The bitter Austrian wind howled against the black stone of Nurmengard, a familiar, mourning choir that Gellert had long since learned to ignore. He sat in his high backed chair before the hearth, his mismatched eyes fixed on a single, crumpled piece of parchment resting on the wooden table.
It was a letter from Elsbeth, detailing the end of term feast at Ilvermorny.
A slow, dry chuckle escaped his lips, sounding raspier than it used to in the hollow silence of the fortress. The Scholar's Medallion. The Silver Leaf. And a custom commendation for fortitude.
He traced a calloused finger over the ink. Ophelia had not just survived the shadow of her name this year; she had dominated it. To wake from a five month coma and still seize the top of her year was a feat of raw, stubborn will that made his old heart swell with a dark sort of pride. She was a Grindelwald, through and through.
But it was the postscript that truly amused him. Elsbeth had noted, with a touch of exasperation, how the girl had turned the entire room into a living, breathing forest at the silent request of the Headmaster.
"Arrogant fool, Fontaine," Gellert muttered to the empty room, his eyes reflecting the orange glow of the dying fire. "Asking for a display of power he spent the entire year trying to suppress."
He leaned his head back against the cold stone wall. He could see it so clearly in his mind. Ophelia standing tall, her magic flooding the room without a wand, forcing them all to look at her not with fear, but with pure, unadulterated wonder. She had a gift for theater, just as he once did.
But theater only got one so far. Power without absolute control was just a beautiful bomb waiting for a trigger. And in the world outside these walls, triggers were everywhere.
He had specifically instructed Rowan to bring her to him the moment she landed in New York. He wanted to see her. He wanted to test the limits of this "forest" she had created.
BOOM!
The heavy, iron reinforced oak doors of the chamber didn't just creak open; they exploded inward.
A violent, concentrated wave of concussive magic slammed into the room, tearing the doors clean off their hinges and sending them skittering across the stone floor with a deafening screech of metal on rock.
A thick cloud of dust and splinters swirled in the doorway, momentarily obscuring the figure standing there.
Gellert didn't move. He didn't reach for his wand. He simply sat in his chair, a slow, genuine smirk spreading across his aged face as the dust began to settle.
Out of the gray haze stepped a young girl with long black hair, her breathing slightly heavy but her posture perfectly straight. She was wearing high quality traveling clothes, her white dragon skin gloves pulled tight, and her new silver and emerald bracelet glinting defiantly in the firelight.
Ophelia lowered her hand, her eyes locked onto his.
"Again. way to much force, I don't know why this keeps happening. Are your doors just that weak compared to the doors at school grandpa?" the girl asked as the dust settled.
Gellert's smirk widened into a full, proud smile as he looked at the ruined doorway, and then back to his granddaughter.
"An impressive entrance, Ophelia," Gellert said smoothly, standing up from his chair with a slow, deliberate grace. "Though a bit hard on the decor. Come in, child."
Fila thought he would be more angry, but okay.
She slumped down into the armchair beside his, the same one she had sat in last time she visited. She brushed some debris of the chair, a piece of the door.
Gellert waved his hand and the door started repairing itself.
The splintered oak flew back together, the heavy iron bands sealing themselves against the stone archway with a dull, metallic click. Within seconds, it was as if Fila's explosive entrance had never happened.
Gellert turned back to her, his sharp eyes taking in the way she sat. Even slumped in the chair, trying to look casual, there was a tension in her shoulders.
"you need to learn control, I've heard about your plants. It seems you control them just fine. So its only the normal spells." He said as he took a sip from his mug.
The fire crackled as the two of them sat in silence for a bit. They both didn't need to talk even after not seeing each other for a while, maybe it was the fact that they didn't know each other very well, or that they just liked the silence.
"Why didn't you answer any of my letters?" Fila suddenly asked.
She didn't expect to be given a clear answer, but it would be nice to know.
Gellert sat looking at the fire for a long time before he shifted his weight slightly, he seemed to think how to answer this one. For the first time in a very long time, he didn't know how to answer. One of the most powerful dark wizards through the ages sat stunned as his thirteen-year-old granddaughter asked such a simple question.
