The Fourth Guest For Tea (Part One of Two)
Title: The Fourth Guest For Tea (Part One)
Author: scarysnapey
Warnings: Some sex, non-Grindeldore side relationship.
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~12,000
Summary: After Ariana's death, Gellert and Aberforth have both fled Godric's Hollow, leaving a distraught Albus behind. After a time, he too sets out on his own journey, to return four of Ariana's toy tea cups to the people she had set the table for on the day that she died. His journey brings him face-to-face with his estranged brother, the one man he truly loves, and the one thing he fears the most: the identity of Ariana's true murderer.
A/N: Currently out of town and on a weird internet schedule on top of the time difference, so I'm hoping against hope that I'm posting this somewhat correctly. Fingers crossed. In two parts because it's too long.
There are four little teacups leaving rings on the wooden table in the garden. Each is about an inch and a half in diameter. Their beautiful white edges haven’t left the tabletop for days now, and no one has come by to pick them up or to put a tablecloth under to protect the mahogany. The four little teacups have been alone for what seems like ages, rotting together as the last days of summer flitter away.
They’re made of beautiful real china, as their owner would have boasted a week ago. They are not, in fact, the same stupid plastic cups that all the other girls play with. The delicate swirling designs were created with a sheer pink glaze, and the four little cups together hold just the amount of tea that the matching teapot makes.
The teapot in question, however, is nowhere to be seen.
It’s raining, now. The horrible droplets are nearly the size of the teacups themselves, and, after just a few moments of the pounding storm, the teacups are full to the brim. The sky is not the only one crying today. The mahogany is already ruined, the teacups growing blotchy with the rain, the carefully trimmed grass beneath the table legs giving way to mud. No one cares about these things, though. The tears are for something else.
The inhabitants of Godric’s Hollow have been praying for rain for weeks, hoping for a bit of reprieve from the hottest summer the area has seen in decades. The summer has been scorching, frying the ends of everybody’s hair and sizzling off the fine ends of everybody’s patience.
Bathilda Bagshot watches the town from the window in her study, resolutely ignoring the photographs on her desk. She’s placed them facedown for now, until time dulls the pain enough for her to look at them again. Instead, she watches the rain-soaked streets for anything of interest. There’s one man walking his dog and a young couple running in from the rain, laughing foolishly. Bathilda shakes her head and turns back to the letter she’s writing. Let it rain. She’s tired of summer, anyway.
From her window, she cannot see the teacups, supposedly forgotten, sitting on the little table in the back of the house next door. Someone sees them, though. In fact, someone has been eying them for days, peering through the dense curtains of his own guilt only to see those same bloody teacups lying on the table behind his house. Albus Dumbledore is looking at them now, just out of Bathilda’s line of sight. If she walks to the other side of the room and parts the curtains, she’ll see him, bundled tightly in two sweaters, a vest, and his raincoat, hugging himself beneath the awning on the back lawn.
As it is, Albus doesn’t care about being seen. In a few moments he’ll be gone, anyway. He can flee this place with a whirl and a crack, and there is nothing that he wants more. He has some unfinished business that will take him elsewhere, and he would already be gone had he not been so needlessly ensnared by the sight of those four teacups, full to the brim with rain.
He strides forward at last with a decisive air that he does not feel and gathers the teacups with one hand. The cups are small enough and his fingers long enough that he grasps them all at once with ease, shoving them hastily into a pocket and turning away. As he walks to the other side of the house, the mud gives way and the small table topples onto its side, disappearing slowly into the newly formed sinkhole.
In an hour when she peeks out the other window, Bathilda will wonder why Albus doesn’t take better care of the lawn.
Albus glances up at the light in Bathilda’s study for only a moment as he walks across his own front lawn to stand on the sidewalk. The rain has long since soaked his carefully combed hair. A few pieces have freed themselves from the neat ribbon and stick to his forehead. Albus does not brush them aside; he merely glances away from Bathilda’s house and vows to never come back. The small part of him that wanted to blame her died when he plucked the teacups from the table.
The ‘For Sale’ sign on the lawn creaks in the wind, and the large white lettering with their bright blue background is the last thing Albus sees before he Disapparates.
The fact that he can see his own house from his point of Apparation does not go unnoticed. Albus feels incredibly stupid for Apparating at all, but what’s done is done. He tries to quell the butterflies in his stomach as he walks up the wet pathway to a door identical to his own. He blames the nausea on Apparation. He’s damned to play the blame game all of his life.
Albus summons the courage to knock on the door from somewhere deep down inside him that he isn’t sure exists. The pastel pink door slides open almost right away, and Albus pastes some bashful, shy, childish grin on his face. He’s getting a bit old to play sweetheart to his friends’ mothers. Mrs. Doge doesn’t smile. She knows what’s happened as well as anybody else.
“Hullo,” Albus tries. His voice is full of false cheer. Why Elphias is still living with his mother, Albus will never understand. He is saved from further small talk by Elphias himself, who appears over his mother’s shoulder with a grin.
“Albus!” he exclaims, unable to contain his honest enthusiasm. The nausea finds a second wind, and Albus nearly doubles over from the force of it. He shouldn’t be here. Right now the Leaky and a bottle of whatever Tom will serve him sounds preferable to Mrs. Doge’s disapproval and Elphias’s willingness to put the past behind them. Regardless, Albus finds himself taking a step into the house.
“Elphias,” he responds kindly.
“Elphias,” Mrs. Doge quips. Elphias assumes the facial expression of a firmly chastised little boy. “Will you join me in the kitchen for a second?”
Albus stands by the door, which is thankfully closed, and listens to the sound of the rain and the ever-present creak of the ‘For Sale’ sign across the street. The walls are lined with family portraits. Mr. Doge is in few of them, having passed away when Elphias was young. Mrs. Doge looks the same in all of them, overbearing and a bit too cheerful, never aging even as Elphias turns from a little boy to a young man.
Albus finds himself walking along the hallway, glancing at the pictures that were obviously not chosen by Mrs. Doge herself. Elphias’s picks are hidden in a back corner, somehow dimly lit while the rest of the house nearly sparkles. The photographs all contain Albus, which would explain why they are hidden. In them the two boys are laughing, smiling, embracing. In one, he and Elphias are bent over a map of the world, eagerly plotting a trip that Albus never went on.
“Mum-“ Elphias’s voice wafts from the kitchen. Albus isn’t even trying to listen, but he cannot help it.
“He’s dangerous, Elphias. Don’t you try to pretend he’s not. You know as well as I do what he did to that poor girl.”
“Mum, he didn’t. It was that other boy.”
That other boy. Albus feels like he’s going to be sick. In an attempt to block out the voices, he focuses on tearing the frame of that one photograph from the wall without damaging the wallpaper. It proves surprisingly easy, and Albus pries the photograph from the frame without much trouble, either. The empty frame goes back up on the wall, and the photograph with Elphias and the map goes straight into Albus’s pocket with the teacups.
“What is it you’re after, then?”
Albus jumps a foot in the air, startled more by the cool tone in Elphias’s voice than by the suddenness of the question.
“I-“ Albus doesn’t know what to say. He’d expected Elphias to invite him upstairs where they would talk about anything and everything. Albus would act delighted to finally hear the details of the Grand Tour, and when the sun went down, Albus would make up some bullocks about wanting to stay the night. By morning he would have thought of where to go next.
Instead, his tongue gets stuck in his throat.
“Well?” Elphias says shortly. Albus gapes, unable to comprehend this turn of events.
“Elphias?” Mrs. Doge putters out of the kitchen wearing a dreadful hat and a matching pair of gloves. The hat has a gigantic flower on the top of it. Albus almost whispers the first snide comment that comes to his head, but thinks better of it just in time. He needs to remember whose company he’s in. “I’m off to the store,” Mrs. Doge continues. The rest of the sentence remains unspoken as she steps into the Floo. ”Albus had best be gone when I get back.”
Given the way things are going, Albus doesn’t think that will be a problem. The last of the green flames flicker in the grate and then are gone, and Albus reluctantly turns his attention to Elphias, who is grinning as though he’s as mad as a hatter.
“Never was much of an actor, Albus, but I’ve fooled the two of you pretty well.”
Albus shakes his head. “Elphias, what are you-?”
