albus.

how much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder? bio - connections - tracker

[endingthemes]

[hairyhearted]

halgian‌:

Dying he says, as though it is nothing. “I’m just dying.” Albus’ kindness burns, as it always does. Gellert has never wanted his kindess, the soft look in his eyes that says “pity” and “I’m sorry”. Dying he says, and Gellert is not surprised, but a quiet sort of bitterness comes with it. All men are mortal after all, it seems, even the ones who should not be.

(Would that they could live forever, he once thought so long ago. Would that they could have all the time in the world to play out this little game of theirs, stretched out through the centuries. Allow the mortals and petty things to blur out around them, what do human things matter when you can live forever, when you walk as gods among men? How beautiful would it be to not be held down by the attachments of this world? He wonders if Albus has ever longed for such a thing, just a taste.)

So calm he is, in face of his own death. ”Allow me my paranoia, and vices.” Of course he is. He is Albus Dumbledore, ever the unflappable, the unafraid. How sensible. Gellert is not afraid either, he has no grief to give (yet). Albus is not dead yet.

(He will not die at all, if Gellert has anything to say about it, and he does.)

“Reformed?” Gellert says like he is amused, like he hasn’t heard anything else Albus has said. He tucks his hand onto the back of Albus’ neck, a possessive gesture, proprietary. He digs his nails into the back of Albus’ neck and brings them lovingly into intimate proximity. Charlot’s face may be unwanted, but it is not unappealing. (Not when he feels their deadline looming. Not when he will take what he can get.) “No never, but I can be good. For you I can be very good.”

He smiles, a teasing thing, full of promises and secrets for two. “We both know how much you like it when I’m good.” Obedient. Gellert has not felt obedient in a long time.

Gellert kisses him then, because he can, and more to the point Albus can’t stop him. Charlot’s lips are full in a way he doesn’t remember Albus’ being, and it is a closed lip, prefunctatory thing, dry and unpleasant; it is their first kiss in 80 years. It is rapture.

(Gellert decides that if Albus must die than it will not be by whatever mysterious wound or illness that has befallen him. Should he fail so completely that he cannot fix this, Albus’ life will be his for the taking. If he cannot have Albus in life than he will surely have him in death.)

“Have you resigned yourself to your mortality, old friend?” Gellert asks in a whisper against Albus’ ear when he is done. They are chest to chest in the shallow light of the bathroom, with the lingering scent of blood hanging around them. “Do you really believe I will let you go that easily?”

“Let me be good for you.” He entreats while he soothes the small, crescent shaped hurts his nails have caused on the back of Albus’ neck. “Let me be your tool. We will fix this, together.”

He pulls back then, so that he may see Albus’ eyes. They are not Albus’ in truth, but here is perhaps the one thing that Charlot and Albus have in common. There is no mad smile on Gellert’s face, no teasing to his voice. “Tell me what it is.”

Albus does not accept the kiss, but nor does he technically refuse it either. He might as well be a statue standing there, Charlot’s pretty face carved from cold white marble, for all he reciprocates. It must be uncomfortable for Gellert, Albus imagines. But then, he imagines even the idea of intimacy with Albus must be uncomfortable for him. It’s curious how Gellert has still been the one to seek it out even so; then and now.

He doesn’t want to be touched. Albus has been cold these last months, a last line of defense. He is acutely aware of what allowing himself to get too close again would do. All paths to the future from here are painful, a carefully laid out hand of tarot. Death, reversed. The Devil. The Three of Swords. The Lovers, reversed. It’s the wrong suits, it isn’t a game Albus can win; he can’t count cards, he can’t bet, he can only speculate as to the path that will cause the least amount of pain.

Cruelty is a tool Albus is familiar with, used with the intent of mercy, of minimizing long-term pain. Albus has been cruel to his colleagues, to Alastor and Minerva, to the Order as a whole. He has been cruel to Aberforth, on more than one occasion. He has been cruel to Tom Riddle. He has been cruel to Gellert Grindelwald.

