Chapter Text
Chapter 2 – Remember Me
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never wrote, nor no man ever loved.
The first letter had arrived five years after he disappeared in the night. It was unassuming, talked of the winter solstice in Russia, the mountains he wandered. It described the beauty of nature in a way only he could. He despised poetry, yet was a poet at heart.
I see eternal ice. I see the darkness beneath. You should see the darkness – it’s magnificent.
I’d like to say that I burnt any of them, or even came close to it. I didn’t. my heart racing, my eyes glued to every last line, I drank in his words like a liquid drug, like poison. And I hid them, told no one about them. We’d always been a secret, why should this be any different? Whenever a new one arrived I thought it would be different, this time. It wasn’t. Albus Dumbledore, the blushing school boy, and Albus Dumbledore, the alchemist, were one and the same. When the third letter arrived, I was a teacher. Caring for children, shaping young minds. And I reverted back to my boyish fever with the first word, the first line.
This isn’t who you are supposed to be. Carry that knowledge with you, as you walk those fabled halls. You’re retreating, regressing. You’re making yourself small. You will be surrounded by people of limited minds, people that can never grasp the power you could have.
He seemed to resent my choices. Why, I wasn’t sure. One of the implications was that he considered it a waste of my gifts. An affront to nature, as he repeatedly wrote.
A big fish in a small pond. Does it make you feel safe? The oceans are waiting for you. The world is waiting for you, to drown in who you truly are. Who we truly are. Can’t you hear it?
The letters became more political in nature after that, and he started berating me for my abandonment of our plans. It seemed, Ariana was a non-factor to him. Whether he believed she should be nothing to me as well remained unclear. But the message remained the same. You should see this – it is magnificent, Albus… The water hot springs are smoking all year, you would love them… I met a wonderful stranger today and I thought of you… You’re not here… not here… not here… He was taunting me with my abandoned travel plans.
“Did you never travel, after that?” Theseus wondered, as he scanned the letters for signs of evil. There were none. Just… him.
“I tried, over the summers. It didn’t work out the way I imagined.” I didn’t explain. How could I? The paranoia. The memory of the first time, a fleeting lover bent over me and whispered a line he’d been fed. There was the man in Alexandria, who left the Hallows symbol on my steamed up bathroom mirror. The stranger in Paris, who spent weeks by my side, only to show me a necklace he wore, once he took off his shirt. The library he had, that wasn’t truly his, filled with books that reminded me of who I’d been, once. The stranger in Athens, who shaved at the end of a wonderful summer, only to reveal a scar someone had carved into his skin.
I stopped seeking out romantic attention, eventually. I accepted that travelling in the summer made me predictable. That I, apparently, had a type. I’d become so transparent to a shadow of my past, that it was child’s play to send me into a stranger’s arms.
“That’s beyond obsessive,” Theseus commented, though he seemed more fascinated than appalled. “How much time do you think he invested in that?”
“I don’t know.” Gellert had always been good with the Imperius Curse. Feeding a stranger information about me, controlling him from afar wasn’t a challenge for him. The real mystery, the horror behind it all, was how he anticipated my travel plans.
“Maybe he didn’t,” Theseus said. “I know you have this Machiavellian image of him – and he is that – but did you ever think he just had someone follow you at the beginning of your trips, then sent in his next victim? It can’t be that hard to make a receptionist forget who really booked a hotel room and who didn’t. You stayed around a lot of secluded places, didn’t you? With lots of Muggles?”
I did. It felt safe at the time. Escapism. How foolish I’d been.
“See, I assumed he waited for my first letters to my friends and intercepted one of them. I didn’t always get responses. But if felt strange to ask.”
“Also possible.” He played around with one of my quills, tracing the engraving on it. “Did he ever sent you any gifts? Other than during your holidays, I mean.”
“Very funny.” Not to my knowledge, no. Though I would now start looking at everything I ever received with different eyes. It didn’t matter who handed me something, who spoke to me. It always might be part of him. When I wasn’t given signs, I made them up in my mind. When I didn’t see the Hallows, I kept looking for them. Kept searching, inspecting, controlling my lovers, until they recoiled. Retreated. Even if he didn’t interfere in my life as much as I thought – he’d gotten into my head, thus ensuring that I couldn’t be without him. Couldn’t move on. Be happy.
“You have to start that letter sometime,” Theseus said. “I’ll give you some privacy. Contact me, when you have a first draft.”
I couldn’t sleep that night. To tire myself out, I started patrolling the hallways. The castle was so peaceful at night – I felt reminded of the many nights I’d snuck into the library as a boy. I’d taught myself an invisibility charm, just for this purpose. I remembered Gellert laughing, when I confessed my youthful sins. Or what I thought were sins, then.
“You’re adorable. You think that’s bad?”
“Oh, be quiet!” I was blushing – I didn’t know why I’d thought it would impress him.
“Who sneaks out at night for books?” He couldn’t stop laughing, and my face had gone bright red.
“Well, I wanted to get into the Restricted Section!” I insisted. After a while, I had to join in. he was right. It was ridiculous.
“Well… what did you read?” he asked, when he’d finally calmed down. The smile on his face was wide, and magnificent. I didn’t know whether he was this beautiful, or whether it was all in my head. It almost hurt to look at him, sometimes. “What was so titillating, a good boy would violate curfew for it?”
I started writing after midnight. I don’t know, why, but I chose my simplest quill. The cheapest ink. It felt wrong, to invest in him. I’d already invested enough.
Gellert –
I’m certain you must be surprised, hearing from me after all these years. In truth, I thought about picking up a quill and writing to you many times. I never did.
Maybe we’re both better off for it. I know you’re following your path, whether I might agree with it or not. There are certain liberties in being apart from each other, as you probably would agree.