"i…." he began but stopped as he considered his words. He looked, almost afraid or was it sad. "They hurt you, all because of your name. a name that I dirtied so long ago." He felt regret. For what he did had not just hurt him but now also his own granddaughter. "I never thought someone would go so far as to use the cruciatus curse, on my own granddaughter who has done nothing."
The heavy, suffocating silence returned to the room, but it was different now. The previous quiet had been comfortable, the comfortable silence of two powerful minds sharing a space. This silence was thick, charged with decades of regret and the fresh, raw pain of a young girl who had paid a debt she never owed.
Fila didn't move. She sat in the overstuffed armchair, her black hair falling forward to cast a shadow over her face. Her hands, resting in her lap, clenched tightly.
Gellert looked away from the fire and directly at her. For a moment, the fearsome Dark Wizard was gone. In his place was just an old man sitting in a dark, cold tower, crushed by the realization that his legacy was actively poisoning the life of the only family he had left.
"I thought," Gellert continued, his voice barely a whisper against the howling Austrian wind outside, "that if I stopped writing, if I severed the connection entirely... the world might forget you belonged to me. I thought silence would be your shield."
He looked down at his own aged, calloused hands. "I was wrong. Silence did not protect you. It only left you alone."
Fila didn't speak for a long minute. She looked at the floor where the debris of the door had been just moments ago. She understood what he was saying. She understood the twisted, tragic logic of trying to protect someone by pushing them away.
Slowly, she raised her wrist, letting the firelight catch the delicate emerald leaves of her new silver bracelet.
"They didn't forget," Fila said quietly, her voice steady. "And they won't. I spent a long time this year trying to hide. Trying to make them see someone else. But at the end of the year, I realized that I don't need to hide who I am to be a good person."
She looked up at him, her dark eyes reflecting the orange flames. "I don't need your silence to protect me, Grandpa. I need you to teach me how to protect myself."
A ripple of emotion crossed Gellert's face, something bridging the gap between profound sadness and a spark of fierce, burning pride. He stood up slowly from his chair, the weight of his years seeming to lift just a little bit.
"Your mother had the same determination as you when she was younger. And so did you father." He added, but this didn't do better.
Fila perked up slightly. Last time she had visited he was surprised that she hadn't figured out who her father had been. Could she finally learn who her long lost father is?
Gellert stood, and walked to a box he had one of his desks. He pulled up a Photograph. And looked at it, a smile formed on his face.
"This, is the only picture of your mother and father together." He said as he slowly walked towards her. "They didn't get to spend much time together, he only got to see you for a couple of months." he looked like he felt heavy as he said these words.
The wind outside seemed to drop to a low, mournful whistle, as if the fortress itself was holding its breath. Gellert stopped by the edge of the armchair and slowly extended his hand.
Fila reached out with fingers that trembled just a fraction, taking the old, black and white photograph from him.
The image was moving, charmed with the classic magic of the wizarding world. It showed a beautiful young woman with Fila's same sharp, determined jawline and high cheekbones, her arm looped through the arm of a young man.
"Mom…" she said as she traced her finger over the picture.
The man was striking. He had sharp, aristocratic features, storm gray eyes that seemed to look right through the camera, and a mass of untamed, wavy black hair that looked exactly like Fila's. He wasn't smiling traditionally, but a ghost of a haughty, brilliant smirk played on his lips. He looked like the kind of person who bowed to absolutely no one.
"His name," Gellert said, his voice thick with a heavy, ancient sort of fatigue, "was Regulus. Of the House of Black."
Fila's heart hammered hard against her ribs. She traced the edge of the moving photo, her eyes locked onto the face of the father she had never known. "Regulus... Black?"
"A son of one of Great Britain's oldest, most powerful, and most arrogant pure blood families," Gellert murmured, returning to the hearth and staring into the orange flames. "He was brilliant. Moody. Infuriatingly stubborn. When the two of them met, it was like putting a match to a powder keg."
She had never heard of any families from Britain, so saying this made not difference in her mind, she still felt that he was a big mystery even with his name and face in front of her.
"I'm sorry grandpa. But who are the Blacks? apart from what you said." She asked her gaze not leaving the photo.
