Without a doubt, if someone were to ask Harry to summarize his first week at the Tower in a single word, he would say "boring", at least mostly.

The relaxed rhythm of the weekend, with Tony or Pepper taking obvious shifts to stay by Harry, ended on Monday morning when they both left for work, leaving Harry all alone. Having spent most of his childhood alone, it surprised Harry how quickly he missed their company. He spent the weekend racing from one activity to another, passing the time faster than Harry had ever experienced; because Tony's mind truly did work at tens of miles per minute. In contrast to Tony's organized chaos, Pepper had a collected calm air around her, putting Harry at ease when they sat side by side watching a movie, worked on a puzzle, or read — technically Pepper read and Harry secretly strategized new quidditch plays — every night waiting for Tony to finish in his workshop.

Without set chores for him to work on, and being confined to their private floor, the daytime hours Harry spent alone dragged on. The first two workdays, he used to catch up on watching movies from a fantastic list Tony set up for him through JARVIS, writing letters to his friends he'd never get to mail, learning to play billiards on the pool table he discovered while exploring the other side of their floor — an entire guest wing the size of the penthouse that JARVIS told him Tony rarely used anymore —, and working on the list he began the other day comparing his magic to Tony's technology. One day, he hoped to talk to Hermione about his ideas on the subject, but without knowing how long his hiding would last he figured writing out his mixed-up thoughts and observations was as good of a place as any to start. Plus, it was probably what Hermione would recommend he do, anyway.

On his third day, Harry moved into the kitchen, deciding it'd be a courteous gesture to make dinner. Tony and Pepper never asked or expected Harry to cook for them — and Harry wasn't about to tell them about his cooking history —, but cooking had been one of his favorite chores at the Dursleys so he didn't mind doing it. After asking JARVIS and Happy for help with a grocery delivery order, and navigating the steep learning curve of Tony's smart appliances, Harry enjoyed the afternoon preparing a traditional Shepherd's Pie with a fresh salad, rolls, and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Without his aunt breathing down his neck, cooking passed the time quickly, and before he knew it Tony and Pepper arrived home just as Harry was finishing up. Harry wasn't used to having a relative proud of him, so the immense pride on Tony's face when he saw the meal Harry made sent a rush of happiness through Harry's body, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. Undoubtedly enough to fuel a full-fledged Patronus in a second.

Over dinner that night, Tony finally brought up the topic of their Tower-mates, as Tony liked to call them. He recommended their dedicated monthly "team night" on Friday for Harry to officially meet the team; an event started by Steve to help the team bond in their new Avenger roles. Aside from their excellent company, Tony pitched the gathering as an excuse to order too much food and play video games or other "activities" — all of which Tony assured Pepper would be teen-friendly this week, mainly no gambling. Harry readily agreed, not hearing what Friday night would entail because he was too preoccupied with Tony not only remembering what Harry said about wanting to make a good impression when meeting people but also taking his concern seriously by asking Harry's opinion on it first.

Naturally, Harry spent Thursday researching each member of the Avengers and watching all the news footage JARVIS had on them.

Bruce, who Harry had not realized was a member of the team during the paternity test, reminded Harry of Remus in more ways than one; a gentle and rather soft-spoken human form to balance his destructively wild inhuman one. Unlike Remus, though, Bruce couldn't predict his transformations by checking the calendar. The thought of the Hulk sleeping a few floors above him made Harry seriously consider sleeping with his wand under his pillow at the idea. But, Tony seemed unconcerned about the man and always spoke fondly of the other scientist, so Harry decided not to worry about it either… Even if, after watching him tear apart the side of a skyscraper, Harry knew the Hulk could tear through their door like it was tissue paper.

