Chapter Text
Albus
9 March 1920
Albus opened the door to Newt’s basement. What sort of ventilation charms must Newt have installed? It was extraordinary: Albus knew that the basement was full of animals, but it smelled no different from an ordinary root cellar – from up here, at least.
Was there anyone down there? Albus heard nothing but the faint sound of the traffic outside and of his own heart beating too loudly in his ears until – the faraway echo of an angry shout, and some murmuring sounds after. There were at least two people in the basement, but Albus couldn’t make out what they were saying.
He moved silently down the steps to the first landing and stopped to listen again.
“… hurts! You’re being rougher than necessary on purpose!”
Theseus! He was safe, thank Merlin. Albus felt as if he were finally remembering how to breathe.
“You didn’t have to come to me. In fact –“
“Newt?” Albus called out in warning, springing down the stairs.
The voices hushed. Newt appeared just before Albus reached the bottom step. He looked up at Albus sternly. “You can’t just come into my house – come into my basement – whenever you like, Dumbledore! There are creatures down here which don’t react well to strangers –“
“Oh, I’m not a stranger, Newt,” Albus said with a broad smile. “And it was an emergency. Besides – the door was open.”
“It was not!” Newt protested.
Albus pushed past Newt, not quite apologizing as they clipped shoulders, “I was concerned.”
He rounded towards the area where Newt prepared the food for his creatures. Sure enough, Theseus was seated at a stool at the table. The man’s back was to him, and his shirt was off. A rope of new pink scar tissue, shiny with healing salve, was running from the scapula on one side of his back, diagonally down to the other side, finally disappearing around his waist. How far around did it extend? He could have been killed!
“I – “
Theseus turned at the sound of Albus’s voice. The scar did not cross Theseus's abdomen as much as halfway, stopping just short of the patch of hair around his navel. Albus traced the faint line of hair down to where it disappeared into Theseus's trousers.
What was he doing? His eyes snapped up and met Theseus's. The younger Wizard didn't have to take his shirt off to make it impossible for Albus to speak (though it wasn't helping - what Wizard had muscle definition like that?) Those unwavering grey-blue eyes alone had always been enough to shut off Albus's ability to think clearly, at least for a moment.
Albus hastened to defend himself: "Your scar... it's..."
Albus remembered when those eyes would have lit up to see him. But that was more than a decade ago. Now, Theseus looked… unimpressed.
Albus tried again. “I heard that there was a skirmish this morning at the Hammersmith power station, and – “
Theseus turned away as if Albus were not speaking to him. No, as if Albus were speaking, but beneath his notice. “You’re right, Newt,” Theseus said, “Your door was locked.”
Theseus stood and turned back to the worktable. “But that’s no defence against a man like Albus Dumbledore, who has a bad habit of thinking that just because he can do something, then he should be allowed.” He picked up his undershirt off the table and pulled it over his head. Albus watched the muscles in Theseus’s back ripple just before being hidden from view.
“He thinks there’s nothing to forgive, because they’re such little trespasses: ignoring other people’s locks, for instance.” Theseus turned back towards Newt and Albus. The undershirt stretched tight against Theseus’s chest. Albus looked away for a moment, then, with an effort, turned his eyes back to Theseus’s face (‘eyes up, Dumbledore!') and found Theseus was looking right at him. “Interfering in Auror investigations, that sort of thing.”
“You were hurt,” Albus said simply, unable to muster more than this simple observation.
“Yes,” Theseus acknowledged, grabbing his shirt off of Newt’s workbench and throwing it on. “Not that it is any of your business. Newt has taken care of it for me. I’ll be fine.”
Fine?! A wound of that kind was fine? What was to stop something like this happening again? And what did Theseus mean ‘not his business’?
“‘Auror investigation,’ Theseus? Tell me, how did the other Aurors fare?” Albus growled, becoming angry now that he knew that Theseus was ok. If he had been killed, it would have been needless, completely avoidable.
“I’ll just – feed the graphorns, then,” Newt said quietly, grabbing as many buckets as he could hold off of the work table. “And a few other…” he trailed off and walked away. That was unusual. Albus had expected Newt to scold one or both of them some more – he wasn’t ordinarily one to hold back his opinions. Perhaps he thought that Albus and Theseus were scolding one another just fine without his help.
“Albus – “
“Oh, that’s right. There weren’t any other Aurors.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that –“
“You can’t very well call it an ‘Auror investigation’ if you don’t share whatever information you have with the Auror’s office! You simply went on your own to confront Grindelwald and an unknown number of his co-conspirators! During an attack on an electrical plant! Theseus! You can’t simply – go off on your own like this!”
