Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony was 75.98% sure he had hallucinated the whole thing. It was around when he was coming to terms with having survived Afghanistan only to probably still die. He had just left some event or another before it ended and Happy was on his way. JARVIS was in his ear, talking about the levels of palladium poisoning and possible options to reduce it, of which there were essentially none.

That’s when it happened; it being two teenagers coming up to him and asking him if he wants to be their father. Tony, with blood filled with palladium and alcohol, looked from the boy with his dishevelled hair and too-green eyes to the girl and her tiny frame and mane of waves and was about to comment on biology and genetics and how adoption actually works but there was literally no recognition in their eyes and if these two idiots were going to steal themselves a father it might as well be a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. And so, yes he’s never given children much thought, but he knows he’d be better than Howard and he was dying wasn’t he? He could at least admit that in the safety of his mind, he was dying and this time maybe he won’t be able to build himself out of it and leave an explosion in his wake. He was going to die from his own invention and the entire Stark legacy would end with him. So, he made a quip about reverse baby acquisitions and agreed.

And then- and this is how he’s almost certain it was a hallucination- the girl pulls out what he’s almost certain was an athame and asked if she could pierce his finger. He’s sure that it was so sharp he hardly felt it, if it was even real, and they collected his blood in a little glass vial that was shaped like those miniature poison decanters and then Happy was pulling up and they were gone. He glanced around the street as he got in the car and the street was utterly devoid of anyone except some guards for the event.

*-*-*-*

A few weeks later he had what he thought would be his last birthday ever, made many mistakes including destroying his home and fighting his best friend. Then a few hours later Natashalie stabbed him in the neck, and he got a spiel from the Spy of Spies. Against the odds, he built himself out of almost death and made Badassium- fuck professional naming conventions its always going to be Badassium to him- which tasted like coconuts and victory.

He forgot about that moment wherein he apparently became a father, because of course poison - heavy metal poisoning at that - causes hallucinations, and it stayed that way until the Battle of New York. To be specific, until the very end of the battle after he was startled awake by Hulk’s roar and begun the trek back to the tower. The suit was dead and so the first time JARVIS spoke to him was when he stepped out into the penthouse and even then whatever he was about to say was lost under the whirlwind of fury, worry and affection that hit him.

Distantly he tries to figure out how these people got up here without JARVIS noticing and then he startles when he realises he knows the two teenagers that had left from against the bar and rushed him.

He focuses enough to hear the girl shout “Are you an idiot? A nuke? Into space? What if you couldn’t get back?” but before he can reply, her brother - and he must be her brother right? They had asked for a father after all - walks up to him and reaches up toward his face whilst asking yet another question, “are you okay? Where hurts? Do you want Hermione to heal you? She has a lot of practice healing reckless fools” and shoots a conspiring look at him.

Natasha cuts in before he can respond, going the intimidation route and asking them to identify themselves while Barton mutters about whether they’re with Loki. The girl, Hermione, obviously hears that and then begins a rant that eerily reminds him of himself when it’s just him and JARVIS figuring things out.

“Loki? As in Loki Laufeyson? The Silvertongue? The Liesmith? God of fires, chaos, mischief and lies? The protector of the outcasts? oh, I’ve read so much about him and even though the tomes are all a bit controversial, and a lot of details differ I admire his way with words and his runic name is such a powerful chain too! In The Poetic Edda, there’s a-”

“Hermione, sister mine, I don’t think they want to hear about the god currently embedded in the floor”

“Embe- Oh Merlin, what in the world?”

And then she’s rushing over to the awakening god and Tony has to move quickly to get over to them as the rest of the team follows. She’s holding his head and making some intense eye contact within seconds.

“Who would dare to do this?” and she looks up at them and then chuckles at the way their eyes glance at Bruce. “Oh, not that, I heard he led the little invasion. I meant, who would dare try to control the actions of the god of chaos?”

“Control?” Thor asks indignantly before anyone can recover from that bomb – and maybe now isn’t the best time to make mental references to explosives.

