Chapter Two of 'Kairos Amid the Ruins'- Another Beginning
Chapter One.
Title: Kairos Amid the Ruins (2/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Orion Black, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, mentions of various canon pairings
Content Notes: Time travel, heavy angst, Harry mentoring Severus, violence, gore, minor character deaths, AU
Rating: R
Summary: Harry’s attempt to time travel and fix the past went badly awry. Time shattered, and the various pieces of the universe clung to each other as best they could. Harry finds himself in 1961, with Albus Dumbledore the Minister for Magic, Gellert Grindelwald his loving husband, Voldemort newly defeated…and Severus Snape being proclaimed the Boy-Who-Lived.
Author’s Note: This is going to be a long story, focusing on Harry mentoring Severus as the Boy-Who-Lived, with flashbacks to an alternate World War II. The Harry-Severus mentorship will remain gen. However, the romantic pairings are a prominent part of the story. The word “Kairos” comes from the Greek, meaning a lucky moment, or the right moment, to act.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Two-Another Beginning
“How was governing the ungrateful world today?”
Albus rolled his eyes as he removed the scarf from around his neck and extended his hands to the fire. He shivered, despite the heat pounding out from the hearth. The older he got, the more the wind bit. “I’m still handling it better than you would have, Gellert.”
“Being ready to kill everyone has its good points, you must admit.” Gellert raised a lazy eyebrow at him from where he lounged in a huge golden-and-red chair. Well, at least it had been golden-and-red when Albus left for the office. Gellert had changed it to plain black since then. “I would have been more efficient.”
Albus sighed and sat down on a chair in front of the flames. “There are more important things for the Wizengamot to consider than being efficient, Gellert,” he muttered, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“What’s really wrong, Albus?”
“The fools in the Ministry who think that Severus Snape is some kind of powerful Dark wizard and want him either imprisoned in Azkaban, or growing up under Ministry control.” Albus slumped back with a hard huff of breath. “Those are the ones who deserve your particular brand of justice.”
“Severus Prince, now, I heard. His grandparents changed the name.”
Albus nodded. “Yes. They didn’t like that, either. There were some who said that he should always be identified by the name that his mother gave him, to ensure ‘continuity with the history books’ or something like that. As though Ebenezer Greengrass even knows what history means.”
Gellert chuckled lightly, but his gaze didn’t waver. “And that’s all? Greengrass’s understanding of history, or rather his lack of it, has infuriated you, and there’s nothing else?”
Albus shook his head, tightened his mouth, and stared into the fire.
Gellert moved so that he was standing beside Albus’s chair, but he didn’t interrupt his gaze. He never did. “Something that perhaps has to do with blood family and how they’re not always the best ones to leave a child with?”
Albus shut his eyes. “I don’t feel like discussing this tonight, Gellert.”
“Such a shame that your wants don’t matter in this situation. We’ll talk this out now, or I’ll be woken up from sleep tonight by you shouting Ariana’s name.”
Albus jerked around, furious, but Gellert just met him stare for stare. When he wanted to, Albus privately admitted, Gellert could still by the handsomest man in the world. White had touched his golden hair, and his eyes had a faded whiskey color now, but it didn’t matter, not with the way his face glowed.
He stared down at Albus as if he were the sun, and the way he had all those years ago, when Gellert had sought him out with an apology and a determination, Albus melted. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair.
Gellert stepped behind him and began to massage his shoulders. “You were thinking about her,” he said, this time not like an accusation.
Albus nodded wearily anyway, the weight of the past crushing him into the chair. Again he could see Ariana dying from the curse that he might not have cast, but which he was going to take responsibility for. Again he could hear Aberforth shouting at him about how he didn’t deserve a sister like Ariana, not when he would have given up taking care of her to travel the world with a budding Dark Lord. “Yes. The Wizengamot takes it for granted that no one would ever harm someone of their own family. Greengrass had the bollocks to tell me that I would understand better if I had an heir of my own blood.”
