on days like this Chapter 1: For the first die young, a Harry Potter + Avengers Crossover fanfic

on days like this

there is a correlation (causation) between the times tony shattered and harrie died

For the first die young

When they are young and their only connection through their dreams, they used to tell each other of different mythologies. Harrie's favourite was of the Dionysus, a god of madness and frenzy with wine in his blood and rebirth in his veins. Anthony would devour those of creation and war, taking in those that tell of Hephaestus and Hera, of Daedalus and Icarus, of Ares and Athena. They would sit and imagine a world of wings that did not drip wax, of loving fathers and devoted mothers, of family that was family and love that was love.

Together they would whisper off the machinations of Loki, the battle prowess of Thor, of battle-harden Odin and the prophetess Frigg. They would speak of poor Baldr, powerful Freyja and the terrifying Hel. They would whisper of hidden children like Fenrir, Jörmungandr and Sleipnir.

They would speak of druids and Morrigan, of the seidhe and the magic that flowed through the old world. Harrie would listen with rapt attention to all the new stories that Tony would find, of magical horses, terrible woes and great giants.

They would sit side by side on these dreams, within sprawling gardens, rolling meadows and underneath open skies. They would take each other's arms, tracing the names that said they belonged to one another. Harrie Lily Potter written in languid strokes on Tony's arms, with winding and looped letters. Anthony Howard Stark written with quick marks on Harrie's arm, harsh, demanding but ultimately his.

They would soon find out that those legends they would listen and retell would tell of fallacies and devastation, of humanity and its vices and the damnation that awaits both heroes and villains. And so they decided that they would make their own legends.

There would be tales about a man that flew closer to the sun then even Icarus and never falling, only to rise high into the clouds, stars, cosmos; and about a woman who looked at death's face, only to laugh, laugh, laugh.

Harrie Lily Potter is three when she meets Anthony Edward Stark. He is five. He knows he is dreaming and she knows it too. The world, a futuristic utopia is great and all but intangible, impossible. Soulmates normally meet in life, but they were never conventional. There was a sense of something odd in their dream, a sense of something magical that sat strange in Tony's scientific mind but felt at home for Harrie.

It is Tony that sees her first, when he is standing on top of a building of red brick and gold windows. She is sitting by the pond that has Captain America standing proudly with his shield in the air, triumphant and perfect.

He thinks he falls in love with her from the start. This girl must be what mama used to say about soulmates – that you knew from the moment who that someone was. This girl must be what Anna Jarvis used to whisper stories about – something magical and wondrous.

Tony jumps down the terrible fall that had it been reality would have shattered his bones and destroyed his body. The girl with curls the colour of what would one day be his favourite shade red looks up, eyes widening and he thinks this too is when she falls in love with him. Youthful fantasy but he knows it always ringed true.

Her wrist shines in this world – bright, obvious. Tony reads it and for the first time he feels at home. Tony's is a dimmer light, but constant compared to the blaring light that came from her. A current of loyalty compared to the supernova of love. When Harrie reads it, mouthing the letters and realising it says her name, the smile she gives is one of pure happiness and light. It is not often that soulmate names match like theirs do.

They are like the stories – two people meant to be one.

When Harrie is eleven, she tells Tony of magic in her dreams. She tells him of brilliant Hagrid who is half a giant and half a person so this must mean he must be something fantastic. She tells him of Hermione Granger who is a brilliant creature with a head that can never be too full, her mother's name written boldly across her wrist. She tells him of Ron Weasley who is a boy hidden behind the curtain of incredible brothers, striving for a bit of sunlight to allow him to grow, the name Hermione Jean Granger written in her terrible handwriting.

Tony in turn tells her of his single, solitary year in high school where it was obvious he didn't belong. He tells her of when he heads to MIT, great and incredible. She watches him in awe, as he goes on about science and theories she wasn't even able to comprehend. But the sheer joy in his face as he tried to explain what he was doing, showcasing thoughts and images of what their reality made him. One day, he tells her quietly of James Rhodes, Rhodey as he calls him, the greatest man he has come across, whose soulmate name he doesn't reveal. He is sombre in what has happened.

