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one
Stephen groaned, loud and childish. "We don't need help! We've got it under control!"
Wong, current Sorcerer Supreme and perpetual supreme pain in Stephen Strange's ass, looked pointedly unimpressed. "We need help, and it does us no favors to pretend otherwise." He made a show of opening the refrigerator, allowing the tentacled creature within to wrap a long, writhing purple limb around his ankle. "It's drinking all the orange juice," he said with a severe frown. He pulled out a (admittedly low) carafe of juice and kicked the tentacle off himself, slamming the fridge door on it until it fully receded.
"You just handled it," Stephen muttered, stabbing at a turkey sausage link on his plate. "It's under control."
The carafe hit the table with more force than he expected, startling him into looking up. "Master Granger will be here shortly from the London sanctum," said Wong sternly. "There is no room for argument. I understand," he continued when Stephen began to speak, "that you do not believe this is necessary." Wong poured the last of the juice into an absurdly fine goblet, scowling at the dense pulp plopping in at the end. "I do. Master Granger is the foremost expert on ley line harmonics on the planet."
Stephen scoffed. "It's wild magic, not an academic exercise." The sorcerers of the London sanctum were best left to their textbooks. Handling a burst confluence of ley lines required real-world experience. "There's a difference between reading about stopping a hemorrhage and having your hands in someone's chest cavity."
He stood polite and aloof as Wong welcomed Master Granger into the New York sanctum. She arrived via portal. The edges of it were tight, constrained, the characteristic sparks of golden light moving in one clean band around the aperture in space rather than flinging out madly into the world. It closed behind her soundlessly with barely a shimmer. He barely suppressed an eye roll. How long had she spent perfecting an inter-dimensional portal when she could've been doing something practical?
It was difficult to guess her exact age, but he tentatively put her at a few years younger than him. He wished Wong had told him how long she'd been studying the Mystic Arts. She seemed fascinated by her surroundings, as if she'd never been somewhere so magical. Her fingers twitched like she was ready to cast. Overeager. This time it was even harder to keep the skepticism and irritation from his expression. Judging by the look Wong gave him, he didn't quite manage it.
Her hair was a gravity-defying crown of tight curls, abundant and free in sharp contrast to the precise lines of her robes. The deep burgundy fabric was immaculate, every fold and drape deliberate, every seam straight and even. A silver-bound amulet rested against her chest, glimmering in the light as she moved.
Granger carried two bags: a mundane leather weekender and a small beaded purse. He wondered where she'd acquired the latter; it seemed to hum with magic. She set the former on the ornate antique rug covering dark hardwood with a heavy thud. "You've certainly got excess wild magic," she said calmly, still peering around the room as if she could see it. "It's coming from the southeastern corner of the building, yes?"
Wong nodded seriously. "That is where the ley lines merge." It irritated Stephen that she needed the reminder.
"Well," she said, clapping her hands. "Let's get to it." Finally, the woman turned to acknowledge Stephen. "You must be Master Strange." There was a glint in her eyes as she said it; she'd heard of him, of course. He understood he had a reputation. "You've been taking point on this, I believe? I'd love to get it handled quickly," she continued without letting him speak. "There's much more complex work to be done."
He grit his teeth. "The network here is a little more complicated than your usual ley lines, sweetheart." Her eyes narrowed infinitesimally. Good. She understood. "Why don't you start by observing?"
Wong heaved a sigh, rolling his eyes, but Granger refrained from responding. Clearly, Stephen gathered, she was intelligent enough not to pick fights she couldn't win.
He led them to the top-floor room he'd hardly left in three days, barely sleeping to make sure the situation was handled. Light from the rising sun cast a golden glow on the elaborate array of artifacts and conjured focuses redirecting the energy out of the sanctum and into the outside world.
"It took three days to construct the channeling array, but it's holding," Stephen said proudly, and Wong looked suitably impressed.
Granger said nothing as she approached the section of the array that merged the stream of excess magics with the usual exhaust of the sanctum, effectively adding a junction to the existing conduit through which magic was channeled out. A single dark hand extended, not quite touching the golden lattice of conjured light. Her needlessly flashy rings reflected the light sharply.
"You chose a Singh-Cagliostro tertiary diffusion approach?" she asked after a few long, quiet moments.
Stephen blinked. "Obviously." She raised her brows, deep brown eyes boring into his, waiting for him to stop being evasive. He felt compelled to explain the decision. He ignored the impulse.
When it became clear even to her that he wasn't going to elaborate, she pursed her lips minutely and turned her attention back to the lattice array.
