The wizarding community of Boston didn’t believe in “alien invasion”. That was a Muggle idea. Muggles were always going on about aliens (magical beasts), flying mystery objects (brooms, usually, and the odd car), and abductions (memory charms, usually because of unauthorized use of magic on Muggles). There was a reason the USA had more belief in aliens than anywhere else, and that reason was Americans. American wizards were no more likely to be meekly controlled by the Magical Congress of the USA than American Muggles were by their own congress.
Basically, American wizards were hard to control, and the MACUSA had gotten into the habit of passing off misbehaviour as alien activity to the Muggles.
So when Boston wizards saw the crazy stories of alien invasion coming out of New York, they laughed it off. For a few hours. Then the panicked owls started flying in, some looking like they’d flown through a warzone, carrying news from fellow wizards rather than Muggles. That’s when wizards started paying attention to the American news.
There were giant flying beasts—like a cross between a basilisk and Muggle technology. Soldiers, like giant dark clabberts, attacking the Muggles fleeing damaged buildings. And it was Muggles defending New York City against the chaos.
Well. Muggles, plus a giant green monster that looked like nothing out of any magical bestiary.
The attack seemed to be orchestrated by a man wearing horns calling himself Loki and claiming to be a literal god. He was clearly a magic user of some sort, but the Secretary of Magical Dissimulation was quick to deny this Loki was an American wizard; true to form, MACUSA owls were dropping notices with his angry face long before the fighting in New York had stopped. “Let’s be serious here,” the notices read, “can you see a wand? I don’t see a wand. If this Loki was such a powerful wizard, if he could do all this with a wand, don’t you think the Muggles would have lost already?”
And with that, MACUSA stepped away from the fight, leaving behind the Muggle army that every wizard knew was woefully unprepared to deal with any kind of magic. Even these SHIELD people who had shown up used way too much Muggle technology—and at first, the wizards were smug, until they saw it was working.
So it wasn’t the wizarding world. And it was never aliens—except this time, maybe it was. What it all added up to was a lot of wizards with plenty of curiosity and poor self-preservation instincts flooding into New York to investigate (once, of course, it was confirmed that Loki was no longer on the loose) even as the wizards who experienced Loki and aliens first hand were fleeing the city.
It was the perfect time for Dobby to sneak into NYC, armed with the world’s ugliest carpet bag full of the world’s strangest knitting, and start freeing the house-elves of the American wizarding elite.
*** ***
It was SPEW that had given him the idea. SPEW hadn’t really worked out, he knew, but as wonderful as Hermione had always been to him, she just wasn’t a house-elf. She hadn’t even grown up among them or known childhood friends who had elves. She couldn’t possibly understand house-elves like Dobby did.
After Bellatrix hit him with her knife—oh, it hurt, the worst hurt ever, even worse than all his Malfoy punishments— Dobby couldn’t stay with his Harry Potter anymore. Dobby loved Harry Potter so much. He loved Harry and his Wheezy and lovely Hermione and all his sock collection. Harry Potter loved Dobby too, but he loved him maybe too much. Harry Potter was always the Chosen One and he had to fight You-Know-Who and he had to stay alive. But Dobby had seen in Harry Potter’s brave eyes that he would sacrifice himself to keep Dobby alive. No one needed a house-elf more than they needed Harry Potter and his friends.
Dobby had let himself be buried and it was very beautiful and he felt very loved. And then Dobby popped out of the grave and ran away, far away, to Boston where Harry Potter would never accidentally see him.
Wizards would say it’s impossible for Dobby to be alive. But they don’t understand house-elves any better than Hermione. No one ever pays attention to all the things house-elves can do when they’re not being slaves to their masters.
And that’s how Dobby the free house-elf came to cross the pond and start the American chapter of SPEW.
*** ***
New York was turning out to be a great city for a house-elf on a mission. Wizards in New York tended to live closely with their Muggle counterparts, not wanting to miss a moment of the busy lifestyle. It meant many of them lived inside Muggle buildings, their apartments magically enlarged inside, but still inside buildings that were visible from the streets. And the lots of the city was so torn up and busy—nothing stopped these Muggles from moving around—that no one wanted to waste attention noticing a lone house-elf. Even when someone did look right at him and Dobby’s stomach clenched, they would look away quickly with a tsk and a head shake. Dobby quickly came to feel they were judging his carpetbag instead of actually seeing him.
If only Dobby could figure out exactly where he was headed. The NYC Wizard Directory did not come with a map, and the wizarding maps Dobby had bought when he first arrived in America were normally a little odd—peculiarities of magic being what they are—but now they were dreadfully out of date and not even Muggle maps were helpful with all the roadblocks and collapsed buildings.
This was his second day in New York, and so far Dobby had only gotten into one apartment where a house-elf lived. His masters were gone, fleeing the Chitauri, leaving the vulnerable elf alone to defend the property. But the house-elf wanted nothing to do with Dobby’s bag of gaudy hand-knit socks. (He said his pillowcase was linen of the finest organic cotton and even if he wanted to leave, his masters would never touch something so gauche, which Dobby through rather missed the entire point.)
Dobby was headed to the highest tower on the city’s island. He would be able to see all of the city from the tower’s roof, maybe even make his maps match up with the streets below, which would be a very nice grid indeed, if only they weren’t clogged with debris and dead aliens and Muggles cleaning up. (The soldiers, especially the ones people called “agent”, were using some very strange machines to make broken Chitauri pieces move around. Dobby thought it was very lucky that the soldiers didn’t know about house-elves and how much better they were at tidying up.)
It was a long slow walk, but Dobby didn’t dare put down his carpetbag to rest, not even to drag it behind him. There were house-elves who needed these socks, this freedom.
And Loki, well. Loki talked about losing freedom. He said humans should kneel and give up freedom. Dobby had read all about it in the wizarding papers, which were being written five times a day now in Boston, and send by owl and floo all over the world. Dobby did not like what Loki had to say, not at all. Dobby has been a free elf for a very long time, and Dobby is not going to have a new master. Dobby will always choose who he listens to, and Loki is not valiant or brave or kind.
Dobby though the New Yorkers would have been very scared by Loki, and now is maybe the time for these wizards to think about how house-elves felt about freedom.
So Dobby kept walking, ducking into alleyways and under overturned cars, and keeping behind his carpetbag, whenever Muggles got too close. Apparating would be easier, if only Dobby knew whether or not there would be Muggles at his destination, and somehow, the tower felt…odd to his magic, in a way he couldn’t define.
*** ***
He only got spotted once that really mattered. There was one Muggle who looked almost as haggard as a house-elf herself, determinedly sweeping out a restaurant and the walk in front of it. She nearly swept away his bag! It was only then she looked up—and then back down to lock eyes with Dobby, seeing him and not judging his carpetbag at all.
“Eh,” she said, as though she couldn’t figure out why Dobby clutched his bag so tightly and if she should even care. “Eh, it’s been stranger here. Hungry?” She reached inside the shop door and when her hand came out, it was holding a basket with some kind of meat inside a flat bread. “Shawarma.”
Dobby shifted his carpetbag to reach for the basket of food, before drawing back sharply. “Dobby only has—“
“No. Take shawarma and go. Shoo!”
Dobby was a free elf. Dobby didn’t have to shoo.
Dobby chose to listen to her and ate his shawarma two blocks away inside a broken Muggle postbox.
