“I jumped.”
Sunday, November 12
“It’s going to be fine, okay?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“This will be fine.”
“Dad… I want my dad.”
Harry’s eyes flew open and a strangled sound ripped its way from his throat.
There was a moment when all Harry could smell was something earthy and damp and something heavy laid on his chest - crushing him, can he breathe? - and then—
“Shh, kid, you’re okay.”
Harry looked around, his chest heaving as his eyes tried to adjust to the dark. Something brushed Harry’s head and he snapped his head over, looking for the source.
“Dad,” Harry sighed, relaxing some. His dad was sitting in the chair beside his bed. A new chair, one that hadn’t been there before…
Before.
When Harry looked down at his chest, he saw that Joey was the lump on his chest that weighed him down, not… not potatoes.
“Your friends are in the living room,” Tony said quietly. He had his fingers in Harry’s hair, brushing the sweaty hair off Harry’s head over and over. “Do you want to go in there with them?”
Harry shook his head, overwhelmed already.
Ron and Hermione had been at their house for two nights and were meant to go back to Hogwarts that afternoon. Harry wasn’t… ungrateful… to have them there, but he was ready for them to leave.
They were pretending like everything was normal.
Ron was cracking jokes and trying to stuff food down Harry’s throat. Hermione was asking about magic, about Peter, about school.
They were the same and Harry was so bloody different and they were just pretending not to notice. Like it was normal for Hermione to help Harry to the loo, or for Harry to be in a chair and taking three pills and three potions a day.
A pill for depression because Harry hadn’t smiled in… weeks… probably.
A pill for the deficits in Harry’s brain that made his fingers itch and his mind to wander too often.
A pill for infections so that Harry’s stump didn’t get reinfected since Sirius hadn’t been able to just heal the incision. Not that Harry had even seen Sirius since the day he got home, but it wasn’t as if Harry had been asking for him either.
Then a potion for pain.
A potion to sleep.
And a thick and disgusting potion to make up for the fact that Harry didn’t feel like eating anymore.
“Are you hurting, kid?” Tony asked, continuing to brush Harry’s hair off his forehead with his big sad eyes full of pity and heartache.
Tony’s heart ached because he knew that Harry had been a crap son before, a heavy burden, and now that he couldn’t even walk? It was almost laughable what a burden Harry became.
Harry blinked, trying to make Tony understand that Harry couldn’t just… he couldn’t just whine about being in pain. Especially not when everything hurt all the time.
“Yeah,” Tony nodded as if Harry answered him. “You’re in pain. I’ll make you a deal, come out and eat lunch with your friends before they have to leave, save me from Hermione Granger asking me a million questions. Then you take your medicine, I call the freaking Dogfather again, and we’ll watch a movie after the extra hormones have cleared from our house.”
Harry moved his eyes up to his ceiling, fighting down an inappropriate urge to cry.
Nothing inside of Harry wanted to go out in the sitting room and see his friends be the same people they always were. Harry was so different… not just the leg, but… but something inside of him felt different.
Everything was too raw, too exposed, and there was a tiny voice inside Harry’s head that made him want to ask his dad to hold him until all the outside noise and smells and feelings dulled down and Harry could breathe again.
“Fine,” Harry rasped out quietly. He kept his eyes aimed upward, knowing that Tony would just move him from his bed.
Because that was a thing now.
People could just move Harry around.
“Pepper’s going to be home tomorrow,” Tony said while he lifted Harry up. Harry tilted his head on Tony’s collarbone, just for a moment, pretending it was a normal hug instead of Harry needing assistance to do something as simple as getting out of bed.
Hermione said that Harry’s strength would come back and he’d be able to do everything himself again, but as Hermione had two legs Harry figured she was full of shit.
“We’ll be able to make a plan when she gets home,” Tony went on. “You know how she is, she’ll have the best physical therapists, the best tutors, the best therapists all listed for us to go see.”
Harry turned to look at his dad, lifting an eyebrow in a silent question. It took Tony a moment, they were nearly to Harry’s door - Harry reached out to snag his cloak, wrapping it around his waist and covering his legs - when he finally seemed to understand what Harry was asking.
“You- do you want to go back to Midtown right now?” Tony asked.
Oh. They weren’t replacing Strange, they were replacing the muggle teachers.
