The past couple of days had held a golden glow a people packed up their belongings and returned home. Fort Stark slowly emptied and Gellert, Berg and Hermione were, as their mother had promised, free of all obligation. They swum in the moat every day; Hermione was a surprisingly strong swimmer, even if she insisted on shocking both of her brothers by wearing a pair of old boy's shorts and a shirt when she swum. They cast magic and went on long, idyllic rides through the extensive parkland that surrounded the Lintzen's home.
Two days in, Hermione decided that she would take him to visit her family holding in Orkney. Berg declined the invitation, having secured himself a day of riding with Neele Fleiss, whom he'd spent Ostara with twice now.
She met him in his rooms as he was fretting over what to wear and he quickly took in her clothing, using it to guide his choices. She wore reasonably warm clothing - one of the semi-formal black dresses, made for her with exquisite care by Atalanta; Hermione's devoted admirer. Unfortunately, Gellert didn't have the luxury of a large wardrobe anymore, or an apprentice seamstress who worshipped the ground he walked on, so he ended up choosing a set of robes that had belonged to Herr Lintzen when he was younger and slimmer.
They wandered down the the portal at a leisurely pace, Gellert pressing Hermione for information whilst she steadfastly refused to answer anything. Therefore, when she activated the portal with a confidence he envied, he had absolutely no idea what he was stepping into.
A bog, as it turned out. His first three steps were across stone, his fourth sunk into muddy grass with a heavy squelch. He was in a small ring of stones on a wide expanse of windswept moorland. The sea glittered to his left, trimmed in whitecaps and washing gently against the black rocky shore. Hermione grabbed his hand and started up an unmistakable path - bright green through the brown bracken and heather and marked with piles of stone every couple of meters. They crested a small hill and he realised they were on a long pit of land, almost but not quite connected to another spit curling out from another landmass. Just before the distant shore was the biggest ritual circle he'd ever seen and between them and it was a large grassy mound. Grazing nearby were three pearly white beasts under the supervision of a dark figure.
Hermione led him down the hill, boots splashing in the sloppy grass. There was no physical boundary to the wards, but it felt like he'd been pulled through a solid, oppressive wall of air when he crossed through them. They were easily the strongest set of wards he'd ever felt and like the barrows that had guarded the portals in Germany, these were very obviously sentient.
The figure that had been tending to the beasts waved to them, and Gellert wondered what kind of creature it was - as far as he knew, Hermione was the first of her family in centuries.
Hermione changed her course, heading down to the figure and beasts, stepping high and fighting her way through the course ground cover. As they got closer, he realised that however real the figure looked, like Mordred he was just a spirit. His skin was covered with shifting runes that slithered and reformed with every moment - animals, Ogham, swirls and symbols. Across his back was a wickedly carved staff, tipped by a savage flint spike and at his belt hung a short sword.
'High Priestess.' The being bowed to her and Hermione hugged him fiercely, surprising him. 'Who is your guest?'
'This is Gellert Grindelwald. Gellert, this is Gorlois, who gave his name to our line.'
Gellert bowed deeply to the spirit and the spirit nodded back. He stood still whilst he was inspected critically by those piercing blue eyes. Then, seeming to judge him sufficient, the spirit of Gorlois turned away sharply.
'How did you fare in your war?' He asked Hermione and the young witch launched into a blow by blow account of her duel and the following battles. Gorlois was a good audience, reacting in all the right parts as they trampled their way over to the beasts. Katana was the first to see them and with a screech he half-flew, half-galloped over to them, stopping in a bluster of wings and fine swirling hair. Hermione laughed and leapt forwards to hug him. Gellert and Gorlois stood back to allow the reunion as his mother's two Granians trotted over to see what was going on.
Gorlois helped Hermione up onto Katana's tall back and witch and beast launched into the air leaving the two males to walk by themselves.
'So you're the one who introduced her to her lineage?' Gorlois said in his gruff voice.