“Yes control, see his eyes? And the way his magic is in torment? Those are signs of the aftereffects of possession or mind control”

“Loki.. was not himself?”

“Well, not really, I’m sure he’s capable of utter destruction, being chaos given form as it is but were this entirely his plan he would not have failed. No offence intended, of course, I’m sure you are all perfectly competent and formidable but insofar as records show, dubious nature of said historical records aside, your victory over Mr Liesmith had he been entirely himself is improbable”

“Not impossible?” Tony cut in, latching on to the phrasing in that way of his, casting aside all the other things he should be focusing on.

“Well, nothing is really impossible is it?” and she gives him a secretive smile that her brother mimics with a comment under his breath about veils and mystery.

“Anyway, I’m sure you lot have someone to report to, and Loki isn’t going anywhere right now” the brother interjects, and the spies and Steve reluctantly leave after a nod from Tony, most likely only so they can report to Fury. They, in all possibility, might not even leave the building but Tony signals to Jarvis to restrict their access and stop them from re-entering his floor.

Bruce accepts the offer of a room and stumbles off with JARVIS guiding him using coloured lights in the wall panels. Thor comes closer instead and focuses on the kids and Loki with an intensity that reminds Tony that this is the god of thunder, an alien, not just another agent. Loki, who up to this point had remained quiet and assessing with green – had his eyes always been green? Tony could swear they were blue before – eyes focusing on the teens, turned to face Tony.

“I think I’ll have that drink now” and Tony can appreciate sass like that, so he nods and takes a step to the bar before Hermione interrupts him.

“I’m sorry but could I bother you to shift that to water or tea instead? It’s only, I don’t think mind addling substances would be a good idea, and I’d like to do a cursory scan if you’ll allow me” she focuses the last part of her sentence to Loki who hesitates a bit before nodding an acquiescence.

And then, this little teenaged girl who might have actually asked him to be her father once and cut him with a shiny blade that drew blood painlessly before the wound immediately, improbably, healed over, she pulled out a fucking carved stick with a slight sheen and pretty vine looking design and waved it at the fucking murdering, army-from-outer-space-leading quintessential villain still half lodged in the penthouse floor. It half-amused him, and half terrified him because does she have no self-preservation?! And oh-  oh no, Tony’s potential children are reckless. Well, at least something runs in the family.

“Okay so, you need rest and fluids and a few salves to recover from multiple abrasions and dehydration. Also, it would be a good idea to check over yourself to make sure all ties are cut. I have a few healing potions and salves if you need them, but I have a feeling your magic can work on healing faster if given the chance.”

And there it is, she’s sending Tony’s mind reeling again. He can barely hear Thor addressing them both formerly like the prince he is and saying something about seidhr, because all his mind is focussing on it the word potions. He latches onto it, pausing his slow-going process of pulling the pieces of his damaged suit off. They can clearly feel his wide-eyed and disbelieving stare on them as the boy turns to him and disregarding his sisters reprimanding tone as she says his name, Harry waves his shiny stick which is carved to have little knobs going along it. The result is the rest of Tony’s suit removing itself from him and as he tries to recover from his suit defying gravity and logic to float unto the counter Harry turns to him with a shit-eating grin.

“Congratulations! It’s a wizard and a witch!” the phrase is accompanied by jazz hands.

Sorcerers, Tony thinks, mind reeling anew, he gave his blood to sorcerers, and they used it to become his children even though they still don’t seem to recognize him. ‘Great job, Tony’ he mentally commented to himself, suddenly even more exhausted, thoroughly regretting not getting the shawarma or a drink first.

Chapter Text

Tony had intended to go to sleep, really he did. He was practically dead on his feet, and it was probably a good idea to try to get to sleep now before he can start worrying, stressing, about what lay beyond the wormhole. He offered the alien princes rooms to sleep, mild threats about cause even more property damage and a promise to order food in the morning and was weighed the options of letting the little sorcerer children sleep in the extra room on his floor or elsewhere when he stumbled across then standing by the window he was thrown out of with their little stick pointed outside. It was still barely sunset, and he was sure Fury was currently filling his call logs, but JARVIS knew by now that he didn’t care about the Head Spy or his organisation outside of intellectual curiosity and the perpetual urge to hack into things he shouldn’t know exist. He froze midway between the bar and broken window because the teens were at that very moment rewriting reality by somehow making the pieces of buildings remerge and stand as they did before the invasion. He stood there for a few minutes just watching them fix the buildings closest to the tower and mutter something about more energy in the ley lines before his disbelief overpowered him.

