It really was incredible, Gellert thought, how many attempts on his life were averted per mensem. It was not that Gellert had been immune to the attentions of would-be assassins prior to Cassandra's employment. One man in particular had actually come quite close in 1911, before she had come to live with them--using a Muggle gun, of all things. A Muggle gun, and a poisoned glass of wine to impede his healing process. But Gellert supposed that non-magical means really were the best way to truly threaten him or Albus. After all, given the extent of their abilities, either one of them was likely to sense a Killing Curse building in an aura long before it was actually released, giving them a split second in which to react and protect themselves. Gellert's reflexes had been put to the test enough times in that arena for him to be reasonably certain that magic was little threat to his life.
But the frequency of attempts (or what would have been attempts, had Gellert not been given fair warning) had increased dramatically since Cassandra was hired. Gellert knew better than to assign the correlation any sort of causatory relationship. With the years, his methods had only become more brutal, after all. And with the way his public image had begun to crack so severely over the past decade or so, it came as no surprise that certain members of the population were more desperate than ever to see him in the ground.
...Which was unlikely to happen anytime soon. Not with the assistance of the woman who was now stepping into Gellert's quarters, at any rate.
"Cassandra," Gellert greeted her. He made an effort to infuse his voice with warmth, despite the fact that Cassandra had known him long enough to see it for the act that it was. (And despite the fact that, having Seen parts of Gellert's life that were privy to no one else, she knew more about his true nature than any other. Perhaps even more than Albus.) He gestured for her to precede him into the small parlour in which they usually held these meetings, a servant holding the door open for her passage. Her security detail would, of course, remain in the receiving room.