Chapter 3: Family Ties Across Time and Space
1111 Words
In the end, all she could manage was a dry, "I'm sorry."
“Oh.” To her surprise, Gellert laughed. “Sorry? Is that all you want to say? Come on, Ywen… Did you really think I would blame you? After all these years, you still haven’t changed a bit.”
The old man’s withered hand reached out, and even after a century apart, Ywen could clearly feel the texture of his skin, the aged, time-worn lines that marked his hand.
His touch was light, almost tender.
His voice, too, carried a low, sigh-like quality. “Honestly, I’m grateful… Grateful that when everything had already settled, you came back to me. You didn’t have to see me at my worst.”
“What?”
Gellert raised his gaze to hers, his mismatched eyes glinting with a mix of mockery and nostalgia. Emotions swirled in his gaze, a tangled knot of contradictions that ultimately transformed into something Ywen couldn’t quite decipher—a stubbornness etched deep into the essence of every Grindelwald.
“Arrogant one… When you stubbornly made your choices, never looking back, when you cut the fine threads binding us together, did you ever stop to think about whose hands held the other end of those threads?” His voice grew fainter, softer, almost a whisper. “But still, I’m glad… To meet you again like this. At least now, I lack the strength to ‘settle scores.’”
“Otherwise, tell me—how different are you now from a butterfly caught in a spider’s web? Do you know how much I wanted to see you… Every minute, every second, for a century? In those moments when my ambition was paving roads of corpses, when my madness was scorching the earth… It was then that I missed you the most! If only you had been there. To see it all—to witness how I shattered the magical world you so loved into utter chaos!”
His laughter was hoarse, rasping, as though he were reliving the blood and fire of fifty years ago. Yet amidst the madness, his gaze at Ywen bore an almost pitiable tenderness.
“Don’t you want to know?” he leaned slightly closer, his voice conspiratorial. “Don’t you want to know how the world changed after you left?”
Ywen said firmly, “That’s not—”
“You don’t care, do you? Because it’s already happened,” Gellert interrupted with a strange smile. “But what about your friends? Your teachers? Your companions… Do they not care either?”
Too sharp. Ywen stared at him, murmuring internally. This Gellert, after a century, was far too incisive, his presence overwhelmingly aggressive.
Was this a product of the times? And when had he begun turning that blade toward his own sister?
“I hated them,” Gellert said suddenly. “Once.”
Ywen asked, “Why?”
“It’s simple. To the old me—the ‘little Gellert’ who never attended a magic school, who was confined to the small, dull world of the Grindelwald estate and could only glimpse the magical world through his sister’s letters—you were everything.”
“You were his sky. His world. His sunlight.”
“How strong is a child’s twisted sense of possession… Sometimes I think, if you’d just listened to our parents back then and obediently gone to Durmstrang, how much better it would’ve been. You’d have been so close to me, never entangled in disputes over ancient magic, never dragged into goblin wars, never leaving half your heart in England across the channel.”
“But then I thought, perhaps it’s for the best. It meant that when you left… I wasn’t the only one suffering the pain of a separation that spanned time.”
Gellert’s voice rose oddly at the end, a mischievous, almost childish “misery loves company” tone as he recounted fragments of his youth with disarming frankness.
Yes, chatting—because to him, Ywen’s return meant only this. Just a casual conversation, letting her know what the river of time had washed away, what had been lost. She needed to understand that.
And he would accompany her, slowly helping her adjust. Since Ywen had chosen to return to him first, he didn’t mind extracting the last dregs of warmth from his near-dried heart to keep her company and wait for her to adapt.
Ywen understood this, too. She closed her eyes briefly, sat down, and said to him,
“Let’s talk, Gellert. About the magical world, about time, about you.”
At last, Gellert smiled with satisfaction.
…
When she heard Gellert was expelled from Durmstrang for dabbling in dark magic, Ywen thought: My brother is wild.
When he mentioned spending the summer at their aunt’s in Godric’s Hollow, she nodded: At least he knew to stay with family.
When he spoke of meeting a kindred spirit in Godric’s Hollow, Ywen felt relief: So Gellert’s life was vibrant, even after I left.
But then… uh?
Ywen’s expression turned increasingly serious. She suddenly raised her hand to interrupt him. “Wait a moment—”
Gellert obligingly fell silent.
Ywen pressed, “This… Albus Dumbledore you mentioned. Were you really just kindred spirits? I haven’t finished school yet, don’t lie to me—”
Look at Gellert’s choice of words: “the only English rose blooming in Godric’s Hollow,” “the only person in the world who understands my heart,” “the greatest white wizard of this century, acknowledged by none but me…”
Ywen rubbed her chin and said in a grave tone,
“I think you two were a bit too close.”
**So gay. So incredibly gay, little brother!** What on earth did England do to you?
Gellert suddenly gave her a peculiar smile.
“Take a guess.”
Ywen stared at him for a few seconds, a wild idea surfacing in her mind.
The absurd thought made her eyes widen uncontrollably, her expression slipping for once.
“No way… you—”
“Oh, sister, that was a long time ago,” Gellert cut in. “As I told you, we couldn’t see eye to eye.”
“Wait… I—what the—”
“Sister, he won’t forgive me. And I’ll never see him again. Guess how long it’s been since we last met?”
“But, but… Ahhhh!”
**My brother was stolen! My sweet, adorable little brother was stolen by some English pig! And not just stolen—BE’d!**
*Albus Dumbledore, huh?*
*The greatest white wizard of the century, huh?*
—**Do you think Gellert would mourn you?!**
- Writer