Tony had always been a physical child, always choosing to lie across Harrie compared to her almost shy countenance. She says he was young for what Rhodey had saved him from, Tony is quiet but nods, once.

'You are just a child,' she says, whispers into his dark hair, where he sits in between outstretched legs. 'We're both just children.'

'They won't allow us to be children.'

When Harrie tells him of Sirius Black, of the great bounding dog turned man that protects with exposed gums and bloodshot eyes, there's a quite hope in her. Family, Sirius would whisper it in her hair when she finally decides to grab at his presence after he showed the name James Henry Potter, written in an almost perfect scrawl.

When the whole fiasco with Peter Pettigrew ends and Ron Weasley unable to use his legs for weeks, with Sirius in the wind, Harrie grows quieter.

He tells Rhodey, his only confidant in the way Hermione had been Harrie's of Sirius. They spend two weeks in England, finding Sirius quicker than any magical means and it is Rhodey who places his hands up and says, 'We love them and we would do anything for them.' The terrible mutt changes into a bedraggled man and he looks between the young boy Tony was and Rhodey who is the true hero of this story.

The godfather says, 'For her.'

Rhodey says, 'For him.' There's a nod between the two of them and with that, Sirius Black has Tony Stark's protection till the day he dies.

Their secret dream place is awash in soft yellow glows from the mythical, unburning sun above when Tony tells Harrie that one of the last remaining links to her family is safe. He doesn't tell her of the money he funnels to Remus Lupin for the honesty and hope he had given Harrie during her third year.

She tells him of the Triwizard Cup – annoyed at the start, growing angrier and their seat by the pool growing darker as she becomes filled with more and more and more rage. To counteract it, Tony tells her of how Sirius is spending his time in the Stark house in London, bounding in the garden's light and racing up and down the halls without a care in the world. His safety a balm to Harrie's soul.

When Harrie is fifteen and he is seventeen, they meet for the first time outside of their dreams. She's sitting on a swing, ears ringing with her screams from the night and eyes burning with the face of a lifeless boy. Her hands feel weak and she feels like ash, ready to blow in the wind. She thinks – no she knows – that it was thanks to Tony that she didn't snap as she could have so easily done.

She looks up and she sees humanity standing in front of her. Her first thought was he's weak, he had never been a man to show his strength and as a child he had been a twig. Too much hair, too large eyes, too big of a grin. Too much wrapped in a naïve body. He comes to sit next to her, the swing sways as he rights himself.

'You're small.' She says, with a grin.

Tony lets out a chuckle, 'Look who's talking. Come on, sparky, I think there's a place for cheeseburgers not far from here.'

'Cheeseburgers.' Harrie shakes her head, 'you and your cheeseburgers.' By this time they come to the car where Rhodey stands by the driver's seat. She smiles at him, knowing who he is from Tony's stories.

'Rhodey, love of my life, meet the other love of my life, Harrie. Harrie, meet my honey-bear, my greatest platypus, my beloved snookums.'

'Oh it's darling to meet you honey-bear.' Harrie grins, after Rhodey comments there's two of them and Harrie and Tony laugh, because it's true – they were always too close, cut from the same cloth as it was.

The next morning sees a picture of them sitting in a park somewhere in London, with too much fish and chips that Harrie promptly doused in vinegar much the amusement of the boys. Harrie cuts the black and white photograph out from where Uncle Vernon threw the paper in the bin, having ignoring the society pages and going straight for the comics in the back. No one can see her face, Tony had made certain of it. She places it behind a beam, where only she can see it laying down in bed.

It joins another one of Hermione, Ron and her – a magical photograph, moving with smiles and grins. The pictures show two different worlds that she's fundamentally entwined within – the magical and the real, and she loves them both with a power unimaginable. She traces a face over Rhodey, who was cracking up laughing when she told him of Hermione's terror of getting expelled and then placed a finger on Tony's face who gazes at the two of them with a look that she knows because she does it when she looks at those she loves.

