“Welcome to Hogwarts, Tony.”
“Nat, on your left!” Steve snapped, his voice commanding in Tony’s ear.
“I’m on it,” Nat said.
Tony focused on trying to cage the silver haired guy literally running circles around them. “Be a great time to get pissed,” he said through the headset. “Go smash some shit, Br—”
“Mister Stark, Mister Black is calling.”
Tony took a shot at one of the tanks guarding the base. “Patch him through.”
“Sirius, hey, not a great time,” Tony said. He ignored Clint’s snort in his ear at his drastic understatement. They were getting their asses kicked by the witch-bitch and the quick-kid. JARVIS had a lock on the scepter, but Tony was busy playing defense while the quick-kid kept them on their toes.
“Oh, you too busy to hear about Harry’s new defense professor?”
Tony swore quietly and tried again to swerve the superhuman whatever that kept blocking him from entering the building where the scepter was.
“Talk quick,” Tony told Sirius. “When I say I’m a bit busy, I mean it.”
“Tony, help Thor,” Nat ordered.
Tony turned and saw Thor spinning his hammer and figured the God of Thunder could use some juice to strike down the witch with the glowing hands and red hair.
“I’m on it,” Tony said. He sent as much power as he could spare to Thor from one of his repulsers while Sirius filled him in on whatever was going on with his kid.
“Harry’s defense professor’s had him in detention all week—”
“Tony’s son? Shocker,” Clint muttered.
“Yeah, he told me,” Tony said impatiently. He watched as Thor took a shot at the witch and winced at the super-powered shield she used to block herself. Sirius certainly didn’t have her powers.
“Did he tell you she’s carving his hand open every night?”
Tony shot off a repulser with much more power than he intended and cursed just as strongly as it burnt through the trees and left a path open for Cap to advance.
“She’s fucking what?!” Tony demanded while he held himself back. He needed to know what was happening with Harry before he went scooping up the scepter. He waved Clint ahead impatiently when he lingered beside where Tony hovered above the ground.
Sirius sounded as solemn as he ever had in Tony’s ear.
“It’s called a Blood Quill, Harry writes and it carves the words in his hand. He’s got some nasty scars from it already.”
And Harry never said a word about it. Tony talked to him every day, every single day, and the kid didn’t say a word about having to cut himself for a punishment.
But he told Sirius.
“Tony! We could use some help in here!” Steve called over the headset.
Tony wanted to scream with frustration.
His team needed him.
His kid needed him.
“Damn it all,” Tony spat. “Sirius, go get Harry. Tell Albus he broke our deal and Harry’s done there.”
“Oh, sure,” Sirius drawled sardonically. “I’ll just go marching in the school with the ministry hag, shall I? Think you can bust me out of Azkaban before the dementors steal my soul?”
“TONY!”
“DAMN IT!” Tony yelled. “Sirius, give me like an hour and I’ll go get him myself! I’ll call you back!”
Tony hung up on Sirius and flew full blast to the compound the team was in. He didn’t have time to jack around with the super-duo or the scepter.
“We’ve got a pit stop to make when we’re done here,” Tony told the team casually as he flew in the room and began shooting at the blur of silver that was protecting the red-head.
“Are we rescuing your son from the bad sorcerers?” Thor asked loudly. He swung his hammer at the witch-bitch when she approached Steve with her glowing hands and a snarl twisting her face.
“We’re going to—”
Tony cut himself off when a loud growl sounded just outside the compound. The five Avengers fighting inside the room had less than thirty seconds warning before the Hulk burst in the room with his large green fists swinging.
“Guess you managed to piss off the big guy,” Clint said. He ducked to avoid the Hulk as it took a swing at the quick-kid. “Tony, grab the stick and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Happily,” Tony said. He went for the scepter and then everything was gone.
Black.
Empty.
A wormhole in space.
The endless void of nothing.
Tony flew through the dark until he saw a light.
