Green light.
It was always the green light.
"You foolish child!"
Voldemort's voice echoed through the Ministry atrium like a death knell, his serpentine features twisted with fury. "You've wasted the chance I gave you, Reyner Lance! You are not worthy to be my successor!"
Reyner's wand arm burned from exhaustion. Blood dripped from a gash above his eye, blurring his vision. Around him, the atrium lay in ruins—shattered marble, overturned statues, the golden fountain reduced to rubble.
"Whoever said I wanted to be your successor?" Reyner spat, positioning himself between the Dark Lord and Harry. "You snake-faced freak—Harry, move! You're going to get us both killed!"
"But Reyner!" Harry's green eyes—so much like the curse that haunted Reyner's nightmares—were wild with desperation. "We can't just leave! Voldemort is still—"
"Not for long."
The tired voice cut through the chaos like a blade. Reyner's heart surged with desperate hope as a figure emerged from the shadows of the atrium, robes billowing, wand already raised.
"Professor Dumbledore!" Harry's relief was palpable. "Finally!"
But Reyner didn't have time to greet the headmaster.
He never did.
Voldemort moved first—a blur of dark robes and killing intent. Spells collided in the air, explosions of light and force that shook the very foundations of the Ministry. Dumbledore engaged the Dark Lord with the calm precision of a master, buying them precious seconds.
Seconds that were never enough.
Reyner knew how this ended. He'd lived it a hundred times, a thousand times, trapped in this endless loop of memory and failure. He'd known the visions were a trap from the start—Voldemort baiting Harry with images of Sirius being tortured. He'd tried to reason with the stubborn idiot, tried to make him see sense.
But Harry Potter didn't do sense. Harry Potter charged headfirst into danger for the people he loved, consequences be damned.
And Reyner had followed him anyway.
They'd walked straight into Voldemort's trap. The Death Eaters swarmed. The Order arrived too late—always too late. Sirius fell through the Veil, his expression frozen in surprise, and Harry's scream still echoed in Reyner's ears even now.
Then came the moment Reyner dreaded most.
Voldemort's wand turned toward him. Those crimson eyes, slitted like a snake's, burned with cold satisfaction.
"Avada Kedavra."
The green light swallowed everything—
Abel Shaw woke with a strangled gasp, his hand clutching his chest like he expected to find a hole there.
For a long moment, he just lay still, staring at the water-stained ceiling of his bedroom. His heart hammered against his ribs. Sweat soaked through his shirt, plastering the fabric to his skin.
Breathe, he told himself. You're not Reyner anymore. You're Abel. You're safe.
The mantra felt hollow, even after five weeks of repetition.
"Another dream," he muttered, dragging a hand down his face. "Same damn dream."
The digital clock on his nightstand glowed an accusatory red: 4:40 AM.
Sleep wasn't coming back. It never did after this nightmare.
With a heavy sigh, Abel swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a moment, letting the cool air ground him in reality. His room was small—barely enough space for a twin bed, a desk cluttered with textbooks, and a dresser. The walls were bare except for a single poster of the New York skyline his mom had bought him when they first moved here.
This was his life now. His third life, to be precise.
The first one had been... unremarkable. No family, no friends, no lover. Just a lonely high schooler who died too young and too pathetically to even remember how.
The second life had been Reyner Lance—a name he'd carried for three years in a world that should have only existed in books. The Wizarding World. Hogwarts. Harry Potter and his friends.
And Voldemort.
Abel—Reyner—had been dropped into that world without warning, without guidance, without purpose. Just a freshly dead teenager suddenly attending wizard school alongside the Boy Who Lived, trying desperately not to get himself killed.
He'd failed at that last part.
Spectacularly.
Sure, he'd changed a few things. Saved a few lives that canon had discarded. Made friends he'd never expected to care about so deeply. But in the end, he'd still died in that atrium, cut down by the same killing curse that had orphaned Harry Potter.
And he hadn't even made it to the final battle. Three years of trying to make a difference, and he'd been dropped into Harry's fourth year. The Triwizard Tournament was already underway. Pettigrew had already escaped. Voldemort's return was inevitable.
All Reyner could do was prepare everyone for the war to come.
He hoped Hermione had found the book—the journal he'd hidden in the Room of Requirement, filled with everything he remembered about the original timeline. Every death, every Horcrux location, every twist and turn of a story he'd once read for entertainment.
If anyone could use that information to save the world, it was Hermione Granger.
Abel pushed himself to his feet, padding quietly to the kitchen. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant wail of sirens somewhere in the city. His mom's door was closed, a sliver of darkness beneath it.
Good. She needed the sleep.
He filled a glass with water, squeezed in some lemon and honey, and drank it slowly while staring out the window at the pre-dawn skyline.