Captain America's story grabbed Harry's interest the most, probably because waking up decades into the future reminded Harry of first entering the Wizarding World. He literally woke up to a whole different world than what he was used to living in. Although Captain Rogers' fighting style was nowhere near as explosive as Iron Man, as skillful as Black Widow or Hawkeye — the two spies Harry noted to keep a close eye on —, or as destructive as Hulk, Harry spent a lot of time debating if he'd win in a fight against a witch like McGonagall or wizard like Snape. If the Vibranium in his shield wasn't resistant to magic — something Harry figured he should research sooner rather than later — he could easily see McGonagall transfiguring the shield into a feather and then incinerating it. Then Snape would probably stalk in and use some obscure dark curse and Captain America would be done.

The Avenger who posed the greatest risk to Harry was Thor, and it had nothing to do with his magic hammer. What Harry saw Loki do in the Battle of New York too closely resembled the magic Harry knew, and the fewer ties to magic around him, the better off he'd be. To anyone else, he was just another no-maj. Loki, on the other hand, might be able to sense his magic and therefore it wasn't too much of a stretch to assume Thor could too. According to Tony, despite sharing a floor with Steve, the God of Thunder technically didn't live in the tower and rarely attended their team nights. With Harry's luck, however, this would be the week Tony was wrong about Thor skipping out. Just in case, Harry tried to brainstorm at least one contingency plan. Unfortunately, every idea ended with Snape skinning him alive for calling him on his magic mirror, something Harry planned to avoid at all costs.

Heading into Friday, Harry wanted to be excited because life in the Tower as Harry Evans should have been perfectly fine. Except, Harry's nights hadn't been nearly as uneventful as his days.

Harry's nightmares not only returned but worsened the more he settled into his new life with Tony and Pepper, threatening to ruin it all. Early in the week, the dreams were snippets of the Graveyard — a flash of green and Cedric's empty eyes, the sound of Voldemort's vicious curses, or the returning tremble waking him up — yet as the week progressed, then they became longer and more detailed, leading up his worst one Thursday night when Harry dreamed he wasn't able to escape the graveyard and was used in whatever ritual Snape said the evil wizard was planning for him. It didn't matter that Harry knew nothing specific about what the ritual entailed, his mind was more than happy to fill in the blanks with things like removing various body parts from Harry while strapped to the tombstone, still very much alive. Every time he awoke in a cold sweat JARVIS asked if he needed help. The first two nights it took Harry a solid minute to remember where the disembodied voice came from, and why he was asking. By the third night, he preventively told JARVIS to assume he never needed help from a nightmare. JARVIS had hesitated — could an AI sound conflicted? — but eventually agreed.

One night Harry had actually debated telling Pepper about his nightmares when they were working on a puzzle of the Seine River. Tony had gone down to his private lab for the night and in casual conversation, Pepper had asked him how he was sleeping at the Tower. Not thinking, Harry almost answered honestly but changed his mind at the last second. Instead, he told her how his bed was the most comfortable he'd ever had; not a total lie, since it felt as close to sleeping on a cloud as Harry could imagine getting.

After the close call of telling his new father's girlfriend that he had nightmares as a teenager, Harry tried to control them. Just like he did at the Dursleys when he returned there after school, he slept in shorter spurts throughout the night and stayed awake if he had multiple nightmares. The downfall was that it left him exhausted to his core, making the idea of spending Friday night meeting the Avengers feel more like a job he wanted to avoid than the fun game night he had been looking forward to. And that was only the mental side of the nightmares. Physically, despite using Snape's potion consistently, his tremors worsened too, forcing him to get creative in hiding the issue from his new guardians. The combination made the end of his week significantly more stressful than the beginning and left him irritable and tense coming into Friday evening.

"Harry?"

A warm hand touched Harry's arm, startling the teen almost right out of the living room chair. He'd been looking out the window as he listened — or thought he was listening — to Tony contemplating a change of plans for Harry's introduction to "the team" for the fifth time in three days. Originally, Tony wanted to sit them down to explain the situation first, and then have Pepper escort Harry upstairs afterwards. That changed to Harry just showing up with Tony and pretending as if Harry had always been there, leaving the others to guess what was going on. Thankfully, Pepper reminded Tony how having a surprise person in a group of superheroes and assassins wasn't necessarily the smartest idea so Harry didn't have rain on whatever parade Tony had worked up in his head by telling him he didn't fancy being introduced as a "surprise". The last Harry heard of the plan, they settled on Tony telling the team while Harry hung out near the lifts waiting on Tony's signal to enter. That one was decided on during breakfast that morning but apparently Tony wanted to make yet another change to the agenda; one Harry didn't hear because of his utter exhaustion.

