They set out to conquer the world on a Monday morning, a clear blue sky and white clouds, the sing of birds overhead. Albus looks to Gellert. They twine their fingers together. Somewhere back home is Aberforth, sixteen and furious, but he can do nothing. Albus has custody of their sister, and Ariana smiles into the sunlight, taking a sweet breath of free air.
"Where to?" he asks Gellert.
His hair is silver-gold and liquid smoke. "Anywhere," he says. "Anywhere with you." Gellert Grindelwald kisses his cheek. "It begins here, with us."
They go to Paris first, across the English Channel, to France and its rolling green hills, pastures of grazing cows, vineyards bursting with dark purple grapes. They stay at a hotel; a motel in truth, a tiny cramped space with two beds and moth-eaten wood to keep them company.
"I'll sleep on the couch," Albus announces. Gellert raises a brow; Ariana scoffs.
The first night, he ends up in Gellert's arms, tangled as the roots of trees deep within the earth. After that, he doesn't bother pretending anymore.
They visit the Eiffel Tower the next day, eating gelato by the edges of the Champs Elysees, trying soft cheeses and hard cheeses and bread baked fresh from a local bakery. Albus laughs as Gellert gets a smother of jam on his cheek.
"Just for that," he tells him, gathering the last of his dignity, "I won't wear socks tonight."
"No," Albus says, aghast. "You wouldn't dare make me deal with your cold feet."
"Oh, I would." Gellert's missed a spot of jam, and neither Albus nor Ariana are in a particular hurry to tell him.
"You're both lame," she says, and for that, Albus steals a spoonful of her ice cream.
On the third day, their work begins.
It is nasty, filthy work. Standing in wizarding taverns and bars, carefully chosen words and orchestrated speeches, establishing an audience, one person at a time. On those nights, Albus and Gellert will come back late, when the streets are still and when the sky is dark and silver with stars. They will smell of cigar smoke and fouler things, throats hoarse.
Ariana waits for them, always. She reads during that time, she tells Albus, or she draws, or sometimes, she does nothing at all. But she is always there when they come back, in a thin nightgown, warm tea at the ready.
"Thank you," Gellert tells her when she hands him the cup.
The tea is too thin; hot water is cheap and the leaves are not. But they are happy.
Albus keeps meticulous count of their money; the francs like the glow of the golden moon, silver and bronze and copper. He weighs them, watches them. There are always too few, too little, not enough.
When he tells Gellert, he wraps an arm around Albus' waist and holds him close. "I have you. We have each other. Is that not enough?"
He wakes to the sound of an owl at the window, a horned egret bearing word from across the sea.
Gellert blinks a sleepy eye. "Tell that buggering beast to stuff it," he grumbles.
Albus sends the owl off with the last piece of ham in their fridge. Dawn has not yet broken; the sky is bruise-blue and bereft of stars, clouded as the future that awaits. He stands by the window in their cramped room, barefoot, hair disheveled. The parchment is dry and sealed with a spot of wax. Albus does not need to open it to know that the letter comes from Aberforth.
What will it say? What can it say?
He looks around the room to Gellert, fallen asleep with the covers tangled around his ankles, hogging two-thirds of the bed. He looks to the other side and sees Ariana, auburn curls splayed across her pillow.
Albus lets the letter turn to ash in his hand, unread.
The locals begin to whisper. They pass stories of two young men, hands clasped in the darkness of night, whispering in each others' ear. They give life to rumors and wretched accusations, made monstrous in the eyes of God.
In the second week, a gang of muggle men corner Albus.
They split his lip and bruise his brow, shouting tales of sodomy and beastiality. Albus can't use magic to fight back - of course he can't - and it's all he can do to run into a secluded alleyway and apparate back to Gellert and Ariana.
"What did they do to you?" Gellert whispers. He cradles Albus' chin and presses his lips to the crook of his nose. Fury overtakes him. His eyes are black, black like the void of death and the anger in his heart.
"It's not too bad - nothing a quick charm won't heal -"
Ariana tries to intervene, but Gellert brushes right by her. "Tell me who it was."
"I don't know - Gellert -"
The next morning, five bodies are found lying against a brick wall. Their eyes are gone, smashed to juices, their throats ripped apart in a ruin of gore.
Albus and Gellert and Ariana pass the police tape on their way to the market. No one says a word.
"It's time," Gellert says.