A few days later, Tony comes into her dreams with a black eye and a split lips. She learns to hate Howard Stark in a way that she couldn't scrounge up for even for Voldemort. He wouldn't tell her what that black eye was for, but Harrie had an inkling. The reasons for children like them were easy to pick out.

Tony keeps a photograph within his drawer. He whispers about a girl with a fiery temper, quiet melancholy and devious bravery to his mother when his father isn't there. His mother smiles, sad.

'I am happy you found her.'

She is dressed to the nines, ignoring the purple on her son and makes sure that the dripping red doesn't touch her. Her mark on her wrist is bound tight, a name forgotten and most definitely not Howard Stark.

The next night, his parents are dead. And so is Jarvis with the name on his wrist dark, no more shining Anthony Howard Stark. And Tony becomes numb.

Harrie decides that the Wizarding World can go to hell when she's sixteen. She grins at Tony in the dream and tells him to come to London. The next day, a private jet lands in Heathrow and Harrie is there, waiting for him with a large black dog, Hermione Granger on her other side and Ron Weasley next to her.

'I'm taking you into Wizarding London.' Harrie tells him with a grin as she leans up next to him. 'The others don't like it, but I'm sure you can hold your own.' She places a warm, warm hand in his. He greets her friends for the first time, smiling at Hermione who starts to ask questions about his degrees and Ron Weasley just looks at him as if he's some very odd, very exotic creature from the Amazon.

Harrie tells him it's because he's a muggle and Ron doesn't come by such people very often.

She takes him forward to the car that would take them to London, his hand clasped firmly in hers and they don't separate throughout the whole trip. From the bank run by goblins, to the joke store run by tricksters who have each other written on their wrists, Tony is in awe.

The coldness after Jarvis's death slowly dissipates and only truly goes when Harrie kisses him for the first time in their bedroom. He's kissed before, plenty of times before, slept with other men and women. He had intimacy with some of them and just a good, hard fuck with others.

This is different. This was warmth and security. It was not the best, in fact Tony is pretty sure it would be counted among one of the worst. But it was theirs, in a way it could be no one else's. He kisses her long and hard before falling asleep in her arms.

Then comes the year that breaks them. Harrie tells him of her nightmares in real form, of the great snake lord and rising black smoke of prejudice and genocide. She weeps in his arms, terrified in her uncertainty and unsure in their future.

'They're killing people like you, Tony.' She whispers to him. She tells him of the diary, the ring, the locket, the diadem, the cup, and the snake too. He is horrified to his bones at the actions of the inhumane.

They lay in the bed, as close as they can touch and Harrie traces the stubble on his face as she says, 'we're going to have to shave this off you know.' The look on his face made her laugh like a madman, a hyena-like thing that makes Tony grin. It had been too long since she had laughed the way she had. 'You're well known Tony, not just as my muggle soulmate, but your Tony freaking Stark – you're well known even among my people.'

Later, much later after the destruction of their world and damnation of those against them, there is picture developed. Tony keeps it in his bedroom, the one in which no one could enter and would look at it. It shows a dark-haired woman, hair the colour of the inky sea with sharp amber eyes and no scar grinning up while being twirled by a red-haired, green eyed man. They're dancing, softly and constant in this moving picture – he couldn't remember the song, but it had been one of the greatest moments of his life.

The picture will follow him everywhere – this constant reminder of her constant presence in his life, of that ever-bounding love and joy.

One day, Tony will keep it close to his heart in a cave, blocked from the sunlight of her adoration.

It all culminates in the end with the three. A stone, a cloak and a wand, earned with terror and blood, but hers nonetheless. She stares at the two people in front of her, her mother and father who look at her with hopeless loss in their eyes.

'Have I done well?'

'Yes.' They say, arms outstretched but nothing but a cold touch on her face.