"Whoa, Bambino!" Tony exclaimed. After helping Harry back into the chair, he remained standing close, almost alarmingly too close, to Harry's side. Desperate for some space, Harry pulled away to sit on the other side of the small chair. It wasn't much, but it'd have to do. "Are you sure you're alright? We can totally skip out on team night if you're too knackered. It'd be the perfect Stark move to do."

"Knackered?" Harry asked with a grimace. Although the word accurately described him, hearing it in Tony's full-fledged American accent sounded too weird.

"It means tired."

"Yeah, I know what it means," the teen snapped. In a slightly softer tone, aiming for sassy-sarcasm, he added, "What I don't know is why you used it."

If Tony had a problem with Harry's latest attitude, he hid it well, standing a little taller and squaring his shoulders, almost in a sense of pride. "I'm trying to help you feel more acclimated… at home… in your new casa. Wait until you see the spread of fish and chips tonight." Unable to resist, Harry smirked as he rolled his eyes. "And it's clearly working if you're joking around with me like that rather than all the walking on eggshells crap you've been doing all week."

Harry frowned. "I have not been walking on eggshells–"

"Whatever you say, kid," Tony retorted in a very toddler-like fashion. "Because teenage boys do every little thing they're told as soon as they're asked."

"Or," Harry said, emphasizing the word, "maybe I'm just too knackered to care anymore."

"I see what you did there." Tony's hand fell awkwardly on Harry's shoulder, as if he intended to reach up to mess with Harry's unmanageable hair but changed his mind at the last second. He gave it a small, awkward squeeze. "Now, about tonight…"

It took Harry making three more requests and insulting the man by calling him a helicopter parent before he persuaded Tony that he had no problems meeting the team that night. In fact, he looked forward to it for no other reason than to use their common areas next week to help pass the boring time. While the private floor had plenty of areas for Harry to roam, it still felt a lot like being locked up at Privet Drive… a very, very large version of Privet Drive, but locked up nonetheless. Harry hated feeling trapped more than anything. It made him antsy and gave him the urge to leave immediately; counterproductive to what Sirius and Snape spent a lot of energy on. However, once the rest of the Tower knew about Harry's existence, Tony promised Harry he could wander into the non-residential floors above them, including the theater, gym, and indoor pool. Harry fully intended to use them.

In the end, they went with the same plan they previously agreed on: Harry waiting for Tony to give him a signal after Tony explained the situation about Harry to his tower-mates. What none of them expected was Natasha being late. So as Harry paced the area in front of the lift, listening to Tony on the other side of the door drone on about her tardiness, refusing to tell them his "big news" without her, and eventually threatening to put her new weapon projects at the bottom of his to-do list, the spy managed successfully sneaked up behind Harry.

"You're Tony's big news, huh?"

Harry froze at the sound of her crisp voice behind him, the worst position to be caught in. Knowing exactly who to expect standing there when he turned around didn't help to stop the hair on Harry's neck from standing up at the sight of the Black Widow scrutinizing him suspiciously, her finely sculpted single eyebrow arched, waiting for his answer.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry replied in the same false confident tone he often used when confronting Snape.

"Ah, you're British too. Well, that certainly explains Tony's choice of food tonight." Her eyes scanned him head to toe and jutted her chin at the door behind. "Do you really think you'd be standing here if you weren't supposed to be here? C'mon kid it doesn't take a spy to put two and two together."

"Erm…"

Before Harry could ask what she meant by that, her arm tightened around his shoulders. "Let's go have some fun, shall we?"

Once again, she didn't let Harry respond, she simply dragged him into the Avengers' version of a common room; his protest stuck in his throat.

