Chapter 3
For once, surprisingly, Gellert felt happy about something other than his studies. Two weeks he had spent in Godric's Hollow, and he had started talking to Albus more, finding out he didn’t want to hide any more from muggles either. It started with them meeting maybe once a day and in two weeks they were spending from lunch to almost dinner with each other talking about plans and the hallows.
They were currently in Gellerts’ room, and he was watching Albus going through his book, fighting the urge to take it back. “You really should actually organize this, like get a folder for all these loose papers” Albus looks at him and laughs a bit, shutting the book. “You can take your book back.”
After Gellert takes it back and puts it in his drawer; he looks back at Albus “Don’t look at me like that” he fixes his shirt, “stop looking at me like that, do I have something on…” he stops, even if hes been speaking English since he was little he still had trouble with translating since he didn’t speak it often because he only talked when necessary at school. He glares at Albus when he hears him laugh quietly and looks at the mirror.
Albus smiles more and laughs. “No there is nothing on your face Gellert, I forget sometimes people don’t like to share their things” he looks at the time, “I should get back before Aberfroth attempts to make dinner.” He goes to get up and take his things. He takes the bag that Gellert hands him “Thanks” Albus goes to walk out the door, “Oh, we should go somewhere else tomorrow like outside. I’m getting antsy sitting inside all the time when it's so nice out.
Gellert looks at him, studying his face again, he had been moving around in his seat more the past couple days than the week before. He hadn’t been getting like that, but he also wasn’t someone who needed to be outside to get out energy. “Ok, let's go look through the graveyard then”, he watches him leave the room after a nod and then goes to his window to watch Albus walk down the road to his house.
He closes his eyes for a second getting a glimpse of a vision before opening them again, he closes them again but doesn’t get the vision again, instead he gets the same war he has seen between the muggles that he has seen before. He sighs and takes out his bag, looking for the set of tarot cards that Dumstrangs’ divination teacher insisted he took when he found out he was a true seer.
He hadn’t used them before, he tended not to, knowing that if he had a short vision, a longer one will most likely follow of the same scene. But this glimpse, a glimpse of Albus and him kissing under a tree, he couldn’t tell if it was just his imagination talking or an actual vision. He opens the small metal box and takes out the cards, going to the table and sitting down. He starts shuffling them, overhanging and riffling them for a few minutes until he throws them to spread out on the table. Three were flipped over; the lovers, the ace of wands, and the justice, all upright.
The lovers ; upright it traditionally it means to reflect the challenges of choosing a partner. At a crossroads, one cannot take both paths. More modernly it has taken a strictly romantic role, that you may believe to have found your soul-mate and have a strong connection with them, this new meaning also implies that the feeling is mutual and goes beyond instant gratification.
The ace of wands ; upright it offers new opportunities or ideas with the potential to grow. It also is often associated with inspiration, ambition, drive, and desire. It can refer to an action setting of a chain of events, like a new beginning or a birth. Furthermore, it also can represent a will that is entirely focused on seeing an idea through to the end.
Justice ; it has to do with moral sensitivity and that which gives rise to empathy, compassion, and a sense of fairness. Since the time of Solomon, this image has represented a standard for the humane and fair-minded treatment of other beings.
Gellert sits in the chair and looks at them while putting the other cards back in a deck. The ace of wands is a card he would expect to get with his plans for a new world, it would make sense since he would achieve that goal or die trying. Justice he would be able to see except he lacks the empathy or compassion for muggles in uniting them, if muggles die in his fight for a world with no hiding he wouldn’t care. They killed his kind for hundreds of years, simply because they existed, but that doesn’t mean he would actively search out to kill them. And the lovers…he just simply couldn’t see that card at all resonating with him or his future; he has never felt love or at least remember feeling love for anyone, nor has he seen someone as his equal as most partners do. He honestly believes he doesn’t have the capacity to love someone, only his ideas and his purpose, but these cards state otherwise. He wants to believe they’re wrong but when a true seer throws or shuffles cards they are rarely ever wrong.
