Not So Blue
First post EVER, I'm jumpin right in hurr gaiz. This is a chapter outta a Grindelwald story I'm hoping to write.
Title: Not So Blue
Author: Bloop
Rating: T
Genre: Romance/Drama
Pairing: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald.
Warnings: Slash, obviously. KISSU SCENE
Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I wouldn't be here....that's for sure.
Summary: There was something off about those blue eyes. Albus always felt it. And yet for that connection, he will do anything.
HI THUR. So I'm new here- I had to look up how to do lj cuts D;-, but not to writing. I have a fanfiction: TheCookieWhoLived. I love OTPs. So of course, I love Grindledore. I woke up with this plot bunny in my mind, a story about their friendship and how it ended and then their battle and all but...i have no idea how to start it! WELL..I just wanted to use y'all as my test hamsters for a chapter of it, see if anyone was interested.
This takes place while they're reading up on the Deathly Hallows.
It was a sunny, pleasant afternoon in early July, with one of those occasional breezes that felt like heaven. School was out and children of all ages filled the streets, laughing. One boy was trying to impress the girl besides him by balancing a spoon from his ice cream on his nose. It was only serving to trail dribbles of vanilla down his cheeks making her and his schoolmates laugh.
The boy made a face. “Whatchoo laughin at?” He wiped his face as one of his friends, with an unfortunately thick smattering of freckles all over his face, jabbed his shoulder. “Ow! Geroff!” “Shhhh!” hissed the other boy.
The freckled boy motioned to the window above. In it, they just had the view of a red head, poring over books.
“Look…it’s that barny bloke.”
The girl screwed up her face as she looked up almost directly into the sun.
“What’s ‘e doin inside on a day like this? Hey, let’s invite him out, it’ll be grand!”
“Are you daft? Use your loaf! That guy’s absolutely nutters…always got ‘is nose in a book..joo know, Alice Steubben swears she walked by their house and heard things clattering and knocking around but when she looked inside, there was nothing!” the freckled boy spoke in hushed tones.
The girl’s mouth formed a small ‘oh’. “Maybe he has cats?”
“Bluddy vicious cats if that true,” the first boy mumbled and gave the girl a sidelong look. She looked frightened. He grinned slightly.
“Hey, Bernadine…watch this!” he picked up a pebble and hurled it into the redhead’s window. “Watcha readin eh? Eh?” he yelled up.
A blond appeared over the redhead’s shoulder and stared down reaching for something in his pocket, but the redhead shook his head.
“No, Gellert. Leave them be.”
The blond muttered something like ‘dung-brained Muggles’ as the group of students scampered, laughing amongst each other.
Putting his wand away he turned and then grinned. “They’re right though, Al. What are you doing trapped up in here?”
Albus put down his quill and arched an eyebrow. “I was under the impression you were eager for new information on the Hallows, Gellert,” he murmured though he smiled a bit. Gel shrugged and grinned. “I got something else on my mind.”
Gellert fell silent again, thumbing through books as well. The two read at a rapid pace, but it was to be expected- they had keen, rare minds.
Fifteen minutes later, Gellert said he was going for some water. Declining his offer for some, Albus turned a page, eagerly devouring the words in the book. Fascinating…these books Gellert brought each day were fascinating! Ancient, and priceless beyong belief…he could only wonder where he’d gotten them all.
Something rapped his window again. Thinking the Muggles had returned, Albus ignored it, but after a few more rapping realized it might be his owl and opened it.
He was not expecting to see Gellert hovering outside on the broom.
“Is that wise? There are Muggles everywhere..”
The other boy gave a noncommittal shrug. “All down at the lake, I already checked. Come now Albus, you could do with some fresh air..”
Albus paused and looked at the broom with apprehension. “..You go on ahead, Gellert. There is this part in runes that I would like to translate.” Praying that his neighbor would not stop him, the bespectacled teen pulled back into the room.
But Albus had learned before, and would learn again, that saying no would only encourage the thought in that sly, brilliant mind.
“Why spend all day staring at languages that even the ghosts don’t speak when you can come outside?”
He flashed that roguish grin and reached out a hand. Albus withdrew, but in vain, because a calloused and large, warm hand closed around the redhead’s wrist and tugged him out the window so quickly it was all the other could do to grab his glasses with his other hand so they did not slide completely off his face.
“Gellert, I must insist I am more comfortable-“ refusing to resign himself to his fate he struggled as he was tugged out and Grindewald’s laugh filled the air, like a clear gold bell, freshly crafted.
“Enough with the formal talk, Al! Honestly- you must practice for hours to perfect speaking like that without slipping up.” The gold-locked boy gave Albus a yank and forced him to let go of the windowsill and kind of tumble into a straddling position on the broom. He would have tipped over to the ground twenty feet below if it were not for the solid hand on his waist.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you started speaking in thou’s and thy’s next, Ally.”
The more studious of the two only thickly swallowed and stared down at the ground. So distant…all that was separating him from a fall to his death was this stick. Muggles used this to sweep their floors, how stable could it be? He focused on the scarlet lettering on the handle to distract himself: “Shooting Star 1300” it read.
“Now..I have satisfied you, have I not Gellert? I think it suitable to return to the ground now..I feel much safer when I know where my two feet are going to land..” Albus murmured and the boy behind him threw his head back and laughed in that wild way, breath raising the fine hairs on the back of the redhead’s neck.