Was he supposed to fly away from the light?
Tony landed on a rocky expanse of some other world planet.
“Dad!” Harry laid on the ground and Tony rushed to him. He laid there with his face colorless and his bright eyes dull and lifeless. Tony couldn’t even think—
How?
Why?
He’d flown in there alone.
Harry coughed and raised a hand to Tony.
“Dad…”
Tony sucked in a shuddering gasp as Harry disappeared.
“Harry!” Tony sat up and looked around frantically. “Harry!”
“Someone calm him down,” a familiar voice called. “And get those coordinates pulled up from the kid’s phone.”
“The kid?” Tony sat up and blinked at his surroundings. He was in the jet, laying in the back cargo area. He saw Bruce, no longer green and angry, Steve, Clint, Thor, and…
“What the hell is she doing here?” Tony demanded as he saw the witch-bitch in question sitting quietly between Clint and the silver haired quick-kid.
The witch was peering at him with big eyes and a puzzled expression.
“No ‘thank you for saving my life’?” The quick-kid said with a snotty snort.
“You were the ones trying to kill us,” Clint said curtly with a glare for the duo they’d been fighting before Tony…
Blacked out?
“The point remains,” quick-kid scoffed.
“My name is Wanda,” the witch said quietly to Tony, a musical lilt to her voice that contrasted sharply with her fierce persona he’d been exposed to. “Did you create your son as well or was he born with magic inside him?”
“As well?” Tony repeated. He accepted Bruce’s hand when it was offered and slowly got to his feet. He looked down and saw his suit was off him, probably removed by Steve after he’d blacked out.
“Wait…” Tony narrowed his eyes at ‘Wanda’. “What do you know about my son?”
The magic Wanda had wielded had been nothing like what Sirius had shown him. When Tony had called it magic, JARVIS had recognized whatever power Wanda used as something different than the magic Sirius cast through his wand.
And none of it explained how Wanda knew about Harry.
“Were you in my head?” Tony lunged toward Wanda without a thought for his suit. He’d kill her with his bare hands. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HARRY?”
Wanda threw her hands up and placed a shimmering red bubble to surround her while Tony’s mind went back to that endless nothing filled with only the memory of Harry dying because Tony hadn’t done enough.
“Tony! Calm down!” Nat ordered from the cockpit. “Give me the coordinates if you want to pick your son up.”
Pick his son up…
Pick Harry up…
Damn.
Tony turned away from Wanda and aimed a harsh kick at a nearby bench.
“JARVIS, put the coordinates for Harry’s phone in the navigation,” he ordered.
“Yes, Mister Stark. We are approximately thirty-two minutes from Mister Harry’s location.”
“Great.” Tony spun back around and crossed his arms as he glared at the duo that had no business on the jet. “That’s plenty of time to hear about why you two are on my jet when you should be in prison.”
The quick-kid crossed his legs and gave Tony a cold look.
“You killed our family, the least you could do is give us a ride on your jet bought with blood-money.”
Tony sank down in a seat across from the duo and let them tell him their story.
Wanda described a bombing that took their parents and destroyed their home. Pietro, her twin brother apparently, described laying next to a radioactive bomb for days as they stared at the name ‘STARK’ on the side and wondered when it would explode and kill them.
And, when they were done, Tony wondered if flying in that wormhole would have ever removed the sins that stained his skin for an eternity.
“I’ve never met another user of magic,” Wanda told Tony in an awed whisper. “I saw your son in your mind, was he created with the scepter as well?”
“The scepter?” Bruce had stood beside Tony and listened to their story. He’d probably been too green to hear it the first time, since the others were involved in their own conversations and ignoring the twins. “Is that where you got your powers from?”
“I did,” Pietro said in an arrogant drawl. “Those that saved us, HYDRA, ran experiments. I survived.”
There was an implication there that there were more that didn’t survive HYDRA’s experiments.
