Work Text:
April 1927
It all began, as these things usually did, on a Monday with a spell gone wrong. Stars knew that Hogwarts’ six meters thick walls had absorbed worse than a minor explosion spell. Albus could think of many more creative ways to blow something up than to slash one’s wand through the air diagonally downward from the left side at one’s eye level with the additional screamed “Bombarda!” ricocheting off the tapestries. For students who had never fought in a war and gods be willing never would, bombarda was perfectly adequate to get rid of something so mundane as a heap of stones quickly, however. These lessons were usually fun. Fifth year students were approaching something adult enough to think about where to point their wand before they ordered it to blow something up. The classroom was padded out thicker than a madhouse’s solitary cell, Albus had put up magical screens between the students solid enough to hold anything they threw at them, and the castle had conveniently expanded the room to double its size. Routine. Somewhat dangerous, but routine.
Every year had the curious ones, the experimenting questioners, the sceptics, the cast before you think sort of kids. Yes, there unfailingly was a high percentage of those in Gryffindor. To put it lightly: explosion spell classes with Gryffindors were best mixed with Ravenclaws. Think before you do anything sort of types. – Critical error. Albus was not making that mistake again.
Over the ear-splitting cacophony of loud voices, laughter and booms going off willy-nilly, he did not hear the question that almost led to disaster, but he certainly saw the explosion going off entirely in the wrong colour.
He threw himself into the path of destruction without a second thought. Behind him, a girl who otherwise would have been sent flying squeaked as she jumped out of the way. By then, Albus already had the fiery ball of energy in his quivering hands. No time to draw his wand. The spell burned his palms, halted as it was in its rapid expansion. The pain was secondary priority. Grimacing from the force of it, teeth grit, still he was planted like a tree. With his naked hands he squashed the ball smaller, increasing its density while making it shrink to the size of a cannonball that he finally threw out of the open window. It scorched the ledge before the explosion finally scared apart the birds flying their loops in the springtime sky.
Silence in the classroom.
“So,” he breathed out, “everyone alright?”
Slightly startled “Yes Sir”s resounded all around him. Sweeping his focus over the class, he made sure none of them was too badly shocked before he nodded, dusting off his hands. Damn, but that had stung.
“Good, alright, that’s good. Sit down, everyone, just sit on the floor, we’re forgetting propriety for a bit.” That got them laughing a little. Going to his knees because he wasn’t getting up again without help if he sat on his arse now, Albus observed the Ravenclaw girl who had accidentally misfired her spell. “Miss Adams, are you unharmed?”
“Yes, Sir,” she murmured with her head hung in embarrassment. Her cheeks were aflame and she was welling up. “I didn’t mean to… Sorry, that was dumb as shit. Just thought I’d… No, that was so stupid, I’m sorry, Sir.”
“No, go ahead, I would like to know what you did differently so you all can avoid that in the future. Your motif was perfectly fine: you were curious what would happen if you did it differently, am I right in that?”
A cautious nod didn’t lift her eyes.
“Yeah. Wondered if the movement altered the spell. It was so fast, but I think it came out red.”
Good. There was no shame in his classroom. So long as they knew that they could admit to mistakes to analyse and learn from them without any judgement, he had done his job correctly.
“Instead of?”
“Yellow, Sir.”
“That’s right. How did you do the motion? Upper right down left instead of the other way around?” Another nod. At least she looked at him now, however briefly. “Curiosity is a gift, Miss Adams. It defines your house. You can be proud of being a true Ravenclaw with a dash of Gryffindor in you.” Smatterings of laughter again bounded around the room. Though his knees were aching slightly, he stretched his hands out in front of him for everyone to see that he was unharmed. “So, can anyone tell me what went wrong there?” Silence stretched for a few long moments before some of the Ravenclaws as well as the Gryffindors who had been working next to Miss Adams cautiously raised their hands. “Yes, Mister Trevors, please. Go ahead.”
The only pure-blood offspring of nobility in the room looked at Miss Adams when he answered.
“Magic is intent, first and foremost. So, you knew what was supposed to happen – minor explosion, perfectly controlled, approximately the force of a new year’s fireworks rocket – but you changed up only the motion, so the spell had a different starting point with the same expected end result. That’s a paradox. If you change the origin; the word or the motion or both; you have to expect a different outcome. Did you try to force it to go your way? When you noticed?”
“Yes, sort of. Didn’t work. I think I made it worse.”
“That’d be the panic, I think. Panic means loss of control.”
Satisfied, Albus inclined his head to both of them.
“Very good, Mister Trevors. That’s five points to Gryffindor.” Clasping his hands together, he sought a way to describe the finer points of how a spell was built inherently without any of his students trying out different combinations all over the place without observation. “In its details, this is a tricky matter. I strongly ask you not to try this by yourself, please. So – in your first months here at Hogwarts, we teach you the very basics of spellcraft to catch those who have not grown up in a magical environment up with the rest of you who did. A spell, however, is made of much more than the word, the motion and the energy. Those are… let’s call them instructions. Intent, as you now know, is more than seventy-five percent of everything that goes into any given charm or curse. Changing the motion itself is not going to make your spell go awry if you have a crystal-clear, very solid understanding of what precisely you are changing in the spell’s structure. Mind you, this is university level magical theory and not really necessary for your everyday needs, but I want you to understand that the crucial component of casting, as Mister Trevors put it so fittingly, is control. That is why nonverbal spells work perfectly fine if you have the concentration to direct the energy without one of our instructions, the word. Put into practise, that means that theoretically, you can cast entirely without the wand motion and get exactly what you wanted to achieve. But, and I want to stress my plea not to try this by yourselves, please, that takes immense concentration and no room at all for doubt. You are directing something that wants out. If you give that something windows on your tunnel of intention, it will break those windows. … Have I gotten that across properly? Questions? Don’t hesitate, please.”
