Chapter 1: The Letter

The strange objects in the room twinkled with an odd blue light, while the people in the portraits snoozed gently in the background. In the center of the clutter, sat an old man at a weathered desk with the expectant air of a person who was waiting for some sort of visitor. A tattered book lay open in his lap, surrounding by the wayward silver strands of hair from his beard.

A sharp rap instantly brought him to alertness as his eyes sharply flickered to the door. A moment of hesitation followed, then he quietly said, "Come in, Minerva."

A stern-looking women entered the room, a bun placed neatly on her head as she swept through the room to stand in front of the old man.

"You called, Albus?"

Albus nodded gravely, before standing up and placing the book on the desk. He reached out to grab a silver bowl filled with yellow sweets, and offered one to the woman standing in front of him.

"Lemon drop?"

Minerva gave him an exasperated look. Albus just smiled faintly, before popping one in his mouth. "Your decision, I suppose."

As he placed the silver bowl carefully back on the table, Minerva strolled over to take a closer look at the battered book lying open on the wooden surface. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the spindly handwriting on the cover. "Is this written by Beedle the Bard?"

Albus raised an eyebrow, before evenly responding, "'Are you familiar with 'The Stones of Creation'?"

Minerva looked up to meet Albus's amused expression, her mouth thinning. "No, but I don't see how fables have anything to do with the situation at hand." She waved her hand exasperatedly over the dark cover. "Black is on the loose, and all we have are fairy tales?"

Albus just stared at her, his eyes unnervingly sharp as he slowly sat back down in his seat.

"Truths often make up the core of a story," he sighed. "It's inconvenient to sort out the falsehoods from the truth, but that's the price of knowledge."

He showed his first sign of impatience when Minerva opened her mouth to protest again, and waved her objections away.

"I'll read the tale first," he said. At her incredulous look, he sighed and gestured to the book, which flipped open. Quietly, but firmly, he stated, "It's not about Black."

"What?" Minerva nearly shrieked. "We should be focusing on the murderer, not on a child's bedtime story." But a look from Albus, icy without its customary twinkle, made her quiet down unwillingly.

With a hint of weariness, Albus said, "Minerva, I wish that we were just dealing with Black. But something's brewing, and the only clue I've been able to find was in this book."

"What about Harr-"

"I have not forgotten about Harry," he interrupted. "But we must be ready for the storm that is brewing."

He glanced at Minerva, who, after a indecisive pause, closed her mouth and nodded stiffly. With that seemingly decided, he looked down and began reading.

"In the beginning, before the creation of the universe, there were six sentient beings that lived in peace. But there came a day when a sudden explosion ripped through the endless peace, throwing bits of earth and dust throughout the darkened night. The dirt clumped together, forming planets and stars to fill the newly created universe with light."

"But the six beings were destroyed, and their remnants were scattered across the universe, forming into six stones of tremendous abilities. The first stone was made of sheer power, while the second had the ability to influence reality itself. The third stone could manipulate space, the fourth, time, and the fifth could manipulate consciousness and minds. And the sixth stone was rumored to be able to house souls inside circles and lines."

"A single one of these stones could bring the population of an entire planet to its knees. But the energy from something as powerful as these stones must be dispersed somewhere. The stones created a pocket in the universe, and the living beings learned to harness the energy inside this tear."

"But if these stones are ever brought together, the magic in this pocket will overflow. Worlds will be meshed, towns will be burned, and hatred will be sown. And that's when the chosen will be ripped from their world to avenge their own."

Albus closed the book, looking across to Minerva, who was looking intrigued, but skeptical.

"Albus, you can't possibly believe that this could be true."

With growing confidence in her voice, she went on. "It's just a child's tale, just like 'The Tale of Three Brothers.' We can't just go on believing every bedtime story we hear."

Albus just looked at her calmly, picking up his wand and rolling the wood between his long fingers.

She went on with a nearly inaudible snort, completely at odds compared to her usual severe demeanor. "Imagine, having invincible wands and powerful stones. It's completely outrageous."

He replied lightly, "I suppose so."

Clearly still unsettled, Minerva glanced back at the book on the table, frowning slightly. "It even rhymes."

"Yes, it does," Albus said, faintly amused.

A short pause. "Was that all?"

"That was all I wanted to show you." He waved a hand at the door, politely dismissing her. "Thank you for your time Minerva. You're free to go."

