Harry Potter was staring out the window of bus watching the sights of London go by. He had never seen London, at least he never remembered seeing London. For as long as Harry could remember, he had lived with his aunt and uncle at number 4 Privet Drive in Surrey. It was a pretty miserable existence, but he could never tell anyone. No Harry learned that painful lesson early in life.

Keep quiet, don't whimper. Don't be seen.

Keeping his thoughts positive, he turned back toward the window, holding his second hand backpack close to him.

Today was eight year old Harry Potter's lucky day and he was determined to let nothing ruin his day, not even Dudley. See, they were going to the Stark European Expo, a once in a lifetime opportunity. The last time the Stark expo was in London was in 1992.

Harry knew all about the Stark European Expo, he had read about it at the free library. That is where he always went to avoid his cousin and his gang. Harry soaked up knowledge like a sponge. His favorite subject by far was robotics and mechanics. It always looked so interesting to him. He had heard about his grandfather being a mechanical engineer from his aunt, one time when he was cleaning the kitchen, so he supposed that he must have inherited his love of robotics. He had built a circuit board in school during one of their science classes, but Dudley had snatched it and took credit for it.

He wondered about what his parents had done. He didn't know anything about his mother and father. His aunt refused to tell Harry anything about his deceased parents except that they were drunks who were killed in a car crash.

Harry zoned in listening to Ms. Aberdeen give the last minute instructions to her class. Harry smiled looking at Ms. Aberdeen, who was his favorite teacher by far. She knew that he was a ward of his aunt and uncle, and that they really didn't pay much attention to him, so Ms. Aberdeen gave Harry little acts of kindness, like this field trip. She had stopped Uncle Vernon after school asking for the permission slip for Harry, and he stated he did not see the point behind spending money for Harry to go on the trip, so Ms. Aberdeen offered to pay, citing that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Uncle Vernon couldn't give any logical reason on why Harry couldn't go now, and he certainly did not want to keep Harry at home that day, so here Harry was, on the bus enjoying the sights and sounds of London.

And he wasn't going to let anyone rain on his parade. It was his first time that he could remember out of Surrey and he wasn't going to take it for granted.

Not even Dudley was going to ruin it for him.

He could hear his cousin boasting about how much money Uncle Vernon gave him for lunch and for souvenirs. Harry could only shake his head. He had woken up early in the morning and had hoped to pack a small lunch, but only had managed to hide an apple in his backpack before Uncle Vernon woke causing Harry to retreat back in his cupboard with only an apple for lunch. It was better than nothing.

He stood to leave the bus, only to be shoved down by Dudley. His glasses fell from his face which sent Harry groping on the floor for them.

He sighed in relief finding them and then scrambled off the bus after his classmates.

"Now I want everyone to pair off. Each one of you are responsible for staying with your partner. And then we are going to break off into different groups with the different chaperones."

Harry watched as everyone paired off, knowing that no one would want to pair off with him. Not that he could blame them. He was short, skinny (though not his own fault), with ugly glasses (yet again, not is fault), with knobby knees and clothes that didn't fit him.

Ms. Aberdeen looked at him and held out her hand to him.

Harry smiled gratefully and took it.

"I hope you don't mind having to escort me around the Stark Expo."

"Not at all Ms. Aberdeen. I am grateful for having such a pretty woman on my arm," Harry told her, flashing her a smirk.

She ruffled his already messy hair, looking down at one of her favorite students. She had made it a habit to review all the reports of the kids before they entered her 2nd grade classroom. Harry had been at the top in the beginning of his school career with the instructors stating that he should skip a couple of grades, but then it suddenly plummeted. She knew that something was going on with him. You don't go from reading 5 levels higher then to not knowing how to read at all.

The system was flawed. She had made Harry stay late one day, telling his uncle that Harry had missed to many days of school (which was true) but had given him a test he had supposedly missed. It was an IQ test. Harry did well when she had told him that these tests were not reported to home.

Well was an understatement, he was classified as a genius.

"Everything all right at home lately?"

"Yes Ms. Aberdeen," Harry replied. Harry had gotten walloped a couple of days ago for undercooked carrots, but he was able to function, and the bruises were covered by his clothes.

"You know if you need me, you can tell me anything," she told him gently.

"I know." Harry closed himself off, watching the presentation on recombinant DNA, asking intelligent questions at the end.

She shook her head and continued to keep an eye out on all her students. Dudley Dursley and his gang were at the top of her list to make sure that they towed the line. She shook her head as she saw them bullying a classmate close to the robotics display.

"Oh Harry, I have to run and take care of that cousin of yours."

Harry groaned, wanting to stay away from Dudley for most of the day.

"Stay by the genetics display and I will come for you as soon as I deal with Dudley."

Harry nodded, walking through the crowd to get away from his cousin as quickly as possible.

111111111

"Tony!"

Tony cringed hearing the sounds of his assistance voice cutting through the crowd. He was on a roll, a lucky streak, and had not played craps this well in quite a while.