She has a parasite in her head, a curse, a damned soul waiting to be expelled. She told only Tony, breaking down crying in the hall. Tony, her steadfast pillar, who had taken a year to aid them in a war not his own. He had followed her, lounging in a second-hand tent, watched with furious eyes as Ron left, spent time falling in love with Hermione's mind that ran on a different wavelength then his, but geniuses in their own right.

They had talked during their quiet times together, outside in the cold. They both had cups of tea in their hand – he hid the whisky for days in which they truly felt despair echo in their minds from the impossible quest an old fool had given Harrie.

That day, when she tells him in other words that she was to die, Tony had held her, held Harrie tight, instinctively knowing what was to come. He knew what horrors he will have to see at the day's dawn. He had kissed Harrie on the top of her head, kissed her and held her close, wishing for once that she could be a selfish woman instead of this, brave, idiotic girl he held close to his heart.

Tony wasn't there when Harrie faced her nightmare and closed her eyes to green, green light. Had he been there, he would have said fuck it to everything and taken her, hidden her somewhere where no one could find her. Kept her in the same way a dragon hoarded gold, his and no one else's to put claim to her.

The first time Anthony Edward Stark truly murders someone is when he's nineteen and seething. Harrie's body is paraded through the courtyard with grinning madmen surrounding her. He's quiet, terribly quiet and he spots the bushy-haired Hermione watches him when he takes in the limp red-haired girl. There is pity in her gaze, hiding her own grief.

He hears the old McGonagall let out a devastating cry that would have been his had he been able to make a sound. But he is frozen, solid and for the first time in his life absolutely empty. This was not the numbness that fell him when Jarvis died. This was a roaring echo from an abyss that did not answer his pleas. The wrist which blazed for him alone was dark, no constant light emitting from the name written in his penmanship.

Tony knew that he would never feel happiness, lightness again.

The man, that terrible creature of whom his…his…Harrie had nightmares of since she was a child parades his wondrous prowess of killing a child that willingly came to him. Tony wouldn't believe it had he not known the sacrifice that Harrie willingly acted upon. Harrie was no coward – she was a brave, idiotic soul, through and through who laughed at death and made fun of madmen. She stared death happily, willingly and took all that was given to her. She was nothing more than a lamb coming to the slaughterhouse.

The gun that hid beneath his clothes is in his hands now. Action, reaction – it was instinctive. No on watches the only man without magic, no one watches as he brings up one of the weapons that his blood would make a fortune upon, no one watches as it fires, straight and true.

Bang.

He shot only two but the echoes reverberated among all of them. Here was man of no magic but great might. Here was a man who despaired in silence and felt his soul damned. Tony stood a god among mortals, letting the arm fall and the gun to the ground with a clatter and final silence echoing.

Tom Marvolo Riddle falls. A puddle of blood behind his head and another staining his dark robes. A man who played at godhood whose position was usurped by someone who truly encompassed the entirety of the idea.

There is a loud scream, heart-wrenching even though it came from the opposite side and Tony looks up as a mad woman came towards him. A literal connotation of a Fury comes towards him, like deity of vengeance and damnation. It is Bellatrix Lestrange, he thinks for a moment. The woman who destroyed Hermione all those weeks ago, who wrote mudblood over her mother's name.

And now she desires to the same to him. He wonders for one second if she would take Harrie's name from his arm, so he would never have to see that warm, constant love that signalled his devotion to the sad creature lying dead.

He sees a red line of magic come towards him and he is on the floor with devastating pain and terror running through his veins. There is a terrible silence in his ears, like the way the waves sound underneath the sea.

There is a dog rushing past him and a dog falls. Tony slowly watches the last vestiges of who Harrie was disappear as the dog lets out a whine, a puddle of blood disappearing into fur from the slit across his neck.

It is then that Tony weighs the life of this witch, of this woman who believed her better than him simply for the blood running through his veins. And when he weighs it to all else he knew, Tony Stark found it lacking.

It is that day that Tony Stark becomes the Merchant of Death.

10.