Minerva strode to the door before hesitating. Then impulsively, as if she couldn't hold herself back, she quietly asked, "But it can't be real, right?"

He didn't answer, but his look of resignation said enough.

He reached out to touch the laughing face of a woman, red hair framing her face like an angel surrounded by flames. Then her face closed off suddenly, as she turned around and spotted something far off in the distance.

A sudden pang of longing struck his heart, and he held out his hand pleadingly.

Don't go, he wanted to say. We can make this work.

But his voice wasn't working, and metal was materializing all around him.

She looked back at him with a tired glance, and shook her head, before turning on her heel and strolling away. Behind her, a purple figure loomed higher, fist adorned with a glittering golden gauntlet.

By this time, the red and gold fully materialized around him, and his held-out hand hummed with a glittering blue light. But the giant just laughed, and held up his golden gauntlet with the six glowing stones on it.

He tried blasting the glove off, the repulsors at his sides shooting a beam of white light that got batted away like a cat with a piece of yarn.

"You can't stop me, Tony Stark."

He could see the amusement in the giant's eyes, as if he was an insignificant speck on the ground. You can't protect them, they seemed to reflect mockingly.

And you'll know what it's like to lose.

With a soundless roar, he charged at the purple giant, repulsors whirring as they absorbed energy from the blue light on his chest. But the giant just held on bejeweled hand up, and snapped his fingers with a triumphant smirk.

Then a small voice whispered, "Mister Stark?"

He glanced down to see a young boy, desperately stumbling towards him.

"I don't… I don't feel so good."

The anger immediately drained out of him as he watched the boy collapse into his arms, coughing. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the giant flicker into nothingness, but he absolutely didn't care because all his thoughts were coalescing into a few jumbled words.

No.

Not him.

"I don't want to go, please, I don't want to."

The quiet, resigned voice nearly cut through him as his repulsors died out and he helplessly wrapped a red and gold hand around the boy.

Please no- not him, please, don't take him away too.

The boy slowly began disintegrating into dust, and the solid, breathing flesh underneath him faded away into pieces of gray ash.

"I'm- sorry."

And with that, his world shattered into fragments of pain and grief. The boy was gone, blown away by the wind until only a few pieces of gray ash lingered in the air.

Gone.

A rip in his chest opened up, and he could almost imagine the blue glow settling back into his chest, transforming back into a second heart because the other one felt like it was being torn out. It was just like the time when the shards of metal got embedded inside his chest, and iron wires and copper bolts were the only things that kept him alive.

Both times there was a hole in his chest, and both times he couldn't save them.

He stayed there in the wasteland, crouched on the ground for what seemed like centuries, feeling the broken throb of his heart and watching the remaining ash slowly settle on the dusty ground.

Then a voice broke through the suffocating silence.

"What would you do to get him back?"

The words weren't spoken aloud. Rather, they hung in the air like shards of glass spinning gracefully out of control. It was more of a silent murmur that managed to linger in the air, soft and gentle, and definitely not human.

He didn't look behind him as he whispered, voice brittle and so unlike the soft sound of the unknown being, "Anything."

"Anything?"

A pause, and then he repeated, "Anything."

The voice replied steadily, "First, you must find Death and summon the stones."

He spun around, eyes narrowed in confusion. "What does that even mean?"

Then his eyes widened as he spotted the orange glowing ball behind him, pulsing with power and growing larger with every passing second. The light swallowed him up, but not before he caught the last murmur of words from the strange orange orb.

"And then, you'll get him back afterwards."

Tony woke up in a twisted pile of blankets, his head swirling with half-formed, panicked thoughts and his chest aching with something indiscernible. Taking a deep breathe of air, he clutched his sheets and tried to steady his shaking hands.

Focus. Just another weird dream Tony, nothing to get so worked up about.

He could still smell the scent of pickled slugs and mint that was still in the air from the last potion he accidentally spilled on the ground. He could even faintly hear the metal clanging from his father downstairs, which indicated that he was working on another potion.

Mentally he sighed, because that basically meant that he had to stay away from his dear old grumpy father for the rest of the day until the potion was done. But it wasn't too big of a deal, considering that he was already a pro at avoiding said grumpy father.