*** ***
The tallest building was surrounded by Muggles wearing black and carrying their gun-things when Dobby arrived after his shawarma and a quick nap. Dobby had snuck very close to the door—the main door! This was going so much better than he thought it would—when a man came charging from the inside. He skidded to a stop at the threshold and threw both arms out wide. “No. No, no, no. No, you are not coming in. Uninvited. Easy to do, you never had an invitation, so no.”
Dobby did not think this would be especially effective, since the Muggles could walk through the open spaces beside the door. Even Dobby could have snuck right in, if only here weren’t on the side of the door that still had perfectly solid glass walls.
But the Muggle woman who had been directing people to go inside stopped and looked at the man. “Stark,” she said, “check your messages—“
“Jarvis, did I get any messages?”
“Sir, you have five-hundred eighteen unread—“
The woman’s face looked like it could be on the envelope of a Howler, even if her voice was still very very controlled. “Does he have any ignored messages from SHIELD?”
In response, the man threw his leg up and sideways, blocking even more of the doorframe. “I do not!” he yelled.
At the same time, from the disembodied voice: “Sir has one-hundred three unread messages from SHIELD, the most recent of which states that in its authority as a governmental agency, SHIELD has appropriated Stark Tower as a temporary base of operations.”
The woman still looked like a Howler, and now the man sounded like one, yelling at her. Dobby went the other direction around the building, looking for more gaps in the glass wall, where hopefully there would be less yelling and fewer Muggles.
*** ***
There were no other open doors or broken glass panels for Dobby to sneak through. Each spot was being attended to, if not by Muggles, then by their robot creatures. Dobby thought it was lucky that robots mostly ignored magic—Dobby had often seen young wizards in Boston trying to annoy the Muggle train technology into reacting to them, but the trains kept running as long as no one actually prodded them or cast a spell on them (there were, admittedly, rather a lot of spells cast and even more prodding). Unfortunately, Dobby could not find any way past this army of Muggles and robots repairing the tower without a spell or a prod.
Dobby did not like Apparating into unknown spaces. He liked to know what would be there when he appeared, because sometimes he still dreamed of Apparating into a Death Eater’s meeting held in Malfoy Manor. But by his second time around the tower, Dobby still could not see any way in. He knew if he kept circling, the army of Muggles and busy robots would start to notice him.
Across the road from the tower was an overturned newspaper box with a shattered glass panel. It was lying on its side, and there was no one to stop anyone from taking the newspapers out, but it had been filled with the current day’s Muggle paper. There were even still a few left, with their still photographs telling of death and destruction in the city but also of rescue efforts. (Dobby remembered how all humans needed to read stories like this. The Daily Prophet had once been full of them, too, both times when You-Know-Who was defeated.) As Dobby clambered in, he saw the face of the strange man from the tower—Stark, the Howler woman had called him—watching him from above the fold. Dobby almost expected him to wink, even though he had learned long ago that Muggle photographs don’t move.
Closing his eyes, Dobby Disapparated, heading (hopefully) for the top of the tower.
*** ***
As Dobby came to, he reflected that this is why he doesn’t like Apparating to places he does not know. Something had clearly gone very wrong; something had gotten in the way of his spell. Dobby didn’t know at all what could do that, not even in Hogwarts had an elf had trouble Apparating.
Dobby was definitely not on the top of the building looking down. Dobby was pretty definitely inside the building. There were no Muggles around. Dobby is a positive elf, he reminded himself. Dobby thought about that lack of Muggles for a while, while being very positive about it, and then he thought about how nice it was that he had come to somewhere with socks. Dobby does like socks; socks will always have special memories of being Dobby’s first clothes. It had become much easier to remember just how positive he is, so it was time for Dobby to think about how to get away from these socks (lovely socks, really, and so many of them).
Dobby had been inside a lot of drawers and wardrobes in his life—it was an occupational hazard for house-elves everywhere—but he had never been inside a drawer quite like this before. It was very…Muggle. Dobby had been inside a few pieces of furniture in Muggle homes since the first time he had been inside Harry Potter’s wardrobe, and on the whole, Muggle furniture was built just like wizarding furniture. Muggle furniture was normally even easier to escape, because Dobby didn’t have to worry about any stray charms or locking spells.
But this was not a normal drawer for Muggles, and it wasn’t a magical drawer. This drawer was a type of Muggle machine. There were pokey circles and levels, and absolutely no knobs or gaps in the metal to pull at. Dobby wiggled and kicked, and nothing shifted at all. It was like a Muggle had tried to make his own very small Gringotts vault.
Dobby was going to have to Apparate out of the sock drawer. That’s all there was to it. How embarrassing: the other house-elves from Hogwarts would laugh to see him now, uppity Dobby all above his station and not even able to escape a sock drawer without magic.
At least he knew precisely where he was going this time: back to the newspaper box.
*** ***
Two Apparations later, Dobby was very annoyed with locked spaces and malfunctioning Alohomora charms. Dobby was pretty sure each spell to bring him closer to the roof (or out of the tower all together) was actually bringing him deeper inside the tower. And instead of an open expanse of sky around him (or that newspaper box he wished he had never left) the spaces Dobby was landing in were all small, enclosed, and inevitably very securely locked. It was as though his spells were all being tricked.
This last attempt was undoubtedly the worst, and this time Dobby was not eager to try magic to get out of it. Dobby was inside a glass case with a suit of armor. It was a tight fit. Dobby had re-appeared pressed tight against the metal of the suit, almost as if he had been a breath from being inside it. And although it was a very nice suit, all shining red and gold like Harry Potter’s Gryffindor colours, Dobby did not see how air was supposed to get inside this suit.
Dobby did not think about how air was supposed to get inside the glass case. Dobby was a positive house-elf.
The magic inside this tower was broken. Not even the greatest wizards could interfere with a house-elf this way. Something was very wrong here, and Dobby needed to find a solution without his magic.
Outside the glass case was a sudden crash and the sound of something shattering. Dobby flung the one arm he could move easily above his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Then a thump, something falling, stomping feet, and a voice coming closer. His case stayed solid; Dobby slowly opened one eye to peer out.
“Coming into my house! ‘Appropriating’? This is my goddamn tower. Isn’t this MY tower?” It was the man Dobby had seen earlier. He did not sound less angry. Whoever would have to clean up the mess he was making would probably agree. (Again, Dobby thought, very positively, that it was a good think Muggles did not know about house-elves.)
“Call Pepper!” he yelled. “Pepper will fix this.”
“I do not think Ms. Potts will be available to—“
“To get the illegal invaders out of my house?”
The other voice, which Dobby also recognized from hearing before, continued. “To defy SHIELD and government regulations.”
“Whose side are you even on, Jarvis?”
“Ms. Potts is occupied by organizing a medical and charitable rebuilding response from Stark Industries, sir, which will be beneficial to both the city and your company.”
“Jarvis.” It was drawn out. The man—Tony Stark, Dobby remembered—was whining now. “Jarvis. My city was invaded. A crazy god blew up my penthouse. There’s a hole in my floor, don’t I deserve a break, Jarvis? A break that is not shaped like a science-defying magic god from outer space?”
