Gellert alternated between scowling heavily at the hoop on the ground and the instructor, whose only piece of meaningful advice so far had been to "intend to appear in the hoop". Hermione sat off to one side, sweet talking the ministry officials in charge of the apparition licensing scheme. They were so pleased that the deeply traditional Grindelwalds were electing to support the new, and currently optional apparition training and licensing program that they hadn't even noticed her manipulation.

It was an assumption that neither of them were willing to correct; normally, his mother would have taught him or he wouldn't have bothered to learn at all. He could probably count on one hand the number of times that she had apparated in his lifetime.

Unfortunately, they'd decided that apparition holding Morgana's staff was likely to be the safest way to access Avalon, despite the damage it would do to their magic - certainly less than throwing themselves into a portal, breaking the fundamental rule and hoping they washed up against Avalon without being pounded to death on the wards. By merit of being sixteen and eligible for the ministry apparition and licensing scheme, Gellert had drawn the short straw of being the one to learn.

Not that he was getting very far. The instructor could have been one of Hermione's many ancestors, who liked to give advice such as "make it happen," and "the only limits are what you believe the limits to be."

It was infuriating, but at least the three other students were having even less success. One had fallen over on his first attempt, failed to catch himself and now sat near Hermione, looking starstruck with a cooled rag held over his nose until it stopped bleeding.

He looked down at his wand, wondering what role it played in apparition. His mother could do it without hers, which suggested it was only acting as a conduit for those who'd never build the magical integrity and structures to cast using their hands. There were no incantations; how could there be when the magic changed so fundamentally depending on who was carried, where they went, even what they were wearing at the time. Coupled with the vague explanation, that probably meant that the magic was closer to something Hermione did.

He reached out with his magic, then paused, considering.

If one had to be able to reach with their magic to the location they intended to apparate to, even the most powerful wixen would be restricted to line of sight. Even a wand couldn't improve that.

But what if it was his own flesh that needed to be infused with magic. It would need to be, he supposed, to successfully disassemble himself without causing a bloody, gory mess. Then, his magic would maybe hold some form of imprint, or template, of his body to recreate in the new location?

Uncertain, because it was powerful magic that he was playing with, with potentially disastrous results - if he was correct, perhaps the apparition licence wasn't the worst idea - he pulled his magic up and saturated his body. He carefully made sure not to miss an inch. Every organ, every hair, every stitch in his clothing.

Then he did exactly what the instructor had told him to do.

He knew that turning on his heel would start the process, he knew that his magic could tear him apart and he knew that it could reassemble him on the other side, in the hoop.

He turned on his heel.

It was almost instantaneous. Uncomfortable, but too fast to be properly painful. He barely even had time to process that it had worked before he was standing in the hoop, fists clenched as his magic roiled like the sea after an earth quake. The instructor was congratulating him and the others around the walls of the room were applauding furiously, but Gellert was too busy slapping his magic back down, smoothing the surface and restoring the calm.

'… correlation between the volume of the disapparition and completeness of the magic, which usually comes with time and familiarity. Of course, we could hardly have expected anything less than near perfect success from the Grindelwald Heir!'

Gellert blinked, coming back to himself and immediately searching out his witch's eyes. Hermione wore a small smile, the one that said she was proud of him but couldn't show it because they were in public and in public they had to act as though the extraordinary was commonplace to them. He smiled back, allowing just enough of his own pride to spill through that she would be able to see it, but not the others who knew him less.

Then, just to prove a point, he reached out again, saturated his core. It was quicker, this time, easier. He twisted and reformed back outside the hoop.

'Not even a hair left behind!' The instructor beamed. Gellert sneered at him; the task would have been far easier if the man had just given him proper instructions.

The instructor made him apparate eight more times. Gellert knew from Hermione's descriptions that he was nowhere near as badly affected as she was. His magic was naturally inclined to smoothness and like the water it so closely imitated, it flowed back to settled relatively quickly, but by the fifth time he had to resort to using his wand and taking the soothing potion that Hermione offered. But he succeeded every time, and by the end of the day he was being presented with a scroll of thick vellum, stamped with the Ministry of Magic seal, which awarded him an apparition licence.

