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That night, Harry didn't sleep. He couldn't after Snape stormed into their motel room well after midnight and announced that they'd be meeting Tony Stark and Pepper Potts in the morning before heading off to the bathroom without saying a word about what had happened during his 'mission'; why the sudden change in plans, or what to expect at Avengers Tower? A moment later, Harry heard the shower start — yet another too human act of Snape's that Harry pretended not to notice — and knew not to ask questions when the man emerged roughly thirty minutes later.

So, unable to settle his mind enough to sleep, Harry resigned himself to tossing and turning in his bed all night. Snape didn't seem to have the same problem. Apparently, whatever he refused to talk about had worn the man down and, for the first time since they arrived in the dodgy motel, as soon as his head hit the pillow, his quiet, rhythmic breathing filled their small room.

Each hour brought a fresh wave of emotions that Harry tried to bury under the surface. First was his friends. He missed them, and even if he only received one letter from Hermione, being deliberately cut off from them for the first time since they met was more difficult than he anticipated. Then there was Sirius… As the first adult who actually prioritized Harry above his own needs, deep down, Harry understood why his godfather sent him away. And so regardless of how badly Harry wanted to be in London with him — and fight Voldemort alongside him — Harry also knew that if they had any hope of being a family, he had to survive first.

His feelings surrounding Snape fell into their own increasingly complicated category. Questions like 'why does he really want to help me' and 'how do I know I can trust him' were constantly plaguing him. Sure, the letter from his mum mentioned they'd been friends in school, but something still felt off about the whole thing. He felt like he was missing something… something vital.

Finally, there was the hippogriff in the room, his biological father. That topic immediately sent Harry's stomach churning; so much so that until then, he deliberately avoided the subject altogether. But now that he knew he would meet the man in less than twelve hours, he forced himself to confront the situation and his emotions about it. Emotions never were Harry's strong suit. He blamed it on living with the Dursleys. It would have been so easy for Harry to sink into a pit of despair at living in the cupboard, but rather than pitying himself, he ignored it all. It was simply the hand he'd been dealt — nothing more, nothing less. Except laying there on his rock-hard bed, staring at the stained ceiling as the minutes ticked by, he wished he knew how to deal with all the questions, and their accompanying feelings, swimming around in his head.

What will the meeting be like? It was easy to assume they'd do some sort of paternity test. Someone like Tony Stark wouldn't accept their word without verifying it himself. What if their test revealed his mother had made a mistake? Would Tony Stark sigh with relief as he shoved them out the door? Where would Harry go after that? Certainly not back to the Dursleys.

But what if they were right? What would his father say to him? Would he be excited about having a teenage son? Or would he feel disappointed at being weighed down with the burden of a child? Not that Harry had high expectations of the man. Or really any expectations at all. Harry had been caring for himself since he could walk. If he managed without a father for all those years, he didn't need one now. No. He merely needed a safe place to stay while Dumbledore, Sirius, and Snape worked out Voldemort's mysterious plans. He had no reason to become attached or attempt to form any semblance of a bond because the moment Sirius deemed Harry safe, he would be on his way back to London. This was all only temporary. Sirius was Harry's family, the only one he needed. Those were the exact phrases Harry told himself whenever he considered the ridiculous idea of actually starting a life with his biological father.

After falling asleep around four in the morning, Harry awoke to the smells of breakfast: a styrofoam container filled with cold eggs, sausage, and thick American pancakes. Since the day they arrived, Snape insisted on using as little magic as possible, so Harry didn't bother asking for a warming charm and ate his breakfast cold; even though he was sure he had seen Snape reheat his tea the other day.

"When are we leaving?" Harry asked Snape, who, yet again, sat at the rickety table to eat. This time he was sorting papers into three separate piles. By Harry's count, they seemed evenly distributed until he placed one out of every five into a folder on his right.

"As soon as you memorize your cover story," Snape grumbled at him and tossed a different folder from the other side of the table directly at Harry's feet on the bed.

By now, Harry was well familiar with the folder. It contained all the details about Harry's new life. Some were genuine, like his original birth certificate and his new passport, and others fabricated by Snape, such as his school records at a boarding school not named Hogwarts. He'd been studying the stupid thing for days and could confidently recite almost everything in it by heart.

