“What’s wrong with your hand?”
September 10
Hey, kid, I’m off to Slovakia to shoot bad guys. If you need anything, call or text me and I’ll answer. Pepper has Mister Arsehole. Love you, stay safe.
Harry frowned at the screen.
By yourself?
Harry absently picked at the roll he’d nicked from the kitchens to bring to the Astronomy Tower with him while he waited for Tony to text back. He looked up and felt wistful at the setting sun and the way the orange and purple mixed in the sky. It was probably stupid, but…
Harry clicked a photo of the sky above the lake, nothing identifiable about it, and sent it to Peter with a little, ‘wish you were here’.
Or, more accurately, Harry wished he were back in New York. As much as he loved Hermione and Ron, as much as Hogwarts used to be home, it just… it just wasn’t anymore.
Home felt a lot like Harry’s poorly painted bedroom with Joey in his bed and Jarvis updating him on where everyone was in the tower. It felt like Saturday evenings spend skateboarding or playing video games with Peter and Sunday nights having dinner with Tony and his friends.
Home was where his damn hand didn’t ache, his chest wasn’t constantly tight, and people weren’t whispering about him behind his back.
Hogwarts just wasn’t home anymore.
If Harry were honest with himself, it hadn’t been since the night he’d been chosen as champion and the magic he’d felt within the castle turned to malevolence. Once he began to look at everything in a ‘could this save my life or end it’ sort of way, it couldn’t go back to being the whimsical magical castle it had been when Harry was eleven.
Harry was ripped from his quickly devolving thoughts when his phone lit up with a new text. Not from Peter, but Tony.
I’m with the Scooby-Doo gang, of course.
You know I don’t actually know what that means, right?
We have to fix that. Steve, Bruce, Nat, Thor, and Clint.
Harry frowned and tossed his half-eaten roll across the lawns.
I thought you weren’t working for Fury?
I’m not. Forget that guy. I’m working with my friends to destroy a hydra base. Part revenge, part getting Thor’s toy back since hydra stole it. Oh, Thor says hi. Want us to stop by your school on the way back? You can meet your favorite uncle?
Harry laughed lightly and kicked his legs against the rail.
Going to try and drive the dick-mobile to Hogwarts?
Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the Dick-Jet and I can land this baby anywhere.
Harry grinned when he imagined Tony just somehow managing to rip through the wards and landing a jet in the middle of the grounds like Madame Maxine did with her carriage last year.
It’s fine. I’ll meet the hammer guy this summer. Try to not kill any innocent aliens this time.
You’ll meet Hammer-Man over Christmas Break when you come home. And just for that, I’m going to kill three times as many aliens.
Going home for holidays? It was… it was something Harry had never done before and something that lit a small fire in his chest every time it was mentioned. Harry never had a home before, and he certainly never had someone who wanted him to be with them for the holiday, Sirius aside.
Harry’s smile slipped off his face at the reminder of the documentary Tony showed him though. Tony… Tony was a real Gryffindor. Tony was brave, selfless, and more than a bit impulsive, in Harry’s opinion. And Harry wouldn’t have a home or a family to want him there if Tony got himself killed.
Maybe no flying in to wormholes this time. Send psycho instead.
Kid, did you just say you hope I don’t die? That’s practically an ‘I love you so much, dad’.
Harry rolled his eyes. Trust Tony to ruin a perfectly normal message.
I hope Bruce smashes you. I have detention again. Goodbye.
He won’t. Have fun in detention, be safe, I’ll text you when we’re done.
Harry stayed up on the rail of the tower, kicking his legs over the ledge, lingering, and tried to count down how many more days until Christmas holidays. Actually…
Harry held his phone up by his mouth, “Hey, Jarvis?”
“Yes, Harry?”
Harry smiled for the sound of the one friend from New York he’d been able to take with him. He assumed all StarkPhones had JARVIS installed, except Hermione’s new phone, the one she practically shattered the windows when she screamed to receive it, didn’t.
“How many days until the 18th of December?”
“There are 99 days until then, Harry.”
