those who live without love

“there was nothing more i wanted in the world than to hear what he had not said”: 

Albus Dumbledore was dying.

In a way, he felt he was already dead. 

Every moment of the rest of his life was accounted for- well organised. 

Yes. Tomorrow. 

It was planned.

And yet

He felt frayed along the edges and it wasn't the black grip of pain which even now worked its way up his arm, necrotizing the flesh- no. Albus had long felt the rot pullulating inside him. Each decision (sacrifice) for the greater good polluting him (they praised him as he played with their lives).

No.

It was not his inner moral decay or his outer flesh-eating rot that haunted and tore at him in these final hours but a demon of a slightly different nature. 

Severus.

It had been months since the encounter that plagued him with such frequency he felt he thought of little else.

Always.

What a thing to love a person in such a way that to merely call it love did the complexity of emotion a disservice.

It is a thing that carves into you- through meat and muscle and bone, down to the very soul.

It is hoarded within you but knitted into everything outside of you.

Through the strain of years it remains golden veins like lines of fate rooted to your very being.

It aches and yearns and longs with tender fingers and wicked smiles, a curl of blonde, a flash of blue and brown-

Albus forces a breath, closing his eyes and stalling his unconscious pacing. 

These thoughts were a cycle that led him to memories he did not have the time for tonight…but if not tonight…

It had been more than fifty years, surely the feeling of his long fingers (firm but gentle(hallowed)) interlaced between his own was merely a phantom of wishful dreaming and not the truth of such a long lost sensation. Surely such intimate knowledge had long since fallen to time. 

Albus clenches his teeth with a force that creaks through the furniture in his office. But force does not drown them tonight and the memories bloom behind his eyes pulling him under with the fervour of their current. 

Gellert.

Always Gellert.

Even now. Especially now.

He lives in the quiet moments between Albus’s thoughts, he dances through his dreams and lingers in the rays of morning light. 

He does this still and always.

And it ravages Albus- these thoughts that stampede through him. 

The glass in his office windows lace with spider cracks, the portraits watching on warily.

Tonight-. Tonight there is nothing for it. This extreme and unrelenting vulnerability that has flayed him as an open wound. 

It is the height of peculiarity for Albus Dumbledore to lose control. He is a man of carefully made decisions, even his whimsy is artfully crafted. Perhaps it is a measure of how deeply the curse has seeped into his self or, one might reasonably purport Gellert as the cause (probably Aberforth, Ab always saw right through him). Whichever affliction was the source, Albus found his hand clutching a particularly worn bronze tin and whispering ‘Peverell’ before he could give the mere notion of what he was doing a second, or even first thought. With a light woosh that barely left the papers on his desk askance- Albus lands with a slight stumble and a sharp smack of wind that does nothing to bring him to his senses.

Snow swirling through the air and settling in his beard, melting into the fabric of his royal blue robes. If he feels the cold he shows no sign- his blue gaze transfixed upon the grey stone and harsh jut of the tallest tower. 

So this was not to the plan, so he had gone a bit off-book. This changed nothing. He would still die tomorrow.

This was merely part of setting his affairs in order- a part he had briefly overlooked in previous planning but important nonetheless. 

To see Gellert one last time. They could both use some closure. 

Though…what if Gellert didn't want to see him? What if he hated him? Mocked him? Scorned him? Perhaps the solace of his memories were best kept as the last-

But that wasn’t true. 

His last moments with Gellert had been the furthest from comfort- 

Gellert chained on the ground like an animal 

Blood tracing a path from the corner of those lips 

Albus wanted to fall to his knees, he wanted to weep and crumble and rage. 

He wanted rays of sunshine in verdant fields with scattered books and whispered promises: a home he hadn’t known he had 

Bloodied and bound Gellert smiles and Albus stands at a distance, struck, until they are both guided away. 