"I have memorized it." Harry tossed the folder back at the professor, ducking his head when it caused one of Snape's paper piles to nearly fall over. "My name is Harry Anthony Evans, and I was born on 31 July 1998. I lived with my mum, Lily Evans, and my step-father, James Potter, in Chard, England until they died on Halloween of 1999. From there, I then went to live with my mum's sister's family, the Dursleys, in Little Whinging. No one had any reason to believe James Potter was not my biological father. I go to Stirlingshire Academy, an exclusive boarding school in Scotland where I've been going since I was accepted at age eleven. Oh… and there is absolutely nothing freakish about me."

"Potter!"

"Sorry, sir." Harry grinned, satisfied to have gotten the reaction he wanted out of Snape. "You're a bit uptight today, don't you think?"

Snape turned and gave Harry a seething gaze that clearly said 'you are only alive because I vowed not to kill you'. Harry wondered how deep that vow went. There had to be a breaking point somewhere, but he didn't exactly want to find out where that was. Get close to it, yes… but not cross the line.

"You seem to forget how my life depends on you telling this story convincingly," Snape pointed out. "The details matter, big and small."

Harry had not, in fact, forgotten it; not with how often Snape reminded him. Sure, Snape had done most of the work while Harry sat in a warehouse, then on a plane, and now in a smelly motel room. But Harry had just as much to lose if Voldemort found him. Therefore, Snape really should trust him taking it over from here.

Packing up his belongings had been quick, more so than leaving Privet Drive, seeing as he didn't bother to unpack. All he needed to do was throw his toothbrush into his bag and demand his cloak from Snape, who took way too long in Harry's opinion to return it. He shoved it safely at the bottom of his bag when a thought popped into his mind.

"What about magic?" Harry asked. Snape was also packing his things up, probably to stay at the Tower with Harry for at least a few days to make sure he didn't drop the Boy-Who-Lived off with a bunch of murderers; which, technically, the Avengers were… just sanctioned ones.

"Simple. Don't do it."

Harry rolled his eyes, thankful to be facing away from Snape as he did it. "Obviously. But can Tony know about it? Hermione's parents do, so there has to be some kind of exception for parents, right? How does that work in the United States? Am I supposed to be registered or something? If I'm not, will they even know if I do magic here? Can they report it back to the British–"

"It is safer for you if no one knows about magic and you do not do magic," Snape said, putting an end to Harry's anxious rant. "For transparency purposes, I had a minor… incident… last night that required a silent Petrificus."

"You petrified him?!" Harry shouted. In his shock, his filled backpack slid off his shoulder with an umph. "How do I explain that?"

"You don't."

Snape heaved his duffle beside Harry's and gave the room a thorough once-over. Satisfied they weren't leaving anything behind, he opened the door and gestured for Harry to leave. Harry didn't move. If he was about to waltz into a disaster, he deserved to know it.

"I will remedy the issue today," Snape sharply stated. "You will not be responsible for my oversight."

Snape's oversight? No wonder he was so grumpy last night.

"Are you going to obliviate him?!" Harry asked, anxious on behalf of the biological father he hadn't even met yet. "You can't do that!"

Snape let out a hard sigh and slammed the door shut. "Do you really think I am stupid enough to use magic to cover up magic use?" Harry took the question as rhetorical. The correct decision as Snape continued his lecture, "I have a sufficient potion to do the job—higher classification of the forgetfulness potion you learned in first year—and the intelligence to know how to use it properly. Now grab your bag and get your arse out the door!"

Seeing the 'do not cross' line approaching, Harry slung his suddenly much heavier bag over his shoulder and walked out the door.

The journey to Avengers Tower, in a place called Midtown and Manhattan, was an adventure in and of itself. In keeping with their muggle transportation plans, Snape arranged for a car to pick them up down the street from their motel. Harry spent most of the nearly hour-long ride equally terrified of the driving and in awe of the New York skyline as they crossed the bridge into Manhattan. Manhattan, unlike Queens, looked just like Harry had seen on the telly, and for that portion of the drive, his excitement drowned his fears out. Excitement for what? He didn't really know. Aside from school, this was his first trip anywhere, and the buzz of the city made the entire experience feel like an adventure.

All of that changed as the car dropped them off near the entrance to the tallest, nicest, and most futuristic structure Harry had ever seen. Looming high into the sky, it was made mostly of glass and featured a large A toward the top, next to what appeared to be a landing pad. It was more intimidating than any of the pictures Harry had seen of it in the magazines. Suddenly, between the impending meeting of one of his parents — a literal dream he used to have as a child and had long abandoned — and the idea of real-life superheroes living in this building, his feet refused to work.