"You said we could wait a little longer -"
He shakes his head, vicious. "It must be now. You saw what they would have done to you, Albus. We can't wait this long." His eyes soften, and he reaches for Albus' hands. "For you," Gellert whispers. "And for all the men like us. And the children like her."
She is brought to them in a pretty white dress that cost half their savings, her red hair knotted in twin braids, her arms bare.
"I can do this," Ariana tells Albus. Her hand is cold on his arm. "I want to help you. I want - I want other people to know my story."
"You'll do wonderful," Gellert says. His eyes are cold and clinical as they rake her outfit. "There," he says, clipping a bow into her hair. "You look excellent."
Ariana looks ten instead of fourteen, eyes blue like the sea. She is the pinnacle of child innocence, and, Albus thinks dangerously, a doll, weaponized by ribbons and mirage.
It's a success. Everyone loves Ariana, her soft voice, her small hands, her beauty made tragic through violence.
"She's like Helen of Troy," Gellert murmurs into Albus' ear. "A champion for our cause."
"It's scary," Ariana confesses, later, when it's just her and Albus and a box of stir-fry. "All those eyes on you... they're judging me."
"Do you want to stop?"
She hesitates. "Not yet."
The weeks blur by. After Paris, they go to Belgium and gorge on waffles and artisan chocolates. They stop by Antwerp, the second-most populous city, and famed for its exquisite collection of diamonds.
They walk through the square mile, glittering in its gem-stoned finery. A thousand shops and factories line the streets, five hundred years of history steeped within the tiles. They pass a storefront, showing clear diamonds and pink diamonds and purple diamonds, bound by a band of gold.
"When I propose," he says, reverent and quiet, "I'll buy you a ring. From here."
Ariana wanders off a little, perhaps caught by the glint of a bracelet, or more likely, to give them privacy.
Albus blushes. "Gellert -"
"We will be able to marry. When this is all over, or perhaps at the height of it. You and I, two kings of a revolution."
"Together," he says.
It is dark; no one is there to see them when Gellert smiles, and dares to kiss him in the open streets. "Together."
After Belgium comes the Netherlands by the German Ocean; a ship to Denmark, and a portkey to the Kingdom of Norway-Sweden. Gellert, as he learns, becomes violently seasick on a roiling deck.
"What fool suggested this?" he moans, silver hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
"You," Ariana says brightly. She brings him a cup of lemon water.
"You wanted to see the open waters," Albus tells him, kissing the back of his ear. "Here. A potion for your pains."
"Thank you," he groans, and pukes all over Albus' shoes.
After a week in Sweden, Gellert Grindelwald threatens to sleep without socks for a month if they don't take a portkey directly to Germany.
"Well , " Albus says, just to see him squirm, "your toes are rather pretty..."
Ariana mimes gagging into her hands.
" Hey, " Albus protests. "I thought I banned kink-shaming last week."
They end up taking a portkey, and Gellert rewards him by locking the door and sending Ariana off to the local market for three hours.
As the months flutter by, they continue their search for the Hallows, trekking through fields and forests, following tales of mythic folklore that stretch back to the beginning of time. But never for too long: Ariana is still weak; pale and growing thin. The long autumn nights spent in tents, even with all their warming charms, is not enough to make her cheeks flush and her lips color.
"I'm slowing you down," she says, when they're alone. "I'll be fine if you left me somewhere for a week, or two -"
"No," Albus says at once. "I can't risk it. Won't risk it."
"I'm not that important."
"Yes you are," Albus insists. He doesn't think of Gellert, because he knows, hidden behind his careful indifference, of the frustration waiting to boil through. "Your safety is my greatest duty. I would leave them - all our plans - if they were to ever harm you."
As the thick of winter comes and goes, their campaigns blossoms. When they arrive in Munich, their reputation precedes them: two young men and a little girl, with tales on their lips and a rallying cry to their cause.
It's there, in a university auditorium, that things begin to change.
They've always relied on donations, and suddenly they come in barrages, swift as rapid waters, blown by word of mouth. Galleons and sickles and knuts; paper bills and coins heavy as lead tablets. They collect in bins and jars, stored away in bank accounts.
"We're rich ," Ariana says, laughing. "We should do something to celebrate."
Gellert buys a cake, three tiers of precious vanilla and white sugar, milk and eggs and flour, frosted in dark chocolate. They eat until they are stuffed, and still Albus cuts a slice for everyone.
