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Chapter Text

Fucking Dumbledore.

It wasn’t Dumbledore’s fault of course, that the knotted threads of magic Tom had just spent hours mending apparently weren’t the only thing broken about the Vanishing Cabinet. But it did feel good to have a target to direct his frustration towards as he sat back and took a moment to prepare himself to start all over again. Approach the problem from a different angle.

And anyway, it was Dumbledore’s fault that Tom was spending the nights of his final year at Hogwarts in the Room of Hidden Things, trying to rig a backdoor into the only home he’d ever known.

Well. That’s perhaps not quite true either – Headmaster Dippet seemed happy to ignore Dumbledore’s opposition to having Tom back at all, simply wanting him to be a few years older.

As if Tom would be content with waiting around until some elderly imbecile decided to allow him back into the castle that was his birthright. The very idea was insulting.

There were a few dead ends before Tom had discovered the Vanishing Cabinets – if he could just repair the one here in the Room of Hidden Things, he’d be able to access the castle from the cabinet’s twin in Borgin & Burkes, where he’d already secured a job as a shop assistant to begin after graduation. He would be able to slip back into the castle whenever he pleased, and not even Dumbledore could stop –

BOOM.

In an instant, Tom was engulfed in an explosion of golden dust and wooden splinters.

That’s odd, Tom thought, as he felt himself being sucked in towards the Cabinet, or whatever remained of it.

Explosions are supposed to push you outwards.

*-*-*-*

Tom was on the floor, the room that came into view as the dust cleared utterly unfamiliar. Shelves of contraptions – clocks, pendulums, hourglasses – lined the acid-green walls, and the tables filling the room were littered with piles of papers and books. A study then, or a laboratory of some sort.

Two strangers were looking down at him, though the twin looks of horror on their faces made it clear they hadn’t summoned him with ill intent, so Tom repressed the urge to draw his wand and out himself as a threat until he had more information.

“It’s not her,” the older one croaked in despair. He was probably only in his late 20s once you accounted for the aging effects of what looked like days without sleep, and clad in the deep blue robes of an Unspeakable. A research room in the Department of Mysteries then.

Bizarrely though, he was apparently not the one in charge, turning with a sickening helplessness to his much younger un-uniformed companion, a slight auburn-haired youth no older than Tom. If the man looked like he hadn’t slept in days, it looked for the boy like it had been weeks. Pronounced dark circles under striking blue eyes that darted around distractedly, well-tailored clothes that hung rumpled and just a smidge too loose, and a pallor that highlighted the bruises around a recently broken nose. Not so recent though, that it wasn’t odd it hadn’t been fixed.

“I think I got it,” the boy said quickly, eyes far away as his mind raced through variables and permutations, and Tom felt a spike of irritation at seemingly having already been forgotten. “Let me try again, I’ll-“

The older man suddenly vanished.

No snap of apparition or flash of magic, the person was simply… gone. As if they had never existed.

A jolt of alarm coursed through Tom at the realization that he could no longer remember anything about whoever had been there a moment ago.

“No…” the redhead muttered in quiet shock, freezing for a moment as his eyes started to shine with tears.

Tom felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the air seemed to start crackling with the magic radiating from the red-haired boy, whose expression was equal parts desperation and determination. As he turned back towards the cabinet, it was as if all the magic in the room contracted inward – converging at the tip of the redhead’s wand for a moment before exploding into a pulse of golden light.

It makes his hair look like fire, Tom thinks, watching as the red locks flutter around the boy’s face with each pulse of magic. He looked so slight and exhausted that Tom wouldn’t have guessed him capable of withstanding a strong breeze, let alone that burning golden aura.

He looks like a Phoenix consuming itself.

Later Tom will decide it was the boy’s fault for distracting him, though he really should’ve expected that a second person being spat out of the Cabinet would land in precisely the same spot he had failed to move from.

A lapful of pretty blonde nearly knocked the wind out of him, but Tom managed to steady them both, looking curiously at her long renaissance-style dress. She seemed maybe a few years his senior and frozen in shock, silent and shaking.

“Eloise!” the redhead exclaimed, tears finally spilling over in relief as his face cracked into a smile.

No, closer to 15 years older.

A chill went up Tom’s spine. Something was terribly wrong.

It took a moment to realize, what with her violent trembling, how her skin started to loosen. It was difficult to see in the flickering candlelight, her blonde hair turning white and liverspots sprouting up amongst her freckles.

Tom shudders and makes to push her off him, but her grip is like iron, and his legs tangle in her skirts. Horror fills him as she shoots past 60, 90, the shape of her skull starting to show through paper-thin skin. And her wide-open eyes never leave Tom’s as the whites yellow, her mouth open in a silent scream as her gums recede and teeth clatter to the floor.

For the first time in very a long time, Tom is frozen in fear, watching death seep into the woman in his arms.

It’s ridiculous. Tom’s seen death before – hell, he’s been the cause of death before, violent and untimely. But something about this is different, fills him with dread. It feels… inevitable, somehow.

Tom barely registers phoenix-boy doing things in the background – some kind of stasis charm to pause whatever was happening to the woman, keeping her corpse-like face locked in terror, some alarm being hit, her body being floated off Tom and towards the doorway where she’s collected by what looks like a St. Mungo’s transport team.

“Please, don’t say anything.”

Tom looks up, startled back to his senses by another flash of irritation. He’s about to ask why he should cover for whatever this mess was, when he’s shocked into stillness by the audacity of the boy literally pressing his hand over Tom’s mouth.

“I mean anything,” the boy clarifies, blue eyes focused on Tom’s with a fiery intensity. “Don’t tell me your name, don’t tell me where you’re from, don’t tell me when you’re from.”

‘When.’ The Department of Mysteries. Ancient Magic. Eloise Mintumble.

A dozen puzzle pieces fly together at once in Tom’s brain as he realizes what must have happened, what this absolute bloody idiot has just done to Tom’s life. He wrenches the boy’s hand off his face with a glare, and the redhead at least has the grace to look a little abashed.

“We were researching Time Travel, but something’s gone wrong,” he explains. “It’s best not to try to send you back until we know exactly what.”

Oh, Tom knows exactly what. And that there will be no ‘going back.’

“But in the meantime we’ll have to keep you somewhere without too many interactions that could disrupt the timeline. Come with me.” Infuriatingly, the boy once again attaches himself to Tom’s person without warning, grabbing his arm and apparating them into what looked like a room in a cheap boarding house. Bed, desk, bookshelf. Though the shelf could not hope to contain the mountains of books, stacked precariously on what seemed like every available flat surface, including floorspace worryingly near the fireplace.

“Chamber pot’s under the desk, and help yourself to anything in the cabinets. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And with that, the redhead apparated away with a loud crack, leaving Tom alone in what seemed to be the boy’s living quarters.

“Fuck,” Tom muttered, allowing himself a moment mourn the only thing he’d miss from his old life – being ripped away from Hogwarts a whole month early. That all his plans and networking would go to absolute waste (for another 40 years at least) was irritating as well, though perhaps that would end up being to his advantage. After all, he had no past to conceal here in 1899 – no one knew of his upbringing or bloodline or horcruxes, nor could ever piece together his killing of Myrtle Warren or his father and grandparents when they hadn’t technically happened yet. His image wouldn’t be tainted by anyone’s memories of a mudblood orphan first year who hadn’t yet perfected the posh accent of his peers. This could be a fresh start, none of the baggage of the past, and all the advantages of knowing the broad strokes of the future.

Knowledge is power after all, and if Tom was going to be stuck here the first order of business would be to gather information so he could decide how he wanted to play this.

The door and window were magically locked from the inside and outside with an intricacy Tom would need time to figure out how to escape – an unusual amount of custom security for a property of so little monetary value.

Intelligent and powerful. Possibly paranoid, but with his access to the Department of Mysteries, more likely in possession of some rare knowledge or skill that puts a target on his back.

Tom turned his attention to the books – in his opinion, the true window to one’s soul. As expected, the desk was littered with tomes related to time travel. Many of the magical texts Tom recognized from his own research, but there was also a stack of muggle physics treatises, which from the scribbles adjacent it seemed the boy had incorporated into magical theory.

An open mind to muggle science, good grasp of it as well. Brilliant synthesis with magical theory, really. Pity the physics is all wrong – Einstein won’t publish for a few more years...

A scan of the rest of room revealed a much more eclectic collection – it seems muggle physics wasn’t the last resort of a desperate man, but a mere sampling from a wizard who read absolutely everything.

Histories both magic and muggle, books on mathematics and economics, a pile of magazines with as many issues of Witchy Weekly as Transfiguration Today, a compendium of medieval Mermish poetry next to a collection of the latest Oscar Wilde plays, balanced on a pile of knitting patterns propped up by An Ornithology of North American Birds, an English-Goobledegook dictionary, and a thick biography of Herodiana: Forgotten Depulso Master by Sophronia Franklin . If there was any organization to the madness it was lost on Tom - a book of wizarding children's stories lay next to the muggle medical textbook Gray’s Anatomy, an ethnography of the tribes of Papua New Guinea, and a trashy romance novel with an illustration of a shirtless pirate caressing a swooning woman in a period-inaccurate gown.

Brilliant enough to be an asset in any number of areas, but also sentimental and frivolous. Unfocused. Open-minded enough to be malleable, perhaps…

On a hunch, Tom cast a few detection spells until he felt something, spending the next 15 minutes prodding his wand at a shelf of hideously boring-looking agricultural almanacs until it melted away to reveal far more interesting titles.

Moste Potente Potions. Ties that Bind: Vows, Troths, and Blood Magic. Eleven Ways to Disembowel Your Enemies. Infernal Inferi: Creation & Control. Secrets of the Darkest Art.

The corner of Tom’s mouth turned up a little as he thumbed the familiar spine of the last title.

He’s thorough – no area of study left unexamined. But ashamed of it even in his private quarters – perhaps runs in circles with moral qualms against the Dark Arts.

And terrible judgement, to have a hidden shame-shelf yet leave that pirate romance out in the open. 

Reapplying the concealing charms, Tom turned his attention to personal effects, checking the usual hiding spots under the mattress for anything juicy or incriminating, but only finding a pair of spare reading glasses that fallen forgotten.

The cabinets were similarly unfruitful, containing only knitting supplies, tea, half a sleeve of digestive biscuits, and a bowl of sherbet lemons.

Clear enough from his appearance that eating and sleeping haven’t been a high priority recently. Something happened. More than a month ago but less than three, judging from the weight loss and awkward hair length – like it had previously been kept short and just started to grow out. Suits him better longer though.

Tom cut a length of sturdy-looking yarn, taking off the Gaunt ring and threading it through. In his time there were no Gaunts to recognize the heirloom, but that wouldn't be the case now, and Tom didn't want to risk any run-ins with his family that would lead to him being un-born like that poor sod at the Department of Mysteries. As he tied the loop closed around his neck, making sure it was long enough for the ring to be hidden beneath his shirt, Tom made a mental note to check up on his parents in the spring of 1926 just to make sure everything was on track. And to brew some Amortenia to help things along if it wasn't. 

Tom gravitated back to the desk, rummaging through the drawers for any papers or personal items that might shed more light on his mysterious captor.

Ah-ha!

Grinning as he retrieved his prize from the drawer – a stack of correspondence – Tom began opening the first envelope. Whatever happened, from that broken nose and the utter cock-up today I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all his fau-

Tom stopped cold. And saw red.

No.

No way.

Salazar’s

Saggy

Balls

NO!

For the first time since he was seven years old, a burst of accidental magic shot through Tom’s normally immaculate control, causing the letter to burst into flames and crumble into ashes in his clenched fist, yet the words remained mockingly emblazoned in his mind.

“Thank you for your recent interest in our Glamorous Ganymede Greek summer tour packages! We value your business Mr. Dumbledore, and have enclosed a menu of our itinerary options…”

Tom let out a scream of frustration at the ridiculousness, the unfairness, the sheer infuriating absurdity of it all.

Of course. Of fucking course it was Dumbledore that had somehow, once again, found new and creative ways to make a colossal mess of Tom’s grand plans. Seemingly without even knowing what he was doing this time, which was downright insulting in its lack of intention, when someone of Tom’s capabilities deserved to be countered with nothing less than furious defiance.

Tom took a deep steadying breath, reminding himself that it would be a poor tactical move to raze the building to the ground in a fit of pique. It would be prudent to at least work out how to unlock the door first, lest this body meet its end to the scent of fiendfyre-roasted sherbet lemons.

Perhaps I have latent abilities as a Seer, Tom thought wildly. Perhaps all those times cursing Dumbledore’s name for things that weren’t technically his fault wasn’t adolescent moodiness, but a premonition of this very moment. Perhaps somehow he just knew, deep in his bones, that eventually the feeling would be true:

This was all definitely, indisputably, all Albus Fucking Dumbledore’s fault!

Chapter Text

Upon reflection, it was probably a good thing that Dumbledore had abandoned him so thoughtlessly, or Tom might’ve impulsively killed the boy upon finding out who he was, the same way he he’d killed his muggle relatives when he’d found out they’d had the gall to still be alive.

That had been the plan for at least 20 minutes, until Tom calmed enough to admit that there was a very real possibility he might not emerge victorious from a duel with Dumbledore. Even a teenaged Dumbledore half-dead with exhaustion.

Tom had never grit his teeth so hard as when Griselda Marchbanks, the examiner for his NEWTS practical, had complimented his brilliantly innovative modifications to an animation charm as “the best wandwork I’ve seen since Albus Dumbledore.”

Since.

It had been a point of annoyance, learning that the eccentrically dressed man carrying out the minor errand of delivering letters to orphaned first years was in fact apparently the most powerful wizard in Britain. Possibly the most powerful wizard in all of Europe, from the way everyone kept urging him to take down Grindlewald. War-hardened Aurors truly believed that this one man had the ability to defeat the Dark Lord who’d conquered half of Europe, if only it suited his whims.

Tom still wasn’t sure why Dumbledore had refused.

The obvious answer, had it been anyone else, would have been cowardice and ego. A normal man with an exaggerated reputation: not wanting to die, but not wanting to admit to mediocrity either.

A laughable idea when it came to Dumbledore, whose every mundane action couldn’t help but radiate greatness. Sometimes in ways so subtle that it drove Tom crazy when no one but him noticed.

Everyone said that the chamber music playing in the Defense Against the Dark Arts Tower had improved significantly since Dumbledore had expanded the repertoire beyond Luigi Boccherini’s “Minuetto,” as if the Transfiguration Professor had merely added more songs to the rotation, like loading a jukebox. As if he hadn’t enchanted each instrument to improvise variations with the skill of a virtuoso and the passion of an artist, given each a personality and purpose that kept them working in harmony without direction. It was a horrendously complicated thing, to pour that level of sentience and intelligence into an inanimate object. The showy, excitable violin about to lose itself in a cadenza, pulled back to reality by the long-suffering steadiness of the cello and the gentle amusement of the viola. Tom had only really achieved a similar result with the creation of his diary, though he couldn’t be sure to what extent the piece of his soul stored inside helped truly bring it to life.

More annoying was when even Tom didn’t notice – the Slytherin hated that it had taken him until second year to realize that Dumbledore’s uncanny ability to know when a student was lying about a crup eating their homework or other nonsense must be because the man could read minds. After learning what Legilimency and Occlumency were, Tom made it his mission to master both by the end of term, in the meantime thinking furiously in Parseltongue whenever Dumbledore was nearby. Neither outwardly acknowledged the development, but in Tom’s mind at least, the gauntlet had been thrown. Your tricks won’t work on me. I’ll figure out all your secrets.

And one day, I’ll be better.

Tom itched with impatience for that day to arrive. It was horridly unfair, the advantage that Dumbledore had over Tom due to age and experience in the wizarding world. Due to Tom initially underestimating him, stupidly revealing his special powers, probable bloodline, and manipulative tendencies almost immediately.

And now he has none of those advantages. Tom is suddenly heady with the realization.

This Dumbledore knew nothing about him, would never see anything past Tom’s occlumency shields that Tom didn’t want him to see. He hadn’t advised the Minister of Magic or discovered the twelve uses of dragon’s blood yet. Dumbledore’s not an authority figure here, he’s young and-

Unfocused. Open-minded enough to be malleable perhaps…

Tom’s brain starts spinning with possibilities – this Dumbledore didn’t mistrust him. This Dumbledore could still be won over. Controlled even.

The thrill of hatching a plot – of getting to overwrite a mistake - brings a small smile to Tom’s face as he begins thinking through the details.

Who says you can’t get a second chance at a first impression?

*-*-*-*

Tom schemes. Makes himself a cup of tea and tries to scheme some more, but there’s really not all that much to plan around ‘be charming.’ Reads through the rest of the letters – some tedious exchanges with a friend on the Grand Tour, frantic messages selling Eloise Mintumble on the feasibility of long-distance time-travel (lol), and academic correspondence with experts in various fields (including a rather lively exchange with Nicholas Flammel on the finer points of alchemy, if Tom’s French is correct).

Another cup of tea, a few more biscuits.

He figures out how to unlock the door but not how to circumvent the alert that will note if he leaves, then spends a few hours reviewing Dumbledore’s notes fusing physics with time travel, adding corrections for the discovery of relativity and space-time until the mechanics shake out smoothly. Even so, Tom’s still unclear on how he came to be here, or how Eloise had been retrieved. Dumbledore’s notes on the matter of targeting a particular person elsewhere (elsewhen?) to drag through time simply referenced “See A.” Though it seemed like the page with Appendix A or Figure A had gotten separated somewhere.

There are about three digestive biscuits left when Tom decides it might be wise to start using the doubling charm on them, to ensure he doesn’t starve whilst waiting for Dumbledore’s return.

No wonder he has a phoenix for a pet. One apparently needs to be immortal in order to survive Dumbledore’s hospitality.

It’s hard to gauge how much time has passed. If Tom remembers correctly, today should last about two and half days, as Time Itself shifts back into place.

He really has no grounds to judge me. My reckless teen experiments only got one mudblood killed. His reckless teen experiments erased 25 people and nearly broke reality.

Tom lets out an annoyed huff that even in his own thoughts, he sounds just a little bit impressed.

The sun is still high in the midday sky when Tom can no longer fight the need for sleep. It would probably feel weirder, getting into Dumbledore’s bed, if Tom wasn’t half-certain the boy had never actually used it.

*-*-*-*

Day 2 is much the same, except now it’s late afternoon. Tom freshens up as best he can with cleaning charms and has another meal of tea and biscuits, refusing on principle to touch the Sherbet Lemons that the older Dumbledore always offered upon entry to his office, despite the fact that Tom had never once accepted.

At least there’s plenty of reading material to keep Tom entertained. He decides after some deliberation that he doesn’t care if Dumbledore catches him reading from the Hidden Shame Shelf – they’re Dumbledore’s books to begin with, and enough time had passed that finding it could be attributed to boredom rather than reconnaissance.

Tom has a lovely day learning quite a bit more about blood magic and inferi than was ever available in the Hogwarts Library.

*-*-*-*

It's sunset by the time Tom goes to bed.

It’s dark by the time a loud crack! of apparition jolts him awake.

Silhouetted against the moonlight, Dumbledore’s posture sags with defeat and exhaustion, staggering a few steps before flopping facedown on the bed alarmingly close to Tom, not even bothering to take off his shoes.

Bit presumptuous, Tom thinks, scrunching his nose away from where an errant red curl tickles it.

Unless… Surely not…

Tom clears his throat, practically in Dumbledore’s ear, and the redheaded teen shrieks, jumping about a foot in the air and promptly falling off the bed and onto the floor with a loud smack.

Tom hopes it’s the sound of him snapping his neck, but alas, no such luck.

“Oh Merlin, that’s right!” Dumbledore looks up with wide, shocked eyes. “You’re here!”

He forgot.

Dumbledore fucking forgot about him and Tom is livid. They’re the same age, yet still the great fucking Dumbledore is so goddamn busy with great important things that upending Tom’s life doesn’t even warrant remembering?!

It takes every ounce of Tom’s self-control to not abandon the make-a-better-first-impression plan and just strangle Dumbledore right there. This might be more challenging than anticipated.

“I’m so sorry,” Dumbledore babbles, oblivious to Tom’s rage (which only compounds it). “The ministry – they’ve put a ban on time travel – research even!” He looks more devastated at that than anything else. “No one would listen to reason. And the Vanishing Cabinet was ordered to be destroyed, so naturally it vanished, and I’ve yet to track where it might have ran off to, so there’s no way to keep on with…” Dumbledore trails off and blinks, and Tom can’t tell if he fell asleep for a second with his eyes open, or if he once again just remembered Tom’s presence.

“So, it uh, it looks like you may be stuck here for some time,” he finishes, almost as an afterthought.

There’s a beat of silence as Tom mentally flashes through various violent scenarios that would ensure Dumbledore never forgot him again. All incompatible with making a better first impression, unfortunately.

“Have they released Ms. Mintumble’s cause of death yet?” Tom instead asks casually, feeling a smidge of satisfaction when Dumbledore turns his head up sharply, finally looking at Tom like he’s worth his full attention.

“You’re from the future,” Dumbledore says instantly, quickly processing that there was no other way Tom could’ve known the goings-on outside this room. The sleep-deprived teen slumps over with relief. “And this has all already happened.”

“Yes, you’ve managed to avoid completely breaking the timeline, but only just,” Tom explains, putting extreme effort into concealing his glee at being the knowledgeable one explaining things to Dumbledore for a change. “Thursday will only last a few hours, but time should start flowing normally after that.”

“You’re lucky I read as much as I do,” Tom went on. “Time travel more than a few hours was strictly outlawed in 1899, after Eloise Mintumble spent several days trapped in 1402, with her interactions resulting in at least 25 people being Un-Born,” he recited. “Although she was rescued, she died in St. Mungos shortly after, her body having aged the equivalent centuries of her travel.”

“I’d rather not suffer the same fate, so it looks like this was a one-way trip for me,” Tom says with gravity, steeling his face neutral before looking down to savor Dumbledore’s expression of guilt and distress.

He's instead met with a loud snore, and the disturbing image of a trickle of drool forming at the corner of the teen Dumbledore’s mouth as he lay splayed across the hard floorboards, dead asleep.

Tom spends a good half hour fantasizing about suffocating him with a pillow.

*-*-*-*

It’s morning when Tom wakes again.

“Oh good, you’re up,” an annoyingly alert voice observes the second Tom shifts slightly.

Dumbledore is at his desk, looking unreasonably awake, and pouring over Tom’s corrections to his time travel notes. In the morning light, it’s understandable why Tom didn’t recognize him at first.

While the old Dumbledore was mostly beard, this one seemed not just clean-shaven, but unable to even grow proper facial hair yet. Enough pepper (paprika?) had remained in the old Dumbledore’s salt-and-pepper that Tom knew it must have been reddish at some point, but he hadn’t been prepared for the vibrancy of the color, darker and richer than the more orangey-red of the Weasley clan. The garish colors that the Dumbledore of his time favored were absent from the subdued Victorian garments stowed in his trunk, though a shirt with excessively full sleeves hinted at the flamboyant cuts of the future. The nose was off too – perhaps a second break was needed to force it into the shape Tom knew, and to cause enough brain damage to explain the decline in sartorial sensibility.

About the only familiar bit are those distinctive bright blue eyes, though they seemed larger now, unobscured by glasses and unhooded by age. And that annoying ‘twinkle’ was apparently the remains of what was now more like a slightly manic kitchen fire, currently wrought with an emotion Tom had never seen in them before. Confusion. How delightful.

“What’s this curvature you’ve added to the coordinate triangulation?”

Tom sits up and stares deadpan at a Dumbledore who has apparently not yet learned about social graces. No “Good morning” or “Sorry I permanently removed you from any life you had before” or “Care for some breakfast, on the off-chance I’ve let you go hungry for two days?”

But those previously all-knowing eyes are now looking at Tom like he has all the answers (which he does), and Tom can’t resist.

“It hasn’t been discovered yet,” he starts, taking out his wand and levitating the blanket off him so it hovers in a flat plane. “Newtonian physics works in most cases, but there are instances when space and time – which are more like different faucets of a 4-dimentional continuum than separate things – doesn’t always lie flat.”

Dumbledore watches raptly as Tom conjures a cannonball and rests it on the floating blanket, which sags under the weight.

“Great power can distort spacetime – like the gravity of a massive star, or a reservoir of ancient magic, or a jump of five centuries” he explains. “If you went looking for something near that great power, you wouldn’t find it unless you took into account how that power distorts space and time around it.”

“Is that why you can’t apparate into or out of Hogwarts?” Dumbledore interrupts, staring at the model with fascination. “Before they even put up the anti-apparition wards that is. Because the castle was built on a giant reservoir of ancient magic, so space works differently there.”

“I suspect so, yes.” The corner of Tom’s mouth twitched a little, somehow both pleased and irritated that Dumbledore had extrapolated to different use-cases so fast.

“So if you knew how to account for the distortion-“

“-and the wards were down-“ Tom reminded.

“Then you absolutely could apparate and disapparate at Hogwarts,” Dumbledore finished, momentarily distracted from… whatever his issue was… with the thrill of academic discovery.  

Tom knew the feeling. Before the cabinets, it had been his most promising lead for how to get into the castle after graduation, and the reason Tom had gotten so deep into self-taught relativity in the first place. Unfortunately, there was no way around the wards without either being recognized as its owner (a status tied to being Headmaster), or blasting the whole thing apart.

“Do they teach this sort of thing at Hogwarts in your time?” Dumbledore asks, glancing at the school robes Tom’s been wearing for the last three days. “Muggle science, that is.”

For one insane moment, Tom is reminded of Abraxas Malfoy in first year, casually asking where Tom had picked up such an extensive musical education, after Tom’s observation that October was far too early for The Nutcracker Suite to be playing in the corridors. It felt like an insult somehow, and Tom soon figured out it was a backhanded way of pointing out he must have grown up with muggles. “Proper” wizards had their own musical tradition, and most couldn’t recognize muggle works like a Tchaikovsky or Mendelssohn piece.

Dumbledore the Great Muggle-Lover certainly did though, so it was an absurd comparison to make. Tom must still be calibrating how to read the expressions on this newer face.