That… that was too many days.
“Thanks, mate,” Harry sighed.
99 days felt like an eternity, all the more so when Peter text Harry back a photo of himself and Gwen grinning outside of a brick building that looked like his school.
Sunset doesn’t look as good as you do. I wish you were here.
Yeah… Harry pocketed his phone and slid off the rail so he could get to detention, he really did too.
“Oh, Harry.” Hermione sighed when Harry slunk in the deserted common room a few hours later after finishing his third detention with Umbridge. “You look… well, really unhappy honestly.”
She pat the couch cushion beside her, the open one between her and Ron, and Harry went over to it and slumped down. “Was she awful again?” she asked when Harry sat.
“Same shit,” Harry said. He nodded gratefully when Ron handed him a bowl of murtlap essence for his hand. It stung putting the fresh cut in the bowl, but then his muscles relaxed when the relief began. “Thanks, guys, really, you didn’t need to wait up for me.”
“I didn’t, I just got back from practice,” Ron joked. He was windswept and pink cheeked though, so Harry figured he truly had been out flying on the pitch. Harry would have loved to join him, help his best mate earn Oliver’s old spot on the quidditch team, but unfortunately he never knew when to shut his mouth.
“Still,” Harry said, looking between the two of them gratefully, “thanks.”
Hermione moved her head to Harry’s shoulder, careful not to dislodge the bowl on his lap and Ron scoffed and put an arm across the back of the crimson sofa behind him.
“You’re miserable,” Hermione said softly, a statement, not a question.
“Well my hand has seen better days,” Harry quipped, hiding the truth in her words behind a sarcastic front. He was miserable, his hand just had nothing to do with it.
Harry hated it there. He wasn’t sure if he hated it more because he knew there were better places he could have been or if it truly was the worst time he’d ever had in the castle, but every fiber of his being urged him to text Tony a simple ‘I’m ready to go’.
Tony would let him leave, no questions asked. Harry could be back home, enrolled at school with two of his other friends by the end of the week. He could video chat Hermione and Ron on Hermione’s phone and visit over breaks.
He could be done with the wizarding world that didn’t give a damn about him.
But Tony wouldn’t do that.
And Harry wasn’t going to let a little thing like his own happiness stand in the way of earning the casual ‘love you kid’ that Tony sent him every day.
“Nah, it’s more than that,” Ron said, surprising Harry that he’d every noticed Harry’s forlorn mood. It wasn’t that Ron wasn’t observant, it was just that…
No, it was that Ron wasn’t usually very observant.
“You miss your dad?” Hermione guessed tentatively when Harry didn’t say anything. Her voice shook a little on the word ‘dad’, as if she were nervous to mention it, but Harry had long since grown indifferent to people referring to Tony like that.
“No,” Harry lied. He leaned back, resting his head against Ron’s arm, and closed his eyes. “It’s just… well, it’s… it’s not like I ever missed the Dursleys,” he said, scrunching his eyes and curling his lip. “And it’s not like anyone besides the two of you even want me here,” he added, thinking of Seamus up in his dorm and Lavender in the girls’ dorm. All the students who thought he was lying about Voldemort and ran away to get attention. “All summer nobody called me a liar or a freak or a- a…”
“An attention seeking, self-important, brain dead, prat?” Ron offered brightly.
Harry snorted and opened his eyes long enough to give Ron a humorless grin. “Yeah.”
“Don’t get mad, okay? But…” Hermione chewed her lip as she peeked up at Harry through her lashes. “Why did you come back? Don’t misunderstand,” she added quickly, “I’m glad you did, of course, but you’re so miserable, Harry. We can all see it.” Ron nodded in agreement, causing Harry to snort.
“Why not leave?” Hermione prodded. “You said you almost went to school with the boy you definitely aren’t secretly dating.”
Harry twisted his face in a scowl in a fruitless effort to hide a blush. He knew he shouldn’t have talked so much about Peter or shared photos of him with Hermione. Hermione was much too clever for her own good. He glanced quickly at Ron, but Ron just looked mildly amused as he tilted his head back on the sofa with his eyes closed and a tiny grin on his lips.