“Yes, actually,” Mister Trevors said lifting his arm. “With all due respect, what on earth did you do back there, Professor? You caught the spell mid-air and bloody threw it out the window. That is not – it’s magic alright, but you cast nothing of your own, did you?”
Stars willing, that young man would go far in life. Albus blew out a breath. Having feared that the question would come, he still had little in the ways of an answer that would make sense to them. The thing was that they were all watching him like the second coming of Merlin himself. Gellert would have called the heavy feeling in his gut instinct. Albus called it dread.
“That… is very difficult to explain. To start with, doing this out of anything other than self-defence or protecting children is illegal.” A murmur rose from the class. Gods, he was going to get into so much trouble for this. “Secondly, and I want you to understand this, what I did there was extremely dangerous, and it only worked because I have been extensively trained in unusual forms of self-defence because I was a war-time Minister.”
More than a few of them muttered something that sounded like “oh, right,” as though they’d entirely forgotten. Good, he thought. They didn’t have to know that he and Gellert had practised catching and holding each other’s magic when they had only just come of age.
“I suppose it’s illegal because it’s dangerous, then?” another one of the Gryffindors piped up in a tone that suggested that he thought anything of the sort ridiculous. Albus half shrugged one shoulder, shifting his weight to relieve his knees a little.
“That is one of the reasons, yes, though I would argue that there are things that you learn in your regular school career that can do just as much damage to yourself and others. The difference is that – well, to put it lightly, catching someone else’s spell, aside from putting yourself at risk to simply getting hit with whatever it is, requires absolute, complete control not only of your own but also a fair bit of someone else’s magic. You have to keep your own from reacting, which would be disastrous without direction – again, intent is key, without that, energy is just chaos – and there is the spell that you are stopping, of course. It is an unstable source of magic that will explode on you no matter what kind of spell you caught. For a third reason, as you saw, there was no time for me to draw my wand, so you are cradling a naked, unstable spell in your bare hands that can and will blow them clean off if you do not get rid of it immediately. In this case, I wrestled it into some semblance of control so it would not expand further, as is the nature of the explosion spells, before I redirected it. Another option is to absorb it entirely. I do not have to tell you that with an explosion spell, that would be lethal. More so than getting hit directly, in fact.”
The silence in the classroom quite resembled the shock right after he'd thrown the damn thing out the window.
“In short,” summarised Miss Adams looking quite pale around the nose, “I am not going to do that again. Goddamnit, that was scary. Thank you for not taking any points away, Professor. And, uh. That… insanely dangerous thing you did. Christ.”
That feeling of dread solidified. The whole school would know what he had done before dinnertime.
Throughout the afternoon, he heard bits and pieces of a story that turned “Professor Dumbledore did something extraordinarily dangerous because that one Ravenclaw girl let herself be goaded into trying something out without thinking about it too much” into “Professor Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard alive, no really, he’s just shy, isn’t he amazing!” and that led to such stupidities as “Why is that man a teacher when he could bloody rule the world?”, this being one of the more harmless ones. When he entered the Great Hall for dinner, hungry, tired, aching and quite ready to stretch out on any horizontal surface, the usual table conversations turned into very pointed whispers. Some of the seventh year girls actually fanned themselves when he strode down the centre aisle. Up at the Head table, Gellert pulled back a corner of the papers to lift a single eyebrow at him in such clear amusement that Albus actually rolled his eyes at him.
“Don’t,” he stopped any questions while he gratefully sat down. The high-backed chair wasn’t particularly comfortable, but his knees were sore with him, and his back had developed the typical crick of desk work. The force of pressing in on the explosion made his upper arms feel a bit like jelly.
Gellert raked his eyes down and up his general person, a look that normally never failed to get Albus hot under the collar. Tonight, there was too much laughter in his gaze for that.
“Good evening to you too, my love; why yes, I had a perfectly uneventful day, thank you. And yourself? Boring day? Nothing at all to get the whole castle talking?”
“I figured you would be worried,” Albus huffed, keeping himself from ducking behind the newspapers spread out like a screen to kiss his husband hello. Even after a long day, Gellert was a vision: his long hair sat in a bun threatening to come undone around his wand poked into it, his dark blue shirt was spotless and looked as though newly pressed. The silver embroidery at the collar and the sleeve hems brought out the colour of his eyes. The cufflinks Albus had done up himself for him this morning. If he got his way, there was nothing else he wanted more in that moment than to undo them, peel Gellert out of his ridiculously well-fitting shirt, his trousers, his shoes, and drag him under a blanket on the sofa. For quality time, of course. His knees were too ruined for anything else today. To make matters worse, Gellert’s mismatched eyes softened, entirely losing their slightly smug amusement.
“I was for about ten minutes before I got the whole story out of one of your Gryffindors. I rather believe that they are the source of your new little hero worship cult. Your Ravenclaws are sensible enough to have puttered off to the library by now, so I imagine that a few of them will be joining the club soon.” Then his relaxed eyebrows ticked up again. “What you did was stupid, mind you, but it was the only thing you could have done to prevent disaster. Are your hands quite alright?”
“Perfectly. My upper arms are pudding from the force of that thing, though; Miss Adams has more power crackling at her fingertips than she is aware of. I’m afraid that the bravest of them will start asking more questions about stopping and redirecting a spell.”
“As they well should,” Gellert nodded, closing the papers to reveal page four on the backside. Back at him stared Albus himself from two weeks ago. “This isn’t going to make the next few days any easier for you.”
WITCH WEEKLY VOTES FOR WIZARD OF THE MONTH!