“We don’t even have alchemy in my time,” Tom snorts. “And I doubt my dormmates could do long division if their lives depended on it. I imagine I learned the same way you did,” he gestures vaguely at all the books around them. “You’re probably the first person I’ve met capable of understanding any of this,” Tom makes sure the compliment sounds matter-of-fact rather than sycophantic, which isn’t hard when it’s the honest truth.

“Your maths expected Eloise to be here,” Tom transfigures the floating blanket solid like wood, and conjures a small toy owl about five inches from the cannonball.

“But you couldn’t find her because she was here.” The blanket suddenly turns back to cloth, and the owl drops two inches as the cannonball stretches everything downward.

Dumbledore swallows hard, trying not to think about how the short fall and sudden stop reminds him of the movement of a noose. He couldn't think about that, couldn't handle that his attempt to fix things had made everything so much worse, sentenced so many more to...

“It wouldn’t have saved her, if you had known,” Tom says gently. It’s so easy to feign sympathy when it gives him an excuse to let his gaze linger on Dumbledore’s anguished face. Tom vanishes the cannonball and transfigures the toy owl into a threaded needle making a neat running stitch down the blanket.

“That’s what we discovered, from Eloise’s death. The thread of a life stays the same length.” The fabric of the blanket bunches, so the next stitch comes up all the way at the end of the blanket, much farther than the thread is long. As the blanket straightens back out, the thread snaps.

“You can jump ahead, but you still age as if you hadn’t,” Tom explains. “You can’t truly ‘skip’ all the time in-between, because a life can’t blink out of existence and then back in again.”

Something changes in Dumbledore’s expression at that last statement – he looks almost… angry. Strange. Tom risks the faintest brush of legilimency, and luckily Dumbledore is thinking quite loudly and derisively.

A lot of things can’t be done, until someone does them.

Huh.

Tom is slightly disturbed by how the thought sounds far more like him than it does the older Dumbledore, who seemed to have no ambition at all. What sort of thing kills that kind of fire?

“There’s one thing I don’t understand though,” Tom starts, as he vanishes and needle and thread and lets the blanket gently float back onto the bed. “Since the coordinates didn’t work, how did you manage to bring back Eloise?”

“It was a half-formed back-up plan,” Dumbledore confesses. “Using a heavily modified summoning charm as a base, transmuted into a scrying within a set time period for the person who fit the stated criteria. After… whoever it was, was Un-Born,” Dumble shudders at the memory, or lack thereof. “I just focused on finding the one who would make it all stop, and blasted open the search area as wide as I could, hoping to get a match.”

Tom doesn’t bother feigning astonishment that Dumbledore had managed to scan at least 500 years of existence in an instant. There’s a much more pressing concern.

“And before?”

The unspoken question was clear – What stated criteria singled out me?

Dumbledore drums his fingers on the desk restlessly. “I might have been a little tired and unfocused,” he admits, in what was surely a massive understatement. “I was thinking about resolving the experiment of course, which would’ve brought back Eloise, but for the ultimate purpose of…” Dumbledore trails off and the tapping of his fingers slows to a stop as his eyes get that far-away look again, before whipping back to Tom with laser-focus.

“Of course!” he exclaims, falling half-way out of his chair in excitement while fixating on Tom with an unnerving fervor. “You! You’re as brilliant as I am, maybe. In the relevant areas, at least! But you know things I couldn’t possibly figure out on my own. Things that haven’t been discovered yet.”

Tom isn’t scared - no, definitely not – he’s merely startled into recoiling back against the wall when Dumbledore suddenly launches himself towards the bed, practically climbing into Tom’s lap as he throws his arms around him in a tight hug.

Is this what having a heart attack feels like? Or a brain aneurysm, perhaps. Do either of those come with nightmarish hallucinations?

The part of Tom’s brain screaming out for something that makes sense adds ‘physical boundaries’ to his mental list of things Dumbledore had apparently not learned until later in life.

When Dumbledore pulls back – not so far that he’s not still in Tom’s lap mind you - the mildly delirious grin tinged with a hint of adoration does nothing to settle Tom’s nerves.

“It’s you,” he says again, almost reverently. “You’re the one that can help me see Ariana again!”

Chapter Text

Tom feels off-balance for several reasons.

The first, quite obviously, is the fact that the man Tom had never seen touch anyone outside of socially obligated formal handshakes is currently sitting in his lap with a shamelessness so Un-British, so Un-Victorian, and frankly so unhinged that it’s safe to assume he is in the middle of some sort of mental breakdown.

Given the caliber of said mind, Tom supposes it’s not too surprising that said breakdown has already amassed a body count.

The second is that unsettling people via physical proximity is usually Tom’s move. Children who grew up in East End muggle orphanages generally have a different sense of personal space than pureblood little snots who grew up in mansions where their parents didn’t even share a bedroom. Stand just a little too close, lean in just a little too far, and Tom suddenly had the upper hand over purebloods comically unnerved by the violation.

Though for Tom in the moment, the most unnerving part is seeing Dumbledore without his ever-present armor of politeness and propriety cloaking his raw emotions. It’s almost too much, like staring at the sun without the protection of smoked glass.

The third is that apparently the reason for this entire fiasco is some girl, and Tom swears that if this is all because Dumbledore got dumped, he’s wringing the boy’s scrawny neck and rolling the dice on whether he can successfully obliviate Dumbledore afterwards.

But Tom forces those thoughts aside for now, because a singular opportunity has just presented itself.

Dumbledore needs me.

It’s a best-case scenario really – Tom has never been terribly successful at winning Dumbledore over,  but if Dumbledore has to win Tom over…

Tom never imagined he’d play hard-to-get with Dumbledore of all people, but he’s fascinated to see how the other boy will go about it.

Dumbledore is looking at Tom like he’s some kind of savior and Tom wants to slap the expectation off his face, but settles for roughly shoving him off his lap.

“Perhaps I could help you see this Arianna,” Tom starts with a voice like bitter syrup, “I can do a lot of things. But the bigger question is, why would I?”

It’s getting to be familiar, Tom thinks, the face Dumbledore makes when he’s mentally on step 7 of a 26 part plan and Tom unceremoniously yanks him back to focus on the present. On Tom.

“You’ve permanently ripped me away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known.” Tom reminds him sharply, and Dumbledore looks stricken at the realization.

“Left me locked me in a room eating biscuits for nearing 3 days, and you haven’t even bothered to introduce yourself, so forgive me if I’m not feeling overly generous at the moment.” Tom looks away and clenches his jaw slightly, putting on a flawless show of the British stiff upper lip. “I’ll never be able to claim my family name, and my mother will never see me grow into a man.”

A technically true statement, albeit one completely unrelated to Dumbledore’s time travel shenanigans.

“I’m… I’m so sorry-” Dumbledore starts awkwardly, anxiously, but Tom cuts him off with a dismissive hand gesture, as if he’s too disgusted to hear it right now.

“Where’s the bath so I can have a proper wash?” Tom stands and wordlessly, wandlessly transfigures the blanket into a towel. He gives Dumbledore a once-over and sniffs, wrinkling his nose unpleasantly. “And you after. Then you’re taking me out for breakfast, because I don’t recall anything in history class about this being a famine year.”

Dumbledore nods, ever-so-slightly calming at the to-do list to direct his energy somewhere useful.

Chaos, stress, uncertainty, guilt – people overwhelmed by such circumstances love being told what to do. The older Dumbledore could never be so easily rattled or swayed, but this one… Tom represses the urge to smile.

“End of the hallway, on the left. The washroom, that is,” Dumbledore clarifies.

Accio soaps and whatever clothes are the least Dumbledore-like Tom thinks silently, holding one hand out to catch the items while simultaneously using the other to unravel Dumbledore’s complicated custom door lock, again wordlessly and wandlessly.

He’s showing off a little sure (the older Dumbledore had never looked so unguardedly impressed as this one, and it’s unbelievably satisfying), but it’s much more strategic than when he was 11. (Probably.) Tom is demonstrating his value, hammering home that he’s not like the simpletons reliant on Dumbledore to fix all their problems, incapable of figuring the man out. Tom is different. He’s special.

And you need me.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Tom feels refreshed, and grateful for heating charms making bathing in Victorian England a far more pleasant experience than the muggle equivalent would be. The water boiler in the orphanage had been broken more often than not, and while Tom prided himself on being able to endure circumstances that would’ve made his dormmates faint with horror, he wasn’t particularly keen to do so unnecessarily.

He’d been prepared to have to magically alter the borrowed clothing – Tom wasn’t overly broad, but young Dumbledore was downright scrawny – and yet, the outfit had fit him so well he wondered if it was enchanted to do so. Black trousers at just the right length for his long legs, a full-sleeved black shirt that did the same for his long arms, and a close-fitting double-breasted black vest that should’ve been more finnicky, but was sized perfectly to his waist and shoulders. There was also some strip of cloth Tom assumed was a cravat or ascot or somesuch nonsense that Tom decided to forgo entirely. Incorrectly applied neckwear showed incompetence – lack of neckwear was a choice.

The whole effect was rather dark and severe – very much not Dumbledore’s usual affect – up until the collar area where Tom had given up on figuring out the various fastenings and just left it open. In contrast to how buttoned up the rest of the outfit was, the fully exposed neck gave the whole look a rather rakish quality, as if in the beginning stages of undress.

“Young man, don’t you think it’s a little early in the day for all that?” the mirror chided.

Tom ignores it and makes his way back to the room, where Dumbledore hurriedly stands up to greet him.

“I can’t believe I still forgot to introduce myself, my sincerest apologies, my name is Albus D-“

Tom notices 3 things in quick succession.

The first, which Tom finds himself inordinately pleased by, is that for the first time in his life, Tom is taller than Dumbledore - can literally look down on him. Though Tom had grown quite a bit in the last year he hadn’t quite caught up to the spindley old professor, but this one was still on the wrong side of a growth spurt.

The second, building upon the first, is that there’s no way the clothes Tom was wearing could’ve been Dumbledore’s.

The third is that Dumbledore has suddenly gone white as a sheet, falling silent mid-sentence as he stares at Tom like he’s seen a ghost.

…Whose clothes am I wearing?

“You alright?” Tom asks instead.

Dumbledore gapes, trying twice more to form words before he manages to succeed.

“Dumbledore. My – my name. That is. The introduction. I’m Albus,” the redhead chokes out before fleeing past a puzzled Tom and out the door. 

Well, that was bizarre.

Deaths, Un-births, time travel – and yet this was the most flustered Tom had ever seen the young man. Interesting.

About a minute later the soaps, a fresh towel, and change of clothes float out the door, presumably when Albus noticed that in his haste, he hadn’t brought anything to the washroom with him.

I suppose I should probably start thinking of this one as Albus, at least to differentiate him from Professor Dumbledore, Tom muses. The name ‘Dumbledore’ had become so ingrained with meaning that he probably shouldn’t import into Albus if he meant to influence him. Dumbledore was so larger than life, so untouchable. But a young Albus…. Tom could work with Albus.

If Albus hadn’t drowned himself in the bath, which was beginning to seem more likely as the minutes ticked by.

It apparently just took 40 minutes for Albus to mentally collect himself, only flinching slightly at the sight of Tom lounging on his bed in that outfit before barreling on.

“I don’t know if you have any particulars in minds, but The Leaky Cauldron does a decent Full English, if you’re amenable?”

“Ah, so I’ve been in London this whole time,” Tom said coolly, enjoying Albus’ twinge of discomfort at the dig at his hospitality. “That’ll do.”

Tom didn’t realize how much he missed fresh air until it hit him when they exited onto the street, on the border of Knockturn Alley.

It was only a few blocks up from the truly dodgy rentals where Tom had planned on living after graduation. Not exactly where Tom had pictured Dumbledore to live, but he supposed it was economical for a fresh graduate.

If it wasn’t for the change in fashions, Tom would’ve hardly noticed he’d gone back in time 40 years. The buildings were the same, and most of the shop-fronts even, in business for generations.

One of the changes thankfully, was that the Leaky Cauldron had not yet employed a barkeep named Tom, necessitating Tom to register whether someone was calling for him or merely wanted a refill on their drink, and it was instead a matronly sort named Madame Figg that saw them to a table and took their orders.

Tom had passed by diners many times on the way to Diagon Alley but had never eaten at the Leaky Cauldron – the fund that Hogwarts provided for essentials didn’t leave room for such extras. When the steaming plate came out smelling divine (eggs, sausage, black pudding, bacon, beans, grilled tomato, mushrooms, potatoes) Tom schooled himself into the same nonchalant manner he adopted at every Hogwarts Welcoming Feast, as if it wasn’t the first time in months he’d had meats on his plate. Hardly a challenge now, when it had only been a few days.

“I suppose we’ll need to find something to call you,” Albus muses, pushing beans around with his fork but seemingly uninterested in actually consuming anything. “Have you given any thought to a name?”

Tom had, actually. It was too early to reveal his chosen name – Lord Voldemort could not make an appearance before Tom started using it amongst his inner circle at Hogwarts. But a shortened version could work – V. – and the idea of Albus, of Dumbledore using his new name sent a thrill down Tom’s spine.

“I was thinking of going by an initial actually-“

“Oh, that’s no good,” Albus interrupts, his apologetic and overly deferential manner suddenly forgotten when it came to discussing strategy. “Fine for written correspondence sure, but in person the first question everyone will ask you is what it stands for, and we’re back to the original problem but have highlighted that you’d like to obscure the answer.”

Tom hates that Albus is right.

There is another, perhaps even more exciting possibility, but it’s too early to deploy that one as well.

“Well, what would you suggest?” Tom asks with a hint of peevishness, stabbing a mushroom with a bit more force than necessary before popping it in his mouth.

“Tom,” Albus says simply, and Tom promptly chokes, mind racing in panic.

Motherfuc-

He can’t possibly–

How on earth?!?

Albus might be more suggestable, less experienced, but in this moment Tom is uncomfortably aware that he is still Dumbledore.

Have I even time-traveled at all? The explosion – am I concussed in the hospital wing and this is all some vivid hallucination? Or a trick, an illusion to get my guard down and reveal… something?

Before Albus can intervene, Tom manages to clear his windpipe with a vigorous enough cough, trying to keep a straight face as he double-checks his occlumency shields are still in place.

“Why ‘Tom’?” he asks, strangled.

“Well, there are a lot of Toms,” Albus says reasonably, and Tom’s eye twitches at having his own words from so long ago unknowingly repeated back to him. “The best way to slip into a society unnoticed is to be any Tom, Dick, or Harry, but those last two names can have rather rude double-meanings, so of the three I thought you might prefer ‘Tom’.”

Tom really hates that Albus is right.

“Or a functional title could do, if you’d rather play the part of an eccentric?” Albus suggests, when Tom does not seems entirely enthusiastic about his first idea. “Like Doctor, or Barrister or Professor. You’d make a fine teacher really,” Albus muses idly, thinking back to Tom’s physics demonstration earlier.

“I’m glad you think so,” Tom says tightly, wondering if he could strangle Dumbledore and explain that he’d understand in about 40 years why a benign compliment warranted such a reaction.

“Though if you agree to help me, it’d be more like the work of an angel,” Albus throws out unthinkingly, then stops as if registering his own words. “Actually, that’s a proper name as well, Angel, though mostly in Spain, but your hair is quite dark-“

Tom blanches at Albus seemingly taking the idea seriously.

“You know what? Tom is fine. Let’s go with Tom,” he says quickly, before Albus gets too carried away or comes up with something even worse, somehow.

“Settled then,” Albus nods, “Though a surname will be trickier…” He looks at Tom questioningly.

“It’ll have to be a muggle name,” Tom answers the unspoken question. “Even names that can be either – Smith, Black, Potter – the record-keeping is too good to try and pose as a distant cousin. Too many nosy great-aunts putting together genealogical trees while shopping for pureblood matches for their nieces. And I’m far too British to pretend to be foreign, or from some other part of the commonwealth.” Tom gestures at his own face, skin porcelain from more days with clouds than sun. “Hardly the complexion of a youth spent in Bermuda or Uganda.”

Albus nods in understanding, but his next question nearly causes Tom to choke a second time.

“Do you think that’s believable though? Someone of your power, posing as a muggleborn?”

He says it so casually, so matter-of-factly, without a hint of shame. Tom chews a bit of blood sausage slowly to give himself time to absorb the shock.

Dumbledore the Great Muggle-Lover… You grew up in a different time after all.

By the time Tom swallows he’s recovered enough to switch gears, resurrecting an old tactic from 3^rd year. “Who says I’ll be muggleborn? Let’s say I never knew my father. I could easily just be a bastard. I’ve been called such often enough,” he adds cheekily, earning a small snort out of Albus.

“Fair enough,” he concedes. “Any names come to mind?”

The names Tom has encountered in his life flash by – he can’t copy but he can remix, remake better in his own image.

Riddle Gaunt Cole Stubbs Slytherin Merope Marvolo Morfin – wrenching the Gaunt ring off his disgusting Uncle’s finger, the more worthy heir claiming the family legacy for himself.

“Moore,” Tom settles on. “I can be Tom Moore.”

“A fan of Irish Melodies, or Utopias?” Albus asks with a smile.

Of course. Thomas Moore (1779-1852) the poet famous for his Irish Melodies, songs about Irish culture with just a hint of overthrowing British rule. And Thomas More (1478-1535), the author of the political satire Utopia, which imagines a radical new world order. Tom hadn’t been thinking about the references – it felt like an insult to have someone else’s name (his filthy muggle father’s name) rather than his own – but he supposes he doesn’t mind the anti-establishment flavor.

“A fan of not settling for the status quo,” Tom answers easily, with a smile that shows teeth.

Albus looks intrigued for a moment, but for whatever reason quickly stamps down on that feeling. “So not simply an enthusiast of vast open stretches of desolate countryside* then?” he jokes instead.

“Oh that too certainly,” Tom returns without missing a beat, gesturing once more with a flourish to his ivory skin, made paler in contrast to his all-black clothing. “Can’t you just picture me riding a camel with my brethren Moors across the sand dunes outside Marrakech**?”

Albus laughs at that a little harder than is warranted, almost like he was relearning how to make the sounds. Tom thinks it must be the first time Albus has laughed in many months.

“I’d say the libraries of Cordoba, with the curtains drawn, would suit you more***,” Albus counters once he catches his breath, and Tom can’t help but shake with mirth at the perfect end to the rally.

But as quickly as it had come, the light drains from Albus’ face and the laughter dies in his throat, his gaze moving to something just past Tom.

Tom turns to see a boy, maybe 5^th or 6^th year on the way out after purchasing his school supplies in Diagon Alley, a bit stout with dark chestnut hair, and a familiarity Tom can’t quite place. His kilt isn’t a fashion statement – it clashes horribly with the fair-isle knit sweater it’s been haphazardly paired with, and the sight of him would be comical if it wasn’t for the expression on his face.

Tom has never seen anyone look at Dumbledore with such disgust and contempt, quite a feat considering the company Tom had previously kept.

The boy gives Tom a quick once-over before turning back at Albus.

“Quick, aren’t you?” he spits out gruffly, then continues on his way out, as if he can’t stand the sight of them.

The hell?

Tom takes a second to assess how it looks from the outside, with steadily increasing horror. Their easy banter, being out for breakfast together downstairs from an inn, Tom’s suggestively undone collar.

His stomach turns - Tom thinks he can guess whose clothes he’s wearing.

(Not the kilt-boy obviously, too short and unstylish. But when he looked at Tom, he was clearly seeing someone else.)

“What was all that about?” Tom manages.

Albus looks deflated, slumped in his seat. “That was my brother, Aberforth.”

Tom raises his eyebrows – he’d never known Dumbledore had a brother, found it hard to picture him with family at all. Had figured it was something singular forces like them had in common.

“Our sister, she… she died recently.” Albus hesitated before continuing. “It was my fault.”

Two more things Tom definitely did not expect to hear.

“So to see me laughing in a pub… it is quick, isn’t it,” Albus says quietly.

Tom thinks that’s not all Aberforth meant (though for the sake of his sanity he’s putting a pin in that thought for now), but if that’s the way Albus wants to spin it.

Honestly probably a smart move – once Tom had realized what the looks Alphard Black kept giving him meant, he hadn’t hesitated to milk that blackmail at every opportunity.

“It was my fault,” Albus says again, “Which is why I have to fix it.” That manic focus is coming back into Albus’ eyes and Tom thinks he knows where this is going.

“That’s why I need your help, Tom. Arianna… she’s gone, and  it’s my fault. And I have to fix it, but I can’t.”

So this is how you summoned me. Tom is intrigued, amused. This is how your magic chose me.

I’m the only one who’s conquered death.

“I know it sounds crazy, but so did instant travel before Floo Powder was invented, so did repelling a lethifold before someone tried the patronus charm, so did horseless carriages without magic until just a few years ago.”

“Not sure solving any of those other things would get a religion started around you,” Tom points out reasonably. “You’re asking me to raise the dead.”

“No, with necromancy they never come back quite the same,” Albus dismisses with a disconcerting quickness that has Tom as fascinated as he is gobsmacked. “That’s why I was thinking perhaps the time travel route, preventing it from happening in the first place. But, well. You’ve seen how that’s worked out so far.”

Albus Dumbledore. So full of surprises. Just what are you getting yourself into?

“So, what do you think?” Albus wrings his hands. “Do you think you can help? I’m open to any ideas.”

Perfect.

“I mean, it doesn’t sound too promising,” Tom hedges, and Albus’ shoulders slump. “I won’t obsess over it like you do.” Albus perks up at that. “But if anything comes to mind, I suppose I’d mention it.”

Tom flinches as it looks for a moment like Albus is going to try to hug him again, but the redhead quickly stops himself, his brother’s words ringing silently between them.

“That’s – that’s fantastic.” Albus stammers. “Thank you, thank-“

“I’ll take a few knuts as my thanks for now,” Tom interrupts what was sure to be tedious pleasantries with an outstretched palm. “I have a few errands to run, letters to post, that sort of thing.”

“Letters?” Albus blinks. “To who?”

Tom rolls his eyes and floats what he needs out of Albus’ moneypouch, amused by the way the smaller boy’s brows furrow trying to figure how Tom has so easily bypassed the anti-theft charms.

“I’ll meet you back here at, let’s say 5 o’clock? We can figure out dinner then.” Tom says breezily, flashing Albus a charming smile as he stands and pockets the money. “Maybe try a bite of your breakfast before then, it really is quite good.”

Albus can’t bring himself to put anything into his mouth when it feels like cotton, watching Tom walk away. The hair is all wrong, the gait and body language different, but the silhouette is the same, the silhouette of those familiar clothes filled out again, frozen in that moment between throwing Gellert’s neckwear aside and unbuttoning the rest of his waistcoat.

He’s been barely holding it together since the washroom, don’t think about it don’t think about him but now that Albus is alone he lets himself crack a bit.

“Madame Figg? Could I get a glass of brandy, please?

The look she gives him is full of judgement (it is 9:30 in the morning young man), but she brings him the drink without protest. Her frown deepens when he tosses it back entirely too quickly, but Albus is beyond caring, just trying to dull himself from thinking.

Anything to stop thinking – don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t stop for even a moment, keep chasing theories, don’t think (does anyone understand how difficult it is to keep a brain like his from thinking??) because if he thinks he has to face it.

He’s a monster. Aberforth doesn’t hate him nearly enough.

Arianna is dead. It’s his fault. It might have been Gellert’s spell, but ultimately, it’s Albus’ fault.

Albus is a monster.

Because even knowing all that.

It’s not Arianna that he misses most.

Chapter Text

Godric’s Hollow, 3 months earlier

“Strike! That’s uh, game.”

Albus cringed, watching Ariana roll her eyes as she moved Albus’ point-marker over into the victory column, ending their lawn-bowling game far too quickly to have been much fun for either of them.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve let you win-”

The scathing look of offended judgement that only a tween girl could deploy with such devastating effectiveness caused Albus to physically shrink back.

“-I mean, I should’ve adjusted the rules to make it a fair match,” he quickly corrected.

But rather than softening into forgiveness, Ariana’s eyes suddenly grew wide with alarm at something in the distance, before ducking to hide behind her brother and gripping tightly onto his sleeve.

Albus turned and had his wand out in one fluid motion, a dozen spells on the tip of his tongue. Everyone in the village knew not to approach the house, so wh-

“Gellert,” Albus breathed in surprise, wondering for a moment if he was imagining the sight of the handsome boy walking leisurely up the hill towards them, the sun illuminating his golden locks like a Botticelli angel.

Ariana’s nails digging into his forearm broke the spell enough to continue his sentence.

“I already told you I can’t go anywhere today, I have to mind my sister while Aberforth’s in town.” Albus is unsure if his heart is racing from the idea that Gellert had come to- to call on him like some character from a Jane Austen novel, or panic that his presence was agitating Ariana, and Aberforth wasn’t here to calm her down.

“Yes, that’s why I’ve come to you instead,” Gellert smiles impishly.

Albus wants to feel charmed, flattered, excited about a friend coming to visit for the very first time - but he knows he can’t. And for a moment, the simmering anger and resentment he tries so hard to keep buried rises to the surface.

If it weren’t for… Ugh, it’s not fair.

It’s only a moment before Albus tamps it back down again, but Ariana senses it anyway - lets go of his sleeve and shrinks away, and Albus wants to kick himself.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave, my sister’s not comfortable around strange men,” Albus tries to keep his voice calm but firm. “I’ll catch up with you some other time.”

Gellert stops advancing, still a good 20 paces away, but he doesn’t make to leave. To Albus’ horror, Gellert tilts his head to address Ariana.

“I’m sorry Liebchen, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Gellert says softly. “In fact, I’ve brought a gift for you. Would you like to see?”

There are a few long, tense moments of silence before Ariana leans very slightly to the left, to better see around her brother (who is standing very still and trying very hard not to hyperventilate) while still mostly hidden behind him.

Gellert smiles and holds up a palm, gently summoning red smoke from his bag to rematerialize as a large ornate storybook floating halfway between them.

“Albus says you like fairy tales? This is a very special enchanted book. The illustrations are all hand-painted portraits of great actors – so the pictures don’t just move, they perform the whole story, like a stage play in the palm of your hand.” Gellert waved and the book opened to Sleeping Beauty – a royal banquet to honor the birth of a new princess, and actors stirred awake for the first time in decades.

