The morning after in the Alps dawned bright and cold.
Cassius stood on the balcony of his rented chalet, breath steaming in the thin mountain air.
The jagged white peaks stretched as far as he could see, glaciers cutting into the horizon, valleys hidden in shadow.
The sight was breathtaking in a way, though Cassius treated it as one would an elaborate stage curtain—pretty, yes, but irrelevant to the true performance.
He tugged his cloak tighter, Noctis perched on the railing beside him, feathers puffed against the cold.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he murmured, not so much to the owl as to himself. "But beauty is just a veil. Somewhere in this vastness, behind wards the muggles can't even comprehend, lies a cage fit for a king."
Nurmengard.
The prison of Gellert Grindelwald.
His target.
Cassius' lips twisted into a smile.
If he could find it—and that was the first test—then his plans would move into an entirely new phase.
For now, the search would be disguised as a tourist's wanderings.
Hiking trails, mountain villages, the occasional day trip into the valleys.
All the while, his senses strained for magical signs—places where muggles stumbled away for no reason, where animals refused to tread, where the air grew thick with that subtle hum only wizards noticed.
He set off with his bag strapped across his shoulder, wand holster snug against his thigh.
Hours into the walk, he found himself musing, as he often did during quiet moments, on the stupidity of the last wizarding war.
Not Grindelwald's—though that had its own ironies—but the one that had ended only recently in Britain.
The First Wizarding War.
Voldemort's rise.
The thought left a bitter taste.
By every account Cassius had managed to gather, the war had dragged on for nearly a decade.
And for the first half, the so-called forces of light—Aurors, Order members, even the Ministry—had shackled themselves with "non-lethal" engagement.
Stunners.
Binding hexes.
Confinement charms.
"Idiots," Cassius muttered under his breath as he trudged along the snowy path.
His boots crunched against the frost.
"Idiots the lot of them."
The Death Eaters hadn't shared such compunctions. They had tortured.
Maimed.
Killed.
And yet the Ministry clung to Dumbledore's doctrine: redemption, mercy, the preservation of life above all else.
The irony was obscene.
Cassius paused by a rock outcropping, resting for a moment as the wind howled through the peaks.
He drew a notebook from his bag and scribbled a thought before it could escape.
Mercy is not a strategy.
It is a luxury.
One cannot preserve life when the enemy's goal is your death.
The pages filled with scrawled observations, fragments of what might one day become a philosophy of war.
"Dumbledore," Cassius spat, snapping the book shut. "The man would rather see a hundred corpses than stain his soul with one righteous kill."
He could almost picture it: young Aurors, fresh out of training, facing robed Death Eaters in the night.
Stunners flashing like fireworks.
Death Eaters laughing as they answered with green light.
Again, again, until one side lay bleeding into the mud.
And only when the losses piled too high, when the Ministry's hand was forced, did they whisper the Killing Curse into their Aurors' ears.
By then, the damage was done.
By then, Voldemort's fear had already sunk its teeth into Britain.
With his growing horde of followers even breaking those captured in the earlier stages of the war from the prisons that held them.
Cassius resumed his trek, fury simmering beneath his calm expression.
"If someone tries to kill you," he whispered into the mountain wind, "you kill them right back."
It wasn't cruelty.
It was mathematics.
A duel was not a debate.
It was subtraction.
Either you remained, or they did.
And Cassius intended to remain.
He'd barely dipped a toe into the magical world, but the year 1 transfiguration books were very clear about one constant rule.
'Equivalent exchange'
You cannot create something from nothing, inversely you cannot take something away without it costing you.
This rule was ignored by Dumbledore and the forces of light, until it became apparent that the ratio was not even, and that the rules of engagement were only being adhered by their side.
By midday he reached a tiny mountain village, the kind tourists loved to photograph.
Sloping roofs heavy with snow, smoke curling from chimneys, locals bundled in coats thicker than mattresses.
He bought bread and cheese from a market stall, his German halting but passable with the aid of a phrasebook.
But as he passed a narrow alley, something caught him.
A man—local, by his dress—walked briskly toward the lane.
And then… stopped.
Stared.
His face twisted with confusion.
He turned on his heel abruptly, muttering, and strode away in the opposite direction.
Cassius' pulse quickened.
A ward.
Subtle, but real.
The alley shimmered faintly at the edges if one knew how to look.
He finished his purchase calmly, stowed the bread, and returned later when no eyes lingered.
Passing through the alley was like walking through custard, as he passed a barrier ward, but beyond was a simple hidden village, nothing all to much just a couple of inn's, and a bar.
He wandered in to check things out but it was very clear this was an adults only location, and judging bythe fact that aside from some... working ladies, all the men present were simply just offduty from whatever their job nearby was.
And that job Cassius could guess, these were the guards of the greatest dark wizard of the last 100 years prison.
Allowed leave to relax and enjoy time away without worrying if Gellert would choose at anytime to leave his cage.
Somewhere ahead, woven deep into these mountains, lay Nurmengard, though how to get there was still unknown, sure he could try to follow a wizard but the chances were great they would apparate to the edge of the prison wards a method Cassius could not replicate yet.
That night, back in his chalet, Cassius lit a single candle and spread his books across the table.
Hogwarts textbooks mostly—Charms, Transfiguration, Potions—each page annotated in his sharp, cramped hand.
The largest slap in the face book had to be Muggle Studies, seeing just how backward and misunderstood the wizarding world viewed muggles.
If you took a wizard and pulled thing into the muggle world, everything they saw could be viewed as being a sort of magic, but the same could be said of the reverse.
With both sides being misunderstood, but since Cassius planned to expand the magical world, but also be inclusive to the muggles, he first needed to use his influence to slap the high and mighty proud wizards into realizing just how wrong they were about the muggle world and the very risk it posed to them not just if the statute of secrecy was broken.
Though how he'd go about that he wasnt yet certain, but for now he would redouble his current efforts.
Tomorrow, the search would continue.
And one step closer, Nurmengard awaited.