(minor rewording, 11th July, 2014)

Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following one-shot occurs in an alternate universe (as usual for most things I post on this site). The premise of this particular one-shot is that at some point in the spring of 1971, for reasons to do with her background (which differ from that of canon) Eileen Snape receives some urgent communications regarding Nurmengard prison...

At the time of posting (September, 2013) I'm unclear on the exact starting date of the 'Wizarding War' in canon, but in so far as it matters I have assumed that it has only recently started in this universe – Voldemort has openly declared himself, but it's still only really getting underway, and the defeated Gellert Grindelwald is very much the Dark Lord to feature most significantly on minds.

This story is rated 'T' to be one the safe side.

"So: Ariana married an Englishman then…"

Young Severus Snape had not expected one of the greatest dark wizards of the twentieth century thus far – one who had cast his shadow over much of the world at one point – to be quite so good at speaking English.

He stared at him in fascination. This was Gellert Grindelwald, and even after more than two decades in prison in almost solitary confinement, here in Nurmengard, the man kept the lingering remnants of some sort of dignity and dark charisma about himself. At the height of his powers… well, it was easy to see how he had set much of wizarding Europe and the nations beyond aflame.

"Why did you want to see us?" Severus' mother demanded, her face pinched and wary. "And what does my mother, Ariana, have to do with this?"

There had come mysterious communications, several weeks ago, from the wizarding world's equivalent of legal representatives. They had strongly advised Severus' mother that she make a visit to Nurmengard to see its only prisoner – as soon as possible.

"Helmut Skeeter: A nosy wizard, who has been poking around, and who came to me to put several theories to me, which I neither confirmed nor denied." Grindelwald seemed to be enjoying cryptically hedging around a bit, before coming to the point. "One of those theories, however – one which was lower down on his list – was that Ariana happened to be my secret daughter. As it happens, that one was true, and I thought that it would be appropriate that you have the chance to hear it from me, before dear Helmut got around to confirming it – there's certainly going to be evidence there aplenty for him to find once he starts digging. You, my dear Eileen, are my granddaughter – my only grandchild, as far as I am aware. I had ambitions of dynasty at one time, but not all the victors of the war were as anxious not to take lives as Albus Dumbledore, nor all my children so well hidden as Ariana had been…"

Severus Snape's life had just been turned upside down. His mother was a granddaughter of one of the most infamous dark wizards of the past hundred years, and that made him the great-grandson of the same man. And he was supposed to start at Hogwarts in six months, where the man who had fought Grindelwald and put him in this prison was headmaster. And Severus' best friend, Lily – his only friend for that matter – was a muggle-born, which might be an association that the wizard in front of him would have opposed with every fibre of his being – or had it just been muggles that the wizard in front of him had been in favour of oppressing, and were muggle-borns okay? But in any case, Severus' father (not that Severus thought much of him) was a muggle.

His mother's face had gone particularly white, with shock.

"Oh, it's not all bad." the old man cackled. "Well probably not, although there are some strings attached. I left a thing or two in vaults and other places around the world – tribute from admirers… Nothing stolen, or officially required as reparations for my 'crimes', and you certainly look like you could use a galleon or two to rub together, if that's how you normally dress. By 'strings' I mean to say that you have to acknowledge publically what you are, amongst other things, but then that's going to come out now anyway, with Helmut nosing around…"

Severus' mother spent several days checking as much as possible, as soon as they got back from Nurmengard, and all too much readily tied in with what had been said in Nurmengard, including that a naturalised British wizard called Helmut Skeeter – retired from law-enforcement due to injury – was indeed making extensive researches right now into the doings and background of Gellert Grindelwald.

And so Severus' mother approached Gringotts in London, and a simple test there confirmed the awful truth – that she was a descendent of the currently imprisoned customer and account-holder, Gellert Grindelwald, and in theory (subject to certain conditions) as a witch who was of age had access to all vaults in Gringotts belonging to said account-holder and contents stored within them.

