From the mountain of loot Li Ming had hauled back, the Ancient One picked what interested her, then walked away with an Undetectable Extension trunk stuffed full. She even kept the trunk—its otherworldly expansion charm fascinated her most of all.
Not long after, a portal blossomed in the tent. The Ancient One stepped through, handed him a paper sack bulging with cash. "You're living in the desert now?"
Li Ming took the bag, rubbed the back of his head. "Master… do you have a way to hide a mage's aura?"
She didn't answer with words. Just extended her hand.
He gave her the palm-sized spellbook. She touched the cover, and new symbols bled across the page—the cloaking method etched straight into his grimoire. "Treat Kreacher well. In time—" She paused, weighing what to say. Even for him, a glimpse of the future could twist the path. Finally: "He's… good." She closed the portal without saying another word.
Li Ming caught the message between the lines: Kreacher wouldn't betray him, wouldn't unravel the world. That was enough.
By the time Portland's stores opened, Li Ming wore Mordo's face, cash in hand. He hit supermarkets, big-box warehouses, then slid into dealerships after hours to "borrow" parts off the newest models. Piece by piece, the RV's overhaul kit came together.
Back in the desert, the project swallowed six months.
Flight? In theory, simple. In practice, radar was a net. He could bend light, cloud minds, blind optics—but radar wasn't fooled. Invisible or not, a machine still reflected waves. He didn't know the names of stealth coatings, or where to buy them, so he settled for what he could. He etched a broad-spectrum Muggle-Repelling Hex across the chassis. If the military scrambled jets, the pilots would steer away and report "negative contact."
Missiles were another matter. He laced protective sigils into every panel and rim until the RV became a rolling fortress. Tires alone bore seven or eight wards apiece. He wouldn't drive through a nuclear fireball, but short of that? He could sip tea while watching artillery splash harmlessly against his windows.
Then came the fun part: space. He inscribed Extension arrays into the cabin, built a four-door wardrobe that could swallow an apartment complex. The RV's cabin stretched like a private jet—sixteen feet wide, fifty feet long. He could've gone bigger, but who wanted to jog for half an hour just to find the bathroom?
It was enough for two residents: him and Kreacher. The Dementors stayed locked in their trunk—he wasn't letting them roam with the Ancient One watching.
One wardrobe door opened onto Kreacher's pride: a herb garden the size of two football fields, filled with magical plants from the Potterverse. Another held a kitchen patch and livestock. What began as tomatoes and hens became cows, goats, even ostriches Kreacher had stolen from a zoo—his solution to Li Ming's craving for duck-neck snacks.
Li Ming had stared at the birds. Chickens, ducks, ostriches…not the same thing. He wisely kept quiet, fearing Kreacher's next "procurement" might involve giraffes.
Somewhere between bafflement and bulldozed, Li Ming watched his kitchen garden turn into a full farm and the RV into a self-sustaining base. The third wardrobe door housed a spell range. The fourth: his collection room.
One evening, Li Ming sat cross-legged on the RV roof, beer in hand, watching Kreacher baste lamb over a campfire. The elf plated a slice, passed it up—sweet, dripping—just as a portal snapped open by the flames.
Li Ming hopped down, offered the plate. "Master, you should've called. Kreacher's cooking is a sin to miss."
She tasted, nodded. "It is."
Kreacher bowed, murmured thanks, and doubled down on his seasoning.
Li Ming ushered her inside, gave her a full tour. They ended in the collection room. Ignoring the shelves, the Ancient One drew out the Time-Turner and pressed it into his palm, a smile playing at her lips. "I understand it now. I can see the past without the Eye."
His chest tightened. Does she know everything?
"What did you see?"
She shook her head, let the question fall. "Your book. I've finished organizing the spells."
He handed it over without hesitation. She tapped the pages once, then lifted her plate. "You won't mind if I take this and enjoy it slowly, will you?"
"Please. Take ten. There's a whole leg outside—need it wrapped to go?"
She opened a portal, shook her head, and stepped back to Kamar-Taj.
Only when she was gone did he exhale. Secrets could wait. He set the Time-Turner on a pedestal, warded it until the air hummed. Time deserved shelves lined with safeguards.
Then he cracked open the spellbook. New temporal techniques gleamed across the pages. And at the end, a surprise: a complete method for wandmaking.
He read it twice, scratched his scalp.
This… isn't what I expected.
A secret S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, location classified.
In a white room no larger than a modest office, Phil Coulson sat at a bare metal table. No restraints. Just a blindfold, two glasses of water, and a phone.