It was a hastily assembled ceremony, with photographers for the papers and political proponents of the new legislation and program gathered to celebrate the most influential son in Germany and his success. He gave a handful of honeyed lies, talking about how he could now be confident in his ability to safely transport himself and how he believed that attendance of the course could drastically reduce transport related mishaps.

He didn't talk about how it wreaked havoc on his magic, how he would need days to restore his wandless ability, how useless the instructor had actually been and how he thought the ministry should be teaching safe portal use instead of apparition; a solution that allowed a couple of hundred miles of range, when one could easily portal across the world in one step. But apparition was easier to control; apparition wards at the borders, in buildings, over events and public places. It was just another stage in the plan to remove the independence of wixen, to reform them into a conventional mirror of muggle society.

He couldn't apparate them home to Hexemeer. The island was enchanted to allow no form of magical entry; broomsticks, beasts, apparition, flying carpets. The only way onto the island was through the portal and past the terrible barrow wights. But as part of the big show, he took Hermione's hand and carefully apparated them both away from the award ceremony, to thunderous applause.

They reappeared in the small wizarding village that served as the closest remaining portal to Nurmengard, hidden in the shadows between two buildings. Both Grindelwald children gulped down soothing potions, Gellert sagging against the rough wall whilst Hermione slid down to the floor and rested her head against her knees.

'Sorry.' Gellert apologised. It wasn't his fault; apparition was always terrible for those trained in the old ways, but he still felt terrible that he was causing her discomfort.

'No.' Hermione denied his apology, 'yours is better than most.'

Mollified, and with a glow of pride in his chest that combated the unsettled swirling of his magic, Gellert sank down beside her. He pushed her pooled skirts aside, only succeeding in covering them in more dust, pressing up so that their shoulders touched. Her magic was comforting against his own; familiar despite being rattled. He could feel the potion's effects, stilling his magic easily whilst it battled against hers.

'We should do it.' Hermione said into her knees, but she did not move to do so.

'We can wait a bit?' Gellert offered. 'There was a baker here that sold little butterfly cakes, my father used to bring me there. We could see if he's still open?'

'No.' Hermione groaned and withdrew the long, twisted shard of Morgana's staff. She'd tucked it into her stocking, hidden beneath the many floaty layers of her summery skirts. He took it, surprised by the density of the dark wood. It had a magical signature of it's own; other, foreign, like that entity that lived deep within Hermione and emerged for rituals. Her family magic.

Hermione's hands wrapped firmly around his, squeezing with a strength greater than her hunched shoulders and sagging head belied. Gellert held the staff with equal strength until splinters stabbed through his skin and drew blood. One final time, he flooded his magic through both of them, this time drawing the odd magic signature of the staff with it.

The magic of the staff responded, meeting Hermione's with a small fission, the foaming edge of a calm wave washing up a beach, borne by the water of Gellert's magic. He pushed it to every limit of their beings with far more deliberation and care than he had in any attempt since his first; this would be the most dangerous apparition of his life, with the potential to hammer them up against the most powerful wards in existence if their theory on the staff granting them access was incorrect.

They disappeared from the gloomy German alleyway.

It took fractionally longer than previous attempts. Perhaps because the distance was much further, perhaps because they were traversing through a set of wards.

They reappeared in the throne room.

He'd seen it before, but it still took Gellert's breath away. There was no obvious source of light, yet somehow even the deepest corners of the massive room remained unshadowed and a soft, undefinable spotlight highlighted the throne on the dais, leaving it the brightest spot in the room. The walls, seamless stone and white enough to be chalk yet glossy and smooth like marble, towered up to a distant ceiling, high enough to fit Blau Berg's hall comfortably beneath it, rafters, roof and perhaps even the tower. Six hooped, iron chandeliers hung on chains thick enough to anchor ships, looking perfectly proportioned in the cavernous space; the only ornamentation besides the throne and the five tapestries, each large enough to blanket an entire cottage if laid flat.

Hermione looked very small as she made her way across the room, pausing before the dais. The tap of her heels seemed to echo on long past when she stopped moving. Then she climbed the two small steps until she stood right before the throne itself, but instead of stopping at it, she walked straight past until she was right against the far wall. Seeing her beneath one of the banners really brought the whole room into scale. From a distance, it had looked like the crested tapestries were maybe a meter from the floor, but Hermione passed right beneath it without ducking, opening a concealed door that had been built seamlessly into the stone wall.

