Author's Note: Written for QLFC (Season 4, Round 6). Position: Keeper for the Falmouth Falcons

Word Count: 2,948

Write about a dark character demonstrating the virtue of temperance.

He drew only one card from the top of the pile: The Devil. On it, two lovers were bound, controlled by their desires instead of being in control themselves. The Devil was a representation of one's addictions, and Gellert saw the card for what it was: a word of warning, not to be overcome by his wants. More wanted more, and what Gellert wanted, more than anything else, was control.

.ooo.

He found his first horseman in a seedy duelling ring.

Gellert had visited both German and British duelling clubs; they were all polished, gentlemanly sites where they called each other 'good sport' and 'mein Freund'. Western Europe, it seemed, had completely missed the point of an underground fight, but here, in Eastern Europe, men still fought because they had to. They came here to make money, sacrificing health and what small bit of honour they had.

Here, the fights were about survival. Nothing more, nothing less, and a strange sense of pride filled Gellert at the thought.

A scent of sweat and musk greeted him as he entered the arena. It was a humid and dark warehouse, a forgotten benefit of industrial society, and Gellert was sure it was filled with mostly workers from the factory next door.

It made his fingers twitch with wanting to participate. For a moment, Gellert fantasised about jumping in, brandishing his wand and showing them how it was done. For a moment, Gellert fantasised about making his father proud.

Admitting to the strange thrill of watching men tear each other to pieces reminded Gellert why he rarely frequented such places; it was a guilty pleasure, and Gellert already carried his share of guilt.

Living with a life on his conscience was a heavier burden than he'd thought.

As he pushed deeper into the mob, his gaze fell on the current fighters. One was a mountain of a man, his spells powerful enough to pick away at the magical shield surrounding them, while the other was a leaner and shorter man─quick but weak. Despite the former's obvious advantage, it looked like the latter carried the upper hand at the moment.

Gellert only paid them fleeting attention. His target was somewhere else, talking to a crowd of eager bystanders. They were waving fists in the air, all trying to attract the man's attention. Mesmerised, Gellert watched money change hands and a charming smile bloom on the bookmaker's face as he dealt with the crowd.

This would have been his father's favourite haunt, had he been alive, and by association, the duelling ring both intrigued and disgusted Gellert.

The tables turned inside the ring, and as the big guy delivered a final blow, everyone's attention focused back on the duel, leaving the bookmaker by himself. This was his moment, Gellert realised, and he slid to a standstill beside the man with the odds and the money, his eyes trained on the far end of the room. "Does warmongering pay well these days?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bookmaker glance at him warily. "That depends on the fight."

"What would you say if I could promise you a fight where the odds were always in your favour?" Gellert asked.

"I would tell you I'm not the betting type." His voice was laced with a confidence that made Gellert's spine tingle. He had definitely found his man.

Turning to face the bookmaker, Gellert noticed that the other man was slightly taller than himself. He was hairy, and, though it was obvious he did what he could to keep up appearances, he looked grimy in the yellow lighting from the lamps.

"But you are addicted. And I want to give you what you want; I want to give you the chance to start a war." At Gellert's words, the bookmaker's eyes widened only slightly, but he still leaned forward in curiosity. Hook, line, and sinker. Gellert decided to call him War from now on. Gellert had studied him, found his weakness and his strength, and he had found that the two were the same: War thrived on creating and maintaining strife.

What War couldn't know was that Gellert's final goal was to create peace. He was only starting a war for the greater good.

"I need someone like you," Gellert continued, turning to face the duelling ring again. They only had a few moments before new bets would start rolling in. "The pay will be good, and you'll be my personal advisor."

"Why me?" War drawled. There was a certain Northern heaviness to the syllables, and Gellert imagined he was from Minsk or somewhere in the area. Gellert had always associated the city with high political voltage and the surrounding, rural areas with men slow on the uptake and women willing to put up with them.

"Because," Gellert said, turning slightly without looking back at the man, "I need someone to start a war."

"You'll need soldiers for that," War protested.

Gellert gave a short, cynical laugh, presenting War with a tarot card: Strength. On it, a young girl in a red coat was petting a werewolf. "And I will need someone to recruit them."

War coughed. "How much?"

It took them only a few minutes to come to an agreement.

As Gellert exited the cellar after their talk, he ran his hand briefly over a concrete wall with big, bold letters. Peace, bread, and land. The words, a well-known Communist parole, were written in runny, red paint, and Gellert allowed himself a smile.

How ironic that in order to obtain peace, bread, and land, you needed to start a war, a famine, and a plague.

.ooo.

He found his second horseman at a beautiful party.