I read a book the other day, and I had to think of you. A wanderer, from a faraway land, arriving in the dead of night...
The story goes as follows – a man descends from a mountain. He finds believers in the valley, and laughs at their faith, for he is cleverer than them. He tells them that mankind's goal must be to create something superior to itself – all men, he says, must be prepared to will their own destruction in order to further their own evolution. His audience is of torn on the wisdom, and offense, of his words. While he speaks, another man walks a tight rope. He falls to his death. The stranger takes the corpse of the rope-dancer on his shoulders, carries it into the forest, and lays it in a hollow tree. He decides that from this point on, he will no longer attempt to speak to the masses, but only to a few chosen disciples.
Sometimes I wonder, if we’ve all become like that. We stay in safe quarters, only speaking to those who agree with us. Avoid the difficult conversations. We evade uncomfortable truths, to soothe our egos, our perceived morality. Evade ourselves, or who we might be, if we stopped hiding in our comfort.
You once spoke about the Great War. The implications it brings for us. The dangers of a repetition, of progress for the sake of progress. I know you don’t think of me as someone who goes to your rallies, and you would be correct in that assumption. But I do read about you, from time to time. You’re hard to miss these days. I suppose you were right in your assumptions about the fame that was in your future.
Many years ago, you held a knife to my palm. You said we had to be united, for the consequences would be to grave, if we weren’t. From a philosophical point of view, does that not imply that we are the danger – not you, or me, individually, but us? To each other, to the world at large.
They say you carry me with you wherever you go. You could hide the phial, bury it in the deepest mountains, but you don’t. To taunt, provoke me? To play fate? Is it a tight-rope you’ve created for yourself – and is it one you enjoy walking on? They say the greatest men tempt death the most, because part of them yearns to meet him – the next great adventure, so to speak.
We should talk about it, sometime. Maybe the time has come to leave safe quarters behind.
Albus
I didn’t know how to sign the letter. Best wishes? Too impersonal. A touch sarcastic. Sincerely yours? That one hit too close to home. Faithfully. He’d always used that one. There were no good options, so simple stopped writing, signed my name.
I could’ve presented the letter to Theseus, but I was tired, and strangely agitated. Gellert did that to me. Everything he said, everything he was – it was unsettling. Maybe because of who he was. Or who I was, when I was near him. The eternal question – was it because of him, or did he just reveal me, at my core – was about to be answered. And I couldn’t discuss it with Theseus. He wouldn’t understand. Good people never do.
The strange truth was, I did want to talk to him, sometimes. For all the patience in the world couldn’t save me from the need to be understood, without slowing down. Without simplifying things, explaining, explaining, explaining. Without rhyme or reason, without self-censorship, to avoid confusion, shock, alienation. I did miss our conversations for that.
*
The Editor of Transfiguration Daily sent me flowers that week. He had his assistant Iris Finnegan deliver them in person.
“You shouldn’t have,” I said.
Behind us, some students spied on myself and the pretty young woman handing me flowers. I could tell what must be going on in their minds. They couldn’t have been more wrong. But explaining felt wrong as well, inappropriate. Inviting questions.
“I know it’s not the most usual gift for a fella,” Iris said, shrugging. “He suggested a book, but I walked past this little flower shop next to the office and thought… It’s more personal, you know.” This was only part of the truth. She was blushing, as she lied to me. I’d known her for years. She’d always been a bad liar.
“What is his name?”
She blushed harder. “Oh, shut up.” She walked into the courtyard, then lowered her voice. “Alright, I’ll tell you, you nosey old git.” We sat on one of the benches. The flowers were glorious in the sunlight. “I saw him through the shop window. I thought I’d seen him somewhere before, ya know, so I walked in. say hello. But it was a complete stranger, and without a wedding band and everything! His mother just died. He said… well, it’s cheesy…”
I could hardly stop smiling. Her stories were always wildly chaotic and endearing. “Tell me.”
“William – that’s his name – said my beauty distracted him from his grief. And then William and I got to talking – I said I was picking out a gift for a friend – a work friend, I said, because he seemed a bit jealous for a minute there-“
“Naturally,” I said. It was sweet of her to assume I’d be offended she’d downgraded me to “work friend.”
“But then he helped me pick these out. Aren’t they just so perfect?” She beamed.
They truly were. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever seen an assortment of flowers so beautiful. Every rose was a deeper, darker shade than the next. The Dahlias, lush and full, reminded me of those I’d had in my childhood garden. And it was bound in ivy – an elegant touch. I hadn’t been aware Iris knew me that well.
When I walked back to my office after she was gone, a voice called out for me.
“Excuse me, Sir?” It was a little girl. Bright green eyes, Ravenclaw robes, a butterfly pin in her hair. I’d taught her for two years, and she’d never taken that pin out, not once.
“Yes, Eva?”
“You dropped this. It was in your flowers.” She handed me a small card. It was white, with crisp, golden edges. And it was empty.
“Thank you. Would you like to pick a flower as a reward?”
She nodded, and bent over the bouquet. Her finger bled, when they closed around the stem of a particularly dark red rose. Her blood and the petals were of the exact same shade.
“I’m so sorry, Eva. Here, give me your hand.” I healed the cut, and took of the thorns, before I sent her on her way. She left happily. There was still a trace of blood on her brisk white sleeve.
I took the flowers to my office, arranged them on the window sill. They really were beautiful. It wasn’t until the later evening, that I noticed the little card. I’d put it on my desk, and forgotten about it. When I picked it up to throw it away, it wasn’t empty anymore.
My heart started racing. I would’ve recognized that handwriting anywhere.
It was good to hear from you.