Albus has been cold.

He reaches for the curve of Gellert’s jaw, when Gellert finally pulls back to look at him. Charlot’s hands are small and soft and lily-white, but Albus’s touch has never been anything but commanding. He holds Gellert Grindelwald’s face and thinks of love, but it is not a comfort. He thinks of love and thinks of the absence of it, because love complicates things, love is involuntary and devestating. Albus wishes for the absence of love, and still remembers the way he cupped Tom Riddle’s face in his hands like so almost forty years ago, how the chill of his skin lingered on Albus's palms.

“I do have my reasons for not confiding in you, my dear.” It’s so strange to look up at him, but that he is no longer looking down at Gellert doesn’t mean his words are any less patronizing. He pauses for a long time there, lips pressed together tightly, harsh lines around his eyes.

“You have been good for me,” he confirms finally, a murmur. It has a sexual undertone and it doesn’t. He still remembers. “Though I feel obligated to remind you that was eighty years ago, and you were--you were fifteen.” It sounds bleak and damning, stated like that, so calmly. Nevermind that Albus was only three years older, it doesn’t matter. Albus continues, and the list of his sins grows. “I am uncertain of your ability to be good for me now.”

Later, perhaps, he might regret that; not accepting what Gellert has offered him. Obedience is a gift, and not always one given freely. Albus had been uncertain, that summer all those years ago, if he really had taken it from Gellert. If he even needed to.

There are things, Albus understands, that others will give him if only he asks in the right way, with the right backing. He has become aware of the things carefully placed words can accomplish. He is not eighteen anymore.

“And so I don’t see the point in addressing that,“ he is dismissive again, tone clipped, and he drops his hand from Gellert’s face and takes a step backward, an appropriate safe distance, “if we are only to talk. But very well, I will tell you what it is.”

What it is isn’t particularly interesting. Albus has accepted that, though he continues to search for information, for a cure. He is aware, at least, that he will never find what he is looking for.

“I was hit with a particular curse that night at the Ministry; and one that by all rights ought to have killed me then. It is... obscure and incurable. The potions I’m taking are extending my life. Perhaps two years, if I am lucky.” Charlot’s eyes don’t twinkle in the way Albus’s do, but they are dull now nonetheless. Albus hesitates, speaks lower. “I couldn’t see for certain who cast the curse, but I suspect it may have been Tom Riddle himself. Or I suppose, as you would know of him, Lord Voldemort.”

[dailywizardwheezes]

I’m not buying the whole “accident” thing Albus

[endlessly-unwinding]

I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work.

Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper War of the Foxes, Richard Siken (via endlessly-unwinding)

[rockatanskymax]

[hairyhearted]

c. 1943, after curfew | albus dumbledore’s office, hogwarts closed thread @kcdavras | “ than to be fed by anyone else ”

Tom Riddle’s hands are very cold where Albus closes them gently around the hot teacup. This is Albus being kind, though perhaps Tom won’t see it as so. He is ever aware of the potential for cruelty in their interactions, and supposes the desire to be cruel will never leave him. Tom admires him, Albus knows this. Tom also shies away from Albus’s kindness, and that is a familiar sentiment, one Albus recognizes as easily in Tom as he recognized it in himself, almost forty five years ago.

The intent is different. Albus only has the best of intentions, he tells himself this; he is not volatile and overeager Gellert Grindelwald trying to force his way into someone’s bed. Albus is only the kindly old mentor, attempting to counsel a troubled student. That is all.

“Sugar?“ he asks lightly when he pulls his hands away, though the chill of Tom’s skin lingers on his palms. He pours several spoonfuls into his own cup, then nudges the container across towards Tom. Something sweet could do him some good. There’s a tin of candies on the desk too, lemon drops dusted in white sugar, and he nudges that towards Tom as well.