Everything was scintillating; the ornate chandelier gleamed overhead, and the floor shone beneath his shoes. They clacked dully as he walked, a sound Gellert found infinitely satisfying, like clicking his tongue.

Gellert didn't like to look back. His past was in his past, and it had no more power over him now than he allowed it. Still, he felt a tug in the pit of his stomach; this was the kind of party his mother would have loved to attend.

The addictions of his parents─his father's to violence, his mother's to beauty─lay within him too, and even as he marvelled at the splendour of the dining hall he was in, he wanted to leave. Gellert wanted nothing to do with his parents' addictions. There was something gaudy about the decoration; the people seemed ill and possessed, as if they were trying to fill a gaping wound with poison. A part of Gellert was drawn to it though, and he didn't want to be.

Conscious of his own hunger to stay and become one of them, Gellert decided to leave as soon as his mission was over. He'd worked his whole life to wriggle free from his parents' addictions, to always hold himself to a higher standard, and this was his chance to show that he'd broken free, that he wasn't a slave to his desires.

A part of him knew that he practised abstinence because of that summer in Godric's Hollow. If the grief of losing Albus had taught him one thing, it was this: true independence came with needing no one. The horsemen he'd chosen were good candidates for their jobs, but they were all expendable.

Gellert had promised himself never to depend on anyone again.

Determined, he approached the buffet.

"Beautiful, isn't it," he said as he sidled up next to a man with a wide girth and a smile empty of mirth. The man was standing with a plate in his chubby hand, looking as if he was still searching for foods to adorn the mountain he'd already accumulated.

A part of Gellert was disgusted, another fascinated.

"It sure is," the plump man grunted, baring his teeth in what Gellert thought was meant as a smile.

"I understand you provided some of it."

The man, whom Gellert had decided to name Famine, looked up, his smile widening as his eyes narrowed. "Most of it."

Then, scanning the table, he grabbed an elaborate canapé and shoved it towards Gellert, who only shook his head. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Famine stared.

"Karl Marx," Gellert supplied. Critique of the Gotha Program, he wanted to add, but he held his tongue, knowing the additional information would be lost on this man. "I'm not hungry."

"Ah, well, more for the rest of us," Famine said in what Gellert assumed was a mocking tone and popped the canapé in his mouth.

"However," Gellert began, "I have something to offer you."

Although he kept eating and didn't look up, Famine said, "I'm listening." Gellert had the feeling he wasn't, but said nothing. There was a sense of excitement to convincing a man who thought he had everything.

"A monopoly on manufacturing and selling bread."

"Indeed?" Famine sounded unconvinced.

"Let's just say that in a starving economy, you'll never go hungry again."

Now Famine turned towards him, the tip of his gut pushing against Gellert. "I don't go hungry as it is."

"Perhaps not," Gellert said, unconcerned. "But neither do the people who buy your goods."

"Bah!" Famine waved a hand dismissively and turned away. "Let them eat cake."

Gellert wondered briefly if Famine even knew what that quote meant, but he could feel his window of opportunity narrowing. "Think about a desperate population, who only have one place to go: you. When the workers who make up this great nation go hungry, do you think they will buy canapés?" Gellert sent Famine a fleeting glance. "No, they'll want bread, and you will be the only one who's able to give it to them."

He produced a card, holding it out to Famine, who was turning around to face him again. The Magician, in a black coat and with a pair of scales in his hand, stared out at them.

For a second, Gellert thought he saw lights in Famine's eyes.

Grabbing the card with a bloated, sweaty hand, Famine said, "Count me in."

.ooo.

He found his third horseman in a ward for the magically insane.

Once a renowned Healer, Plague, as Gellert called her, had decided to set free a magical virus because her patron had cut her funding. Plague had argued that without money, she couldn't pay for house-elves and would have to test her virus and antidote on other subjects.

When Gellert entered, she was, of course, in a straitjacket.

"Hello." Her voice was low and level, and Gellert thought there was something attractive about that. Plague wasn't the only patient in the room, and Gellert wondered for a second if she knew that Gellert had come for her or if she was simply accustomed to treating all visitors with almost authoritative civility.

"Hello," Gellert responded.

"What's that you have there?" Plague inclined her head towards Gellert's right hand, which was holding a rather large, painted card.

Gellert, summoning a chair and sitting down opposite her, held up the card. "A reward for good behaviour."

"Let me see."

Placing the card on the table between them, Gellert slid it forward. Big letters at the bottom of the card spelled The Tower, and the picture showed a woman on a white horse losing her crown while an arrow pierced it mid-air.

Plague's matted black hair fell forward like a veil to hide her features as she studied the card. "I see."