“Sacrebleu!” A guard yelped, spotting Ariana and hurrying to call the rest of the cast to attention. “C’est un enfant! Un public! Réveillez-vous!”

“En anglais s'il vous plait,” Gellert instructed. “Surely you’ve picked it up by now.”

“Yes, of course,” the King nodded, clapping his hands to call the cast to attention. “Places, everyone!”

Ariana was slowly scooching further out of Albus’ shadow, interest in the scene gradually overcoming fear of a stranger.

“Ah, young princess, it is an honor to perform for you today,” the King bowed deeply, and Ariana brought a hand to her mouth to cover what was almost a giggle. “It’s been too long since we’ve had the pleasure, and we intend to make it one for the ages! Please make yourself comfortable, and we’ll begin at your leisure.”

It took Albus a moment to notice that everyone – Ariana, Gellert, even the illustrations – was looking at him expectantly. He had been a little preoccupied trying not to let his jaw hit the floor at Gellert managing to turn the situation around in a way Albus never could, and at Ariana (sort of, from a distance) interacting with someone outside the family for the first time.

“Oh, right.” Albus waved a hand and conjured a book stand, some picnic blankets for Ariana and for where Gellert had stayed some distance away, as well as an abundance of squashy pillows.

“Once upon a time,” the king began, once they had settled in, “In a far-off kingdom…”

After a few scenes Ariana was fully entranced by the story, having either forgotten or no longer caring about Gellert, who had settled in with a (non-enchanted) book of his own.

“Ariana, is it alright if I go over and talk to my friend?” Albus asks quietly. “I’ll be just over there, and come right back if you need me.”

Ariana looks over at Gellert and nods, attention quickly returning to her book as the curtain rises for the next scene.

“Ah, welcome,” Gellert puts his book aside and smiles when he senses Albus approaching. “And of course, I brought a gift for you as well.” He fishes a clear butterbeer-sized bottle from his bag, filled with a pale gold liquid.

“At Durmstrang we called it Meschkinnes,” Gellert explains. “You’ll like it, it’s like your mead.”

“Thank you,” Albus accepts graciously, conjuring two small cups. “That’s very kind. You’ll join me?”

“Obviously.”  A laugh and two pours and Gellert is right – it’s the sweet flavor of honey, but none of the syrupy mouth-coating texture. Just light and refreshing, like a cool breeze through sunlight.

“You’re amazing,” Albus blurts out, blushing immediately at his uncharacteristic inartfulness, and at how amusing Gellert seems to find it. “With her, I mean. She’s only really been around family before.”

“Ah. Yes, my Aunt said she used to… keep to the house, mostly,” Gellert says delicately. Albus nods politely, pretending not to know that Ms. Bagshot had likely said something closer to ‘they kept the squib daughter locked in the basement until she killed her mother in a rage for backyard privileges’ and perhaps some commentary about such murderous rages ‘running in the family.’ Notorious gossip, that one.  

“It’s not right… to be hidden away because you’re different,” Gellert says seriously, keeping his gaze forward on the horizon rather than looking at Albus. “Because the ignorant are scared of what they don’t understand.”

Albus swallows and tries not to speculate on what had gotten Gellert banished to England, because it doesn’t sound like he’s only talking about squibs. But whether Gellert suspects that’s not what Ariana is, or if he means something else…

Though, does it really matter? In any interpretation, his answer is the same.

“It’s not,” Albus agrees, filling the awkward silence by draining the rest of his cup.

“…It seems the little princess is enjoying her gift,” Gellert changes the subject while taking Albus’ cup to refill it, and Albus blinks stupidly for a moment before registering that of course Gellert is talking about Ariana.

“Oh! Yes - Where on earth did you even get something like that? It must be worth a fortune.”

“Oh, it is - belonged to French nobility before the revolution. And in the spirit of La Révolution, I liberated it from my Aunt’s collection,” Gellert seems delighted at the scandalized look on Albus’ face.

“We’ll give it back then, of course-”

“Nonsense, look how happy they are,” Gellert gestures towards where Ariana’s enjoying the performance. “They’ve been waiting a century for a child to tell a story to. And, what was it you told me again?” Gellert picks up his book and flips through the pages, and Albus’ heart skips seeing it’s the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson.

“Ah yes.
‘How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!’”

Albus feels the heat of embarrassment creep up his neck and tries to busy himself with sipping his drink – when he'd first met Gellert down at the pub last week, he’d not meant to complain so much, or in such… dramatic fashion. But Gellert seemed to understand his restlessness and frustration like no one else. Had somehow even tracked down his reference to muggle literature in the meantime.

“It’s a beautiful poem,” Gellert reassures. “Ulysses finally returned from his great Odyssey adventures, unable to bear the tedium of attending to a wife and kingdom.”

“Ruling a kingdom is tedious?” Albus asked, carefully sidestepping the idea of a wife.

“Of course,” Gellert answered, as if it were obvious. “Don’t you know, Alexander wept when there were no more worlds to conquer.”

Gellert looks so pleased with himself at making an Albus-type reference, that Albus doesn’t point out the saying was apocryphal – Plutarch had said no such thing about Alexander the Great.

“Is that your plan then? To conquer the world?” Albus jokes.

“Absolutely,” Gellert’s tone is playful, but there’s a flash of fire in his eyes. “Though if I’m to succeed,” Gellert smiles as he trains his intense gaze on Albus, “I’ll need a good general.”

…Is Gellert aware of what some say about Alexander and his general, Hephaestion?

The saying would make more sense then. With no more worlds to conquer, what excuse is there to run off together? And so, Alexander wept.

Albus feels hot suddenly, and a little dizzy.

((Later he’ll learn that while Meschkinnes might taste like mead, it’s well over twice as strong – basically just honey-flavored vodka.))

“But I already cancelled my Europe plans,” Albus says wistfully, and he suspects he skipped verbalizing a few leaps of logic somewhere along the way, but trusts that Gellert will figure it out.

“We’ll make new plans,” Gellert promises, and Albus relaxes in relief against Gellert’s side, though he’s not sure when they got quite so close. “Close your eyes and picture it.”

Albus does.

“The sunlight glittering on the Mediterranean Sea. The mighty peaks of the Alps piecing through the clouds. The leaves of the Black Forest rustling in the breeze.

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

When Tom steps out into Muggle Victorian London for the first time, he’s immediately overwhelmed by the smell.

Tom’s London had smelt of smoke – first from factories and cigarettes and car exhaust, then later from bombs and the fires they left in their wake.

But the 1890s smelt strongly of horses. Specifically, what came out the back end of horses. And maybe a hint of sewage, as Tom makes his way towards the Thames River.

Disgusting barbarians, the lot of them, Tom thinks derisively, briefly reassessing his plan to walk rather than apparate. But London had doubtlessly changed more than Diagon Alley had, and it was a good idea to get a lay of the land to avoid splinching while trying to get somewhere that didn’t exist yet.

The walk also gave Tom a little time to reflect.

He supposes it’s not all that surprising that Dumbledore is a fairy. Tom’s instincts are impeccable, and it was his first thought when the old man had strolled into the orphanage in that ridiculous plum velvet suit.

(Though he was quickly distracted by his second thought - that there was no way Mrs. Cole would’ve let a pervert look to adopt, much less leave him alone with a child, so he must be one of those doctors that was just as mad as the lunatics trapped with them.)

That, along with Tom’s disastrous assumption-ridden botching of that first meeting and the discovery of the wizarding world and its general ignorance of muggle fashions and connotations, was enough for him to mentally retract the assessment, which he hadn’t thought about since.

(That one night doesn’t count. It doesn’t.)

After all, the idea of Dumbledore dating anyone, of either sex, was absurd. Who could possibly be a match for a man without equal? Tom felt the same about his own prospects – had concluded that it was often the fate of singular geniuses like themselves to accomplish their great feats unburdened by frivolities like family or dating, wasting time tending to the emotional needs of lesser minds.

Meaningless physical dalliances, sure. But to look as haunted as Albus did seeing Tom wearing the clothes of whatever nameless nobody who’d warmed his bed previously? Asinine.

It was the same old argument they’d had so many times before – is love in all its forms a power beyond magic, or an indulgent liability?

Tom had been on guard at first, when after he’d closed the Chamber of Secrets Professor Dumbledore had started finding excuses to have him ‘round for tea and a chat. Tom had assumed it was an investigation of sorts, to trick him into admitting guilt, find proof that he’d killed Mrytle Warren and have him expelled and shipped off to Azkaban. But he’d quickly caught on that it was something much worse.

Tom recognized it from new staff at the orphanage before they learned better, from the counselors at the muggle primary school that thought he was ‘troubled’. From every insufferable teenage girl convinced that she alone could bring out the vulnerable soft side buried deep within.

Dumbledore was trying to fix him.

It was at least somewhat more enjoyable than the muggle attempts – rather than try and talk about feelings, Dumbledore casually engaged him in philosophical debates. That the real magic behind the chamber music in the halls was not his enchantments, but the emotions that inspired the composers to create in the first place. Appreciation for the beauty of the changing seasons (Vivaldi), admiration for a hero (Eroica). How can skill shine in use, without first being moved to act?

Tom countered that Dumbledore was assuming the order of cause and effect – a baseless romantic notion that composition stemmed from something like divine inspiration. Music is designed to evoke a certain emotional response in the listener – a skilled composer needn’t feel dread to put together the right sequence of minor keys and slow accelerando to manipulate his listener into feeling it.

It was novel, as exhilarating as it was frustrating, to be able to move the debate across topics with someone whose breadth of knowledge eclipsed even his own.

Deep discussions about magical theory and the link between magic and strength of emotion, more apparent in some spells (patronuses, unforgiveables) than others. A stalemate – no amount of emotion can spark magic in a muggle or squib, but despair can kill the magic of a wizard. (A personal failing, in Tom’s opinion.)

Historical examples of love compelling great acts of sacrifice or charity, but how is that evidence of a power greater than magic when an imperio or amortentia could achieve the same result?

Well, it’s about motivations, the ‘why’ of it all, Dumbledore would assert.

But isn’t the road to hell paved with good intentions? Tom would challenge. Didn’t Grindelwald start the war for the Greater Good? Is it not love for one’s countrymen that compels a nation to care for its orphaned children, only to obligate them once grown to die on a French beach for that same love of King and country?

It had only been 6 months since 11,000 British soldiers had died storming Normandy. And in 6 more months, Tom would graduate and have to leave Hogwarts – an able-bodied young man of fighting age.

Neither ever truly won the other over, but Tom still relishes the memory of being able to visually disturb the old man.

Speaking of disturbances – Tom casts a notice-me-not charm as he reaches his destination, seeing it unmarred by bomb shrapnel for the first time.

Cleopatra’s Needle stands nearly 70 feet tall over the banks of the Thames, an ancient Egyptian granite obelisk flanked by two iron sphinxes. It had intrigued Tom as a child, a monument to a long-dead Paroh outlasting the ability to even recognize the language it was written in (at least until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone).

Taking out a paper napkin from breakfast where he had emblazoned a reference from memory with his wand, Tom circles the monument until he finds the matching hieroglyph, a simple snake-like character. Surviving to proclaim the greatness of Pharoh Thutmose III for over 3000 years.

“Bombarda!” Tom obliterates the hieroglyph to dust, keeping the explosion contained enough to blend in with the bomb damage that will come with WWI.

Tom looks back down at his parchment, a slight wave of nausea hitting when he reads the note below – Do you remember where you first saw this symbol?

Of course he does – finding the obelisk when wandering the streets as a child, hissing at the snake hieroglyph to see it twitch slightly, whatever magic had resided there long since spent.

But that will never happen, can’t happen now that he’s destroyed it before his younger self will see it.

It’s a paradox.

A small paradox, which exists only in his memories and a napkin with a hieroglyph drawn 5 minutes before he’d seen it, from a memory of 40 years after it was destroyed.

It was minor enough not to disturb the timeline into having to fix anything, but still enough to make Tom feel slightly ill when thinking about it.

Paradoxes and changing history are to be avoided at all costs then.

Given how many times Tom had felt the urge to murder Albus in the last day or so, it was imperative he knew for certain that such urges, no matter how tempting, must be suppressed. Everything that will happen must have already happened - must plausibly fit with the world Tom grew up in.  

And Ariana must die, Tom concludes. If he finds a way to drag us back, she has to die every time.

Tom had only been brought to this time in the first place because of Albus’ little crisis over his sister’s death – if the girl didn’t die, then everything about Tom being here would be a paradox. And while a horcrux or two could protect Tom from death, they’d be useless against the impossibility of existence.

Albus was smart. On some level, he had to know that the consequences of creating a paradox on the magnitude of life and death would ripple. Though his current state gave Tom the impression of someone who didn’t particularly care if his world blinked out of existence.

I suppose I’ll have to give him a reason to care.

The gears of a plan start churning as Tom drifts over to a bookshop. And he is quite innocently browsing a kiosk of maps and travelogs just outside the door, posing a threat to no one, when he’s suddenly and viciously attacked by a rogue barn owl.

Well, to be more precise, the owl drops a pewter beer tankard on his head, (thankfully) empty except for a hastily scrawled note.

Laddie with the collarbones:
Come collect ye wee friend or pay for a room – no sleepin’ on the tables!

Tom snorts, but recognizes the opportunity to make Albus feel indebted to him more concretely, and selects a Thomas Cook travel guide (Merlin, there really were a lot of Toms) to bring to the cashier.

But the demon-owl had apparently been trained to terrorize its victim continuously until they actually arrived back at the Leaky Cauldron – it takes two tries for Tom to shut the door behind him quickly enough to keep the bird out.

“Confundus,” Tom shoots at the shopkeeper, who already looked quite confused at the hell-bird screeching at Tom through the glass windows as he grabs a pen and some letter paper. “The missing items are simply an inventory error, and I am but a daydream. The owl outside however, might be rabid,” Tom instructs, before promptly disapparating away.

(Birds do not get rabies, of course. So really, the blame for any avicide should fall squarely on the muggle shopkeep if he’s too stupid to know that.)

Albus is just where Tom had left him, albeit face-down, and with the addition of an empty snifter by his hand and a small child carefully braiding where his hair hung past the edge of the table.

“There ye are,” Madam Figg starts in on Tom, but stops and sighs when she spots the child, gently shooing her away with a cleaning rag. “Arabella! How many times do I have to tell ye, ye cannae play with the drunks!”

The little girl runs off giggling, and Tom wonders idly if perhaps the people of this time have yet to invent any names starting past the letter ‘A’.

"I apologize Madam Figg, he usually doesn’t get this out of hand,” Tom says truthfully. While Dumbledore enjoyed a tipple, Tom had never seen the professor anything close to sloppy. “How many has he had?”

“One.”

Madam Figg sounds deeply unimpressed.

Well. Given that he can’t have slept more than a few hours in the last three days, and Tom had yet to witness him eat anything, that made sense.

“I’ll take him home, just have a quick note for the outgoing post first,” Tom says, taking out his new purchases to scribble out quickly:

Orient Express - 2 bottles of claret and a lost hat. The Prospect of Whitby, this Saturday at 11 o’clock. Or my next attempt to contact you won’t be so discreet.

He seals the envelope and scrawls a name on the back before handing it to Madam Figg with a knut for the postal fee, rather hoping that should the task fall to his owl nemesis, it will be professional enough to carry out the errand with no hard feelings. In the event it survived the shopkeep, anyway.

“Alright, up you get,” Tom sighs, crouching down to sling Albus’ arm over his shoulder and snake his own arm around the redhead’s waist, apparating them both back to the flat.

o-o-o-o-o-o

When Albus opens his eyes again, the sun is suddenly much lower in the sky.

And Ariana is gone.

Suddenly wide awake, Albus attempts to bolt upright, but is brought back down by a wave of dizziness and a strong arm.

“Easy there. Ariana’s fine, your brother took her inside a little while ago,” Gellert soothes, and slowly Albus registers the strong arm as belonging to the other boy. And being wrapped around him. “He didn’t seem too impressed to find you sleeping on the job, but Ariana was happy, so he didn’t make a fuss.”

As one part of Albus’ brain calms, his heart races with panic that he had fallen asleep in Gellert’s arms.

…Though. Gellert’s not running off disgusted. He doesn’t even seem to mind.

…

Gellert is running his fingers through Albus’ hair.

“You’re like a skittish animal,” Gellert chuckles, as if that explains his petting, and they’re so close Albus can feel Gellert’s laughter reverberating against him. “Everything is fine. Ariana’s safe, and I’m happy to be here watching the sunset with you.”

Albus relaxes, daring to turn his face so his cheek rests against the flat of Gellert’s chest, listening to the calm thump of his heartbeat.

Everything is fine.

Ariana’s just inside.

Gellert hasn’t run off, he’s right here with me.

Albus nuzzles into the familiar warmth, breathes in the clean scent of his woolen waistcoat.

Everything is…

“Well good morning sleeping beauty,” a decidedly less familiar voice breaks the spell, and Albus is confused for a moment. About why Gellert sounds different, about when they had moved to a bed, why the fingers in his hair felt curious rather than calming.

Albus looks up and sees Tom’s face, and reality suddenly comes crashing back down around him.

Gellert’s fled.

Ariana’s dead.

Everything’s gone wrong.

This is why Albus doesn’t sleep. Because if he sleeps, it means he’ll have to wake up.

Tom bristles. He hadn’t been expecting any particular reaction from Albus – perhaps gratefulness for taking him home, or flustered embarrassment at having cuddled up to Tom in his sleep while he read next to him. A maiden blush wouldn’t have been out of order.

But what Tom had never experienced from a waking bed partner, and certainly didn’t expect from Albus, was for the boy to react to the sight of his face with crushing disappointment.

It causes an ugly, unfamiliar emotion to tear through him, before a more comfortable anger and annoyance move in to take its place.

“Sorry, should I have just left you passed out at the Leaky Cauldron?” Tom asks irritably, withdrawing his hand from where he’d been idly undoing Arabella’s work.

“Wha- oh,” Albus seems to put the pieces together. “No, thank you for bringing me back.” Albus’ hand wanders up to where Tom’s had been, feeling that part of his hair had been braided. “Er. Did you…?”

“Merlin, no,” Tom denies with mild horror. “Some little girl did it while you were slumped over a table. I was just trying to untangle it a bit.”

“Ah,” Albus nods. “And you let her decorate yours too?”

“What?” Tom blinks, and Albus reaches up to pluck a large barn owl feather from Tom’s hair, a casualty of the shop door scuffle.

Damn bird. This was far from over.

 “A souvenir from my enemies,” Tom says darkly, vanishing it with a flick of his wrist.

“What?” Albus asks this time.

“Nevermind,” Tom dismisses. “Listen, I was thinking,” he starts. “Wizarding Britian is a very small and insular community. Every time I go outside, I risk running into my ancestors and setting off a chain of events that prevents my own birth.”

It’s a plausible enough reason on its own – Albus needn’t know the other reasons yet.

“So to minimize that risk, I think it’s best we go abroad.”

“I can’t,” Albus answers automatically, out of habit. “I have to…” But he doesn’t.

You’re free now, Aberforth had snarled at the funeral.

“Albus, you can’t keep on like this, you’re driving yourself crazy,” Tom sighs. “And I will quickly tire of scraping you off the same floors and tables. At least grant me a little variety.”

“But-“

“I’m not saying you need to give up on anything. You can think just as well in any location. Better perhaps, if new scenery triggers new ideas. Besides, you’ve had to cancel your Grand Tour, and I never got the chance. I was only a month from graduating, you know.”

Again, technically true statements that despite the implication, were in no way Albus’ fault. Even before WWII had plunged the continent into chaos, the Enlightenment-era tradition of young gentlemen capping off their education by traveling around the great sites of Europe had long been on its way out. Not that Tom would’ve been able to afford such a thing, anyway. At the rate Borgin was willing to pay him, it’d probably take 10 years to save up enough.

“But I’m not sure I have the funds for such a trip anymore,” Albus finished anxiously. He hadn’t exactly been judicious with his spending lately. Well, with the boarding room maybe, but when it came to mail-ordering rare books or experimental potion ingredients that might lead to answers, money had been no object.

“Not an issue,” Tom waves away the objection, “I expect I’ll come into a bit of money soon, so we can leave straight away. Come to think of it, the money might even be conditioned on our leaving the country…”

“Dare I even ask?” Albus’ expression wars between curiosity and concern. “The implications of using knowledge of the future to win a bet, or make an uncommon investment-”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” Tom interrupts, before Albus can think too much on paradoxes. “Just an accounting discrepancy from long ago, finally made sense.”

“Well… I imagine the Vanishing Cabinet won’t have stayed in the country either, after the ministry’s destruction order,” Albus acquiesces. “Perhaps we’ll run into some leads on it.”

“Excellent,” Tom unfolds the map attached to the cover of his new travel guide, having to put an arm around Albus’ shoulders to hold it spread out in front of them, and it’s hard not to flash back to Gellert doing the same. He might’ve even been wearing the same shirt.

Albus hopes whatever money is coming is enough to get Tom a new wardrobe as well.  

“I know you were thinking Greece,” Tom won’t pretend he didn’t go through Albus’ mail, “Any other destinations on your must-see list?”

It’s almost painful to dream again, after the last two times planning this trip with Elphias and then Gellert had ended… poorly.

“Nowhere in particular; wherever you like is fine” Albus defers. Then thinks a moment. Gellert’s likely on the Continent now, absconded to somewhere familiar. “Though I’m not too keen on central Europe or the Baltics. It’ll be too cold there soon.”

“That’s fine,” Tom agrees. “‘It’s not to late to seek a newer world.’”

Albus’ breath catches in his throat. “What?”

“Here,” Tom points to the header on the side of the map that he’d just read aloud, listing the recommended destinations for autumn travel. “The summer travel season is about over, but it’s not too late for the autumn one round the Mediterranean.”

“And if it’s warm weather you’re after, we can keep traveling south with the winter. I’ve long been curious about the wandless tradition at Uagadou,” Tom traces his finger south over the Nile, past the edge of the map. “And with the reputation of their alchemy and transfiguration departments, I imagine there’ll be plenty to hold your interest as well.”

It’s a welcome difference, from planning with Elphias and then Gellert

“I didn’t take you for an adventurer,” Albus looks curiously at Tom, who… well, frankly gave off something of a ‘city mouse’ vibe. His pace when they walked together, forcing Albus to speed up, certainly suggested ‘born-and-bred-Londoner.’ “To trek past the Sahara. Might I see you riding a camel after all?”

“Absolutely not,” Tom shudders at the memory of Abraxas Malfoy and Alphard Black sneaking their collection of Arabians onto the grounds over the 4^th year Easter holidays for an unsanctioned polo match. Tom had broken his wand arm in 3 places, and having to watch Avery fumble to set the bones enough for Tom to be able to heal himself was almost more painful than the actual injury.

“But regardless, you’d do best not to underestimate me,” Tom admonishes playfully, poking Albus in the ribs. “Gryffindors think they have a monopoly on bravery, but only because they can’t recognize it without recklessness.”

Albus pauses for a moment, short enough that Tom doesn’t seem to notice.

“I’ll try not to make that mistake.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

That one night that doesn’t count, 1944

It wasn’t that late really, just after dinner, but with the sun setting so early in the winter evenings, it felt much later.

Tom raps firmly on the door to Dumbledore’s office, waiting until he’s called in, his Head Boy badge catching the light as he enters the room.

“It’s a bit late for tea Tom,” Dumbledore’s at his desk, nearly finished grading a stack of essays. “But you’re welcome to a tipple, if you like.”

It’s Friday night, and there’s a freshly poured glass of red wine breathing on the table waiting for Dumbledore to finish his work, and a viola nicked from the hallway playing softly in the corner. So this is how Dumbledore unwinds. It was strangely intimate, getting to see it.

“Thank you sir,” Tom takes a seat, and Dumbledore conjures a second glass, which the bottle pours a few ounces into. “Though I won’t be long, I’m just here to pass on a message. Headmaster Dippet’s been called away on urgent business, and wanted me to inform his Deputy Headmaster of the need to assume the role in his stead.”

“Thank you for letting me know, Tom,” Dumbledore acknowledged, raising his glass in a slight toast. “To the Headmaster’s safe return.”

Tom mirrored the action with his own glass, the almost purple-pink color glinting like a gemstone in the candlelight, before taking a sip.

Light, bright, fruity, pleasant. Tom’s no wine connoisseur, only trying it a few times at Slughorn’s parties, but he can’t imagine a wine being any more perfectly suited to Dumbledore.

“This year’s Beaujolais Nouveau,” Dumbledore explains. “Released on the 3^rd Thursday of every November, the first wine of the harvest, so it’s still quite young.”

“And here I thought older was supposed to better,” Tom replies without thinking, not hearing how… charged that sounds, until it’s already out of his mouth. The silence after being filled by a rather sultry passage from the viola certainly doesn’t help.

And then. Well. Tom gets a crazy idea.

It would be so satisfying, to be the one to finally uncover a true human weakness in the seemingly endlessly capable man. Tom couldn’t best him in magic or knowledge, not yet at least. But he has seen his own reflection lately, noticed the change in how people looked at him as he’s grown.

Perhaps he’d win that old argument after all.

“Though I trust a more seasoned palette can better appreciate the qualities of something aged just enough to join the older vintages on the market,” Tom finishes, expertly threading the needle of making a perfectly innocent statement while casting the lure of double-meaning. Not to get a bite just yet, but to alter the mood.

“I take it I’ll be reporting to your office in the interim, concerning Head Boy duties?” Tom changes the subject before Dumbledore can respond.

“Yes, that would be correct,” Dumbledore confirms, his demeanor still neutrally polite, as if he hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

“Then I place myself and my talents at your disposal,” Tom says smoothly, bowing his head slightly before looking up through his lashes to make direct eye contact. Lets just a hint of tease slip into his voice. “I am yours to command.”

The old man doesn’t even flinch.

“Thank you, Tom. I trust you’ll carry out your duties with competence and diligence, as always.”

“Of course,” Tom nods again deferentially before standing at the implicit dismissal. “Good night, Professor.”

“Good night, Tom.”