"Evans," Snape grumbled at him, but Harry was frozen in place on the sidewalk, his neck craned up towards the sky. "Evans, get moving…. Evans…. Evans!"

"I heard you the first time," Harry snapped, a lump in his throat quickly forming. "I just… I need a minute."

Snape let out a harsh groan, which did not go unnoticed and was unappreciated. "What is the issue now? Not that you care, however, we are about to be late."

"I do care!" Harry yelled at him, and once those words left his lips, more began spilling out, completely bypassing his brain's warning of how bad of an idea it was to share with Snape. "I just… I… what if he doesn't like me? He's a genius…. And he's a superhero. He flew a bomb into outer space! Through a hole in the sky that he didn't know a single thing about before he did it. And here I am, running away from my problems… hiding."

With a muttered 'I can't deal with this' under his breath, Snape aggressively yanked Harry by the upper arm to the side of the building's entrance. Standing above Harry, he made the teenager feel even smaller next to the massive building.

"The stone," Snape whispered to him with his jaw tightly clenched. Ignoring Harry's confused expression, he continued to count each event on his fingers as he spoke. "The chamber. The bloody basilisk. Black, then a werewolf, then a hoard of dementors. The entire tournament last year that you could have likely gotten away with simply refusing to take part in. Trust me, you are certainly not a genius–" Harry opened his mouth to defend himself, but Snape instantly cut him off, "–however, you do share this man's propensity for running into dangerous situations without a lick of self-preservation.

"Yes, you are choosing to remove yourself from this battle. This one is not yours to fight. If you can live long enough, I am sure you will find plenty more in your life. Now, get in the damn door or I will shove you through it."

Taken aback by Snape's somewhat insulting speech, Harry wasted no time in rushing into the building and to the security checkpoint with Snape's hand firmly clutching his shoulder the entire way. Snape made a small motion with his head to tell Harry to place his backpack on the conveyor belt, just as they had done at the airport in London. Although Harry breezed through the metal detector with no issues, the archway sounded at Snape, forcing the security guard to sweep a separate wand across his chest, over his arms, and between his legs. Snape's deathly glare was the only thing keeping Harry from bursting out laughing.

Any humor Harry might have found at the sight of the security agent patting down Snape vanished when he finally saw the lobby. Harry couldn't take his eyes away from the spectacular four-story interior, which was covered in glass on almost every surface and walkway. The same wall of windows that had reflected like a mirror from the outside was now broadcasting a variety of close-captioned news and sports channels. There were white and black leather couches and chairs set in different arrangements throughout the room; some faced the television windows, while others formed smaller circles across the waiting area. A table in the center of the room held a stack of current magazines, including titles covering topics from women's interests, international news, celebrity gossip, and even a few kids' activity books and crayons. Three large glass chandeliers hung above the immaculately tiled floor, making the room feel more like a futuristic Gringotts than anyone's home — certainly not Harry's.

A short corridor to Harry's right led past a long reception desk that divided the public areas from the network of glass walkways to a row of white lifts with red numbers illuminated above them. Each door also had an exterior keypad, ensuring no one entered or exited the building undetected. Contrary to its recent name change, according to the massive Stark Industries logo on the wall behind the registration desk, the Avengers Tower contained at least some part of the Stark Industries offices.

"Welcome to Stark Industries," the redheaded woman behind the desk said. She was typing on a keyboard slimmer than any Dudley had, and until he heard the soft clicking sounds as she typed, Harry figured it was just lights on the desk. "Do you have an appointment today?" she inquired, her gaze remained fixed on the screen.

Snape cleared his throat. "Yes. My name is Severus. This is Harry Evans. We have an appointment with Pepper Potts."

One of their names must have caught her attention because her eyes snapped up to them and she gave Snape a slow once over before repeating the action with Harry. Looking around the room, Harry had to admit they looked out of place: a man dressed in a long black coat over a black plain shirt, jeans, and a pair of boots with a teenager dressed in an ill-fitted, nearly threadbare gray T-shirt and jeans with a hole in the knees, both carrying bags over their shoulders. In the pristine atmosphere of Stark Industries, asking for the person he knew was the CEO, Harry would not have believed them either.