Elphias shrugs. “She wants you gone, obviously. We’ll stash you in the closet when she comes home.” He begins to usher Albus up the stairs. “How long will you be staying? Never mind. We can hide you as long as you’d like. I saw the sign in your yard; that’s how I know. I really can’t believe….”
He putters on like this for what seems like hours, in the hall, in his room, outside the bathroom while Albus is changing into a pair of borrowed nightclothes. Albus drops his cloak, oblivious to the clatter of the china hitting the bathroom floor. Elphias is still talking, and Albus hangs onto the words well enough to know when he should chuckle fondly. He is otherwise preoccupied with undressing in the tiny bathroom without actually seeing his naked body in the mirror.
He cannot bear to see himself naked. He cannot even bear to think of himself naked these past few days. It’s only a short leap from there to something else, and that particular something else Albus has sworn to never think of again. It’s difficult to ignore the pallor of his chest, which stands out quite boldly in the lime green powder room. Albus pulls on Elphias’s nightclothes with his eyes shut tight, which results in his tripping into the door on several occasions.
Elphias doesn’t seem to notice. Rather, he keeps prattling on, oblivious to the quiet sound of sobbing as Albus begins, at one point, to cry.
Albus emerges a few minutes later, red-eyed and with a few bruises to show for his escapade in the bathroom. Elphias is actually still talking, a fact that Albus cannot get through his head no matter how hard he tries. He clutches his carefully folded clothes to his chest with one hand and holds up Elphias’s nightclothes with the other. The drawstring just doesn’t pull tight enough.
He never has to hide in the closet, thank Merlin, because Mrs. Doge does not return for a terribly long time. By the time the whoosh of the Floo catches in Albus’s ears, Elphias is asleep. Albus himself is huddled up in a makeshift bed on the floor. It’s really more of a pile of blankets, which, in the dark, can hardly be told from a pile of dirty laundry. This is a lucky thing because Mrs. Doge has the good sense to check on her son before turning in.
The light from the hall splits the darkness, falling in a clean line just a foot from Albus’s face. He lies deathly still, trying painfully hard to hold in his laughter as Mrs. Doge approaches Elphias’s bed and gives him a quick peck on the forehead. She creeps away, sparing Albus’s corner of the room not a single glance.
The light in the hall shines beneath the closed door for a few moments longer before Mrs. Doge whispers, “Nox,” and the house goes dark.
Albus stares at the ceiling for hours, incapable of sleeping. His folded clothes lie on the floor beside his head, just beneath the windowsill. Albus is still awake when the first rays of light shine through the window, illuminating the four white teacups that Albus had placed there in the night.
“You’re not going to disappear on me again, are you?” Elphias confirms. He places a plate in front of Albus, who stares at the runny eggs with marked distaste. His lip curls just a bit at the sight of such food, and just a bit more as he remembers why Elphias was such an awful friend.
The neediness that fogs the room is enough to ruin Albus’s appetite. He’s dressed and ready to go, anyway, so he steps back from the table and pretends that he hasn’t noticed the plate of food at all.
“Of course I’m not,” Albus says. He gives a little chuckle, too, just to make sure that Elphias believes him. Good old Elphias smiles. He would follow Albus to the ends of the earth, singing his praises all the bloody way. If only he understood what a mess Albus had made of things.
Albus fingers the teacups in his pocket, backing toward the door with what he thinks is an easy manner. “I’ve got some loose ends to tie up, but I’ll be back.”
He isn’t lying, technically. He’s simply leaving out the fact that it might take him years to tie up those ends.
With this in mind, he escapes through the door, walking down the path toward a whole new world. So things always are after a storm, when everything is wet and trees have been felled and familiar houses are missing a shingle. The world is yet undiscovered, though the roads all lead to the same places as before.
Albus feels Elphias’s eyes boring into his back as he reaches the sidewalk, and Bathilda’s, too, as she pulls aside the curtain of her study and peers at him from across the way. That’s how he knows the world hasn’t truly changed, by the wave of nausea at the thought of being watched, especially by these two people, who’ve known his every secret and never known him at all.
The graveyard is as silent as expected. The rain has made its mark here, too, and it only stands to reason that no one would bother to visit the dead on a day such as this. The gate has been blown off one of its hinges, and broken twigs and branches have practically obscured the path from view. It’s a completely different place than it was a mere three days ago, but Albus knows his way, nonetheless.
The temperature is disgustingly low for August, and the multiple sweaters are hardly enough to stop the chill from seeping into Albus’s bones. He’s starting to think that the world has turned into one giant dementor.
Cracking twigs beneath his boots is unavoidable, especially because he walks with the intent of avoiding every single crack in the path. He avoids them like the plague, lately. It’s the least that he owes Ariana after all those years of walking carelessly with little care for breaking his mother’s back or otherwise injuring anybody.
He leaves deep prints in the mud when he steps off the path, making his way purposefully toward the one fresh mound of soil in the whole place. One might think that Ariana Dumbledore is the only person who died all summer. In the little sphere of life contained in Godric’s Hollow, one would be right. Albus doesn’t mind that the rain has turned her grave into a mushy soup. The grass will grow quickly with all this rain, and the raw wound of her death will turn into another finely trimmed plot of land with a headstone carefully selected and quickly forgotten.
Ariana will be a fond memory in time; that’s what Bathilda told him. Albus knows that that’s a lie. Bathilda has just gotten abnormally good at glossing over the fucked up moments in her past.
Albus take a minute to admire the headstone. He picked it out himself and wrote the inscription, which took hours of planning to decide on at last. Now it looks so goddamn perfect that Albus wants to start crying again. The whole thing is so bloody picturesque; it wouldn’t be more beautiful if it had been done properly, by some future husband, years down the road in a future that will never come. Instead, the words on the headstone will forever been Albus’s, picked from one of a thousand books he’d read that summer.
Ariana Kendra Dumbledore
1885 - 1899
‘Of these most elusive magical objects, few shall speak with any sincerity. These three would seek, together, to turn one’s innermost emotions against their holder. Only with love will man prevail.’
That Magic Most Evil would devote an entire chapter to the Deathly Hallows is almost ludicrous, and that the chapter is so completely comprised of fluffy rhetoric is even more shocking. But Albus chose this passage because of the way he disregarded it when he first read the book. Only in retrospect did he understand the way the Hallows had twisted him, how they still seek to twist him, and that the love that would save him should have saved him long ago.
Suddenly, he feels an overwhelming surge of guilt, not for the many things he is guilty of, but for using Ariana’s headstone as a reminder of his own regrets. Few others would ever look upon those words and see more than a sentimental quote. Few others would ever understand.
Few others will come here at all, Albus realizes. Their parents are dead; they will never come to see the grave. Aberforth can be trusted to return monthly, at least for the first few years. After that, who knows? And Albus himself will not return for a long, long time. Not until he has more to show for himself than four lonely teacups, two sweaters and pointless tears.
“Did you know?” he whispers, falling to his knees in the damp soil that marks her grave. Ariana does not answer. She cannot answer, though Albus doubts her words would comfort the fear clenching at his heart inside his chest. She cannot tell him the one thing he wants to hear: that her death was not his fault, that the curse that struck her down did not belong to him.
Albus kneels there for hours, long after the moisture from the ground has soaked through the knees of his trousers. He listens to the wind rattle the branches above his head and privately rejoices when no one comes looking for him after the sun goes down.
When he’s wept his fill, when the headstone no longer looks perfect, when the August air becomes to cold for him to bear, Albus leans forward and takes something from his pocket. He sets the teacup on Ariana’s grave, beside the wilted flowers and magically preserved wreaths of the past week.
Albus leaves the tiny teacup there without a word, having asked the only question that mattered and received the answer he expected. With his heart a little lighter and his stomach only doing slight somersaults, Albus avoids the cracks on the path back to the gate. Just outside the gate he pauses, casting one last look about Godric’s Hollow, at the light on in Elphias’s room, at the cats milling around stupidly in Bathilda’s yard. He listens to the faint creaking of the ‘For Sale’ sign and the repetitive drip drop of water off of the trees.
Beneath the black and blue sky he bids farewell to his home. He leaves the house and the yard and the little table in the back, Bathilda and Ariana’s grave and Elphias and his disapproving mother. He leaves everything but the weight of all the death, a photo of Elphias, and three little teacups clinking in his pocket.
