Chapter Two:

Harry was pretty miserable. He had been looking forward to the Stark Expo and now he was going to have to miss it because of his cousin. There was so much to learn and so little time. He had wanted to hear Tony Stark talk about technology and his future vision for the world, and now . . . and now, he was stuck in a hospital bed. Dudley was always making his life miserable, and Harry just always had to take it.

There was never a time where Dudley wasn't ruining things for him. It was a daily occurrence, and he should have known that today was going to be no different.

Harry remembered arguing with his cousin. Dudley was trying to strong arm Harry's backpack from him. Dudley knew that Harry most have stolen from the kitchen again, and then Harry was shoved into the genetic reader from Fortis Biotechnology. He got caught on the reader and he hit his head on the ground. The next thing he knew, he was at the hospital.

He looked down at his arm, there was a long nasty gash on it. Another scar to add. The one that was most visible was the lightning bolt scar on his forehead that he has a long as he could remember, and other little scars acquired in his daily living with the Dursleys. Harry didn't have to be told by an x-ray that it was broken, he knew it was broken. Dudley had broken Harry's arm before, and it had felt the same way. He remembered all too well the smacking around he got afterward because of the hospital bill.

It had gone from a great day to a wretched, no good, rotten day in the blink of an eye.

He sighed, knowing that his uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia wouldn't be bothered to come out to the hospital to visit him, they would actually have to care about him to do that. All he was to them was an orphan, and burden, a freak. Hell, he did not even know his real name until he started school and he had gotten in trouble for not answering.

He couldn't let it bother him anyway, it would be a change of pace. At least for a while he wouldn't have to do the heavy lifting chores, but he still could weed the garden, vacuum, and clean the bathrooms. All those things he could do with one hand.

Harry knew it from experience.

The last time Harry broke his arm his aunt only gave him a reprieve from dusting and doing dishes as she didn't want him to break her fine china or break one of her precious Waterford crystal picture frames with her Dudley Diddykins in it. Harry stared out the window wondering if his mother and father had pictures of him in Waterford crystal pictures frames, or if they had kept his handpaintings as aunt Petunia did. She proudly displayed all of Duddykins work on the refrigerator, and whenever she got a hold of Harry's, she made great pleasure of tearing it in half in front of him and throwing it in the rubbish bin. Harry had drawn a picture of the four of them as a family. But that would never be. He knew he would always be alone.

Harry had a couple of his pictures tucked away underneath his mattress in the cupboard under the stairs, he managed to hide it before his aunt could throw them out, and she would never go into his cupboard. It was too dusty and full of spiders for his prim and proper aunt to be sticking her head in there for him.

His art teacher had praised him on his art work, and he had actually won a couple of awards for it, no that his relative knew or cared. Dudley was the next Monet according to Uncle Vernon, when in fact all Dudley could ever draw were rudimentary shapes and maybe some stick figures on a good day.

Maybe more like Picasso with the cube picture. Harry remember seeing that one day in one of his art books he was looking at in the public library. He wouldn't dare bring out the books to his Aunt's house, Dudley would tear the books to bits.

Harry laid there, staring out the window wondering if he could draw on his cast. At least this time he would be able to have a cast.

The medical intern came in, smiling at Harry, telling him he could have red or green for his cast. Harry chose red.

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Tony looked out at all the students gathered around to listen to him sing the praises of science and mathematics and to encourage the research and development on new ideas, but his heart just wasn't in it. He was detached and actually reading from the cue cards that Obi had handed him right before he took the stage. He couldn't focus, his heart was hurting, as it was sporadically known to do. His personal physician kept telling him his heart was fine, but his heart would ache every couple of days or so. The booze helped to numb this from time to time.

A couple of minutes before he took the main platform of Stark Expo, Tony watched as they loaded the small boy up in the ambulance and pull away. He hadn't wanted to walk away from the child, and he felt some kind of pull toward him, a protective pull maybe. He couldn't quite place the feeling, all he knew was that it wasn't a feeling that he had never felt before.

Tony spaced out for a minute, watching the ambulance lights dim, thinking about his cousins James and Sirius. James who was long gone, and Sirius in some place for killing James. He wanted to get up and go to the hospital for some reason, but he just couldn't leave the expo. It was one of his first big events since taking over Stark a decade ago, normally foregoing these type of activities for his own private activities.

