“I’m just thankful to be here.”
Thursday, November 23
Harry looked around the flat and felt… felt…
Overwhelmed.
Tony had the entire place redone while they were gone and Harry was so ungrateful because all he could think was how much he hated it.
The flat was still completely open, with the walkway from the lifts to the rest of the place lined up with doors that led to Tony’s bedroom, office, and lab. Harry’s bedroom door was still on the far side of the sitting room. The back wall of the house was still made up of glass. It was still painted a fresh and clean shade of white.
But everything else was different.
The tall bar table that they used as a dining table that separated the kitchen from the sitting room had been replaced with a longer and more permanent looking fixture. It curved around, truly separating the kitchen from the rest of the house, and instead of being the same height, it was… it was the perfect height where Harry could just roll up to it and be comfortable.
The rest of the kitchen had been redone as well, with sinks low enough that Harry could reach and even a new refrigerator. Harry saw a microwave down low and counters built in low.
Harry was pretty sure the telly had been upgraded, it looked bigger, and the drawers that used to be built up in the wall, the ones with the game equipment, had all been lowered.
It looked posh still, ‘modern’ and ‘techy’ (Tony’s words), and Harry… Harry hated it.
“What do you think?” Tony asked brightly, gesturing around their place. “Wait! Look!”
Harry sat, dumbstruck, when Tony ran around the new bar/table setup and threw open a ceiling to floor cabinet beside the refrigerator.
“Check it out, cereal!” Tony declared dramatically, waving at where Harry could see an entire shelf filled with cereal right at… at Harry height.
Harry looked up at Tony’s smile and felt something cracking in his chest.
“I’m so sorry,” Harry said hoarsely. He looked around the entire place that had been Tony’s home before Harry showed up and ruined Tony’s life- Tony’s home.
“I- I’m sorry,” Harry said again. Apologies didn’t mean anything, Harry knew that, but he couldn’t just not apologize. Not when Harry wrecked Tony’s life and then wrecked his home.
Harry didn’t think Tony would ever hit him, even when Harry had given him a thousand reasons to do it, but Harry would have felt better if he did.
“Sorry? For what?” Tony asked, pretending to be stupid, apparently. He walked casually around the new bar setup, stopping to turn on the additional sink that was at ‘Harry height’. “Anything you need in the kitchen, it’s all here! Look!”
Harry sat silently while Tony went through the entire flat, showing off a million changes, and Harry’s guilt just grew and grew.
“And this drawer…” Tony opened a drawer built in the wall, just beside Harry’s door. “Tada! I had them install shelves to store potions. Just put your thumb on this scanner, the drawer pops open, and you can access all your medicine in one place!”
Harry nodded, since it seemed like Tony didn’t want to hear more apologies.
“Well, home sweet home!” Tony said cheerily. “Of course, we’re going to move the furniture around to set up a table here for dinner tonight, but—”
Harry had never been so relieved to hear the lifts ding as he had been in that moment.
Sirius bound off the lift, dressed in his pajamas still, and stopped to look around at the changes.
“What are you going to do when Harry’s walking again?” Sirius asked bluntly. “Bit of an overreaction, innit?”
“He doesn’t want a prosthetic and he’s got body autonomy here,” Tony said airily. “Plus, he’s still growing, so who knows…”
Harry developed a new super power when they took his leg. It wasn’t an Iron Suit or super speed, it was the very unique ability to make all the noise around him absolutely meaningless.
Tony and Sirius could stand there discussing Harry all they wanted with their hands flying around and their mouths moving and Harry didn’t hear a single word they said.
Instead, Harry just looked around and wondered how much money Tony spent because Harry couldn’t bear the thought of having some fake leg - like Moody, like Pettigrew, like Bucky - attached to his body.
Thousands? A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand?
Could all the galleons in Harry’s vault repay him?
Would Tony let him repay him?
Tony had done everything for Harry. Tony was… Tony was everything.
And Harry sat in his chair in that flat and felt like nothing.
“Where you going?” Sirius asked, his voice breaking through Harry’s fuzzy bubble that kept him separate from the conversation happening above his head.
“Shower,” Harry said shortly. He pushed his chair to his room and paused when he saw that even his doorknob had been moved. Tony… Tony had his doorknob lowered so Harry barely had to stretch to reach it.
“Dinner’s at five!” Tony called to Harry’s back.
Harry nodded and wasn’t even surprised when Sirius followed Harry in his room and flopped down on Harry’s bed.
“On a scale of Dursleys the summer you were twelve to potions class after your name came out of the goblet, how much do you hate it here right now?”
Harry paused, caught off guard by the way his closet had been redone- all his shirts, jackets, jumpers, and hoodies were lowered. And hung up, which Harry didn’t usually do.
When Harry turned around, he noticed that his two dressers that were filled with jeans, trousers, socks, pajamas, and pants were swapped for a short and wide dresser in a marble topped material that matched Harry’s nightstand.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars, Harry realized with stinging eyes. Tony spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Harry because he wouldn’t just get a stupid fake leg.
“Siri, I fucked up,” Harry whispered, his eyes caught on that new dresser. “I fucked up so bad.”
Sirius sat up on Harry’s bed and scooted to the end of it, his face suddenly more solemn despite the tangled black hair and ratty Queen shirt he wore.
