Authors Note: So...I'm back. I know it's been ages and 'Why'd all your stories disappear?' Truth is, I thought being an adult meant I had to cut out every piece of fun I had gotten used to, so I asked the admins to delete my fics so that I wouldn't be tempted to come back to them. OBVIOUSLY, that didn't work. What I completely underestimated, though, was how much so many people loved my fics. I'm sooooo deeply touched by all the PM's I received. You guys are the best. You'll be happy to know that I'm bringing back every fic I can to this site. They'll be edited a bit, since t's been years since I posted them, but they will be back. Updates may be slower because, hello, adulting, but you can bet that they will be back. I'm sorry I ever took them down. You guys didn't deserve that.

Now, about this fic: Yes, this is a Harry Potter and Avengers movieverse type crossover. Yes, they are happening at the same time. Don't fight me on this. If you can't bear to extend your imagination that far, this fic is going to be very uncomfortable for you. Now, I'm warning you, both Harry and Tony may be a tad OOC until I wrap my head arund them fully. Truthfully, this is a completely different situation for them both, one I've never seen in the fanfic arena, so they very well may stay a little bit OOC. Maybe. I should also make special mention that this fic includes the movieverse ONLY post Avengers #1, so no CA:WS, no A:AoU, no Thor:Ragnaroc, no matter how awesome it is. After the Chitauri are defeated (Yay!) in New York, the universe I envision takes a drastic turn from movieverse canon. Got it? Okay good. Let's get on with the fic.

The Blink Protocol

Tony would admit to no one but JARVIS - who monitored his vitals and knew anyway - that he had a minor panic attack when security called him about a kid named Potter at the security desk.

Really, it wasn't that unusual. The Stark Industries staff was well versed in what to do with awe-struck fans, be they adults or teeny-boppers, so initially, Tony'd put it out of his mind. He had a gauntlet to calibrate, after all.

Until they had said 'Harry Potter'.

Until they said he'd mentioned 'Blink'.

Now, on a regular day, Tony was insane. He freely admitted it. What he never admitted to was being a sap who fell apart at the slightest mention of a childhood code word.

But he did. It took him forty-three seconds to wrap his mind around what the kid standing in the security bay may mean for his life, and then Tony was sprinting for the elevators.

Thank God for JARVIS. It wasn't till the elevator stopped some 20 seconds later did Tony realize he couldn't breathe. He was fine, he knew, his lungs were working perfectly except they were suddenly mutinous and didn't want to work and whose organs did those type of things in precarious situations like this? Didn't they know he was trying to keep it together as it was?

Luckily, Pepper entered the elevator, having been warned and summoned by JARVIS who was brilliant even if Tony couldn't hear him over the blinding rush of colors supplanting his vision.

A lance of pain across his face then glorious, glorious air flooded his lungs and Tony stood in the moving elevator, clutching Pepper's upper arms and thanking every diety he knew didn't exist that she, at least, had kept her head.

"Tony? What's the matter with you? JARVIS says your heartrate hasn't been so high since you got back from Afgahnistan." Her blue eyes were full of concern and Tony dearly wanted to drown in them. Like right now. He could manage it, too, if he had Pimm's shrink -

Violent shaking interrupted his thoughts. "Tony!" Pepper peered at him sternly, ready to shake him again if he so much as blinked too long. Tony wanted to sob. "Tony, you answer me right now or I'm calling an ambulance."

Well, that made no sense since they had a fully stocked medical lab on the twentieth floor. Calling an ambulance would do nothing more than annoy him - because he was not riding in one of those things, have you seen one? Deathtrap, hello- which is probably why she said it - oh.

"There's a Potter in security." His voice sounded like Bane in a blender. Nice.

Pepper gazed at him a full second before her face shifted, going from concern and slight panic to expasperation and frustration with an undertone of relief, if you could believe it. "Tony, I thought there was an emergency. Did you put JARVIS up to this? Why on earth is a clay craftsman a cause for alarm in that demented head of yours?"

"Sir, we are approaching the Secuirty Bay."

Sudden terror gripped him, and Tony gripped Pepper's arm tighter as the room around him tilted. He couldn't do this.

