Young

“I welcome you, Miss Henshaw… Clara.» Albus amended with an ounce of his grand-fatherly archness, «as the newest member of our staff. Minerva is head of your department, but for anything I can do, feel free to come to me.»

«Perhaps for some remembrance, professor-» at sight of Albus’ expression, she amended, inclining her head, «Albus? If you wouldn’t oppose to that?»

Albus hummed. «Will you make me feel old?»

Clara gave a polite smile. «Why not make each other feel young.”

«You are young, my dear.” Albus whispered conspiratorially to her.

Clara laughed then, a silent and introvert thing; Albus tilted his head to the back, so he could see her through the lower part of his bifocal glasses, the one designed to refine sight of objects within small distance.

«You are as old as you feel.” Clara responded; Albus hardly had time to open his mouth, before she calmly stopped him with her lifted a finger. “Ah- ah- ah. Don’t go denying this. I know for a fact you’ve lived by it all your life.”

Albus had to admit that a rare kind of mirthful familiarity had started flooding his chest. It was an unparalleled feeling he’d gone too long without. No matter how much it warmed his heart now, it was obvious it needed to be rooted out before it was too late. He fixed her with one of his intrusive stares; it flustered her as efficiently as it would most people.

«You have developed some gall over the years, haven’t you?” He said, jumbling up her thoughts, making her doubt what she considered certain.

Her smile was lost. Her expression closed off. She even went as far as vacating her chair. «I need to settle in, if that’s all, Headmaster.”

She stressed his title on purpose, Albus knew.

«We’re colleagues now, Clara. We agreed you call me by my name.” He wore his smile.

He was unsure whether his little carrot smoothed things over, but at least Clara met his eyes; her gaze was intense, but not with hurt or affront. Before Albus had time to decode her expression, she inclined her head in acknowledgement and left his office in a flurry of dark burgundy robes.

Clara had been his student, his apprentice – one of the last apprentices he had taken. She mastered transfigurations and, for the decade following her graduation, gained some experience in teaching by assisting in a few magical schools around Europe. She had missed the first Wizarding War. She had returned to England last year and when a professor had retired, she had petitioned for his position in Hogwarts.

She was unmarried, childless, friendless upon returning to the land that was her home. In no other way but name, it seems.

Out of place that girl was, always had been. A Slytherin in manners, a Hufflepuff at heart, a Ravenclaw in matters of the mind. As a student she had been distant and lost in her head. In her apprenticeship she had immersed herself with all her heart and had practically rendered his job uncalled for. That girl wasn’t one to be stirred, even by the gentle influence of a teacher she respected.

She reminded him a bit of Newt Scamander, excepting his endearing nervousness.

No, on their first meeting after all these years, Clara’s manners had been assured, but without displaying over-confidence. She felt joy, fondness, nostalgia upon seeing her old professor again, but she had ruled over it perfectly. It had only shown in her choice of words and in the softness of her eyes. Albus had been touched, if not a bit bored of such pretences. He had come to enjoy the simple, straightforward attitudes these days. A hundred years of playing hide and seek with the world and yourself can do that. A hundred years, and wars and battles beyond count. The last war had been put on hold however, Tom’s reappearance was lurking somewhere ahead, but for a year now calm reigned.

Still Albus was perfectly aware of how many things needed to be settled before the madman returned to finish what he had started.

Sybil Trelawney was rumbling on about the future in the Staff Room again.

Albus met the teacher’s eyes one by one. He smiled and reassured Minerva’s exasperation, he enjoyed Severus’ disgust and curling lips. He shared a momentary glance with Flitwick, before the latter returned his attention to Sybil and carried on his noble task of nodding politely at all the right moments. Albus noted Pomona and Sinistra converse in whispers. His eye fell on Clara to his right; the girl- woman’s--

Albus sighed discreetly at himself. On Clara’s face lay an unreadable expression. She rested her chin on her interlaced fingers, her elbows braced at the table in front of her. She seemed immersed to the seer’s remarks, even though amusement was discreetly colouring her face. And yet, her eyes seemed lost far away, her brow was slightly creased. Then again, on closer inspection, her eyes weren’t far away exactly, behind them danced all sorts of thoughts.

Albus send forth his mind and gently prodded, but once more, Clara became aware of the intrusion. Once more, she didn’t try to block him off. Albus pretended once again not to be taken aback by the ease with which such a guarded girl allowed him into the privacy of her thoughts.

Before Clara’s eyes had turned to his face, Albus was in and whispering around her consciousness.

‘You’re cooking up a reference for this.’

It was not a question. Perhaps that was why Clara’s eyes brightened up, her lips quivering slightly, as they contained her amusement, her fondness.

‘Iliad.’

 Albus caught the whisper of her thought and his brows shot up in thought and acknowledgement. Omer’s rhapsodies were some of the few muggle texts that had wormed their way into Wizarding academia; and given Clara’s background, it was no wonder she was familiar with them. Albus backed away from the mental intimacy such a guarded girl kept granting him so easily, and opted to lean physically closer to her.