'I was the first to meet her but I was not present when she first met the Lady Morgana and Lady Morgause.' He replied, deciding honesty was the best policy. Far above them, Katana screeched, wheeling on his silver wings and one of the Granians took off to join him, followed shortly by the other.
'Hmm.' Gellert glanced sideways at him. They walked in silence for a bit longer, cutting back to the path so that they could make better ground. 'Mordred doesn't like you.' Gorlois said after a couple of minutes. A scowl twisted Gellert's features despite his best efforts to keep it off.
'I don't like him either.' He bit out. Gorlois chuckled, his voice a deep baritone. It would have been reassuring if his hand didn't rest on his sword.
'He gathered as much.'
'Hermione likes him, so I'll not fight with him unnecessarily. I understand that he is her link to your family.' Gellert tried to compromise, feeling an awful lot like he was rapidly failing a test,
'Oh, fight him all you want.' Gorlois laughed. 'Fighting is good for the soul. Otherwise it just stews inside until it turns you dark. No, I think you should have a good long discussion, perhaps whack each other with a sword. Aggression is only natural in two healthy young men, especially when a witch is involved.'
Still chuckling to himself, Gorlois continued walking even as Gellert found himself rooted to the spot. Gorlois wanted him to fight with Mordred? Gellert had never considered aggression to be the solution to any problem before, but what the ancient patriarch said made absolute sense; his resentment of Mordred had festered darkly beneath the thin veneer of politeness that Hermione enforced between them. If they dragged it out and spoke about it and inevitably fought - whether they ended up whacking each other with swords, or just shouting, could it fix the issue? At least then Mordred would know why he didn't like them.
He resolved to give it a go just as Hermione landed like a bolt of lightning beside him. She wore an exuberant grin, hair flying loose and wild around the crown on her brow. She swung down, letting the reins of the halter her beast wore drop to the ground and with much more bounce in her step, she circled the massive grassy mound.
It wasn't exactly what he'd expected from such an ancient family - a cramped, roughly carved crawl space into a mound of earth. After several long seconds of shuffling in the dark space, he finally saw Hermione's silhouette straighten in a dimly lit chamber. A moment later, he too was standing.
'Waah!' He jumped backwards as a leering skull filled his vision, stumbling over the slightly uneven walls. 'Yeeugh!' He cried out again as skeletal fingers wrapped around his arm and caught him before he could fall. He scrambled away to safety, realising that both Hermione and Gorlois seemed to find his situation hilarious. Two skeletons lounged in the small chamber, jaws clacking in an imitation of laughter. He huffed in outrage, glaring at the skeleton who'd initially startled him.
'Do you have no concept of manners?' He demanded, earning another round of laughter.
'Eowan was brought up by werewolves, so no, no manners.' Gorlois managed to tell him through gales of laughter. He could sort of see the funny side but his pride was too wounded to laugh. Instead, he just straightened and brushed off his clothes.
Eventually, Eowan the skeleton joined his companion and opened a passageway that tunnelled deep into the ground and he followed Hermione down into the depths. It was very gloomy but dry and the stones were still crisp and new feeling beneath the hand he ran down the wall. Sharp edged carvings decorated the walls - he could just make out a large, horned creature with birds spread beneath his outstretched arms. There were more like that; something that looked like a massive deer with the most impressive rack he'd ever seen. Depictions of children danced beneath the antlers.
He fell behind as he looked at each individual carving, so he emerged into the bustling main room just as a crowd dispersed. Skeletons clacked to each other and ghosts drifted away in clusters as the walls seethed with carved figures returning to their positions.
The entire building was packed from floor to low ceiling with fascinating artefacts - secrets lost to time. Between the arched doorways were thick, bulky chests, strapped in iron, silver and gold. A library contained mounds of scrolls and books; ancient and lost knowledge. A room of weapons and armour, another of seemingly random items that he assumed were valuable. A grumpy golem ushered him back over to Hermione who was standing by the massive doors at the end of the room. She ushered him through into a sparse living area. There was an open hearth in the middle of the room and a massive cauldron on six legs which clanked over. It lowered itself into an awkward bow, then one of the handles started moving like a mouth as the cauldron began a tirade of complaints about that lack of ingredients.
