“Welcome to Casa Rhodes!”
“Welcome to Casa Rhodes,” Rhodey said, spreading his arms wide. “Make yourself at home, your bedroom’s through that door behind the couch. We’ve got a dinner at six.”
Harry was shivering, shaking, and he hadn’t felt so alive in days- weeks, maybe. After Tony left, Harry had resigned himself to laying in the sitting room and watching the news for any report on the Avengers until Tony’s team returned home, but then Rhodey arrived.
And not many things could distract Harry when he was worried that two of the most important people in the world to him were going to die, but Rhodey had done it with a single question.
“Think you can make a four hour flight on your broom?”
So, Harry packed a bag, asked Happy if he’d watch Joey and Hedwig and they left. With Harry beneath his cloak and on his broom, and Rhodey in his robot costume carrying Harry’s bag of clothes, medicine, and toiletries, the two of them flew from New York City to Washington DC where Rhodey lived.
It had been a cold flight, but it had passed by quickly while Harry and Rhodey caught each other up on recent events in their lives.
Harry told Rhodey about his medicine and Luna Park, Rhodey told Harry about a disastrous date with a woman he worked with at the White House. Harry told Rhodey he was suspended from school, Rhodey filled Harry in on a new project the President was working on to change school lunches.
In Harry’s opinion, school lunches seemed to be bloody daft thing for the President of the United States to be concerned about, but maybe he was just lucky with the cafeteria at Midtown.
Rhodey’s place was nice, cozy. It was a loft style flat, with Rhodey’s bedroom and bathroom making up the second floor, but the sitting room, kitchen, and guest suite were on the first floor.
Harry was grateful that despite the warm brown tones Rhodey’s place was decorated with, that there was a telly that covered an entire wall in the guest bedroom. It took Harry a few clicks with the unfamiliar remote until he found a news channel that he left on while he showered and changed.
Surely if the Avengers made any sort of spectacle that it would be all over the news.
While Harry showered, he heard weather reports, stock reports, and a story about a woman whose chihuahua saved her life, nothing about the Avengers.
“How long does it take to fly to Sokavia?” Harry asked Rhodey when he emerged from his room, his hair wet, dressed for dinner.
“Mm, they probably won’t be there until—” Rhodey cut himself off when he turned and looked at Harry. Harry looked over Rhodey’s dress shirt and black trousers and Rhodey looked over Harry’s jeans and long-sleeved shirt with the Avril Lavigne logo on the front.
Rhodey’s lips twitched while he kept staring at Harry until he was suddenly laughing hard, grabbing the back of his sofa to hold himself upright. Harry was scowling, unsure why Rhodey was laughing and not actually enjoying being laughed at.
“What’s so funny?” Harry demanded after Rhodey’s laughter died down but his eyes were still gleaming.
“Kid… kid…” Rhodey took a few deep breaths. “Kid, maybe I didn’t clarify, but it’s dinner with my boss.”
“Okay?” Harry asked slowly. He’d been to lunches at Stark Industries before and Harry always wore jeans. “I didn’t bring any posh suits, Rhodey.”
Rhodey bit his lip and looked up to the ceiling, looking like he was barely refraining from laughing his arse off again.
“You know what? Your last name explains everything,” Rhodey finally said. He smiled at Harry and grabbed a set of keys hanging from a hook. “You don’t have any knives or anything dangerous on you, do you?”
Harry gave Rhodey a bewildered look. “No? Where the hell are we going?”
The White House.
Rhodey was taking Harry to dinner at the White House.
“Rhodey… what’s your job?” Harry whispered to Rhodey when they finished at security and were walking through the fancy halls. Harry had a temporary ID pinned to his shirt and he felt like an idiot since everyone else was wearing suits. Even the security guard that ran a metal detector up and down Harry’s body had been wearing a full suit.
Harry glanced at his phone while they walked, at the news program Jarvis sent him an app for, and frowned when there still wasn’t any report on the Avengers.
