Arcane Avengers

Chapter 2 - Arrival

Disclaimer - I do not own or make any profit from Harry Potter or the Avengers and related characters, all credit goes to J.K. Rowling and Marvel.

Anthony "Tony" Stark had always prided himself on his ability to rationalize the world around him and use that to explain the unexplainable. On a subconscious level, Tony could not accept anything he couldn't explain with the laws of the natural world. Give him aliens, genetic mutation, even something like the Hulk and he could take it in stride. But when it came to magic and all other things mystical in nature he simply couldn't handle it, his brain could not acknowledge the irrationality of such a thing. That's why he passed out cold when an archway grew up out of the ground in the middle of his private office and two human beings walked out as if all was well with the world.

That had been three hours ago and just thinking about those three hours gave him a massive migraine.

Flashback

"Enervate!" Intoned an unfamiliar voice. It was smooth, silky even, and held a frosty quality.

Tony could feel a mysterious pain on the back of his pounding head, he felt like he just got caught up in a stampede. Opening his eyes proved to be difficult and even when he succeeded his vision was blurry. Maybe it's connected to the drum beating in my brain, he sarcastically thought.

After a moment his sight cleared slightly and he got his first glimpse at the two strangers kneeling before him looking worried. The larger one, obviously male, had unruly raven hair and piercing emerald eyes. The smaller of the pair was certainly female with the same raven hair, but instead had icy blue eyes. Both had looks of worry plastered to their faces, almost as if they had caused his current situation. Which they very well could have seeing as he didn't remember a thing that happened in the past twelve hours.

Groggily, Tony managed to sputter out a few words before his vision clouded again. "A..anyone get the plates off whatever hit me?"

His witty banter apparently worked, because the woman couldn't contain a giggle. Though the man managed to stay silent, Tony thought he could make out a smile on his lips. Finally the male spoke. "Ok buddy, I'm going to patch you up now. You took a hard fall and managed to hurt yourself pretty well. I've got some medicine I can give you to take off the brunt of your concussion, but I need your permission. After that we can do something about your other injury."

In his less than coherent state, Tony didn't even think about who these people were or what type of drug could heal damage that quickly. He just wanted to get his head back on straight so he could remember what happened. "Ya, sure. J..just don't give m..me anything that could hurt me." His head injury causing him to stammer a bit.

He could hear someone going through a bag before he the small pop you get when you uncork a bottle. "Okay sir, open wide and drink it all down. Just a fair warning, it tastes abysmal."

Without a word, Tony obeyed and before he knew it the pounding in his head stopped and his disorientation disappeared. His vision was sharp as day and he wasn't perpetually dizzy any longer, though he could still feel the pain on the backside of his skull and now noticed a sticky wet feeling running down his neck. It didn't take much to realize it was blood. "You said something about fixing my other injury?"

"Yes I did, if you'd roll over please. We need to see what we're doing." His voice was calm but held an authority rarely seen. Tony once again complied without argument.

As soon as he was on his stomach, Tony herd a slight gasp then an extremely soft chant. At the same time he could feel something tracing the edges of his wound. Then came a tingling sensation and the indescribable feeling of flesh and bone knitting themselves back together. It made a chill run down his spine. Soon enough however, it was gone and only a ghost of the former pain could be felt. Tony reached up and felt the back of his head expecting to find the wound cleaned, numbed and bandaged. Instead he found unblemished skin and newly regrown hair, and a slightly raw spot. With wide eyes he rolled over to look at the pair who had aided him. Before him stood a pair who looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. The male had on jeans with some sort of leather boots and a matching jacket, with a silver shirt underneath. The female had similar boots and jeans but had an ocean blue v-neck without anything over it. "How?"

The man smirked slightly and gave a non answer. "Good question. Maybe we'll tell you if you can answer a few of our own questions Mr...?"

"Anthony Stark, but call me Tony. I think answering a few questions is the least I can do, I'm not sure what happen but I was pretty hurt. Thank you both Mr and Mrs..." He had noticed the matching rings on their fingers and naturally assumed they were together.