For the eighteenth time in the history of our esteemed paper, Professor Albus Dumbledore has been pronounced most eligible bachelor in the country. Having received the First Order of Merlin for his war-time services to the country alongside then-vice-minister and veteran Professor Gellert Grindelwald at the end of last month, the voting was quite clear on the result. Congratulations, Sir!
“You have got to be kidding me.” Thank the heavens that Hogwarts was used to a lot from these two. Albus let his head fall to Gellert’s shoulder in defeat there at the high table as Gellert silently laughed at him, quaking bodily with a quiet glee.
“Now, I think that photo is excellent, a very fetching angle. I should frame that. Put it up in our common room, give Dippet something to smile about once in a while.”
“You are terrible,” Albus informed him in a long-suffering tone that only made Gellert’s shoulders shake more. It dislocated Albus’ forehead from its resting place, but he wasn’t defeated yet. “Why are you even reading that drivel? Witch Weekly? If you need knitting patterns, you only have to ask; I think I have more books and magazines for that than I’ll ever get around to actually using.”
“Oh no, I am merely indulging my guilty pleasure because I am extremely partial to other people singing your praises. You deserve them, you know? If you remember, I founded your little fan club twenty-eight years ago.”
“Vividly,” he replied drily, cleared his throat and decided that he was going to entirely ignore the excited shouts that echoed up the Great Hall when quite a number of young women received their own copy of that infernal gossip rag. Under the table, Gellert squeezed his hand. That was enough for him for now.
The curious difference this evening in the well-known routine of Hogwarts was that quite a few more owls fluttered into the hall loadened with private letters than usual. It was a Wednesday in April, what reason could parents largely across all age levels of students have to write their children in the evening?
Ah. Fuck.
Unfortunately for Albus’ sanity, the letters only kept piling up in the following days. Some were very kind in thanking him for saving a student from a dangerous mistake. Most of those came from parents of the Ravenclaw girl’s friends. Others piled him with thinly veiled to outright demands for an explanation why the fuck he was teaching the bombarda to kids. The third kind were the worst: those who insinuated that someone with obvious magic power like him could do better, what he was doing in Hogwarts, what he was hiding from society at large with power to throw around like that, what kind of witchcraft the Ministry had taught him during his serving years... Ultimately, they boiled down to attempts to either lure or push him away from Hogwarts. And that wasn’t even with the opinion pieces in various papers counted in. His fifth years had already apologized profusely for ever having said anything to their parents. There were fifteen different types of some special Honeydukes chocolate on his office desk now, so much so that he’d broken them up into a bowl and just offered one to every student who came to him.
Predictably, Gellert ranged between outrage, exasperation and laughing himself sick over the slew of new admirers. In the past few weeks, he had perfected the art of tossing treats to the owls for them to catch mid-air so they would let drop their loads right into his waiting hands. That way at least their breakfast spreads didn’t suffer so many showers of owl feathers. To say that Albus was miserably failing at ignoring the whole thing would have been a bloody understatement.
“Oh, this one wants to marry you,” Gellert narrated the fan mail on a Tuesday morning, which incidentally had also developed into providing entertainment for the whole High Table. “Offers... a lovely little cottage in Cornwall with lots of space around it for you to throw your poor suppressed magical prowess around, in case you are lacking a way to blow off steam.” The equivalent of popcorn, for Gellert, were sunflower seed biscuits of a southern German brand that Albus couldn’t be arsed to try to pronounce. He still had bite marks down his chest from blowing off steam yesterday evening.
“Cornwall?” he mumbled around his toast with jam on it, swilling it down with lukewarm Earl Grey. They’d been at this for a while. “I had actually hoped to get you to the sea somewhere warm next summer. I suppose a cottage would be lovely to ... what was the phrase? Release some of my poor suppressed power, preferably with you flat on your back underneath me and the windows wide open. Wouldn’t want to accidentally blow something up.”
Again: failing miserably at ignoring the whole thing. It was well worth it for seeing Gellert choke on his crunchy little seed cakes. Albus blinked at him with a small, secret smile half hidden behind the rim of his teacup.
“Merlin’s balls, give a man a warning! Holiday plans, yeah? I think we can do better than Cornwall. The hotels there are shit. The cote d’azur at least has excellent wine and civilized people who don’t propose marriage to you with a place in bloody Cornwall as dowry.” With narrowed eyes and a little cough that refused to leave him, he ripped open the next letter out of which an entire brochure for a magical recovery retreat in some remote green place that looked a lot like Ireland fell. A second of absolute silence reigned the high table before Gellert incinerated the offending thing with little more than his stare alone. And that, it turned out, was the wrong thing to do. Gasps echoed off the heads of the house tables nearest to the professors. Mutterings started up. Short, discreet fingers pointed from one to the other: figures, Albus imagined them saying. Figures that the one with the white eye is as much a mystical legend come to life as the wartime hero.
His chair scraped loudly over the floor.
“Right. That’s it. We’re leaving.”
Gellert eyed him with a keen attention bare of all humour.
“Your toast?”
Pushing back from the table, Albus shook his head.
“Lost my appetite.”
A voiceless curse fell from Gellert’s lips as he tossed the letters all together into a bin kindly provided by the house elves after the third day of this. He squeezed Albus’ shoulder in passing with something like an apology before he led the way out. If they walked out of the great hall faster than usual, Albus at least kept his back ramrod-straight and his shoulders pushed back.
That stupid fucking curse, he thought. Of all the things to rat him out as an oddity besides the obvious, throwing a student’s spell out the window in order not to un-exist the front wall of a classroom was such a stupid way to reveal his hand. And Gellert rarely thought about what exactly he was doing with his magic on a day-to-day basis. Whereas Albus kept it under such a tight lid, he was obvious in his power for the simple reason that the white eye branded him as rare anyhow. He had nothing much to hide, aside from the whole being able to level cities without batting his lashes thing.