“Grindelwald never showed. It was only –“
“But you didn’t know that, when you apparated there! You went thinking he would be there.”
“Fucking Krall.”
“Yes, Krall. And that, if you were wondering, is what makes it my business. Who do you think pointed Krall in your direction in the first place, Theseus?” If Theseus had been killed, it would have been because of intelligence Krall had shared – intelligence that Albus had told Krall to share with him.
“What are you doing collecting informants, Albus? Krall is not a civilian-grade contact.”
“Krall was a student of mine –“
“Don’t give me that. Krall went to Durmstrang.”
“ – at the Hungarian Auror’s Academy. I taught a seminar there every summer for three years, under another –“
“The Hungarian Auror’s Academy?” Theseus asked, sceptically.
“I… had reason to learn Hungarian in my youth. And German. The instruction at the Auror Academy is -”
Albus stopped. How was it that Theseus had turned the tables on him? How was it that Albus was the one being interrogated? Theseus was the one whose behavior was in question, here. “None of that is important, Theseus. The important thing here is –“
“That you have been spying on me.”
Infuriating! “No, I have not. Krall had shared nothing with me of your actions, before now,” or – at least nothing that was so concerning as to be actionable, “but he felt responsible this time. He had given you information, and he feared you were going to get yourself killed. So – I went, and – it was too late. You had gone already. I cleaned up the spell damage on the boilers – “
“I was going to go back –“
Lovely. Now the boy was defensive. Always having to tiptoe around his insecurities…
“It was for appearances only. There was nothing that would have caused a critical failure immediately – you did a good job, Theseus. There could have been an explosion, or a fire, or –“ or Theseus could have been killed. But he hadn’t been. Albus took a deep breath to calm himself. “Not a single Muggle was harmed or even alerted. You did well.”
It was at this point that Albus noticed that Theseus still had not buttoned his shirt. No, it wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed at all before now. Instead, it had only now become all that he noticed – his next thoughts completely erased by the realization that it would be quicker to get Theseus’s shirt off of him than for him to put it to rights.
“Not that I was looking for your approval,” Theseus answered. As if Albus’s attention had woken him up to his own semi-dressed state, Theseus started buttoning his shirt. Albus’s eyes lingered on Theseus’s fingertips, manipulating the buttons. Why was watching a man dress as provocative as watching him undress?
Albus turned away and pretended to be interested in a large tank containing some grindylows. He tried to steady his breathing. He had been berating Theseus for his recklessness? What if Theseus had noticed Albus watching him? Albus sighed. He wouldn't have. Theseus didn't really see Albus anymore. But what if he did? What if Theseus noticed Albus looking, and invited Albus back to his house? What if Theseus put those fingers to work on Albus's buttons? Would Theseus offer him a drink first? Or simply throw Albus up against the wall, and -
Theseus cleared his throat, and Albus turned. Theseus fully dressed was not, as it turned out, any less distracting. Albus should have actually been looking at the grindylows, instead of fantasizing about his ex-student. Now he was completely unable to speak. He might never be able to speak a word to him again. Albus was still stuck in that moment of seeing Theseus’s back, bare to his gaze, of him turning, revealing his bare chest, his abdomen, that trail of hair...
‘Pathetic, Dumbledore,’ he scolded himself, ‘You’re as bad as a fourth year, swooning over having seen a boy with his shirt off. Now open your mouth and say an intelligible word like a man who actually speaks for a living. It is not as if you have not seen your fair share of naked men. For Merlin’s sake.’
“Theseus,” Albus’s voice broke a bit on his name, and the younger Wizard’s eyes widened for a moment. Albus cleared his throat, as if that had been the problem. “Call me next time.”
“Albus, you have no jurisdiction –“
“Which is exactly what you want, if you are insisting on not taking this to your superiors.”
Theseus tilted his head up towards the distant ceiling and groaned, “Albus bloody Dumbledore.” Just to add to the growing bank of images Albus did not need.
Theseus looked down at his shoes and then met Albus’s eyes. “There’s – I think there’s a mole. If I share my intelligence with the department, then Krall will be found out, and become no good to me. So, it isn’t that I’m being reckless, Albus. I’m being cautious with the resource you shared with me.”
“You were lucky this time, Theseus, but don’t count on getting away with something like this again. Grindelwald prides himself on never making the same mistake twice. Take me with you next time. It will not slow you down to send me a Patronus.”