Gellert blinked, wondering how she could have possibly known of it's location, then he hurried after her when she paused and looked back, waiting expectantly for him.

After all of his research into castle building and defence, he'd expected a secret door built into a throne room to be a secret escape incase the castle was overrun. He'd expected a cramped, winding staircase cut into the sheer cliffs which excited to some kind of hidden dock at the bottom.

In reality, the door opened straight into a medium sized room which may once have been comfortable. Seagulls regarded them from nests built from mouldering upholstery, squawking warningly but not leaving their clutches of eggs. This room actually had windows; arrow slits recessed deeply into a gently curving wall that could only be the base of the main tower.

'Somewhere defensible… it's got to be down further.' Hermione folded her arms across her chest, frowning at the other door to the room. It was slightly ajar, hinges rusted to the point of not moving. Gellert fired a blasting curse at it, knocking the door clear off it's hinges in a cloud of ancient splinters. The door led to a corridor; on one side an eerily abandoned dressing room, where the Queen of the castle would have prepared before taking her throne. Gold earrings and necklaces glittered from between shattered pots of long-rotted cosmetics across the floor, swept from the dresser in a fit of fury. A battered, dented goblin wrought silver circlet lay where it had been hurled against the wall. It painted a picture of Morgana's last moments in the castle; her rage when she learned of Mordred's death, and the hasty departure to confront Merlin that followed. A wardrobe hung open, rich cloaks protected by preservation charms and one hanger conspicuously empty, the others draping after it as if the missing cloak had been grabbed in a hurry.

Shivering, Gellert left the doorway and caught up with Hermione, who had started descending a staircase - tighter, but still wide enough to be one used by the royalty of the castle. Peering up the centre, he could see it spiralled upwards a staggering distance, perhaps right up to the square tower top that was the final station before Morgana's private floors in the tallest tower. Looking down, the staircase continued. There were no windows lower down and the walls changed from the pearly white of the castle to the slightly darker grey of the cliffs, giving the depths a gloom that was nonexistent elsewhere in the castle.

'It'll be close to the throne room.' Hermione informed him, jogging downwards. 'They always are, Mordred told me. It's our natural sense of importance; we always put important things in important places - the top of towers, throne rooms, under throne rooms because ward stones are meant to be secret and secure.'

'So why would it be there? If everyone knows to look there?' Gellert asked, jogging beside her.

'Arrogance?' Hermione questioned. 'I suppose if you get to it, you've already managed to take the rest of the castle, so what does it matter?'

It did make sense, and it also looked like Hermione had been right. The first door beneath the throne room tunnelled straight into solid rock. Unlike the rest of the castle, this space was small in scale; barely more than head height. Gellert found himself counting his steps, despite having no idea of the dimensions of the room above. At a guess, they were somewhere beneath the middle of the room when they reached a squad of guardians; Gellert had almost forgotten about the undead guards of the city, dressed in their gleaming mail and woad blue livery. They stepped aside with a clank of mail and bone. Slowly, the door began to gate up into the ceiling like a portcullis.

The corridor might have been narrow, the headroom low, but the door were thick enough to stop a charging dragon. A slab of solid rock wider than the preceding tunnel by about two feet on either side and deep enough for the whole squad of skeletons to huddle in the space where it had sat- it could only have been hewn out of the solid rock, already in place.

Behind the door, another squad of skeletons heaved at a windlass, winding in a chain which ground the stone up. Gellert hurried beneath it, mind full of images of the ancient chain snapping and the massive slab of stone smashing down on top of him.

The room beyond was small compared to the size of the city it protected but every surface was covered in densely packed runes. The walls, the ceilings, the four pillars which supported the throne room; several stories of solid rock above them. The runes glowed softly, alive with whatever magic supported them; family magic, blood magic, ritual sacrifice, perhaps even tied into the lay lines like the most powerful ancient wards.

'There's no key.' Hermione said, sounding shocked. Surprised, Gellert looked around the room with purpose. Hermione's seal was small and the slot for it could have been easily missed, but usually they were in a prominent position - the human sense of importance, as she'd said before.