Harry relaxed some. Mortifying thought that Strange was apparently the one that found Harry in a motel covered in his own sweat and probably dying aside, Harry rather liked the witty man.
Of course Harry had liked Bucky, so maybe Hermione wasn’t the only one that was full of shit.
Harry hadn’t actually even considered school at all. He tried to imagine showing up at Midtown with his stupid chair and his missing leg that couldn’t be hidden there and everyone would stare.
They would stare and whisper and laugh and Harry didn’t want to go at all.
“No,” Harry said in response to Tony’s question.
“I figured not,” Tony said simply, as if Harry wasn’t just putting more of a burden on him by staying home.
Harry opened his mouth, he needed to tell Tony what Bucky told him—
What was Bucky but another Voldemort, really?
He killed Tony’s parents, left him an orphan, and people told Tony they died in a wreck.
—but then they made it to the sitting room and Harry saw that Ron and Hermione were waiting for him.
“Morning,” Ron said cheerfully. He hopped up to grab Harry’s chair from Tony. Instead of pushing Harry to the sofa as Harry expected, he started pushing him toward the lifts. “C’mon, let’s take your dog out back. It’s private, eh? You can get some fresh air.”
“Good idea,” Tony said immediately, causing Harry to feel a bit like it was pre-planned. “Hermione and I will order something for lunch. Kid, any input?”
Harry figured that Tony knew he didn’t have input because he wasn’t hungry, so he just stayed quiet.
Joey seemed thrilled to follow Ron and Harry though and Harry figured that Ron wanted a bit of privacy for whatever thoughts seemed to have his mental wheels turning at…
Harry glanced at a clock on their way to the lifts…
… at eleven am.
Harry squinted in the sunlight out back and then winced when Ron pushed Harry’s chair off the pavement and on the grass, the bump jostling Harry’s body in a way that only worsened the pain shooting through his hips downward.
“Sorry, mate,” Ron said apologetically. He stopped Harry’s chair in the middle of the fenced in back yard behind the tower and then plopped down on the ground beside him.
Harry appreciated the few moments of silence. The sun was shining despite the cold wind blowing, it smelled like autumn, and Joey barking was a peaceful melody to listen to.
Even with the awkward chair beneath him and a cloak wrapped around his waist to hide his legs, Harry felt like before for a moment.
If he closed his eyes, it was before.
“Are you going to be okay?” asked Ron quietly.
And then Harry was dropped gracelessly back in the after.
Harry looked over at Ron and saw his best mate, his first friend, staring at him with solemn blue eyes filled to the brim with worry.
Harry swallowed hard and looked out at where Joey was jumping up and down at the stone bench that Harry usually sat on. It was new, it only appeared after Harry came back from Hogwarts. Harry didn’t use it often, because he usually just took Joey on walks.
Not toward the downtown area, because Harry didn’t want to get mugged again.
Not with Peter, because Harry got him stabbed.
Not with Bucky, because… because.
And not at all anymore, because Harry couldn’t walk.
“I don’t know,” Harry said honestly. When it hurt watching Joey jump around, knowing Harry wouldn’t be able to again? Harry didn’t know if he was going to be okay.
Harry didn’t even know what ‘okay’ was meant to mean anymore.
“You’re going to be okay, kid.”
Ron’s large and warm hand moved to Harry’s arm. Harry looked down and saw that all the freckles on Ron’s hand were the same, but Harry’s arm looked small, pale, gross.
Ron hadn’t changed at all and Harry didn’t even recognize himself.
“If I could stay, I would,” Ron said.
Harry curled his lips to the side, a wry and joyless smile. “Even if I could leave, I wouldn’t.”
Where would he go?
Why would he want to?
“Yeah,” Ron sighed. He gave Harry a more genuine smile, less full of pity. “Honestly, mate, you’re lucky you have lifts here. Imagine going to Hogwarts with a wheelchair. All those stairs?” Ron shivered and Harry forced himself to laugh, knowing that’s what Ron wanted. “It’d be a bloody nightmare.”
Lucky wasn’t really a word Harry thought he’d use to describe himself, but he nodded all the same.
“Yeah, I’m lucky.”
By the time Harry and Ron made it back upstairs with Joey leading the way, there was already food all over the counter in the kitchen. Courtesy of Bruce, it seemed like, since he was standing in the kitchen chatting with Hermione while Tony sat on the sofa poking angrily at his phone.