"Here, blow on these for me," Tony told her looking over his tinted glasses taking a sip from his high ball drink holding his open palm out on it.

"Tony, we are going to be late, we should have been up in the air three hours ago, where have you been? You haven't answered your phone, you weren't in your room . . . Tony, this Stark Expo is important," Pepper huffed out.

"I know . . . now blow the die," Tony told her again.

She did, knowing that her impulsive boss wouldn't stop until she gave him an inch. Rolling her eyes she watched as he rolled doubles, which drove the table crazy.

He grabbed his chips, calling it a day. He supposed she was right, he did have a multi-billion dollar company to run.

"Pep, cash these out and transfer a million to the Catholic Ministries for me, put some in the Maria Stark Trust, and take some for yourself," he told her quietly. There must have been about a couple million in the pile. Not that Tony needed it or anything.

Pepper smiled, "I'm so gonna get myself a nice birthday gift from you with this."

"It's your birthday?" Tony asked, smiling at his assistant. He knew her birthday was last month, but whenever she was going to get something with his money she called it a birthday gift.

"Meet me at the jet in 10."

"Take care of those chips, okay?" He walked away placing a thousand dollar chip on the roulette table. He won, and she collected those winning.

"Thanks Pep."

She knew Tony would have bought drinks for everyone at the bar, but every so often, she would catch glimpse of Maria Stark in him. She had often heard around the off about how Maria had a kind heart and would dote on her son, but Maria had died before Pepper could meet her, taking out Tony's only positive influence. Obidiah Stane had stepped up while Tony tried to catch is bearings, but he did nothing to help Tony deal with his loss, and so Tony just floundered.

Sometimes Tony still floundered, but it was her job to keep him on the straight and narrow, so she squared her shoulders and got Tony on his jet.

11111111

Tony Stark stood right outside the structure that housed Stark European Expo. He had resisted for ages of coming back to London, thinking that Switzerland would be a better spot, but Obi and Pepper wore him down. Pepper had always wanted to see London (she was adopted by an American couple, but had found out that her birth parents were from Britain), and Obi had said it would be good for business. Obi wanted to score the contracts in the UK, or gobble up some tech companies that were start-ups.

Tony, well as for him, he wanted to avoid London like the plague.

Tony remembered his time in London with both fondness and disdain. His cousins James and Sirius were fun to be around, James' parents were both nice and accommodating to the squib side of Dorea's family. They spent summers together from 12-16, until Tony graduated from MIT and started drabbling in the R&D department of Stark industries leaving the wizarding world mostly behind. His mother Maria had forbidden Tony from going London after she was tortured by her sister during the rise of He Who had Way to Many Names.

Bellatrix Black didn't care if you were her half sister or not, if you were a squib you had to die. Like Maria, Tony had some active magic abilities (stemming mostly around self preservation and healing), but not fully active magical powers. Bellatrix screamed she was going after 17 year old Tony next. Maria healed, but had forbid Tony from going to London. It's not like he really had time considering all the other things he had going on in between MIT and other activities. The latest thought was that genetic mutations (as in mutants and the X-men) were caused by the faulty magic gene. He had read the report a couple times when his good friend, Hank McCoy came by to see him. Luckily for Tony, his magic was mostly now controlled and the accidental outbursts had come to a stop. But his crazy half-aunt was someone he had preferred not to run into anyway.

He wouldn't have gone to London if he hadn't gotten the frantic phone call from Lily about James. Maria had tried to forbid him, but Lily needed him. His cousin was presumed dead, and Sirius was mad with grief and on a whim joined the Auror corp to help hunt down the bastards.

The last outburst he had was when he found out that Lily and her husband had died. Tony had spent a couple of months with Lily, helping her through James supposed death. Lily had been a wreck, and Tony tried his best to help her through it. The death of his parents had been what brought Tony back to the states, he wouldn't have left Lily otherwise.

Lily had been the only person who never judged him or tried to be with him for his money. Lily was a breath of fresh air, much like Pepper was with him now. He smiled thinking of his personal assistant. Pepper was the only one besides Obi now that he could trust. Everyone was always trying to get a piece of him, but not Pepper.

At times Tony swore he could see a little bit of Lily in Pepper, but he never confused the two in his mind, no matter how alike they were at times. He looked across the expo watching Pepper handle the setup for Stark Industries. He would have never made it the last seven years without Pepper, she came to him right when he needed her. His life was in shambles, Lily was gone . . . James was gone. Remus, who he had spent many summers with, had informed him that his cousin Sirius was thrown into some place called Asskabin.

Tony shook his head, bringing himself back to the here and now. The wizarding world was better off left to defend itself and fight their own battles. He locked eyes with Pepper and she made her way across the room to him.

"How are you?" She asked him quietly as she weaved them skillfully through the crowd.

"Fine, never better," Tony stated putting up his party boy mask. "I could use a little bit of alcohol though, these things are always better with a little bit of whiskey, or maybe a lot of whiskey."

