I almost didn't get this chapter out today, Genshin has taken over my life and I had stuff due today, but then I had to go fetch my car, and I got my work in 30 minutes bore the deadline because apparently, 8 pm is a wonderful time for deadlines when it comes to English.
Anyways here is the next chapter, and my discord channel because very, and I mean very, even bothered to join, it hurt ya know, but I am joking. XcBjQV59Uq
I will be petty about this, just to let you know.
The days were starting to pass quickly as everyone settled into their new lifestyle. When Tony headed off to a board meeting the day after going to MACUSA, Harry spent a few hours with Steve and Bruce ticking off things on Steve's list. It had been difficult to get Bruce to join but Harry had promised that he wasn't scared of him, even after seeing the videos of what The Hulk could do, he also promised to call him Bruce instead of Mr Bruce.
Clint and Natasha would be returning on Friday, and Harry couldn't wait to spend more time with her, while Clint was going to go home to his family for a while, but he promised to be there for Harry's birthday. Before the two had left Clint had given Harry a number to connect him through if he ever needed help.
Tony was bored during the meeting and didn't see the point in being there, but it was required of him, being the owner of the company. He sat and fiddled on his StarkPad, working on a few upgrades on his suit. He was working on a way on how to call the suit to him, no matter how far away he was, also he had started upon a few designs for a suit for Harry. It was mainly going to be there to protect him, not allow him to fight.
He also needed to find a witch or wizard that he could employ to handle digitalising everything that he had on magic. Sure they had done a lot in London, but he needed someone dedicated to it, so whenever he needed something he could call on JARVIS to search through everything. He was sure how to go about it though, the simplest route will be sending out application forms to MACUSA but then he was also aware that there was a wizarding newspaper, but he wasn't sure how to contact them. He would need to sift through everything he had gotten yesterday before he proceeded.
The meeting had taken five hours and had had an hour break halfway through. The company really did try and squeeze as much as they could into the one meeting where Tony was guaranteed to show up. Heading out the office room and to the elevator to head up to the penthouse, the perks of having the office spaces on the lower levels of the building you live in, Pepper cornered him.
"Tony, we need to talk," Pepper said biting out the words in frustration. Tony looked at her as if she was an alien, and he had met some before.
"We need to talk!" Tony was shocked, to say the least.
"Yes." Pepper said smugly, crossing her arms over her chest and slightly lifting her chin.
"There is nothing we need to talk about, you don't want to believe the truth then so be it, I won't feed you lies so you can keep the image you have of me in your head. There was a reason why we didn't last long, I saw through your gold-digging ways early enough, and got rid of you. You do make a good CEO, I will admit that, but if you so much as try and sabotage my company or me and my child, you can say goodbye to your position and ever working for Stark Industries again. So you wrap your head around that, I'm going home to my son, that I care about, and who trusts me." Tony said angrily pushing past her before she could say anything.
He was right to have left her the previous year, she had only ever been happy when he was spending money on her, and only when it was branded items. Tony headed up to his labs instead of the living areas, not wanting to be angry around Harry, and potentially say something bad. Tony drowned out his anger as he blared ACDC at max volume. It took a few hours before JARVIS cut the music and informed him that Steve was coming in. Tony ignored the two as he continued working.
"Tony?" Steve called out softly. Tony turned to look at him, trying to hide his anger but failing. "What happened?" Tony took a deep breath, trying to arrange his thoughts.
"I don't know Cap. Why can't Pepper just believe me, where did the side of her go that I once fell in love with? Everything went downhill after we started dating, I'm glad it ended, I truly am, but I don't know whether she just hates me now, or if she resents me. Although there isn't much difference between the two. But I feel like it's my fault, and then today when she cornered me and continues to insist that I am lying about Harry, well the story behind how he came to exist. I just snapped at her, and I'm too angry to be around others and I don't want Harry to see me like this." He was stressing and starting to pull at his hair.
"Hey Tones, it's alright, you don't need her validation for anything. If she doesn't want to believe you, then she isn't worth your time." Steve said coming forward and pulling Tony into his arms. The man just broke down, shivering but not crying. "JARVIS, could you tell the others that I'm handling everything?"
"Will do Mr Rogers."
"Tony, you are amazing, and I'm not just talking about your brain. I know how nervous you were about being a father to Harry, but the boy loves you. You are doing an amazing job, and the rest of us in the tower also knows. So what if she questions you, she clearly doesn't know who the real you are. As long as the people who are closest to you believe in you then, why give a flying fuck about what others think." Tony gasp, he had been listening to him, but humour was how he dealt with things.
"You swore!" Tony said pushing out of Steve's arms to look at him
"Tony, I'm a Brooklyn boy, born and raised, of course, I swear. I might not all the time after the army but trust me, I do."
"Still the stars and stripes of this country just swore." They both laughed a bit.
"Come up in a bit why don't you, Harry is busy cooking up a storm and I promised to make some good old American apple pie, so you better show up. And don't worry about Harry, he is perfectly fine." Steve turned to walk out the door but paused to turn around. "You'll be up soon, right?"
