It Only Takes a Second

- XVI -

"Well?" He asked, looking at Tony. "Please say something."

Tony opened his mouth slightly before closing it again and swallowing.

"Do you hate me?" Harry asked, voice cracking with emotion.

"Absolutely not. Harry, nothing could make me hate you. In fact, I'm trying to think of the best way to help you with your magic. While you just dumped a shit ton of information on me that we will definitely need to discuss further at a later date, I'm proud of you for everything you've done."

"Really?" Harry breathed, heart swelling with an unfamiliar feeling: hope.

"Absolutely. In fact, I want to help you so bad, and make you feel comfortable with your gift, that I'm going to do something that I never thought I would ever do."

"And what's that?" Pepper asked, turning to Tony with an intrigued look on her face.

"I'm calling Loki."

*

"So, wait," Natasha began. "This Voldemort guy- he's definitely dead, right? Like he's actually gone this time?"

"Yeah, he's actually dead this time. We destroyed all six Horcruxes. Well... all seven," Harry corrected, counting himself as one of the Horcruxes.

"Wait, I thought there were only six," Clint spoked, counting on his fingers as he tried to name them all. "The diadem, the snake, the diary, the cup, the ring, and... the locket?"

"That's all we thought there were," Harry sighed, knowing that nobody in the room would like the next part. "You remember me telling you about the three brothers?"

"Yeah, they had the cloak of invisibility- which is now yours, the elder wand and the resurrection stone, right?" Pepper asked, twirling her engagement ring anxiously on her finger.

Nobody had slept the night before. They couldn't. Instead, after Harry went to be for a few hours, they had all discussed the best way to handle the situation. Harry had explained to them that all of his stuff was back at the Dursley's house, and that even though he still had two years left at Hogwarts, he didn't want to return when term began.

Ultimately, they had decided that calling Thor and Loki would be the best plan of action. None of them were familiar enough with magic, and those two were the only one's they knew they could, at least partially, trust when it came to the magic department.

When Harry had woken from the few hours of fitful sleep he had managed to score, he had entered the living room to find the entire team still wide awake, chatting quietly. They had all tried not to bombard him with questions, but he knew that they were all confused and curious.

Now, he was back in the hot seat as everyone gently asked their pressing questions, trying their best not to smother the kid.

"What do those things have to do with you, though?" Bruce asked. "I know you have the invisibility cloak, but you said that Voldemort had the Elder Wand, right?"

"Right. He did, at least. Originally, Dumbledore had it and when he was murdered, Voldemort stole it from his grave, where it had been buried along with him. But during the battle, instead of firing the killing curse back at Voldemort, I used the disarming spell. Ultimately, Voldemort's curse rebounded on him, which obviously killed him, and the wand became mine."

"Wait, so you have this wand now? Isn't it, like, super dangerous and powerful?" Peter asked, eyes widening. Harry had told them the story about the brothers, and how the oldest brother had been murdered for the wand. He didn't want anything like that to happen to Harry!