While Harry would have happily gone right back onto the plane after all of that, Tony had wanted to go talk to the guy who had seemingly duplicated his technology, so was off finagling access at the prison. On the plus side, they at least finally got lunch, though Harry was getting quite a few looks in his scuffed and slightly-singed summer suit.
Happy was off dealing with getting a new car for the return trip to Nice, so it was just Harry and Pepper at the corner table. She was halfway through her meal, staring, shell-shocked into the middle distance and not tasting any of it, before she finally said, "You're not grounded."
"No?" Harry asked, over his own cleaned plate. He'd been waiting for the verdict.
"You were the only one of us that kept your head. Any of us might have died if you hadn't. I wish you'd stayed in the car, because it was really hard to watch you nearly die three times out there. But… I think you may have saved Tony with that stunt." She took a long breath and squinted down at the pasta on her fork, as if not remembering that she'd even ordered it, much less already eaten half of it. "So, no, not grounded. But I think I'm going to have half a head of gray hair in the morning."
Before Harry could figure out what to say to that, Natalie was walking up, still as put together as she'd been when he'd met her (which was barely an hour earlier, but felt like an age after all that adrenaline). "Christine Everhart wants to know if this is a good time to get that interview?" she asked.
"Might as well," Pepper sighed, setting her fork back down, apparently done.
Natalie waved the blond reporter over, then walked off. Christine slid into a seat across the table from them without asking, and produced her digital recorder. She then glanced around to make sure no one was actively watching, smiled conspiratorially at them, and placed a small soapstone charm that looked like a monkey with its hands over its ears next to her recorder. Suddenly, the noise of the restaurant dulled, like it was being heard through a wall. "A little cone of silence," Christine explained.
"Who are you?" Pepper asked, suddenly on guard.
"Christine Everhart, Vanity Fair," she answered with a smirk, then added, "but I write for Witch Weekly with the pen name Rita Skeeter."
"This whole time?" Pepper asked. "You were a witch this whole time?"
"My friend Lavender reads Witch Weekly," Harry realized. "Are you from…?"
"Ravenclaw, class of 1992," the reporter smiled. "And, yes, I was there at the same time as your parents, but I never really talked to them. Different house, lower year, you know how it is."
"Are you one of the Masters?" he asked.
"Not really," Christine shook her head. "I was honestly barely competent on Vanaheim, and there's not much I can do here without my wand. And I don't want to fight Dormammu any more than I want to live in the middle ages. But I help them keep magic out of the news, and they help me out."
Pepper narrowed her eyes, "Did you sleep with Tony to get close to us?"
Christine shook her head in denial. "I didn't even make the connection until today! My editor has been sending me owls asking if I can write a story on Harry Potter. Everyone's very curious about what happened at the school this year." She gave him a predatory smile and added, "After what just happened out there, I bet it's a great story."
The two women regarded each other warily, and Harry watched his aunt's business sense slowly overrule her jealousy over what must have been another woman Tony slept with. Finally, Pepper insisted, "We get to review all copy for accuracy for any news source before publication. You try to keep a stopper on anything that would get Harry targeted over here. In return he'll interview with you exclusively about Vanaheim matters, and I'll give you a longer interview for Vanity Fair."
"Done," Christine agreed with a few seconds of consideration and a smile. "Okay, question one, because my readers are going to want to know… Does the Harry Potter have a girlfriend yet?"
Harry was almost as shell shocked after the interview as Pepper had been after the fight with Whiplash. Thank goodness he'd had her there to guide the interview and keep him from embarrassing himself. He hoped.
The ride back to the Nice airport was quiet, Tony brooding in the back seat over whatever he'd learned at the prison and Pepper trying to figure out what to say and clearly not wanting to do it in front of Harry and Happy. Harry wasn't totally sure why Natalie wasn't riding back with them, though he guessed she'd gotten to Monaco on her own and there wasn't really space for an extra person in the more compact BMW Happy had hired to replace the Rolls. It was probably for the best: the only place she could sit that wouldn't make Pepper uncomfortable would be shotgun, and then Harry would have had to spend thirty minutes in the middle seat between Pepper and Tony.
The flight back to LA was about fourteen hours for commercial flights. At least, with the modifications Tony had made to his smaller private plane, it would be a couple hours faster and they wouldn't need a refueling stop. Still, they left mid-afternoon in France, and would be getting home late in the evening after half a day in the air. Flying a third of the way around the world was no fun, but the time difference alone would have been awful even with a sling ring. Harry spent the first part of the flight trying to figure out when he could take a nap that wouldn't completely ruin him for LA time.
Well, he also spent it answering the frantic texts that were coming in, as all of his friends seemed to have finally caught the news stories coming out about the incident at the race. Hermione was probably almost as annoyed with Harry as Pepper was with Tony. And realizing that only exacerbated his confused considerations about why everyone seemed to think they were dating.