"The leak was the earth reacting to the Snap," she said quietly. "The source has cut off now that the excess has been let out. This is a puddle, not a stream."
Then with a twirl of her wrist, the streaks of magical energy coursing through his grid began to twirl towards her, gaining speed the closer they came to her hand. All at once, the light compressed into a small amber marble with a snap. The air in the room felt lighter, easier to breathe, and he realized she must have extracted the excess energy in the atmosphere as well.
She slipped the marble into her pocket and Stephen was distressed to find that his jaw had dropped. "It was a decent start, Master Strange," she told him. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes betrayed her vindication. "If there was truly an active flow, it might've been useful." Her words prickled but he withheld comment.
"Thank you, Master Granger." He'd forgotten Wong was even there, busy as he was ignoring the sting of being outmatched. "I see my concerns about cascade failure were unfounded."
"Just so. Now, where can I put my things?" Her smile seemed to transform into a sharp-toothed grin. "There's a lot of work to do here."
two
The Sanctum's solarium was not visible from outside the building, but the pale sun of an April morning still shone through the glass panels that began on the floor and stretched high above to form a domed ceiling. Stephen sat on a cool stone plinth admiring the impossible architecture and nursing his second cup of coffee.
A window opened like a door and he bit back nasty words. Wong half-entered the solarium. It looked like he was holding onto something in the hallway. "Strange, we have a small situation."
"It seems large enough for you to interrupt my morning solitude."
"It's nearly noon," Wong snarked. "But… yes, it is. May we come in?"
"We?" But Stephen motioned for Wong and his guest to come fully into the room.
He didn't recognize her at first.
A young girl stood at Wong's side, no more than eight years old. She was putting on a brave face but her pale knuckles gripping Wong's sleeve betrayed her. All the most obvious hints were there—her complexion, keen eyes taking in the strange space, and spirited halo of curls—but it was the resolute set of her jaw that made him sure that he was looking at a young Hermione Granger.
"Did Granger conjure a copy of herself?"
"This is Granger," Wong hissed. Stephen couldn't help the twitch of his lips. Of course she'd managed to de-age herself. "I have a Zoom conference with the London sanctum's treasurer about their dry-cleaning expenses. I need you to handle this."
Stephen stood and brushed nonexistent dust from his deep blue tunic. Young Granger's wide eyes followed the motion and he realized with a start that she seemed genuinely terrified. He approached slowly, his boots on the stone floor echoing throughout the solarium. "Hermione, yes?" She looked like she wanted to hide behind Wong but just nodded tersely. After a brief hesitation, he crouched to match her eye level. "My name is Dr. Stephen Strange. I work with Master Wong."
"He works for me," Wong grumbled. Stephen ignored him and Young Granger looked a little less like she was going to cry.
"Do you know anything about magic?" he asked. The girl bit her lip, looking torn. It was unsettling to see open uncertainty on the almost-familiar face. "Maybe you can do things that others can't?" He wracked his memory for anything useful from Granger's occasional mentions of her childhood. Ah. He smiled and she showed a spark of interest. "I think you know this trick." He thrust his right hand behind him without breaking eye contact and the book abandoned on the plinth floated into his grasp. She cracked a smile and nodded, the motion easier this time. "Sometimes you do things accidentally."
The smile left her reddening face and the hand gripping Wong seemed to tremble. "Did I do it again?" Her clear upper-class London accent carried in the room. It seemed she had not yet mastered the concept of an inside voice. "Is that why I'm here?" Above her, the Sorcerer Supreme checked his smart watch and cringed at whatever notifications were buzzing on his wrist.
"Yes," Stephen said bluntly, because he assumed Granger hadn't de-aged herself on purpose. Her shoulders hunched inwards and he hurried to add, "It's okay, sweetheart, mistakes happen." The words surprised him even as he spoke, but they did halt the tears forming in the girl's eyes. "Wong has work to do, so you're going to help me fix it, alright?"
As they left the solarium, the other Sorcerer smiled at him, bowing his head in thanks.
Granger's workspace was tucked into a corner of the third floor, windows overlooking the chaotic beauty of Bleecker Street below. The room was organized chaos, with shelves lined with labeled jars of ingredients both mundane and magical, a workbench scarred from years of careful experimentation, and floating orbs of soft light that drifted between the ceiling beams like curious fireflies.
Young Granger's eyes went wide as one of the lights dipped low to investigate her, circling her head twice before floating away. "They're checking to see if you're friendly," Stephen explained, and she watched the orb's path with undisguised wonder.
