There is a joke that goes something like this: Sometime around 1960 or so, a Drill Sergeant was going down the line asking the new recruits if their fathers had served, and if so, where. Eventually, he reached a young man who mentioned that his father had been at Normandy. The Drill Sergeant then asked what unit the man's father had served in, and the young man turned bright red and replied "The German army".

Once upon a time, in the waning years of the 19th Century, there was a young man named Robert Evans who went out to seek his fortune. The first place he'd sought the fame and riches he dreamed would one day be his was London, where he completely failed to find either. He did however find an opportunity to head to the Continent and seek his ever elusive fortune elsewhere. Eventually, after one century ended and another began and Robert still had nothing to show for his quest, he stopped searching for fame and riches and instead settled down in a place he could call home. When the Archduke Ferdinand was shot and war broke out, Robert didn't have the money to get his family back to England so he stayed because he would not leave a single one of them behind. In 1921, following a heart-attack, the man who had been in his mid-fifties left a widow and several children whose ages ranged from six months to ten years behind in a small town East of Berlin.

Some seventy-three years had passed since that date. In the intervening years, most of the Evans family had made it back to England, but none of them before 1945 when their Fatherland had become a sinking ship, and they fleeing rats who'd used their half-English heritage to their advantage. The older man with the blue-green eyes and graying red hair that had become more gray than red in recent years who was striding away from a German prison with a bus ticket and some money in his pocket had not been one of them. This had been Hans Albrecht Evans' third stay in prison since the war. He had always promised to keep his nose clean, and always found himself right back in for another decade or so again after failing to find legitimate work and resorting to crime to get by. He could've easily escaped the prisons he found himself in whenever he wanted to, but to go where? His family - what little of it was left in Germany - had no desire to see him, and had made that fact quite clear long ago. He wasn't welcome in what had been his world from the age of eleven either. Grindelwald's followers never were these days.

As he strode towards the bus-stop, trying to plan out his next move in a world where he was wandering aimlessly adrift, a beautiful white owl flew up to him and imperiously extended its leg. Having not received a letter in such a manner since they'd taken his wand from him at the end of the war, and not having anyone who would write to him anyways, he wondered why it could possibly be there. As he stood wondering, the glorious bird which was beginning to symbolize the magic that had, in his mind, been his birthright despite his origins continued to hold its leg out to him despite its obviously increasing impatience.

Almost hesitantly, he took the envelope that was tied to the bird's leg. Rather than having his name on it as he'd half hoped/expected it would, he'd found the letter addressed to "A blood relative who isn't Petunia or Dudley" in English. Simultaneously frowning and chuckling at the manner in which the letter had been addressed, he opened the envelope, pulled out the missive inside, and began to read.

Five minutes later, Hans Evans had something he hadn't had since Grindelwald had been defeated in 1945, a goal.

He was going to England.

Edited 7-18-15.