“Hello, Little One.”
Sunday, January 21
Harry was flying through the skies on his broomstick, looking down at his friends and family.
Tony was throwing a stick for Padfoot to catch while a little girl with strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes laughed and chased Padfoot.
Pepper relaxed on a chair with a baby on her lap, one that looked a little like Harry with dark hair but with Pepper’s teal eyes.
Peter was making Ron shriek like a girl when he kept shooting webs at him, something Hermione and Gwen found hysterical.
There were others there too- Flash and Pietro were racing. Clint and Psycho were wrestling while the twins cheered them on. Even Ginny and Luna were there while they kept poking Bruce with sticks, trying to get him to transform in the Hulk.
It would be perfect if Harry could just navigate his broom to the ground so he could join them. But no matter how much pressure Harry put on the handle, it wouldn’t go to the ground.
“Fly down, you bloody broom!” Harry growled.
“Have you tried asking nicely?”
Harry’s head whipped to the side and he was suddenly faced with a man flying on a broomstick beside him. Even in his dreams, Harry had never seen him before. The man was tall and elegant with slicked back black hair and green eyes that were so bright it made Harry think of the spell he saw when his mum was murdered.
“Hello,” the man said. He had his hands behind his head and wasn’t even holding on to his broomstick. “You are quite interesting, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” Harry asked.
“I find you incredibly interesting,” the man said. “I saw you in the mind of your godfather and knew we had to meet.”
Harry furrowed his brows down, puzzled at that. Harry had a lot of odd dreams, even odder nightmares, but it was still starting to become one of his weirdest ones yet.
“Sirius does Occlumency,” Harry pointed out to the man. Harry knew logic didn’t work in dreams, but he still felt compelled to say it. “There’s no way you got in his mind, he’s brilliant.”
The man threw his head back and laughed, displaying a set of perfectly white and even teeth.
“The mind blocks of wizards is no match for the power of a God,” the man said.
Harry felt a little thrill of fear at that, but the man soothed it away before Harry could even voice it.
“Your godfather is fine, Little One. He’s under the impression that he defeated me and sent me back to Asgard.”
“Asgard?” Harry asked. “Isn’t that where Thor lives?”
“Unfortunately,” the man agreed drily. “Enough about me, I want to talk about you. I did come quite a way to find you.”
Harry didn’t even blink and suddenly the clear skies he had been in swirled around and Harry was surrounded by darkness until he was in a room that he only saw in his memories.
There was baby Harry in a crib, crying for the woman dead on the floor.
Harry couldn’t breathe when he saw his mum laying there, dead, while the baby cried in its crib.
“You were marked for death as an infant and yet here you are,” the man mused. He walked over to the crib and conjured a pacifier from thin air to offer to the baby.
Harry pinched his arm and tried to wake himself up, but all he managed was to make the scene change again.
It was cramped in the cupboard and Harry couldn’t stand up straight. He crouched down and felt his lungs being squeezed by the lack of air in the room.
The man was still there, peering at Harry through the dark with his glowing eyes.
“You were locked away, treated like a burden for the tragic crime of being special,” the man whispered. “They were ashamed of you. They made you ashamed of yourself.”
“I want out,” Harry said plaintively. He smacked his hand on the cupboard door and caused a cloud of dust to fly up in his face. “I WANT OUT!”
Harry smacked the door again and it disappeared, causing him to fall forward and hit the floor. When Harry sat up, he saw he was on the platform for the Hogwarts Express.
And so was eleven year old Harry with his messy hair, owl in a cage, and his wide-eyed look of excitement as he took in all the magic around him.
“Did you finally feel as if you fit in somewhere?” The man sat crossed-legged beside Harry in the middle of the platform. “When you were here, Little One, did you finally feel accepted?”
It was a dream, only a dream, so Harry could be honest.
“No,” he said, miserable at the truth in his own words. “They- they wanted a hero. They wanted someone special and I just wanted to be Harry.”
“A legacy placed on your head and all you wished for was to be a child.” The man hummed. “Tragic.”
The air whipped through Harry’s hair and the platform around him blurred until it resettled and Harry was twelve, in the Chamber of Secrets, fighting a basilisk.
Harry struggled to get to his feet - even in his dreams he was clumsy with his prosthetic leg - while he watched Harry running for his life with nothing more than a sword in hand.
“RUN!” Harry screamed to himself. “RUN!”
“You slayed a beast as a child that most grown warriors refuse to face.” The man sounded amused, but Harry was busy watching himself sliding against walls, hiding from the basilisk that would eventually get its fang in Harry’s arm.
Harry screamed in tangent with his younger self when the basilisk fang eventually pierced Harry’s arm at the same time Harry drove the sword through the roof of its mouth.
“I would have given anything to have a pet basilisk,” the man said. He smirked when Harry looked at him. “Not all serpents are evil, Little One. Eve took the apple, but the snake got the bad reputation.” The man clicked his tongue and then their surroundings changed again.
“You have a heart made for mischief.” The man and Harry watched as Harry threw mud at Draco Malfoy from beneath his cloak outside the Shrieking Shack. Despite himself, Harry did snicker when Malfoy began whining about ghosts.
“Oh.” Harry grimaced when the next scene he saw was the fight against the Horntail.
“Yet another beast of legends that you evaded,” the man said. He looked at Harry appraisingly. “What were you thinking when you used a wooden broomstick against a fire breathing beast?”
Harry blinked at him. “Er… not catching on fire, mostly.”
