Since Harry had been helping with the Iron Man stuff, he had transitioned in Tony's estimation.
Previously, he'd just been a kid that was often around. Tony didn't hate kids, but nor did he really care about most of them one way or the other. When he thought about Harry at all, his feelings were generally positive—the boy was a little nerd that wasn't annoying and liked video games—he just didn't think that much about Harry.
But in the last year or so, Harry had proven to be useful as a research assistant. In addition to the actual help testing, he was a pretty good rubber duck for Tony to talk at while working through design problems, who usually didn't interrupt unless he actually had something to add that regularly turned out to be valid. Perhaps more importantly, he'd saved Tony's life on potentially multiple occasions (definitely against the guy with the knife in his garage, and possibly against Vanko and the Sokovian paintball assassins). And it was easier to dismiss your assistant's kid than your girlfriend's kid, and Harry was functionally Pepper's kid.
It was weird. Tony wasn't ready to be a stepdad, but Harry was technically Pepper's nephew, right? Was he expected to parent? Was she?
All of this resulted in a change in Harry's relationship with Tony that the two of them were still working out, but the salient point for the end of August was that Tony actually suggested that they fly Harry to London in the Stark Industries jet. He obviously hadn't put much thought into how Harry had gotten to England the previous two years, but now he was going to make sure it was in style. There was technically a conference he and Pepper were going to stop at, afterwards, but the point was to prevent Harry from having to fly commuter air.
Consequently, Harry didn't get to engage in his usual, relatively-relaxing trip to school via international teleportation. And he couldn't explain to Tony that taking a private jet would be a downgrade.
"Why does your school start on a Thursday?" Tony asked, toward the end of the flight.
Harry shrugged and fibbed, "Tradition. Train leaves on September 1st most years. But they have some weird thing about it actually being based on when the fall equinox is." This was one of the years that the dates didn't line up as normal, because of the drift in Earth's year until a leap year put it back more or less into sync.
And that was before you got into the drift of the hour of the day. Harry's first year, it had been close to midday on Vanaheim when it was 11 AM in London. His second, the train had left before dawn, Vanaheim time. This year, they'd been warned that the train would basically be leaving in the middle of the night. For some reason the date the convergence formed was based on the Vanaheim side, but the time was usually based on the Earth side.
Hermione had a whole graphed notebook trying to work it out and explain it to everyone else. She was hoping to eventually use it as the basis for an extra credit project in Professor Sinistra's class.
"I should come by this school. It sounds so weird," Tony said.
"No electronics, remember?" Harry told him.
"Even for adults?" Tony checked.
"Very traditional," Harry nodded.
"Fine," Tony relented, before Harry had to come up with an even better excuse. Even if he was cleared to know about Vanaheim, Tony would suffer "heart" failure as soon as he stepped through the convergence. He supposedly had a minute or so before he'd actually pass out from lack of blood flow, hopefully enough to stagger back through, but it was best, for a lot of reasons, not to risk it.
Fortunately, Tony's newfound interest didn't extend to waking up and navigating downtown London on a Thursday morning, so it was just Pepper dropping Harry off at the station after Tony had groggily said goodbye then headed off to bed at 8 AM local time. They got there early, and stepped through the convergence together into Vanaheim, dark sky surrounding a train platform lit primarily by the giant bonfire that the locals used to travel to the Hogwarts Express.
In the middle of the night, it was cool and the air smelled much more clear than it did in London. There was a cacophony of animal noises from the nearby trees, probably angry at the bustling of the platform waking them all up. At the edge of the firelight, a mangy-looking black dog stared at the collection of students and parents for a minute before snuffling off.
Pepper took a deep breath and said, "Wow. This is the first time I've been home since your parents got married."
"Do you miss it?" Harry asked.
"I think you always miss your first home," she shrugged. "But I really like email." It was true. Few people emailed with the intensity and fervor of Pepper Potts. "Are you ready?"