The Leaky has never felt to inviting as it does tonight. The bar is full when Albus sweeps in, tucking an unruly strand of hair behind his ear and trying to keep his face pointed toward the ground. He’d toyed with using a glamour, but decided against it at the last minute.
He elbows his way toward the bar, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible while still making progress. A particularly fat man bars his way when Albus is just a foot from his destination. Tom is cleaning a glass and speaking animatedly with a pretty blonde girl. Albus opens his mouth to catch his attention, but the fat man grabs him by the collar.
“Eh!” he grunts, hoisting Albus practically off the ground. “Bertrem!” Albus, panicking, is fairly certain that the man has mistaken him for someone else.
“My name isn’t Bertrem,” he tries to say calmly, but he only gets the words halfway out before another man, presumably Bertrem, wheels around to face him.
“What?” Bertrem growls. The fat man shakes Albus a bit.
“See this?”
“Put me down!” Albus interrupts, kicking at the air. Half the room is looking now, which is quite a feat considering how noisy and crowded the place is tonight.
“This is the one that killed his own sister!”
Bertrem takes a skeptical step forward. “I don’t think it’s him. And I heard the brother didn’t even do it.”
“Let me down!” Albus cries again, flailing foolishly. He grapples for his wand, but Tom is quicker. He rushes out from behind the bar with his wand drawn.
“Bertrem,” he snaps. “Get your friend out of here. I think he’s had just enough to drink.”
In the Leaky, Tom’s word is law, and that’s why Albus finds himself unceremoniously dumped onto the ground as Bertrem practically drags his fat friend from the premises. The other patrons turn back to their drinks, bored of the situation already. General chaos resumes, and Tom helps Albus up from the slightly grimy floor.
“Thank you,” Albus manages, watching Tom take in the dirty knees of his trousers and his all around disheveled appearance.
“A room, lad?” he says quietly, and Albus swallows dryly and throws dignity to the wind.
“Yes, please,” he manages. The evening crowd is beginning to thin out as lecherous men drag their prizes in the form of giggling young women up the stairs or out the door. A few pathetic wretches are yet ordering another drink, and two young women in the back are eyeing the slim pickings of remaining men. One teeters over to Albus on unsteady feet, throwing embarrassed glances over her shoulder at her friend.
Albus gives her a friendly smile and mentally urges Tom to hurry up with the key.
“Hullo,” the woman says. Up close, she is not nearly as young as he originally thought. Pretty, yes, but mid-thirties. She’s far too old for Albus, at any rate, even though the short length of her hemline suggests that she’s in denial about her age.
“Hullo,” Albus replies. He makes a great show of rifling through his pockets to find the money he needs, and by the time he pulls the galleons free, Tom is sliding the key across the counter.
“Room 17,” he says, pocketing the galleons and turning to a man who has just come in from the cold. “How about this weather? And in August, no less,” Albus hears Tom say to the man. He picks up the key and turns to the stairs.
“You’re going already?” the woman whines, lurching after him. The drink in her hand is a danger to those around her. Albus stops reluctantly and turns around.
“I’ve had a long journey, and I would like to get some rest.” He smiles and gives her a friendly nudge back toward her friend. “I apologize, though. I am sure that your company would have been most pleasant.”
He’s gone before she can get her bearings, taking the stairs an ungainly two at a time. His remarkable lack of interest in the opposite sex has become a source of constant nausea, and Albus has no doubt that the fact that he could have had sex with that woman will haunt him for days. He’s still thinking about her as he jiggles the key in the lock of his room.
He wonders what her lips feel like, and her fingers. He wonders only for a moment about her breasts as he undresses, arranging the three little teacups carefully on the windowsill. The room is small, but it has a bed and a place for Albus to hang his cloak while he wonders how her breasts would feel like in his hands. Too soft, too damn soft.
He sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and wonders if it’s too late for him to run downstairs and request the woman’s company, just so that he can see what it’s like. It’s probably not, but Albus thinks better of it and kicks off his boots, resigning himself to the fact that there is no way he would have been able to get… hard.
Dammit. He’s blushing just thinking about it.
Albus is starting to wish that he’d nicked a pair of Elphias’s nightclothes. He could have transfigured the damned things to fit properly, and now he’s stuck wearing his trousers to bed, remembering the time his mother warned him never to sleep naked in a motel.
“There are certain things that even the harshest cleaning charms leave behind,” she’d lectured, and Albus really hadn’t given a fuck. Now, knowing that the woman downstairs could have been pounded into the mattress in this very room prompts him to stop his bare skin from touching anything even resembling bed sheets.
Instead, he strips the bed completely, from comforter to the thinnest sheets. After a moment of deliberation, the pillows join the pile of fabric on the floor. Albus snuffs the lights and lies on his back in the darkness, staring at the ceiling once again. He wonders why exactly he isn’t tired after everything that’s happened.
In the time between midnight and morning, the only possibility that Albus comes up with is that grief has broken the part of his brain that allows him to sleep.
Albus loves peepholes. This is, admittedly, the first time that he’s ever had use for one, but he loves them nonetheless. Right now, his face is squashed uncomfortably against the door as he peers out into the hallway, feeling horribly like Bathilda. The door of the room across the way is open, and a half-naked man is standing in the threshold. He is not, actually, what Albus is staring at, though his biceps are impressive. What has captured Albus’s attention is the woman his is ushering into the hallway, who is about to undertake the dreaded walk of shame from the building, awkwardly pulling down last night’s skirt to make it somewhat appropriate for daylight hours.
Albus stands at the peephole even after the woman stumbles off, captivated by the man in the doorway. He had sex with that woman last night. Albus could have had sex with that woman last night. The thought is mind blowing, disgusting, and refuses to be shaken from Albus’s head.
The man has gone inside by the time Albus steps into the corridor to forage for food. He feels irritable and exhausted for the first time in days, though he knows that any attempt to sleep will be futile. Instead, he drags his weary feet to the stairs and down them.
The memory of Elphias’s runny eggs besieges him as he looks at the menu, and he at last decides on dry toast. The waitress gives him a funny look and flounces off, obviously expecting a tiny tip from such a small order. Albus would love to prove her wrong, but the galleons in his pocket are dwindling, and he would rather avoid a trip to Gringotts, where his identity would need to be revealed.
He wastes the day at that same table in the corner, watching the fare as they come in and out. The people are fundamentally uninteresting, and Albus feels that inkling of superiority inside him rear its ugly head. The waitress comes over to hover by him nervously every twenty minutes, and after a few hours, Albus orders a coffee, just to get her to leave him alone.
Around sundown, Albus moves to the bar, procuring a stool in the corner just as the first bundle of customers rushes in from the cold.
“Bloody August,” one man grumbles. The woman he’s with titters, and the laugh is so unnatural that Albus nearly bursts out laughing himself. Instead, he orders another drink and glances around the bar. The woman from the night before and from this morning is sitting in the corner again, laughing her head off with her friend. Albus wonders if this is a common endeavor for the two women, whether the two of them enjoy getting stupidly drunk and fucking the first muscled young man to look in their direction.
He has no idea why he is so fascinated with her, but he realizes that he should probably stop looking lest she notice and make another ill aimed lurch in his direction. Looking away, however, only brought to his attention that he wasn’t the only one looking. The man with the admittedly gorgeous biceps is sitting on the stool beside Albus, peering slyly at the two women.
“Back for another go?” Albus asks. He honestly cannot help himself, though he regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth. The man cocks his head, raising one perfect eyebrow and staring down his nose in Albus’s general direction. It becomes horribly clear for the first time exactly how much bigger than Albus this man actually is, and he feels himself shrinking before the other man’s eyes.
“Excuse me?” the man prompts when it becomes clear that Albus will not be making the next move.
“I saw you with her this morning,” Albus says bravely. “I’m wondering if it was so good that you’re back for another go.”
The man smiles, an honest to Merlin beautiful smile, and for the first time, Albus’s interest in the man has nothing to do with the woman in the corner. In fact, his legs feel weak as fuck and he’s barely able to keep his arse properly stuck to the stool.
