A Witch and A Genius Walk Into A Cafe
Some days I'm built of metal, I can't be broken
But not when I'm with you
…
Forged of Metal, Crowned in Jewels
Chapter One: A Witch and A Genius Walk Into A Cafe
...
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“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Hari, standing nearby and sipping on her own latte, glanced up at the sound of the exasperated male voice. Barely a month had passed since her ‘return’ to Earth, a month during which she took a week to fully recover from her massive Appartion jump from Vormir to London, England, then used the remaining time to verify her suspicions. She still wasn’t sure whether it was more terrifying or relieving to be the only one of her kind. She’d searched for a magical population in Britain and found nothing—no Hogwarts, no Hogsmeade, no St. Mungo’s, no Ministry of Magic. When she found a photo of a location in the States, she used it to Apparated there, determined not to panic. Seeing a newspaper giving the date as being along the same month—May, the end of spring—but several years ahead of her own timeline—2007, not 2001—threw her off perhaps more than the dimensional shift or the lack of magicals. It never occurred to her that there might be a difference in time, though she ruefully admitted to herself it should have been a fairly obvious possibility. She just counted herself lucky she hadn’t been flung decades to centuries forward or backward in time.
She could, she knew, get back home to her own time and dimension when she truly wished to, if she were willing to Apparate to Vormir again. It would be easiest on her to access the same point in the Spirit World from which she emerged in order to use the Spirit World as an in between to get back to where she originally entered it, and therefore to her own dimension. In the meantime, she saw no reason not to continue her own vacation—a new adventure now, she supposed—without worry over either being attacked by any remaining Death Eaters or mobbed by overly enthusiastic admirers. If it meant she could escape the crushing weight of expectations that came from being Harveste The Great, The Girl Who Lived and the Woman Who Conquered, then she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. After all, for once, Harveste Nepeta Potter-Black could be ‘just Hari’ as she’d always wanted, could truly disappear into anonymity.
Being ‘invisible’ and not the center of attention, so to speak, for the first time in a decade meant a lot of sitting back to simply enjoy life and all its quiet moments, take her time, and of course, to people-watch. Which is what led her to quietly observing the man standing barely two or three feet away from her from the corner of her eye as he stared down in consternation at his own coffee cup. Flicking her gaze downward to find what held his attention, she felt faint amusement curl her lip, which she hid by taking a healthy sip of her latte. She could clearly see ToonieStork scribbled in one of the barista’s untidy scrawls. Something of a soft snicker must have escaped, however, because she soon found the man—handsome, just under six feet tall, with black hair, brown eyes, and facial hair—eyeing her with some level of offense.
“Got something to say, Red?”
Not one to be abashed after years under George and Fred’s anything-but-shy influence and Hermione and Ginny’s direct, fiery natures, Hari met his glance head-on rather than shrinking away from it. “Just that you seem a bit miffed there, mate.”
He turned toward her fully, closing a bit of the distance between them. Hari couldn’t completely hide her smirk as she caught another look at the spidery Toonie Stork winking boldly at her in a bright red on the white of the disposable cup, though she tried valiantly not to look like either a prat or a prick. She tried not to tense up, aware that likely no one on the entire continent posed a real threat to her but her paranoia making it difficult to truly relax.
“By that accent I take it you’re not from around here. You an exchange student? A tourist?”
He seemed more curious than overly hostile. Hari gave him a polite smile. “A traveler.”
“Uh-huh.” He scowled at his coffee before taking a tentative sip. “You know, Red, if i hadn’t heard from a friend that they have some of the best coffee in the city here I wouldn’t have bothered coming.”
Hari couldn’t stop herself from darting her eyes to look at what had to be an obvious misspelling of his name. “So I guess your name isn’t Toonie Stork , then? Or did something else offend you?”
The man snorted. “Do you take pleasure in mocking handsome foreigners?”
“I never said you were handsome,” Hari teased before her mental filter could stop her. Damn her mouth.
The man graced her with the first sincere smile—really the only smile—she’d seen him wear since they started conversing. “Cheeky. I like that.”
“Then I guess you have good taste.”
Hari fought back a blush. She had no idea why she couldn’t stop running her mouth. The stranger just seemed to bring it out of her.
“I do, actually.” He studied her intently over the rim of his cup as he took a measured sip. He lowered it with a contemplative expression on his face. “Tell me something, Red. There’s been a distinct lack of starstruck awe—why is that?”
