To the surprise of both young wizards, Gellert began to recover. By the next morning he had considerably more appetite and the smell of his injury has rapidly fading. He put away two bowls of spicy soup whilst Berg was treated to a mound of rice covered in some kind of spicy bean sauce. He claimed it was excellent, if not what he would consider normal breakfast fare.
The family was quite large; there were two sons - one who looked about eighteen and wore a long set of white robes and a piece of fabric over his head, the other seemed about their age and wore a threadbare tunic and loose-fitting trousers. Both boys babbled urgently to their mother whenever they were in the house. There were two girls as well but the two boys of the household kept them firmly out of sight - he only saw a glimpse of the oldest once and she, like her mother wore a black dress and shawl around her head. He heard the youngest often, she liked to sing but was still working on her pitch and tone.
Berg offered to help out on the second morning, perhaps noticing that despite their generosity the family were not well off. He left with the two sons as the sun rose, and returned exhausted for a break during the heat of the day before heading back out again. By the fourth day, Gellert was allowed to sit and he helped chop food and mix dough.
Star had apparently taken to lounging beneath the largest tree and going for lengthily flights, occasionally bring home deep-like animals with delicate, spiralling black horns. The family had refused to take the first, but for some odd reason after that, so long as the eldest son spoke to the bird in the morning they seemed okay with it, and would more than happily take the meat to cook. They also performed some kind of muggle ritual five time each day, all facing in the same direction. Each time the boys would watch on with bemusement, wondering if perhaps this was some pre-statue remnant of magic or if there would be some dramatic magical effect if one of them joined in.
'I think Allah is magic.' Berg had decided one morning as he fussed with the head-cloth he'd taken to wearing outside. There seemed to be a strategy to wearing one, and a certain knack to the tying that he had yet to get the hang of.
'No, I think Allah is a person.' Gellert decided contemplatively. 'Maybe their king?'
'Funny king, to make people bow like that when he can't even see them.' Berg shrugged. Unless one of them learned the language, it was unlikely they'd find out more.
The husband arrived home on the fifth day, calling out for his wife in the local language. She ran out to greet him joyously, leaving Gellert to finish the scrubbing of the laundry. Laundry had been a new experience for him - Gellert had never even wondered how the clothes were cleaned but the elves - water was logical but he'd never thought it would take all this sloshing and scrubbing.
The sound of raised voices lifted his attention from the tub and he flicked his fingers towards the kettle, boiling the water instantly for the tea that would probably be made.
The owner of the voice bust into the room, tall and thin with a full grey beard and checkered head-cloth. He was loud and angry, then he suddenly stopped when he saw Gellert, still wringing out clothes. He said something more quietly and the woman said something in reply. The man bowed suddenly and Gellert paused, wondering what he should do in reply. Back home, he would never have bowed to anyone but out here he was a nobody child and these people had taken him into their home. After barely a moment of indecision he stood and bowed back in reply. His movement was stiff and formal compared to the other man, more meant for a ballroom than this desert dwelling but it earned him a friendly smile from his host.
The woman, as predicted, poured cups of tea for all of them, then a moment later a couple more just in time for Berg and the two boys to arrive through the door. The boys embraced their father and all of them settle on a rug on the floor.
Berg bowed unhesitatingly to their host, then introduced himself by pointing at his chest and saying his name. Wondering why he had yet to do the same, Gellert also introduced himself in the same manner. The father was Mohammed, the woman was Saba and the sons were Soheil and Hamid. The father called the two girls out as well, introducing the eldest (who wore an embroidered scarf, rather than the plain black of her mother) as Azadeh and the youngest, who couldn't have been older than five, Zari. The family caught up over tea and chunks of bread as Gellert and Berg sat off to one side, then came the time for Gellert's bandages to be changed. The father watched with awe as Gellert conjured crystal clear water into a bowl and lit a bright witchlight; the two young wizards may have accepted that Saba had used bugs to heal him, but they were determined that none would be left in now that it was beginning to heal.
She made positive noises as she unwrapped it and showed it to the two boys. The smell had gone and the stitches she had used had pulled the edges closed to form a knotted but healthy looking scar. She rubbed more honey on it, then wrapped the bandages that Berg had washed and dried back around it. Then, in a manner that prompted no arguing, pointed outside.
She had been getting him to walk around the garden several times after each meal, and this time he was joined by everyone else. There was a donkey harnessed to the cart, tethered to a ring on the shaded side of the building and everyone hurried over to it and began unloading. There were piles of hessian sacks, tied into bundles which Gellert helped to shift to a large shed built against the house. They were large but easily levitated and Mohammed clapped in delight as they floated their way onto shelves. Berg dealt with the sacks of flour and jars that were destined for the kitchen. There were nails and a new, heavy pot that could have passed as a cauldron, a length of cloth and two skeins of brightly coloured thread. Then, almost reverently, the man pulled out a green stone, set in gold. The whole family seemed overjoyed and Gellert wondered at such a simple piece of jewellery bringing such pleasure. Hermione loved her family comb and treated it like a newborn baby. Anneken and Petrovna had always been casual about their jewellery, perhaps it was a witch thing.