The cake marks a beginning: "Hope," Albus declares.
Beside him, Ariana groans, caught under a fierce headache brought by the sugar.
Ariana catches a chill in late winter, and spends two weeks bed-ridden. Albus spoons potions down parched her lips, squeezing her hand through bouts of wracking coughs. She is precariously vulnerable; what might otherwise be a common cold for any wizarding child has become something ruinous inside of her.
Albus refuses to leave her side during that fortnight. Gellert relents, in poorly concealed fury, and makes their planned speeches alone.
Ariana gets better eventually, but the sickness devours her health: her wrists are thin to breaking, her features sharp, jagged. She walks with a tilting gait, and though she is careful to never bring it up, Albus knows her right hip pains her.
Ariana stares at herself in the mirror. "This is -"
"Superficial," Gellert says. "Nothing that can't be fixed with the right touches."
Albus swallows a sharp rebuke and looks away.
With their money, Gellert buys cosmetics. Foundations and creams, lip gloss and powders for the eyelid. He sits for hours before every conference, Ariana squirming in her seat. He brushes on the rouge, fixes the spots of acne, brings out the blue of her eyes. He paints her face as if she were a canvas, to be molded and twisted however he pleases.
When Gellert's done, Ariana is unrecognizable. Her skin is white like parchment, her lips red like blood, her features sculpted into a hollow vessel. She is a puppet, come to dance for the world.
They stay in Munich for a while; they're popular here, this raucous city and its young men, eager to drink their stories and share their mead. Gellert makes friends with the locals. He isn't jealous, Albus thinks to himself; it's been almost nine months since the last time Gellert heard German. It's only natural that he wants to spend time with them.
"None of them could ever hold a candle to you," Gellert confesses later, when they lie in bed. "They're simpletons, all of them."
Albus laughs into his shoulder. "That's not nice."
"No, but it's the truth."
When it happens, Albus tells himself that one of Gellert's friends, his simpleton friends, suggested it. That of course, no, it wouldn't be him. No. Of course not.
The three muggle boys are still there come morning, tied to a lampost by ribbons of magic, bound by an invisible glue that holds them in its searing embrace. They have been stripped of clothes, to hang in the cold spring morning. A light dusting of snow covers their hair.
On their foreheads is carved the sigil of the Deathly Hallows, the cloak, the wand, the stone. The blood has dried, dark brown upon the wound, fresh red on their neck, where it splattered.
Ariana makes a sound when she sees. Her hands shake. Albus rushes her away.
"You said you were going out with friends," Albus rasps. He doesn't know his voice, made deep and dark in his horror. "You said you were going to a tavern -"
Gellert says nothing. His eyes are white and black, light and shadow. They watch him, a curious tilt to his chin. "Did you think we'd always be like this?"
"Gellert -?"
"Revolutions are started with ideas and finished in blood."
"Not the blood of innocents. "
"When has war ever spared the faultless? The children, the boys, the girls, the mothers?" His jaw is taut. "You should be thankful. They wanted to kill them, but I convinced them otherwise."
Albus tastes bile. "Is that your excuse?"
"That's the truth."
There's an argument. It's not their first; not their second or their third or their hundredth, but this time it's real.
When it's over, Ariana clings to his shoulder and cries. Blood drips from his under-eye. Albus lets it dry on his cheek, as it had dried on the three muggle boys.
Gellert is gone, perhaps to his German friends, to wallow in his hurt and lick his wounds surrounded by his pack of loyal followers. Ariana sits in the corner of their room, reading. Albus watches her for an hour. Two hours.
When the sky is dark and Gellert still hasn't appeared in the doorway, Albus fetches parchment and ink. His hand shakes as he holds the quill, poised to write.
What is there to say?
Everything. Nothing.
Dear Brother, he begins, and lets the words twist on paper. Albus sends the letter without thinking.
Gellert returns in the morning, silver hair blown astray by the wind, breath reeking of mead and smoke, eyes marred by a night without sleep. Albus takes one look at him, pale, shaken, and knows that he will grant his forgiveness without a second thought.
"Ariana," he begins, and she is already on her feet, mumbling about buying more candles.
The door shuts behind her, the door of their lavish apartment bought in the heart of Munich's wealthiest district, funded by the donations of Gellert's zealous friends. But they are not Albus' friends. If ever they were, they never can be, now.