Pepper had badgered him into becoming the face of Stark Industries again, and admittedly, he had let Obi do it for too long after his father died. Now was the time, the world needed Stark Industries to have the visionary at the helm.

He looked out into the crowd of little children, wishing that he was following the ambulance to the hospital to sit with that little boy. If he had a kid, heaven forbid, he wouldn't want them riding alone. He remembered one time when he had hurt himself in his father's lab and he had to go the hospital. Howard was away and Maria was in Europe visiting with her sister Andromeda. She was the non crazy one, if memory served him right.

He shook himself out of the dark place and shot a smile out to the kids and continued on with his speech about embracing science and math and letting imaginations run wild.

"Math and science are critical to research and development of medicine, robots and most importantly for the development of video games," Tony stated, getting a cheer from the kids. He knew that would get a cheer from them. Obi's speech was a little dry, but he didn't have the heart to improvise too much right now. Abnormal for him. He soldiered on, hoping to get out of there soon and to get to his London apartment to crack open a bottle of gin.

"My old man, Howard Stark, was not an easy father but he knew where to push me to excel." He stepped away from the kids and turned on the projection of Howard Stark, who would talk now for about 30 minutes.

Walking out off the stage, he saw the young blonde teacher speaking softly to Pepper. She was the one who was escorting the little boy around.

"Tony, this is Ms. Rachel Aberdeen, Harry's teacher." Pepper said introducing the two. "Harry, the little boy who you helped earlier today."

"Mr. Stark, thank you for getting to Harry so quickly," she told him. "Harry's cousin is quite the trouble maker. I had to call his parents to get permission for Mr. Fortis to run Harry's blood because it just wouldn't get clean without running it through the system, and they refuse to pay for any damages, believing that Harry is the real trouble maker."

Tony fumed for a couple of seconds, processing the information. He shook his head. "Please call me Tony. I will talk with Nathan in a little bit and see if there was any thing that needs to be replaced. I can absorb the cost."

"Call me Rachel. I know I shouldn't have favorites, but Harry is my favorite. He hasn't been shown much kindness in his life. From what he's told me, his parents died when he was very young. And from what I observe, his aunt and uncle are less than accommodating from what I can gather. They hen and haw over their precious Dudley, but pay no attention to little Harry."

She confided in him that Harry's guardians were the best sort and probably wouldn't pay for additional treatment or plastic surgery if needed.

"They always give Harry the bare minimum, if anything at all." Ms. Aberdeen whispered. "I should have gone with him, but I can't leave the class."

"Poor kid," Tony said. Howard had been a little neglectful, mostly because of his obsession with Captain America, but never purposely so. Maria had made up for an absentee father most of the time anyway. "Harry seems like a pretty special kid."

"Oh, he is." Ms. Aberdeen smiled, thinking of the kind-hearted child. "Harry was devastated when his uncle said he wouldn't pay for him to come, so I paid for him." Tony smiled, knowing that teachers didn't make a lot, and that this probably wasn't the cheapest of excursions, but she still allowed it for this special kid. He would send her something nice. "All Harry could talk about was seeing you speak. He had been in the library during his breaks reading about the great Tony Stark. His favorite article was about your MIT dissertation."

Tony smirked.

"He was very impressed, I'm sure," Pepper said sarcastically. "Tony doesn't need another fan."

"He is a really smart kid, but he refuses to shine in class." Tony put that information in his mental file folder. Probably because he couldn't do any better then his pig of a cousin.

"Sounds like I am going to have to meet this kid, I mean I can't leave my biggest fan in the lurch. Pepper, can you clear the rest of my day?"

Ms. Aberdeen smiled. Tony Stark was known for his intelligence and ingenuity, as well as his playboy ways. She never thought he would take his time to go visit this child. She hoped he would do it. It would make Harry's year.

Pepper pulled up Tony's schedule. "Nothing that I can't move or see to myself. Where did they take him too?"

"The Royal London Hospital," Ms. Aberdeen informed him. "It is one of the largest children's hospital in the UK." She looked out into the crowd and saw the Piers and Henry had started picking on another student. Dudley surprisingly was staying out of it. "Sorry, I have to go break up these hooligans again."