If she noticed anything out of the ordinary about them, she said nothing. She simply pushed a few keys on the keyboard, paused, and clicked a bunch more before waving to a row of chairs, informing them to take a seat and that someone would be right with them. Whether this 'someone' was Pepper Potts or security escorting them out, she didn't say.

Harry attempted to sit in a chair facing the outer windows, to pretend to watch the baseball game playing on the screen, but Snape redirected him to a set of unoccupied chairs perpendicular to the lifts and windows. A strategic choice, obviously, to allow Snape to see nearly every area of the room

Harry passed the time aimlessly flipping through a sports magazine, wishing it was the Quidditch Times with the latest news on the Chudley Cannons upset that Ron had scribbled in at the end of Hermione's letter. Harry knew very little about American Sports other than they referred to football as soccer. He hoped Tony wouldn't ask him too many questions about them. Or, if he did, he blamed Harry's poor knowledge on his British heritage.

Given Stark Industries' prominence to the city, and apparently the country and world, their lobby felt unusually quiet. Based on the number of chairs and the seven workstations at the reception desk, he expected to see a slew of people coming and going — employees arriving for work on any of the tens of floors, deliveries to this department or that, and visitors for any number of reasons — yet Harry and Snape were the only ones waiting there. How come two people who had no business being anywhere near this place until yesterday were the only ones visiting at this exact moment? Had they intentionally cleared the building? Did Tony Stark or Pepper Potts think they were dangerous?

"Mr. Snape?"

A woman's voice coming from the lift corridor interrupted Harry's thoughts before he had the chance to answer himself. Probably for the best.

Miss Potts appeared just as Harry expected based on the news report he read on the airplane all about her promotion to CEO of Stark Industries. She had the perfect balance of being a serious and down-to-earth businesswoman, with her long red hair tied in a loose twist at the nape of her neck. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse over a sophisticated gray skirt, paired with black heels that Harry couldn't fathom walking in. Stopping short of approaching them in the waiting area, she offered them a polite handshake as they met her between the lifts and the front desk. Notably, the woman who had checked them in was no longer there.

"Severus, please," Snape replied, shaking her hand as he spoke.

"Severus, then."

Harry, standing alongside Snape, tried to lighten the tension by shrugging one shoulder up and joking, "You're lucky. He makes me call him Professor or Sir."

"You must be Harry. The boy of the hour. It's a pleasure to meet you," she said, her gentle smile sending the same warm, pleasant feeling through Harry as Mrs. Weasley's and reassuring him he could trust her. "I'm Virginia Potts, but everyone calls me Pepper."

While waiting for the lift, Pepper informed them they would be in Bio-Lab 12 on the 62nd floor, where a doctor named Bruce Banner had already set up for the paternity test. Harry wondered why they needed a medical doctor on staff, but the lift doors opened at the swipe of Pepper's card and they were on their way. Harry had never been in a building this high before, and his stomach sank watching the number rise.

"How high up does this go?" Harry nervously asked as they passed the 30th floor.

Pepper clasped her hands in front of her, turning slightly to face Harry. "The Tower has 93 floors, plus a garage and multiple subfloors underground. Up to floor 78 are all for Stark Industries, however, any floor above 55 is private and therefore requires a code to access. Dr. Banner's personal lab is on floor 75 and is only accessible to him and Tony.

"This bank of elevators goes up to the 78th floor, serving all the floors of Stark Industries. Additionally, we have several freight elevators that can go to specific floors to make it easier to deliver parts, supplies, and equipment. There is another set of elevators on the East side of the building for floors 81 to 93," she rattled off, all the while holding herself steady and professional. The only slip in her CEO demeanor occurred when she spoke to Snape, accusingly stating, "The elevator you managed to use last night is only for Tony and me to access our private floors."

Even though she didn't explicitly say which floors were their private ones, through the process of elimination, Harry figured out those were 79 and 80. Hopefully, if Pepper had been regurgitating information found in any public database, she realized the flaw in their security.

They traveled faster than Harry thought it would take to go up sixty-two floors and suddenly, whether or not Harry felt ready, they came to a halt. The walls of the Biological Laboratory floor, designed in the same futurist style as the rest of the tower he had seen so far, were mostly clear glass, which Pepper assured him could become opaque for privacy at the touch of a button. At the very least, no one could spy on Harry from the windows throughout this entire ordeal; not that he saw a single soul as they navigated the maze of corridors to reach Bio-Lab Number 12.