“She and I didn’t-“ The man starts laughing and has to pause. “She was too drunk to walk last night when she threw herself on me, and I didn’t have to think too hard to figure out how her night would end if I didn’t offer a helping hand. I slept on the floor.”
Albus rubs his forehead tiredly. “My mistake, then,” he says awkwardly. This is where the conversation should logically end, or, at least, that’s what his head is telling him. The man, however, is still smiling, apparently unaware of the proper decorum.
“Tonight, though. I am off babysitting duty,” he says, and Albus’s stomach does an enormous somersault.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”
“Ian.”
“Hullo, Ian. I’m Albus.”
“Pleasure.”
Awkward silence reigns, and Albus stares uncomfortably into his empty glass. He can feel Ian’s eyes on him, but he’s never been terribly good at carrying on pleasant conversations. “So what are you going to do with your night off?” Albus attempts, trying to resurrect the flirty tone of the babysitting comment earlier.
Ian grins. “I plan on buying you another drink,” he says smoothly, gesturing in Tom’s direction. The dim lighting hides Albus’s blush, or so he thinks, until Ian tucks a red lock of hair behind his ear and leans down to whisper, “You blush so prettily,” and Albus never gets that first drink.
He’s pressed up against the wall of Ian’s room in less than a minute. This is the second time in his life that he’s been happy to be so small. With Ian’s huge biceps on either side of his head, Albus is fairly certain that being a skinny little shrimp of a man makes this the hottest thing in the world, but that also cold be attributed to the things Ian is whispering or the feeling of his cock rubbing against Albus’s leg through far too much fabric.
Whichever it is, Albus doesn’t particularly care, so long as the clothing comes off soon. However, with his hands trapped just above his head, Albus is in no real position to be making demands. Ian seems to get the picture, though, when Albus arches his hips and whines like a cat. Ian chuckles, and the whole situation becomes just mortifying enough to be perfect.
The words running through his head are all words that goody little Albus shouldn’t know. He won’t ever admit that he gets off on humiliation, but there is something about the dingy motel room and the fact that Ian is calling the shots and the fact that Albus is so obviously panting for it that just makes this the kind of thing that Albus shouldn’t want. But he does, Merlin, he does.
Ian might have a bloody perfect body, but it’s the situation that gets Albus hard in the end, and the feeling of humiliation in the pit of his stomach that allows him, with his eyes shut tight, to pretend that Ian is someone else.
The regret comes as soon as Albus does, and his quick eyes are already plotting the fastest course to gather all his clothes and slip out the door by the time Ian pulls out of him.
“Merlin’s beard,” Ian groans, rolling off of Albus and onto his back. With his hands behind his head, he cocks that perfect brow and grins.
“I’d better be going,” Albus says, flinging his legs over the side of the bed, taking the entire comforter with him when he stands. Never mind the fact that this man was balls deep inside of him a moment ago; there is no chance of him seeing Albus naked now.
“Why?” Ian asks simply. Albus toys with answering as he grabs his trousers. He reaches for his vest, too.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m getting out of a bad relationship.” Not totally a lie. Albus certainly doesn’t want to talk about it with Ian, naked Ian, who is lying there looking smug as fuck. He hasn’t bothered to cover himself, and Albus is given pause by the sight of his soft cock lolling against his thigh. Albus’s own cock gives an interested twitch.
“He break your heart?” Ian asks.
“He died.” Albus grabs his boots. There’s the lie.
“I’m sorry,” says Ian.
“Yeah, well,” Albus says. He’s gotten everything and is standing by the door. He can’t think of anything else to say, so he leaves it at that, but he trips over the comforter like the clumsy fool he is and ends up back on the bed, tangled hopelessly in the sheets. Ian is smiling at him again.
“See, your legs don’t want you to go,” says Ian. Albus sits up and flings his legs over the side of the mattress again. He feels the tears coming too quickly for him to stop them, so he buries his head in his hands and cries. He’s aware that the quivering hunch of his back cannot be pretty, but he doesn’t bloody care. He’s mortified by the entire situation, and not in a good way anymore.
Ian presses his hand softly against the exposed bit of Albus’s back. Albus shivers, and Ian withdraws the hand immediately.
“Oh my- That wasn’t your first-“ Ian blubbers, and Albus snorts awkwardly. Through his tears, the laugh comes out all wet sounding.
“No,” he says. “My second. Congratulations.” There’s a pause. “Anyway.” Albus stands up and waddles awkwardly to the door. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“Yeah, no. It’s fine, really.” Ian sits up and crosses his legs. Albus wishes that he’d put on some clothing. “I mean, your lover just died. You’ve got to be a wreck.”
Oh, Albus is a wreck, alright. He nods. “He’s not dead,” he says before he Apparates into his own room across the hall, leaving the comforter pooled on the floor before Ian’s eyes.
Albus settles into his own bed immediately, cursing his tears almost as much as the beginnings of the ache in his arse. That wasn’t worth it.
It’s a credit to both Albus’s frugality and his stealth that he manages to live like this in the Leaky for an entire month without visiting Gringotts or bumping into Ian again. Albus has seen him, obviously, through the peephole in his room, wondering frantically what business could tempt a man to put up a seemingly permanent residence above the pub. Then he realizes that he’s done the same thing. And then he wonders if Ian watches him through his own peephole.
Then he feels like a bloody fool.
Albus has tried to think about that night as little as possible. He’s devoted his attention to planning his future, which, however bleak, is unavoidable. By day, he pours over maps and the relevant newspaper clippings, sipping coffee quietly at the small table in the corner downstairs. He avoids the waitress’s eye when she tries to give him a refill. One cup a day is all he can afford, right now, and he takes his last sip of the long-cooled caramel colored liquid around dusk when the night crowd pushes through the door.
Then he retreats to his room. One night, he passes Ian on the stairs. Albus is going up and Ian is going down. Ian tries to say something, but Albus keeps his head down and walks past, and around one in the morning, while Albus stares at the ceiling above his bed, he hears Ian’s baritone shake the corridor outside with his laughter. Against his will, Albus’s feet carry him to the door, to that blasted peephole, and he watches as Ian a whorish little stick of a young man into his room. The door slams shut, and Albus returns to his bed in the darkness.
By night, the demons come for him. They unlock the carefully sealed doors in his head, and all the things that he has no business thinking about come out. The past and the mistakes he’s made and all the people that he misses so badly that his heart breaks in two at the very thought of them. By night, Albus curls up into a little back and wonders if he’ll ever be strong enough to be an adult. Then he wonders if he’ll ever live that long.
Then he wonders if he even wants to.
The thirty days of the end of August and the beginning of September pass in the blink of an eye, and it’s the fifteenth before he reaches into his pocket to pay Tom and realizes that the only contents are a large piece of lint and the teacups. That’s when he decides that it’s time to go. He bids Tom a hasty apology, clears his room, and is gone within the hour. The last thing he does is push a note under Ian’s door, full of stupid, bullshit things that Albus doesn’t really need to say. But he supposes that he should leave a mess behind him wherever he goes. It’s tradition, after all.
His pockets have very little in them by the time he steps out onto the window streets of Diagon Alley. The three remaining teacups jingle faintly, grating against the photo of him and Elphias. In the other pocket are all of the newspaper clippings that mention, even in passing, the fearful darkness rising in Berlin.
Gringotts rises before his eyes, stark against the pale sky of September. This weather is trying his patience. Albus warmly recognizes the warning against thievery without even looking. A smile quirks his lips. He could rob Gringotts if he tried, Albus is sure of it, but his days of standing out are over. He walks the stairs with determination, pulling his key from the bottom of his shoe and handing it over to the nasty little goblin.
He emerges victorious fifteen minutes later, with a pocket full of galleons and only a bit of nausea pooling in his stomach. The ride to the vault never does anything for his anxious disposition. Albus stands at the base of the steps for at least an hour, watching the wizards and witches come and go. He thinks, suddenly, that he is very much like Bathilda, and, in that same second, he realizes where he needs to go.
The crack of his Disapparation startles a little girl who is devouring an ice cream despite the cold. She jumps and drop the cone, and her earsplitting shrieks disturb the shoppers for the five long minutes it takes for her mother to buy her a second one. All the mothers shake their heads and the fathers roll their eyes, and everybody wonders why that redheaded young man was too self-involved to walk to the bloody Apparation point.
