Chapter 2
2023-post war pre-summer.
For Harry, the weeks after the war are mired in grief. He spends his days distracting Morgan away from a harried Pepper, lifting her on his shoulders, showing her apps on his phones, letting her create 'controlled' explosions in the underground lab. When Pepper has the time and the head space to sit with Morgan, or one of their family friends is looking after her, Harry cooks food he never intends to eat and cleans things that were never dirty in the first place.
Pepper suffers his zombie-like presence for three weeks before she puts her foot down.
She tries to convince him to go to therapy first.
"Your dad went for a bit, it really helped him."
"Dad went to a therapist and said ‘remember all the aliens and that time I flew into space and almost died, it stressed me out.’ What the fuck am I going to say? You know that war in England nobody has ever heard of? The notorious serial killer you've also never heard of finally succeeded in offing me and sometimes I'm not sure if I came back at all."
Harry’s breathing has picked up and he feels like crawling out of his skin.
"Harry James Potter. Do not take that tone with me when I'm only trying to help," she bulldozes right through Harry's meek apology, "honestly, this is the most you've said to me the entire time you've been back and it’s filled with expletives. You can't keep going like this. I've always said that you are entitled to time to rest and heal, but you’re not getting better, your wasting away.
Harry flushes, "I could go back to England," he blurts out, regretting the words immediately.
Pepper slams the pot she was holding down on the bench before exclaiming, "You belong here. You belong with your family. You can't run every time somebody tries to look after you, Harry. You deserve so much better than a life of misery and isolation."
Tears well in his eyes and when Pepper looks up to him, he notices her eyes are wet too.
She comes over to him and pulls him into a tearful hug, "We'll figure it out," she whispers, "one-step at a time."
Third Year
On the first day of Harry's third year Professor Mcgonagall calls him into her office.
On his way to her office Harry spent his time wondering what he could possibly have done to warrant punishment on the first day of term for the second year in a row.
A few minutes into the meeting he realized his worries were unfounded when she asked after the red journal he had been fiddling with in the great hall.
"Your mother carried that around with her constantly. She must have cast dozens of charms to account for the amount of pages she had."
"I forget that you must have taught my parents." Well, parent, he guesses.
"I was quite fond of her, she had all the brilliance of your father without any of the arrogance. Although she got in almost as much trouble as you with all her experiments. We kept in contact after she graduated, she often asked me for help researching things entirely unrelated to my field."
Harry considers this.
"If you were close to my mother, does the name Tony mean anything to you? It was in her diary but I didn't recognize it."
Mcgonagall shook her head then paused to consider. "Stark?"
Harry shrugs. The name sounds vaguely familiar but not in a way he can place.
"Maria Stark was an American witch that revolutionized the field of ancient runes. She was a muggleborn quite fed up about the amount of magic that was taught exclusively to predominately pureblood scholars. That was due to the overly complicated nature of most available resources. Her work is the reason we're able to teach runes at Hogwarts and she was somewhat of a role model to your mother."
"My mother took runes?"
"She did, along with arithmancy and alchemy before we got wind of the professor trying to recruit for He Who Must Not Be Named and we had to let him go."
Harry considers this, "Do you think I could? Take runes and arithmancy, that is."
Professor Mcgonagall peers at him over her glasses, "How was your math, Mr Potter?"
Harry sits up straighter, "Excellent, professor."
She smiles, "So was Lily's, when she put her mind to it." She pins him with a serious look, "If you apply yourself, Mr Potter, I do not imagine there would be much you couldn't do. Only if you apply yourself."
Harry smiles sheepishly. "Would I need to drop care and Divination? Only I'm taking them with Ron and I wouldn't want to abandon him-what with-" He trails off and hopes that Mcgonagall understands that he's referencing the general horror of missing half the world's population.
She smiles thinly, "Students are generally allowed up to four electives, but with no spare periods and quidditch you'll have quite the full schedule. No time for slacking off"
Harry beams, "Thanks, professor."
She inclines her head.
Then Harry asks, "About what I asked earlier, Tony Stark?"