Gellert’s fingers didn’t become like claws, but Albus knew they would have, were he anyone else. “I do wonder if Greengrass has troubled the world long enough.”
Albus said nothing. The vows Gellert had made, the spells they had cast, ensured that was only an idle threat. Still, Gellert would be able to make Ebenezer’s life miserable, and at the moment, Albus hardly felt sorry for the old fool.
“And so the Princes have changed their grandson’s name,” Gellert went on as though the rest of the conversation hadn’t happened. “One would think that would please Greengrass, with all his reverence for family.”
“He thinks the parents matter more,” Albus said. “Or at least the wizarding parent. And she chose to give up the Prince name.”
“Plus, I suspect that this will make it harder for the Ministry to control the child, whereas if he had no living family, he couldn’t be renamed and he would remain a Ministry pawn with whoever they chose to place him with.”
“Yes,” Albus said, with a long sigh. “Not to mention that Ebenezer tried to use Ariana against me when I told him that I was sure the Princes were competent guardians.”
Gellert gave a long, low laugh. “Then he’ll have nightmares of his own tonight, won’t he?”
Gellert’s vows were loose enough to permit such a thing, so Albus only shrugged. “He was the most persistent and personally insulting, but I actually hate the ones who were recommending Azkaban for a fifteen-month-old more. You have to admit,” and here he got in his own dig, “that the British Wizengamot has their own particular reasons to fear a Dark Lord arising from a young man.”
“But we all agreed that Azkaban wasn’t an appropriate punishment.”
Since at least a third of Albus’s own nightmares revolved around the moment when Gellert had knelt in front of him and sworn his surrender-nightmares that it had gone differently, that Gellert had managed to trick him, that it hadn’t happened at all-he only nodded in agreement.
“Tell me who the ones were who wanted Prince in Azkaban. The same ones who wanted to punish me?”
“You know most of those are dead or retired now,” Albus muttered, but he obliged. “Arcturus Black. Abraxas Malfoy. Lucietta Dagworth-Granger.”
“Dagworth-Granger surprises me,” Gellert admitted after a moment. “I would have thought that she could understand the value of letting a child grow up with his parents.”
“She hasn’t been the same since the rest of her family died. She’s obsessive about protecting that niece of hers, and she’s convinced the best way to do that is to snuff out any hint of a Dark Lord ever rising.”
“Even if it means driving another child insane or killing him?”
“Even then.”
Gellert snorted. “Then that makes me glad that you have no children of your own. It seems to make people focused on the welfare of their own family and ignore others’ more often than it makes them choose a future worth fighting for.”
Albus shrugged. Normally he would have been fair, he would have brought up the times when he had seen concern for one’s children translate into concern for all children, but it had been a long day.
“The house-elves have roast beef prepared under a Warming Charm,” Gellert said, changing the subject with a lack of grace he usually demonstrated only when it was the two of them. “Come eat, and we can think about how to pay the idiots back without violating my vows.”
*
As he had known he would, Albus dreamed of the moment when Gellert had surrendered that night.
Albus strode across the golden battlefield, golden with the fire he had called and mastered. Every flame that swayed around him danced in the shape of a phoenix, all of them cleansing and purifying. The soldiers that had followed Gellert had passed through those flames. They had cast down their wands and knelt with their hands behind their backs, willing to be punished for their crimes.
It had taken Albus years of work to perfect that spell. Purification magic was common, but it was meant, most of the time, to remove stains and smoke and blood. Few spells worked on a human’s soul, and fewer of those were of the kind that Albus would employ, the kind that would grant a true redemption.
Albus did not tear apart their souls or force them to obey his will, the kinds of spells that had existed before he made the Phoenix Fire. Instead, he lifted the criminals to an objective point-of-view and showed them the harm their actions had done.
After viewing those, most of the troublemakers were ready to surrender of their own free will.
Albus halted in front of Gellert, who still stood tall. The wand he carried, of blackthorn and thestral hair, dangled in his hand. It was a special wand, one made to Gellert’s exacting specifications by Gregorovitch, but it was no match for the Elder Wand, which Albus held at his side.