“Hey, Harry,” Bruce said, looking up from a holographic screen he’d been examining with Hermione. “Hermione, let’s talk more about this next month when you come back, okay? I’d be thrilled to look into it with you.”
Hermione looked like she had won the Quidditch World Cup when she came bouncing over to Harry and Ron with a wide smile and glittering eyes.
“Genome mapping,” Hermione breathed to them. “Can you imagine if there was a way to identify the gene that makes us magic? See if it can be replicated in muggles? There could be a way to tweak the genes in a muggle and give them magic!”
“That’s possible?” Ron asked, leaning against the handlebars of Harry’s chair. “You can use muggle stuff to make magic?”
Hermione easily pushed Ron away from the chair and guided Harry to the kitchen where the food was sitting on the counter. She chatted on quickly, too quickly for Harry to really listen, about genetics and manipulations and DNA and RNA and when Harry looked up at Ron he saw that Ron’s eyes were glazed over, but he was grinning like an idiot at Hermione all the same.
Harry figured that if you really loved someone, you could overlook something as mildly annoying as them talking too much. It was different, with Ron and Hermione. What was one annoying habit of talking too much about something that nobody else understood as compared to… oh, Harry didn’t know… a person only having one leg?
“Breathe, and eat,” Ron told Hermione patiently. “What…” Ron leaned over the counter and looked at all the dishes scattered around. “What is this anyway?”
For just a second - for one bloody second - Harry got drawn in the familiarity of being around Ron and Hermione. For one second, it was before.
Harry went to stand up to see what food was laying out on the counter out of his sight because he thought it was before.
A shooting pain radiated up from Harry’s stump to his hips and then his back when he landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, right in the middle of the kitchen. It was unintentional, but Harry let out a sound something mixed between shock and pain and suddenly everyone was surrounding him and not only did his vision go hazy from the pain but then he couldn’t breathe.
“Harry, are you—”
“Here, let me—”
“Shit, hold on—”
“Okay, everyone back up, now!”
Harry was trying to catch his breath, trying to swim through the pain, and looked up gratefully when his dad stepped up and forced Hermione, Ron, and Bruce to get away.
“Couch?” Tony asked. Harry nodded, flinching hard when Tony lifted him from the floor and carefully moved him to the sofa in the sitting room. Tony waited until he had Harry settled in the corner of the sofa to subtly wipe the tears Harry didn’t know he’d cried off his face.
“Pain medicine and food,” Tony said firmly. “You like the chicken and broccoli crap, right? Bland and full of greens?”
Harry nodded and then dropped his head down when Hermione came over to sit beside him, snuggling in his side and grimacing when Harry jolted away from her.
“Are you okay?” Hermione asked Harry quietly while Tony began a loud conversation in the kitchen, probably smoothing the topic away from Harry and his idiocy.
Tony was a good bloke.
He really didn’t deserve to be saddled with Harry to start with, and he definitely didn’t deserve to be stuck with him then.
Harry was a coward of a son, one who convinced his own father to be a coward. Tony was a genius, Harry was an idiot.
Tony had a company to run, a team to guide. Brilliant, life-changing, ideas to think up and then bring to life.
The very last thing Tony needed was a- a… a crippled kid holding him back.
“Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong,” Hermione said calmly, as if she could read his mind. “You deserve love just as much as anyone. This doesn’t change that.”
Harry snorted quietly, “Whatever you say.”
Really, Hermione was on a streak of being full of shit.
Harry was quiet during lunch, choosing to listen as Bruce and Hermione talked rapid fire about genetics and Ron told Tony about the odds and ins of quidditch. Joey sat by Harry’s foot, even though it was once again hidden by his cloak that Ron returned to him, and Harry kept feeding him pieces of his chicken while his brain swam in the pain relieving potion.
At some point, Harry’s phone rang and it took him a moment to realize it was still in his pocket, he must have fallen asleep with it the night before.
It was Peter and Harry clumsily clicked ignore.
“You’re such a dick,” Ron snorted. He was sitting in a chair beside Harry and watched as Harry ignored Peter’s call. “He’s not so bad, even if he is half spider or whatever. Why are you ignoring him?”