"Are they alive?" she whispered.
"Not in the way you are, but they're aware." He gestured for her to follow him to the workbench. "They like curious people. I think you'll get along fine."
She approached the bench cautiously, standing on her toes to peer at an open leather-bound journal. Stephen had found it on Granger's desk, already opened to a page titled Re-Aging Protocol (In Case of Temporal Displacement). The margins were covered in her precise handwriting: ingredients, measurements, three separate contingency plans depending on the severity of the age regression. A few pages after, marked by a yellow ribbon, was the matching De-Aging Protocol.
"You wrote all this?" Young Granger asked, squinting at the notes.
"You did. The older you." Stephen couldn't help his amusement. He knew Granger had been researching temporal scrying techniques to find information on an old ward. "Apparently you anticipated this exact scenario."
"Oh." She looked simultaneously proud and embarrassed. "That's... clever?"
It would've been more clever if she hadn't de-aged herself in the process, but it was still impressive. "It's extremely clever. Makes my job much easier." A brass cauldron already sat on her workbench and Stephen flicked a low flame beneath it. He began gathering and organizing the components she'd listed: dried moonflower petals, powdered unicorn horn, a vial of morning dew, and several others she'd already set out. Young Granger watched intently as he measured the dry ingredients carefully.
Working with an untrained seven-year-old ("I'm seven and seven-eighths!") would not be Stephen's first choice for future projects, but he had to admit that the girl was… charming, in the way that precocious children could be. On the surface she was a confident child, but it quickly became clear that it was a mask heavy enough to tire her.
"The order matters," he explained to the wide-eyed girl, adding a pinch of unicorn powder to the swirling cauldron. "The horn makes the base receptive to change. The dew keeps it stable while we add your magical signature. Reverse them, and the mixture collapses before we can calibrate it."
She watched a few drops of dew sink into the mixture, turning it faintly opalescent as they diffused. "So it's like you're propping a door open."
Stephen blinked. That was actually a perfect analogy. "Yes. Exactly like that."
Her face lit up with the praise, the last traces of fear disappearing entirely. "Can I help with the next part?"
"I was hoping you would."
It was interesting how quickly she trusted Stephen. He'd expected more resistance over being forced into a room with a strange grown man who acted like he knew her, who knew things about her that she barely knew. Perhaps the Granger he'd worked with had some control over her mind. Perhaps the elder Granger trusted him more than he realized.
Stephen leveled a look at the girl over the finished product. "This is going to taste terrible, you know."
"I thought so. I saw what went into it." She was resolute. But she was also seven years old: "Why didn't you add anything for flavor?" She had yet to visit Hogwarts or Kamar-Taj, so of course she didn't know the intricacies of ingredient interactions.
He bit back a laugh, but he must have still looked amused. Her face pulled into a recognizable Granger half-frown, half-pout. "Once we get you grown up again, you'll remember," he soothed.
Still showing that surprisingly immense trust in him, Young Granger drank the potion at a reasonable pace and allowed him to lull her to sleep with magic. He worked quickly over her, broad gestures from olden spells manipulated for new purpose, finally letting the back of his mind wonder how the hell she'd gotten into this situation.
After his final flourishes, the sleeping girl began her metamorphosis into the shape and mind of Familiar Granger. He found himself uneasy at the thought of being there when she woke. Leaving Cape behind to keep an eye on her, he went to the library.
She stepped in under five minutes later, her skin glowing in the warm candlelight. He'd never seen her this unmoored. "I believe I have you to thank," she said, gently closing the heavy mahogany door behind her. It thudded into the frame and the 'click' of the latch sealed them away from the rest of the sanctum, closing the world to this small space.
He watched the light flicker along the halo of frizz around her head. "Yes."
"Well." Granger paused. "Thank you." She busied herself pretending to look for a book on the shelf nearest her. "I know that I was—I hope—" She took a slow breath, steadying herself, and Stephen wondered where on earth this was going. "I understand I could be a difficult child. I hope that I was on my best behavior."
Something in him softened. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, so he ignored it. "You don't remember anything from today?"
She shook her head, still not looking at him. He hummed in acknowledgement, watching her trace gilt titles. "I apologize for needing your help re-aging in the first place. I assure you that a return to youth wasn't my intent."
He'd come to appreciate her dry humor. "I assumed not." Her lips were pursed and, seemingly deciding that the conversation was over, she turned to leave. "Granger?" he heard himself call. She halted but didn't look back. "You weren't difficult." He couldn't see her face, but he saw the slight tilt of her head. "You made a very charming young assistant."