Tony nodded. "Well, if I am no longer needed, I am going to mingle a little longer with the exhibitors before I go visit young Harry."

Pepper handed over the list of exhibitors, knowing that Tony was going to hit up Nathan Fortis first. " Tony, are you sure about going to the hospital? Maybe you should wait until the kid is settled at home."

"Pep, I know. But Harry, I don't know, something about him has me wanting to meet him and know him." Tony tried to explain to her. It was hard to put the feeling into words. It was almost as if he just knew he needed to be there for this kid. "It sounds like his family is neglectful at best, and I know that feels like. I should be there, hell I should do more."

"If it is something you really need to do, I can put off your meetings until tomorrow. It was just something called Advanced Idea Mechanics, and really Obi can handle this if you want him too," Pepper told him, pulling out her newest Stark Technology pad. "Tomorrow, really is pretty much open too, although you should probably do the BBC interview that you have been putting off, also you need to go visit the London division of the R&D department while you are here. They have some exciting break in the Warrior missile, and you should probably start interviewing for the new head for R&D here. I have uploaded the resumes."

Tony nodded as he started walking toward Fortis Technologies booth. He wanted to ask if there had been any damage during the scuffle with the kids. He wouldn't make the school or the teacher cover any damages if there was any.

"Mr. Stark," a pleasantly stout man came up to him. "I'm Nathan Fortis, the rep here for Fortis Technology."

"You are Lionel Fortis' son. MIT 1999 graduate with a specialization in genetic recombination; next in line for CEO. I have heard great things about you," Tony said, remembering what he had read on the biographies. He wasn't an internationally known businessman for nothing. His father had several mottos, one of them was to know your colleagues. They shook hands briefly and talked about the new developments in organ and limb regeneration.

They were close, but Tony knew that they were a little closer. Stark Industries just didn't do weapons, even though that was where they money was. Obi had been skeptical when Tony had approached him with expanding, but in the end decided to let Tony have his fun. Now they did energy, pharmaceuticals, and medical research. Those departments still didn't gross as much as the weapons industry though.

"So what are you running right now?" Tony asked, keeping the conversation going.

"Some kids got into a scuffle over here, and I can't get all the blood of the spectrometer. So the teacher gave me permission to run it through the genetic tester. Just for fun, we are running it against some famous people. Bon Jovi, Prince Harry, you . . ."

Tony laughed, he had given Nathan Fortis a swab of his earlier in the day to test against his fathers. It was undeniable that he was his father's son. He was always careful with his one night stands. Nondisclosure agreements were always handled by Pepper in the morning, his genetic profile was actually on record at Stark Industries, just in case.

Pepper walked up, smiling at Tony. "Harry has been settled in at the hospital and is getting the best care and extra treatments that Stark money can buy. Rachel said the hospital confirmed that his arm was broken in three places, so he is going to need some screws and pins, and probably some therapy. They also found that he was severely dehydrated and malnourished."

"Have Jarvis . . ."

"I already had Jarvis hack and pull up the medical charts, its uploaded to the StarkPad now."

Tony nodded, he and Rachel had suspected abuse.

There was a low beep from the machine, and Nathan looked up surprised.

"There's a match . . ."

"A match?"

"What match?" Pepper asked, not knowing what was going on.

Nathan handed Tony the paper.

"Are you positive?"

"99.8%," Nathan reaffirmed. "Tony . . ."

Tony shook his head. There was only one woman that he hadn't been careful with, and she was dead. He closed his eyes, thinking about the little boy. He had been drawn to Harry. He didn't know why, but now he did. Harry was his son. His son with Lily.

Oh God, Lily.

His best friend, his cousin's wife. Oh God.

Those eyes were all Lily, the hair was all him. The boy had his skin tones and his jaw.

"Oh God," Pepper whispered when Nathan told her. "Are you positive, I mean this is new technology."

"He's mine." Tony whispered more for himself than anyone else. "He has Lily's eyes, my hair. I don't need a DNA test telling me what I am feeling, why I was feeling it."

"Tony . . ."

"Pepper, I just know."

"Okay," Pepper said, backing him like she always did. Tony never did anything without reason.

Tony took off, leaving the expo behind. Tony would hear Pepper in the background, trying to stop him, but he wouldn't stop. His son was in the hospital, and he needed him.

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