“I apologize. That was thoughtless of me,” he admitted a few silent minutes later when they were just jogging up the stairs to the towers. Albus could have kissed him against any available wall right this fucking second for all that he hated having him apologize for such a casual, everyday... Stars be damned, what was so fucking surprising about wandless, nonverbal magic in their lives? Hadn’t they fought enough? Hadn’t they survived a war by the skin of their teeth and patched the country up afterwards? Hogwarts was supposed to be their retreat, their safe haven, a spot of peace at a place so soaked in old magic that they weren’t so much of a shock to the ghosts of this castle.
“Don’t. Let them talk for now. It’ll die down eventually.”
Gellert slanted him a sideways glance that made Albus push his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t reach for him.
“Among the student body, yes, undoubtedly. I don’t give a fuck about the gossip of teenagers, though. Stars know what they’re saying about us already. It’s their parents that worry me. Parents who largely work in the Ministry. Your expertise in wards and transformation is public knowledge, but this is different. You already have a dozen letters demanding you to explain your capabilities every morning, love, and you don’t want to hear the things people want to know from me. This is only going to get worse.”
Albus wanted to tuck him away somewhere in France where no-one knew their faces and their names only elicited a vague recollection from the foreign news section in the papers. In the lonely corridors beyond even the dominion of the resident ghosts, he ached to let the silver mist of Gellert’s magic sink underneath his own skin in five perfect points of contact along his neck: being held, beholding those mismatched eyes, knowing intimately what lingered on the praecipe of even their awareness. They had never tested it. Limits.
“This was inevitable,” he muttered with a frown and shake of his head to dislodge those dark, possessive thoughts. “I am loathe to share even an inch of you, but I’m afraid that giving something away willingly will serve us better in the long run than to hold our cards entirely close to the chest.” Then he swallowed, unable to look away from Gellert who tilted his head in curiosity, watching, always watching Albus with his full attention. It was a heady thing to have. The tension between them snapped. Two steps back had Albus hit the cold stone wall, and as soon as his hands flew to Gellert’s belt loops, there was a hand shielding his head from the wall as they breathed the same air a hand’s width apart. His heart was rabbitting in his chest. “To be truthful, I forget,” he murmured against Gellert’s lips, straining forward. The heat between them made him ache. “Have we gotten lost in each other again? We wield old and incredible things with such ease from long use, is this not our fault for letting caution slip?”
A mere breath separated them. Gellert had one hand cradled in the slope of Albus’ neck, a point of contact that burned him with the tingling sparks of magic that shot straight into his bloodstream.
“I do not want to hide you,” Gellert said and kissed him. Such a deep, intimate confession, a vow filled to the brim with passion made Albus groan from somewhere around the vicinity of his heart. He slotted them together from hips to chest, slid down the wall a little just so Gellert could cage him, push him against the stone that responded to his every touch.
“I do,” he whispered harshly, “I do, all the time, I want to shield you from the endless questioning. Do you have any idea what a selfish man I am? You make me want to be selfish, darling, the prospect of giving a finger when anyone is going to come around and ask for an entire arm scares me. You know what the rich and powerful are like. This is why we left the Ministry.”
“And they’ll never get you back,” Gellert promised lowly, sealing it with another kiss that made Albus open up like a flower underneath him. This, too, was better to be kept hidden: the possessive edge to their love would scare any sane person away. To drag his imagination out from between the Egyptian cotton sheets of their bed several levels upstairs, Albus gentled their kiss, painfully aware that under no circumstance could he whisk them away to let Gellert render him incoherent now. They had to get to their respective classes pronto.
“If we control the narrative,” murmured Gellert against Albus’ neck licking kisses into his heated skin, turning his spine liquid, “if you explain what you did with that stupid spell, cite your non-existent training as war minister and admit to us using a bit of wandless magic for mundane things, it will not appear so strange anymore. They are afraid, my love, always Man grows so quickly afraid of what he does not know. Perenelle and Nicolas will forgive us for the white lies. Better this way than to let the rumours fester.”
Albus bared his neck for better access with his breath hitching in it, both hands placed firmly on Gellert’s hips lest they wander. Stars, he wanted.
“I’ll not claim that crown for myself alone. About myself I care little, it’s your reputation that I’m afraid for. You already get treated like a common fortune teller.” Gellert’s laughter was a husky shower of chuckles rained upon Albus’ collarbone, being dragged back up his neck to his lightly bearded cheek. It tasted sweet with a bite to it that he lost another helpless noise to. Gellert was smirking at him, the bastard.
“This is what it takes for you to take up arms in my defence? My reputation? Dear heart, sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid that ship has sailed a long, long time ago. On the other hand,” he drawled, “I get to sing your praises in an interview if that’s the way we decide to go. Might do heaps for my public approval rates.”
This time, Albus groaned out of annoyance for that old spirit of theirs that had hunted them at every turn during their years in the Ministry. There were people who built their entire careers on watching and reporting on public views of this or that. Letting his head sink back against the wall, he hummed in thought. Really trying to visualise giving an interview made him twist his mouth down unhappily.
“An interview? With the Prophet?”
Gellert clicked his tongue, slanting a smirk at him.
“Better than Witch Weekly. Though I suppose you should thank them for making you most eligible Bachelor for the eighteenth time. They’ll stop once you hit fifty.”
“I can’t wait,” Albus replied dry as chalk and pushed off the wall to plant another quick kiss on the edge of his husband’s lips.