It got a short laugh out of her. "Thank you, Master Strange," she murmured, and then she was gone.
three
The damage to the sanctum's stability from the reversal of the Snap was deeper than any of its Masters had originally guessed. As work progressed, Stephen grew begrudgingly grateful for Granger's presence. Having another set of hands had made quick work of the ward recalibrations, and he wasn't above admitting that her contributions to the disrupted enchantment reinstatements were helpful.
He had low expectations when she arrived and she made no secret that his first impression was poor, but after working in close quarters for so many weeks they had leveled out to something closer to friendly. Stephen didn't suspect this was Wong's intent in giving them these types of projects; he knew it was, because Wong had told him daily for an entire moon cycle that he needed to get it together and work respectfully with Granger.
She really was brilliant, and overall Stephen was finding her… well, he was finding her.
In the dimly lit study, Stephen watched openly as Granger wove shining strands of wild magic back into the sanctum's fifth-dimensional structural supports. If the ambient light were brighter it would be difficult to keep track of the frayed ends of these more reactive threads, but sunset in December came early, so they didn't have to stay awake terribly late to get the work done.
The silvery strands braided together in a pale mimicry of the crown of hair framing Hermione's face, the flitting light of them making her skin seem to glow. The tip of her tongue was caught between her teeth the way it always was when she worked through something complex.
Her tongue disappeared and her lips pulled into a smile. Granger looked directly at him and he realized that the work was done. He kept his face straight, not allowing it to betray that he had been paying more attention to her than her spellwork. "Good work."
Despite the slight sway to her walk, her voice was firm as she teased, "You didn't even remind me to double-check the mercurial junctions."
Stephen couldn't help the snort that escaped him. Six weeks ago he wouldn't have let her get through the first motions without biting commentary. He crossed the room to lend her support as she walked. "Why would I say anything when I know you don't care to listen?"
"Mm." She looked exhausted, letting her weight fall into his side, and he thought he'd won. As he helped lower her into the leather chair beside the roaring fire, she looked up with a mischievous expression. "I rather thought you liked the sound of your own voice."
He resisted the urge to flick her on the side of the head, opting instead to frown as severely as he could manage. "I've been told I have a very nice voice."
Her face flashed to something inscrutable at that before it settled back to her usual playful dismissiveness. "Go do something useful, Strange, I'm fine here."
Though he would've happily sat at her side to ensure she drank something restorative, the sanctum needed to be his focus. He fixed her with a doctor's stare. "Rest."
She nodded with a smile and shooed him away.
The western wall of the room was covered by floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookshelves stuffed with tomes from Arcane Architectures to Zesty Recipes for Two Besties. Some were more temperamental than others, and the Sorcerers of the sanctum had detected depressive sentiment amongst the shelves' population from the rippling magics and emotional upheaval of the city around them.
Stephen moved along the shelves, trailing a soft dusting cloth along spines, murmuring reassurances where he felt the books needed them. A grimoire on defensive wards practically hummed with anxiety. "You're still useful," he told it quietly. "We'll need you soon." It settled under even strokes of its spine, its pages rustling contentedly.
He checked on Hermione twice, once to find her with her eyes closed, not quite asleep, and again to see her reading by the firelight, a cup of tea steaming on the side table. Good.
The ladder creaked as he climbed, and he found himself eye-level with some of the sanctum's oldest texts. The Codex sat wedged between two volumes on transdimensional theory, and he carefully extracted it. The book was heavy in his hands, the leather cover warm to the touch.
Stephen perched at the top of the ladder, the Codex open across his knees, and immediately regretted it. His back already ached from the day's work, and squinting at cramped medieval handwriting wasn't helping. It took two hands to keep the pages flat because the damn book kept trying to close itself, which meant he couldn't summon his reading glasses from the desk below. He scrunched his face in silent frustration before smoothing it placid and turning over his shoulder to ask, "Granger, can you get me my glasses?"
The reading glasses he'd left abandoned on the edge of the heavy mahogany desk floated towards him from the table and he turned his head just so to catch them on his ears. Six feet below, Granger rolled her eyes. "Thanks, sweetheart," he said absently.
He almost missed the way her expression shifted again, just for a second.
Rather than the familiar performance of irritation, there was something soft there. As quickly as it appeared, it vanished. She was back to the book in her lap (which she shouldn't be working on, hadn't he told her to rest?), the only evidence of any reaction the slight flush of her cheeks, almost as if—
Stephen dragged his gaze off of her rather than finishing the thought.
