Yule was closing in rapidly on the Durmstrang castle. The year was particularly cold and dark, chasing Gellert and his followers inside for all but their hardiest classes. He'd found an old, disused store room beneath the library, full of ancient texts and his followers had helped to clean the place up so that it resembled a comfortable study room - even if they did have to keep re-transfiguring the furniture.

It allowed them a private space to study and practice, where none of their peers could question or report the martial magic that they studied or the plans that they were making for how to bring back the old ways, forcefully and completely. They were not fully developed of course; Gellert had spent long enough in the trenches of Russia to know just how complete this kind of planning needed to be, but it was the foundations- foundations which were easy to gather when nobody suspected them.

Already, his followers had plans to obtain ministry blueprints, warding diagrams and keys from family and family friends over the holidays. Who would suspect a fifth year of anything untoward?

But Gellert's own plans for the holiday were rather less certain. Hermione had invited him back, of course, in every one of the weekly updates she sent Berg to deliver. His mother was still recovering from her broken leg, but the knowledge that the muggle healing was progressing well at least quelled the guilty feeling in his chest. But Gellert would not be invited back; the invitation was an insult of it's own. Hexemeer was his by right, not Hermione's. He didn't need to be "invited" back.

He'd exchanged several letters with his Aunt in Britain and although they'd agreed to meet for a meal in the Unterhalb over Yule, she was also irritatingly British in her views of patriarchy and parental authority. She wouldn't take him in for the holiday season without his mother's permission, despite his attempts at cajoling. He didn't want to visit any of his allies either; it would suggest that he couldn't fend for himself.

There was the option of staying at Durmstrang over Yule, and he had already formulated an excuse if he did - additional, private lessons with their sorcery instructor. That was an unappealing option though, because he wanted the privacy to practice what he'd learned from the abandoned books in the store room and school certainly wouldn't provide that.

So he was going to go to Blau Berg. The catacombs beneath the castle were still mostly intact and he was certain that there would be a set of rooms down there that were usable, or that he could make usable. He'd used his cursebreaking skills to break the anti-theft charms on several books of household spells and stolen them from the library (because he didn't want those books on his withdrawal history). It had only taken a couple of charms to conceal them as yet more dry books on magical artefacts for his research on the hallows.

He was rummaging through his trunk when he found it - a thick folder of parchment. It was clearly one of Hermione's, far too neat to be his own. He almost threw it away, then one of the smaller notes slipped out.

It was in German.

Hermione only made notes in German if she expected either Berg or Gellert to use them.

He picked it up, discovering a diagram about the height of stairs and types of trick steps. Intrigued, he opened up the rest of the folder, spreading it out across the floor of the dormitory. Several boys glanced up, including Berg, but none bothered to look too closely. He was well known for his unusual research.

The folder turned out to be the plans for the new Blau Berg which they'd been planning to build. Every floor, every note, everything except the wards that Hermione had designed and kept concealed inside her copy of Beedle the Bard. Everything, arranged meticulously and researched down to the details of how many stores could be held in the cellars and which pest repelling rituals would be needed to keep pigeons from the roof.

It took him the rest of the evening just to read through the plans, recognising his own ideas and suggestions in equal weight to hers and Berg's. He wondered when she'd had the time to compile it all from the messy scribbles and side notes in margins that he remembered.

There were changes that he wanted to make, of course, now that he'd parted from the coven's passive approach to the world. He noted these on his own sheet of parchment as he worked late into the night, moving down to his room when the annoyed grumbling of the boys in his dormitory about the light became too distracting.

He was found there in the morning by his followers, still in the clothes of the day before and surrounded by parchments.

'What is this?' Steinbach, one of Gellert's most influential and aggressive followers asked, peering at the plans.

'A fortress.' Veli Mustonen breathed.

'Our base.' His twin brother agreed. Gellert glanced up.

'Yes.' He confirmed after a moment. Blau Berg had been the base of operations for the old covens and it had fallen because of their incompetence. Gellert wanted to build his own system; a new one without the flaws of the old one. One that fought for what was right, and to uphold their traditions, that wasn't afraid to act to uphold it's duty to the people. It was only fitting that his base of operations should be built on the ruins of the old.

'Nurmengard.' Steinbach read. Gellert glanced up in surprise to see the boy pointing at a set of runes. 'You've named it Nurmengard.'

'I did?' Gellert asked curiously. The question in his voice was missed by his peers. He pulled the piece of parchment over. It was a map of the valley, annotated roughly as if it were an afterthought. Blau Berg ruin had been marked but so had another tower on the opposite side of the valley; Nurmengard. The name had been scratched out, as if Hermione had changed her mind, but Gellert realised that he liked it.

'Yes. Nurmengard. Nurmengard is going to be our headquarters.'

And he was going to start building it over Yule.