Author: scarysnapey
Warnings: Some sex, non-Grindeldore side relationship.
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~12,000
Summary: After Ariana's death, Gellert and Aberforth have both fled Godric's Hollow, leaving a distraught Albus behind. After a time, he too sets out on his own journey, to return four of Ariana's toy tea cups to the people she had set the table for on the day that she died. His journey brings him face-to-face with his estranged brother, the one man he truly loves, and the one thing he fears the most: the identity of Ariana's true murderer.
A/N: Currently out of town and on a weird internet schedule on top of the time difference, so I'm hoping against hope that I'm posting this somewhat correctly. Fingers crossed. In two parts because it's too long.
There are four little teacups leaving rings on the wooden table in the garden. Each is about an inch and a half in diameter. Their beautiful white edges haven’t left the tabletop for days now, and no one has come by to pick them up or to put a tablecloth under to protect the mahogany. The four little teacups have been alone for what seems like ages, rotting together as the last days of summer flitter away.
They’re made of beautiful real china, as their owner would have boasted a week ago. They are not, in fact, the same stupid plastic cups that all the other girls play with. The delicate swirling designs were created with a sheer pink glaze, and the four little cups together hold just the amount of tea that the matching teapot makes.
The teapot in question, however, is nowhere to be seen.
It’s raining, now. The horrible droplets are nearly the size of the teacups themselves, and, after just a few moments of the pounding storm, the teacups are full to the brim. The sky is not the only one crying today. The mahogany is already ruined, the teacups growing blotchy with the rain, the carefully trimmed grass beneath the table legs giving way to mud. No one cares about these things, though. The tears are for something else.
The inhabitants of Godric’s Hollow have been praying for rain for weeks, hoping for a bit of reprieve from the hottest summer the area has seen in decades. The summer has been scorching, frying the ends of everybody’s hair and sizzling off the fine ends of everybody’s patience.
Bathilda Bagshot watches the town from the window in her study, resolutely ignoring the photographs on her desk. She’s placed them facedown for now, until time dulls the pain enough for her to look at them again. Instead, she watches the rain-soaked streets for anything of interest. There’s one man walking his dog and a young couple running in from the rain, laughing foolishly. Bathilda shakes her head and turns back to the letter she’s writing. Let it rain. She’s tired of summer, anyway.
From her window, she cannot see the teacups, supposedly forgotten, sitting on the little table in the back of the house next door. Someone sees them, though. In fact, someone has been eying them for days, peering through the dense curtains of his own guilt only to see those same bloody teacups lying on the table behind his house. Albus Dumbledore is looking at them now, just out of Bathilda’s line of sight. If she walks to the other side of the room and parts the curtains, she’ll see him, bundled tightly in two sweaters, a vest, and his raincoat, hugging himself beneath the awning on the back lawn.
As it is, Albus doesn’t care about being seen. In a few moments he’ll be gone, anyway. He can flee this place with a whirl and a crack, and there is nothing that he wants more. He has some unfinished business that will take him elsewhere, and he would already be gone had he not been so needlessly ensnared by the sight of those four teacups, full to the brim with rain.
He strides forward at last with a decisive air that he does not feel and gathers the teacups with one hand. The cups are small enough and his fingers long enough that he grasps them all at once with ease, shoving them hastily into a pocket and turning away. As he walks to the other side of the house, the mud gives way and the small table topples onto its side, disappearing slowly into the newly formed sinkhole.
In an hour when she peeks out the other window, Bathilda will wonder why Albus doesn’t take better care of the lawn.
Albus glances up at the light in Bathilda’s study for only a moment as he walks across his own front lawn to stand on the sidewalk. The rain has long since soaked his carefully combed hair. A few pieces have freed themselves from the neat ribbon and stick to his forehead. Albus does not brush them aside; he merely glances away from Bathilda’s house and vows to never come back. The small part of him that wanted to blame her died when he plucked the teacups from the table.
The ‘For Sale’ sign on the lawn creaks in the wind, and the large white lettering with their bright blue background is the last thing Albus sees before he Disapparates.
The fact that he can see his own house from his point of Apparation does not go unnoticed. Albus feels incredibly stupid for Apparating at all, but what’s done is done. He tries to quell the butterflies in his stomach as he walks up the wet pathway to a door identical to his own. He blames the nausea on Apparation. He’s damned to play the blame game all of his life.
Albus summons the courage to knock on the door from somewhere deep down inside him that he isn’t sure exists. The pastel pink door slides open almost right away, and Albus pastes some bashful, shy, childish grin on his face. He’s getting a bit old to play sweetheart to his friends’ mothers. Mrs. Doge doesn’t smile. She knows what’s happened as well as anybody else.
“Hullo,” Albus tries. His voice is full of false cheer. Why Elphias is still living with his mother, Albus will never understand. He is saved from further small talk by Elphias himself, who appears over his mother’s shoulder with a grin.
“Albus!” he exclaims, unable to contain his honest enthusiasm. The nausea finds a second wind, and Albus nearly doubles over from the force of it. He shouldn’t be here. Right now the Leaky and a bottle of whatever Tom will serve him sounds preferable to Mrs. Doge’s disapproval and Elphias’s willingness to put the past behind them. Regardless, Albus finds himself taking a step into the house.
“Elphias,” he responds kindly.
“Elphias,” Mrs. Doge quips. Elphias assumes the facial expression of a firmly chastised little boy. “Will you join me in the kitchen for a second?”
Albus stands by the door, which is thankfully closed, and listens to the sound of the rain and the ever-present creak of the ‘For Sale’ sign across the street. The walls are lined with family portraits. Mr. Doge is in few of them, having passed away when Elphias was young. Mrs. Doge looks the same in all of them, overbearing and a bit too cheerful, never aging even as Elphias turns from a little boy to a young man.
Albus finds himself walking along the hallway, glancing at the pictures that were obviously not chosen by Mrs. Doge herself. Elphias’s picks are hidden in a back corner, somehow dimly lit while the rest of the house nearly sparkles. The photographs all contain Albus, which would explain why they are hidden. In them the two boys are laughing, smiling, embracing. In one, he and Elphias are bent over a map of the world, eagerly plotting a trip that Albus never went on.
“Mum-“ Elphias’s voice wafts from the kitchen. Albus isn’t even trying to listen, but he cannot help it.
“He’s dangerous, Elphias. Don’t you try to pretend he’s not. You know as well as I do what he did to that poor girl.”
“Mum, he didn’t. It was that other boy.”
That other boy. Albus feels like he’s going to be sick. In an attempt to block out the voices, he focuses on tearing the frame of that one photograph from the wall without damaging the wallpaper. It proves surprisingly easy, and Albus pries the photograph from the frame without much trouble, either. The empty frame goes back up on the wall, and the photograph with Elphias and the map goes straight into Albus’s pocket with the teacups.
“What is it you’re after, then?”
Albus jumps a foot in the air, startled more by the cool tone in Elphias’s voice than by the suddenness of the question.
“I-“ Albus doesn’t know what to say. He’d expected Elphias to invite him upstairs where they would talk about anything and everything. Albus would act delighted to finally hear the details of the Grand Tour, and when the sun went down, Albus would make up some bullocks about wanting to stay the night. By morning he would have thought of where to go next.
Instead, his tongue gets stuck in his throat.
“Well?” Elphias says shortly. Albus gapes, unable to comprehend this turn of events.
“Elphias?” Mrs. Doge putters out of the kitchen wearing a dreadful hat and a matching pair of gloves. The hat has a gigantic flower on the top of it. Albus almost whispers the first snide comment that comes to his head, but thinks better of it just in time. He needs to remember whose company he’s in. “I’m off to the store,” Mrs. Doge continues. The rest of the sentence remains unspoken as she steps into the Floo. ”Albus had best be gone when I get back.”
Given the way things are going, Albus doesn’t think that will be a problem. The last of the green flames flicker in the grate and then are gone, and Albus reluctantly turns his attention to Elphias, who is grinning as though he’s as mad as a hatter.
“Never was much of an actor, Albus, but I’ve fooled the two of you pretty well.”
Albus shakes his head. “Elphias, what are you-?”