It had weighed on him often how much effort the family were expending on him, and he owed the woman his life. His hand wandered the the gold chain that hung around his neck. It had once held his heir ring but now that he was eleven he wore it on his right hand and the chain was now empty and of little relative value to his family. He touched the man on the shoulder lightly and the family fell silent, opening up to look at him. He unclasped the chain from around his neck, letting the fine gold coil into Mohammed's hand.
Saba, the mother gasped and her eldest daughter looked like she was about to cry as Gellert pushed Mohammed's hand in her direction. Mohammed shook his head, moving to give it back to him but Gellert tilted his hand so that the light glinted off the carved sapphire and tapped it once with his finger.
'You saved my life.' He said slowly and clearly, but the words meant nothing to the desert dwellers. He looked to Berg in frustration.
'Show them a memory.' The other boy suggested, waving his hand in a large circle and creating a misty sphere which convalesced into the image of Gellert collapsing as Berg tended to the nasty injury. He tapped it once and the image changed again to show Saba tending to the injury. Gellert nodded and bowed to Saba again, deep and smooth now that he wasn't caught off guard.
Any further conversation was halted by the arrival of Star who deposited another one of those deer-like animals and sending the donkey shying sideways. Mohammed had stumbled backwards and fortunately landed against the cart before he fell, and he remained there, paralysed with fear as Star lowered a mighty eye and blinked a couple of times at him.
'We should make sure Star knows not to eat their donkey.' Berg said as the eldest son stepped forwards to inspect the kill. As usual, he inspected it closely, then when it satisfied him he picked it up and took it to the tree where Star was staying. Soheil usually took the best cuts of meat and left the rest for Star to pick at in his own time, the bird seemed happy with the arrangement and the family appreciated the free meat.
'Star isn't stupid, he hasn't eaten any of their sheep.' Gellert defended the bird, reaching over to scratch his chin and drawing his attention away from the terrified farmer. He named the bird, pointing at it deliberately and was echoed faintly.
'They're not as bad as we were told, are they?' Gellert commented as they wandered back towards the house.
'No, its rather impressive really, what they can do without magic.'
'I don't understand why the statute keeps us away from them. We could do so much to help them.' He looked at his wand as he twirled it in his fingers.
'Because they hunted and burned us.' The other boy replied quickly, the conditioned response.
'Only because we kept cursing them, these muggles haven't done anything but help us. It takes a flick of my wand and they've got clean water and there's spells to make food cook itself, wood cut, and fields sow. We could give them so much.'
'And the next Dark Wizard that comes along kills them in the thousands and we're back to square one; being burned and hunted.' Berg looked somewhat bad tempered at Gellert's persistence.
'We can just obliviate the ones that know about that then; we already do that to erase our own presence, so it would violate their minds even less.'
The other boy sighed in resignation.
'I wont convince you otherwise, will I?'
'No.' Gellert said resolutely. 'As soon as I come of age, I'll start changing things. Beginning with that village at the bottom of the hill at home. The statute doesn't have any foothold in lots of countries; Romania still allows witchcraft and they're virtually nonexistent in South Africa and Australia.'
'That's because the natives there use their own traditional magic and their people accept it, its not like our magic with wands and light.' Berg said tiredly as they stepped inside, blinking quickly to adjust to the darkened interior. Gellert boiled the kettle with a wave of his hand and Saba picked it up with a smile, pouring them both tea as Gellert pulled the bread dough from where it had been rising on a board
'Hermione doesn't use wands and light.' Gellert pointed out, smiling slightly.
'Hermione's odd like that, scary, like I said.' Berg helped Saba lift a long metal paddle out of the fire and Gellert dropped the flat loaves onto it. They landed with a sizzle and immediately began to puff up as Berg manoeuvred the paddle back into the fire.
'She just visualises magic in a different way to us. She treats it like its something living inside her and she tells it what she wants, and just expects her magic to provide. She's always doing stuff that should be impossible.' Gellert almost glowed with pride as he spoke. He'd spent ages working with her and admired the strength that came with her method. He often tried to emulate it, but the ingrained habits of society made him doubt whether it was possible, and as soon as doubt crept in he'd lose the conviction necessary to make the magic work. Hermione's muggle upbringing meant she had no such reservations.
'Strange, so her magic works out the method on it's own?' Berg sounded mystified.
'Yes, she gets odd side effects a lot of the time though. For some reason lots of her magic ends up blue.'
They discussed the technicalities of magic as they helped to prepare dinner, then Gellert was shooed out to perform more laps of the garden and Berg joined him. The sunsets here were always spectacular, streaks of orange and purple like paint across the sky and gold etching the clouds as they streaked into velvet night sky. The first stars twinkled, those that were familiar to him, and closer to the horizon in the south there were those that he didn't recognise.
'Do you really plan to reveal witchcraft to the muggles in Germany?' Berg asked after several minutes of walking in silence.
'Yes. When I come of age.'
'What about the ICW? They'll try to stop you.' Berg replied, clasping his hands behind his back to match Gellert's pose as the last of the sun dipped beneath the horizon.
'I am a Grindelwald. They cannot stop me.'