The room was one huge open space, around the size of Tony's place if they removed all the bedroom walls, yet somehow had a more inviting feeling to it. Posters of bands and movies Harry didn't recognize covered its neutral cream walls, and plush rugs with wild, unmatching geometric patterns offset the dark hardwood floors running the length of the room. At first glance, Harry could make out three distinct areas of the room: the main lounge section in the middle, a gaming area to the left, and a television spot to the right.

The same floor-to-ceiling windows Harry had seen on every exterior wall in the Tower gave a great backdrop to the room. It even had a set of doors leading onto a large balcony area, surely giving the better view Pepper promised him the other day. Five long tables sat near the wall beside the door, each filled with an absurd amount of food and bottles of soda. It reminded Harry of the Great Hall if it had a buffet instead of the family-style tables. While there were no official tables and chairs to sit and dine at, several sofas, loungers, and recliners were scattered about the center of the room, with side tables nearby to create a casual eating area. A blue felted pool table, more worn-in than the one Harry used in Tony's guest suite, was in the gaming area along with a ping-pong table directly behind it. A few paddles and balls balanced in the center, as if someone had recently played. Opposite the ping-pong table, a large flat-screen television covered most of the wall. With no apparent cables or hardware, if Harry didn't know better he would have assumed a strong sticking charm held it in place. Finally, rounding out the room was the gaming area with a large sectional couch in front of the television and a coffee table in the center covered with a box of video games and four controllers.

The door closed softly behind them but any hope Harry had of a quiet entrance disappeared by Natasha exclaiming, "Hey Tony! I found your kid wandering in the hallway. What kind of father leaves a teenage boy to roam a place with easy access to weapons?"

The air in the room stilled for a few seconds as the group processed what Natasha said, everyone glancing back and forth between Tony and Harry. As soon as it sank in. though, they began asking questions at breakneck speed and shouting over one another. Harry's eyes bounced from person to person but it was impossible for him to keep up with the banter.

"–He doesn't have access to any weapons!"

"Who would give you a kid–"

"–No one gave me him! Jesus Christ, Barton do I have to give you the birds and the bees talk?!"

"–Is this really a surprise? Knowing a fraction of his history, it was bound to happen–"

"–When did he show up?"

"About a week ago–"

"–Is this why you've been hiding out on your floor?"

"We haven't been hiding–"

"Why do I feel you knew about this and didn't tell us?"

The last question came from Steve to Bruce. That Bruce was the only one of the group who remained seated on one of the most comfortable looking plush chairs Harry had ever seen, with a dumbfounded expression on his face, probably gave his secret away. With the attention now on the doctor, the entire room went eerily silent waiting for his answer.

"What was I supposed to do? It wasn't my place to say anything," Bruce eventually blurted out to defend himself. He pointed at Natasha, who had dropped Harry off next to Tony, and continued on to sit beside Clint. "How did you even find out?"

"Yeah, Natasha," Tony whipped around to face her. "Care to explain?"

"Lucky guess?" She offered, giving a nonchalant shrug of her shoulder. "It wasn't hard to figure out. You've locked yourself away all week–and not in your shop–you call us all here, telling us you have some big news and the kid waiting outside looks like a younger, scrawnier version of you." She winked at Harry. "Sorry kid, it's true. You need to put some muscle in those bones if you're gonna survive here."

"I'm sure it was more than luck, Romanoff."

She gave another shrug, but this time didn't provide any extra commentary.

Releasing a sad sigh at his big moment lost, Tony motioned Harry forward until they stood side-by-side. "Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to my son, Harry Evans. Harry, from left to right you have Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff… you know Bruce and Rhodey already… and that's Steve Rogers. Like I mentioned the other day, Thor doesn't regularly show up around here unless we need some extra power on a mission, which usually means I'm there too."

The group collectively groaned, and Clint muttered, "Get over yourself, Stark." True to form, Tony ignored every negative comment made about him.