Elphias shrugs. “She wants you gone, obviously. We’ll stash you in the closet when she comes home.” He begins to usher Albus up the stairs. “How long will you be staying? Never mind. We can hide you as long as you’d like. I saw the sign in your yard; that’s how I know. I really can’t believe….”
He putters on like this for what seems like hours, in the hall, in his room, outside the bathroom while Albus is changing into a pair of borrowed nightclothes. Albus drops his cloak, oblivious to the clatter of the china hitting the bathroom floor. Elphias is still talking, and Albus hangs onto the words well enough to know when he should chuckle fondly. He is otherwise preoccupied with undressing in the tiny bathroom without actually seeing his naked body in the mirror.
He cannot bear to see himself naked. He cannot even bear to think of himself naked these past few days. It’s only a short leap from there to something else, and that particular something else Albus has sworn to never think of again. It’s difficult to ignore the pallor of his chest, which stands out quite boldly in the lime green powder room. Albus pulls on Elphias’s nightclothes with his eyes shut tight, which results in his tripping into the door on several occasions.
Elphias doesn’t seem to notice. Rather, he keeps prattling on, oblivious to the quiet sound of sobbing as Albus begins, at one point, to cry.
Albus emerges a few minutes later, red-eyed and with a few bruises to show for his escapade in the bathroom. Elphias is actually still talking, a fact that Albus cannot get through his head no matter how hard he tries. He clutches his carefully folded clothes to his chest with one hand and holds up Elphias’s nightclothes with the other. The drawstring just doesn’t pull tight enough.
He never has to hide in the closet, thank Merlin, because Mrs. Doge does not return for a terribly long time. By the time the whoosh of the Floo catches in Albus’s ears, Elphias is asleep. Albus himself is huddled up in a makeshift bed on the floor. It’s really more of a pile of blankets, which, in the dark, can hardly be told from a pile of dirty laundry. This is a lucky thing because Mrs. Doge has the good sense to check on her son before turning in.
The light from the hall splits the darkness, falling in a clean line just a foot from Albus’s face. He lies deathly still, trying painfully hard to hold in his laughter as Mrs. Doge approaches Elphias’s bed and gives him a quick peck on the forehead. She creeps away, sparing Albus’s corner of the room not a single glance.
The light in the hall shines beneath the closed door for a few moments longer before Mrs. Doge whispers, “Nox,” and the house goes dark.
Albus stares at the ceiling for hours, incapable of sleeping. His folded clothes lie on the floor beside his head, just beneath the windowsill. Albus is still awake when the first rays of light shine through the window, illuminating the four white teacups that Albus had placed there in the night.
“You’re not going to disappear on me again, are you?” Elphias confirms. He places a plate in front of Albus, who stares at the runny eggs with marked distaste. His lip curls just a bit at the sight of such food, and just a bit more as he remembers why Elphias was such an awful friend.
The neediness that fogs the room is enough to ruin Albus’s appetite. He’s dressed and ready to go, anyway, so he steps back from the table and pretends that he hasn’t noticed the plate of food at all.
“Of course I’m not,” Albus says. He gives a little chuckle, too, just to make sure that Elphias believes him. Good old Elphias smiles. He would follow Albus to the ends of the earth, singing his praises all the bloody way. If only he understood what a mess Albus had made of things.
Albus fingers the teacups in his pocket, backing toward the door with what he thinks is an easy manner. “I’ve got some loose ends to tie up, but I’ll be back.”
He isn’t lying, technically. He’s simply leaving out the fact that it might take him years to tie up those ends.
With this in mind, he escapes through the door, walking down the path toward a whole new world. So things always are after a storm, when everything is wet and trees have been felled and familiar houses are missing a shingle. The world is yet undiscovered, though the roads all lead to the same places as before.
Albus feels Elphias’s eyes boring into his back as he reaches the sidewalk, and Bathilda’s, too, as she pulls aside the curtain of her study and peers at him from across the way. That’s how he knows the world hasn’t truly changed, by the wave of nausea at the thought of being watched, especially by these two people, who’ve known his every secret and never known him at all.
The graveyard is as silent as expected. The rain has made its mark here, too, and it only stands to reason that no one would bother to visit the dead on a day such as this. The gate has been blown off one of its hinges, and broken twigs and branches have practically obscured the path from view. It’s a completely different place than it was a mere three days ago, but Albus knows his way, nonetheless.
The temperature is disgustingly low for August, and the multiple sweaters are hardly enough to stop the chill from seeping into Albus’s bones. He’s starting to think that the world has turned into one giant dementor.
Cracking twigs beneath his boots is unavoidable, especially because he walks with the intent of avoiding every single crack in the path. He avoids them like the plague, lately. It’s the least that he owes Ariana after all those years of walking carelessly with little care for breaking his mother’s back or otherwise injuring anybody.
He leaves deep prints in the mud when he steps off the path, making his way purposefully toward the one fresh mound of soil in the whole place. One might think that Ariana Dumbledore is the only person who died all summer. In the little sphere of life contained in Godric’s Hollow, one would be right. Albus doesn’t mind that the rain has turned her grave into a mushy soup. The grass will grow quickly with all this rain, and the raw wound of her death will turn into another finely trimmed plot of land with a headstone carefully selected and quickly forgotten.
Ariana will be a fond memory in time; that’s what Bathilda told him. Albus knows that that’s a lie. Bathilda has just gotten abnormally good at glossing over the fucked up moments in her past.
Albus take a minute to admire the headstone. He picked it out himself and wrote the inscription, which took hours of planning to decide on at last. Now it looks so goddamn perfect that Albus wants to start crying again. The whole thing is so bloody picturesque; it wouldn’t be more beautiful if it had been done properly, by some future husband, years down the road in a future that will never come. Instead, the words on the headstone will forever been Albus’s, picked from one of a thousand books he’d read that summer.
Ariana Kendra Dumbledore
1885 - 1899
‘Of these most elusive magical objects, few shall speak with any sincerity. These three would seek, together, to turn one’s innermost emotions against their holder. Only with love will man prevail.’
That Magic Most Evil would devote an entire chapter to the Deathly Hallows is almost ludicrous, and that the chapter is so completely comprised of fluffy rhetoric is even more shocking. But Albus chose this passage because of the way he disregarded it when he first read the book. Only in retrospect did he understand the way the Hallows had twisted him, how they still seek to twist him, and that the love that would save him should have saved him long ago.
Suddenly, he feels an overwhelming surge of guilt, not for the many things he is guilty of, but for using Ariana’s headstone as a reminder of his own regrets. Few others would ever look upon those words and see more than a sentimental quote. Few others would ever understand.
Few others will come here at all, Albus realizes. Their parents are dead; they will never come to see the grave. Aberforth can be trusted to return monthly, at least for the first few years. After that, who knows? And Albus himself will not return for a long, long time. Not until he has more to show for himself than four lonely teacups, two sweaters and pointless tears.
“Did you know?” he whispers, falling to his knees in the damp soil that marks her grave. Ariana does not answer. She cannot answer, though Albus doubts her words would comfort the fear clenching at his heart inside his chest. She cannot tell him the one thing he wants to hear: that her death was not his fault, that the curse that struck her down did not belong to him.
Albus kneels there for hours, long after the moisture from the ground has soaked through the knees of his trousers. He listens to the wind rattle the branches above his head and privately rejoices when no one comes looking for him after the sun goes down.
When he’s wept his fill, when the headstone no longer looks perfect, when the August air becomes to cold for him to bear, Albus leans forward and takes something from his pocket. He sets the teacup on Ariana’s grave, beside the wilted flowers and magically preserved wreaths of the past week.
Albus leaves the tiny teacup there without a word, having asked the only question that mattered and received the answer he expected. With his heart a little lighter and his stomach only doing slight somersaults, Albus avoids the cracks on the path back to the gate. Just outside the gate he pauses, casting one last look about Godric’s Hollow, at the light on in Elphias’s room, at the cats milling around stupidly in Bathilda’s yard. He listens to the faint creaking of the ‘For Sale’ sign and the repetitive drip drop of water off of the trees.
Beneath the black and blue sky he bids farewell to his home. He leaves the house and the yard and the little table in the back, Bathilda and Ariana’s grave and Elphias and his disapproving mother. He leaves everything but the weight of all the death, a photo of Elphias, and three little teacups clinking in his pocket.
