AN: Just curious, but if you believe that my chapters are a bit too short, please let me know! Otherwise, enjoy!

"Harry," The young woman is looking down at Harry from an elevated stage. "I must say, your performance this quarter has been astounding, my friend." Her insanely curly hair dances as she begins to walk across the platform to reach Harry. "Congratulations Ha-"

"-rry Potter, sir."

Harry's eyes open to a bright light in his face. "Whaa-" comes his feeble reply. Squinting to make out the unfamiliar face behind the light, Harry allows his previous dream to fade away from his muddled head.

Harry tries again. "Whudduhyouwan?"

"Come again?" The bright light moves away from his face, illuminating the small apartment room with long shadows. A woman with a thin mouth and a worn-down baseball cap holds it up. Her accent is unmistakable; she is a New Yorker, through and through. "Ahem," she says. "The name's Ashley Sharpe. I'm from-"-here she whispers-"-MACUSA."

"Muh-cou-suh?" Harry struggles to get up from his bed. "How did you - how did you get in?" Sharpe glances at his bare chest and tosses him a shirt.

"Don't pretend like we don't both know the answer to that question," she says, rolling her eyes. "And yeah," she continues, nonchalantly rubbing her large nose. "I've been appointed to escort you to our headquarters, upon which you're to be detained." She quickly adds, "for questioning," after seeing Harry's look of incredulity.

"I haven't done anything," Harry says, furrowing his dark brow. "I don't even know what medusa is, or whatever the bloody hell you're talking about."

Sharpe leans in and raises her eyebrows. "We're the American version of the M.O.M, Potter. You're in our territory now." She looks at him with expectance, head cocked, but all the new vocab and acronyms are just making Harry's already sleepy head spin.

"M.O.M?"

The woman named Sharpe begins to look a bit worried. "You are Mr. Harry Potter, are you not? Auror-in-training?"

"What the bloody hell is an auror?!" Sharpe recoils in near disgust at the outburst. Harry then remembers that he has the right to PRIVACY, goddammit. "I'll call the police on you if you don't get out of my apartment room this instant!"

Sharpe backs away, her light gripped between her fingers. Harry scrunches his eyes up and sees a thin flashlight made of what he believes is wood. Of course, without his glasses, which are lying under the bed, he can't really trust his eyesight.

"Uh, c-c-c-all? You mean, you're just a no-mag?" Sharpe stammers. She swallows. Her face is now a mask of uncertain contempt. "Dammit," she mutters. "Screwed up my first official mission."

"No maje or not," Harry retorts, "You definitely don't belong here. In MY apartment." He reaches for the phone lying on the floor, carefully watching Ashley Sharpe, who has now bumped her hip into a potted shrub. The woman continues walking backwards, one hand groping for the window behind her. She throws it open, then jumps out.

"Holy-"

"-shit!" Tony exclaims, staring at Harry. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," Harry replies with measured reproach. "I thought you said the apartment was break-in-proof." He watches as Tony Stark sits himself down with a plop and an 'oof' on the apartment lobby couch. Tony presses his hands flat together and props his chin on top of them, Sherlock-style.

Tony continues, glancing up at the ceiling now. "It is." He mumbles something under his breath, then shakes his head. "I had that checked out by a couple guys I know around five months ago. I wanted Pepper to be safe up there, you know?" Harry nods, awkwardly standing next to Tony's preferred couch. "Don't tell her that though," Tony adds hastily.

Tony beckons to Harry. "Sit." Harry sits.

"So you're saying, last night, a woman woke you up and said she was from a place called 'Medusa'?"

"Yes, and, er, she jumped out the window."

Tony whistles. "No one else said anything when I came by this morning, after I got your text."

"You're acting surprisingly calmer than I expected."

"Yeah, well, I've dealt with a lot of these types of things."

"Is that so? You're used to women jumping out windows and not dying? Just disappearing into mid-air?"

Tony smirks. "Super-humans are my area of expertise, Harry boy. Leave it to me. For now, do you still want to stay in the apartment room? If not, I can hook you up with a friend of mine."

Act manfully, Harry tells himself. "No, it's alright."

"You sure? That must have been a real shock. Especially on your second night in good ol' New York."

Long pause. Tony's eyebrow quirked.

"...Tell me more about your friend."

"Tough looking guy with a heart of butter," Tony says, grinning. "His name's Steve, although we like to call him Capsicle. Inside joke. Actually, only I call him that. Still. Nice loving man with arms of steel."

"And... he's willing to take me in?"

"Well, sure," says the Stark. "I only had to mention that you were, one, starving; two, small; three, homeless; four, in need of a haircut; and he was like BOOM, I'm taking him."

"I am NOT starving!" Harry exclaims. "Nor am I small!"

Tony pats Harry's back in a comforting fashion. "No, no, of course you're not small, Harry. Steve's just like that." He considers his next sentence, then says it after hearing Harry's stomach give off a loud growl. "But yeah, you're starving."

Harry pretends not to have heard the latter. "Look, it's not that I'm afraid of the apartment being broken-into again, it's just, I don't feel as safe as I should be."

"Yeah, yeah, that's understandable. I can relate. Remind me to tell you about this one time in Sokovia."

"Right." Harry clears his throat. "Could I meet Steve before considering, though?"

"Sure," Tony nods. "Shall we grab brunch at his place? You can check it out, then make up your mind."

"Let me grab a few things."