“I’m head of the Department of Defense,” Rhodey said, guiding Harry through a left turn down another hall. “All those guys you met, Mike, Sam, and the others? They work for me.”
“And who do you work for?” Harry asked him, his stomach tightening with nerves and possible nausea.
Rhodey stopped at another security checkpoint, this one just as thorough as the last one, and didn’t answer Harry until they got through and stood outside a large white door.
“The Obama’s,” he said. He gave Harry a crooked smile that did nothing to ease Harry’s discomfort. “I hope you like seafood.”
Harry had never had seafood before, Tony was allergic to most types of seafood apparently, but since Harry never had dinner with the President of the United States either, it seemed to be a day for horrible new experiences.
“So, Harry! You’re a wizard?”
Harry choked on the ‘starter’ he’d tentatively taken a bite of, some sort of vegetable soup, and turned a dark red while Rhodey patted him on the back. When Harry could breathe properly and probably looked even stupider than he already had, Harry just blinked owlishly at the muggle President and had no idea what to say.
Sure, President Obama and his wife, Mrs Obama, had been perfectly pleasant and polite so far. They’d welcomed Harry and shook his hand and they all pretended like Harry wasn’t wearing a band shirt while they were all dressed up nice. They’d both made small talk with Rhodey while they sat down and waiters in crisp uniforms served starters and drinks and Harry thought he could slip through the dinner silently.
Then the President asked Harry something like that and Harry was struck silent.
“That’s what President Quahog told me,” President Obama said. He took a spoonful of his soup and then smiled warmly at Harry. “Was he wrong?”
“No… no, sir,” Harry said, desperately hoping it wasn’t some trap to trick him into breaking the law.
Mrs Obama smiled at Harry as if he’d given the correct answer. “That’s amazing,” she said enthusiastically. “We thought once that Malia was a muggleborn, but it comes to find out that Sasha was just hiding her stuffed cat from her.”
Harry relaxed some and politely asked about their daughters to move the subject from magic to their kids. In Harry’s very limited experience, parents could talk for hours about their kids. Unfortunately, President Obama did actually seem to be mates with Tony, as Tony had once said, and he started asking Harry about him.
“What’s your father up to, Harry?” President Obama asked when the waiters were clearing away the soups and bringing out the ‘entrees’.
“He’s going to Sokavia, sir,” Harry said. He looked distrustfully at the food in front of him and took a tentative sniff.
“Mussels in chilli curry and spring onion pancakes,” Rhodey whispered to Harry with a wink. He took a demonstrative bite of his, showing Harry how to eat it. “It’s good.”
Harry tried a bite and discovered that Rhodey wasn’t lying, it was good. It burned Harry’s tongue, probably the chili, but it taste okay anyway.
“What’s in Sokavia?” President Obama asked, looking toward Rhodey.
“It’s Mission Ultron,” Rhodey said. He dabbed his lips with the posh white linen napkin. “They’re hopeful with the new additions to the team that they can end it now.”
“Aah,” Mrs Obama nodded, apparently they already knew about it. “Yes, we’ll all rest easier when— Harry, are you alright?”
Harry was not alright, Harry couldn’t breathe because his throat was swelling up and his face was burning and—
“Oh, shit.” Rhodey jumped up and left Harry to scratch at his throat, trying to pull the shirt away because he couldn’t get any air, and Rhodey was leaving him there to die alone.
“Hold still,” Rhodey said, running back to Harry’s side. He had yellow and white tube in his hand and Harry was gasping for air while Rhodey bit the cap off and suddenly stabbed Harry in the leg.
“Easy now.” Rhodey grabbed Harry and guided him to the floor, holding him upright while Harry wondered about the irony from dying of food poisoning.
The Boy-Who-Lived, dead from poisoning by muggle President.
“I should have guessed that you’d be allergic to shellfish,” Rhodey said casually. He grabbed the collar of Harry’s shirt and ripped it, bringing cool air to Harry’s chest while Harry finally felt like his throat was open enough to get oxygen to his lungs.
