FIC! entry 23
January of 1996, perhaps--
Albus--
Fifty years. I have been here fifty shit-scraping years. And in all that time, you never sent me sweets. It was like an explosion of the most brilliant charms upon my tongue.
Fifty years. My body looks like a skeleton. I'm the only inmate alive. The guards have left. An ancient house elf shoves the food between the bars. Even the charms on my watch are fading. The hands waver. I think an owl takes three days or so to get from Hogwarts to here? More, perhaps, these days? Is the world expanding beneath me? Is that why I've become so distant? So it must be sometimes in January, and the sun's in about the right place.
But I am nothing to you anymore but an ear. Writing ancient lovers tearful letters in your Christmas sherry again, Albus? Back and forth we go, back and forth. Your hand hasn't even changed. I'm running out of parchment. Most of my correspondents are dead. I've read every book in this room a dozen times. I suppose Fawkes is still there? Everything as it always was?
I don't bother to sleep anymore. If I read Gertrude in delerium, she almost makes sense.
Poor Albus. I'm barely even angry with you anymore. Hell, I almost feel sorry for you. You never had children, did you? Never married, never settled down? You'll just take the--It--and the Potter boy into Death with you, leaving nothing but pretty birdsong and a bag of candy.
But this means you have something in common with me. You and I--we fall in love with people better than us, and do it badly. You don't care about anyone but the boy anymore, I know. You will not break me. You will not break me.
We're getting too old. We belong a century ago by the millstream, Albus, not rotting away in our towers caught on the horns of the world. We belong at the beginning, where our brilliance is not weighted by responsibility, our beauty not marred by age.
I've stopped thinking of you, those times in the past. I've tried to stop thinking of anything, really.
You're right. One boy, at least, should walk away with a good life. Ours are long, long destroyed.
Gellert Grindelwald
[entry in the Grindeldore for Goats Blogathon Venture; sponsor me here!]
Albus--
Fifty years. I have been here fifty shit-scraping years. And in all that time, you never sent me sweets. It was like an explosion of the most brilliant charms upon my tongue.
Fifty years. My body looks like a skeleton. I'm the only inmate alive. The guards have left. An ancient house elf shoves the food between the bars. Even the charms on my watch are fading. The hands waver. I think an owl takes three days or so to get from Hogwarts to here? More, perhaps, these days? Is the world expanding beneath me? Is that why I've become so distant? So it must be sometimes in January, and the sun's in about the right place.
But I am nothing to you anymore but an ear. Writing ancient lovers tearful letters in your Christmas sherry again, Albus? Back and forth we go, back and forth. Your hand hasn't even changed. I'm running out of parchment. Most of my correspondents are dead. I've read every book in this room a dozen times. I suppose Fawkes is still there? Everything as it always was?
I don't bother to sleep anymore. If I read Gertrude in delerium, she almost makes sense.
Poor Albus. I'm barely even angry with you anymore. Hell, I almost feel sorry for you. You never had children, did you? Never married, never settled down? You'll just take the--It--and the Potter boy into Death with you, leaving nothing but pretty birdsong and a bag of candy.
But this means you have something in common with me. You and I--we fall in love with people better than us, and do it badly. You don't care about anyone but the boy anymore, I know. You will not break me. You will not break me.
We're getting too old. We belong a century ago by the millstream, Albus, not rotting away in our towers caught on the horns of the world. We belong at the beginning, where our brilliance is not weighted by responsibility, our beauty not marred by age.
I've stopped thinking of you, those times in the past. I've tried to stop thinking of anything, really.
You're right. One boy, at least, should walk away with a good life. Ours are long, long destroyed.
Gellert Grindelwald
[entry in the Grindeldore for Goats Blogathon Venture; sponsor me here!]