The one with the bow was grinning in a way that meant he hadn't seen something as entertaining as this in a long time. The pretty, red-haired one looked like she wanted to grin in a similar way but had more control to keep her features schooled in something approximating mild curiosity.

"So you're my dad," Harry said to the large, blond one. The one with the hammer. Supposedly a god, even.

"Yes, I have conceived you myself!" His 'father' said with a huge, beaming smile.

"With your brother," Harry said very slowly, very carefully. "Who is apparently my mother." Harry gave the tall dark-haired one a good, long look. Yes, there were similarities between their features, even Harry could see that. Hair, eye-colour, the shape of their nose and mouth.

The big, beefy one with the shield lowered his head into his hands and released a deep sigh that conveyed a generous amount of wariness and disbelief. Beside him on the couch the brown-haired one with the glasses calmly sipped a steaming mug of tea. Harry could do with some tea right about now.

How was he ever going to explain this to Ron and Hermione, to Sirius and Dumbledore? If it even was true, since Harry still had his doubts. As far as he was concerned, James and Lily were his parents, end of story.

"Ah, yes," his 'father' said after a few awkward moments of complete silence. "Loki played a prank, disguising himself as a woman, and afterwards, after you were born, our father was not amused and had you taken away. We did not know where you were taken, but we have looked for you."

Harry released a snort. "So Loki put on a dress and somehow he got pregnant? Is that what happened?"

The cocky one with the goatee, the one who had all but kidnapped Harry from the Dursleys just as he had returned home from a disastrous fourth year at Hogwarts, stepped up to Harry and clapped him on the shoulder. "Chin up, kid. The last time Loki popped out a sprog he was a horse. Imagine, you could have ended up with eight legs and spent the rest of your life carrying your asshole grandfather into battle instead of what you got now."

Yeah, Harry had nothing coherent to say to that.

00000

Number 2

Harry asked for a phone while he retreated to one of the hotel room's private bedrooms. Tony Stark threw a thin, black thing at him and when Harry caught it and stared at it in confusion, Steve Rogers scolded Stark and took the time to show Harry how to work the mobile phone, since that was apparently what it was.

Grateful that he'd taken the time to memorize Hermione's phone number years ago, Harry called her, needing someone familiar to talk to about everything that had happened.

His whole life had been turned upside down in the span of just a few hours and Harry didn't think there was room in his head to make sense of it all.

Hermione answered herself and Harry was glad he didn't have to talk to one of her parents because he wasn't sure his voice wouldn't crack the second he used it.

"Hermione," Harry breathed, and yep, his voice was doing strange things as he attempted to get a few more words out.

"Harry?" Hermione asked, obviously shocked Harry would call her since she knew the Dursleys would never let him use their phone. "What's wrong?"

Harry swallowed, and then he swallowed again. "So my parents apparently aren't my parents, and now I have new ones, alive ones, and they're taking me to America for the summer at least."

"What?" Hermione asked and then fell utterly silent as she processed what Harry had just said. "Okay, one thing at a time. What new parents?"

"Yeah, so my new parents had me as a prank but then my maybe evil grandfather took me away and my parents couldn't find me until now." Harry was deeply, sincerely proud of himself that he'd managed to get all of that out in one go without breaking down in some way.

"Where are you?" Hermione demanded.

"Er…some hotel in London. We'll be leaving in a few hours."

"What's the name of the hotel? Look around, it's probably printed on something."

Harry walked around the room and saw custom water bottles on the dresser opposite the huge bed. "It says The Rosewood London. It's a very big suite with multiple bedrooms."

"Okay, thank you. Harry, stay put, I'm getting in touch with whoever I can get in touch with."

Harry inhaled a deep breath. He was just so confused. "Yeah, that's probably for the best. I really don't know what the hell is going on."

Just as Harry ended the call, he heard something behind him.

"So we're expecting visitors," the red-haired one said as she leaned casually against the doorpost, of the door Harry knew for certain he'd closed behind himself. The door was still closed. How the heck had she entered and he hadn't heard it.

"My friend's coming over," Harry said with a tight shrug, unsure if Hermione herself was coming or someone like Dumbledore or Sirius. Harry doubted it, though. How was Hermione getting in touch with anyone in the wizarding world while she was staying with her muggle parents? She didn't have an owl, and even if she did, delivering a letter could take hours and by that time Harry would be well on his way to the other side of the world.

"I'll let the others know company's on the way." And with that she disappeared quietly and Harry sat down on the edge of the biggest bed he'd ever seen and waited while staring down at his shoes, mind going a mile a minute.

It was perhaps an hour later when furious knocking sounded on the door of the enormous suite. Harry finally got up and left the bedroom to join the others. Before long he found himself with an armful of Hermione, bushy hair tickling his face.

"You're all right!" Hermione said loudly, immediately followed by furious whispering in his ear, "These are muggles, Harry. Remember the Statute of Secrecy! And I couldn't contact anyone else, so I begged my parents to take me."

