The air smelled different in Germany. She didn't know if it was the height or the lack of engines or perhaps some magical factor, but she loved to sit on her window seat for a couple of minutes after arrival each day. She always opened the window, allowing the icy air to chill her skin and her breath to mist. Then, once she'd had her fill and her fingers were going numb on the stone sill, she would shut the heavy glass panes and warm her hands by the roaring fire.
The castle was a different place during winter too - furs and blankets were piled on every chair and fires roared in the grates. It was darker too, the sun sparkling through the windows less often as it struggled to rise over the hills behind them. Rain often lashed the building, louder against the old glass than it was in England and wind whistled through gaps around windows and doors. With daylight harder to come by, light itself was a commodity. One couldn't just turn on a bright, electric lamp, one had to light candles. The candles would provide a circle of light, a small area where it was light enough to read, but one could only do so for a couple of minutes before ones eyes ached and the letters began to blur. She became hugely proficient at witchlights, which she would hover above her book so that she could see clearly.
The day's schedule had to change too - they would turn up to lessons just as the sun rose, but then would have to finish earlier as the sun set. Hermione's dancing lessons came to a close and were replaced by sword fighting, which was apparently an essential predecessor to duelling. Broomstick flying was also finished for the year and was taken over by table manners. Hermione had no idea that anyone really cared for the difference between a tea spoon and a coffee spoon - one was fractionally smaller than the other. The difference was really negligible and certainly only recognisable when one held the two up next to each other. Silver spoons couldn't be used for caviar or boiled eggs and the oyster fork should be placed to the right, unlike every other fork.
Her parents were progressive, so the manners lessons seemed to her to be pointless and infuriating. It took a guilt trip from Gellert to finally get her to take the lessons with even a modicum of her usual dedication. He had to point out that it was a reflection on his family and the upbringing provided if she couldn't obey all the silly rules. Hermione thought it was all rather contrary to Lady Grindelwald's constant lectures about power and bowing to no one... no one except the steak knife it seemed, or perhaps the author of "A compendium of table settings and their appropriate occasions."
Her greatest concern however was that Gellert clearly had no concept of how winter could be fun. The snow fell only days after Halloween - or Samhain as Gellert called it.
She'd missed the celebration with his family; as desperate as she had been to attend a festival that they clearly believed to be so important, her real life had gotten in the way. Her parents had been invited to a Halloween party and even though children were invited, it hadn't been aimed at them so there'd been no provisions for 'reasonable bed time'. She'd ended up trailing behind her parents as they walked home well past midnight when no taxi would service such a distant London suburb when there were far more profitable rides in the city centre. By the time she had stripped off her makeup, the sun was peaking through the curtains and she only managed to toss in bed before giving up and deciding to read a novel for pleasure. With no sleep, came no visit to Gellert's. His mother had said it was only natural that she would want to celebrate her ancestors with her own family and Hermione didn't correct her on her assumptions of 20th century Halloween customs.
She woke on a Sunday to a bright white light and threw open the window to see that a thick blanket of snow covered the upper reaches of the hills the castle was built on. The valley below was frosted and smoke spiralled from chimneys. The trees had lost their last golden leaves and against the snow they looked black and bony. The starkness continued to the castle, the living metal dragons of the gates had shaken the snow off their backs and wings and towered above the otherwise white scene. The lawns and gardens were a blanket of white, an elf having pruned all the plants back for winter several weeks ago, but the sculptures and trellises that formed the landscape were now frosted into ice sculptures.
She flew down the stairs to Gellert's room and burst through the doors, launching herself onto his fur covered bed and bouncing on him until he woke up.
'Snow, Gellert, Snow!' She cried as her friend blearily blinked his eyes open. He groaned and tried to roll over but her weight across his torso effectively immobilised him.
'Hermione.' He finally mumbled, surrendering to her insistence. 'What is it?'
'It's snowed.' She informed him, jumping off his bed and throwing open his windows. A blast of wintery air blustered through the room, lifting sheets of parchment from his desk and sending him scurrying towards the clothes laid out for him with a string of colourful curses he definitely hadn't learned from his mother.
She let him curse to himself in German as he hurriedly pulled on clothes behind the screen, despite it being an english day. When he finally emerged in his usual white shirt and went for a light jersey she dove into his wardrobe, ignoring all protests about propriety, and pulled out more appropriate clothes.
'We're not going out are we?' Gellert looked dubiously at the thick fur cloak, hat and gloves she'd shoved into his arms, then looked to the pair of gloves she was already pulling on. Her borrowed fur hat was already on her head.
'Of course we are!' She said decisively.
'Your ideas are always terrible.' Gellert lamented but followed her anyway.
The halls were frigid and Hermione was glad for the warmth of the old fashioned clothes she wore. She had to force the small side door open with her shoulder, scraping a thick drift of snow behind it. Then she was stepping out into a crystalline fairy land, like something out of the nutcracker. She sprung forwards, her feet crunching on light, dry powder. A moment later Gellert's set of footsteps joined her.