He spoke in his own voice, whispered as to not reach the ears of the rest of the staff. «You do not mean Calchas?”

Clara smiled to herself, but with Albus gone from her mind, her thoughts were her own. «Always ready for the sacrifice of a daughter, aren’t you?”

The pained kind of fondness that coloured her tone perplexed him, rather begrudgingly. He watched as Clara’s eyes lingered on his face for a short moment. She seemed unable to hold people’s gaze for long, even with him to whom she showed such fondness.

«Why not Cassandra...?” She whispered to him, looking away, at some place she deemed safer than his face.

Albus straightened up and hid the fond, amused surprise dancing around his mouth behind his steepled fingers.

Cassandra was Paris’ sister who warned that he must not steal Helen. Cassandra foretold how Helen’s kidnapping would bring destruction upon their world, and it did; it brought forth the War of Troy, with catastrophic repercussions on their family. Calchas ordered the slaughter of an innocent maiden and people heeded him because he was a celebrated Seer. Cassandra warned that her brother should let his brain do the thinking instead of his penis, but no one listened.

Between the two of them, whom did Sybil Trelawny resemble, really?

Clara didn’t know about Sibyl’s prophecy, and yet… and yet, her musing was to the point. She saw Sybil for what she was, a woman with good intentions. She didn’t rush to condemn her to the opportunistic nature of Calchas’ norm, however sceptical her mind was when it came to seers and divination. Albus stole one more glance to this girl that had not allowed her square, rational mind shallow her to the dark pits of nihilism. Things like that made life seem bright again, it spoke of hope for the next generation and Albus relished them from a distance.

Three years had passed since Clara had settled among the staff of the school. In time, they had fallen back on their peculiar kind of camaraderie that had proceeded from their spending so much time together in her 7^th year. She was a conversationalist, that girl, she could turn a boring subject interesting, with a few choice quips and the right questions. Not that she ever bothered to, back then. And now, with her colleagues she was polite, friendly with some, but still detached. In the ten years of her absence she hadn’t learnt what it meant to co-exist with other people without shedding off your armour. She was a locked box, an unbreachable fortress. Well, except with him.

Maybe it was their apprenticeship together, or the common academical interest, a plain where Clara had always seemed more at ease than any other terrain. Maybe it had been his own talent for unlocking minds and secrets- no, he hadn’t used anything too intrusive in Clara’s case. He had kept out of her mind, back then, for their camaraderie’s sake.

And really, he had no reason to intrude.

Albus himself had often relaxed in her presence, all those long hours she spent researching and experimenting. Silences were long but not uncomfortable, and breaking them was never too loud or annoying. She understood, that girl, she understood many things her peers didn’t, that people hardly ever do. And that had deprived her of the chance to live a happy, fulfilling life like most of humanity does. Another victim of her own square reason that protected her tender heart as if it were made of glass. And perhaps it was… perhaps it is.

Because in thirteen years, Clara had not changed. Albus couldn’t tell at first whether it was his own wish to find her the same as before, as if that would trick time from passing in its usual relentless way.

That one year with Clara and her inquiring mind had helped him move on from his teaching days. Her apprenticeship had given him one last year dipped in the pleasures of teaching, before he became completely drawn into his position of Headmaster. The war was already starting back then, in the early ‘70s. But responsibility and worry – of his own infliction of course, he wasn’t delusional to blame anyone else – were not taxing enough to keep him from enjoying these little pleasures. Neither did they occupy enough time to make him unable to enjoy a bit more time with her than what was strictly necessary. Or even appropriate between a Headmaster and a student, even if Clara was an adult at the time.

But they had fun, the two of them. They read and laughed, Albus had even given in and debated her at a few memorable occasions. He should have felt old, he had thought in hindsight, he should have felt old being with a girl so young and fresh. He should have been guilty of stealing her some of her time and energy, just to his enjoyment, for the sake of remembrance of carefree days long past.

But Clara had enjoyed this strange camaraderie too, he knew. They had never explicitly called each other out on it. They had danced on the borders of impropriety and held it close, a secret between fellow spirits, between friends even. Theirs was an impropriety of mental intimacy and nothing else. Albus had made sure of this, that the girl wouldn’t misunderstand the openness that sometimes he allowed himself in her presence. Nothing too open of course; he hadn’t shared secrets or pains with her in any explicit way. They had just danced around with words and meanings, ironies and sighs.

No other kind of impropriety had taken place in those secluded evenings, but that of two tired people laying down their burdens for a while, secure in each other’s presence. Albus’ own frustrations in love would have discouraged him, even if Clara wasn’t a student.

Albus had cast the physical aside for decades now and he was perfectly content with that. And once he knew the girl’s mind was away from that as well, he just allowed himself to discreetly bask on the nostalgic serenity of their shared secret.

«Your turn to ask.” Clara slurred a bit, on a Christmas Eve four years after she joined them, his office fireplace crackling merrily in front of them. She was leaning back on the armchair’s front legs, and made to fill his cup again with the bottle of mead she had grasped with fumbling fingers.

