Enter: hand waving engineering. My background is in biology, not physics. While I'm not as lost as Harry is here, please don't expect this to make much actual sense. Since Iron Man 3 didn't happen in this timeline, Tony is working on the Mark 42 here.
New York was called "The City That Never Sleeps" and on his first night in the Tower, Harry understood why.
While Harry had heard the phrase used plenty of times on the television — and more than a few times from Piers as he bragged to Dudley all about his holiday trip to the States last year — living in a sleepy little town where most of the shops closed by eight, then in a boarding school with a strict bedtime curfew, it took seeing it for himself to fully comprehend its meaning. Looking down through the windows in the living room, it seemed unbelievable that the roads were still filled with the red glow of brake lights and many of the surrounding buildings' windows were still illuminated. He was too high in the Tower to see individual people on the walkway or hear any of the hustle and bustle below him, but if there were even half as many people down there as when Harry and Snape had arrived, it certainly qualified as "never sleeps."
The irony of how Harry stood there at two in the morning watching the city that never slept, when he desperately wanted to sleep yet couldn't wasn't lost on him. After the adrenaline rush from his tremor episode wore off, he had fallen asleep fairly easily until a dream about Uncle Vernon locking him in his cupboard just as the house caught fire jolted him out of bed. Somehow, it never occurred to him that what most people would consider a nightmare, no longer qualified as one to Harry. For Harry, if it didn't involve Voldemort, dementors, or the graveyard, he called it a dream. Meaning, anything about his childhood or Uncle Vernon fell into the same category as dreaming about his friends or Quidditch. A horrible reality he avoided putting too much thought into.
Regardless of how he categorized the dream, Harry tossed and turned in bed unable to fall back asleep; reminding himself that the smell of charred wood filling his nostrils was all in his head. Frustrated, he went to his desk to read the old letters from friends. Less than a week ago, reading all about Hermione's family trip to France after first year or Ron's hatred for degnoming the garden would have helped to quiet his jumbled racing thoughts. Tonight it had the opposite effect, instead leading Harry's thoughts down a twisting, anxiety-ridden path. Did they realize he was gone yet, or were they still waiting for Dumbledore to bring him to the hidden place where they were spending the summer? No matter how hard Dumbledore tried to prevent it, as soon as the guards outside Privet Drive reported him missing, the news would spread like wildfire, so if the adults knew, his friends would too. Harry swore he could feel their concern for him deep inside his chest, and he had to resist the impulse to write to them, even though he did not know where or how to send it.
By the time he returned the last letter to his desk drawer, his grief over missing his friends and his rage over Sirius and Snape's ridiculous plan had him kicking his desk chair onto its side hoping to ease the mounting pressure building inside of him. Giving up on the idea of getting any decent sleep, he threw a pair of sweatpants over the boxer shorts he had worn to bed and headed to the living room — because he could actually leave his bedroom anytime he pleased and thinking a change in scenery would help him relax a bit.
"Still fighting jet lag?"
Harry jumped in surprise at Tony's voice behind him, as he stood memorized by the city life going on hundreds of feet below him. Tony and Pepper's bedroom door had been shut when Harry passed it, so he hadn't expected either of them to be awake in the middle of the night. But now Tony was casually leaning against the barstool side of the kitchen counter, nowhere near his bedroom door. Between Tony's strange location, the loose dark gray MIT shirt he wore over a pair of faded jeans — far from any pajamas Harry had seen —, and Harry not hearing the bedroom door open or close, he easily assumed the man had not been sleeping either. But where had he been this whole time?
"It takes longer to adjust than most people think. A couple of days at least, sometimes up to a week, depending on what you're doing during the day," Tony said, his hands unnervingly motionless at his side as he spoke. "It'd be, what? Almost seven in the morning in London? Are you usually an early riser?"
"Something like that," Harry mumbled in reply. It didn't matter whether Tony interpreted it as jet lag or being an early riser seeing as neither was the actual reason for him being awake.