"Now with Harry here tonight," he went on, pointing his finger at them as he spoke, "every single one of you better be on your best behavior. If Pepper catches any word of gambling or life- or limb-threatening stunts, I'm kicking you all out of my Tower."

"Wait a minute," Clint said, pointing his finger into the air. "Just to make sure I understand correctly, are you saying we can't do any of that stuff, or Pepper can't know about it?"

"Interpret it how you'd like, just know you've been warned." Tony held his hands up in innocence. "Now let's get this party started."

And "party" was definitely the best word to describe it.

Loud music poured out from hidden speakers around the room, the same ones he assumed were everywhere for access to JARVIS, as they made their way over to the food. Natasha — "Baby Stark can call me Nat" — had been right about dinner. From the common Fish and Chips and Banger and Mash to a bite-sized version of Steak and Kidney Pie and Scotch Eggs, Tony indulged in ordering every British dish he could think of in the Manhattan area. If anyone cared about the food selection, they kept their complaints to themselves and piled mounds of different dishes onto their plates.

Harry added a small salad, a few pieces of fish and some chips to his plate, then followed Clint to the middle part and dropped on the couch. He took a peek at the adults surrounding him to see how they arranged their plates before placing his plate on the coffee table in front of him. Growing up, Dudley could occasionally eat in the living room — the only rule Aunt Petunia truly enforced was dining at the table or in the kitchen — but Harry wasn't allowed to. At Hogwarts, they ate all of their meals in the Great Hall and only had snacks in the common room, so seeing a group of men and women settling around the sofa or even sitting on the floor, plates of food balanced on their laps, made him smile. But it was comfortable, and it reminded him of his first meal at The Burrow.

Unlike at the Burrow and everywhere else in the Wizarding World, the Avengers knew nothing about him, while he knew quite a lot about them. Throughout dinner, Harry patiently answered their questions about himself and his life in England. He limited the details of his mum's and James's death to "a car accident" when asked how he ended up living with the Dursleys, and then changed the subject to attending an exclusive boarding school in Scotland, his friends, and his love of sports, all of which he said with such conviction that they didn't seem to doubt any of it.

The conversation took a bizarre turn when they started interrogating Tony about how much he learned about Harry in the week he'd been living there. By then, the adults had finished several rounds of their "adults only" beverages, as Tony immaturely referred to it, and they started yelling out things for Tony to answer. What started easy with his favorite color, food, and class subject, ended at where Harry's was born and how Tony had met Lily.

"I was invited to take a class on robotics in London." Tony swirled the amber liquid in his glass tumbler and took a long sip from it. "It ended up being a colossal waste of time and by the third session I was positive the only reason I got the invite was so they could use my name in their marketing materials." He spread his hands across his face, like displaying a sign. "Come here and get a mediocre engineering education! Why? You know… because the great Tony Stark attended!"

"So, did you meet in class?" Bruce thoughtfully asked. "Was she a student there?"

"No–" Tony exaggerated the end of the word. "We met at a little rundown dive bar."

"Of course, you did." Steve shook his head in disappointment and after everything Harry had seen and heard about his father's history, Steve really shouldn't have sounded so disappointed.

"Lily was studying to be a nurse," Tony said, turning serious. "She told me she was there looking for a way to forget an awful day at work and I was there trying to hide from my destiny. Worked too because somehow I was attracted to the only woman who had no clue who I was. Even on the day I left, I still couldn't tell if she was lying about it or not."

"Why would she have lied?" Harry blurted out, unable to stay quiet when the topic of his mother took a turn in a possibly unfavorable direction for his mother.

Nat let out a loud sarcastic laugh, "You'd be surprised, kid. The number of women who throw themselves at your dad is crazy. I've gotten the unfortunate chance to see it firsthand, and let's just say that if I wanted to catch his attention, and set myself apart from them, I'd play dumb about who he is… the nurse card would be an added benefit."

Another round of ruckus laughter passed through the adults, followed by various jokes about Tony playing patient for the new nurse. Except Harry didn't find it funny at all. The mere idea of his existence coming from his mother playing into his father's Playboy lifestyle made Harry's stomach churn. Not that anyone noticed Harry's reaction as the teasing and jokes continued to get worse and worse.