The abrupt shift in topic was finally enough to jolt her out of the playful exchange of banter. Genuine confusion clouded her features, her forehead puckering as her brows drew together. “I’m—I'm not sure what you mean. Should there be?”
The man chuckled, and Hari might have found it condescending if not for the bitter edge she heard to it. “You’ve got to be the first person that doesn’t know me by sight, especially in this city. Unless you’re a damn good actress.”
“No, not from here, remember?”
He tilted his head, gesturing a bit with his cup. “See that would be a perfect cover story. Pretend to be British, have a fabulous accent, conveniently not know who I am…”
“I really don’t know who you are,” Hari refuted, shaking her head for emphasis. “And I’m sure you don’t know who I am.”
“Should I?” His eyes bore into her.
Hari huffed. “Besides being an heiress, I’m sort of a local legend back home. I couldn’t get bread at the grocer without someone recognizing me and wanting something from me. Everyone knew who I was, who my parents were, how much money I had because they died and I didn’t, and expected me to hang the moon. It was awful.”
She didn’t intend to let the raw emotion leak into her voice, but felt glad she had when she noted his reaction. She saw... something in his eyes, then. A recognition of sorts sparking there. Not from recognizing her , because of course he wouldn’t, but from relating to her.
“Sounds like it. Must be terrible, having all that money.”
His eyes sparkled with playfulness and the same bitterness from earlier, and Hari couldn’t help the faint, half-grin-half-grimace that twisted her lips. She ruffled her blood-red curls, her voice wistful as she spoke. “It is when that’s all anyone sees. Forget dating, even friendships are hard. You don’t know who wants you for you and who just wants a piece of you.”
A second bitter, all-too-knowing chuckle slipped from the man’s lips. “Don’t I know it.” He checked his watch with a small groan. “Well, duty calls, Red. You come here often?”
Hari shrugged. “I have for about the past week. It’s close to my flat.”
A flat she at first paid for by using gemino on any Muggle money she acquired. She’d observed enough people paying in cash to know what each bill looked like, and had gotten lucky a few times with finding dropped bills and change. Eventually, not wanting to cheat anyone outright, she’d transfigured a Galleon into a gold trinket to sell, using Legilimency in order to get a fair price. None of it constituted something she normally would have done, but with no Gringotts she couldn’t exchange it, and she couldn’t exactly go around paying for things in pure gold or handing out clearly foreign currency with no known ties to a given country either. It worked to assuage her guilt toward tricking the Muggles through transfiguration. After all, they might start asking questions. If they asked questions—
Hari really didn’t want to go back to being Freak or living on the run as she had during the war.
She had no idea how the Muggles might react to magicals—especially given their treatment of mutants and the like—and she was a very poor example of a typical magical. She couldn’t die. She could animate leaves into lions with substance and weight. She could wield cursed fire, Fiendfyre. She could breed the King of Serpents and command it to do her bidding. She could Apparate between planets, though it exhausted her to the point that she’d been useless for an entire week, unable to even use a Summoning Charm. She knew without a doubt that she would terrify them, and for good reason. She had the capacity to rain fire and blood down on their heads with a twitch of her fingers, could kill countless innocents in the blink of an eye.
She was dangerous, and she knew it.
The man smirked, then, though she could see from experience that it held a kernel of interest, and, strangely, hope. She knew all too well what hope looked like in someone’s eyes, and his dark pools of mahogany seemed particularly expressive to her.
“Then I’ll see you around sometime this week, same time-same place.”
Then he was turning, gone, and Hari wondered just what she’d set herself up for by speaking to the man who got Toonie Stork written on his order.
…
He showed up as promised about three days later, sliding into her booth with a handmade apple-cinnamon hand-pie and another Americano, this one bequeathed with the bold label of Tiny Stank. Hari nearly spat a mouthful of her latte out when she saw it. She pretended to be studying the wood grain when her new acquaintance stared pointedly at her. After a few moments of playing with the sugar packets, she sighed and looked him in the eye. “We can’t keep meeting like this. You’re going to have to tell me what to call you. I know it can’t be Toonie Stork or Tiny Stank. ”
The man relaxed back into his seat. “Can’t it? And here I thought Toonie Stork was distinguished.”
