Disclaimer: We do not own the characters or concepts from Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or MARVEL. Those rights go to JK Rowling, Rick Riordan, and MARVEL Studios respectively.

AN: Guys... thank you so much. All of your reviews are really keeping me happy and excited to write more of this story! Also, thanks for everyone who provided constructive criticism/feedback! You all are helping me make this story better!

Updated 20.5.20 (5/20/20 for Americans I believe) for small edits and answering reviews (see below).

Chapter Nineteen

"Let me get this straight." Annabeth said, staring at Harry, "You want us to be captured by a group of people who are working for SHIELD- the Avengers - and then trust that one of them will help us escape and fake our deaths at the same time? And then what, we pretend to be different people?"

"Pretty much." Harry said for the ninth time since Natasha had left, "As I said before, I trust her."

"The redhead?" Percy inserted.

"Natali-er, Natasha. And yes."

Annabeth bit her lip.

"Well…" She said, "I don't know…"

"Annabeth." Percy said, taking his girlfriend's hands into his own and gazing into her eyes with a steely resolve, "We trust Harry, so we trust who he trusts, too. And it sounds pretty legit to me. The redhead - whatever her name is - even gave us a list of who will be on the Avengers."

"Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow, Bruce Banner aka the Hulk, and Tony Stark, aka Ironman." Harry rattled off.

Annabeth's eyes widened.

"Mr. Stark?" She asked.

Percy had a similar reaction.

"Wait… Steve Rogers? Like, tall guy, blond hair, super muscular?"

"Uh… yes and yes." Harry replied.

"Um, I ran into him earlier." Percy said sheepishly, "The guy who I brought to your place?"

Harry blinked. Right. With everything going on… well, this made it a lot more complicated. How was SHIELD supposed to convince two people who already knew Annabeth and/or Percy and Harry to capture them?

Harry shrugged it off. He'd leave that up to Natasha.

Annabeth glared at Percy.

"You what?" She asked, "I thought we had agreed-"

Percy put his hands up, scooting away.

"I, er, think that this might be irrelevant right now -"

Annabeth suddenly slumped, as if all of the fight had been taken out of her.

"This would mean I couldn't be Mr. Stark's assistant anymore…" She whispered.

She looked downright depressed.

"You could under a different name!" Percy exclaimed, trying to calm Annabeth down.

"You'd have to be very careful." Harry said, "But we have to take this one step at a time, and it's not like you would be able to go back with SHIELD on our case, anyways."

Annabeth, who's eyes had closed, opened them slowly and nodded.

"I already rerouted the message so that it wouldn't get to Stark until later." Annabeth said, "I wasn't able to take it back after I sent it, but hopefully it will give us enough time.

Harry nodded.

"Alright." He said, "Let's do this."

"So who are the threats worthy of a team of superheroes to be assembled?" Tony asked, "Well, mostly worthy of me, since I'm the superhero-est-"

"You'll see." Romanoff replied, her voice mysterious through the comms, "Are sources say that they should be in this building up here."

Tony frowned. Everything with SHIELD and "the Avengers" had happened so fast, he hadn't had time to ask JARVIS to hack into their base and figure out who the threats were.

"JARVIS?" He whispered, careful for the earpiece not to hear him (at least, not to hear about something other than an undesirable murmur).

"On it, sir." JARVIS replied.

Tony landed on top of the building. They'd decided to just bust in instead of sneaking, since they didn't know if what they were dealing with could sense them coming.

A scuffle could be heard through the comms.

"Targets are attempting to escape through the roof." Barton said. Tony grinned. This was exactly what they'd suspected.

Tony heard Romanoff and Captain America - Rogers - land on the roof beside him (probably using a rope or something, since they couldn't do the awesome flying he could). Banner was a few blocks away, set up in the Quintjet and looking over everything. They didn't exactly want him Hulking out in this situation - or at least, everyone but Tony didn't, but they kept him close by (just in case, Fury had said).