He has taken to offering Tom tea and sweets because there is little else, these days, that Albus can offer him. A guiding hand, after all, is not a gift; but a tool meant to tame a thing, to mould it. He has taken to offering Tom tea and sweets as an apology, something sweet to soften the blow, something sweet to make a bitter pill easier to swallow.

He sips at his own tea, syrupy and still too hot, and peers intently at Tom over the rim of the cup. “I won’t ask what you were doing out after hours, Tom.” But he knows, doesn’t he? The Chamber of Secrets has been opened, and Tom’s hands are cold, and a dark shadow clings to him. It settles between his fingers and in the hollows of his cheeks and nestles between strands of straight black hair.

Albus, regrettably, has an eye for Dark things. He just... he wants to believe something else, wants to be wrong, wants to come up with some alternate theory where Tom is just Tom, just a bright if slightly troubled student. Troubled, he stresses, in the normal fashion for a sixteen year old. He is so bright. Albus knows he is not wrong.

“Nor will I hand you a detention or turn you in to Horace.” He is being too permissive, feeling the weight of playing favorites. “It will be our secret.” And Albus’s humor is dry here. If there’s a hint of a smile at his lips, it’s bitter. “But I will ask you to sit and talk with me, for a little while. Forgive me, but I’ve been concerned as of late. Is there something going on, Tom, something troubling you?”

[shadow-of-the-eclipse]

I think the most hard to believe thing about the new Fantastic Beasts movie will be how Dumbledore wears a grey smart well-fitted suit, costume department, have you read the books? There is no way Dumbledore would be caught dead in that, he’d be wearing bright aquamarine blue to bring out his eyes and it would be edged in yellow and orange with dancing pumpkins and everyone would look at it awkwardly and then not comment on why exactly this eccentric Transfiguration Professor is wearing such a hideous design and also somehow pulling it off, despite the orange clashing with his auburn hair.

[hairyhearted]

halgian‌:

For Albus to grace Gellert with his presence after a night on the town with his own face (they both know what he’s doing when he leaves without a word and not a drop of polyjuice in sight, but they never talk about it, of course not) is odd in the extreme. Gellert had rather gotten the impression that Albus was determined to ignore his activities (and him, if at all possible) until he was forced to acknowledge it (him). It seems Albus has rallied himself, if only for just tonight.

(Perhaps it has something to do with the flask of polyjuice he is holding but not drinking. That’s just a guess, though.)

“I have.” Gellert agrees, mild as anything, as though they speak of this all the time; just another piece of the domestic farce. -“And how did your excursion go, Darling?” “Well, My Dear. I slaughtered at least 5 filthy excuses for wizards.” “Splendid.”- “I see you have not. Trouble swallowing your fix tonight, Albus?”

Charlot’s face is pale and waxy even in the more forgiving shadows of the evening. He is handsome, oh yes, there is no denying that Albus has excellent taste, but Gellert’s mouth twists into a displeased grimace at the sight of it.

Charlot Delacroix is a lovely boy, but he is ugly camouflage to Gellert who has not seen Albus’ true face since 1945.

(Just what is Albus hiding beneath Charlot’s oh so pretty visage? Gellert doesn’t know. They don’t talk about it, and for as chatty as his sight is with Albus around, it will not show him this. Gellert only knows something is wrong.)

“You could leave it.” Gellert does not bother to hide how much the offered suggestion appeals to him. It’s a suggestion he hasn’t made to Albus before, well aware he would be ignored (they don’t talk about it). However, if Albus is being so kind as to break the ice first Gellert would be remiss to not respond in kind.

(They don’t talk about it. This is no delicate sheet of ice between them, it is deep permafrost containing all the things they don’t, won’t talk about. 80 years worth of things to say and they make small talk at the dinner table about the weather. -”It’s going to rain tomorrow”- Albus’ gentle touch barely scratches the surface.)                                                   

“You look better without it.” Gellert sounds unbearably fond. He knows he speaks the truth without having to see Albus’ face first. Albus has always been far too captivating for Gellert’s own good. Gellert allows himself to reach out with his hand and hover just shy of touching Albus’- Charlot’s cheek. Tempting, maddeningly so, but there with be no lover’s touch tonight. Instead his hand comes to rest on the open mouth of the flask in Albus’ hand.