"I don't want to lose you," Gellert whispers. His voice is dry as sand spread across a beach.
"But you're not sorry."
"We once promised we'd never lie to each other." Gellert holds his gaze. "It was always going to be like this."
Was it? He can think of nothing but the darkness, the ice in his heart and the bitter words on his lips. "For the Greater Good," he says, quietly. "Is that what we work for?"
"What do you want me to say?"
Albus lets out a shaky breath. He closes his eyes to stop the tears. "I want you to tell me that -" He stops. "I want you to tell me that what happened happened because you were drunk. That it was - an accident. That you didn't mean it, that you'll never do it again."
"You want me to lie."
The tears slip through, hot like the breath of a summer wind, the glare of a summer sun.
Hands cup his cheeks, cradle the back of his neck. Gellert kisses him on the forehead. "Albus -"
"I want you with me," he says. "I want you by my side. We said together, didn't we?"
"We did."
Albus looks up at him. "Do you regret what you did to the muggle boys?"
"I regret the pain it caused you."
"Alright," he says, voice thin and broken. "Alright. We - I -" Albus wipes his eyes. "We can, we can work that."
"Thank you," Gellert breathes. He holds Albus close, presses his nose into Albus' hair, squeezes him tight. "Thank you."
"But promise me," Albus says. He forces Gellert to look him in the eye. "Promise me that it won't happen again. Or -" The words burn. "Or I'll leave you."
Gellert Grindelwald bows his head. "I promise."
They leave Germany soon after, and travel south to Italy, a land of cultured arts and fine operas. They stay in Venice, a condo that overlooks the sea.
For weeks, there lies a strange tension between them. Never in their ten months have they been like this: hesitating before each word, weighing their thoughts before asking after something as benign as a salt shaker during dinnertime.
Albus hates it, as if they are strangers, come to dance around each other's shadow.
Gellert gives him gifts: little things, a new book here, a pair of boots, a heavy cloak for the foggy mornings, an ink bottle graven with gold and silver, gelato from the nearest vendor. Albus thanks him with all his heart, and cannot help but feel that Gellert is buying back the lives of those three muggle boys.
Lives are not meant to be bartered as common goods.
Ariana develops a seasonal allergy. She is shaky, inconstant, and growing thinner and thinner. Her outbursts have begun to resurface.
The layers of makeup, of mirage and lies, grows thicker. Gellert lightens her cheeks and darkens her brow, paints her lips the red of fire.
"It's not enough," he mumbles to himself. He stands back to see what he has done, her features made inhuman under illusion, stripped bare of their humanity.
"I don't -" Ariana stops. Her eyes flicker to Albus. Her fingers twitch. "I don't think I can do it today."
"You can," Gellert says, and there is a note of warning in his voice. He adjusts her bow. "You'll be wonderful. You always are. They love you."
All men love Helen of Troy.
The night begins predictably well; Gellert and him have become masterful orators, weaving together sentences that bleed one after another, seamless, effortless, perfect. And then they bring in Ariana.
She comes onto the stage in her white dress, a new one every time, her red hair bound by blue ribbons, her cheeks reddened to blood on marble.
As she starts to speak, Albus frowns. He looks to Gellert. Her words are different. Unlike everything and anything she'd said abroad, in Germany or France or Sweden.
"Gellert -" Albus murmurs. His frown grows. She is using words, big words. Monstrosity. Sacrilege. Mortification.
Her hands are empty, but they might as well be holding a parchment written in Gellert's hand.
"That was ill-done," Albus says when it's over. His anger is burning, the kindling waiting for spark. "We said we'd let her speak -"
"And we are."
"- so that she could tell her own story. Not some words on paper that you made her memorize."
Gellert has never taken kindly to reproach. He clasps his hands behind his back. "You are a man of numbers and mathematics. Did you take a look at them recently?"
No, Albus wants to scream. No I haven't, because my sister is wasting away, and we're here, halfways across Europe, tying ribbons in her hair.
"They've been decreasing," Gellert continues. "Steadily. One hundred forty-three at today's meeting; one hundred fifty-two at yesterday's."
"So?"
"We need a way to bring them back up."
He says it simply, so very simply. And yet it is enough for Albus to understand.
"That night," he says, hands shaking. "That night in Munich. That was what it was, wasn't it? The muggle boys. It wasn't sport or amusement. It was a political play."
"Was it?"