«Are you serving me, so you avoid to refill yours?” He inquired, instead of honouring his turn on the game of questions they had begun. “If that’s the case I applaud your good sense.”

Albus should have never allowed it to escalate to this, with him resulting with a young girl- woman- person- young-ish Clara with sprawled feet on his fireplace mat and a mind hazy with mead, but he had lost himself in their game of questions, in nostalgia, in serenity. Clara was drunk before he knew it. Around the cup he was holding out for Clara to refill, there was a messy bundle of limbs. His hand holding the cap, Clara’s hand keeping his hand and the cup in place and his other hand keeping it all together from the outside. Her face held a concentrated expression, her eyes were narrowed, her head tilted, her bottom lip sucked between teeth.

«You’ll have a hangover tomorrow.” Albus remarked, crossing his feet as his back came to rest on the armchair again.

Clara’s face fell and she fell back on the armchair’s front with it. Her shoulders suddenly slumped and her familiar eyes (brown eyes, nothing impressive) were haunted by a misery familiar as well. (Familiar from his own eyes, when he looked in the mirror, late on a miserable night, when all the ghosts of his past came rushing through and no place in the world felt big enough to accommodate his guilt). Albus was taken aback by her sudden graveness, unsolicited as it was by his indifferent remark. She hardly ever lost composure like this, as much as she let it slip sometimes in his presence, nowadays. Her eyes, made more beautiful by some kind of pain only she knew for sure, landed on him. Her gaze caressed his face with the usual softness she reserved for him. And Albus-

Albus just stared back feeling more incapacitated than the meagre amount of alcohol he had consumed could justify.

«What time is it?” Her voice came out a bit hoarse but with a blunt kind of sharpness that made Albus blink out of his stupor.

«A bit past two.” His own voice came out normal and perfectly collected.

He watched as Clara blinked and blinked, the information waking her up. Her expression closed off a bit, although her eyes didn’t lose the beauty of their pain.

«I’m imposing on you.” She made to stand and Albus let her.

She was imposing, wasn’t she? It was past two and they had been together for the last six hours. What could possibly justify anything more? What had kept him that long already? How come he hadn’t found a way to kick her out earlier and close himself off of the living world as was his usual practice?

Why did she stay? That question remained blissfully, safely unaddressed.

Clara was uneasy on her feet and standing up took longer than it normally would. Enough for Albus’ numb brain to wonder all that and enjoy the awkward, amusing grace she displayed, characteristical of a person with ease of movement that was abated by alcohol. Yes, Clara had always been content in her own skin, and it showed in the way she held herself. Only now her unsteady feet made her sway towards him as she stood. Albus’ hands grasped her waist by instinct and before he could get up for his seat and steady her, Clara had landed on his lap.

Quickly realising the situation, she grimaced and darted out of it, taking hold of the armchair’s sides to steady herself.

She faked a smile of amused ruefulness. «Sorry. I’ll go now. Don’t worry.” She waved a hand, straightened her back. «I’ll find my way. Always do.” She shrugged a shoulder as her last word came out broken by a silent chuckle, while her feet were already moving her to the door.

Albus stood up. He called out her name and Clara turned her whole body towards him, a daft mockery of a smile stretching her lips, her hand bracing her against the back of his empty armchair. She hummed inquisitively and her sight made him snort.

«Will you be able to find your room in your state?” He threw her a look over his spectacles, which he didn’t wear, now that he thought about it.

But the effect was unadulterated all the same, because Clara raised a brow at him, her face stretching with drunk, playful defiance. Before she managed to slip away, Albus took her hand and pulled her gently towards him and around the armchair.

«No, no, no, you need your peace…!”

«Too much peace… It doesn’t do good to the joints in my age.” He placed a careful hand on her shoulder and guided her to sit in his armchair, the warmness of her skin radiating through the fabric.

Albus removed himself to the other armchair and flicked his wand for coffee. He needed it too, judging by the numbness that had shrouded his normally buzzing mind. Clara was rubbing her face with her hands.

«I shouldn’t be here, not now.” Nevertheless, she eased her back to the chair and crossed her legs, as if in an effort to mimic his composed collected state from before. «And for good reason.”

«And what reason is that?”

She took the preferred cup of coffee, her fingers brushing his, leaving hot imprints on his skin.

«I’m this close,” she limpily held index and thumb so close they almost rested on each other, «to losing it.”

She kept her eyes to the fireplace while Albus was musing on how much more could she lose it than she already had.

«I’m too drunk now.” She swallowed, her eyes never leaving the flames. “I can’t be too unguarded in your presence.”

Her face was a neutral mask, apart from the eyes, the beautiful eyes made even more beautiful in their pain. The pain of all she is, of all she can’t be, never has been. Albus knew those eyes and they weren’t young. They couldn’t be young, because if they were, then so were his.

«Am I to assume you do not trust me?” Albus quipped lightly, even though he was feeling too old to be facing her now. She was a clever girl, of course she didn’t trust him. And quite right too.

«Oh, I do trust you, Albus.” Bitter mirth coloured her voice and Albus was staring at her eyes before he knew it. Dark beautiful eyes but with a light, a softness, a sweetness you’d never expect from them.

