As the Night Falls

[A Harry Potter and Avengers Crossover]

Disclaimer: Ownership goes to their respective creators.

Warnings: Uh, none, I guess.

Author's Note: Surprise! I've updated! (clearly.) I have been struggling for inspiration for this story.

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


Chapter Seven: The Worries of A Father

The sarcasm was not lost on either Bruce or Harry.

After a moment of silence, Bruce spoke up calmly, "I did not want to bother you. I know how hard you and Pepper have been working for this moment, so I did not want to distract you. Besides, it is not like Harry is up to doing a lot right now, beyond resting. And with you and Pepper at the Civic Center, I could help get Harry acclimated with the idea of having a dad. It's not the easiest news to receive."

"You're telling me! And that still doesn't excuse the-"
"Tony, you have led and lived your life thinking that you were childfree; a few more minutes was not going to change anything," Bruce interrupted firmly.

"But what am I supposed to do! I have never been responsible for a kid before. I don't even know how to be a dad!" The other responded in a panic waving his arms around comically.

Harry was tempted to say something snarky like he didn't need a dad because he was responsible enough to take care of himself, particularly if that's all he was, was a "distraction." But the man before him was in such a state of panic and theatrics that Harry doubted that the man would have even heard, much less acknowledged anything he might have said.

"Wait a minute." Tony broke off mid-rant, suddenly becoming suspicious. More suspicious than he had the right to be. "If you were keeping the fact that I have a son, what else are you hiding from me?"
Bruce rolled his eyes, "Realize, Harry didn't ask to be your son, but he is, and you are his father, so I suggest you stop throwing a fit, and begin acting like a father, and meet your son."

It was apparent that Harry was extremely uncomfortable during the whole exchange, and Tony didn't know what to say to make the situation any less awkward.

Tony cleared his throat for a moment as he tried to find the words to say.

Eventually, they came to him, although perhaps they weren't the exact words he was looking for.

"Hi, kid, I'm your father, Tony Stark."
"Yeah, I kind of figured," Harry said but seemed to realize what he said, and looked slightly embarrassed. "I mean, I'm Harry, Harry Potter."

"I know. JARVIS pulled up your information. You live with your aunt and uncle and cousin in Surrey." Tony stated while taking the time to really look at the child.

Overlooking the boy's apparent ill-health, Tony noticed that Harry shared a lot of his features. It was in his face, more so than anything, he'd say. At close inspection, Tony realized that there was no denying that it was there and that this boy was his.

"So uh, your mom was…" Tony spoke up again, trying to start up a conversation after a few seconds of silence as he tried to remember who the boy's mother was and where she might be.

"Lily Potter," supplies Harry, while looking at him with an intensity that made him almost uncomfortable. It was like the boy was sizing him up, determining his worth. Maybe he was.

If looks could go by alone, Tony would say that the kid wasn't impressed. Oddly enough, this was something that bothered Tony.

The man in question seemed to think hard for a second before nodding. "Right. Yeah, I think I remember Lily, although I don't recall her telling me her last name was Potter. Red hair, green eyes, and legs that went on for-."
"Tony." Bruce interrupted while giving the billionaire a loaded look.
"What? It was just an observation." Tony said unabashedly at being called out.
"So how did you meet mum? I mean, she was with dad... so, how did you come into the picture, exactly?" Harry said so bluntly that Tony almost flinched, the accusation was evident in his tone.

Harry wouldn't pin this one on his mum. It had to be Tony's fault that his mum cheated on his dad. It just had to be, because his mum loved his dad, and his dad had always loved his mum. Everyone had always said that his dad had never had his eyes for anyone else. And Harry believed them. He believed that his mum had been faithful, from the moment she agreed to go out with his dad. Perhaps, and Harry hated to think of it like this, but perhaps James hadn't been capable of you know, as it wasn't so uncommon within the pureblooded society. At least, according to one Hermione Granger, who had found it absolutely fascinating at the lengths that some wizarding families went through just so that their "heir" would pass as their heir.

His eyes watered when he tried to suppress another cough. He didn't want to scare this man off just by coughing on him. At least until he got some answers, then he would reserve whatever rights he had to cough on the man as much as he dared.

"We met in London about fourteen years ago. I was holding an expo, like the one I had today. Going to just say that if this is what will happen every time I have an expo, then consider this one the last one."
"But did you know her from before? Like were you, friends, or something, before the exhibit-thing?" Harry questioned, desperately trying to give Tony the benefit of the doubt- more for his mum's sake, because, for all he knew, Tony did not deserve a second thought. He had been able to do the math; if they had only met fourteen years ago, there wasn't a whole lot of time in there for them to get to know each other.