"My father was born Howard Potter in 1916, twin to a man named Charlus Potter. Charlus had a son named James, and we basically grew up together. James got married, and died a short time later in the small comunity he lived in, he, his wife and son. I had someone very close to them tell me his son was very, very dead when I went looking for him. But now, security is telling me his son is in my building asking for me and using a code word James and I hadn't used since we were ten and I can't breathe Pepper I can't breathe I'm going to die if it's not him, Pepper I will I swear but if it is," he swayed dangerously on his feet, dark clouds fringing the edges of his vision, "if it is I can't, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know - "

"Tony I need you to breathe." Pepper's eyes swam in front of his face curiously as Tony stared at her in utter confusion. "Breathe Tony, with your mouth. Okay? Come on. In - "

His lungs took over on their own accord and suddenly the heavenly, heavenly sensation of air hitting his arioles flooded his senses -

"And out. Very good. In again Tony, good. Good, keep breathing in here, okay?" Tony nodded obediently, remaining upright where she leaned him up against the wall by some miracle of science, he was sure, since he couldn't feel his legs. "You stay here, and I'll go find out what I can, okay. I'll take him to the medical bay, to get him tested, you stay in here and breathe okay?"

Tony didn't care if she couldn't decide if what he'd said was true or if he'd finally lost his mind. He didn't care that her eyes were just the tiniest bit pitying behind her confusion. Tony didn't care. James' son - James' son - may or may not have traveled across an entire ocean to find him and Tony just needed to know, as Pepper requested JARVIS let her out and keep him in before slipping through the narrow opening of the elevator doors, which version of the truth was going to kill him when terrorists, psycho competitors and hive-minded aliens couldn't.

Harry wouldn't admit it to anyone except Hedwig - whom he was terribly anxious to see if she could find him all the way across the ocean and was secretly dreading the event in which she couldn't - that he was terrified.

The rather bland looking security guard he'd approached at the Stark Industries building's - don't even get him started on the building - main floor had seemed harmlessly formal and detached when he'd first asked to see Mr. Stark. Harry wasn't a fool. He could clearly read Stark's name on the building and knew that his chances of seeing the man - who might be his cousin - in person were slim to none, which was why he'd thought of using the secret word as his parents had instructed.

So when the thin man had asked him to repeat his request, Harry had thought nothing of it.

"Uh, yes, sir. my name's Harry Potter. I wanted to speak to Mr. Anthony Stark about Blink." He'd blushed at the odd look the man had given him, until a small, flashing red light caught his attention right before the man stood up.

Harry, in his panic, had done the first thing that came to mind. Standing on tiptoe he'd peered over the edge of the too high desk and managed to catch a glimpse of a computer screen with a series of small photos of him he recognized as being from the moment he passed through the building's front doors, the words 'BLINK PROTOCOL BREACHED' flashing bright red in large capital latters over it all. He managed to pale half a second before two large security officers who could probably give Hagrid a run for his money gripped him by the arm on each side, hustling him towards a shiny silver wall and through a suddenly-there shiny silver door that slid open on their approach. The elevator, for that was the small room he'd been herded into, moved upward a few floors before Harry was unceremoniously hauled out into a large, brightly lit room. The guards plopped him onto a seat in the middle of a small, white clearing and left him. They stood feet off to the side, obviously guarding him, but Harry didn't think that necessary. He wasn't Gryffindor enough to move just then.

And so he sat. Terrified.

This, like all his plans, had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

He'd left Privet Drive the day before yesterday, after having convinced his aunt and uncle to do the same.

After the disaster that was the Tri-Wizard tournament, Harry wasted no time in telling his uncle, who had moved to lock away his school things yet again, that Voldemort was back and determined to kill him, and the more time he had to study magic, the better their chances to survive if any Death Eaters came calling.

Of course, his relatives took that to mean that Harry was not to leave his room for any reason at all, and locked him in with a bucket for "necessities," his aunt had sniffed.

Except on the second day, Harry had received a summons from Gringotts, ordering him to present himself and his magic to the bank at his earliest convenience, and after bribing the man with the promise of one thousand pounds to take him into town and bring him back to Privet Drive, Harry had set off to Diagon Alley that very afternoon.