Perhaps it was his time as Minister, but every single one of Albus’ instincts told him not to hand control of this away. Public opinion had cost Evermonde all respect before the convenient stomach ulster barrelled him out of the political field to leave the empty post behind for Albus to snatch up. As much as he hated explaining parts of his capabilities – it would feel like bragging no matter how courteous he was about it – something had to be done. An interview with someone trustworthy from the Daily Prophet with a photoshoot reluctantly agreed upon as a bonus would at least give him the opportunity to defend Gellert publically when the inevitable questions about the nature of a Seer came. It all felt horribly familiar.
A photoshoot together with the interview for the wireless and the Prophet was scheduled for a week later. By the time what felt like a battalion of stylists, hair- and make-up experts as well as no less than three corresponding coordinators from the papers were through with them, Albus felt about ready to crawl out of his skin. The only good thing about this entire disaster for him was Gellert appearing entirely in his element, the prancing peacock. He could probably do this in heels and a skirt without batting an eye. The staff was falling over themselves before him, staring at his mismatched eyes before their gazes flicked to the way that his hands moved while he talked, how his fingers wrapped around spells for privacy like the glasses of white wine that he ordered as soon as he noticed that Albus was being quiet in his illuminated vanity chair.
The stylists had put Gellert in a dark green velvet suit jacket, a white shirt with bow-tie and black suit trousers that would indeed have looked fantastic skirting pumps. Albus watched him through his lashes in order not to be caught staring, sneaking lingering glances from the corner of his eyes whenever Gellert was wrapped up in talking the photographer around his little finger. The stout, ginger man with a keen eye by the way he was watching them gave in after only a few minutes of back and forth that Albus kept himself entirely out of.
To be truthful, he could not have cared less about the photographer, his dozen assistants, the paper coordinators supervising from the side lines like they were writing the article with their eyes only before having heard a word from either of the professors in question. Hyperaware of his every motion, Albus held himself stiffly out of the way. He was here to downplay the magic that sizzled in his veins, burning at his fingertips in the rhythm of his heartbeat. It sparked against Gellert’s exposed wrist when they accidentally brushed hands on their way to the set-up. A dark turn of the century settee on a lush crème carpet full of swirls that looked soft enough to sleep on sat in the middle of a large, empty room. The backdrop was a single wooden wall covered by a similarly patterned Victorian tapestry. Together with the gold that adorned both their wrists and fingers in the shape of borrowed jewellery, the aesthetic distinctly reminded the viewer of grand stately rooms in grand stately houses in the countryside, of the London nobility, perhaps. Power equalled money.
Seemingly through with the photographer, Gellert shot Albus a quirked smile over his shoulder, fingers twitching.
“Well, I daresay the Cornwall cottage is going to be humbler than this.”
That drew the first genuine smile of the day out of Albus.
“Not enough space for my poor ensnared magic,” he remarked. “That settee is going to suffer.”
Gellert swallowed his laughter with a snort, trying to contain the chuckles trapped behind his teeth so desperately that his shoulders shook. Albus swatted him on one arm trying not to imagine it – that settee easily was big enough for four people to sit on it; lots of space to lie down for all sorts of things he very much was not thinking about – and again, sparks flew between them. To be fair, he was nervous, and Gellert was a very distracting man when in casual clothes. In a suit, he looked like temptation personified. Next to him, Albus felt gangly and awkward in his red tones that reflected House Gryffindor more than his Ravenclaw origins. But they made a fetching pair, he supposed, the green and the red both toned down for the refined modern taste in men’s clothing. He could have done without the bow tie.
“Should’ve brought Fawkes,” murmured Gellert into his ear as they settled down on the settee while the photographer what’shisface’s assistants flitted about the lights. Gellert’s breath came warm upon Albus’ neck. “Make it a proper family photo.”
“Hmm. It certainly would make this whole show easier to get through. Are you alright?”
“Having the time of my life,” he answered with a lopsided grin, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets with a casual shrug as he leaned his whole weight on the settee’s curved back. It made his arse bunch up against the wooden frame. Was Albus staring? Probably. Gods, he was going to screw this up so badly.
“Well, at least one of us knows how to behave in… this. You love the spotlight, admit it.”
“Says the man who ruled the British Empire for seven years. The press never made you nervous. They pissed you off plenty alright, but you’re fidgeting, love. We’re going to be fine.”
He exhaled. What he would have given right now to be able to lean into him… instead, he tipped his head up to watch the photographer, definitely heir to some Scandinavian blood with a healthy dash of Irish bravery in him, approach them to re-arrange them as he wished. His gaze was assessing.
“This is great, actually. Professor Dumbledore, if you could look at the camera, but turn your face a little to Professor Grindelwald – and you, Sir, just angle yourself a bit more to the camera as well, please, back straight-“
Gellert snorted. Nobody had told him anymore to straighten his posture in a good twenty-five years. His left hand remained in his trouser pocket, the right one he set on the settee’s back close enough to Albus for him to almost feel his warmth. The photographer clapped his hands excitedly.
“Alright, gents, you are going to be a joy to work with. Breathe, please, don’t hold your breath, keep your focus on the camera, not on me. We are going to do this in colour, a special treat for a special issue. Even comes out on Sunday. You’re lucky.” He had to be a few years older than them; his hair was starting to grey at the temples and his moustache entire salt and pepper. His face did not spark any recognition with Albus.
“Sorry, what was your name again? I missed it earlier, I’m afraid.” There had been no introduction. Seemingly only becoming aware of this now, the man’s eyes widened, then crinkled, before he bowed, of all things.
“Erik McKinsey, Professor. Terribly sorry for the oversight. Your charming companion completely distracted me earlier.” The wink really wasn’t necessary. Gellert’s hand inched closer to Albus’ shoulder. Ah, he thought with an internal sigh, one of their kind. He couldn’t say if that made it better or worse. “Ready, gents? A one-two-three-”
Lightbulbs flashed. Smoke puffed from the massive camera put up a few feet away from them. Albus gently sank back into the cushions so that Gellert’s fingers brushed his shoulder. Settled. Squeezed. A minute movement meant to soothe. Breathe in, breathe out. A one-two-three – more smoke. Albus focused on the warm weight on his shoulder anchoring him to reality. His pulse was pounding in his chest, no matter how discretely he tried to breathe it into submission.