Tony smoothly sauntered to the window directly to Harry's right and peered out at the city. "Guess it's another thing we have in common, huh? Bacon on pizza and rough sleepers. Sounds like you hit the jackpot, kid."
Harry's forehead creased as he frowned. "I didn't say–"
"I like to tinker," Tony abruptly interrupted. He shifted his body, squaring his shoulders to face Harry straight-on. Seeing Harry's confusion, he clarified, "When I can't sleep, I like to tinker. It keeps my hands moving and my mind focused on something productive. Want to give it a try?"
Not once in his four years of knowing Snape had Harry ever wanted to be anything like the man, but at that moment he really wished he could read people as easily as the professor could. There was something in Tony's eyes — a hint of distrust, perhaps — as he waited for Harry to make the next move that made the hairs on the back of Harry's neck stand straight up.
"Erm, sure?" Harry said. As if any other answer would be acceptable given how Tony had already taken off towards the front door.
Since Tony's workshop took up the entire floor under the penthouse, getting there was as simple as going through the door to the left of the lift and down the glass staircase. Unlike every other area Harry had seen in the Tower so far, the workshop was an absolute mess… an organized mess and Harry loved it. Although a system surely existed in Tony's head, random mechanical parts covered nearly every table with no obvious rhyme or reason. The screens were filled with various diagrams, equations, and schematics; all foreign to Harry, who technically only had a primary school education in Maths. The deeper he walked into the room, the more he thought the space likely mirrored the chaos in Tony's mind when no one forced him to rein it in for the more structured aspects of his life.
Tony led the way past a table holding a dozen cellphone-like devices, another with a rack of arrows, and one with pipes connected by a white stringy material. Harry slowed down as they approached a robotic arm that was sweeping fine metallic dust into a dustbin. It reminded Harry of the summer he spent at the Burrow, specifically Mrs. Weasley's enchanted broom, where he had first learned how magic could be incorporated into a home. Watching the robot move autonomously further supported his growing belief that technology was simply muggle magic. After all, Tony had invented alternatives to a lot of the things Harry could do using magic, such as programmable robots for mundane tasks, automated systems to control everything from the lights to temperature settings to unlocking doors using a fingerprint, and flying in a metal suit with blasters was not unlike flying a broom while using the stupefy spell. And that was only what Harry had seen in the last half-day.
"Sorry about the mess. I would say it's a work in progress, but this is the best it's looked in for a while. This area of the lab is my sandbox, where all the ideas are born. The ones that don't explode then head off to their respective paths, an area for the SI public work, one for the SI business segments, Avengers, or just my own shit," he rattled off ahead of Harry. When Harry didn't respond, he noticed Harry's curiosity in the robot and flashed a proud smile. "This is DUM-E. I made him during my MIT days and he helps with just about everything down here. DUM-E–" he waved his hand in a circle toward the corner of a well-loved sofa behind the robot, "–you missed a spot right there."
With no extra information on where the missing dust was or how much, the robotic arm whirled around and promptly scooped up a bundle of discarded wires into the bin. Harry had no idea how Tony did it. He wouldn't even know where to begin such a process; yet another thing his biological father had over him.
"You really are a genius, aren't you?" The question slipped out before Harry could stop himself. "I mean, I read all about your history on the plane from London–"
"Hold up," Tony came to a halt, placing his hand firmly on Harry's chest, practically catching Harry who almost ran into him. "What do you mean you read about me on the plane? Are you saying you had never heard of me, as a person not as your… um… not as a relative, before coming here?"
The accusatory tone, more than Tony's inability to speak the word 'father', caused Harry to take a step back. "A little narcissistic, don't you think?"
"Eh." Tony shrugged. "Par for the course for me."
"Well, I'm only fourteen and until this week I lived in the UK. Excuse me for not keeping up with the American news on weapons and energy."
"And technology," Tony added, making Harry believe his reasoning has been logical enough to accept. The feeling was short-lived, however, as Tony had his own equally logical rebuttal, "Except I'm pretty sure the alien invasion on New York last year made worldwide news. Then, of course, the whole superhero aftermath thing was kind of hard to miss."