She danced out into the yard, spinning her feet so that puffs of powder drifted up around her. The castle towered above her head, the sun just peeking over the hills and lighting the icicles on the turrets and setting the windows alight with fractured rainbows.
She held her hands out to Gellert, offering him the opening stance of a waltz and she led him, twirling and spinning through the archway, out of the yard and into the walled gardens. In here it was a maze of calf height hedges, dark evergreen plants and frozen water features. He didn't seem to mind the dancing, although he seemed puzzled. Eventually she stopped, falling breathless and warm onto one of the snow covered benches.
'Isn't it beautiful, Gellert?' She asked breathlessly. The young wizard looked around them.
'I guess so.' He replied dubiously.
'We need to have a snow fight.' She declared, bending over on the bench and scooping up a handful of snow. It was really a little too powdery for snowballs, but she managed to get something vaguely structural.
'A snowball fight.' Gellert deadpanned.
'Yes, yes, like the food fight but with snow instead.' She insisted, weighing the snowball. Gellert looked unconvinced. 'Oh come on, you enjoyed the food fight.' She insisted, springing up and dashing away from him. He stood reluctantly and scooped up his own snowball. She allowed him a couple of seconds of grace to figure out the technique, then launched her own ball at him. It imploded into dust before it hit him and a light shower drifted down between them.
She scooped up another ball and closed the distance. Gellert's nailed her on the shoulder, hers soared over his head. He decided magic was allowed, wandlessly bewitching snowballs to make themselves was he scooped them up and launched them. Less advanced, Hermione opted to make them manually and spell them to follow him, which was much easier to make her magic do.
She ducked behind a large trellis, then dropped to her stomach to army crawl behind one of the knee high hedges. A snowball brushed the hedge above her head and the branches dumped a small mound of snow on her unhooded head. She squeaked as it touched her neck and leapt up, throwing caution to the wind. She lobbed unformed handfuls of snow in Gellert's direction, her magic holding them together until they hit.
Gellert seemed to judge this to be real duelling, because he conjured a nebulous snow-blob to start attacking her. She batted her arms at it ineffectively, then realised Gellert had made the fatal mistake of venturing to the deep snow beneath an apple tree. She magically pulled on a laden branch and a heavy thump signalled that the glittering frosting of snow had fallen.
'Help me!' He called as he dug his cloak out from the pile, the trailing end having caught beneath the debris. Hermione almost took that as his surrender, but then several elves appeared and like a general he directed them to attack her. She summoned her own elf who seemed only too happy to help her defend her honour and the garden turned into a war zone of enchanted snowballs, strange monsters and joyful laughs. Hermione whipped between topiaries, hair flying and a defensive shield of wind and snow batting snowballs away from her as she manually pelted the magically formed snowballs Flighty provided.
'What are you doing!' A cold voice demanded and it was like a fresh breath of winter had swept through the garden as elves and humans froze. The enchantments faded, snow monsters disappearing and Hermione's shield dissipating. Gellert emerged from a wall of snow almost certainly higher than what should have been possible to create with the amount of snow on the ground.
He looked terrified, and when it seemed after a moment as though he wasn't going to speak up, Hermione curtsied deeply.
'We were engaging in a snow fight, Lady Grindelwald. It seemed like a good way to practice duelling.' She answered, meeting Gellert's gaze quickly before looking back up at the fearsome lady of the house. She wore furs, black as pitch from head to toe and a pair of heeled boots that just peeked out from below the hem of her dress. As usual, her wand was held in her neatly folded hands.
'Duelling?' Lady Grindelwald questioned, her tone sounding intrigued but still colder than the air that misted around them.
'Yes.' Hermione answered firmly. Lady Grindelwald's chin rose slightly and she gestured towards the gardens.
'By all means then, let us duel, if you are so eager for the practice.' The woman replied. Cool foreboding trickled through the young witch, but she and Gellert hurried off to the far end of the gardens anyway.
'We're in so much trouble.' Gellert murmured, glancing back to where Lady Grindelwald was now a small black figure against the towering doors.
'Let's work together, like we do in classes. The better we do, the less angry she'll be.' Hermione decided, holding her hands up. Usually they sat for this, but in this case it seemed prudent to stand. Gellert had no better ideas and joined his palms to hers, linking their magic in a way that was beginning to become intimately familiar.
'I'll handle attack, see if you can make that wind shield you had before.' The young wizard instructed. Hermione drew their magic together into searing ropes of fire around them, superheating some areas whilst the snow cooled others. It only took a small magic to harness the resulting wind into a swirling storm of fire and wind. Gellert reached out beyond, forming balls of snow and making them hover, ready for launch.
Across the garden, Lady Grindelwald was creating a bigger storm, swirling her wand and hand around her head. The sky darkened, clouds sinking and bulging ominously. Gellert launched their snow balls and they zinged off her shield with flashes of bright magic, whilst the storm overhead grew. The air took on an ominous yellow tint and Hermione drew the fire above their head into a dome. It quickly became sweltering inside.
