Kestrels

Prompt: star crossed lovers

WC: 1091

It's not really meant to be all the time. Lives intersect, then leave in an instant. A constellation bows towards the earth for a week in a year and then disappears. Sometimes, love is more than the sparks and the heat of touch.

Gellert drew everyone in his circle like a star draws planets. For years, Albus would puzzle over this. He would try to figure out what it was, if it was the way he looked at you, or the way he spoke, or the speed at which his brilliant mind turned.

A simple hello would turn Albus's world backwards.

"Want to come with me to Hogsmeade?"

Sure, of course. Anything. We don't even have to do anything except sit.

"Write me letters over the summer when you're away!"

Albus wouldn't dare to say no.

He always felt like the center of the universe when Gellert looked at him. But too much gravity collapses unto itself until a black hole pulls everything around it into a suck of oblivion.

ONE.

"What'd you get for number five?"

Albus laughed. "God, Gellert, is arithmancy this hard for you?"

Gellert snorted in response. "As if."

"Do it yourself, then." Albus went back to his homework. He had big dreams. He wanted to be a Minister of Magic one day. Or at least a member of the Wizengamot. He'd work his way up from there.

Gellert and he talked about their dreams all the time.

Albus remembered the time he escaped from Godric's Hollow and they slid into the Muggle world, just imagining what it would be like if their worlds were one and the same.

"Think of the power of modern medicine and magical herbology," Gellert said as they passed a hospital. "These muggles don't even have magic, but they can heal broken bones and give people immunity to infections. Isn't that amazing?"

"And think about the world we could create!" Albus added excitedly. "We could give teach them so much. Transfiguration, spells that can create more food per hectare, potions that can regrow limbs!"

Gellet and Albus schemed together, drumming up dreams. Albus felt special in a way. Gellert paid him so much attention, made him feel brilliant to be in Gellert's inner circle. Together they spun a tapestry of the future that could be. They were going to be revolutionaries together. The word together made Albus feel warm and tingly in a way he didn't understand.

"I agree with you, Gellert," Albus insisted, "but we can't just kill people. Merlin, do you hear yourself?"

"Look, it doesn't matter." Gellert took out his wand and twirled it absentmindedly. "They're just going to die eventually. If anything, it's a mercy to take them out now before their feeble minds crack due to their inability to fathom the new world we create when it's all over."

Gellert stopped spinning his wand and started to point it at a Muggle reading on a park bench. "I could do this right now. Nobody would know."

"Are you serious right now?"

"Watch me."

Quick as a blink, Albus threw up a shield in front of Gellert, and the hex that Gellert cast bounced off and back into himself. Gellert fell backwards onto the grass.

"What the hell was that for? What the hell, Albus?"

Albus scrambled to the ground and patted Gellert's chest as if to check if he was okay.

"Morgana's tits, stop touching me." Gellert wrenched Albus's hands off him and sat up with a scowl. "It was just a stinging hex. I wasn't going to do anything."

Albus breathed a sigh of relief. "You're still crazy casting spells out next to Muggles."

Gellert smoothed over his features in one quick breath. "That's what we're going to change, though, aren't we?"

With a sigh, Albus nodded.

"We should agree not to fight each other."

Albus sometimes hated when Gellert made suggestions. He could never disagree, not even when he was being asked to make a blood pact.

TWO.

Merlin, the fight had happened so quickly. He couldn't remember whose wand was drawn first. He couldn't remember who the hell spoke the first spell into existence. There had been bright flashes of light, too blinding to think. Raw power emanated through space and filled Albus with scary calm and focus. As soon as it had started, it was over.

"No," he said, his voice barely a hoarse whisper. Albus crouched over his sister's cold form. Her body was twisted into an unnatural shape, and her eyes stared blankly up as if they were glass. A tear tracked down his cheek onto her face, and he closed her eyes with shaking hands.

"I'll find it myself, then," Gellert said, bitterness tainting his voice.

"Is this what you wanted?" Aberforth's voice grew loud. "Merlin, fuck! You and your fucking insane dreams. You'll stop at nothing, huh. How could you love a person like that? You think Grindelwald cares about you? You're a fucking fool."

Albus stared at his brother, a knot growing tighter in his chest, so tight he felt his heart would burst. "I…" He couldn't find anything to say.

"Get the fuck out."

"Abe, I-"

Aberforth punched a wall before roaring, "Leave!"

THREE.

Gellert. Gellert, with his blonde hair and his brilliant ideas and his piercing stare that made you feel like all he saw was you.

Here he was. Again.

"Albus," he said with a small smirk. "Long time no see."

"It's been a while, Grindelwald," Albus said. The tiredness in his voice could not be mistaken. He had been tracking his former friend's movements in Europe and the Americas, desperately hoping to find out where he would appear next so he could stop his atrocities. Finally, he had crawled into the enemy's den.

"Fitting that we should meet here in my own fortress," Gellert said, looking around with mock wonder. "Didn't we plan to make this our headquarters?"

Albus's hand was shaking. His wand was outstretched before him, but he could barely look at his friend.

"I knew you were loyal, Albus," Gellert said, almost laughing. "Why else would I have trusted you? You think I didn't know how you looked at me? You can still join me, if you want."

Albus closed his eyes tight, memories from Godric Hollow flashing underneath his eyelids. He hated himself. He hated how easily he was manipulated. He hated that Gellert had him controlled, that he was turned into a sock puppet. He hated that he still loved this monster.

Wordlessly, he let the first spell fly.