“I can’t leave,” Harry hissed at Hermione, entirely ignoring her comments about Peter. “I told you about… about that thing those people are guarding.”
“Hmm.” Hermione hummed skeptically. “And you believe it then? You believe that you, all by yourself, have to defeat Voldemort—” the muscle in Ron’s arm twitched beneath Harry’s head, “—and nobody can help you?”
Harry gave Hermione an exasperated look. “Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives,” he quoted quietly. The common room was empty, but Harry never knew when there was an extendable ear in use. “That sounds like it’s got to be me, doesn’t it?”
Hermione harrumphed and crossed her arms while she sat up. “Well I think it’s a load of tosh from an old fraud and you should just let your dad and his friends handle it. And,” Hermione shot a furious look at Harry’s hand, “I think you should tell someone about what that foul woman is doing to you.”
“Oh yeah, that’ll look really fucking mature,” Harry drawled irritably. “‘Excuse me, Tony? I know you’re busy saving the world, being a hero, but my hand hurts.’”
Harry wasn’t going to go whining about a cut on his hand to Tony. Not when the whole point of Harry going back to Hogwarts was to prove he was just as brave as Tony, James, and Lily. If Harry wanted to be like his parents, then he had to suck it up. The soreness afterward was annoying, and Merlin knew Harry didn’t relish having a scar that called him a liar for the rest of his life, but it was almost as peaceful as it was painful when Harry wrote his lines—
The sharpness of the cut cleared his thoughts and all he had to do was write. It was as if Harry could release all the misery he had inside of him on the back of his hand.
He doubted if it was meant to be a favor, and he hated Umbridge for watching with a sadistic smile as he tore his skin open, but he’d left every detention feeling sore physically and better emotionally.
Probably more proof he was crazy, but it wasn’t likely that he’d go telling the Daily Prophet that.
Ron snorted softly at Harry’s mocking comment, but Hermione only dug her heels in further.
“That’s what parents do,” she insisted. “They watch out for you! If I were in your shoes, I’d call my parents right away!”
“Sorry, orphan who was surprise adopted here, I’m new to this parent thing.” Harry blinked at Hermione innocently. “Maybe explain it in smaller words?”
Hermione, quite maturely, stuck her tongue out Harry. Harry, just as maturely, stuck his tongue back out at her.
“You’re being—”
Harry ignored whatever insult Hermione was muttering about him when his phone vibrated softly in his pocket. Ron shuffled over enough so Harry could grab it and they all three grinned at the picture of Padfoot with his tongue wagging that Harry set as Sirius’ contact photo.
“Don’t speak yet,” Harry called to Sirius, hiding his phone screen as soon as he answered. He didn’t see anyone else in the common room, but his bed would be a safer place to chat. “Let me get somewhere more private.”
“Come on,” Hermione smiled at Harry and helped him stand without touching his left hand. “I’ll walk you both upstairs.”
Harry and Ron shared a bewildered look behind Hermione’s back as she began leading them to their dorm.
Since when did Hermione walk them to bed?
Ron went straight to his bed after a hasty goodnight when they got to the dorm. Hermione crinkled her nose up when he climbed in his bed with his dirty trousers on and pulled his curtains shut.
“Gross,” she muttered. Harry only smiled while he cast a silencing charm around his bed; Ron usually slept in his pants, Harry was certain he just didn’t want Hermione to see him undressed.
Hermione jumped in Harry’s bed, ignoring his peculiar look, and scooted closer when Harry closed his curtains and picked the phone up.
“Sorry,” Harry told Sirius. “I was in the common room.”
Sirius was playing with a little golden snitch - Harry’s, if Harry wasn’t wrong. When Sirius decided to rob Harry, he wasn’t sure, but he swore to never leave his belongings with the man again.
“No worries.” Sirius snatched the snitch from the air then grinned at the camera. “I was just bored. Thought I’d call and see what my favorite godson was up to.”
“I’m your only godson,” Harry smirked.
“Also my least favorite then.”
