The green light was always the green light.
It didn't matter which universe I was in, how many years had passed, or how many different monsters I'd fought since then. Some things don't fade. They don't soften at the edges like normal memories. They sit inside your head like a permanent stain, and every so often your brain decides to rub your face in it at four-forty in the morning, just to make sure you're still humble.
In the dream, I was back in the Ministry atrium.
Everything was too bright and too polished in that way government buildings love—like they're trying to convince you the world is stable while quietly filing paperwork that ruins lives. The golden fountain was shattered. Marble pillars were cracked. Statues lay broken like fallen gods. The air smelled like dust and spell-burn and blood, and my wand arm felt like it had been set on fire from the inside, the exhaustion so deep it wasn't even pain anymore—just a dull, numb warning that I had maybe one more good spell left, if I was lucky.
Voldemort's voice echoed through the wreckage, cold and high and wrong, like someone had taught a snake to speak and it hated the effort.
"You foolish child!"
His red eyes fixed on me the way a predator fixes on prey that still thinks it has options. His face twisted with fury, and in the dream I could always see every detail: the flat nose, the thin lips, the pale skin that looked like it had never known warmth.
"You've wasted the chance I gave you, Reyner Lance!" he hissed. "You are not worthy to be my successor!"
Reyner—me, back then—spat blood and forced himself upright, stepping sideways until he was between Voldemort and Harry. I could feel the cut above my eye leaking down, blurring my vision, and I could feel the tremor in my wrist from pushing magic too hard for too long.
"Whoever said I wanted to be your successor?" I snapped back, because if you're going to die, you might as well die petty. "You snake-faced freak—Harry, move! You're going to get us both killed!"
Harry's eyes—green like a curse and stubborn like fate—flashed with panic and fury. He was half a step behind me, clutching his wand like it could fix grief, horror, and bad decision-making all at once.
"But Reyner!" he shouted. "We can't just leave! Voldemort is still—"
"Not for long."
The voice that cut through the chaos wasn't Voldemort's.
It wasn't mine.
It was tired. Old. Calm in the way that only comes from someone who has seen too much and still chooses to stand in front of darkness anyway.
My heart always lurched at that sound. Hope, sharp and desperate, like grabbing a rope while falling.
A figure emerged from the shadows, robes billowing, wand already raised.
"Professor Dumbledore," Harry breathed, relief making him sound like a kid again. "Finally!"
I didn't even get the chance to greet him.
I never did.
Because Voldemort moved first. In the dream, he always moved first—dark robes flashing, killing intent so thick it felt like pressure on my lungs. Spells collided midair in explosions of light that shook the very foundations of the Ministry. Dumbledore met him with precision that wasn't flashy, just lethal, like a surgeon cutting out rot without hesitation.
It bought us seconds.
Seconds that were never enough.
I knew this ending. I'd lived it too many times, trapped in that loop of memory and failure. I remembered the lead-up as clearly as the death: the visions of Sirius being tortured, the bait designed to drag Harry into a trap. I'd argued. I'd pleaded. I'd shouted until my throat hurt, trying to make the stubborn idiot see sense.
But Harry Potter didn't do sense.
Harry Potter ran toward danger for the people he loved, consequences be damned.
And I—because I'd become his friend, because I'd become family in the way that mattered—followed him anyway.
The Death Eaters swarmed. The Order arrived too late, like they always did. The atrium filled with shouting and spells and panic.
Sirius fell through the Veil.
His face was frozen in surprise, like the universe had betrayed him mid-breath.
Harry screamed.
That scream was the worst part. Not because it was loud, but because it was raw. A sound of a kid's soul tearing.
Even now, in a different world with different rules, I could still hear it.
Then came the moment I dreaded most.
Voldemort's wand turned toward me.
Crimson eyes burned with cold satisfaction, like he'd been waiting for this specific piece of cruelty. His lips parted, and the words were simple. Casual. Like saying hello.
"Avada Kedavra."