There were wedding pictures taken in exactly this position, he knew, with the bride in his sitting position and her newly wed husband standing behind her. Those photos so often lacked the steady, physical support of affection. Albus was deeply afraid that any viewer would be able to tell how much he wanted to cover Gellert’s hand with his own. It had to be obvious; the secret love hidden behind his slight smile, his burning eyes as he forced them not to blink for the four seconds it took to commit their casual pretence to light-sensitive paper.
In a way, they were burning the façade of their necessary lie into sepia tones. See, people would say generations later, these were the minister and Vice-Minister during the 1910s and early 20s. This was in ’27, I think. Look how young they were then, as Professors! And to think they ruled a decade earlier! Well, always nice to have such good friends work so close together, don’t you think? Albus wanted to retch from the sour aftertaste of pretence. What he really wanted to commit to paper for the world to see was himself draped in Gellert’s lap, feet dangling over the armrest, one arm slung around Gellert’s neck as he was being kept from falling himself. It terrified him, the possibility of anyone with eyes reading those thought from his eyes in those four seconds that would re-play on the front page of that Sunday issue of the Daily Prophet for as long as a physical copy existed in the newspaper archives. This was their legacy: the space left to read between the lines of historic record.
Photographer McKinsey signalled a change of the plates used to capture light and shadow just as Albus felt that he could not hold back from touching Gellert a second longer. His hand shot up to slot their fingers together like strands on a loom, breath hitching, his face lowered so his hair would hide the flush on his cheeks. Gellert must have felt his pulse without touching the inner side of his wrist, and still he did. A wave of magic flooded into his blood stream like ice on a burn.
“Breathe,” Gellert murmured bowing low to rest their heads together. A gesture entirely too intimate to hold for any prolonged time surrounded by people. Albus could not have given less of a fuck if he tried, not while the ghostly silver of a Seer’s rock-solid faith soothed the indigo waves that racketed his pulse up to a roar. His magic was an extension of him, no, a part of every single aspect of his personality: it responded to his emotions, positive or negative and everything in between. Nerves translated in the strain on his iron self-control growing tighter. Surrounded by Gellert’s cologne, anchored in the minute strokes of his thumb over the back of Albus’ right hand, he deliberately took his time to feel the silver run through his blue-tinged veins. There was no word for this. No spell, not a charm to give either word or motion to in order to break the clutch that anxiety had on him in that moment. He was not an anxious man normally. Spotlight slid off him like water off duck feathers, he did not bask in it like Gellert did, it could not touch him. If it did – if he let it, if he was dragged into the stumbling jitters of nerves like this, he would be easier to read. An open book the secrets of which he never, ever, could reveal for the world to see.
“Alright there?”
His breath hitched. They squeezed hands, twice in quick succession. Gellert straightened. Their hands slid apart.
“Getting there,” Albus smiled at photographer Mr Mckinsey observing them with a knowing arch to his eyebrows. “I’m afraid that I am no longer used to this. As Minister, I used to simply ignore the press outside of pre-planned conferences.”
A nod, an impatient swipe of greying hair out of a sweeping forehead. It was warm in here.
“Ah. Well, you’re in good company, Professor Dumbledore. Would you like to sit next to each other, more or less mirroring each other? I do get the feeling that you’re a package deal. You’re the man at the top, Dumbledore, but you never do take the stage alone, do you?” Growing serious, McKinsey did not wait for the obvious answer here. “No matter what you’re capable of, and I’m not sure I even want to know, there’s a reason you can do such incredible things. You got us through the Great War. Reminding the nation that you’re human – you do appear quite unreachable, Sir, forgive my frankness – showing that you had help through it all, that’s going to be good publicity.”
“You should work for the Minister,” Gellert remarked as he sat down before Albus could inhale to launch himself into yet another speech about just what Gellert had done for the country far beyond the war. McKinsey’s laughter echoed off the warehouse ceiling so far away one could not make out what it was made of.
“Hell no, thanks, I’ll pass. Now, if you could just – there you go. You’re a natural at this, both of you.”
Albus huffed. They were handsome together, was what McKinsey meant, and he couldn’t even fault him for it. Crossing their legs in opposite variation with their feet almost touching, Gellert slung an arm over the dramatically sloped back of the settee in the exact position that he would hold were Albus to settle against his side with that arm over his own shoulders. The suggestion was there in an entirely innocent pose, sitting only a few inches apart. His heartbeat calmed, if merely a bit. He nodded at McKinsey with his hands folded loosely in his lap.
“Do we do the interview right after?”
“Yes, Sir. A one-two-three-“
~~
In the changing rooms, a gramophone sat unused in the farthest corner on a lonely table barely big enough to hold it. Gellert threw everyone out so he could put on a top-modern record of swinging love songs that he twirled Albus around to without any space at all to even try for a dance or two. They stumbled over chairs and into suit jackets of every dull shade of beige on the rack, like sand under the sun. Albus caught their reflection in the brightly lit mirrors, smiling widely, laughing, yelping when one or either of them hastily prevented a fall. After, when they sunk back into the chairs in front of the mirrors, Gellert removed the powder that made Albus’ face itch with gentle strokes, dabbed crème on his nose and kissed him, lingering like a promise.
“Better?”
“Better.”
They smiled at each other like they had the time for it. Like they were alone in the whole building on no-one’s schedule.
“Good.”