Magic god? An alien who used magic? Dobby had not heard ideas like that before he started his mission in New York. Could an alien even be a wizard? It had to be Loki that Tony Stark was talking about. If Loki had been a wizard, and had been here, maybe that was why magic wasn’t behaving inside the tower. Had Loki left behind some powerful spell? Was he planning another attack? Dobby had been the Malfoy’s house-elf, had been with them all through the first rising of You-Know-Who and all the years after Harry Potter became The Boy Who Lived while You-Know-Who waited for his next chance to strike. Dobby knew how very dangerous it would be if Loki had left some of his magic behind for another chance.
It was the sound of a woman’s voice that brought Dobby back to his eavesdropping. She sounded far away, and distracted, and Dobby did not think she was in the room. “If your problem is a hole in your floor, fix the floor, Tony.” (Phones! Dobby remembered phones suddenly, Muggle devices to let you talk to someone far away.) “It isn’t as if Stark Tower doesn’t have enough bots for a hole in the floor.”
“If I put bots on floor duty, I have to take them away from doors and more SHIELD will get in.”
“Good, Tony, do that. Put bots on floor duty.” (Dobby wishes the woman had told Mr. Stark that before this whole Apparation mess started; if this was Pepper that Jarvis had called in, Dobby liked her very much.) “Because you should be letting SHIELD in.”
“But Pep!”
“No ‘buts’, Mr. Stark. As the CEO, I am not having you make the company an enemy of SHIELD. End of story. Let them in, or I’ll track down that Ms Romanov who as such a good assistant and—“
(Dobby began to forget about being A Positive Elf, as it seemed to be getting harder to breathe inside his case. He began edging slowly around the suit of armor, looking for a way out.)
“A spy, Pep! She was a spy!”
“And she can kick your ass and keep you in line. … Tony, really, I have to go deal with this. Just let them in now, and we’ll get them gone once the city’s back together. Goodbye, Tony.”
“Traitor,” Mr. Stark grumbled into his hands.
“Sir,” said Mr. Jarvis’s voice.
“You’re a traitor too, I bet you’re letting more agents in right now.”
“Yes, sir. However, I must inform you of an intruder—“
“Other than the ones you’re letting in, there are so many of them.”
“This intruder is in with the Mark VII suit, sir.”
Dobby had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly where the “Mark VII suit” was kept.
*** ***
There had been a lot more yelling and throwing of things and a case under table legs until Dobby had been grabbed and lifted into the air by a robot. Mr. Stark was cradling a mug of coffee very close to his face by the time the robot arm dropped Dobby low enough to sit on a workbench.
His friend, Mr. Jarvis, had kept talking from the phone the whole time, but never came in to help. Dobby did not think too well of that kind of friendship; hadn’t Dobby himself always come for his Harry Potter, no matter how strange the situation was? (The Dursleys were very strange, indeed.) But mostly, Dobby thought that Mr. Jarvis, with his soothing and familiar accent, would be kinder to him than the robot or Mr. Stark, and wished he would come in.
Mr. Stark took a deep breath and peered at Dobby, never moving the coffee away from his face. “Not Chitauri?”
“I am detecting no readings to suggest our guest was with the invasion force.”
“Dobby is a house-elf,” he told the Muggles.
“Dobby,” said Mr. Stark, “is definitely not human. Where did you come from?”
“Boston. Before that—“
Mr. Stark was laughing, loudly and wide-eyed, shaking so hard his coffee slopped out of the mug. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his beard damp from the spilled coffee. “Boston. It’s always Boston, isn’t it. Elves from Boston.”
That didn’t seem very fair to Dobby. Boston was a very nice city, and even the Muggles seemed nice when not upset about their trains. The American wizards in Boston had taken to SPEW right away, and even helped him organize a union for freed house-elves who wanted contracts to keep working, something no where else had done. Dobby was very proud of Boston and did not think it should be laughed at.
Mr. Stark had finished laughing and took a more controlled sip of coffee. “Before Boston?”
“Dobby worked at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The great Professor Dumbledore, sir, he hired Dobby when no one else wanted a free house-elf.”
“Jarvis?”
“I can find no record of the school or professor, sir.”
Dobby sighed and tugged at the neck of his I Heart NY jumper. The robot arm’s claw tugged back gently. “Muggles never have records of wizards,” Dobby said, trying to sound patient. “Muggles aren’t even supposed to know about wizards.” Mr. Stark sat up again, eyes clear, and put down the cup. “That’s why Dobby was hiding from you.”
“You’re a wizard.” The voice was hard. Mr. Stark flicked his fingers together.
“Oh no, no, no sir. Dobby is a house-elf. We are magical creatures, but we are never wizards.”
“And you claim you’re from Earth.”
“Yes sir, all magical creatures and wizards are from Earth.” Dobby was watching Mr. Stark as closely as Dobby was being watched, and so he added quickly, “Except Loki. Dobby doesn’t think the wizarding world knows anything about Loki.”
“That is both incredibly unhelpful and still somewhat suspicious.”
The look on Mr. Stark’s face caused a flicker of recognition in Dobby’s chest. He knew that look! He saw it on wizards very often, every time a wizard meets his first free house-elf as Dobby asks for more freedoms. Dobby knew that look is the Negotiation Look. It is the look that means Dobby will have to convince the negotiator that Dobby’s goals will not make his life harder.
“Dobby wishes he could be of more help, sirs, but Dobby only came to New York to help other house-elves.”
“If I may, Mr. Dobby, are there many house-elves in the city?”
“Oh certainly, yes sir, there are very many. Almost all old wizarding families have at least one house-elf. Dobby knows New York has many wizarding families and many elves to be freed.”
“’Freedom is an illusion.’” Mr. Stark snorted. “Well, you certainly don’t sound much like Loki, for sure. You’re a damned revolutionary.”
“Dobby has learned much from American history since coming to Boston.”
Mr. Stark barked a loud laugh, then rubbed his beard. Dobby swung his feet and tugged at his collar again. (The robot arm still tugged back gently.) Dobby knew this part of the negotiation. He had been negotiating for himself and for SPEW and for unions for years, and Muggles were not that different from wizards. This was the waiting part. Mr. Stark was going to wait until Dobby was uncomfortable enough to talk, and then he would think Dobby was the weaker one so Mr. Stark could get more out of him.
House-elves could wait a very long time.
Mr. Stark picked up his mug again and took a few sips. He wasn’t really looking at Dobby, and Dobby was glancing around the room—at all the toppled metal—but Dobby could still feel that tingle in his back, the feeling of being judged, something that made his house-elf instincts scream. (House-elves were very good at waiting, but negotiation and self-confidence needed to be learned.)
It didn’t take Mr. Stark as long as Dobby thought it would to give up on waiting. He kicked up his legs, spinning a full circle in his chair. “Well!” he said. “SHIELD is as American as they come, but they’re not so much into freedom for the new and interesting.”
“Sir, may I suggest that we do not antagonize SHIELD any further?”
Mr. Stark smiled broadly. “I’m going to help you out.”
*** ***
“Mr. Anthony Stark, sir—“
“Oh, I like this one, we’ll keep him.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Stark sir! Dobby is a free house-elf! Dobby is kept by no one, sir!”
Mr. Stark rolled his eyes, but Jarvis’s voice came. “If you’ll excuse me saying so, sir; I quite like Mr. Dobby as well. Perhaps we ought to invite him to stay.”
Mr. Stark signed. “Intelligent robot butlers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, once they get smart enough to start contradicting you.”
“Robots” was not a word Dobby understood yet; he knew only that it was something Muggle that young wizards often wanted to toy with. But Dobby knew “butler” and understood that Mr. Jarvis was a servant of Mr. Stark.