So here he stands in the Swiss Alps, in front of a castle he had promised himself he would never see though is now too late to turn from because even without the physical connection of the blood pact, its echoes allow for a certain amount of awareness when they are near one another so it is in fact far too late to do anything about this absolute sham of a situation and this is absolutely the very reason that Albus has always believed in the art of careful planning.

It is just so very like Gellert to muck up his deathbed plans. The man knows no boundaries. And yes, it could be argued that Gellert is actually not to blame in this particular instance but those who would suggest such a thing would be incredibly naive and lacking in all Gellert-related knowledge to which by this point Albus can certainly claim a PhD. Gellert has most likely been planting these thoughts today and over the last 50 odd years. What else is he meant to do with his time but sneaky legillemens-related trickery? Make friendship bracelets? Unlikely, as Albus has never received one and surely he would have at least received several by this point. 

Albus, in a fit of peak, resolutely brushes off his gathered snow and moves through the castle in what can only be described as the incensed jaunt of a man who knows he’s about to start a uproarious fight that he is sure to win and even surer to dance around the ashes of his enemy afterwards. Simply to say that one would never think him in his 120’s with the speed to which he takes to the stairs and then arrives in the tower room. 

Albus arrives with one hand reassuringly stroking his beard and the other with his index finger pointed in the air as if to say “and another thing”; halfway through the argument before it has even begun.

Then his hands slowly fall, his fervour fading like a punctured balloon because its Gellert because of course he spent the last fifty years thinking of this one man because he looks so small in that cell and most of all because this is the exact reason Albus refused all thoughts regarding the consequences of their final duel. 

Blue meets heterochromatic and a lifetime happens. 

“Dumbledore.” Gellert’s eyes are cold, his stance rigid and closed.

“Gellert please. Not like this.” Albus takes a step forward, his head tilting imploringly.

“I haven’t the faintest what you mean.” Gellert dismisses, sticking his nose up in the air and turning slightly from Albus’ piercing gaze.

“Still holding grudges then?” Albus asks, a deep sigh sinking through him. This was a wasted effort. Of course Gellert was still holding grudges. 

Silence.

Gellert turns back to face Albus and takes in his state of dress, the words slipping out of his mouth before he can think to stop them

“Still dressing as ridiculous as usual then?” 

A grin breaks across Albus’ face. He looks up at Gellert through his eyelashes

“I haven’t the faintest what you mean.”

Now Gellert releases a deeply weary sigh, running a hand across his face

“Albus, you’re wearing bunny slippers,”

Dumbledore practically clicks his heels in delight, pointing decisively at Gellert to claim his victory

“Ha!”

Gellert is naturally used to Albus’s hysterics, even after all these years, but the man is surely outdoing himself with his exuberance over a mere slip of the tongue

“Oh for the love of-”

“I knew you couldn’t possibly-”

“How could you know  anything!? Fifty years and this is-”

“As it happens the slippers were a complete accident. A very happy one indeed as they are incredibly comfortable, like walking on jam. Of course, I was in such a hurry to leave the house-”

“House?! Have you finally lost your wits?! A castle is not a house, we could have had a house if you had simply stood with me you insufferable fool-”

Albus gives Gellert’s feet a particularly considering look that has Gellert wishing, not for the first time in the past few minutes, that he could once again be continents away from Albus Dumbeldore. 

“Your feet look cold Gel, I could make you some of your own-”

“Albus Percival whatever-”

Any protestations on Gellert’s part are completely ignored by an enthusiastically intent Albus. Moments later a pair of bright orange bunny slippers with tall ears that occasionally twitch take shape on Gellert’s feet.

Albus claps his hands together. “Ah. Lovely.” A job well done.

Resigned to his fate Gellert says, “Like walking through jam.” 

Albus gives a chuckle, looking up brightly into Grindewald’s eyes. His Great Enemy and his Great…something else, “Gellert, I…” Albus falters. He can’t say it. Not this. Not to him. Some Gryffindor he is. He is as foolish and cowardly as he has always been, he should have known such integral traits wouldn’t change even when faced with imminent death. 