Rogers drew his shield and Romanoff her tasers. Tony lifted his arm for his repuser. All of them aimed at the trapdoor on the roof. Shouts and loud footsteps sounded. The trapdoor opened, and three figures spewed out of it. They stood and gawked at the scene in front of them. On the left was a young adult with black hair and emerald green eyes. On the right was a teen - maybe young adult - with black hair and sea-green eyes. And in the center-

Tony's jaw dropped.

"That would be Annabeth Chase, si-" But Tony wasn't listening.

"Annabeth?" He asked at the same time Rogers said, "Percy?"

Annabeth looked at him with wide eyes. She held a sword in her hand.

Barton clambered onto the roof after them. Annabeth jumped away, angling the sword at him. Romanoff slowly moved right, surrounding them.

"So it comes down to this." The guy on the left said.

"Woah, woah, woah, hold up." Tony said, turning to Romanoff, "That's my intern."

"Technically, I was your co-worker." Annabeth replied, not lowering her sword an inch. The guy on the right did the same, except it was pointed at Stark, "Or Pepper's assistant. Whichever you prefer these days."

"Why are you here?" Tony asked, confounded.

"Why are you?" Annabeth replied.

"To take out a threat."

"Well, then I'm here to make sure you don't." Annabeth replied.

"Me too." The sea-green-eyed guy said, "But some revenge would be nice. How's the arrow wound healing, Barton?"

"I would say better than hers, but she seems fine, so I guess we'll have to chalk enhanced healing up to your abilities." Barton replied.

Wait… Barton had shot his Annabeth?

"So which one of you is going to shoot first?" The emerald-green-eyed dude said, "'Cause we can always just leave…"

"Where's your weapon?" Tony asked.

"Right here." The emerald-eyed dude replied, pulling out something from his pocket. Tony, on a reflex, angled his hand there and blasted the object out of the enemy's hands.

They all stared at the charred, broken stick on the ground.

"Looks different from last time." Barton commented, "But I wouldn't consider myself to be an expert on magic sticks."

And they jumped into action. Percy - the guy with sea-green eyes, according to JARVIS - went straight for the so-called Hawkeye. Barton did a half-spin out of the way, drawing a taser and slamming it into Jackson. Rogers threw his shield at Annabeth, who easily dodged. Tony could only stare as she did a sort of back handspring to avoid Romanoff's knife, landing in front of Rogers and throwing a punch. Rogers caught it, hesitating. Annabeth used the distraction to knee him in the balls. Tony couldn't help but feel a wave of pride.

"A little help, Stark!" Romanoff said as she ran toward the duo. Tony blinked. He couldn't hurt Annabeth… but they were attacking the Avengers? What was happening-?

Tony blinked as he saw the other man - Harry Potter apparently, run straight toward him.

"Sunning only, JARVIS." Tony replied, wondering if Potter wasn't totally with it as the man attempted to run headfirst into a block of gold titanium alloy. Tony quickly pushed Potter away, using his repulser to bring him down.

"And you guys couldn't take him out with twenty of you?" Tony crowed to the two SHIELD agents.

"He's harder to defeat with his stick!" Barton replied from where he tased Jackson. Two down.

And that left Annabeth.

Tony turned to where his intern - co-worker - associate - whatever she was - battled with Romanoff and Rogers. She did an admirable job, ducking and weaving out of the way. She was no match for Steve's strength nor Natasha's flexibility, but her smarts, as well as some sort of amazing fighting sense, had her keeping up with them blow for blow. Tony could see that she was growing tired, however, and her movements began to slow at a quicker rate than the other two. The only thing Tony could think was how is she doing that? And what else did she keep from me?

Annabeth caught Tony's gaze through his Ironman suit. Her eyes were wide as she stared, seemingly caught off guard at the sight of him (even though she knew, logically, that he was there, since she'd seen him minutes before).

Steve's shield hit her in the head and Annabeth went down, thudding to the floor as her consciousness left her.