Green light swallowed everything.
And then—
I woke up gasping, my hand clawing at my chest like I expected to find a hole there.
For a long moment I just lay still, staring at the water-stained ceiling of my bedroom in Queens. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack something. Sweat soaked my shirt, sticking to my skin like I'd run miles in my sleep.
Breathe, I told myself. You're not Reyner anymore. You're Abel.
Safe.
The mantra felt hollow even inside my own head, which was rude. If my own brain wasn't going to cooperate, who was?
The digital clock on my nightstand glowed red: 4:40 AM.
Five weeks. That was how long I'd been having that dream every night back when the memories first crashed into me like a truck. Same atrium. Same green light. Same death. Sometimes different angles, different lines, different ways my mind tried to torture itself, but the ending was always the same.
Sleep never came back after this one. It never did. Once the green light showed up, my body was done pretending rest was possible.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there until my breathing slowed. My room was small—twin bed, cluttered desk, books and papers stacked like I was trying to build a fort out of knowledge, dresser that Theresa kept attempting to organize like it was a moral mission. The walls were mostly bare except for a poster of the New York skyline she'd bought when we moved here, like she wanted to remind me that this city could be beautiful if you ignored the parts that tried to kill you.
This was my life now.
My third life.
That sentence still felt insane sometimes, like something you'd say during an awkward icebreaker at a support group for people who had died too often.
My first life had been a blur. No family. No real friends. No one who would've noticed if I disappeared. I died young and forgettable, so unremarkably that I couldn't even remember how it happened—just a moment, then nothing, then waking up in a new body.
The second life had been Reyner Lance.
Hogwarts. The Wizarding World. The whole "magic is real and also politics is a nightmare" situation. I'd been dropped into it with no warning and no safety net, attending school alongside Harry Potter while trying to survive long enough to do some good.
And I had changed things.
I'd saved people canon treated like disposable background characters. I'd made friends I never expected to love so deeply that losing them still felt like someone had torn out a piece of me. I'd trained. Fought. Planned. Hoarded information like it was ammunition.
But in the end, I still died in the Ministry atrium.
Cut down by the same curse that had orphaned Harry.
Three years of preparation, and I hadn't even made it to the final battle. I'd been inserted into that story during Harry's fourth year, when the Triwizard Tournament had already begun and Voldemort's return was basically a ticking bomb with a smug grin.
All I could do was prepare everyone else and hope it would be enough.
I'd hidden everything I knew—Horcrux locations, turning points, names of people who would betray or die—in a journal. I'd left it in the Room of Requirement like a desperate time capsule. If anyone could use it, it would be Hermione.
If she finds it, I thought, and that was the most depressing part. My last gift to my friends was a maybe.
Now I was here. Abel Shaw. Sixteen years old. Living in Queens. Theresa making sure I ate vegetables and didn't die doing dumb teenager things.
Except the MCU didn't really allow "dumb teenager things" without adding "and also aliens."
I got out of bed and padded quietly into the kitchen. The apartment was silent except for the fridge hum and distant sirens that never fully stopped in this city. Theresa's door was closed.
Good. She needed sleep. Her job took enough out of her without worrying about her weird kid waking up like he'd been stabbed by a nightmare.
I poured a glass of water, added lemon and honey out of habit—Hogwarts had trained me to believe honey could fix everything from sore throats to existential dread—and drank while staring out at the pre-dawn skyline.
New York City.
Not the New York from my first life. Not the magical London-adjacent world from my second.
This was the Marvel world.
The one where gods walked around like celebrities, monsters hid in plain sight, and the future had a habit of arriving with explosions.
The worst part was knowing what was coming.
The Battle of New York hadn't happened yet, not back when those memories first returned. The Avengers Initiative was still just a rumor. Thanos was still just a shadow at the edge of the story.
But he would come.
The Infinity Stones would matter.
And half the universe would vanish in a second.
I set the empty glass down and changed into workout clothes.
