Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. There are also references & on-screen child abuse (because the Dursleys are, well, the Dursleys). There's also mental instability. Feel free to back out if that's you.

Author's Note: Three things should be noted before delving into this. The first is that the timelines have been shifted to bring them in line with each other. The Marauders and Tony are the same age and while Iron Man 1 & 2 have happened, Avengers is still a few months away by the end of this chapter. The other thing is that Sirius' narration reflects the state of his mind, which is why it's so scattered. Azkaban did a number on him. As a final note: I made Lily black. While it isn't specified in this, Lily & Petunia have different mothers.

Timeline Notes (New!): Tony Stark is the same age as the Potters, with both sets of birthdays shifted to reflect that. Harry is thirteen, making Tony in his early 30s (as well as the rest of the Marauders Era characters). Iron Man 1 & 2 (along with Fury's Big Week) has happened by the beginning of the chapter. The first scene takes place at the beginning of Harry's third year; Sirius' perspective takes place (as much as it can) during the Shrieking Shack scene; and the last scene takes place immediately after Harry returns from Hogwarts (so July 1st).

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 11); MC4A
Individual Challenges: Yellow Ribbon (Y); Yellow Ribbon Redux (Y); Click Bait It; Short Jog; Letter of the Day; Flags & Ribbons; Rian-Russo Inversion; True Colours; Quiet Time; Neurodivergent; Ethnic & Present; Advice from the Mug; Lovely Triangle; Feeling So Logical [Criminal]; Themes & Things A [Love]; Themes & Things B [Protection]; Marvelous Cinema; Team Logic; Old Shoes [HP]; New Fandom Smell [MCU]; Golden Times; The First Phase; Seeds; Gryffindor MC (x3); Bow Before the Blacks; Sett to Destroy; More than England; Iron Son
House: Hufflepuff
Assignment No.: Term 11 – Assignment 02
Subject (Task No.): Game Development (Task #1: Write about someone whose true identity is hidden from them.)
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Pinata [Medium] (Friendship); Insane Prompt Challenge [44] (Millefleur); 365 [02] (Provoke); Galleon Club (elegant)
Space Address (Prompt): Su Bingo [2D] (Dust)
Representation(s): Lily Evans/James Potter/Tony Stark; Bisexual Sirius Black; Remus Lupin; Petunia Dursley
Bonus Challenges: Abandoned Ship; Surprise!; Muck & Slime; Second Verse (Lovely Coconuts; Three's Company; Unwanted Advice; Spinning Plates; Zucchini Bread; Nontraditional; Persistence Still; Not a Lamp; Ladylike); Chorus (Wind Beneath; Creature Feature; Unicorn; Larger than Life; A Long Dog; Tomorrow's Shade; Mouth of Babes; Rediscovery; Peddling Pots; Machismo; Wabi Sabi)
Tertiary Bonus Challenges: T3 (Toad); SN (Rail; Negate); LiCK (Poppy; Narcissus; Yarrow); O3 (Orator; Oust); TY (Enfant)
Word Count: 2067

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How to Engineer a Family
Chapter 01: Omission
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Remus Lupin woke to screams and crying. The air of the compartment bit into his very bones with how icy it was. He knew this cold, like a lover recognizing his ex. Not fully awake and running on instinct borne of practice, he rose with his wand already in hand and casting a Patronus.

The glowing dragon roared as it materialized from his wand. Its silvery teeth sunk deeply into the shroud of the dementor leaning over an unconscious boy near the door. The dementor shrieked louder than the other children in the compartment were. For all that it was disturbing to see a Patronus being so aggressive, Remus had always enjoyed the fact his Blossom could actually hurt the aberrations. Even after so many years in the Muggle world and working with metahumans, Remus still hated the soul-sucking creatures more than anything he had seen.

Yet this time Blossom seemed to have passed simply aggressive and was headed into murderous quickly. In fact, Remus was fairly certain that the first dementor she had attacked before turning to the second one was being still because it might actually be dead. The second one went down just as quickly in a spray of thick black liquid. It was also in multiple pieces.