He turned his attention back to the Codex, squinting down at the terrible script of the same paragraph he'd been trying to read for the last five minutes. Truly he wanted to reassure the book that it was safe and cared for, or to at least get its demands to take back to Wong, but his eyes kept drifting back to Granger.
"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" she asked in an even, assessing tone. She wasn't even looking up, her attention seemingly on the work before her.
"Not everything is about you," he grumbled. She just laughed under her breath and pointedly turned a thick vellum page. "It's nothing," he said. "The light was doing something weird. Just a refraction."
"Strange," said Granger, and he wasn't sure if it was an observation or a reprimand.
four
Granger was watching the tips of tentacles that rhythmically emerged from beneath the refrigerator. "And you said it used to live inside, but it's moved down here?" As usual, she continued before he could reply. "There must be something strong back there it's trying to leech off of."
"Christine invited me to her wedding," Stephen said instead of anything useful.
Granger didn't look up. In fact, she dropped from her crouched position to her hands and knees to peek below the fridge. "Good for you." She flicked her wrists and the long, trailing edges of her robes shrank back to three-quarter sleeves that revealed her forearms. "You could use some socialization." A glance up at him, then, finally. "Try not to insult the catering staff."
So far, so good. "I've got a plus one."
She didn't move, which would've been fine if one of her hands wasn't currently thrust under a heavy appliance towards a nest of writhing appendages and something powerful enough to attract them. He nudged her arm with the tip of his boot and she retracted it.
"I was hoping you'd accompany me," he continued.
She looked ridiculous, plopped on the tile floor in a puddle of periwinkle robes, looking up at him with furrowed brows. "I'm sorry, is there a head injury I should know about?"
Stephen scoffed. "I'm being serious." She was still utterly bemused, but not saying no. "It's an open bar; be gracious and say yes."
Something seemed to click. "She's going to give you hell if you don't have a date," Granger surmised.
He should've known. "She gave me the plus one, so yes." It was his turn to cross his arms. "I'm not taking Wong, and I don't get out enough to find a real date. It's black tie. Do you have something you could wear?"
Granger rolled her eyes. "I own nice things, Strange." She swatted the tentacle that emerged from the dark below the fridge. "Sure, I'll go."
The ceremony was beautiful enough that Granger cried despite never having met Christine or the groom and there was a cocktail hour afterwards. It was a good afternoon.
For dinner they were seated with some of his Metro-General colleagues at one of many tables nestled between butterfly bushes along the edge of a sculpture garden. There was a large parquet dance floor in the center where they watched the couple's first dance and Christine's father's tearful speech after an expensive dinner.
Bringing Granger had been the right call. Every other surgeon at the table had brought a plus-one, mostly spouses, and he would have been irritated beyond belief at the inevitable comments. Plus, he thought as he watched her stand to fetch a glass of champagne from the nearest bartender, she cleaned up well. He hadn’t been sure what he expected, but the emerald silk of her dress moved like liquid when she walked, catching the light along the elegant line of her shoulders. He found himself tracking the slow sway of the floor-length fabric throughout the evening. Her charmed earrings (a gift from a friend, she said) had already sparked several conversations, but she handled each one with effortless warmth, smiling as though she’d been born into rooms like this rather than stepping into one for his sake.
Dr. Pharber was one of her biggest fans. "Your date is lovely, Stephen." The woman glanced past him, over his shoulder. "I don't know how you convinced her to take a chance on you."
"Granger's not my date," he said, though he wasn't sure why. "She's my plus one."
The orthopedic surgeon blinked at the distinction. "Right."
A hand settled on his shoulder from behind and it was the familiar smell of her perfume that kept him from registering her as a threat. "I heard that," Granger said without any heat. "Very romantic. I feel like a well-dressed carry-on bag."
Stephen couldn't help but smile up at her. She was well-dressed, and her eyes were sparkling as much as the gems in the earrings that swayed with her own smile. "You'd be very practical luggage," he assured her.
"Truly, Doctor, I'm swooning."
The string quartet set up near the edge of the dance floor transitioned into a cello-forward cover of some saccharine pop song, slow and sweeping and irritatingly sentimental. But—it might've been her bubbling laugh or the light haze of champagne or the way the florals in her perfume emanated from the pulse point on her wrist; regardless, it wasn't Stephen's fault when he placed a hand over hers, still resting on his shoulder, and said, "Dance with me, Granger."
Granger tilted her head, her smile growing subdued. "Are you sure?" There was something implacable in her tone. "I know you hate when I step on your toes," she added teasingly, pulling a stupid smile from him.
