Gellert was not among those who had his magic returned to him at the beginning of the new month. It seemed random, the bestowal and removal of power in this place, but he could not help but feel some measure of grudging toward those he felt were wholly undeserving of their magic and yet had it restored. After all, it was not arrogance -- he knew that he was one of the most powerful wizards ever to live, if not the most powerful. He had overheard the professors saying as much, in whispered tones, at his most recent hearing. Only his academic adviser had bothered to cut them off when they started suggesting he was in danger of becoming a Dark wizard...which was expected, really, since he'd switched advisers from the Charms professor to the Dark Arts professor in his second year.
But all magic was essentially mathematics. Like everything, its complexity could be unraveled to little more than equations on a page, elegant and intricate and clarion.
And that was what Gellert was working on now: devising a hypothetical spell that could remove the magic from a large group of people, in hopes that by working backward, he could formulate something that could restore it. Then it would just be a matter of finding someone whose magic had already been returned, and having them perform the spell on Gellert himself.
The bar helped, somehow. Gellert rarely drank, even in Germany when beer had been a staple of every meal, but the environment seemed oddly conducive to his studies. Perhaps it was the grey-noise hum of other people on the periphery of his awareness, or the lighting, or the inclusiveness of the architecture. Regardless, he had parchment spread out on the table before him, already half-marked with his preliminary equations. He had been sipping on a cup of Earl Grey for some time now, spiked with just a single cube of sugar, scarcely even noticing as the heat drained from his drink leaving it bland and lukewarm.
He finished his tea and then lifted his head, searching the room for the barman and then lifting a hand to summon him over. "Another cup of tea, please," he said.