His first stop had been a magical furniture store. He'd learned from fellow students that if you had a Gringotts account you could sign for purchases in the Alley without the burden of cash in hand. The charmed scroll would let you know if you had the amount of your purchase available when you signed, and Harry thoguht the whole deal was amazing. Sure, he had business at Gringotts, but as far as he knew the bank never closed, and Diagon Alley stores surely did. He'd had no idea how long his appointment would take.

After purchasing a few necessities of his own - if the Dursley's were going to lock him in all summer then Harry would most definitely need a toilet, a desk and a proper bed - Harry had hurried to the bank. There, he'd been directed to the office of a goblin named Ironjaw, who'd proceeded to blow Harry's fourteen year old mind.

Apparently, being entered into the Tri-Wizard tournament had the funny side effect of making him a legal adult in the magical world. Harry had stared at the goblin in shock for three seconds before the full ramifications hit him. He could leave the Durselys. The thought was almost too scandalous to think, so Harry had thought it again. Then spoke it out loud.

Ironjaw had asked him to repeat himself, and then the goblin had seethed. Harry had asked a question Ironjaw had asked another, and before long Harry's whole world had been turned upside down. Again.

The meeting had ended with Harry knowing a lot more about himself and his family than he'd ever learned in his entire life.

Ironjaw was the Potter family account manager. Apparently there were some 12 vaults linked to the Potter family.

There was another Potter out there, in America. He was actually Harry's Head of House, even though he didn't have magic. The Potter's, apparently, did not disown their squibs.

Dumbledore had illegally taken control of his family's Wizengamot seats, and had sealed his parent's wills. He'd also been making illegal withdrawals from Harry's trust vault, the one he'd given Harry the key to. The same one Molly Weasley had yet to return the key to, since she was also, apparently, making illegal withdrawals from said vault. He wasn't sure how he felt about that since he had offered that one time.

He was never supposed to have been placed with Petunia. At this, there was nothing but a hollow kind of sadness where he'd expected to feel rage.

His parents had left him letters.

It was this last thing that had undone Harry. He'd screamed at nothing in particular for an indefinable set of time before Ironjaw had had enough and summoned a goblin that doused him with a cauldron of ice water, one who had apparently been hired for this very purpose, years before Harry's grandfather was even a twinkle in his parent's minds. Apparently, the Potter temper was hereditary.

It was in James' letter he'd found the secret word and the instructions "If you're reading this, then you're not living with Padfoot or Moony, or any of the other guardians your mother and I assigned. In that case, withdraw some gold and buy a ticket to the US. My cousin Anthony is an American in charge of his father's old company, Stark Industries. Find the headquarters and get there. Its practically famous and there's only the one, so you shouldn't have any trouble. Ask for him and if they give you a hard time, just say Blink. It's our secret word and should clear up any confusion."

Harry had thought it a great plan. He'd bid good day to Ironjaw - who tasked him to send Anthony Stark back to him in a magically shrunken box for neglecting his duties as son of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter - withdrew his uncle's pounds and extra enough for the ride to the airport and any hotel he'd have to stay in (he hoped), and dashed out of the Alley underneath his invisibility cloak.

At Privet Drive, he'd cheerfully told his aunt enough of his new information to tantalize her into agreeing to write him a letter saying she'd never wanted him and did not, under any circumstances, want him back in her house; basically, that he was an emancipated minor and Dumbledore had been keeping that from both of them. He didn't bother to tell her that most of that time he'd been in school. That wasn't important. He took his letter - that Petunia had decorated with quite a few exclamation points - and secured it with his other official documents from Gringotts. Then he'd given her five hundred pounds to help with moving expenses after explaining that if there were any blood wards on the house, they surely wouldn't last long with both her letter and his absolute excitement to leave. He'd called a taxi, amidst the Dursely's near-frantic packing - even Dudley wasn't kicking up a fuss - and left before the sun had fully set. He'd slept at a hotel while he'd fine tuned his plan - finding the address of the Stark Industries headquarters and confirming, through gossip magazines, that 'Tony' Stark was definitely in the city and definitely a Potter with the hair and the face and the family he looks just like James - then the airport the next morning to catch his flight, which lasted far too long in his book, so he had to grab a hotel that night - thank God for Gringotts bank cards - and then catch a taxi here to the building this morning.

