Gellert’s brows only lifted higher with each of Albus’s successive sentences. “That is your opinion,” he said at last, “not evidence-supported fact. If you intend to make that argument, you need to support it with something solid--more than a decisive tone and large words.”
This was where Gellert always won his arguments. People too commonly assumed that everyone agreed on some basic point that built the foundation of their argument, but if that point was constructed from conjecture, even the most skilled debater in the world could never win. And once they betrayed that foundation, it was too easy to pick the rest of their sentences apart for flaws, unwinding all their carefully-formulated hypotheses and spreading them naked on the table. Albus was brilliant, but he assumed that Gellert agreed with him on one small, seemingly insignificant point. He took his knowledge of their acquaintance for granted. Whether Gellert actually agreed was neither here nor there, because opinion could never be touted as fact and hope to hold up in the counter-assault.
“Nothing is obvious,” Gellert continued, rolling onto his back and letting his arms fall to his sides, splayed across the bed. “And you cannot win this argument by making generalised statements about society as a whole. Society must be examined by its groups, and then by its individuals. By trends, not assumptions. Besides,” the corner of Gellert’s lips quirked up, just the slightest bit, “already you speak in terms of a ruler over his populace. Things a ruler must do to ensure a healthy society. You acknowledge that for the greatest good to be achieved, society must be moderated by someone with knowledge of its functions and of what will bring about benevolence. You make no suggestion of democracy, or of the people deciding for themselves. So you see--we do agree.”
He had to wonder if Albus wished they did not. If those ideals Albus had possessed in his youth now seemed so repellent after Gellert’s exodus, the death of his sister, the things Gellert apparently went on to do. He pushed himself up into a seated position and met Albus’s gaze. The smile had vanished from his face, his expression altered into something sober, something sombre. “Albus....” Because how better to find out, than to ask? He found he had to know. Needed to know. Their debate was forgotten, all thoughts of logic and arguments cast out of his focus. “It has been almost five years, for you. Do you ever...wonder what it would have been like, had you gone back to the Continent with me?” And then what he really meant, what he really wanted to know -- “Do you ever wish that you had?”
Albus had been all too eager for discussion on the futility and dangers of democracy, when all too abruptly the conversation shifted. Instantly called to Albus’s attention were the years, and events, that divided them. He’d scarcely forgotten, but his mind found it too easy to entertain two simultaneous, and even contradictory frames of reference at once. Typically, he was better able to synthesize, but lately his mind seemed inordinately prone to polarization. Lately, of course, had more to do with his arrival in this place than with the actual passage of time.