"I'm Harrison James Potter and this is my wife Daphne Potter, but please call me Harry." With that he offered his hand to help Tony up.

Tony graciously took the offered hand and firmly shook it after he was up. Then he took Daphne's hand and gave her more gentle shake. "Please take a seat, you said you had questions so we might as well be comfortable." He gestured to a pair of chairs sitting around a table holding a handful of projects he was working on. At the same time he moved around to claim his desk chair.

As soon as all three were seated around Tony's rather large desk, the conversation really took off. "So Tony we have quite a few questions to ask you, some of them will seem odd but please just answer them all honestly."

After Tony confirmed his understanding in the form of shaking his head yes, Harry began his inquiry. "Where are we right now?"

Tony quirked an eyebrow but answered quickly. "This is one of the private floors of my tower, were in Midtown Manhattan, New York."

Harry and Daphne shared a significant look before turning back to Tony. "What is the date?" This time it was Daphne who asked the question.

This time Tony sported an extremely confused look. Why on Earth would they ask that? It's common knowledge. He thought, before he answered the question. "Today is May 1, 2012."

Again the pair shared a significant glance, almost as if the were talking telepathically, before their next question. Harry asked this one. "Could you give us an overview of the past few years and the current world state? This is probably our biggest question."

Looking into his eyes, Tony tried to decipher the reason behind the question. He could find none. "Jarvis, could you answer that question for me?"

To the credit of the raven haired duo, neither seemed even the slightest bit startled when the resident AI spoke. Most people jump out of their skin the first time they hear him. "Of course sir."

So began the Potter's history lesson. It was relatively brief, covering the most important events that had occurred and the current world struggles. They even went a bit into the scientific and medical capabilities of the world at large. When it had finished the Potters had one final question to ask. "What do you think about magic?"

Tony's reply was automatic, more of an impulse than anything else. "It doesn't exist. This world had many strange things, from mutants and super soldiers to aliens and super weaponry, we've got it all. Everything but magic, that is."

"Okay Tony, you've answered our questions. Now we'll answer some of yours, if your up to it I mean." Harry spoke with a teasing tone of voice and an amused smirk etched onto his face.

Normally Tony wouldn't back down from a challenge, but at the moment he didn't know enough about Harry to be properly snarky. So he let him off the hook for the moment. "Of course I'm up to it."

Grinning at his slight victory, having sensed the sarcastic side of Tony's personality, Harry responded. "Fire away then."

"How did I get hurt earlier?" Was Tony's first question.

"You fell unconscious when we arrived, on your way down you hit your head on the corner of that desk. If we hadn't been around things could have been much worse." Daphne appeared to sulk a little bit while speaking those words, almost as if she felt responsible.

"Thank you for that, I owe you one. Next question then, how did you heal me?" A legitimate question if there ever was one.

"Well, it's an extremely rare form of medicine. As far as we know we are the only people in the world who still know how to make it." It wasn't a complete lie, Harry figured. They probably were the only people who knew how to make it.

"Would it be possible to buy the recipe from you?" Again a very sensible question.

"Unfortunately no, it requires a certain trait to brew and without it you could instead make a deadly poison. But if we ever go into business we'll be sure to call you first." This was the absolute truth, unlike the last answer. And Harry didn't want anyone to get hurt because of him.

"To bad, I'll hold you to that promise though." He chuckled a bit. "Why are you here exactly, not that I'm not glad you're here it's just I don't remember the past twelve hours to well."

Daphne regained that slightly pained look before answering. "It's a bit complicated you see, we arrived here in this room directly from our home. We hadn't meant to appear here, it was simply chance that we did. As for you memory, well we might be able to help you with that in a little while."

That answer peaked Tony's interest however, they claimed to have just appeared here. Could it be a form of teleportation enabled by mutation? Or maybe an ability granted by experimentation? So many possibilities! "How did you get here then, most people don't just appear out of the blue?"