Maybe he should have just figured out how to help while invisible. At least he wouldn't have been on the news.
Eventually deciding to at least take a short nap, Harry first decided to wander into the plane's galley for some kind of dinner-like meal before "bedtime," and found Tony hard at work over the limited stove with a carton of eggs, spinach, and mushrooms looking baffled. "Maverick," Tony acknowledged. "Do you… know how to make an omelet?"
"I can make scrambled eggs," Harry admitted. He'd learned a fair amount of breakfast cooking even when he was little because otherwise Pepper would just subsist on dry toast in her rush to get to work. "It's basically the same thing, right? Put up a tutorial and let's figure it out."
It turned out it was not exactly like making scrambled eggs, and with the two of them elbow to elbow in the small galley, they passed quite a while in mostly silence with occasional admonitions to "you have to keep it moving" or "mushrooms go in now?" Eventually, they had both eaten a couple of the reject omelets, and had one that looked pretty decent that Tony started to plate up and put under a serving cover.
"Apology dinner for Aunt Pepper?" Harry asked.
"Something like that," Tony agreed.
Harry came right out and asked, "Are you just messing with her, hiring Natalie?"
"I needed a new assistant," he said, defensively. "I lost my last pretty redhead."
"You're working on losing her," Harry told him, seriously. "She knows something's wrong. You're making her cry."
That seemed to get through a bit, and Tony's face fell. "I didn't mean to. To make her cry. Really?" He frowned and said, "I'll make it up to her. No more flirting with Ms. Rushman?"
"At least," Harry shook his head. "I'm going to take a nap."
He headed toward the back of the plane, where Happy had already shut the windows and nodded off. As he walked past Pepper in the still-bright area, he noticed that there was a news report with a Senator Stern arguing that Tony should turn over the Iron Man armor to the US government. Pepper seemed to be watching it intently, an annoyed expression on her face. With Tony not far behind him with her in-flight meal, he just gave her a tired smile and left the adults to try to work their troubles out.
He didn't have high hopes. Neither was very good at talking out their problems.
Despite his best efforts, Harry wound up getting a full night's sleep in the back of the plane for the remainder of the trip, waking up ready for a new day when the plane taxied into the private Stark Industries hangar back in LA, only to groan at the sun setting over the ocean. It looked like everyone else had slept most of the flight, too, and from the lack of affectionate banter between Tony and Pepper, he was guessing the discussion had gone about as well as he'd expected.
"Do you want us to drop you back in Encino?" Pepper checked. "I think we're going to be working at Tony's house all night. Somehow, Natalie already got back."
"She left while we were waiting for Mr. Stark, so she had a head start," Happy clarified.
Managing to squelch his urge to ask, "Natalie's at the house?" Harry instead said, "No, I'm going to be up all night anyway. I'll just head over with you."
Tony brooded the entire drive to Malibu, and quickly descended to the garage as soon as they arrived. Natalie was waiting for them in her car, a nondescript black sedan, when they pulled up. She'd changed from the red dress into a skirt and blouse, but Harry's eyes were just as unable to stay under control. She caught him looking, with a small glance back and a smirk to let him know she'd caught him as they walked inside.
"I'll, uh… I'll go upstairs and play games," Harry told them, realizing that as much as he'd like to stay where they were working, he wasn't going to be a value add to whatever public relations they'd be doing, and he'd just wind up being creepy. "Let me know if the Boy Scouts need a statement, I guess."
Happy disappeared to wherever he went when there wasn't driving or boxing to be done. Honestly, the mansion was big enough that Happy might just have a permanent room there that Harry had never noticed.
In all actuality, Harry got bored playing video games pretty quickly, and was soon browsing the internet on his phone at the top of the stairs while texting with Padma and Parvati (for whom it was morning and the news had finally shown up). He could hear Pepper and Natalie just below, on the phone with a series of reporters, he assumed. Between lots of talk about "fundamentals of the company" and "the AP wants a quote," it didn't seem like they were having a great time.
And then he was surprised to hear someone stomping across the living room and Rhodey's voice. "Where is he?"
While Natalie tried to tell him (and she might not even know who Rhodey was, yet) that Tony didn't want to be disturbed, Pepper overrode her with, "He's downstairs." Excited to see Rhodey, who he hadn't gotten to see since before his first year of Hogwarts, Harry pocketed his phone and headed down, passing Pepper assuring someone on the phone, "Iron Man never stopped protecting us. The events in Monaco proved that."
By the time Harry slipped down to the garage and put in his access code, he was just in time to hear the back half of Rhodey ranting and angrily pointing at Tony's display of Iron Man suits, "They're gonna take your suits, Tony. Okay? They're sick of the games. You said nobody else would possess this technology for twenty years. Well, guess what? Somebody else had it yesterday. It's not theoretical anymore." Rhodey had shown up still in his Air Force uniform, so he must have come straight from work.