The Leaky has never felt to inviting as it does tonight. The bar is full when Albus sweeps in, tucking an unruly strand of hair behind his ear and trying to keep his face pointed toward the ground. He’d toyed with using a glamour, but decided against it at the last minute.
He elbows his way toward the bar, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible while still making progress. A particularly fat man bars his way when Albus is just a foot from his destination. Tom is cleaning a glass and speaking animatedly with a pretty blonde girl. Albus opens his mouth to catch his attention, but the fat man grabs him by the collar.
“Eh!” he grunts, hoisting Albus practically off the ground. “Bertrem!” Albus, panicking, is fairly certain that the man has mistaken him for someone else.
“My name isn’t Bertrem,” he tries to say calmly, but he only gets the words halfway out before another man, presumably Bertrem, wheels around to face him.
“What?” Bertrem growls. The fat man shakes Albus a bit.
“See this?”
“Put me down!” Albus interrupts, kicking at the air. Half the room is looking now, which is quite a feat considering how noisy and crowded the place is tonight.
“This is the one that killed his own sister!”
Bertrem takes a skeptical step forward. “I don’t think it’s him. And I heard the brother didn’t even do it.”
“Let me down!” Albus cries again, flailing foolishly. He grapples for his wand, but Tom is quicker. He rushes out from behind the bar with his wand drawn.
“Bertrem,” he snaps. “Get your friend out of here. I think he’s had just enough to drink.”
In the Leaky, Tom’s word is law, and that’s why Albus finds himself unceremoniously dumped onto the ground as Bertrem practically drags his fat friend from the premises. The other patrons turn back to their drinks, bored of the situation already. General chaos resumes, and Tom helps Albus up from the slightly grimy floor.
“Thank you,” Albus manages, watching Tom take in the dirty knees of his trousers and his all around disheveled appearance.
“A room, lad?” he says quietly, and Albus swallows dryly and throws dignity to the wind.
“Yes, please,” he manages. The evening crowd is beginning to thin out as lecherous men drag their prizes in the form of giggling young women up the stairs or out the door. A few pathetic wretches are yet ordering another drink, and two young women in the back are eyeing the slim pickings of remaining men. One teeters over to Albus on unsteady feet, throwing embarrassed glances over her shoulder at her friend.
Albus gives her a friendly smile and mentally urges Tom to hurry up with the key.
“Hullo,” the woman says. Up close, she is not nearly as young as he originally thought. Pretty, yes, but mid-thirties. She’s far too old for Albus, at any rate, even though the short length of her hemline suggests that she’s in denial about her age.
“Hullo,” Albus replies. He makes a great show of rifling through his pockets to find the money he needs, and by the time he pulls the galleons free, Tom is sliding the key across the counter.
“Room 17,” he says, pocketing the galleons and turning to a man who has just come in from the cold. “How about this weather? And in August, no less,” Albus hears Tom say to the man. He picks up the key and turns to the stairs.
“You’re going already?” the woman whines, lurching after him. The drink in her hand is a danger to those around her. Albus stops reluctantly and turns around.
“I’ve had a long journey, and I would like to get some rest.” He smiles and gives her a friendly nudge back toward her friend. “I apologize, though. I am sure that your company would have been most pleasant.”
He’s gone before she can get her bearings, taking the stairs an ungainly two at a time. His remarkable lack of interest in the opposite sex has become a source of constant nausea, and Albus has no doubt that the fact that he could have had sex with that woman will haunt him for days. He’s still thinking about her as he jiggles the key in the lock of his room.
He wonders what her lips feel like, and her fingers. He wonders only for a moment about her breasts as he undresses, arranging the three little teacups carefully on the windowsill. The room is small, but it has a bed and a place for Albus to hang his cloak while he wonders how her breasts would feel like in his hands. Too soft, too damn soft.
He sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and wonders if it’s too late for him to run downstairs and request the woman’s company, just so that he can see what it’s like. It’s probably not, but Albus thinks better of it and kicks off his boots, resigning himself to the fact that there is no way he would have been able to get… hard.
Dammit. He’s blushing just thinking about it.
Albus is starting to wish that he’d nicked a pair of Elphias’s nightclothes. He could have transfigured the damned things to fit properly, and now he’s stuck wearing his trousers to bed, remembering the time his mother warned him never to sleep naked in a motel.
“There are certain things that even the harshest cleaning charms leave behind,” she’d lectured, and Albus really hadn’t given a fuck. Now, knowing that the woman downstairs could have been pounded into the mattress in this very room prompts him to stop his bare skin from touching anything even resembling bed sheets.
Instead, he strips the bed completely, from comforter to the thinnest sheets. After a moment of deliberation, the pillows join the pile of fabric on the floor. Albus snuffs the lights and lies on his back in the darkness, staring at the ceiling once again. He wonders why exactly he isn’t tired after everything that’s happened.
In the time between midnight and morning, the only possibility that Albus comes up with is that grief has broken the part of his brain that allows him to sleep.
Albus loves peepholes. This is, admittedly, the first time that he’s ever had use for one, but he loves them nonetheless. Right now, his face is squashed uncomfortably against the door as he peers out into the hallway, feeling horribly like Bathilda. The door of the room across the way is open, and a half-naked man is standing in the threshold. He is not, actually, what Albus is staring at, though his biceps are impressive. What has captured Albus’s attention is the woman his is ushering into the hallway, who is about to undertake the dreaded walk of shame from the building, awkwardly pulling down last night’s skirt to make it somewhat appropriate for daylight hours.
Albus stands at the peephole even after the woman stumbles off, captivated by the man in the doorway. He had sex with that woman last night. Albus could have had sex with that woman last night. The thought is mind blowing, disgusting, and refuses to be shaken from Albus’s head.
The man has gone inside by the time Albus steps into the corridor to forage for food. He feels irritable and exhausted for the first time in days, though he knows that any attempt to sleep will be futile. Instead, he drags his weary feet to the stairs and down them.
The memory of Elphias’s runny eggs besieges him as he looks at the menu, and he at last decides on dry toast. The waitress gives him a funny look and flounces off, obviously expecting a tiny tip from such a small order. Albus would love to prove her wrong, but the galleons in his pocket are dwindling, and he would rather avoid a trip to Gringotts, where his identity would need to be revealed.
He wastes the day at that same table in the corner, watching the fare as they come in and out. The people are fundamentally uninteresting, and Albus feels that inkling of superiority inside him rear its ugly head. The waitress comes over to hover by him nervously every twenty minutes, and after a few hours, Albus orders a coffee, just to get her to leave him alone.
Around sundown, Albus moves to the bar, procuring a stool in the corner just as the first bundle of customers rushes in from the cold.
“Bloody August,” one man grumbles. The woman he’s with titters, and the laugh is so unnatural that Albus nearly bursts out laughing himself. Instead, he orders another drink and glances around the bar. The woman from the night before and from this morning is sitting in the corner again, laughing her head off with her friend. Albus wonders if this is a common endeavor for the two women, whether the two of them enjoy getting stupidly drunk and fucking the first muscled young man to look in their direction.
He has no idea why he is so fascinated with her, but he realizes that he should probably stop looking lest she notice and make another ill aimed lurch in his direction. Looking away, however, only brought to his attention that he wasn’t the only one looking. The man with the admittedly gorgeous biceps is sitting on the stool beside Albus, peering slyly at the two women.
“Back for another go?” Albus asks. He honestly cannot help himself, though he regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth. The man cocks his head, raising one perfect eyebrow and staring down his nose in Albus’s general direction. It becomes horribly clear for the first time exactly how much bigger than Albus this man actually is, and he feels himself shrinking before the other man’s eyes.
“Excuse me?” the man prompts when it becomes clear that Albus will not be making the next move.
“I saw you with her this morning,” Albus says bravely. “I’m wondering if it was so good that you’re back for another go.”
The man smiles, an honest to Merlin beautiful smile, and for the first time, Albus’s interest in the man has nothing to do with the woman in the corner. In fact, his legs feel weak as fuck and he’s barely able to keep his arse properly stuck to the stool.