"Yeah sure. I'll be there. Let me just finish up on this one thing and I'll be there." Steve left after that, and true to Tony's words, he finished up on the piece he had in front of him before heading up to watch the two in the kitchen. He sat next to Bruce and the two went into science bro mode, talking about any recent advancements in any noticeable field.
The next few days passed quickly and the group of three was welcoming home Natasha from the mission she had been on. She stayed around them for a while before disappearing off into her room. They decided to move the monthly movie session from Friday until Saturday when Nat didn't show up. In the meantime, Tony started flipping through the leaflets of information. When he came across the New York and Nation-wide magical newspaper, he knew he hit gold.
He drafted out an application form, saying that Stark Industries was looking at hiring someone to help with the digitalisation of magical knowledge on private servers for people in the know. Tony had thought with all the effort he was going through to digitalise everything, he might as well make it available to the rest of the wizarding world, well at least to the American wizards in the beginning. He borrowed Hedwig, to send out the letters, grateful that both offices were in New York. He had got a reply from the New York newspaper, the MANY Daily Times, that his request would be posted in the next issue, due to come out the next day.
Tony had also spent the last few days, sourcing teachers for Harry's normal education. He definitely wouldn't be teaching some subjects the American way because American schooling had gone down over the years. Harry would be learning English and would have to catch up on the two years that he had missed. He also wasn't going to make Harry start learning the American equivalent of English, he was hoping to find a teacher from the U.K.
Harry would also learn mathematics as a whole and not how the American schools split it, yes, he would learn in sections, but as a whole, all the different parts would come together quicker than what most learnt in the country. In a sense, it was mathematics core, what they learnt in the U.K and other parts of the world.
He would also learn physical science, or physics, as well as chemistry, and what was called natural sciences, but is really biology. There was also social sciences on the list, which was History and Geography combined, as the two went hand in hand. And lastly, he would be learning Latin, which would also tie in with his magical studies, whenever they went over the lists and decided what Harry wanted to learn. Harry had left his normal education up to Tony, and he had appointments the next Monday with teachers. Tony also wanted Harry to learn Italian as he had learnt it growing up, mainly because his mother was Italian, but he had learnt to love the language.
Tony was also thinking of doing a two-week timetable, where one week focused on normal subjects and then the other would be on magical subjects. Sure, it was going to be a lot, but children the same age as Harry, did the same number of subjects thinking it was normal, and Harry knew what he was signing up for when he said he wanted to do home-schooling with both of the educations. Plus, he wouldn't allow his child not to have a basic understanding of everything.
Harry's birthday is next Wednesday, and Tony didn't know how to spoil him. He had thought of renting out somewhere fun for the day, but that wouldn't be Harry's first choice. He had also thought of taking him sightseeing with the team, as his boy hadn't really seen New York for what it was. He already had a mountain of gifts for Harry sitting in a warehouse, ready to be brought in the night before his birthday. He vaguely knew that the others had gotten him stuff, he knew his friends were getting Harry interested in some of their own extracurricular activities that they like to call their hobbies. What else could he expect from his team?
Birdbrain had informed him that he would also be bringing his family along, he was still trying to wrap that around his head. How the featherless chicken had hidden something like this from him so well. Tony said he was more than welcome to, even if the kids had a massive age gap, he was sure they would get along.
Saturday came and went quickly; Harry has spent most of the morning with Natasha and Tony choose to not notice that she was starting to teach his kid how to throw knives after they went through a workout routine. Tony continued to work in his lab feeling safe enough to leave Harry with the rest of the team, and safe enough that Harry wouldn't be hurt by them not spending time together. After being with each other for almost a month, there was trust between the two of them.
Sunday came around and sitting in his office that overlooked the grounds below, Dumbledore felt the wards weaken around the Dursleys home. He may have lied about them being blood wards, but there were still wards around the house that needed to be recharged every year Harry went home for his and the household's protection. Oblivious to the treatment Harry faced in the house, he assumed that they had all gone on a family holiday. Albus was still angry about being kicked out of Gringotts and was being denied a meeting with the Potter account manager.
Given his current mood, he wrote a not so polite letter to the Dursleys, telling them to return to their home soon, before the wards collapsed, and they no longer had protection. He wasn't going to put in that the wards would last until the beginning of November when he originally put up the wards all those years ago. Dumbledore did not know what was happening, and it was annoying him.
First Sirius Black escapes from Azkaban, he knew that Peter was still safe with the Weasleys, the last thing he needed was Sirius proving his innocence and taking in Harry, it would not do, even if the man agreed with his views, it would prevent Harry from being moulded into his weapon against Voldemort.
Secondly, he had been kicked from Gringotts, he should have been allowed, being the magical guardian of Harry, but now he was also questioning if the Ministry wasn't involved, and lastly, he had to deal with the weakened wards. He was not looking forward to the year ahead, he had at least somehow convinced Remus Lupin to come and teach The Defence Against Dark Arts for the next school year.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter.
Now if you were on the discord channel will know that I am doing a poll on the subjects harry will do for his magical subjects, but I spoke with my Beta, and a few other ideas popped up, and so I want to redo it, so if you want to be apart of that... 😂