Back in Azkaban, Li Ming grinned like a man with the world in his pockets. Two battered trunks sat at his feet—each one a bottomless Extension case packed with the spoils of half the wizarding world. Dump them all out at once and the pile could have filled a semitruck.
With this stockpile and a little grind, he could finally plant both feet in the Marvel world. Even without a Dementor legion, he wouldn't be some drifter living at the mercy of other people's moods.
He sent a command down the thrall-bond: the Dementors shadowing Dumbledore were to scatter, regroup, then wait for a portal. One by one they streamed into an expansion case, Wangcai at their head, and Li Ming snapped the latch shut. His army, folded into luggage.
On the Marvel side, Kreacher blinked up at a new sky while Li Ming sat cross-legged in the desert, feeling for the current in his veins. Quantum energy. If it kept leaking, the world-gate was gone for good. No fast track, no leverage.
A minute, then two. Relief. The current wasn't gone—it was replenishing, slow but steady. Like a tide.
He exhaled, ready to stand—then froze. A whisper skimmed his ear, faint and desperate: help me.
His eyes cut across the sand. Nothing. "Kreacher? Did you hear that?"
The elf blinked. "Master, perhaps wind? It whistled."
"Maybe." He rubbed his brow. Too many nights in Hogwarts. Ghosts in the breeze.
He tugged the RV into daylight with a flick, climbed behind the wheel, turned the key—nothing. Right. A year and a half sitting in dust. Tank bone-dry.
"Great." He hopped down. "Tent up. We're modding the RV."
Upgrades needed steel, wiring, fuel. His crates were heavy on rare reagents, light on mundane parts. Buying them meant picking a city.
New York's Chinatown? Too many cameras, too much S.H.I.E.L.D. Portland? Safer—old stomping grounds, disguises, portals. Kathmandu and Kamar-Taj? A coin toss between awkward and fatal. The Ancient One didn't strike him as the type to laugh off a man who smelled like midnight and carried Dementors.
Portland it was.
He was about to step through when Kreacher padded over. "Master, Kreacher will cook. But…what provisions? Where is the market? Kreacher will buy."
"Market?" Li Ming gestured at the desert. "Looks like a farmers' market to you?" He patted empty pockets. "And what am I buying with in Portland—pocket lint?"
He ducked into the tent, pulled parchment, started a letter to the Ancient One—then paused halfway through the salutation.
Phones existed. Did Kamar-Taj have a switchboard? Did the Ancient One have a number in the yellow pages? He snorted and finished the letter anyway, cracked a thumbnail portal toward her quarters—just to drop it and ghost.
"Li Ming?" came her voice from the other side.
He winced. "Master Ancient One. Uh…home, are we?"
So much for ghosting. She didn't seem to mind. A clean-edged portal opened and she stepped through, pausing at the sight of Kreacher. Her attention moved past him, though—palm raised, tasting the air. The tent's inside bigger than its outside.
Li Ming tipped a nod. Kreacher vanished and reappeared with tea, then led her on a tour. She circled the tent like a cat with a clever box. "A charming tool. It gives me ideas for the Mirror Dimension—stretching space so an enemy runs for days and never closes the gap."
Li Ming smiled. Better her enemy than him.
He slipped a chain from his neck and placed a delicate sandglass in her hand. "Take a look." His spellbook page glimmered with notes beside it.
The Ancient One's face smoothed as she read. Curiosity sharpened to caution. Fingers traced the Time-Turner's rim.
"At the risk of repeating myself," she said, voice even, "do not play with time. You create branches." She lifted the device. "This will send you back. For a span there will be two of you. A branch forms. You could be trapped in it—looping forever."
Li Ming nodded once. "But what if, in that span, there is no me here?"
Her eyes narrowed, then widened as she saw it: the hole. He could leave for another world—this one empty of him—then return at the exact point he'd left. To Time's ledger, it would look seamless.
"You intend to return from away, then use this to go back to the day after you left."
He nodded again. Exactly. He'd spent a year and a half in the Potterverse, and a year and a half had ticked by here. If he could step back to "Day Two" on the Marvel calendar, to Lady Time it would seem he'd only been gone a day. He wouldn't miss the Infinity Stone windows timed to the hour.
Understanding lit her gaze—alongside relief. He wasn't trying to split rivers. He was trying to close a gap.
"Your caution helps," she said. "Set your return to the second day, and you limit the risk."
She turned the sandglass in her hand. "But one side effect remains. You're not thirty here—but the time you spend off-world still etches itself into you. Go back a day on paper and you'll still be older in truth. Picture an ID that says twenty-nine and a face with age spots."