"Yeah, there's Luna and Neville," Harry gestured at his two friends, already there and standing talking with their guardians.
"I think I could do without small talk with Augusta or Xenophilus again so soon," Pepper shuddered, having had to put up with Neville's opinionated grandmother and Luna's strange father during the Market trip. "Have a good year. Remember to try to get an adult."
They hugged and as Pepper was walking out, she passed a man entering with no child and only a backpack for luggage. Harry raised an eyebrow, since he almost looked homeless, as hard-worn as his clothing was. The man glanced around carefully, then immediately boarded the train. Harry shrugged and went over to talk to his friends.
"You said you're not on the first rotation, right?" Harry asked Luna after they'd extricated themselves from the adults and gone to board the train. "Do you know who got picked with who… whom?"
"I'm having second thoughts about this whole thing," Neville confided. "I'm going to mess it up."
"We're all going to mess it up," Harry assured him, as Luna nodded. "Anyway… secrets?"
Luna tilted her head, trying to decide whether it was worth revealing the information before the other girls got to, and whether it would be funnier to make the boys wait. She eventually settled on saying, "Let's just say that the first round is probably not going to work out. Unless the Vanir decide to move to Midgard or vice versa."
Harry mentally matched various people up and said, "So me and Dean with Lavender and Ginny, and Ron and Neville with Hermione, Padma, and Parvati?"
"And not even the combinations that would make the girls happiest," Luna nodded. "That's what they get for drawing paper instead of rolling dice. Or maybe the Norns are getting the bad pairings out of the way. Did I tell you we almost caught a glimpse of a snorkack this summer? Daddy is sure of it."
By the time the Weasleys had tiredly staggered onto the train at the last second before leaving, everyone was impatiently waiting for the pairing assignments. Well, the boys were nervously awaiting their fate (except for Seamus, who wasn't involved and thus very amused) and the girls were anxious to have everyone there to make the announcements.
"It's too early," Ron complained, as they clustered outside of the train compartment. They'd gotten big enough that squeezing eight people into one of the tiny rooms definitely wasn't an option, and, even if it was, they had eleven.
"Honestly, it's not far off from LA time, so I'm pretty over it, too," Harry admitted.
"Everyone's here! Let's announce the matches!" Parvati ordered, having no time for small talk.
Padma pulled out her copy of the list and explained, "Luna and I are neutral parties this time around. This phase will last through the end of Vintage Month. We'll switch about a week before Halloween, er, Dísablót." She waited to make sure everyone was rapt with anticipation, then read off, "Parvati with Ron. Ginny with Dean. Hermione with Neville. Lavender with Harry."
Harry nodded, he'd figured, based on Luna's pronouncement that nobody had gotten who they really wanted, that set of matches was pretty likely. At the very least, it was hard to miss Ginny's crush on him. He tried to figure out how excited Lavender was, and seriously considered how he felt about her as more than a friend. She was sizing him up in the same manner, and finally declared, "Why don't we split into two groups and find compartments? Couples together, and Luna, Padma, and Seamus can go with whoever they want."
Ultimately, Seamus wanted to stay with Ron and Padma wanted to stay with Parvati, so that accounted for four people around the temporary Weasley/Patil power couple. Hermione shrugged and she and Neville stayed with that group (mostly because Hermione wanted to check her homework with Padma on the train ride and make sure Ron, Seamus, and Neville had done theirs). That left Harry to try to find another compartment with his group of Lavender, Dean, Ginny, and Luna.
"Everywhere seems full up except the one with that guy," he said, quietly, gesturing through the glass at the man he'd seen coming through the convergence earlier. The stranger had taken the far corner against the window, pulled a battered Phillies ball cap over his eyes, worn a shabby jacket like a blanket, and gone to sleep.
"Is he a teacher, or a homeless person?" Dean checked.