Harry laughed, as did Hermione, but Sirius brought his face closer to the phone and frowned while he squinted at his screen.
“You look like shit, kiddo,” he said bluntly. “What’s wrong?”
Sirius wasn’t wrong, even if he was rude. Harry knew he looked rough after a few nights spent tossing and turning; there were bags under his eyes, a waxy complexion to his skin, and his bottom lip was probably swollen from where he’d bitten it during detention to keep from snapping at Umbridge.
“I’m fine,” Harry said. He ignored the pinch to his side that Hermione delivered. He didn’t care what she thought, the last person he wanted to tell about his—
“Harry’s hand is quite sore.”
…hand was Sirius.
Harry slowly drug his eyes from the phone to Hermione and gave her a look so furious and betrayed that he was surprised he didn’t blow her up like he once had his Aunt Marge. Hermione met Harry’s glare head on and merely smirked at him.
“I’m off to bed then, goodnight,” she said brightly.
Harry had thought he felt betrayal from Hermione when she turned his Firebolt in to McGonagall, but that was nothing compared to the simmering anger he felt as she flounced out of the dorm. Sirius wasn’t going to ‘drop it’, and Hermione bloody knew that.
“Harry…” Sirius’ voice was slow and his eyes were gleaming when Harry turned back to the phone screen. For the first time since before his detention, Harry’s thoughts felt muddled and his tongue was thick.
“What’s wrong with your hand?”
Harry clamped his jaw shut as he moved his phone from his right hand to his left so he could hold his right up.
“Nothing,” he said, forcing himself to sound as if it weren’t shooting pains down his wrist to hold the phone in his injured hand. “Oh, er, I thought I bruised it earlier, flying, but it’s fine now.”
Sirius scoffed disbelievingly and his eyes narrowed more when Harry carefully moved to phone back to his good hand.
“You haven’t had time to fly because you’ve been in detention every damn night,” he said. Harry cursed himself for being too open with Sirius. He never should have told him about the detentions or Hermione about the quill. “Let’s see that other hand, Harry. What’d you do? Cut yourself?”
“No,” Harry scowled as an answer to both questions. He hadn’t really cut himself, not in the way Sirius was implying. “It’s nothing, drop it.”
“Tell me.”
“Piss off.”
“I’ll call Tony.”
“Do it.”
“I’ll call Pepper.”
“You don’t have her number,” Harry said smugly.
Sirius smirked right in the camera, “Tony does.”
And Tony would give it to his new best mate if Sirius asked. Then Sirius would have Pepper call Harry and she’d be sweet and concerned and sneaky and subtle and Harry would end up spilling his guts.
Then she’d tell Tony.
Then Tony would make Harry leave.
And then Harry’s personal to-do list - learn magic, vanquish Voldemort, be brave, don’t lose your family - would be ruined.
Harry’s stomach clenched as he imagined Tony’s disappointment and Pepper’s sad face if they discovered who Harry truly was inside. Not a genius like Tony, not brave like Tony, but a coward who tried to run from his problems and whose magical knowledge was ‘average’ at best.
“Umbridge has me doing lines in detention and the quill cuts my hand then writes in my blood,” Harry told Sirius in a rush. “Hermione was nagging me to tell someone, and I’m sure she’s smug that she’s forced me to do it now.”
And, strangely, just as it did with the other things he’d told Sirius, a small weight lifted from Harry’s chest while he sucked in a breath. He didn’t think all the tosh Pepper said about how therapy was brilliant because a person could share their burdens and get advice for how to handle them, but… but it sort of worked when it was Sirius.
Sometimes.
Sirius’ face turned as dark then as it had when Harry told him about his cupboard. His (truthfully) handsome features twisted up in the same snarl that decorated all his wanted posters.
“Harry, let me see your hand,” he said slowly, his tone a forced calm over a hurricane of anger. Harry held up his wrapped hand and looked away from the phone when Sirius asked him to remove the bandage.