Tony looked at Bruce for a moment, completely out of his element. He had never had to explain to a kid about his tendencies before. And he was a bit unsure as to how far he should go. Should he tell the kid that he had only had a one-night stand with his mom or say that they had known each other for a bit longer?
He doubted Harry would appreciate him lying about it any more than the child was bound to take to the idea of him, and his mom only knew each other for a couple of hours before nature took its course. He surely didn't appreciate it when someone lied to him. Besides, weren't relationships (of any kind) primarily built out of trust?

He didn't know this kid, and as such, he wouldn't think much of it if the kid got mad at him for having a one-night stand with the kid's mom. The kid would make his assumptions, and that would be that. Under normal circumstances that is, but this wasn't normal circumstances was it? Normal circumstances meant that Tony did not have a kid, and now he did.

Conflicted as to what he ought to do, he figured he would settle with the semi-truth.

"I did not know your mother for long. It was just a one-time thing, although I thought of it often afterward. I thought about contacting her again throughout the years, but I got busy." The excuse was as lame of one as Harry had ever heard, but he didn't mention it.

The way Harry figured, the man before him was probably as uncomfortable as he was even if he did appear to be a bit egotistical, so he just nodded. Even though Tony hadn't flat out said, Harry knew that Tony had no intentions of ever getting back up with his mum, which brought up the point on how had his dad felt about this? James was his dad, not Tony. The man didn't deserve that title yet- if ever. Had his dad even known about Tony?

"Well, that's done. Why don't you tell me about yourself?" Tony said, unaware of Harry's train of thought.
"There's nothing to tell," Harry mumbled. And really, there wasn't; nothing that was worth the trouble he'd get into anyway.

"I doubt that," Bruce interjected before Tony could comment. "But I think that's enough Q and A for now. Harry still needs rest, and you probably need to do the same. You two can talk later after you both have gotten some rest."

Tony looked like he was about to protest, which made him wonder if Tony wasn't a man who was used to getting his way and unaccustomed to someone telling him 'no.'

If that was the case, it sounded a bit like his dad, as by all accounts, his dad had been spoiled and used to getting whatever he had wanted when he wanted it, until his mum came along.

It would appear that his mum had a way about her that attracted the rich and arrogant.

Harry pushed those thoughts away. He didn't want to come to think of Tony in similar terms as he did his dad. Besides, for all that James might have been, no one could say he hadn't been a good dad and a loving husband. He'd loved his mum from the get-go, and he had sacrificed himself in a similar way that his mum had, just no one mentioned it as much.

Harry doubted Tony would sacrifice himself for Harry, the man already seemed to be too much of a self-absorbed arse to do something so selfless.

Eventually, still thinking about Tony and how exactly he was supposed to fit into the grand picture, Harry began to doze.

It wasn't the most restful sleep Harry had ever had, as he would be jarred away with every racking cough, but at least, here in this room, he didn't have to fear his relatives come barging in demanding he 'stop pretending to be sick, get off his lazy arse and get to work, etc., etc.'

Of course, he worried that Tony Stark would just send him packing back to the Dursley's at the end of it all. There wasn't a lot stopping the man, as he clearly was not interested in having a son "cramp his style." But until then, Harry would adopt the same mindset he had at Hogwarts: out of sight, out of mind. Harry certainly did not want to "cramp his style," not that he wasn't used to it, considering the Dursley's thought his very existence was a sin.

Harry would just have to keep up his walls and his resolve, so that way he wouldn't be hurt as to be shunned by one's own blood was bound to hurt more than anything the Dursley's would have been capable of doing.

Giving up on sleep, for now, Harry began to mull over his first meeting with the man whom everyone claimed to be his father.

The man was about as unsure of it as Harry was, which suited Harry fine. He did not need nor want someone waltzing into his life, trying to make everything all sunshine and rainbows when it wasn't. Nor did he want someone meddling in his life more so than what people already interfered with.

What, Harry wanted, and it was something he had yet to get, was time to himself to sort through his thoughts because no one had asked if he was okay with this or offered to help him understand what was going on.

Bruce wasn't the bad guy here, Harry knew, but the man had seemed almost desperate in his push to find Harry, somebody other than the Dursley's to live with. The man was so intent on getting Harry to understand that he had a dad to even bother asking if he was okay with the sudden news.

And Tony was too busy panicking about the fact that he had a son in Harry to ask how Harry was handling the news.

It wasn't that Harry had expected them to, no one ever considered his feelings. Never bothered asking how he was doing, or if he was okay with the current situation, but you had to admit that it would have been nice if for once, someone had set him down and asked if he, Harry, was okay. Everyone just assumed without further thought that he was okay with being a boy of the prophecy or being stuck with the Dursley's, or if he was all right with a stranger coming into his life claiming that another equal stranger was his father.

