This piece is just beautifully done -- full of insight into young Albus and his time. This is so exactly how I can imagine him thinking: the youthful arrogance almost unavoidable to someone of his brilliance and position, someone so intelligent yet so unaware of his own blindnesses and naivete.
There are so many great lines that characterize Albus so well:
This, extraordinary breath-stealing, word-tunnelling closeness in secret silent hours, while the world was asleep. Yes, I can just hear Albus here, showing off his ability with words even as one part of him is thinking that he doesn't have words. It's almost an unwitting arrogance.
And vaguely, in the further future, there had been a clutch of well-turned-out, intelligent children. These children, in Albus' mind's eye, had never really been babies or dependents - but more a group of little acolytes, excelling in their chosen fields, and making their father proud Oh, absolutely. Just exactly the way young, blind, confident Albus would fantasize. And yet we readers can see his flaws so clearly.
Two young men didn't... Apart from Horace and Elphias, of course. But that was different. Albus was respectable. Such a typical attitude of the time, and of course he wouldn't be able to see outside his own box here, not Albus, who is not at all accustomed to questioning himself or his view of the way things should be. (Love the reference to Horace and Elphias, too.)
He laid him down on his childhood bed - where Albus' mother had told him bedtime stories and his father had spoken of wonderful futures for bright young boys, in those golden days before the attack and the illness, when promising lads had been assured of their world tours. Brilliant passage! We see the whole trajectory of Albus's life and outlook, right here.
The respectable future had crumbled around him. The oil painting had faded, the country pile had become shabby and derelict. The well-behaved brood were no more. It was all swept away by the electric heat of Gellert's mouth on his cock, depraved and wrong and everything that Albus had ached and yearned for. I adore this whole paragraph -- you do a wonderful job of summing up the paradox that would have been Albus's world.
There are so many great lines that characterize Albus so well:
This, extraordinary breath-stealing, word-tunnelling closeness in secret silent hours, while the world was asleep.
Yes, I can just hear Albus here, showing off his ability with words even as one part of him is thinking that he doesn't have words. It's almost an unwitting arrogance.
And vaguely, in the further future, there had been a clutch of well-turned-out, intelligent children. These children, in Albus' mind's eye, had never really been babies or dependents - but more a group of little acolytes, excelling in their chosen fields, and making their father proud
Oh, absolutely. Just exactly the way young, blind, confident Albus would fantasize. And yet we readers can see his flaws so clearly.
Two young men didn't... Apart from Horace and Elphias, of course. But that was different. Albus was respectable.
Such a typical attitude of the time, and of course he wouldn't be able to see outside his own box here, not Albus, who is not at all accustomed to questioning himself or his view of the way things should be. (Love the reference to Horace and Elphias, too.)
He laid him down on his childhood bed - where Albus' mother had told him bedtime stories and his father had spoken of wonderful futures for bright young boys, in those golden days before the attack and the illness, when promising lads had been assured of their world tours.
Brilliant passage! We see the whole trajectory of Albus's life and outlook, right here.
The respectable future had crumbled around him. The oil painting had faded, the country pile had become shabby and derelict. The well-behaved brood were no more. It was all swept away by the electric heat of Gellert's mouth on his cock, depraved and wrong and everything that Albus had ached and yearned for.
I adore this whole paragraph -- you do a wonderful job of summing up the paradox that would have been Albus's world.