Harry inched away when staff for the President started swarming him. There was a bloke in a lab coat that reached out for Harry.
“Fine,” Harry gasped, his moment of terror passing and utter humiliation settling in. “I’m fine.”
Rhodey stood up and offered Harry a hand, a hand that Harry ignored in favor of grabbing the chair to pull himself to shaking feet. When Harry looked down at himself, he saw his chest was bare and covered in blotchy red spots.
“Well, Barrack, Michelle, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll call it an evening,” Rhodey said. It was subtle, but Rhodey leaned closer to Harry and Harry leaned on him, just a bit.
“Of course.” Mrs Obama stepped around the large table and her hand fluttered when she reached out for Harry and Harry leaned further on Rhodey’s side, too embarrassed to even look at her.
“Malia is allergic to peanuts,” President Obama said, coming to stand beside his wife and smiling easily at Harry and Rhodey as if Harry didn’t just nearly die at his table.
“Once, we were at a dinner with foreign dignitaries, very formal, and she took a bite of braised duck that had been cooked with peanut oil. Poor girl swelled up like a balloon and we had to call an ambulance,” the President told Harry.
Harry knew he was trying to cheer Harry up, or something, but Harry just glared at his trainers.
“It was probably from the duck,” Harry muttered. “Eating duck is disgusting.”
There was a beat of silence—
Why could Harry never just shut the hell up?!
—and then Rhodey chuckled and the Obamas laughed and Harry decided that maybe he was a democrat.
“Does your dad know you’re allergic to shellfish?” Rhodey asked when they got back to his place and Harry’s chest was normal looking again.
“Am I?” Harry asked in surprise. “I thought they poisoned me.”
Rhodey laughed and went to the kitchen, getting them both a can of sofa.
“You thought the President of the United States poisoned Tony Stark’s son?” Rhodey asked, tossing Harry a can.
Harry shrugged, opening his drink and letting the cold bubbles soothe his still sore throat. “Loads of people probably want to poison me.”
“Tony does have plenty of enemies,” Rhodey agreed. He sat on the sofa beside Harry, kicked his feet on the table, and chuckled. “Your dad’s going to laugh his ass off when he finds out about this. The first time he met Barrack, back when Barrack was a senator, your dad was drunk off his ass and tried hitting on Michelle.”
“That sounds like Dad,” Harry said. He grabbed the remote from the table beside the sofa and flicked the news on, looking for anything on the Avengers.
“Dad, huh?” Rhodey asked. “Channel 10 usually has the quickest updates, but if they’re not making the news, it’s a good thing.”
Harry would have made a comment to avoid that whole ‘dad’ topic, but it turned out he didn’t need to.
“We’re here reporting live from Sokavia where it seems as if the Avengers - a team of superheroes - are tackling an enemy in the heart of the country! Evacuations have began and citizens are seized with terror as they wonder if their homes and their loved ones will be there by the end of the day.”
Harry’s breath caught in his throat, his lungs seizing more than they had when he’d apparently had an allergic reaction, when he saw what looked like thousands of robots shooting bombs in buildings and bullets in people.
“I thought they were going after one crazy robot bloke,” Harry said hoarsely. He scooted to the edge of his seat and gripped his knees tightly, looking for anyone familiar.
There- in the back, with his hair pulled up in a messy bun and—
“You swore not to be a hero,” Harry growled, his stomach sinking when the camera zoomed in on Sirius flying through the skies on a broomstick and Harry saw a grin on his face. Harry bit his lip to hold back a yelp when Sirius did a barrel roll, barely avoiding being hit by a bullet, and used his wand to save a building before it collapsed.
Sirius was only free in America; was he going to end up arrested for saving lives?
“Damn,” Rhodey whistled. “That’s a hell of an army Ultron built.”
It was.
Harry’s eyes were drawn to the people screaming, running down the street, being gunned down where they stood. There were blurs on screen, women and children being grabbed and ran to safety by someone that had to Pietro.