“Ron, mind your business,” Hermione snapped.
Harry saw that Tony and Bruce were both watching the three of them with blandly curious looks on their faces so he hastily muted his phone and put it away.
“But Harry likes him!” Ron protested, only causing Harry to scowl harder down at his lap. “And now that I think I really scared him,” Harry glanced up and Ron looked smug beyond reason, “I think he’s a great boyfriend for Harry!”
“Harry isn’t wanting to date right now, he’s- he’s focused on other things!” Hermione said heatedly. “And Peter should respect that and give him time and space and understanding!”
“And I wish everyone would shut the fuck up,” Harry said, leaning back against the sofa and closing his eyes. “For one minute, one god damned minute, I wish everyone would just shut up.”
Harry knew he was being rude, he knew that he should feel happy that Ron and Hermione even wanted to associate with him at all anymore, but it was just exhausting.
Tony’s voice was wry and playful and washed away the heavy feeling in the air after Harry’s snap.
“One Mississippi… two Mississippi… three Mississippi…”
Tony had a gift for making horrible moments a little less horrible. Somehow, that gift got twisted backward in his son.
Harry was asleep before Tony got to thirty.
*****
“Harry? Harry?”
Harry blinked slowly, bringing himself out of the dreamless sleep he’d been in. As soon as he was more alert, he looked past Hermione to glare at his dad.
“You drugged me,” he accused.
Tony smiled brightly, reclining back in his favorite chair. “You kicked around so much last night that I found the ginger and bookworm on our couch this morning.” Tony waggled his eyebrows playfully. “They didn’t seem to mind, but you need your rest.”
“Don’t do it again,” Harry said harshly before adding on a muttered, “Bastard.”
“Language, Mister Pot— Mister Stark.”
Harry looked to the right so quickly that his neck cracked and his jaw dropped. Standing inside the sitting room, as if she did it every day, was Professor McGonagall.
Not only was it Professor McGonagall, in Harry’s house, but she had on a knee length muggle skirt with a matching blazer on top of it.
Harry had never been so full of shame as he was when his previous Head of House - the person who fought to put Harry on the quidditch team, the woman who had always been stern, but fair, the adult within Hogwarts that Harry had most liked and wanted to make proud of him - looked at Harry and her eyes flicked down to his leg quickly, revealing that Harry knocked his cloak off in his sleep.
“Harry,” Professor McGonagall stepped forward and offered Harry a small smile and her hand for a brief handshake, “how are you?”
“Fine, ma’am,” Harry lied. His face was a hot shade of red when he snatched his cloak off the floor and covered himself with it, hiding his leg from sight.
McGonagall clicked her tongue and Harry looked up, aghast, when she bent down and snatched the cloak from him.
“Your father left this for you to play pranks and other acts of tomfoolery,” she said sternly. “You will not use this to hide yourself from people who care for you. Is that understood, young man?”
In the face of McGonagall’s sternest lecture Harry had received, second only to when he got caught sending Norbert away, Harry could only mumble an agreement.
“I might love you,” Tony said conversationally to McGonagall.
McGonagall turned from Harry to give Tony an unimpressed stare while Hermione and Ron, who Harry could see had their bags packed, gave Harry sympathetic looks.
“You are the one who is endorsing Mister Black’s new lifestyle?” she asked Tony. When he nodded, Harry nearly - nearly - grinned at the scathing noise McGonagall made. “You are two grown men, Mister Stark. You are grown men with a teenage son. It is time to grow up. Have I made myself clear?”
Ron and Harry exchanged a smirk when Tony mumbled out his own sheepish agreement.
“Very well,” McGonagall nodded at Harry and Tony both and then gave Harry his cloak back. “Mister Weasley, Miss Granger, if you’d like to say goodbye, we have a portkey to take.”
Hermione immediately threw herself at Harry, hugging him until Harry felt tears prickle at his eyes.
“I love you so much,” she whispered to him, sounding just as tearful. “Please be so careful, Harry. I’ll see you next month, okay?” Hermione pulled away and put her hands on Harry’s cheeks. “Call me every day, okay? Or… or just text me if you don’t feel like talking.”
“Please do or she’ll drive me bonkers,” Ron joked. He bent down and gave Harry a brief hug before mussing up Harry’s hair with a crooked grin. “We’ll see you soon, mate. Save some danger for the rest of us, eh? No need to keep proving you’re a Gryffindor, we already know.”
