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Chapter Seventeen—Meet the New Professor

"So this is your new office. I'm amazed that you convinced Professor Greyhand to give it up."

Harry rose slowly to his feet. It wasn't every day that he had Gellert Grindelwald walk in through his office door without so much as a knock. He had thought about adding some kind of password to the door, but he didn't want to hold students out of his office, unlike his quarters, when they would need help. "Can I help you, sir?"

"No need to call me 'sir,' Evanson. I feel like we know each other fairly well. We must, right, when the previous war you fought in another timeline must have been against me?"

Harry smiled tightly and said nothing. Honestly, he didn't want to give Grindelwald any kind of hints about where he had come from or who he'd fought. He'd done enough already. And if he admitted that he hadn't fought against Grindelwald, then the man's mind would probably turn in the direction of Voldemort.

"Well!" Grindelwald clapped his hands briskly and sat down in the chair on the other side of Harry's desk, looking around again. "Yes, handsome indeed. You even got some of the scars and dents out of the walls that I remember the last time I visited Greyhand."

Harry bit his tongue against the impulse to ask if that had been a recruiting effort. He sat down behind the desk again and shifted some of the paperwork over to the side, signing it. The Ministry was requiring him to take a whole lot of oaths that put protecting the children first, and Harry approved. He just wished it could be done in person and not by paper.

"You're a cool one, aren't you?"

"I think it's warm in here this afternoon, actually."

Grindelwald laughed and leaned forwards. "Let's not play games, Mr. Evanson. If that's still what you want to be called." Harry stared stolidly at him and didn't react, and Grindelwald lifted his hands a little. "I want to know more about this other timeline that you came from."

"It's destroyed now. It can never be resurrected."

"That's not strictly true, depending on what kind of magic you used for the time travel and what bits and pieces of it you want to resurrect. If you want to use such an inelegant term at all."

Harry met him eye for nose. He wasn't sure that Grindelwald was a Legilimens, but he wouldn't take chances. And he knew that Grindelwald wanted him to ask about things like why "resurrection" was an inelegant word, but he simply wouldn't. He sat there and said nothing and said nothing, and Grindelwald finally threw up his hands in the air with an inarticulate noise of frustration.

"I came because I want answers," Grindelwald said. "As one of the people affected by your destruction of the timeline, and probably someone most disadvantaged by it, I would say you owe me the answers."

"Disadvantaged," Harry said, unable to help himself, and got a sly smile in return.

"You have said a few things that intrigue me so much I cannot keep silent." Grindelwald leaned back and held up one hand. Harry tensed again, thinking that he was about to draw his wand, but instead, wandless sparks leaped from his fingers and fountained up into a shape like a crown, before settling back down into his hand again. "I am still powerful, even disadvantaged as I am by the current timeline I would be happy to help you achieve some measure of power, or whatever it is you desire."

Harry shook his head, a little more centered now. Voldemort hadn't been able to tempt him with his parents' resurrection in his first year, and he wouldn't let this arsehole tempt him now. "Sorry, sir. I have nothing you could possibly give me."

"That seems like an absolute declaration, and those are rarely wise." Grindelwald let his hand fall back to his side, his eyes hard and watchful. "Are you sure that you don't want to change your mind?"

"No."

"You do want to change it?"

"I want you to admit that you came here to change it for me, and to tell you that I'm immune to the Imperius."

Grindelwald leaned just a little in his chair. Harry heard the Elder Wand thrum eagerly. It was so interested in a fight that it often noted when someone made a motion that could let them attack more easily before he did. Harry kept his hand on his quill, though, and not the Elder Wand.

"Accusing the Minister's husband of casting an Unforgivable would give you very few allies," Grindelwald said. His voice was so low that Harry might have thought it was Parseltongue if he was listening from a distance.

"I'm giving you a bit of advice, not an accusation." Harry handed Grindelwald a sunny smile and went back to signing paperwork, trying his best to ignore the creeping collar of fear that insisted he shouldn't take his eyes off the man.

"I will figure you out, Evanson, and then we can talk prices again."

Harry didn't bother responding as Grindelwald got up and walked out of the office. Their clashing points-of-view wouldn't be changed by a single conversation anyway, and he didn't think he should have to spend more time on this than that.

When he heard the distant shift of Hogwarts's wards that meant Grindelwald had left through them, he sat back and rubbed his eyes with one hand. The Elder Wand trembled against him and grew still.

I hate this timeline in lots of ways, Harry thought. But even as he thought it, he remembered Severus, and Sirius, and Regulus, and Mariana.

He couldn't hate them. He couldn't do anything that would cause them not to exist, or to alter into a different form, even assuming that Grindelwald was able to bring him back to his original world, which Harry doubted.

