AN: My stories have been super dark lately. Oh well. Anyways, this story was written for the Hogwarts Oneshot Wars (Team After All This Time- Always, Front Line Cadet #1.) My prompts were The Poor Ghost by Christina Rossetti (poem), Sunburnt Orange (color), Instantaneous (word), Worry (word) and danger (word.) My secondary character was Gellert Grindelwald. I hope you like it!
xxx
Summer is made for the young. It is made for the reckless, the daring, the bright and the loud. It is made for the people who don't know what they're doing and are doing it anyways. Summer is made for the young, and they were so young, back then. When he thinks of it now, that is the detail he focuses on. They were young, so terribly young. He cannot help who he was then. They were young. He was young. He is not that person. It is not his fault.
The words are his mantra.
He doesn't believe them.
Trying not to think about it never works. The memories are always there, lurking in the back of his mind. They are ghosts that will not stop haunting him. It's a great danger, remembering, but he can't help it. The images will not leave him: the boy with the golden hair, the laughter, the late nights sprawled in front of the fireplace, the endless stacks of notes. Lively arguments and serious discussions and drunken debates. Vodka and inkstains and burning glances. Lips and plans and promises.
He cannot shake the memory of pale hands in his own, of the arm around his waist and the lips against his ear as they sat on the roof of the house, watching the sunset. The sky had been sunburnt orange, bright and bold, just like them, and in that moment he'd thought he understood the meaning of the word forever.
Of course, they didn't get forever. They barely got a month.
He doesn't want to think about that. He doesn't want to think about any of it. But the memories are still there.
A month, glorious and bright. They wrote their plans on notebook pages in golden ink, certain that nothing could tear them down. And when doubts arose, when the other boy's face darkened and twisted into something ugly, he ignored it. It was nothing, he told himself. No need to worry. Nothing at all. He distracted himself with burning kisses in dark rooms and kept his eyes closed, because he didn't want to see the truth.
And then.
Shouting voices.
A dark and twisted face.
Bright lights.
Screams.
Sobs.
His sister's body, so fragile, so small, as it crumpled to the ground and lay there. She had a pink bow in her hair that day. He doesn't want to think about it.
The rest of the days were a blur, an endless nightmare. Somewhere in the middle, the golden-haired boy vanished.
He didn't care.
In the months that followed, he left home and found a flat in London. He spent his days lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and drinking Firewhisky and drowning in his own self-hatred. He had never hated anyone as much as he hated himself. He vowed that he would never use magic again. Never. It wasn't worth the risk.
But the months crawled by, and he began to recover. He wrote letters to his friends and pretended that he still had dreams, because no one but he and his brother knew what he had done. It wasn't your fault, they told him, but it was.
It was.
He used magic again. He didn't want to, but he did it. At first, worry twisted in his stomach, but he forced himself to push past it, to act normal, to put on a show.
But when they asked him to become Minister of Magic, to take power, he shook his head. Never again, he promised himself. He would not endanger anyone else with his own madness. Never again.
Time passed. Whispers filled the air, and worry grew and stretched. People began to speak of a terrible danger, a dark wizard with vivious plans. He tried to push his fears from his mind, tried to pretend that the dark events unfolding were not things that he had helped plan, but the laughing, golden face filled his dreams. He awoke, heart pounding, and saw his sister's body fall to the ground again and again and again and again. He could never escape it.
You can stop this, they told him. You're powerful enough. You're the only one.
But he refused.
He was afraid.
He was weak.
He refused, and kept refusing, until he ran into his brother in the village. The accusation in his brother's eyes was deadly.
"Coward," he spat. "You always were a bloody coward."
The guilt was instantaneous and painful, like a punch to the stomach. He knew then that he had to stop hiding and pretending.
So he did.
This is what he's thinking about as he walks forward. The sky overhead is streaked with gold and sunburnt orange. Fitting, he supposes- sunset was always their favorite time of day.
The grass, cold and wet, brushes against the back of his ankles. He thinks of a poem he read once- something about a poor, lonely ghost, but he can only remember one line of it. I was away, far enough away: let me sleep now till the Judgement Day.
He has been far away for so long, asleep for so long, trying to pretend that he doesn't have a thousand deadly secrets lurking just below the surface of his skin.
No more.
The other boy walks forward, too, and his heart pounds. It has been so long since he saw that face. So long, and with good reason.
They are less than two yards away.
Their eyes meet and hold.
Vodka and inkstains and burning glances. Lips and plans and promises. Burning sunsets and laughing voices. Those are the memories that face holds.
Another flash of the poem comes back to him. Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend, I loved you for life, but life has an end.
He licks his lips.
Parts them.
And speaks.
"Gellert," he says. The word was once golden. Now it is rusted, broken.
"Albus," says the other boy.
Once words were easy between them, quick and clever. Now there is nothing to be said.
At the same moment, they raise their wands. There is no delay, no mocking, clever exchange, no shouted catchphrases. There is nothing but this: the wet grass, the raised wands, the sense of dread. Before the sun fully sets tonight, one of them will be dead.
Judgement Day has arrived.