“What’d you do?” Sirius asked. “People have been confessing their murders to me lately, so as long as there’s no decapitated heads in your closet…”
Harry furrowed his brows for a moment, bemused by that remark, and then shook his head to clear that question away.
“I- Tony wanted me to get a fake leg and I said no, Siri. I said no.” Harry looked at Sirius desperately, willing him to understand Harry’s guilt. “I’ve ruined everything. I got my leg cut off and I wouldn’t let Tony replace it and now- now he changed his whole house because I’m an idiot.”
“Oh, yeah, you shouldn’t have gotten in that car with Barnes,” Sirius nodded. “Honestly, Harry, that was about as daft as entering the tournament.”
“Don’t joke,” Harry snapped. He didn’t have the patience to play with Sirius, he needed real advice.
“No, really,” Sirius shrugged. “This is inviting the dementors on the train all over again. You never learn, do you, kiddo?”
“Siri—”
“Merlin, Harry, while we’re on the subject, why did you let Ginny open the chamber? She was only a kid.”
“That’s not—”
“And then you thought it would be fun to play quidditch with dementors.”
“Please—”
“Really, Harry, you just never think.”
“SHUT UP!” Harry yelled, pissed by Sirius’ glib bullshit. “YOU THINK YOU’RE BEING FUNNY AND IT’S NOT FUNNY!”
None of it was funny. Harry couldn’t find a single funny thing in that moment.
Harry was the heaviest bloody burden in the world and Tony didn’t deserve it.
Sirius deserved it, Sirius was a prat, but Tony… Tony was the type of person who didn’t bat and eye before remodeling his entire house just for Harry to get cereal and medicine a little easier.
“Harry…” Sirius leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands wrapped around his neck. Sirius wasn’t joking anymore, he was being… serious.
“Tony doesn’t care to change the place up, he doesn’t care if you get a fake leg or not. He just wants you to be happy in your home,” Sirius said imploringly with his big grey eyes so pathetically like Padfoot.
Harry loved Sirius, but occasionally he preferred Padfoot.
“It was his home first,” Harry told Sirius. “He changed it all because of me; I stole his life and his home.”
“He gave you his home,” Sirius insisted. “It’s your home too, Harry. It’s your life and your home and I think it’s nice that he made it easier for you.”
It was nice.
It was nice that Tony had all of Harry’s clothes moved where he could reach them and potions and medicine put in a drawer he could reach.
It was so nice and…
“Nobody’s ever just nice,” Harry said, his voice breaking at the end. He silently begged Sirius to understand that Harry didn’t understand. “Siri… you’re- you’re the only one who ever does nice things and it evens out because you’re a dick.”
Sirius smirked, unflappable bastard. “You know what your problem is?”
Harry raised a brow; he would love to know what Sirius thought his problem was.
Sirius got up and put his hand on Harry’s should, grinning down at him.
“You spent a whole life getting beat up on, hated on, and told that you were unlovable and a burden to be bore.” Sirius held his hand up when Harry tried to interrupt, grimacing slightly when Harry twitched at the abrupt motion. “Kiddo, I get it. When your grandmum, James’ mum, went and bought me a bed and furniture so I could live with them, I bawled like a baby.”
Harry wasn’t bawling, yet, which made him feel a little better about himself.
“You know what the shiny little therapist that Clint recommended to me said?”
Harry looked up, surprised. He didn’t know Sirius was seeing a therapist, though God knew he needed one.
“What?” Harry asked when Sirius seemed to be waiting for a response.
“Child abuse is some of the hardest abuse to overcome because it’s all done in our formative years and tends to stick around in our brains the longest,” Sirius said, sounding like Hermione just then. “Just because some bloody whale said you weren’t worth changing the size of some cabinets for, it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Harry’s jaw dropped when Sirius squeezed Harry’s shoulder, ruffled his hair, then just walked out.
Aside from the fact that Harry wasn’t abused, that was the most adult that Sirius had ever sounded in his life.
As with all changes in Harry’s life, he hated it.
Harry looked down at himself when he was sitting on the little bench in the ridiculously posh tub in his bathroom. With the clear water and no clothes in the way, Harry could see his… his legs.
His right leg was stretched out, a little distorted looking from the water. It was a bit thinner than normal, Harry hadn’t walked on it since- since his pointless break to the gas station. It took a great deal of willpower to force himself to move his gaze to the left and look at the other… leg.
Even Harry’s left thigh was thinner than Harry’s right. It went down to right above where his right leg had a knee and then it just… it just ended. Harry could lean back and look at it from a distance and trick himself into thinking that there was a knee bent and a leg beneath the stump that was left.
But there wasn’t.
Voldemort was dead.
Harry was in a wheelchair.
Tony spent a fortune to remodel his house just because Harry said he didn’t want a fake leg.
Harry laid his head back on the little cushion spot and closed his eyes.
When did everything get so overwhelming?
Getting dressed used to be so easy that Harry could do it with his eyes closed and half-asleep.
Now, Harry had to force his left thigh in his trousers and then he had to do an awkward jump and shimmy sort of move to get his trousers pulled up. Putting a belt on was awkward. Buttoning his trousers was awkward. Putting shoes on was awkward.
Harry was awkward.
Harry slid his closet shut after he got dressed and looked himself over in the mirror covered door.
