“You want to go blow shit up?”
Friday, September 21
Harry held an umbrella in one hand and Peter’s hand in the other.
The skies were crying heavily, but not nearly as heavily as Peter was.
The two of them stood in the rain in the graveyard for an hour after Peter’s uncle was buried, forgoing the ‘celebration of life’ lunch that was happening back inside the funeral home.
Harry stared at the handsome grey headstone and let his eyes blur and his mind unfocus while Peter cried beside him.
Harry was lost in the past—
“You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father. A Muggle and a fool…very like your dear mother. But they both had their uses, did they not?”
He imagined Peter was lost to the ‘what if’s’—
What if his uncle hadn’t died?
What if his aunt had been the one to follow him to the store?
Truthfully, Harry didn’t know what Peter was truly thinking as he’d been quiet about the entire incident. All Harry knew was what his Aunt May had told him when she called him Tuesday after school.
Harry didn’t expect to see Peter there, since he was still suspended, but May Parker’s phone call had been a shock.
“Is this Harry?”
Harry frowned at the quivering and soft female voice coming from a number he didn’t recognize.
“Yes?”
The woman had released an alarming sob. “Dear, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I think Peter could use a friend...”
When Harry asked Happy to take him to Peter’s instead of home, he’d only had to step inside and see the look in Mrs Parker’s face to know what happened. She looked like Cedric’s parents had when Harry tried to give them the tournament winnings, like her entire world had been ripped apart.
Harry had ran up the stairs and burst in Peter’s room and felt his chest ache when he saw the look of abject misery on his face.
“My uncle,” Peter whispered, “he’s gone.”
Peter had opened his arms and Harry had climbed up on his bed and let Peter cry silently while he just sat there.
Mrs Parker had been the one to tell Harry about the funeral, imploring Harry to go for support for Peter. Harry would rather never step foot in a cemetery again, but he was relieved when Tony offered to go with him.
Tony has seemed as uncomfortable as Harry was when they arrived and sat through the service. In fact, Tony had looked pale and a little sweaty, but Harry hadn’t felt much better.
Now he stood there with Peter while the others hid from the rain and the grief inside the funeral home, and Harry didn’t have any words to say.
“Thanks for coming,” Peter said hoarsely when the wind began to blow the rain back in their faces.
“Of course,” Harry said quickly. “Do you- do you want to go inside?”
Peter turned and looked at the innocent seeming white building with a parking lot full of cars.
“No.” He squeezed Harry’s hand and then dropped it. “I’m going to go home.”
“Hold on!” Harry pulled on Peter’s hand when he started to walk off. “I’ll give you a ride, it’s cold out,” he protested.
Peter didn’t seem to even hear him, or he didn’t want to, one of the two. He shook his head and gave Harry a wan smile.
“Bye, Bright Eyes,” he said, lifting his hand in goodbye.
Harry stood alone in the lawn and let the umbrella fall and the rain soak his hair as Peter walked away.
“You okay, kid?” Tony asked while they drove home shortly after Peter left.
Harry shrugged, “I’m fine.”
He felt… uneasy. On edge, or something. It was probably just seeing Peter so dejected and upset, or maybe the sight of all the tombstones in the graveyard, but Harry felt off.
Not that he’d be telling Tony that. Ever since Harry got his arse kicked in that alley, Tony had been acting weird and Harry didn’t appreciate it much. He hadn’t asked Harry to leave, yet, and had been pestering him almost constantly, asking what he was doing, what he was thinking, all sorts of mad questions. And on top of that, it seemed like Sirius was avoiding him.
Every time Harry went to see him, he’d only found Thor. And Rhodey was right, Thor was pretty soft despite his size, like Hagrid really, but Harry didn’t go to see him.
He did hang out for an hour after school the day before and listened to Thor talk about his brother Loki.
Harry kind of hoped he’d get to meet Loki eventually, he seemed like a laugh when he wasn’t trying to take over the world.
Tony didn’t say much the rest of the drive home and Harry was relieved for it. It had been a long week. He was already buried in homework he didn’t understand, he had essays he had to write, Sirius was avoiding him, and now Peter was in a funk that Harry couldn’t yank him from. All in all, Harry had better weeks.