"Dr and Dr Granger," Hermione's mother introduced herself and her husband as she shook hands with Steve and Bruce. "Hermione's best friends with Harry, she insisted on coming to say goodbye."

"Sure, the more the merrier," the one with the goatee said.

"Goodness, you're Tony Stark," Hermione's mum breathed, eyes wide.

"I get that a lot," Tony Stark said with a charming grin while he leaned his hip against the edge of the couch. "And these here are Harry's new parents, which is why we're all here." Tony gestured at Harry's new 'mother' and 'father'.

Harry's 'mother' looked around the room with glowing green eyes and seemed intent to murder everyone, except for Harry, in their sleep. Harry's 'father' released a burst of booming laughter. "Be welcome, friends of our son!"

"Harry," Hermione breathed after she released Harry and looked around the room with wide eyes. "These are the Avengers."

"They're the what?" Harry asked, which earned him an incredulous look from Hermione, not to mention from Tony Stark himself. "I don't keep up with the news," Harry said lamely, in his own very weak defence since he couldn't very well tell these mostly muggles that he was stuck in a magical boarding school for most of the year and they received no muggle news there.

"So you missed the aliens invasion as well?" the one with the bow asked.

Harry snorted, thinking they were having him on, until he saw the look on Hermione's face. "What alien invasion?"

"Wow," Tony Stark said while he looked Harry up and down. "It seems your kid is even more ignorant about everything than you are, Thor, and that's saying something."

00000

Number 3

During their trip to America in one of the airplanes that wasn't an airplane (Quinjet! Tony Stark had said at least a dozen times) Harry sat on a hard bench and stared straight ahead, still unable to fully comprehend what exactly was happening.

There was a small noise beside him as his 'mother' sat down, leather pants and jacket creaking. Loki remained quiet for a few moments until he cleared his throat. "We looked," Loki whispered, gaze on the pale hands in his lap. "I need you to understand that because I can well imagine your anger at the idea we abandoned you while in truth, we did no such thing."

Harry licked his lips and glanced to the side. He had felt random bouts of anger at the idea of having parents, real parents, out there while he'd been stuck with the Dursleys. "All right," Harry said, sounding rather unconvinced even to his own ears.

Loki turned to him at once. "You do not believe me."

Sighing, Harry leaned back against the metal wall behind him. "No, I do believe you've looked and stuff. I just don't get how you didn't find me. You're supposed to be really powerful."

Loki sniffed in reply, lips slowly morphing into a grin. "I am really powerful, but unfortunately, so is Odin. And we had not expected him to essentially turn you into a human, albeit temporarily. We were looking for an Aesir child in all the nine realms, not a human child on Midgard."

"Ah." Harry looked down, plucking at his t-shirt with nervous fingers. "So am I human or not?"

"In essence, not. But you appear human in many ways until the spell Odin put on you breaks."

"And when does it break? Because right now I'm a limp noodle compared to you two," Harry said, trying not to sound too bitter, but it was hard. One look at his 'father' and his physique, or his 'mother' and the magic that just about poured off him, and Harry got the distinct impression that he'd received the very shortest end of the genetic stick.

Loki chuckled, apparently guessing where Harry's thoughts were going, or perhaps the bloke could straight up read minds, who even knew? "It should break once you are declared an adult in this realm."

"So, seventeen," Harry said with a nod. "And then I'll get superpowers or something."

"Or something," Loki agreed, and a few moments of silence stretched between them but it wasn't uncomfortable, not anymore.

Loki craned his neck and pointed towards one of the side windows that showed the ocean beneath them as they started lowering altitude. "That is where your brother lives."

Harry turned to stare at Loki in astonishment. "A brother? I have a brother?"

"You have three siblings," Loki said with a warm smile, the kindest he'd yet looked. "Fenrir, Hela, and Jormungandr."

"I have siblings," Harry whispered, more to himself than to Loki. This was a revelation. Harry had always known he had parents, albeit dead ones, so the idea of now having living parents all of a sudden wasn't that much of a stretch. But siblings…that was something entirely foreign yet incredibly exciting. Harry looked up and out the window. "Wait, where did my brother live?"

"Jormungandr lives in the oceans of this planet," Loki explained patiently. "He is known as the Midgard serpent."

"He's a serpent?" Harry asked, shocked, but that only lasted a moment, because honestly, after all the revelations he'd had recently this wasn't even the weirdest thing that he'd heard.

His brother, at least one of them, was a big ass snake. Good thing Harry was a parselmouth then.

00000

Number 4

Harry shuffled into the dark communal kitchen in the Avengers Tower where he was now staying. He hadn't been able to sleep, doubts about how to broach the subject of his being a wizard to the people around him keeping him awake. Harry hoped a hot cup of tea and perhaps a sandwich might prove enough distractions for his buzzing mind to finally allow him some rest.

A hand shot out of the shadows, strong fingers curling around his neck. "Who are you?" a hoarse voice whispered against Harry's ear as he was pushed against the refrigerator without pause.

