As the Night Falls
[A Harry Potter and Avengers Crossover]
Disclaimer: Ownership goes to their respective creators.
All rights belong to Condé Nast, the parent company, of the House & Garden Magazine.
Warnings: Sick Harry in this chapter.
Mentions abuse.
Chapter Two: The Boy in the Lobby
Fourteen years.
It had taken him, the legendary Tony Stark, almost fourteen solid years to forget all the preparation organizing and headaches involved with hosting an Exposition to showcase his latest and greatest inventions. At least this one was going to be taking place in New York City rather than London like the last one. But the closer the countdown got to the opening day of the expo, the more he wished the idea had been delayed for another fourteen years.
All because Pepper had taken away all his alcohol insisting that showing up drunk to his own function would not be good publicity for Stark Industries, he needed to get coffee in him pronto, or he would not make it through today. He was barely functioning as it was.
Tony didn't particularly care what the world thought of him but knew that Pepper would never forgive him if he botched up this business venture as the whole idea behind holding this presentation was her idea as she wanted to try to branch out Stark Industries into other fields.
It wasn't strictly necessary, at this point, that Stark Industries branch out, but it certainly wouldn't hurt either.
And now with the Expo being only hours away, he still had quite a few things to take care of in the small-time slot he had left and for every second he delayed it, the more it was going to snowball on him.
For one, he still had to go over the files of the two men who had won the Sweepstakes he had used as a way to both advertise and build up interest in the Expo. Pepper had been urging him to look at it ever since the winners had been chosen and announced, but Tony had kept putting it off, just as he was going to now.
It had waited this long and it could wait for a few more minutes as coffee came first and maybe a donut or a blueberry muffin too if he could get his hands on one.
But he was stopped short the moment he stepped into the living area just as he was getting ready to place his order so it would be ready by the time he arrived at the coffee shop by Pepper who was walking up to him. She had a troubled look on her face.
Glancing at the time on his phone, Tony saw that it was just before six, surely nothing had happened this close to the opening.
Tony looked at her expectantly waiting for her to drop the bombshell.
"Oh thank goodness, Tony! I was getting ready to try your lab. You need to come downstairs now!"
"Why should I? You know there is a horde of rabid people down there just waiting to catch a glimpse of me. If they see me, they will probably try to bite." Tony said while pulling out his phone scrolling through something on the web that Pepper couldn't catch.
"I am serious Tony! There's a-"
"What's going on?" Interrupted Steve who had just entered the communal living area alongside Clint and Bruce.
It wasn't unusual for Pepper to argue with Tony about something, but they usually reserved the arguments for a more reasonable hour, not at five-fifty-three in the morning. And Pepper seemed to be overly frustrated with Tony- not that that was anything new.
"There's a child down in the lobby. He appears to have spent the night there."
"So have Happy kick him out before he goes and gets my car. JARVIS call Happy."
"JARVIS cancel that," Pepper said in a tone that had Tony look up from his phone and stare at her. "Tony, I think the boy needs medical attention, he appears to be sick."
At this Tony grumbled under his breath. He hadn't had any alcohol in almost a week and had yet to have his morning cups of coffee and people were expecting him to play host to a sick child when he knew nothing about what to do with a child- let alone a sick one.
"Then call an ambulance." Tony dismissed. He really just wanted that cup of coffee right now. Like right now. He couldn't deal with this before he had his daily intake. Pepper knew this.
"There are reporters and people lined up all around the main entrance. If we call for an ambulance, then we will have to phone the police for crowd management." Pepper reminded Tony.
"Why don't I go down there and check out the kid?" Bruce offered to try to solve the situation and appease both Pepper and Tony at the same time. He knew that Tony did not really want the police called as that would no doubt get S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents snooping around.
He did not want them around either if it could be avoided.
And Pepper wouldn't leave it alone until someone checked on the boy.
"I'll look at him and if I think he needs more than what I can offer then we will go from there."
"Sounds like a plan to me." Ever the one for plans, Steve agreed immediately. And that was that.
"And what am I? Chopped liver? I own this building! Shouldn't I get a say so in what goes on?" Tony attempted to protest.
But Pepper, ignored her boss and just called Happy and ordered that he go and pick up whatever it was (that wasn't alcohol related) that would put Tony in a more agreeable mood.
"Come on," Clint said to Tony while Steve leads the way to the elevator followed closely by Banner. Really it probably only required Pepper, Tony and maybe Bruce, to check on the boy but Clint and Steve were not about to stay behind.
"How old would you say the child is? And what are his symptoms?" Bruce questioned Pepper as they descended from the upper floors of the tower to the ground floor.
"It's hard to say how old he is, but I would say he's around ten. He is wearing clothes that appear to be at least three sizes too big for him. And I am certain he was caught out in that rainstorm last night but I will have JARVIS playback the camera footage to verify that."