As he walks back to the dungeons, Tom’s not sure why the wine suddenly seems to finish bitter on his tongue. He didn’t actually want the old man to make a move on him. A pause of discomfort, a bit of nervous laughter would have sufficed as a victory, made him feel like he didn’t just make a fool of himself.

The name for that unfamiliar feeling comes to him eventually as he descends the cold stone steps – not unfamiliar because he’d never experienced it, but because he’d never before felt the sting of respecting the opinion of the person dispensing it.

Rejection.  

Chapter Text

Tom doesn’t see Albus sleep again after the Leaky Cauldron nap – he’s still at his desk when Tom goes to bed and already gone by the time Tom wakes, though he at least does the courtesy of not locking Tom in this time.

Albus is erratic but capable, so his unexplained absence doesn’t alarm Tom. At least, not until the other wizard returns laden with shopping bags.

“I’ve bought you some clothes,” Albus announces, dumping a concerning number of bags onto the bed. “Can’t have you spending another 3 days without changing,” he explains with a laugh that’s supposed to sound casual, but instead comes out slightly more on the side of ‘hysterical.’

“Oh, you… really didn’t have to,” Tom looks at the bags and boxes with mounting dread about what sort of candy-colored nightmares might lie in wait.

But apparently the circle of hell where the Dumbledore of the 1940s shopped had yet to open its doors to customers, because the selection is surprisingly tasteful.

Classic cuts in light brown-gray tweeds, charcoal wools, crisp white cottons, and a deep mahogany twill that matched his eyes. Accented here and there with more stylish touches, subtle enough not to offend the senses – a silk cravat in a rich oxblood color, a tie-pin in the shape of a snake.

It was almost more infuriating somehow, to learn that Dumbledore wasn’t actually blind to good taste, but instead had actively decided to reject it.

“Go on, pick something out for your travel papers photo,” Albus urges, turning to give Tom some privacy and to unbox a folding handheld camera from the Eastman Kodak company.

“You’re going to forge my papers?” Tom asks in surprise, even as he shucks off the flowy black shirt for a pressed white one, along with a dark gray waistcoat and trousers, perfectly tailored to his measurements. Or rather, his measurements, Tom supposes.

“Of course - you weren’t planning on obliviating the clerk every time we reserve an international portkey, were you?”

Tom had actually been planning on a variation of the Imperius curse, but Albus probably doesn’t need to know that.

“I need to tell you something about the future,” he says instead. Albus whips around in alarm, only to find Tom looking unreasonably fit in his new clothes, save for the black cravat dangling uselessly in his hand. “Fashions have changed, and I haven’t a clue how to put this on.”

Albus wants to laugh almost – it’s unexpected, the wizard who kept up with Albus so well that he rather suspected Tom was some kind of trauma-induced hallucination, looking helpless at something so simple.

“Here,” Albus steps forward and takes the strip of cloth, reaching up to drape it around Tom’s neck. “Like this,” he demonstrates slowly so Tom can follow, “…Across, then up through the loop… There. Now you try.”

While Tom undoes the knot, Albus is struck suddenly by the sense memory that there is really only one context in which he’s been less than a foot away from a boy loosening his collars.

At least until Tom reverses course and starts putting things on again, rather than taking them off.

(He gets it right on the first try of course, but does it twice more anyway, just to be sure.)

Since as predicted, Thursday only lasts four hours, neither of them bother with sleep, continuing on with their various projects through to Friday night. Papers are drawn up (Tom seems inordinately entertained by the sight of Albus committing forgery), travel arrangements are made, packing is started, and Tom even manages to bully Albus into eating half a sausage roll while they’re out running errands, which Albus blames for tricking his body into thinking it’s time to rest.  

By evening Albus finds himself sucking on a sherbet lemon to stay awake – to debatable success since after what feels like a slightly-longer-than-normal blink, the mess of books and papers that had been in front of Tom is suddenly tided up.

“Albus, you really should sleep,” the dark-haired boy says, sounding more exasperated than concerned.

“I’m fine,” Albus insists, concentrating very hard on not swaying. “Just… finishing up some things.” It would probably sound more convincing if the papers on his desk would stop swimming long enough for it to at least look like he was reading.

“Oh for Salazar’s sake,” Tom mutters, and next thing Albus knows he’s flying across the room, landing flat on his back on the bed, wand arm suddenly wrenched upwards as a literal iron manacle materializes to fasten his wrist to the bedpost.

“What in the- are you mad?!” Albus yelps with indignation, casting a silent alohomora to no effect.

“It’s certainly possible,” Tom grins, looking far too pleased with himself for Albus’ liking. “Though in fairness, you’re the one that kept me locked up first.”

A few more niche unlocking spells also fail, and Albus’ stomach flips at the realization that he might actually be trapped.

“This is hardly necessary,” Albus protests, now mentally flipping through various slicing and melting spells to break the chain by force, while trying very hard to not think about that time Gellert had found his old Gryffindor tie. “And impractical. What if I need to use the washroom?”

“Then you’ll just have to ask me for permission, won’t you,” Tom answers flippantly, as if this is all a big laugh, and Albus desperately tries to keep the flush off his face, unsure how he’s supposed to even respond to that.

("Ask me nicely," Gellert teased Albus with his tongue as the red and gold tie stretched taunt around the bedpost.) 

Albus settles for an uncomfortable pause and a bit of nervous laughter.

It’s like a shark smelling blood. Albus isn’t quite sure if he’s just imagining the change in Tom’s demeanor (from idle amusement at some thoughtless ribbing to delight at the effect it’s having on Albus), because he’s suddenly violently distracted by the sight of Tom taking off his trousers.

((It’s 1899 so the drawers he has on underneath are hardly revealing, basically loose-fitting knee-length short pants. But still.))

“What are you doing?” Albus asks with an alarm that only heightens as Tom makes to slip under the covers.

“I realize the concept is a bit unfamiliar, but generally during the nighttime, one retreats to a comfortable place for a period of rejuvenating unconsciousness called ‘sleep.’”

Tom is having entirely too much fun with this.

“Yes, but…” It’s only a single-size bed, so sharing requires being practically pressed together. Which is beginning to feel like an increasingly dangerous proposition to whatever shreds of Albus’ dignity are still extent.

“I think the fact that I’ve been here for nearly a week and you’re only just now noticing there’s one bed is a testament to how much you need to actually use it,” Tom says, making himself comfortable against Albus’ side and throwing an arm over him like that’s a perfectly normal thing to do. “Don’t worry, we all got used to having to sleep in a pile for warmth after the Second Ice Age started. Safety in numbers against roaming Yeti and all that.”

“Tom!” Albus gasps, “You’re not supposed to tell me about the futur-” Albus can feel, rather than hear, the shaking of Tom’s repressed laughter.

“Oh, so now you’re just having me on,” Albus scowls.

“Well I have to take advantage while you’re still half-delirious,” Tom yawns. “In your right mind, you’d definitely have recognized a Kozlovs-style runic combination curse by now.”

There are several moments of silence as Albus processes.

“The only way to get this off is to count sheep?” he asks incredulously.

“Count rune premutations, technically, but yes,” Tom confirms, closing his eyes. Unless released by the caster, one must methodically go through all 999 rune combinations to find the randomly generated countercurse. “Think of it as a bedtime story for the overly intellectual and wildly stubborn.”

It’s a ridiculously convoluted and oddly forceful way to convince someone to go to sleep and yet… it’s exactly what Albus needs. He can’t just quiet his mind (Merlin knows he’s tried), but to keep it occupied with a puzzle that’s engaging yet repetitive is soothing in a way.

As Albus mentally cycles through patterns, his eyes settle on the only novel thing in the room – Tom’s sleeping form. If Tom is merely a product of Albus’ slipping grip on reality, he at least has to compliment himself on the design – the boy really is uncommonly beautiful. And not just a cheap copy of Gellert either – he’s dark where Gellert was fair, restrained where he was wild, dryly sarcastic where Gellert was captivatingly dramatic.

And if he’s not a creation of Albus’ own addled mind then he has to wonder, not for the first time, how it is that Tom knows him.

o-o-o-o

Hogwarts, 1943

Tom is quite subtle about using physical proximity to get someone on their back foot. Just the smallest intrusion into personal space to make the other automatically retreat to keep the appropriate distance, literally conceding ground to Tom without even noticing it had happened.

But he supposed it was only a matter of time before someone developed enough situational awareness to notice. And of course it was one of the few boys not already under his thumb.

Followers have to want something. Like Rosier who clung to the faded glory of the family name after the evaporation of the family money, like bumbling Avery who could never live up to expectations, like Mulciber who could finally indulge his worst impulses as long as Tom was around to cover the tracks.

But Alphard Black? Popular, clever, disgustingly wealthy heir to the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black?  He wanted for nothing.

Which made it so highly annoying when he stopped pulling back from Tom’s intrusions around 4^th year. By 5^th year, he’d grown the nerve to start throwing Tom’s strategy right back at him, no longer just refusing to retreat, but upping the ante by moving even closer. Only when no one else was around though, showing Tom no special attention the rest of time. As if their unspoken rivalry wasn’t even consequential enough to acknowledge in the idle gossip of intra-house politics.

It was maddening, but Tom refused to be the one to back down first. Even if it meant having Alphard’s thigh pressed against his for a full hour of arithmancy revisions before the sound of a group of Ravenclaws approaching their secluded corner of the library prompted Black to remember some urgent engagement elsewhere.

Tom’s the only one left in the Slytherin Common Room, pouring over the section on Victorian-era plumbing installations in An Architectural History of Wizarding Britian, when Alphard Black returns from wherever the hell he’d been roaming so late that it was technically morning.

“I should take points off, for being out in the corridors after hours,” Tom says, irritable at the interruption.

“But you won’t,” Alphard replies easily, confidently, with a knowing smile. Obviously mocking Tom’s lack of real power over him, because what does a Prefect badge matter compared to a dynasty.

And as if to rub salt in the wound, the Black heir bypasses the availability of literally every other seat in the cavernous common room to sit right next to Tom on the sofa. And because he doesn’t even have the excuse of a book of his own, he leans in even further to read Tom’s.

“The history of pipes,” he observes, seemingly in no hurry to leave. “Sounds riveting.”

Tom snaps the book closed and tosses it aside, turning to face the other boy directly. If Alphard wants to pick a fight then fine, Tom’s ready. He’s not pulling back.

“What is it you want, Black?” he hisses, only inches from the other boy’s face.

The confident front slips (Ha! Tom thinks victoriously), and Alphard doesn’t answer. Not with words anyway. But his gaze flicks down to Tom’s lips.

…Tom pulls back.

(Later, Tom will decide that it was technically Alphard who truly retreated, quickly getting up and going to bed without another word. Tom had merely… employed strategic distancing while reassessing the situation in light of new facts.)

Tom had always been told, and never had reason to question otherwise, that homosexuals were odd, dirty old men that preyed on pretty young boys. Not pretty young boys themselves, and certainly not heirs to great pureblood families with their pick of potential brides. Not star quidditch beaters that rode horses and rough-housed, without a trace of the effeminate. That fit in seamlessly with a world that was otherwise made for them.

When Tom walks in to breakfast the next morning and meets Alphard’s eyes at the Slytherin table, there’s a look in them that Tom’s never seen on the heir before. An emotion he’s certain is forbidden in the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black to show to anyone, much less a filthy mudblood.

Fear.

Of what Tom knows, of what he might say.

It’s delicious. Intoxicating.

It’s radiating off Alphard in waves when Tom catches him in an empty corridor weeks later and presses him against the wall.

“Alphie, darling, I do believe you have something for me,” Tom purrs in his ear.

Even as the panic of being seen competes with the warmth of Tom’s breath on his skin for making his heart race, Alphard can’t help but melt a little. It’s the sort of thing straight out of his late-night fantasies. And that smug bastard knows it.

“It’s bad enough you’re blackmailing me, there’s no need to mock me as well,” Alphard grumbles. But there’s no heat in it, and he doesn’t move to push Tom away.

It’s pathetic – the way he savors crumbs like this, replays the memories for days after. And humiliating that Tom can tell, keeps winding him up just to revel in his newfound power to bring the pureblood heir to his knees. (Strictly in the metaphorical sense, unfortunately).

“Here,” Alphard shoves several books at Tom, trying not to feel pleased at the way his eyes light up. “Everything in the Black Family Library on Herpo the Foul, as requested.”

“Oh, you spoil me,” Tom grins as he greedily reads through the titles. “Hm. Should I be concerned about the blood stains on this one?”

“Not unless you’re looking to return it personally. My however-many-greats Aunt Carina cursed the family library back in the 1700s to shred anyone who tries to enter without being pureblood, but didn’t think to cast a liquid repellant charm on the shelves until after she ordered a house elf to fetch her a book.”

“Utterly charming, your family. Can’t imagine why you won’t take me home to meet them.” Tom looks disturbingly entertained by the idea. “Which do you think would offend them more – my lack of breeding, money, or breasts?”

“Perhaps your lack of proper Slytherin ambition. Most people use extortion to get things like money or political favors, not extra schoolwork.” The ‘you insufferable nerd’ isn’t explicitly added, but it’s heavily implied.

“Now, now, we all have our peculiar tastes,” Tom chides. Then grins wickedly as he hears a group of students approaching, lowering his voice and leaning in close to whisper in Alphard’s ear. “Although I do appreciate your concern that I’m not taking adequate advantage of your lust for mudblood cock.”

Tom pulls back just as a group of Hufflepuffs round the corner, luckily too involved in their chatter to pay any mind to the alarming shade of red Alphard’s face has just turned. Tom entertains himself with a peek into the chaos of Alphard’s thoughts – panic and shame warring with some rather graphic imaginings of what else Tom’s unexpectedly filthy mouth might be capable of.

“Why must you always do things like that where people might see?! How can you be so cavalier?” Alphard hisses, once the group is out of earshot. “You think it won’t blow back on you too?”

“Oh, I lie awake all night worrying,” Tom says dryly. “Whatever will mother and father think? Might I lose my inheritance? Perhaps the Ministry position reserved for me at birth might be withdrawn, to avoid the scandal and all.”

For a moment, Alphard feels oddly jealous of Tom’s myriad disadvantages, or at least, the freedom that seems to come with it.

((In one possible version of the yet-to-be-written future, Alphard reaches the end of his life treasuring the ability to live freely. To his nephew Sirius, who has already seized freedom, he leaves his gold to ease the way. To Regulus, enthralled by Voldemort in a way Alphard knows all too well, he leaves an escape hatch. A secret he’s sure no one else has yet put together. After all, it’s only in the Black Family Library that one can read extensively about Herpo the Foul, the only known creator of a Horcrux.))

Though, Alphard gets the sense that Tom’s not quite like him, despite the obvious pleasure he gets from making Alphard squirm. Tom still regularly flirts and goes on dates with girls, and although he’s taken up the annoying habit of catching Alphard’s eye on such occasions, he seems to enjoy it well enough.

(Unbeknownst to Alphard, much of that enjoyment stemmed from driving Abraxas Malfoy slowly insane. Ever since the blond had made an off-hand remark about not seeing Tom as a rival since they’d appeal to a “different class of woman,” Tom had started regularly scanning Malfoy’s mind and made it a point to win the affections of any girl Abraxas started having the slightest interest in. The snobby git would have to mail-order for a wife that Tom didn’t get to first.)

“You seem quiet, darling,” Tom teases, bringing a hand to Alphard’s cheek in a mockery of comfort. “Not looking forward to your perfect future carrying on the family name?”

“Just thinking that blackmailers also generally don’t flirt this much,” Alphard quips, steeling himself against reacting to the touch. Sometimes, when Alphard was able to resist, Tom would go further to get a reaction. And Alphard’s not a Slytherin for nothing.

“Have you been blackmailed often?” Tom asks, stroking his thumb slightly against down Alphard’s face.  “Do tell, I might get jealous.”

“No need, you’re my first,” Alphard concentrates very hard on keeping his breathing steady. “Though my great-grandfather always warned us about not getting into such situations.” And then, bitterly, “At least he got to indulge though, before the bill came due.”

 “Phineas Nigellus was an invert?” Tom is surprised; the old headmaster was a bit of a snarky dandy and clearly hated his wife, but the man had four kids – double the required heir and spare. Tom lets his hand slip down further.

“Worse,” Alphard swallows hard, increasingly distracted as Tom starts playing with the fastenings to his robes. “Snuck out to ride on the Orient Express when it first opened, misplaced his hat, and some muggle stewardess found it. Two bottles of claret and 16 years later the bastard offspring shows up demanding an allowance to stay quiet about it.”

Tom chuckles, eyes sparkling with mischief. “And now you’re trusting me with the family secret.”

Alphard curses and, with what looks like great mental effort, bats Tom’s hand away. “Stop that! It’s making me stupid.”

Tom laughs in earnest, and Alphard tells himself it’s profoundly foolish to be charmed by a laugh that comes at his expense. From a boy that he knows doesn’t really care about him.

“Well maybe I like you stupid,” Tom smirks as he backs off, satisfied with having won the interaction. “Who knows, do something idiotic enough and you just might get somewhere.”

Alphard lets the back of his head smack against the wall just a little too hard as Tom walks away, hoping the action might knock some sense into it.

Because at the moment he can’t think of anything more idiotic, more unfathomably stupid, than falling for Tom fucking Riddle.

o-o-o-o-o

Succumbing to sleep had been a monumentally dumb idea, Albus quickly realizes. Particularly after also consuming what might be categorized as ‘real’ food.

Because now that his body was no longer teetering on the edge of collapse, now that it was somewhat fed and rested, it had apparently decided that ‘survival mode’ was no longer necessary, and that it was once again okay to reawaken more… secondary needs.

Though at the moment such needs felt quite urgently primary, as his body practically screamed at him that he was an 18 year old boy who had very suddenly gone from ‘multiple times a day’ to ‘literally nothing for weeks.’

Now warm and comfortable, with an improbably attractive time traveller cuddled up against him, his body was in full-on rebellion mode, adamantly refusing to believe any pleas from his brain that now was not the time.

The only thing to be done then, was to quietly make his exit to take care of the problem, without waking Tom.

A truly flawless plan, had it not been for Albus completely forgetting that he was still chained to the bed.

And instead of being properly ashamed about diverting enough blood away from his brain to make Albus forget this crucial fact, his stupid body was apparently finding the position quite thrilling.

I mean, it was rather exciting just with the Gryffindor tie – imagine if you actually couldn’t just easily escape-

I don’t have to imagine!

Fantastic, now he arguing with himself because apparently the horny half of his brain had decided his body had the right idea.

Even more fantastic, the sound of the chain rattling had apparently disturbed Tom, who released a breath of air against Albus’ neck that caused an unmistakable dampening in the front of his pants. The dark haired boy was starting to stir, and any moment now he’s open his eyes and see where the blanket wasn’t laying quite flat, or worse move and feel – oh no, no, NO –

In a moment of panic, Albus does the first thing that comes to mind: vanishes all the bones in his arm and slips right out of the cuff, rolling out of bed and fleeing to the privacy of the washroom before Tom can finish blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

One would think that would be the end of it. After nearly a month, surely a few quick strokes were all that was needed to resolve the issue.

But it turns out ‘a few quick strokes’ is not exactly possible when one’s dominant hand is completely devoid of bones and significantly more flaccid than the organ it’s supposed to be stimulating.

It’s a bit like trying to fuck a fruit jelly, Albus guesses. Minimal friction, zero control, and the visual of thrusting against something jiggly enough that it just slips right past you is equal parts comical and off-putting. Not only was it not getting him anywhere, but the horror of it all was causing him to start to deflate.

No matter, I’ve got two hands, haven’t I?

Albus had never tried it with his non-dominant hand before. It was surprisingly awkward, being unable to replicate the motions he was used to, having to concentrate more on directing the movements of his hand than on enjoying the feelings it was eliciting. Or, trying to elicit.

Merlin, this is what he’d been hoping to avoid.

A few quick strokes would’ve been ideal. A bit of friction, completion, and absolutely zero thoughts.

But his mind and body had obviously teamed up to conspire against him, because the opportunity to tip over the cusp of climax had now passed, and in order to get back to that edge it was now necessary to… get ‘in the mood.’

Well, you liked that manacle well enough just a bit ago. Let’s revisit that, yeah?

The unexpected force with which he was thrown on the bed, the unyielding iron encircling his wrist. It was certainly a… choice on Tom’s part, going full medieval with his taste in restraints. Though he supposed it went along with the whole ‘living in the dungeons’ thing. And he definitely had experience disciplining schoolmates, Albus hadn’t missed that ‘Head Boy’ badge on those Slytherin robes either –

“It doesn’t mean that,” Albus playfully shoved Gellert, who had found the badge in a box of old Hogwarts things.

“But Leibling, you’re so good at it, of course you’d have an award for that too,” Gellert teased.

No. Absolutely not. He was not thinking about Gellert.

And really, he shouldn’t be thinking about Tom either, that was wildly inappropriate, what in the galloping graphorns was wrong with him.

(Rather a lot, he would conclude by the end of the day.)

Okay. New fantasy. Um… Isaac Cooper maybe? The Quidditch Captain from back when Albus was in 4^th year, he’d always been quite fit.  

But they were never close and it’d been a few years, so Albus struggles to remember his face clearly – he’d had blond hair and blue eyes, so it keeps morphing back into Gellert.

And perhaps Albus’ ability to feel anger had been locked away in the same place his sex drive had been hiding this past month, when shock and grief had overpowered everything else. Because suddenly it’s like a dam breaking, how quickly it was erupting.

Gellert had to ruin even this too? It wasn’t enough he’d turned Albus’ life upside down, led him to ruin his family, and left without even so much as a goodbye – the ghost of his memory couldn’t even leave him well enough alone to let Albus have one off the wrist?!

I bet he’d love that, Albus thinks bitterly. Even now he’d want to consume my every thought. If I ever again see that selfish, arrogant, cowardly prick, I’ll-

Albus’ train of thought is suddenly derailed by what feels like a garrot tightening violently around his throat.

Merlin, Jack the Ripper’s a wizard! Albus thinks wildly, as his boneless hand flops uselessly against his neck in a vain attempt to free it.

His other hand succeeds however, in recognizing the charm hanging from the chain.

Wait, no. It’s that damn blood troth!

It loosens slightly for the moment that surprise is at the forefront of Albus’ thoughts, before the next wave of rage causes it to retighten with vigor.

Inconveniently, and frankly rather worryingly, this does seem to be rather effective at ah… ‘reigniting his enthusiasm.’ Probably something to unpack later, because there was an angry rant to be had at the moment.

Unbelievable! I’m not even allowed to be angry?! This is rubbish! We vowed to never hurt each other, yes?! So why, when he broke my heart, didn’t it kill hi-

The chain jerks tighter with such force that it throws Albus off balance, and the boneless hand he instinctively throws out to break his fall knocks over a shelf of for-purchase toiletries with a loud clatter, but does very little to actually slow him down, having an internal firmness roughly equivalent to that of a flobberworm. Albus smacks his face against the tile floor hard enough to feel his nose break (again) and see stars, which themselves are starting to get rather fuzzy from the lack of oxygen.

So this is how it ends, Albus thinks dramatically.

On the dirty floor of a shared washroom, pants around my ankles, with swollen bollocks and a boneless arm.

Done in by a bit of vindictive jewelry.

Less than a year ago, he’d been the most promising student Hogwarts had ever seen. He should’ve known he was going to end up like those child virtuosos that perform at all the great concert halls, only to end up knee-deep in laudanum and courtesans by their teens and found face-down in a ditch before 30.

My obituary will be naught but limp wrist jokes, Albus thinks in a daze. No, the salacious Prophet article about finding my body. Aberforth would never write an obituary for me.

Oh god, Aberforth’s going to be the last Dumbledore standing.

Albus hears several sharp knocks – the sound of his soul crashing through the floors of each circle of hell no doubt – but when the devil speaks, he sounds awfully familiar.

“Everything alright in there?” Tom asks. “I heard a crash. Do you need me to come in?”

It was bad enough to be found dead this way, but to be found like this while still alive?? Sheer horror at the thought instantly overtakes any feelings of anger and the troth goes slack, air rushing back into Albus’ lungs in great heaving gasps.

“Okay, it rather sounds like you’re dying, so I’m just gonna-“

“NO DON’T COME IN,” Albus chokes out, throwing up as much wandless magic as he can against the door. “I’m fine, just… not decent!”

Even in Victorian England it’s a poor excuse against a boy his own age that’s equally used to dorm life, but looking at the utter state of mess he was in, indecent is truly the only word for it.

“… Right. If you’re sure then.” Albus sighs in relief at the sound of receding footsteps.

There comes a point in a man’s life when he must come to terms with the fact that sometimes, despite all best efforts, one must concede defeat.

And for Albus, today is that day. He turns the tap settings to ‘glacial’ and spends the next five minutes standing motionless under the spray as the cause of so many of his troubles withers under the icy assault.

No complaining, you’ve caused enough trouble for one day, Albus scolds. You’re lucky I don’t keep this on until you get frostbite and fall off.

Perhaps Albus was going mad, just a bit.

He’s cleaned up and mostly calmed down (albeit still maddeningly frustrated) by the time he returns to the room. At least, until Tom speaks.

“You know, you could’ve just asked me to help you out.” Tom raises his eyebrows in amusement at Albus’ flaccid arm.

“W-what?” Albus’ mind stutters to a halt, probably his body can’t handle any more of the ice water that’ll be required if his thoughts are allowed to proceed any further.

“Of the cuff, dummy,” Tom clarifies, with a playful shove. “Instead of removing your bones like a lunatic. What, did you think I was offering to help wash your hair or something? Fat chance – you brought this on yourself, so you’ll just have to suffer a little bit.” He looks pleased at the idea, and Albus frantically has to remind himself that Tom’s picturing some slapstick comedy of Albus struggling with a shampoo bottle.

“How’d you manage to break your nose again, anyway?”

“Souvenir from my enemies,” Albus echoes Tom’s ridiculous words back at him, since he’s currently at an utter loss for his own.

“Touche,” Tom snorts. “Well, I have an appointment to be off to – try not to damage or disappear any more body parts while I’m gone.”

No promises, Albus thinks darkly, summoning a dusty bottle of Skele-Gro from his potions kit.