“You’re dying.” Whispers Gellert, the words loud and crashing through the stillness around them. 

Albus narrows his gaze on Gellert, “How did you know?”

Cadaverous cracks line charred skin that was once lightly tan and oft speckled with varying shades of ink, callused along the thumb and forefinger from writing with a quill for hours without respite. 

This hand that once held Gellert, once indented his skin in passion, caressed him in adoration…this hand that Gellert once held, once caressed…

“Magical decay leaves a certain…scent, shall we say? A curse of the darkest of arts. What have you been up to without me Albus? I never took you to be so careless.”

“I found it. The stone.” These meagre words bind and cage them with heavy shunting breaths of dread, anticipatory in its own way. 

Gellert drowns in Albus’ shimmering eyes, paling even further in the shafts of moonlight lancing through the bars of his cell. “Did you…”

“Alas, you need not worry Gellert.” Albus looks up from the cracked stone he had been inspecting on the ground, a small broken smile curving his lips, “I am as I have always been. I knew even before I put it on that what happened to Ariana was my responsibility to bear. Whether it was at your hand or Ab’s…it matters very little.”

Gellert chuckles, after all, Albus is as he always was.

“Have you come for pity Albus? Perhaps some reassurance that you are not the monster you believe yourself to be? I have nothing for you. You are the very thing that you claim to so despise, Leader of the Light. Your ‘greater good’ has blackened and leeched your soul just as you once claimed it had mine. You are a fool Albus.”

Albus had expected this Gellert, he knew this bitterness with the intimacy of years. 

“I did not come for pity Gellert, I know what I am. I-I merely came to say goodbye.” Albus said with an earnestness that cracked through his already wavering voice. Naturally, everything was going to absolute shambles. 

“Ah. And I had thought we had seen to that particular obeisance fifty years ago.”

“It is as you said Gellert, I am dying. Surely you can forgive an old man his sentimentality-” 

Gellert scoffs incredulously, his eyes narrowing on the other man's open beseechment. “I would forgive you nothing, Dumbledore. You have done little and less to deserve it.”

“I have missed you, Gel.”

Gellert knows and understands with every fibre of his being that that is absolute scheisse. Instead he diplomatically says, “I would not know it.” Let the bastard think he is just as aloof.

Albus paces to the side in annoyance, “Why must you be like this?”

“Like this? Like this!” Gellert vehemently shakes his head. He can no longer stand to look at Albus and stalks tightly to the back of his cell, placing his palm flat along the roughly hewn stone. 

“What do you want from me Albus?”

“As I said, to say goodbye-”

Gellert whips back to face Albus.

“No. The truth. Whether you are merely hiding it from me or from yourself as well, I would have it now. In full. If this is to be our last, true, goodbye. What do you want from me? Why have you come? This night of all others?”

“I had to see you before…I needed to-.” Albus rubs a tired hand across his face. He moves towards the cell bars, closer to Gellert than he has been in fifty years. “Do you get the papers here?” questions Albus with a certain forced cheer.

“Dumbledore.” he growls. Gellert will not let him convince him off topic. Not tonight.

Albus holds up a hand as if to forestall Gellerts ire, “I am in them quite often. Mostly political pieces but some have been more…I am still a bachelor. Many articles have, in the past, wondered as to why. None striking so near to the ‘heart’ of the matter.” Dumbledore gives an empty chuckle, gazing determinedly at his slippers. “There was never anyone else.” He glances up and his shimmering blue lock with Gellerts glazed heterochromatic. “I had tried once or twice, alas, I had rather already met the only one. You never left me. Those first months and every moment after have haunted-”

Gellert surges forward from the back of his cell, clutching fervently at the cold bars. “Do not speak of love to me Albus, as though you are the one who has longed in exile all these years. I have been here. Where you put me.”

Dumbledore gives a single resolute shake of his head. “Where you put yourself. A prison you made for yourself, Gellert. One I could not bear to see you in.”