He should throw a quip again, guide the conversation away.

«Then you’re not as smart as I thought.”  He said instead, and started to worry that more alcohol was running through his system, than he was aware.

He hoped it would unnerve her, push her away, and then he’d cut through with some witty quip and save them both from escalating intimacy. But Clara only smiled in that fake, stretched, wry way again and returned her focus on the flames.

«Perhaps. Perhaps it hardly matters. I trust you with my life, Albus, because it’s meaningless. I have enough brain, even too much brain to realise that everything I do is meaningless. When you have overanalysed everything, reality just… deflates. I cannot understand… I have never been able to pinpoint one thing… that is not meaningless. And all the other people, that’s what it keeps me going. Their beauty… their grandeur. The way they make meaning out of the mess, out of the arbitrary. It’s amazing, isn’t it? The biggest gift a normal person can give to another is to trust them with their lives. It’s the biggest thing, the biggest honour. But what do you do with a life that is worthless to the person it belongs to? Does it hold some value still?”

Albus waited for her eyes to meet his, but they didn’t.

But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pull her out of her numb state anyway. This night had turned out to be something different, something far more intimate than he had found himself in for years. He drunk thirstily from it, setting the thought that he was exploiting her vulnerable state aside. Albus was a greedy man and secrets were the most precious currency of all.

«I have thought hard these past ten-something years.” She was saying, with her face almost blank and her voice flat. «What trusting you with my life means. I have no delusions of who you are, I think. I have seen it in your words, the way you see the world. All these times we debated, you and me, I listened; I understood. Your hard, romantic cynicism. It made me taste the illusion that I’m not alone. That there is another person out there who knows what meaningless means.” She chuckled, her face stretching around her own pun.

“You know how we were in the Guild.” She looked at him then, once, fleetingly.

Her mentions of the Guild were scarce, even when she was in her early teens, fresh in mourning about the loss of the only home she’d known from birth.

Clara knew that Albus knew about the Guild; in fact, Albus had been one of the few who dared to politically assault this secret society of mages, that had been a thousand years old and used to serve as the dominant form of government, before the Ministry of Magic was established.

Yes, Albus knew more about the Guild than any mage who didn’t belong to it did; he knew what they used to do to children. He knew that it was a cult that operated in the shadows. Albus had tried to bring the Guild under the Ministry’s laws, and free the people who were in its influence.

But Albus had stopped trying, when Magister Henshaw was elected as the new leader of the Guild; Alexius Hensaw, otherwise known as Clara’s father, who, after barely a decade of being its Magister, Voldemort had decapitated, when Henshaw refused to bring the Guild to his side.

Henshaw had been a good man. His bloodline had placed him in a cult, but Albus respected him for not losing his principles when he earned the leader’s position.

After the Guild’s destruction, Clara still wouldn’t talk about it nor about her grief, not even to Albus; perhaps the only non-member who could understand.

And now she was mentioning it; more than that, she counted herself as one of them, even though she had been too young to become a fully integrated member, before Voldemort burned it to the ground.

“You know that in the Guild, we did what we were supposed to do…” She continued, eyes focused on the flames once more. “Just like you do. But we took everything so seriously… You realise that all this, wars, dark lords, the little lives of little people… you realise it’s meaningless. Your reason can tell you they have no meaning; they lose it all when you’ve analysed them to their core.”

Albus didn’t reply, even though he had strong arguments to counter her words. Even when he was an angry, stupid boy, he meant well, even if he wasn’t the right person for the job. Even despite his enormous ego, he wanted to help the world, not ruin it. Regardless of the fact that he would have ruined it, had Arianna not been sacrificed, to make him see the error of his arrogance.

Clara was wrong. She couldn’t discern his character clearly, no one ever could. She couldn’t understand his pain, his humiliation, his grief. She couldn’t realise how much he cared about all the “little” lives of all the “little” people.

«You would sacrifice my life.” Clara’s flatness, for it could hardly be called a voice, interrupted his inner tirade.

For the Greater Good, was written over Numengard’s gates. Those were Albus’ words.

“If you had to, you would sacrifice my life.” Clara repeated, nodding to herself. “The Guild would have sacrificed me too, and they’d pretend to cry about it afterward… But you wouldn’t pretend, would you? Your heart would bleed with it, it would actually bleed, even if you never showed it. And just for the knowledge, for the certainty of it… I would do it. I would give my life willingly just to see how your heart bleeds with it. Because it’s one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed. How you can still do what you’re supposed to, something you know in your mind that has no meaning, and still feel the pain as if it had. And in your heart it has. My life is precious to your heart; and yet you’d sacrifice me if you had to.”

Something cold and ruthless was spreading inside Albus’ chest. But Clara wasn’t even sparing a glance at him. He traced the rim of his coffee-cup with a finger, over and over and over again; a simple, grounding activity.

“And I would counter, just for argument’s sake…” Albus put on his musing tone, but it came out all wrong, discordant. “That if your life was as precious to one, as you describe, then this person would be unable to find a reason that would be reason enough to sacrifice it.”