He shook his head, and returned to satisfying the Ministry's endless appetite for paperwork.

"I'm starting to think it was inappropriate to put Evanson in the Defense Against the Dark Arts job."

Albus sighed. He had just come home from an exhausting incident in which what should have been a simple Obliviation after a Muggleborn child's accidental act of magic had gone horribly wrong and had to involve the Wizengamot, and of course Gellert would be complaining about this. "Why?" he asked, sitting down at the table.

Izzy immediately popped a plate into view with potatoes on it as well as small portions of beef and, on a separate plate, small chunks of cut-up cheese. Albus chuckled to himself as he began to eat. Izzy insisted on balancing his meals that way.

"Because he's disrespectful. If he can be disrespectful to the Minister's husband, how well is he going to get along with the other professors at the school? Greyhand won't be there to shelter him for long."

Albus concealed his smile behind a forkful of beef for a moment, but Gellert saw it when he lowered the thing. His eyes narrowed. "What's so funny, Albus?"

"You went there to try and bribe him with something, didn't you? And you wanted information about the original timeline."

"That's not a crime." Gellert gave him a winsome smile, but he wore another air, a charming, determined one that was part of the reason he had managed to attract so many followers. "If we have a time traveler at our disposal, and mutual agreements not to betray each other, why shouldn't we learn as much as we could?"

"It would still depend on Mr. Evanson's desire to share that information. And it seems that he wasn't forthcoming, was he?"

Gellert shrugged. "He could have been. He might feel more that way if you came with me next time. I had the impression at that little interview with Mariana Prince that he was closer to you than me."

Albus shook his head and patted his lips with his napkin. "I don't want to know anything more about the alternate timeline than I do, Gellert. It sounds like it might have been worse for both of us, so why do you want to know about it, anyway?"

"Because I think the little bastard is lying." Gellert's charming air cracked and he stood up, prowling back and forth. For a moment, his magic was visible behind him like a flying white cloak, drifting and flowing around his shoulders. "I don't think for a second that the original timeline he came from was so—confining."

"You think we were the rulers of the world there. Despite what he said about you being in prison."

Gellert turned around and walked towards Albus, and then knelt in front of him, taking his hands. Albus shuddered a little. This was the mood of Gellert's he understood the best and liked the least.

"I think he's lying," Gellert repeated softly. "And even if the bit about my being in prison wasn't a lie, doesn't that mean that I was in prison for a grand crime? That perhaps I was a ruler who was overthrown? Albus, I feel so stifled in this life we have now. If there's a chance we could be something else…"

"I don't feel stifled."

"Then you don't. But if you love me, then you should be able to see that I do."

"You could have gone on fighting to the end." Albus kept his voice as quiet as he could, because he still had nightmares where that had happened. "You could have refused the rehabilitation the Wizengamot offered you, and chosen prison. Then you would be in prison for that 'grand crime' you're insisting probably happened in Evanson's timeline."

"You might as well call him Potter, he so obviously is one." Gellert sat down on the other side of the table, but ignored the plates that popped into existence in front of him. "And I made the choice that would keep me alive, Albus. You know that's different from being happy with all this peace that we have now."

"What would you have me do?" Albus didn't bother keeping the exhaustion out of his voice. "I wouldn't change the timeline back or have you in prison if I could, Gellert."

"Just speak to Potter. Persuade him. What harm can knowledge do? You know that we can't bend the timeline back the way it was, but what's the harm in knowing about it?"

Albus snorted, unable to help himself. "So says the man who claimed that the knowledge about the Deathly Hallows wouldn't hurt us."

"It hasn't hurt you." Gellert's eyes went to the Elder Wand sticking slightly out of Albus's pocket, which thrummed at him in warning. Albus had thought at one time that the wand would prefer to go with Gellert, since he had been so focused on conquest, but it had chosen Albus instead, perhaps because he had always had a slight edge on Gellert in magical power. "Come on, Albus, why would you deny me something so simple?"

"Because I don't think your motivations for asking are innocent."

Gellert's wicked smile was bright enough that Albus's breath caught the way it had, all those years ago, when he had come around a corner in Godric's Hollow and seen Gellert for the first time. "Why, no, they're not," he murmured, and came over to stroke his fingers through Albus's hair. "But has it occurred to you that we could have both?"

"Have both what?" Albus managed to ignore the way that Gellert was stroking his hair and focused on his narrowed smile instead.

Gellert bent towards him. "We have a time traveler who hasn't gone insane or tried to run around destroying anything," Gellert breathed into his ear. "And who hasn't been executed or tried by the Ministry or gone beyond our reach in some other way. This is the perfect situation to find out if Croaker's theory of contained time bubbles is true."