Tom’s gone by the time the potion really starts kicking in, the shards of bone slowly penetrating each finger feeling like a thousand splinters trapped under his skin. The pain is sharp, intense.

And it’s the only thing that seems to relieve, just for a moment, the boiling frustration in his loins.

Maybe I do just have to suffer a bit, Albus laughs to himself with slightly more than a touch of hysteria, smiling as a particularly jagged-feeling bone shard pushes its way through his wrist.

 o-o-o-o-o

London is chock-full of pubs advertising how many centuries they’ve been around that could’ve chosen as a meeting place, but Tom remembers the Prospect of Whitby because of the decorative noose hanging out in front. It apparently used to have a fantastic view of the gallows where pirates and smugglers would be hanged, if one fancied a pint while enjoying that sort of thing.

Phineas Nigellus Black is already seated at a corner table, sans robes but still looking horribly out of place in his posh, finely tailored morning coat. Tom is pleased to see he looks wildly uncomfortable in the muggle pub, nursing a double of some amber-colored liquor while observing everyone around him with deep suspicion.

Tom takes his time ordering a small beer (there’s care too much cholera in this time period for Tom to trust muggle water), before putting the Headmaster out of his misery.

“’Toujours pur.’” Tom mocks, as he takes the seat directly across from Phineas. “Mais bon sang ne saurait mentir.”

‘Always Pure.’ But good blood doesn’t lie.

Tom’s banking on Phineas Nigellus’ French being as bad as Alphard claimed when he said it was the only pronunciation worse than Tom's, after being horrified to discover Tom had been pronouncing the T in Vol-de-mort. Though it was hardly Tom’s fault that he had to self-teach from books rather than private tutors. Honestly, one really had to lay most of the blame on the French, for being too lazy to pronounce half their letters in the first place.

“We speak English in this country,” Phineas retorts haughtily, rather than reveal his own clumsy tongue. But he looked rattled enough that it was clear he understood the meaning. Studies Tom’s face intently, takes in the dark color of his hair, so similar to his own.

“How old are you boy?”

“Fifteen,” Tom lies easily.

Phineas frowns at the broadness of Tom’s shoulders, the sharpness of his cheekbones, free of baby fat. “You don’t look fifteen.”

“And you don’t look like a man with a reputation for sleeping with muggle train stewardesses. I imagine you’d like to keep it that way.” Tom expertly mimics Alphard’s body language, a relaxed confidence stemming from entitlement and privilege, and for good measure reproduces a peculiar pattern of tapping his fingers against the table. A little tic he’d noticed from Phineas Nigellus’ portrait at Hogwarts.

Neither entitlement nor habitual tics were genetic of course, but Tom doubted Phineas would think too hard on that. Not after the final touch.

“Of course, I can always have an official paternity test conducted on the record, if you’re in doubt. And with my citizenship proved, I could even transfer to Hogwarts,” Tom smiles threateningly. “Mère wanted me to go to regular school, learn things like maths and English rather than magic tricks. But surely they’d be able to put some special remedial program together for the Headmaster’s muggle-raised son?”

Phineas looks simultaneously pale and nauseous, but also like he wants to flip the table.

“….State your demands.”

“A monthly allowance,” Tom answers easily with a wide smile. “Generous enough that I won’t feel the need to use my family name for status. I trust you and your accountants will settle on a fair number.”

“Fine,” Phineas grinds out through clenched teeth. “Contingent on your silence, a continuance of your absence from wizarding Britian that I’ve enjoyed these last 15 years, and society’s complete ignorance of any connection between yourself and the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Tom agrees. “I just have one more request.” Phineas bites his tongue as Tom fishes a slip of parchment from his pocket and pushes it across the table. “Have your house-elf go through your records of European wizarding families and owl me the tree on this name, if it exists.”

Phineas looks more confused than anything, after reading the parchment. “Who the hell is ‘Gellert Grindlewald,’ and what’s he got to do with all this?”

“Nothing really, it’s a completely separate matter,” Tom shrugs. “I’ve just heard that your family has the best genealogical records that can be found anywhere, and wanted to take advantage.”

When Tom exits the pub a few minutes later, there’s a thrum of excitement in his step. Everything was going according to plan, and the path to greatness had never been so clear.

Everything that’s going to happen, has already happened.

It’s the only thing that made sense, it explained everything.

Why an Austro-Hungarian wizard inexplicably used the crest of a long-dead British wizarding line as his symbol – the same symbol etched into Tom’s family ring.

Why Dumbledore had refused to move against Grindelwald throughout the War – clearly Tom had succeeded in winning Albus over to his side.

Why Grindelwald had left Britain alone - to avoid any run-ins with his younger self.

And Grindelwald’s claims of being a Seer? The perfect cover for Tom, in his new identity, being able to use his knowledge of the future when it suited him.

He knew he wouldn’t be spending the next 45 years simply flying under the radar, waiting for all possible paradoxes to pass. Tom – no, Tom under the new name Gellert Grindelwald, would grow his followers, raise an army, conquer half the Continent! Become the greatest, most feared Dark Wizard the world has ever seen. And the best thing was that Tom knew he’d win, because it had all already happened!

Sure, there were some details to iron out. He wasn’t sure why he’d let himself get captured, or go through with plans he’d know would fail, or what would happen to his eye.  But figured the reasons would eventually be made clear.

For now though, his path was set.

Take Albus on a little grief tour of Europe until he forgets all about his stupid sister and nobody paramour and gets attached to Tom.

And on the side, track down if there’s an existing Gellert Grindelwald and kill him.

It’s such a fun, simple, elegant plan, and with a 45-year long view on the situation Tom feels as confident as a Seer in his prediction:

This time, there is absolutely no chance that Albus Dumbledore is going to find a way to fuck this up for him.

Chapter Text

The Nutcracker premiered in December of the same year Albus started at Hogwarts. Albus hadn’t seen it on stage of course – even before… everything, could you just imagine dad and Aberforth being dragged to the ballet for a family outing? They’d stage a riot to get out of it. Mum might’ve taken him, if Ariana wasn’t…

Well. It was a moot point now.

It was Professor Ronan who had brought the score to the music room as a festive treat, along with some muggle candies from the play. Spanish chocolate, candied ginger, sugarplums. Albus had earned 20 points for Gryffindor when he showed Professor Ronan how he’d applied that week’s Charms lesson (wingardium leviosa) into making the sugared violets not just float out of their bowl, but swirl and frolic in formation to The Waltz of the Flowers. 

Albus found himself looking up the composer, Tchaikovsky’s, other ballets – each beautiful, whimsical, haunting, with a fairy-tale like quality. Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake. (That the villains were often magical was disappointing, but a muggle couldn’t be expected to know better.) Books had long taught Albus the magic of words, but here was someone who could tell a story without using any words at all.

He’s dead before next Christmas.

Even for a muggle, 53 years old seems a bit sooner than usual. The papers say it was cholera, but also report rumors of suicide, possibly forced. It takes a little more digging for 12-year-old Albus to figure out why – what shame they suspected he either couldn’t bear anymore, or that couldn’t be tolerated by others.

Albus learns some new words (slurs, really) that day. And as always, a newly learned word suddenly seems to start cropping up everywhere. But it still catches Albus by surprise when, while visiting home for the winter holidays, Aberforth calls him a poof.

“Mum said you have to help me clean out the goat pen, not just sit there like a lazy poof!”

Triumph shines on 9-year-old Aberforth’s face at finding an insult that lands, that makes Albus finally drop his book and look at him, face turning a splotchy red.

“She didn’t say that.”

“She said the first part.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m surprised you need my help.” Albus casts about for an equally offensive insult to throw back. “You like those goats so much you may as well move to Wales!”

“Why would I move to Wales?” Aberforth looks confused, and belatedly, angry. Albus is always saying confusing things, then acting like he’s dumb for not understanding.

“Why would you call me a poof?” Albus snaps back.

“Because if you sit on a sofa long enough, you’ll turn into one!” Aberforth retorts with exasperation, trying to channel the same condescension Albus has when he explains things.

Oh.

Albus looks at the pouf he’d propped his feet up on as he read. So Aberforth wasn’t calling him… that.

While Albus is processing, Aberforth has already stomped over to the kitchen in indignation.

“Mum! Muuuum! Albus called me Welsh!”

“Albus, that’s a terrible thing to say to your brother,” Kendra’s voice scolds lightly.

Albus sighs and puts his book away, resigned to spending the afternoon cleaning out goat dung. His genius was truly wasted here.

Albus is in third year when he notices that Isaac Cooper has a very nice smile, and when he learns that Oscar Wilde has been convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to hard labor. Prison is for murderers, Albus knows. The other students had reminded him of that often enough. It hadn’t occurred to him that one could end up in a cell like his father, not for killing, but for loving.

Wilde was world-famous, a beloved wit. His lover was a member of the muggle aristocracy. Surely once you’ve proven your worth, achieved a certain status… They should’ve been untouchable.

But it always seemed to end badly, for people like that.

That summer, Albus finds a photo of what he thinks must be his grandparents. He’d never met them – just knew that they were Americans who must have died when his mother was young, since she’d been sent to England to be raised by her grandparents. The ginger woman in a prairie dress has his mother’s delicate features, and the native man sporting a handsome feathered headdress by her side has his mother’s dark hair and almond eyes. When he asks about it, Kendra Dumbledore just smiles fondly at the picture before putting it back in the drawer.

“Sometimes, the world isn’t kind about certain things. When they’re confronted with it, especially. So you keep it close, where they can’t get to it. There’s no point in making things harder for yourself.” It’s only lunchtime, but his mum already seems tired somehow, as if at the end of a long day. “People just see what they want to see, anyway.”  

Albus is in 4^th year when Gryffindor wins the Quidditch Cup for a record 7^th year in a row, and the other houses aren’t even sour about it, because everyone wants to be able to tell their grandkids they witnessed the legendary Isaac Cooper catch the snitch and smash every Quidditch record Hogwarts has ever known. He’d been Gryffindor’s star seeker since his first year – it’ll probably be a century before anyone manages that again!

The entire goddamn school has been staring at him in adoration all day, the sporty boys more than anyone, shoving drinks in his hand and slapping him on the back, and Albus is pretty sure the entire Gryffindor team has kissed him at least once over the last few hours. On the cheek mostly, but keeper Arlo Lovegood was so overcome he kissed Isaac full on the mouth (to raucous laughter, and Albus’ wide eyes) before turning to apologize to his girlfriend Geraldine Clearwater. Who didn’t seem to mind at all, taking it as a free pass to push him aside and shove her tongue down Isaac’s throat next.

Someone had snuck in several bottles of Ogden’s Finest Firewhisky, which Albus decides to try since characters in books always seemed to do so to ‘calm their nerves,’ and Albus can’t stop mentally replaying the image of Isaac kissing a boy. (He only manages half a sip before passing it back to Priyanka Singh, who giggles with the rest of the girls at Albus nearly choking on the fumes. They seemed to think his reaction was ‘cute’.)

The burn is still lingering on Albus’ tongue when he’s suddenly knocked over (the drunken human pyramid being assembled behind him was apparently structurally unsound) and finds himself crushed flat on his back.

With a laughing, rosy-cheeked Isaac Cooper lying fully on top of him.

“Sorry Albus, didn’t see you there,” Isaac struggles a little to get up, inebriated from the constant stream of congratulatory drinks. “Cheers, mate,” he kisses Albus on the cheek and ruffles his hair, before he’s helped back to his feet by… honestly, it could’ve been hippogriffs for all Albus was aware of right now.

The party is still in full swing as Albus makes his way back up to the deserted dormitory, shuts the curtains around his bed, and… comes to terms with some things about himself.

He comes to terms so hard it splatters onto the curtains, standing out against the dark red velvet with stark, horrifying vulgarity.

In retrospect, a scourgify would’ve sufficed at destroying the evidence, but setting the curtains on fire was doubtlessly more thorough. He’d always hated them anyway – velvet catches dust too easily to be appropriate for bedcurtains.

…Merlin, he really was a flaming poof.

He doesn’t tell anyone, of course. There are 3 more years of dormitory life to get through, after all.

There’s no point in making things harder for yourself.

…And part of him wonders if maybe all the people who called it sick and wrong had a point. A boy holding down Ariana like that is what destroyed her, what drove his dad to murder and Azkaban. What kind of freak must he be to want that kind of thing?

So Albus clamps down hard on those feelings, buries them deep. Focuses on his studies. It’s amazing how much you get done when all the hours a teen would normally devote to crushes and first dates and break-ups is instead directed entirely toward academics.

Albus gets 13 ‘Outstandings’ on his O.W.L.S., and equally amazing N.E.W.T.S.

He’s reading the Daily Prophet announcement of Isaac Cooper’s engagement to his Montrose Magpies teammate Alice Thatcher when Elphias asks him about going on the Grand Tour. And for a few brief weeks, Albus feels something like hope.

He’d spent his whole life in the small, insular world of wizarding Britain – where everyone knew everyone else, or their relatives, and certainly knew everyone’s business. So to finally get away, to visit a world completely apart?

…Maybe one with people… like him?

Elphias was simple enough not to catch on if Albus took a few extracurricular excursions, and loyal enough not to tell anyone if he did.

It always made Albus feel a little guilty. He’d only approached him in first year because he’d just read a fascinating article on dragon pox and wanted to see the symptoms up close. But Elphias told anyone who would listen about Albus’ big heart and Gryffindor bravery, that he was the only person not scared to befriend a boy covered in green skin and pustules.

It doesn’t work out, of course. Mum dies, and Elphias leaves without him.

Albus returns to Godric’s Hollow, where the only thing to do is care for the goats and Ariana, two of the few areas in which he is utterly lacking in natural skill. Well, that and cooking – he tries for a week before Aberforth officially bans him from the kitchen. Albus tries not to think too hard on how infrequently Aberforth washes his hands, because his meals are a marked improvement from Albus’ own efforts.

His wealth of actual talents are left to rot. 

One night when Albus can’t sleep, he decides to walk down to the local pub, The Stout Heart. After all, isn’t that what people do in this mundane little village? Futz around in the garden, have a pint down at the local, repeat until old age has set in and life has passed you by with nothing accomplished, no mark left on the world to show you ever existed but the inane gossip of neighbors.

Albus opens the door already knowing what he’ll see this time of night – Old Man Prewett smoking in a corner to avoid going home to his wife, Madam Wilson from the potions shop (who, not coincidently, is known for her hangover cures) deep in her cups, perhaps Leopolde Babcocke doing the same if sales have been either very good or very bad.

So it catches him off-guard when there’s a new addition – a striking young man with blonde hair who perks up at the sight of Albus and seems to wave him over. Albus checks, but there’s no one behind him that the youth could’ve been addressing instead.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the stranger says in an accent Albus can’t quite place – almost German, but not entirely. How on earth did a foreigner end up in this little backwater?

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Albus is flustered, but there is no way he’d forget a face like that.

“Not yet,” the stranger smiles knowingly, and Albus feels his cheeks color a bit. “But you will.”

The Dumbledore household had never had visitors before, not until Gellert wormed his way into Ariana’s good graces. And now he’s over all the time.

And why not? Albus is the man of the house, after all – he decides who’s welcome. Much to the annoyance of a certain grumpy little goat-herder.

Gellert’s attempts to win over Aberforth have been… less successful.

“You didn’t,” Albus is nearly crying with laughter when Gellert recounts the incident. “Oh, Gellert.”

“What?” Gellert looks perplexed. “Is it an insult somehow, to compliment clothing in this country?”

“Not at all,” Albus wipes a tear of mirth from his eye. “It’s just that we call them ‘kilts’, not ‘little plaid skirts.’”

“I can’t have put too many pins,” Albus insists, “It’s called 10-pin bowling.”

“Well it was originally called Kegelspiel, which uses 9. Typical British Imperialism to annex an additional pin.”

“It was actually the Americans who did that,” Albus lights up the way he always does when he’s excited to share a particularly amusing fact. “Their authorities outlawed 9-pin bowling for being associated with drinking and gambling and general merriment – all grave transgressions in Puritan New England. These were people who left England because they thought we weren’t uptight enough, you see. So what do you think the tavern owners did in response?”

Gellert laughs, suddenly understanding why Albus preferred this version. “They added a 10^th pin.”

They whisper secrets to each other, hidden under a blanket fort in Albus’ room. As if that’s what’ll keep Albus’ siblings from overhearing, rather than the silencing charms on the door. Albus tells Gellert the truth about Ariana’s illness, about why he can’t let anyone else care for her. Gellert takes his hand and promises to build a world where such a thing would never happen again. Not just the incident, but all the injustice that followed. Reveals that he has visions – abstract and confusing – of upheaval and change on a grand scale, of revolution, of the two of them at the center of it all.  Albus is entranced by the way his eyes blaze with purpose.

Gellert has enough passion and conviction for them both, Albus realizes. It burns so brightly that it manages to rekindle the fire in Albus he thought long since snuffed out, suffocated by this small town.

It’s terrifying. Maddening. Wonderful. And Albus wants nothing more than to let the flames consume him.

To tell Gellert one more secret.

But the possibility of scaring Gellert away is more than he can bear, and Albus’ Gryffindor courage fails him.

They egg each other on, like wind and kerosene turning a spark into an inferno. Deciding with all the arrogant certainty of youth what’s rotten in the world, and how things should be instead. Strategizing in increasingly realistic ways how they’d implement such changes. The revolution they’d start.

The conqueror and the general.

Gellert is the visionary, the animating force driving it all. No more hiding in shame and all the collateral damage that comes with it – wizards will live freely in the open, and muggles will respect their power. Albus is the strategist, directing Gellert’s fire in the proper direction, restraining it when needs be. Impatience and a tendency towards meeting resistance with might is Gellert’s weakness – too much force breeds backlash. Most people lack their capacity for vision and will need to be gently guided, sold on the logic and virtue of the new system. That whatever pain or discomfort that accompanies all change will ultimately be worth it – for the Greater Good.  

Together they’ll be unstoppable – the iron fist and the velvet glove. Albus can’t get enough of the way Gellert looks at him whenever he ‘adds a 10^th pin’ to a plan, comes up with something unexpected, effortless, and brilliant.

If they ever run out of words to conquer, Albus will simply have to create new ones.

Albus didn’t mean to walk directly into the stream, nearly falling over as the ground gave way to cold water that promptly seeped into his shoes. But the sight of Gellert wading in naught but his rolled-up trousers, the way the lean muscles of his back moved, was highly distracting.

“You’re supposed to take your shoes off first,” Gellert smirks, looking for all the world like some kind of trickster forest spirit as the dappled sunlight dances across his bare skin.

“You must forgive my confusion. I didn’t realize shoes were worn on the torso,” Albus takes the excuse to look pointedly at Gellert’s shirtlessness and oh Merlin that V of his hipbones – why is it so much sharper than mine, like an arrow pointing straight to his-

Albus suddenly realizes he’s been staring a bit too low and a beat too long and feels the icy grip of panic start to squeeze at his throat. But as always, Gellert twists Albus’ anxiety into a much more pleasant kind of tension.

“You can look if you like,” Gellert grins and makes a little show of preening. “I don’t mind.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Albus rolls his eyes even as he smiles, the color in his cheeks now feeling agreeably warm instead of uncomfortably hot. “I bet you’ll decree that every household should hang your portrait, won’t you?”

“Well what kind of rulers would we be, to deny the masses such a simple joy?” Gellert feigns concern before they both succumb to laughter, a comfortable ease settling in as they while away the afternoon talking about nothing and everything, the cool water running over their feet tempering the summer heat.

For the first time Albus thinks he might understand, just a bit, how someone could be content spending their whole life in a little town like this.

“Come in, I’ll get you some dry socks,” Gellert says when it’s time for Albus to go, shrugging his shirt back on. “You’ll get blisters if you walk home with damp ones. And you can see my room!”

Albus has seen it before, when his mum came over for tea and the kids were left to entertain themselves. The childish shrieks of laughter managed to lure Albus away from the bookshelf long enough to find Aberforth and Ariana jumping on the guest room bed, trying to see who could bounce higher. (Aberforth let Ariana think she won.) They must’ve been 3 and 4, Albus thinks.

“Ta-da,” Gellert leads Albus into the cramped room with a flourish, and it’s… exactly the same, save for the open traveling case in the corner. Same pastel crocheted afghans piled on the bed, same collection of wooden clocks on the wall, same hideous floral wallpaper.  

It suddenly strikes Albus that this isn’t Gellert’s room, not really. It’s an old lady’s room, that Gellert’s only staying in temporarily. Albus’ heart aches at the thought – it’s only been a few weeks, but already he can’t imagine them parting. As it is, they can barely manage separating even to go to sleep. Aberforth had made Albus promise to watch Ariana tonight, as if he had some pressing social engagements of his own to attend to, but-

“I don’t want to go yet,” Albus says suddenly, when Gellert places a pair of thick woolen socks in his hands.

“Then don’t,” Gellert replies quickly, perhaps a little too eagerly. “Stay here with me.”

It’s terribly rude, Albus knows, to look into someone’s mind without asking. But Gellert knows he can do it, knows he needs eye contact for it to work, so when he steps closer and gazes into Albus’ eyes it feels like an invitation, and Albus dives in.

Stay, and don’t ever leave my side.

He’s almost overcome by the emotions swirling in Gellert’s head: longing, desire, affection, happiness, nervousness. (He wouldn’t have believed it if he didn’t feel it – Gellert “I do what I want and don’t apologize for it” Grindelwald, nervous.) And a warm feeling that Albus understands completely, because he feels the same way.

“Okay,” Albus breathes, heart racing like a hummingbird as he closes the half-step of distance left between them. Gellert can’t read minds, but he hopes his intention is clear enough.

Gellert leans in, and when their lips touch Albus feels his mind go blank at the same time he has a thousand thoughts all at once.

Every poem and love story he’s ever read suddenly resonates with new meaning, every love song he’s ever heard suddenly makes sense – he can feel the violins from Romeo and Juliet swell and crest in his chest.

It’s not just his first kiss; it’s his first time daring to think that love might even be possible for someone like him, that the relationships everyone around him fell in and out of so naturally might be something he’d get to experience too. Because Gellert - vibrant, handsome, wonderful Gellert – he feels the same.

Gellert’s arms had wrapped around him at some point, and Albus lets himself melt into them. He feels like he should be doing something with his hands but doesn’t know what, so he just clutches tighter onto that stupid pair of socks to stop from bursting with happiness.

They end up making out well into the evening, exploring every way a kiss could be done until the sound of Ms. Bagshot returning forces them to detach from each other.

Even Aberforth reading him the riot act when he gets home can’t dampen the soaring of Albus’ heart, because Gellert likes him. Gellert kissed him. Gellert wants to kiss him again. Gellert, Gellert, Gellert.

“This-” Albus wrings his hands, never imagining he’d ever had trouble finding words, “This thing we have-”

“Love,” Gellert interrupts, cupping Albus’ cheek and coaxing him to meet his eyes. “Don’t ever let anyone make you afraid to name it. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself, and this,” Gellert places a palm to Albus’ heart, “is nothing to be afraid of.”

Albus wants to believe it, wishes he had Gellert’s certainty.

“Don’t let the ignorant masses poison it by taking away the words, making you think our love is something different than theirs, something less. Not when you’re infinitely more than anyone could ever imagine.”

They can’t keep their hands off each other - If they were inseparable before, it’s nothing compared to now. Aberforth doesn’t even make a snarky comment the first time Gellert stays the night because it’s a welcome break from having owls tapping at the window every 10 minutes while he’s trying to sleep. If more disturbing noises have taken their place, well, Aberforth’s just glad his brother has always been excellent at silencing charms.

When Gellert finally holds him down, it’s nothing like what happened to Ariana. He’s gentle, loving, safe. Whispering words of adoration over every inch of his body. He makes Albus feel like something precious.

(It’ll be the only few weeks of Albus’ long life where he doesn’t feel at least a little bit like a monster.)

Intellectually, Albus knew that people liked sex for a reason, knew from self-indulgence that certain things felt good. But since he hadn’t predicted it was something he’d ever participate in (the dirty business of back-alley depravity he’d thought was the only option for people like him seemed wholly unappealing), he hadn’t anticipated how wonderfully fun it could be.

Gellert’s not much more experienced than he is – if you can even call an aborted attempt at a blowjob ‘experience’ – so they learn everything together. The taste of each other, how Gellert craves words like “I love you” and “I’m yours” once Albus gets brave enough to say them, how it excites Albus when Gellert gets riled up enough to pull his hair and just take. What doesn’t work (“Ow, ow!” “I told you hickeys wouldn’t feel good there.” “Well… now we know for sure!”), and what absolutely does (“Yes, yes! Don’t stop!”)

The first time Gellert enters him (after some debate over whether this is an actual sex practice or just another ridiculous urban legend like vagina dentata, followed by an even more poorly-informed debate on if that’s a real thing) the sensation is enough to temporarily erase his ability to speak English. When Albus whimpers as he adjusts to the intrusion, Gellert mutters soothing reassurances in German that seems to drive Albus wild, so he keeps going. Leibling, mein Schatz, mein Ein und Alles, and when he runs out of sweet nothings, a recipe for Lebkuchen recited in his most seductive voice.

((Aberforth doesn’t understand why in the heat of summer they decide to bake German Christmas cookies with Ariana when he finally manages to wrangle them (because there’s no Albus without Gellert now) into a semblance of responsibility. But from the way Gellert keeps laughing and Albus keeps blushing, Aberforth decides he doesn’t actually want to know.))

When Gellert finds the scene left bookmarked in Plundering her Heart: A Voyage of Desire, Albus thinks he might faint from embarrassment, which quickly morphs to nearly fainting from arousal when Gellert smirks and offers to act it out. (“Though, I’ve been on the Durmstrang ship, and you can’t actually use halyards like that-” “Less ship-rigging, more plundering Captain Jack!”)

Albus is less enthused about Gellert wanting to blow him behind the pub (“How can ‘almost getting caught’ possibly be exciting, let alone when you can cheat by seeing the future!?”) but it’s unexpectedly hot when Gellert comes untouched. And leads to an extremely fun evening later, when Albus puts on bits of his old school uniform and plays at giving Gellert ‘detention’ for his naughty public behavior. (“If it was you disciplining me back at school, I’d have gotten into much more trouble.” “Gellert, you were expelled.”)