Tony had clearly been sitting in the hot rod and watching a briefing that JARVIS had assembled of news reports about Whiplash, who seemed to actually be named Ivan Vanko. Did one newspaper say he'd already died in custody? Did Tony have something to do with that, while he was away that afternoon?
Rhodey glanced back at Harry while he put a hand on Tony's shoulder to get his attention, "Are you listening to me?" As Harry was crossing the room over to them, Rhodey didn't seem to like the look on Tony's face and asked, "Are you okay?"
Tony grunted finally, saying, "Let's go," but slipped while getting out of the car. He didn't look drunk. He hadn't had time to get that drunk.
Harry rushed across the room to try to help, and Rhodey just as quickly moved to the other side of the car. Between the two of them, they were able to prop Tony up. "Hey! You alright?" Rhodey demanded.
Tony seemed almost totally out of it, offering, "Yeah, I should get to my desk. Maverick, open that cigar box?" Harry nodded, moving over ahead of them while Rhodey supported Tony. The long brown wooden box opened to reveal six of what looked like small video game cartridges: flat gray rectangles slotted into individual metal housings with a vent next to them. Tony let Rhodey lever him into his desk chair and explained, "It's palladium."
He reached under his shirt and pulled out the arc reactor. Harry hadn't realized how big it was. He'd assumed it was just a flat disc that sat atop Tony's chest, but there were three inches of metal that was almost certainly usually hidden inside of his chest. Harry gasped, asking, "Is there a hole in your ribcage for that?"
Rhodey seemed equally confused by the corroded metal rectangle that was ejected from the device, asking, "Is that supposed to be smoking?"
As if it was the most normal thing in the world, Tony explained, "Yes, there's a reactor wall in there. And the smoking is from neutron damage with that wall."
Rhodey's eyes were still wide, helping Tony remove the spent palladium disk, and he demanded, "You had this in your body?" Harry handed him a replacement and Rhodey slotted it into the reactor, staring at Tony from behind, observing, "And how about the high-tech crossword puzzle on your neck?"
"Road rash," Tony lied. Slotting the arc reactor back into his chest, he at least had the grace to say, "Thank you." Harry watched him make a face as if he was suddenly waking up once the light in the center of his chest turned back on. He immediately went for a water bottle full of the chlorophyll drink that was supposedly for his hangover. "What are you both looking at?"
Rhodey argued, "I'm looking at you. You wanna do this whole lone gunslinger act and it's unnecessary. You don't have to do this alone."
After gulping down some of the strange green drink, Tony told him, "You know, I wish I could believe that. I really do. But you've gotta trust me. Contrary to popular belief, I know exactly what I'm doing."
"Fine," Rhodey huffed, shooting Harry a look. "I'll be upstairs for a bit if you want to talk more. Once you're finished rebooting." Not waiting for a comeback, he strode back out of the garage, leaving Harry somewhat awkwardly standing at the end of Tony's desk.
Tony took a couple more swigs from the bottle, staring at Harry, before offering, "Ask."
Harry grabbed a spare rolling chair and slid into it, thinking about what he'd seen. They'd mostly been covering invertebrates in McGonagall's classes so far, but she'd at least done a primer on human anatomy for those who wanted to study healing magic early. There wasn't space in Tony's chest for all that metal without at least moving something else out of the way. He said, "I thought that was just an electromagnet. To keep the shrapnel out. But as deep as that is… how can your heart even work with that in the way?"
"It started as just a magnet," Tony admitted. "I obviously went to the hospital after I got back from Afghanistan. Got specialists to try to get the rest of the shrapnel out. Yinsen—the guy I was in the cave with—did his best. Maybe if I'd gotten to a hospital right away, they could have completely fixed it. But there was too much damage. They were going to put me on a machine and wait for a heart transplant."
"Oh, no, Tony, I'm sorry," Harry said, but figured that wasn't the end of it.
"I said, 'Why bother with the transplant?' and just had them send me the schematics for the machine. Miniaturized it. Put it in my chest. Works better than my heart ever did. They weren't going to move a functional alcoholic to the top of the transplant list anyway." Tony tapped on the device and gave a smile, "The system basically is my heart these days. The old one's still in there, but it's bypassed."
JARVIS cut in, his synthesized, English-accented voice emanating from all the speakers in the room, "And the palladium is killing him."
"Damnit, JARVIS," Tony sighed. "Don't tell Pepper, okay? I've been trying to break it to her."
"She thinks you're trying to kill yourself," Harry warned him. "Why can't you just keep the reactor out of your chest and run a wire in?"