Harry nodded absently.
A Gryffindor?
Harry should have went to Slytherin.
“It was a pleasure to see you,” McGonagall said to Harry, somehow sounding genuine. “I’ll bring your friends to you next month. Mister Stark, watch over him,” she told Tony firmly.
Harry lifted his hand in a horribly relieved farewell when Hermione and Ron started to walk off toward the lifts with McGonagall.
“Wait! Professor!” Harry’s heart started racing as he had a sudden thought. Maybe… maybe…
Professor McGonagall turned to Harry and there was a look in the set of her lips that made Harry think she knew what he wanted to ask. That didn’t dissuade him though. Sirius was smart, but McGonagall was a genius. McGonagall was the wizarding version of Tony.
“Professor, is there any way… can you…” Harry sighed and gestured to where his leg used to be, carefully avoiding looking at it. “Can you fix it?” Harry asked her, sounding rather desperate.
McGonagall walked back over to Harry, leaving Ron and Hermione to stand by themselves with identically pained expressions.
“Harry, I can assure you that I have scoured every resource available since I was told of your… accident,” she said gently, kneeling down in front of him to put their faces on the same level. “I spoke with Albus, with one of the greatest healers at St Mungo’s and even with Severus.”
Harry already knew what was coming next.
If McGonagall found a way to regrow his leg, she would have said so from the start.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” McGonagall said sadly, sounding as if she truly was sorry. “I cannot begin to imagine what you are going through, but I know that you will find a way to come through stronger than before.”
Harry nodded in acknowledgement and McGonagall patted his shoulder kindly before standing back up.
“Was it you, ma’am? That sent me my broom in first year?” Harry asked when she started to walk away again.
McGonagall smiled over her shoulder and nodded. “It was. You- you may not have known this, but I was one of the first to know about your mother’s pregnancy with you. Your father quite adamantly stated that I would be Grandmother Minnie.”
“That would have been nice,” Harry said quietly. He could imagine it, really. Maybe he would have grown up with his parents during the year, Tony in the summers. Maybe his parents would have moved to the States and Harry would have lived with all of them.
They would have had holidays together. Professor McGonagall would have nagged Harry until he was just as good at Transfiguration as everyone said James was.
Sirius still would have bought him his first broom, but McGonagall would have bought him one for quidditch. Tony would be there to tinker with the broom, trying to make it better just like he did their refrigerator.
Harry probably would have been happy. He definitely wouldn’t be who he was then.
“Yes, it would have,” McGonagall agreed with a sniffle so quiet Harry might have imagined it. “Write to me, Harry. Thank you, Mister Stark. I’m sure I will see you both again.”
With a final goodbye from Ron and Hermione, the three of them left.
Harry grabbed the cloak from beside him and covered himself back up with it. Even if clearly Harry needed to get used to seeing himself so utterly broken, he didn’t need to do it then.
Tony cleared his throat and moved from the chair to the sofa, throwing his arm around Harry’s shoulders and pulling him to his side.
“Prosthetics are the wave of the future anyway,” he said brightly. “One day people will be having elective amputations just so they can have prosthetic limbs.”
Harry tried to imagine himself with a peg leg like Moody…
The clunking sound of Barty-as-Moody half carrying, half dragging, Harry from the maze to the castle…
A loud clunk, the wooden leg fell away as a normal leg regrew in its place…
Except Harry wouldn’t need a peg leg; he could have something different, more magical…
Wormtail raised his head and stared in disbelief at the silver hand, now attached seamlessly to his arm, as though he were wearing a dazzling glove. He flexed the shining fingers, then, trembling, picked up a small twig on the ground and crushed it into powder.
“My Lord,” he whispered. “Master... it is beautiful... thank you… thank you…”
Harry closed his eyes and breathed slowly.
No.
No magical hand either.
Which really just left…
“No fake leg,” Harry finally said, instantly jerking his thoughts away from the only other fake limb he knew of. “I- just… I can’t.”
“Okay,” Tony said easily, his heavy and warm arm never wavering from its place around Harry’s shoulders. “No prosthetic. I guess that means you don’t want to see the blueprints for the kick ass Iron Kid leg I’m definitely not already building.”