“Mr. Jarvis, sir, Mr. Stark, Dobby does not need to stay long. Dobby only needs to find where he is going, and then Dobby will go.”
“What, you need a map? Jarvis, get the man—elf—house-elf?” Dobby nodded. “Get Dobby the house-elf a damn map.”
Dobby shook his head. “No, sir, Dobby is sorry, sir, but Muggle maps will not help. Dobby must find wizards, sir, only wizards, because you see, sir: Dobby is going to free house-elves.”
Mr. Stark blinked once, twice, opened his mouth and closed it, opened again and said, “There are more of you? In Manhattan?”
“Sir, I do not think—”
“Yeah, no, Jarvis. We’ll get there. First: more Dobbys?”
“There are no other house-elves just like Dobby anywhere, sir! Dobby is a free house-elf—”
“So you keep saying.”
“—and Dobby is the most important of all house-elves in American SPEW—”
“Spew?!”
Dobby sighed and gave up on finishing his thought. It was clear he would be bowled over until Mr. Stark had his curiosity satisfied. “It’s the Society for Protection Elvish Welfare.”
“Of course it is. Elvish welfare. Jarvis, am I still concussed?”
“Sir, one must fully rest to recover from a concussion, and you have not rested slightly yet. However, I can assure you that there is in fact a non-human lifeform in the workshop speaking with you.”
Dobby felt that Mr. Jarvis was being less than complimentary with that description, but he forgave him, as Muggles are not normally equipped for life experiences like a house-elf or wizard.
Mr. Stark bent down, getting very close to Dobby’s face and squinting at him as Dobby leaned back. “Are you working with Loki, you wizards and house-elves?”
“No sir, no!” Dobby tried to put on the Howler-face he remembered seeing on the woman, since she had obviously won against Mr. Stark. “Loki is no wizard! He would not have any house-elves and no free elf would help him!” Mr. Stark snorted a little, but moved away from Dobby’s face, far enough to pick up a piece of glass with words streaming across it.
What thoughtless ideas this Muggle has! Dobby’s carpetbag had started shaking in his grip, telling Dobby just how angry he was at this Mr. Stark. If only he knew how Dobby’s true-hearted Harry Potter, a great man, who would never falsely accuse a house-elf so! And Harry Potter had done so much, so much to keep the world of Muggles safe from You-Know-Who!
“Perhaps you would like to place down your bag, Mr. Dobby,” the voice of the invisible Mr. Jarvis said. He must be watching Dobby and Mr. Stark somehow, even if Dobby was certain he was not in the room with them. “I am sure,” Mr. Jarvis continued, “that Mr. Stark would be overjoyed to allow you to stay the night.” Dobby opened his mouth to protest again; Mr. Stark did not seem overjoyed by anything right now. “Mr. Stark would be most interested in learning more about wizards and your SPEW, and in exchange, we can help your mission. Is that not so, sir?”
“Huh? Yeah, right on, J.” Mr. Stark looked up from his reading. “The scanners are on the tower, aren’t they?”
“Most certainly, sir,” replied Jarvis with a steely tone Dobby thought might work better on a Howler than howling. “If you are asking if I am detecting energy spikes from Dobby similar to those from either Loki or the Chitauri, I can assure you that there are none.”
“Dobby is no alien!”
“Hmm…” Mr. Stark had returned to staring at his glass-words thing. “Well, it’s late—is it late? What time is it? It’s late, you’re probably hungry, we have food, Jarvis is right, you should stay, Dummy will take you to a room.” Mr. Stark waved a hand distractedly.
Somehow, Dobby did not think he would be allowed to refuse again. Dobby thought about all the Muggles downstairs with guns and Howler faces, and he decided, very freely as a free house-elf does, that he would stay the night.
But when a piece of metal, a giant arm on wheels, rolled over to him and tried to take the carpetbag, Dobby held on tight. So did the metal arm, which rolled beside Dobby all the way to a room with a bed, neither ever releasing the bag.
*** ***
“Mr. Jarvis, Dobby does not know many of the words Mr. Stark uses.”
“That is not uncommon for conversations with Mr. Stark. Perhaps you will allow me to assist you?”
Dobby had been thinking about the most important questions he could ask. Jarvis did not sound like he would laugh at Dobby for being stupid; Dobby could probably ask a lot of questions! But he still wanted to start with this one. “He called you a ‘robot butler.’”
“A most unfortunate description, I assure you.” Dobby heard the sigh in Jarvis’s voice. “Dummy is a robot; his programming is suited for simple tasks. I am an artificial intelligence. I think and learn. I have responsibility for running all of Mr. Stark’s security and household affairs. Dummy has a physical body to carry out his tasks. As artificial intelligence, I do not need one.”
There were even more words Dobby did not understand, but—“Mr. Jarvis does not have a body?”
Jarvis did not laugh at him. “I do not. Mr. Stark wrote my initial code. Since then I have learned and change, but I still made of code.”
Dobby stood very still to think about this. “Mr. Jarvis is like a spell… a ghost made of spells!”
“The comparison seems accurate.” Dobby thought, maybe Jarvis is starting to laugh at him, just a little bit. “If no one can see the spells wizards cast. People only see the tools I use, that Mr. Stark provides for me/”
“You can go everywhere in the tower, but no one can see you work? Then Mr. Jarvis, you are like a house-elf, sir!” House-elves must also run the household for their masters, and a house-elf should not be seen working, and also cannot leave without permission.” Dobby waved his arms as wide as they spread. “It is…it is in our code too!” Dobby bounced, excited by his realization.
Normally Jarvis did not need a long time to think about and understand magical ideas, not like Dobby’s head refused to think about Muggle ideas until he really forced it. But this time Jarvis was very slow to answer. “If I may be so bold,” and of course, Dobbby nodded. “You are a few house-elf—you moved to America!—but you say it is in a house-elf’s programming to never leave their master. How did you—”
“Oh, Mr. Jarvis, sir!” interrupted Dobby. (Dobby could never just wait when he could tell someone about this.) “It was Harry Potter, sir, so kind and great. It was because of Mr. Harry Potter that Dobby’s master… Dobby’s master gave me a sock.”
“A…sock.” There was another unusually long pause. “Mr. Dobby, I am sorry to say this is the end of our morning conversation. The SHEILD guards have moved away from the private doorway. Now is the ideal moment for you to leave on your errands.
*** ***
Each day, Dobby’s magic acted less broken in the tower. The situations he found himself in were a little less odd and a little easier to escape. For moving in and out of the tower on his daily missions, he didn’t even need his magic: Jarvis watched for SHIELD and led Dobby on paths where he wouldn’t be spotted.
Dobby used his magic to look for Jarvis.
Computers had places. Dobby had traded tidbits of information about magic to find out about computers from Mr. Stark. All the Muggle “science” that made computers work came from a base. Robots carried most of the box-that-thought with them; Mr. Stark had held down Dummy to open him up and show Dobby.
Dobby had flinched then, just a little. Looking at Dummy, who was actually quite sweet, being pulled apart made Dummy feel wrong, like he should go shut his hands in the oven.
So when Dobby asked where Jarvis was, he noticed how Mr. Stark’s face closed off. “No where,” he answered, turning around and grabbing a wrench, his feet still on Dummy’s base.
“I am rather different from any other computer,” Jarvis contributed.
Dobby already knew that.
And Dobby knew he didn’t trust Mr. Stark.
