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I. December -- some years before 1945
Gellert is wrapping a dark red shall around his shoulders, ready to step out into the street and into the first snowstorm of winter, when he hears that shallow tapping at his door. A heavy gust of wind rushes in as he opens it, nearly blinding him with the blowing snow. Looking down, he sees a ragged-feathered owl presenting herself to him in his entry-way. The owl shakes off some snow, then opens her beak, dropping an envelope at his feet. Then she hoots once, either in greeting, or in complaint for having had to undertaken the outing, and turns to flit away again, bravely heading back out into the storm.
Bending down to examine the envelope, Gellert recognizes the scratched handwriting of his great Aunt Bathilda. Ordinarily, he might have set the letter aside and continued on his way, but his curiosity gets the better of him. For he has not heard from his aunt in more than a year, and his contacts on that side of The Isle have been especially unreliable lately. He shutters the door closed, and using a gloved finger, breaks the seal on the envelope to pull out a letter. As he unfolds the page, a photograph slips outs. On the back is an undecipherable date, penciled in a similar cursive hand. He turns first to read the short letter:
My Dearest Gellert,
I found this while dusting out my old guest room. I thought you might appreciate it, as a keepsake from your visit to England, so many years ago.
I trust all is well.
Holiday Greetings,
Your Aunt Bathilda
Gellert turns the photograph over. It shows two young men, of no more than twenty years. Their earnest but inscrutable faces pear out at him as they stand under the big oak tree in his Aunt Bathilda's garden. It was so long ago, that summer. It had blurred into a yellow haze in his memory. Sometimes, certain threadbare frames of it would flash through his conscience. Or less often, full scenes or words would come calling back to him. He is sure, however, that he has not thought of this moment, or of this photograph's existence, in the years that had passed. But now, now, he finds he can remember that afternoon well. A summer storm had broken out soon after the photograph had been taken. Both he and Albus breaking the composure they had been holding for the photograph and racing to save their books, then running towards the house. The wind and rain falling in their faces. They had been laughing.
Gellert feels the sudden pang of a wound, perhaps somewhere near the center of his chest. And his stature, if just for a moment, shifts. He has always prided himself on his wild self-control. On his excellence, no matter the circumstances. He'd never been naturally gregarious, or popular as a schoolboy, but nevertheless, winning friends and supporters and even enemies to his side had never taken effort. It had been his inborn sense of self and certainty; he'd never been without that pure thread inside of him. Except for one moment, perhaps. It had only been a few weeks after this photograph had been taken. He had been packing his bags in the guest room of his great aunt's house. Leaving Godric's Hallow.
It was a similar feeling that he thought he felt now. A feeling coinciding with pride, but which might be that which others called doubt. That pin-prick of a thought, that perhaps this time his usual methods might not lead to all of his desired ends, nor fulfill his ideals. Or that, in fact, this was not what he would prefer to be doing at all. And now, it also seemed to reside with a similar feeling, one of doubt aged by time. A feeling, which others might call regret.
It is a strange sensation to feel divorced from one's self, even for a moment. And Gellert is suddenly envious of that young man standing in the photograph. And envious of those others also, whom he might normally have looked down upon, dismissed as shallow or dependent. For here he stands, suddenly a prisoner of his own self, but finding himself ill-capable of questioning the situation. Nor given this new-found will, acting in word or deed differently.
And then a second thought appears in his mind, fallen loose it seems after so many years of denial. Why hadn't Albus, he with the sparkling, intelligent eyes, eyes which could host an adventurous streak as well -- which only the barest hint of showed though in this old photograph -- why hadn't he joined him in this quest? How different and how much easier might it have been? For he had left Gellert, just as surely, without packing any bags of his own. No correspondences, neither first or secondhand, had ever reached him since that day in Bathilda's guest room. Gellert feels his eyes sting, and looks down, in surprise, to see a single tear has fallen onto the photograph that he holds in his hand. The old ink spreading in that small drop of salt water.
And then like the ink, Gellert’s vision itself begins to blur. Sparks of light forming and encroaching from the periphery of his vision, until his whole field of view catches fire. And he is sent tumbling downward into a blinding white light.
~~
Gellerts finds he is standing in immense clearing of a thick forest. The mountains surrounding it, just visible through the trees, are unfamiliar to him. Nearby he hears the booms and sees the sparks from the wands of wizards and witches, as they do battle all around him. And Gellert finds himself turning to join in the fray. His elder wand rising with his hand.
The chaos and battle continue for what seems an eternity, neither side gaining any ground. But then, in the middle of this war, the sky itself seems to part. A deafening transformation of dark clouds into light, of thunder into an eerie silence. Gellert stands in that emptiness disarmed. Not only of his wand, but it seems his heart and of his thoughts as well. As he looks about he finds that his fellow wizards and witches, on both sides of the battle, have all disappeared. And a sense of unending space and time pervades the air around him, and seems to shape even the scorched ground upon which he stands. Into the clearing he sees a man approaching. Walking in magnificent blue robes. Albus.
The shapes and angles of his friend's face are sterner than he remembers. He seems taller. There are now white lines through his fine reddish hair, and new lines formed from age in his face. Does he see a small flicker of fear in Albus’s eyes? Of uncertainty? Of guilt? No, there is only the strongest of wills there, as if his own strong will were reflected back to him from the eyes that now uphold him. But as he holds that gaze for moment after moment, Gellert feels a crack in his own pride. And then a bottomless pity and remorse begins to grow up within him. It starts at the base of Gellert's heart and grows outward through his body, until it becomes overwhelming. His eyes, which have continued to hold Albus' gaze, suddenly feel heavy. He bends his head, his eyes falling towards the ground.