"He must be the new defense instructor," Luna said, with confidence. "He looks like he's had a hard life. I think he must be teaching us something interesting."
With teenage confidence, the five invaded the compartment and took seats. Harry sat in the middle between the strange man and Lavender, and Ginny wound up in the middle seat on the other side between Luna and Dean.
As the door slid shut and they got their trunks stowed, the awkwardness set in.
After five minutes of sitting in silence, watching the forests of Vanaheim roll by under the waxing moon, carefully not touching and not sure if they should be touching, Luna had enough and demanded, "Tell us about the crazy things you did this summer?"
That was a fair question. The girls in the other compartment had basically heard all of it at Kamar-Taj, and seen parts of it on the news, but the Vanaheim natives had no frame of reference. So Harry thought about it and began, "I told you about how Tony made flying armor? It turned out he'd been basically working as his own one-man private army and our government wasn't happy about it. And, even worse, the son of one of Tony's father's ex-partners had some of his technology and decided he wanted to kill Tony…"
The story took a long time to tell. Dean took over for the parts he'd been around for. The presumed-new-defense-instructor slept through the whole thing, though Harry thought he felt him shift a bit when Dean was describing the battle between the two green titans in Harlem. When the adventure seemed to be over, but they rolled right into describing mercenaries trying to kidnap Harry on his birthday, the girls all seemed very surprised.
Finally finishing up, Harry explained, "...and then we just let SHIELD clean it all up while we got hamburgers."
"Your life is like all the stories!" Ginny exclaimed.
"Well, it really wasn't until right before Hogwarts," Harry demurred. "And most of this is stuff that's happening to Tony. I'm just around for it."
Luna watched the two Gryffindor girls taking it all in like it was a wonderful saga, rather than realizing that dating Harry (and probably Dean) was very likely to get them killed. She opined, "I think that I would like fewer dangerous adventures when we date. Though I guess I am sad I didn't get to see the dragon or the shadow nix your first year." They'd told her that story at some point after she joined the study group. "Fine. Try to keep your adventures to ones that involve interesting creatures while we're dating."
"I'll do my best," Harry agreed, gamely. "When is that, by the way?"
"We've only been dating for two hours and you already want to see who's next?" Lavender pouted.
"Ummm…" Harry stalled, and tried, "No?" Fortunately, a yawn broke through and he said, "Woah. I think I've been up for nearly a whole day. A nap? Anyone want to take a nap like this guy?" He gestured at the unconscious probably-professor.
Lavender relented and they all tried to lean back and get a bit more sleep.
Harry woke up some time later, as the train was shuddering to a stop. He realized he was leaning against someone warm and soft, and groggily opened his eyes to realize that he and Lavender were basically sprawled out together on their corner of the compartment. If the defense instructor weren't to their right, they probably would have wound up stretching out across the whole seat.
"Um, uh, are we at Hogsmeade?" Harry checked, carefully leaning up so as to not accidentally put his hand down on… parts.
Across the way, Dean was already awake and grinning at him. Ginny had basically curled up into a ball with Luna, so he was in a much less compromising position. "I don't think so," he explained. "Should have been past sunrise when we got in, right? I don't think it's quite dawn yet."
"Then why did we stop?" Harry tried to figure out, peering into the darkness outside. It was difficult because the dim magical flames that lit the train compartments weren't something you could just switch off, so it was hard to see outside with the moon already lowering to the horizon but the sun not up yet.
Except then the flames suddenly guttered out, plunging the compartment into darkness.
As his eyes adjusted, he got the impression they were in the scrub foothills, only rolling underbrush and grass spreading away from the train in the dim moonlight. And, outside, a dozen red lights, floating about head height, were making their way onto the stopped train. "I don't think that's good," he said. "Everyone up!"
The girls roused, and even the older man finally stirred, "What's going on?" he asked in a Midwestern American accent.
"Train stopped early," Harry recapped. "I can see red lights outside. The lights in here just went out. And they shouldn't."