They ride a broom out to a deserted field of wildflowers and make love on a blanket, shedding all inhibitions in the open air and sunlight.

Albus has grown bolder – ripping the buttons off Gellert’s waistcoat in a moment of impatience (“I’ll mend it later!”) and throwing it aside so hard it knocks over an inkpot (“I’ll wash it too!”).

Afterwards, when they’re both spent and catching their breath, Gellert teases him about doing his mending and washing like a little wife, and Albus is suddenly struck by a moment of insecurity. The thought is like a stab to the heart, but even Oscar Wilde and Tchaikovsky had wives to keep up appearences.

“Is that something you’d want, someday?” Albus tries to keep his voice light, but a waver betrays him. “A wife?”

“Never,” Gellert says with conviction, without having to think on it for even a moment, and warm relief floods through Albus as Gellert turns to look him in the eye.

“This,” Gellert takes Albus’ manhood firmly in hand and starts slowly stroking, “Is what I want.”

Albus moans softly at the touch, at the gentle kisses Gellert leaves along his jawline. “You are what I want. And I won’t ever let you go.”

The beauty of being eighteen is that ‘spent’ is relative – Gellert’s reassurances have Albus nearly ready for another round. But Gellert pauses in his ministrations to make sure Albus hears him finish his thought, before they get carried away.

“Our new world won’t abide hiding of any sort – not our magic, and not this either. None of this Victorian ‘love that dare not speak its name’ hülyeség. *I* dare.”

Albus shivers pleasantly at the impassioned resoluteness in Gellert’s declaration, feels a surge of want for this man who thinks nothing of changing the whole damn world before letting it get between them. Gellert tangles his fingers in Albus’ hair and looks at him with such naked desire Albus feels like he might burn up on the spot.

“I will shout it from the rooftops,” Gellert promises quietly, “And slit the throats of any who dare object.”

Albus pulls Gellert down to meet his lips in a searing kiss.

“Does it sow discord, you think? The Deathstick?” Albus bites his lip in concern as he pages through the story of the Three Brothers again. “Like, magically. Compelling people to turn on each other, that otherwise wouldn’t.”

Gellert looks offended. “I would sooner cut out my own heart than betray you.” And after a moment of thought conjures an ornately bejeweled dagger.

“I believe you,” Albus says quickly, with alarm. “There’s no need to demonstrate!”

Gellert ignores him and wraps his hand around the blade, and it’s Albus who yelps as Gellert slices his palm open without hesitation, smiling as blood seeps to the surface.

“I love you Albus. I want to swear it in blood,” Gellert holds the hilt of the dagger out for Albus to take. “A blood pact. From now until forever, that we’ll never fight each other.” Albus stares with wide eyes at the dagger, the blood dripping down Gellert’s wrist now.

“This is….” Crazy. Strangely romantic. Needlessly dramatic. So very Gellert. “…wrong.” Albus finishes, turning distractedly to a pile of books.

“What?” Gellert’s face falls, then twists with an ugly anger. “Do you not feel the same way?”

“No, I do!” Albus insists, finding the correct book and flipping through the pages. “But for blood troths – ah, here, yes!” Albus holds up the entry for Gellert to see, “The cuts need to be made with a wand.” Albus smiles apologetically for the confusion as the anger fades from Gellert’s face. “It was a lovely dagger though.”

They do it properly, after Albus makes Gellert slow down enough to read the instructions first.

There’s something joyous in the pain Albus thinks, knowing what it meant as their palms touched and fingers laced together, their blood mingling as it dripped and morphed into two identical charms. Intricate silver metal work encasing their commitment like a gem, glinting like a ruby in the light.

It feels like a ring, like a promise of forever. And when they each take their charms, when they smile giddily at each other and kiss, Albus thinks this must be what it would feel like if they could marry.

“We’ll take her with us,” Gellert proposes, hand entwined with Albus’ as they watch the sun set, sooner in the evening now than when they met.

“Aberforth won’t like it,” Albus bites his lip.

“Aberforth doesn’t like anything.”

“With all that could go wrong-”

“The two of us together would be able to contain her,” Gellert assures, squeezing Albus’ hand. “And don’t you think she deserves to see something of the world, beyond this little village?”

‘Before she dies,’ hangs unspoken between them. It’s an effective tactic on Albus, Gellert knows, but perhaps one final push…

“…I’ve Seen it, I think,” Gellert says carefully. “The three of us, in some foreign city.” He pauses, and Albus gets the feeling he’s keeping something back.

But there’s something oddly comforting in ‘knowing’ the future, like having the burden of decision eased off him, even though he knows that isn’t really the case.

“I think she’ll like those little villages on the Italian coast,” Albus smiles softly. “All those colorful little houses nestled in cliffs by the sea.”

“Then that’ll be our first stop,” Gellert vows, kissing Albus on the temple.

The last bit of sun dips beneath the horizon, leaving only the orange-pink glow still reflecting off the clouds.

For one brief summer, Albus was happy. In love, and content.

It all ends horribly, of course.

Doesn’t it always, for people like that?

He thought Gellert might show up for the funeral. Wondered if maybe he had, but Aberforth scared him away before Albus arrived. Aberforth hadn’t gone home, had kept watch over the grave all night, and ignored it when Albus brought him a black suit in the morning, in case he wanted to change.

He waits until the after the service, but he never should’ve asked. The word “Gellert” isn’t even halfway out when Aberforth snaps, more guttural screaming than words as he slams his fist as hard as he can into Albus’ face, but Albus understands the probable gist.

Selfish, thoughtless, bastard. Bringing this to their door, and still choosing that foreign fuck even now, with Ariana barely cold.

“GET OUT. GO.” Aberforth shoves Albus so hard he falls over, blood from his broken nose dripping onto the dirt. Then he wrenches Albus up by the collar and glares into his eyes hard, daring him to read the thoughts Aberforth doesn’t know how to put into words.

You never wanted to be here anyway. You’ll deny it, but there’s a part of you that’s relieved she’s gone – that’s glad she’d finally gotten on with it. So now you can pursue all the books and buggery your heart desires without us lesser beings inconveniencing you.

Albus turns his head away in shame, breaking eye contact, and Aberforth lets him go with one final shove.

“You’re free now. So go,” he snarls, turning to march back alone to the house Albus is no longer welcome in.   

I deserved that, Albus thinks to himself, trying to focus on the pain in his face to distract from the stab in the heart that was Aberforth’s thoughts. 

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

It’s almost a relief he broke his nose again in the washroom this morning. Because the pain had nearly gone entirely, which felt wrong somehow, when he hadn’t stopped deserving it.

The last however many hours had been nothing short of glorious – there’s no room for things like guilt or regret or frustration when the slowly-moving shrapnel of a thousand bone shards completely fills your consciousness with constantly shifting pain.

He practices a little with the troth, since he’s too distracted with his arm to let anger fully consume and kill him. Chokes himself a few times in the beginning, but eventually learns to moderate his thoughts to keep it to a firm squeeze rather than full strangulation. The closest he’ll get to ever feeling Gellert’s caress again, probably.

He’s disappointed when the pain starts to ebb, the razor shards fusing into solid bone and no longer cutting him from the inside.

As the haze starts to clear from his mind, Albus becomes aware that he’s breathing heavily – has been hard for quite a while now. He flexes his fingers experimentally, testing if he had control over his hand again yet. Oh thank Merlin, finally-

“Bones fully formed again, I take it?” Tom’s voice queries innocently, and Albus once again shrieks and nearly falls out of his chair. Partly in surprise, partly as a result of the wordless glacius he’d just sent to his crotch.

He hadn’t heard the door or a crack of apparition – just how long had Tom been silently standing there, watching him, like some kind of creepy undead portrait. Well, not-born-yet, rather than dead. Not alive, in any case. Well, except that he is.

…. Albus is fairly certain he’d had an exceptionally sharp mind once upon a time, and wonders if it might return to him any time soon.

“The bones in your arm,” Tom clarifies when he doesn’t get an answer, and Albus isn’t sure if he’s just imagining the sparkle of laughter in Tom’s eyes or not, because he keeps a remarkably straight face.

“Oh. Right. Yes,” Albus swears he also used to know words with more than one syllable, but seems to be further devolving to zero syllables and crude sign language as he demonstrates opening and closing his hand, for some reason.

“Brilliant,” Tom nods in approval. “Because our portkey leaves in half an hour and I didn’t want to have to carry all the bags.”

The room is already nearly empty, and the few essentials still left out fly into the expansion-charmed cases with a flick of Tom’s hand.

“All ready to go then?”

I wonder if there’s studies, Albus thinks detachedly, when he decides Tom probably wouldn’t buy it if he said he needed 5 minutes of privacy to say his emotional goodbyes to the communal washroom, On how long without relief it takes before a man either explodes or goes completely insane. If only he hadn’t been so quick to hide his shame, he’d probably have been able to pull it off in one, two minutes tops.

“…Sure,” Albus says. Then thinking he should show a little more enthusiasm to the guy taking him across Europe, forces a smile. “Off we go.”

“Just one more thing,” Tom reaches a hand up, and Albus quickly turns away when he realizes Tom is eyeing his nose.

“No! Don’t, I-”

“Don’t worry,” Tom says in a voice that sounds soothing, at least until one registers the strangeness of his words. “I wasn’t going to heal it.”

Tom takes Albus by the chin and gently coaxes him to face him again, and when he brings his hand back up Albus feels the cool sensation of a glamour being cast.

“Just making you presentable,” Tom explains, the corner of his mouth twitching with amusement. “Don’t need people wondering what I do to you behind closed doors when I’m trying to whisk you out of the country with forged papers.”

Albus swallows hard as Tom’s hand moves down to his neck and lingers, unsure what the actual hell is happening until he feels another cold wave of glamour encircle his neck.

“We wouldn’t want anyone trying to rescue you,” Tom smirks, stepping back to collect the bags while Albus has a silent mini-crisis about the blood troth leaving marks and Tom having noticed.

At first he’s relieved that Tom doesn’t ask about it - follows the dark-haired boy to the portkey in blessed silence.

…Until he realizes that it’s absolutely way, way weirder that he doesn’t ask. Tom probably hadn’t been standing there long enough to see the troth, and ligature marks are hardly the sort of injury one gets by accident. And it’s not like Tom’s the incurious sort.

Albus keeps puzzling over it until the chaotic whirl of portkey travel (via a tin of beans) rattles all the thoughts out of him, and the pleasantly warm sea breeze shocks him into the realization that he’s no longer in England.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Somewhere in the Swiss Alps

The remnants of an expensive bone china teacup clatter onto the hardwood floor of the vacant muggle ski chalet Gellert was currently squatting in. A tap of his new wand and the pieces fly back together seamlessly, good as new.

Gellert hurls the teacup against the wall again with a growl of rage, before picking up the source of his ire, a paragraph in a letter from his aunt, to hate-read once again. He wasn’t ordinarily in the habit of writing his rather long-winded aunt, but… desperate times.

…And Mr. Selwyn has the gall to act like it’s the squirrels carrying rotten fruit onto my side of the property line, instead of acknowledging he’s the one that let that crabapple tree get out of hand when he should’ve been regularly trimming…

Wait, wrong page. It’s somewhere here…

…is the cutest little thing I ever did see, just like a little doll with those big curious eyes! I remember when you were that age, such a little troublemaker. Thought it was the funniest thing to run away and make me catch you first whenever your nappies needed-

Nope! Not that page either.

…and Healer Barleycroft gave me this ointment to try from the muggle chemists’, and I must say it’s a wonder! As I’ve mentioned in my last three letters, I was at my wits end with that awful rash, it was even starting to weep pus-

Gellert shudders and throws that page in the fireplace.

Ah ha! There it is.

…’s daughter, the one that’s about your age, just got a promotion at the ministry, so you might want to think about sending her a little note of congratulations. I wager she’s on the market so to speak, because her mother asked if I knew who Albus’ new flatmate was – he’s apparently quite the looker, to turn heads that don’t even know his name. Aberforth didn’t catch it either, or didn’t care to I suppose, as they’re still quarreling. Just called him ‘the new Gellert,’ as if you were some kind of celebrity. I do hope they make up soon, and that you and Albus are still in touch after being thick as thieves all summer – the poor dearie’s been having a time of it according to Agnes Figg down at the Leaky…

Gellert has half a mind to throw that page in the fire too, but decides to shatter a soup tureen against the wall instead.

Albus had blocked him from owling – even from a pseudonym, third party, or chain of several unknowing intermediaries – blocked his Floo, made his unit unplottable, and apparently cursed his landlord from speaking about him to anyone, if the gibberish owled response Gellert got was any indication.

He just needs a little time, Gellert had assumed.

What had never crossed Gellert’s mind, what made him blind with rage at the mere thought, was the idea that Albus might’ve moved on with someone else.

The entire china cabinet explodes, the shards embedding themselves into the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the translucent glow of Gellert’s shielding charm.

He checks the wall clock and and stalks out of the ruined vacation home without even bothering to close the door behind him, placing his hand on a broken compass that had been left atop the fencepost.

Right on time, he feels the tell-tale pull behind his navel sucking him into portkey travel.

London, here I come.

Chapter Text

It’s not too hot, or too cold, or muggy, or overly windy – it’s just…. comfortable. Which was exactly how the seaside resort town of Malaga along Spain’s southern coast had been advertised, but which to one accustomed to British weather still felt just a little bit suspicious.

‘An ideal climate for the recovery of invalids’ the guide had said.

Ariana never did get to see the coast. It occurs to Albus that he’d never bothered to ask if she even wanted to.

“No looking so glum,” Tom scolds, kicking lightly at Albus’ shoe. They’d settled on a quiet spot on the cliffs to enjoy the sunset over some grilled sardine skewers that seemed to be the local specialty, after dropping their bags at the hotel’s front desk. “We’re on holiday, at the seaside. I’m fairly certain it’s against the rules to not at least try to enjoy yourself.”

“Sorry,” Albus apologizes, trying to think of a more appropriate topic of conversation than his dead sister. Or Tom’s weird lack of concern over unexplained signs of strangulation. Or his twice-thwarted desperate need for a wank. “Um. Did you often holiday at the seaside? Before?”

“Oh, nearly every summer,” Tom smiles, as if remembering some fond memory.

((It was during the yearly Wool’s trip that Tom had first tested if his ability to control animals without training them extended to people as well. The absolute thrill he felt when Amy Benson waded chest-deep into the cave’s dark water at Tom’s command, despite sobbing all the while. The matron had trouble convincing her to even get in the bath - apparently she’d screamed for hours the night her family died, clinging to a floating bit of broken boat hull until some early-morning fishermen heard her.

Gentle little Dennis Bishop had such a crush on her, always tried to comfort her and help her adjust to orphanage life. He’d never understand why he’d followed her into the water, only to hold her head under the surface while she thrashed frantically – the same way Dennis’ mum did, the night before the police took his dad away and brought him to Wool’s. When the struggling started to weaken, he’d let her up long enough for Tom to savor how her screams blended with the roar of the sea, before dragging her back under.))

“I just love the sound of the waves crashing. How about you?” Tom asks brightly. “Family trips to the coast, some fish and chips in newspaper?”

“No, we… Weren’t really a family trips sort,” Albus equivocates. “Though I did some traveling for competitions and such, when a professor could be found to accompany me. Cairo and Copenhagen. But I usually didn’t get a chance to do much sight-seeing.”

“A professor accompanied you? Didn’t you have parents?” Tom asks. He’d always thought of Dumbledore’s parents as dead – how could they not be, the man could be someone’s grandpa if he wasn’t bent – but Tom supposed they must have been alive at some point.

“I did,” Albus says slowly, realizing that his mum had been right about people eventually forgetting his father’s crimes. If Tom with his infinite attention to detail didn’t know, then it must not be common knowledge anymore. “Though, they’re gone now.”

“But they weren’t then.”

“…No.”

Tom makes a sound of frustration at Albus’ dead-end replies.

“It’s not my fault you know, that I can’t share family histories in return to make you feel more comfortable. Timeline and all that.”

“So make up another of your ridiculous lies,” Albus suggests with a helpless shrug.

“Raised by wolves,” Tom answers without missing a beat. “The regular kind, not the ones that have opposable thumbs most of the month. I was completely feral before Hogwarts, running around the forest hunting deer and pillaging care packages for the elderly from young girls wearing crimson traveling cloaks. I figured the next logical step after graduation would be to found a great Italian city, but my wolf-mother told me that I had already killed my twin in the womb, and starting an empire was really more of a two person job.”

Tom grins at Albus, who laughs even as his stomach twists at the reminder of his recently abandoned two-person empire-building plans.

“Now your turn.”

The cheer fades from Albus’ face as he steadies himself to answer.

“My sister was ill a lot, so mum had to stay home, to take care of her.” He hopes Tom doesn’t follow up on that, as learning someone was terminally ill might dampen enthusiasm for altering time to prevent their accidental death. Hopefully the next bit will be enough of a distraction. “…And my dad was in Azkaban. For uh, killing three muggles.”

Whatever Tom was expecting to hear, it wasn’t that. His eyes look like dinner plates as he stares at Albus like he’s re-evaluating some things.

“He wasn’t – it wasn’t a bit of sport or anything,” Albus says quickly, unsure how to interpret the silence. “It was just a… a fight that got out of hand.”

He’s lying, Tom realizes incredulously, as Albus averts his gaze and fiddles with his sleeve. Tom tries to be sparing with legilimency, because it’s only a matter of time before Albus notices, but if there was ever a time to use it…

Those animals deserved it, Albus thinks viciously.

Tom reels at the ruthlessness of Albus’ thoughts, hidden so well under that feeble hand-wringing. He hadn’t thought Albus capable of it – had assumed Dumbledore was the kind of hypocrite who believed in his own bullshit, rationalized himself into more comfortable versions of the truth. But Albus lied just as easily, faked concern over murders he secretly relished just as well as Tom did.

Tom has never wanted to know Albus more.

I’ve killed three muggles too. Would you be as approving? Or is that only for dear old dad?

“Perhaps we’re in need of more drastic measures to shake off this sullen mood and get in the proper holiday spirit. I know just the thing to clear your head,” Tom announces, standing up. It probably won’t get Albus to tell him anything he doesn’t already know, but it’ll be highly entertaining regardless. “Follow me.”

Albus doesn’t know what exactly he was expecting, but he’s a little disappointed when Tom simply leads them to a liquor store. A bit of a cliché really, young gentlemen that are supposed to be visiting the great sites of Europe, just getting obnoxiously sloshed instead. It was probably a mistake to excuse himself to use the loo, because when Tom meets him outside the shop, rather than one of the many local wines, he’s carrying the dodgiest-looking muggle whisky Albus has ever seen. The bottle is literally covered in dust, because this town in 90% British tourists, and no subject of the crown would travel all the way to wine country to buy a Spaniard’s best guess at what whisky is supposed to taste like.

“I don’t care for whisky,” Albus wrinkles his nose, wondering if they could compromise by popping back in for one of those sweet wines for him.

“That’s perfect,” Tom says nonsensically, “I tried to get the worst one in case you had a taste for it.”

“…I’m not sure I’m following,” Albus says, even as he follows Tom back to their room – a suite apparently, since it opens to a sitting room suitable for entertaining. That ‘bit of money’ was quite generous then.

“Now, for the game to work you need to shoot the entire thing in one gulp – none of this sipping or choking nonsense,” Tom instructs bossily, as he leads Albus to the table and fills two shot glasses to the brim. “Besides, the quicker you get it down, the less you’ll taste it.”

Albus looks skeptical. “I fail to see the game aspect…?

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Tom gives him a mysterious little smile. “Come on, it’s no fun just playing with myself.”

Albus definitely needs to take a moment to jerk off in the bath tonight, because he’s starting to hallucinate sexual undertones everywhere. Perhaps a shot wouldn’t be entirely out of order. He’s probably developed a little more control over his gag reflex since the last time he’d tried whiskey anyway.

“Fine,” Albus picks up the glass before that train of thought can get too far, lifting it slightly in Tom’s direction and bracing himself for disgust. “Cheers.”

Albus has barely finished swallowing the foul drink before he’s suddenly slapped hard across the face, the combination of burn, shock and sting forcibly clearing his head. Like a slate wiped clean, then doused in acetone for good measure. There’s nothing (no thoughts, no stress, no worries), nothing but the white noise of his ear slightly ringing, and a pleasant warmth tingling on his cheek.

It’s marvelous.

“Didn’t even taste it, did you?” Tom’s smug voice pulls Albus back to the present, reminds him that he should probably react appropriately to what had just happened.

“Because you slapped me,” Albus is relieved that he manages to sound indignant. “In what kind of future is this a drinking game?”

One where after a particularly bad air raid, a group of orphans pluck a half-full bottle out from under the body of a tramp who’d chosen to protect it rather than his own head from falling debris. Without any juice, fizzy drink, or sugar to make it even slightly palatable (diluting with water just prolonged the pain), they’d quickly figured out that a slap to the face was the best chaser they had. Artie Miller had suggested it, saying his parents had played that game all the time. Artie was an idiot, but it was in fact surprisingly effective. Broken clocks, as they say.

“The Temperance Movement really takes off in the future,” Tom answers instead. “New law is that every drink comes with some sort of penalty. It was the only way to get the Scots and Irish on board with it – they couldn’t turn down a mandate to slap every Englishman who walks into their pub.”

Albus rolls his eyes with a light laugh at Tom’s quickness at spinning a yarn – it’s certainly much more fun than simply being reminded that there were things he wasn’t supposed to know, a premise he’d always found hard to accept. And it probably carried about as much truth as anyone else’s predictions of the future. It’s embarrassing really, how Albus had actually bought into Gellert’s “Sight” for a while, had believed him when Albus knew perfectly well that getting an O in divination was simply a matter of telling people what they wanted to hear.

(“I won’t blame you, if you don’t want to come over anymore.” Albus is being gallant – he’d be devastated if this was the last time Gellert came to his room. Maybe that’s why he’d suggested the blanket fort – so the bad memories could be contained within and folded away.

“Obscurials don’t frighten me,” Gellert says, which is no surprise. The surprise is that he sounds thoughtful instead of posturing. “I saw it in a dream. One day, an obscurial will kill the one I fear most.”

“You fear someone?” Now that would be the most surprising thing of all.

“Of course not,” Gellert’s posturing is back. “But maybe one day I will, and it’ll be an obscurial that comes to my aid. Maybe it’ll be her.”

He’s trying to make Albus feel better perhaps, and Albus appreciates the sentiment, but, “It’s just a dream, Gellert.”

“Not mine,” Gellert insists. “My dreams always come true.”

“And what dreams of yours have come true lately?” Albus refrains from rolling his eyes, though the tone of his voice is enough to convey his skepticism.

“I met you.”

Gellert smirks in triumph at the way Albus’ cheeks redden.)

“You better not hit like a girl,” Tom teases before he takes his own shot.

It’s probably why Albus deliberately keeps his hands on the table, looking on serenely as Tom gags on the vile drink without the assistance of any distractions.

“That’s some tough talk from someone that handles their whisky like one,” Albus returns, even as he knows he’d react the same or worse. And that if half the stories some of the boys told in the dormitory were true, any girl would have more practice hiding disgust than either of them.

“You’ve a mean side,” Tom wheezes through the fumes, though he looks more entertained than annoyed.

“Because I didn’t strike my fellow man?” Albus blinks with exaggerated innocence and that damn twinkle.

“Because you sat there watching me suffer,” Tom seems strangely pleased about that. “But rules are every shot needs a slap, so if you forfeit yours-”

Albus could’ve dodged, if he’d wanted. It’s too early to blame the whiskey for his failure to even flinch away from the hard slap Tom delivers to his opposite cheek.

It’s strangely satisfying, the symmetry now. Both cheeks tingling, both ears ringing slightly, his overactive mind rendered momentarily incapable of twisting itself into guilty knots. It’s not outright awful like Aberforth’s anguished punch, but it dances just close enough to the line of ‘too much’ to feel gratifying.

Gellert had never hit him like this – to the extent he left cuts or bruises, it was from enthusiasm or recklessness rather than intent to hurt. And he’d felt sorry, when bruises and love bites bloomed an unexpectedly severe-looking black and purple on Albus’ skin the following day.

Judging from his wide grin, Tom didn’t feel sorry at all. Just like he wasn’t remotely concerned about Albus’ twice-broken nose, or strangled neck.  

Albus picks up the bottle and refills his shot glass, Tom’s dark eyes following his movements with amused satisfaction.

“Eager for another, are we?”

The tips of Albus’ ears redden, since it’s not clear if Tom means a drink or a slap. It probably wasn’t meant to be clear. A person could only say so many innocent things with double meanings before one starts to suspect it may be on purpose.

“Well that’s quite standard isn’t it? Or do you ordinarily only go a single round?” Albus challenges with a raised eyebrow. “How disappointing. I’d have thought you’d have a little more stamina.”

Tom looks thrown for a moment, but quickly recovers.

“You just didn’t strike me as the type to want to go all night long is all.”

Whether or not that was accurate really depended on if they were still talking about drinking. Albus doesn’t fall into the trap to specify.

“I’m not an old man yet,” Albus reminds Tom with a chuckle. “Or was it something else that gave you that impression? Was it my penchant for putting away my books and retiring at a reasonable hour? The clear value I place on getting my nightly beauty sleep over getting answers?”

“Fine, fine – I should’ve taken into account that you don’t place a particularly high value on sleep,” Tom seems to acquiesce, before meeting Albus’ eyes with a knowing smirk. “After all, I have to chain you to the bed, don’t I?”

Albus can’t think of a witty reply that doesn’t point out Tom’s use of present tense - the implication that said chaining wasn’t just a one-time thing. So he picks up the shot glass in front of him and downs it like a lifeline.

When Tom slaps him again, the first thought to penetrate that wonderful blankness is that their chairs are much closer together now than they were at the beginning of the game, though he’s not sure who had moved. The next is the cool sensation of his glamours being removed, which feels almost more intimate somehow, than if it had been his clothes. Between the broken nose, ligature marks, probably red handprints on his cheeks-

“I must look a fright.” Albus mumbles in mild horror.

