Like Teacher, Like Student /// A Doctor Strange Fanfiction

Chapter 16

Casey perched on a stone wall, cross-legged, her hands practicing the shapes of a spell to the lyrics of Vance Joy's Riptide. Below her in one of Kamar-Taj's many courtyards, people were practicing the sling ring portal spell. Her own sling ring was tucked away in her pocket.

So far, she could often a portal to a janitor's closet in her school and that was about as far as she could go. From Greenwich Village to Midtown. Not exactly something to be proud about, but it was better than not being able to portal at all. To get to Kamar-Taj, she had used the permanent portal that led into the library, and for now, that was her mode of transportation back and forth.

Back home in New York, things were starting to warm up as winter folded into spring. Her life outside of magic was folding into nothing. Softball tryouts were soon, but she probably wasn't even going to attempt it.

Normally it would've taken up all her time, getting ready for the spring season, but studying magic, sparring, visiting Kamar-Taj, keeping up with schoolwork, attempting to learn cooking, and trying to not tear a hole in the universe by accident was taking up her whole life.

Her friends had basically stopped trying to get her to hang out. The fact that she always said she was busy or had other plans or couldn't make it led to that. She had even stopped posting that often on social media, because really, what was the point? At least she could still binge-watch Netflix on occasion. Sometimes she and Stephen even binge-watched the same show together; he always critiqued the show's background music while she pointed out plot holes and stiff dialogue.

They had also started challenging each other to impromptu rounds of music trivia lately. She had gotten tired of him rattling off song titles and the years the songs came out whenever older music played on a show or on Pandora or Spotify, so she had started hijacking the Bluetooth and shuffling more recent stuff. That, and sometimes she would throw in things from the 40s, declaring that 'well Captain America would know it!' He had retaliated by occasionally blasting her with music and then demanding she look up the title if she didn't know it off the top of her head. It was fun, in a dorky way.

"Are you practicing being a bird?"

"Is that an option?" Casey asked, glancing down over the edge of the wall. Stephen was standing down below, arms crossed over his chest. Above his arms, the Eye of Agamotto hung from around his neck. Some kind of wizard council had decided to give it to him for safekeeping, though Casey didn't understand why it couldn't stay here. Stephen had explained that with the increasingly weird stuff going on, including space invasions, mythical gods, and superhero battles, everyone had agreed it was best to keep the Super Powerful Infinity Stone of Doom with someone who could use it if they needed to. Someone who was willing to use it. Oh, yeah, she knew about those too now, the Infinity Stones. There were five other ones, but this was the wizardy one. Though the Reality Stone really sounded more like their speed.

"Did you want to transform into animals? Because that's not my forte," Stephen said. He gestured for her to come down, which she reluctantly did, skipping down a few stones that were jutting out from the wall. All the training had made her more athletic, she had to admit.

"We already decided that you're Dumbledore, not McGonagall."

"You decided. That, and that I have a, what was it you called it? A Snape Cape?"

"Yep. Though Cloak is way more colorful and awesome, aren't you?" She addressed the cloak directly, and it waved toward her, the edge of it snapping at her affectionately.

The two of them headed back toward the portal that would lead them home, taking the long route past courtyards and meditation areas. Sometimes Stephen opened one on his own and occasionally he tried to force her to open one. So far, no luck. He had threatened to leave her on Mt. Everest a couple times, but he hadn't gone through with it. Yet.