Despite what Harry had imagined all night, it was not like any doctor's office he had seen as a child. For starters, the room was enormous; it could easily fit the entire bottom floor of the Dursleys' house. There was a patient table for Harry to sit on and a chair for Snape, but that was where the similarities ended. Beyond the patient table, there were three additional metal tables filled with computers, technology and equipment Harry didn't recognize, and a variety of tubes, bottles, vials, and medical supplies. It appeared as a perfectly organized mess, without a single scrap of paper anywhere, with everything computerized. Harry sat at a table facing a giant mirror on the right wall, where he could see himself, Snape in the chair in front of him, and Pepper typing on her phone behind him.

As soon as Harry scooted himself up on the table, the outside door swung open, and two men entered — one stockier in a black suit and the other looking timid in a white lab coat. Without waiting for the door to close, the first man flipped a switch next to it, making the window panel opaque and blocking the view of the corridor and, by extension, Harry.

"Harry Evans?" the man in the lab coat asked. He placed the clipboard he brought onto the small cart to Harry's left and offered his hand out. "My name is Dr. Banner. You can call me Bruce. I'll be taking your samples today."

Harry was about to introduce himself when the man in the suit interrupted him. "Happy Hogan. Security."

Harry smiled at the irony of a man named Happy who, second to Snape, had the world's grumpiest face.

"Happy, is this really necessary?" Pepper argued, but Happy merely nodded and stood, his hands clasped in front of him, motionless between Snape and the mirror.

"So, Harry," Dr. Banner said, officially kicking off the meeting — or appointment, Harry wasn't sure what it was exactly. His tone was calm, but more unsure than Pepper's. Still, Harry took an instant liking to him. "Did anyone explain what we're going to be doing today?"

Four pairs of eyes blinked at him like he was some kind of experiment they were watching; waiting to see if he'd explode or something.

"Erm, not really," Harry admitted. "I know my mum had a letter and in it she said Mr. Stark and her… uh… that he… they…"

Fortunately, Bruce didn't make him finish his uncomfortable explanation, stopping him by explaining how they would use Harry's DNA and compare it to Tony's to determine whether Tony was his father. To be sure, they would use two different methods: first by swabbing Harry's cheek and then by drawing his blood. To Harry's surprise, Bruce asked for his consent for the procedure. While Harry wasn't keen on giving his blood, he nodded after a brief glance at Snape sitting in the corner with his arms securely crossed over his chest. Once they had the samples, the computer would do all the work and give them a "yes or no" answer. That was really all Harry needed to know about it; not any of the complicated science Bruce described.

"I know I dumped a lot of information on you," Bruce ended with. "Do you have any questions before I take the samples?"

Again, four pairs of eyes waited for Harry to say something. "Uh, just one I guess?"

Snape's eyes narrowed at him, a silent do not screw this up shared between them.

Bruce pulled on a pair of dark purple gloves. "Of course. What is it?

"Erm…" Harry's face flushed. "Where is Mr. Stark?"

Three out of the four sets of eyes turned towards the mirror. Apparently, he'd been watching them this whole time.

The guard — Happy, Harry's brain helpfully supplied — responded first, "For security reasons–"

Out of nowhere, a secret door on the mirror's side swung open, and the man Harry had been obsessively studying for days strutted out, the door softly closing behind him.

The man who was approaching him with caution, though, was not the well-put-together man Harry had seen in the photos. Gone were the crisp high-end business suit and tie, the bright eyes, and the perfectly sculpted facial hair, replaced by a man roughly Harry's height wearing a pair of well-loved blue jeans and a tight plain black t-shirt over a long-sleeved white shirt; the black color drawing Harry's attention to the circle of intense blue light emanating from the center of his chest. He appeared fit compared to Harry's scrawny body, but he needed to be in order to fight aliens and other bad guys. It seemed he slept as little as Harry last night with the shows under each eye and his facial hair overgrown by at least a day or so.

"Here I am. But, please, call me Tony. Harry, I take it?" Tony spoke a little too confidently, in Harry's opinion, but earned a chuckle from the teen when he gave a sideways glance at Snape and muttered, "Nice to see you again, Count."

Harry sat up taller. "Yes, Mr… erm… Tony. I'm Harry Evans."

Tony stood in front of him, eyes locked. And if Harry had expected some kind of soothing words, he was gravely mistaken. "You're big."

