Author's Note: Welcome to Chapter Two v 2.0 :) I combined the previous versions of Chapters Three and Four and made a few minor changes; hopefully it turned out well. I have no idea when the next installment will be out; I keep telling myself I'm going to work on Madman and get the next chapter of that out before I do anything else-and I have been working on it, honest! But I am having so much difficulty with the chapter I'm working on, and I cannot for the life of me figure out where I'm going wrong. So this is happening instead :P

Chapter Two: Here's Your Ten Galleons, Ron

After a moment's hesitation, Harry Disillusioned himself and jumped on his broom. He was pretty certain this would cost him the bet, but smoke meant fire, and there couldn't be anything on fire in the desert unless someone had brought it into the desert with them. Sand cannot burn.

That meant it was pretty likely that someone needed help. No one would come all this way to have a barbeque, after all. And Harry didn't think he could live with himself if someone was hurt or killed because he hadn't wanted to lose a bet.

He wasn't quite sure what to make of the pieces of metal scattered across the desert floor, but it seemed reasonable to assume they were from some sort of machine. Probably a flying one, because to smash into pieces like that, the machine would've needed to hit the sand at a fairly high speed. He didn't know enough about Muggle machinery to guess at more than that.

Some interestingly colourful curse words pulled Harry from his thoughts, and he blinked back into awareness just as a man pulled himself out from underneath the main part of the wreckage.

He was a good-looking man, with dark, messy hair, and skin with a healthy tone to it. His build was average, verging on slender, and there didn't seem to be anything remarkable about him. And yet, Harry mused as he watched the man searching through the wreckage, he'd managed to haul himself out of the sand and scattered bits of metal without any help—and despite his obvious injuries.

Without really thinking about it, Harry flew behind a nearby sand dune and dropped out of the sky. After shrinking his broom and reversing the Disillusionment Charm, he started making his way back towards the wreckage, reaching the top of the dune just in time to see the man collapse a short distance away. Cursing a bit under his breath, he started trudging faster.

He reached the man just as he was shakily getting back on his feet. "Easy there, mate," Harry said soothingly, hoping not to startle him too badly, and taking an arm to support him. "I've got you."

The man straightened up and pulled away, turning to face him fully.

Up close, Harry could tell his new friend was closer to forty than thirty, which he hadn't been expecting, and there was a faint blue glow coming from underneath his shirt. His intense brown eyes reminded him of Hermione: full of life and intelligence, analyzing everything and everyone they met and storing their findings away for future reference. Harry had to forcibly stop himself from fidgeting.

The man was clearly injured—clothes torn, cuts and bruises scattered across his skin, a split lip, holding one arm close to his body at an awkward angle—but he was standing almost defiantly straight, as if daring Harry to try and help him again. Harry couldn't help but smile a little at that; he tended to have the same sort of reaction, after all.

"You're late."

Harry jumped a little, having gotten lost in his thoughts, which caused the man to smirk. "Er…I am?"

"Obviously." The man rolled his eyes, winced, then gestured towards the wreckage behind him. "Seeing as I rescued myself before you even found me." His eyes left Harry for a few moments and scanned the horizon, as if looking for something.

"Oh, um, I'm not part of any sort of rescue team," Harry attempted to explain, stumbling over his words. "I'm, er, I'm sort of camping out over there," he gestured vaguely back towards his camp, "and I saw the smoke, so…here I am."

"Uh huh, right. You're just a regular guy, nothing special about you or your job, not military or terrorist or anything like that, who just randomly said to himself one day 'Gee, I've got all this vacation time I haven't used, I should go camping in the middle of a war-torn desert.' Because, you know, that's something people like to do."

"You'd be surprised," Harry replied, grinning a little at the man's cheek. He probably should've done better research into this whole Afghanistan thing, but too late for that now, and anyway things tend to go worse when he tries to plan ahead. "It's a bit of a long story, but if you substitute 'unused vacation time' with 'stupid bet with my friend', you've pretty much got the gist of it."

"Ah. Well, I know all about making stupid bets with people. You said your camp's nearby? Awesome. Why don't we make our way over there before the sun turns us into a couple of crispy bacon strips?"

"Sounds good," Harry agreed, and the two men started making their way back towards Harry's camp. "My name's Harry, by the way. Harry Potter."

"Tony Stark," the man replied, shaking his hand. Tony stared at him expectantly for a few moments, but when Harry didn't say or do anything else, he smirked and turned away. "Let's go, Arthur Dent. We've got some walking to do."

~o~o~

There was definitely something weird going on.

Granted, flying face first into the ground and digging himself out had taken up most of his attention for a while. And the way his head was pounding, he probably had some sort of a head injury. So, maybe, just maybe, he'd missed something, some perfectly logical explanation that would tell him exactly how a young, good-looking British man had happened to show up at his crash site, with no idea who he was—Tony had been watching him carefully as they exchanged names, and there'd been no recognition there whatsoever— and seemingly no ulterior motive for wanting to help him out.

Or maybe the head injury had led to hallucinations. Somehow, though, Tony really didn't think that was the case—or that he'd missed anything.

If he'd been in some sort of military uniform, Tony probably wouldn't have questioned it. He had no doubt the U.S. military had pulled in all of their resources, and their allies' resources, to help in the search for their biggest weapons manufacturer. The man—Harry, he'd called himself, hadn't he?—carried himself like a soldier, standing straight, shoulders back, steps easy and graceful, and he had that air of being constantly alert and in control that so many soldiers seemed to have. Yeah, Tony could see him as a soldier.

But there was no sign of any weapons on him, not that Tony had been able to notice. And he was wearing glasses—not many soldiers did that nowadays, preferring to correct their vision in a way that couldn't be knocked off their face during a fight. And his hair was definitely too long and messy.

The thing that really tripped him up, though, was the sweat. There was no sign of any mode of transport, so Harry had to have walked to him. But he wasn't sweating, didn't look tired or dusty, like he'd been kicking up a lot of sand—and, really, it hadn't been that long between Tony's landing and Harry showing up. Again, he'd been rather preoccupied, but he was pretty sure it hadn't been long enough for someone to have walked from a camp that was too far away for him to see.

So, that meant…what, exactly?

Oh well. Tony mentally shrugged, hissing as he felt a sharp stab of pain, and continued struggling through the sand. He had a feeling he was going to have plenty of time to figure this guy out.

Just a quick A/N, because a reviewer mentioned this, I like talking about things, and I can't send them a PM: Tony's age. I did not throw that bit of info in there in response to a review, or anything like that; Harry is studying Tony in that moment, and if he's noting his hair and eye color, and his intelligence, he's probably noting his age, too. I did research online before throwing that detail in, because I'm like that, and couldn't get a straight answer as to how old Tony was when he made the suit. Between the comics and movies and RDJ and people having their own opinions...the general consensus seemed to be that Tony *was* in his thirties, though opinions varied on which end of the spectrum. I decided to make him a bit older for two reasons: 1) one of the potential developments for this story may make more sense if there's more of an age difference between Harry and Tony (in my head Harry's about 25) and 2) after watching Iron Man, that's how old I thought he was.