“He’s going to get shot,” Harry breathed, horrified. “They all are…”
When Harry saw a familiar red and gold suit shooting across the sky and the reporter began screaming about Iron Man entering the gunfire, the screen went blank and Harry actually yelled.
“Rhodey!” Harry turned to him and tried to snatch the remote from his hand. “Turn it back on!”
“This is exactly the sort of thing that a kid doesn’t need to see,” Rhodey said, holding the remote out of Harry’s reach. “It’s been a long day, why don’t you go do kid stuff? Brush your teeth, take your medicine, go to bed?”
Harry sighed and lowered his head. “Okay,” he said. He got up and moved around behind the sofa and then dived across it, snatching the remote, turning the telly back on, and landing neatly on the floor by Rhodey’s feet.
“Youngest seeker in a century,” Harry murmured smugly. “You’ll have to be—”
“We have reports that one of the Avengers has suffered from gunshot wounds while others enter the synagogue in an attempt to locate the source of the chaos!”
Harry was breathing quickly and he stuffed one fist in his mouth while his other hand searched blindly for his phone.
“Jarvis?” Harry said, his voice sounding wrong even to his own ears.
“Yes, Mister Harry?”
Harry’s eyes were glued to the telly, waiting for someone to appear to narrow down who got shot.
“Can- can you send a text? If I tell you what to say?” Harry asked Jarvis. Rhodey’s large hand gripped Harry’s shoulder for a moment and then slid down his arm, grabbing his phone from him.
“I’ll do it,” Rhodey offered. “Who am I texting and what am I saying?”
Harry saw a woman sobbing, holding a baby to her chest, and Harry thought of his mum.
“NOT HARRY! PLEASE!”
And when the bomb went off and a brick slammed in the woman’s head and she fell on top of her baby, both of them teetering on the edge of a dock before falling in the water, Harry felt like he’d been the one submerged in the ice cold depths.
“Tony and Sirius, tell them I love them and don’t die,” Harry whispered. He couldn’t find it in him to find any snark or sarcasm, no jokes to be had. Not when people were dying and Harry hadn’t seen any of the Avengers on screen since the reporter said someone had been shot.
“Done,” Rhodey said. He grabbed Harry’s shoulder again, not too tightly, just tight enough that Harry knew he was there. “I’m going to grab you a sandwich, your pill, and you’re going to take them or I’m turning off the power breaker and we’re living in the dark ages until your dad gets back safe and sound, understand?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Harry murmured, completely distracted by the telly. There were arrows flying as quickly as bullets then and Harry could see Clint leaping nimbly from car to car, shooting arrows one after another at the robots terrorizing the city.
By the time Rhodey came back, pressing a pill in Harry’s hand and tapping him irritatingly on the top of his head until Harry swallowed it quickly, Harry had seen Psycho too.
“There’s too many of them… who’s missing?” Harry mumbled to himself. “Clint, Psycho…”
“Psycho?” Rhodey asked, making a choked laugh when he saw Natasha flit across the screen with kids clinging to her. “Ah, fitting. That is one woman I wouldn’t want to cross.”
Harry’s phone rang then and Harry jumped to see who was calling him, only to see it was the actual only woman who Harry was afraid to cross.
“Harry? Are you there?” Pepper asked with too much forced cheer to sound natural. Harry hummed so she knew he could hear her. “Where are you? I’m coming to the tower. Why don’t we go out tonight? Catch a movie? Go shopping? Oh! Do you want to buy a car? Let’s go buy a car!”
“I’m already watching the news,” Harry said flatly.
Pepper swore loudly, creatively even, and Harry couldn’t even crack a grin because he saw Bruce in all his Hulk glory, grabbing boats and putting them in the ocean so Psycho could put people in them for their own safety.
“You’re home?” Pepper asked.
“Rhodey’s,” Harry told her.
“Got it. Harry, try not to panic, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Someone got shot.”
