"Why are you outside the market for drinks, exactly?"

"Because I can make arbitrary material objects."

"...woah."

"It's very convenient."

"Yeah, I bet. Once we get the Statute repealed want to come over and 2179 us?"

"I would really, really like that, but I am not sure how it interacts with putting several million more Elves back and then going to another planet and putting more people back."

"I mean, even if everything goes exactly the way I dream I'm not going to be Minister of Magic until I'm thirty and repealing the Statute'll probably take longer than that."

"I am not sure how you get me to 1802 With Added Wizards in a few years, is my point."

"Oh, do the doors not last?"

"If they do I'm going to have to carve a hole in the wall of my little building to get out to the garden and put Elves in it. Bar?"

The doors do not in fact last.

"Does the alternate universe version of me perchance have people under his command who'd be willing to hang out here full-time such that doors are reliably accessible - does that work, Bar -"

Yes, but unless the door is open to a particular universe time does not pass therein while a patron therefrom is inside.

"...so no one's wondering where I am, yet?"

Correct.

"...huh. Okay, I'm keeping a door on my end at least through N.E.W.T.s."

"And yes, he has lots of people, he's a prince, he sent some along to help acclimate reembodied Elves so I can just do full time resurrection - newts? Are newts an event? Is this like porcine dermatology being a school?"

"They're an abbreviation for Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test, they're the exams at the end of school and they're a week straight of really exhaustive testing and I can cheat at studying for them so much. ...I should probably check the bylaws to make sure it's not actually considered cheating, I bet they have rules about time-travel but I doubt they prohibit using it to study more between exams..."

"And you have lots of people who will continually hold this door for you?"

"I am not a prince but I could totally convince people to hold a door to a magic room in shifts."

"...well, at any rate you might have trouble keeping access until you're ready to drop 2179 on 1802 With Wizards."

"It would probably be a little bit of a challenge but it'd surprise me a bit if it were insurmountable. Magically hide this wing of the school, have my grandfather kick up a fuss, Slytherins take that kind of thing very seriously and would be meticulously reliable - or I could have an elf do it -"

"Huh."

"Yeah, come to think of it the easiest way would be to tell the administration and then assign some elves, assuming doorstops don't work."

"Incidentally part of it being 2179 normally involves slavery being abolished but maybe the magically bound elves are more complicated somehow."

"It takes that long? - and yeah, elves're more complicated, they were - designed to strongly prefer being slaves and be incredibly distressed at the idea of not having work to do or being such a disappointment to their masters that we'd free them - if you do, they beg you to take it back and then drink themselves to death - someone a long time ago was a monster but abolition wouldn't do much now. We've gone back and forth on the ethics of increasing their population to supplant the human slave trade once the Statute's gone."

"Oh, no, it doesn't take that long," Cam assures him. "In the States it was like, what, fifty, sixty, years off from when you are, I'd have to look it up, and I think the UK beat us to it. The magical elf slaves do indeed sound more complicated."

"Bet even if you don't come 2179 us I can do it in well under fifty. But yeah. All the nonhuman relations are a little tenuous but the Statute's more urgent."

"Oh?"

"Uh, which part? There's recurring debates over whether various races of magical peoples are, in fact, people - also periodic discussion of whether it should be legal to hunt Muggles for sport - killing a werewolf is always self-defense, even if it's not the full moon, whenever the government gets in too much debt they accuse the goblins of usury and there's a war - that kind of thing."

"I mean why is the Statute urgent, although that's also interesting." Notes appear on his computer; he doesn't even have to look at them.

Like a dictation quill but with technology, presumably. "Statute makes it illegal to let Muggles notice we exist - this contributes to the discrimination problems, because anyone who doesn't look standard human can't go out in public - it's enforced with mass memory charms, which are kind of terrible - and it means we can't cure plagues and stuff."

"Memory charms are what they sound like?"

"Yep."

"I am indestructible against all forms of physical harm but might like to test whether that extends to mental harm before coming to 2179 your world."

"Fair enough. What about, like, stunning spells -"

"That would also be good to know."

"I don't know how to cast a memory charm but I would be happy to try other magic if you want."

"If I'm immune to some of it I can probably trust that to hold as a class."

"Probably. There're also protections against a lot of it and while I've never heard of Muggles learning them they don't involve casting spells, you might be able to learn it."

"Plan B."

"Do 2179 humans still age?"

"Yes, but they regularly clear a century."

"Wizards live a lot longer than Muggles. Though maybe you can stack them or something, give my father more time for the Philosopher's Stone -"

"I will not be able to import all of the medical advances because some of them are 'summon an angel and get them to do your bidding' and that might not work where you are."

"Sounds more promising than summoning demons. How do either of those things work, when they do work?"

"Drawing on the floor. There's an extensive safety lecture. If you summon unbound daeva they may go around committing acts of wanton destruction."

"I know to be careful with magic. Drawing what on the floor?"

