As the Night Falls

[A Harry Potter and Avengers Crossover]

Disclaimer: Ownership goes to their respective creators.

The author is not a doctor.

Warnings: Sick Harry in this chapter.

Mentions abuse.

Author's Note: Yes, you are seeing it right, another chapter!

A lot more Bruce and Harry interaction in the chapter. Sorry no TonyxHarry action yet, but it's coming.

All dates in HP have been pushed forward to correlate with MCU events.


Chapter Five: The Boy in the Frame

While he appreciated Bruce trying to get him familiarized with JARVIS, Harry wondered why he was wasting his time. Although Bruce had no way of knowing, Harry doubted that he would be able to stay here with Tony during the summer months. It was his mother's sacrifice that had defined his childhood, and it was his mother's blood that kept him safe. Would he receive the same protection if he lived here with Tony? Probably not.

Throughout the whole attempt to get him familiarized with the AI, something else kept nagging Harry.

He couldn't shake something that Bruce had said. Something about looking up his Aunt and Uncle, while he had been unconscious.

How had they been able to do that? How had they been able to trace him back to the Dursley's? As far as he knew, the Dursley's had tried to do everything to distance themselves from him and make it appear that they were not related or connected in any way.

The Dursley's absolutely hated it when someone had mistaken Harry to be their child. They had always quickly corrected the person that Harry was their nephew, their most unwanted nephew.

"Um, S-Bruce?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"How, how exactly where you able to trace me back to the Dursley's?"

"What do you mean? We asked JARVIS, and he searched the web for you." The concern was evident in his voice.

"But, I uh, I am not- I don't have any access to the internet, how could you find all this stuff about me?"
"Your passport gave us a good place to start. It provided us with the basics, name, age, what country you're from, things of that nature. Basically, everything we couldn't tell just by looking at you. Anyway, we set JARVIS on it, using facial recognition from your Passport photo, and he pulled up a few articles and records from when you were younger. And since your Aunt and Uncle have guardianship over you, they would always be connected back to you. Would you like me to show you what we found?"

"Do you mind?" Harry said, slightly fearful as to what they found. There was no telling what had been posted about him on the web, and with his own limited access to the internet, he had no way of checking. Dudley wouldn't let him come near any of his laptops, even the ones- yes, there were multiple- that he had broken the screen during a tantrum because his team had lost.

"I wouldn't have offered if I minded. JARVIS, pull up everything you have on Harry James Potter."
And a few seconds later, Harry was looking at a screen that was full of an assortment of pictures ranging from those of his earliest primary school days to those taken earlier this summer. One of them was as recent as just a few days before. It consisted of him standing dejectedly in the background as his aunt, uncle, and cousin standing beaming at the forefront when his uncle had won the trip to New York. The happy family of three looked as proud as peacocks while Harry, who was barely in the shot, stood looking on in the background.

Harry stared at the countless newspaper articles and magazine entries in shock. He hadn't been aware that he was even in half of these pictures. For all the times the Dursley's had tried to cut him out of their otherwise happy family, exclude him from everything they possibly could, and pretend that he didn't exist, there was proof that he did, he had existed, and there was a multitude of photos to prove it.

He was never in focus, always in the background, but there nonetheless. Always easily overlooked, but if you looked hard enough, you could not miss him.

Bruce, not understanding, or perhaps misinterpreting the look of amazement on Harry's face, spoke, "It is pretty remarkable that JARVIS is capable of doing everything he does."
But Harry barely heard him. "I'm in these pictures! I didn't even know these pictures existed!" he exclaimed in shock while flipping through the screens to look at more pictures, only taking time to scan some of the captions. They never listed his name, but that didn't matter to Harry. They did, however, mention the names of his aunt and uncle plenty, and on occasion, his cousin too.

"Why wouldn't you be in the pictures? You're their nephew; you should be standing there with them." Bruce said carefully.

Bruce had strongly suspected physical abuse because no kid had that amount of scrapes and bruises just by roaming around, and kids, no matter how fast their metabolism was, were not that skinny unless they were being starved or were very sick. Yet Bruce knew that it was likely that the child wouldn't immediately admit to his relatives' treatment of him no matter how much he hinted around or asked. It was better just to let Harry say what he wanted to say about the subject and store it away for later review.

Harry looked at him like a deer caught in headlights, mild panic evident in those startling emerald green eyes, "N-no reason. I just am usually at school,"

And while Bruce wasn't as good as Natasha or Clint in calling a lie, he knew that the boy wasn't being entirely truthful.

Perhaps he had been at school some, but unless the kid went to a boarding school- which Bruce doubted as they usually cost money, and that did not seem like something the boy's relatives would willingly pay for the boy to receive- then there was no way the kid was at school that much that he didn't even realize there were numerous photos of him.

Harry saw the skepticism on the other man's face, and his feverishly pink face darkened slightly.