“Don’t drink it.” he says, a hair short of an order. “if we a speaking I would speak to you, not the boy’s face you wear. Or are we still not talking, Albus?”

When Albus does speak to Gellert, it is only what is earned. He sighs, but the noise is dismissive rather than soft. “If you think I have not been leaving it, I have to wonder what you do think I’ve been doing these last months. I may be old in foolish, but not so foolish as to sit around twiddling my thumbs and assuming you have reformed.”

But they said, oh yes, they all said he must have come to repent his actions in his time alone locked away in Nurmengard. Albus thinks he knows Gellert better than that; he didn’t have to see the blood on his hands to know.

In the right light, Albus supposes, Gellert’s cause could be just. Particularly now. It’s blood for blood, eat or be eaten. And without Albus to stop him, he supposes there is little option but for Gellert to emerge the victor, however his motivations twist.

Albus will not stop him. For the Greater Good, if there ever was such a cause. Albus’s thoughts taste bitter, these days. He watches Gellert move in the mirror above the sink, never really looks at him, and shies away preemptively from a touch that never comes. He has done this before, the summer of 1899, June when he couldn’t figure out what he wanted or how he wanted it. He had shied away from Gellert’s interest then, too, but if he had weaponized it then it was without intention of doing so. Easier to feign disinterest and a lack of comfort, then come back and take advantage with his own ill intentions.

Gellert had been so very eager. Albus had disliked that at the time, wanted to be in full control of their situation. He still does. He’s better at it now than he was when he held Gellert down in that bedroom eighty some years ago and kissed him.

He watches Charlot’s pale face in the mirror and pulls he flask out from under Gellert’s hand. The fondness is uncomfortable, it makes him itch under the skin. “If you would like to talk, Gellert,” and his voice is sharp and cold. Albus tries to be impenetrable, smooth and cool like glass. Impossible to gain purchase on. “I don’t see how much of a difference it makes what face I wear, as long as my words are my own.”

He doesn’t take kindly to the almost-order, either. It was never his role to play.

“And--forgive me--if your interests encompass that beyond talking, I suppose it would be wise for me to remain as Charlot.” As you don’t want to fuck him. Albus tries to bite back these words. They are cruel. Albus tries, very hard, not to be cruel. Still, it’s impossible not to notice, how very eager Gellert still is. How he has expressed more interest in Albus as Charlot when he is wearing Mattias’s face. It’s alright, if we aren’t ourselves, Albus almost catches himself thinking on the worst nights, then sobers up. He hasn’t touched Gellert since 1899. “Considering that you don’t express nearly as much interest in taking him to bed.“

He drinks the potion. It slides down his throat, slimy and foul-tasting, but he manages not to be sick with it, manages to remain composed, though he’s certain his face is still waxy and flushed from illness.

“I am dying.“ It’s softer, kinder, than anything else he has said to Gellert in the months of their reunion. They don’t talk about it, they simply don’t talk. He hasn’t stated it before, not so plainly. “Allow me my paranoia, and my vices.”

[hairyhearted]

                    albus dumbledore + tom riddle // @kcdavras

all of your words they’ve been cursed with dishonesty

[hairyhearted]

c. mid-late may 1980 | a seedy bar in knockturn alley closed thread @sablemagician | “ under the table ”

Albus is–well, he’s a little sloppy when he’s drunk. It’s a motivator to cut himself off after two drinks, lest he run his mouth and give up the whole charade of Charlot. That, and Albus has already had his fill of making a fool of himself in his younger years. He’s almost one hundred. If he wants to drown his sorrows, he should be doing it alone in that cottage like a tomb, not… hanging around a seedy establishment surrounded by people a fraction of his age and half enjoying the atmosphere.