Tony shook his head, "I was too clever. It's all meant to be integrated. And the best heart surgeons in the world won't risk the lawsuits to try to fix it, after I realized it was toxic." He sighed and pulled up his shirt, showing Harry that the geometric black lines that Rhodey had noticed on his neck were all over his chest, radiating out from the reactor.
"Can you… make a reactor that doesn't need palladium?" Harry checked.
"We've run numerous simulations," JARVIS explained, replacing the news reports with an image of a periodic table with all of the metals, including the special ones on the bottom rows, marked off in red. "Any known element with the correct properties to replace palladium is even more toxic."
"Don't suppose you know about any unknown metals?" Tony joked.
Harry knew of at least one, and said, "Ur… uh, neutronium?" He'd almost said "uru," which was supposedly in the greatest creations of the dwarves of Nidavellir, such as Thor's hammer—forged in the heart of a dying star. He wasn't actually sure if neutronium was exactly the same thing.
"It's a thought," Tony didn't immediately dismiss it. "Supposed to be heavy, though, right?"
JARVIS answered, "Estimates of the weight of neutronium suggest that a disk the size of the palladium cores would weigh on the order of a billion tons. Also, we do not currently have access to a neutron star."
"Well, let's add it to the list anyway," Tony ordered, clearly not highly optimistic. "I might have a brainwave."
"You have to tell her," Harry insisted.
"I will," Tony sighed. "When the time's right. I've got a while longer to have a breakthrough. I'm not trying to kill myself. I want to live, and I'm trying to."
"Okay," Harry allowed, getting up and leaving Tony to research and/or brood. "Let me know if you need any help. I have small hands. And dance moves."
That at least got a genuine smile out of Tony. "You know, I actually played that dance macro trying to get a terrorist camp to surrender a couple months ago. They didn't think it was funny." He gave it a beat and admitted, wincing, "JARVIS was right about the pelvic mobility."
"I ran detailed simulations, sir," JARVIS confirmed.
Harry was still pretty depressed the next few days. Tony had pulled his own way out of worse situations, and Harry knew that there was nothing he could actually do. Even if he could tell Tony about uru and thought it might work, his chemistry texts didn't provide any information for how to make it (that information was jealously guarded by the dwarves). He could slip Tony potions designed to cure poisons, but those were less effective on nonmagical Vanir like Pepper and might barely work at all on people that were purely human. The Masters didn't seem to have anything better: they didn't seem to use potions. And even if he could convince a skilled magical healer to work on Tony, he was pretty sure heart damage was almost as hard for magic to heal as it was for science.
About his only nod to future planning was borrowing some electronic scraps from Tony's discard bins and making a poor copy of Ivan Vanko's electrical whips. Harry had at the back of his head that if he needed to use his magic in public, he might be able to explain away his own energy whip as Tony making him a knock-off of Vanko's weapons. Obviously, if he went with that explanation, Tony would hopefully never find out about it, since he'd know it was a lie.
He tried not to think about how Tony finding out about it might not even be a concern for much longer.
Tony's birthday fell on a Saturday that year, almost a week after Monaco, and looked to be an even more extravagant blowout than previous ones. The day before, Happy noticed that Harry was as in the dumps as everyone else, and offered, "Tony blew off boxing practice today. Want to show me what you've been learning at that fancy school?"
Harry didn't have any better ideas for how to entertain himself, so went and got into exercise clothes and wandered into the gym that Tony had set up just off the main floor of his home, featuring a full-sized boxing ring. "I may only know dirty boxing," Harry warned Happy, while putting on gloves and protective headgear. Honestly, with as much size as Happy had on him, it wasn't like even his best moves were likely to do anything.
"I'll show you how to do it clean. Okay, put your gloves up and show me how you punch…"
It turned out that the kind of styles Harry was learning weren't that far off from boxing. He wasn't allowed to kick, but the strikes he'd learned were easy enough to translate into punches. After a while, Happy actually let him try to use kicks, and showed off that they weren't really effective against a boxer who was prepared for them, especially with his reach advantage.
"Not bad," Happy ultimately allowed. "You've got speed and accuracy going for you. If you get up on someone, you could lay them out before they were ready."
"Karate and… something like Kali?" Natalie observed from where she'd been lurking in a doorway. She'd changed into a dark workout leotard, and Harry's brain fritzed out while he tried to process that.
Happy tapped him on the head with his glove lightly, "Lesson one: Never take your eye off your opponent."
"Sorry," Harry apologized, stepping back so he could watch both Natalie and Happy, asking, "Kali?"
"You look like you're doing strikes that could just as easily be with a knife," she explained, walking up.
"My martial arts teacher liked knives," Harry nodded. "And my friend Dean has been taking karate for years. He's who I mostly practice with."
"Can I have a go, Happy?" she asked.
Happy considered for a moment and couldn't come up with a good excuse, finally cautioning, "Just don't make him slip."