Albus had the immense pleasure to watch Gellert go through the same routine of removing the white powder, the kohl and the jewellery that wasn’t his while swaying to the sweet tune of violins and guitars. If this was what it took to kick him into such high spirits, then by all means, the magazines could have him every other weekend as far as Albus was concerned. After a while of simply enjoying the deep hum of Gellert’s voice, the words on his tongue tumbled forth entirely of their own.
“Remind me to shut it when I inevitably call you a peacock again. You’re beautiful, do you know that?”
Gellert exhaled a pearl of laughter with his eyes shining in the mirror. There were crow’s feet on either side of them.
“I’m gaining on fifty, I’ll have you know that I’m a seasoned, experienced man who smokes too often and should go running more than twice a week when I can be arsed to drag myself out of bed with you in it. That is to say, I’m an ageing, tired fairy too old for this nonsense, and I’m perfectly fine with that. Thank you, my love.” A kiss to Albus’ cheek sealed the affection within the joke. “We should go dining at the Ritz sometime again. Haven’t been in ages.”
“Give them more fodder about us?” Albus frowned, even though he very much wanted to swan through one of the most elegant restaurants of all London on Gellert’s arm looking exactly like he was enjoying the Muggle high societies a lot more than the magical ones. Twisting his silver earring back into its intended place, Gellert lifted an eyebrow at him.
“You’re afraid any of those blind, bumbling fools is going to come to the right conclusion by flashing a camera at us coming out of the Ritz of all places? Darling, you give the general public too much credit. They won’t even acknowledge what’s happening in Berlin; how many young men like us are seeking companionship there because it’s become bloody impossible in London. This whole thing,” he said circling his finger in the air, “is designed to assure the average person that you and I are beyond ill repute. We give them a little sob story over how we had to expand our knowledge and abilities during the war years due to how much we were sitting on a silver platter for any assassin, domestic or foreign, and et voila, no-one is going to question your enormous power anymore. They’ll forget what it takes to do what you did, what you had to have been born with beyond any training that we did receive, mind you, we’ll just leave Perenelle and Nicholas out of this.” When the silence settled between them, he huffed and bent to peck Albus’ lips. “Stop worrying, love,” he murmured with another kiss to his forehead. Then he started opening the buttons of the white shirt to change back into his robes, and at that point, Albus kind of lost the plot.
~~
For all that Theseus insisted that drinking sparkling wine at every celebratory occasion was a dreadfully German tradition that didn’t hold a candle to either champagne or whiskey, on Sunday afternoon he popped the cork of a green bottle of the stuff with a lot of enthusiasm. Gellert only pointed a finger at him in passing when Theseus made to angle the pressurized bottle at him.
“Don’t you dare! I already bathed this morning, and we’re going to the Ritz for dinner, I don’t have time to get that sticky shit off beforehand. Gods, I thought you hated that stuff.”
“Humour me for a glass on you successful weaseling your way out of this one. Thought I’d do you a favour bringing in a tradition from back home.”
Gellert gave a frustrated noise that recognized full well the sweetness of the gesture. Throwing up his hands, he twirled on his heels to peck Albus on the cheek on his way into the kitchen.
“Honestly, you are such a Hufflepuff sometimes!”
“No, he’s not,” commented Newt drily at the kitchen counter where he was cutting cake together with Tina. They were newly wed, and while absolutely besotted with each other, they were not the ones being absolutely insufferable about it. Theseus was so bloody proud of his baby brother he couldn’t shut up about it to anyone if he tried. Decorating the dining room table, Albus shared a look with Leta over the fine china that was half laughter.
“I for my part need two slices of cake in me before I touch that, Theseus. But the thoughtfulness is much appreciated. Do you have something softer too? Tea, perhaps?”
“On it!” Tina called from the kitchen just as Newt sent the first distributed cake on plates floating over. Snatching them from the air, Leta turned up the wireless in one fluid movement that twirled her right out of Gellert’s way as he came back with a steaming cup of coffee. They weren’t in their finery for London yet, having instead chosen to be chiquely comfortable instead for a visit to the Scamanders, and still, those trousers in combination with actual heels did things to Gellert’s legs that he better didn’t think about while at someone else’s house. Theseus’ knowing grin told him that he’d been caught staring nonetheless.
The London townhouse he and Leta had moved into last year was a Victorian beauty worked over to fit modern appliances like gas lamps into it. The wallpapers were new too, having replaced the Victorian originals that had spewed asbestos absolutely everywhere during the renovations. All the furniture, the pictures on the walls, the decoration, the pillows and throw blankets embraced the art deco movement in their rich materials and deep colours. They truly had made the place a marvel to look at wherever one’s eyes lingered, always perfectly cleaned up whenever Albus came for a visit. It could not have been a bigger antithesis to the small, cluttered cottage that Newt and Tina had taken over together with the old hippogriff farm of the boys’ late mother. Though some of the dozen house plants had made it from the countryside to the London townhouse, it seemed. Albus brushed back a leaf of something big and fleshy that respectfully lifted out of the way when he settled in at the table.
Soon, there was sparkling wine, cake, tea and water in front of everyone. Albus and Gellert tangled their legs together under the table, holding hands above it, amicably chatting, joking back and forth until Theseus summoned the dreaded Daily Prophet Sunday issue from the living room with visible glee.
“So,” he grinned over Albus resigned sigh, “ladies and gentlemen, we are assembled here today to delight in the truly outrageous amount of trollop that you two fed the papers. Honestly, can’t blame you for fucking off to the Ritz tonight. Do avoid Diagon, yeah? I don’t have enough Aurors at my disposal to protect you from the hubbub this is going to cause. In fact, I don’t know if you’ve had an ear for the wireless yet, but they’ve had people chiming in via letters all day. The housewives sighing over how noble it is that such fine gentlemen have never married in order to focus on their academic brilliance and – what was it-“
“Thee, please. You’re embarrassing them.”
