Secrets

--

Maybe it was the summer heat that brought the words to my lips, or the chilled lemonade sweating on the windowsill of Gellert's room. Maybe it was the sound of children too young to even be developing magic laughing down the lane. Whatever it was that brought the words forth, once they had come, there was no sending them back, "Tell me a secret."

He looked up from the long scroll of parchment he was fervently scribbling on. His brown eyes were a bit dazed as if he had just awoken in an unfamiliar place, "Come again?" he asked, his accent snagging on the words as he spoke them.

"Tell me a secret." I repeated. To this day I do not know why I didn't just abandon the curiosity and tell Gellert to forget it.

"If I tell you, Albus, then it is no longer a secret."

"Well, I know that," it took a great deal of effort not to roll my eyes, "Reveal a secret to me." I amended.

"Why would I do that?" he asked me, a smile tugging his mouth into a crooked smile.

"Because we're friends," Could he read the truth on my face, "Friends confide in one another."

Gellert grinned and carefully rolled up the parchment and set it beside him on the carpeted floor. I was sprawled on his bed and he sat opposite me against the wall, "Very well, Albus, my friend, what do you wish to know?"

"Gellert, everyone has secrets," I pressed, "Just pick one."

He considered this for a moment and then said, "Expelling me from Durmstrang could never stand in my way."

I furrowed my brow, "That is hardly a secret."

"Very well," he mimicked a scowl, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter, "I was afraid of darkness for years. Terrified."

I raised an eyebrow, "Afraid of the dark? Honestly?"

"Yes, honestly!" Gellert must have seen my lips tighten and pale trying to conceal the laughter that tickled my throat because he added a bit viciously, "It's your turn."

I hesitated, "When my mum died I seriously considered not coming back home."

"I don't blame you!" Gellert shook his head, "You're a brilliant wizard! If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, it's a crime for you to be cooped up here with your idiot brother and that lunatic sister!" What was it that made me look past these slights to my loved ones and find the compliment hidden within the insults? I had always been intelligent (as half of the Wizarding World knew) and I knew what it was that I was feeling towards Gellert. I truly believed in the plans we were making, though. If I made some confession to him, would I be able to make him stay if he took the notion to go? Unless...could he possibly return my feelings? He must have seen the look on my face because he said, "I haven't ever kissed anyone." his accent was husky.

"Eh?" I couldn't have heard right.

"It was my turn to tell a secret, was it not?" I nodded slowly and he smiled gently. It was definitely the most benign expression I had ever witnessed upon his face,"I've never been kissed."

"I...really?" I was surprised. I suppose in my mind, I had imagined that I was not the only one that Gellert had enchanted without magic.

"Yes, really." already the smile was fading, "Now you go."

"I..." I swallowed, "I haven't had my first kiss either."

We looked at each other and time stopped, hanging unaltering in the air. To us, nothing moved but our eyes following the others. Brown on blue. We were not two 17-year-old boys sitting calmly in a bedroom in Godric's Hollow, we were two spirits suspended weightlessly in time and space. There was so much in life restraining me and confining me, bars to a cage I had never done anything to deserve, but suddenly those shackles were only words and faces foggy in my memory. It was a day when steam rose in ribbons and streams from the ground, but I couldn't feel the hot air pressing on my skin. I felt a gurgling fountain of warmth and shudders inside me and a shiver trickling down my spine. I felt Gellert's unwavering gaze; it thrilled me and frightened me at once. All he had to do was lean forward a tad or I could slide off the bed onto the ground with him...It didn't have to mean a thing; it could just be exploration...but it wasn't. Although it felt like a beautiful eternity, it was only a few moments and reality returned like lead when Gellert dragged his eyes from mine.

I discovered that I was breathing hard. My lungs were trying to recover from the assault that had just been waged against the quivering heart between them. Gellert got to his feet and retrieved the glasses of lemonade from the sill where we had placed them before. He drank deeply from his--he seemed to do everything with a great sense of purpose--and handed me mine. I nodded my thanks and drank some. Like everything else in my life, it was sweet and sour.

Gellert sat again where he had been and took up his parchment. He ran the end of his quill along his lip as he read over what he had already written. It had been only a week or so since we had met, but I already knew him. Or I thought I did.

I thought of the moment when we had so nearly shared our first kiss. I was filled suddenly with the buttery exhilaration that goes with secrets as well as the bitterness of regret, because I knew already that I would never share the memory with a soul.

--Fin--