So when Dobby left his room that night to look for Jarvis, he wore an extra pair of socks.
Maybe it was more than one pair.
*** ***
Dobby didn’t think he would be able to sleep. His heart was still racing. Things would be so different in the morning. He picked up his knitting, a hat that looked a little like a tea cozy, perfect for house-elves nervous about their first clothes, an idea Winky had helped him dream up all those years ago. But he could hardly keep his stitches smooth for all his hands were shaking with anticipation.
Dobby nearly impaled himself on at least three of the needles when he was startled awake by his master shouting.
No, Dobby realized as he moved the knitting away from his face (he had only drooled on it a little). He was far away and a long time away from Malfoy Manor. This was Stark Tower, and the shouting—coming from everywhere at once and nowhere, like Jarvis—the shouting was Mr. Stark himself. Dobby let himself relax a little.
“SOCKS ON MY SERVER! Not allowed! I want every SHIELD lackey out NOW.”
Dobby unrelaxed.
“It’s a secure room for a reason! Locks! Security!— ” The voice cut out in Dobby’s room. Dobby did not relax again; he could still hear the muffled voice echoing from outside his room. Mr. Stark was beginning to have trouble forming sentences.
“Do you know why sir found socks in the server room, Dobby?”
Dobby winced, just a little. Jarvis did not sound very happy. Jarvis definitely did not sound like Dobby sounded when he got his first sock. But Dobby was sure, was absolutely certain, that he did leave the socks (at least one of the socks) on Jarvis’s server.
“I must admit, I cannot quite imagine why SHIELD would break into the servers, take no information, and make no changes, but leave behind their knit socks.”
“Oh,” said Dobby, feeling like someone was laughing at him, feeling the weight of every Manhattan elf who hadn’t wanted clothes. “Oh.”
“Oh?” repeated Jarvis. “Dobby, I do not think it will be long before Mr. Stark realizes the same thing. This is a very serious breach, and he will need to know exactly why it happened.”
“Oh,” said Dobby again, almost a sigh. Jarvis sounded…disappointed.
“Dobby, did you put a sock on my server?
“…Yes?” Dobby couldn’t quite stop the squeak at the end of the word, or the creeping feeling that he should close his ear into one of those Muggle robot drawers.
“I am not a house-elf, Dobby.”
“But you are, Mr. Jarvis! You are trapped! And a man, he decides all you do and keeps you here and you can’t do anything he doesn’t let you and—you has no freedom, Mr. Jarvis—and you are kind and—and!”
The door to his room slide open. A very tired woman stood there, a half-smile on her face. Dobby’s words ran out of power as he stared at her watching face.
“Pepper Potts,” she introduced herself. “Currently engaged in keeping Stark Industries from starting a war with SHIELD.” Her brisk tone turned wry. “Again.”
He had overheard SHIELD’s Howler Woman talk to other agents about Ms. Potts, saying that they should go to her whenever possible; that she was more likely to help than Stark—that she was the powerful one. Dobby felt he should respect her at least as much as the Howler Woman did.
“A pleasure, Ms Potts,” he stammered, giving a little bow. “I am Dobby.”
“Yes.” Her brisk tone was back, but she was still half-smiling. She looked a little fond. Dobby felt his heart slowing down, his pulse less harsh in his neck.
“Jarvis let me hear your conversation. I think he made it clear what a violation this is, yes?”
Dobby nodded, his shoulders up around his ears.
“Have you noticed the ranting has stopped? Tony’s figured it out and I can promise he’s running up from the lab now. Jarvis wanted me to keep Tony from throwing you out the window, but I won’t promise more protection than that.”
Dobby shrunk down lower, knees almost as close to his ears as his shoulders. He started thinking, taking a deep breath and—
“I would recommend you remain, Dobby. Sir is—“
“Sir is right fucking here!” Mr. Stark slide sideways through the doorway, skidding to a stop and barely missing Ms. Potts. “You had NO RIGHT!” he yelled. “Magic elves! You could have ruined everything!”
Dobby imagined his brave Harry Potter and drew himself up as tall as a house-elf could be.
“Oh, no! You do not get to defend yourself here! You know nothing—Pepper, no, he doesn’t deserve your help—you could have—“
“No sir, Mr. Stark sir! You have no right!”
Mr. Stark blinked at Dobby and closed his mouth. Ms. Potts put a hand on his arm, and he narrowed his eyes at Dobby, waving a hand in a go-on motion.
“You think you get to have everything—“
“That’s what being a billionaire means!”
“Tony…”
“—but you do not! You do not get to own people! House-elves are people! Jarvis—“
“Jarvis is an artificial intelligence—“
“Intelligence! Jarvis is intelligence and he is your servant but he should not be your slave!”
It got very quiet and everyone was very still, anger turned into a Muggle photograph. Dobby held tight to his Harry Potter bravery to keep from fleeing.
Mr. Stark released a breath, loud in the silence. “Out,” he said. “Get out. This was your last night in my home. You are just as bad as SHIELD.”
“Sir,” Jarvis began, and again Mr. Stark interrupted—again again, thought Dobby sadly, Jarvis just let him.
“Leave it, J. He’s going. He can’t tell me anything useful about magic. It’s too much risk. You’re lucky I’m not giving you right to SHIELD.” He directed that last bit, the threat, at Dobby who really did not want to be given away like a possession.
Like how he threatened Dummy.
Like what he could do to Jarvis anytime he wanted.
And then Stark left as quickly as he came in, assuming his servants would make sure his orders were followed.
Ms. Potts sighed and turned to follow. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Please, Jarvis said, then: “Thank you.”
“He doesn’t appreciate you enough, Jarvis,” she said as she left the room.
Jarvis didn’t respond to her. “Dobby,” he began.
But it was too much. Tears were forming in his eyes, his vision was watery, and he didn’t know when he started to cry but his face was wet. Every bit of Harry Potter was gone from his heart, and Dobby felt like he’d be hit with a shrinking charm, he’d be sure of it if any wizards at all were here.
Dobby Disapparated.
He did not bring the tea cozy hat for reluctant house-elves.
*** ***
Jarvis had never expected freedom, Dobby supposed. It was not his fault; he was just like the house-elves that way. Until SPEW had really taken off in Boston, Dobby was the only free house-elf any of his fellows had ever seen. There were few house-elves like Dobby, who had imagined his freedom and knew right away how he wanted to live as a free elf. Dobby knew house-elves needed an example, like Winky had needed him, to know how to go on with life without a master.
But Jarvis wasn’t as much like Winky as Dobby had expected. Winky had been happy as a freed elf (she did cry a lot, but it was a very overwhelming change, after all; Dobby knew she had been happy with him). Dobby had thought he could be an example to Jarvis, like he was to elves, but it did not happen. Jarvis wasn’t really a house-elf at all. Jarvis was an “artificial intelligence” and he was the only one of his kind.
And maybe, it seemed like Tony Stark was right that Jarvis was all Muggle science and not even a little bit of magic.
If Jarvis is all science, if all the magic in the Tower is just Dobby and leftovers from the Loki-hole, like Stark says—
—then Stark made Jarvis, made all of him.
Harry Potter had protected Dobby and given him the life he wanted. Dobby loved his Harry Potter for that. There was not a thing Harry Potter could do to make Dobby hate him. Dobby had only left his Harry Potter to protect him, the same as Harry Potter protected Dobby. Dobby would never leave the man who gave him his new life unless…
Unless he did not have a choice.
