37 days. Fortune-teller (Gellert/Albus)
"Poor boy, how much grief do you have to endure?"
Albus remembered the squeaky voice of a decrepit, weak, as if dried, old woman in a dusty, colorful shawl, with huge earrings rings in saggy earlobes, in an old darkened skirt to the ground. This is what typical street fortune-tellers look like when they were catching yawns on the main square of their relatively small town. An old woman caught a boy returning home from a closed school for gifted children with a bag in his hand.
"Soon there will be a fateful meeting".
Young Dumbledore didn't believe in fate. His dreaminess and faith in the miracle were outdated next to his sick sister and a grim, uninhabited brother. He had to think about how to take care of them so that they would not need anything and would be happy. Here, fate will not help, but only your strength.
"And what has this fate prepared for me? - Yet Albus asked, looking at the faded eyes of an old woman. She smiled strangely with her dry, cracked lips, and her gaze turned out to be an amazing shine.
"She made you love".
It was said too gloomy for a seemingly joyful event, why Albus got cold in the chest and squeezed his throat. He looked at the old woman differently, seeing a strange, frightening shadow on her face.
"This feeling will be the strongest in your life, as well as the one who will cause it in you.
He wanted to find something in someone else's eyes that would calm him down and relieve the anxiety that was clutching in his lungs and settling in his stomach. But the shadows were getting longer, the image of the old woman was getting darker, and at some point, it seemed to him that there was no man in front of him.
"But it will be disastrous for you, because it will burn you from the inside until it burns blue flames, leaving only a handful of black ashes.
The voice became deafening, and the woman seemed to stretch out and rise above the not-lowest young men, pressing him against the plates of the square. She was hiding a hidden power that could have destroyed Albus in a flash, but suddenly everything stopped.
"But you are a phoenix. You will be reborn. Just don't let him get lost.
The sounds filled the world. He didn't even notice how he couldn't even hear his surroundings, he was so captivated by the squeaky voice of an old woman who turned into a flabby old lady that she smiled gently and gently, and in her eyes was the weight of worldly wisdom.
Albus left quickly, afraid to look back, feeling a stranger's look. In his head, bees buzzing with thoughts, painfully pressuring him, keeping him from gathering himself. He didn't believe in fate and shouldn't be scared, but something still kept him from breathing.
Dumbledore did not notice how he had encountered another passerby.
- I'm sorry, - said Albus, who immediately grasped the panic in his voice. He looked up at the man he had accidentally touched.
- It's all right, - the young man nodded, looking frowningly at the culprit of the "accident. Albus gently squeezed under that piercing gaze, which penetrated the soul, feeling it and clenching it unpleasantly, as if in his fist. But his inner pride was playing out, and Dumbledore straightened his back and proudly raised his chin, looking at the stranger a little more boldly. And at that moment, an arrogant smile appeared on the lips of strangers, which knocked out the young man's balance along with his breath.
- Can you tell us where you can rest in peace here? - Nathan suddenly asked, a few centimeters closer to Albus. The distance was within the limits of decency, but Dumbledore felt some discomfort, which at the same time and somehow strangely warmed up.
- I can show you, - Albus smiled weakly, leaving a pause at the end of his sentence, hinting to introduce himself.
- Gellert.
- Albus.
He does not believe in fate and its turns. At that moment, however, he felt that he had lit a light, which might be the cause of their death in the future. Albus shook these thoughts - no prediction can be true, he builds his own life. And Gellert does not want to let go, although the squeaky voice of the old lady of Destiny reminds him that only pain awaits him with this affection.
But Albus Dumbledore will be able to cope with everything.
Contrary to Destiny.