From the waist up, Harry looked decent enough. Pepper had texted him and told him to wear his dark green dress shirt and it used to fit Harry snuggly. It used to make Harry look toned and it showed off all the few wiry muscles he had from quidditch. It set off Harry’s eyes nicely and it was a good contrast to his dark hair and fair skin.
It was the waist down that was painful to look at. The same black trousers that used to make Harry look taller suddenly looked… flat. The left side of the trousers were slack and nothing could make Harry look tall in a wheelchair.
Impulsively, Harry reached out for one of the bars mounted to the walls all over the flat and pulled himself up to stand on one very shaky leg.
Nope.
Even standing, Harry didn’t look tall anymore.
Harry’s thoughts on how he looked were thankfully interrupted by a ding from his phone.
Do you want to come outside or I can come up?
Harry rolled his shoulders and grimaced as he used his fingers to comb down his hair.
“Hey, girl,” Harry whistled at Hedwig, waking the cranky owl up. “You wanna go outside with me?”
Hedwig stretched her wings and hooted softly while Joey heard his favorite word and began barking his head off.
Meet me out back?
Harry checked his appearance one more time, wishing he wasn’t about to go talk with Peter.
Why Pepper invited him to Thanksgiving, Harry had no idea.
Harry rolled himself outside, mildly pleased that he was able to do it himself, and then stopped right outside the back door.
Peter was sitting on the bench in the back garden area with his head tilted backward and his neck gracefully curved. He was dressed up as well, in the same suit he wore to Harry’s birthday, and he had his backpack on the bench beside him.
With the sun peeking through the clouds, a little ray touching Peter’s relaxed face, he looked beautiful.
Beautiful was an odd word to use to describe a bloke, but it was true all the same.
“I can hear your heart beat,” Peter murmured with his eyes closed and a small grin on his lips. Peter’s quiet words broke the moment and Hedwig flew off Harry’s shoulder and Joey took off to run around the yard.
“That’s creepy,” Harry said, not moving any further in the yard. Harry wiped his sweaty palms off on his trousers. “How was lunch with your family?”
“Sad,” Peter said bluntly. He lifted his head up and Harry thought the edges of his eyes looked a bit red.
Not that Harry was judging, he seemed to cry at the drop of a quill recently.
“It was at my Aunt Kim’s house, she’s my dad and Uncle Ben’s younger sister,” Peter explained. “Everyone was crying and then pretending to be happy anyway.”
“Oh.” Harry grimaced in genuine sympathy. “Well nobody here has died recently, so… so probably nobody will cry.”
Peter smiled when Joey chose that moment to run to him and jump up on him, getting muddy paws on Peter’s nice clothes.
“Hey, buddy.” Peter scratched Joey’s ears, making him smack his tail on the ground. “You miss me, huh? You miss me?”
Harry pushed himself out in the yard and then scowled at the mud that seemed to be a wheelchair’s worst enemy.
“Want some help?” Peter offered.
“No,” Harry said stubbornly. He kept pushing, willing the bloody chair to move, and then smirked victoriously when he made it in front of the bench.
“So… so can we talk?” Peter asked, sounding nervous.
Harry shrugged. “I thought that’s what we were doing.”
Peter grinned and lightly pushed Joey away, focusing on Harry. “I’m sorry I tricked you.”
“I’m sorry I got you stabbed,” Harry said genuinely.
“I’m sorry I led you to an ambush.”
“I’m sorry I threw a beanbag at your head.”
Even if he deserved it, Harry silently amended himself.
“I’m sorry I screamed at you.”
Harry hesitated, fairly certain he’d apologized for the only things he’d done wrong. “I’m not sorry for not telling you about magic before because it’s illegal,” he explained, wanting to clear up everything that lingered between them. “Or, it was, before Sirius announced it on the bloody news.”
And now Harry, Tony, and Sirius were all ‘formally invited’ to go speak with the President of MACUSA about ‘amending the American Statute of Secrecy’.
America was insane.
“Sirius told me,” Peter said with a frown of his own. “He’s kind of been filling in the blanks for me on what the hell you and your friends talk about.”
Harry grinned faintly at that; Ron had been having a laugh at Peter’s expense. Which had caused Harry to laugh.
He’d screenshot and saved ‘What’s MACUSA?’ ‘An acronym.’ for anytime he needed a quick pick-me-up.
“Sirius is a bit behind on most things because he was in prison for twelve years, so don’t take him too seriously,” Harry warned Peter.
Peter grinned and there was a little hopeful light in his eyes to match the gold flecks. “If I have questions, can I ask you?”
“Can I ask you about your spider senses?” Harry asked, a bit coolly. He knew Peter apologized, but it was still embarrassing that Harry had hung out with Spider-Bloke for weeks and weeks and didn’t realize it was Peter.
“I think all the cats are out of the bags,” Peter said with a shrug. “You… you know about me, I know about you…”
That was what he’d said the last time they talked in person.
“We don’t have to have any more secrets! You know about me, I know about you!”
“Brilliant.”
“I just want to talk, to see if we can fix this!”
“There is nothing to fix!”
“Well I’m so freaking in love with you that it hurts, so how do I fix that??”
And then Harry had started screaming because if Peter loved him, which Harry really doubted, he could do better.