“A right mess,” Tom agrees pleasantly, raking his eyes appreciatively over the marks. Albus can’t tell if the burning in his cheeks is due to the slaps, the alcohol, or the predatory glint in Tom’s eyes.

Albus doesn’t hit like a girl at all when he suddenly slaps Tom across the face, taking the other boy by surprise. Both the force and sneakiness are clearly the work of a boy who’d grown up with a brother.

“What was that for?” Tom asks in confusion, wondering for a moment if he’d miscalculated.

“Your turn was taking too long,” Albus says simply.

Tom almost laughs at the admission, relaxing into a sly smile. So he hadn’t misread anything - someone was just impatient to be in the line of fire again.

“One shot, one slap. A simple rule, yet that’s the second time you’ve broken it.”

Albus is quite sure Tom as Head Boy didn’t use that tone of voice when scolding students for rule-breaking.

“Is it?” Albus breathes. “And the penalty for a second offense…?”

Tom slaps him twice in quick succession, one to each cheek so it burns with perfect symmetry, and Albus can’t quite tell over the ringing in his ears, but he might’ve let a little sound of pleasure escape. In the moment, he finds it hard to care too much – lost in a haze from the alcohol, the stinging warmth, the glorious emptiness.

“Bed.” Tom’s voice is suddenly very close to his ear, the authoritative tone making Albus shiver pleasantly, and when a hand closes around his wrist, he lets himself be pulled to his feet and led away. Feels his shoes and socks, shirt and trousers magically slip off, transfigured into handkerchiefs or buttons that fall to the floor before switching back, leaving a trail of clothing behind them, until they’re both in just their drawers.

There’s a voice in the back of Albus’ mind, even as Tom gently pushes him onto his back, that thinks it’s a bit odd there’s still only one (albeit much larger) bed, if money wasn’t a problem.

A somewhat louder little sound of pleasure definitely escapes Albus as the manacles form around both wrists this time, and Tom chuckles a bit as he cuddles up to and wraps his arms around Albus. Who is a little dizzy and unsure what exactly is happening, but has no intention of stopping it.

At first.

It feels amazing – Tom’s warm skin pressed against his, his breath against the back of his neck, the light little touches along his chest, tracing soothing little patterns here and there.

‘Soothing’ should’ve been his first clue. The lack of escalation his next. It takes longer than it should have, for Albus to catch on. For his hopes (amongst other things) to start to wither, and a confusing mix of emotions to take its place, as the terrible realization sets in.

“Are we… are we here to sleep?” Albus demands incredulously.

“That’s generally the idea, when one goes to bed. What else would we do?” Tom asks with such convincing innocence, that Albus has a moment of panic re-evaluating if he’d wildly misinterpreted things. Social norms varied over time and place – bed sharing was common until recently, and there was that tribe in Basutoland that kissed friends on the mouth platonically, not to mention the general existence of the French…

But no, in any time or culture that tone of voice, those charged looks…  nothing concrete though, all worryingly subjective. All things an addled mind could easily imagine into existence. Maybe this was the next step towards madness.

Or maybe he just really needed that wank.

“I need to go to the loo,” Albus declares.

“No you don’t,” Tom snorts. “You’ve literally had 3 ounces of liquid since you last went.”

“…For a bath!” Albus amends.

Tom nuzzles into the crook of his neck and Albus spasms – bucks his hips involuntarily – as Tom inhales from his collar bone up to behind his ear, lips brushing all along the sensitive skin of his neck.

“You smell fine. And you were in there for ages this morning.”

(“Not productively!” Albus thinks in despair.)

“Besides, you shouldn’t bathe just after drinking, that’s how people drown,” Tom says, with an infuriating amount of sense. “Or slip and break their noses.”

If his hands weren’t both chained down, Albus suspects that it’d be Tom who was more likely to end up with a broken nose tonight. But at the same time Albus also feels like crying, or asking Tom to hit him again, or maybe just curling into a ball and disappearing in shame. It was all a very confusing mess.

“Can’t you please just let me out?” Albus tries finally, unable to keep the breathless pleading out of his voice.

“I could,” Tom pretends to think, idly tracing a finger along one of the red lines around Albus’ throat. “But I like the funny little noises you make.”

Albus’ brows furrow in confusion, until Tom softly bites his earlobe and Albus lets out something between a gasp and a whimper.

“Like that one.”

Albus can hear the smile on Tom’s voice and it dawns on him that if he hasn’t already succumbed to madness, perhaps Tom means to drive him to it.

The sound of the waves drifting in through the open window is much gentler here than in Britain -rhythmically lapping at the sand rather than crashing angrily against rock. It’s as perfect a match for Albus’ soft whines as the cave had been for Amy’s screams.

Tom really did love the sounds of the seaside.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Diagon Alley, a Few Days Later

“And you’ve no idea where he might have gone?”

Albus may have lifted the curse on his landlord (a Mr. Conrad Fletcher) when he checked out of the boarding house, but it hardly made a difference. The balding and rather unkept man just shrugs and picks at his teeth like he’s not in his place of work, representing it to the public. It’s viscerally disgusting, and the complete lack of shame or respect, the attitude that it’s in fact Gellert who’s the one bothering him, has Gellert reminding himself in a mantra that torture is an ineffective method for extracting reliable information.

“Did he say anything at all – about meeting anyone, or a purpose of some sort? An apprenticeship somewhere, a holiday destination?” Blank stare. Too many multi-syllable words, perhaps.

“Or his manner of dress – city or country, sun or snow? Unusual behavior, or preparations?” More silence.

“Any detail would help,” Gellert grinds out through clenched teeth.

This isn’t nearly as much fun as the Sherlock Holmes serials make it seem, and Gellert sorely wishes Albus was here to pry out answers with a single look and save Gellert this painful tedium. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? That Albus isn’t here.

“The other bloke said something about catching a portkey, I reckon,” Fletcher finally says, face pinched as if the act of thinking is physically painful.

“Other bloke?” Gellert scowls at the memory of his aunt’s letter, and at the infernal man’s inability to communicate effectively in his own native tongue.

“Yep.”

Gellert’s eye twitches when he realizes the man isn’t going to elaborate without prompting. “A flatmate? Visitor? Baggage porter?” he finishes sarcastically.

“Dunno. Not official-like anyway – all ‘er rooms are singles,” Fletcher shrugs again, and Gellert’s fist clenches at what that fact might imply. “Sure was ‘round an awful lot though. Kinda… funny looking.”

“How so?” Gellert clings to that sole positive detail in this whole maddening conversation – anyone this man thought was ‘funny-looking’ must be part troll. His aunt had probably just been trying to prompt him into courting that ministry witch by appealing to his vanity and competitive streak.

The landlord shifts uncomfortably.

“Like when them scammy artists paint people better’n they really look, ‘cept it was his actual face,” the man scowls. “Unnatural is what it is. Like one of them veela birds that get ya all… confused, what with their shiny hair, and… smelling all nice.”

It takes a moment for Gellert to process the horror. He’s not sure which is worse, Albus in the company of some kind of not-yet-discovered species of incubus sex-demon, or Albus in the company of a wizard whose only defining feature seems to be ‘so attractive he spurs crises of sexuality in random passersby.’ Both seem to be momentarily eclipsed by the more immediate horror of witnessing the disgusting man in front of him experience one such crisis in real time, so Gellert addresses that first with a quick exit onto the street.

At least he had another lead to track down now, striding with purpose towards the portkey office he’d just come from. While the chatty attendant is worlds more friendly and forthcoming than Mr. Fletcher, volunteering information with Gellert barely needing to speak at all, the experience soon proves just as unhelpful and rage-inducing.

“They went through international departures, but I honestly can’t remember to whereabouts – never left England meself see, so all those foreign cities - it’s all Greek to me,” Stella Shunpike shakes her head. “But the Department of Magical Transportation keeps records o’ course, down at the Ministry – just gotta get ya some forms, and if you fill them out in triplicate, check the box with your approved reason for inquiry – I recommend ‘mortal peril,’ they tend to get back to ya within 48 hours for that – though waitaminnit you ain’t British, are you?”

“…Regrettably not,” Gellert says sarcastically, frowning as Stella reaches under the desk for an even thicker stack of papers.

“That there’s gonna be a foreign national request then – you’ll need to apply for a pre-clearance from your home country’s ministry first, takes about 2 weeks usually, then-”

“Perhaps you can just tell me about Mr. Dumbledore’s traveling companion and I can figure it out from there,” Gellert interrupts, adding ‘break into the British Ministry of Magic’ to his mental list of options, if all other leads burned out.

“Oh, now that’s a face I won’t forget any time soon,” Stella Shunpike’s eyelashes flutter at the memory as she sighs dreamily. “Tall, dark and handsome, and those big doe eyes!? Morgana have mercy.”

Gellert very much wants to set something on fire, but suspects that might complicate matters when he needs to utilize the office to book a portkey to wherever Albus had gone.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a name,” he says testily.

“Oh, enough people come through here every day, the names all start to blend together honestly. It’s why I love this job so much – getting to meet so many new and interesting people!” Stella smiles contentedly.

Gellert’s heart sinks, recognizing Albus’ fingerprints anywhere – this had been one of their plans.

(“Layering on the mild cheering charm is key,” Albus explains. “A happy memory is something people just want to feel, not pick apart. Memory charms, notice-me-nots, false ids – all are more effective if one is simply too content to think to question anything.”

“Like how the bliss of an Imperio makes one more open to suggestion?” Gellert raises an eyebrow with a knowing smirk.

“What can I say? You inspire me,” Albus grins back with a trouble-making twinkle in his eyes.)

“So that’s a ‘no’ on the name then,” Gellert tries again, just in case.

“With a smile like that, does he even need one?” Stella fans herself.

Gellert still needs a portkey out of here, but decides he’s going to murder the next person to tell him how attractive this Thieving Fopdoddle is.

“The things I’d let him do to-”

“Good day Miss Shunpike!” Gellert says quickly, once more escaping out onto the street.

There's one more witness to question - the proprietor down at the Leaky Cauldron. Gellert can only hope it'll be like in stories, where the tavern-owner always knows everybody's business, somehow.

“Couldn’t tell ye,” Madam Figg speaks with the kind of very thick Scottish accent that has Gellert questioning if he actually understood English. “Young folk not be sharing their plans with the likes of me. And only met the other lad the once, came with Albus for breakfast.”

Gellert feels a surge of jealousy – Albus had never taken him out for breakfast.

Probably because there was no place in Godric’s Hollow where one could dine out for breakfast. And because it was more efficient to simply go downstairs to scarf down a quick cup of tea and pastry before going right back up.

A witch and wizard choose that moment to come down the stairs, reminding Gellert that this place had beds upstairs as well, which does not help his mood.

“Oo, is this the one that looks like a prince?” a little girl giggles as she joins in on the conversation out of seemingly nowhere.

She’s six, maybe. The murder plans must once again be shelved.

“I like ta think princes wear their shirts more’n half on,” Madam Figg snorts, and the urge to murder (the Homewrecking Harlot, not the little girl) burns anew. “Had me half-worried people would wonder what kind of establishment I’m running!” Avada Kedavra would be too kind. There was that Christopher Marlowe play, Edward II, where the title character has his organs burned inside of him, when his murderers stick a red hot poker up his-

“If you wanna talk to him, Owlie knows how to find him,” the little girl (Arabella Figg) says matter-of-factly, and Gellert is pulled out of his revenge-fantasy at the first bit of actually helpful information today. Out of the mouth of babes.

“Will you introduce me, little Miss?” Gellert asks seriously, following as Arabella skips to the back of the room.

“This is Owlie,” Arabella declares, gesturing to a barn owl perched calmly in the corner. “She doesn’t need names, she remembers everyone who comes in here. That’s why no one ever skips out on a tab – she’ll track ‘em down!

“You can find this man? The one who came here with Albus Dumbledore,” Gellert addresses the owl directly. She hoots, unimpressed. Gellert switches to Hungarian – all human languages being roughly interchangeable to owls.

“I mean to find him, and end him. Slowly and painfully,” Gellert explains, and the owl seems to perk up. “Can you help me with this?”

The owl flaps her wings enthusiastically in assent.

“Madam Figg,” Gellert waves her over, “I’d like to buy your owl.”

“Oh, she’s not for sale-”

“Borrow indefinitely then. Would this be fair?” Gellert summons a handful of galleons from his moneybag, stacking them onto the table in three neat columns.

“May a moose ne'er leave yer girnal wi' a tear drap in his e'e,” Madam Figg says with raised eyebrows, pocketing the coins before they attract too much attention. Gellert thinks that means ‘yes,’ but is less sure about if any of those words were actually part of the English language.

“I must warn you, this will require many long flights, as we track the bastard down. Are you prepared?”

The owl seems in enthusiastic agreement.

“And perhaps a new name, for a new purpose,” Gellert proposes. “Let ‘Owlie’ be for the little girl’s memories. What do you think of ‘Olga’? Have you heard the legend of Olga of Kiev?”

The owl tilts her head questioningly.

“It was a thousand years ago, that Olga loved her husband, the king. When the enemy killed him, intending to marry her and steal her throne, she had the messengers who delivered the proposal buried alive. When the honor guard came to collect her, she invited them to freshen up in her personal bathhouse, locked the doors, and burned it down with them inside. Olga arrived at the rival kingdom with her army and plenty of drinks, claiming her culture mandated they first celebrate the life of her late husband, before the marriage could proceed. Once the hosts were drunk and merry, Olga’s army easily massacred them. She then laid siege to the city.”

“He speaks owl,” Arabella explains to a passing customer that gives them a funny look.

“She finally agreed to end the siege in exchange for a small tribute - three doves from the nests in the thatched roofs of each household. It seemed a mercy. It was not.”

The owl looked enraptured.

“Olga had a fuel-soaked rag tied to the leg of each bird. The rags were set on fire and the birds released, spreading flames to every dwelling in the city at once, as each returned to its nest. The city burned to the ground. Olga’s revenge was complete, and it was total. A rage to match the intensity of her love. Would you like to carry on the legacy of such a name?” Gellert smiles softly at Olga the owl’s affirming hoot.

It's a far cry from having Albus Dumbledore in his corner, but it's a start.

The moment doesn’t last – a chill seems to go through the air, and an icy dread twists in Gellert’s insides. He looks up to see Madam Figg walking towards him with something like anxious pity in her face, and with a flash of certainty, Gellert suddenly Knows.

Perhaps he had known for a while, on some level. Hadn't he said when they parted, that it would be the last time they'd see each other?

“I’ve just heard from your aunt,” Madam Figg wrings her hands. “She has some terrible news, I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you-”

“My father is dead,” Gellert says flatly.

Madam Figg blinks in surprise, guiltily relieved that someone seems to have beat her to it, though Godric knows how any news managed to travel faster than the gossip train of Bathilda Bagshot.

“I’m so sorry dearie. You can use our Floo to go to your Aunt’s, or I can offer you a room upstairs and you can catch the first portkey out in the morning-”

“It’s fine, I have arrangements,” Gellert says in that same emotionless voice. “Olga, I will collect you in the morning. Tonight I will be alone.”

He walks out and through the streets in a daze, not entirely sure where he’s going until he finds himself back at the boarding house, drawing his wand on Mr. Fletcher.

"Imperio!” There’s almost no difference in his demeanor. Figures. “Give me the key to Albus Dumbledore’s old room.”

Gellert climbs 3 flights of stairs until he finds the matching room number. He already know it’s going to be empty, but his heart still sinks as he searches for anything Albus about the room and comes up with nothing. Just the rickety basic furniture that came with the place.

The sheets, which he’s sure no one has bothered to change, don’t even smell like Albus when Gellert lays down and buries his face in a pillow. Just cheap soap and general staleness. (And maybe tears, by the next morning.) 

He’d spent the last month on his own, but it’s here, in this little room that suddenly feels so cavernously empty, devoid of even the ghost of Albus’ presence, that he’s never felt more alone.

It takes a long time to fall sleep. And when he finally does, he’s haunted by the same dream that's plagued him ever since he’d taken the Elder Wand.

A snowy mountaintop. A hooded figure.

Two heartbeats.

And then only one.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The Spanish Coast, A Few Days Earlier

Tom doesn't know if Albus slept at all – he pretends not to notice that Albus is far too unnaturally stiff and still to be anything but awake as Tom slips out of bed and heads to the washroom to take care of his own bit of ‘morning stiffness.’

Tom runs a leisurely bath, unhurried as he takes himself in hand, fueled mainly by the idea that Albus desperately wants to do the same, but can’t. Not until Tom decides to let him. It's so deliciously unfair. 

He’s not quiet. And ‘forgets’ to put a silencing charm on the door.

When Tom finally returns to the bedroom, refreshed and wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist, Albus just glares at him, looking flushed and agitated. There’s the faint soapy scent of a recently cast ‘scrougify’ in the air.

Oh, that can’t have felt good, Tom thinks with glee. The way his arms were chained wouldn’t let him turn over, and that lightweight summer blanket was hardly going to provide any pressure stronger than a light tease. He’s almost sorry he’d missed it – it must have been a sight.

Next time.

“Bath’s free,” Tom says cheerfully, as the manacles snap open with wave of his hand and Albus massages some feeling back into his wrists. “They’ve left us some lovely little olive oil soaps.”

“Brilliant,” Albus says sarcastically, stalking to the washroom with as much dignity as he can muster. Which isn’t much, when they both know what he’s going to do in there.

“I’ll just leave your tea on the warmer then, if you’re going to be a while?” Tom can’t help but needle, getting only an impressively loud casting of a silencing charm in a response.

He figures he has an least an hour – 30 minutes for Albus to wank his brains out and 30 minutes for whatever emotional crisis that follows. Plenty of time to brew a nice cup of tea.

A few spells and the kettle is filled with water and warming on the stove, while Tom reaches out the open window to pluck a few handfuls of leaves from one of the many oleander shrubs growing around the property. It’s another suspiciously perfect day, with the sun shining and a nest of freshly hatched baby birds chirping. Tom conjures a floating ball of blue flame outside the window, and enchants the oleander leaves to levitate a short ways above, roasting in mid-air.

The cabinets have regular teas, which Tom uses to make two cups when the kettle boils, leaving Albus’ under a warming charm next to the whole bowl of sugar, rather than hazard a guess at whatever sickening amount he’d want to add. Tom takes just a splash of milk in his own, sipping peacefully as he watches the leaves roast outside the window, the smoke blowing towards the bird’s nest.

The chirping of the baby birds soon falls silent.

It’s wild, how ubiquitous oleander is in this region – growing alongside every road and building as if every bit of leaf and stem and flower wasn’t highly toxic.

Satisfied with the potency, Tom extinguishes the flame and floats the oleander tea into a paper sachet. Scrawls instructions on a piece of paper and casts a compulsion charm to deploy upon reading. Puts all the items in an envelope and writes a name on the outside - István Grindelwald.

The Grindelwald family tree had proven to be conveniently small. An old family of minor nobility in the Hungarian countryside, nearly died out. Father and son seemed to be the only ones left, unless one counted a great-aunt in England (the famous historian Bathilda Bagshot, if you can believe it!).

Gellert’s whereabouts were hard to track down via mail order public records – he hadn’t a house or a job or anything – but a funeral was always good for calling children back to the nest, so to speak. To claim the inheritance, if nothing else.

Speaking of, it seemed the mother bird had returned to the nest as well, if that awful panicked squawking was any indication.  

“Oh, quit your bellyaching and come make yourself useful,” Tom orders, and the bird falls eerily silent as it complies, landing on the table. “You’ve nothing on your schedule now anyways,” Tom adds reasonably, fixing the envelope to the bird’s leg with a temporary sticking charm.

“Now, bring this to István Grindelwald, at this address here,” Tom instructs, letting his magic flow through the bird’s little body. “Then find a quiet spot somewhere, and wait to die. Understood?" The bid twitches unnaturally. "Good. Off you go, then!” 

Tom shoos the bird out the window and sits back to enjoy his tea, watching as it obediently flies away, slowly fading into the distance.

A refreshed Albus emerges a little while later, more languid than twitchy for the first time since Tom’s arrival, and proceeds to guzzle nearly a quart of water from the pitcher on the table.

“Shut up,” Albus says once he catches his breath.

“I didn’t say anything!” Tom blinks innocently, even as his shit-eating-grin speaks volumes.

“Well you’re thinking rather loudly,” Albus returns, and Tom isn’t sure if he means it metaphorically, or if he’s somehow gotten around Tom’s occlumency. Probably the former – he imagines there’d be a lot more anti-murder judgement otherwise.

“Let’s get some breakfast, I’m starving,” Albus swipes the room key from the table and grabs Tom’s sleeve to drag him towards the door.

“Worked up an appetite, did you?” Tom teases as he lets himself be led outside.

“I’ll be cannibalizing ears any moment now,” Albus says dryly. “Are you sure you can afford breakfast? Since there wasn’t any room in the budget for a second bed, apparently.”

“A simple translation error,” Tom explains easily. “I asked for a two-room and they gave it. How was I to know only one would be a bedroom?”

“Uh-huh,” Albus says disbelievingly. “I’m sure that’s how it went.”

They soon find a churro cart, but it’s not until they’re already walking away that Tom realizes Albus bought both churros just for himself, and a little scuffle ensues as Tom tries to steal a bite. Albus is a slippery thing and manages to finish eating both mid-kerfuffle, but lets his guard down after his assumed victory. He nearly chokes on a mouthful of fried dough when Tom catches him by the wrist and licks the sugar off his finger.

“Tom!” Albus sounds scandalized.

“What?” Tom smirks at the shade of red Albus turns as he licks up another finger.

“Oh Merlin. Shut up,” Albus sputters.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You were thinking it!”

Tom’s laughter echoes down the street as the oleander shrubs rustle in the gentle breeze, and birds soar in the cloudless, sunny sky.

Just another suspiciously perfect day in paradise.

Chapter Text

It’s a bit like waking up from a dream, Albus thinks, his mind clear for the first time in a month after finally having all his body’s primary (and ah, ‘secondary’) needs seen to.

Or perhaps more like waking up after a wild night of drinking, wondering what exactly had possessed you to run off to Spain with your trauma-hallucination, who it turns out is both very real and possibly some kind of sexual sadist.

Maybe best not to dwell on that last bit until they’re back in the room.

They’re almost back to town now, having spent the day at the ruins of an ancient arithmancy site, investigating the possibility of naturally occurring time portals in case they failed to find the Cabinet. It had turned out to be a dead end, but nevertheless, the scenic views as they hiked up the rolling hills to the site, the exploration of it all, had been… rather fun? Probably more fun than it would have been with Elphias, Dumbledore thinks guiltily, because Tom had kept up with him every step of the way as he bounced between theories and measured solar positions.

And it had been a minute (not since Gellert, Albus tries not to think) since he’d enjoyed such a spirited debate with a worthy opponent - on if there were 8 planets or 9, when they noticed that was the cause of their differing calculations.

(Albus wasn’t convinced about the ‘new’ planet – it’d throw off centuries of established arithmancy theorems based on the symmetry of 4 terrestrial planets and 4 gas giants if there were 9, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone got overly excited about what was basically a large asteroid. Ceres in 1801, anyone? Tom’s eye twitch when Albus said a mistaken new planet would probably be tiny and terrestrial, perhaps with a strange orbit or moon situation, basically confirmed it.)

Even for someone as careful as Tom, accidental revelations of future knowledge were inevitable. Albus knows he’s not supposed to be divining knowledge of the future from Tom’s presence, but it’s not like he can just turn off his brain from making observations or deductions.

Dark hair, Slytherin, posh accent, Londoner walking pace, a level of beauty and intelligence that seems incongruent with a family tree full of inbreeding – it was a decent guess that Tom was part of the sprawling Black clan. It would explain the sudden wealth (not too many family vaults could chalk up a loss of this much money to an ‘accounting error’), plus Albus is pretty sure he’d seen Headmaster Black’s owl deliver a letter once.

Still, it didn’t seem quite right.

Tom had booked them a muggle hotel. That in itself wasn’t odd – it was necessary in fact, because aside from the long-abandoned ruins, there wasn’t a wizarding settlement for a hundred miles. (It seemed people hadn’t quite gotten over the Inquisition just yet.)

What was odd was how clearly at ease Tom was in the muggle world. Much more so than Albus, who’d lived amongst them until he was 10. And although Tom seemed like the sort of person who’d put on a confident front no matter how out of place he felt (he certainly hadn’t let it show if he found any of the trappings of Victorian life strange or shocking), it seemed like more than that.

Knowing that the designated muggle who physically carried their bags to the room had to be paid separately, despite no signs advertising the service or specifying the price. Small things he’d ordinarily do with magic (hanging up his jacket, rummaging for correct change in his money pouch), Tom switches to doing the muggle way without having to even think about it first. As if making the switch was simply second nature.

(Which meant the Statue of Secrecy Gellert sought to overthrow was still intact, a petty part of Albus observes.)

Clearly, Tom’s comprehension of their world isn’t just that of someone who’d gotten an ‘O’ in Muggle Studies - it’s borne of familiarity.

The same familiarity Tom had with Albus’ rather modest circumstances, not even blinking at the idea of having to share a washroom of questionable cleanliness with a whole floor of strangers. (Or a rickety too-small bed with Albus, for that matter). Tom’s speech and mannerisms mirrored the posh side of pureblood society perfectly, and yet he was accustomed to the kind of austerity that sort would never be able to comprehend, let alone tolerate. Even Gellert, adventurous and adaptable as he was, had the odd moment of pause trying not to show surprise at learning that the worn boots Albus wore everywhere were the only pair of shoes he owned. (It seemed imprudent to buy more, when he was probably still growing.)

Perhaps a branch of the family that had fallen on hard times, especially if muggle-relations had gotten them blasted off the family tree. Or maybe Tom alone was cast out – apparently much more brutally than Gellert had been. (…Maybe even for the same reason?) That would certainly explain why he didn’t seem to miss his family – or anyone – at all.

It was almost disturbing really, how easily Tom seems to have adjusted to leaving his whole world behind. Was there truly no one and nothing he cared for? As amusing as Tom’s tall tales about the future are, the recurrent themes hint at a bleak picture. Groups of people hiding from some outside terror, growing up feral, scarcity and violence.

(Albus tries not to think about what Gellert had said, about the muggles bringing about wars more terrible and far-reaching than had ever been seen before.)