“What if you thought that sacrificing me would improve other people’s lives?” Clara asked, her voice a burning antithesis to his. Quiet, but collected.

“When someone loves, he cherishes.” He tried to control himself, he really did. But the hour was late, and instead of her, he was the one suddenly being exposed. “They put their loved one above all other concerns. They don’t care how many faceless people scream and burn, as long as their loved one is safe and content.”

“Not for you.” Clara shook her head languidly, in a certainty that unnerved him. “You rise above all that. You’re supposed to-“

«Supposed to?” His tone came out bland with doubt. “Supposed by whom?”

«You think you are.” She whispered in one breath. “You think society expects you to. You do it because no one else can. It is rare, it is pure and it is beautiful.”

«I treat people like cattle.” Cold, his voice was. Colder than he expected, but he pressed on. «I would treat you like cattle, had you been in the Order. I would have given you too many orders and not enough information and I would expect you to trust me, while I do not trust you.”

That was the truth, and it wasn’t pure, it wasn’t beautiful. His intentions may be, but his actions were certainly not.

She was an open wound in front of him, but he couldn’t help prodding her, as if to see if she fully realised what she was speaking of.

He might as well be poking at a corpse.

«Cattle.” Clara repeated. “Precisely. How else can it happen? Meaning comes when you find ways to put chaos in some order. People put chaos in an order with rules and norms. With good and bad and right and wrong. People fear hell and search for utopia, but they do not see that if utopia came to be, if everything was perfect, nothing would evolve. We flourish through problems, through destruction… Through solutions. How can something be born if something else doesn’t die. The continuous flow of it is what keeps energy in existence. But if you trust people with this truth, they crumble. Chaos is so strange, so unknown; it’s where their nightmares come from. They want to be cattle; they want to have a shepherd that will know all the unnerving truths but shield them from them, while they live their lives in a relative comfort that they maintain on sheer will alone. That’s why religions and governments and etiquettes and norms exist. But being cattle doesn’t abort your beauty.” She let her head fall back, a breathless element taking over her voice. “Those machinations are so… intriguing.”

About a century ago, two angry boys had spent many a night discussing all this, in a hillside west of Godric’s Hollow, with only the stars listening in. All these points she was making now, they had thoroughly analysed. But not once had they spoken with the warmth and admiration she was expressing so genuinely.

“If the cattle wanted to know,” Clara continued slowly, “why do they not search for these truths themselves? Your Order… The Order of the Phoenix… If your members wanted to know who their General truly was, then why didn’t they search for it?”

Albus thought about correcting her; he wasn’t a General, he must never become. But Clara’s face was lit by the flames, glowing pale in the dark office. Her melancholy eyes never once met his, as if she were there alone and he was but a spectre of her imagination.

“You were right there in front of them, ever since they started school.” She pressed on. “Why didn't they wonder, philosophize in the first place? Why don’t they hone their reason more, so they won’t miss on small important details?”

“Most of the times we don’t dare to look at the stars, because their vastness haunts us later.” Albus said. His coffee had grown cold and the flames reflected strangely on the white porcelain of the cup.

 “They make us feel small, and maybe we are.” Clara agreed softly, she seemed to mellow by his words. “But the beauty, the art of it, isn’t it to know how to turn small things into big and important? Isn’t that a gift the cattle know too well and the shepherd is only capable of mimicking? That’s how you see the world. You admire the cattle. Tell me I’m not wrong.”

He could hear the pleading in her voice, the beseechment that was breaking through the flatness. In spite of it, not one whisper of reassurance left Albus’ mouth.

“Your life is empty, Albus. It’s all a façade.”

He tried to hold onto denial; it was for decades now that denial didn’t work.

“Mine is too,” she continued, pained by the admission, “but at least you’re trying to help, you have the courage to try and help. I don’t want to help. I don’t believe anyone needs help and I bask in the safeness of it. I admire you, Albus. Not as much as I do the cattle, but my admiration for you comes from the heart, as well as the mind. Comes because I understand you more intimately than I could ever understand them.

«And if that makes me too arrogant or too dramatic, who cares.” Her eyes trailed to the ceiling as her head slumped back. “I’m drunk. I can go back to pretending humility tomorrow. I see you, Albus. And seeing you fills my heart. But what can I give you as a token of my emotions? If you ask for my life, I will give it to you, to dispose of it as you see fit. But it is of no worth to me. Do you see? You are a part of my heart, and yet I have nothing of value to offer you.”

“You can give me your truth, at the expense of your ego.” Albus said, the knot on his throat constricting painfully. “As you do now.”

“Only that?”

Albus heard her bitter amusement, but he couldn’t convince himself to look at her. He whispered softly that it was enough, but it didn’t reach Clara’s ears.

“Such a small petty thing,” she was saying, “but it’s the best I can do. My ugly, superior, arrogant self who thinks I know better than everyone else. Now you’ve seen my foolishness and I cannot hide. Not that I ever could, not from you. At least it’s nice to be free once in a while. You’ll remember all this tomorrow, won’t you.” Her head slumped to her chest, she closed her eyes as if in pain. «I won’t. I’ll make sure I won’t. Please keep me blissfully ignorant of it, or I fear I’ll never be able to face you again.”