“You don’t have to do this,” Harry said, thinking of their last conversation. “I- I’m fine, really. I’ve got my dad and Sirius…”
It was a miracle Tony didn’t just drop Harry off at an orphanage, really.
Peter laughed mirthlessly and looked up at the sky in what seemed to be blatant exasperation.
“I’m going to do something really stupid,” he said.
Harry didn’t even get a chance to make a biting retort to that before Peter was on his feet, one hand on the arm rest, one hand cupping Harry’s face, and his mouth on Harry’s.
It took Harry a moment to work through his initial surprise, but then his brain caught up to his mouth. Harry reached out, grabbing Peter by the front of his shirt, and pulled him closer while he tilted his head to the side, offering a better angle to deepen the kiss.
Peter groaned in the back of his throat when Harry slipped his hands between the buttons of his shirt and felt bare skin. Harry made his own sound when Peter slowly, slow enough that Harry could stop him if he wanted, slid his tongue across the bottom of Harry’s lip and then bit it lightly.
Even if it was a pity kiss, it was still a good one.
Peter eventually pulled away and his heart was racing beneath Harry’s hand.
“I don’t feel bad for you,” Peter said. He kissed Harry again, a quick and chaste one. “This isn’t pity. You’re- you’re a freaking badass, Harry, and if anyone’s lowering their standards here, it’s you.”
“You are a domestic terrorist,” Harry tried to drawl carelessly, the effect was somewhat lessened by his shortness of breath from the enthusiastic snogging. “And you’re half spider, which is gross.”
Peter straightened up then and laughed, loudly and genuinely, before smiling down at Harry. “Man, you know how to make a guy feel special, Bright Eyes. Do you call everyone you kiss gross afterward?”
“Yes,” Harry lied seriously. He bit his lip then, looking off to the tree where Hedwig was perched in the branches, and figured if they were being honest then he should be completely honest.
“I’m fucked up,” Harry said without looking at Peter. “When I told you I jumped off a roof, I meant it. And- and a lot of nights I still wish I’d hit the ground.”
And sometimes Harry figured that was how he’d go out, since apparently Voldemort wasn’t around to do him in anymore.
Maybe it would be a hop, maybe it would be half a dozen dreamless sleeps at once, but Harry’s therapist said that Harry was his own worst enemy once and Harry believed him.
Especially since Bucky killed Voldemort.
Peter sat back down on the bench and Harry did some fumbling maneuvers to turn his chair and back up so it was as if they were sitting together.
“The summer I was fourteen, I spent three months in the hospital,” Peter said, catching Harry’s interest immediately. Peter was the one avoiding Harry’s gaze then, his eyes were locked on Joey, moving as Joey moved.
“I took a bottle of Tylenol and my Uncle Ben found me in the bathroom with the empty bottle,” Peter went on flatly. “He called an ambulance, I went to the ER, and after they pumped my stomach and filled me with a bunch of medicine to fix my liver, they sent me to the juvenile psych floor.”
“Why?” Harry breathed, caught up in Peter’s story. “Why did you…?”
Why did he do it?
What would have happened if he’d succeeded?
Harry’s insides turned cold and he crossed his arms over his chest, fighting off the chill that overtook him.
“Everyone’s got shit,” Peter said, his voice still flat. He shrugged and then looked toward Harry, locking eyes. “So if you’re fucked up for jumping off a roof then I’m fucked up too.”
“You should see a therapist,” Harry said with a tiny smirk. “Apparently everyone’s doing it now.”
“Yeah? Maybe I should,” Peter said with his own smirk. “Except I think the whole spider DNA thing might freak them out.”
“I talked about a basilisk to mine,” Harry shrugged. “Michael Morris, he’s a nice bloke.”
Harry checked the time and sighed to see that they needed to go inside.
“Pepper said dinner was at five,” Harry told Peter. “Er… are you- do you still want to go inside?”
Personally, Harry would rather skip the event. He’d probably beg off, except then Pepper would be upset and Harry hated upsetting Pepper.
“Will you tell me about the giant snake on the way up?” Peter asked. He got up and swung his bag around on his back. Harry didn’t argue when he grabbed the handles of Harry’s chair, Harry’s arms were tired from trying to fight through the mud anyway.
“It’s not really that exciting,” Harry hedged. He whistled for Joey and Hedwig on their way back inside and then launched in the story. It sounded ridiculous, trying to explain about a cursed diary and a basilisk filtering through plumbing in the walls, but Peter was a decent listener.
By the time they arrived at the top floor, Harry had been trying to describe the magic in Phoenix tears.
And then they both stopped dead in the entrance of Harry and Tony’s flat because—
Harry had only been outside for an hour?!
—the place was packed with people.
“Hey, kiddo!” Sirius bound over to Harry and grinned down at him. He was dressed nicely, in black trousers and a light grey dress shirt, and he had his hair pulled back in a neat ponytail.
“Peter, good to see you,” Sirius winked at Peter which made Harry scowl. “I’ve always wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving, you know.”
“It’s Sirius’ most recent dream,” Harry drawled, glancing uneasily around at the familiar people filling the flat.
Pepper and Happy were loading the kitchen bar with more food than even feasts at Hogwarts had. Tony was leaning against the kitchen counter, a glass of what Harry thought might be wine in one hand and his other hand waving around wildly, as he told Rhodey some story that Bruce was listening to as well. Pietro and Psycho were setting the obscenely large table with plates, silverware, cups, and candles.