"Okay," the man said, sighing and seeming to work himself up to offering, "I'll go check with the conductor. You stay here."
Before he could get fully up from his seat, however, they spotted red light reflecting off the windows on the opposite side of the aisle hallway outside the compartments, as if from something not far down the aisle from them. And Harry suddenly felt a little light-headed. He thumped back into his seat, unable to stand, as ringing sounded in his ears, like tinnitus, slowly resolving into a far-away scream.
He dully comprehended voices in the compartment ordering, "Lock the door," and, "What is that?" As if he was being pulled a million miles away, he spotted a gray-skinned human figure outside the compartment, staring directly at him with one, searing-red, cyclopean eye.
"No. Not Harry!" a woman's voice resolved out of the scream as white fog wrapped around his mind.
And then he passed out.
When he came to, the lights had come back on in the train, sparking a bit as magic never intended to turn off reestablished itself. Dean and Lavender were both sitting next to him, and Dean said, "He's waking up."
"Everybody okay?" Harry checked, putting a hand on his temple. "My head hurts."
"Yeah, the professor scared it off," Dean explained. "I'm not sure how."
"I don't think it liked what it saw in my head," the man admitted.
"Mindless Ones," Luna supplied. "They have no mind of their own, so they draw out the thoughts of others around them. The worst thoughts. I almost passed out, too. I think I heard my mum…"
"Oh," Harry nodded. "Yeah. Me too." He'd been aware that Luna's mother died, but he hadn't known she'd had a memory of it.
"You kids, uh, want some chocolate?" the man asked, rifling through his backpack and producing a couple of candy bars that were a foreign brand Harry hadn't seen before.
"Will that help?" Dean checked.
"Couldn't hurt," the man shrugged, breaking the bars into pieces to divide them evenly around the compartment.
"They must have been looking for Sirius Black," Harry figured. "We saw them guarding the prison."
"Oh, yeah?" the man asked, seeming to recognize the name, which might not have been the case if he was Midgardborn. In the light, Harry could see that he had dark hair and a day or two's worth of stubble, but his age was hard to figure. Given the condition of his clothes, he might have been a fairly young adult that had a hard life, or be fully into middle age. "I better go check and make sure everyone else is okay."
As soon as he was out, the rest of their friends were storming in, and Harry and Luna had to explain how badly they'd responded to the creatures. No one else had that adverse of a reaction, but Ron admitted, "I kind of felt, wrong, you know? Like I'd never be happy again."
"They shouldn't be on the train!" Hermione said, incensed. "They shouldn't even be out of the Dark Dimension."
"Sun's rising," Padma noticed. "Maybe they left because they're like vampires."
"Good thing they didn't catch us earlier in the ride, then," Dean figured.
It was Ginny that finally asked, "Are they smart enough to think that Black might try to ride the train… or would they only show up if he had definitely stowed away?"
That got everyone worried again, and they basically decided to cram into one compartment for the rest of the trip, with brief, guarded outings to use the spare compartment to change into their school robes a couple of people at a time. With the worry about Black and his jailers, they weren't even that concerned about being squished into close proximity of their assigned significant others, though those that sat on the floor of the compartment would have probably gotten sick of it if they'd had more than an hour left before the train finally pulled into Hogsmeade's station as dawn had fully broken.
Harry, Luna, and a few other students that had an especially bad reaction to the Mindless Ones got pulled off of the helhest-driven carriages and given a once-over by Madame Pomfrey, the castle's healer. She didn't think they'd have enduring issues, but advised staying clear of them in the future. By the time she released them to slip into the great hall, the sorting had already finished.
Harry slid into the spot Lavender had saved him just as Dumbledore was standing up for his pre-meal announcements. He noticed Malfoy laughing and pointing at him, so figured the story had already gotten around. The Slytherin table quieted as the star-spangled old wizard began to speak. Harry wondered if he'd actually do something about the Mindless Ones and Sirius Black problems, or treat both of them as wonderful opportunities for Harry to get in mortal danger again.