"Circles. I am qualified to teach the entire university course on the subject but this strikes me as still the 'overview' stage of the conversation."

"Yeah, of course, sorry. You honestly look like you could use a break, we don't have to do all the magic system comparisons right this minute."

"...yeah, with time paused I will probably want to hang out and decompress for a while, it's been - some time, since I took a break."

"Okay. I'll finish my homework, go get some sleep and sweets."

"Enjoy."

"No, no, that was a recommendation - sweets help with Dementors, which have an effect on people similar to the effect, uh, the war had on you."

"...Oh. Sure, why not." He pops a truffle that wasn't there before into his mouth and goes and flops on the couch by the fire.

And he does his homework. "I don't suppose the alternate universe version of me is fetchable?" he asks after a while. "I'd like to meet him."

"On another planet, it'd take five days there and five days back."

"Awww, too bad. You'll just have to tell him I said hi."

"Sure. 'Hey Maitimo the human teenager version of you says hi.'"

"Is he older?"

"In addition to being resurrectable, Elves are immortal by default and also take like five hundred years to even grow up, he's way older."

"...weird.  

- is he married -"

"No."

"Awwww, I could save myself some time and see if we had an alternate universe version of her."

...

He fiddles with his change purse. "Bar, how much do things cost in here?"

Reasonable currency-dependent prices. What can I get for you?

"If money's a limiting factor I can just make whatever if you don't need her recommendations," Cam remarks from where he is supposed to be napping.

"I want to get everyone 2179 birthday presents."

"...and do you know enough about what sorts of things they might want that I can provide or are you going to be relying on Bar for suggestions?"

"I would at least need a partial list of things that exist in 2179, and you are supposed to be resting."

"I don't actually need sleep, you know."

"I will take your word for that but you need something."

Cam sighs and flops more emphatically onto the couch.

And he pulls out a couple of Galleons and asks Bar for birthday present recommendations.

She is happy to provide to the limits of her information about the recipients.

He knows them pretty well, so that will totally do. He ducks out and holds the door to check if computers work in Hogwarts (nope) and whether this breaks them permanently or they start working once removed from the premises again (they do).

He quizzes Bar some more and starts assembling little gift baskets for everyone - there's some gear for zero-gravity games that Fredrick and Theodore will both appreciate, there's a delightful array of exotic foods, there are blueprints, there are plastics, his father and Minor both get radios...

"So if you don't technically need to sleep, when you said you hadn't taken a break -"

Cam sits up and peers over the back of the sofa. "Do you want me to nap or do you want to talk about how unnecessary it is for me to nap."

"Sorry." And he can continue gift-planning with Bar over napkins.

Cam goes back to sleep. Bar is very helpful.

Everyone will get their presents in a smooth chrome basket that no power on Earth could achieve in 1802. He doesn't have enough money to get them for every kid in the school but he asks Bar if she minds if he has Cam duplicate things he bought from her.

Bar does not mind at all. Also she can accept counterfeit.

The goblins would probably not appreciate that if it ever somehow got back to them and everyone is a dick to the goblins so he is trying not to be. But it's good to know anyway, thank you! He plans out on parchment the gift baskets for everyone else in the school.

Cam wakes up after a few hours.

Miranda gets a book on the decline of the British Empire which he is currently annotating heavily, another book that walks one through all the technical calculations involved in going to the Moon, a computer, the Igbo alphabet in the timeline where she didn't invent it, and an account of the transition away from human slaveholding which he will be heavily annotating as soon as he's done with the current one.

"Whatcha writing?"

"Well, now that we've got a timeline to compare to we can probably avoid some mistakes and catastrophes and so on - I'm trying to figure out what the best handling of the next century's events looks like -"

"Wizards don't seem to have affected the course of history?"

"We try really hard to stay out of Muggle events, so that's not as surprising - you had witch-burnings without any actual witches, but even in ours, lots of innocent Muggles were caught up in those..."

"Were yours even in fact witch-prompted? Are witches a separate thing from wizards?"

"Uh, woman are witches, men are wizards, there's no actual difference, at least some witch-burnings were witch-prompted - some people find being burned at the stake hilarious - but I haven't been able to trace down any histories specific enough to identify a divergence - well, not from that subject, there's a little town in Poland where a dragon killed everyone and it looks intact on your maps, but doesn't look to have much affected the course of history -"

"Dragons. Gosh."

"They're pretty cool if you know what you're doing. Most places have reserves, and teams to keep them from flying off and terrifying or murdering Muggles, but - some teams care more about that than others -"

"...and if a dragon gets loose somebody memory charms the Muggles and tells them it was a forest fire?"

"Yup."

"Ugh."

"The Statute is the most selfish, inhumane waste of resources since Azkaban was founded. We're going to get it repealed, though, a lot of people are coming around."

"Azkaban?"

"Wizarding prison."

"...is a selfish inhumane waste of resources?"