"Lose the gloves," Natalie suggested, as she gracefully ducked under the ropes and into the ring as Happy climbed out. Harry obliged, working hard to continue meeting her eyes and glad that his exercise shorts were loose. "Did you learn any soft styles?"
"Soft?" Harry gulped.
"You know, judo, aikido. Styles that use pins and throws?" she clarified.
"Not really," Harry admitted. "I've learned a little about grabbing people to trip them to the ground, but none of that 'use your opponent's weight against them' kind of thing."
"You should consider it," she suggested, slowly moving around the ring to gauge his ability to move and pay attention. "With your build, it's easier than trying to out-strength people."
"I might get bigger," Harry said, defensively, knowing full well that he was currently shorter than most of his same-aged female friends. He might eventually be taller than Natalie, who didn't tower above him the way most other adults did, but he was unlikely to catch up to his aunt's height, much less that of his male friends. Ron and Dean were both growing like weeds, and even Neville was starting to show signs that he might hit six feet.
"If you do, it's still useful," she shrugged, which had kinematic repercussions that sorely tested Harry's ability to stay focused. "Let me show you. Try to hit me with an overhand strike, slowly." Harry obliged, since that didn't seem too bad, and she reached up and grabbed his arm, only to tuck her body in and under his arm so her back was to him. While he was seizing up at the closeness, she said, "I'm going to throw you. Pay attention."
He tried to, but honestly, as he was going ass over tea kettle, what he was mostly paying attention to was the feel of her as she rolled him over her body and onto the floor of the ring.
"Got it?" she checked, all business but with a slight humor in her eyes as she looked at him upside down.
"I might… need to see it again?" Harry suggested.
"Why don't you throw me?" she offered. "Easier to get it by doing it."
"Uh. Okay," Harry blinked, rolling to his feet. "You're going to chop, and then I just… grab your arm, turn, and roll you over my shoulder?"
"Exactly," she nodded. As soon as he was planted, she swung her own arm in slowly, he reached up, grabbed on, had a moment to consider the softness of the fabric of her exercise outfit, barely remembered to spin, and then followed through on pulling her over his back and shoulder. His vision almost whited out as he felt points of contact on his back as she flipped to the ground. By the time he could process again, she'd already landed and rolled back to her feet in one fluid movement. "Good!"
"That's… that's a cool throw, thanks," Harry offered, having to stand awkwardly.
"It really is," Happy admitted from the sidelines. "You'd have to get a lot faster. Might work against straight-on punches if you duck under. Be sure to watch the other hand."
Natalie smiled at Happy for the notes. "I agree. But it might surprise those big corn-fed English boys you go to school with, huh?"
"You don't know the half of it," Harry told her, though was obviously hedging a bit on the "English" part.
"What's boarding school like?" she asked, politely not calling out his stance and just looking him in the eye. "Ms. Potts says you're usually there until July, but had to come home early this year?"
"They're fixing a gas leak," Harry nodded, repeating the same story. "It's okay. It's tougher than my old school. They fit in a lot to learn, and then we have extra stuff to squeeze in when we're not in class."
"I bet the highlands are beautiful," she got a wistful look, as if imagining it.
He shrugged, "It's nice, but we don't really get to leave the grounds. And the weather's pretty bad, a lot of the year. Dean makes us practice outside even if it's cold."
She nodded, "Still. Sounds like a good experience." As if realizing that Harry wasn't going to be in any state to practice throws again for a while, she gave him the out, "I better check in to see if Ms. Potts or Mr. Stark need anything. Maybe we can do a longer workout later, boys."
As she walked out, Happy admitted, "I'm still not sure I trust her, but I guess she's growing on me. Weird that she's doing your aunt's job."
Harry shrugged, pulling his eyes off the retreating personal assistant and suggesting, "She's not, really. And maybe if Aunt Pepper doesn't have to be Tony's nanny on top of running the company…"
Happy nodded, thinking that was a pretty good point, but then ordered, "Okay. Back to real boxing…"
By the night of Tony's party, Harry's internal clock still hadn't adjusted to LA time, so he'd slept way in and woken up only a couple hours before the party. Pepper grudgingly brought him with her, mostly under the hope that Tony might be on better behavior with Harry around.
And then Harry was surrounded by scantily-clad models who recognized him from helping fight Vanko and had to get close to him to talk over the loud music about how cute he was in his natty little party outfit, and how grateful they'd be if he'd introduce them to Tony. He was almost able to hang on, but then he spotted Natalie moving around the party in a tiny leopard-print dress. That was it, he was overstimulated, and he had to make apologies and retreat to the garage.
Pepper rolled her eyes, watching her nephew slip downstairs. A lot of help he'd been.