“Hey, Glinda and Merlin, where did you guys even come from?”

“Not from around here, obviously” Hermione sassed him.

“Clearly. Are you aliens then? From another realm? A different dimension?”

He snarked back except she said, “Yes actually” and started an extended, all in one breath discussion into dimension travel and he really shouldn’t have entertained the conversation but now it’s been over an hour, and they’re sprawled across the couches in the penthouse that Harry put to rights as they spoke. harry himself is leaning into his sister side and tries unsuccessfully to discretely yawn. This drags Hermione out of her rant and has her attempting to bundle him off to bed, except she doesn’t know what direction it is – which is how they end up meeting J. He directs them to Tony’s room and introduces himself when politely prompted. Tony tries to fight the sleep and make sense of this bewildering turn of events but then Harry is pulling off his shoes and talking softly about the pattern on Tony’s socks and Hermione carding her fingers through his hair. And Tony doesn’t think he’ll be able to fall asleep with flashes of what lay beyond the wormhole running through his mind but somewhere between hushed whispers about the different basis for the multiverse theory and the gentle drag of his hair between fingers he drifts off.

*-*-*-*

When Tony wakes the following morning he’s irrationally cleaned and most of the aches and bruises are gone. He steps into an immaculate looking room, looking exactly as it did the morning before, unbroken window and all, except for a glossy black ring around 2 inches wide surrounding the space where the god of lies was planted into his floor. There are boxes with shawarma spread across the table he’s used maybe twice, and a tea set he’s never seen before laid out amongst the boxes.

“Hope you don’t mind, we asked our big brother what you’d prefer, and Shawarma was mentioned at some point yesterday or last night,” Hermione says striding out of the kitchen with a massive mug he most certainly does not own. It’s placed in front of him filled with coffee, “he also told us how you take your coffee”

“Big brother?”

“JARVIS, obviously. You’re our father, He’s your son and we sound-alike”

Tony chokes on the first sip then decides he’s still too disoriented to respond and just starts to pile food on a plate as she makes two cups of tea. She seamlessly transitions to setting plates for her and her sibling, her keen eyes watching his portions and choices.

“I dropped off about double this amount with the godly guests. Incidentally, we tried to pay for this ourselves but when we got to the place to pick it up they said it was already paid for” she comments, raising her teacup towards one of JARVIS’ cameras in a toast.

“It is my interpretation that such acts can be seen as typical of an older sibling” and oh no, JARVIS is in on it too but he’s also making decisions himself like paying for food, so this is still a good thing.

“Speaking of familial acts, Dr Stark, sir, I feel like now would be the best time for full disclosure. The dimension from which Harry and I are from seems to, at this moment, have no pathway by which to return. Now neither of us had a family, with mine verging on neglectful prior to my attending boarding school and then essentially partial amnesiacs, not by choice mind you, where it concerns my existence and other factors of the life they built in the place I called home. It could have been fixed to an extent, but the Department of Mysteries said it can lead to an early onset of what we call dementia and honestly they seemed way happier so. Anyway, Harry is an orphan, and no we weren’t really related but we were siblings in all the way that mattered, and it was one of our first decisions upon arriving here, well, after trading in gold for money that is. Anyway, the ritual works best with a binder of blood and that’s basically where you came in and don’t worry we did not and still do not intend to become a burden to you, but we saw the news and we were worried so here we are. As it is we effectively do not exist here so before you tell us to get out of your hair I have a favour to ask: can you help us create documents to give verification to our existence?”

“You have excellent breath control” is one of the first things Tony says in the ensuing silence, followed closely by “How old are you two? Where are you living?”