“Yet you bear it now!” Gellert shouts, spittle flying from his mouth.

“At the end, yes! My end. Tomorrow I will die. It is planned. All the arrangements have been made, Merlin save me. And on my last night on Earth when I should be ensuring the final stages of all my planning and hard work. Ensuring the fate of our world, of the muggle world! I could not think my way around the invading thought of you! I love you Gellert. I have loved you in agony and in silence since those first days of sunlight and through every darkness since. It is no small thing to see the love of your life as he rots, a mausoleum to his own worst mistakes.”

For a moment Gellert is perfectly still, then, coming back to himself he yanks his hands away, his face twisting in disgust. “You have left me and there is no love in that.”

“Gellert-”

“Fifty years-” Gellert’s voice cracks and is hurriedly cleared, “Fifty years stripped of my magic, alone and rotting in this ‘mausoleum’, as you say! It may feel unbearable to you in the abstract Albus, but I have lived it! Every hollow agony, memory blurring and sanity dwindling, always plagued by you! ” Gellert slams his hand against the bars once, “Would you write me?”, twice, “Send me those insipid socks that I received annually even after Bhutan!?” three times, “Did you think of me? This me? Not some idealised youth of your memory?” Before Gellert could hit the bars a fourth time, Albus grabs those tender hands wrinkled with age, red and bruising from their recent battering. He holds them gently against the bars as Gellert’s breathing begins to slow. “You should have killed me that day Albus. I have been barely a wraith since. Death would have been kinder.” Tears track openly down Albus’ cheeks before disappearing into his beard. 

“No, Gellert. I fear I would never have been able to see such a thing through."

"Even if it led to my peace?"

"I have never known you to be a peaceful soul, Gellert."

"If not peaceful then at least away from this."

Albus cannot give him the answer he wants so instead he leans his forehead against Gellert's, only the bars interrupting the feel of his skin, “Seeing you chained at my feet…fate seemed such an unrelenting force that not even I could stand against it any longer. I spent years putting off fighting you. Surely you must know that.” Albus pleads in halting whispers. Gellert makes no verbal response but instead slides his hands from under Albus’s own and moves them along his arms to clutch at his shoulders, weaving gentle fingers into the lengths of his hair.

Albus’s breathing stutters with the sharp reminder of each kindred comfort previously lost to the duration of years in absentia. 

Strengthening his own grip insomuch as he is able, Albus moves his blackened hand up and along the curve of Gellerts cheekbone. Their harsh breathing, louder, even than the lash of the wind outside the tallest tower. “You were never my enemy either Gellert. It devastated me to face you in such direct combat but equally I could not compromise my principles and join you in such cruelties,” Albus’s forehead crinkles, his face bearing the weight of his years, “yet what I have done since to the people who I would claim to hold dearest, what I am still to do to them…to ask of them. It would seem that in seeking to protect those I love the most I have only seen them to a quicker and more harrowing end.”

Gellert hums lightly while soothing his fingers through the strands of Albus’s hair, “Yet you would carry out your plan?”

Albus drops his hand from Gellert’s face, “I see no other way to defeat Voldemort.”

Gellert snorts, “Only a brief moment of clarity then.” straightening, he gentles his hold on Albus, “Perhaps, Albus it is not only yours to see.”

“If only it were so simple.” Albus heaves a great sigh. “I once more feel the ponderosity of fate driving us all towards a seemingly inevitable end.” Albus studies Gellert’s face. “Gellert I know what you must think. It is not merely that I do not see what damage I have done, but that I have brought the entire Wizarding World so far down this path that I fear turning back now would lead to a future far more terrible than even you could contemplate.” Albus shakes his head, considering for a moment, “Perhaps if I had not let certain… events colour my judgement…” Albus shakes his head again, “To ‘put all my cards on the table’ as the muggles say, I spent an embarrassingly long time believing that there was not a soul in the world who loved me. I let that fear and many others override any wisdom I possessed. My abandonment and mistrust led to the creation of a second Dark Lord. I moralised love yet when it came to act practised distance. Now, at the end of my life, it is only too clear how I have harmed you all and the mistakes that have compelled our various ends.”