The telly was on in the sitting room behind the table, and some sport game was playing on the screen that Clint was sitting on the edge of Tony’s recliner yelling at.
Harry knew he should have grabbed his cloak.
Ding!
Harry jolted in his seat at the sound of the lift opening behind him. He turned his head and saw Professor Strange stepping off the lift in normal clothes with a bottle of wine in each hand.
“Oh, good, someone invited the ‘sorcerer’,” Sirius muttered, shooting Strange a dark look that Harry didn’t think he quite deserved.
If Tony wasn’t lying, and Harry didn’t think he’d lied to him yet, then Strange was the one who found Harry and kept him from dying.
“Hello,” Strange said politely, stepping up to where the three of them had been lingering. He held up the bottles of wine. “Where should I put these?”
“Oh, Stephen!” Pepper’s voice caught everyone’s attention and Harry glared down at his lap when he was an inadvertent subject of their sudden scrutiny. “You can give the wine to Tony, but you didn’t need to bring anything!”
“I never arrive empty handed,” Strange said smoothly. He juggled one bottle to tuck it in his other arm so he could pat Harry’s shoulder briefly before walking toward the kitchen.
“Harry, come test the desserts,” Rhodey called. He was dressed up in a suit and had his usual easy smile on his face. “I brought brownies.”
“Adult brownies?” Psycho asked, looking up from where she’d been lighting posh looking candles on the table.
“Would I be offering them to a fifteen year old if so?” Rhodey scoffed.
“Tony was doing a hell of a lot more than pot at Harry’s age,” Happy quipped, drawing a few laughs.
Harry started pushing himself toward the kitchen, refusing to look like an easy target to the rooms filled with assassins and heroes, and was absently relieved that Peter fell in step beside him.
“Hey, kid.” Tony put his wineglass down and waved Bruce off when Harry made it to the kitchen. “I’d offer you wine, but your future stepmom might kill me.”
“Or the interaction of medication and alcohol would kill Harry,” Pepper said without even looking away from where she was fluffing some odd looking platter. “No booze, Tony.”
“The fun police strike again,” Tony said sadly.
“The responsible parent strikes again, you mean,” Rhodey chuckled. He grabbed a silver pan off the counter and offered it to Harry before offering it to Peter as well. “It’s my grandma’s recipe,” he explained when Harry was inspecting the square chocolate brownie. “Your dad goes crazy for them.”
Harry took a small bite while Peter ate half of his in a go.
“It’s good,” Harry said truthfully.
“It’s freaking amazing,” Peter said. He reached for another one and stuck his lower lip out when Rhodey moved the pan away from him. “I thought we were friends.”
“You thought wrong,” Rhodey said jokingly. “I hate spiders.”
“Who doesn’t?” Tony asked as he quickly snatched three brownies from the pan Rhodey held.
“Harry doesn’t,” Peter said smugly.
“Harry’s clearly got bad taste,” Strange said as he joined the conversation. He offered Harry his hand now that it was empty. “How are you? Incision healing up? No phantom pains? Temperature normal ranges?”
“I’m a little off-balanced when I run,” Harry said flatly, embarrassed by the focus on him and his leg again. Peter and Tony were the only two who laughed, but Strange had an amused glimmer in his eyes as he shook Harry’s hand.
“Yeah, that’ll wear off eventually,” Strange said with a brief wink. “We’re back on schedule for our session on Monday, right?”
“We’ll see,” Tony interrupted quickly. “Hey, let’s sit down and eat, everyone!”
“Not yet,” Clint called, his gaze still locked on the telly. “Come on… come on… SON OF A BITCH!”
Harry jolted in his chair and Pepper swiftly threw a roll at the back of Clint’s head while Tony turned the telly off with a press of a button on his phone.
“It’s dinner time,” Pepper told Clint firmly. “Eat.”
“I can do it myself,” Harry snapped, probably more defensively than needed when Tony started to push him toward the table.
“Better yet, I’ve got it,” Rhodey said, easily snagging the handles of the wheelchair from Tony. “Jesus, kid, why are you using a chair from the Stone Age? Is your dad too cheap to get one of those fancy electric ones?”
“I don’t need a fancy electric one,” Harry said. He put his hands on his lap and gave Peter a pointed look when Rhodey pushed Harry at the far end of the table where a chair was conspicuously missing. Peter got the hint and took a seat on Harry’s right while Rhodey seemed content to take the left.
Sirius was up at the counter and called to Harry, “Harry, you like turkey?”
Harry opened his mouth to answer and Pepper did it for him, “Just get him some of everything.”
“Everyone! Food! Eat!” Tony called again. “If you have two legs, you have to make your own plate.”
“TONY!”
Harry snorted at Pepper’s affronted tone. “What?” he asked when she whipped her head toward him. “It was funny.”
Tony winked at Harry and it felt like the tension broke and everyone started talking on top of each other, the whole flat filling with a mixture of voices and laughter and shouts.
Harry didn’t exactly understand all the articles that Hermione sent him about the origin of Thanksgiving (how could someone ‘discover’ a country if they were met there by others?), but he thought he might like the holiday anyway.
“Hey, you animals!” Pepper snapped at everyone filling the table when they all finally took their seats. “We should go around the table first and say what we’re thankful for.”
