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Albus is shy, and it drives Gellert insane in a way nothing else ever has. Not because it is weakness, no, never that, but because it is hidden brilliance, veiled like moonlight behind gauzy clouds. That gentle smile, those averted eyes, the unbearable kindness that sparkles in them, all of it seems to beg to be overlooked, as if Albus fears what might happen if someone truly sees him.
Even Gellert.
“You are glorious,” Gellert says once, his voice unsteady from the sheer sincerity of it. He is stunned by the ease with which Albus has charmed the other boys by the lake, conjuring fountains from the still water, shaping them into playful dragons that coiled and danced in the summer heat, misting laughter and awe into the air. Albus hadn’t even used a wand. Just his hands. Just his will. And his light.
Albus smiles, but only faintly. The corners of his mouth twitch, unsure whether they have the right to rise, and his gaze has dropped to the sun-scorched grass at his feet.
“Do you think so?” he asks quietly, like he truly doesn't believe it.
Gellert still thinks so.
He tells him again, and again, in the shadow of oak trees, in lazy hours made of ink and sun. Albus would sit with not one, but three books cradled in his lap, reading with a grace that feels otherworldly. Gellert would watch in fascination, not just the words, but the way Albus’ fingers touch the pages, as if the text is alive, sacred. And when Gellert’s praise spills out, compliments effortless and true, strung together like spells, Albus blushes. Always. He would try to hide behind the spines of the books, but his ears would go pink, and Gellert would feel something unbearable unfurl in his chest.
He has never been like this with anyone. Has never wanted to be. Praise had once seemed beneath him. But Albus makes it feel like offering. Like worship.
Sometimes, when Albus finally looks up, his eyes wide and startled, and whispers “Please stop,” Gellert would wonder if his heart is thundering as violently as Gellert’s own. Surely it is. Surely they are both teetering on the same precipice.
In the wheat fields, where the golden stalks smells like honey and summer, Gellert watches him dance, arms wide, face tilted to the sky. Albus looks like something ancient, something eternal, half-spirit and half-starfire. His hair catches the light like flames, as if the sun has slipped from the sky just to rest on his shoulders.
And when he collapses into Gellert’s arms, laughing, flushed, sun-kissed, Gellert nearly crumples beneath him. Not from the weight, but from the rightness of it. As if Albus belongs there. As if every inch of him had always been meant to fit into Gellert’s embrace.
“I wish I had hair like you,” Albus murmurs, playing absently with the wheat between his fingers, not meeting Gellert’s eyes. “It looks like sunlight.”
Gellert can’t speak. His throat is too full. His heart beats against his ribs like a drum of worship. Instead, he gently plucks the wheat from Albus’ hands, letting his fingers brush the soft skin. That small contact lits a fire behind his ribs. He doesn’t hide it.
“You’d look better with it than I do,” he says, low and certain, and he means every word.
Albus chuckles and Gellert’s heart aches. The kind of ache that feels like beauty. The kind that ruins you.
He forgets everything else. That his feet get cold easily, even in summer. That they’d crushed parchment beneath them when they’d collapsed on the bed. That ink had spilled across a desk under the cottage window. None of it matters. All that exists is this: Albus above him, radiant with laughter and warmth, and that look, the one that doesn’t flinch away this time. The one that meets his gaze full on, like a spell cast without words. It holds Gellert still. Strippes him bare. He would have fallen to pieces if Albus had told him to.
In that moment, with the shimmer of magic in the air, the golden glow in Albus’ hair, and the entire universe flickering in his eyes, Gellert forgets who he was.
He is just a boy in love, undone by the gentlest look he has ever received.
And Gellert knows, with the force of a curse: He is lost.
Gellert knows he can give Albus confidence.
Maybe he’s always known, somewhere in that place where instinct and love collide, but it becomes undeniable on a soft summer night, beneath Bathilda’s string of fairy lights, where laughter hums like bees in lilac. Albus is speaking to the historians, hands half-tucked behind his back, voice smooth and measured. But now and then, between paragraphs, between long scholarly flourishes, he glances toward Gellert. And when he finds him there, smiling in the half-darkness, Albus winks.
Sometimes, when Gellert lingers a step too far away, Albus lifts his voice ever so slightly, not to boast, not to show off, but just enough so that Gellert can catch his words. So he can hear him. It tells Gellert everything he needs to know.
He is Albus' anchor. His witness. His reason to speak with conviction.
Gellert gives Albus adoration. Not for the things the world sees, but for the quiet moments in between. For the gentleness in the way Albus speaks to his brother, even when Aberforth stomps through the yard like a half-trained ghoul, his boots muddy and his complaints louder than the goats. Gellert doesn’t mock it, doesn’t roll his eyes. He watches Albus' restraint and sees the love beneath the tension. That is what he worships.