He wasn't. He wasn't okay with it- had never been okay with it, and maybe he would never be okay with it.

While Harry was not one to cry or had a tendency to lose control of his emotions frequently, the boy broke down and buried his head into his hands.

He didn't want this any more than he wanted to go back to the Dursleys. He didn't want an absentee father, who was only going along with the act because he felt like he had to. As he had found in Ron and Hermoine, Harry wanted someone who cared for him because they wanted to, not because they felt like they had to or that it was expected of them.

Tony was only doing this because he felt he had to because his "son's" home life at his relatives wasn't the best.


Tony went to his lab to work on one of his latest prototypes, or at least, that is what he had told Bruce after they made their way back from visiting Harry. In actuality, he was going to dig up some more details on Harry and his relatives.

He wanted to know everything about the boy that rested a few floors above. Not to mention, why Lily had never called (or even written, for that matter) to tell him that he had had a bouncing baby boy. Had she even known it was his or had she assumed it was her husband's?

Had she even been married at the time? Not that it would have bothered Tony back then if she had been. He had slept with plenty of married women over the years, so he would have been almost hypocritical for him to judge her.

Asking JARVIS to pull up everything he had on Lily Evans or Lily Potter, he frowned at the results, or lack thereof.

The results JARVIS was able to access were limited at best. Although nothing was truly out of reach from his AI, there was not much on Lily Evans and even less on Lily Potter.

Her childhood records were typical until eleven, where she just disappeared during the school year. If Tony had to guess, she had gone to a boarding school for her upper years, as her records resumed as usual during the summer months- at least until the summer of her seventeenth year.

It was like Lily Evans ceased to exist at seventeen as all subsequent traces of the fiery redhead ended.

Tony could only assume that s, especially when there was virtually nothing off-limits to his AI. How could someone just appear only to disappear a short while later? What boarding school was so off the grid that even JARVIS was incapable of finding its records, furthermore, where did Lily and her boyfriend/husband go after they graduated?

Furthermore, and perhaps most pressing, was where did his son go during the year?

If there was one thing Tony felt more uncomfortable about than having a son, was not knowing said son was during the year.

That also brought on the question, was Tony going to claim the kid as his?

Was Harry his? By all accounts so far, it would seem so, as Bruce had run a DNA test on the kid, and JARVIS had picked up on the match (having sent him the initial alert), but Tony wondered if he could have one of the tech's downstairs run another… it was better to be safe than sorry, right?

Even if the boy wasn't his, after the meeting with the b- Harry's relatives Tony knew that he couldn't just send the ailing boy back to them at the end of the week, or ever.

He did not necessarily want to play sick-maid to a virtual stranger, but the boy needed somewhere safe to rest and recover, plus, Bruce was right, the kid was his responsibility right now whether he liked it or not. Bruce had also made it abundantly clear that if Tony wasn't willing to step up and provide the absolute basics for the kid, then he would, while using Tony's money to do so, or at the very least a room in his house.

Either way, Tony was going to get involved in this kid's welfare regardless of how he felt about it.

That brought up a point on how involved Tony should be.

If he did claim the kid, the kid would be thrust into the spotlight. He would be hounded much like Tony was, until his past was re-hashed for the world to see. Did he want that for the kid? No, the kid was probably used to living a private life and was no doubt, going to shy away from the excess attention.

But was being thrown into a life filled with money, fast-cars, and no privacy worse than living incognito with a family that obviously abhorred your very existence?

Tony would like to think not.

At least, with living so much in the public eye, Tony hoped that it would eventually become enough reassurance to the kid that he would never be hurt by his own flesh and blood again. The media would have a field day if they knew Tony had resorted to treating his son the same way Mr. Stark had treated Tony while growing up.

He needed to stop. He was getting ahead of himself, way ahead of himself.

First things first, he had to obtain another DNA sample and send it off for another paternity test, because you could never be too sure. Particularly when Tony had so much at stake (this could be his heir after all).

Secondly, he would no doubt have to prepare for a legal battle, as the Dursleys were not deserving of a dime from him, for taking care of the kid for the past however many years he'd been with them.

Nor were they any more likely to just "give" Harry to him, as, well, he did have the means to fund the lifestyle they wanted.

Of course, if it was a legal battle they wanted, it was a legal battle they were sure to get as Tony had no shortage of money or resources at his disposal to see them in court every day for a very long time.

Now, it is understood that Tony was not a bad guy, he was an Avenger and all, but sometimes, sometimes Tony just got these urges to do some bad things to bad people. And in Tony's book, the Dursleys were most deserving and overdue to have some very bad things done to them.