"Oh, we did get rather side-tracked didn't we? Tony Stark, to the best of my knowledge, was Maria Stark's son. Lily visited him about two years into her specialisation in pursuit of some of Maria's lost work. I'm not sure how far she got before the war got so bad she needed to return home. You might ask Professor Lupin if you want to know more."
"Professor Lupin?"
"One of your parents' closest friends."
Harry blanches.
----
Summer before 4th year
The first time Harry met Pepper Potts he was, understandably, intimidated. He was 12, set to be 13 by the end of the month, short for his age, dressed in hand-me-down clothes and standing next to his emaciated fugitive godfather who he'd only met that year.
---
Pepper Potts was immaculately dressed in a pale pink pants suit, red hair straightened and falling gracefully down her shoulder and wearing truly intimidating high heels. Harry, who had never met a discernibly rich person in his life-barring an obnoxious Draco Malfoy- might have spontaneously combusted if it weren't for her kind smile and warm eyes.
Before either of them could get in a word Sirius let out a low, childish whistle, "Stark has a type."
Harry blinks and Pepper's nose wrinkle.
"Mr Black, I presume?" All the warmth from her smile fading away.
Sirius inclines his head.
Pepper holds out her hand, looking down her nose at Sirius "Pepper Potts, Tony's wife."
After they shake hands Pepper turns to him, all the frost from her expression immediately thawing.
"And you must be Harry. Come in, come in. We're so excited to meet you, it's all Tony's talked about for days."
---
The Avengers facility was wide and open in a way Harry was not used to. The cramped clutter of Dudley's toys and Petunia's vases contrasts starkly with the sheer magnitude of the building and all the rooms within it. It has a certain coldness about it that he is not particularly fond of. Their marble floors and black, white or grey walls make Harry ache for the red of the Gryffindor common room.
Pepper takes them to a little sitting room with dark wood panels and a glass door that seems to lead to a lab of some sort. She instructs them to take a seat on one of the blue or black leather seats and passes through the glass doors, presumably to fetch Tony.
---
The first time Tony Stark lays eyes on Harry Potter, he almost has a panic attack. He's been getting some help for his anxiety and the attacks have gotten better, but the sight of a twelve year old Harry fidgeting nervously on his uncomfortable blue couch almost sends him spiraling.
"Pepper, my son is in that room."
"Yes, Tony, your son arrived on time. A real surprise considering his genes." A statement which was true in more ways than one. Lily had never been particularly punctual either. Together they had been a disaster and had driven Pepper mad.
"What do I do?"
"That's your responsibility, you’re the one who forgot to practice safe-sex."
"Pepp please."
"Just say hi and go from there" she quips, nudging him toward the door.
Before they go through she squeezes his shoulder. "Take a deep breath, relax. You've talked to him over the phone, he's not a total stranger."
---
Mid 2005
“Tony,” Lily murmurs, pulling away from the kiss.
“Mm” Tony hums into her neck.
Lily spares a moment to appreciate the feel on him pressed against her before she feels his hands dipping beneath the waist of her skirt. She swats at his hand, “You’re going to be late.”
“I’m already late,” he says, while curling an arm around her waist.
“That only makes it more important for us to stop,” she steps out of his grasp, “Pepper’s mad enough that you missed the board meeting yesterday.”
“Yesterday, we were working. Today, I think I deserve a little time to myself.”
“Yesterday you went down on me inbetween about ten minutes of actual work, you’ve had plenty of time for yourself.”
“Can’t we use one of your time-turner thingies?” He whines, but he’s starting to smooth out his clothes so she knows she’s won.
“It’s not a working time-turner, it’s an experimental model. The unspeakables want Sirius and I to see if we can use it to conjure apparitions from the past. They really wanted Severus, but seeing as he’s abandoned his morals, I’m the next best thing.”
“Because Sirius is so moral.”
She shrugs, “He has Remus and I for that. I suppose James helps too, when he isn’t letting Sirius tempt him into doing unspeakable things.”
“Unspeakable? That's terrible, one coin to the bad pun jar.”
Lily rolls her eyes.
“Well I guess that’s it for me then, throwinn to the sharks. Can I at least get a kiss for good luck?” he asks, reaching for her.
She dances away from him, “none of that, you’ll get distracted and never leave.”
“And I wouldn’t regret it one bit”
----