Harry sighed. The attack on New York must have been broadcast live during the event. It was probably on the telly for weeks afterward, too, but Harry wouldn't have seen it because he had been living in a castle with no electricity. So, no, he hadn't heard about it.
"I was… busy this past year," Harry lamely said. He really needed to think faster if he had any hope of successfully hiding from Voldemort.
"Busy?" Tony repeated, his head nodding. "Ok."
Harry knew Tony didn't believe his half-truth, but Tony dropped the subject to show off the bench in front of them filled with pieces of the Iron Man suit in various stages of development, a range of tools, strips of metal, and half-striped wires covering the bench in front of them. Harry couldn't tell top from bottom and wouldn't even attempt to guess what all the different colored wires meant, if they meant anything at all.
Clearly in his element, Tony jumped right into explaining the parts and justifying his decision to choose one material over another. The portion of the suit he was currently working on controlled the propulsion system, that much Harry had understood. Tony had changed the design so that individual parts of the suit could self-propel to him on demand, similar to the Accio Harry used in the first task to summon his broom. Once again, Tony's world of engineering aligned with Harry's magical one and so long as Harry made these small connections, substituting magic for energy, he felt he stood a decent chance of keeping up with Tony's fast-talking.
Creating a suit to allow the navigation of individual sections required creating a miniature power source and maneuvering system for each section. All of this used a series of math formulas with as many letters as numbers for things like weight, forces, and a few other parameters that Harry lost track of less than halfway through. After tweaking the equation to his liking, Tony spent no less than five minutes searching his drawers for a pair of safety glasses to teach Harry how to solder, a tool Tony said he used to love using as a kid. Harry didn't follow how those two were related. Not taking Harry's terrified "no, thank you" as an answer, Tony handed over the tool to Harry and set up a practice station using scrap metal and random wires DUM-E gave him, and then patiently walked Harry through the steps of basic soldering. While Tony assured Harry he had done a 'stand-up job for his first go', Harry flat-out refused to do any work on the actual power unit beyond holding the parts in place to prevent any shifting.
"This must be weird for you, huh?" Tony briefly glanced up at Harry as he asked.
Harry understood what he meant, but didn't want to talk about his feelings surrounding the last week; preferring to bury them and move on, just like he was trying to do with the graveyard. And if everyone left him alone, he'd have a better chance of succeeding, or so he thought. "I don't know," he drew out the words, feigning his misunderstanding, "the soldering part is pretty straightforward… the maths on the other hand…"
He trailed off, hoping Tony would get the hint and move on. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect, and the man merely continued working, perfectly content to let the awkwardness of their silence build while waiting for Harry to give him a serious answer. He succeeded, too, because by the third minute, the silence had become too much for Harry, and he gave in.
"It's weird," he amended his answer. "I've never really been anyone's son before. I mean, I don't remember having a real parent, and my aunt… well…"
What could Harry possibly say about Aunt Petunia without raising at least a dozen red flags? He couldn't tell Tony how much she hated him and how, as a result, his bedroom for most of his life had been the cupboard under the stairs. He couldn't tell him how often she misdirected her anger at Lily towards Lily's son, how Harry had learned at a young age to remain just out of their grasp, or about the unfair chores and the horrible things she'd say to him for no reason other than his existence. No, Harry would never tell Tony any of those things.
"Your aunt, what?" Tony prodded, spotlighting how long Harry had sat muddled in his thoughts. "You never considered her as your parent?"
"No, not really." That was as close to the truth as he would get.
Tony doubled down on his notes, giving Harry the impression he had moved on. Again, Harry was mistaken. "You mentioned a cousin, right? Were you two close at all?"
"In age, yes," Harry carefully said. "We were in the same grade and classes until I went to boarding school."
"So, then how'd you end up at different schools?"
The question was innocent and one Snape had grilled Harry about during their stay at the motel, so he felt sure of his response, "It's a by-invitation-only school. My mum was the first of her family to get invited and attend. As her son, I automatically had a spot. Guess I'm doing pretty well there, because they let me back every year."