Harry was such a burden.
Instead of answering, Harry carefully lowered his head on Tony’s shoulder.
“Can we just watch a movie?” Harry asked him quietly, hating the way that even his voice sounded weak and pathetic.
Tony tilted his head to touch Harry’s and rubbed the chill from Harry’s shoulders.
“Of course, kid,” he said, sounding fond. “What do you want to watch?”
Harry shrugged and yawned, grateful when Tony snagged the blanket off the back of the sofa and covered them both with it.
“Dealers choice then,” Tony said. “You know what’s going to cheer you up? Killer clown.”
Harry tried to stay awake to watch Pennywise terrorize a group of kids, but he drifted off to sleep before the good guys could defeat evil.
Good guys didn’t always win.
Who knew that more than Harry?
The rest of their day passed slowly, lazily.
It was almost normal, really. Until Harry caught a glimpse of himself on his phone screen after replying to a concerned text from Pepper—
Hey, sweetheart. Are you feeling okay? Is your dad giving you your medicine? I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you.
I took my medicine. I feel like rubbish.
You’re very cute trash. I’ll bring you something to cheer you up, okay?
Harry sent a thumbs up, though his actual thumb had hesitated for a moment over the leg and brain pictures.
A leg would cheer Harry up, as impossible as it seemed. So would a brain, since Harry just went from stupid decision to stupid decision.
When he clicked his screen off though, Harry had to see his reflection in the black screen and it made him cringe. His hair was so greasy that it looked wet and Harry swore that his face used to be… clean… and less thin…
In short, Harry used to be at least a little less Snape-like.
Harry looked around for Tony, hardly noticing when he said he needed to make a call and hadn’t returned yet.
Harry’s chair wasn’t far from the sofa… his bedroom door was open…
Harry slumped down in a miserable ball when he realized that he couldn’t even use his shower.
‘Young man’, McGonagall had called him.
What ‘man’ couldn’t even get to a shower by himself? Almost worse than that, what ‘man’ couldn’t go to the bloody loo by himself?
And… and Hermione was gone.
When Tony came back in the flat, it was to find Harry curled against himself, his face buried in a pillow on his lap, and his shoulders shaking.
“Woah, woah, Harry?” Tony sat down beside Harry and started rubbing his back, making Harry cry that much harder because he was pathetic.
“Hey, what happened? Are you hurt? Harry?”
“I CAN’T FUCKING SHOWER!” Harry screamed in the pillow, muffling his voice some. “I CAN’T GO TO THE BLOODY LOO!” Harry lifted his face and turned, refusing to be too cowardly to say what was eating him alive and taking up most of his thoughts to his lap. “I’m a burden, Dad. I’m- I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, what?” Tony wrapped his arms around Harry and practically dragged Harry to his lap, rocking him side to side while Harry broke.
Harry clutched his dad like a lifeline he didn’t deserve and sobbed out apology after apology.
“I jumped-” Harry cried, getting snot and tears and his disgustingly greasy hair all over Tony’s shoulder. “It’s- it’s my fault, Dad. I jumped. I jumped.”
Harry jumped.
Harry was the idiot who jumped from a speeding car and broke his leg.
Tony didn’t say anything, probably even more disappointed in finding out his son shared none of his brilliance, and just let Harry clutch on him.
When Harry felt boneless, hollowed out and limp against Tony, Tony kept rubbing Harry’s back with slow circles.
“I know you jumped,” Tony said quietly, his hold not wavering. He didn’t let Harry pull away when he tried, he just continued to hold him while Harry’s erratic gasping breaths slowed down. “I know- I know you jumped because you’re so freaking brilliant that you saw an opening and tried to take it. I know that you walked on a broken leg, like a god damned superhero, four blocks to a gas station, because you’re insanely brave.”
“Brilliant, brave,” Harry mocked him despite trying to bury himself further against Tony, wanting - just wanting to… to just feel like someone was there.
Harry never needed someone before, he really didn’t.
Harry didn’t need anyone in the cupboard. He didn’t need anyone when he saw the face of the man that killed his parents when he was only eleven. He didn’t need anyone when he thought he was dying in the chamber while Tom Riddle mocked him.
Harry didn’t need anyone during fourth year, not during the tasks, not when he was in the graveyard alone. He had Sirius, but he didn’t need him.