“If I did not know you any better I would say you were nervous! Scared of a little flying, mighty prefect?”
“Ge-“
To tease his companion the blond suddenly swerved his broom away from the window and Albus yelled out and covered his eyes, sending Gellert into peals of laughter.
“You’d think I’d tugged your pigtail, Al- wait a minute-“ he leaned forward, arm brushing against his and then realized.
“Albus…Merlin’s right pocket- you’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“Yes, congratulations,” Albus muttered a bit vapidly. “Now will you let me down?”
Gellert grinned at the sign of irritation from the usually overly composed young man. “Ah, but how can I not tease you, dear Albus, after uncovering your greatest downfall? Ooh, little Diggle will have a field day with this one- imagine the possibilities-“ he adopted an eager, squeaky voice- “oh no, stairs, Albus! Would you like this parachute, Albus? Should I blindfold you, Albus? Hold your hand, Albus?”
The redhead’s lips twitched faintly. “Accurate impersonation, Gellert, but not nearly falsetto enough. Now do let me down, I am beginning to feel a bit queasy.”
Gellert was silent and Albus could tell by the breeze in his hair that he had not listened; they were still on the broom, his own eyes shut tight.
“Albus,” whispered a voice in his ear. “Look at me.”
Struck by the sudden serious note in his voice Albus’s eyelids flickered. “Is there something-“
“Look.” The word was spoken with finality. It was like it was a command, and order Albus had no choice but to oblige. Something about that voice was simply undeniable. A dangerous, yet valuable skill...he was pulled from his rapidly wandering thoughts again.
“Open your eyes, Albus.”
And so he did. Reluctantly of course, dreading to see the difference in height below but instead he saw lively blue eyes boring into his, and he froze for a moment. Up close Albus was suddenly struck with the notion that Gellert’s eyes were not blue at all but a shimmering iridescent multitude of colors…all living in flashes. How strange…
“Albus,” came the voice as if from very far away. He blinked off his dream like trance and looked up once more, and something flashed in Gellert’s eyes. It was amusement, but a cold amusement. Like a boy holding a magnifying glass, gazing down at a bug. But then it was gone as quick as it came and Albus was not sure if he had dreamed it or not.
“We’re flying,” he chuckled and Albus flickered his eyes down to the ground and they were, indeed. “You see, Albus?” Gellert’s voice had changed somehow. Become deeper, more introspective perhaps… “Fear is not a limitation on minds like ours.”
Minds like ours. The words echoed in his mind.
Many a time Albus felt that he simply just did not fit in. He tried, heavens, he tried. He tried to identify with his young brother Aberforth, tried to socialize with fellow students in his year at Hogwarts. And yet, there was a distance that could not be crossed. Even with Dedalus.
But for the first time in his short life, Albus felt like he had made a connection with this boy from Durmstrang with his not-blue eyes.
“Gellert..”
The blond grinned. “Yes, Albus?”
“Tree.”
“What?”
“TREE!” the redhead knocked the other’s hands away from the broom and grasped it turning it down as far as he could before they acquainted their faces with the large elm tree rapidly heading their way.
The two boys yelled as they crashed through branches, the broom lost somewhere along the way. Albus landed on the ground on his back and then let out an ‘oof’ as another body crashed down on top of him, dislodging his glasses.
“I might have needed that...” Albus groaned rubbing his stomach. “What?” “The function of my spleen,” he said pleasantly and Gellert laughed that glorious laugh again and fingers brushed against his ears as Gellert placed his half-moon spectacles back on his nose.
Slowly the boy opened his own piercing light blue eyes and found Gellert staring down at him from a very close distance. It was a bit nervewracking, in fact, and Albus felt a swoop in his stomach as if they were up on that cursed twig again.
Gellert leaned down. He said something, but Albus wasn’t sure what, and then out of nowhere warm lips pressed against his.
It was a strange feeling. Albus had never kissed a girl but from his roommates’s description in their quarters at Hogwarts, it wasn’t like this. It was rough and domineering, and Gellert’s lips weren’t very smooth at all. But Albus was still breathless when the blond pulled away and he stared up in utter shock.
It was all that he’d hoped for, and all that he’d dreaded.
The other’s not-blue eyes glimmered again with that sparkle. Many months later, Albus would see it as triumph…and contempt.
“Together, me and you, Al. We can overcome much more than fear,” whispered that voice in a charming, almost secretive whisper. As if this would stay between them…and tie them together.
It sent a thrill of excitement to Albus’s very core, the prospect of discovering more, of being a great wizard…and to be not alone all the while. Something he could never dream of.
And with this thrill came a shiver of uneasiness that he wrote off as adrenaline.
But it was over as suddenly as it had began, and Albus would wonder if it had ever really happened, this secretive moment beneath the dappled shadows of an elm. Gellert stood up and offered a hand and there was a familiar grin on his lips again as he hauled the taller boy back to his feet.
“You owe me a new broom, Albus.”
He paused, and then smiled slightly. “Of course.”
Gellert chuckled and winked. “Well…make it up to me by finishing up those runes!”
After all Gellert had shown him today, Albus could only agree to those not very blue eyes.
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So whaddya think? Would you be interested in reading on what happened before and what happened next?Or too cliche?