New York City.
Not the New York he'd known in his first life, or the magical underbelly he'd glimpsed in his second. This was something else entirely.
This was the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The realization had hit him like a freight train five weeks ago, when his memories finally resurfaced after a fever that nearly killed him. Six years of living as Abel Shaw, thinking he was just a normal kid with a hardworking mom and an absent father—and then suddenly remembering everything.
Two past lives. Two deaths. And now... this.
He'd confirmed it quickly enough. Tony Stark's face was plastered across every magazine and news channel—the same face as Robert Downey Jr., down to the last detail. Captain America appeared in their history textbooks. The Battle of New York hadn't happened yet, but Abel knew it was coming.
Everything was coming.
Thanos. The Snap. Half the universe turned to dust.
And here he was—a sixteen-year-old with no powers, no resources, and no idea how he was supposed to survive any of it.
Abel set down his glass and changed into his workout clothes. If he couldn't sleep, he might as well run.
The streets of Queens were quiet at this hour, caught in that liminal space between night and morning. Street lamps cast pools of orange light on empty sidewalks. A stray cat watched Abel pass from beneath a parked car, its eyes glowing in the darkness.
He ran.
This had become his ritual over the past five weeks—waking before dawn, pounding the pavement until his lungs burned and his legs ached, pushing his body to its limits. In a universe filled with gods and monsters, peak human conditioning might not mean much.
But it was something.
And Abel refused to be helpless again.
His combat training helped. Wizard duels weren't what fanfiction made them out to be—all colorful lights and dramatic poses. Real magical combat was brutal, efficient, lethal. Footwork mattered. Positioning mattered. The Auror training program Reyner had begun with the Dumbldore Arme emphasized close-quarters combat as much as wandwork, because the moment you lost your wand, you were dead.
Hermione had taken that lesson to heart. She'd somehow acquired muggle martial arts manuals—Abel never asked where even though he was sure that the Wesaley twins had their hands on that—and insisted that everyone in their little group learn the basics. Harry taught them spells. Hermione made sure they could throw a punch.
Abel still remembered Ron's complaints. "Bloody hell, 'Mione, we're wizards! When are we ever going to need to—OW!"
The memory made him smile, even as a pang of loss tightened his chest.
He missed them. All of them.
Two blocks later, movement in an alley caught his attention. Abel slowed, his senses sharpening. Three figures emerged from the shadows—young men, probably early twenties, with the kind of desperate hunger in their eyes that Abel had learned to recognize.
"Nice shoes," one of them said, blocking the sidewalk. "Hand 'em over."
Abel assessed the situation in a heartbeat. Three opponents. No visible weapons, but that didn't mean much. The alley behind them was a dead end—they'd probably dragged victims in there before.
New York at 4 AM. Some things never changed.
"These?" Abel glanced down at his worn sneakers. "They're knock-offs. Not worth the trouble."
"Let us be the judge of that."
The first one lunged.
It was over in seconds.
Abel sidestepped the clumsy grab, drove his elbow into the man's solar plexus, and used his momentum to send him crashing into his friend. The third hesitated—just long enough for Abel to close the distance and sweep his legs out from under him.
All three lay groaning on the pavement.
"Like I said." Abel stepped over them, barely winded. "Not worth the trouble."
He continued his run, heart rate elevated but steady.
If there had been more of them—or if they'd been armed—running would have been the smarter option. Pride was worthless if it got you killed.
But three untrained thugs? That was just a warm-up.
By the time Abel returned home, the sun was beginning to paint the sky in shades of pink and gold. He slipped through the front door quietly, expecting the apartment to still be dark.
Instead, the smell of bacon greeted him.
His mom stood at the stove, her ginger hair—the same shade as his—pulled into a messy bun. Dark circles shadowed her brown eyes, and she still wore yesterday's clothes, but she was humming softly as she cooked.
Theresa Shaw. Head chef at a Michelin three-star restaurant. The hardest-working woman Abel had ever known.
His mother.
The word still felt strange sometimes. In his first life, he'd been alone. In his second, he'd had friends—family, even, in the way that mattered—but never a parent. Never someone who kissed his forehead before bed and packed his lunch and worked double shifts just so he could go to college without drowning in debt.
Theresa wasn't his biological mother. Abel knew that much. They didn't share blood, well technicaly they did.
But she was his mom in every way that counted.
"You should be sleeping," he said, leaning against the kitchen doorway.
She turned, her tired face breaking into a warm smile. "And you should stop sneaking out at ungodly hours. We've talked about this."
"It's just jogging."
"At four in the morning. In New York."
"The streets are empty. It's actually the safest time to—"
"Nice try." She pointed her spatula at him. "Sit. Eat."
Abel sat. He ate.