“I know,” Pepper sighed. “I’m going to call Rhodey, alright? Just… stay calm. I love you.”
Harry suddenly realized that he never told his parents - James and Lily Potter - that he loved them before they died. He couldn’t have, he was only a baby. And… and it seemed like people around Harry were constantly dying young.
“I love you too,” Harry said a bit desperately.
Then he hung up on her so Harry could watch the telly and look for his dad, Sirius, Pietro, Wanda, Thor, or Steve.
“WHY CANT THEY GET MORE THAN TWO FUCKING CAMERAS?” Harry screamed at the telly when the news channel kept switching from two views. One was of the white building that was glowing through the windows that they said the Avengers were inside and one on the streets that kept moving around, showing the deaths and the attacks.
Harry’s phone rang again when lightning began to fly down from the sky to the white building. Harry’s hope that it was his dad or Sirius was crushed again when he saw Gwen’s name and her silly smile on the screen.
“Harry! Hi! Listen, my parents said I can have a friend over and I was thinking you come and we swim and work on homework and—”
“I’m watching the news with Rhodey,” Harry interrupted Gwen’s peppy invite. “I met the President of the United States, I’m allergic to shellfish, and someone’s been shot and I don’t know who.”
“Okay… call me later, love you.”
“I love you.”
Harry clutched his phone tightly when the ground on the telly began shaking and the reported was screaming about an earthquake. Clint and Psycho were shooting down robots while they evacuated crying people, but there were too many people and not enough boats.
Even Harry could do the math.
“That’s Sirius, right?” Rhodey asked when the camera panned to the white building where the lightning had been striking and a red light glowed from the windows.
“Could be Wanda,” Harry muttered. He accepted the sandwich Rhodey forced on him absently and chewed a large enough bite to satisfy him so he didn’t mess with the telly again.
“THERE! That’s Pietro!” Harry yelled, finally seeing a silver blur race across the screen just in time to save a little bit from getting shot.
Harry’s shoulders relaxed some; even if Pietro had pushed Harry out a window, he was also a laugh when he wanted to be and liked to walk Joey with Harry after school.
“Damn it, hang on, kid.” Rhodey let go of Harry and walked off when his phone was the one that rang. Harry didn’t want to listen to Rhodey’s conversation, he wanted to listen to the reports happening rapidly on the screen, but Rhodey was loud.
“What? No! Sir, they can’t. Tell them to stand down. Tony will contain the scene.”
“Civilian evacuations are happening at the south and east borders, but thousands are trapped inside their homes on the west side!”
“I understand the risk of contamination, but there are more than just the army there, sir, there is also a team of guys trying to stop them.”
“WITH THE INCREASE IN TREMORS BENEATH THE SURFACE, VIDEO FOOTAGE IS BECOMING HARDER TO MAINTAIN!”
“IF THEY OBLITERATE AN ENTIRE COUNTRY THEY WILL BE TAKING OUT THE ONLY PEOPLE CAPABLE OF STOPPING THIS!”
Bullets flew across the screen and Clint leaped to save the kid and—
The feed switched to a blurred and shaking view of the white building.
“I AM NOT LEAVING!” Harry snapped the next time his phone rang and it wasn’t anyone he wanted to hear from. “JUST LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!”
“Harry, I—”
The camera feed on the telly went black and Harry screamed and threw his phone at it hard enough to shatter his phone screen and the telly screen.
“Kid, hey!” Rhodey shouted at Harry and Harry turned around with his hands on his head, pulling hard at his hair.
“Go outside and run the block,” Rhodey said, tilting his phone away from his mouth while he stared hard at Harry. “Run it hard, okay? Then come back. If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’ll hunt you down.”
Harry recognized that for the escape that it was and he was outside pounding the pavement as hard as he could and convinced himself the burn in his throat was from running and not his complete lack of control in anything.