"Hey, guys!" Steve finally yelled over everyone talking. "Cool it down, will you?"

Everyone turned to Harry, staring at him, making his face darken at least three more shades of red.

"Oh, shit!" Tony exclaimed with a sinister chuckle. "I'm sorry, Harry. That was wildly inappropriate and not what you need to hear about you old man and… and your mother who I have no doubt loved you very much. I… uh… God, Pepper was right to say I'd screw this up… I barely made it through dinner."

Harry resisted the urge to tell him he didn't mind, to keep the peace. But it wasn't fine. The veiled insults to his mother — a woman who protected him by choosing to go through with an unplanned pregnancy and then literally died for him against Voldemort — stung deep in his soul. The silence built up in the room, broken only by the continued music and Clint crunching away at a handful of crisps.

Maria eventually saved them all and broke the awkward silence by asking, "When is his birthday?"

Like a light switch, Tony's face shifted from heavy guilt to light-hearted. "You know I have his official birth certificate, right?" He scoffed, flashing the woman a cocky smirk. "And practically a photogenic memory, it's almost too easy to answer."

"Having the certificate doesn't mean you read it, and it wasn't like you were there for the event," Clint countered, without missing a beat. Nat slapped his arm when a puff of crumbs fell from his mouth as he spoke.

"Fine, fine," Tony grumbled. He lifted his hand in the air, drawing more of their attention towards him and not to Harry. Not realizing it, Harry watched him with bated breath, equally expecting him to get it and miss it. "It's July…" Tony paused, his brown eyes met Harry's green, "... 31st… 1998. And for those of you who can't do mental math–ahem, Clint–he'll be turning fifteenin a week and a half, and, no, gifts are not optional."

Harry fought back the lump instantaneously forming in his throat. Many people knew his birthday… most complete strangers to him. Yet the simple fact of his father knowing it meant more than all of them. None of his relatives had remembered or even cared. Now he had one.

"Well happy early birthday, Harry," Maria said to him. "Any birthday traditions Tony should know about from home?"

Harry opened his mouth to tell them they didn't need to celebrate it, but quickly closed it. They didn't need to know how the closest he'd ever come to celebrating the day had been Hagrid bringing him a birthday cake with his Hogwarts letter on his eleventh birthday. Or how the Dursleys ignored every single birthday before then, and the ones since then included him getting locked away on his twelfth birthday for the Dobby debacle, blowing up Aunt Marge on his thirteenth — living at The Leaky Cauldron afterward could be considered a positive but no one really acknowledged his birthday — and then last year he spent it in his room eating the treats his friends sent him. Overall, his threshold for birthdays was set embarrassingly low.

Fortunately, he didn't have to think of a better answer than the truth because Tony jumped in. "Just say the word and we'll arrange it. Since Pepper won't let me throw him a party–"

"For good reason," Rhodey interrupted. "He's fifteen, Tones, and your parties are notoriously not teenager-appropriate."

"Hey! I can cool it down to a solid fifteen-year-old level," Tony pouted. He turned to Harry and said, "I promise, I'll work on that for next year. For this year, what do you think about taking a trip out to the Malibu house?"

Harry had just taken a sip of his soda and coughed at the absurd suggestion. Immediately, Maria clapped her hand on his back to help, until he regained enough composure to wave her off.

And, of course, amid some of the brightest and most famous people in the country, Harry asked the first thing that came to his mind, "Erm, would we have to fly there?"

"Yeah, kid. California is kind of on the other side of the country," Tony snorted, making Harry feel even more embarrassed for asking it. "Which, as the crow flies, would be like going from London to…" he screwed his eye doing some mental math, "... somewhere in the middle of Russia. Definitely past Moscow. To give some better perspective on it, flying still takes somewhere around six hours from here, about the same time it took you to fly to New York from London."

"Oh." Harry obviously knew the United States was big, but he hadn't realized it was 'across the ocean' big.