"You sound relieved," Tony said, and Harry feared explaining himself until Tony gave him the out he needed. "I suppose most kids are thrilled to leave home. I might have too if my parents hadn't celebrated the day they shipped me off. Well, my dad mostly."
Harry stopped himself from disagreeing. If Hogwarts wasn't a magical school, the Dursleys likely would have gladly shipped him off, and Harry still would have been relieved to go. They also might have forbidden him from attending just to torture him. They took too much joy in depriving Harry of anything positive in his life.
Deciding to change the subject, one Harry had more control over, he not so innocently asked, "Do you remember her? My mum, I mean."
The sharp inhale next to him told Harry that he had successfully thrown Tony off. A feat, really. Taking a play out of Tony's and Snape's book, the teen waited patiently for the answer, refusing to speak first no matter how awkward the quiet dragged on. Tony did a better job of putting himself back together than Harry did, and in less than a minute, he gently set the tools aside to properly address Harry's question.
"Listen, Harry," he began with sincerity, "over the next few days you're gonna hear a lot of stories about my… wilder years. You're going to hear about a lot of alcohol, a lot of drugs, and a lot of different women. And you should know that everything you hear is the truth. Back then… I didn't– I didn't care about anyone or anything but myself and maybe who I'd take home from one party to the next.
"I remember Lily." He let out a nervous breath. "I can't say I would have remembered her by just her name if I hadn't seen her picture too, but I remember going back to that little bar night after night hoping she'd be there. She had fascinated me, and not just because she turned me down on the first night, and then again on the second night. She was smart, witty, and confident, unlike any of the other women I surrounded myself with during those years. In fact, Pepper is the only other woman who has fit that bill since Lily. And I think… I think under different circumstances… had my parents not died when they did, and I hadn't been forced into running SI right afterward…. I think things might have worked out differently between us.
"I hated I had to leave," Tony continued, almost trance-like, and Harry hung on every word, eagerly soaking up the brief glimpse of his parents' life together. "Even worse, I did it in such a cowardly way. I just… I got the call, and I acted. You'll learn I do that a lot, act before I think."
"Me too," Harry responded. A gentle smile passed between them. "My friend, uh, she tells me all the time how I need to do a better job at planning first. It just never seems to work out. She says I'm a magnet for trouble."
Tony's shoulder bumped against Harry's. "I really hope you got some of my outstanding traits too. I promise, there are at least one or two of them. If not, well, I'm sorry. You're going to have a rough go ahead of you."
The warmth in Harry's chest grew, helping him feel a little lighter. "Did you ever try to find her?"
"Yes!" Tony exclaimed unequivocally, leaving no room for Harry to doubt him. "Once the dust had settled around here, I looked for her but kept coming up empty-handed. At one point I thought maybe she didn't exist at all. That I made it all up. Given the drug and copious amounts of alcohol, it wouldn't have been as far-fetched as it sounds today. Obviously, that wasn't the case, though, because here you are."
"Right." He really didn't want any more details on that particular subject.
They settled into a rhythm of Tony adjusting some wire or knob on the power unit, as Harry took to calling it, then he'd explain to Harry what he had done, why, and what he planned next. As Tony delved into topics Harry had no hope of understanding, the teenager examined a tablet that appeared to be a digital notebook filled with Tony's indecipherable scribbling. Apparently, terrible handwriting was yet another similarity they shared, even in electronic form.
"You actually understand this stuff?"
"More or less." Tony turned his attention to the tablet and swiped through the 'pages'. A few screen taps brought up an expanded version of the notes from the tablet onto the monitor. The equation had been the foundation for the work laid out on the bench. "Some of it is my rambling in writing form and occasionally…. I get lucky and stumble on something right."
"You sometimes get lucky, huh?" Harry cast a skeptical glance at him. Nothing Tony created seemed based on luck. To prove his point, Harry pointed at the bright blue circle in the center of Tony's chest. "Like that?"