~~
And then, in the blink of an eye, as if removing the dust from his vision, Gellert finds he is once more in his residence. Instead of a roughed forest floor, he is gazing down once again at the photograph in his hand. Shaken. Watching as the shade of Albus' younger innocent eyes seem to shift, to be peering up at him more directly. Still innocent, but with a new edge of both seriousness and sympathy there. He stares at the photograph, until the immediate feelings of the vision gradually ebb out from him, and only the faintest remnants are left. Then, it is to both the young and older Albus, whom Gellert speaks to under his breath:
"Is this what might come one day, my friend? Well, if you will join me at the end…"
II. May 1945
When Albus returns, he does not notice it. To tell the truth, when Albus returns he does not notice anything. Not the colour of the sky, not the small buoyant celebrations around him, and those whom earnestly try for his attention, expressing praise or gratitude or even thinly veiled scorn, seem but mute to him. As he closes the inner door of his chamber later that evening, the photograph falls out from behind a shutter, or perhaps a book on the shelf, and flutters to the ground unnoticed. Just like an innocent paper bird. As if it did not hold the guilty weight of those two purposeful, joyous months behind it. A photograph of two men of no more than twenty years.
It is by rote memory that Albus begins to undress that evening. First, with an unsteady hand, taking out a long knobbed wand from his pocket, and laying it on the table near the bed. The flames from a candle there paint the wand in flickering shadows and it seems to come alive. Albus carefully sheds his dark blue over-robe, folding it in half, and laying it over the back of his wardrobe. Then his rings, one at a time, falling heavily into an enamel bowl on his dresser, sounding out in the vacant chamber. He unties the braided clasp on his undershirt and pulls it over his head. His bare skin prickling in the cold. Then steps out of his trousers, one foot at a time. Then removing his thick woolen socks. He does not take up his silk dressing gown from the chair, but blows out the candle, the hypnotizing patterns dying with the light, and slips into his bed. He feels the extent of his limbs for the first time as they encounter the smoothness of his mattress and the steady compress of his woolen blanket.
It would be a lie to say that sleep comes easily to Albus that night, but it is perhaps not as long as one would think, before his mind and body surrender into a welcome oblivion, one they have not found for many days. And, as the night wears on, the moon rises in his tallest window and shines over the first strands of white that wind through his hair and beard. The light settling like a benevolent arrow across the stillness of his chambers. And out of that oblivion, Albus dreams a dream more vivid than any he has dreamed before.
~~
Albus walks out through a cold calm night of winter. There is no wind, but the crack of frozen snow sounds out stark under his boots. He follows a small glowing spec of light. It flits ahead of him, just out of his grasp. As he approaches a stone-walled courtyard, an elderly man is crouched there, warming his hands over a heap of firewood. But no flames grow from the pile, only smoke. It is there that the small light slows and halts, flickering in the haze and then burying itself down into the pyre. As it does so, the man warming his hands brings his gaze up to meet Albus'. His eyes are unstartled, as if he had been expecting Albus. Though the face itself is aged, unmistakably, Gellert's eyes gaze back at him. His face clear, even though Albus knows this can only be a dream.
At this sight, Albus sways, and then finds he is kneeling in the snow, looking down at his beard as it lays over his robe. It has turned a pure white. When Albus first tries to speak, his voice breaks. And when he is able to form words, they sound foreign in his throat. A tremor to his voice, as if he were a child:
"Gellert, what are you doing here? -- Where are we? -- I thought I'd seen you for that very last time."
"Ah, and I thought you were the wiser of the two of us," is all that Gellert replies. His eyes calm. His mouth yielding slightly at the ends.
"Oh, I do not feel wise today. I feel such a burden upon me. For my own mistakes or yours, I cannot tell. And will you forgive me someday, my friend? I had no other choice.”
“Oh, I’ve had much time to think about forgiveness. Decades out in the cold of that cell where you left me.”
"Ah, Gellert, it was you whom left me." It is both a question and an accusation. Again, Albus feels like a much younger man, or a child, and certainly not a headmaster. But this is only a dream, isn’t it? And so he continues, hesitantly.
"All that I had once learned from you of knowledge, of trust, of confidence -- of love -- you betrayed that. Though it’s too late now -- perhaps if you had stayed that summer, if that -- if that accid -- if that accident hadn't happened -- It would have made all the difference -- I still could have convinced you then, before it all happened. For we once held the same ideals. Why couldn't you have been worthy?"
Curiously, Albus feels the delicate path of a tear, warmer than the melting snowfall, as it winds down his cheek.
"Again, I thought better of you, Albus. Some questions do not have answers. And would it have been me--whom you had loved in the beginning at least -- would it have been me, if I stayed?
Albus tries to form a reply, but Gellert continues on.
"Don't worry, my friend, I'm not asking for your forgiveness. At least not for all of my sins. If forgiveness is possible. For some sins cannot be forgiven. Or if they can be, then only for those who have made their penance. Or so I am told. But I am here now. Come, rise up, warm your hands over the fire."
And now as Albus looks closely, he sees the flickering orange flame of a fire through the smoke. Casting fragile shapes across the snow. He stands, bringing up his hands towards the flames, and indeed, they are warmed.
"Yes, I'm still learning how to yield to it. Don't you see Albus. It may not have made a difference. Might we somehow have ended in the same place? Each of us our pride and our ideals. But you've done the right thing today, my friend. Yes, I’ll admit it after all these decades" -- and here Gellert grinned -- "you were always wiser than I, even when we were younger".
And then, what started first as that grin, spreads over Gellert’s face, to reach his very eyes. As if he might even be laughing.
~~
Against all odds, a shard of comfort props up deep in Albus' sleeping heart. A shy smile brought to his lips, echoing the one he sees in his dream, as his breath continues to draw in and out, and in and out, in his slumber.