Harry wanted to answer, he really did, but his airway was being cut off. He also wanted to reach for his wand, until he realized he'd left it in his bedroom since he was wearing pyjamas without pockets and hadn't bothered to take it with him, to his very real regret.

"Bucky? Where did you go?"

Right before the lights in the kitchen turned on, the hand released Harry's throat and Harry found himself gasping for breath.

Before him stood a tall, muscled, long-haired man with a thousand-yard-stare a dozen times worse than Sirius' had been when Harry had first met him in the Shrieking Shack in his third year.

"There you are," Steve said, looking at the metal-armed man like a happy golden retriever might look upon the meanest, scariest street cat with murder-claws he had been tasked to look after and had accidentally mistaken for a cute, fluffy kitten. "And you've met Harry, Thor and Loki's son!"

Bucky bowed his head with a guilty glance to the side while Harry coughed and coughed to get his throat working properly again. Behind him, Harry heard the refrigerator open and close and a cool can of soda was pressed against his chest by a metal hand.

Steve beamed as if it was Christmas morning and he'd just received the one gift he'd always wanted but hadn't received for decades.

Harry opened the can with trembling fingers and took a big gulp. The cold liquid helped to soothe his throat. "Thanks," he managed to whisper.

"Couldn't sleep?" Steve guessed, and only now did Harry notice that both he and Bucky were dressed in striped pyjama bottoms with white t-shirts. They matched. At Harry's nod, Steve added, "Us neither. We were looking for some snacks."

As if on cue, Bucky pressed a box of Oreos into Harry's arms with a look that was full of silent apologies. Harry accepted them with a quiet, solemn nod, finally understanding that Bucky hadn't meant to assault him but somehow couldn't help himself. Harry had quickly learned that most people living in Avengers Tower had weird, disturbing histories.

"Bucky's doing a lot better," Steve explained while pulling the fridge open to rummage through the leftovers. "Hydra had him for seventy years, but he still beat them in the end, right, pal?"

Bucky ducked his head, face hidden by a curtain of brown hair, and Harry felt a huge wave of sympathy for him. He wasn't sure what Hydra was, but he realized that Bucky had overcome some incredible odds in an obviously very shitty life.

Harry opened the box of Oreos, ripped open a sleeve and pulled out a cookie. He held it up to Bucky, hopeful that Bucky would understand Harry accepted his weird apology. Bucky's head snapped up and he stared at Harry with wide eyes for a few moments before accepting the cookie as if Harry was offering him a live hand grenade.

"Bucky," Steve said with a strangled sound, wiping a hand across his eyes. "You've made a friend!"

00000

Number 5

Dinner at Avengers Tower was always a loud, raucous affair. Not everyone joined the others at the dining table every day. People went on missions, and dates with friends or lovers, and from time to time everyone needed a quiet dinner in their own rooms to relax. But everyday there were at least some Avengers and support staff to come together for the evening meal and Harry usually sat down with them to eat.

That evening, Harry was seated between his mother, who took helicopter parenting to a whole other, potentially lethal level, and Bucky, who had apparently decided that Harry was the only other person in the tower besides Steve that he actually liked.

Harry's father was seated across from them, regaling a bemused Steve with an animated account of one battle or another.

"How are you settling in, Harry?" Bruce asked from the head of the table. He always got to sit there, claiming that having to bump elbows with others stressed him out too much.

"All right," Harry said with a casual shrug. He actually wasn't quite sure how he was doing these days. So much had happened, so much had changed, that it was difficult to comprehend it all. Mostly, Harry just went with it and let everything happen around him.

Bruce nodded with a sympathetic smile. "It must be difficult, not just suddenly having parents, but suddenly being royalty as well."

Harry's eyes widened and he froze in place. Holy fuck. He had not considered that, not even in the slightest.

"Yes," his father said in a voice full of pride. "Haraldr is my firstborn child. I am the heir to the throne of Asgard, and Haraldr is my heir."

Harry still couldn't move and he felt his mother's hand gently squeeze his thigh under the table.

"Thor," Loki said while giving Thor an exasperated look full of centuries worth of frustration at Thor's inability to be subtle. "Perhaps we should discuss this with Haraldr in private before announcing it to the world." Both his parents had taken to calling Harry by the name Loki had apparently given him right after birth. After a brief period of adjustment, Harry didn't mind it, even kind of liked it. Everyone else still called him Harry, though, as he preferred it. He was happy to let Haraldr be the name only his parents used for him.

Thor looked at Loki in sheer confusion.

Leaning forward and offering Thor his most intense stare, Loki said through gritted teeth. "Haraldr might not even wish to rule, brother. He was not raised like you and I."

Thor waved a dismissive hand around. "Of course he will rule. He is our child, Loki. One day he will make a fine king."

Harry could barely breathe. Now he wasn't just the Boy Who Lived and saviour of the wizarding world, no, now he was also suddenly the future king of an alien world somewhere in deep space. How was he ever supposed to deal with that?

Beside him, Bucky picked up a warm bread roll and silently handed it to Harry.