Clara stood up with a sigh and staggered out of the room without seeing the tears that had gathered in Albus’ eyes.

A few hours later, as he was mixing into his tea a relief potion for his sleeplessness-induced headache, a very strange thing happened to him. He thought of how bad Clara’s hangover would be when she woke up.

After ruminating over it for an irrationally long amount of time, he sent a house elf to make sure Clara would find a remedy on her bedside table, alongside a note: “I do take joy in being right.”

If alcohol had muddled her recollection, that note would be enough to convince her that last night had passed in a very ordinary, safe and unmemorable manner. Or if she could in fact recall, the note would show how Albus wasn’t insulted by the liberties she had taken, and that they could forget all about it, putting it aside as a mead-induced accident.

Albus was composed the next day, he wore his superiority like a royal cloak. He hadn’t been the one who opened up last night, after all. What she had said about him were her own words, her own ideas. He had parted with nothing of himself, apart from a couple of heated remarks, that could be easily manipulated to hold different meaning than the one they actually did.

Clara must have known something had happened, because she kept herself at a bigger distance than she normally did. Whether she had full memory of everything that happened, he didn’t know and couldn’t find out. But Albus made sure to coax her back into their usual distanced proximity. Two planets in orbit around each other. Never letting go, never coming too close, because if they did, they fell and crumpled.

He coaxed her with small smiles and winks in neutral contexts, he coaxed her with carefully balanced words in irrelevant topics.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have; but it didn’t cost anything, really.

And after a while, when her words had properly sank in, why not? He coaxed with discreet, featherlight touches. Touches that said I’m here, I do not shy away. You hold knowledge that hits too close for comfort, you accept things you probably shouldn’t, but I’m alright with it. I… like it.

I… like being accepted and I want you to know you’re accepted as well.

Decades had passed since the last time he had engaged in such a simple interaction as this.

His hands never lingered, neither did they press down. They just passed through and winked, much like the rest of him was doing. And when Clara eyed him, her beautiful brown eyes heavy with puzzled suspicion, he shot her his best grandfatherly look.

On a cold night during the next winter, Albus was leaving Aberforth’s pub. Snow crunched under his buckled boots, and he picked up his pace to fight off the cold. He was just turning into Hogsmeade’s main street when someone collided with him. His hands went to seize the person’s shoulders, keep himself up and them from falling, when warm brown eyes, alight with agitation, met his under her hood.

«Public hazard?” He teased with a straight face, just as Clara smirked and peeped down the road from where she had come from.

Albus, aware of how easily her hands had settled on his arms and showed no intention of leaving, took it upon himself to back off just as Clara hastened to hide behind the corner and took him with her. He went with a sigh.

«Clara, my dear, are you playing hide and seek?”

«An adult, societal version of it, yes.” She replied with an apologetic expression. «Sorry, I just-’‘

«Ran from a young lover perhaps?” Albus interrupted, extending his elbow to guide them to the school from side streets and not the main one. «Are young men so abominable these days?”

«Oh, please.” She scoffed, looping her hand on his. «I deplore your insinuation. Me and young men are two concepts that have years to… overlap.” She shot him a meaningful look and smiled at his polite chuckle.

«Young ladies, perhaps?” Albus side-glanced her.

«Yes, but for no amorous reason. I bumped into some old schoolmates and wasn’t in the mood.”

«Ah, mundane, then… Pity. I craved for some fresh, steaming gossip.”

«Then why don’t you go ahead and provide it.”

Albus turned to her with a brow ticked up. «You cannot possibly be asking…?”

«Whether you had a rendez-vous?”

«Oh, please, it’s been years since I last-’‘

«Overlapped?” Uttered Clara with sugar in her tone.

Albus made to frown at her in his professorly way, but Clara’s sly expression made it crumble. They navigated Hogsmeade’s narrow streets, arm in arm.

«How long really?” She asked casually, expectant for an answer.

«Oh, you’d feel sorry for me.”

«Alright, I’ll say first.”

A pause stretched and Albus felt her eyes on him. «Do you really have to?” He frowned.

«Might I remind you that you started on this topic?”

Albus gave a long-suffering sigh. «Yours cannot be longer than mine.”

«Since I allowed a stuffy blond German deflower me in an alley…”

 Albus choked on a snort.

«…Twelve years ago.”

«Well…” He gazed ahead as another blond boy came to his mind, who was the dangerous opposite of stuffy. «Mine was on the summer of… 18--” he intoned, «… ‘97.” He turned to relish her reaction, to find only a grimace of amused bewilderment.

«And your balls haven’t exploded.”

Albus smiled. «You do enjoy crude language, don’t you?”

«Oh, why not? Why not speak simply for once. It’s only sex, after all.”

Albus held the gaze of this person whose love life was in a way worse than his own, and huffed. «Hmm… Only.”