"Do you think he is homeless?" Clint questioned with some unease creeping into his voice. He knew what it was like to be homeless and so he felt for the boy but at the same time, he wasn't sure if he liked knowing that they might have a problem with the homeless population in the lobby now that one had seemed to have found his way in.
"I don't know," Pepper said as she stepped off the elevator and showed the others to where the boy laid tucked away almost unnoticeable in a darkened and unused corner.
Tony who had thought this whole situation was a bit much stayed far enough back so that whatever germs the kid possessed wouldn't jump on him and cause him to get sick.
Bruce on the other hand, who liked to remind them all that he did not have a doctorate in medicine, was not even mentioning now, instead, he immediately approached the still figure that laid curled up in a ball and placed a hand on the boy's face.
"He is definitely running a fever. A pretty high one too. It looks like he's suffering from sun poisoning, so the fever could be caused by that. Come on Steve and give me a hand. He's not heavy but I could use a hand carrying him upstairs. I would feel better if I got him upstairs to where I could check him out better and give him something to help lower this fever and possibly put something on his sunburn. We also need to get him out of these damp clothes but that can wait until we are upstairs."
Steve immediately moved closer at Bruce's beacon and scooped down to pick up the knobby-kneed teen, not that any of them would have guessed that Harry was a teenager based on his size alone.
Picking up the slight teen Steve frowned at how little the child weighed in his arms while Bruce carefully slipped the glasses from the boy's face, taking notice of how they appeared to only be held together by tape.
Now it was Bruce's turn to frown. With the boy's glasses removed, the bags that lingered under his eyes became the most prominent thing on the boy's face. These bags spoke of countless sleepless nights the boy had suffered. But at least the boy was sleeping deeply now, even if it was probably due to him being sick.
Carefully cradling the boy to his chest as to keep from jostling him too much as he carried him, Steve brushed pass Clint and walked quickly back the way he had come. Tony had moved away all too happy to just observe from a distance fell into step somewhere behind him. And Pepper was looking up something on her phone. No doubt consulting last night's film footage that showed when the boy had come in sight of the street cameras and those that had shown him entering the building walked beside Tony not saying a word as she showed Tony something from the footage.
The good doctor was right on his heels trying to look the boy over the best he could for any other signs that would indicate just what was inflicting him.
The elevator ride back up to the personal floors that Tony had set aside for them never seemed to take as long before to Banner who was anxious to check the boy over. He knew that he should probably consult someone in the actual medical profession particularly with how labored the boy's breathing appeared to be, but he wanted to determine what the boy had contracted before he got any doctors involved. If it was a cold then he could handle that, if it was pneumonia, so long as the boy's breathing was entirely compromised, he would be able to handle that too. Just because the boy had labored breathing didn't necessarily mean the boy had pneumonia although the puddle of water that they had found the boy in certainly did not lessen the possibility. Hopefully, if it was pneumonia, they had caught it early enough where there wouldn't be too many complications hindering the boy's recovery.
He was sure that if push came to shove and he needed a doctor, Tony would be able to get his hands on one so he wasn't particularly concerned if it came to that point. Right now he primarily needed to reassure himself that the boy's immediate needs were taken care of.
Once they got back to the communal floor Bruce ushered Steve to place the boy on the couch. The child hadn't stirred once, causing Steve to worry a bit but if the child was sick then he probably needed the rest.
"Help me strip him, I don't like how labored his breathing is. And see if you can find any identification on him." Bruce ordered at the same Natasha entered the room.
She paused for a moment staring at the scene before for her before greeting the masses.
"Well, hey fellas. You didn't tell me you had a child Tony."
"He's not mine! I've never seen him in my life!" Tony exclaimed feeling more like himself now that he'd had his cup of coffee in hand paired with a nice warm blueberry donut.
Clint, who had yet to get a good look at the boy looked at him again. He did look like Tony, he thought it was the hair more than anything, but there were other more subtle hints that they both shared that could lead anyone to believe that Tony had fathered this child.
"I wasn't even seeing anyone ten years ago!" Tony protested right as Steve fished out a small burgundy colored book that the boy had been carrying on him. It was a passport.
Curious, Steve flipped it open and began to read.
"Hey, it says here that the child was born in July of 2000 making him thirteen. You weren't doing anything thirteen or fourteen years ago where you? Because, Nat's right, you and the kid do share a likeness."
"He doesn't look like a thirteen-year-old," Clint said skeptically.
"He also doesn't look like he's had a decent meal in months," Bruce said voicing his concern, as he finished undressing the child taking stock of the cuts that crisscrossed each other forming a lattice pattern all down his chest and torso and the bruises that overlapped each other on the boy's thin bony arms and legs which were bright red and blistering from spending prolonged amounts of time out in the sun without proper coverage.
"Does he have a name?" Pepper asked looking deeply concerned at the state of the emaciated boy.
"Harry James Potter. According to the Passport, he's from England, uh, born somewhere in West Country." Steve said.
"What's he doing here in New York then?" Tony questioned while Pepper ordered JARVIS to find any and all information about one Harry James Potter.