“A Patronus?” Theseus asked, confused. “Sure, I can make a Patronus.” Albus had been the one to teach him. Theseus had been so delighted with himself and Albus both when he finally managed a corporeal Patronus that the memory of that moment was what Albus thought of when he cast his own. “But how that is relevant…”
Oh, of course. It was a rather uncommon application of the spell, and not part of the British Auror Academy repertoire. But Albus had seen an Auror use it at MACUSA, and had assumed…
“You can – ah – use it to send messages. Like an owl, but nearly instantaneous. It travels as quickly as a beam of light. And – it speaks. The message. In the voice of the sender, which, together with not having control over which animal you conjure is a kind of authentication of the message. The usual variant speaks the moment it reaches the person for whom the message is intended, but that is impractical. It can result in a message being shared at an inopportune time. But I’ve designed a modification that ensures that the message is received in a timely and discrete manner –“
Theseus looked at Albus, stunned. “You can send a message with a Patronus? That’s dead useful. Why didn’t you teach us this at Hogwarts?”
“I just said, Theseus. The basic variant on the spell causes the Patronus to blurt out a message no matter where the recipient is, no matter what they are doing, no matter whom they are with! Can you imagine? It could give away your location in a duel. It could reveal privileged information to someone not meant to have it. It could – simply be used to harass and embarrass another person.”
“I was listening, Albus,” Theseus said, matching Albus’s tone of annoyance so perfectly that it could only be mockery. He picked his wand up off the table and twirled it in his fingers. “You also said that you had modified it?“
That was fair. There had been no need for Albus to be quite so defensive. It was only that he had been annoyed with himself for not thinking of sharing the spell with Theseus before now. But he didn’t want Theseus to think that he had been keeping the spell from him on purpose, either.
“I only worked out this other way a couple of years ago.”
‘After you left,’ Albus didn’t add, though the implication was obvious. ‘After the War had already started,’ would have been equally true. ‘I never kept my magic from you,’ would have been still more dangerous to say.
“But I still don’t teach it at Hogwarts. It takes a bit of practice, and natural talent – it’s… frustrating for some people.” A lot of people. Albus had only successfully taught it twice, and had become even more careful about whom he shared it with as a result. “But you’d pick it up right away, I’m sure of it. I’ll teach it to you. But in return, you have to promise me that you won’t face Grindelwald – or his followers – on your own.”
Theseus placed his wand in his holster. “I’m not a child anymore, for you to bribe, Albus.”
“No, you’re a man, for me to negotiate with.”
“You’ll teach me the spell because you want me to have it. Because if I have it, I’ll be able to reach you if I need your help.”
Well, he had said that he wanted Theseus to negotiate like a man. Theseus was right – he didn’t have to promise Albus anything, because ultimately Albus was the one who wanted him to have the spell. He had worried about Theseus for years, especially after he left for the War. But when Theseus returned, Albus had had almost as much reason to worry before. Joining the Auror Corps’s organized crime and insurgency division? Theseus could have done worse only by becoming a Hit Wizard. The spell would make him safer. If he bothered to use it. Which he wouldn’t, because he was never again going to admit that he needed Albus for anything. But maybe at least he would use it to call someone else.
“I don’t think I like you very much, Theseus Scamander,” Albus said to him, feigning a disappointed expression.
Theseus smirked. “The feeling is mutual, Dumbledore.” He slapped Albus on the shoulder as he walked by.
Albus turned his head and called out after him, “Thursday night?”
“The Dartmoor Training Centre, eight o’clock,” Theseus answered, without looking back.
They hadn’t gone so far as to make plans to see one another in twelve years. This was – something hopeful. An opportunity to regain some lost ground. Maybe.
Albus sat on the stool Theseus had vacated and waited for Newt to return. He did not have to wait long. The young man appeared the moment the sound of his brother's footsteps had faded. He must have been hiding, waiting for Theseus to leave.
“There’s time enough for me to teach you the spell, now,” Albus invited.
“Oh, I’m no Theseus,” Newt demurred, though there was a hint of resentment in his voice. So, he had been listening.
“No,” Albus agreed. “No, you’re not. You’re more patient than he is. And a great deal less reckless. But your brother is fighting against people who at least respect Wizardkind. The people you are setting yourself against care for nothing – far more dangerous. You could benefit from the spell, and you’re certainly Wizard enough to master it quickly. The charm work on this basement, Newt - it's extraordinary. Truly.”
Newt didn’t answer, instead saying, “My brother can be a little dense, Professor. He’s not going to know if you don’t tell him.”
Albus gave Newt a quizzical look.
“Yes, why not pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Newt turned towards the work table. “I’ll have time for your lesson when I’m done feeding the animals – I won’t be fifteen minutes.” He picked up a knife and began preparing vegetables and throwing them into a bucket. “I’ll see you upstairs.”
Albus, dismissed, climbed the stairs to the kitchen, and thought about what Newt had said. Of course, Theseus wasn’t going to know how Albus felt if he didn’t tell him. That was the whole point of not telling him.