Everything had seemed to go perfect, until now. He was being detained for breaching some kind of protocol, and someone somewhere was probably calling the police. Harry sat, heart pounding. It was one thing to be brave when you were in familiar circumstances with familiar people and knew you had people to fall back on, even if they would be terribly disappointed or hate his guts. It was another thing entirely to be brave when you'd left the only family you knew (and they had gone only Merlin knows where) and been arrested in a foreign country. He realized with a jolt that outside of his passport he had nothing in the way of identification, and that if they searched for him he highly doubted they'd find anything on him after fifth form. This was all some elaborate prank and Harry had fallen right into it. He didn't think his dad had meant to prank him, but Harry was so terrified he didn't know what else to think.

He'd sat there for maybe ten minutes before a tall be-suited woman with flowing red hair walked in from another suddenly-there door. Those same gossip rags he'd browsed the night before identifyed her as Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries and Tony Stark's sometime girlfriend. Harry idly wondered if his fate depended on whether they were on-again or off-again.

He also wondered if Potters had a thing for redheads.

She stepped up to the security guard behind yet another desk he couldn't see over that Harry had only noticed a few minutes ago. They conversed quietly for a few moments, Ms. Potts' face giving nothing away, not that Harry could tell. All he knew was that if his heart beat any louder it would beat right out of his chest, which would cause a mess on the very white floor, which would probably get him in even more trouble. These thoughts did nothing to ease the racing of said heart.

He was just calculating the chance of him being able to scourgify the mess before he died, or worse, got found out by Muggles, when Ms. Potts tapped him on the arm.

Harry jumped, eyes wild as he tried to get his heart, again, to settle down.

"You're rather jumpy, Mr. Potter."

He blushed. "Sorry. I didn't realize you'd moved."

"Hmm." She studied him for a minute longer, which felt like eternity to Harry, before she turned towards one of the white walls. "Come with me, Mr. Potter."

Bemused, and glad to get away from the oppresive atmosphere of the Security Bay, Harry followed behind, impressed despite his fear when a section of the previously unbroken wall gave way again to another elevator. He didn't know why he was surprised. In a building this size Harry privately thought that elevators were matters of survival.

Ms. Potts did not speak in the elevator, even though Harry knew she wanted to. She'd look at him every so often, the way people sometimes did when they didn't know what to ask even though they dearly want to ask something.

Harry found himself occupied with flattening down his hair, even though he knew it was pointless - his cousin was a Potter and clearly had the same flyaway hair that didn't lay flat for any reason, first impressions be damned - and racking his brain for what he could say to his long-lost cousin.

Not exactly lost. Ironjaw had told him that Tony'd cut off all ties with Magical Britain after James' death. From what the goblin described, those two had been closer than brothers, and James' death had nearly destroyed him. It was a response Harry could understand, but a pat of him couldn't help but feel resentful. Hadn't the man cared about him at all? Not that he should have, since technically Harry wasn't his kid but still, something about it pricked him the wrong way. Harry didn't knwo what to think.

When the elevator pulled to a halt and the double doors pulled open, Harry nearly collapsed in relief, confusion and disappintment. Heart thud-thudding and struggling to process the distinct lack of Potter/Stark in the room, he followed Ms. Potts out into the room before he'd even realized it.

Ms. Potts took a good look at his face. "This is the Medical Lab. Mr. Stark has asked me to verify your identity. We have people come in here all the time claiming to be related to him." She paused, her entire face softening just a little. "Do you understand?"

Harry did, and nodded. He understood that Tony couldn't come down to meet each and every person that showed up and claimed to be his family. The man would probably never get anything done. That didn't mean it didn't hurt.

He swallowed. "But the secret word?" Maybe it wasn't so secret after all.

"Mr. Stark is especially eager to verify your identity because of it," Ms. Potts said briskly. She turned to a woman who seemed to have materialized out of thin air. "This is Dr. Cho. She'll take a sample from you to run the DNA test."

Said Dr. Cho exchanged a raised-eyebrow look with Ms. Potts Harry was sure meant a thousand different things, but the woman nodded and gestured him closer.

Tony had managed to not suffocate himself in the fifteen minutes it took Pepper to collect him from the Security Bay and transport him to the Medical Lab, wait for test results and then make her way back where Tony had sequestered himself in the elevator. He knew it was fifteen minutes because even as JARVIS distracted him with designs for first a new suit then upgrades to the team trainging room, Tony kept a running count in his head and it was exactly fifteen minutes twenty-six seconds from the time she left him in the elevator to the time she pressed the call button.