"With the benefit of hindsight, I think I got pretty damn lucky. Just don't tell anyone else I said so," Tony replied, surprising Harry with his honesty. "When I think about the months I spent in the cave, I have a hard time believing I'd be here without a healthy dose of luck… luck that someone skilled enough was there to keep the shrapnel from killing me on the spot, luck that I had the right amount of Palladium available to pull it off, luck that Yinsen… I got lucky, that's all."
A heaviness fell between them which Harry immediately recognized as grief and guilt pouring off of Tony. The name Yinsen didn't sound familiar from any of Harry's limited research, but Harry knew about grief and guilt. Every day, he battled the same demons concerning Cedric, often wondering why Cedric had to die if Voldemort had been after Harry, why Harry had insisted on taking the cup together, and why Harry didn't die instead or, or at least with, Cedric. It was unfair for Harry to have survived when Cedric, an innocent bystander caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, had stood a chance. In Harry's eyes, Cedric's death fell on his shoulders just as much as Voldemort's and he refused to believe otherwise.
"Why do you wear it all the time?" Harry had wondered about it when Tony first entered the lab, but it hadn't exactly been the right time to ask. "If it powers the suit, can't you just put it on when you need it?"
"It's not just for the suit," Tony mumbled, dropping the work he'd been staring at the moment before. Their eyes locked, and Harry almost took back the question at Tony's stern expression. "Well, I got hit by an explosive in Afghanistan. It's how they captured me… everyone knows that part. Remember the shrapnel I mentioned? The only way Yinsen could think to save me was to find some way to stop the shrapnel from entering my heart. The shrapnel is metal and the arc reactor powers the magnet that's preventing them from going anywhere they shouldn't be. Just don't give anyone else that information."
Tony stated it so casually that, if not for the creases tugging at the corners of his eyes, Harry would have second-guessed himself on how serious the situation actually was. A million questions flooded Harry's mind. Could his magic disable the device? Will it eventually quit on its own someday? Would Tony have enough time to react if that happened? Could his magic remove the shrapnel for him, making the reactor unnecessary?
In the end, Harry went with, "It's keeping you alive?"
"More or less."
"Is it dangerous?"
"Dangerous? Not anymore," Tony scoffed. At Harry's unsure expression, he added, "It had a… ah… malfunction, a few years back, but it's all good now. This baby will run for more than my lifetime and as long as it is, the shrapnel will stay away from my heart."
Harry's head bobbed, sorting through what he'd been told. "Does it hurt?"
"Never." Tony sharply answered. "Ok, not much anymore. Sometimes if I move at an odd angle."
Harry grinned. "So, which is it?"
Tony's brows lifted. "Depends on whom I'm talking to. To Pepper? Never. To myself? Occasionally. Nothing more than I can handle, though. Don't you worry, I'm not going anywhere, anytime soon."
"What about yours?" Thrown off by Tony's question, Harry touched his chest, as if expecting to have grown his own mini light there. But as soon as he looked up at Tony, he groaned because Tony had his finger aimed directly at Harry's forehead, almost touching his scar. "Something unique like that has to have a good story behind it. I bet it's cooler than a giant magnet in your chest."
Harry let out a sad, sarcastic laugh and combed his fringe down to cover the scar. "Sorry to disappoint you. I don't remember getting it. It happened the night of… the… erm…"
"You mean in the car accident?"
"Yeah, in the car accident," Harry said, playing along with the story his aunt and uncle had told him as a child; one Snape kept for simplicity's sake. "I really hate the bloody thing."
"Of course you do. Having a visual reminder of our darkest days is tough." Tony lightly tapped the arc reactor. The solid clink surprised Harry; proof it wasn't a tangible object and not just a circle of light. "At least for me, it also reminds me of how good can come from bad. For you, I imagine every time you look in the mirror you're reminded of losing your parents–"
"My mum," Harry automatically corrected, unsure why he'd done it and wishing he hadn't.