But… he isn’t Albus tonight (and as he is not Albus he is not drinking his sorrows away after the events of the last six months, he tries to convince himself of this), he’s Charlot, and Albus’s drunk self (it’s been more than two, that’s for certain) reasons that he likes being Charlot better. There’s something to be said for being young and pretty again, and perhaps more importantly, something to be said for fitting in. If anyone’s stared at him it’s because he is, as aforementioned, young and pretty again, not because he’s The Great Albus Dumbledore. (Though--when he remembers the last six months, he recalls another reason, one that’s settled in the pit of his stomach uncomfortably. It’s difficult, becoming accustomed to being dead.)

So he enjoys the attention. Just a little. It doesn’t surprise him, then, when someone sits down next to him at the bar. he half turns to greet them with a hello to you too (how drunk is he?) but before he has a chance, his hand knocks against the stranger’s when he goes for his glass, and Albus ends up knocking both of their drinks over. Sloppy.

“Oh, goodness, that was entirely my fault–“

He vanishes both puddles on the bar with a flick of his wand under the table and sets the empty glasses upright. Perhaps unconsciously, he leans in closer to the man--tall, blond hair speckled with gray, rather handsome, older than Charlot. He came into this bar without intentions and plans to leave without them too, but there’s no harm in... having fun for a few moments.

Albus doesn’t sound sorry at all, and if he notices any of it spilled on the stranger’s robes, he remains unapologetic.

“Let me buy you another drink, pet.”

[arcticbeatlesmonkeys]

Visit Original Link

Your past-times, consisted of the strange, And twisted and deranged, And I love that little game you had called, Crying lightning..

[hairyhearted]

c. late may 1980 | a bookstore in knockturn alley closed thread @kcdavras | “ discipline ”

He has come to enjoy this place, though he knows that he shouldn’t. The shops in Knockturn Alley are quiet in a way that’s unexpected. Take the taboo away from a thing and it holds less weight; dark wizards are free to roam the streets now, so why would they seclude themselves here?

Albus likes the bookshop in particular, cramped aisles and high dusty shelves. It’s hard to breathe when books are pulled down, the dust settles in his hair, in the folds of his robes. He breathes it in and feels far older than Charlot’s tragic thirty-five. The shopkeepers don’t bother him, even when he is stirring up dust. Alchemists are a funny sort, well known for being eccentric, well known for their strange experiments that push at the boundaries of magic. Not all of the books are Dark in excess, after all. Many of them are titles Albus recognizes from the restricted section at Hogwarts, though others he wouldn’t dare have put on the shelves at all.

Still, without access to Hogwarts, this is his best opportunity for finding information. A large part of him is certain Benjy won’t find anything in his studies, and that Gellert wouldn’t come up with anything useful either. If Albus wants the thing done he must do it himself.

It’s only--the tall shelves aren’t helping. The ladder doesn’t reach the top, and Charlot is missing a good six inches of height needed to pull anything down from the top shelf. Albus doesn’t make a habit of using his wand in public, nor wandless magic, too distinctive of a dead wizard far more powerful than Charlot Delacroix has any business being.

He goes looking for a clerk for help, and finds Tom Riddle instead, standing behind him in the aisle.

In the moments between seeing him and reacting Albus wonders with his back against the ladder, in a detached sort of way, what Charlot’s face looks like when he sees Tom. Charlot has blue eyes too reminiscent of Albus’s own, but his face is soft and his gaze doesn’t hold the same hard edge. He looks, Albus expects, a bit like a deer in the headlights. And if he were anyone but Albus Dumbledore, he might feel the same.

He ought to extricate himself from the situation, Pretend he is in fear, perhaps, and scurry out without meeting the eyes of the man who was Tom Riddle. Instead, Albus smiles guilelessly. Charlot is a pretty young man, charming, the sort of boy who might have caught Albus’s eye. Tom was similarly charming once--and he’s still handsome, in the same way Albus thought of Gellert as still beautiful when they met again in 1945. Albus doesn’t want to dwell on those things; sometimes, he thinks, that is his curse.