"Gellert -" Albus breaks off, not trusting himself to speak. "Gellert - Gellert -"
Lives are not meant to be bartered as common goods.
Gellert takes him to see an opera: La Boheme, a four-act play famed through all of Italy. It tells the story of four starving artists in Paris, Bohemians who live for the unconventional and aesthetic and philosophical. They are poor and live scraping after coin and bread.
But they are happy. So very happy.
There is an owl waiting on the windowsill. It is a tawny owl, native to England.
Aberforth has written a reply.
Albus holds the letter in his hands, bound by a seal of wax, rubbing the twine between his fingers. It beckons, this life back home.
If he wants this idyll to go on, this life in Italy surrounded by gondolas and the sea, he should burn the letter and send the owl away. Albus does nothing.
Ariana puts an emaciated hand on his wrist. "I want to stop," she says. Her eyes are dark with pain. When was the last time she slept through a whole night? "This evening. No more."
Gellert Grindelwald opens his mouth. Albus beats him. "No more," he agrees, and glares at Grindelwald.
"I was a child when it happened," Ariana begins. The hall is quiet to better hear her voice. "I don't remember much only -"
Something happens. The flickering lights or the screech of a chair against stone. It can't be magic; Albus is scrupulous about keeping all magic away from her during these sessions. It doesn't matter.
He rushes to the stage, catches her just as she begins to tilt. Her eyes roll upward.
The plates, the cups, the cutlery begin to wobble, to shake, to quiver. They fly, one after another, whizzing through the air, crashing against walls. Someone screams.
Ariana jerks in his arms, her thin limbs pounding his chest, her feeble legs wrenching against his hold.
"A Healer," Albus hears himself cry. "Someone get a Healer."
He searches the hall for Gellert, eyes raking from face to face, looking for the glint of silver and gold. He meets his eyes, his calm, calm eyes.
The Healer is an old man accustomed to treating the rich, bribed to his teeth to tell no one of his patient. Ariana lies before him, eyes closed. She hasn't moved in three hours.
The Healer feels her brow and takes her temperature, casts the requisite spells and turns to Albus.
"She's dying," he says.
Gellert is not here. He is gone, gone back to the hall to smooth over the mess, to appease their fears with his silver tongue, to salvage what he can of his precious numbers.
"How long does she have?" Albus asks. He holds her hand, her small, small hand. Her nails are trimmed in perfect crescents, painted the white of her dress. Gellert's gift for her fifteenth name day.
"I could not say," the Healer says. His voice is clinical yet kind. "A year? Perhaps, under the best conditions. Less if -" He makes a gesture with his head, as if to say, I know who she is. And I know what you've been doing to her. "There are stressors which will quicken the rate of her symptoms."
"Noise," Albus guesses, reduced to monotone in grief. "Loud sounds."
"Crowds, stress, anxiety."
Albus looks away so that the Healer will not see his tears. "A year," he repeats.
"Only under the best conditions."
Albus nods. Readies the second half of the payment. "Thank you, healer."
He bows his head.
The letter still sits in the drawer, crisp parchment unmarred by time, a plain gray seal. Albus holds it, carries it with him to her beside. He looks at Ariana, covered in blankets, wasting away.
He searches the room for Gellert, for his bright smile and his mischievous eyes, for his jests and his hugs and his warmth. But of course. Gellert is not here.
Albus peels away the wax seal and unties the string. He reads Aberforth's letter by the candle of moonlight.
Gellert comes back at dawn, robes rumpled, a weary set to his eyes. They fall into each other's arms.
They have not been like this in far too long; set free, nothing in the world but their hearts, beating as one. Gellert smells of smoke and the new cologne he wears, of crisp polish and leather fresh from the tannery. He smells of money and wealth and a life filled with gold.
"Did you know this would happen?" Albus whispers.
They have sworn not to lie to one another. "I suspected," Gellert says.
Albus steps back, slowly, so that he can see him, dark robes and silver clasps, the green embroidery at his throat. "She has a year," he says. "Did you suspect that as well?"
"Albus -"
No, that's not fair, is it? But it never is. It never is.
Albus takes a breath. Another. Now, before he changes his mind. Now, before Gellert reaches for his cheek and kisses away his fears, before the easy thing becomes the right thing, and the right thing becomes impossible.
"I'm leaving," Albus says, and chokes on his tears.