While having all his friends thousands of miles away was mostly downsides, one advantage of it was that someone was usually awake to talk to no matter what hours Harry was keeping. He spent some time texting with Padma and Parvati about how lame and noisy adult parties were while snooping around the garage. It was easier to pretend that he was going back to the party after getting his cool back if he didn't sit down to play a game or read a book.
After a while, he noticed something odd and asked, "JARVIS, is this an arc reactor actually mounted in the Mark II?"
"Mr. Stark is experimenting with systems that have the power onboard rather than relying on his personal reactor," the AI helpfully answered.
"Because he's figured out how to get the reactor out?" Harry asked, hopefully.
"No significant progress on that front has been achieved," JARVIS corrected, and it was interesting that the synthetic voice was able to sound sad. "The Mark II has, however, been recalibrated to scans of Colonel Rhodes' body."
"He made Rhodey a suit." For a moment he thought this was progress in them repairing their friendship, but then he realized, "It's in case he doesn't make it."
"This is a fair assumption," JARVIS agreed.
Harry had quite a while to agonize over that fact, pacing around the garage, and eventually asked, "Won't Rhodey have to turn it over to the government? And will they just give it to Justin Hammer?" Harry was aware that Justin was the new arms contractor for the US military, though it was sort of unclear whether his contracts had been revoked recently.
"This supposition, again, seems logical," the AI agreed.
Harry rubbed his scar in concentration, "Did Tony upgrade the operating system? This was just the first prototype, right?"
"The armor includes the initial training data, but its software has not received the latest security patches."
"Can you go ahead and patch it?" Harry suggested. "Tony probably just forgot."
"Harry Potts has level 3 administrative access, and this is sufficient to authorize system patches. Uploading firmware now," JARVIS agreed.
"Wait, I have admin access?" Harry checked. "Is that normal?"
"You are one of five individuals with such access. The others are Mr. Stark, Ms. Potts, Colonel Rhodes, and Mr. Hogan. Your access is higher than anyone's but Mr. Stark's and Ms. Potts', and is scheduled to improve to level 2 if Mr. Stark becomes deceased," the synthetic voice explained, perhaps a little too much.
A few minutes later, Tony staggered downstairs. It generally took a lot of alcohol to make him lose coordination. He barely noticed Harry as he walked over to the Mark IV armor. "JARVIS, open Mark IV. It's time for Party Iron Man!" The suit opened and he levered himself in, finally noticing Harry. "Maverick. You're here? What are you doing in the garage."
"Patching your prototypes," Harry shrugged. "Didn't want Rhodey to turn this over to the government and have them brick it."
Tony waited for the suit to finish clamping itself down around his party outfit before admitting, "Huh. Good call. Guess JARVIS told you about the retrofit. I can't make one for you yet… you're not done growing." He'd left the helmet off, and it was odd looking at him wearing the armor like just a shiny suit.
"I'd rather have you around than a suit of armor to remember you by," Harry told him. "Are you about to go do something to piss off Aunt Pepper?"
"The fans want Iron Man, so they get Iron Man," Tony shrugged, with the electric whir of the suit's servos. "You should get back up there. You're a hero of Monaco, too."
"I need an anti-puberty codpiece first," Harry admitted.
It took Tony's drunk brain a moment to get it, but then he chuckled, "JARVIS, add that to the list. Guess they don't have sexy schoolgirl outfits at your school, huh?"
"Very bulky," Harry agreed. "It's cold up there most of the year."
"I bet. Alright, I'm heading back up. You should join the party! Or guard the workshop. Do what you want." and with that he walked out of the garage, a little more steady with the suit's onboard kinematics trying to correct for his drunken sway.
After another ten minutes alone in the garage, Harry psyched himself up to head back upstairs. If anything, the place was louder and the clothing skimpier than when he'd left.
Tony was dancing in the suit on the DJ podium in the living room, right by the stairs, and yelled when Harry came up, "Everybody! Maverick! Don't call him my kid sidekick, because that's illegal!" He stumbled as he explained into the microphone, sotto voice, "Little known fact, everyone knows Captain America had a kid sidekick named Becky? Billy? Something like that. That was just in the comic books. Binky was actually an adult. Don't believe everything you read in the funny pages."
After that, Harry didn't have time to get embarrassed because he was being basically shoved around the entire ground floor of the mansion as everyone present wanted to get a selfie with him. It was a good thing he'd figured out the contact-lenses-and-ballcap trick, because there was no way he was going to be able to walk around any major city unmolested in the future without a disguise. He was pretty sure he got videoed for B-roll on TMZ, and did a disjointed short interview with a drunken Chess Roberts from WHiH (though maybe she was undercover, since she was insisting that her name was "Rebeca with one C").
He'd wound up on the back patio when the music suddenly stopped and he heard Pepper take over the microphone. He missed the first part, but caught her insisting "Unbelievable! Thank you so much. Tony, we all thank you so much for such a wonderful night. And we're gonna say good night now, and thank you all for coming."