The lack of humming in the rooms downstairs indicated that his mother probably was off somewhere, doing goodie good things in the muggle world. She focused on charities and other events to help bring up their reputations as a rich family (Howard did occasionally invent "medicines" for the muggle world).

She almost hired a butler because they were that rich, but his father refused to have one, especially since he didn't want to "deal with some idiotic fella who knows nothing about the wizarding world and will eventually call the police on us because of said stupidity." He would never tell his father, but there were times where he occasionally wished that his mother would hire a butler just so he had someone else to talk to. He could almost imagine the butler's voice, kind and caring. Someone who he could rely on.

Too bad that wasn't ever going to happen.

Rolling around in his bed, he kicked the sheets off himself. Already, the dream was fading away, as he pushed the last remnants of fogginess and panic away because he couldn't risk being off-balanced and wonky while working on a potion. The last time he did that, he accidentally fell into the fire, and nearly burnt off his entire face.

(St Mungos probably had a bed saved just for him, considering how much times he managed to injure himself.)

After he hopped off his bed and grabbed a dusty old cloak from the hook hanging on the wall, he quietly edged down the stairs to grab some ingredients from the cupboard downstairs. Unfortunately, summer meant that he had to practice his potions all day long, unlike some other kids who actually were able to relax, or eat poison, or whatever normal kids do in this day and age.

Apparently, being the son of a famous potion master meant that he also had to be an expert at creating weird drinks. But he actually didn't mind too much, since making potions was awesome. People got confused with the knick-knacks behind brewing a potion all the time. But for Tony, it was somehow easy to remember whether or not he had to stir five turns counterclockwise or add a dash of powdered bone.

Anyways, it was honestly kind of entertaining to see how remembering all the steps to a twenty ingredient potion caused jaws to drops. Memorizing things was as easy as chowing down a piece of chocolate. Inventing potions to fit exactly what was needed was the hard part.

After stumbling downstairs, he grabbed a spare bottle of a Pepper-Up potion lying haphazardly on the table before downing it. Immediately, steam whistled out of his ears, and his drowsiness somewhat faded away.

Now that was better. He could actually think semi-properly, what a surprise.

Just three more doses left to go, and he'll be as good as new.

Before the little annoying voice in his head could berate him for drinking yet another dose of Pepper-Up (addiction and too much is bad, that sort of thing, blah blah), he quickly gathered another handful of fire seeds and mandrake root before scampering upstairs. Considering that his own secret stash of Pepper-Up potions was running out alarmingly fast from his mass consumption of them, it was an absolute necessity to brew some more.

Before he could disappear inside his room to make more drugs (yay!), he spotted an owl flying through an open window on the bottom floor. Where his grumpy father was currently working on one of his extremely important potions.

He froze. Then he mentally snorted to himself, because what were the odds that this owl was supposed to be for him?

Maybe it was another request for his father to brew yet another potion? Or som-

"Anthony. Come downstairs. Right. Now."

As if on cue, his father's voice drifted up to his room, filled to the brim with exasperation.

There went his goal to avoid grumpy old fathers.

With a sigh, he dumped the ingredients outside his door, and trudged downstairs. Honestly, he would be so much more impressed that his father could communicate across an entire floor without screaming if he wasn't going to be lectured in a couple of minutes. What was the letter even about anyways?

Outside the potions room, he waited with one of his better poker faces, allowing his hand to tap a nervous beat against his leg.

Did someone finally discover that he was the one to spike the Minister of Magic's drink with a Laughing potion?

His father soon appeared in the doorway, eyes narrowed in annoyance.

"Stop tapping your finger on your leg. It's obvious that you're nervous, and you don't want your rivals to take advantage of that."

Tony immediately stopped, nearly spitting back a frustrated retort before reigning himself in.

He really wasn't in the mood to make this worse. Any other day, he would have gladly snarked back, but that weird dream that he couldn't even remember (something about glowing orange balls?) added on to his lack of Pepper-Up potions made him want to get over this as fast as possible.

He strolled inside the brewing room and watched Howard snatch the letter on top of a blackened table. It was a white envelope emblazoned with a bold red seal.

No way. Was it-

"Your Hogwarts letter, I presume," Howard said, handing over the paper.

Trying to hold back his excitement, Tony reached a hand over to the piece of paper, but then hesitated. Something didn't feel… right.

He never felt that way before.