“It’ll hurt,” Harry snapped. He glared at the embers burning in the fireplace hatefully. “It’s not all that exciting anyway. Sure, one day perhaps I’ll have to explain why my hand says ‘I must not tell lies’, but it’ll be an interesting scar, right? Thank God, huh? Because I was ALL OUT OF THOSE!”
Sirius let Harry scream at him then smirked. “You did put up a silencing charm, right?”
“Nope. I’m a fucking idiot who accepts calls from escaped convicts at midnight without one.”
“Maybe you should have put one up,” Sirius said airily, purposefully ignoring Harry’s sarcasm. “You got your map?”
It took Harry a second to sooth his own irrational anger so he could recognize what an abrupt question that was.
“In my trunk…?”
“Good. Get it out and watch the corridors for Snape for me. I’m on my way.”
Harry’s fierce and immediate protests went unheard as Sirius disconnected the call.
Damn it all.
He knew he should have kept his mouth shut.
Harry scrambled out of his bed, conscious of not waking the other boys, and dug in his overly full trunk for his map. He also kept pressing Sirius’ number over and over, trying to call him and getting ignored each time. Harry found and activated the map and sent a quick look toward where Ron was snoring behind his curtains.
No… this wasn’t Ron’s fault.
Hermione, however…
“You cannot honestly blame me,” Hermione hissed ten minutes later. Harry had been nervous to go wake her, as he’d never actually been in the girls dorm before, but thankfully Hermione’s bed was right beside the door and Harry had gotten her out of bed and down to the common room without waking anyone else up.
Hermione giggled peculiarly when she saw Harry using the stairs, but Harry chalked it up to exhaustion.
The two of them sat in the common room, Hermione wrapped up in a fuzzy robe and Harry with a blanket wrapped firmly around himself, and stared at the map. Harry’s stomach clenched and coiled to the point he thought he might be sick every time he imagined Sirius’ dot appearing.
“You’re the one who told Sirius,” Harry whispered hotly. He knew it wasn’t fair to blame Sirius’ idiocy on Hermione, but she was the one who planted the idea in Harry’s head and pushed him into talking about it. Harry never should have opened his big mouth.
It was almost as if he was incapable of shutting up.
Sirius probably would have killed the Dursleys had they been home during the summer, why did Harry think he wouldn’t try and do the same thing to Umbridge?
For an innocent man, Sirius truly was constantly chomping at the bit, always ready to commit murder.
“I thought he would tell your dad,” Hermione snapped. “Not come kill Umbridge like a maniac!”
“Oi.” Harry gave her as severe of a look as someone wrapped up in a rainbow colored quilt could give. “Sirius is not a maniac, Hermione. He’s just… a bit impulsive.”
“You didn’t see him this summer,” Hermione sniffed. She looked disdainfully at the map as if it were Sirius himself. “He was terrifying, Harry.”
“He’s also dramatic,” Harry said, only a little fondly. “He would have made a great Aragorn.”
Hermione’s face whipped up to Harry’s so quickly it would have been comical if Harry didn’t feel sick while he imagined Sirius being captured and tossed back in Azkaban. Sirius being kissed by the dementors, as soulless as Barty Crouch Jr.
Sirius never laughing again or talking Harry into leaving the Astronomy Tower and going to bed.
Sirius never sending him Dreamless Sleep or stupid emojis.
Sirius never ruffling Harry’s hair or getting to enjoy freedom.
“Did you read— oh, Harry,” Hermione’s voice softened and her excitement over Lord of the Rings disappeared when Harry had to screw his face up to keep from actually crying. Harry didn’t want to imagine a world where Sirius lost his soul before he even got to imagine freedom. He never had a childhood, his adolescence was stolen by war, and his adulthood stolen by an unfair legal system.
Sirius never even got to live his life- Harry couldn’t let him lose it before it could begin.
“Which passage do you think Sirius will use?” Hermione asked kindly, politely ignoring the way Harry swiped beneath his eyes.
Harry shrugged and then considered it. “That one,” he said, his voice embarrassingly shaky. He pointed at the tunnel that connected the Shrieking Shack to the Whomping Willow. It was a guess, but it would be the easiest one for Sirius to get to and the one he was most familiar with.