“You want to watch a movie or something before dinner?” Tony asked when they climbed on the lift to ride up to their flat.
Harry gave him a suspicious look. “I’ve got homework.”
Tony grinned at him while he loosened the tie knotted up by his neck. “How much homework could you have? You’ve only went to school one day this week.”
Harry flushed and looked down at the muddy dress shoes he had on. Tony hadn’t seemed mad about Harry skipping school Wednesday, which he’d called him out on immediately when Harry got home (apparently in muggle schools they called your parents when you suddenly disappeared), but they hadn’t really discussed it much either.
“Sorry,” Harry muttered. He glanced up at Tony through his lashes and tried to gauge if his smile was forced or not.
“Hey I skipped a hell of a lot more than one day when I went to high school, I mean, I was twelve, but still.”
Harry snorted and tried to imagine himself at twelve navigating the halls of Midtown High. He would probably have been trampled within an hour. Hogwarts was mad, but muggle teens were loud and overwhelming. Everyone wanted to talk to Harry, asking about Tony and the Avengers and Harry’s accent; it was nearly ironic that Harry was just as famous in Midtown as he was Hogwarts.
It was no surprise that Harry hated it just as much as he always had.
“What all homework do you have?” Tony asked when they stepped off the lift and into their flat. “Anything I can help with?”
Harry hesitated. Tony probably could help, but then he’d be fully aware of what an idiot Harry was…
“No,” Harry said lightly. “I think I’ve got the gist of it, I just have to do some worksheets.”
And read half a book by William Shakespeare. And figure out how to make algebra equations not look like squiggly lines. And then read a chapter of his history book and answer a bunch of questions on it.
Harry sighed when he considered it all. Without Hermione to help him, it felt like a lot to do.
“If you need me, I’ll be in my lab,” Tony told Harry when they split off in separate directions. Harry gave him a half-hearted nod and then went to tackle the impossible mountain of homework.
Since the algebra was the most confusing, that’s where Harry started. Except he didn’t actually understand it and then he kept getting distracted checking for messages from Peter.
Which then led him to thinking about how miserable Peter was. Which then led Harry to thinking about how miserable he’d be if someone in his family died.
Then Harry text Sirius, asking where he was. A bar with Clint, apparently, was the swift reply Harry got back. Harry scoffed and sent a picture of a face rolling its eyes. Trust Sirius to celebrate freedom by drinking at three in the afternoon.
Harry decided to skip the algebra, save it for when he could pester Gwen for help, and then tried to do the history assignment.
Harry tapped his fingers on his desk while he read. He pulled at the tie he still wore. Then he decided to change into something more comfortable. And since he was in the bathroom anyway, Harry brushed his teeth and removed the bandage on his mostly healed hand. He only covered it out of habit, since it would be a difficult scar to explain to muggles.
Once he sat back down at his desk, Harry lost his place and regretfully started back at the top of the page he’d been on. He didn’t even make it to the middle of the page before he huffed and slammed the textbook shut.
Why was concentrating so bloody hard? Harry felt like he was on a sharp edge of something and he got up to shake it off.
Literally.
Harry shook his hands out, he rolled his neck, he stretched up to pet Hedwig. When Joey yawned from where he was sleeping on Harry’s bed, Harry figured it was as good of a time as any to take him outside.
It was still raining, so Harry stood beneath the awning just outside the door while Joey quickly did his business. Harry was pleased to see that he was running around and playing perfectly normally. Tony had been worried about Harry’s minor injuries from Monday night, but Harry had only been concerned about Joey.
“Good boy,” Harry praised Joey when he came back with an empty bladder and a wagging tail. “Come on, let’s get you a treat.”
It wasn’t a way to stall, it was a necessity. Joey needed a treat for being such a good dog and Harry could use something to crunch on to help him focus.
Except it didn’t work and Harry wound up pitching Shakespeare across his bedroom and complaining about it while he stormed in the sitting room.
“Stupid fucking Shakespeare, just write normal! And who gives a damn about Macbeth?!” Harry muttered darkly. “Whole damn story is rubbish.”
“There’s a lot of dick jokes in there if you squint through the pretentious bullshit.”