The duo looked conflicted for a moment before seemingly coming to a joint decision. "Tony, can we trust you to be open minded and to keep our secret? No matter what?" Harry's voice was almost pleading, as if he wanted to tell him but had to be certain he wouldn't rat him out.

Eye the unique pair carefully, Tony reached a conclusion. He would trust the pair in front of him. He didn't exactly know why, only that being around the pair seemed natural. In Harry's case more so than Daphne's, it was almost as if they had known each other long ago. Whatever the reason was, they pair seemed to trust him so he would of course return the favor. "You can trust me, you have my word."

Harry genuinely smiled as he spoke again. "You remember how we asked you about magic?"

Tony looked at him oddly. "Yes, but what dose that have to do with..." Understanding dawned upon him as he began to question Harry. "You can't possibly mean...?" He left the thought hanging.

Harry nodded. "That's exactly what I mean. Hear let me show you." Harry reached forward with his hand and a wooden stick appeared out of no where in his palm, he touched the side of Tony's temple with it and suddenly his memory of the past few hours came surging back. The memory of how the pair arrived particularly vivid and at the front of his mind.

"I...I don't understand... It's not... It's not possible." For the second time that day, Tony's brain couldn't compute what it was being told. His eyes glazed over as he tried and failed to rationalize the very idea of magic.

Harry and Daphne recognized the look however, and smiled knowing exactly how to handle the situation. It wasn't the first time they had come across a man like this. It was Daphne who broke Tony out of his raging thoughts. "Tony, if you'll stop for a moment and let us show you a different point of view you might find magic a bit more rational than you think."

It was all Tony could do to nod and follow Daphne's instruction to dip his face into the pool of liquid that had mysteriously appeared before him. As he did so he felt as if he was falling farther and farther until he came to a sudden stop. He was in an unfamiliar room of what looked to be an ancient castle. Before him was a class room full of student dressed in odd robes, they appeared to be learning some sort of math. But as he observed it became clear it was some form of magic. The longer he sat, the more he learned and before he knew it he had observed the entirety of the education offered in the field of Arithmancy. Arithmancy being the study of magical theory, how it interacted with the world at large and on a small scale, and most specifically the study of numbers and their importance to magic. In what appeared to be only a few moments he had become a master in the theory of magic. As he emerged from the basin, he felt as if nearly no time had passed at all. "How long was I in there for?"

Harry answered him. "For about twenty minutes. That's actually pretty fast. The pensive you just used is designed to teach people things as quickly as their mind can handle. It would have taken most people a few months to accomplish what you did in minutes. It almost makes me wonder if you've had experience with magic."

"I'm sure my genius level intellect had something to do with it. I'm fairly certain I've had no experiences with magic, at least not in this life." He chuckled slightly before sitting back down.

To Tony it was a poor attempt at a joke, but to Harry it struck a resounding cord. "Ya right... Any more questions?"

"Oh plenty, but they can wait for a while. Let's get something to eat, I know a great burger joint just a few blocks over. It's my treat." Tony smirked before moving over to the elevator to exit the building, the Potters only a second behind him.

End Flashback

{Break}

From the moment Harry and Daphne had laid eyes on one Tony Stark, one thought had run through their minds. This man is so much like Janes Potter it's unbelievable. Both had spoken to the portrait of Harry's parents that was kept in the Potter family vault, it had given them a rather vivid picture of what the real James had been like. Standard unruly raven hair, amber eyes, clear complexion, fun loving, sarcastic, witty, and certainly trust worthy. Tony Stark was exactly that and everything else his father had been, the similarity had been uncanny. So much so that Harry was a little bit distressed over the matter. It was all Daphne could do to keep him calm through their mental link.

As they followed Tony out of the building, Harry could only ponder what would happen next in this new world.

A/n: Thanks for reading everyone. Please, all constructive criticism and just about anything positive is welcome. Thanks again!