“She and I didn’t-“ The man starts laughing and has to pause. “She was too drunk to walk last night when she threw herself on me, and I didn’t have to think too hard to figure out how her night would end if I didn’t offer a helping hand. I slept on the floor.”
Albus rubs his forehead tiredly. “My mistake, then,” he says awkwardly. This is where the conversation should logically end, or, at least, that’s what his head is telling him. The man, however, is still smiling, apparently unaware of the proper decorum.
“Tonight, though. I am off babysitting duty,” he says, and Albus’s stomach does an enormous somersault.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”
“Ian.”
“Hullo, Ian. I’m Albus.”
“Pleasure.”
Awkward silence reigns, and Albus stares uncomfortably into his empty glass. He can feel Ian’s eyes on him, but he’s never been terribly good at carrying on pleasant conversations. “So what are you going to do with your night off?” Albus attempts, trying to resurrect the flirty tone of the babysitting comment earlier.
Ian grins. “I plan on buying you another drink,” he says smoothly, gesturing in Tom’s direction. The dim lighting hides Albus’s blush, or so he thinks, until Ian tucks a red lock of hair behind his ear and leans down to whisper, “You blush so prettily,” and Albus never gets that first drink.
He’s pressed up against the wall of Ian’s room in less than a minute. This is the second time in his life that he’s been happy to be so small. With Ian’s huge biceps on either side of his head, Albus is fairly certain that being a skinny little shrimp of a man makes this the hottest thing in the world, but that also cold be attributed to the things Ian is whispering or the feeling of his cock rubbing against Albus’s leg through far too much fabric.
Whichever it is, Albus doesn’t particularly care, so long as the clothing comes off soon. However, with his hands trapped just above his head, Albus is in no real position to be making demands. Ian seems to get the picture, though, when Albus arches his hips and whines like a cat. Ian chuckles, and the whole situation becomes just mortifying enough to be perfect.
The words running through his head are all words that goody little Albus shouldn’t know. He won’t ever admit that he gets off on humiliation, but there is something about the dingy motel room and the fact that Ian is calling the shots and the fact that Albus is so obviously panting for it that just makes this the kind of thing that Albus shouldn’t want. But he does, Merlin, he does.
Ian might have a bloody perfect body, but it’s the situation that gets Albus hard in the end, and the feeling of humiliation in the pit of his stomach that allows him, with his eyes shut tight, to pretend that Ian is someone else.
The regret comes as soon as Albus does, and his quick eyes are already plotting the fastest course to gather all his clothes and slip out the door by the time Ian pulls out of him.
“Merlin’s beard,” Ian groans, rolling off of Albus and onto his back. With his hands behind his head, he cocks that perfect brow and grins.
“I’d better be going,” Albus says, flinging his legs over the side of the bed, taking the entire comforter with him when he stands. Never mind the fact that this man was balls deep inside of him a moment ago; there is no chance of him seeing Albus naked now.
“Why?” Ian asks simply. Albus toys with answering as he grabs his trousers. He reaches for his vest, too.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m getting out of a bad relationship.” Not totally a lie. Albus certainly doesn’t want to talk about it with Ian, naked Ian, who is lying there looking smug as fuck. He hasn’t bothered to cover himself, and Albus is given pause by the sight of his soft cock lolling against his thigh. Albus’s own cock gives an interested twitch.
“He break your heart?” Ian asks.
“He died.” Albus grabs his boots. There’s the lie.
“I’m sorry,” says Ian.
“Yeah, well,” Albus says. He’s gotten everything and is standing by the door. He can’t think of anything else to say, so he leaves it at that, but he trips over the comforter like the clumsy fool he is and ends up back on the bed, tangled hopelessly in the sheets. Ian is smiling at him again.
“See, your legs don’t want you to go,” says Ian. Albus sits up and flings his legs over the side of the mattress again. He feels the tears coming too quickly for him to stop them, so he buries his head in his hands and cries. He’s aware that the quivering hunch of his back cannot be pretty, but he doesn’t bloody care. He’s mortified by the entire situation, and not in a good way anymore.
Ian presses his hand softly against the exposed bit of Albus’s back. Albus shivers, and Ian withdraws the hand immediately.
“Oh my- That wasn’t your first-“ Ian blubbers, and Albus snorts awkwardly. Through his tears, the laugh comes out all wet sounding.
“No,” he says. “My second. Congratulations.” There’s a pause. “Anyway.” Albus stands up and waddles awkwardly to the door. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“Yeah, no. It’s fine, really.” Ian sits up and crosses his legs. Albus wishes that he’d put on some clothing. “I mean, your lover just died. You’ve got to be a wreck.”
Oh, Albus is a wreck, alright. He nods. “He’s not dead,” he says before he Apparates into his own room across the hall, leaving the comforter pooled on the floor before Ian’s eyes.
Albus settles into his own bed immediately, cursing his tears almost as much as the beginnings of the ache in his arse. That wasn’t worth it.
It’s a credit to both Albus’s frugality and his stealth that he manages to live like this in the Leaky for an entire month without visiting Gringotts or bumping into Ian again. Albus has seen him, obviously, through the peephole in his room, wondering frantically what business could tempt a man to put up a seemingly permanent residence above the pub. Then he realizes that he’s done the same thing. And then he wonders if Ian watches him through his own peephole.
Then he feels like a bloody fool.
Albus has tried to think about that night as little as possible. He’s devoted his attention to planning his future, which, however bleak, is unavoidable. By day, he pours over maps and the relevant newspaper clippings, sipping coffee quietly at the small table in the corner downstairs. He avoids the waitress’s eye when she tries to give him a refill. One cup a day is all he can afford, right now, and he takes his last sip of the long-cooled caramel colored liquid around dusk when the night crowd pushes through the door.
Then he retreats to his room. One night, he passes Ian on the stairs. Albus is going up and Ian is going down. Ian tries to say something, but Albus keeps his head down and walks past, and around one in the morning, while Albus stares at the ceiling above his bed, he hears Ian’s baritone shake the corridor outside with his laughter. Against his will, Albus’s feet carry him to the door, to that blasted peephole, and he watches as Ian a whorish little stick of a young man into his room. The door slams shut, and Albus returns to his bed in the darkness.
By night, the demons come for him. They unlock the carefully sealed doors in his head, and all the things that he has no business thinking about come out. The past and the mistakes he’s made and all the people that he misses so badly that his heart breaks in two at the very thought of them. By night, Albus curls up into a little back and wonders if he’ll ever be strong enough to be an adult. Then he wonders if he’ll ever live that long.
Then he wonders if he even wants to.
The thirty days of the end of August and the beginning of September pass in the blink of an eye, and it’s the fifteenth before he reaches into his pocket to pay Tom and realizes that the only contents are a large piece of lint and the teacups. That’s when he decides that it’s time to go. He bids Tom a hasty apology, clears his room, and is gone within the hour. The last thing he does is push a note under Ian’s door, full of stupid, bullshit things that Albus doesn’t really need to say. But he supposes that he should leave a mess behind him wherever he goes. It’s tradition, after all.
His pockets have very little in them by the time he steps out onto the window streets of Diagon Alley. The three remaining teacups jingle faintly, grating against the photo of him and Elphias. In the other pocket are all of the newspaper clippings that mention, even in passing, the fearful darkness rising in Berlin.
Gringotts rises before his eyes, stark against the pale sky of September. This weather is trying his patience. Albus warmly recognizes the warning against thievery without even looking. A smile quirks his lips. He could rob Gringotts if he tried, Albus is sure of it, but his days of standing out are over. He walks the stairs with determination, pulling his key from the bottom of his shoe and handing it over to the nasty little goblin.
He emerges victorious fifteen minutes later, with a pocket full of galleons and only a bit of nausea pooling in his stomach. The ride to the vault never does anything for his anxious disposition. Albus stands at the base of the steps for at least an hour, watching the wizards and witches come and go. He thinks, suddenly, that he is very much like Bathilda, and, in that same second, he realizes where he needs to go.
The crack of his Disapparation startles a little girl who is devouring an ice cream despite the cold. She jumps and drop the cone, and her earsplitting shrieks disturb the shoppers for the five long minutes it takes for her mother to buy her a second one. All the mothers shake their heads and the fathers roll their eyes, and everybody wonders why that redheaded young man was too self-involved to walk to the bloody Apparation point.