It had also taken years of work to make the Elder Wand cast the Phoenix Fire spell correctly, instead of corrupting it to drain others of their magic or crack their minds. The Elder Wand had always been a tool of destruction.
But it was no match for a man who had sought redemption for himself, and sought the wand to strengthen the chains of his own principles.
Gellert stared at him, his golden hair hanging ragged in his eyes. The Phoenix Fire ringing the battlefield was more golden, but, Albus had to acknowledge, he might have made the spell in memory of that hair.
“What exactly do you think I’ll do?” Gellert asked.
Albus sighed. His body ached. It had been a long battle, that misty day in 1937, on a battlefield still ravaged by the Muggle Great War. “I don’t know, Gellert. I know that you’re going to surrender and we’ll find a place for you in the world we’re creating, or you’ll go to prison. Or maybe die. I wouldn’t put that past you.”
“This brave new world of yours has no place for executions, Albus?”
“That you can quote a Muggle work shows-”
“Shhh,” Gellert said, and winked. “All of them think it’s my genius for turning a phrase.”
“It shows that you might not be entirely lost,” Albus finished, determined to ignore Gellert’s ability to sidetrack the conversation. “Come, Gellert. Will you not either surrender or submit to the Phoenix Fire? One or the other.” He was aware that this might end with Gellert’s death. He didn’t want it to, but the possibility was there, breathing the same air as the possibility of Ariana’s death had before it happened.
Gellert shook his head slowly. “I have no intention of submitting to your mind-wrenching curse.”
“Then I suppose it will be a duel.” The Elder Wand felt like a boulder in Albus’s hand.
“Oh, no.” Gellert dropped the blackthorn wand on the ground and spread his hands. “I surrender. I simply have conditions.”
“People who surrender cannot set conditions, Gellert.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find these more than acceptable,” Gellert purred, leaning towards him. Albus ignored the way that the sunlight shone on his hair. He only had to remember the blood Gellert had spilled to resist the enchantment. “I want you to personally take charge of me and my trial. If I’m issued a punishment other than Azkaban, I demand to be released into your custody.”
Albus looked at him, long and steady. Gellert might not want to go through the Phoenix Fire, but Albus would have thought he’d want to avoid Albus’s custody even more fervently. He had to know how Albus would hold him to his word and make him face his failings. “Why?”
Gellert gestured with one hand. “I failed on the battlefield. The next best way to change wizarding society is to be close to the most powerful man.”
“It’s not ever going to be like it was, Gellert.”
“Of course it won’t be. You grew up and embraced responsibility for some reason. But I want it to be like what it was.”
Albus shook his head. He could only assume that Gellert wanted to try and manipulate him again. Fine. He will fail. “If I agree to this absurdity, will you kneel in surrender?”
“I’ll always kneel to you, Albus.”
Albus did not blush, but only because he’d had years of practice at resisting the temptation by then. He watched as Gellert knelt in front of him and put his hands behind his back, the way the others subject to the Phoenix Fire spell had been doing, and sighed when an Auror gingerly clasped holding chains around his wrists. Yes, all right. The thing that had seemed so impossible for years was becoming a reality as he watched.
Gellert looked up at him and ran his tongue along his lips in a gesture Albus knew to be deliberate. Albus didn’t flinch. Gellert pouted slightly about that as the Aurors, clustered around him like sheep who couldn’t believe they had a wolf chained up, urged him to his feet.
“You are going to have to observe my trial,” Gellert said.
“I know that.” Albus let his voice slow in confusion. Gellert could take little advantage of that, the way things were right now.
“So you’ll have to look at me, listen to me, and hear my arguments for why I did what I did.” Gellert’s voice remained low and precise, but his eyes were shining in the way that Albus had learned to distrust with all his being. “Do you think you can withstand it? Who will convert whom, when we’re in close quarters together?”
Albus laughed before he could stop himself. The smile froze and cracked on Gellert’s face like rotten ice.
