Harry doesn't like bad dreams, but he likes what comes after. Even when Harry doesn't have nightmares, someone else does, so there's always someone who needs a hot drink in the middle of the night.
When Harry wakes up tonight, he's not scared, and he knows right away he's in his room at the X-Mansion school. He turns to see the mini mansion he'd made from boxes and paints.
He's safe.
He doesn't know why he's awake. He doesn't need to use the loo. Dad's not screaming. He's sleeping on the mattress on the floor, because he always seems scared he'll hurt Harry during his own nightmares.
Harry hears a whimper, but not from Dad. Or himself.
He squints. Without his glasses, he sees a big, black shape on the floor. A dog? Nighty? Harry hadn't been scared, but now he looks around for a huge shadow, waits for Hagrid the giant to burst through the door and hurt Dad. Harry's about to call for Dad, because Dad can wake up super fast and be ready to fight.
Harry suddenly remembers everything from yesterday with Sirius. Harry had let Snuffles up on the bed when Dad tucked him in. Snuffles had walked in a circle and flopped down, but couldn't get cozy. He'd gone to the floor and curled up there.
Snuffles whimpers again and Harry climbs out of bed. He puts his hand on Snuffles' shaking ribs, and runs his fingers through black fur. Some places are missing hair, like his Grandpa'fessor.
Snuffles yelps and opens his eyes. He's still shivering.
"You're cold," Harry pulls the blanket off the bed and lays it over Snuffles. He keeps whispering, because Dad's sleeping. "My dad went to cold cryo jail too. It freezed him. But you're not in jail now."
Harry hugs Snuffles through the blanket. It's like hugging a teddy, but not babyish at all. "I know what helps. Come on,"
Harry stands, and hears Dad breathe loud and rough. Dad's shivering too, his whole body trembling except for his metal arm.
Harry crawls next to Dad and lays on his chest. "Dad, it's me, Harry. We're in our bedroom an' it's warm."
Dad jerks, then goes still, but not like a statue. Harry can still feel him shaking, feel his fast breathing in his chest.
"Harry," Dad gasps. He slowly relaxes and his breathing sounds better. "You know not to touch me if I'm-"
"Hugging Snuffles helped. He had a freezing dream too." Harry says. "I always want hugs after bad dreams."
"Did you have a bad dream?" Dad's voice is shaky.
"Not tonight," Harry grabs his dad's skin hand. It's almost still.
Harry leads the way to the kitchen. Snuffles follows like a shadow, then turns into Sirius again.
Mr. Stark is already there, drinking. "I knew you'd come to join the party."
Mr. Stark turns to look at Sirius. "I'm glad you're free and everything, but our baggage area was already overflowing. Clearly nobody here got the memo of only having one carry-on. Or whatever they do on normal planes. I have my own jet. And you have no clue what I'm talking about."
"You didn't dream about cryo freezing." Harry knows Mr. Stark didn't get frozen like Dad did, but he doesn't like caves.
"I didn't," Mr. Stark agrees, but he doesn't say what he had a nightmare about. He looks at Sirius. "You, uh, reminded me of some things. I didn't really have a good time overseas, either. Wrongful imprisonment, the works. No creepy ringwraiths, though."
"Dementors," Sirius croaks.
"Sure. Was Tolkien secretly a wizard?"
Harry turns to Sirius, too. "Do you want tea or cocoa? Jarvis says hot cocoa is too much sugar and I won't sleep after. But nobody sleeps after bad dreams."
Sirius takes a bit to answer. "Chocolate helps with… where I was."
Harry's surprised to hear that. "You get chocolate in jail? Did you get chocolate ice cream 'cos it's freezing?"
Sirius looks like he was fed just as little as Harry was with the Dursleys, and Harry never got chocolate there. Maybe jail would have been better than his aunt and uncle's house. He starts to say that, then stops, because it'll make people sadder.
Sirius shakes his head. "I never got chocolate in jail. Or ice cream."
"We get hot cocoa here." Harry gets the cocoa powder and marshmallows from a cupboard. "It helps lots."
"Why are you making it?"