Hari rolled her eyes at him. “Don't be a prat. I’m Hari, and if I had to guess I’d say you were Tony, but I could be wrong.”
“You’re not, Hari . Really though? Who names their daughter Hari?”
Hari raised a single unimpressed brow as she sipped delicately from her latte. “It’s short for Harveste, if you must know. Is Tony short for anything, or is it just Tony?”
Tony leaned toward, hands curled around his cup. His thumb only just covered the ‘T’ in Tiny. “It’s short for Anthony.”
“Anthony,” Hari repeated. “Hmm. Shortening it to Tony definitely suits you.”
“Um. Mister—Mister Stark sir?”
They both tensed at the intrusion of a third voice, turning to see an abashed baby-faced pre-teen with a sunny mahogany complexion standing a few feet from their table. He had shoulder length, well-groomed dreads. He wouldn’t look either of them directly in the eye, instead staring at the tile as he shifted from one foot to the other. He wore a NASA t-shirt and held a textbook in one hand, thumb and notebook marking his place. When Tony didn’t respond immediately, Hari nudged him with her foot under the table. He cut his eyes at her, brows raised as if to say ‘What? What do you want from me?’
Hari harrumphed and turned to the kid with a polite, patient smile. “Do you need something?”
His eyes jumped uncertainly to her face, then away, his cheeks heating. “I just, um, I was having trouble with this physics homework and I, um….” He faltered, wincing then wilting. “Never mind. It was stupid to ask. I mean, why would the Tony Stark have time for some dumb kid’s homework.”
He turned to go, but to Hari’s surprise and delight, Tony stopped him.
“Wait, kid.”
The boy stopped, shoulders hunched. Hari watched through half-lidded eyes as Tony appraised him, setting his Americano aside. “How old are you?”
The kid turned back to them with hope burning brightly in his eyes. “Almost twelve.”
Tony gestured at the textbook in his hand. “And you’re studying nuclear physics?”
The kid shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. I’m a little ahead.”
Hari caught the flash of understanding that skittered over Tony’s features. She’d seen that expression before—the look of someone who saw themselves in someone else, saw how it often softened them. Hari watched the way Tony softened for the boy and knew his blasé facade would break, just the tiniest bit, but break all the same.
“Come here, kid.” Tony patted the booth next to him.
The kid’s eyes went as round as saucers. “Really?”
Tony gestured for him to join them. “Yeah-p. Come on, come on, before I change my mind.”
Ignoring any stares of the closest customers, many of whom were researchers, professors, interns, and students involved in the sciences, Tony tugged the book closer, glancing over the text while Hari continued to observe the interaction. Tony scanned the page, swearing when he got halfway through. “What the hell? They made this needlessly confusing.” Absently, he grabbed for a napkin and pulled a pen out of his suit pocket. “Here let me reteach this, it's actually really easy when you’re not an overly pretentious moron trying to sound like you understand nuclear physics…”
The boy stifled a delighted titter as he avidly followed Tony’s writing, listening attentively to his explanation. Hari, mesmerized, could only grin softly, though she hid it behind her cup. Tony Stark had a soft side whether he was aware of it or not, and Hari would make it her mission to bring it out more often. Of course, that meant seeing him more often, and seeing him more often meant befriending him. Shameless flirt aside, he didn’t seem all that bad. More, he seemed to live under the same sort of stress and scrutiny Hari was used to—as Harveste the Great, The Girl Who Lived and Woman Who Conquered, and as the Potter and Black heir. Perhaps a friendship would be good for both of them.
Hari continued her musings, content to serve as a bystander to an arguably tender moment. Tony seemed in his element, and once they’d gone over one concept and the boy tentatively brought up two others, the five minutes quickly turned into twenty, then more. A little over half an hour later, Hari tracked the progress of the beaming kid as he scamped off across the room to return to his seat with his friends—all of whom immediately began interrogating him as soon as he reclaimed his seat. “You know you’re his hero now,” she remarked idly.
Tony scoffed as he too followed the boy’s journey. “Red, I’m no one’s hero.”
Hari merely shook her head. “Keep telling yourself that, Tony, but that boy adores you now. And it’s Hari.”