The four stood in silence.

"Did we win?" Banner asked through the comms.

"Yeah." Tony breathed, staring at the prone form of Annabeth's body, "Yeah, we did."

What had they done?

And then he was bursting out of his suit, nearly stumbling to his knees. He pushed Romanoff away (in her opinion, she let him, but it didn't really matter at that point) and grabbed Annabeth's wrist, breathing heavily.

There was a moment of silence.

Where was it? Tony was freaking out, touching Annabeth's other wrist and then her neck and then the place above her heart, Where was it? Where -

He almost missed it, but there it was.

A pulse.

Tony sagged, dropping Annabeth's arm.

She was okay. His associate-co-worker-intern person was okay. She was alive. She was alive, alive, alive -

"Stark?"

Romanoff was looking down at him, an unreadable expression in her eyes.

"She can't be guilty." He said emphatically, even though the evidence in front of him pointed to the contrary, "She's - she's just a kid. My intern. Associate. Co-worker. She wouldn't do anything wrong, she must have been just in the wrong place in the wrong time, a framing - yeah, they framed her-"

"She's carrying a sword and attacked us like she'd done it a million times." Barton cut in, "That isn't exactly the picture of innocence, Stark."

Tony stood, eyes wide, shaky. He stumbled toward Barton.

"You!" He exclaimed, pointing at him as the pieces sloppily clicked, " You shot her with an arrow?! You shot a kid with an arrow, you shot my Annabeth with an arrow-?"

Someone - Rogers, by the feel of it - held him back.

"Stark." Rogers said, somehow calm after everything (though there was an odd, unsettled tone to his voice), "We're going to find out what the truth is. If they aren't guilty, we'll find out."

Tony began to turn. Rogers let him go, so he rounded on Romanoff.

"Is that true?" He demanded.

Romanoff raised her eyebrow at him, looking unimpressed. "We don't like to make a habit of imprisoning innocents."

"I know the other two." Steve said, his voice somehow quiet yet loud, "Percy and Harry."

"How?" Barton asked.

"Percy showed me around New York." Steve said, "Brought me to Harry's restaurant. The Traveller's Inn."

Barton looked between Rogers and Tony before letting out a low chuckle.

"What are the odds?" He said, shaking his head a bit.

"Let's get them on the Quintjet before they wake up." Romanoff interrupted, "I'd rather not repeat the process."

"Motion seconded." Tony said, his arrogant, genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist mask clicking back into place. His voice barely shook, an accomplishment, "Party's over."

He didn't bother to wait for the others, simply getting back into his Iron man suit. He walked over to Annabeth's limp form, desperately trying to ignore the pot of emotions that threatened to boil over.

Without a word, he picked up Annabeth's body and flew off.

Replies to reviewers:

Watcher123: Thanks for the feedback! The Harry in my story is still going to be impulsive/rash like the younger version of himself (aka being open about having magic in front of SHIELD/stupefying them) - there will be more of this later, but because he is older, he's mellowed out a bit. He understands that there's a lot of places to make mistakes and slip up and/or hurt people that aren't necessarily evil if he barges into SHIELD. Also, he's lived a lot of lives while traveling around and trying not to be recognized as Harry Potter, so the faking-your-death thing is something he's kind of used to. Of course, he is incredibly loyal and wouldn't want Annabeth/Percy to get hurt.

Hopefully this helps make the story make more sense!

Alexis R AC: Yes, Harry can do wandless magic.

Ariadne Venegas: The Greek gods don't usually get involved in the affairs of their children (so the demigods) in the books, but a potential exposure of the Greek world may alert them... you'll see ;). Also, I think that human life is incredibly important and leaders should recognize that, but the world is not always what I wish it to be...

dzeebest and cengland: Thank you for the help catching mistakes/making this story better!

Everyone else: Thank you ever so much! I have to go to a meeting, so I can't reply to you all, but if you ever want to talk/want a reply, just PM me!

-Shadowphoenix