Then the dragon settled over the unconscious boy like a real dragon would her eggs. Calm now, Blossom began grooming the boy's curls, which had been left natural but cut too short to be considered an afro. The scene reminded Remus of how Lily used to do the same to Harry, a fitting memory for more than simply Blossom being inspired by Lily's Animagus form.

There was, after all, no mistaking the stamp of Lily Evans Potter on the boy's face. Surprisingly, the small signs of James that had been so obvious in Harry as a toddler seemed to be missing now that boy was a teenager. In fact, Harry looked an awful lot like that Muggle lab partner that Lily had had when she worked at Cambridge, the one who flirted indiscriminately with both her and James.

Remus felt something akin to resignation settle in his stomach, like every time he had realized that James and Sirius were in the middle of yet another prank war. Lily would never have cheated on James, but Remus knew both Lily and James enough to know that Tony Stark had been exactly their type, especially if it was just a casual thing. Remus knew enough about Tony Stark's notorious playboy years to know that had likely been the case: just a fling with a lab partner and her husband.

He briefly thought of mentioning the idea to the boy, of suggesting that he might still have a living parent out there. But then again, what would it matter? Stark may be turning over a new leaf with this Iron Man persona of his, but barely over three months ago, he was all over the tabloids for getting drunk in the armor at his birthday party and trashing his own mansion. It wouldn't be right to bring up the possibility when Stark was so reckless, and the boy had years to get settled well with whatever guardian he had been raised by so far.

Blossom snorted at him, as if she was alive enough to have any opinion on the matter.

Sassy Patronus.

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Sirius Black was confused. Honestly, he knew that he wasn't exactly thinking straight. Ha! He had never done anything straight in his life! He was the king of straddling the line, a solid three on that Kinsey Scale thing that Lily had been fond of using. Lily! She would be able to explain why the pup didn't look right.

Lily could do anything, because she was phenomenal like that. It was why they loved her so much, him and James. Not that Lily loved him like she loved James, which was good, because Lily was nice to cuddle but she wasn't—wasn't something, but Sirius couldn't remember, not after being around dementors for long. Even in his Animagus form, that took a toll. Being around Lily would have helped, because Lily knew how to fix things, even Sirius' thoughts got slippery and dark.

Lily was fierce and elegant and brilliant.

And the rat betrayed her! Peter was supposed to protect her and James and little Harry, who smelled strange. Sirius remembered how the toddler hadn't smell like James, except in that way that people got when they were around each other often. James had said it didn't matter, that Harry was his heir and that was all that mattered. Lily had looked a little sad, a little wistful sometimes when she had looked at Harry, like he was reminder of something that had been enjoyable but had gone away. Like how Remus looked when the chocolate-covered blackberry jammy dodgers were gone and Lily was too busy with Harry to bake any more.

Harry! The traitorous rat was at the school! He was in the same dorm as Harry! The traitor was near James and Lily's pup! Sirius needed to save him! He would catch the rat and shake him—No, that wasn't right! Lily wouldn't approve. James might have, because James understood that death was sometimes kinder than what magic could demand, but Lily was vicious when it came to protecting what was hers, just like the dragon she sometimes was. A traitor wouldn't deserve kindness, not in her books, not when Harry was in danger.

Yet faced with the opportunity to kill the rat, Sirius hesitated. He was angry! The rat needed to pay, but Sirius still hesitated. Harry looked scared and angry, but not at the rat. He looked scared of… him. Harry was scared of Sirius. That wasn't right. Lily wouldn't approve. Sirius shouldn't scare the pup, shouldn't scare the Prongslet. Sirius searched Harry's face, wanting to see James again, even in just a little bit.

James wasn't there to be found. Lily was, in the eyes and the tight curls that were just barely looser than Lily's had been. Harry didn't look like James, and he didn't smell like James. Harry sounded just a bit like that voice who was on the telly so much when Sirius had been staying at that Muggle house, when it was too cold to stay in the caves near Hogsmeade. Harry looked like him, too, in the parts that weren't Lily. Sirius remembered something but it skittered around the edges of his memories where he couldn't quite see.