"Mr. Dursley never mentioned anything about a nephew!" Pepper exclaimed after going through one of the files JARVIS had pulled up.
"Dursley? Who's he?" Tony asked cluelessly. Was he supposed to know a Dursley? The name didn't ring any bells. He was positive that he did not have any business associations with a Dursley.
"You didn't read the files I gave you two months ago? I told you to read the files, Tony! Mr. Dursley is the man from Great Britain who won the drawing."
"Okay... well call him and tell him I have his nephew and that he can pick him up before- after" Tony quickly amended once he saw the looks both Bruce and Pepper were shooting him, "after the Expo."
"The boy looks like he's been living on the streets for ages, but his passport was stamped just yesterday. Why would the Dursley fellow bring his nephew only to let the child run around unchaperoned in a city he didn't even know? Is this Mr. Dursley in some financial bind that has left him struggling to make ends meet? I mean look at the tattered rags the boy was wearing" Clint questioned absolutely confused at the turn of events while holding up the boy's...clothes, for the lack of a better term.
"No." Pepper said determined to get to the bottom of why one of the contestant winner's own nephew appeared to be so thrown away. "Look here. It's a magazine article from House & Garden."
Tony looked at the image not seeing what Pepper was trying to bring to his attention. All he saw was a perfectly manicured lawn with a pretty standard sized house. It all looked rather dull to him honestly.
"What am I supposed to be looking at? All I see is-"
"Read the caption, Tony."
Squinting, unnecessarily at the smaller print, Tony quickly read what it said. "For the second year in a row, the award for the Best Landscaped Yard in Little Whinging, Surrey goes to Mrs. Petunia Dursley, of Number 4 Privet Drive. When asked what Mrs. Dursley secret behind keeping such a manicured lawn, she replied, 'I take great pride in my job as a homemaker and it is my job to keep the house looking perfect all the time. With my husband, Vernon, leaving early for Grunnings every morning and my son going to Smeltings, I have a lot of free time on my hands, so I spend a lot of mornings doing what I enjoy most: gardening.'" The picture and article were dated back to three years ago.
Tony raised an eyebrow as he looked more critically at the house that was included in the picture.
"They have the money." Pepper insisted, "It even says here-" (and Pepper proceeded to bring up yet another internet search result to read to the room at large,) "-that the Dursley's took in their nephew at the age of fifteen months after his parents, James Potter and Lily Evans perished in a car crash on the Halloween night of 2001. People don't just take in orphan's without having money to provide for them." Pepper said frowning. "I think there is more going on than what the Dursley's are admitting. In the questionnaire, Mr. Vernon Dursley never mentioned anything about having a nephew. When he got to the question as to who he lived with he only responded with his wife and son. No mention of a nephew anywhere." She said while flipping through his file checking and double checking to make sure she hadn't missed any mention of a Harry Potter.
The more she thought about it the more she was sure that Mrs. Dursley might not be the one behind the perfectly maintained yard as she had said in the magazine. Or at least solely.
"I agree," Bruce said as he got up from the boy's side. "Something is going on here. No one just lets their nephew wander around New York, particularly during a storm as bad as the one we got last night. The boy has obviously spent more than one day outside if those burns and blisters are anything to go by."
"Are you sure there isn't a Missing Person's report on him? Or an active Amber Alert? Just because he's all scratched, bruised and sunburned does not mean his relatives are neglectful. He's a boy, they play rough." Natasha said from where she stood with her arms crossed in front of her looking at Tony.
"What do you want me to do? Hack into the Police database and check to see if there was a Missing Person report filed on Harry?" Tony said with a sigh.
He really needed to get ready for the Expo. It was approaching seven now and the doors to the Civic Center were due to open in two hours, although the actual expo didn't begin until ten-thirty, with him speaking at noon.
Plus he was supposed to offer a personal tour around the expo and offer a complete narration as well to the contestant winners. He had a ton of things to do now that he had procrastinated for so long and when he finally thought he would have the time to get things done, Pepper had decided that a somewhat abandoned boy was more important than preparing for the Expo. Which was somewhat funny, considering this Expo had been the center of her life for the past month at least. She had spent almost every free moment she had working and planning out everything to the smallest detail to make sure that Stark Industries were presented in its best light.
"If you don't mind," Bruce said as he got up from his place by the boy's side and left the room, probably to get something he thought the child needed.
"Fine!" Tony snapped irritatedly in response. Before making quick work of hacking into NYPD's missing person's database to see if anyone had reported a Harry James Potter missing.
There was nothing indicating that the boy's relatives or anyone else had even contacted the police in regard to the boy's whereabouts.
Which raised red flags and questions that only the child who laid unconscious before them could answer.
Tony found himself getting frustrated. He didn't want to play sick-maid to a child, but Pepper and Bruce were right. Something was going on here: and it could not be ignored.
As a superhero, it was his job, or one of his jobs was to make sure he protected the innocent.
And who out there was more innocent than a child?