"It's easy" Harry likes helping adults. It makes him feel grown up, instead of being the littlest kid in a big, big school, too little to even go to class like the older kids do.
Harry can measure the powder, but he needs Dad to help with pouring the big jug of milk and putting the mugs in the microwave.
Sirius asks what the microwave is, then pulls out his wand and heats the hot cocoa up with magic, way faster than the microwave. He even makes the marshmallows fly into the mugs. Harry laughs, and Sirius sort of smiles.
While they sip their cocoa, Harry tells happy stories because they told enough sad stories yesterday. He talks about playing in the sun so Dad and Sirius don't think about cold cryo jails. "I'm going to fly in the sun when I'm in the Olympics. And we're going to play Quidditch and win, and play flying basketball."
"Isn't that just quidditch?" Dad asks, smiling a tiny bit. Harry grins.
"No, Quidditch has a quaffle! An' bludgers and-"
"-the golden snitch," Sirius finishes. "Your dad- your first dad- had a snitch he'd play with. Nicked it from the quidditch pitch."
"My new dad can catch bullets," Harry says. Sirius doesn't know what bullets or guns are. Mr. Stark tells him how guns work, how they're made, exactly how fast bullets go. Sirius still looks confused.
"But everyone knows magic now, 'cos of Loki." Harry frowns. Don't magic people know about muggles, too?
Loki appears in the kitchen, all of a sudden, and makes his own mug pop out of thin air. He smiles. "It may take him a little time to catch up."
Sirius scowls.
Harry finds out that Sirius barely knows about the Avengers. Harry thinks they should be called the X-Vengers because the X-Men are a part of the team too, but Mr. Stark says it sounds like a bad breakup. "Like if the team went their separate ways."
Harry hates that idea. "We're going to be family forever until you die."
"Given the stuff we've survived, we're probably invincible." Mr. Stark says as he gulps down the rest of his drink. "Not really, but… that's enough feelings for one night. Who wants to play Go Fish?"
He glances at Sirius and Loki. "Do you even know what fish are?"
"Yes," Loki rolls his eyes, and suddenly a deck of cards appears in his hand, too.
Loki snaps his hand, and cards float toward each of them. Dad holds them in his metal hand and stares at everyone to guess what cards they have.
Whenever Sirius has to fish, he flicks his wand at the pile of cards like a fishing rod, pulling one up with a magic string Harry can't see.
Harry wishes he had a wand to do it, but Loki can just make them appear. "Can you teach me?"
Loki says he might. Loki never has to pick up any cards. When Harry asks if he has any twos, Loki tells him to go fish.
Harry likes playing games during their night parties. He'd like it even more if he was winning, like Loki.
"Don't think I don't know you're switching cards with magic." Mr. Stark points a finger at Loki.
"Are you accusing me of cheating?" Loki raises his eyebrows.
"Yeah. You're literally the demigod of Lies." Loki narrows his eyes at demigod, but he doesn't scare Mr. Stark the way he scares Mr. Barton. "Besides, I've been counting them, and-"
"That's easy." Harry interrupts. He points to the cards in his own hand, only he switches from counting to saying the numbers on the cards. "One, two, seven, two, Q."
"You really do need preschool," Mr. Stark says, then studies Loki. "Do you have any fours?"
Loki grins. "Looks like you need to go fish, Anthony."
The pile in the center of the table suddenly flies towards Mr. Stark, which isn't fair at all. He'll probably get the two that Harry needs. Harry shouts, grabbing for the cards, and some of them turn to fly toward him.
Harry snatches cards out of the air, determined to win. "You brought them towards you, not me." Loki tells him, and Harry snatches more in triumph.
By the time Steve walks in, they're all at least smiling, their nightmares chased away by games and hot cocoa. Loki glances at Steve and says "You said you were good at poker,"
This scene ended up being way longer than I expected, and I can't believe I had less than twenty-four hours in the story span like five chapters.
My new teaching year starts tomorrow (technically Friday was a training day) so I'm not sure how that'll impact how frequently I update.
I finally bought a Bucky/Winter Soldier action figure. Don't know why I waited so long since he's been my favorite character for over five years, and I love buying toys.