But Harry needed his dad so damned bad then that it was terrifying because Harry just kept ruining everything.
And Harry would ruin the way Tony held him then. He did it almost immediately.
“Did you know B- did you he killed your parents?” Harry asked Tony as he pulled him closer and kept his face hidden against his neck.
Tony stiffened, his muscles going tense for a moment, then he relaxed.
“I do,” he said evenly. “Sirius and Gandalf did some Jedi mind shit to Barnes and- and Sirius gave me an update.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry said again, his voice hoarse. That time he did pull away, slowly shifting off of Tony and on the spot beside him where he’d been before.
Tony turned to face Harry and put his hands on Harry’s face, lifting it up and forcing Harry to look in his eyes.
“Kid, none of this shit is your fault, alright? It’s Barnes and it’s mine and it’s Steve’s, but it’s not yours. You jumped, sure, and you broke your leg. You ever broken a bone before?”
Harry nodded uncertainly.
“And what happened?”
“I couldn’t wash dishes for a week until the swelling went down,” Harry said slowly, thinking of the broken wrist he had when he was nine. Tony’s face twisted in distaste, so Harry swiftly thought of the next time he broke a bone.
“Then Lockhart vanished my broken arm bone and it had to be regrown in the Hospital Wing,” Harry said. “And- and I broke my leg… same leg… in May and Madame Pomfrey healed it. Then… didn’t I break a rib in September?”
And then there was the time that B- that… that Harry’s arm had been broken, but Harry didn’t think Sirius told Tony about that and Harry wasn’t going to either.
When Harry had to consider it, it sounded like a lot of breaks actually. He didn’t even count the three or four times that he’d fractured his knuckles hitting something only to have Sirius or Madame Pomfrey heal them.
“Okay, exactly.” Tony smiled a little, but his eyes were unusually serious while they bore into Harry’s. “Every time you’ve had a broken bone before, aside from the wrist that we’ll discuss another time—”
Harry scowled, it was probably less impressive with his blotchy face and swollen eyes.
“—it’s been healed, instantly. You fly a broomstick hundreds of feet in the air, kid. Do you every worry about falling? Why would you think that any injury you got couldn’t be healed? If you jumped out of the car with Happy, or Pepper, because God knows she drives like a maniac, we’d go to the hospital for a cast or have Sirius heal it, right?”
Harry nodded again, much slower.
“So what makes you stupid for thinking ‘I need to get away and if I’m injured then I’ll get patched right up’?”
“I…” Harry opened his mouth and closed it again. Harry didn’t even consider getting injured when he jumped from the car. Harry never worried about falling when he flew.
Every one of Harry’s injuries since he turned eleven were magically healed.
“Come on,” Tony said abruptly. He heaved himself to his feet and grinned down at Harry. A grin that almost didn’t look fake. “It’s a Stark symptom to blame yourself for everything. You want to take a bath? I’ve got a huge tub in my room. Private with jets and you’re allowed to submerge that leg—”
“Stump,” Harry said quietly.
“You’re allowed to submerge your thigh,” Tony stressed, “in water now.”
“You’re going to lift a naked fifteen year old and put him in a bath?” Harry asked bitingly, masking him horrifying embarrassment behind bitterness. “That’s sick, maybe even illegal.”
“No, smartass,” Tony grinned crookedly and easily lifted Harry up and moved him to the damn chair. “I’m going to help you get in in your boxers- God, you’re wearing boxers right? Good,” he laughed when Harry nodded. “Then you can remove them yourself and by the time you get out, I’ll have something set up in your bathroom so you don’t need help. And tomorrow we’ll have a tub installed in your bathroom. No biggie.”
Harry’s stomach and his chest clenched at the way Tony listed a complete renovation as ‘no biggie’.
“I’ll find a way to repay you somehow,” Harry said, hating what a burden he was.
Tony paused just outside of his bedroom door and ducked his head down, pressing a firm kiss to Harry’s disgusting hair.
“You never have to repay me,” Tony said softly. “I love you, kid. You’re like the greatest son in the world.”
Harry reached backward and touched Tony’s fingers on the handle of his chair, just for a moment.
“I love you,” he said.
And he’d find a way to repay him, no matter what Tony said.