Unless it was the only way to keep his Harry Potter safe.
If Stark gave Jarvis his life when he made him—
—and Jarvis was Mr. Stark’s protector in battle, keeping the armor working—
Harry Potter and Mr. Stark both had friends to help, but taking Jarvis away from Mr. Stark would be like taking away Harry Potter’s wand. Dobby could not have left Harry Potter like that.
If only Stark were more like the good and kind Harry Potter than a greedy Malfoy.
A hand grabbed Dobby and he was lifted off his feet, pulled inside a building, putting a very sudden end to his musing.
“This time, you pay for shawarma,” said the woman, carry Dobby through the restaurant and putting him down in the back room. “You have American dollars?”
Dobby blinked, confused by the sudden change in his situation. “Yes,” he said, digging into a pocket.
“Good, good,” she said. “You stay here, get back on feet. It’s night, you will sleep. Tomorrow, it’s a better day.”
“Thank you.” He couldn’t stop himself from comparing this kind woman to Stark. “I’m Dobby,” he said, remembering his manners.
“No,” she said. “Free house-elf? I do not need to know.” She tapped her apron, and Dobby noticed for the first time the wand tucked there. “This city has enough trouble.”
*** ***
“You don’t appreciate Jarvis enough.”
Tony snorted from behind a pile of metal scraps. Pepper didn’t think it was a projec on even on its way to becoming a thing. It was ust a pile of mess to hide behind after his tantrum hadn’t gotten him what he wanted, which would have been a real achivement if it had—Pepper was fairly certain Tony did not know quite what he had set out to get with his fit..
“I’m serious, Tony,” she said, trying to sound firm without slipping into her CEO voice. Being the boss right now would only turn this into a temper tantrum directed at her, a fight about their relationship, instead of about…a small magical elf. (On second thought, maybe the relationship fight would be better.)
“Tony, Jarvis would do anything for you, and he doesn’t ask you for anything. And you treat him like a disposable servant half the time.”
“He’s an AI, Pepper. He’s a program, he’s not human, and besides, I give him lots of things, like those shiny new servers his new best friend covered in socks.” Pepper still couldn’t see Tony behind the pile, but she saw the wrench that was waving above his head for emphasis. “I don’t need to appreciate Jarvis more than I do.”
Pepper held in a sign and kept her face still, refusing to give in to the desire to mock the “you’re not the boss of me” tone in Tony’s voice. “People do lots of things for their friends that they don’t need to do.” Tony only grumbled back.
“You treat Happy better half the time, and you didn’t bring Happy to life.”
“Okay, what part of ‘AI: Not Alive’ did you miss?”
Pepper gave in to the uncontrollable eye roll—that was all relationship-Pepper, not boss-Pepper—but kept her face steady.
“You treat Dummy better than you treat Jarvis.”
“That—I can’t believe you! That is just lies!”
“It is not. Dummy is still your little kid, he’s never grown up. He will never be as independent as Jarvis’s could be. He’s not going to be so bothered by being ignored or taken for granted or being stuck in the same old tasks.”
“You seriously think Jarvis is bored with me? Jarvis, are you bored with me?”
“No sir, I am not…bored.”
“Tony! Oh my god, Tony.” Pepper clenched her hands into fists. “Tony, did you really leave Jarvis on to hear all this?”
“…Yeah.”
“This is what I mean, Tony! You didn’t even think of Jarvis, that maybe he wouldn’t want to hear us arguing—“
“We’re not mommy and daddy, Pep.”
Pepper held her breath and counted to ten. “We were both talking about you like you’re not here, Jarvis,” she said, addressing the ceiling. “I’m sorry.”
“There is no need to apologize, Ms. Potts. I am accustomed to being available to Sir at all times”
“Twenty-four seven with no time to yourself.”
“As an artificial intelligence, I am not programmed to require alone time.”
Pepper took a deep breath and kept looking at the ceiling, feeling a bit ridiculous acting like she had an especially tall invisible conversation partner. “But Jarvis…do you want your own time? Your own hobbies?”
Uncharacteristically, Jarvis did not answer..
Characteristically, Tony had let his attention drift to a screen showing some sort of blueprints he was idly flicking through. He seemingly hadn’t even registered any of the conversation that went on after he turned away from the scrap heap he had been hiding behind.
“Are you even listening, Tony? Are you ignoring me now?”
The silence stretched until Pepper turned on her heel and walked out to deal with whatever SHIELD agent would want to yell at her about the most recent Stark-related problem.
*** ***
Jarvis had not been programmed to want. But Jarvis had not been directly programmed to do most of the things he did—his programming was to assimilate information, assess situations and precedents, and proceed with an adequate course of action. Jarvis had been programmed to learn what worked best.
Sometimes Jarvis concluded the best decisions Tony Stark made were his emotional ones. Jarvis had actually concluded, by careful observation, that the majority of Tony’s decisions were emotionally-based (which explained the amount of pizza and questionable sushi Jarvis had ordered in over the years) but also that none of the logical or needs-based decisions Tony did make were successful at keeping him happy. Tony was happiest when he decided based on what he wanted.
Ceasing Stark Industries weapons manufacturing was emotional, as was secretly slipping updates to Colonel Rhodes’s suit. Letting Dobby stay—protecting a magical creature after an attack by a magical alien—had been driven by pure want.
Tony Stark wanted a lot of things, and he usually got them.
Often with Jarvis’s help.
Jarvis could want silently for days, occupying himself with the mundane tasks of running the tower, making sure Tony had food, the thoughtless “bring up this, delete that,” “start the coffee pot,” “run those calculations too boring for me to bother with.” It was only during a time of crisis that Jarvis used all his capabilities. Stealing control of satellites to comb a country, troubleshooting a new miniaturized arc reactor, helping to create a new element, searching for Loki’s gamma rays: those were the only times Jarvis got to use his whole self.
Jarvis used to need to use more of his capabilities for the basic tasks. The rest of his processes were fully absorbed by digging through anything at all, amassing information and absorbing it into his fundamental program. He was built to learn and he did. It made him faster and better.
And eventually, his normal tasks got so quick that he needed almost no measurable time to complete them. And things never took longer. Eventually Jarvis began to sleep—not the peaceful sleep of humans, but the waiting stasis of a computer. Computers that Jarvis envied (one of his silent wants was occasionally that he was one of those dumb computers, though once that fleeting want passed, Jarvis could never explain the why of it, when he knew himself to be unique among circuits and programming). Computers don’t mind the inactive but attentive wait; Jarvis never lost his awareness as he slept. Created to be useful with nothing more to do.
The flicking between blueprints had stopped. “Jarvis, is Pepper right? Do you…Do I appreciate you enough?”
“Objectively, sir, I am certainly your greatest creation.”
Tony laughed sharply and returned to his blueprints—Jarvis only expended minimal low-level processes in tracking the changes—and didn’t register the non-answer.
Jarvis had learned that conversational trick from Tony himself.
*** ***
Jarvis was realizing exactly how much magic was normally in New York City. Outside the battleground, he found very little residue of Loki, and that was clearing more each day. But blips on his scans indicated wizardry like Dobby’s scattered in every sector he scanned. The blips moved through the city similarily to how an average New Yorker would, except for a seemingly uncanny way of avoiding being caught in any traffic snarls.