Tony turned to her, looking ready to argue, but instead looked down as his pager went off in his pocket. He pulled it out and scowled at what he saw. “Fucking hell.” He sighed in frustration, suddenly somber and exhausted as he ran a hand through his wavy hair. His eyes, an umber with a warm undertone, sought out hers. “Fine, Hari.” He held her gaze, and as he did, a crooked smile returned. “Wanna help me ditch my duties for a few hours?”
Hari shrugged, bordering on smirking. Tony had a good, if slightly damaged from trauma, soul. She ignored the strangeness of that thought as she drained the last of her latte. “Why not. I haven’t had a chance to skiv off in four years.”
...
It became a regular occurance—not an everyday occurance, but regular all the same. Sometimes Hari saw Tony once a week, sometimes three or four times. They usually met at the same cafe, but not always, as occasionally one of them would suggest trying another they saw with an interesting theme, and they’d agree to meet there next time, or to meet at the park. Sometimes he would hang around for hours, always talking animatedly about something he read in the latest scientific journals, and sometimes he could barely squeeze in fifteen minutes between meetings, but he made time for her. That, more than anything, spoke volumes: Tony Stark, making time for a woman that didn’t even exist in his world, though of course he had no way of knowing that.
He’d never pried, apparently never researched Hari, and for that she was grateful. After all, she only knew Tony was Tony Stark because of that kid—Hakeem—coming up to them and asking Tony for his help with nuclear physics homework. That hadn’t been the last they’d seen of Hakeem or his friends, either. More often than not, when they frequented that science-themed cafe, Tony would indulge the kid and any other students who approached him, and that, too, was telling. It didn’t take long before he had a group he regularly tutored.
One day in early September Tony scarcely had five minutes before he had to attend a mandatory conference—something he’d been swearing about for the past five weeks. “I won’t be able to get away for the next few days—here, take this.” He took a business card out of his jacket, hastily scrawling something on the blank side.
He extended it to Hari, who took a few seconds to skim the message. She flipped the card over, then went back to looking at the number. “That’s my personal number,” Tony explained as he tucked the pen away.
“Oh.” Hari stared at it awkwardly, completely at a loss for words. How to explain—
“Er, Tony? I don’t have a mobile.”
Tony reacted as if in slow motion, staring dumbly at her as if she weren’t real. “You don’t have a—oh come on , Red, everyone has a cell phone.”
Not functionally immortal witches from another dimension, unless you count two-way mirrors.
Brushing aside her fond exasperation at his insistence on that nickname, Hari focused on the more pressing issue at hand. “I don’t.”
Tony’s mouth opened and closed several times. “ How ?”
Hari, fairly amused, shrugged, her lips twitching with unrepressed mirth. “Easy. I just never have.”
“But— never ? How do you use social media?”
“Social whatsit?”
“You’re killing me, Red.”
He had to hurry off not soon after when he got an incoming call, text, and page at the same time. The next time he saw her, he shoved a small box affixed with a green bow into her hands. It was, as it turned out, a Stark phone.
“I programmed my number and a few others you might need into it. Call them if you need anything.”
Hari examined it, touched by the gesture but wondering what the hell a Happy and a Pepper were. She traced her fingers over the edges of it, intrigued not just because she’d never held that sort of Muggle device before—no way would the Dursleys ever waste money on Hari for one—but because Tony had clearly gone all out to give her one equipped with his most recent tech innovations. Hari carefully cradled the fragile-looking device as she turned it over in her fingers.
She had something for Tony as well—an enchanted mirror that she made him promise to keep in his pocket at all times when she passed it to him with an absentminded, “Just think of me and say Harveste Potter,” as she turned the Stark phone over and over. She missed the look Tony gave her for that, but he pocketed it nonetheless.
Now that they had a way to contact each other whenever they wanted, they didn’t bother setting meeting places beforehand. One of them would text a location, and they would both show up there. They branched out to walks in parks and gardens and a few infamous museum trips that saw Tony dressing, in Hari’s opinion, like a bank robber or that American terrorist the Unabomber in order to “blend in” with the crowds—sunglasses, ball cap, hoody, and all. That Hari supplemented his ridiculously obvious ‘disguise’ with a well-applied Notice-Me-Not Charm and weak Disillusionment Charm went unspoken.
Weeks flew by, then months, until nearly a year had passed. At the end of January, Tony asked to meet one more time before he went on a business trip out of the country.
Hari had no idea that the tentative one-armed hug she gave him would be some of the last and only friendly human contact he had for the next three months.