He leans back and holds up the lover's card while looking at it, thinking back to his brief vision earlier, now convinced it was actually a vision. It would make sense the more he thinks about it, from the moment he saw Albus his life felt different. He gets a feeling he doesn’t know the name of every time he’s around, or he thinks of him, like he’s going to be sick but in a good way. His original plan was to leave and never come back but recently the thought of never seeing Albus again made him feel actually sick, like when someone takes his things and thinks they would get away with not giving them back.
At first he hated these feelings, he spent his whole life turning his uncomfortableness around people into numbness that the sudden change in emotion was jarring to him. But now, after only two weeks of knowing this other boy, he's started to like it, like he doesn’t want to live without it. He puts the cards back and casts a tempus to check the time and goes to get his dinner quietly. He looks at the dinner and only takes the bread and some vegetables going back upstairs.
He stops when he sees his great aunt standing at the stairs with her arms crossed. “Yes?” He looks at her and notices she's looking at his plate and glares at her “There is nothing wrong with my dinner”. It's not the first time she's done this.
“Go back and put some meat and dairy on that plate, you are 17. I shouldn't have to be telling you what to do for you to survive.” The old woman doesn’t move from her place in the middle of the stairs.
“I’m not going to eat it, I don’t like fish pie.” he attempts to go past her but can’t “I’m fine”, he keeps glaring at her
“Meat and dairy.” She says simply.
He goes back down and puts his food back going out the door, he’ll get dinner elsewhere then. He walks down the street, and it starts to rain, and he gets soaked before he could cast an umbrella charm “Großartig*” he mumbles and looks around for shelter noticing in his random walking pattern he ended up by Albus’ house and goes over, knocking on the door.
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Albus had gotten home and had to, quite forcibly, push Aberforth away from the kitchen. “You’ll end up burning down the house, remember what happened last time you tried to cook.” Blocks the door reminding his little brother of when he tried to cook the muggle way and half the kitchen caught fire.
“That was one time, and I'm a better cook than you!”
He looks at his brother and tilts his head. “That was last week” He looks at the counter, “What were you going to make” he goes over to look at the ingredients. Most of them were everyday occurrences like beef, onions, celery, and carrots. He raises an eyebrow at Aberforth “You know I’m not afraid to read your thoughts”, he watches as his brother goes upstairs, he sighs “Ok then a quick beef stew”
He starts making dinner, luckily they had some leftover stock stored so he could make it in an hour or so. He ignites the stove so the pot could simmer and goes to sit with Ariana at the table “Who is the flower crown for, Ari?” He watches her make it, and smiles when she puts it on his head “Thank you”. He fixes her hair and hums, “How about we go to the garden and get something to make into a salad to go with dinner?” Albus gets up with a roll of his shoulders.
“Yes!” Ariana gets up and goes outside with him. Albus checks some of the vegetables they have and sighs “not quite ready yet. Can you go pick some cherries?” He watches as she goes to the sole cherry tree they grew, then he goes to pick some currents and elderberries that were wild in the yard, he also finds some strawberries, black berries, and raspberries.
They could make a fruit salad out of this, just something to go with dinner other than soup and day old bread. Albus looks up as he hears thunder and quickly ushers Ariana inside “thank you for helping Ariana”. Albus takes a bowl and puts the fruit in it, going to wash it “can you get Aberforth please, he’ll actually come down with you ask him.”
Albus sets to work de-pitting and prepping the fruit just putting them together in a bowl except for the strawberries since Aberforth doesn’t like them. He was just going to check the stew when he heard a knock on the door which was odd, no one should be out right now considering it's pouring like merlin himself was out for revenge on Mab.
Albus cleans his hands and goes to the door, opening it he gasps “merlins’ beard gellert what are you doing out!” he pulls him inside and looks at him “you’re soaked”
Gellert takes the spell off and puts his wand away after drying himself off “oh really Albus? I hadn't noticed”
“What are you doing out anyway, did you not see the clouds?” Albus locks the door so it doesn’t fly open and turns back to his friend, turning straight to look at his chin and neck since he was so close. He takes a second to calm himself with how close he was considering he hadn’t expected him to be so close when he turned around and looked up at him “do you want to back up so we can have a proper conversation?”