He sees it again in the way Albus kneels to encourage his little sister. Bright-eyed and skittish, so much like Gellert's own sisters had been at that age. Her laugh is soft and scattered like windbells. She reminds him of home.
He teaches her to make flower crowns, weaving magic like glistening threads through the petals, gentle and slow so she can follow. He sees the flicker of worry in Albus’ eyes — but he also sees the wonder when she beams and does just fine. She’s his sister, after all.
Gellert gives Albus his truths. His rawest confessions. He speaks, late into the hours of dusk and candlelight, of his worries, of a broken world, of stolen futures, of a hollow in his soul that no spell can fill. He tells Albus, quietly, that they’re not ready yet. Not here. Not in this sacred village of books and soft dreams. But one day, they could be. They could be invincible. Together, they could remake the world.
And Gellert means it.
He gives Albus his heart, without ceremony, without condition, as naturally as one gives breath to the wind or heat to a fire.
He would give Albus the world.
And one day, sprawled in the sun-drenched grass, elbows stained green and knees dirty from laughter and tangled limbs, Gellert says it aloud.
“I love you more than magic.”
The words come unbidden, unfiltered, a spell cast not with a wand, but with trembling sincerity.
Albus doesn’t answer with words.
But Gellert sees the storm of emotion flicker through his eyes — fear, awe, love, resistance — like the sky before a summer downpour. He doesn’t need to hear it. He knows.
And in that moment, it is enough.
Gellert wishes they could stay in that summer forever.
In that sweet, golden hour of youth, when everything still feels like myth and possibility. When magic is not yet a weapon but a language, a shared dialect spoken with glances and laughter and starlight.
And oh, how it glows within him. That lightness, that radiant, unbearable warmth that coils through his chest every time Albus smiles or leans just a little too close. The weightless joy of stolen kisses beneath the eaves of Bathilda’s rose-wrapped garden, the heat of hands pressed together beneath books no one’s reading anymore.
But even through the brightness, Gellert knows. He knows they won’t stay here.
Because alongside the light grows the dream. The revolution. The future they whisper about in the hush of candlelit corners and between breaths in darkened rooms.
They speak of change as if it’s music, a melody their minds compose together, each chord a shared idea, each note another promise. They speak of overthrowing the corrupt like poets, of freeing the world from rot and mediocrity, their words woven with conviction and desire, too much of both to untangle. Their visions spill from their mouths in silver syllables, as if they were born from the same dream.
When Albus casts his gaze forward to the world they might build Gellert sees starlight in his eyes. And when they kiss, it feels like tasting the future.
But neither of them says what they both know.
That no story, not a single one, has ever told of light emerging without its shadow.
There is no hero without a rival. No flame without darkness to define it.
Gellert wakes gasping, the shimmer of dreams clinging to him like morning mist. His skin is damp with sweat, his hair plastered to his forehead. The weight of his heart beats against his ribs, frantic and cold.
He doesn’t speak. He just wraps his arm tighter around Albus.
And there he is, sleeping peacefully, face soft in the half-dark, skin glowing faintly like starlight. Dreaming of nothing dangerous. Unfathomed by the storm twisting in Gellert’s mind.
Then, in a small voice, like a spell whispered to the dark:
“Do you fear death?”
The question is asked so innocently, so guilelessly, that Gellert feels something crack inside him. Albus always knows when to ask, but never quite knows what it does to him.
And in that moment, Gellert wants to wrap himself around Albus and never let go. To bury them in the softness of this bed, this house, this summer, before the world creeps in and everything shatters.
Gellert has never feared anything.
Not when his eldest sister fell from a Hippogriff and shattered both her legs. He’d sat beside her for weeks, whispering stories and promises. He knew she would survive. She was strong.
Not when his father lost his ministry post and they were forced to flee their homeland, scraping together a new life in a country that spoke a different tongue. He had shared cramped rooms with his family, slept with his siblings all in one bed, and he knew it would pass. It always did.
Not when a Durmstrang boy sneered the word sodomite at him after catching his eyes lingering on another male student too long. Not even when he was expelled for kissing a professor and didn’t regret. He knew his mother would still take him in. She always had.
And he has never been afraid.
But all of it feels dull and meaningless now, compared to the brilliance of Albus’ smile.
Because what he does fear, what pierces deeper than any hex, any slur, any loss, is this: I fear losing you.
Gellert doesn’t say it. But it pulses in his blood. It screams behind his ribs.
And his heart aches with the truth of it, with a love too vast for any magic he’s ever known.
What does it mean to give the world to someone?
Gellert doesn’t know.
And it itches at him, that not-knowing, like a thread beneath his skin he can’t quite reach.
Because Gellert Grindelwald rarely lacks answers. The world unfolds in front of him like a spellbook he already understands. His mind is a storm of ideas, theories, visions. Possibilities flow through him the way magic does — effortlessly, unstoppably — waiting only to be plucked, shaped, named.
He always finds the pattern. Always finds the narrative that fits. Except now. Because when it comes to Albus, to loving him, to giving him something rather than dazzling, impressing, possessing, he falters. He doesn’t know what it means to give the world. And he wants to. He wants to so badly it burns.
He watches for clues.
Albus smiles when Gellert is close.
His eyes sparkle when Gellert charms the laburnum to bloom at midnight, yellow blossoms spilling like laughter into the warm summer air.
He laughs with reckless delight when Gellert animates a tray of sugar-dusted mice to dance across the breakfast table, evading his fingers and leaving powder on his lips. That laugh, it sinks into Gellert’s skin and refuses to leave.
Albus laughs again when they leap from rooftop to rooftop in the village, feet barely touching the tiles, shushed by groggy neighbours leaning out of windows in their nightclothes. His hair flying. His cheeks red. His joy unfiltered. It’s then that Gellert thinks: This is what it means to give someone the world.
But only for a moment. Because the moment always ends.
Later, in the hush of Bathilda’s study, with velvet voices debating the future and parchment rustling like old leaves, Gellert touches Albus beneath the table. Just gently. A thumb to the knuckle. A quiet reminder: I’m here.
Albus touches back. Always. Soft and steady. But his eyes drift. They go somewhere else.
And Gellert hates the way they dim. Like a light going out. Like something inside him breaking, just a little, every time someone asks Albus about his future. About duty.
About the Ministry. Or the academic path. Albus never argues. He just smiles that careful, practiced smile and says something diplomatic. Says he has obligations. Says he’s grateful to be needed. Says it as if his heart isn’t slowly being hollowed out by expectation.
That’s when Gellert grabs his hand tighter.
He laces their fingers together, rests their hands between them like a secret. And Albus squeezes back, faint but real, as if holding Gellert might make all of this, any of this, more bearable.
As if he’s the one being given something precious, not Gellert, who would raze kingdoms for that touch.
So Gellert wonders again: What is the world, to give?
What could possibly compare to the way Albus smiles at him through a bloom of conjured flowers? To the way he returns the smallest touch, even when his soul is somewhere far away?
He doesn’t know. Maybe — maybe — giving the world isn’t about changing it.
Maybe it’s about raising the one thing he never wants to lose.
Sometimes in his dreams, Albus wears a crown of fire, and it suits him too well, not cruel, not consuming, but bright like creation itself, the kind of fire that births stars and writes truths into the bones of mountains. His beauty is terrible in its divinity, his stillness like that of a god caught between mercy and judgement, and beside him, in the flickering dream-light, stands Gellert, not behind, never behind, always beside. Equal in power, joined in purpose, two halves of the same invocation. Their hands raised together, the world reshaped beneath their will. But even in dreams, even when the sky breaks into colour and the wind sings hymns to their names, the world at their feet is never untouched. The ground is scorched. Cities lie silent, turned to ash. Light cannot exist without shadow, and in the dreams where Albus glows like morning, the darkness always comes from behind him. It seeps from Gellert’s own hands, his own mouth, from the crown he refuses to wear but always finds curled at his feet. He is the shape the light casts behind it. He is the dark.
Albus touches him tenderly when he wakes, fingertips soft as old lullabies. He doesn’t ask what Gellert sees, but he asks if he’s in pain, and Gellert says yes, a headache, a seer’s curse, a trick of the stars, and not the truth that lies like a brand on his chest. Albus holds him as if he can be saved. And that is worse than anything else.
When his sister dies and Albus breaks apart, his voice becomes something Gellert has never heard before. Wet, pleading, guilt-wracked and feral with sorrow. The visions twist. From the sound of destiny dying in Albus’ throat.
Gellert runs, but his feet do not know the way. His steps slip sideways and his heart is a clenched, sobbing thing. The dream has ended, and he cannot breathe in this waking world without choking on it.
Sometimes he still sees it. Sometimes it still haunts him. Albus with fire in his hair and power raging from his hands, Gellert by his side like a loyal star circling a sun. And sometimes he wonders, if he had stayed, if he had wept with him, if he had buried his sword and bled like a man instead of vanishing like a storm — would that dream have lived?
But he knows better now. That fire was never his to hold. He was meant to set it, not be warmed by it. He was meant to be burned within its rage.
So he whispers, only to the dark, to the ashes in his chest:
I give you the world — and I give it up for myself.