They moved through the room, scouring the wards for any recognisable feature that might point them in the direction of the key. It was like staring at a map of an unfamiliar land; he recognised features - a handful of runes that provided strength, another handful that protected against fire, but it was like recognising symbols for trees and mountains which came together in unfamiliar ways to create ranges and forests that he couldn't navigate. He could recognise signs, but he couldn't figure out a way home through it all.

Hermione, who was fluent in the runic languages used by her family, recognised it first.

'They're slaved.' She announced incredulously, from the far side of the room.

'Slaved?' Gellert echoed in disbelief. A property as secure as Avalon should be the master by all rights. Slaving it to somewhere else… it was like designing the fastest broom in the world and then making it out of straw.

'Slaved.' Hermione confirmed.

'Where to?' Gellert demanded, coming up alongside her. Hermione cast him a quick look that conveyed how stupid the question was; only an amateur ward builder identified the master wardstone in a slaved ward. Whoever had built Avalon's wards was clearly not an amateur.

Then, her jaw dropped. Gellert held his breath in anticipation of her answer.

'The Barrows.' She realised, 'Gorlois told me! Years ago! All Gorlois properties have wards slaved to the ward stone in The Barrow.'

'The Barrow?' Gellert asked dubiously. It really was like building a racing broom out of straw. The wards on the place were powerful, but nothing like Avalon. Nobody had managed to find the island city in centuries, and people had spent lifetimes trying. It was a city so well warded that all but the name had been wiped from living memory. The Barrows were just a mound of dirt… anonymous, distant, protected by a savage sea and the inhospitable weather of the Orkneys and an inordinate number of guardians and ghosts. Perhaps it was not the worst place to slave the wards to.

'But I've been over the wardstone a hundred times.' Hermione scowled darkly, crossing her arms and leaning back against the glowing runes on the wall.

'Over it…' Gellert realised, eyes lighting. He'd seen the wardstone in The Barrows before; a boulder, larger than he was tall and several paces long.

'You think the slave link for Avalon is under it?' Hermione realised. It made sense; another line of defence. An invader would never think to check beneath the massive stone, particularly when slaving Avalon's wards to The Barrow's was like building a racing broom out of straw… or not. It was sheer brilliance.

Hermione darted from the room, tearing along the corridor and bounding back up the spiral staircase. Gellert barely kept up with her, catching himself carelessly against ancient door frames and startling the birds roosting in the study behind the throne room. Hermione crashed against the throne room doors, shouldering them open and bowling over the skeletons who had been about to do it for her. Gellert called back an apology to them, pausing to scoop up a skull and hand it back to it's lost body.

By then Hermione had already reached the outer doors, slipping through into the blinding summer sun as soon as they were wide enough. She skidded to a stop at the portal and Gellert barely caught up with her in time to follow through the silvery gateway.

Orkney was uncharacteristically lovely. A gentle, cooling breeze fanned off the sparkling sea, rustling vibrant sprigs of coastal flowers and tempering the sun, which lit a cloudless sky. The Barrow was covered in flowers; if he hadn't known the family that lived below, he would have assumed the dominance of blue and white to be a coincidence of sun and shelter. As it was, he suspected one of the guardians, ever patriotic, had carefully ensured an advantageous spreading of seeds last autumn. A herd of cattle milled around the ritual circle, grazing at the rich grass that grew at the base of each stone.

Realising that Hermione had gained quite some distance whilst he'd been enjoying the weather, Gellert sprinted off up the track to the barrows.

He had longer legs, so despite her fitness, Gellert was able to reach the entrance not long after her. Unfortunately, where longer legs helped in the open, it did not help him crawl through the tunnel any faster but Hermione was in a skirt - ruined, already, from sitting in the dirt in that distant German alleyway. It was impressive that she could manage the crawl at all.

She fidgeted from foot to foot as the guardians opened the hidden passageway for her and barrelled into Gorlois when she reached the root of the stairs.

'Where's the army?' Gorlois asked, an eyebrow raised.

'We've figured out how to lower Avalon's wards.' Hermione declared, sidestepping her ancestor and hurrying down the dimly lit hall and taking the last archway to the right, just before the end archway that led into the living room.

'Oh?'

Gorlois, like the others, had forgotten all but the essentials of the ancient city. He shared a bemused look with Gellert and followed Hermione into the wardroom. She already had her wand drawn and was prowling around the block as if deciding the best way to proceed.