Harrie meets Edwin Jarvis when she's dead. The man that is Tony's father in all ways but biological. He smiles at her, sad and soft, pulling her into a hug. For a moment Harrie stays still, quiet – even now, still unsure at the contact that came with unconditional love. There may be no physical similarity between Edwin Jarvis and Tony Stark, but she sees familiarity in that mischievous glint that never goes away or that smile Tony had when he looked at her when he believed no one else was watching him.

'Oh darling girl,' Jarvis says, standing in front of her. He raises his hands up and lays them upon her face. They are cold against her, terribly so in a way that told her that something wasn't exactly right. She feels her hair on her arms rising on her arms. 'I cannot thank you enough for what you have given that boy.'

'No, I think I have to thank you for what you made him into. He's a good man.' A quiver to her voice and a wet smile grace her person, then a sniffle.

'One of the best I have come to know.' Harrie lets out a sob and hugs him close to her.

'You and you alone have made him into a man that I can love with all my being. He is so easy to love.'

'Yes, that boy is. I am happy he will still have you in his life. Go, my girl, he waits for you.' Edwin Jarvis places a cold kiss on her forehead and she wakes with the warm hand of Tony Stark on her cheek.

He stares down at her with horrified awe at the heart beating almost-ichor through her veins. As she stares up at him, she hears her heart beating in her ears and realises that she should not have survived.

11.

She is seventeen when she enters his room in the apartment they shared in London, silent feet padding to sit by his bed. Harrie doesn't feel real, her fingers can't feel the sheets beneath her fingers nor the silk of her negligee. She wasn't able to taste the food on her tongue nor the drink she had earlier that night. She would look outside and see the bright, shining lights of Singapore and think of the empty vacuum of space – cold and unfeeling.

It was not a good day.

Tony watches her for a moment, places the tablet he used down on the bedside table and takes her hand in his. Harrie shakes. She breaks and looks at him with green eyes of death and her face, normally valleys of life in smiles and laughs become devoid of the very thing that made her Harrie. She's motionless, the breakage happening inside her, leaving a shell in her place and Tony holds her close to him.

His warmth burns like the sun she loved to sleep under. The early stages of stubble along his jaw poke and prod in her skin, hot breath burrowing into her skin. Most of all, she hears his heart – steady and constant, ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom, slower than the ticking of the clock in the room. She breathes and counts.

When she gets to eighty-four, she asks, '–make me real.' The whisper echoes in Tony's ears, fingers gliding across the mark on his wrist that foretell their connection, their inability to be without another. 'Show me I'm alive. Tony, please make me warm.'

He takes his hands, takes her body and slowly brings her to the bed. He looks at her and she looks at him, dusk light illuminating the gold of her skin and red of her hair. The crackling fire shines red through his hair and dances gold across his skin.

They are creatures cut of the same cloth, golden and bright – gods in human form with mortal vices and immortal desires.

They do not sleep within one another that night, they don't fuck too. But what happens is just as intimate, just as opening and revealing. In soulmate culture there is mentions of looks, communication that is easy and understandable – it is no different for Harrie and Tony.

She nods once and Tony starts to breathe life back into her. His hands go to her negligee, and pulls it off so slowly, so delicately as if she was horse easily startled and not a human being on the border of being so broken she'd never be the same again. Tony's eyes don't stray from hers, keeping green and brown locked. His fingers go to her underwear, watching as always for uncertainty. He brings them down and allows her to step out of them.

Tony allows her hands on him, shedding the clothes much in the same way as he did her. Slowly, watchful, waiting for something to crack. The shirt, the shorts, the socks and underpants and in much the same way he stands there allowing her to peruse him, take him in and realise this is what the universe has decreed her equal, her half.

And for the first time since they've known one another, they are at each other's mercy.

'You know what I feel?' Tony asks, placing the hand over her mouth and noise. 'Air, breath.' He lets his hand drag down, a chill where it once was before it rest on top of her left breast, he bends forward, placing his ear on her chest and Harrie breathes slowly with a shiver. 'A heartbeat.' His hands go to her wrists, softly and gently turning her hands over so he can trace the veins and arteries up and down her arms. 'The blood in these arms.'