“Oh, we’re renting an apartment nearby, costly but we got good rates for the transfigured gold, I guess the charms that stop it from being altered to that extent fall when you’re in an entirely different world, which frankly makes sense. Harry was there earlier getting our trunks and don’t worry we’re not moving in or anything he just picked it up when he was near there so we could have a change of clothes, and because we prefer not to be so far from all our possessions in a strange place honestly.”

“Gold? Charms? Never mind that, aren’t you two a bit too young to be renting places? And why was he Near there? When did he leave? What was the actual reason if not the clothing?”

“Wizarding money is made of real gold, silver and bronze, like civilizations of old. Transfiguration is the act of transforming something into something else. Charms are a category of spells. And incidentally what we used to make people not question two 18-year-olds moving in without any of the documents necessary or meeting most requirements. And well it’s a bit of a story but I’m not going to deny you an explanation if you want one – there’s no way you would miss the outcome of our travels anyway”

“I like stories, go on then tell me why you thought it was a good idea to sneak out after I went to sleep”

“Look at you, dad voice and everything. Well after you fell asleep we put some potions into you and I’m sorry about that I do prefer to ask but I entirely forgot to but hey, congratulations on being able to use the potions we made because of the ritual recognizing you as essentially our sire. They’re the reason you aren’t in pain and maybe feeling a lot healthier than in recent times but if you have any specific ailments you should let us know because those were just for general healing and a tiny amount of Calming Draught to help with sleep without creating a false sleep. After the potions we went outside and shifted the rubble, don’t worry we cast charms so no one focused on the whole wand thing, which, arguably may have been a bad decision, but I digress. So yes, rubble shifting and then I cast a stasis charm on people just in case and helped to get them to the nearest hospitals. And then I went to the hospitals and healed breaks and wounds for a few hours, most of the night really, whilst harry went around casting Reparo’s to fic the buildings and vehicles and all that. He transported all the people he uncovered to the hospitals or just healed them on spot depending on the issue. Afterwards, we met up, got food and Harry transfigured that mimicry of a leviathan into a box the size of a bedside table, then I inscribed runes to expand then inside then we cast summoning charms for all the alien bodies. The box is currently in your lab, don’t worry we didn’t go there, JARVIS showed me an image of what it looked like from outside the door, and I sent it there when I came back with it and the food, leaving Harry to get our stuff and enhance the structural integrity of some of the major buildings”

“You – what?” holy Fibonacci, Tony thought, they did millions of dollars of clean-up and rehabilitation overnight.

“We’ll probably go around laying some light protection charms and enhancing the structural integrity of some of the major buildings that fell later but I’d prefer to do that after officially existing. So, not to bug you but about creating our identity, will you help?”

“Right, we can sort it out now. J will fill in features and you can take a picture later, tell me your level of education and stuff like that, we can forge it, but you should try to stick to something that you can pull of near any agencies that may show up”

“About that,” she took a pause to eat and bit and seemed to be contemplating the best way to lay the news on Tony, “we went to witchcraft and wizardry school at age eleven so that’s where our official mundane education ends.”

“Right, well, you’ll have to do some tests so we know where you stand then you can study so you can do official exams to give credence” he makes a motion that signals Jarvis to start compiling questions and information packets for them.

“Official exams?”

“Well, of course, anything less and they’d question your Stark name”

“Our- oh thank you!” Tony got the distinct impression that had they not been on opposite sides of the table he’d have just received a hug.

“That’s what dads are for, right? And of course, you’ll both move in. trust me, despite previous evidence it’s safest her, the alien invasion was an outlier,” he says with a look of anxiety and barely concealed hope.

“Oh, can we? I’d love that…dad. We’ll have so much fun” then she pulls out her wand, holy fuck my daughter – I have a daughter!!- has a wand, and shoots off a shimmery silver, partially transparent animal that she tells the news to.