'Hermione…' Gellert began nervously, 'You shouldn't cast on an active wardstone.'

'I know, but how else am I meant to move it?' Hermione scowled at the rock, but put away her wand never-the-less. She folded her arms stubbornly.

'Perhaps, High Priestess, Galanan might be able to assist?' Gorlois suggested instead. Summoned by his name, Galanan; the massive stone golem, hulked into the room with heavy steps. Hermione's expression brightened into a beam as she saw him, stepping back to allow the caretaker access to the stone.

There were two depressions in the floor, barely noticeable without context and hidden among the complex engraved wards and many slave links, that Galanan's stone fingers slotted into neatly, allowing him to get purchase on the boulder-sized wardstone. They were on the right track.

Galanan heaved and the block pivoted up and over. Keen, Gellert, Hermione and Gorlois all leaned down to try and catch an early view of what was underneath.

The stone moved about a meter before it hit the opposite wall and could go no further. Gellert's lungs tightened in dismay, but Hermione had already darted forwards, under the massive slab that was held only by Galanan's trembling arms. Gellert managed a vague noise of denial and disapproval, before Hermione was pivoting up struts in each corner that had been recessed into the stone floor beneath the wardstone.

Galanan let the weight of the stone drop down onto the struts, which thankfully held despite their age; Hermione was still beneath. Job done, but for once fascinated by proceedings beyond his edict of maintenance, Galanan knelt down to see what Hermione was doing. Gellert did the same - the three sect members had taken up the obvious spaces, so Gellert was forced to lie on his stomach and squeeze his cheek against the floor to see in.

'Oh!' Gorlois sounded very pleased. 'This one, first, High Priestess.'

Obediently, Hermione pressed her knuckle into the groove her ancestor had pointed to. The ring on her finger slotted perfectly into the spot. Magic shimmered, like a bolt of lightning down a conduit.

'Oh!' Gorlois sounded even more surprised, his painted eyes wide. 'I remember now; you should do this one next, if you want to use the portal.'

Hermione obeyed again, pressing her seal into the stone.

'This, here, that's inactive. That's the wards over each level of the city. There's wardstones in each gatehouse, but they can also be raised and lowered from here. This one conceals the island from outside eyes, this one here prevents physical access to the island. You could lower that one, but keep the other up; only people who know the exact location will be able to get in.' Hermione obliged, continuing to adjust wards as Gorlois talked her through them. Gellert should not have been surprised by the complexity of the warding that covered the island - it was an entire city. From his limited understanding, it sounded like the wardroom beneath the throne room contained the bulk of the actual wards but others were scattered in locations across the city incase the castle was lost but other parts of the island still stood, but every one had been slaved to The Barrow so that the city couldn't be used against the family should they lose control of it - a racing broom of the finest ash indeed. The Gorlois family might be primitive, using magic that was crude in comparison to what could be achieved today, with elementary potions and heavy reliance on runes and reagents, but they were masters of magical warfare; that was undeniable.

Gellert's face was numb by the time Hermione crawled out from beneath the wardstone, Galanan taking the weight so that she could fold the struts back down. The stone block settled back into it's position on the floor seamlessly; there was no gap to suggest the stone even could lift. It looked for all intents and purposes as though it was a solid piece carved up out of the floor. Gellert would never have guessed that the key to the strongest set of wards in existence lived beneath it.

Hermione babbled happily to Gorlois as she made her way back towards the surface, explaining how they were planning to hold Anneken's wedding on the island. Gorlois had never been to the castle; his undead form was bound to The Barrows as a trade off for his physicality and he'd been dead before Morgana had taken control of the island so he'd never seen it in life. But his descendants had spoken of it at length; weddings on the beach below the battlements, where the couple could ritually wash away impurities. Births in the forests, beneath ancient tress blessed by the fey and funerals in the fields before the city where the ashes of the dead could help to feed the living.

He didn't dare be rude to Gorlois, so it took all of his tact to remind Hermione that they needed to let Anneken know that her Avalon wedding could happen. She left reluctantly, bidding goodbye to her ancestors with unusual intensity.

It was only later, in bed, that he realised what it was that was so unsettling about the farewell; it was final, as if Hermione thought for some reason that she might genuinely not see Gorlois for a long time - it was the kind of goodbye you gave someone before departing for years… decades even.