“I have always been…” Wanda glanced at her brother and they shared a smirk. “Different,” she said slowly as she turned back to face Tony and Bruce. “I would like to speak with him.”
Tony bristled and curled his lip up, “I don’t think so.”
“Really? Because we’re about to land,” Nat called. “Where am I supposed to put this thing?”
Tony moved to a window and looked down at the forest beneath them. Where the hell they were, he had no idea, but the closest space he could see was a wide stretch of green lawns that surrounded a large abandoned church.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” Wanda breathed as she followed Tony to look down at the ground. “Your son lives here?”
Tony squinted at the church that had the caved in roof and the wild weeds surrounding it and climbing up the sides. The windows were boarded up and the peeling paint on the siding looked like it had been destroyed by the elements. Sure, maybe if used to be ‘lovely’, but Tony would be pissed if that’s where his son had been the last few weeks.
“It better not be,” Tony said. “JARVIS, ping Harry’s location again.”
“Mister Harry is within a ten mile radius, sir. I’ve sent his precise location to your phone.”
“Drop it here, Nat,” Tony said. He frowned at his phone that confirmed Harry was nearby. “Call Sirius,” he ordered JARVIS absently.
Sirius answered almost immediately.
“Took you long enough,” he snarked right off the bat, his voice flowing over the speakers in the jet. “You get Harry?”
“Bit of a problem there, bud,” Clint said. “Is the kid inside the creepy church?”
“Church?” Wanda and Thor both turned toward them.
“You don’t see the castle?” Wanda asked.
Tony looked toward Thor and he looked as surprised as Wanda sounded.
“It is as clear as ever,” Thor said with a deep boom. He waved his hand toward the window. “It is a magnificent home for young Stark.”
“Ooh, Tony, you idiot,” Sirius chuckled. “Do you have your magic proof suit on?”
Tony didn’t, but it only took a moment to get it on.
“Check again,” Sirius told him.
“Holy shit.” Tony moved to the window with his mask in place after Nat landed on the grounds and what had once been an overgrown and overwhelmed building - crumbling and an eyesore, had changed to a gleaming castle. An actual, honest to god, complete with large towers that overlooked the grounds, castle.
Sirius’ smile was clear in his tone, “Welcome to Hogwarts, Tony.”
*****
Tony looked up at the entrance to the castle, a smirk on his lips.
They really were living in the dark ages.
“To knock or not to knock, that is the question,” Tony murmured as he pushed the door wide open.
He stepped inside and immediately felt like he had been transported to some horrible medieval times where they were using candlesticks to light the stone hallway he stood in.
“Jarvis, how much power do we have?” Tony murmured, his eyes zeroing in on the set of doors beside him where it sounded as if hundreds of people were congregating.
“71%, sir.”
“Are we in contact with the jet?”
“No, sir.”
“Better kick on those boosters then,” Tony instructed as he took a step closer to the doors. It might have been a mistake to leave Thor on the ship, but Tony didn’t trust the twins alone with the scepter or his team. “We’re about to fight more wizards.”
“Excellent, sir. May I suggest replacing your face mask?”
“Good idea,” Tony agreed. He waited for his mask to snap in place before settling his nerves with a even breath and kicking one of the doors open as dramatically as he could.
As much of a buzz of noise as there had been, it went dead silent as the people within the room took in Tony and Tony took them in.
There was a very quiet ‘You’re fucking joking’ from a familiar voice though.
Tony spared a quick look, searching through a table of dead silent students dressed in identical and clichéd black robes with Iron Man colored ties, before he found the kid he wanted.
Harry didn’t look so hot. Bags under his eyes, apparently a lot of sleepless nights, and his face looked maybe a little thinner? Or was Tony imagining it? Tony didn’t like the way that there seemed to be a bubble around Harry and his friends either, a bubble that told Tony that his kid was being isolated for something. But that glare on Harry’s face was unmistakable.