Gellert looks at him, eyes plain and uncovered. Did he not suspect? Did he not know? "Albus?" he says. His lip quivers as if he were a child, who has just been told that the ruin of the world is their doing. "Albus, what do you mean -?"
"She has a year." Albus looks at Ariana, limp and fighting for every breath. "A year, Gellert."
"Then we'll - we'll find the best Healers, the best alchemists, potioneers, enlist them - we have all the money in the world, all the resources anyone could possible want for -"
"She doesn't need potions or salves or balms." She needs freedom.
Gellert latches onto his words as a starving man begs for water. "That's alright. We can organize something. Visits to the countryside. Italy - Europe - is known for its lakes and trees, we can do it, we're wizards -"
"Ariana will be dead by next summer." The tears fall. "Gellert -"
"We'll take a week off. All of us. Go to - Belgium, and the waffles, or, or Paris, yes, Paris -"
"A year," Albus says. "Could you put your plans on hold for a year? Wait it out, all twelve months? Not a word about conquest, the future, the campaign. Nothing about the Greater Good, the Deathly Hallows, the revolution. Nothing. Could you do it?"
Gellert's eyes flicker, desperate for a gap, a hole, a missing clause. They have sworn not to lie to each other. Perhaps it would have been more merciful if he did.
"I could try," he whispers, but the words die on his tongue.
He could try, yes. But it wouldn't be enough.
They are silent. Gellert's eyes are glassy, warm, filled with tears. They are like spring rain collecting on leaves, glittering in the dying light.
"Then you're going?" he says, voice raw with grief.
"I'm going," Albus says, before he can throw himself into Gellert's arms and lose his sorrows in the warmth of his embrace.
"Albus -"
"I'm sorry," he whispers.
Gellert lets the tears spill. "When the year is over," he says, quietly, pleading, "when the year is over, will you - will you come back?"
Albus looks at him, his silver hair and timeless beauty, features ravaged by agony. He has never been more beautiful, more compelling. He looks around him, to the marble walls and the lush carpet underfoot, to the carvings and the statues and the polished wood. He looks to the empire they have built together.
Together.
He thinks of the three muggle boys and Ariana's small wrists, her chapped lips gasping for breath. Revolutions are started with ideas and finished in blood, Gellert says, a dark, deranged tilt to his chin.
"If I hadn't stopped you that night," Albus says, "if I hadn't said no - would it have continued? The killings. The lies. The brutality."
He knows the answer before Gellert speaks. Maybe he always has known.
"I love you," Albus says. His voice is thick with despair. "I want you to know that. We've, we've never told each other the words, but I - I thought you should hear it. I owe it to you." Albus looks him in the eye and sees his pain. "I would give my life for you, a thousand times over. But my sister's life? My humanity? That will never be yours."
This is how he leaves him: red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks, tears that glisten like drops of morning dew. Gellert Grindelwald is soundless in his suffering. Beautiful, divine. If Albus were any weaker, he would have stayed.
They stand on a hill in the bloom of spring. The sun is golden, the breeze soft. Albus holds her hand, breathes in the scent of the sea and the salt and the dawn.
They turn back for a moment, to the city of Venice, a scatter of islands speckled across blue waters. Albus reaches out a hand. He stares at the red-rimmed rooftops, the pale walls, the streets alive with sounds and laughter.
"Goodbye, Gellert," he whispers.
"Will we see him again?" Ariana asks.
"Maybe someday. Maybe."
She squeezes his hand, her fingers faded to skin and bones, her grip strong and warm. "Let's go," Ariana says. "To the future."
"To the future," Albus agrees.
The orphanage is withering away, bricks crumbling to dust, mortar sloughed off by the wind. Albus and Ariana stand back to give him a moment of privacy.
Aberforth walks up to the door and speaks to the matron. "I'm here for my son," he says. "Aurelius. Aurelius Dumbledore."
They leave as one, a girl and her two brothers, a child swaddled in blankets.
"Where do we go?" Ariana asks.
"Wherever you want," Albus says. "Anywhere."
"It begins here, with us," she says quietly.
Aberforth tilts his head, not understanding. Albus smiles, bitter and filled to the brim with hope. He takes his brother's hand and holds Ariana's slim fingers. They walk together towards the dawn.
A/N:
This was meant to be a fix-it fic to help me cope with SoD's ending. I have no idea how all of this happened. I hope you enjoyed reading it :D
All comments/criticisms welcome - thanks for giving this a read!