“Okay.” Hermione wrapped an arm around Harry’s torso and hugged him briefly. “I’ll go get Ron and then we’ll go stop your homicidal godfather from killing our professor. Is your cloak in your trunk?”
Harry steeled himself to admit the worst part of the whole situation.
“No. Sirius has it.”
Hermione closed her eyes for a moment before she released a heavy breath. “Of course he does.”
Of course he did.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione traveled through the castle as quietly as they could. Ron had been annoyed to be drug from bed for all of two minutes before Harry explained what happened in the brief time he’d been in bed and then Ron got them each a knitted jumper and hat and agreed to come help.
It was ridiculous, and Harry blamed his headache and exhaustion, but it had made him swallow back a sob when Ron pulled his hat on Harry’s head and easily said they’d all go together.
“Like always,” he had said cheerfully.
If anyone had better friends than Harry did, he didn’t know them.
They moved in a tight cluster; Hermione tried to cast a disillusionment charm on them but all she’d managed to do was make Ron’s hair a bit lighter. Harry had never had to be out much past curfew without the aid of his cloak and he didn’t enjoy being visible at all. Every footstep, no matter how light, could get them all drug to an office and leave Sirius loose with nobody to stop him.
They had the map though, and Harry blindly followed behind Hermione while watching it to make sure they didn’t cross paths with Peeves or Filch.
Luck was on their side when they made it outside without getting caught. They went over to the Whomping Willow, getting as close as they dared, and then huddled together and watched the map.
“He’s mad,” Ron whispered. He stood behind Harry and peered over his shoulder while Hermione nestled in Harry’s side and offered him her warmth and her calm. “I mean, we all know Sirius would kill anyone who hurt Harry, but he’s going to start with the Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic?”
“He tried to start with my uncle,” Harry murmured absently. His attention was fixated on the map so hard that he hardly blinked.
“Good.” Harry did blink then as he looked over at Hermione’s snarl. She crinkled her nose irritably at Harry’s curious expression. “Oh don’t look so surprised, those people are foul.”
“We were going to kill them ourselves,” Ron added conversationally. “Fred and George were going to help if we didn’t find you before school started. They’ve got loads of failed products that they swear were toxic. I figured—”
“There!” Hermione yelped, her voice traveling through the silent grounds. She jabbed her finger at the map; not at the passage Harry thought, but at the one that came out on the third floor.
“Fuck. Run!” Harry turned on his heel and began sprinting for the castle.
“Language!” Hermione wailed from behind Harry, reminding him idly of Steve. Harry didn’t have time to tease her for it though, Sirius was moving quickly and Harry had to get to him before he did something irreparably stupid.
Harry ran as quickly as he could. He put all his energy on it and ignored the reminder of the last time he’d ran so frantically—
“Take my body back.”
—and focused on saving Sirius from himself.
The loud and echoing footsteps in the castle didn’t matter. The way Harry tripped over the stairs didn’t matter. The nosy portraits asking noisy questions didn’t matter.
Harry didn’t stop running until he made it to the third floor, and he only did it then to check the map.
“Where is he?” Ron asked as he skidded to a halt beside Harry and rubbed a stitch in his side.
Harry saw Sirius’ dot moving ahead of him- silent and invisible in the same corridor. Sirius was a man on a mission and Harry doubted it anything he said would help.
Hermione had went in a different direction than them, but Harry couldn’t think of that because he had to save his stupid godfather from himself.
“This way.” Harry grabbed Ron’s wrist and jerked him toward the passageway that Sirius’ dot moved in. Sirius was quick, his dot dancing out of reach without even a whisper of his presence.
If anyone could pull off a murder and get away with it, it would be Sirius Black. But Harry would prefer he not try.
Sirius’ dot exited the passage, tearing quickly through the tapestry that would bring him to the defense corridor, and then—
“Stupefy.”
Sirius’ dot got close enough to Hermione.
Hermione looked smug when the boys caught up to her.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” she said happily.