Clara smiled in that introvert way of hers. And Albus tore his eyes from her, wondering again what he was doing here. With the warmth of her body on his side, and her hand looped in his. As if she heard his thoughts, Clara untangled their limps and went to stop in front of him.

«Do you miss it?” She searched his face with that fondness she only had for him. Albus placed his hands in the pockets of his coat and searched back.

«Love? Sex? Physical contact?” He enquired, his tone mimicking her silent one on its own accord.

Clara frowned and hummed. «I should have probably asked what do you miss.”

She didn’t though, she left it dangling, providing him with a way out.

«I miss being held. Cuddled.”

Clara huffed a laugh at his choice of word. His eyes searched the sky, as a part of him laughed at the old foolish man he had become.

«Kissed, caressed. Small tokens of being accepted, I would sat.” His gaze settled on her with a sad smile. Now he had paid her back in kind, for that night a year ago.

Clara had lost her smile and was looking at him with an intensity he had never seen in her before. It felt like something had broken inside her, her gaze was fixed with an unknown intent. And when she took a step towards him, leaving only a hair’s distance between their bodies, he didn’t step back. Not even when her hand rose to his face, with a slowness that could only be deliberate, not even then did he step back. He almost hoped she would do it, she would lay her skin on his. And when she did cup his cheek, it took him more self-control than he would enjoy admitting to not lean into her touch.

Instead he kept his eyes on her beautiful brown ones and whispered. «Out of pity?”

He almost hoped his quip would faze her, but they only made those old eyes even more deep and beautiful. She brushed a thumb against his cheek and the shivering sigh that escaped him made his eyes almost flutter close.

«Out of acceptance.” She replied.

And then his eyes did fall shut, blocking off the world and everything but her touch. Her touch that didn’t come unfounded. Because the devil had opened up to him, she had paved the road before she dared out of her fortress.

«Acceptance cannot turn physical.” He bit his tongue and congratulated it at the same time.

«In whose mind?” Her other hand joined in his face, and they fit there like they were the pieces that had been lost. He opened his eyes then, to find somewhere to hold on and put an end to this. But her eyes that were the wrong age, that seemed almost out of place with the rest of her, didn’t help. Her pinkies dived under his ears, caressed the soft skin there.

Soft, sagged skin.

Clara inched closer, her eyes falling to his lips. «Let me take you to bed.”

Albus needed a moment to realise these words had actually come out of Clara’s mouth.

Her breath tingled his skin, her heavy eyelids haunted his mind with all sorts of ideas. He relaxed toward her full red lips, pinched by the cold. Their swell was familiar, the way she used them liberating. He was tilting his head and he couldn’t recognise himself. Clara was trembling, her shaky exhales were burning him.

«No.” He uttered, so close to her, he could imagine how intoxicating her warm wetness would be.

Clara raised her eyes on him with something even more broken in the beauty of her eyes. She forced her mouth into a smile, tense and stretched and so utterly faked.

«I will ask two more times.”  She said. Her hands slided off him with an unwillingness he couldn’t overlook anymore and Albus heard, and then I’ll respect your choice.

«And then I’ll stop.” She said instead because she had her self-assurance to protect.

She stepped away from him with something gentle in her features, something akin to pride. She extended an elbow to him this time, her gaze lost ahead. Albus had never navigated those waters where sex was considered something small and insignificant. That you had gotten the hang of it so well, you could shoulder giving or accepting a refusal as if it were no big deal.

Well, a night of firsts.

He looped his arm with hers and met her fondness with his own.

After-images of that night haunted him in boring staff meetings and long nights. Ηe felt her closeness while speakers raged on in the Wizengamot. Let her words sink in while he absently petted Fawkes. Considered her eyes and wondered why. Considered her request and thought why not.

Nothing changed in the way she held herself around him. Lingering looks and secret smiles were the same as before. Their quiet nights where he smashed her over a chess board came and went as if nothing had happened. Except for some times, when she thought he wasn’t looking, he thought he caught her eye on him more heavily than before. Heavy with questions? Ridicule? Fondness? … Lust?

She had trembled that night. Trembled as she held her lips away, expectant for his answer. But how could that be? No, it must have been the cold, or nervousness, or an effort to hold back disgust. It was all a plan, a farce, a joke, a conspiracy.

And then, of course, it wasn’t.

The second time she asked, it was in the staff room, in one more staff meeting where it always took too long for the teachers to calm down. Tea being served, chit-chat honoured, dislike quickly gathered behind politeness. Clara had looked at him from across the table, she had raised her eyes slowly from the ground and found his. And the expression in them tipped him off.

Within a blink he penetrated her open mind, always open, how can it be? Her face was calm and neutral but her eyes screamed the question to him.

Will you let me take you to bed?

His gaze fell on her lips before he whispered a half-hearted no.

Trying to take me by surprise? he asked back just as he left her mind and folded back into himself. A place that seemed colder and colder as weeks passed.

Her mask broke, as she lowered her eyes. Something close to the sheepishness of a child-like smile filled her face with tenderness and a blush. The sight was so irregular, so unexpected, that a couple of colleagues noticed it and frowned. She raised her eyes quickly though and arched an eyebrow, cynicism returning her walls in place. The only thing that remained was the blush. A bit of blood to match her lips. To match Albus’ heart that always struggled with right and wrong.

