Chapter Text
James hadn't been surprised. A scant 30 seconds after he disconnected the call, the air in his new NYU dorm room—a space that still smelled of fresh paint and unpacked boxes—caught fire.
A vortex of swirling black flammes appeared beside a half-assembled IKEA bookshelf, and from it materialized out his father.
Harry Potter-Black didn't arrive; he manifested, already clad in the obsidian-black, rune-etched armor he’d worn on the tanker, the terrifying war scythe held loosely in one hand. His green eyes, burning with protective fury, swept the room, cataloging threats with lethal speed.
The scene he found was one of frozen, chaotic tableau. Happy Hogan was halfway to drawing a concealed firearm, his face a mask of disbelief. Dr. Yinsen, ever the calm academic, had simply pushed his glasses up his nose and was observing the spacial distortion with intense curiosity. Hugo, his younger son, stood protectively in front of Doreen Green, whose own personal squirrel, Tippy-Toe, was chittering angrily from her shoulder. And in the center of it all stood the source of the disruption: a tall, powerfully built young woman with braided blonde hair, wearing unfamiliar, high-tech armor and leaning on a colossal, double-bearded axe.
Harry’s gaze locked onto her. His magic, a palpable force in the small room, crackled like ozone. “Step away from my sons,” he commanded, his voice a low growl that promised swift, merciless violence.
James braced for a fight. He expected the woman to raise her axe, to issue a challenge, to do *something* hostile. Instead, her eyes went wide. A brilliant, starstruck grin spread across her face, completely shattering her intimidating warrior persona.
“Wow,” she breathed, her voice filled with awe. “Uncle Hugo wasn’t kidding. You really do just… command a room.” She took an impulsive step forward, then seemed to remember the massive scythe pointed at her sternum and stopped. “I mean—Lord Potter-Black. It is an honor. Truly. My name is Thrúd Thorsdottir.”
Harry blinked. The sheer, unadulterated fangirl enthusiasm was so unexpected it momentarily short-circuited his battle readiness. The killing intent in his eyes flickered, replaced by profound confusion. He glanced at James, who just shrugged helplessly.
“Uncle Hugo?” Harry repeated, lowering the scythe a fraction of an inch.
“Oh, right. You don’t know me yet. He’s not my uncle yet,” Thrúd corrected herself, blushing slightly. “He will be. He and Aunt Doreen basically raised me.” She gestured with a thumb towards the bewildered pair by the window. Doreen’s mouth opened and closed silently, like a goldfish.
Harry slowly dematerialized his armor and scythe, the black metal dissolving into smoke. He was left standing in his travel-worn leather jacket, looking less like a demigod of war and more like a very tired, very confused father. “Alright,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Someone, from the beginning. And please, use small words.”
They sat on unpacked boxes and the edge of a bare mattress, the mini-fridge still jammed in the doorway. Thrúd, now that the immediate threat of dismemberment had passed, launched into her story. It wasn't a clean, polished report; it was a torrent of memories, a history lesson steeped in personal tragedy.
“It started after the Convergence,” she began, her gaze distant. “The Dark Elves… they returned. Malekith came for the Aether, and he got it. He attacked Asgard.” Her voice grew heavy. “Grandfather Odin… he was lost in his grief for Queen Frigga. Malekith killed her, you see. It broke him. He didn’t prepare the defenses. He didn't see the attack coming until it was too late.”
She described a desperate, doomed battle. Thor, Loki, Lady Sif, and the Warriors Three fighting back-to-back against an unstoppable tide. Jane Foster, her father's ally, using her knowledge of astrophysics to try and turn the tide. But it wasn't enough.
“Malekith won,” Thrúd said, the words flat and final. “He unleashed the Aether. He plunged the Nine Realms into an age of darkness. Not all at once. It was a slow decay. A creeping twilight that swallowed stars.”
Her story painted a grim picture of a scattered resistance, a handful of survivors hiding in the shadows of a dying universe. “My father, Thor, became their leader. He and my mother… Lady Sif… they found moments of light in the darkness.” A shadow passed over her face. “She died when I was born. The strain was too much.”
