s neatly made bed, watching the kid with no small amount of concern.
How much weight did Tony’s son carry through the unlucky circumstances of his birth? How much pain could Harry have avoided if Tony had just known about him when he was born?
“Mm,” Harry hummed something that was nearly an agreement. “I like the way ice feels on my face. Reminds me of winter.”
Tony grinned at the return of Harry-sass.
“I thought fall was your favorite season?” he asked.
Harry pulled the ice pack off and tossed it on his dresser over his shoulder with damn good aim considering the room was dark and he looked exhausted.
“It was a joke,” Harry sighed. He stared up at the ceiling before lolling his head to the side to look at Tony. “Are you here to tell me what Dumbledore wants? Am I supposed to go hide out in Grimmauld with Sirius or grab my wand and go fight some death eaters?”
“I figured we’d talk about that tomorrow. I actually just came to give you this.” Tony offered Harry his birthday present and scrounged up a smile for him. “Gandalf the Lame and Clifford the big black dog interrupted before I could give it to you.”
Harry picked his head up and rolled his chair over by the bed to slowly accept the gift Tony got him.
“Do you have a nickname for everyone?” Harry asked curiously as he fingered the edge of the red wrapping paper.
“Sure,” Tony shrugged and leaned back on Harry’s bed, holding himself up with both hands. “Your friend Gwen? Brenda Starr. Peter? Moe.”
Harry kept playing with the wrapping paper instead of actually opening the gift, though he paused even that to give Tony a suspicious look.
“Who’s Brenda Starr and Moe?”
Tony grinned. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Or just Google it tomorrow. Go on,” he nodded his head, “don’t leave me in suspense here.”
Harry peeled back the paper slowly, revealing a dark maroon and gold edged leather album. It wasn’t anything fancy, but Tony hoped the contents got the same smile that Sirius’ envelope of photos did. He opened the album and reached over to turn on his desk lamp when he realized it was too dark to read the first page.
“Last will and testament of Anthony Edward Stark,” Harry read aloud. He looked at Tony with a furrowed brow. “Why is your will here?”
“Safe keeping,” Tony told him with partial honesty. “You have a copy, I have a copy, and our fifty closest lawyers.”
Harry didn’t look convinced and he continued to squint at the legal document until he let out a choked sound.
“You’re mad,” he whispered, his eyes as round as Tony’s favorite oversized coffee mug. “You’re leaving me everything if you die before I do?”
“‘If’,” Tony laughed. “I better die before you, kid, but yeah. I mean, my dad left me the company, I’ll leave it to you, one day you can leave it to your kid.”
“I don’t know anything about running a bloody multibillion dollar company!” Harry yelped. “Leave it to Pepper!”
“Can’t,” Tony said breezily, “family tradition. Flip the page, the real present is past that.”
Tony had only included that to show Harry that when he said what’s his was Harry’s, he meant it.
Harry turned the page with all the slow precision of a bomb technician. If he expected any more shocks, he wasn’t disappointed.
“What…” Harry traced a finger across the youngest photo of Harry that Tony could find. It was grainy even after being cleaned up, but it was unmistakably Harry riding in a shopping cart a few weeks before he turned three. Tony had even done a bit of editing and taken out his ugly cousin who’d been hitting Harry in the head with a bottle of salad dressing.
“Where’d you get these?” Harry asked as he began flipping the pages more eagerly, still carefully, and stopped to stare at every single photo. Tony got distracted by the genuine and childlike smile that began to spread across Harry’s face and didn’t hear his question until Harry repeated himself.
“I’m not in to conspiracy theories, because they’re all true,” Tony told him seriously. “Big Brother? The eye in the sky that watches everything you do? It’s real and it has archives. And the archives just need some effort to dig through and you can find almost anything you need.”
Harry let out a delighted laugh at a photo of himself playing on a playground. He’d been a background picture, not really noticeable in the photo of the little girl with pigtails that had been the star of the photo, but once Tony cropped it and did some light edits, it looked like a photo of a seven year old Harry swinging on a swing.
“This is brilliant!” Harry turned that genuine smile on Tony and for the first time in Tony’s life he felt like he truly did something right. “This must have been a nightmare to do.”
It had taken Tony most of the night before to work on it, but he wasn’t going to admit that. Not when Harry looked so excited.
“The hardest part was picking an album,” Tony joked. “They had a cool superhero one I just knew you’d love, but it didn’t have enough pages to hold all the photos.”
Harry laughed again and moved from his chair to sit beside Tony at the foot of the bed.
“Look,” he pointed at a photo of just the most pathetic looking nine year old Tony had ever seen. Harry was wearing clothes that he absolutely drowned in while his face had a bright smile and a goat was eating corn from his hand. “My class went to a farm and I didn’t have a permission slip but my teacher didn’t even notice, so I got to go and blimey, I forgot about it, but that goat head-butt one of Dudley’s friends and knocked his arse in the mud.”
Tony listened to Harry as he shared crazy little stories for each of the older photos of himself that Tony managed to find.
“How’d you find this one?” Harry howled with laughter at a photo of himself and a man that had the be nearly Hulk sized at a train station. “That’s Hagrid, he’s the one that brought my letter. He’s half-giant and the kindest bloke you’d ever meet.”
“Blimey. I’m lucky the Ministry never saw this,” Harry laughed nervously at a CVT image of him two summers ago, a wand in his hand and a wooden trunk being drug behind him. The kid looked like hell in that photo too, furious and with a mark on his neck that looked like damned fingerprints. “That was the summer Sirius broke out from Azkaban, I blew up Vernon’s sister and thought I’d have to be a fugitive.”
Tony didn’t even mind when Harry put aside the album to snag the photos off his desk and begin telling Tony the story that went along with each picture.
“I didn’t even know Hermione took this… alright, it looks pretty bloody odd to be hiding in a bush, right? But I was hiding from my defense professor, this bloke named Lockhart…”
“Oh! Brilliant! Look! Hermione got a photo from last summer! Alright, so these are Ron’s siblings, I can’t figure out who’s who from this distance… Anyway, this is quidditch. It’s the best magical sport there is. And I’m seeker for Gryffindor.” Harry grinned cheekily up at Tony. “I bet my Firebolt can outfly your suit.”
That led to an hour long explanation on quidditch and what Harry’s role in it was. Which they held in the kitchen with pieces of birthday cake and glasses of cold milk.
And by two, when they were both yawning more then talking as they stretched out on the couches together, Tony was sure he’d be smiling in his sleep at the quick, one-armed, hug he’d gotten from Harry after they sorted his photo collection in to ‘magical’ and ‘muggle’ albums.
Even with the wizard bullshit, Tony felt like maybe he’d salvaged Harry’s birthday just enough that Harry would look back at it with some sort of fondness.