The man laughed, a huffy and sarcastic noise, and Harry knew what was coming next as much as he didn’t want to see it.
“Please don’t,” Harry said when the sky darkened and the air became thick with the smell of wet earth and blood. Harry closed his eyes- he saw the graveyard enough when he was the one being tied to the tombstone, he didn’t want to watch from an outside perspective.
“Don’t marvel over the sheer strength of a mere child who stood against a tyrant and refused to bow? Fine.”
Harry didn’t open his eyes until he felt the air around him changing, hopefully to something better. It was better, if an odd moment to choose.
Harry had a bruise on his face, a backpack over his shoulders, and walked without notice through a crowd of people in an airport. Sirius had bought him a ticket, but he also placed a Notice-Me-Not Charm and Muggle Repellent Charm on Harry to get him through customs and on the flight for New York.
“You left behind everything to find your blood kinship,” the man said quietly. “Why?”
Harry swallowed hard and shrugged his shoulders.
“For Sirius,” he said truthfully. “And… and I think a little for me.”
Harry could have run away on the first night at the tower, he could have left when Tony didn’t get him the documents he asked for. But he didn’t.
“I see.” The man raised a brow and kept his eyes locked on Harry while the background shifted and swirled until they were on top of a building, looking out at the New York skyline.
Harry’s knees shook from the force of the wind while he squinted through the dark to see himself sitting on the edge of the building, leaning forward and laughing.
It was a joyful laugh that was wildly out of place when Harry knew what was going to happen.
Harry let out a strangled scream and hit the ground hard on his knees when he had to see himself flipping forward and free-falling off the side of the building.
“Stop,” Harry said hoarsely. The scenery was changing again and Harry wanted to clench his eyes shut to avoid whatever the man wanted to see next. “Please. Please, stop.”
“These are your memories, your legacy,” the man said. “Why would you avoid it? These are your choices, Little One.”
Harry’s eyes teared up and he grabbed his left hand when phantom pains stabbed his hand while he watched himself writing lines in Umbridge’s office.
“What a vile woman,” the man commented lightly. “You should have let your godfather kill her. It’s the duty of a godparent to protect you.”
“I had to protect him,” Harry said quietly. His hand was on fire and he had no idea how he managed to sit there for so many hours, just carving his hand with that quill.
“Sirius is the godfather,” the man stressed. “He is named after Seirios, the brightest star in the sky for the strongest warrior known to the Greeks. Why would you think you could protect him?”
Despite the pain in Harry’s hand and the tears in his eyes, he smiled a little.
“Sirius is too reckless,” Harry explained. “He’s too quick to act. It’s not his fault, it’s just because Sirius loves me more than he loves his freedom.”
“Aah. But does he love you enough to be honest with you?” asked the man. “Is love a good reason to lie?”
That felt like a riddle, one like the Sphinx asked Harry in the maze.
“I don’t know,” Harry said slowly. “I guess it depends on what they’re lying about?”
The man looked too amused by Harry’s answer and it made Harry feel nervous. He had to remind himself that it was only a dream- if an incredibly strange one. He smirked at Harry and then twitched his fingers and everything changed again.
Harry stood beside the man in a hotel room so hot that Harry’s shirt clung to his back. It smelled horrible, like infection and death. And there laid Harry on the bed with his eyes closed and his lips moving as he talked to his hallucinations.
“Was it all worth it, Little One?” The man stared down at Harry with intensity while Harry’s heart raced with the familiar feeling of being so close to death and so helpless to prevent it.
“You’ve faced terrors that would send warriors running for their mothers and yet you never attempted to take your life until after you found your father. You maintained all your limbs through battles with beasts. You lived fourteen years with relatives that despised you without permanent injury. It wasn’t until you sought out a parent that you became so damaged.
“Was it worth it, Little One?”
Harry didn’t know how he did it, but Harry took control of the scenery then.
Harry showed the man the day he played catch with Tony and accidentally broke his telly without Tony beating or berating him. Harry showed him the day he adopted Joey, with Pepper smiling behind the camera and Peter beside Harry.
Harry brought up Sirius being freed. Sirius laughing and singing in his flat while he made objects fly around just to pester Harry. Harry showed the man Gwen’s party and the friends Harry made there that he still had.
For every moment the man had of terrible things in Harry’s life before Tony, Harry was able to find twice as many moments - maybe not so large, but still relevant - of times where Harry laughed without notice and smiled freely.
The last memory Harry brought up was from just a few days ago. Tony drove Harry and Pepper out of the city, claiming he had a surprise for them. Harry talked him into bringing Joey with them and he smuggled Tri-Paw’d in his hoodie pocket.
When they arrived at their destination, it had been a big empty lot. It was a pretty piece of property; huge with green grass and tall trees around the edge while a lake sparkled in the background.
“This is where we’re going to put our home,” Dad said. He put one arm around Harry’s shoulders while his other hand held Pepper’s and the three of them stood there for a moment, taking it all in.
“This is a good place for our family,” Pepper said softly. She looked at Tony with a loving smile before leaning forward to give Harry the same look. “I love you both.”
Harry and the man watched the scene and Harry cleared his throat.
“Yeah, it was worth it,” Harry told him.
Harry opened his eyes with a quiet gasp. Automatically, he tried to kick his blanket off him and felt a familiar shock of surprise that his left leg wasn’t there to kick.
That shock was nothing compared to when Harry sat up and saw a pair of bright green eyes peering at him from the foot of his bed.
“Hello, Little One.”
Harry opened his mouth and screamed at the top of his lungs.