It didn't take long at all for the elevator to make it to Pepper's floor. Tony had a moment of slight panic when he realized Pepper had called him to the Medical Lab. He hastily averted his eyes to the floor-wide rig he'd been playing with for Hawkeye before his brain had a chance to latch onto that location and what it meant.

"Tony?"

Was it just him or did Pepper sound hesitant? It wasn't just him, Tony knew, because Pepper didn't do hesitant, Pepper didn't do anything but strong and confident and a little bit exasperated so if she was hesitant that meant she was worried about him and the only reason she would be worried about him and his sanity and his lack of breathing that he couldn't even control because really, his lungs were mutinous little organs intent on killing him slowly, was because the kid that he had hoped for fifteen full minutes was really James' kid come back from the dead wasn't. The finality of that statement cleared his brain and for once, his lungs deflated and inflated of their own accord, the rush of air he didn't even know he'd been holding filling the small elevator like a mighty wind.

"It's fine, it's fine. It happens everyday, right? Did you already have lunch? Of course you did, I sent it up. What about dinner? I demand you stuff those files you've been poring over for a week into your desk and treat me to shwarmwa. We haven't had it since The Aftermath and I'm feeling pe - "

Tony blinked, the edges of his vision spotted with colors which told him he'd been runnning out of air again, but he couldn't pay attention to that since is eyes were preoccupied with a sheet of paper with a graph and some words but Tony was captivated by a number near the top, a number he couldn't begin to understand and wouldn't you know it it had stalled his brain again and his lungs were back with their mutiny and again Tony couldn't breathe because '87% match' was printed in red, bright red, red so bright it was smearing on the paper, no, the whole paper was smearing and blurring and Tony couldn't see oh God he was dying and then he blinked, and Pepper was there, soft fingers on his face, whispering something to him and the doors were closed over her shoulder he could see now and with a start Tony realized he was crying, really crying, and he couldn't stop.

"I can't stop it, Pepper. What's wrong with me?"

"You're happy, Tony. A little bit overwhelmed, but happy. Do you think you can stand up?"

He could stand, or so his legs said when they supported his weight. His brain, for once, was blessedly empty, not even commenting on the tears glistening on Pepper's own face which he knew he should have a comment for since Pepper didn't do tears. He clutched at Pepper's hand where it rested on his chest, an inch above the arc reactor, eyes tracking the freckles along her nose as he tried to will the tears to stop falling all over his face.

"Why won't they stop, Pepper?"

In answer, she only pulled him close enough to kiss each cheek, a secret smile playing over her lips. Tony knew he could figure out the meaning behind that smile, knew he could but found himself preoccupied with a more pressing thought.

"Where is he?"

"Inside with Dr. Cho. Are you ready to meet him?"

He didn't know if the sound that came out of his mouth was a sob or a giggle. "How am I supposed to be ready? Dumbledore told me that he died. He specifically told me that Lily and James, James was my brother, were dead trying to save Harry from the Dark Lord but the Dark Lord killed him anyway. I saw the house." His vision blurred again, and this time the tears were hot on his cheeks. "I flooed over and I saw the house and it was nothing. Half a wall still standing, scorchmarks everywhere, everything burnt to ash and I left him there." His dark eyes sought out Pepper's blue, desperate for an anchor. "I left him there, all by himself."

"That's not your fault, Tony. Someone lied to you. You couldn't have known - "

"I could have checked the family tapestry. I could have checked with Gringotts. I should have been handling the family affairs but I ran back here to lose myself in alcohol and women and wasting money and he probably grew up with Petunia." This time, there was a sob, and Tony fully resigned himself to a complete meltdown. "She probably hated him and - "

"You can't know that, Tony - "

"If Dumbledore had anything to do with it that's probably exactly what happened." An image assaulted him then, of thin, pointy face Petunia shaking a tiny fifteen month old Harry who didnt understand where his mummy was and why his da hadn't picked him up yet or his uncle Padfoot come to make him giggle or his uncle Tony to spin him around, just Petunia shaking and shaking him and Tony didn't realize he was pulling at his hair till Pepper slapped him again.

