A/N: Written for The Battlefield Wars, for the position Colonel for Team "After All This Time - Always"
Headlining Character: Albus Dumbledore / Assisting Character: Elphias Doge / Specific Plot: The characters have a friendship that begins to blur the lines of something more. / Optional extra prompts: (word) danger, (word) ice, (word) spectacles, (emotion) sadness, (colour) sunburnt orange, (colour) dark green, (emotion) afraid, (poem) "The Poor Ghost" by Christina Rossetti.
Also written for the Vocabulary Challenge, for the word Agelast, n., someone who never laughs.
Thank you to Sociially-Diisoriientated for beta reading this for me, you were wonderful and very helpful.
The White Dukes
You stand in your living room, haggard and weary. You grasp a monochrome photograph tightly of two boys, smiling, free from woe. I hear you sigh.
"Albus, my old friend. I'm sorry. I never told you," you whisper softly to the boys in the picture, as if your words could bring me back to life. Elphias, my comrade, I'm right here. I will not be with you for long, I know. I can feel myself fading. You will not know my presence, but I will have been beside you.
I want to tell you that the boys in that photograph have not walked this earth for a long time. Those uniforms we wore with such pride have long since suited younger frames. We grew into very different men than we once thought we would be.
You place the photograph down upon the mantelpiece with the gentlest touch before leaving the room. I follow, close behind, walking as if my body has a form and weight. I'm sure you remember our time at Hogwarts, Elphias. It was often the other way around. You were the one to follow me. How times have changed, my friend.
Are you aware how you appear now? You seem like an agelast, my friend. As if you have never smiled, much less have a desire to do so any more.
I watch you take a vibrant bowl from its hidden home. To anyone else, the dark green and sunburnt orange decorating the worn wood would be a garish sight, but not to you and I. We never forgot that sunset we shared, looking out over the luscious green of the forest together, did we? The silver liquid, with circles swirling on its surface as you move the dish, beckons us both. You place it down on your cabinet as you move to submerge your face in its depths. As I am here with you, for you, I have no choice but to follow, although you do not know.
We're back at school now and I'm watching you as you watch us. Your eyes dampen as the scene before us overwhelms you.
"Elphias, you must read this book! It's fascinating," I told you. Watching us when our hair was still pigmented with reds and browns brings a smile to my weathered face. Your younger bright eyes stare back into mine as you smile at my awkward and gangly frame.
"What's it about?" you asked, excitement in your voice. I'd forgotten how expressive your voice was as a child, Elphias.
Our younger selves stood in a bright corridor as the world rushed by like time meant nothing to us. We didn't realise then how little of it we had.
I've never seen you look so sad, Elphias. You are an old man now. Old age brings with it more sadness than a young mind can comprehend. My younger self is explaining the finer points of advanced potions as the younger you nods with great enthusiasm, but instead of watching them, I turn to you. I know this scene, Elphias. We've seen this a thousand times together, you and I. It's only a memory now, Elphias, please remember that.
As the scene fades, I am transported to Godric's Hollow with you, into the green behind the village church where the forest stretches up to reach the sky. Ah, we spent many a summer day there. The sunset. We're sat side by side on the grass, laughing. When we were sixteen, the world seemed like a jar of Berty Botts' Every Flavour Beans. We only had to stretch our hands out a little to reach in and find countless opportunities between our fingers. It sometimes seems like all we did was spread them at our own feet to trample down to a sugary dust.
As the sun falls towards the treeline, your younger self turns to the younger me, sat at your side as the first tears begin to fall from your wrinkled and tired eyes.
The younger you turns back to the tired sun as it falls beneath the tree line. "It's beautiful isn't it?" you asked.
"Beautiful?" I laughed a little. We didn't use words like that often, you and I, too caught up in logic and reason as we were.
"Yes. I think so. It's moments like these that I wish could last forever."
"But surely that would mean you would never grow up?" I asked, incredulous at your words. I hadn't known then that in some ways, you were smarter than I. I took my own intelligence for granted and did not stop to consider yours.
"Growing up doesn't seem all that special to me." Your younger self shrugged.
"Growing up means growing old, and growing old means dying," you explained. You conceded, many years later, that there was a lot more to growing old than dying, I remember.
We stared at the sunset for a moment before you spoke again.
"Albus, promise me you'll always remember this?"