Tony drunkenly argued, "No, no, no, we can't. Wait, wait, wait. We didn't have the cake. We didn't blow out the candles."
Harry managed to get into position at the patio doors where he could make out the argument his aunt and Tony were having in front of the DJ booth, though she'd held the mic low so no one could overhear. It looked like Tony was trying to drunkenly flirt and Pepper was trying to soberly mom, and neither was happy about the results. She finally took the bottle of expensive booze he was holding and handed him back the microphone.
Tony announced to everyone, "Pepper Potts," and waited for the applause. "She's right. The party's over." He barely thought about it before adding, "Then again, the party was over for me, like, an hour and a half ago. The after-party starts… in 15 minutes." The guests began to cheer. "And if anybody—Pepper—doesn't like it, there's the door." He gestured with his gauntleted hand and managed to trigger the repulsor, shattering the glass around the stairway.
Harry's eyes widened. That wasn't good. The number of safeties that Tony must have turned off for that to happen… And then a girl up front threw a liquor bottle in the air for Tony to shoot like skeet. Harry thought he saw Rhodey angrily heading downstairs, and Pepper retreating from the room in confusion and annoyance as Tony crouched and screamed like a madman at the crowd's enthusiasm.
From the back, Harry was trying to get the less-drunk guests to realize that things were out of hand and leave, as all the party girls in the room started grabbing things for Tony to try to shoot out of the air. Harry tried to stop one from grabbing a whole watermelon from the snack table, but was just in time to hear Tony's excited yell of, "I think she wants the Gallagher!" He triggered the unibeam from his chest to blow it into slime.
Somehow, even covered in plasma-pulped watermelon, nobody was leaving. Harry didn't understand adults. But the noise from the stairs got everyone's attention as Rhodey stomped up from the garage in the Mark II armor, all chrome except for the open faceplate on the helmet. He yelled at the crowd, "I'm only gonna say this once. Get out," letting the helmet snap shut to underscore his point.
That at least got the drunk people crowded in the living room to start to shuffle out to the patio and lawn, but there they stopped, eager to see the confrontation. Harry moved to use the food table as cover, just in case Tony was still drunk enough to misfire a repulsor gesturing.
Somehow, it wasn't Tony that escalated the situation. Instead, Harry heard Rhodey, voice augmented by the armor, insist, "You don't deserve to wear one of these. Shut it down!"
After a tense moment considering whether to capitulate, Tony gave a smirk and said, "Goldstein!" The DJ acknowledged him, and he asked, "Give me a phat beat to beat my buddy's ass to." He giggled at the alliteration and let the faceplate fall on his armor as Goldstein queued up Queen of all things.
And then two metal-clad titans were fighting like bulls in a china shop.
Harry, fully cognizant that he wasn't wearing armor, hung back but kept up with the fight as they began to smash through walls in the house. Harry was just trying to figure out how to get the two closest things he had to father figures to stop. He caught up to them fighting with freeweights in the gym, having already destroyed the sauna and the boxing ring, where Tony was insisting, "Sorry, pal. Like I was just telling the party guests, Iron Man doesn't have a sidekick."
Rhodey slammed him with one of the posts from the boxing ring, enunciating, "Side. Kick. This!" They both struggled for a moment before smashing up through the ceiling. Harry was pretty sure that was into Tony's bedroom.
He could hear smashing upstairs, and by the time he realized they'd fallen back into the main floor and crushed the food tables (Harry was glad he hadn't still been hiding there), he spotted Happy hustling Pepper out the back.
"You want it?" Tony was screaming in the augmented suit voice. "Take it!" It was suddenly a game of rock-em sock-em robots, as they both awkwardly punched at one another, all thoughts of martial arts technique lost in the urge to smash each other. Finally, probably just due to more familiarity with the suit, Tony managed to trip Rhodey face first through the kitchen sink.
He regarded the guests all clustered on the patio, and Harry hoped that it was over with. But instead of apologizing, Tony suddenly gave an armor-augmented scream, like some kind of robot monster in a horror movie, shrieking out all his pain at his oncoming death and the frustration at the whims of public approval. That finally convinced the crowd to rush off around the house, clearing out of the back yard.
And, behind him, a standing Rhodey ripped the rest of the kitchen island free, spun it around, and smashed Tony in the back, flinging him across the room into the gas fireplace, which erupted around him, threatening to burn him alive and the entire house down.
As Tony ripped free of the mantelpiece and turned to point the repulsor in his palm at Rhodey, and Rhodey did the same, ordering, "Put your hand down," Harry had enough.