The goblins of Gringotts also advised Severus' mother that to their knowledge, their fellow bankers in Zurich also held in storage not insignificant holdings there, under the Grindelwald name and with identical conditions attached for access, and that there might well be other accounts and holdings of which their colleagues in Zurich had knowledge.

Several rather long discussions resulted between Severus' mother and father over the next few days, with much crying and holding tight to one another. That was a relief, to Severus, as it made a difference from them shouting and arguing.

Severus' mother took the plunge. It was all going to come out anyway, with Skeeter chasing the story, and it would see them financially secure. And at least being descended through the female line, the name requirements would fall. Well apart from that she style herself as 'Countess of Nurmengard'.

The repercussions in wizarding Britain were immediate – not least in that Eileen's father apparently hadn't known that the woman he married (by now a couple of decades deceased) was a daughter of Gellert Grindelwald, and all of a sudden he was quite keen to try and mend fences with his daughter, despite the fact that he'd previously disowned her and cut her off without a penny. Severus' mother ignored him for now. Her father never did anything unless he had an agenda it fitted.

The wizarding press had a field day, but Severus' mother had put in place measures beforehand, including wards to keep out absolutely all mail-owls and making the Snape family home unplottable.

And then there was the fact that Albus Dumbledore himself personally delivered Severus Snape's letter of invitation to Hogwarts. Apparently being a messenger of a Hogwarts letter was sufficient to get Albus Dumbledore through the wards, and once he was ensconced in the Snape family home, he kept peering at Severus' mother and knitting his brows in puzzlement, as if he wasn't quite sure what to make of her. He requested to 'see the family photo album', and distinctly frowned over the few pictures of Eileen's own mother it contained.

He seemed to believe that he 'should have known, of course'.

He gave the impression that there were other, burning questions which he wanted to ask, but which he considered unwise to cast about upon first acquaintance.

He also cast a lot of strange sideways glances at Severus towards the end of his call.

Severus got the feeling that the headmaster of Hogwarts would have offered to take him shopping for school supplies in Diagon Alley, as if Severus were a muggle-born, had Eileen not been a witch more than capable of doing that herself.

Severus checked his history books, just to make sure of a couple of things, and then broke the news to Lily Evans (his still only-friend).

"So your great-grandfather was like the wizarding equivalent of Adolf Hitler?" Lily wrinkled her nose.

"No." said Severus. "He wanted to conquer a lot of the world, but he wasn't as crazy as Hitler, and just wanted to enslave all muggles, not kill them. Well not to kill them unless they tried to resist."

"But your dad's a 'muggle', isn't he?" Lily frowned.

"We only just found out he's my mum's grandfather. And he's been in prison ever since the mid-1940's, and not exactly been communicative with the outside world until now or able to do much about it."

"Ummm." said Lily. She frowned. "But he's okay with muggle-borns?"

"He's in prison and I don't think he really cares very much who I'm friends with and even if he did, he couldn't do much about it." Severus said. He frowned. "Well at least I don't think so. He was a genius."

"Ummm." said Lily again. She paused and looked at Severus in a curious manner, which Severus had never seen her do before. She was looking at him as if she were seeing something for the first time.

"So: what Hogwarts house did you want to be in again?" Lily asked.

On board the Hogwarts Express, Lily and Severus had a compartment all to themselves. There were a lot of people though who stopped in the corridor to peer through the glass of the compartment door and to whisper to one another.

Once they got to Hogwarts, for some reason the sorting of Lily Evans went on for ages. As it progressed, she sat there on the stool with the old hat on her head, her arms folded, and an increasingly stubborn expression on her face.

"Slytherin!" the hat shouted at last, somewhere around what must be close to the twenty minutes mark.

Lily took of the hat and headed for the Slytherin table, an expression of triumph on her face.

The whispers and glances in her direction at the Slytherin table commenced almost at once though, and the other Slytherins gave her a wide berth. This lasted until Severus himself was sorted into Slytherin (which took five minutes – as he subsequently told Lily, for some reason the hat tried to put him in Gryffindor) and he went and sat down next to Lily. At that point the whispers and glances subtly changed.