The bacon was perfect—crispy but not burnt, seasoned with something subtle that made his taste buds sing. The eggs were fluffy, the toast golden brown. Even exhausted, even running on barely four hours of sleep, Theresa Shaw cooked like the professional she was.
"Mom, if you're still tired, I can start making my own breakfast. You know that."
She yawned, sliding into the chair across from him. "Honey, I already can't make your lunch and dinner most days. If I skip breakfast too, that'd be truly negligent."
"You're not negligent. You're overworked."
"Same thing, in my book."
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, Abel eating while Theresa watched him with that soft expression she always wore when she thought he wasn't looking. Like she couldn't quite believe he was real.
He wondered sometimes if she sensed the change in him. Five weeks ago, he'd been a normal teenager—or at least, he'd acted like one. Now he was... different. Quieter. More aware.
More afraid.
If she noticed, she didn't say anything. Maybe she chalked it up to teenage moodiness. Maybe she was just too tired to push.
Either way, Abel was grateful.
"You should take a break," he said between bites. "You haven't had a proper day off in, what, five months? You're the most overworked Michelin chef I've ever met."
Theresa raised an eyebrow. "And how many Michelin chefs do you know, exactly?"
"Just the best one. But I'm pretty sure you're still breaking some kind of record."
"Flattery won't get you out of school, young man."
"Wasn't trying." Abel hesitated, then added quietly, "I just worry about you."
Something flickered across her face—surprise, maybe. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
"That's my job, honey. Not yours."
Abel squeezed back, committing the warmth of her touch to memory.
In a universe where half of all life could vanish in an instant, moments like this mattered.
He didn't know who his biological father was. His skin was brown, his hair an unusual shade of green—traits that definitely didn't come from Theresa. But whenever he asked, she deflected. Changed the subject. Found an excuse to be somewhere else.
Abel didn't push.
Why should he care about a man who'd never shown up? Not once in sixteen years. No birthday cards. No phone calls. Nothing.
For all Abel knew, his father could be Sebastian Shaw—leader of the Hellfire Club, mutant supremacist, and all-around terrible person. Same last name. Same universe where comic book villains walked the earth.
It was a possibility he tried very hard not to think about.
"Alright." Theresa stood, gathering his empty plate. "Get ready for school. You'll be late."
Abel glanced at the clock. She was right—as usual.
He brushed his teeth, grabbed his bag, and headed for the door. But before he could leave, Theresa caught his arm and pulled him into a hug.
"Have a good day, baby."
"You too, Mom."
He meant it more than she knew.
The ride to Midtown School of Science and Technology took about fifteen minutes by bike. Abel weaved through the early-morning traffic, enjoying the wind against his face and the gradually warming air.
Midtown was one of the best STEM schools in New York—competitive, demanding, and filled with kids who were either geniuses or desperately trying to become one. Abel fell somewhere in the middle. He was smart enough to keep up, dedicated enough to maintain decent grades, but he wasn't here to become a scientist.
He was here to survive.
And maybe—if he was lucky—to find a way to help when the world started falling apart.
The school building loomed ahead, all glass and steel and modern architecture. Students streamed through the front doors, chattering about homework and weekend plans and whatever drama had unfolded on social media overnight.
Normal teenage stuff.
Abel parked his bike and headed inside, nodding at a few familiar faces along the way. He wasn't popular, but he wasn't invisible either. Just another face in the crowd.
That was fine. Anonymity was its own kind of protection.
In the main hallway, a large screen cycled through videos of famous scientists and inventors. A recruitment tool, probably—reminding students of the greatness they could achieve if they studied hard and dreamed big.
Today's feature: Tony Stark.
"Tony Stark—renowned scientist, businessman, and philanthropist. Graduated from MIT at seventeen, with doctorates in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Physics..."
The video showed clips of Stark at various galas and press conferences, flashing that trademark smirk. Young, arrogant, brilliant. Still in his playboy era, before Afghanistan, before Iron Man, before everything changed.
Abel watched for a moment, something unreadable flickering in his eyes.
In a few years, that man would build a suit of armor in a cave. He'd become a hero. He'd save the world more times than anyone could count.
And then he'd die.
"I am Iron Man."
The words echoed in Abel's memory—not from this timeline, but from a movie screen in a life that felt like a dream now. He remembered the theater. The gasps from the audience. The tears.
Tony Stark would snap his fingers, and Thanos would turn to dust, and the universe would be saved.
But Tony wouldn't survive.
Abel turned away from the screen and walked to class, a strange heaviness settling in his chest.
His life was peaceful now. Boring, even. Just a normal teenager going to a normal school, pretending he didn't know what was coming.
But peace never lasted.
Not in this universe.
And when the storm finally hit, Abel intended to be ready.