“Mister Stark!”
Tony’s assessment of Harry was cut short when Albus stood up — dear God, as bleak as the castle was, it had to be because Albus took all the color in his gaudy robes — and smiled at Tony as if they were the best of friends.
Which was such a damn contrast to Tony’s inner feeling of murderous rage that it was almost comical.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Albus said, his voice filling the room. “Had I known you were coming, I would have met you on the grounds. You had no trouble finding us?”
If Tony were anyone else, he might be thrown off by Albus’ pleasant greeting and polite questions, almost as if he actually had invited him to the castle, but he was Tony Stark and this was his show to run.
“No problem at all,” Tony said, just as pleasantly as he approached the table where Albus sat along with the other adults (Tony would hardly refer to them as teachers, considering why he was there). “It’s amazing the things you can do with the right technology, take central air, for example.”
Someone, a student to Tony’s left, whispered, “Is that bloody Iron Man?”
“In the flesh,” Tony quipped. He watched Albus closely, wishing he could drop his face shield to show him exactly how unhappy he was. “I had some errands to run nearby, thought I’d stop and pick up my son since Albus is a damned liar. Oh, incidentally…” Tony’s eyes scanned the adults slowly as he came to stop in the center of the room. “Which one of you is Dolores Umbridge?”
The stern looking woman in the black robes sitting on the right of Albus coughed and pointed at the—
“Dear God, I can’t even look at you,” Tony cried dramatically. “Ugh. I didn’t even know pink could be so bright and unattractive.”
Tony pretended to shield his eyes as the squat woman with the beady eyes and tacky pink sweater, complete with shoulder pads, turned a deep shade of red and quiet giggles came from the students.
Tony turned his head toward where Harry sat, his friends shaking with silent laughter while Harry looked horrified. “You told me hobbits weren’t real! Or… are trolls real? And do they all prefer to dress in the most clashing shades of pink?”
The girl beside Harry lost her fight and put her face on the table, right beside a plate of food, her suppressed laughter now loud and clear.
Harry didn’t look quite so amused.
“Ahem.” The ugly woman coughed and smiled at Tony, somehow making her even uglier. “I’m afraid I don’t know you, Mister…?”
“It’s bloody Iron Man,” the same student from before mumbled again.
“Is your hearing as impaired as your vision?” Tony asked the woman. Tony turned enough to look through the room, “Was it just me a moment ago who heard Gandalf the Lame say my name?”
More laughter, it was vindicating to know that Tony’s jokes weren’t as lost on the kids as they were the adults.
The girl beside Harry, Hermione Granger, Tony recognized her now from when he searched for Harry’s friends’ identities before, raised a hand, and wow, Tony forgot that he was not a fan of kids who weren’t his.
Harry grabbed the girl’s wrist and pulled it down, shaking his head at her and mumbling something Tony couldn’t hear.
“We heard him, sir,” a red head boy at the end of the table where Harry sat piped up.
“He clearly said: ‘Harry Potter’s creepy robot dad, welcome,’” the identical red head beside the first one added.
“Did he just say that Potter’s dad is Iron Man?!”
Tony shouldn’t have been surprised that Harry hadn’t told anyone about his ‘kidnapping and surprise adoption’, as the kid called it, but there was a wash of whispers from the students that sounded a lot like hot gossip.
“Exactly!” Tony pointed at the grinning twins as he turned back to the adults in the room. “Tony Stark, feel free to call me Mister Stark, or, more accurately, the father of the kid who you tortured as a punishment.”
Tony was pleased to be in his suit as the temperature in the castle seemed to drop ten degrees. Though, whether that was due to the lack of manufactured heat, or the way that the adults all turned to glare at Umbridge and the students seemed torn between looking at Tony or Harry, remained to be seen.
“Perhaps we should take this to my office?” Albus suggested, remaining on his feet and waving toward a door behind him. “Mister Stark, Dolores?” His eyes sought Harry out, “And Harry?”