Pepper shook her head seeing Tony revert back to his public persona. It was quite rare that she would catch glimpses of Tony having an "off day."

"Is it sunny out yet? I swear Switzerland or the Netherlands would have been better. Did you know that you can prostitution is legal in the Netherlands?"

"Oh Tony, you know that you don't have to pay to get women in your bed," Pepper replied cheekily, pulling out a tissue to wipe some lipstick off of Tony's neck. He didn't even remember getting kissed, it was probably one of the fan girls that were constantly following him around.

"I bet you don't even know how that got there," Pepper said knowingly.

Tony shrugged his shoulders and smirked. He was getting ready to reply something petty and snarky, but a shock of black hair and green eyes caught his attention.

He scanned the crowd and realized that it was school day. Some of the primary and secondary schools were invited during the day to promote science and mathematic education. It was a worthy cause, but that meant he had to be around children, and children made him uncomfortable for some reason.

"Could you give the presentation?" Tony asked Pepper as they started to make their way to the main stage.

"Scared of a bunch of children?" Pepper smirked at him. She knew that Tony had an aversion to children for some weird reason. It was probably because he didn't have any of his own, and well, Howard Stark wasn't a great role model for his son.

"I'm Tony Stark, CEO and head of R&D of Stark Industries. I am called the DaVinci of our time, even though I really don't know what that means, what do you think that means?" Pepper shook her head and rolled her eyes at his rant. It was nothing new. "Anyway, I am not scared of a bunch of school children. I just don't like germs."

"We went over this at our meeting, and you agreed. Who better to talk about the advancement of technology than you? Besides you are a kid at some level."

He nodded, and was going to retort, when a commotion caught his attention. Not again. Flashes to another time pushed to the for front of Tony's mind as he fought to keep his stress levels down. Stress would cause his ambient magic to lash out for protection.

Tony looked around and saw a young teacher going to where the disturbance was, whispering instructions to the child she was escorting around the expo. The child looked like he could be no more than five with taped up glasses, dark brown (almost black) hair, and large green eyes.

"Tony?"

"Seems like some kids are screwing around near the genetic display. Who is our presenter over there today?" Tony asked, just trying to keep on track with the expo.

"Fortis Biotechnology," Pepper spouted off by memory. She remembered being intrigued by their new genetic testing technology. From what she could remember, genetic testing and genetic recombination was only some of their research. Much like OsCorp, they were looking into ways to help the veterans coming back with missing limbs and trying in trying to regrow missing limbs.

There was another company looking into it as well, but she just couldn't remember who they were at the moment.

Tony, for some reason, just couldn't take his eyes off the little boy with his teacher. The teacher had to leave the little boy behind to deal with who Tony could only presume was the boy's classmates. He saw that a rather large looking whale of a boy had slipped off, and Tony was getting ready to say something, when Obi approached.

"Are you ready for your publicity stunt of the week?" Obi asked.

Tony nodded minutely when he saw the whale-boy pushing around the small child.

If there was one thing in this world that Tony Stark loathed, it was bullies.

"Tony," Obi warned following his line of vision.

"I'll do the presentation after I take care of this little nuisance."

Tony crossed the expo, ignoring the calls of the fans and women wanting to get a piece of him. He had tunnel vision right now, and he knew he had to get to that booth.

"Dudley, just leave me alone," Harry begged, holding on to his book bag, walking backward in hopes to escape his cousin. He knew though that he was trapped. There was a huge machine blocking his path and Ms. Aberdeen was nowhere in sight. He closed his eyes, resigned to his fate knowing that there was nowhere for him to go now. Dudley had him boxed in.

He had forgotten the first rule, don't get boxed in.

"Freak, you stole from my kitchen again!" Dudley accused, ripping the book bag out of Harry's hands and pushing Harry into the exhibit. "Just wait til I tell Dad, he's gonna whip you good."

Your kitchen? Yeah right, like you could figure out what was in there anyway. Harry thought darkly as his cousin advanced.

Harry knew, he just knew, he was in for it now. He fell back, hard against the hard metal machine, he felt his arm catch on a jagged piece of metal in the display causing a gash and he heard a crack. Harry heard someone running up before he let the pain in his head over take him.

Tony picked up the small child, holding him against his chest as he made his way over to the medic area. He started barking out orders, telling them to call of an ambulance. The kid had taken a pretty heavy hit to his head by the whale kid, and then another hit to his head as he hit the ground.

He looked at the kid, taking in his slight form.

"Tony, you need to go do the presentation now."

Tony looked up and blinked. He had almost forgotten about the presentation. "Yeah, Pepper, find his teacher and let her know what happened to him. Get his name, we will send flowers."

"Okay Tony." Pepper said, watching the medic work on the small kid. Tony looked up in the direction of the stage, murmuring to himself as he walked off.

A couple of scenes added here and there. Drop me a line, let me know what you think.