'Dream diary.' Gellert sighed. 'I've got to write a dream diary.'

He dropped the sheaf of parchments onto his desk and shoved a pile of Berg's textbooks off his bed so that he could sprawl across the covers. Across the room, a huddle of other boys in his divination class were already trying to decide if they could get away with making up dreams and filling the whole chart at once.

'That shouldn't be a problem for you. You have nightmares every night.' Berg pointed out without looking up from the ancient book that took up almost his entire bed. His desk was already buried, and if he hadn't know that Berg would recommend him sources, Gellert would have been annoyed that they had begun to creep into his space.

'Nothing that I can interpret.' He pointed out. 'I get visions, which means I am literally seeing what will happen. I can't dull my sight enough to get prophetic dreams.'

'Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't your sight also allow you to interpret other mediums of divination instinctively - I seem to remember Petrovna complaining that you never had to open your book.'

'Yes.'

'So why does this homework even matter. You don't need the practice to interpret dreams.'

'It matters because my mother will use me for ritual sacrifice if I don't come in at top of the year, and divination is an easy O.'

'Perhaps you should work on suppressing your sight until you can receive ordinary dreams?' Berg suggested, still not looking up from his book.

'You don't think I haven't tried?' Gellert spat bitterly. 'I see death every night, death and more death. Do muggles do nothing but kill one another?'

'I don't know. The only muggles I've met, you've met with me. None of those muggle were killing each other.'

'Can you look up?' Gellert demanded irritably and Berg looked up from his book, quill gleaming with ink as it hovered over his parchment. 'What are you even doing anyway?'

'I'm researching ancient magical structures. Hermione was planning to start working on wards for a new Blau Berg. I'm trying to track down a magic nullifying ward; if one already exists, we might be able to reverse engineer it.'

For a moment Gellert just stared at him, then he growled in frustration.

'Why do you two always do things without me? I could be helping.'

'I was under the impression that you hated books.' Berg said dryly and Gellert gaped at him.

'No, I like books. Just because I don't have your patience with them doesn't mean I can't help.'

Berg raised an eyebrow, then shuffled aside one of the towers of books and gestured for Gellert to join him. There was a lot going on on the desk - blueprints, history books, story books, analytical essays and several different maps from various time periods.

'I'm noting down anything concrete here, and anything that is mentioned in stories and is worth looking more deeply into here.' Berg pointed to two thin notebooks. Gellert picked up the latter of the two, flipping open the red cover. There were several pages filled, each headed with a name and brief summary of whatever the thing was as well as references to every text where Berg had seen it mentioned.

'Aglaophotis?' He queried. 'Isn't that the antipode of Olieribos?'

Berg looked up in interest, peering over Gellert's arm at the scrawling calligraphy on the page.

'Is it?'

'Yes.' Gellert confirmed more confidently. 'But you'll only find it in really advanced Herbology and Potions books. I think its very difficult to get right, and you'll end up with Olieribos if you mess up a single phase.'

Berg dipped his quill and added that information to the page beneath the relevant heading and Gellert waved his hand over the ink to dry it so that he could keep flicking through. There were several that Berg had underlined - Bangu; a bell that supposedly protected the wall it hung on from fire and Maleperduis; a castle which was supposedly impossible to navigate unless one already knew the way.

'What about this one? An unbeatable wand?' He asked, pointing to one of the entries. It had very little information, except for a small notation saying that it was mentioned in Beedle The Bard. 'Hermione has one of the original copies of this book, untranslated.'

Berg pointed to a carefully wrapped package on one of his stacks of books and Gellert recognised the writing as Hermione's. Berg must have already written to her to request the book. He tore it open and ran his fingers over the brightly painted cover. The runic title had been embossed and filled with gold leaf and he dragged a sheet of parchment over to note down his translations.

Unlike Hermione, he was not fluent, but he did have a good enough understanding that he could flick through the book to the correct story and even then he only had to check for words and terms that he was unfamiliar with.

It was a short little story, and by the time the candles were burning low he had completed his translation. A single roll of parchment stared up at him, telling the story of a wand crafted by death that couldn't be defeated. Surely, if they used that to cast the wards, the castle would be almost impregnable?

'What do you think this word is?' Gellert asked, tapping a short word that preceded what he had translated as brother.

'I don't know runes as well as you and Hermione.' Berg said after a moment. The younger boy pulled the runic dictionary towards him, flicking to the first page where the runic alphabet was and pouring over it.

"A-N-T-O-K" His quill scratched out on a spare piece of parchment.

'There's no meaning for it in the dictionary.' Gellert forewarned him as Berg began flicking through to the Ansuz section.

'A name then?' Berg suggested and Gellert cocked his head. His brother had a thick book on genealogy to hand, and he passed it off to Gellert.

Fortunately, he could discount all the younger generation, which meant he was only looking among the oldest families - Malfoys, Blacks, Gaunts and other such illustrious names floated worthlessly across the page but there was no Antok.

Until...

'Here, Antioch. A Peverell. Oh look, he had two brothers as well!'

Unlike most families, the Peverells were not granted an entire page to themselves. The line seemed to have died out so early that they were merely sketched in as a side note to the Potter family when the two families were joined by marriage.

'Here, K-A-D-M-U-S, that could be Cadmus Peverell and EI-G-N-O-T-U-S would be Ignotus Peverell.' Berg pointed excitedly to the other two words Gellert had been unable to translate. 'So that one must be real.'

'I bet we can find out who killed Antioch. We might be able to track it all the way through history.'

'Or the cloak. It would be brilliant to be able to reverse engineer the enchantments on that!' Berg enthused. 'It would be owned by a Potter if they went through the female line or Gaunt if they only let wizards inherit.'

'A ghost from the time period might know.' Gellert suggested.

'Hermione's family had already died out by then, so Mordred wouldn't know and I don't know any ghosts that old.'

'But the dead talk. That's what Gorlois always says. I bet one of the undead could talk to the dead and find exactly who killed him.'

'Or, perhaps there is mention of a powerful wand elsewhere? Didn't Hermione sing that stupid song about Egbert the Erroneous who killed Emeric the Evil and left all but his greatest treasure?' Berg suggested, using his wand to summon A Brief History of Dark Magic which was anything but brief.

'Egbert the Egregious, who's duelling was very prestigious. He killed Emeric the Evil in the night like a weasel.' Gellert repeated the stupid little rhyme.

'Yes, them.' Berg ran his finger over the densely packed words. 'He was succeeded by Alfred the Awful, who was killed by a witch, probably not an evil one by the name. Meryn the Merry... oh, she died in childbirth.'

'Give me that. I'll read it properly and see if there's any more likely candidates.'

Gellert dragged the book over and started reading.

It was actually quite interesting and he decided to come back to it in more detail when he wasn't chasing up rumours of more important things.

He noted down several likely names, but there was nothing concrete until he came across the sketched portrait of Barnabas Deverille, who was one of the most recent wizards to receive a double page to himself. He was a dour looking man with two-tone hair and a long, drooping nose. It was the wand in his hand that caught Gellert's attention though - unusually long and decorated with knuckle like knots every couple of inches. It looked remarkably like a finger bone, and Gellert knew that wand.

He'd used it before.