Li Ming's mouth twitched. Not funny. With power came longevity; the multiverse was thick with relics against aging. If luck stayed, he might never look past his twenties.
He let her keep the Time-Turner a moment longer, desert light catching the glass, and pictured clocks folding in on themselves like origami.
The Time-Turner safely tucked away, the Ancient One's gaze shifted to Kreacher. Li Ming jumped in fast, explaining house-elves—how their loyalty wasn't just devotion but a curse sewn into their hearts.
By the time he finished, she had the gist: Kreacher couldn't leave his master's side. Force him, and the guilt would devour him alive.
Her eyes chilled. "Keep him out of sight," she warned. "If this world's capitalists learned of such a servant—one who needs no wages, one who dies at a word—they'd hunt him like intellectual property. Blood samples. Cloning vats. Factories full of Kreachers, profit margins soaring."
The thought made Li Ming's stomach knot. He'd only worried about S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra carving the elf open. He hadn't thought like a boardroom.
She had. Too many centuries not to. "Hydra would weaponize him," she said evenly, "but they still trust soldiers trained from birth over alien elves. Capital is different. Capital wants money. Replace half a city's workforce overnight and what happens? And if these elves decide humans aren't fit masters?" Her tone didn't rise. That made it worse.
Li Ming whispered, "The army…worst case, nuclear."
"Then what?" she asked softly. "Outside the bunkers, half of humanity dies. Famine follows. And house-elves survive radiation better than humans. A few centuries later, they're the dominant species. Humanity becomes a zoo exhibit. 'Endangered species: do not feed.'"
The picture was so bleak Li Ming nearly acted right then. The Ancient One let silence linger, then glanced at Kreacher. Li Ming followed the look, gave a small nod. He understood. If the Eye of Agamotto ever showed betrayal, Kreacher's story ended. If not, life—and tea—went on.
Li Ming coughed, sheepish, and opened another trunk. "I, uh…brought back more than one servant."
The latch popped. Cold poured out like a knife. The Ancient One flicked her wrist, sealed the frost back inside. She didn't need an introduction. Wraiths. Wrongness. Half-dead.
Li Ming explained: in their world, Dementors couldn't be killed. Her eyebrow rose. She pointed at one—and unmade it.
Inside, Wangcai, their leader, stared in horror. His kind were eternal. Untouchable. Now he knew better. Trapped in a trunk, hungry, reduced to begging for his master's protection.
The Ancient One's sidelong smile cut sharp. "These are your 'unkillable'?"
Li Ming shrugged. Truth was, even apprentices from Kamar-Taj could dispatch a few with effort. Still, she sketched notes, satisfied herself with their weaknesses, then waved it off. "I'll register them and Kreacher for temporary residence. After that, they're your problem."
Kreacher still concerned her more. Capital couldn't use Dementors. And who wanted bodyguards that stole joy?
Her gaze flicked back. "And what will you feed them?"
Li Ming froze. Right. Dementors didn't eat rice. They ate happiness.
Prisoners? A night run through penitentiaries? One glance at her expression killed the thought. He scratched his head and leaned into the trunk. In the necromancer's tongue: How long without feeding?
Wangcai's reply was bleak. We do not die of hunger. But hunger will drive us mad.
Not death. Madness. That, Li Ming could manage. The bond would hold. And there were always other worlds.
He snapped the trunk shut over Wangcai's protests. Then, with a salesman's smile, opened another case. "Interested in materials? I want to sell."
Inside: chaos. Tools, reagents, curios. A teapot snapped at a drifting enchanted flower.
The Ancient One plucked up a trinket, amused. "Charming. Are you short on money?"
Li Ming rubbed his neck, glanced at the half-dismantled RV. "Very."
"You want to refit the vehicle and lack funds," she translated.
"Exactly." No point lying.
She agreed to buy a bundle. He didn't hesitate. He passed her his wand. "Can you copy this?"
The subtext was loud. If his wand snapped, he had no Ollivander here. No spares. He needed options—wandcraft or replicas.
Ollivander had refused him outright. Unless he swore an Unbreakable Vow and inherited the shop, the man wouldn't teach a word. Bulk-buying spares hadn't worked either. Li Ming had stolen a pile, only to learn the obvious: other wands resisted. Worked, but weakly. His power dropped like a stone.
The Ancient One tested his wand, sent a few sparks flying. "It's good. Enhances success rates. I can attempt a replica—but I'll need to take this one apart."
Before she finished, Li Ming dug into a trunk, came up with a fistful of stolen wands. He dumped them into her hands. "Dissect away. Snap them if you want. I've got plenty."
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