“Let’s have dinner here,” Tom interrupts Albus’ thoughts, gesturing towards a cozy-looking restaurant surrounded by lemon trees as they approach the edge of town.

The trees perfume the air pleasantly as they enjoy a peculiar Spanish dinner divided among many shared small plates, and while a taste for lemon is hardly something uncommon or overly personal, Albus is once again struck by the uncomfortable feeling that Tom knows him. More than just from history books, which Albus has no doubt he’ll end up in for something or other.

At least, Albus hopes that the blood troth occasionally strangling him isn’t the sort of thing that makes it into his biographies. It’s the horrible conclusion Albus is forced to acknowledge – that the only explanation for Tom not asking about it, is if he already knows.

He certainly knows about other very personal things, if all the... teasing, and biting, and licking are any indication.

Albus had never had a... whatever the hell this was, before. Is there even a word for this kind of relationship? Where you're not lovers and barely friends, yet you share a bed and know what gets the other aroused or what it sounds like when he climaxes, reference such things in the cold light of day, but haven't even kissed? As if that would be too intimate, despite Albus already knowing the feel of those lips on his neck, that tongue on his fingers.

“Do I have something on my mouth?” Tom asks, bringing a napkin to his face as the waiter takes away the empty dessert plate.

“…No?”

“Ah. My mistake. I thought perhaps that might be why you were staring at it,” Tom smirks knowingly as Albus averts his eyes.

It had been different with Gellert. All very proper and Victorian – with an admission of feelings prior to any physical affection, and a token of commitment to legitimize the more uh, base inclinations.

(…Well, proper if you overlook the small detail of them both being male. And maybe some of their more… ‘adventurous’ romps. Especially the ones involved a bit of Dark Arts. And maybe the non-sexual Dart Arts experimentation as well. The ‘plotting world domination’ bit probably wasn’t entirely appropriate either. But aside from all that, it really was very by-the-book and gentlemanly!)

In contrast, Tom hardly seems likely to make any kind of declaration of intentions. Despite the rather aggressive flirting, Albus isn’t sure Tom even likes him. Not even romantically, but just like, in general.

It’s what makes him the easiest person for Albus to be around right now.

He’s been ignoring Elphias’ letters for weeks – can’t bring himself to stomach the kind words and sympathy he’s so far beneath deserving. And he couldn’t even explain why, not without risking the Ministry coming after him and Aberforth for harboring an obscurial, or an investigation that would land either him or Gellert in Azkaban for manslaughter. To ‘get away with it,’ and still receive pity for his loss, gentleness, affection – Albus can’t stand it.

So Tom is startlingly perfect at fulfilling all of Albus’ current needs. He couldn’t accept genuine concern for his well-being, but Tom only forces him to eat and sleep out of annoyance at his diminishing usefulness, which is easier to stomach. He engages him intellectually - the only person besides Gellert who could do so in any subject. Completely unconnected to the social baggage of current-day wizarding Britain, yet intimately familiar with the setting. Doesn’t throw him pitying looks or want to talk about his grief or address his “erratic behavior.”

…Has gotten into the habit of holding Albus at night, a comfort (even with Tom’s distinctly uncomfortable additions) that Albus hadn’t realized he’d missed waking up to so much. Is stunningly handsome, yet without a single distinct feature in common with Gellert to evoke his memory. Seems to enjoy nothing more than teasing Albus in a way that makes his stomach flip, a mixture of boldness and unpredictability that has Albus intrigued to the point of distraction.

Isn’t alarmed by Albus’ twisted need to suffer for his mistakes.

Might even be keen to indulge it.

Tom is honestly a little too perfect at fulfilling all of Albus’ very peculiar needs right now. What are the odds, really, that a summoned research partner would suit so well in so many aspects? They must be astronomical.

It causes a tendril of fear to creep through Albus’ consciousness, that he’s perhaps even more selfish than he thought.

It’s hard to remember exactly what he was thinking when he summoned Tom. ‘Tired and unfocused’ was an understatement – he was half-delirious with grief and exhaustion… and heartbreak.

So Albus really can’t be certain.

But he’s starting to fear that he didn’t summon Tom to help him save Ariana at all.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

“No cuffs tonight?” Albus looks warily at Tom, who’s sitting up in bed reading one of Albus’ books – Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, presumably to brush up on his French before they depart for Algiers in the morning.

“Are you disappointed?” Tom looks up and grins as Albus slides into bed at a respectable distance, hair still slightly damp from the bath.

“No,” Albus insists defensively, pulling the blanket up to his chest.

“Mm,” Tom acknowledges mildly in response, returning to his book. Apparently he’d rather just read tonight? About a man who takes pleasure in destroying his enemies in creative and psychologically torturous fashion. Surely Tom doesn’t need the inspiration – and it’s hard not to feel slighted when Albus is right there.

“You are disappointed,” Tom doesn’t look up from his book, but Albus can hear the satisfied smile on his voice. 

“I’d hardly wish for you to become repetitive,” Albus huffs, rather than try to deny it again. Tom finally puts the book aside and tugs the covers away from Albus, pivoting to swing a leg over the other boy’s torso and settle straddled over his waist.

Oh, Albus thinks, a tingle of excitement coming life in his lower belly at the suddenly suggestive position.

“An honest oversight,” Tom shrugs, then grins wickedly. “After this morning, I was under the impression you rather enjoyed being ignored.”

Albus flushes bright red at memory - of having to listen to Tom pleasure himself while he remained cuffed, of being unable to hold out until he was set free, ending a month of celibacy with such an unsatisfying release. It had been terrible, and yet… inexplicably hot. Having his selfish desires reigned in and punished, paradoxically freeing him from the guilt of enjoying them in the washroom immediately after.

But there were no restraints or distance between them now, just the pleasant weight of Tom on top of him. Smiling as he brings a hand to his neck, caressing his pulse point. Albus’ eyes flutter closed as he melts into the touch, content to just be and let Tom surprise him with whatever wonderful or horrible thing came next.

“But you make a valid point - I’d hate to be repetitive. Especially when you have such… varied interests.”

He thinks Tom must have lost his balance at first, when the weight shifts to the hand on his throat. But the pressure isn’t just downward, it’s squeezing in at the sides and holds for nearly three seconds before relenting. Albus’ eyes fly open after the first second passes, taking in how Tom is gauging his reaction with clinical curiosity, waiting to see if he’ll struggle, or push him off.

Albus’s hands remain at his sides.

“I can’t say I understand the appeal myself…” Tom strokes his thumb and index finger lightly over the arteries he’d been compressing on both sides of Albus’ neck. “Is it the haziness that comes from depriving the brain of oxygen? Or do you really just like danger that much?” 

Uncertain, but he likes that Tom can feel his pulse quicken under his fingertips.

“Or is it the windpipe I'm meant to constrict? It would last longer, just depriving the lungs rather than the brain,” Tom muses, feeling Albus swallow under his palm before starting to trace the faded ligature marks with his fingertips. “Though I don’t suppose you’d have too much control to differentiate, with a chord just by yourself. Surely it wasn’t your intention to pass out too soon and break your nose.”

Albus frowns in confusion.

And realizes with a start that Tom doesn’t know about the troth at all. That he thinks those marks are from Albus strangling himself in the washroom for… sexual purposes. Just as Tom realizes that Albus’ reaction means that was absolutely not the case.

“Wait - so it’s not a sex thing?” Tom drops the bedroom voice and his hand from Albus’ neck as he leans back to stare at the redhead incredulously. “How on earth do you go to the washroom to wank, come back with strangulation marks all around your throat, and it’s not a sex thing?”

Albus is usually a better liar, but the emotional whiplash between confusion and arousal, coupled with genuine indecision over whether the truth would be worse, causes him to hesitate suspiciously long before answering.

“Uhhhhh, no, it’s definitely a sex thing,” Albus decides in a panic, because he may as well go all in on the current humiliation rather than invite a second one that requires talking about Gellert. Hell, maybe it’ll even end up being true – he’s clearly got a few wires crossed lately. Worst-case scenario, accidentally stumbling into the sweet release of death would at least save him from the awkwardness of this conversation.

“You bleeding liar,” Tom's voice manages to channel all the scandalized betrayal of two-timed maiden, somehow. “You don’t get off on being choked at all!” he accuses.

“No, I do!” Albus insists, taking Tom’s hands and bringing them awkwardly up to his neck. “Er, go on then!”

Tom never thought he’d turn down an invitation to wring Dumbledore’s neck, but now he’s intrigued - he has to know.

“What could possibly be so embarrassing that you’d rather have me believe you strangle yourself for pleasure?”

“Nothing!”

Albus’ bright blue eyes are invitingly wide with dismay and Tom is just so curious…

“…You’re a legilimens?!”

Tom feels himself be forcibly ejected from Albus’ mind before he can even hear anything - senses the walls suddenly thrown up behind him.

Well. There goes that advantage. He’s not usually so obvious by using eye contact, but there was just something about Dumbledore that had always caused Tom to get a little reckless.

“Took you long enough to notice,” he says instead, in a petty attempt to make it Albus’ failure rather than his own. “Your mind is certainly a very… interesting place.”

The best taunts always leave it up to the victim to fill in the blank themselves – it’s human nature to immediately assume the worst, or manifest one’s biggest insecurity. Or for a mind like Albus', do as much with a whole carousel of increasingly terrible possibilities.

Oh, what Tom would give to read whatever rolodex of horrors is making Albus turn pale like that.

“No, seriously. Please choke me,” Albus groans, guiding Tom’s hand to press around his throat as the rest of him goes limp with defeat. “Just… squeeze until I start twitching and convulsing and don’t have the strength to stop you anymore. Until I go still and my eyes glaze over and you can see the last of the light leave them. …Please?”

He’s joking of course, at least partially. But such a vivid description, combined with the sight of Albus splayed under him, the feeling of his fingers half-way encircling that scrawny neck, the heartbeat pulsing in the palm of his hand, the pleading (though in his fantasies he’d been begging for his life)…

…as much as Tom hates to admit it, he’s only human. For now, anyways.

His dick stirs in his pants.

“Oh, Merlin!” Albus laughs in surprise, because of course he felt it. “For you it IS a sex a thing!”

“No it’s not,” Tom denies, snatching his hand back and looking away from Albus’ amused face peevishly. Though he can hardly admit it’s the ‘finally triumphing over Dumbledore via murder’ bit that peaked his interest, and wonders how on earth he’d been maneuvered into the same dilemma Albus was in just a minute ago - cornered into pretending to have some kind of strangulation fetish as the least bad option.

Albus is laughing hysterically now, his thoughts flowing out with an equal amount of unhinged abandon.

Will you at least make it good for me?  Or are you going to ignore me again, cut off my pleasure with my air? See only to yourself and let me die wanting, writhing around your c-

“Jesus Christ Albus!” Tom nearly shouts, quickly hopping off the other boy and turning away from him, curling onto his side to conceal the physical evidence of his reaction. “What is wrong with you?”

Albus freezes mid-laugh. “You can’t have heard that. Not without eye contact.”

“I don’t need eye contact,” Tom snaps, irked that the ridiculousness of the situation is keeping him from basking in the joy of finding out there’s finally one thing he’s better at than Dumbledore. In a cursed monkey’s paw type of way, apparently.

He's bluffing to get me to say what I was thinking – this is a trick and I won’t fall for it, Albus thinks to himself in panic.

“I’d hardly want to trick you into revealing your suicidal fantasies where you don’t even want to get off before dying while impaled on m-”

“Okay, okay!” Albus interrupts quickly, eyes wide with mortification. And then, because he’s an infuriating swot who just has to notice everything, and exists solely to make Tom’s life harder –

“Wait. Why did that turn you on more?”

“It did not.”

“Then why are you hiding?”

“It seemed rude to let you see my tears of joy at the thought of finally being rid of you,” Tom says caustically.

“So it’s the killing me bit that gets you going?” Albus chuckles, scooting closer so he’s the one with his chest pressed against Tom’s back for a change. “What a pity to have the kind of fantasy you can only do once. Is that why you’re helping me solve how to turn back death? Depending on the solution, we might need to test it somehow. Thoroughly.”

Tom had never given much thought to what Albus' 'seductively teasing' voice might sound like. Just as well, because he'd never in a million years have guessed it would involve alluding to letting Tom kill him multiple times, in the same manner less insane people would use to promise multiple orgasms.

“I’m not having this conversation,” Tom says tightly, trying very hard not to let himself imagine the possibilities. How the fuck did they even get here… “And stop changing the subject!” He suddenly remembers. “How’d you get those ligature marks?!”

“You could always try choking the answer out of me,” Albus suggests cheekily, slipping an arm around Tom’s waist. “Just don’t get too carried away. Dead men tell no tales.”

“If I did get off to the thought of killing you, which I don’t,” Tom adds sharply, willing his body to comply with that statement, “I feel like that’s the sort of thing that should concern you more.”

“It should, shouldn’t it?” Albus says idly, completely unbothered as he relaxes against Tom.  “How fortunate that you don’t.”

God, this was just so typically Dumbledore. It wasn't enough that Tom couldn't kill him before they met without setting off a paradox - he had to go and ruin even Tom's daydreams by being so damn tickled by the idea.

“I hate you so much,” Tom glowers, as Albus dims the lights with a flick of his wrist. “I'd smack you, but you'd enjoy that, you freak.”

“Immensely,” Albus laughs softly, and Tom pouts as Albus cuddles closer.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The Skybound Court of Carpathia (in a region known to humans as 'Western Hungary')

Olga was not one to dawdle when given a mission. Hesitation was for the weak and uncommitted. Yet a feeling of deep unease gnawed at her instincts, persuading her to do a quick sweep of the land before embarking on her quest.

She'd heard the tweets in passing - all three royal heirs brutally massacred in the nest, choked with poison ash. Her Sublime Radiance, the esteemed Avian Queen of the Plumed Throne of Iberia, mysteriously vanished. Rumors swirled.

But none predicted she'd be found like this, hundreds of miles from her realm, glassy-eyed and gasping in odd shallow breaths in the shadow of raspberry bush. She's trembling, with an mangled leaf clutched in her talons.

It was he who sent me, the Queen chirps faintly, with the last of her strength. Poison. My children... A broken feather falls to the ground, like a single tear.

They shall be avenged. The House of the Blue Molt will not be forgotten, and your killers will not go unmarked. This I swear, Olga vows with a solemn bow of her head. Rest easy now, my liege.

Though she lacked the strength to reply, the Queen's relief was visible as she breathed out her last, her soul released to ascend to the Celestial Perch.

As gently as possible, Ogla scoops up the Queen's body. A detour is in order.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

It hadn't been Gellert's proudest moment, fleeing from Godric's Hollow without even a goodbye.

Gellert knew he was… a lot. Or as the British would put it, “Just a bit much, on occasion.” Because it was an entire nation of emotionally repressed passive-aggressives who excessively minimized a complaint as a means of conveying when they meant it with particularly strong intensity.

Gellert tended to speak plainly for the most part, even when it was rude or shocking to do so. Sometimes especially when it was rude or shocking to do so, if it livened things up. He did get bored so easily.

Just as well perhaps, because people tended to grow weary of Gellert with similar inevitability. Not his mother, though maybe that was just because she had died too soon. But his father, his friends, even his school all eventually decided that he was just 'too much.' Too reckless, too selfish, too obsessive, too without limits.

But not Albus. Never Albus. The only one with not just the intellect, but the same sense of adventure to try absolutely anything. They were experimenting with necromancy within 2 weeks of meeting - figuring out how to attach a limb from a recently deceased goat onto one whose leg had gone lame. (The lesser Dumbledore was pissed of course, since the leg was meant to be that week's stew. But Albus laughed when Gellert joked that Aberforth was just mad his girlfriend was harder to catch now.)

So when Albus raised his eyes from Ariana's limp little body to meet Gellert's with that look on his face, the one that people always got when Gellert inevitably crossed one line too many, had finally gone too far and they decided they'd had enough...

Gellert couldn't take it. Not from Albus. The whole world could turn his back on him and Gellert wouldn't even flinch, but Albus....

He couldn't bear it, he'd die. So he fled.

Gave Albus some time to cool off, and grieve. Gellert was useless around grieving people anyway, and it'd be even worse with Albus. He'd hear Gellert's thoughts, which had always been a such lovely experience before. Letting Albus gaze into his eyes and wander about freely, exploring every hidden nook and cranny of his brilliant brain, truly seeing him as no one else could and loving what he saw.

Now, Albus would hear Gellert wondering what all the fuss was, when the girl was going to die soon regardless. Better that it was quick and didn't destroy the whole village, yes? And conveniently timed too, freeing them to go on their trip and the idiot brother to go back to school for the education that'd be wasted on him.

And Albus would get mad at Gellert, lashing out to cover for his guilt over secretly agreeing with these very logical, reasonable thoughts. What a useless, self-sabotaging emotion guilt was.

Gellert had passed the time learning occlumency and mourning that he’d never get to feel Albus walk unrestricted through his mind again. Squatting in a vacant summer cottage in a little village in Bavaria and charming the old widows of the town into treating him to homecooked meals at least once a day.

The vision of the Elder Wand came to him a week in. Gellert recognized the shop - had gotten his own wand at Gregorovitch Zauberstäbe when he was 11. Ebony and dragon heartstring, good for dueling. It had always served Gellert well.

He sees the Elder Wand in the workshop, on the upper floor where he'd never been. Displayed in a place of honor and surrounded by Gregorovitch's notes, his attempts to engineer wands of similar power at scale. As if a Deathly Hallow could be mass produced, like those awful factories muggles were replacing their artisans with.

It was as if the Elder Wand was screaming out for Gellert to save it from such an unworthy master with such mediocre ambitions. Just when Gellert was pondering how exactly to re-enter Albus' life. Surely acquiring a Deathly Hallow and gifting it to Albus would open the door at least?

It's surprisingly easy - circumventing a few basic security charms and shooting a quick stupefy at Gregorovitch before escaping out the window into the rainy night. It hardly took 10 minutes.

Testing all he could do with it on the other hand - Gellert doesn't even notice hours had passed until the sun starts to lighten the sky.

He'd always been exceptionally powerful, but now he felt invincible. Basic spells were super-charged - an impedimentia meant for slowing small projectiles like arrows could stop an avalanche in its tracks. He wasn't sure how large the blast radius of a 'bombarda' could get now, as he'd already reached as large as he could go without starting a forest fire and hardly broken a sweat. He wondered if his shield charm could even block something unblockable, like the killing curse.

 ...Even with the troth, Gellert decides that perhaps it would be wise to find out exactly how angry Albus still was with him before presenting him with an all-powerful, unbeatable wand, to which the ordinary limitations of magic didn't seem to apply.

It was enthralling, addictive, the power thrumming in his hand. People would kill for this.

And it wasn't long before someone did.

'Heart failure,' the healers said. Almost unheard of among wizardkind, bar the rare story of some tragic figure wasting away from a broken heart. As if his father had any sort of heart to break!

Not that that stopped the funeral-goers from whispering as they passed him - the estranged son that had been expelled and then abandoned his long-suffering widower father, who must have had nothing left to live for.

Gellert excused himself to 'take care of some paperwork' in his father's study as quickly as possible, so he could roll his eyes in peace.

A peace that was quickly interrupted by Olga (who he'd just sent away to track down that Street Corner Cravat-Wrangler) soaring in through the window to drop a dead bird on his desk, like she was a muggle’s pet cat.

"Ugh, Olga! Weren't you trained not to bring people 'presents'?" Gellert grimaces at the little corpse. "And I gave you a task to do."

Olga just screeches in reply and spreads her wings ominously, clearly agitated, so Gellert humors her by examining the 'gift'.

The blue tail and black head accenting the grey body were quite distinctive, yet Gellert can't recall ever seeing a bird like it flying around, not in all his sixteen summers here.

That is curious.

A few diagnostic spells reveal traces of magic. Not enough to determine anything, but its mere presence suggest fowl play.

(Olga nips him rather viciously when he says so aloud. Gellert has no regrets - the ability to make puns in a foreign language is a sign of true mastery of it. And as the grieving son, he should be allowed to react to his loss in whatever inappropriate way he sees fit, without criticism.) 

Fifteen minutes paging through a richly illustrated guide on the Birds of Europe (which his father had only purchased as a status symbol, having never gone 'birding' in his life), Gellert finds a match - the Iberian Magpie. Definitely not from around here.

"Good work Olga," Gellert says distractedly, turning his attention to the thin, leathery leaf stuck in the bird's claws and then to the shelves behind him for the European Botanical Field Guide, flipping it open to the section on Spain and Portugal. "I think I can take it from here."

Within the hour Gellert has put it all together.

Oleander leaves, from the same region as the foreign bird, whose poison induces heart failure.

His father was not interesting enough to have dramatic enemies in far-flung places, and no one stood to benefit from his death financially or otherwise, save Gellert.

Gregorovich had seen his face. Had a big enough mouth that others knew he had had the Elder Wand, and knew it had been stolen from him.

Someone knew Gellert had the Elder Wand, but not where he was, and had killed his father to lure him into the open. It was clearly a trap.

(Not everything's about you Gellert, he imagines Albus would tell him if he were here. But it's not narcissism if you're right.)

It was a trap, but that was alright. It won't matter.

Gellert twirls the Elder Wand between his fingers, feeling the magic sing through his veins.

They wouldn’t stand a chance.

o-o-o-o-o-o

The whitewashed buildings of Algiers gleam in the North African sunlight like so many scattered pearls along the bright cerulean sea. The clean background makes the colors seem ever more vibrant – pointed piles of spices in reds and yellows, nomadic Berber men in turbans of indigo or orange, Arab women draped in veils of all colors, fez hats and the latest Parisian fashions, majestic minarets over-looking quaint cafes serving fresh-baked croissants and spongey honey-soaked local pancakes.

To Tom’s delight there’s even a number of snake charmers scattered near the hotels catering to European tourists eager for ‘exotic’ experiences, even though such performances hadn’t originated in the area. One charmer almost has a heart attack when his well-trained Egyptian cobra ignores his instructions and excitedly slithers over to greet Tom, grabbing the poor thing by the head to ‘save’ him. Since Albus hadn’t seen it (he’d gone back to the hotel to escape the midday heat, wilting like a ginger) Tom might have let it slide, but the crowd clapped like the charmer was a hero and Tom some rescued damsel, so he hisses at the snake to bite its owner later.

Snakes had always sought Tom out to speak to him, and it had never been a problem. Of course, Tom had never spent time in an area with quite so many snakes. Most of them curious and comfortable around people, from their day job as street performers.

He’d only been in the hotel (where Tom had booked two bedrooms this time) for half an hour before the first one (a Saharan horned viper and head of the local Serpent Street Performers Guild) slithers in to welcome Tom to the city. With Albus probably swooned over a chaise lounge fanning himself in the other room, Tom has a lovely chat with Sukkar (the snake) about the history of the Egyptian Parseltongues. Until a sudden scream interrupts a particularly interesting story about Cleopatra and her asps.

Your rock is startled, Sukkar observes.

“My ability is a secret.” Tom explains. “Please tell me you did not send him a greeter as well. He won’t understand.”

Sukkar averts his eyes awkwardly.

“Sukkar. What exactly did Albus just wake up to?”  Tom asks with a sigh.

We assumed that was his purpose. Your warm rock that absorbs the day’s heat, and radiates it out all night.

“That’s just a sunburn,” Tom explains with a laugh, before pausing. “Wait. How many is ‘we’…?”

He needn’t have bothered – Albus chooses that moment to burst in with no less than a dozen stunned snakes floating behind him, wand raised to ‘save’ Tom from the snake in his lap.

“Albus calm down, you’re scaring them,” Tom scolds, gesturing for Sukkar to wrap around his arm.

“I’m scaring them?” Albus repeats unbelievingly. “I woke up covered in them! All of them venomous! Half of them not even native to this region! Where did they even come from?!”

I’m here on an exchange program, a boomslang hisses helpfully.

“If this is your idea of a joke-” Albus fumes, “Or – a way to get me back in your bed-”

Tom decides to roll with it – it’s as good an excuse as any.

“I thought you’d be used to having a snake in your bed by now,” Tom shrugs. “And these ones are less likely to bite than I am,” he adds with a sly smile.

“You can bite me all you want later, just put these back where you found them,” Albus orders with a flustered huff, leaving the knot of snakes levitating in Tom’s room as he stomps off.

Weeee! A cape cobra squeals in excitement as it spins in circles. I’m flying!

When Albus returns a few hours later, he’s carrying an issue of The Maghreb Oracle (the local wizarding newspaper), a manic energy, and an armful of alarmingly colorful and bedazzled fabrics. To Tom’s horror, Albus is wearing some kind of gold-embroidered muggle… caftan? … in bright orchid. Fringed with little bronze circles that clink and rattle with his every move.

“What on earth are you wearing,” Tom blinks. “And why is there more of it?”

“Passed by one of those snake-charmer performances and the poor man got bitten by his own snake,” Albus explains. “They’re a menace in this city! Luckily I had a bezoar in my pocket, so he’s fine. But his wife who runs a shop insisted on giving me some of these delightful muggle robes as a thank you.”

The riot of eye-searing colors that had assaulted his vision since he was 11 years old… it had all started here and now. All because of a thoughtless comment to an amenable snake.  

Tom had never been more acutely aware of the dangers of time travel than he was in this moment.

“I think those might be women’s garments,” Tom tries, even as he knows it won’t do anything to dissuade Albus. He’s far too enamored with the way the constant tinkle of metal will soon drive Tom utterly mad.

“I believe muggle robes are generally unisex,” Albus says, entirely inaccurately. Though Tom unfortunately doesn’t know enough about North African fashions to correct him.

“Do you just walk around carrying bezoars in your pockets?” he sighs, contemplating how best to dispose of the monstrosities before him. 

“I used to spend a lot of time around goats,” Albus replies, as if that explains anything. “Now pack your things, I think we can make it to the portkey office before it closes.”

“We just got here! I got rid of the snakes like you asked-”

“Not the issue, but thank you,” Albus clarifies, tossing the paper to Tom, opened to a small headline on page 9 - Fugitive Cabinet spotted in Central Europe! Local Furniture Sellers Deny Involvement.

“We’ve got a Cabinet to catch.”