Sirius had met him, hadn't he? Lily had been working at that school, the Muggle one with the funny name. Sex Road? Come Bridge? They had been trying to create something—no, not create. Make smaller. They were trying to make something smaller, more portable, so that it could be carried around. James had been allowed to help for a while, but Lily had to supervise, and Sirius wasn't allowed, because what they were using was Muggle tech that was reactive to magic. Sirius had more of the Black magical traits—wild and emotive—that James had. The device might have… It might have… done something, which would have been bad, and then there would not have been a Harry-Pup, because Lily hadn't been pregnant then.

There wouldn't have been any Prongslet to be scared of Sirius or to not look like James.

But James had said that Harry was his heir, and that was all that mattered.

Heir! Sirius remembered the rules of etiquette that had been beaten into his head! James never said son. He had said heir. Sons were born, but heirs? They could be anyone! Sirius looked at Harry, feeling as wistful and sad as Lily would sometimes look, missing his friends, both the one he could see and the one who wasn't there. Maybe even the Muggle man that was there—Sirius had met him, right? Lily and James hung out with him sometimes, outside the lab at the sex joke school that Sirius wasn't allowed to visit.

Sirius shook his head, hoping to shake off the fogginess in his thoughts with the motion. After he took care of the rat and the dust settled a bit, he needed to remember to tell Harry about the man from the telly. He needed to tell Harry about why he smelled weird and why there was no James to see like there was Lily.

He needed to remember.

But there had been so many dementors, and then Harry was sending him away on the hippogriff. It was so hard to think straight, which was something that he definitely wasn't. Lily had said something once about a scale.

Maybe Harry would know about it? Was that what he had to remember to talk with Harry about?

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"What do you mean?" Harry asked, feeling a bit numb in the face of Uncle Vernon's smug face. Even Aunt Petunia looked rather sadistically pleased about things. Harry felt like his brain had hit a brick wall in the middle of one of the tangents it liked to go one. "What do you mean that my father isn't my father?"

"It's all here," Aunt Petunia said gleefully. She held up a pale blue journal that had gold millefleur embossed on it. The leather catch had been popped open and flopped with the way that Aunt Petunia was waving it. "Your mother had a torrid affair with none other than Tony Stark. To make it even more scintillating, apparently your so-called father was in on the whole thing! Apparently, there was some doubt about your paternity, so they had you tested with their freakishness. You're a bastard in addition to a freak!"

Aunt Petunia sounded like she did when she was sharing a juicy bit of gossip with her bridge club. Harry tried to not let the words affect him. It wasn't like he hadn't heard similar over the years. This wasn't really that different from what Aunt Marge had been saying last year. It wasn't worth letting her successfully provoke him.

Harry tried to breathe through the way that his emotions rose as he processed the idea. He had no clue how much of the forgiveness abut blowing up Aunt Marge last summer was due to Sirius breaking out and how much was that accidental magic was supposed to be forgiven. Hell, there was even the possibility that Snape had a point about fame, and Harry hadn't been expelled because he was the Boy-Who-Lived.

It was still a lot to process all at once. All his life, he had been told that he was with the Dursleys because he had no other family. He was an orphan whose parents had died in a car accident caused by them trying to drink away the shame of having a son like him. Then Hagrid had delivered his letter, along with it the news that not only had his parents been murdered but Harry himself was famous for not dying.

Then just this past year, he had discovered that he had a godfather who had been thrown into prison without trial and a sort-of uncle who was a werewolf. Sirius had a good reason for never checking up on him—and regardless of anything else about the man, that had to have been his first act after escaping Azkaban—but even if Remus couldn't have taken custody of him, he had never visited or mailed a letter. That realization had hurt, but Harry was used to that kind of pain. He was used to never being anyone's first priority.

Had this Tony Stark even known about him? Was that the reason he didn't take him in after his parents had died? Or had he known and didn't care?

Harry felt like he couldn't breathe suddenly. Everyone was always commenting on how much he looked like James Potter with just his mother's eyes and coloring. He had thought it was weird when he hadn't seen it himself in the Mirror of Erised or in the pictures that Hagrid had given him. He had just figured it was sentiment or wistful thinking. That was better than it being more of the same kind of thinking that had coppers following him around stores or people confusing him with the Tyson kids over on Wisteria Lane.

Who was he if he wasn't James Potter's son?

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To Be Continued
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