A/N: This is depressing as shit and goes into self-harm/suicide, don't read if this is a sensitive topic for you.
Curse
Alb knows he's dreaming when he hears Ariana laughing in the kitchen. Not because she's dead, he realizes that after he realizes it's a dream—but because she's laughing. Aber's laughing with her.
He pushes himself off the foyer couch and steps onto the porch. The sky doesn't look so different in dreaming, same bright blue. The air's fogged up with the sounds of summer (crickets, children, birds, running water) and Alb closes his eyes and lets it soak in, for a minute. You can do anything you want in dreams, he thinks—it was a hobby of his, for the first few weeks of the summer, to try and realize when he was dreaming and shape the world around him to fit his suiting—he's out of practice, now, but he still remembers how.
"Gell? Gell, I want to talk."
And when he opens his eyes, he's standing in Gell's room. There's a beaker bubbling full of something on the dresser, and the boy is sitting cross-legged on the bed, golden, like he never aimed a killing curse at his lover while a little girl screamed in the corner of the room.
"Hey," Gell pushes himself to his feet and hugs Alb, and Alb grips him back and buries his nose in his hair. The boy's stubble scratches, and his scent has a bit of tang around the edges—I thought I forgot what you smelled like but this is it, how could I still remember? Alb doesn't say. When he pulls back, Gellert looks near tears.
"No, no." Alb grabs his shirtfront. "This is my dream. And I say you—you be happy, like it's still two weeks into summer and—we never killed her."
"Sure," Gell wipes his eyes and fumbles for his belt buckle. "You can't look at my face, though, I can't keep the act up that well. Turn around."
Albus wakes up drenched in morning dew, clutching a stick of dead wood. His back screams when he pushes himself to his feet. He's getting old, and Gellert's less than two miles away. He fights the urge to straighten his hair, wash his face, look pretty for the golden boy.
Alb wondered, after, if he would've followed her down if Gellert hadn't been there that summer, with his jokes and his rage. Alb didn't think he would've tumbled quite so far into the dark, he had no right—she was the one the Muggles ripped apart, after all, and he was a Quidditch star—but there had been days when she had heaved into his shirtfront when he wondered, he wondered. She clutched his arm so tightly her fingernails left crescent-shaped scars on his wrists, and he never managed to wash her blood out of his mind. Not after the day he found her on the kitchen floor with the carving knife. He tried to charm the blades away, somewhere higher up, somewhere hidden, but it was hard getting the words out and he couldn't stop crying. Her blood ran red down the sink and got caught in the dips of his fingernails, like cherry juice.
She never liked Gell, not really. There was a day the boy straddled a chair in the kitchen while she was tinkering with a puzzle, and Alb had let himself have a stupid daydream where they all ended up in a quaint cottage on a hillside, together. It had been one of her better days. She flipped a puzzle upside-down to give herself more of a challenge (she was so brilliant, Ariana), and Gell had made her laugh, and she put a hand on his shoulder, and said "I am glad that you make him happy, Chuckles," and Gell beamed at her like "chuckles" was a word that could sound anything other than insane pushed past her lips, and she beamed back like she knew exactly how crazy he thought she sounded, and reveled in it. She patted Gell's head, pushed a curl of her hair behind her ear, bent back over her puzzle, and didn't speak for another two hours except to ask for water.
But she wasn't smiling when Gell stayed the night and gripped Alb's hand over her crumpled body, and she caught it when she choked back a sob and Gell rolled his eyes and Alb fought back a bout of laughter, or tears, he had lost track of which a long time ago. "She's bloody nuts, Al, sweet Merlin she's nuts," Gell had said later, and, "I give her until she's twenty-two before she hangs herself."
"Sure," Alb murmured back, and pulled Gell's blanket up to his chin. "I'm sleeping here, please? Your bed feels safe." Gell teased him about that, it feels safe, after he woke up, but Albus had passed out before he saw the smirk.
The pine needles crunch under Albus' feet and he realizes that he doesn't feel hate for himself, anymore. No more than he can manage to feel the usual warmth when he thinks of Gellert's laugh. You killed Ariana, you're responsible, like prodding a loose tooth. A dim portion of him stirs, You can't even manage to care anymore, you selfish bastard, but it subsides and he is peaceful. Or at least, empty headed. He makes himself picture Gell pushing back his bangs in the lamplight, Gell's rising and falling chest as he sleeps, Gell clapping him on the shoulder and calling him brother, and feels nothing but a bit of pity for both of them, lost boys who had never properly been whipped.
The love and guilt have both gone out of me at once, he thinks, and he can't find the energy to try and laugh.
Aberforth broke his nose, and all Alb could think of to say was, Why don't you hit me harder? Ariana looked so peaceful on the hillside.
The hooded wizards gesture him past their pavilion. He knew they would. Gell insisted on fair fights, back when they would wrestle on his bedroom floor. I'll give you five seconds to try and get a grip on me, since you're weaker, he had said, and Albus could never bring himself to feel insulted.
"They just need to be regulated, since they're the weakest of the natural order." Gell said over the kettle. "Nothing brutal. But these kinds of monstrosities, destroying your sister, tearing apart the earth because they're too weak to cast a simple charm to light their home, they cannot be allowed."
"But how would we corral them?"
Gell shrugged. "A few displays of our power here and there, they'll learn to respect us. We should code up laws, for them. Keep them in certain areas, make them have papers identifying them. So they can't trick any true wizards into giving them leeway. We'll reward the obedient ones. It's in their nature to be obedient, they'll follow."
Gellert greets Albus in the center of the field, with a flourish of his wand and a low bow. Alb is gawky teen and haggard grey-beard all at once. Their eyes meet and Gell looks like he's already been Cruciated and that makes it worse, somehow. Albus tries to say I'm here to arrest you for your crimes, Grindelwald, no "good" is this great, but "I'm sorry," comes out instead.
Gell just grins back, like he always had. "Not going to let you do anything you need to be sorry for," he says, and lunges with his wand.
Aber was screaming in the kitchen, and so was Ariana, but Ariana was always screaming, anyway, so it didn't have the same weight, did it? It's just him, Gellert, and Aber, wands cracking and it's a little like sex except it's fucking horrible and Gell doesn't have the upper hand. Alb told her to leave, he told Ariana a fight was brewing, but she didn't want to be alone so she had clutched Alb's hand under the table instead of running to her bedroom. He told her to go, he had told her to go, but he had snapped at her when he said it and that made her cower, he knew she did that, he should have known better, he should have been kinder and she always screamed and cried so how was he to know that this time was anything special? It was when she stopped that he realized something was wrong, and it was too late, then, it was too far gone. But he had told her, he had told her there would be a fight if she stayed, he had told her but he hadn't said the words right, he should have been kinder, and then she was crumpled face-up on the floor.
Gell's got his wand at Alb's throat and this is it for the oldest Dumbledore, he can finally let go. And he does, he smiles into Oblivion. But he doesn't float away. Gell flicks his wrist to speak the Killing Curse and his wand fumbles, flips out of his hands—and Alb lunges for a bind. In the moments before it hits Gell grins and winks, throws his arms open wide, says "Five seconds, I'll give you five seconds."
He threw his wand away, Alb realizes or thinks he realizes, he'll never know for sure. Albus picks the dead wood out of the grass while he waits for the cavalry.
He still can't feel it, love or guilt both, just dead wood in his hands and his lungs, still going, still breathing.