“Oh, god,” Psycho groaned and threw her head back dramatically. “I just came for the free food.”
“It wasn’t free,” Happy scoffed. “It costs three times as much to cater a Thanksgiving dinner than cook it.”
“Not if you would go through four turkeys if Tony cooked it,” Bruce quipped, drawing a few chuckles.
“I’ll start,” Pepper said in a no-nonsense tone. She smiled around the table, her soft teal eyes lingering on Harry for a moment. “I am so thankful to have our family all together today.”
“Hear, hear,” Sirius said merrily, raising his glass.
Pepper looked toward Tony and cleared her throat pointedly.
“I am thankful that… that I get to spend this holiday with my son,” Tony said, winking at Harry despite Harry’s ferocious scowl.
Embarrassing. These people were embarrassing.
“I’m thankful for food,” Happy followed up immediately, lightening the solemn air.
Bruce was thankful for ‘his friends’, Pietro was thankful for freedom, and then everyone looked toward Sirius.
Sirius coughed and Harry saw him swallow harshly as he lifted his eyes up to the ceiling.
“I’m just thankful to be here,” Sirius said, a bit gruffly.
Harry didn’t know if anyone else knew about the thoughts that he and Sirius shared - the ones that told them the world was better off without them in it - but Harry knew what all those six simple words encapsulated.
Sirius was there, he was free, he was something close to happy. Sirius was alive, he was making friends and… and shagging half the city… Sirius was there.
Peter looked startled for a moment when everyone looked at him next.
“Uh… I’m grateful for oxygen and water,” Peter said with a shrug of his shoulders. “And for college resume requirements of volunteer work.”
Pepper laughed quietly, hiding a smile behind her hand, and Harry scrunched his nose when the spotlight was on him once again.
What was Harry thankful for? Everything? Nothing?
Was Harry meant to be thankful that Bucky killed Voldemort when it cost Harry his leg? His pride? His entire feeling of becoming a man?
Was Harry meant to be thankful that Draco Malfoy’s dad, a man - a parent - who stood by and watched as Harry was tortured, had been killed? Was he meant to be thankful that Pettigrew was dead and the legal wrongs done to Sirius were swept under a rug?
Harry was thankful to his dad, he was thankful that he wanted Harry, loved him, and didn’t seem inclined to ship him off or sign him away as everyone else in his life had. Harry was thankful that Pepper let him get a dog, that Sirius was always there to listen to him complain, and for a lot of things that a lot of people at the table had done for him.
None of which that Harry could say when his throat was clogged up and everyone was staring at him expectantly.
“I…”
Ding!
Oh, thank God.
Harry actually slumped down in his chair with relief when the lift door dinged and everyone immediately turned toward it with various expressions of confusion.
Sirius had his wand already in hand and Clint had an arrow notched in his bow; Harry and Peter exchanged quick looks of wry amusement.
Steve Rogers stepped off the lift with his head bowed and his broad shoulders curled in some. When he lifted his face and saw everyone looking at him, he raised a hand and glanced at Harry questioningly before quickly fixing Tony with his gaze.
“Hey, Tony. Can we talk?”
Tony stood up so quickly that he actually knocked his chair over and he had Steve by his shirt collar in another movement.
Rhodey put his foot behind Harry’s wheel when Harry immediately went to back his dad up and Harry nudged Peter with his right foot in a pointed manner.
Peter and Sirius were both out of their seats quickly, walking quickly to the foyer while Tony slammed Steve against the wall.
“You really don’t want to be here right now, Cap,” Tony snapped, his face right in Steve’s. “I’m really damned tempted to have you thrown in the same prison as Barnes.”
Hospital, Harry silently corrected him. Bucky didn’t go to Azkaban or muggle prison, he was in St. Mungo’s.
All of Bucky’s problems with himself and his madness could be solved with magic.
Harry hoped Bucky was thankful for that.
“Tony, I had no idea,” Steve said. He put his hands on Tony’s chest until Sirius leveled his wand at his head over Tony’s shoulder.
“I didn’t know any of it,” Steve said, holding his hands up pleadingly. “Can we talk? I… he’s my family, Tony, the last family I have. But you’re my family too.”
“You want to talk?” Tony pulled Steve away from the wall and then slammed him against it, startling a yelp from Pepper and a twitch from Harry. “Sure, let’s talk.”
“Tony!” Rhodey stood up, but he still had his foot firmly behind the wheel of Harry’s chair, as good as locking him in place. Rhodey shook his head at Tony and glanced down significantly toward Harry. “Not here, man.”
“Fine.” Tony jerked Steve to the side and gave him a harsh push toward the door for his office. Tony nodded approvingly when Sirius followed him, but blocked Peter from joining them. “Go sit, Spider-Kid, we’ve got this.”
Rhodey slowly sat back down when Tony, Steve, and Sirius all went in Tony’s office and Sirius slammed the door shut behind them.
“I…” Pepper looked around the table and Harry felt bad for the look of disappointment in the set of her lips. “I guess we can eat, they’ll be done soon.”
Harry wasn’t going to announce it to the whole room, especially not with the thick and unease tension in the air, but he did pull out his phone and sent Pepper a quick and simple message.
I’m thankful for you.