He stops there, eyes taking in Harrie – closed eye, mouth slightly parted and her breath slightly faster. Tony's fingers slide to her shoulders, pressing slightly on the freckles that cover the golden, tanned skin and holds her close to him. Skin on skin, warmth on warmth, life on life.

He will wonder afterwards how something so constant between the two of them could be destroyed so easily. How they forget each other in their need to feel something after a war that stole their very persons, their very sense of being and absolution.

But he knows, so obviously knows in the way that Harrie said do what you want, I can't give it to you, I'm sorry. He will realise that it wasn't a go-ahead in the way he thought it was, but rather a plea for patience and commitment. He wouldn't give to her, not when he should have.

With the war ended but adrenaline still pumping through their veins and nightmares dancing behind their eyes, Harrie and Tony turn to their vices. Tony dances long into the night with alcohol on his breath and powdered drugs on his fingertips, cum slides down his clothes and the finishes of sex on his skin. He wakes up the next day with another girl, another boy, another girl, another boy, and so it goes.

Tony knows that Harrie hates it when she watches the parade of pretty creatures walk through their door after a night when she does decree to come home. She says nothing, this creature who asks for nothing and receives nothing. But it does not make her an angel for her own vices may not be in alcohol and bodies but in blood and fights.

Harrie finds herself an auror, a policing force that was exactly that – a force that could not be budged. She thinks she's like that question Tony liked to use when speaking about the two of them in unison: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

But now, they are both unstoppable – constant in their desires and decisions, freely moving. Neither a rock to ground the other.

She goes to work with a single-minded determination, a kamikaze mission more often than not. She lives though, she comes back alive and kicking – feeling life in her sinew and ichor in her body. Harrie is silent in her missions, constant watchfulness and paranoia colliding through her mind.

Harrie doesn't shy away from getting her hands dirty. She knows what they call her in the offices, what the scum of the wizarding world call her – the Devil, for what else could she be when she comes to judge them for their sins. She rips into their ligaments, she tears through their minds, and she ravages their very being. The war had taught her that. The only thing that remains from her utter annihilation of creatures are bruised, torn knuckles and the flickers of blood on her face.

The war had made her this.

Devil, devil – they call her. But even Lucifer was beloved before he fell and Harrie hadn't fallen and with Tony there, patching her hands and mending her scrapes, she knows she never will.

Lethal force allowed, had been her allowance and for someone with death in her lungs and destruction between her fingers she took it as gospel.

There are screaming matches. Horrible things where they use pieces of verbal diatribe to cut into each other, what unknown wounds made worse like salt in cuts. Their friends, both magic and not watch with silent judgement as two opposable forces collide again and again. Hermione and Ron whisper caution to which Harrie throws it in the wind. Rhodey yells at Tony, desperate in his need for him to return to the boy he was.

They want their brilliant creatures back, those they followed for they were boundless like the sun.

But Harrie and Tony continue to collide until one day they stop and Harrie wakes from a dream, looks down, the killing curse almost on her breath as Tony looks up at her, breathing as heavy as she did. She slide off him, her hands tight around the wand she had stolen from a madman, hand flickers to the ring with a rock and hand touching the cloak that always stayed by their bed.

She shakes and shakes, and Tony just sits, away from her still catching his breath as he stares at. It had been a dream, it had been a nightmare that took on physical actions to prevent it.

'Perhaps it's time you step away from your job.' He says.

'I can say the same thing with you and your weapons.' Harrie had always known how to cut the most. Their fight is something grand then. Something so cosmically terrifying that even his robots know to stay away from her.

She disappears the next day, no one knows where she went. Tony would take a glass filled with whisky, sit on their balcony in the cool March air and look at that picture where they twirl, twirl, and twirl.

Gosh so this was a whirlwind and a half! My god, I absolutely loved to write this. Absolutely, absolutely loved this. I hope everyone enjoyed this as much as I loved to write it. It was quite carthartic to be honest, very much so. Anyway, you can find me on mallasia on tumblr! Thank you for reading.

mallasia