"Tony!" Pepper gave a small shake of her head.

Taken aback, Harry frowned. This wasn't really the first impression he'd hoped for. "Well, I am almost fifteen, you know. Not five."

Tony chuckled. "And you're British, too." He picked up the clipboard Bruce brought in and began flipping through the sheets of paper too fast to actually read anything on them. "Which I knew, of course, and somehow the accent still caught me off guard. It's one of the nice ones, though. Because as I'm sure you know, there are a lot of different versions of the accent over there. Not unlike this side of the pond. I hear Minnesota is a fun accent to follow if you've never heard it before… and then the Southern one has an excellent reputation as long as it doesn't cross the redneck line. There's New York, naturally, which you'll hear a lot if our little experiment–"

"Tony!" Pepper exclaimed, proverbially putting her foot down. "I think that's enough."

The more he talked, though, the more Harry thought he was brilliant and his chattiness eased any lingering anxiety he had about meeting Tony Stark. Perhaps that was something they had in common.

Unfazed by Pepper's reprimanding, Tony asked Bruce, "So when is this party starting? Grab some samples and put my tech to work."

"Your tech?" Harry asked, his interest piqued, as Bruce rolled the cart with two swabs, two tubes with yellow tops, what looked like an empty syringe, and a giant rubber band wrap to Harry's side. "You have a medical department?"

Harry opened his mouth when instructed, allowing Bruce to run the two swabs along the inside of both of his cheeks. The simple part was done.

"Of course we do. There's an entire division devoted to medical research. Everything from monitoring devices to equipment. No pharmacy though. Biochem was never my thing," Tony said. Using his foot, he rolled a stool to sit on Harry's right, drawing Harry's attention away from the blood draw prep on his left arm. "My tech runs most of this building, and the percentage is growing every year. Even the electricity comes from my reactor in one of the subfloors."

"Sounds like you have some trust issues." Harry winced at the small prick on the inside of his elbow. "What if you need something you don't have built already?"

"Then I don't see him for weeks at a time," Pepper answered for him, her tone serious.

Tony smiled up at her. "Days, yes… maybe a week… at most. There's a reason my workshop is close to home." Returning to Harry, he added, "And I said almost everything was mine. Obviously, there are some exceptions, but this is not one of them."

Bruce secured a small cotton ball in the crook of Harry's arm with a bandage. Harry's part was officially done. They had his DNA; now it was Tony's turn, and they would leave the rest to the computers. Except Bruce began cleaning up the medical supplies, not prepping for Tony's samples, and Tony whispered something into Pepper's ear.

"Wait, what about Tony?" Harry blurted out. "Aren't you going to swab his cheek and draw his blood? You said the computer needed something to compare mine to, right?"

Bruce's eyes shifted between Harry and Tony and back. "Oh, uh… the computer already has Tony's DNA on file."

"It does? Why?" Harry asked. "Do you get this a lot? People trying to pawn their children onto you?"

Tony scoffed. "Not as often as you'd think, given my history of–"

Pepper's loud, and obviously fake, cough changed his direction.

"Oh, right," Tony corrected himself. Harry figured he'd drop the subject and was surprised when Tony continued, "Well, you see… I'm kind of a high-profile person with a unique and dangerous job. Mine's not the only one in the database. All the Avengers have our DNA on file on the slightly higher chance they may need to identify–"

"Tony!" Pepper yelled. Clearly Tony had crossed Pepper's invisible line.

Snape finally spoke up. "How do we know you're using the correct comparison and not switching them on the computer? You took two samples from Harry to be satisfied, but we are to believe the DNA you claim is on file is correct?"

"You know what? Dracula has a point." Tony pointed at Snape a second before promptly sitting down on the stool. He rolled up his white shirt sleeve and held his arm out to Bruce. "C'mon on, Brucie, I'll give another sample. Satisfy all parties here. Then we'll order lunch while we wait. I hope you all like Thai because there's an amazing little place around the corner where we order from a lot."

For the first time since meeting Tony, Harry got the impression he expected the results to be positive, and possibly even be happy about it. His demeanor seamlessly shifted from an anxious giddiness to a composed and collected calmness as they discussed the latest project in the medical division — an upgraded piece of equipment to help expedite blood culturing in septic patients. The installation in the first round of hospitals was happening next month. Between the passion in Tony's eyes as he spoke and the fire in his eyes, Harry knew it would be the stepping stone to something life-changing. If the paternity results were positive, he desperately wished he could tell Hermione, if only to tell her all about the great things that Stark Industries was capable of.