Picking up on Harry's apprehension, Tony casually asked, "Is that a problem? Because you said the other day, you've never been to a beach and we have the best spot on the Pacific for your first beach experience. You're going to love it."

"It's n-nothing," Harry stuttered, struggling to think of any excuse to stay put. "I really didn't enjoy flying here much. The plane… it-it kind of freaked me out."

"I mean, sitting in the cramped economy seats will freak anyone out," Tony joked. "You'll feel better in the jet, trust me. Besides, the trip isn't totally altruistic. I have to head out there anyway to close up the house and Pepper already agreed to attend a fundraiser out there. I didn't plan on attending but it'd be a cool trip for me, you, and Pep to take together. And you'd get to see another of your many homes."

Harry's eyes widened. "Many?"

"We've places all over the world, Bambino." Tony took a long sip of his drink from the tumbler, hiding a sly smile behind the glass. "Anywhere you want to go, I'm sure I've got somewhere for us to stay. No matter where we go, we'll travel there in style. What'd you say we get you some extra-strength sunscreen so your pasty ass doesn't burn and we spend your birthday at the ocean?"

How could Harry say no to that? Especially considering he didn't want to say no. Almost already able to feel the warm sand between his toes, he wanted to spend his birthday there with Tony and Pepper, to get to know them away from Stark Industries and the Avengers, and he really, really wanted to see the ocean. The Dursleys took a trip to the ocean every other summer which Harry never got to go, making the "family" pictures Aunt Petunia framed from their trips the closest Harry came to seeing it.

The only potential issue was Snape. Since Snape had made it crystal clear Harry wasn't worth risking international disapparation, he probably wouldn't be dropping in randomly. It wouldn't stop Harry either way; annoying Snape was a pastime Harry enjoyed. Getting caught and ruining his chances of living with Sirius impacted his decision more than Snape, but if California was further from London than New York, then Harry could argue that putting extra distance between him and the Death Eaters searching for him was a good thing.

"Sounds awesome," Harry finally answered, relishing in the warmth growing inside of him at Tony's elevation; another new experience for Harry — actually wanting to make an adult happy.

As soon as Tony heard Harry's approval, he eagerly told Harry and the rest of the group about life in Malibu. In the amount of detail he provided, Harry could basically smell the salt water as he imagined the cliff-side mansion — shivering slightly at the term because it reminded him too much of Malfoy — with as many windows overlooking the ocean as the Tower had overlooking New York. And because it was sitting on the west coast, Harry could watch the sunset over the water, which the teen did not know how badly he wanted to see it until Tony described it.

"As exciting as this has been, I believe it's time to begin the fun half of the night." Nat stood and extended her arm, inviting Harry to join her. "C'mon, Baby Stark–"

"Don't call me that."

Nat pretended not to hear him, but her smirk suggested otherwise. "You need to get to know the team away from Daddy Stark."

"Oh, you definitely don't want to call me that," Tony warned. "Pepper would take offense to that and she can be downright scary sometimes."

"Gross." Harry grimaced, his expression certainly resembling when he took Skele-Gro in his second year. He definitely didn't need to know that information.

Tony jabbed his finger at her, scolding her like a child. "Don't go corrupting my kid, Romanoff. He's an innocent one. I'd like him to stay that way."

"Oh, don't you worry, Tony, I'm sure you'll handle that all on your own." She threw her arm tightly around his shoulders and guided him towards the game room. Then after giving Harry a mischievous wink, she called over her shoulder, "Besides he's almost fifteen, and no fifteen-year-old boy is innocent."


AN: I really wanted to expand on the end, specifically another scene with Harry and the Avengers beyond what was originally written but lately I'm having a hard time connecting with Harry's character. He needs to be angsty for a bit longer and I need less angst in my real life. So we're not meshing well. In order to not delay this chapter, I decided not to include more. I might either split the POV next chapter to start with Harry and Avengers or add it as a one-shot later. While it doesn't really add anything to the story plots, I have extra room on the next one for it. We'll see.