"Welcome to another year at our wonderful school," Dumbledore began. "I have a few announcements, though I suspect you're unfortunately aware of the most serious one. Er, no pun intended. I shall get them out of the way before full bellies lead to sleepy minds. Also, remember that this is a breakfast feast. On an ordinary year, we'd crack on right into classes. But given the events at the end of last term, we'll have a few days to get everyone reoriented, and make sure you studied up to your grade levels over the summer.
"As you may have surmised, the," he cleared his throat while trying to decide on a polite term, settling on, "wardens of Azkaban have come into Vanaheim uninvited seeking out the escaped prisoner, Sirius Black. I have already written to the Ministry expressing my displeasure in the strongest of terms, but I suspect they will have little recourse, given the pacts made to create the prison. I will be strengthening the school's wards to attempt to limit their ability to intrude upon the grounds, and we shall be on high alert for our Hogsmeade visits.
"But I counsel you all: they are dark creatures from another dimension, and may be quite dangerous to anyone that gets in between them and their quarry. Stay well clear, and do not stray out of bounds into places such as the forest. They do not use typical senses, and may not even be fooled by such things as invisibility." He shot a look at the Gryffindor table, and Harry in particular, who had contrived to go into the mystical wood at least once every year. "If you see them at a distance or start to feel the effects of their presence, retreat back to the castle immediately."
He took a deep breath, while Percy Weasley (who'd been promoted to Head Boy) also looked importantly at the Gryffindors under his charge. Dumbledore changed his tone of voice and said, "On a happier note, I'm pleased to announce that we have two new professors this year. Of course, the first is our new teacher for the defense seminar. Allow me to introduce a former student of our school, Remus Lupin." He gestured at the man from the train, who had changed into secondhand robes that didn't fit well and tried to tame his hair, but hadn't had a chance to shave. He waved awkwardly at the school to polite applause.
"Look at Snape," Ron whispered. Sure enough, when they glanced at the potions professor, he was scowling harder at Lupin than he ever had even at Harry. Harry guessed that they could be around the same age, and maybe went to school together? That was why Snape hated Harry, because of hating his father. Hey, maybe Lupin knew his father?
"Our second appointment," Dumbledore continued, "is our very own Rubeus Hagrid. Mister Hagrid will be taking over our husbandry classes after Mister Kettleburn's well-earned retirement to spend more time with his remaining limbs." A chuckle passed through the room, since the retired professor was well known for having lost most of his appendages to various accidents with dangerous beasts. "We all believe that Hagrid will be able to hit the ground running, as they say, given his long history with wildlife."
The clapping for Hagrid was louder than for Lupin, though unevenly distributed. Slytherin, in particular, featured several faces of students that no longer seemed happy with their selection of the elective. Kettleburn had warned them he was retiring, but the secret that Hagrid was his replacement hadn't seemed to travel far. Maybe the big man had only mentioned it to Harry?
"I believe that's everything of importance for the moment. Let's eat!" Dumbledore ordered, and then heaping stacks of breakfast foods were teleported to the tables.
They'd barely gotten halfway through when McGonagall was walking down the table with their new schedules. "I thought the headmaster said we had a while before classes start?" Ron said, confused.
"But not before makeup exams," she disagreed. "I hope you've all studied. You'll see your schedule on the front. Your practicals with me are this afternoon, and I expect you finished the materials in your book over the summer."
"I'm dead," Ron sighed, his head falling into his crossed arms and almost getting his hair into the eggs still on his plate.
Parvati looked down at her temporary boyfriend with a bit of distaste, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder, "I'm sure you'll do fine, Ron."
Harry shrugged and glanced at the rest of the study group, who all nodded. They weren't worried. Well, maybe Snape would try to mess them up, but at least all the other classes should be easy enough…