“You can’t compete with the dead, Gellert,” Albus said, shaking his head a little as he moved away from his one-time lover. “Her voice is stronger than yours.”
And it remained strong as he watched the Aurors herd Gellert-always keeping at least a foot of distance between them and him-towards the station set up with hastily-made Portkeys. Ariana’s death had been Albus’s fault, whoever actually had cast that fatal curse, but her voice slowed and quieted a little as she watched the other half of the equation taken away.
*
And here and now he woke in bed and reached out to feel Gellert breathing next to him.
Funny how these things work out, he thought, and he honestly couldn’t tell if that thought was in his own voice, or Ariana’s, or Gellert’s.
But Gellert was either playing the longest of long games Albus had ever seen, more than twenty years in the making, complete with Occlumency shields that would foil both Albus’s probing and those of every other Legilimens in the Ministry, or he was sincere. He had given in. He had admitted his crimes and served his time in Azkaban and then in Albus’s custody.
He had become Albus’s lover and then husband. It was a game, maybe, but when you could no longer tell the game from the reality, Albus thought wearily, what was left?
“Did you feel it?”
Albus’s thoughts had intertwined enough with the past that the first, absurd thing his mind jumped to was that Gellert had thrust some kind of blade between his ribs and was asking him if he had felt the cut. Then he realized that there was a twanging sensation in the back of his mind, something that seared and became more like a fire the longer he thought about it.
“Yes,” answered Albus, disturbed. That was the kind of change to the fabric of reality he had felt only when he wielded the Elder Wand. He sat up and frowned at Gellert. “Do you know what it is?”
“No. Only that I’ve felt something-approaching, for the last half-hour or so.” Gellert was lying with his arms tucked behind his head, frowning. That was unusual. If Albus sat up, most of the time Gellert had to achieve the same height at once to be equal to him. “Like someone coming down a tunnel of pure magic from another world.”
“Or another time,” Albus breathed, and his heart gave a sharp thump. There had been two accidents with Time-Turners in the past ten years that the Department of Mysteries had barely stopped before they could spread and unravel reality. It had been enough for Albus to support a bill banning research into time travel when it went up before the Wizengamot.
“Maybe.” Gellert raised himself on his elbow. “Could anyone have stumbled on the research just casually, though?”
“No. All the Unspeakables who showed some signs of wanting to keep their notes and spread the research were Obliviated and forced out of their jobs. Imprisoned, in a few cases, when they wouldn’t stop trying to propagate it.” Albus’s fingers tapped on his knee in agitation. “Of course, we have no proof that this is time travel.”
“None except the exquisite sensibilities of two powerful and fully-trained wizards.”
Albus nodded slowly. It was unlikely that most other people had even noticed the sensation, unless they were trained in both time travel (which Gellert had made his followers research) and powerful enough to feel a disturbance in reality.
“What are we going to do about it?”
“Go back to sleep.”
Gellert rolled his eyes. “I meant in the future, Albus. I’m not demanding that you leap out of bed and storm the Ministry tonight.”
“I don’t think it came from the Ministry,” Albus said slowly, closing his eyes and reaching out with his will. He laid his hand on the Elder Wand, and felt a strong pull leading him in the direction of London, but…the more he concentrated, the more he was certain it didn’t come from the Ministry. No, it was aiming in the direction of Diagon Alley. “No, it didn’t. It came from Diagon.”
“Really?” Gellert huffed a breathless laugh. “I suppose you can go and inquire in the morning if anyone has opened up a mysterious shop selling ancient artifacts there.”
“You read too much Muggle fiction,” Albus said, and couldn’t help the fondness in his voice. He lay down and reached out to drape his arm gently over Gellert’s chest. “Go to sleep. We will deal with it in the morning. You can even come with me, if you like.”
“I’d like that,” Gellert murmured, closing his eyes. “You only want me for my expertise in forbidden magic, of course.”
“Of course.”
Though Gellert fell asleep before him, the soft, steady sound was one of the major reasons Albus followed him so quickly.
Chapter Three.
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