"I go to a boarding school during the school year. It is the same one my mum and dad went to when they were my age, so I only spend the summer months with my Aunt and Uncle because it's so far away."

"Do you like it there at your boarding school?" Bruce asked, wondering how Tony would take it that his newfound son would be gone for the majority of the year at some boarding school in England.

"Yeah," Harry said immediately and without thought, although he seemed somewhat surprised by the answer.

Bruce wondered why that was, but sensed that it was probably a safe topic to talk about.

"It gets me away from the Dursley's, and I have two really good friends there."

Bruce gave a hollow chuckle at the admission; he supposed any child would be excited about school if it met getting away from the walrus of an uncle, and giraffe of an aunt. "Oh, yeah?"

"Ron and Hermione, we met in our first year. I had never had a friend before I met them. At first, Ron and I didn't like Hermione, but after one of our professor's thought it would be a good idea to let in…" Harry cut himself off with a shake of his head. "He decided to play a cruel joke on Halloween, and Ron and I befriended Hermione then."
Bruce frowned, wondering what kind of joke a professor would pull, or why a professor would be joking around in such a way, to begin with. Particularly in a school full of underaged children. The way Harry put it, it did not sound like the joke was entirely harmless or just for kicks. What kind of school would hire a person like that? He would try to get more information, but he would be telling Tony about this- after he got over the shock of having a son.

Harry noticed Bruce's expression and quickly elaborated and reassured the kind man, "Don't worry, he doesn't work there anymore. He kind of had this mental breakdown sometime before the start of the term, not that any of us knew until the end of the year, but yeah, Dumbledore, I mean Professor Dumbledore, hired a new professor last year. He turned out to be a complete fake. Didn't do half of what he said he did, but hopefully, we'll have a professor who is actually qualified to teach this year." Harry said, scrunching up his nose in disgust at the thought of phony Lockhart.

"And are all of your teachers so… sketchy?" Wondering just what kind of school Tony's son went to.

"Oh no, we have a lot of good teachers, we have Professor McGonagall. She's really strict and kind of old, but she's fair, unlike Snape. Snape or I guess I should call him, Professor Snape, is a downright git. Ron swears that he's a vampire." Harry almost whispered while smirking as he remembered the time Fred and George convinced Peeves to follow the Slytherin head of house around with garlic. Snape had been so mad, but since he couldn't actually pin it on anyone- although it was clear he suspected someone from Gryffindor- so he punished the whole house by causing them to lose extra points during the next potion classes.

Professor McGonagall had been red-faced with fury when she learned at the sheer amount of points he'd taken from her house, but it was worth the laughs they had that evening in the safety of their common room.

Bruce laughed, at the way Harry said it, like it the teen had just let him into a big secret that was only supposed to stay between the two of them. Leave it to children to call one of their teachers vampires. Kids' imagination knew no bounds. But he was curious why Harry and his friend would insist that their teacher was a vampire. "Why?"

In a child-like seriousness that only children could master, Harry said, "Well, for one, he's super pale, and he wears black robes all the time. Like I've never seen him wear any other color in the two years I've been at school. Even his hair is black and greasy. And his office and all of his classes are in the dungeons. It's always dark down there because there are no windows. Plus, he hates garlic." Harry said with a shrug, casually omitting the fact that it was probably because of the prank Fred and George pulled.

"You have classes in a dungeon?"
"Yeah, but just Snape's. Then we have Professor Flitwick. No one has ever asked, but we're all sure that he is half elf- or goblin, I suppose- Hermione says Gobin- but Ron and I think he's part elf because he's so small and he's too nice to be half-goblin. He has to stand on a stack of books in order to see the class, and sometimes when we get an answer correct, he gets so excited that he'll topple from it." Harry grinned as the thought about the time Hermione got a particularly tricky charm right on her first try.

Bruce blinked at this. The professor was obviously a dwarf or something of the like, but that hardly explained the vampires, elves, goblin name-calling. Just what kind of things did they teach over there at this boarding school for the students to widely compare their teachers to fictitious creatures? Bruce was sure he called his teachers some names when he was in school, but not to the extent or with the creativity that Harry and his friends did.

"So, do they teach you anything interesting at this school?"

Harry hesitated. He couldn't very well say 'yeah, loads of things, like how to brew a hair-raising potion or a sleeping draught, or how to re-pot baby Mandrakes, who can kill, or at the very least, knock you out, with a single cry.'

So Harry played it safe and went with the answer that Bruce was most likely expecting, "I suppose so. They teach us chemistry, history, gardening, and regular stuff like that. It can be kind of boring, particularly the lessons that are just theoretical, but the classes where we have to practice are usually always pretty fun."

"Well, it sounds like they teach you an arrangement of things over there. Does your cousin also attend?"
Harry choked at the thought, causing Bruce to quickly and swiftly pat his back as he waited for the teen to stop coughing.