Albus read on and on, chapter after chapter. Clara was sprawled on the mat in front of the fireplace, while Albus read on and on from any book he fancied. He had joined her on the mat, the two of them side by side with their toes warming in front of the fire. Soppy, domestic, sugary enough to spoil your teeth. They laughed at that, secretly, sharing it only with codes and undertones.

For months it had went on and they preferred his private quarters than his office, with all the portrays keeping guard.

Clara had not asked again yet. And when he ushered her to his rooms, with a secret smile and blue eyes twinkling challenge at her to refuse, she had come and observed and laughed. Sometimes they discussed the books or other topics, others they didn’t. Sometimes they shared news and gossips, others they didn’t. Whatever question Albus asked about her past, Clara answered, even a few ones about her childhood in the Guild. But she never asked back. She wanted to so much some times, Albus barely contained his mirth at how she kept her mouth shut and her gaze uninterested.

She could have taken him for a fool, at that point, he thought sometimes. If she was a liar, sent by someone to trick him, she could have taken him for fool. Her behaviour was too consistent, too genuine, too unguarded and spontaneous around him nowadays; that kind of thing couldn’t be faked. And Albus fell more and more into the certainty of her authenticity. Clara had dropped all pretences. He allowed himself that one simple thing, just for now. Camaraderie.

«I love your voice, you know.” She told him, as Albus took a break and drank some water. «It’s so deep and mellow.”

«You’re raining compliments all over me nowadays.”

«You’re welcome to rain me back at any point you like. You should have gotten round to it earlier, really. You know my diet comprises of anything that strokes my ego.”

«In that, my dear Clara, I’m afraid you’re wrong. You have offered up yourself to me twice now, with the aim of sexually seducing me. Me. Sexually.” They laughed. «And I refused you. And yet you’re still here. Not very selfish of you, is it?” He passed his fingers absently through his beard.

«Ah- Professor.”

Albus granted her all the attention such an introduction solicited.

«We’re closer now than we have been in years. If that’s all you’re willing to give, then I’ll take it.”

«So, you say, it’s not sex you want, but this?” He enquired gently. “Everything that comes with it?”

Clara searched back. «What is sex for you? Is it merely acceptance?”

«No… It is intimacy, trust… And… desire.”

«That’s what it is for me, as well. A good-balanced cocktail of all that, served with some simplicity on the side.”

«Was that what the stuffy German was?”

«No.” She averted her eyes and for once over long months, she didn’t answer his question immediately.

Albus’ hand edged towards hers. He touched it with his little finger and kept his eyes away from it. The young hand and the old withered one. He watched Clara’s face instead, how she inhaled and puffed up her cheeks, how she didn’t tense nor take her hand away. He took it in his gently and brought it to his lips. Side-glancing her, he kissed. He brought it down on his lap and rubbed it between his own.

He kept a straight face when Clara broke out in a loud and viciously sarcastic snore.

«You’re a fucking princess, do you know that?” She asked. “Are you doing it on purpose, because I have never been sure. I mean, you don’t breathe without theatrics, but…” Her face softened as she searched his eyes, «were you always like that?”

An answer for answer.

«I was always… more feminine than an average boy.” He noted her curious expression and smiled to himself. «That does not frighten you.”

«Did you just equate me to an average girl?” Clara wore a gentle frown after a moment.

Albus chuckled, his body shook. «My apologies. Insulting you wasn’t my intention. So, deflowering. How did that go?”

Clara was taken aback, thinking she had avoided the topic. The answer fell from her mouth, nevertheless. «Oh, no, that was… That was stupid. That was… girly. I just thought… let’s go through with it and be done. Let’s see if I’m wrong, let’s see if that kind of thing suits me in the end.”

«And did he need to be a stuffy German?”

«He was just… handy.” Clara shrugged. «Anyone would have done. It…” She paused, her eyes searching ahead to the lively flame, her mouth working around words that he had pressed her to give. Albus squinted, as if to not lose any moment of it.

«It was you I wanted.” The words came out in such a silent whisper that Albus saw them falling from her lips more than heard them. He wasn’t surprised; he had guessed as much.

«Oh, shut up.” Clara’s face had hardened, and once again she couldn’t meet his eyes.

Yes, he had guessed as much, but the question was, how much of this was just a schoolgirl’s crush on her teacher?

«I knew you’d be suspicious of this.”

«I wasn’t aware I expressed any such sentiment.” He replied calmly.

«You don’t need to express it. You don’t need to say it, I can hear your puzzlement from miles away.”

Albus met the ageless brown again, fleetingly. He didn’t need to say it. How superficial can something like this be, in the end?

«Sleep with me tonight.”

Clara’s expression fell quite comically, Albus couldn’t help but smile.

«I have a big bed… Very big.”

And cold.

«Four people can sleep abreast and they won’t even touch each other.” He addressed his afterthought to the fire.

The longing in his gut scared him still; well, good to know.