Without thinking, of course without thinking, he stood and spun to face her fully, placing his own hands gently on her narrow shoulders. "I'll take the risk, sweetheart."
Behind him Dr. Pharber broke into a coughing fit, probably choking on her gin and tonic, but Stephen ignored her, his focus only on Granger's nod.
Her hand slid into his and they moved from the soft, manicured grass to the solid parquet of the dance floor. Music wrapped around them and as he placed a scarred, unsteady hand on the stability of her waist, the world narrowed to the span of his palm. She was too petite to see her face without her looking up deliberately, but the way she neatly rested her cheek just below his shoulder assured him she welcomed the closeness. He had the disorienting impression that he'd been molded for this purpose.
The song progressed through verses he half-remembered, but the rhythm of her breathing against his chest drowned out almost all of it. Hermione softened into him as they swayed, humming absently beneath her breath, the vibration of it traveling straight through him. He adjusted his hold once, barely an inch, and her breath caught. The small, involuntary sound struck him low and deep in a way that he refused to examine. He didn't move his hand back.
As the song swelled towards its crescendo, she lifted her head from his lapel and met his eyes. Stephen became acutely aware of the narrow distance between them, how easily he could close it, how catastrophically simple it would be to capture her mouth with his. They were close enough that he could almost taste the sweet apple notes of champagne on her breath, could feel the warmth of it against his lips. Her lashes lowered, and—
A roar of cheers from a nearby table shattered the moment like glass, and they stepped apart at the same time, as though choreographed.
Hermione cleared her throat, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle in her dress. Stephen's pulse thundered in his ears. He almost reached for her again, almost said her name, but she excused herself with very little eye contact, something about resting her feet. As he watched her go, he thought that atop the hill of a technicality was a very stupid place to die.
Wong was going to be insufferable about this.
five
Wong was completely insufferable about it. He noticed the awkwardness between Stephen and Hermione in less than a day, and he didn't waste time getting to the bottom of it.
"So." Stephen rolled his eyes practically to the back of his skull and didn't bother suppressing a groan. He had zero desire to have this conversation for a fourth time. "The wedding."
Stephen tried to contain his irritation, but the containment spell he'd been working on shattered, releasing wisps of magic back into the air. Must Wong interfere?
At Stephen's glare, Wong only frowned. "Don't pretend that I'm the one making your work mediocre." He settled into the straight-backed wooden chair across the dining table, where Stephen had set himself to work to avoid the library, where Hermione was studying the scrying glass. "You are behaving like children," he observed. Stephen conveyed nonverbally how unimpressed he was. "Worse—like teenagers," Wong decided instead, gesturing at his overall demeanor. "Next you are going to start blasting terrible music and wearing too much eyeliner."
"I never had that phase," Stephen objected.
Wong glowered. "All the more likely that you will do so now to make up for lost time."
"What do you want from me?" Stephen threw his hands up. "I'm working on the sanctum. I'm doing exactly what we need."
"What I need is for the two best Masters of the Mystic Arts on the continent to fix my sanctum, and for that to happen they need to get it together and figure out how to speak to each other again." He'd forgotten how grumpy Wong could get, but then his friend leaned back amicably, looking as though the awful dining chair was a throne. "She wants to move forward, but she isn't going to approach you first."
A deep breath in and a slow breath out kept Stephen from snapping verbally or otherwise. "What makes you say that?"
"She's a terrible excuse for a Gryffindor," Wong said with a lazy wave. "Also, she told me so."
Stephen's hands stilled over the broken spellwork. "What?"
"I asked her when she gave me this to give to you." Wong retrieved a small scrying glass from within his robes and set it gingerly on the table. The object was no larger than his palm, its surface shimmering with residual enchantment. "It's been tuned to this sanctum and the residual magic of the Snap, but as we don't know the most likely timeline for the knowledge we seek, you will need to search for it with direct observation. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to clear your head," Wong added with a knowing look.
Focus. He just needed to focus. The anchors on which the other protections rested had been in place for so long that any documentation had been lost to time, and they'd decided that their best bet was observing the sanctum's repairs in a similar dimension to find how alternative versions of themselves had accomplished the task. Hermione was in charge of the alterations to the device itself, while Stephen's experience with such hunts lent him better to the search itself. A single stray thought could tilt the glass, snagging his consciousness on some useless avenue of inquiry and wasting hours in an unhelpful reality.