"Merlin, no! I mean no, Dudley doesn't attend. It's very selective, and usually, you have to be related to someone who's already attended, but not always. Hermione is the first person in her family to attend, but everyone in Ron's family has or is attending. Mum and dad attended, and dad's parents before him went. Mum was the first and only person in her family to attend until I started going two years ago."

"So, you can only attend if your parents go or something like that?" When Harry nodded, Bruce continued, "Therefore, I'm correct when I say your Aunt and Uncle didn't attend?"

"Aunt Petunia never got an invite to go, mind, I don't think she or Uncle Vernon would ever want to attend a school full of freaks. And obviously my cousin Dudley didn't get a letter saying he was accepted. Not that it would matter if he did, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would never allow it."

Bruce grunted, and Harry tried to determine what it meant. Uncle Vernon grunted a lot when he looked over Harry's finished chores, but it was never because he was admiring Harry's work. However, Bruce didn't seem put-out or mad. "You said your friend didn't have any family members to go, how did she get in? And does this school have a name?"

"Er, yeah. It's called Hogwarts. An odd name I know, but the local town is also named after a pig so… I guess the founders just kind of went with it, but the school and the town are both really old, so there's that too."
Hogwarts, that was undoubtedly a strange name for a school, and one that Bruce was sure he wouldn't forget anytime soon.

"And Hermione got in through a scholarship, I think. I don't really know. I never asked her." Harry didn't have to ask how Hermione had gotten in, but he couldn't say that she was a witch without breaking every statute of secrecy known to witches and wizards.

"So when do you get this coveted letter of acceptance?"

"Well, you have to be eleven to go to Hogwarts. I got mine on my eleventh birthday, although they had tried to reach me before then."

"Do you plan on going back this year? When does school start back?"
"We catch the train at Kings Cross on September 1st, and what do you mean, am I going back?" Harry pressed, somewhat confused by the question. Why wouldn't he go back?
"Well," Bruce fumbled for the right words, not wanting to set the child off. At some point during the morning, they had reached an uneasy peace between them, as apparent as it was that Harry didn't really trust Bruce. Not wanting to jeopardize it by asking the wrong question or saying the wrong thing, Bruce put some thought into his response. "I'm sure Tony would like to get to know you, and September 1st is only a few weeks away. That doesn't give you a whole lot of time to get to know each other."

Harry looked confused for a moment before he said rather firmly, "I know you think that Tony's my dad and you say the paper says something similar, but my dad died. He died protecting my mum and me on that Halloween night. I'm going back to England with the Dursley's at the end of the week, and on September 1st, I'm boarding the train with the rest of my friends and going to Hogwarts."

"Harry, we cannot let you go back to your relatives. It's not safe. They left you alone in a city, in a country that you are not familiar with. They haven't even reported you missing, what kind of guardians do that?"
"But don't you get it? I'm an orphan. My parents are dead. I don't have anyone else but Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. Do you think I want to go back? I pleaded with Professor Dumbledore right before the summer of my first year, to let me spend the summer at school, but he wouldn't hear of it. He said that they're my legal guardians and that he had no choice but to send me back. Besides, I do owe them for taking me in, when they could have taken me to the orphanage or drowned me or just abandoned me. They've sure threatened it enough times, but no matter how much they might have wanted to do those things, they never did."

"Listen to me," Bruce said, but when Harry refused to meet his eyes, Bruce tried again, this time making it much more of a command rather than a simple suggestion. "Harry, I need you to listen to me, okay? They did abandon you. They brought you to New York and turned you loose in the streets." When it appeared Harry was going to interrupt, Bruce held out his hand to stop him while he continued. "Do you even know the name of the hotel they are staying at? Or how to get there?"
Harry didn't say anything opting to fiddle with the sheet corner instead.

"Do you even know why you are in New York?"
"Of course, I do! Uncle Vernon won some sort of office sweepstakes and got four tickets to some sort of convention and a trip to New York."

"Do you know where the convention was being held at? Or where you're at?"

"Yes! You said Tony Stark owned this building."
"I did say that, but do you know the street in which this building is on?"

"No, I wasn't really paying attention to street names last night, as I kind of wanted to just get out of the rain and not spend a night on a park bench or in some darkened alleyway."

"You will never have to worry about that, here, Harry. You will always have a home here; I promise you that. Tony will insist that you stay here with him. If you want to take the train to Hogwarts on September 1st, you'll have to let him know that that is what you want. But I can guarantee you that your home with the Dursley's is not your only option. In fact, when Tony and Pepper get back, it won't even be an option."

"You sound mighty sure that Mr. Stark will want me. If you're so positive that I'm his son, then why haven't you told him yet?"

"He hasn't told me, because I left before the DNA results came in." A new voice came from the door, neither Bruce nor Harry had heard open.

"I got your call, Bruce."