Gellert takes a few steps back and looks at the slightly shorter teen, “no I did not notice, I was thinking when it started rained” he glares when Albus chuckles “how many times do I have to say to not to laugh at me”
Albus calms down “sorry you just are funny when you mess up, rained is an actual word but what you meant was raining. You still didn’t answer my questions about what you were doing outside in the first place”
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Gellert hums and looks around Albus’ house, it was only the third time he had been in it and was still looking over the details. “Aunt Balthida made fish pie for dinner, I’m not very fond of cod” he goes to sit down “I was planning on climbing back through my window later in the night but I think that is out of the question now.” The rain didn't seem like it was going to stop at any point soon. He looks over to Albus. “Your house is quieter than I originally thought.”
He watches Albus glance upstairs “Ariana and Aberforth are getting cleaned up for dinner. If you haven’t eaten, I can set a plate for you.”
Gellert leans forward a bit and looks at him “if it is not cod then I would like to accept”
Albus smiles “good, and it's beef stew with bread and fruit we found in the garden” he goes to the stairs “Ari, Abe hurry up dinner's ready! And we have a guest!” Albus waits for a reply of the affirmative that they are coming down before going back over to Gellert.
Gellert gets up “you don’t have a dining room?” He looks around while only seeing two doors, one that leads to the hallway with the stairs upstairs and another that leads to the kitchen.
Albus leads him to the kitchen and lets his magic make the bowls of soup and plates of fruit. “No we just eat in the kitchen…our mom was muggle so she couldn’t expand the house when we moved here…” Albus looks up as his siblings come into the kitchen “good, you two remember Gellert, Ms.bagshots nephew”
Gellert gives a glance to Aberforth then smiles to Ariana “hello Ariana how have you been” he pulls the chair out so she could sit and then sits down himself, noting the glare he received from Aberforth.
Ariana smiles “thank you”
Albus hums and gives his siblings their food, then Gellert and finally sits down himself. “Aberforth I didn’t expect you to voluntarily sit next to Gellert” he laughs at his glare and eats then hums “Gellert, it’s probably better for you to stay here tonight. The wind is starting to pick up and you might not be able to walk back”
He looks up from the food to the window in the kitchen “you’re right Albus, but I don’t want to intrude on your family's nightly activities”. He hums at Aberforth's smirk, ‘little shit’ he thinks and smirks back“ on second thought I would actually like to,” he finishes his bread “as long as you make breakfast tomorrow, this dinner is delicious”
Albus nods “Sure though Aberforth is actually a lot better with me since he had more interest in helping mother when we were younger,” he laughs “and I’ll set a room up for tonight after I clean up dinner”. He had quickly finished his own food, not being that hungry. He charms his plates to clean themselves.
Aberforth glares at Grindelwald “he can sleep in my room, I don’t trust him”
Albus gets up “If you don’t trust him then he can sleep in my room.” He waits until Gellert is done “can you two wash the dishes while I set things up” looks at Aberforth and I better not come back down and only Ariana is cleaning up” he goes upstairs with Gellert, “this is my room” he takes an extra pillow and transfigures it into a mattress.
Gellert looks around at the small room. It was simple, obviously Albus didn’t feel like putting his stuff back where they were after he returned. He hums, amused, and picks up a small rock and turns it over a few times; seeing nothing special about it “this is a very peculiar thing to have in your room.” he looks up at Albus as he comes over.
“Oh that,” Albus smiles a bit and gently takes it “a first year gave it to me in my 7th year, I was helping her with her Defense against the dark arts work” he puts it back down “and I know my room is small but it has everything I need” he sits on his bed “ you can take my bed or the floor mattress your pick”
Albus watches Gellert continue to look around the room and smiles a bit, “I never asked, how old are you?” he watches as he stops and looks like he was doing math in his head
Gellert turns to him, he never really celebrated his birthday since he was always in school or tutors for it so he had to calculate it quickly “I just turned 17 in March, why” He knew Albus was a couple years older than him, he went to look him up in books after he met him. Gellert goes to sit on the mattress and keeps looking at him.