"It's fine, Harry," Tony waved off with a shake of his hand. "You spent fourteen years believing one thing… That this man was your father. It's become a part of who you are, part of your identity, and I don't expect you to forget him. I hope you know that. Trust me, I understand it takes more than blood to make someone a father. Hell, he probably changed your little diapers and I haven't done shit yet. He–" Tony rapidly snapped his finger with a slight hum as he thought, "–James! His name was James, right? I found a marriage certificate shortly after you were born for Lily Evans to James Potter."
James Potter .
Suddenly, all of Harry's blood drained from his face, and his palms sweat so much that he laid them palm-side down on the workbench, silently pleading the cool metal to calm him down. But it couldn't change how Tony had connected him to James Potter. The very name Snape had been adamant that Harry keep hidden for as long as possible, and he found it on the very first night. As his heart rate rose dramatically, his head got cloudy, making it impossible for him to think clearly enough to get himself out of this situation.
A loud pop and a bright yellow spark caused both of them to jump. Tony moved quickly to shield Harry as a second pop, followed by a larger spark, filled the air, forcing them and Harry's chair clear to the workbench behind them. Although he didn't feel any of the usual static associated with his accidental magic, Harry shut his eyes to concentrate on his breathing just in case: a deep breath in, hold, a deep breath out, repeat. He held his eyes closed for an entire minute until he heard Tony's footsteps heading away to assess the damage. Cracking his eyes, for fear of the damage he'd caused, he saw the formerly transparent screen they'd been working from — to build on the equation, with Tony adding notes along the way — had turned completely black with streams of black smoke spewing out from the side.
Oh , this is bad … This is very , very bad .
"Hey, JARVIS?" Tony asked, pure curiosity in his tone. "What the hell happened? How did… Why is my screen black?"
"Sir, there has been an electronic malfunction," the voice said. "Reboot has been unsuccessful."
"No shit," Tony muttered more to himself than Harry or JARVIS. "Any idea of what caused it?"
Harry thought he knew exactly what caused it. What else could it have been besides his magic? He swallowed hard, trying to keep himself calm waiting for JARVIS's assessment.
"I am still analyzing the environment," JARVIS dutifully replied. "This might take some time, Sir."
Tony frowned, clearly not liking the reply. He turned to Harry. "Are you alright? Nothing burned you?"
"No," Harry said quickly. "I mean, I'm alright."
"You sure? We've got a whole med-floor upstairs with burn cream, bandages, scanners–"
"I'm ok," Harry emphasized, to get his father's attention from his near-panicked rambling. "Really. Nothing got me."
"Oh, thank God."
Tony ran his hand over his chest, his face relaxing. In that moment, as he saw his father recover from his panic, Harry realized Tony had assumed his technology had caused the mini-explosion, and his relief came from knowing he hadn't hurt his son, not the other way around, as Harry knew had happened.
"JARVIS," Tony's gaze never left Harry as he spat out the instructions, "recover everything you can from the drives and reopen it on monitor twelve. I'll validate it tomorrow when I look through the incident report. We're done for tonight."
"That's an excellent idea, Sir. I would have recommended the same thing had you not."
Tony's dramatic eye roll made it difficult for Harry to hold a grin and a small laugh even escaped his lips.
"What do you say we go upstairs and fall asleep watching a movie?" Tony asked, wrapping his arm around Harry's shoulders to lead them towards the door. "Better yet. I have the best place to watch a movie in all of New York."
"There's a 'best place' to watch movies? Better than your living room?"
This was news to Harry, whose movie-watching came solely from either cracking the cupboard door or sitting on the third stair — close enough to peek down at the telly, but far enough up to be unnoticed and make a quick getaway when he heard his uncle or Dudley walking up the stairs. All he needed was a screen and film to be happy, but Tony's enthusiasm about it filled Harry with a childish delight, which he had to admit felt great.