He chose to search from the solarium, taking advantage of the slant of afternoon light in a comfortable, comforting place. Nestled amongst the verdant tendrils of a vine running the perimeter of a peaty bed of soil, the scrying glass seemed to warp a few millimeters of light around it, bending its surroundings to its shape.
With a deep, steadying breath, Stephen leaned forward and began his search.
There were many universes like their own, a Stephen and Wong and Hermione searching tirelessly for ways to repair the cracks in the foundational wards. In one, they'd managed to rid the refrigerator of the octopus and its children. He made a mental note to look into that later. He hadn't even realized it might be breeding under there. These Stephen flicked through like so many cards in a deck in search of one in which they had made real progress. He didn't bother stopping on those that didn't contain all three of them.
Finally, he glimpsed a Stephen Strange exclaiming to Hermione and Wong that he found a coded collection of spells between dimensions in the kitchen. Perfect. He watched the techniques and spellwork their mirrors used, peering over the other Hermione's shoulder to commit the glyphs she etched in gold to memory. Their work looked productive and Stephen was pleased at having found answers so quickly.
"Stop being humble," the other Stephen said. The pride and amusement with which he looked at the world's Hermione was familiar, but—did he always look so enamored of her? "Will you please just take the credit?"
He looked to Hermione to see if she noticed, if she was uncomfortable with that Stephen's attention, but there was a soft heat in her eyes as she said, "Not if it means taking it away from you."
A silence hung between them, heavy with something but not awkward, and he realized that something was different in this universe.
It didn't matter. Stephen recentered his mind on the ward reconstruction, jumping ahead as they executed on the process they'd finally translated. The three Masters worked through nights to get the job done as quickly as possible, as was their way, but again he spotted something that made his chest tighten and his mind pause in its journey through the timeline.
The Hermione of this world slipped into the library one evening with Stephen's name on her lips and smiled fondly; following her gaze Stephen saw himself asleep at his desk. Hermione tucked a conjured cushion under his head and carefully draped a matching blanket over him, tender but not entirely surprising.
Then she pressed a kiss to his hair.
He was supposed to be watching the sanctum repairs. He needed to watch the sanctum repairs and get out of this dimension, but every time he caught a glimpse of Hermione it got harder to focus. The time he spent watching their interactions only grew. It wasn't entirely unproductive; he was able to glean the details of the way Hermione adapted the Xiang-Webbier method as well as the severity of the headache it left her with.
She waved off her Stephen's worries and Stephen frowned at the way her face crumpled in pain when his other self abandoned her in the study. He felt bad leaving her as well for some reason, unable to move on until the other Stephen hurried back in with a cup of her favorite tea. The scent of chamomile rose with the steam and Hermione smiled gratefully. Rather than float it to her, her Stephen walked it to her and set it on the end table by hand, dipping down to capture her lips.
"Thanks, love," she said softly, and Stephen realized suddenly and uncomfortably that he was intruding.
There were more differences between their universes than he'd expected, and it was his curiosity about them that damned him in the end.
One late night, she fell asleep mid-annotation, quill slipping from her fingers. He watched himself tuck a curl behind her ear with infinite care, as though she were made of something fragile.
She turned toward the touch even in sleep.
He jumped across time, trying to find the end of the process, notes he could carry back, anything to justify getting the hell out. But he couldn't stop his mind from drifting to her, that focus drawing him into voyeuristic visions of the two of them.
Glyphs in Hermione's careful hand, then her hand tracing his skin, then her in pale lace beckoning him from his books—
Stephen tried to focus. He tried. Then he heard a soft moan and it pulled him toward it like a tether before he could stop himself—
There she was, clad in nothing at all, pressed against him, beneath him, making the most sensual sounds while he murmured—
"That's it, sweetheart." Stephen's, the other Stephen's, lips were pressed to the other Hermione's ear, whispering sweet nothings as they—
He watched for a beat too long before pulling himself almost violently out of scrying.
Heaving gulps of warm, humid air, Stephen was intensely unsettled by his own behavior, his own desires, the realization that he wanted that with his own Hermione.
He fruitlessly meditated to bring himself to center. No matter where he looked in the multiverse, there was an infinite number of Stephen Stranges desperately in love with an endless supply of Hermione Grangers.
plus one
She was at her favored table nestled in the back of the library. The lighting was constant there, not subject to the whims of the rising and setting sun, which Hermione always said helped her stay in the proper headspace for research. She used to enjoy working in solitude, but Stephen had apparently been decent enough company to be allowed into her sanctuary.
He paused in the doorway, heart pounding a nervous rhythm against his chest. He'd walked from the solarium to the library on autopilot, rehearsing his neat confession, but now that he was here, every carefully planned word had fled his mind.
