harcourt

Clint is offered the Oath when he's nine years old. He's not very good at reading, so the manual comes to him as a picture book, thick like a collection of fairy tales and nicely bound.

It's the binding that attracts him--the book is too nice to be tossed in with the beaten and dog-eared old textbooks which is what's usually on offer when they get secondhand books--school library rejects, usually. This one is a hardcover, and dressed up to look old and important, so Clint isn't sure whether he's elated or disappointed that when he opens it, it appears to be a kid's book.

On the one hand, that's not cool and mysterious at all, but on the other it isn't something boring and unintelligible either, which is what nice books usually end up being--outdated and for grown ups and full of text from cover to cover.

But it's still a nice book, and full of drawings, and Clint's not likely to get a pick of the robot or space books anymore, not with the strongman's sons elbows deep in the pile, so he tucks the fairytale tome under his arm and looks around for Barney, to see if he's ready to go.

So no one can take if off him even if fairytales are kind of a baby book. Maybe a girl book.

Barney says, "God, you're such a loser," but it's fond and Clint falls into the safety of his shadow, and follows him around until he gets fed up with tripping over Clint and declares there's nothing there but crap.

Later, Clint shoves the book away with his things and forgets it in between chores and practice and work and watching the townie kids, and watching Barney watch the townie kids while he strings lights and they walk the slowly lighting-up carnival hand-in-hand.

It's not until their packing up is interrupted by rain and Clint's lying on his belly inside one of the magician's trick boxes--Now you see her, now you don't!--armed with a flashlight, that he finally opens the book, flipping through it and it's detailed drawings--circles and cars and whales and strange words, phonetically sounded out underneath.

For a baby fairytale book it's pretty weird, Clint thinks, thumping a foot against the painted wood in absent pleasure. The sound he makes is covered by thunder, which is good, because he's likely to get in trouble if he's found; for running down the flashlight's batteries and for hiding from work, and for playing with and in the magician's things again.

He leafs back to the front of the book, to start looking at the pictures in order, and finds one page at the front with no drawings at all. Just tidy, dark text. Large enough letters that it's clearly a part of the book and not an introduction or study questions or anything like that, and it's simple and short enough that even Clint's shaky reading skills can manage it.

In Life's name, and for Life's sake, it says.

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Clearly that's not the case though. There are already several wizards AUs, but so far all of them are Harry Potter.

Why would you go with Harry Potter? Who wants to be Harry Potter when you could be Nita Callahan or Kit Rodriguez and fight entropy? ENTROPY!

Clearly this would heavily involve Tony. Because SCIENCE!