I turned to look at you, confused as first, but then my face softened. I saw the sincerity in your eyes and decided not to raise a question.
"Okay. I'll always remember this sunset." I conceded. There was a pause as we watched the coral and salmon shades of the sky dance before us, fading into roses and siennas.
"Elphias, we'll always be friends, won't we? Even if we do have to grow old," I asked you, a hint of a smile on my face.
"Of course we will," you smiled back.
We're still in Godric's Hollow, but suddenly we're in my garden. I can no longer remember where my family were that day, but I remember this picture. It still pains me. You, the haggard man, turn away from the two teenagers. We're older than we were a few seconds ago, and our young eyes were sparkling with emotions that are not happy.
"I don't like him," you said as your eyebrows pulled low on your forehead. The younger me turns away from you to take in the snow and ice that blankets the grass. As I watch the old event unfold before us, I notice how the weather always seems to agree with our moods.
"You've said," I spat back at you. I never knew at the time how dangerous my eyes looked behind my spectacles. I see it now, old friend.
"You don't listen." You came back that day, from your travels in Romania, just to tell me I was as stubborn as a mule. My last letter must have filled you with a fear I would not understand for many months to come. I didn't appreciate you all that much, back then.
"Elphias, you don't understand!" I shouted at you. How foolish I was. "Gellert and I are friends and there isn't anything you can do about it!"
Our younger selves didn't seem to feel the cold as it seeped into their bones and settled. Our anger was too hot to notice the ice as it settled within us as white and sharp as it was around us.
"He's a danger to you! He's making you a danger to yourself! Do you not see that?" you shouted at me. I didn't see it, did I? I'm sorry, old friend.
"Your opinions are not wanted here!" I shouted back. I turn to the haggard man beside me as you turn back to the young men. I know what happens next, and so do you.
"But-" the younger you begins to say, but you decided against speaking further, and you Disapparate before you finish your sentence.
"I'm your best friend, Albus. Not him. He's stealing you from me," the older you says, finishing the younger man's sentence as the garden vanishes. I should have known.
We are back in your house now as you pull your face from the memories and I am brought back with you. There are more moments lost in time to pair with these, but you don't want to see them. I understand. Your frame begins to shake as the tears fall again. You turn back and this time, you know I am here. You see me as I am now, a spectre of who I used to be, and your face pales. You see me now because you want to, Elphias. I came when I was called, and I appear before you as you bid. You ought not to look so surprised.
"Albus?"
"Elphias."
"Where did you come from? Why are you here?" Your hands begin to shake as your eyes widen. You back away from me; I think you are afraid of me.
"I come from the new, while you are left with the old. You will know the new soon, too. Though you know I never truly left you, Elphias," I tell you, hoping that you understand.
"Soon? Not soon; don't say soon, Albus," you reply, your head shaking as you stare through my form. I forget that time has a different meaning for me now.
"Am I so changed? You loved me once, I think. I'm sorry I never knew." I tell you softly.
"I loved you as any true friend would, Albus. The man you were, whose soul was filled with kindness and love. You are not him," you say, your green eyes wide. I think I should not be here, but it was you, Elphias, who called me forth.
"I will not stay for long," I tell you. I turn back to the bowl, to the green and orange of that sunset. "Remember they are only memories, Elphias. It is a great joy and a great sadness to know that memories cannot come to pass once more. It is my turn to sleep now. I will be at rest. Will you?" I ask.
"I don't know."
Elphias, I need you to hear my words. I have no words left now, only an image that is slowly fading now. Your eyes strain to see what little is left of me.
"Where are your spectacles?" you ask. A mundane question, but one that makes me smile. I know that if you are aware enough to ask me such a question, then you are perhaps not as sad as I see you.
"I do not often need to see, where I am now," I comment with a smile.
You stare at me for a moment, and then you smile, too. The first smile I have seen on your face in a long time, Elphias.
"You should not be here."
"You called me hence, Elphias. You requested that I be with you, and I must do as I am bid. I must ask that you do not call on me again, Elphias. This is not my world any longer. It is my time to rest now, in the peace I have long awaited.
You stare at me, and your face softens once more. The fear appears to leave you. "I shall leave you be," you tell me, and I know you will keep your word as I feel myself slipping away. My time with you is over now, but I know I will live on within you.
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