The low table in between the various chairs and couches was littered with boxes, each one containing a variety of tastes and flavours of Chinese cuisine: lemon chicken; honey chicken; sweet and sour pork; walnut beef with plum and sweet chilli sauce; deep fried duck; satay lamb and a host of others, all surrounding a mound of Yang Zhou fried rice.
Plates were balanced on knees or held in hands. Some, like Tony, Matt and Peter used chopsticks, while others and especially Thor, simply used a fork to shovel in their food. The talk was minimal at first as each selected their favourites and settled back to satisfy their hunger. Eventually, though, food was being consumed at a slower pace and they began to talk about their time in England.
"You said that some of those creepy-looking Elves from London kidnapped some kids?" Pepper prompted.
"Not quite," Harry replied. "It was actually some of my lot. They'd used a rather serious spell on the Elves that they'd captured."
"Spell?" Pepper asked interestedly.
Harry nodded. "Yeah. It's actually one of our three Unforgivables."
Peter gave a shiver. "I could hear the capital on that. Must be bad."
"It is," Harry stated grimly. "That particular one is designed to take away free will. With it, you can make anyone do anything you want – steal for you, kill for you, even kill themselves. In this case, those wizards used it to make the Elves their hired muscle."
"Not very successfully," Thor interjected. "I've fought Dark Elves on a number of occasions now and these were not fighting as those of their kind are wont to do. I would say that they were fighting back against the enchantment, making their reactions slow and clumsy."
"You won't hear any complaints from us," Clint remarked. "Taking them down like that is always going to be preferable to potentially having civilians hurt, especially kids."
"How'd the wizards get that spell on them anyway?" Pepper asked, looking between Harry and Thor. "I thought that you two rounded them and send them to Asgard or something."
"So'd we," Harry grimaced. "Seems we missed a few."
"How'd they get the kids they took hostage anyway?" she asked.
"They were abducted from Harry's old school," Doreen said. "You should have seen it. A castle! A real life, magical castle. As a school! Full of talking paintings and ghosts – not that we actually saw any of them – "
"Thank goodness," Peter interjected. "Would have given me the willies for weeks. The towers and turrets looked pretty cool, wouldn't have minding going for a swing around them. Next time, yeah?"
Harry gave an indeterminate nod before continuing the story.
"Luckily, we were actually at the school when the kids were taken," he said.
"And you immediately swung into action," Pepper supplied.
"Well, what else could we do, we're Avengers!" Tony stated and promptly popped a piece of pork into his mouth.
"The battle was short but everyone acquitted themselves well, working as a team to bring down the villains and rescue the young," Thor stated.
"I think Harry was the most surprising, though," Clint smirked.
Pepper looked between the two men before focussing on the archer. "How so?"
"Why don't you show her, bird-brain?" Clint suggested.
"What? I thought that that was what Tony called you," a confused Pepper said.
"Oh, he did. But that phrase is just much more apt for Harry now," Clint remarked.
With everyone now staring at him, Harry bowed to pressure. Carefully, he slid his plate onto the table, nudging empty boxes out of the way, before closing his eyes, concentrating and changing.
"What the hell?" Pepper practically screamed, scrambling backwards on her chair until she was perched in Tony's lap.
Sparrowhawk-Harry leapt upwards, flapping his wings to get airborne before making a leisurely circle of the room. All eyes were turned upwards, watching him; Pepper's mouth dropped open.
"That's … that's really Harry?" she asked.
"Yep, the real 'birdbrain'," Clint replied with a grin.
"You should have seen Tony the first time Harry did it," Matt said. "Never knew he could be so happy. I was sure he was about to wet himself."
"Well, why wouldn't I be happy? He'd just proven me right! All those months I'd been calling him 'sparrowhawk' and he can turn himself into one! Ha! Teach him to mock my name-calling. I'm the great Tony Stark; I'm always right," Tony stated happily.
"How'd he do that? Turn himself into a bird, I mean?" Pepper asked.
"Magic," Doreen replied, her big eyes watching Harry zeroing in on his chair.
"Don't even go there," Tony retorted, pointing his chopsticks at her the same instant that Peter snorted. "Magic is just science that we can't explain yet."
"Nope, Doreen's right. It's magic, plain and simple," a reverted Harry replied.
"We'll see about that," Tony promised. "Just wait until Bruce gets back; between him, me and Peter, we'll have your hocus pocus explained in a couple of days."
"Doubt it'll take that long," Peter agreed.
"What else can you change into?" Pepper asked eagerly.
"While I can use my wand to self-transfigure parts of my body, it's not like becoming an Animagus, becoming the actual animal. You only get one form and you just saw mine," Harry explained. "Although, it's much easier to change someone else into an animal."
Snickers all around, apart from Tony, alerted Pepper to the fact that there was a story she was missing.
"What? What happened?" she practically demanded.
"Stark was annoying the seidhr something fierce, thus Harry enchanted Stark into a small, yellow duck," Thor explained.
Pepper spun to look at Tony. "Really?" Her head snapped to Harry. "Do it again, I want to see."
"What? No!" Tony protested as the rest of the room burst into laughter. "You're supposed to be on my side, don't encourage him."
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