Until that moment, Gellert had never even believed it possible for something so different from a human to look so expressive as the cauldron physically seemed to wilt when Hermione broke the news that they were only staying for an hour or two.
He was allowed, under strict supervision, to peruse their incredible store room of artefacts whilst Hermione received a strictly confidential lesson that she'd already promised to share with him once they returned home.
He'd never seen or heard of most of the items here but all of them were magical- there was a wealth of jewellery laden with protective enchantments, glittering poison chalices, horns that could summon sprites and demons, a hamper that could multiply food, a gilded chariot, halters, bridles, saddles, decorated battle cloths, all enchanted in ways so complex that he couldn't even begin to translate the runes. There were other, less obvious items as well that still thrummed with magic - a pile of heavy iron chains, a bundle of thorny branches, piles of whitish metal ingots, jars of sand.
With so much interesting stuff to look at, he barely noticed time passing until Hermione appeared at the doorway. She had a bundle of parchment under her arm and her fingers were stained with ink. He joined her quickly, leaving behind an urn of large silver coins that almost vibrated with the presence of a powerful curse. He took some of the parchments from her, sharing the burden and they began making their way up and out of the barrow.
'Do you know how many rituals have been lost?' Hermione demanded as they emerged into the dimly lit entrance room, frustration leaking through her voice. Gellert shrugged. He didn't know, but he imagined thousands had been lost to time. He knew that once, magic and religion had been intertwined, muggles and wixen alike involved in rituals and ceremonies with incredible frequency.
'Hundreds - they did rituals for everything. Fertility, birth, death, hunting, planting, passing judgement...' She flicked through the sheets of parchment, reading off the headings to him as she went.
'We still have rituals for most of those.' Gellert pointed out slightly defensively.
'Sort of, but the ones we do now are much more general. They literally have different rituals to keep away different pests. See here, there's one to keep away caterpillars, another to get rid of worms.'
'We have pesticide potions that do that.' Gellert pointed out and Hermione hummed thoughtfully.
'You're right.' Hermione acknowledged. 'But we still haven't performed a death ritual for the Tunningers or for Herr Wach.'
'No.' Gellert acknowledged. 'The ritual is usually performed by the heir, inside the family property. It is not a public affair, although there is usually a more muggle funeral afterwards...' He trailed off.
'Do you think it would help Berg? To perform a ritual for them?' Hermione eventually asked hesitantly.
'I don't know. The adults might not like it, it's not really traditional.' He hedged nervously. Hermione hissed bitterly.
'Who cares about tradition? Berg has lost his parents to his sister. It's what helps him that matters.' She spat furiously. Gellert snapped his hands into the air in surrender.
'I agree. We can ask him and mother might agree if you're the one to approach her.' He backed down quickly. Hermione was nothing if not stubborn when she felt strongly about something and he had no desire to bear the brunt of her ire, particularly when he actually agreed with her.
Hermione's passion faded as quickly as it had been raised, her magic settling back into a steady background warmth. The two children shuffled through the low entrance and emerged, blinking into the bright summer sunlight. Gellert pulled out his pocket watch, realising with some surprise that it was already afternoon.
They mounted quickly and silently, Gellert's thoughts were still occupied by the idea of a death ritual for Berg's family. His father had never received a death ritual, as his betrayal of their values had resulted in his expulsion from the family so Gellert only had very vague recollections of his grandmother's death ritual. It had been a dark and somber affair, almost muggle really. He had no recollection of any real magic being used, or if it had been, he didn't remember it being particularly powerful.
His mother would never agree to it, he was certain. She believed in tradition and she stuck to it firmly. His mother would never change the traditional death ceremony without serious consideration, even to an older tradition. He could already hear her telling them that the older rituals had been abandoned for a reason, that the current rituals had served them for generations. Perhaps, he considered, the ritual that Hermione had in mind had never reached Europe. His mother would never consider it... but they didn't necessarily need her approval.