"Ah, right. America dosent really have these pure bloods that Britain still has."
Gellert turned away from the fire, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a faint, dry smile. He walked over to a towering, dust covered bookshelf and pulled down a heavy, leather bound volume with gold filigree that had long since tarnished to a deep bronze.
"In America, you have your bloodlines and your founders, yes," Gellert said, blowing a cloud of dust off the cover before setting the massive book on the table in front of her. "But the British... the British are obsessed with it. They catalog their ancestry like breeding prized hippogriffs."
He opened the book to a page marked with a heavy silk ribbon.
"They call themselves the Sacred Twenty-Eight," Gellert explained, tapping a calloused finger against a complex, hand drawn family tree that looked like a tangled web of thorns. "A collection of families that claim to be purely magical, dating back centuries. And sitting right at the top of that arrogant pyramid is the House of Black."
Fila leaned in, her eyes scanning the names written in elegant, looping script. At the top of the page, written in bold, emerald ink, were the family words: Toujours Pur.
"Always Pure," Fila translated quietly.
"Exactly," Gellert said, his mismatched eyes flashing with a familiar, cynical edge. "They are a family of immense wealth, terrifying dark magic, and a temper that is just as volatile as your explosive entrance earlier. They do not tolerate outsiders, and they do not tolerate those who do not bow to family tradition."
He tapped a name near the bottom of a branch that seemed to end abruptly. Regulus Black.
"Your father was the jewel of that family. Brilliant, favored, and destined for greatness by their twisted standards. But Regulus had a trait that the rest of his family lacked, Ophelia. He had a conscience. When he realized the true, horrifying depths of the dark paths the British wizards were taking, he didn't just walk away. He tried to tear it all down from the inside."
Gellert leaned against the table, looking down at the young girl who possessed the raw power of his own bloodline and the fierce, noble defiance of the man in the book.
"He died a hero in the shadows of Britain, fighting to destroy a dark, terrible magic before it could consume the world. His family scrubbed his name from their tapestries, calling him a traitor. But he was the bravest man I ever had the displeasure of arguing with."
Fila's fingers traced the ink of her father's name in the ancient book. She looked from the family tree back to the moving photograph of the smiling woman and the haughty young man. She still felt like she was looking at a ghost, but for the first time, it was a ghost she could be proud of.
"So are you saying my whole family has at least some connection to dark wizards…" she said jokingly.
This made Gellert laugh. A genuine laugh he hadn't let out in tens of years.
"You were born unlucky." He smirked jokingly back.
The sound of Gellert's laughter, dry and rattling but undeniably real, seemed to startle even the shadows in the corners of the room. It was a sound Nurmengard had likely never heard.
"Born unlucky," he repeated, his mismatched eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked at her. "Yes, I suppose having a dark wizard for a grandfather and a family of fanatical pure bloods on the other side is not what most would call a lucky hand to be dealt."
He straightened up, his amusement tapering off into a look of absolute focus.
"But luck is for those who cannot control their own destiny, Ophelia. And you have far too much power to rely on chance."
He stepped away from the table, motioning toward the open, freezing space of the chamber.
"We will not start with destructive force. You have plenty of that," he said, gesturing to the freshly repaired doors. "No, we will start with what made the House of Black truly terrifying to their enemies. While I bent the world to my will through raw power and persuasion, your father's family mastered the art of the mind. They were masters of sensory manipulation and deep, impenetrable illusions."
Fila closed the heavy, leather bound book on the table, keeping her finger on the photograph of her parents. "Illusions?"
"A spell that destroys a wall is useful," Gellert said, pulling a dark training wand from his sleeve and holding it loosely. "But a spell that makes your enemy believe the wall is still standing while you walk right through it? That is deadly. A wizard who cannot trust their own eyes and ears is already defeated."
He walked a few paces away and turned to face her. The orange firelight caught the side of his face, making him look incredibly formidable.
"I want you to take out your wand, Ophelia. I am going to cast a simple illusion on this room. I want to see if your raw, instinctual connection to nature can see through a lie."