"Do you know what this means?" Gellert asked. He felt a hunger he hadn't felt in a long time, and realising he'd been leaning forward in his eagerness, he leaned back in his chair again. Plague didn't seem to have noticed, though.

When she finally looked back up, she said, "It means I've hit rock-bottom." Gellert didn't respond. "It means I can finally move forward."

Nodding, Gellert said, "A second chance."

"And what would you have me do with this second chance?" She studied him, her eyes roaming his face for answers, and Gellert felt a familiar thrill at the prospect of having a brilliant companion. Plague understood, and perhaps that was what made her terrifying.

Crossing his legs and leaning backwards, Gellert said, "I want you to finish what you started."

A short, dry laugh spilled from her lips. It was hoarse, her voice, and it excited him that he hadn't noticed that before. It held the familiar promise that he would never be bored with her; there would always be something to discover. "Do you want to be known as the man who set a plague upon the people?"

Mimicking her expression, Gellert only let a small smile curl the corner of his lip. "I want you to be known as the woman who cured it."

"And if you break me out of here, you don't think they'll notice?"

"By then," Gellert responded, "it won't matter."

She seemed to consider that. It didn't matter how much time she took, however. Gellert had identified her strength and her weakness, just as he had with the others. Plague wanted prestige, and Gellert, now more than ever, understood what that felt like; they both wanted to prove others wrong.

The difference between him and Plague was that he could hold back, and she could only pretend to.

"It will matter to me," she finally said.

Gellert couldn't say he had seen it coming, but he wasn't surprised. Taking the card and pinching it between his index and middle fingers, he held it up, the image side turned towards her. "And that is why you lost your crown."

He thought he saw resentment flicker across her face, but he ignored it. "I'm offering you a chance to be better."

"But what will it matter if I don't get what I want?"

This was how they differed, then.

"What do you want?"

"You don't know?" she asked, surprised. "I want to be worshipped."

Gellert thought he probably had known, but he still said, "You're insane."

"Reality and insanity are in the eyes of the beholder," Plague answered calmly.

"In the reality I'm creating, you will be a renowned Healer. I will get you out of here without anyone noticing you're gone, and once you've cured the people, they won't ask any questions. You will be God: judge of life and death, free to walk amongst men."

Plague struggled against the confines of the jacket for show. "You'll have to set me free first."

Gellert, placing The Tower on the table between them once again, said, "With pleasure."

.ooo.

His fourth horseman found him in a small village.

He and Albus had wanted to find the Deathly Hallows together, but while Gellert saw himself as the eldest Peverell, he had begun to see Albus as Death instead. When the time arrived, Gellert was used to the thought of death, but he still wasn't used to being responsible for it, and that would be his doom.

Albus, or Death, as Gellert now called him, did not tolerate anyone else being the judge of life or death.

Gellert had tried to temper his soldiers, making a prison for their enemies without producing an execution chamber, but Gellert finally had to admit that the trail they blazed came with a climbing death rate.

He'd warned the three of them that if they kept doing Death's job, he would eventually come to visit them. Death was about balance, and where Gellert saw opportunity, Death had always seen destruction.

War, Famine, and Plague all fanned over Death; when they had played their part, they knew he would arrive eventually. They envied him and aspired to be him; they hated him and wanted him. All three of them were hoping for a glimpse, a view to a kill, but Gellert had told them that this was his fight.

The cards he had given each of them had been illustrations of both their desires and their weaknesses, but none of them had listened, so none of them were worthy to meet Death.

War wanted a battle, and strength was his tool; Strength, the tarot card, however, was about assimilating rather than conquering. It was about taming the beast instead of killing it, a message that Gellert now saw was too sophisticated for War.

Famine wanted to have what others didn't, and he had been given all the tools to achieve it. The Magician, with all the elements at his disposal, was also a cautionary tale, though. More wanted more, and the infinity symbol hovering above the magician's head in the illustration was a promise that nothing would ever be enough.

Plague, of course, had stated her own desires clearly, and Gellert had clearly told her that The Tower was a warning. The higher you climb, the further you fall.

Gellert himself had been constantly aware of his own wants and needs, always balancing out what he truly needed with how much he took. He had warned his horsemen that if they took too many lives, they would have no one to rule over, but they were all insatiable, and Gellert could no longer control them. He could only control himself.

It appeared to him now, as he was lying in the mud, unable to reach his wand and unable to move, that he should not have avoided his fourth horseman for so long. They had been incomplete without Death, untethered.

Gellert had been incomplete without Death.

Albus was looking down on him, his blue eyes glinting. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death."

Giving him a fleeting smile, Gellert said, "You were never an enemy, old friend."