Harry stopped and looked toward the kitchen. Tony was sitting was sitting at the counter, swiping away at a screen that Harry knew was called a ‘hologram’. It seemed a bit like magic, really, the way Tony could make them appear out of the air then control them with just his fingertips before vanishing them completely.
“What are you doing?” Harry asked, definitely not as a way to push off his homework.
Tony glanced from the screen he’d been studying to Harry and tossed him a quick grin.
“Looking for Ultron and Darth Vader and your red skinned hero.”
Harry rolled his eyes, but popped in the seat beside Tony to take a peek at the screen. It was nice that Tony had believed Harry about the bloke with the red skin, since Bruce and Sirius had seemed skeptical about Harry’s story, but Tony had taken Harry at his word.
A refreshing twist, really.
“I told you it might have been a mask,” Harry reminded him. It was foggy, like the quidditch March before Harry fell and cracked his skull, but Harry did remember the red-skinned bloke. It was hard to forget someone shooting web-like ropes from their hands.
“Hmm,” Tony hummed and squinted at the screen. It looked like a view of the top of a building. “Well whoever he is, he’s damn good at hiding.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want bothered,” Harry said drily. “Not everyone goes on the telly bragging about their good deeds.”
“That’s because everyone else didn’t have a hell of a lot of bad PR following them around,” Tony quipped. He waved the screen away and turned to face Harry. “I’m guessing from your incredibly eloquent critique of Shakespeare that the homework isn’t going great?”
“It’s… fine,” Harry hedged. He wiped his sweaty hands off on his sweatpants. “I was just taking a break.”
Tony made a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat and studied Harry speculatively.
“You want to go blow shit up?”
Harry blinked, certain he’d misheard him. “Pardon?”
Tony grinned mischievously, a twinkle in his eyes that Harry idly attributed to when Sirius was planning a complicated prank.
“I said, do you want to go blow shit up?” Tony repeated, drawing the words out slowly.
That… that sounded brilliant, actually.
Harry laughed when Tony’s robot, DUM-E, sent another piece of junk metal in the air and he shot it with the weapons hidden inside the fingertips of Tony’s Iron Man gloves.
“Nailed it!” Tony yelled happily when the piece exploded and sent metal flying in all directions. Tony held Steve’s ‘borrowed’ shield up to cover them from any stray pieces and they both cheered at the destruction.
“PEMDAS, kid, what is it?” Tony asked when DUM-E pulled its robot arm back with another item to shoot. Tony had been quizzing Harry on algebra while they blew stuff up, a surprisingly easy way for Harry to focus.
Apparently he just needed two things to do at a time and then he was fine.
Harry squinted and held his hand up to aim, waiting for the moment he needed to shoot.
“Order of Operations?” Harry said, a question more than a sure answer.
“And what’s it stand for?”
With his previous answer apparently being correct, Harry felt more confident.
“Parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction,” Harry said, focusing more on the robot to throw the metal than he was the problem. The metal went flying and Harry clicked the button inside where his index finger rested just as he said subtraction and Tony whooped when another piece of metal was destroyed.
“You’ve got it,” Tony said with a wide smile. “Alright, ready for another?”
Harry grinned, a smaller smile than Tony’s but genuinely excited with the game they’d made up. “Okay then,” he agreed.
By the time they were interrupted, Harry thought that he might have had an easier time with his exams throughout school if he’d been allowed to blow things up during the tests.
“Mister Stark, your candidates are downstairs,” Jarvis said.
Tony had been getting ready to reload DUM-E with more scrap metal, but he dropped it to the floor with a loud clang and wiped his hands off on his jeans.
“What candidates?” Harry asked as he regretfully pulled Tony’s robot-glove off his hand and sat it gingerly on the counter.
“Magic tutors.”
“What?” Harry’s head whipped around quickly. He’d thought maybe Tony had more inventors coming, not… not magic tutors.
Was that even a thing?!
“I’m sure I mentioned that?” Tony said with a grimace.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Harry said tersely. “Interested in learning magic?”
Tony laughed and opened his lab door, a clear indication he wanted Harry to leave the room.