It turned out that apparently members of Slytherin house didn't usually tolerate muggle-borns – which was why the hat had tried very hard not to put Lily in Slytherin, despite her demands that she be sent there.

It also turned out that the current members of Slytherin house had rapidly decided that they would ignore the 'pet' of the great-grandson of the (in)famous Dark Wizard, Gellert Grindelwald. If Severus Snape wanted a muggle-born around, then that would be perfectly fine with them. Well, to be completely accurate, not perhaps perfectly fine, but more of a case of they didn't want to get in Severus' bad-books by bothering what was clearly his right-hand witch, whom he had 'collected' and started to train/indoctrinate to be his lieutenant before he even arrived at Hogwarts.

The unspoken verdict of Slytherin house was that young Severus Snape was clearly Destined For Great Things.

The headmaster in fact invited Mr. Snape and Miss Evans for tea in his office, the first weekend after they arrived at school which had to be some sort of record for the fastest such social event to occur.

The assumption in Slytherin was that the headmaster was getting on a bit, and wanted to curry the favour of a future potential dark lord – perhaps even to attempt to enlist his aid against the current one.

Author Notes:

In this particular Alternate Universe, besides his relationship with Albus Dumbledore, Gellert Grindelwald also associated with a number of members of the opposite sex, for the purely pragmatic purposes of 'founding a dynasty' (which he intended to assist him in running the world once all muggles had been conquered, and any objections from amongst fellow witches and wizards firmly squashed). He happened to name one of his daughters Ariana (after Albus Dumbledore's deceased sister), and sent her off to England as an infant, to be raised by a neutral family there. After the Grindelwald's war was over, the victors hunted down and exterminated as many of his children as possible, in case they'd inherited their father's ideologies (and also out of revenge on the victors' parts). Ariana escaped the purge and (unaware of her true parentage) later ended up marrying into the Prince family.

I have assumed that Eileen Snape is Ariana's only surviving child. The dynamic which exists in this alternate universe between Eileen and her father does not necessarily resemble that in any other alternate universe fictions I have written. (It's certainly much chillier than that had by the Eileen who inhabits the universe of 'Alternate Scene by the Lake 4'.)

If Albus Dumbledore was aware of the existence of Gellert's daughter, Ariana, at the time that she was alive and in England, he tended to ignore her, finding the association of her having the same name as his deceased sister making it painful for him to pay much attention to her. He thus missed noticing any clues there might have been as to any physical similarities between Ariana and her father. He certainly never realised that she was the daughter of his one-time friend whilst she was still alive.

Due to the Gellert Grindelwald connection, Albus Dumbledore views Severus Snape as almost family, and he firmly intends to try and guide/mentor him in consequence. He's desperately hoping that Severus will not follow in Gellert's footsteps. (However irrational or otherwise the belief that there's a substantial danger that he might may be.) It's quite possible Albus Dumbledore in this alternate universe may be prepared to show even more favouritism (or at least benevolent preferential treatment) to Severus than he does to the canon Marauders...

Lily Evans has fixated on the idea that Gellert Grindelwald was a magical Hitler, and she's very worried that Severus will turn into one. She thinks she might be the only person who can stop him from doing so. (Her beliefs are partly understandable, given that she is only eleven years old.) Thus she intends to stick as close to him at Hogwarts as possible (and hence her insistence to the Sorting Hat that it place her in Slytherin).

This story is a one-shot.

Update:

'Helmut Skeeter' is almost certainly a relation (most likely the father) of Rita Skeeter in this universe. It made sense to me that Rita might have had a parent with at least some background in digging into other people's doings. Helmut's looking for material on Gellert Grindelwald which might either be profitable in any or all of the literary, treasure-hunting, or less-than-legal (blackmail) senses.

Severus can't currently touch any Gellert Grindelwald bank-vaults or accounts, because he's not of age.