Unlike Harry, Tony refused to let Bruce bandage up the cotton ball. Instead, he tossed the fluffy ball into the red biohazard bin after dabbing it only twice on the pinprick hole and didn't bother to even check the area again before leading them upstairs to a conference room on the 76th floor, which appeared rather ordinary — or boring, in Tony's quite outspoken opinion — compared to the rest of the building.

In the center of the room, a massive wooden table was surrounded by at least thirty padded rolling chairs. A row of windows overlooking Central Park ran the length of the outside wall. Harry took a seat in the middle of the table to look out the window. It seemed strange to be so high in the air while confined inside; not as liberating as flying, but also not as scary as the lift ride to the Bio-Lab. Snape took the seat on Harry's right, while Tony and Pepper sat across from them, creating an intimate space in the large, impersonal room. Despite being invited to join them, Happy remained at the end of the table closest to the door, whether for privacy or security reasons, Harry couldn't tell from their brief conversation.

When Harry said he had never tried Thai food, Tony went crazy and ordered at least one of everything on the menu. The food arrived directly at the conference room, and it was more than enough to feed all of Gryffindor. They settled into a nice cadence of passing around boxes filled with names of dishes Harry had no possibility of remembering, although he genuinely enjoyed most of them.

The memorization of Harry's cover story was put to the test as they ate and waited for the results. Given that the story was mostly based on his real life, Harry hadn't been too concerned about remembering it; the most significant changes being the name of his boarding school and his surname. Snape had been adamant about not mentioning the name Potter at all and was convinced Tony wouldn't be interested in his mother's marriage now that they were both deceased.

Unfortunately, Harry's nervousness took over as question after question was thrown at him and, much to his dismay, he found himself turning to Snape as he answered them. They began with lighter topics, mostly asked by Pepper, like Harry's favorite color — red and gold, coincidentally or not, the same color scheme as Iron Man —, his favorite sports, and his favorite school subject, and gradually progressed to more serious topics such as who he lived with before becoming Snape's ward, how his parents had died, and whether he remembered his them at all. Right as the questioning veered into interrogation territory — why does he call Snape 'professor', followed immediately by why didn't Harry know about his mother's 'good friend' until he went to school? — a voice above Harry startled him, nearly knocking him out of his chair.

"Sir, Dr. Banner has asked me to inform you that the results are ready," the mystery voice announced. "Would you like me to send them to you?"

Harry looked up and around him, confused about where the British voice was coming from.

"That's JARVIS," Tony explained, and to Harry's still baffled expression, he added, "it stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. He's my AI and controls almost everything in the building, including sections of Stark Industries. He's available anywhere within these walls, and after you get to know him, you'll wonder how you ever lived without him.

"And yet you ignore so many of my disclaimers, sir."

"Kind of cheeky for a computer," Harry stated.

Tony's brows raised. "Don't insult him like that. JARVIS is so much more than just a computer. He's… well, you'll have to see for yourself." He nodded toward the screen at the end of the table. "Jay, pull up the results on screen three in conference room ten."

Nothing happened. The transparent screen remained empty.

"Jay?" Tony prodded. "Results. Screen three. Conference room ten."

Another thirty seconds passed with nothing changing before JARVIS cautioned, "Dr. Banner has suggested you review the results first."

Without warning, Harry's heart rate spiked. What had they discovered that prevented them from sharing the results? From Harry's, albeit limited, understanding, the answer should either be yes or no. They could probably even simplify it more with a green check for yes and a red "X" for no, for all Harry cared. What if it could detect his magic in his DNA? Why hadn't they thought of that before now?

"Put 'em up," Tony commanded his invisible assistant. "I don't want any barriers."

After a few seconds, the screen came to life, revealing a rather confusing chart with Harry's name at the top of one column and Tony's above the other. There were numbers under each of their names. Since none of them meant anything to Harry, his eyes traveled straight to the bottom and landed on the little bold text that read:

"Probably of Paternity 99.998%"

Finally brought father and son together, but it'll take a few more chapters for them to warm up to each other.

A/N: I'm going to try to update once/month or post a chapter after I write a chapter (whichever comes first). The polish/editing process is long without a beta, but I'm going to try to be diligent with it and stay motivated to edit.