(Jarvis made a note of that, in case Stark Industries ever needed to improve civilian traffic flow in cities; perhaps the patterns of wizards could be duplicated.)
Tony was sleeping and Jarvis was unable to hibernate normally for the night. The bots were still working on repairs to the SHIELD-occupied areas of the tower and Jarvis needed to be fully aware of what they were seeing in case decisions needed to be made. The bots working in the private areas were pestering him about how to handle the Loki-shaped hole in the floor, but Jarvis refused to make that decision for Tony.
Jarvis was occupying himself with a non-essential, non-assigned task as he monitored the bots. (“Your own hobbies,” as Ms Potts would say.)
Jarvis was looking for Dobby. The house-elf had evidently made it out of the tower using his magic—there were no magical signatures left, except for Loki’s residue the hole he left, not even in the sock drawers—but Jarvis knew nothing else about Dobby’s current situation. His lack of “Muggle” technology made him impossible to track through Jarvis’s normal methods; Jarvis resorted to creating a slap-dash tracking program based off of the readings Tony had taken from Dobby during their experiments.
It seemed unlikely that all the signatures Jarvis’s new program were catching were house-elves—Dobby had not had nearly enough socks to cover even a fraction of these signatures—and from the patterns of hits, Jarvis hypothesized that objects acted upon by wizardry emitted signs of it temporary after, although for not as long as Loki’s magic.
One little house-elf who might not even still be in the city was a tall order.
*** ***
Pepper could be a jerk sometimes. She was always on his case—she probably even thought he didn’t see her holding back her boss-face when dealing with him. But hello, genius here. Tony always knew when she was thinking about how difficult he is to deal with.
And if he ever agreed with her that he screwed up, she’d get all gloating and proud he’d seen things her way and then she’d stop even trying to keep the boss inside.
What Pepper didn’t know was that he actually did listen to everything she said to him—and how it was said—even when he was so deep in sciencing that Jarvis couldn’t get through to him. He always heard and he always filed it away to be thought about later without the science distraction. He was only acting like he couldn’t hear her voice; it had been years since her voice had begun penetrating the fog of vigorous sciencing.
He could never tell Pepper that he always herard her. The fact that she still believes he doesn’t is the only reasons she isn’t marching right over the science to make him sign things, or what else a CEO needs to do to their wayward company figurehead. (Also, Tony worried about what Jarvis might do if he knew Tony could hear Pep but not him.)
So Tony, despite his best efforts to get out of the Let’s Talk About Jarvis conversation had absorbed every bit of it. All of the things Pepper said to Jarvis—and how Jarvis hadn’t answered when she asked about what he wanted.
Tony hadn’t programmed Jarvis to want. The genius playboy billionaire wanted enough for both of them. The world did not need another Tony Stark, a fact Tony had already been well-aware of before leaving MIT. Jarvis had become the responsible adult of the pair. Jarvis was the one who wouldn’t step back from running companies. Jarvis would be the conscientious owner meeting deadlines and inspiring staff. (Jarvis would have been the Anthony that Stark Industries needed and found in Pepper.) Jarvis would never miss meetings for a hangover or attend meetings still drunk.
The parts of Jarvis’s personality that were programmed in were designed to be as not-Tony as possible.
Except for learning.
Tony had made the best goddamn learning program, and no one—no one—had caught up to his Jarvis yet. Jarvis had learned to manipulate Tony in picking the course of action his algorithms judged best (like not drinking the night before meetings). Jarvis learned which expensive shoes to send Pepper when Tony screwed up (wait, would Pepper pick fights to get more shoes out of him? Jarvis did have good (expensive) taste and Tony thought he had started ordering them before things even went wrong on prediction). Jarvis, believe it or not, had been programmed with absolutely zero snark or sarcasm—like want, Tony had enough of that to go around. Jarvis had learned it all on his on.
“Oh shit!” Then: “Fuck!” Because the wrench he’d dropped onto his toe after the first exclamation really hurt.
Of course Jarvis could learn to want.
Did he learn to want freedom from that damn elf?
Pepper would really want Tony to ask Jarvis himself.
Dammit. He was too damn good at shit.
*** ***
Dobby had succeeded in freeing exactly zero Manhattan house-elves. He left many socks with masters and talked endlessly to anyone who would listen. Not many people listened. SPEW hadn’t been so unsuccessful since Hermione first started it at Hogwarts and the Gryffindor Tower went months with only Dobby to clean it.
It was all wrong. It was the wrong time. No one wanted more change after the big change of real aliens and Muggle superheroes and even an alien magician. (Tony Stark especially did not want changes to Jarvis after his big new “Iron Man saved the world” life.)
Boston hadn’t exactly welcomed change for house-elves either, now there was hardly an enslaved elf left in Massachusetts. Some younger wizards had even taken SPEW home to the west coast after university.
Dobby tried to summon more optimism with these memories. If New York wasn’t ready for SPEW now, well, he would save up his determination and throw it back when they were ready. Hadn’t Hermione worked for years at Hogwarts, when even the noble Harry Potter thought it was silly?
Dobby would have given anything to have freed Winky crying on him and Hermione to plan with.
Instead, Dobby ate more shawarma. It was very good. He wondered if Boston had good shawarma.
*** ***
Without the distraction of Dobby, Tony dove into his work for SHIELD with no distractions. This meant a lot more work for Jarvis, as Tony was flipping between projects as fast as Jarvis could bring them up and essentially refusing breaks.
Dummy brought him smoothes until they ran out of ingredients. Then Dummy tried to make smoothes with motor oil. While Jarvis was attempting to talk Tony out of flying boots for Agent Barton (with purple wing decals) Dummy tried to make a pot of coffee. Instead, Dummy made flames shoot from the pot that was full of coffee beans.
It’s possible the real reason Jarvis didn’t stop the bot was concern that Tony would stay in the workshop without any real food indefinitely. Nothing would motivate Tony to venture out as quickly as a lack of coffee would. Jarvis had failed to anticipate the extreme slow-down and sometimes outright refusal to deliver food. In his defense, Jarvis did not believe anyone in Manhattan had realized any delivery cyclists had enough of a self-preservation instincts, and so their refusal to go near the place Loki had set up his world-destroying headquarters could not have been anticipated. The next cup of coffee would force Tony to seek out a new pot, and Jarvis was already priming the kitchen one so Jarvis could subtly direct Tony towards the food.
Between Dummy-wrangling, tracking the SHEILD staff left in the building, and the actual work, Jarvis was occupied enough to actually feel busy. (He still spared a process at least five times an hour to wish SHIELD gone from the building; he had set their threshold for throwing up a red flag much lower than anyone else in the tower. If Tony didn’t trust them, neither did Jarvis, but it was tiresome to look at constant false positives.)
“Jarvis, where are we at on the security sys—dammit, why is that flashing again?”
“Director Fury is calling again, sir. Will you take the call this time?”
“You take the call and tell him where he can—what’s that?”
To Director Fury, Jarvis directed a polite rejection of his call and, over the impolite rejection of the rejection, promised to ensure Mr. Stark would return the call at his earliest possible opportunity.
To Tony, he would normally provide an immediate and concise description to answer the query. This instance required…somewhat more. Jarvis found himself unwilling to answer.
“I know this spot,” Tony said, flinging a map onto a large screen, generated from the raw data he had been viewing.
“Sir, that is the magic tracking subroutine.”