"Ab-sol-utely," Tony exclaimed, drawing out each syllable. "We have a kickass theater designed and outfitted by yours truly that has the most comfortable recliners known to man. Seriously, even Steve falls asleep in them, although that might have more to do with the black-and-white films I tracked down for him than the comfort. It has the whole deal… blankets, pillows, snacks, popcorn… although if we're aiming to catch some sleep we may want to skip the food."
"Fine by me."
They paused near the lift, choosing to take that rather than go up several flights of stairs, and Tony's hands moved flippantly while they waited for the lift, "Now besides the theater room, that's where our place shines. Bruce's is a close second, but Pepper went heavy on a relaxing space for him so it's more about comfort than the optimal movie-watching experience."
Tony's casual remark of 'our place', with no hesitation at including Harry in his small family, sent a comforting feeling into Harry's heart.
The lift beeped, rather than dinged, and opened but Tony did not follow him inside. Tony pressed a few buttons on the inside panel and then said, "I'm going to walk upstairs to leave a note for Pepper. She'll worry if she wakes up and I'm not there and I'm not down here. JARVIS will let you into the theater and give you directions to the blankets and shit. Go pick your favorite seat, get settled and I promise I'll be right there."
Curious about Tony's insistence on taking the stairs instead of the lift with Harry, but not wanting to cause any more problems on the first night, Harry simply told him he'd see him up there.
The lift opened up to a bank of windows with the most spectacular view. At close to half-past three in the morning, the sky was dark except for the yellow glow of the city lights. And while he had no chance of seeing the stars through the light pollution like he could from Hogwarts' more remote location, it was stunning in a whole new, modern way to him, much like this new life he was embarking on.
In addition to the theater, JARVIS informed him that this floor also housed a gym with a hand-to-hand combat arena — a separate weapons area was on the floor above them —, a library, a communal kitchen, and a lounge. To guide Harry through the maze, small twinkling lights on the floor led him away from the welcoming windows and to a closet just outside two big double doors. A tiny click when Harry grabbed the handle unlocked the cabinet, which held a variety of blankets and pillows. The pillows were mostly the same, with minor variations of sizes and firmness, but the blankets were all unique, made of different fabrics, sizes, and thicknesses. There were several made of a cooling silk, suggesting that was a favorite among the residents, with a few in a plush soft fabric reminding him of the rabbit he occasionally saw while working in the Dursleys' garden, an old quilt neatly folded on the top shelf, and a thick comforter wedged along the side. Harry chose a thinner square pillow and a red, white, and black checkered blanket before following JARVIS's lights through the double doors and into the theater.
Harry had never been to the cinema. The Dursleys never took him and the Wizarding World hadn't progressed past the wireless. The theater in the Tower, however, surpassed anything he could have expected from a classic cinema. Five tiered rows of seating were each distinctive, just like the blankets and pillows. The row furthest from the screen — not a television like he expected to see — consisted of sofas and plush couches. Some were fabric, some were leather, and they could seat two to four people; more if they squished and less if they sprawled out. The next row was all powered recliners, and like everything else, there was more than one kind. Because Tony specifically said they were the most comfortable recliners known to man, Harry assumed this row was Tony's favorite. He tested three different chairs, deciding on an overstuffed beige microfiber one near the middle of the row and between a white leather and red velvet one. The final three rows in front of him were a mix of sofas, recliners, and chaises.
Settling into the recliner, Harry placed his pillow behind his neck, pleased with the size and shape he had chosen, and arranged the blanket just as a ray of light from the doors announced Tony's arrival. He had a full-sized rectangle pillow under one arm and a silky red blanket folded over the other, which he tossed onto the white leather recliner to Harry's right before plopping himself into the seat.
It took several minutes for Tony to accept that Harry hadn't seen a lot of movies, and after a frustrating game of "how about this or that" transitioning into "have you seen this or that" Tony selected the original Star Wars — strangely starting on Episode 4 — as their inaugural movie night; the first of many, Tony assured him. Harry, though, had no chance of seeing the end. Between his nightmare, potential accidental magic frying Tony's computer, and the extravagant accommodations of the theater room, he fell fast asleep less than fifteen minutes into the film.