There were robots trying to kill the only family Harry had. Clint was probably dead. Tony was probably dead. Sirius was probably dead. The camera feeds weren’t working and Harry couldn’t call anyone because he threw his phone just like he threw the beanbags and everything was falling apart.
“Need to keep going?” Rhodey asked when Harry poked his head inside the door and saw that Rhodey was still on his phone. Harry had ran the block twice and he needed to keep running or else he was going to start screaming. Harry nodded and Rhodey looked at his wristwatch.
“Ten minutes, poke back in here,” Rhodey said.
Harry ran again and he kept running until he was drenched with sweat and bent over in Rhodey’s backyard, heaving and puking on the grass. When Harry lifted his head, staring bleakly in the sparse trees that lined the back of Rhodey’s yard, Harry finally saw something he could control.
“Hey!” Harry’s throat felt like he’d ripped it down the front, but Harry screamed again. “HEY!”
There was a shadow that tried to hide behind the trees but Harry was on it before the bloke with the ball cap could disappear.
Harry didn’t have a wand or a weapon, but he had absolute out of control rage and fear and he slammed the bloke against the tree before he could even think it through.
“Who the hell are you?” Harry demanded, straining to lean up and glare in the mysterious blokes face. “Death eater? Spy? Who are you?”
The bloke reached up and pulled his cap off his head, lightly shoving Harry away from him as he did.
“Hey,” Bucky said. “What’s a death eater?”
“You done shagging my godfather?” Harry yelled at Bucky when he ran from the tower. Harry didn’t have a real reason to be so bitter, but he thought Sirius deserved something better than one night with a fit bloke from a bar.
Bucky turned around and Harry stood from the steps he’d been sitting on when he saw the wild look in his eyes.
“Hey, you okay?” Harry asked, stepping slowly toward him.
“Stay away,” Bucky stammered, holding his hands up. “D-don’t come any closer.”
“Why?” Harry asked. If everyone said Harry had a brain deficit, why not walk right up to the bloke who looked read to kill him. “I’m not scared,” Harry said, his voice steady.
“Stop,” Bucky warned him. Harry stepped closer, brought in by the danger. “I said stop!” Bucky yelled, reaching out and pushing Harry hard on the chest, knocking him flat on his back on the pavement.
“Don’t fucking touch me, you piece of shit,” Harry snapped, scrambling backward on the stairs when Bucky stepped toward him. “You want to run off, leave Sirius alone? JUST GO! HE DOESN’T NEED YOU!”
Bucky shook his head and then there was a sound behind Harry, the inner door of the tower entrance opening, and Bucky fled.
“Are you following me?” Harry demanded. “Why?”
“I- I…”
“‘I- I- I…’” Harry mocked Bucky, misplacing all his anger and shaky instability on this mad bloke who had taken up stalking Harry. “SPIT IT OUT!”
“I was making sure you were safe!” Bucky yelled. “You’re- you’re a kid! Why are you living in that place? Do you even know who those people are?”
“Harry? Kid?”
Harry leaned around the tree and saw Rhodey poking his head out the back door.
“Don’t fucking move,” Harry hissed at Bucky. “This creepy conversation is not over!”
Except by the time Harry went to assure Rhodey he was fine, he was still running, Bucky had disappeared and Harry slammed his fist in the tree where Bucky had previously been standing in front of.
“I am the worst uncle ever,” Rhodey said, forcing Harry to sit on the sofa when Harry went back inside. Rhodey grabbed Harry’s right hand and Harry hissed through his teeth.
“Broken,” Rhodey declared. “Kid, you have to rest and relax, alright? I’m in touch with the National Guard personnel that are headed over there now and as soon as we get an update, I’ll let you know.”
Harry laid his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes when it felt like everything was spinning around him.
“What do we do now?” Harry asked Rhodey when Rhodey sat beside Harry a few minutes later and placed an ice pack on Harry’s broken knuckles.
Rhodey sighed and put his arm around Harry’s shoulders, letting Harry rest his spinning and aching head on his shoulders.
“Now we wait.”