“No need,” Tony said brightly. “I’m taking my son home, personally writing to every single one of the parents of these students with non-magical parents about the torture my kid went through, and you can all bite my shiny metal ass.”
A couple quiet snorts, further proof that some of those kids had a decent sense of humor. Or a decent cable hookup at home, anyway.
“We had a deal, Gandalf,” Tony added coolly.
And, since Tony was a man of his word, unlike some old wizards with bad fashion sense, he looked down the row of adults until he found the one that had to be the hateful ass Sirius described.
But since they couldn’t see Tony’s eyes, and Tony was a big fan of dramatic productions, Tony went on to fulfill his promise before Albus could try and sweet talk his way in to making the absolute bitch fest Tony had planned private.
“And who is the,” Tony tried to recall Sirius’ precise words before he’d gotten off the jet, “greasy slimeball that called my son an ‘arrogant idiot with an inflated sense of self-worth that he undoubtedly got from his father’?”
The witch that Tony was beginning to realize seemed to be the most relaxed at the table coughed again and pointed directly to the man Tony had been eyeing.
“Awesome, two for one today.” Tony raised a hand, activating a meaningless buzzing noise as he pointed a red laser light at the man’s head. “Greasy looking Cullen—”
Ooh. The loud laughs he got that time had actually hurt, Tony only knew the movie because Pepper watched it and they laughed the whole time. There should not be that many British magic kids that knew of Twilight.
“—care to explain?”
Tony registered Albus’ wand sliding in to his hand, it was presumably the same thing the greasy one, Snape, did when his right arm moved but his lips stayed in a disgusted sneer.
As if Tony were the one who looked like he never showered or went out in the sun.
“Do your worst,” Tony taunted him. He glanced up at his stat screen and saw the suit was at full power. “You think you can shoot a spell at me before I can blow a hole in your head? Hell, I bet I can kill you and the color-blind Miss Trunchbull before you can stun me,” Tony smiled behind his mask at the laughs, proof that muggleborns and half-bloods were really the more interesting students, and then he added on a cool and drawn out, “Snivellus.”
Snape lunged to his feet, his face furious now, and a shimmering wall suddenly appeared between Tony and Snape.
“That is enough,” Albus said, his words silencing the laughing students. “Mister Stark, Mister Potter, D—”
“Potter-Stark.”
Tony kept his arm up, his laser pointing at Snape’s forehead, though he’d rather point it at Umbridge, and turned his head enough to see Harry getting to his feet and slinging a bag over his shoulder.
“I believe the Headmaster was speaking to—”
“Shut the hell up because you’re next,” Tony warned Umbridge when she dared talk to his son. Confident that Snape wasn’t going to do more than sneer at him, Tony moved the laser light to Umbridge’s flat nose. “Think I can carve ‘I will not wear pink’ on your forehead? Because I think I can.”
It was vindicating when the woman cowered, cringing away from the beam of light. Tony wouldn’t kill a woman in front of a hundred kids, but if she said one more word he might forget about their innocent eyes.
Harry darted around tables to stand beside Tony, frowning up at him. “What the hell are you doing?” he whispered. “Have you lost the plot?”
“New plot,” Tony told Harry, “you go get your stuff, I’ll officially unenroll you, then we talk about how secrets don’t make friends on the flight home.”
Tony expected Harry to fight with him, to storm away and refuse to leave. He’d been prepared to simply snatch his kid and fly through the glass ceiling, but apparently he and Sirius both misjudged Harry’s unhappiness within the medieval castle.
Harry glanced toward his friends - the redhead boy beside Hermione Granger - then looked up at Tony and nodded shortly.
“I’ll just grab my trunk and meet you out front?”
Tony beamed and turned his focus back on Gandalf.
“Sounds good, kid. I’ll have my first ever parent-teacher conference in the meantime then.”