If sleep wasn't happening, I was going to run. Running had become ritual. If my brain insisted on handing me trauma at dawn, I'd answer by reminding my body it was still alive.
Queens was quiet at this hour, suspended between night and morning. Streetlights painted everything in soft orange. The pavement held the day's leftover heat like a memory. A stray cat watched me from under a parked car, eyes reflecting light like coins.
I started running.
Breath in. Breath out. Footfall steady. The burn in my lungs felt honest, simple. Physical pain is easy compared to memory.
Training from Hogwarts helped more than I liked admitting. Real duels weren't movie flashy. They were brutal, efficient, deadly. Footwork mattered. Positioning mattered. If you lost your wand, you died.
Hermione had understood that faster than anyone. She'd somehow gotten her hands on Muggle martial arts manuals—never asked how, because Hermione with a plan is basically a natural disaster—and insisted we learn. Harry taught offensive spells. Hermione made sure we could throw a punch and had the footwork to back it up.
Ron had complained the entire time.
"Bloody hell, 'Mione, we're wizards! When are we ever going to—OW!"
The memory made me smile and ache at the same time.
Two blocks later, movement in an alley caught my attention. Three guys stepped out—early twenties, desperate eyes, the kind of posture that said they'd practiced intimidation in front of a mirror.
"Nice shoes," the first one said. "Hand 'em over."
I assessed them automatically. Three. No visible guns. Probably knives. Dead-end alley. They'd picked the wrong teenager.
"These?" I glanced down at my beat-up sneakers. "They're knock-offs. Not worth it."
The first one lunged.
It ended fast.
A sidestep. Elbow to the solar plexus. His breath left like it had been evicted. He folded. The second one reached for my shoulder and found empty air because I moved first. A sweep, a shove, a hard impact against brick. The third hesitated—smartest of the bunch—then tried anyway and got a knee to the thigh and a palm strike that made his eyes water.
They ended up groaning on the pavement, wind knocked out, pride shattered.
"Like I said," I muttered, jogging past them. "Not worth it."
If they'd had guns, I would've run. Pride gets you killed. I'd learned that in two different worlds.
By the time I got home, the sun was beginning to paint the sky pink and gold.
And the smell of bacon hit me before I even opened the door.
Theresa was at the stove, hair in a messy bun, dark circles under tired eyes, still wearing yesterday's clothes. She was running on fumes and stubbornness, but she was cooking anyway like feeding me was a rule of the universe.
My mom.
The word still felt strange sometimes.
In my first life, I'd been alone. In my second, I'd had friends who became family. But never a parent.
Theresa wasn't my biological mother in the way my old brain wanted to define it.
But she was my mom in every way that counted.
"You should be sleeping," I said, leaning on the counter.
"And you should stop sneaking out at ungodly hours," she replied without looking away from the eggs. "Sit. Eat."
So I did.
Perfect bacon. Fluffy eggs. Golden toast—crispy outside, soft inside. Even exhausted, she cooked like she refused to be anything less than excellent.
We talked about nothing important. School. Work. A funny thing she'd seen. Little normal conversations that felt like stealing peace from a universe that didn't believe in it.
I wondered if she noticed the change in me back then. If she sensed her son was carrying two lifetimes of memory. If she could tell I was trying to prepare for disasters she didn't even know existed.
If she did, she never said anything.
And I was grateful.
Because sometimes love is letting someone have their silence.
At school later—back when this all started—a news feed played on a hallway monitor during lunch. Tony Stark's face filled the screen, smirking like he'd invented confidence.
In a few years, that man would save the universe.
And die doing it.
I turned away, a weight settling in my chest like stone.
Peace never lasted.
Not in this universe.
Not when you knew what was coming.
And as the days kept moving forward, one thought hardened into something like a vow:
When the storm came—when Thanos arrived, when the Stones started to matter—I would be ready.
Even if I didn't know how yet.
Even if all I could do was run at dawn, drink honey-lemon water, and keep living long enough to matter.