Both men seemed shocked when there was suddenly an angry pre-teen throwing himself in between the two of them, ready to be blown to bits by their "flight stabilizers." Both at least had the grace to lower their arms enough to not accidentally pulp young Harry Potts the way Tony had the watermelon. "Stop it!" Harry yelled. "What is wrong with you?"
Internally, Rhodey grinned, hoping that Harry could scream some sense into Tony, but he realized that the boy was looking at him. "We… didn't have to do this," Rhodey said, lamely, voice electronically augmented by the suit.
"Didn't have to start a fight with your friend and smash up his house?" Harry asked, glad nobody seemed like they were going to laser him or punch him. "What if a guest had gotten hurt? What if I'd gotten hurt. You almost fell on Aunt Pepper!"
"Tony started…" Rhodey tried, while behind Harry there was an electronic sigh as Tony at least realized what he'd done and felt sorry for it.
"Tony's drunk. And he should know better too. But you started it, trying to beat him up instead of talking to him," Harry corrected, full mad. Fortunately, hidden by his bangs as it was, none of them could see the orange light leaking from his lightning-bolt scar. A place he was starting to consider his second home, one of the only places he felt completely safe (barring rare dark elf attacks), had just been smashed and ruined. Two of the adults he'd always trusted had been almost ready to kill each other, regardless of whether he or his aunt were harmed.
His mother had made her dying wish for the Soul Stone to grant him protection, it had followed the connections he had made with others, and whatever residual energy from it lingered in Harry was not pleased. A safe haven was being torn apart from within. Father figures were abandoning him to try to maim one another.
"We need Iron Man back on the job. Not showing his ass in front of everybody," Rhodey tried to explain. Tony was still crouched by the fireplace, spent.
"We need?" Harry asked. "You know he's sick. You can't let him have a vacation? He stopped selling you missiles so he has to spend every single day protecting the country?" Harry demanded, a hint of the same heartsight he'd felt with Gamora laying bare James Rhodes. "Is he your best friend, or just your weapons dealer?"
"Take the suit," Tony spoke up. "I made it for you. I was going to give it to you… if I didn't make it."
Sadly, with merely whatever remnants of the Soul Stone's power that still protected him, Harry didn't have any ability to actually persuade the way he had Gamora. He could tell, even through the face-concealing armor, that Rhodey was considering what he'd said. What Tony had said. But Rhodey was still too angry to admit he was wrong.
"I… maybe went too hard. But you're out of control. Figure it out," Rhodey ordered, stepping onto the patio, triggering the boot jets, and flying into the night.
"Did he… drive here?" Harry wondered.
The crisis over and all the guests gone, Tony opened his faceplate and looked around at the wreck of his house. At least the fireplace was already going out, probably because JARVIS cut the gas line. "You don't have to fight my battles for me, kid," he said.
Harry whirled on Tony, Soul Stone-powered senses still active and asked, "Are you trying to make everyone so angry they're not sad when you're gone?" Tony's eyes widened, maybe admitting that was partially true, but as Harry stared at his suit—at the arc reactor—he realized something.
Tony's heart was mechanical. It beat at whatever rate the software decided. The arc reactor was a giant electrical pacemaker. Afraid, angry… aroused, Tony's heartbeat would stay the same unless the software thought to change it. Again, Harry wasn't exactly an expert on the human body but…
"Tony. Have you been afraid since you replaced your heart?" Harry asked, shocked. "Like, your heart is beating faster because there's a problem? Or is your heart steady when you're in danger?"
Tony staggered over and sat back down on the hearth, eyes widening as his drunk brain took a moment to process the question. He eventually concluded that his endocrine system was probably all out of whack. "It's running a simple algorithm based on oxygen needs," he admitted. "I don't even have any sensors in there for hormone levels…"
Harry walked forward and put a hand on the chestplate of Tony's armor and asked, "Are you scared to die? And your body isn't letting you realize it?"
"Well," Tony sighed. "I just smashed up my own house trying to beat the hell out of my best friend to keep him from taking a suit I made for him. So I don't know if I'm the authority on my feelings right now."
He took a deep breath, willing his logic to account for what might be a fundamental gap in how his body processed emotions. He was never one for deep introspection, but being that drunk did lower his inhibitions against looking at his motivations. Maybe the kid was right.
"Thanks… Harry," he finally said. "Give me a little while to sober up and then… I'm thinking donuts?"
Why yes, I did completely invent a different explanation for what's up with Tony's arc reactor because the entire situation in IM2 bugged me. It didn't make sense that there was a giant hole in his chest if it was just a magnet, and it didn't make sense that he couldn't just stop keeping the arc reactor in his chest rather than on his belt or somewhere it wouldn't poison him. I suspect my explanation is just as troubling if you know how heart bypass machines work, but I'm doing my best here with a situation clearly based on a weird decision to have a scene where Pepper put her hand in Tony's ribcage to fish out a wire.