Fila pulled her wand from the sheath at her wrist, feeling the familiar hum of her own magic answering her call. She stood up from the armchair and stepped into the center of the room, squaring her shoulders.
Gellert didn't perform a grand gesture. He simply gave his wand a sharp, miniscule flick.
Instantly, the freezing Austrian mountain air vanished.
The dark stone walls of the chamber melted away, replaced by the towering, ancient trees of a dense, sunlit forest. The howling wind was gone, replaced by the gentle rustling of leaves and the distant, cheerful chirping of birds. Beneath her boots, the hard stone floor now felt like soft, damp earth and moss.
It felt perfectly real. It looked exactly like the forest she had summoned in the Thunderbird tower, right down to the smell of pine and wet dirt.
"Tell me what you see, child," Gellert's voice echoed, seemingly coming from all directions at once within the dense trees.
Fila looked around, her mind momentarily reeling from the sudden shift. She knew it was a trick, but her eyes, her nose, and the skin on her face were all telling her she was standing in a real forest.
"apart from the very real forest. I see magic… what should I call it, cracks? Like the magic cant keep up with my mind or something." She answered as the illusion showed several of these cracks, they were subtle but visible to her eyes.
Gellert's voice ceased its all direction echo, and his figure shimmered into view. He was standing near a moss covered oak that was, in reality, probably the corner of his wooden desk. A look of genuine, profound surprise flashed across his face before settling into a small, impressed nod.
With another tiny flick of his wand, the sunlit trees and the smell of pine evaporated like mist. The freezing, gray stone of Nurmengard rushed back in to fill the space, and the howling wind resumed its mournful song.
"Cracks," Gellert repeated, sounding almost fascinated. "You saw the seams of the tapestry."
He walked over to her, his sharp eyes studying hers intensely.
"Most wizards, even highly trained adults, would have been completely fooled by that. They would have trusted their eyes and ears without question. But you... your connection to nature is not a learned spell, Ophelia. It is a part of who you are. Your mind knew that forest was a fabrication because the magic didn't feel alive."
He paced a slow circle around her, his leather boots clicking against the cold floor.
"You did not just see the illusion; you felt the lie in the magic itself. This is a rare gift. Your father's family used illusions to manipulate and deceive. But you... you have the potential to be the ultimate counter to their arts. No one can trap you in a cage of your own mind if you can always see the bars."
He stopped in front of her, his expression growing serious.
"But seeing the cracks is only half the battle. Now, we must see if you can create them. If you can bend reality just enough to make a seasoned opponent doubt their own senses."
He pointed his wand at the small, white river stone still sitting on the table.
"I want you to make me believe that stone has turned into a venomous snake. I do not want you to transfigure it, Ophelia. Transfiguration is permanent and physically alters the object. I want you to project the idea of a snake so purely that my mind fills in the gaps. Make me hear the hiss. Make me feel the threat."
Fila looked at the small white stone. She had never tried to project a lie before; her magic had always been about creating things that were entirely, vibrantly real.
She closed her eyes for a split second, bringing to mind the vivid memory of a venomous adder she had seen once in a book in the Ilvermorny library. She remembered the diamond-shaped patterns on its back, the dull sheen of its overlapping scales, and the way its dark, slit-pupil eyes caught the light.
Instead of pushing a wave of force at the stone, she let her magic seep out of her wand in a thin, controlled stream. She didn't try to change the stone itself; she painted the idea of the snake directly into the air around it.
She focused on the details. Scale by scale. The rough texture of the skin.
"Open your eyes, Ophelia," Gellert instructed quietly.
Fila opened her eyes. The river stone was gone.
In its place, coiled tightly on the dark wood of the table, was a thick, ash-gray adder. Its head was slightly raised, and its black, fork-like tongue flicked out into the freezing air, tasting the scent of the room.
It looked incredibly real. But as Fila stared at it, she could see the 'cracks' her grandfather had mentioned. The shadow the snake cast on the table didn't quite match the flicking firelight, and the sound of its scales sliding against the wood was just a fraction of a second too slow.
Gellert leaned forward, his mismatched eyes narrowing as he studied her creation. He didn't reach for it. Instead, he slowly extended a finger toward the snake's triangular head.