His son – a son!- pops in, literally, with the pop that usually heralds something wrong down in the lab. He puts something on the ground and taps it with his wand before striding over. “I can’t believe we have a home now, and a dad too! If he’s okay with my little passengers then we’ll be set” he comments pulling his plate closer and shooting Tony a warm smile, an expectant gleam in his eyes.

Tony has only just registered the word ‘passengers’ when he hears a hissing sound and turns towards it just in time to witness a flat snout and beady eyes pop out of the trunk, followed by another, and another, and another. He stares uncomprehendingly as 15, foot-long snakes start to chart a course across his floors.

“Can we keep them dad?” and that joking tone of voice is followed by a cheeky smile, but his brain freezes on the word ‘dad’ for longer than he’s like to admit

“Sure” he eventually croaks out, “they’re not venomous are they?” and then the kids, his kids, are giggling into their breakfast and he turns to face one of Jarvis’ cameras.

The deadpan response, “Not enough to cause death in humans, sir” is nowhere near soothing, especially with the echo of hisses from the fifteen snakes exploring the suite.

Chapter Text

Harry’s POV

I had thought I got the parseltongue thing from the Horcrux, but I was so wrong about that. Well, sort of. Technically it did give me the parseltongue, only it was its version after it blocked some aspect of my magic that allows something called All-speak. It was a Peverell family trait, something to do with there being no secrets in death, which wasn’t ominous at all, of course not. To be honest, the implications of being descended from them and having a trait isn’t something I wanted to investigate, so I just closed that box and shoved it in the same place I put the box that held the feelings of intrigue and curiosity I had regarding some books in the black library. Anyway, it was the strangest thing to have expected to no longer hear snakes after the whole death-but-not-really thing only to go outside after a week of holing up in Number 12 and be confronted with the fact that a snake had just won a duel for a mate near the house and that birds yell out warnings as they poop – because I could hear both the warning and the snake looking for a place to mate. I’ll admit that I did an about-face and went back to my room, only pausing long enough to ask Kreacher, with a carefully worded command, to place an egg or piece of meat right outside the doorway for the snakes to replace their energy.

Like most things in my life this backfired because the following day when I opened the door there were now 2 adders just beyond the stairs arguing about whether one of them had made up food appearing in front of him the day before. They paused when they saw me staring and so I had a staring contest with two snakes until another bird trilled out an “incoming” at a passing car. And then I made my third mistake of the morning – the first and second being coming outside and staring at the snakes respectively. I looked at the little snakes, barely two feet long with their pretty zig-zag patterns and hissed out “er, do you want an egg?”

I don’t know how to explain how big of a mistake that was, because the snakes had never met a speaker before, and they offered a trade if I set up a space for them to have their clutch when the time came.  And apparently not only am I an idiot, but my saving people thing wasn’t just a people thing. Anyway, that’s how I ended up being tricked into making a nest for their clutch when they returned a few months later and being stuck with 15 little 7-inch-long baby adders after witnesses their live birth on my birthday. It was in no way a fair trade because firstly, adders don’t even care for their young and thus secondly, all I gained was responsibility. I was expecting a useless dead animal, maybe some snake gossip, not their entire clutch.

The snakes and my damn Potter luck won.

Now you may be wondering, how is all this relevant? Well, when Hermione finally forced me to investigate why I was dreaming about that damn veil; and came with me for moral support, apparently so did my little responsibilities. Except they had stolen away into my trunk when I was looking for my cloak that morning, so I didn’t find out until we had arrived in some random street in a world we knew almost nothing about.

It’s also relevant because the day after we went to confront our superhero dad who tried to blow up space; I got to see the look on his face when 15 mildly venomous little noodles came slithering and hissing out of my trunk onto his dining room floor.

Chapter Text

I realized I’d never actually announced it. So, yes, this is now part of a series with the second installment picking up directly from this one (as in within hours of the snakes slithering out Harry’s trunk).

There are also tentative plans for a part 3 but not fully decided at this time.

Part two is only a chapter away from being complete and is already almost double the word count of this. 

Thanks so much for reading/commenting/leaving kudos/subscribing/bookmarking.
Literally thanks for everything; I love you all xx -M