Pepper looked at the electronic watch she wore and then Harry felt more than saw when she smiled softly at him.
Everyone began picking at their food, everyone probably wondering about what was happening in the office. Clint and Psycho kept exchanging looks beside each other and Harry kept his head down when Strange kept giving him thoughtful looks.
“I DON’T GIVE A DAMN!”
“Why Sirius is not using a silencing spell, I will never know,” Pietro drawled. Peter laughed, but Harry had carefully put his fork down at whatever his dad was shouting about.
“Move your foot or you’ll need a wheelchair too,” Harry told Rhodey flatly. He stared deadpan at the man until he pulled his foot away from Harry’s chair so that he could carefully back up and then tried to wiggle behind the row of chairs until he got to Tony’s office.
Harry knocked, politely, and—
“THEY HAD TO AMPUTATE HIS GOD DAMNED LEG, STEVE! HE ALMOST DIED!”
“Oh, this is fun,” Psycho muttered at her seat behind Harry.
Harry knocked again. “Siri, open the bloody door.”
The door flew open immediately and Harry wheeled just in the doorway. Tony and Steve were in each others faces and Sirius was standing right beside Tony, his hand on each of their shoulders. The three of them looked toward Harry and Harry only looked at Tony.
“You’re upsetting Pepper,” he told Tony quietly. “She worked her arse off and you’re kind of ruining it. Feel free to keep fighting though, it’s really great hearing you scream about my leg to every person you know.”
Tony was breathing heavily for a moment, moving his eyes back to Steve, but he finally agreed.
“Harry’s right,” he said. Tony pushed Steve hard in the chest. “Leave.”
Steve was still staring at Harry with blue eyes that were horrified, an incredibly fun way for Harry to make people feel.
“Keep staring at him and you’ll get a matching chair,” Sirius snarled with his wand aimed at Steve. It would have made Harry grin at any other time that Sirius and Harry were using the same threats now. “Go.”
Steve nodded and looked at Tony once more. “I’m sorry, Tony. If you ever want to talk, you know where I’ll be.”
Harry, helpfully, backed out of the doorway so Steve could walk through it. Steve hesitated beside Harry for just a moment and looked down at him.
“You’re a strong kid,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry you have to be.”
Harry nodded and waited until he heard the lift doors opening before he looked up at his dad and godfather.
“Can someone put a chair where I’m sitting so everyone will quit looking at me like I’m the most pathetic person in the room?” Harry asked them shortly. “I prefer when Sirius is the one getting all the pitiful looks.”
“Absolutely,” Tony said. He brushed his shirt off and clapped Sirius on the shoulder before breezing right back out of his office. “Hey, Pietro, go grab the kid’s chair, will you? It’s in Bruce’s place.”
“Why’s it in my place?” Bruce grumbled.
“Sorry, kiddo,” Sirius said as he too went to leave the office. “I couldn’t let your dad do all the fighting though, eh?”
“Sure,” Harry said shortly. He glared at his godfather. “Does he- do I make everything harder?” Harry asked quietly, quiet enough to not be overheard by the others who picked conversation back up in the other room.
“Yup, totally worth it though,” Sirius said with unflappable cheeriness. “Want me to push you to the table?”
“No.”
Harry was actually sick of people pushing him around, literally.
After Harry made it back to the table and had edged carefully from his wheelchair to a normal chair, everyone started eating and talking and it felt more like Sunday dinner and less like the most discomforting event ever.
Peter started chatting about their classmates to Harry, filling him in on Flash Thompson irritating Peter only to find his locker later spider-webbed shut. At the opposite end of the table, Tony and Pepper had their heads bent together and were talking about something quietly, something that had Tony chuckling under his breath every now and again. And Sirius… Sirius was doing some odd dance between bantering with Pietro and fighting with Strange.
“Which is better, something you have to learn or something you’re born with?” Sirius asked Pietro while smirking at Strange.
“Something you have to learn means you worked harder for it and you’re less likely to take it for granted,” Strange said, speaking over Pietro’s response. “I know that you probably wouldn’t know what hard work is, as busy as you are with your exceedingly casual lifestyle, but maybe you’ll grow up one day.”
Harry sat up, bristling with indignation, but Peter put his hand on Harry’s knee and shook his head with a grin.
“I think they’re flirting,” Peter whispered to Harry after tilting his head toward him. Harry’s neck heated up at Peter’s warm breath washing over the side of his face. “Look at how Sirius is grinning.”
Harry glanced at his godfather and saw that there was a spark in his eyes, one that Harry didn’t often get to see.
“One more insult and you should hit Strange with a web,” Harry whispered back to Peter.
“Deal,” Peter winked.
“I am an adult!” Sirius told Strange. He probably would have seemed more grown up if it hadn’t been for the marshmallows coating his fork. “Sorry I went to an actual school for magic and you just went to some mountaintop and learned voodoo, but—”
“Voodoo?”
Most the table had quieted their own side conversations to listen to the two wizards bantering at that point. Clint was miming something to Pietro that had the two of them snickering across the table from each other like second years.
“How can you possibly compare your parlor tricks with your stick to the magic I pull from the very earth and stars itself?” Strange asked Sirius mockingly.
“I do a hell of a lot more than parlor tricks with my stick,” Sirius drawled. He elbowed Pietro at his right side. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” Pietro agreed with his own twisted smirk. “It’s truly a magical stick.”