The room was silent, absorbing the weight of her loss. “My father… he loved her so much. Losing her, after everything else… he couldn't bear to look at me. I reminded him too much of her.” She glanced at Hugo and Doreen, her expression softening into one of deep affection. “But Uncle Hugo and Aunt Doreen were there. They took me in. They told me stories of a time before the dark. They taught me how to fight, how to hope. They raised me.”
Harry watched his younger son, who was staring at Thrúd with a mixture of horror and fascination. The idea that this quiet, bookish boy would one day raise a warrior princess in a post-apocalyptic wasteland was staggering.
“Years passed,” Thrúd continued. “We were found. In a last, desperate gamble, my father reclaimed the Aether from Malekith's fortress. He and Jane—they knew they couldn't fix our timeline. It was too broken. But they could build a door. A way back.” She clutched a metallic amulet around her neck. “He amd Uncle Hugo poured all their power, all the Aether’s reality-bending energy, into sending me here. To stop it before it starts. To save Queen Frigga.”
“So why come here?” James asked, voicing the question on everyone’s mind. “Why not go straight to Asgard? Warn them directly?”
Thrúd looked almost sheepish. “The temporal navigation was… imprecise. I had to choose a temporal and spatial anchor I knew. An emotional one. And all my life, Uncle Hugo told me stories about his family. About his uncle that became his father: Harry Potter-Black. About the his mum, Hermione Granger. About his brothers James and Teddy" She grinned at him. “He said if anyone could fix the impossible, it was you all. I wanted… I wanted to meet you. The family he missed so much.”
Harry was quiet for a long time, processing. It was insane. It was impossible. And yet, it tracked. The grief of a king, the desperation of a hero, the love of a found family—those were constants in any universe. It had the messy, emotional, illogical ring of truth.
“Okay,” Harry said finally, his voice steady. “Let’s assume this is all true. How do we even begin to contact Asgard? Thor’s off-world. We have no way of reaching him.”
Thrúd’s grin returned, fierce and bright. She hefted her axe, planting its haft on the floor with a resonant thud that probably cracked the linoleum. Intricate, glowing lines of energy pulsed along its surface.
“My father gave me his axe, Járnbjörn,” she said proudly. “And Jane Foster, with help from Uncle Hugo’s notes, made a few… modifications.” She pointed to the nexus where the blades met the haft, where a crystal pulsed with contained lightning. “This is our key. It can call the Bifrost.”
As if on cue, Harry’s StarkPhone buzzed insistently. He held up a hand, pulling the device from his pocket. The screen flashed with a priority alert from E.L.F., overriding all other functions. It was a secure audio channel from Rhodey.
“Harry, you there?” Rhodey’s voice was tense, all business. “We’ve got a problem. A big one.”
“Define big,” Harry said, his attention snapping from the cosmic to the terrestrial.
“Vice President Rodriguez just dropped off the face of the earth. His Secret Service detail is dead—not shot, not stabbed. They look like they spontaneously combusted. Extremis.”
Harry swore under his breath. “Killian’s network.”
“Worse,” Rhodey continued. “Jarvis has been tracking chatter across encrypted channels since Rodriguez vanished. He’s activated a sleeper cell protocol. We’re not just talking about a few rogue soldiers, Harry. We’re talking about dozens of agents embedded in federal and state law enforcement. Capitol Police. FBI. Even SHIELD. He’s not running; he’s staging a coup.”
A map of Washington D.C. materialized as a hologram from Harry’s phone, red dots flaring to life over critical government buildings. The White House. The Capitol. The Pentagon.
“He’s planning on decapitating the entire government in one swift move,” Harry murmured, the horrifying scale of the plan crashing down on him.
“The President is secure on a SHIELD base, but he’s a king with no kingdom if Rodriguez succeeds. We need to move, now. We need you.”
Harry looked from the holographic map of a nation on the brink of collapse to the determined face of the young woman from a ruined future. He saw Hugo, staring at Thrúd with dawning responsibility, and James, whose hands were clenched into fists, ready for the next fight. Two apocalypses, one cosmic, one political, both demanding his immediate attention.
"I'll be back soon"
He ended the call with Rhodey. The dorm room, once a symbol of a hopeful, normal future for his son, had become the nexus point for two world-ending crises. He was one man. His family was powerful, but they were finite. They could not be in two timelines, on two worlds, at once.
“Thrúd,” he said, his voice grim. “Your mission just got a lot more complicated.”