"Hello," Hermione called without looking up. Stephen hated that they'd been doing this, avoiding eye contact, dancing around one another, since the wedding. Her hair was pulled into a knot at the crown of her head, and the sight of her neck, the soft vulnerable curve of it, made his chest ache. "Any updates?" she asked after a few beats, her tone carefully neutral.
He needed to act normal. Hermione expected him to act normal. He didn't know how.
"When I was searching the timelines for the ward reconstruction," he started, his voice rougher than intended, "I saw a lot of things."
The floor creaked as he took a few steps into the room, close enough to see the titles on the edges of her books but not close enough to crowd her.
Hermione hummed absently, still scribbling notes. Books on healing magic lay stacked before her, light reading for her. "And?" she prompted when he didn't continue, still not looking up. One hand traced glyphs on the page while the other copied them down in her careful script.
"Over six billion universes, and do you want to know something interesting?"
She seemed to hear something in his tone and finally looked up. Her face was a smooth mask of academic interest, but he'd watched her enough to know it was hiding confusion. The quill in her hand stilled.
"You were in all of them." He swallowed. "We were—you and I—" He stopped, looked up at the vaulted ceiling to escape her eyes. The candlelight she worked by flickered, and somewhere across the room a book sighed on its shelf. He tried again. "Small things, at first. You turning off the lights when I fell asleep in the library, us having tea. And then—not small things."
Her chair creaked as she shifted. He forced himself to meet her shocked gaze.
"Us together, really together," he said, the words coming too quickly now, practically slurring together, "and I know how that sounds, I know I shouldn't have kept watching but I couldn't focus and I—"
He forced himself to stop speaking and breathe.
When Stephen met Hermione's eyes, they'd narrowed. The hand that had been tracing a page flexed. "And you?" she asked in that same leading tone. He couldn't tell if she was bracing for disappointment or daring him to continue.
"In every universe," he began, forcing himself to speak slowly, trying to make her hear that he meant this, "it's you for me." He swallowed hard. "Even if it's not me for you."
Hermione was quiet.
He watched her process this, watched her face smooth into blankness. The silence stretched. A candle guttered somewhere behind him. "If this is a love confession," she said finally, her voice carefully even, "I don't think you're doing it right."
"I know." Stephen forced himself to take a deep breath. He could speak at his typical, measured pace if he could only find the words. "I want to know what kind of universe this is, and if it's not the kind I hope—" He met her eyes and paused. "It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you."
"Very poetic." Hermione tilted her head, watching him with sharp eyes. An unconvincing smile flickered across her face, sharp-edged in a way he hadn't seen in a long time. "You're telling me all of this because you saw us having sex in other dimensions, you said?" She picked up a stone tablet from behind her stack, its dark surface etched with comparative healing runes, the same spell in three ancient scripts. She turned it over and over, thumb dipping each time to worry at a crack running through the oldest text. "Forgive me if I'm underwhelmed."
She looked angry. No: she looked hurt. "That's a reductive summary."
"Tell me," she said, her grip tightening on the tablet, "in how many of those universes does the voyeur who tells me this actually get the girl? How else should I put it?" Her voice wavered on the last few words. Stephen looked at her, really looked. The translation tablet turned over and over in her trembling hands. Every time their eyes met, she looked away. "Because if this is you deciding you want me after watching some alternate version try me on, I need to know that now."
"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for it to come out that way." Stephen's voice came out hollow. "I'm doing this wrong."
"You are," Hermione agreed. "For a man who can see across universes, you're remarkably bad at reading a room."
"Hermione—" His voice caught. "At the wedding, I thought we—" He cleared his throat. "Please. I need to know if I've completely misread this."
"Merlin," she swore in that deeply weird way of hers. The fractions of seconds between her words felt like eternities. "You haven't."
His eyes went wide. "I haven't?"
She let out something resembling a hysterical giggle. "No." She set the translation tablet down on the stack of books and stood, steadying herself with one hand on the table. "You have not."
Hermione's sage green robes swished as she made her way across the room to him. She stopped close enough that he could see the candlelight catch in her eyes.
Her hand rose to cup his face, and he caught the scent of ink on her fingers. Her thumb brushed his cheekbone. "You are the most brilliant idiot I have ever met," she said, and she was smiling now—really smiling— "and I'm counting myself."
He leaned into her touch, chasing her hand as she began to lower it. "Hermione—"
"You should stop talking, sweetheart," she murmured against his mouth, and then she kissed him.