School: Hogwarts Year 2
Technique: Flashbacks
Prompt: Waiting [action]
WC: 826
Water dripped from a broken pipe above the window, as steady and regular as a heartbeat. The sound permeated Gellert's every moment, fading in and out of his hearing, providing a soundtrack to the relentless march of time.
It was always cold in Nurmengard. The wards around the windows kept him inside but they didn't stop the biting wind from attacking every inch of exposed skin. A bell rang, dull and toneless, from far beneath, the sound blurring into the memories of countless other mornings that started the same. Another day closer to death.
Gellert pushed himself up, breath heavy and catching in his chest, an old cold to remind him of his sins—which were many and numerous. He barely registered the cold, damp stone beneath his feet now. His paths were worn into the ground, a concept that would have terrified him when he was younger.
"Come on prisoner! What are you waiting for?"
⁂
Gellert blinked, sun warm on his face, dust dancing in the beams of light above him.
"What did you say, Albus?"
Albus laughed, the noise almost reveberating through the floorboards, all the more compelling for its tortourous closeness.
"I think all this dust must be clogging up your ears," Albus said, swiping a finger along the shelf closest to him, nose wrinkling as he surpressed the urge to sneeze.
"Maybe so," Gellert sighed, flexing his fingers to a cacophany of cracks, grinning as Albus cursed and half heartedly swiped at him.
"I said," Albus sighed, puncuating his words with a roll of his eyes, "What are you waiting for?"
Gellert chose not to answer, tilting his head to one side in a silent prompt to continue. Gellert knew what he was waiting for: the countless hours after Albus went home—taking with him all the light and joy in Gellert's miserable life—spent scouring over crumbling family records until his eyes were rubbed red raw and the words danced in front of him; the mud that threatened to engulf his boots as he walked the rows of the graveyard again and again, watching and hunting for a single name.
He hadn't told Albus, couldn't bring himself to possibly poison the space between them with the revelation that this quest wasn't just an academic curiousity, a teenager raging pointlessly at the world. Gellert believed in his creed with every fibre of his being and would break the world to see it come to fruition. And—in the depths of the night when the darkness itself draped around his shoulders like a cloak, head aching with dreams of the future—he wanted Albus at his side.
"The way I see it," Albus said, scratching at the rough growth of stubble on one cheek, unintentionally smearing it with ink, "to fully unite a population there has to be decisive action, a slogan or something like that. But it has be done quickly."
"You think so?" Gellert asked, fighting to keep his tone light even as his heart hammered against his ribs, the noise so loud in his ears that he feared Albus would hear it. Was this it? Was this moment when Albus commited himself fully and truly, when he saw the blackness of Gellert's heart and still embraced him rather than turn away in disgust as so many others had?
"I know so," Albus countered, eyes flashing with determination. He pushed himself up, using Gellert to steady himself, and strode to the bookshelf, wood creaking beneath the weight of the heavy books Gellert's Aunt Mathilda had wedged into every available space. The other boy squinted at the titles, glasses perched on top of his head and forgotten, running his fingers along their spines before pulling a tome free.
"See, throughout history, what killed a war—" Gellert was forced to scramble backwards as Albus dropped the book on the table, kicking up another plume of dust, "—was waiting."
"So, Gellert, what are you waiting for?"
⁂
"Hey! What are you waiting for?"
The lingering threads of memories shouldn't come as a surprise anymore. But the grief hit him anew, a tidal wave that threatened to drown Gellert as the guard's indignant shout mixed with Albus' remembered soft words, so full of youthful passion. Gellert mourned the death of their friendship, the death of what could have been.
"What do you think I'm waiting for?" Gellert asked the guard, lips twisting as his face blanched, loosing the colour high in his cheeks. The man—barely older than a boy, had he ever seen the horrors of war?—wavered before spitting a curse in Gellert's direction and striding off down the twisting corridor.
Gellert waited until the wards hissed against his skin, driving him away from the cell door once again, and sat back down on his bed.
Water dripped from a broken pipe outside the window, as it always did. Gellert listened, and he waited, although for what he couldn't quite say.