Rhodey choked on his piece of pumpkin pie - a mushy dessert that was nothing like pumpkin pastries - and Tony burst out in loud laughter from his end of the table.
“It’s called a wand,” Harry murmured to Peter. Peter scooted his chair closer to Harry’s and then swapped their plates, taking the mushy pie from Harry and giving him his raspberry cheesecake that he apparently didn’t like.
“It’s an innuendo,” Peter whispered with a grin.
It took Harry a moment to put that together and then his face flushed a hot red once he did.
Magical stick, disgusting.
“A magical stick is nothing if you don’t know what all you can do with it,” Strange fired back at Sirius. He leaned across the table and laced his fingers beneath his chin. “How good with your stick do you believe you are?”
“Do not answer that, Padfoot!” Harry snapped at his godfather quickly. When everyone glanced at Harry’s abrupt argument, his blush only darkened. “Sirius, if you have ever loved me…”
It vexed Harry to no end that Sirius hesitated for a moment before sitting back in his chair and sticking his nose in the air haughtily.
“Grow up,” Sirius sniffed. “You’re embarrassing Harry.”
Tony caught Harry’s eye from his end of the table and pulled a face that made Harry grin, just for a moment, before he winced and looked down at his lap. Hermione and Tony could call it phantom pains, but it felt real and it felt like Harry’s leg was being crucio’d by an especially furious wizard.
Not Voldemort though… because Bucky killed him.
“Phantom pain?” Strange asked Harry from beside Rhodey, apparently catching Harry’s brief grimace.
“Nope.”
“You’re a horrible liar.”
“I’m not,” Harry said, looking up and staring Strange in the eyes. Harry wasn’t lying, there was nothing ‘phantom’ at all about the way it felt like razor blades were being dragged down his leg and then right back up.
The fact that the leg didn’t exist didn’t seem to matter.
“I’ll teach you a trick to keep you off the potions on Monday,” Strange said. He spun his index finger in a small circle and then reached through the glowing ring of light to pull out a pain relieving potion that he floated down to Harry.
Harry pocketed it quickly, hating the curious and pitiful looks the others gave him.
It would almost be worth it to get a fake leg - like Moody, like Pettigrew, like Bucky; like everyone who tried to kill him - just to end the looks.
The sun had completely set outside by the time people began leaving. Sirius had magicked away the dishes, Clint and Psycho took the leftovers, Bruce and Pietro restored the furniture to how it normally looked, and Harry collapsed on the side sofa the moment he could.
“Now that you don’t need to look tough in front of Petey, why don’t you take that potion?”
Harry lifted his head and didn’t even have the energy to roll his eyes at Tony. Harry’s invisible leg was on fire, burning every nerve in a way it never had when it existed.
“I wasn’t trying to look tough,” Harry grumbled as he rolled on his side to pull the vial from his pocket. Tony was already grabbing Harry’s other medicine, so Harry waited until he put two pills in his hand to swallow them down with the pain reliever.
“Better?” Tony asked. He sat down on the end of the sofa by Harry’s foot and seemed to actually be waiting for an answer.
“Some,” Harry admitted. He scooted up and stared down at the flat trouser leg on his left side and twisted his face up irritably. It didn’t exist, Harry could see that with his own two eyes.
“It’s normal, but it should fade with time,” Tony said, somehow tracking Harry’s silent musings. “There’s probably some tricks your physical therapist can give us next week.”
Harry nodded and then took a chance as he scooted around until he could put his head on Tony’s lap.
“Tired, kid?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. He closed his eyes and nearly smiled when Tony began combing his fingers through Harry’s hair in a soothing motion. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“He really killed Voldemort?”
“He did,” Tony said neutrally. “I saw the head myself.”
Harry swallowed a lump in his throat. “So in the grand scheme of things, the big picture, what’s one leg?”
If Bucky killed Voldemort, someone who killed Harry’s parents, killed Cedric, planned to kill possibly thousands more, how could Harry be upset about a leg?
Harry lost his parents, his childhood really, to have Voldemort defeated once. It shouldn’t matter that it was Harry who had to sacrifice again for Voldemort to be defeated again.
Voldemort was dead, Bucky killed him.
Harry should be thankful.
“There were about seven hundred and fourteen ways that we could have gotten Voldemort’s head that didn’t involve you losing anything,” Tony said, sounding so assured of it. “Am I glad that Darth Vader is dead and all that’s left is finding some little trophies of his and destroying them? Hell yeah. Am I thrilled that instead of getting a competent adult that Barnes decided to take you on some sick cross country trip? Nope, not at all.”
Harry opened his eyes and blinked at his dad. “Trophies?” he asked blankly. “What trophies?”
Tony snorted, but he kept stroking Harry’s hair in a soothing way. “Gandalf the Lame said they’re called horcruxes, which kind of makes them sound much more fun than they are. Sirius about threw up on my office floor when they came to talk about them.”
“Gross,” Harry murmured. He tried to stifle a yawn, he hated that drowsy feeling the potions gave him, but Tony just chuckled.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tony said, his voice swimming in Harry’s tired mind. “Darth Vader is officially not your problem, kid.”
Thankfully, because Harry didn’t know what else he was meant to give up just to keep one wizard from killing thousands.