His father looked at him strangely, still holding out the letter. "I thought you wanted to go to Hogwarts?"

He tried to shove the letter in Tony's outstretched hand, but the feeling of wrongness overwhelmed him, and he quickly snatched his hand back before the letter could touch him.

"C-could you just, place the letter on the table instead?"

Howard gave him a stern glare, and shook his head. "You can't do something like that. People are going to be handing you papers all the time, so get used to it."

Pushing the feeling away, Tony reluctantly held out his hand, waiting for the paper to fall onto his open palm. But of course, his hand had to decide to be a rebel, instinctively flinching away when Howard dropped the letter. He quickly knelt down and snatched it up from the ground, pretending that nothing happened because seriously… not being able to be handed things?

Now that was just pure lame.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Howard's hand pinch his brow in exasperation, with one of those disappointed sighs that made his heart drop painfully. But before he could flee from the room, Howard clamped a steady hand on his shoulder.

"I expect you to do well in school, with none of that nonsense you just showed."

"Of course my goal in life is to fail school, dad," Tony retorted, watching the letter fold under his clenched fists.

Howard sighed, before letting go of him. "I just want you do reach your full potential." He looked at Tony seriously. "Be something more than just a casual tinkerer with potions. You can do so much more with your life, so take that opportunity."

And with that piece of very helpful wisdom, he turned around to sprinkle something on his secret concoction, silently dismissing him.

No congratulations. No praise.

It wasn't a surprise anyways. He never got any praise when he was four, and managed to brew his first potion. Or when he invented his own potion when he was only six, a brew that caused the drinker to grow cat ears and a tail (a slight variation of the Polyjuice potion). Howard wasn't really pleased with the results of that one, but Tony totally didn't care about his opinion.

(He didn't spend the night staring up at the ceiling, obsessively wondering on how he could do something right.)

And now he was 11, and apparently wasting his life away brewing funky little potions. Surprise, surprise.

Something ugly bubbled up in Tony, and he almost blurted out if Howard even cared about him anymore besides being smart and getting a good reputation. But luckily, he managed to push the feeling down before anything spilled out.

Feelings were dumb anyways. Made him burst out into hives, so he would rather avoid the subject.

"Why are you still here?" Howard muttered quietly, back turned against him.

Ignoring the pang in his chest, he quickly slid out of the musty potions room, clutching the piece of paper to his chest. When he was safely outside, his calm mask crumpled to pieces.

He shouldn't have expected anything else.

So why did a tiny part of him expect some sort of congratulations for getting into the best wizarding school in Britain?

Snorting to himself bitterly, he collapsed against the wall, gently peeling open the red stamp off the envelope to read the fancy cursive inside. Howard probably thought sending him off to Hogwarts was one of his best decisions he had ever made.

As he skimmed through the letter and the list of school supplies, a trickle of determination slowly filled the back of his mind.

He would become the best wizard in the school, and then his father would have to be proud of him.

Maybe if he kept on working, he would able to be someone special, not just the little kid who hung around the back all the time. Maybe he would turn into someone worthwhile, if he just became better.

Maybe his dad would be proud. Wouldn't that be something?

But for now, he just had to pretend that he was untouchable, because his father's opinion actually didn't matter much. He was a Stark, and Starks were made of iron. Wasn't that how the expression went?

He stared at the letter blankly, ignoring the watery feeling in his chest.

Just be wiser.

Be stronger.

Be better.

The mantra filled his mind, the little whisper in the back of his head that never ever went away.

Just be better.

And that's the start of the Avengers in Hogwarts! As you probably could tell, this story takes place during the same time frame as The Prisoner of Azkaban. The Golden Trio will be in their third year of Hogwarts, but the Avengers will still be in their first year.

Btw, how did you guys think of Howard? I wanted to make him seem kind of emotionless and very stern, but I didn't want him to seem purposefully cruel. From what I could tell in the Marvel Universe, he wasn't really a terrible guy, but it was kind of obvious that he didn't bring up Tony with a very caring demeanor. I could definitely see him being a bit distant and very demanding, but in his mind, he's just trying to do the best for Tony. But of course, that method of parenting doesn't really work.

If you have any constructive criticism, or parts you really enjoyed in this chappie, feel free to leave a review. Anytime I see a fav, follow, or review, I get super happy. Otherwise, hope you guys enjoyed this!