Chapter Text
“It was all that mudblood Arctus’s idea, you see, to make use of muggle means to capture magical people. It turns out that muggles have all these devices designed for killing and capturing. Guns, electricity, all that stuff. And most importantly, we—we let our guards down around muggles. Get complacent. So it is easy, my Lord, to stun and capture wizards using muggle devices. We don’t even need to Imperio them, there are muggles who would do it for money, the filth.”
There are also wizards who would do anything for a Galleon, Gellert privately thinks, only half listening to the synchopant of the week rattling off. He no longer bothers learning their names. They were strolling at a rather leisurely pace to the cells in his castle.
“We—we have brought you a gift! And once we put those anti-magic chains on—the ones fortified with unicorn blood—any wizard can be held—indefinitely, it seems. No magical damage at all, so you’re free to peer into their heads. Only,” the man rattling off stops abruptly to laugh.
“—only we might have to do a bit of healing of the physical injuries to get him up and running. The muggles were a bit judicious. Anyway, you would be so pleased, my Lord.”
Gellert raises a single eyebrow, almost smirking at the man before him who deigns to decide what pleases him. It has been a long time since he had felt an emotion even close to pleased.
They round the corner and Gellert comes face to face with his prisoner, his hands bound and chained above him. Judging by the way his body hangs off the chains, they are the only thing holding him upright. Blood is still seeping out of a wound on his temple, the bright red oozing across his matted auburn hair. His cream vest was soiled with blood and crusted with dirt, but Gellert could make out the faint pattern of yellow and black stitched along the sleeves. Bumblebees.
“My lord?”
The tentative call of Vinda distracts him temporarily. She is shaking—no, Gellert himself is shaking, his hands trembling so hard he almost drops his wand. The Elder wand knows better than to be dropped. Magic arcs across the stale air and suddenly the cell is empty spare Gellert and his prisoner. It is unclear where Vinda and the two faceless guards disappeared to.
Gellert finds himself pulled forward, as if he were a marionette on strings, drawn to the damaged man in front of him with a gravity he did not understand.
Albus, he thinks. Albus. His brain does not seem capable of other thought.
The elder wand cuts through the air. The chains holding the prisoner up vanished. After days of disuse, the man’s knees buckle underneath him. Gellert rushes forward to catch him, feeling the dead weight slump across his chest. Albus’s pained groan would have been inaudible if his mouth is not inches away from Gellert’s ear, his hot—too hot—breath skittering along Gellert’s nape. The touch sparks something in Gellert and jolts him into action.
“Please,” Albus croaks, before letting his head fall into the crook of Gellert’s neck. His body slackens fully as Gellert tightens his grip.
The wand is alive. Tearing through his own anti-apparition wards, Gellert apparates Albus to his chambers. He hefts Albus onto his bed, vanishing his clothes and stifling a gasp at the many wounds littering his skin. He first performs a quick diagnostic spell, his heart racing at the broken bones and lacerations.
The elder wand is surprisingly still as Gellert stitches broken skin together, the cells multiplying and adhering with inhuman speed. The fractures require more thought. Gellert is careful to weld together the different layers of bone beneath muscle tissue, whispering strength and flexibility into them until he is panting from the exertion.
There is nothing to be done about the constellation of bruises littering Albus’s face and body. Bruising is a result of broken vessels leaking blood into tissue. Unless Gellert coaxes thousands of individual capillaries into submission, they would have to heal on their own. He traces his fingers across the vivid blue-black painting Albus’s left eye, the smattering of blue across Albus’s hip, the sickly rings left around his wrists. What had happened to Albus? A punch to the face, certainly. The anti-magic cuffs. Perhaps a kick to the ribs?
Gellert blinks in exhaustion. He can almost see the gruesome scenes in his head. Standing to retrieve a healing potion, Gellert finds the world spinning around him. He stumbles, collapsing onto the bed, feeling the beginnings of a migraine bloom behind his eyes. Magical exhaustion, his brain supplies. Somehow, the wand obeys when Gellert accios a blood replenishing potion; he spends the next delirious hour dabbing the potion onto Albus’s chapped lips. He had bitten them bloody at some point—in fear? In pain? Yet another wound for Gellert to catalogue.
When the adrenaline recedes, Gellert feels a terrible pain in his chest. It had been a long time since he had felt anything other than a deep emptiness, and now the emotions returning flayed his psyche with a painful intensity. Desperation, agony, guilt. An incomprehensible swell of hope, followed by the crushing depths of hopelessness. He had thought that he could not hate himself more, and yet he proves himself wrong every day.