Albus had very nearly opened his mouth to correct Gellert, to place himself in the context of Gellert's personal timeline, when Gellert did it for himself. Part of him wanted the buffer, the distance, of formality, but Albus had little practice in the business of withdrawing for the benefit of his own comfort.
"You mistake my apology," Albus said simply. "I am not often in the habit of asking personal questions of those who do not know me." And Gellert was someone else. A man was more than his dispositions and his nature; the sum of his actions and experience couldn't be neglected; but there was danger down that line of thought. How much of that young man - that impossibly cold, violent young man - existed in the boy before him? Could he be prevented? Did Albus have the right to try? Or an obligation?
"You are not yet the man I know," he said, by way of affirmation. "Assuming the whole of my memory is left intact, I last recall 1904. And you?" He let himself give Gellert a cursory glance, as if he was no more than taking in the very uninteresting cut of Gellert's ensemble. "You're still in school?"
It was the most neutral way he could suppose to say it, finding it helpful that Gellert did not know just how young he'd been when they'd met.