Across from him, Nick Fury—head shaved clean, burrito in hand—skimmed a dossier with his one good eye. The burrito vanished fast; the man hadn't eaten in a while.
He swallowed, set the file aside, and said, "Take off the blindfold, Coulson."
"Yes, sir." Coulson peeled it away, blinking. The last clear memory: finishing a field op, Fury's call, then an escort relay—plane, car, endless turns—until this room.
Fury picked up the phone, pressed play. A voice Coulson half-recognized filled the room—Li Ming, aboard an RV, describing a method to bring the dead back.
When the audio ended, Coulson frowned. "Sir… that was Austin, wasn't it?"
Fury nodded. "And the content?"
"My first reaction? Not to believe it. Resurrection…" Coulson exhaled. "It's beyond my frame."
Fury's mouth twitched. "Suppose you had a file to match and a medical specialist saying it checks out. Then what?"
"Fix the corrupted drive and run a controlled trial," Coulson said, automatic.
"Same here," Fury replied, standing. "First thing I did after Austin's little hypnosis trick was send myself to psych. Wanted to know if trying a trial was my idea…or his."
They walked a corridor lined with soldiers and medics sealed in biohazard gear.
"What'd the shrinks say? And… where are we?" Coulson asked.
At the elevator, Fury hit the button. "Tests say no hypnosis. But the experts reminded me: people come with curiosity baked in. The more Austin said 'don't do it,' the more my brain wanted to. Especially once a doctor told me it was viable." He shrugged. "Can't rule out he counted on that."
The doors slid open. The car dropped too long for Coulson to guess how deep.
They stepped out into a viewing hall. Fury pointed at the glass. "Watch."
Inside, under harsh light, two operating tables. On one: an ape opened chest to groin. On the other: an anesthetized ape missing both forearms.
At a signal, the surgeons moved. They lifted organs from jars of preservative and stitched them into the butchered ape. Near the end, they sewed human forearms onto its stumps.
The anesthetized ape stayed limp. The one rebuilt from scraps blinked awake—then scratched its armpit with disturbingly human dexterity.
Coulson's throat tightened. "Sir… limb grafting?"
"Not quite." Fury pointed at the dead one. "We've run it both ways. If they're alive during the final graft, none survive. If they're corpses, they revive—with the grafts working. So if you ever want a replacement arm, I shoot you first, then stitch on parts, then bring you back."
Coulson shook his head hard. He'd keep his scars. The whole thing felt like a butcher's lesson in waiting.
He looked from the revived ape to Fury. "Side effects?"
"Animals? Plenty. Across species the success rate's high. Austin said amnesia follows revival. Hard to measure in apes." Fury pushed open a control room door. "Humans? One trial. This week. First attempt took. Only side effect—complete amnesia."
Coulson turned—and froze.
On-screen, a scarred man pressed a barbell overhead, then dropped into squats like it was nothing.
"Recognize him?" Fury asked.
Coulson blinked. "Bob Mantner. STRIKE veteran. Last month he lost everything below the waist to a grenade."
"After I got Austin's drive," Fury said, "I kept R&D busy repairing it. Two years of animal revivals and adjustments before I greenlit a human trial."
Coulson squinted at the barbell. "That weight—"
"Just under five hundred kilos," Fury said.
Coulson shot him a look. Not a record missed the point. Bob wasn't even straining.
Fury read it and added, "Living muscle runs with governors in the brain. After revival? Governors are gone. He can push one-hundred percent of what the tissue can handle. That's why you're looking at a super-Bob."
From the blindfold flight onward, Coulson had been nursing a suspicion. Seeing Bob sealed it. "You brought me here to—"
"I'm assigning him to your team," Fury said. "You're his watcher. Everything you see, you report to me. No paperwork."
Exactly as expected. Coulson dipped his head. "Yes, sir. Do you want me to meet him?"
"Not yet." Fury's gaze stayed on the screen. "You've read Austin's file. See anything that says he could run this kind of work?"
Coulson shook his head. "No lab. No expertise. Only the RV, and that's not a resurrection suite. He could've sold the tech, though."
"Right. And he didn't. No leaks. No rumors." Fury's jaw set. "That's what I can't parse. If Austin wanted profit, he could've gone private, worldwide. Instead, he handed it to us. Why? Don't tell me it's my charm."
Coulson spread his hands. No answer.
"Until I know his angle," Fury said, voice dry, "we freeze human resurrection. But limb grafting—we'll push hard. End disabled soldiers, save a fortune in payouts." A thin smile curved his lips. "Maybe even cut cemetery costs, too."
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