“I don’t have to take some important wizard test this year,” Tony told him in the corridor outside his lab. “Sirius said if you don’t sit for OWLS then you can’t qualify to be a grown up wizard, or something archaic and complicated that only makes sense to these ass-backwards wizards.”
Harry scowled since he was, technically, one of those ‘ass-backwards wizards’.
“I think dropping out of school revoked my ability to take my OWLS,” Harry said with a bite of annoyance in his tone.
Tony raised a brow at Harry’s tone, but didn’t comment on it. “You’re wrong,” he said with a smirk. “You’re not a dropout, you’re homeschooled, there’s a difference, kid. Come on, do you want to interview these wicked witches and wizards or not?”
“If one of them recognizes me, I don’t want them,” Harry muttered as an agreement.
He played with the idea in his mind while they went down to the ‘business’ level of the Tower. It was… a good idea, actually. Studying magic while going to a muggle school was really just the opposite of what Hermione did- studying muggle subjects in the summers and magic during the school year. Harry probably never would have considered it, but he was relieved that he wouldn’t have to give up his magic altogether.
Harry glanced over where Tony was slouched against the mirrored walls of the lift and cleared his throat.
“Thanks,” Harry said quietly.
Tony grinned crookedly and winked at him. “Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t mention it. Wanda keeps trying to give you lessons and she’s all pissy I won’t let her.”
Harry raised a brow at that, and also as he remembered the fully qualified and recently freed wizard living in the same building as them.
“Why not Wanda? Or Sirius?” he asked.
Tony twisted his lips to the side and rubbed his chin. “Between us, I don’t trust Wanda,” Tony said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone as he looked seriously at Harry. “Her and her brother hated me for years and then suddenly she sees that I’ve got a magic son and she’s all team Avengers? I don’t like it.”
Harry had so many questions about that. He pushed them to the side though to get an answer to the second part of his original question.
“And Sirius?” Harry pushed. If his godfather was living there, free to use magic as he pleased, it made no sense to find someone else to teach Harry. Sirius had helped Harry with a lot more than just spells and tests all last year.
Tony laughed when the lift doors open and he gave Harry an amused look.
“Kid, your godfather has been out celebrating for a week, I don’t think he’s letting up any time soon.”
Harry smiled fondly as he followed Tony to the room where the ‘magic tutors’ waited.
“Sirius has twelve years to make up for,” Harry informed Tony factually before they stepped inside. “He’ll probably grow up in another twelve years.”
Tony chuckled again, “I hope not. Where’s the fun in growing up?”
Harry wondered where the fun in being a child was. He’d certainly never enjoyed being small and weak, but to each their own.
And then Harry couldn’t think any more about it because there were half a dozen witches and wizards inside Tony’s conference room and their eyes all swung to him the instant the door opened.
Bloody hell.
Harry sat slumped in a chair beside Tony while each ‘tutor’ talked.
One witch couldn’t stop staring at Harry’s forehead, so he kicked Tony beneath the table as a silent ‘fuck no’.
A wizard with a giant wart on his nose eagerly described his high OWLS and NEWTS. Tony hummed when he looked over his application.
“And what have you been doing since?” Tony asked him. “I don’t see any jobs on here.”
“I’ve been practicing the mystic arts of meditation,” he said, serious as anything.
Tony smiled blandly and dismissed him with the request that he ‘not call Tony, Tony would call him’.
“I don’t think he had a phone,” Harry pointed out when the wizard left.
Tony scoffed, “Exactly.”
The next witch didn’t have any background in Defense Against Dark Arts, which Harry quietly informed Tony was his favorite subject.
The witch after that could only tutor during the hours Harry was at school, as her kids were all attending primary school during the day.
Tony dismissed the fifth one right off the bat when he remarked about Tony being a ‘wizard wanna-be’.
“He’s got a point,” Harry smirked.
“Shut it.”
The sixth one came in with his head held high and a twist of a smirk on his lips. He looked vaguely familiar with his peculiar golden necklace and red cape, but Harry couldn’t place him. He had a neat appearance, trimmed facial hair on a sharp jaw and intelligent eyes.
“Doctor Stephen Strange,” he said, offering Harry his hand before he did Tony. He sat in the chair at the opposite end of the table from them and spread his hands wide. “I’m here to teach your son magic.”