The adder immediately coiled tighter and let out a sharp, menacing hiss, its body swelling with a warning breath.
Gellert froze his hand just inches away. He didn't flinch, but a look of genuine, dark delight spread across his face. He pulled his hand back and looked at Fila.
"Fascinating," Gellert murmured, giving his wand a sharp flick.
The snake vanished instantly, leaving the smooth, white river stone sitting innocently on the table.
"You did not just create a visual lie, Ophelia," Gellert said, walking back over to the hearth. "You gave it a presence. You gave it intent. A normal wizard creates an illusion like a painting on a wall. You created it like a living creature. Your natural connection to life is bleeding into your father's art."
He turned to face her, the firelight casting a long shadow behind him.
"Good work Ophelia" he said with a smile.
Fila felt something like a rock in her throat, what was this feeling. She had just gotten happy from his words, maybe it really is just happiness.
"That is enough for your first day, child." He said as he sat back down in his armchair. "Now tell me, how much French have you learnt."
She had forgotten to keep up with her French…
The scolding she received after could only be described as merciless. She had never felt so scolded and at the same time impressed. Very strange feeling. But at the end of the scolding, they just laughed it of. They both knew she could just read it.
"But Grandpa, how did mom and dad meet?" Fila asked again, she wanted to know more about her father.
Gellert's laughter tapered off, and a sudden, heavy stillness settled over him. He stared into the orange flames of the hearth, his mismatched eyes reflecting the dancing firelight. The amusement from their shared laughter was gone, replaced by a deep, ancient melancholy.
He didn't speak for a long moment. He leaned his head back against the cold stone, exhaling a breath that seemed to carry the weight of decades.
"Your mother was a wild thing, Ophelia," Gellert said softly, his voice barely rising above the low crackle of the wood. "She had my blood, yes, but she had none of my patience for grand designs. She wanted to see the world, to understand magic in its rawest forms. When she was barely older than you are now, she left the continent. She went to Britain."
He shifted slightly in his chair, a small, sad smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"The House of Black was at the height of its fanaticism during those years. They were backing the Dark Lord, hosting his inner circle in their drawing rooms. But Regulus... Regulus was young. He was their golden boy, already marked and praised. But he was suffocating under the weight of his family's dark expectations. He would escape the stuffy manors whenever he could, seeking out the wild, untamed corners of the British coast to practice his magic in peace."
Gellert paused, chuckling weakly.
"Your mother happened to be exploring those same wild cliffs. She was studying the ancient, natural magic of the earth, much like the talent you possess. She stumbled right into the middle of his training. Regulus, being a Black, immediately drew his wand, arrogant and demanding to know who was trespassing on 'pure-blood' soil."
"And Mom?" Fila asked, leaning forward, her heart racing.
"Your mother did not draw her wand," Gellert said, his eyes crinkling. "She simply laughed in his face. She told him his wand work was sloppy and that he was standing on a patch of venomous mountain shrubs that would rot his boots off if he didn't take two steps to the left."
Fila couldn't help but let out a small, breathless laugh.
"Regulus was furious," Gellert continued, shaking his head. "No one spoke to a Black that way. He tried to curse her, and she effortlessly dodged and used the very plants he was standing on to tie his ankles together. He ended up flat on his face in the mud. He was humiliated, angry... and absolutely fascinated. He had never met anyone so utterly unimpressed by his name or his power."
Gellert's gaze drifted back to the moving photograph on the table.
"They kept meeting on those cliffs. Secretly. At first, it was to argue and duel. But soon, it became the only place either of them could truly breathe. Your mother showed him that there was a whole world of magic outside of blood purity and dark lords. And Regulus... Regulus showed her that even in the darkest, most arrogant hearts, there could be a fierce, protective nobility. They were two opposing storms, Ophelia. And when they finally came together, they burned incredibly bright."
He looked at Fila, seeing both of those storms alive and well in her dark eyes.
"But bright lights cast the longest shadows. And the world they lived in did not tolerate that kind of light."
The room fell into a comfortable, reverent silence. Fila traced the edge of the moving photo, feeling a profound sense of connection to the two ghosts who had given her life.