'Don't burn us alive.' Gellert said, eyeing the strangely blue and purple flames nervously.
'Concentrate.' Hermione gritted. He quickly returned to launching snowballs, then a hissing sound filled her ears. The temperature dropped considerably and Hermione gritted her teeth, adding more fire to try and keep out the enchanted snowstorm that was beginning to pummel them. Gellert took a leaf from her book and pulled the snow from the castle roof. His mother deflected it, but the intensity of the storm lessened for a moment and Hermione was able to shrink their fire shield, reducing the area it had to protect.
Their joint magical reserves were getting lower, the fire was hard to maintain. Hermione cut the shield down again until it was a swirling disk-shaped shield that acted a bit like an umbrella, shielding them from the lashing ice and snow. Gellert desperately launched a last assault on his mother, but it was foiled, and a moment later the shield collapsed and the two children huddled together, shielding themselves as best they could with their cloaks.
Within minutes, Hermione's fingers were numb inside her gloves and her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely hear herself wondering when Lady Grindelwald would realise they were beaten. Gellert's lips were turning blue, frost forming on his eyelashes and thickly crusted on his hat. His hood had been blown off and he'd hunched his neck down into his shoulders, seeming resigned to waiting.
Hours or seconds later, Hermione wasn't sure, the storm abated. It disappeared as quickly as it had come and the sun broke through, the warmth glorious on her exposed face but unable to penetrate the thick ice over her clothes.
Gellert stood, ice cracking off his clothes and pulled Hermione up with him.
The garden in a 15 meter circle around them was destroyed, burned by Hermione's fire. Outside that circle was under deep, deep snow. Snow that Gellert's mother was stepping lightly across the top of, towards them.
Hermione curtsied but refused to avert her eyes like Gellert. She was proud of her magic, it was strong for someone her age, even for an adult it wouldn't have been terrible.
'Impressive.' The lady admitted. 'Your magic blends well, but you lack self awareness. You were never going to defeat me by sheer force, so you should have taken an alternative course.'
Hermione nodded and dipped a quick curtesy to acknowledge the feedback.
'What would you have suggested?' She asked, ignoring Gellert's frantic tugging to be silent. Anneken had been right, and although this wasn't a challenge, the older witch seemed pleased by Hermione's refusal to be cowed.
'You should have never started with such a powerful opening move, which forced me to retaliate with equal power, or you should have pressed you advantage when you brought the snow down from the tower. A third attack whilst I was maintaining the storm and defecting the snow.' She was curtly informed. Then the witch glanced around them, blatantly false surprise on her face. She raised her wand, a book whizzing from the library and floating in front of them. Gellert flinched.
'You will find horticultural charms in this book. Until you have repaired the damage to my gardens, you will not be allowed back inside the castle.' The older witch glared at them, then turned and strode across the top of the snow and back inside the castle, huge doors booming closed behind her.
Gellert slumped to the floor in relief.
'You shouldn't talk back like that!' He scolded, receiving a devilish grin in return.
'I think she likes it.' Hermione hissed as she flexed her fingers, the joints painful with cold. Gellert scoffed and pulled off his frozen gloves, revealing fingers yellow from lack of circulation. He stuck them inside his jacket with a groan.
'This is entirely your fault.' The wizard declared, braving the cold to thumb through the book where it hovered.
'I don't think I've got enough left to do this.' Hermione peered over his shoulder. 'Is regrowing bushes hard?'
'I don't think so.' He murmured. 'I mean, with our wands it should be pretty simple.'
The wizard pulled his wand out and pointed it at the nearest charred shrub, magically sweeping the snow away to reveal the broken and burned branches.
Hermione perused the book, deciphering the German instructions and reading them out to Gellert. The wizard brewed a simple potion, a subject which Hermione had yet to begin, whilst Hermione gathered cuttings from the healthy plants. She was swatted away from the cauldron several times, her curiosity not helping Gellert brew. Instead she just warmed hr hands on the little flame beneath the cauldron and listened as he identified ingredients and how he was preparing them. He let her add the cuttings, then they used the knife to carve little holes into the ground and filled them with the potion.
It smelled sweet, like cut crass and turned earth, despite the shimmering purple colour. Gellert had explained the shimmer as unicorn tail hair, which had looked like a shiny version of normal hair. The purple was a reaction between dragon dung and pixie wings, the first perhaps the source of the earthy smell.
For a moment the potion just sat in the holes, then Hermione remembered her job and covered each hole with earth. By the time she had covered the last, green shoots were poking out of the first and like watching a time lapse, the stalk squirrelled upwards, leaves unfurling and darkening. Shoots sprouted, turned woody and sprouted more until before her eyes there were wild, waist high box hedges. Gellert made quick work with the severing charms to form them back into neat shapes, and then Hermione was gladly hurrying into the kitchen where elves waited with steaming hot cocoa.