Albus's whole body flushed with cold, and he pushed himself backwards from the table so abruptly that Gellert had to step smartly to avoid hitting his chin on Albus's head. "No," Albus said softly.

"Point out one way in which it's not a perfect situation." Gellert had his arms folded and his body cocked a little to the side, the way he used to do when he was about to duel someone.

"Because creating such a time bubble would be insane. If it spread and corrupted other corners of the timeline—"

"That's why I said a contained time bubble. We can do this, Albus. You know you're as curious as I am. And there'll never be so perfect a setup again." Gellert's voice was low and persistent now. "The timeline that he came from still lives in Potter's blood and bone. We can resurrect it! And we can make sure that it doesn't spread and destroy the world we're living in now. Unless we want it to."

"Gellert."

"Don't whisper at me like that. You know it might be better, for all involved. I would bet that in that original timeline, no one expected a baby to defeat a Dark Lord! There was probably less pureblood prejudice if I ended up in prison and you were able to dedicate your attention to something other than being Minister. What if we have happy lives there? What if we have a more equal relationship?"

Albus closed his eyes. It was true that he had to think of Gellert as his hostage for good behavior, and he hated to do it. But then, Gellert could have requested some other means of rehabilitation if this was intolerable for him. Albus could have refused to accept responsibility for him. Their choices had made this timeline what it was as much as Potter had.

"Albus." Gellert bent over him, breath and then lips gentle on his ear. "You're curious."

"Yes."

"And you know that perhaps Potter was lying, because he didn't want us to ask him too many questions."

"Yes."

"Well, then." Gellert's hand massaged and squeezed Albus's shoulder, and tingles of sharper cold than he'd felt so far raced through him. "Why not do what we need to do? Looking doesn't do anything. We would have to breach the containment spell that separated the time bubble from the rest of the timeline to have any impact on it. But we could do that if it was good enough. If it was—better."

Albus sighed as a Muggle motor horn seemed to blare in his brain, and stood. "I'm incapable of doing that, Gellert."

Gellert's hand froze on his shoulder for a second, and then jerked back. "Because you're going to pretend that you never believed in the greater good. I see." His face was blank with fury.

"No," Albus said gently. "Because one of the alarms that the Wizengamot implanted in me if you went too far just went off. That means that Aurors are on their way right now to question you and me."

Gellert stared at him and slowly stood to his full height. "The Wizengamot?"

"Yes. Surely you remember the conditions that they put on your release into my custody, Gellert?" Gellert remained silent, and Albus shook his head. "One of them was that if you started talking about strategies that might mean you're trying to restart the war again, they would know, and come to question us."

"How could they possibly know? I know there are no Listening Charms in our house."

"The alarms are in my brain," Albus said. "They're set off by my perception of how serious you are and whether you're trying to violate the terms of your freedom. They know that they couldn't trust everyone to make the right judgment call if they had Listening Charms and someone with too-rigid standards heard you saying some of the things that you like to say. But they can trust me, and if I think you're going too far…"

"I thought I could trust you, as well." Gellert's hair seemed frozen, on the verge of pointing straight up, as he continued to stare at Albus.

"And I thought I could trust you to really have moved on from the war and not still be longing to win." Albus sighed as Gellert didn't move. "Gellert, what do you want me to say? I sacrificed enough of my own time and peace to bring the war to a close, and then to convince the Wizengamot that you would be better in my custody than in Azkaban. Of course I'm not going to jeopardize this for your mad experiment."

"I thought you were more loyal to me as your husband than you were to the Ministry."

Albus swallowed. "I thought you loved me more than your fantasies of world domination. It seems we were both wrong."

Gellert stood still enough that Albus missed the slight backwards movement at first. Then he realized Gellert was sliding one foot behind the other, his body twisting slightly towards the window at the far end of the dining room.

"Of course," Albus said, and couldn't keep the sadness or the contempt out of his voice. "Run. Make sure that you'll go straight to prison and never return to me. What do you think you'll get out of this, Gellert?"

"My freedom." But Gellert stopped and studied him as if he had heard a different kind of bell instead. "Or would you defend me?"

"I can make sure that the Ministry knows you didn't actually flee and that I don't think you were serious about making an insane experiment."

The silence between them crackled. Silent bargains, Albus thought, the kind that perhaps he should have made more carefully when Gellert was first captured and had given his parole.

"Very well," said Gellert abruptly, and moved over to sit down on the couch nearest the fireplace. "Do not imagine that I will forgive this."

"That makes two of us," Albus said, and sat down across from him, and carefully put the Elder Wand on the table between them. It buzzed at him, the way it sometimes had a habit of doing now.

But Albus was far more concerned with the pallor of Gellert's face, and making sure that he remained motionless until the first Aurors came through the Floo.