Albus shrugs “just wanted to know because knowing you, you found out everything you could about me after we met.” He gets up again and stretches “I’m going to check on my brother and sister, you can stay up here, sorry I might not have anything to give you to wear for the night but you can look though.” he goes back downstairs.
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After around 20 minutes, the last 10 he was looking through Albus’ closet just because and not really looking for clothes, he heard yelling downstairs and; oddly the house was shaking like it was being attacked. He runs to the stairs where Aberforth was agaisn’t the wall out of view from the stairs with his wand out and Albus was kneeling holding up a protection charm, holding off what looked like an obscurial.
Gellert takes out his wand when Albus stops him “no! That’s Ariana, she just needs to calm down!” he looks at Albus “I thought your sister was a squib not an obscurus, and I wasn’t going to kill a child.” he helps strengthen the protection charm.
Albus looks at him “I never said that, and we don’t really like to talk about how she became one” he takes down the charm when she becomes herself again and lays on the stairs. He goes down and picks her up “shh Ari, we know you didn’t mean it” he brings her to her room “Aberforth get her a snack”
Gellert had gone back to the room and taken a piece of paper writing on it.
Albus watches as Ariana eats a snack and he tucks her in bed “get some rest”. “He hated that he couldn’t do anything for her. It made him so angry watching her in pain, watching her be in even more pain seeing her only family left either not talk to each other or constantly fight. He closes his eyes for a second and gets up after Ariana's breaths have evened out, going back to his room.
Gellert looks up when he comes in and hums “you wouldn't happen to have any more parchment and ink would you?” He had used most of the parchment he had found in Albus’ room and he had spilled it all over himself from moving too fast while writing.
Albus was surprised to see Gellert still there after what happened, even more to see him looking like a right mess surrounded by scattered papers. He had to take a couple seconds to collect his thoughts and went into the room. “What in Merlin's name happened to you…And I thought you would've wanted to leave after that” he sits on the mattress too and looks at the papers, they were more plans, with categories of other beings that even wizards saw as inferior. “Whats this?”
“New plans, I was so caught up in just trying to get us out of hiding I completely forgot about the magical creatures that hide even from us. As for the mess I had the ink floating and I hit it a little too hard.” Gellert looks back at him after putting the papers in a stack and handing them to him “why are you looking at me like that?” he wipes his face to see if there was ink on it.
Albus smiles as he listened to what Gellert was saying “you really so love everything except for muggles don’t you.” he laughs a bit and looks at the plans “..if we didn’t have to hide there wouldn’t be so many obscurus'” he says quietly “families wouldn’t have to see people they love suffer because they’re afraid to use their magic” he reads out loud.
“Exactly, I wouldn’t say love though” he looks at him “or would I, I don’t really know what love feels like”
Albus looks at him surprised, well he guesses it shouldn’t with how Gellert acts a lot; cunning and smart and he can definitely talk, but doesn’t know how to have an actual conversation where he doesn’t get defensive. “Well love feels like your world would collapse without them, like you would do anything for them.” he looks for the right words to describe it “and sometimes it feels like,”
“Like you’re going to be sick but you aren’t going to retch” Gellert interrupts.
“Yes.” Albus hums “exactly like that, though I prefer to say it feels like you swallowed a snitch” he laughs a bit “a bit more appealing phrase.” He raises an eyebrow at him and takes a cloth “for someone who just said he’s never felt love you sure described it well” he leans forward and cleans a spot of ink off his face. He gets caught by surprise when Gellert suddenly leans forward and kisses him.
Albus slowly puts his arms around him when he realizes that the kiss felt nice. He closes his eyes and leans into the kiss as it slowly gets deeper, Gellert starts to lay him on the mattress and he lets him. He’s never felt a kiss that felt this good before, not even with Elphius and that relationship was amazing. It felt like he was in clouds and eating the best Sherbet Lemons he could buy. He never wanted to stop kissing him…