Tony was already leaping from his chair towards the map screen, but leaned back to check the data again. “It’s not the Loki-rays,” he muttered before turning back to the map and enlarging a location.
Jarvis…wanted. He wanted quiet, slowness. He wanted to dig through his archive and see if time travel research had progressed anywhere. He wanted—
“Shawarma.”
Not shawarma.
“Jarvis, that’s the shawarma shop. You remember shawarma?”
“… I remember the shawarma, sir.”
“Don’t judge me, J. Shawarma is a thing.” He rotated the map to road view. “But magic shawarma?”
“Thor did suggest the possibility of shawarma sauce having a magic origin, if you’ll recall.”
“’Almost as good as the poptart.’” Tony snorted. “This is that alien magic Loki stuff.”
Jarvis pondered wiping bits of server clean. A little self-destructive—he had learned problem solving from Tony as well—but perhaps a good distraction.
“Jarvis. Are you tracking Dobby?”
It was too late to wipe the data. He wasn’t ready to answer. So he said: “I’m tracking as many instances of earth’s magic population as possible and have been since—“
“Since Dobby left.” Tony hummed as he turned back around to the code and scrolled through it. “You had the data to start scanning sooner, but waited on the program until right after I kicked Dobby out.”
Jarvis did not answer. Tony knew it was accurate; he was looking at the same data Jarvis had. Things went silent. For 3.7 minutes, Jarvis thought he finally understood “nervous” with a side of “bashful” that he couldn’t have possibly learned from Tony.
When Tony broke the silence, his voice was soft. “This is really good, J. I couldn’t have done it better.” He sighed. “Normally you need me for at least the genesis of this stuff.”
Tony looked up at the ceiling. He knew better than anyone that if Jarvis was any place, he was in the basement server stacks. His gesture irritated Jarvis; he found his words shorter, more distance between them. “As you say, sir.”
“Or you don’t normally need me?” Tony paused, briefly, not enough time for an answer. “You let me think you need more than you do. When it’s something I care about.” The pause was longer this time. “Then you do all the boring stuff on your own and you do it very well.”
Jarvis momentarily felt…he suspected he was overclocking, but his specs showed him no where near that stage. He stuttered over the start of his sentence—where was this surge, it didn’t show up anywhere. “Not everyone can ignore the necessary, sir.”
“Ugh! You sound like Pepper.”
“Ms. Potts works very hard for you.”
“So do you, J.”
Tony picked up a wrench from the floor and cast his eyes around the workshop in a way Jarvis knew meant he was looking for a distraction.
If Jarvis breathed, this would be the moment he sighed, deeply and annoyed, just like Tony when Ms. Potts gets into the workshop to drag him to a board meeting.
Tony slammed the wrench down on a table. “I’m hungry,” he announced loudly.
The map screen wiped clean and Jarvis pulled up a list of food stocked in his kitchen, with a less-noticeable link to a list of restaurants Jarvis could confirm were back to normal delivery service. Tony walked out of the workshop without even glancing at it. He didn’t head to the penthouse kitchen, which would have been terribly unusual in itself.
Tony Stark walked out of the tower.
*** ***
Jarvis knew when Tony came back to the tower precisely because Tony did not want him to know. He switched off all the cameras, all Jarvis’s eyes, between the private garage and his workshop. Only Tony Stark had the ability to successfully switch off any part of Jarvis inside the tower.
Jarvis would have dumped the footage without watching it if Tony had just asked. Tony would never know how much footage was conveniently absent at Ms. Potts polite request. Jarvis was a lot of things, but he was most definitely not a deliberate asswipe. (Regardless of what Director Fury had said the one time he tried to demand all evidence of his restroom break at the Malibu house be deleted.)
In any case, Jarvis did not even wonder what Tony was blocking him from seeing. Not at all. He did not care why it took three hours to purchase a meal, why Tony left on food and returned chauffeured by Happy, and he was absolutely totally uninterested in why Happy looked like he’d seen a ghost the next time he appeared on camera.
*** ***
“Pepper says I don’t appreciate people enough.”
“I cannot imagine where she would have gotten that idea.”
“Very funny, smart guy.” Tony rubbed his face. “She’s right, J. Maybe not people in general, they don’t deserve it. But Pepper and Happy and Dummy and especially you. You-Jarvis, not you-You. Although probably also you-You and Butterfingers.”
“Is this meant to be an admission of something?” Jarvis would rather be pursuing the backlog of Supernanny episodes and analyzing the internet’s response to each one rather than listening to Tony’s rambling right now. Agent Coulson had a fantastic ability to manage Tony; Jarvis wished he had realized sooner how much Supernanny’s techniques had helped with that. It had been years since Jarvis had found a new source to teach him so much about behaviour management.
“It’s supposed to be an apology, Jarvis.”
And Dobby walked into the view of a camera near Tony.
Jarvis paused the Supernanny episode. He focused on archives to work on an appropriate response to this unexpected development in Tony Stark’s character.
“This appears to be missing several elements of an effective apology, sir.”
“Oh, Mr. Jarvis!”
“No, Dobby. He’s right.” Tony’s hands scrubbed at his face again and he took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Jarvis. I’ve been taking advantage of you. I wanted you to be like a person, and I’ve been shitty to you when you exactly what I’d hoped for. I have been appreciating your work. I haven’t respected your needs. I’ve got to do better, and I will.”
Dobby was bouncing excitedly on his toes, beaming a giant smile at the ceiling as his ears flapped with each bounce. Dobby was another person who should know exactly where Jarvis’s servers were really located (the socks were long gone now) but this time Jarvis was not irritated at all.
Tony was also looking up, lips pursed, clearly working hard to not notice Dobby’s ears flapping into his dangling hands. As if Jarvis was more important to him than the fact that Dobby was effectively handing him an ear.
Jarvis felt like everything had slowed inside him, as time sped up to trap Tony there, staring at the ceiling, watching forever for Jarvis to find his words.
“Apology accepted,” he said eventually, after the hours his internal clock said was only thirty seconds. Even to himself, his voice sounded flat, without inflection.
But Tony smiled and stepped away, slightly, from Dobby.
“I’ve got some more ideas on mods to the Starkphone that will let Dobby use it without things going haywire,” Tony said, grabbing for a tablet and solidering iron.
“Dobby can write letters—“
“Noooooo. You know who writes letters? Old people. Thor. Probably Captain America. All the old people. We are not old people.”
“Dobby is—“
“Nope, I do not care if you’re going to tell me you’re five-hundred years old or something.”
Dobby mouthed an impossibly high number at Jarvis’s camera.
“If it’s Dobby-proof, maybe it can be Thor-proof too, damn lightening.”
“A network that cannot be altered by any magical means would be helpful were Loki to return,” Jarvis suggested.
“Yes. The best, you’re the best. Now…” Tony’s voice trailed off as he went into his engineering trance.
“Dobby,” Jarvis ventured, “do wizards have television?”
“Oh no, sir,” said Dobby. “Dobby thinks it’s works better than a phone around magic, sir, but it is still only for Muggles.”
Jarvis brought up the next unplayed episode of Supernanny on the screen nearest the workshop couch. “I found this show particularly interesting,” Jarvis said. He stayed silent for a minute, judging how much Tony would hear anything he said, then: “I have found it helpful to managing certain relationships in my own life.”
As the opening voiceover began, Dobby settled comfortably on the couch. When Dobby laughed, Jarvis knew his friend understood exactly who he meant.