His chest heaved as he fought to get enough air into his lungs. It occurred to him, as he stared at Pepper's stricken, worried face, eyes wild but holding it together because apparently her boss/boyfriend had completely lost it, that Pepper had no earthly idea of what he was rambling about. Pepper probably thought he was crazy, and if Harry - Harry! - hadn't been sitting in the Medical Bay she'd probably have called S.H.I.E.L.D. in to cart him away for evaluation by now. Not that she'd have wanted to, but it was a part of the Avengers agreement, and Pepper was a stickler for that kind of stuff. Most of the time. Still, he should work on calming down.

"Thanks." His breath still hadn't been caught yet, but Tony was a persistent one. He'd catch it. "I didnt mean to freak out like that. 'M'sorry." If anything, Pepper looked more alarmed. "I'm serious. I feel loads better already, and I'm not going to fall apart. Thanks for listening, and literally knocking some sense into me. I've stalled for long enough now, I think." Of course, his heart still hammered in his chest like a prized racehorse at a championship derby, but she didn't have to know that. "Time to meet the nephew." He tried a jaunty grin, but Pepper saw right through it.

"Are you sure you're ready to do this, Tony? I can bring him up to the penthouse if you need another minute."

"Pepper, I'm fine. Really. The only thing I need right now is to meet Harry."

When Tony banked the corner into the more private area of the Medical Bay where the beds were separated by those too-thin hospital-grade divders, his legs almost gave out on him. Pepper had warned him that Harry was thin, and shorter than she thought he should have been for his age and that Dr. Cho suspected malnutrition at the very least, and Tony quickly noted those things were true but he couldn't get over his nephews resemblace to James. It was almost like taking a step back to the year they were ten and James had broken his arm, except Harry didn't have a cast on his arm, nor were James' eyes that bright, vibrant green.

It took all of three seconds for Tony to realize Harry was staring at him.

The teen's eyes were wide and a little bit fearful, Tony absently noted. He edged closer, half of his brain running calculations on which of them, exactly, was more likely to fall apart. Odds were in his own favor, Tony knew, since he couldn't tell if he was still on the verge of complete meltdown or notanymore, scatteredas his emotions were, but Harry was a kid, and was smaller, and those teenaged horomones had to kick in sooner or later, right?

"Do you realize you're talking?"

Tony blinked to find Harry staring up at him curiously. "What?"

"You're talking? Ms. Potts warned me you do that sometimes. I was just wondering if this was one of them."

His brain was blank. "Yeah, apparently." Harry's eyes were really, really green. "I'm Tony Stark."

"I'm Harry Potter. I think you may be my cousin?"

"No thinking about it, kid. James and I were just about brothers." Something flashed across Harry's face then, and Tony hurried to head it off. "There's only one reason you didn't grow up with me, Harry. Someone I trusted very much told me you were dead. You and your parents. When I got the news I flooed over to the house and it was, it was gone, Harry, all gone. Just the wall left. They told me there were no bodies, old Voldie had killed you all and got disappeared. I never would have left you there if I knew you were alive. You have to know that."

Somehow they'd both ended up with tears all over their face. Tony didnt even have the presence of mind to banter it away, not right now. Let himm catch a nap or half a vat of coffee or something and maybe. right now he was done, competely and utterly spent. It was like the last 13 years all rushed past and trampled him all over again.

Harry sat still, gripping the edges of the too-large shirt he wore, and Tony knew on some level, that he had broken his nephew. Eyes simply weren't supposed to be that wet. And then Harry nodded, said "Okay" and suddenly nothing mattered, nothing at all, because his arms were suddenly filled with sobbing teen boy and Tony didn't care if he was crushing the kid to his chest or that he was crying into the kid's hair or that Harry still smelled like Harry - like hope and love and air currents - or that Dr. Cho suspected neglect and abuse and psychological damage - Tony had psychological damage - all he cared about was Harry, and Harry still fit in his arms, against his chest and in his heart and he was never letting go.

"You hear that, bud? I'm never letting you go."

"Okay." The one word muffled against his collarbone was like fire to a hearth, and Tony could literally feel parts of him he'd locked away opening up to the heat of the blaze. He didn't care about that either. He'd do whatever it took, anything necessary to take care of his Harry.

"Never. Now let's get you home."