“Oh--I’m sorry, I didn’t notice you there.” Yes, Charlot is very clever and very cute, and Albus can play unassuming, play a bit ditzy. He doesn’t care for wilting under Tom’s gaze. It doesn’t seem so long ago that Tom was a young man himself, hanging off of Albus’s words. He liked the feeling. He won’t admit that. “Actually, I could use a spot of help.” His smile turns sheepish, and he clutches his other books to his chest. Everything is deliberate. “I’m, er, having a bit of trouble reaching that book on curses on the top shelf. If you could give me a hand, I would be much obliged.”

[kogniresources-blog]

[hairyhearted]

McGonagall: Albus, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Dumbledore: Assassinated.

[hairyhearted]

c. mid to late may 1980 | the english countryside closed thread @halgian​ | “ where the heart is ”

The safehouse feels smaller than any place he’s ever lived. Smaller than that flat in Paris in 1901, smaller than the room borrowed from Flamel, smaller than the shitty rundown inns he’s been bouncing around with Gellert for the last two months across Europe, with their peeling wallpaper and motheaten curtains. He didn’t think anything would feel more like a tomb than that, laying side by side but never touching on a cramped mattress, staring at paint chips and spiderwebs on the ceiling well into the night. 

It’s about the principle of the thing, not the square footage. There are separate rooms, even. Albus wanted to make sure he was comfortable if he ever had to hide, years ago when he purchased the cottage at the first whisperings of war. He expected to use it, yes, but not like this.

Some nights he thinks he’s going to die here, and then remembers he has something he needs to do before then, some greater purpose. Albus is tired. Some nights he sleeps too much, sleeps through the next day, and some nights he doesn’t sleep at all.

Some nights Gellert comes home with blood on his coat and it isn’t that Albus doesn’t know what to do about it and more that he’s not sure if he wants to do something about it. They don’t talk, they just don’t talk, and if there is anything Albus is exceptional at it’s turning a blind eye. The sound of the tap in the bathroom makes him want to be sick. He is going to be sick.

He doesn’t know what time it is except that it’s late-late, pitch black out the sliver of window not covered by the heavy curtains. Black glass like a porthole, underwater, down so deep no light reaches the seafloor. The water is still running in the bathroom. Albus stumbles out of the bedroom in his nightclothes, his own nightclothes, and they hang too long and too loose on Charlot’s small frame.

Gellert has his hands in the sink and blood between his fingers. The water runs pink in the basin. Gellert is Gellert tonight, which means he comes in late with blood on his hands, remnants of a Death Eater Albus very likely taught and also will likely never know the name of. It’s trying times. Albus doesn’t generally wake up, easier to never look than look away. But he’ll spare Gellert the lecture on excessive force tonight. After all, they don’t talk.

He reaches for the potion flask on the counter and manages to knock everything else over in the process, hands shaking. It only takes a wandless wave of his wrist to put everything back in order, and the blood vanishes from the sink and Gellert’s skin, too.

Their shoulders brush when Albus uncaps the flask, but he only holds the Polyjuice in his hands for the moment, doesn’t drink. It’s a spot of paranoia, perhaps, keeping Charlot’s face all the time, even when alone. He might never know if someone’s watching, if a raid is about to happen in the little community, if if if. Albus is tired.

“Good evening.“ His voice is calm, unfaltering, with the same temper and tone as always even as he thinks that he might actually be sick if he tries to drink the potion now. “I see you’ve been... busy.”

[fanonical]

The Heartwarming Adventures Of Tom Riddle, Teenage Edgelord, And How He Learned Not To Be A Shitty Person

(a fanfic by Albus Dumbledore)

[hairyhearted]

- - - - - ALBUS AND GELLERT - polyjuice identities