“I do miss your suits.” The shock of such a non-sequitur forces them both  to huff a laugh.

“And I yours.” Albus frowns in contemplation. “They never felt quite right after that day. In any case robes are so much more breathable-”

“And in your case just the right balance of dramatic eccentricity.” said Gellert blithely and they both laugh until Gellert’s eyes catch once more on Albus’s blackened hand and it suddenly becomes all he can see. He reaches out and holds the fractured skin gently in his grasp.

“There is truly nothing…?” Gellert murmurs around the weight settling in his throat.

“Alas, even my dear Severus could not break the curse Voldemort placed upon the stone.” With a fond smile and distant eyes Dumbledore says, “There is no brighter Potions Master in our world.” Refocusing on Gellert, “Though we did not enjoy such constancy in this life, perhaps when we meet in the next we will spend it together in its entirety,” Albus holds Gellert’s gaze with a jovial twinkle, “a pact unbroken.”

Gellert smiles in a miserable sort of way that bears new depths of his grief. 

Damaged though Gellert knows Albus is, his intentions remain as pure of heart as the Quilin had deemed him all those years ago. Though his methods had taken a decidedly darker turn. No, Gellert knew that his own intentions and methods would send him to a far different place than his dear foolish Albus. “Of course, mein schatz.” proudly, his voice only barely breaks and not a single tear falls. Until he looks up to Albus’s face.

It is a study in anguish “Gel…” his voice is fragmented and rasping. 

“To ‘put my own cards on the table’, you were correct. I crafted my own prison.” Gellert looks away from Albus and into the past, “I should have left the coffee shop with you. It was madness. You had already given me the only thing I had ever…” he clears his throat, “I should not have left you to deal with Ariana’s passing on your own. I should have been more careful. What I have done,” Gellert looks back at Albus's ashen face, his tears, “It was wrong. I was wrong. The muggles. I should have found another way. We could have found another way together.”

“Du bist die Liebe meines Lebens.” Gellert whispers each word a tender and searing brand.

Albus raises Gellert’s hand and presses a steady kiss along his knuckles. But as he begins to move away Gellert gently pulls Albus’s blackened hand forward and reverently kisses the centre of his palm. And though the skin is no longer soft and the nerves no longer feel, Albus feels Gellert’s tears finally escape from his eyes and run over the mess of his hand. He feels the love and pain and longing in his kiss. 

And he does not leave until the first rays of the sun's light push past the cold and through the bars of Gellert’s window, encircling them both in its golden light. 

_______________________________

Grindelwald: So you have come. I thought you would… one day. But your journey was pointless. I never had it.

Voldemort: You lie.

“Kill me, then!” demanded the old man. “You will not win, you cannot win! That wand will never, ever be yours – ”

And Voldemort’s fury broke: A burst of green light filled the prison room and the frail old body was lifted from its hard bed and then fell back lifeless, and Voldemort returned to the window, his wrath barely controllable.

_______________________________

At last he said, "Grindelwald tried to stop Voldemort going after the wand. He lied, you know, pretended he had never had it."

Dumbledore nodded, looking down at his lap, tears still glittering on the crooked nose.

"They say he showed remorse in later years, alone in his cell at Nurmengard. I hope that is true. I would like to think that he did feel the horror and shame of what he had done. Perhaps that lie to Voldemort was his attempt to make amends... to prevent Voldemort from taking the Hallow..."

"...or maybe from breaking into your tomb?" suggested Harry, and Dumbledore dabbed his eyes.

__________________________________

Between the endless black of life leaving one world and the shock of white as it enters into the next the anguish of failures and the yearning of loss depart into the muted past. Only the profundity of love interwoven between two fated souls as they move from this world and into the next remains.

“IN THE DARKNESS, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.” The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller