Chapter Text
The days are long and the nights are short and something inexplicable lingers in the air. It is a restless tedium and it is a slow exhaustion and it is electricity when grey clouds cover the sky but the raindrops refuse to fall.
Ariana falls asleep as the sun sets over the horizon, and as the night grows darker the sound of Aberforth's breathing slows to a rhythm. The rain starts shortly after, beginning with a few gentle thuds on the rooftop. Soon, the skies have opened and it is pouring, a symphony of sound.
"Aberforth?"
There is no reply. Albus waits a few moments, and then he is downstairs, closing the door to the house, the rain cool on his skin. He turns around, and a shadow flits past him, and he whips around, wand out in a split-second. He thinks there's something familiar about it, though, and a distant kind of hope flutters through him.
"Lumos."
Nothing. Only raindrops and the leaves rustling in the wind. This is what he’s reduced to, then. Imagining ghosts in the night.
Everything looks different now. The light coming from his wand is bright where he stands but casts more shadow than light and illuminates nothing more than a meter ahead of him. Raindrops quiver on his eyelids, the clouds above are a tinted a deep purple, and under the blanket of night the world is like a dream.
*
And then the boy appears, almost as though he was conjured out of the dark and the cold.
He's first a spark of light towards Albus' right, and then he's a disappearing human silhouette, and then he's a gentle tap on his left shoulder.
"Who are you?" he asks, and Albus turns and nearly curses him out of instinct, but catches a glimpse of the other boy looking at him. There's something mysterious about this boy, something unfathomable, and his voice was something tangible and right there; more real than anything else in the night, hovering in the air, even after it was said, almost as if Albus could touch it -
"Who are you?"
He laughs. "I asked first."
A curse comes at him, and he’s taken aback- it’s something he’s never seen before, but he’s deflects it, and then they are flying, hard and fast. He blocks every single one, and even sends a few back, but they’re going far too fast for him to plan an effective course of attack, the great Albus Dumbledore reduced to flinging anything he can at his opponent. Then- his opponent hesitates for a split second and Albus can think of nothing but to disarm him.
When the wand goes flying out of the boy’s hands, Albus drops his in surprise. Both boys fall to the floor wandless, laughing. “What was the blue one?” he asks. “I’ve never seen that one before.”
“I’ll show you.” He does, and then Albus shows him something, and he realises the boy knows more than he’d ever learnt, more than he’d ever thought possible.
That's when it happens- a flash of light illuminates the room he descended from, and he can see it momentarily on the trees in front of him.
He's running upstairs and Aberforth is on Ariana’s bed with her in his arms as she’s sobbing, and Aberforth watches him as he enters, and then looks away. He doesn’t ask where Albus has been. And Albus: he finds himself turning back to look around with a mix of hope and apprehension, and realises only later that he’d expected the boy to follow him upstairs.
*
Bathilda Bagshot shows up six days later with a “How are you all doing?”, food, and him at her side. Although Albus does a double take, he doesn’t even blink, his voice crisp as he introduces himself as: ‘Gellert Grindelwald, although just Gellert is fine’, and Albus feels like maybe he’s dreamt it all. When they’ve been invited in and are dining together, the boy excuses himself to go to the bathroom, and as he moves past Albus’ chair he whispers:
“So. Your name is Albus.” he smiles. “I like it.”
The restlessness dissipates. Albus loves every second of it, the feeling of power coursing though his veins as it did in Hogwarts. No, not as it did, but as it never has before. Gellert’s skin is so white his limbs glow under the light of the summer sky. When they are together, time slows as though it fears them, and it should. He no longer feels trapped underwater: an hour with Gellert and he’s floating on air for the rest of the day, picturing his hair, his eyes, his skin. He learns so much from Gellert, they learn so much together, for Gellert can cast more complex spells but he can cast them stronger.
He goes downstairs and sits in the field, sets blades of grass on fire one at a time. He sends owl after owl to Gellert, two or three a day. Gellert always insists on coming over. Albus always says no, always goes and meets him over there, or in the fields elsewhere. The night they came over for dinner was an exceedingly good one, Ariana calm and collected, and he’s afraid what Gellert will think if he sees the truth.
“You’re playing with dark magic, ” Aberforth hisses one day, but Albus laughs him off. There is no light or dark. There is just magic, and without it they are no better than animals.
Aberforth says less and less, and watches more and more.