“Ah yes!” he rolled right over his brother, flourishing the papers in a half-bow over the table. “For protecting our nation so loyally! Married to King and country, what good examples they are of the modern man!”
The thing was that if Theseus took the crown on hiding his impish nature beyond thirty years of age, Gellert had never made a secret of the fact that he was utterly shameless. How on earth he still made Albus blush by kissing his hand that he was holding so tenderly was beyond him.
“Oh, I’m married to the King alright.”
“Bleeding stars, Gellert,” he muttered out of a thin protest that vanished at the subdued laughter around the table. The colour rose to his cheeks all of its own will. Really, such grand endearments should have been ridiculous, yet it came out as sweet instead. All Albus could do was to swat at him, lowering his eyes, smiling hopelessly down at the sponge cake that he was dying to dig into simply so Theseus would shut up about this stupid stunt they had pulled. Glasses clinked, Leta toasted Gellert with her own cup of coffee and in all the distraction, Tina snatched the papers from Theseus. He didn’t even yelp.
“Oh, and if a woman remains unmarried in order to serve the government full-time, she’s a strange spinster, is she?”
“Of course not! It’s just so bloody funny, some desperate housewife simpering over these two on the wireless because they posed for a few pictures – they’re really good, by the way – and opened up over some of the frankly terrifying barrage of protection charms that our resident Seer here cast over Albus on a daily basis for seven years straight. I was there, I saw it happen, the entire DMLE from back then knew by Christmas ’14 that these two are insanely strong to withstand all that. It’s just… nice, I suppose. Having that finally acknowledged. What you two did during the war, magically as well as politically – well, one would have to be bloody blind not to see how much raw magic you wield. Maybe that’s just me talking out of my ass trained into noticing these things on the job, but.”
“Theseus,” Gellert stopped him kindly with half a smile that was almost sad. “Thank you for your vote of confidence, it’s much appreciated, but you didn’t see me in the comedown from all that. I collapsed. What I did to protect us was not wise, it was desperate. I spoke of my war wound and the seven years after as a cautionary tale of glorifying magical prowess over skill and knowledge.”
“And to get said housewives off my back,” Albus murmured with a huff that earned him a quick squeeze of their joined hands on the table. He did not like to think of those threadbare days in summer four years ago when they had tried to outrun the strain by touring Egypt. As beautiful a trip as it had been with the novelty of anonymity in a country where no-one gave them a second glance, the after-effects of having exhausted himself so entirely Gellert still felt in his visions that had grown more violent physically ever since.
Into the silence, Leta lifted her flute of the sparkling liquid gold. There was something like respect in her gaze as she nodded at Albus.
“Well, I do hope this silences your critics. Compared to the Ministry, Hogwarts is going to be child’s play to lead at the helm for you. Here’s to surviving a lot of bullshit and coming up on top.”
A chorus of “hear, hear” went around the table as they clinked their flutes together. The sparkling wine was strong stuff indeed, so Albus merely sipped from his before he made sure to have something in him as a basis at least. Of course, they had to sit through Theseus reading out the interview just so he could ask how much of it was made palatable or just out-right twisted to fit the narrative. To the explanation what on earth had actually happened in that classroom two weeks ago Albus had added a hearty warning not to try this at home, which obviously meant that Theseus ribbed him for the specifics of catching another’s spell wandlessly in comparison to simply deflecting it in the usual way until Leta threatened to make Theseus clean the flat for a month if he thought casting volatile spells indoors such a great idea.
In short, it was wonderful to see them all again. Tina gave her sister’s greetings and news from New York City, Newt became a bit tipsier than he ordinarily allowed himself in his brother’s proximity, who himself continued to make gratuitous fun of the interview to fill the silence that Albus didn’t manage to break through all evening. He let Gellert do the talking, smiled and laughed and kept to the women’s company. That they saw right through him he did not doubt for a second.
When he changed into his suit with a black tie for the Ritz; such an unusual look on him that he wore proudly just for the way it made Gellert dart glances at him continuously; Tina was the first to hug him goodbye. She held onto him tightly, so he felt no shame in revelling in it for a bit. Her love was a steadfast, protective warmth that he treasured very much.
“You have a kind heart, Albus. Take care, alright? You’re too good for this world.”
“And he isn’t?” he responded quietly into their embrace, making her chuckle a little. Tina pulled back to get a good look at him, though she kept Gellert and Theseus laughing over something or other by the fireplace in her line of view.
“Oh, the world will never be good enough for your starlit man. He’s angry where you are hurt. I know that you’re tired of this, and I wish with all that I have that I could take the secrecy from you. It’s a hopeful story, the two of you. So you’ll have to savour what you have and let the people talk as they will; you cannot let it destroy you. Okay?”
She was so wonderfully American. The stiff British upper lip had never impressed her. Albus smiled at her warmly, kissed the air over her cheeks and inclined his head to her in thanks.
“I shall enjoy the Ritz tonight and stop reading the papers for a while. The whole thing merely rattled me, but I’ll be right as rain, you’ll see. Thank you, Tina. Give your sister and her fiancé my love, please, in the hope that the Macusa is soon going to come to its senses.”
“Not likely,” she snorted but let him go.
He clasped hands with Theseus and Newt before he kissed Leta’s cheeks as well, and then Gellert spelled himself into his black suit with a lazy wave of his hands that solicited only fond exasperation all around. He bowed and twirled on his way out, the incorrigible dandy. On the way down the busy street, he hummed a tune from the wireless that Albus vaguely recognised as a terribly sappy piece. Bleeding stars, he thought, he was so incredibly gone on Gellert Grindelwald, the papers would not have had a chance to do it justice if they tried.