Given the insecurity of conventional magical travel and the impracticality of long-distance Apparition, Snape chose a means of travel wizards rarely paid attention to, ordinary long-distance transport.
With a faint crack of Apparition, Snape appeared before a familiar door on Spinner's End, Cokeworth.
The door's paint was peeling, and the house looked even more decrepit than it had a year ago. The windows were caked with dust, weeds grew through the cracks of the front steps, and the air was thick with a stale, oppressive smell.
It was no longer a home, only a hollow shell, a forgotten ruin.
He did not go inside. Instead, in a concealed corner behind the house, he quickly changed into plain Muggle clothes, carefully concealing his wand in his sleeve, while the Elder Wand was kept close against his body, hidden in the innermost pocket.
Half an hour later, he arrived at the small airport that symbolized the faded glory of this decaying industrial town.
The terminal was narrow and worn, and the few passengers present carried expressions of unguarded fatigue. A rusted fence enclosed a small patch of gray concrete where several weather-beaten propeller planes and small jets sat lifelessly.
He purchased a cheap ticket for the next flight to Berlin. There were no direct flights to Austria, and Berlin was the closest transfer point he could find.
After spending a sleepless night on the cold metal benches of the Berlin airport, his plane finally descended beneath Vienna's gray skyline.
Upon arrival, without a moment's pause, he went straight to the train station and boarded a train bound for the southwestern mountains.
The scenery outside the window gradually shifted, from the bustle of the city to the serenity of the countryside, and then to the steep, forest-clad slopes of rocky mountains. The outline of the Alps emerged in the distance, magnificent in its cold, solemn beauty.
When the train wheezed to a halt at a small station named St. Wolfgang, the setting sun was dyeing the snowy peaks with a pale layer of gold.
After paying a generous fare, Snape found an old, battered taxi willing to take him further up into the mountains.
The driver, an elderly man with cheeks red as dried apples, spoke broken English heavily laced with a German accent, but remained enthusiastically talkative, pointing to the scenery along the way.
"Look! Snow line! Eagle's Nest! Beautiful! God's masterpiece!"
Snape responded vaguely, his gaze fixed outside on the increasingly treacherous, desolate terrain, his mind already fixed upon the legendary tower awaiting him.
"Convincing Grindelwald will not be easy," he thought in the jostling back seat. "This old man has experienced the height of power, the collapse of ideals, and decades of self-imposed imprisonment. Requests, threats, even promises of gain, none of these will move him."
"What I need," he reasoned, "is a way to pierce the ice around his heart, a way to awaken something inside him that perhaps has not been entirely extinguished."
The car eventually stopped at a remote fork in the mountain road. The driver pointed toward a barely visible path, buried under snow, and said in a mix of English and German, "Up there, castle, dangerous! No car! You, careful!"
Snape paid the fare, thanked him, and watched as the taxi rattled away down the mountain, vanishing into the dusk.
A freezing wind swept across his face, sharp as shards of ice.
He drew his wand, murmuring warming and water-repelling charms, then began his steady ascent up the nearly forgotten trail.
The snow and wind grew heavier. The Alps revealed their full cruelty and majesty.
After climbing over a steep ridge, he found himself facing a hidden hollow between the peaks. There, rising from the jagged rock itself, stood a black fortress.
Above the entrance of Nurmengard, carved into massive stone, were the words that had once made the wizarding world tremble:
"Für das größere Wohl", "For the Greater Good."
The fortress was built from vast, cold black stones. Its towers rose like claws stabbing at the gray sky, their sharp, oppressive shapes exuding a suffocating weight.
Though long abandoned and weathered by storms, it still loomed like a slumbering beast of darkness, radiating a chilling aura.
The great doors stood open. The iron gates, rusted and deformed, hung crookedly from their hinges, creaking in the wind.
Inside was endless silence.
Snape stepped through the threshold.
Thick dust coated every surface, cobwebs hung between the broken arches and columns. Once-grand decorations had long since crumbled, leaving only faint, indistinct symbols and fragments of statues from Grindelwald's reign.
There was no cold of Dementors, no sound of guards, no sign of life, only the mountain wind howling through the empty halls, its voice like a mournful wail, occasionally joined by the brittle fall of loose stone.
The desolation and silence were more unsettling than any visible danger. Snape felt as if he had entered an enormous, frozen tomb.
His gaze swept over several shattered Deathly Hallows symbols carved into the walls. Then he crossed the great hall and stopped beneath the shadow of the tallest, most isolated tower.
Looking up, he saw the spire vanish into the leaden clouds above.
Taking a deep breath, Snape drew a small crystal vial from his pocket. Within it shimmered a sky-blue potion.
He drank it in one gulp. Moments later, Albus Dumbledore's wise yet weary face replaced Snape's youthful features.
Pulling on a magnificent purple robe embroidered with constellations, he raised his wand, illuminating the stairway ahead with a steady light, and began to ascend the spiral stone steps toward the summit.
Along the way, he passed barred doors, some sealed, some open, and heard no sound, felt no trace of another prisoner. It was as if this immense fortress existed for one man alone.
At last, he stood before the single cell at the tower's peak.
A heavy iron-barred door stood before him. Just as history recorded, it bore no magical chains, no shimmering wards, only a single rusted lock, cold and silent.
The door seemed less meant to confine someone within, and more to mark the boundary that man had chosen for himself.
By wandlight, Snape peered inside. The narrow stone cell was cold and bare, containing only a hard cot and, near the door, a crude wooden tray holding several pieces of hard black bread and a bowl of murky water.
A frail figure sat on the edge of the cot, back turned.
He wore a tattered prison robe, its original color long lost. His body was hunched, his once-lustrous silver hair now sparse and dry, hanging like dead weeds.
He faced the cell's narrow window, unmoving, like a statue, gazing endlessly at the gray, stormy sky and the jagged peaks beyond.
The sound of the storm was the only accompaniment.
Snape drew a deep breath and broke the silence. In the gentle, measured tone lent by the Polyjuice Potion, he spoke, Dumbledore's voice, calm and clear.
"I am here."
For a moment, even the howling wind seemed to freeze.
The frail figure stiffened, then turned slowly, painfully, toward him.
A face weathered by time and thin to the bone emerged from the shadows.
In the deep sockets of his eyes, Gellert Grindelwald's left eye still held a faint trace of gray-blue light, while the right had faded to almost pure white.
In that instant, something long-frozen behind those eyes seemed to crack open a little.
Grindelwald stared hungrily, unblinking, at Dumbledore's face, as if trying to carve every detail into memory.
A long pause passed before a hoarse, rasping voice finally emerged, tinged with a confused melancholy.
"So... this is what he looks like now..." His tone was hard to read, half reflection, half something else. "He's grown old too..."
Maintaining Dumbledore's posture, Snape gazed at the withered man before him, so far removed from the powerful Dark wizard of legend, and spoke slowly, with the gentle compassion of Albus's manner.
"Gellert, seeing you like this... Madam Rosier would be heartbroken."
A flash of anger flickered through Grindelwald's pale eyes, but it vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by deeper indifference and disdain.
He gave no answer, not even a blink, continuing only to stare at "Dumbledore" with eyes like stagnant water.
Silence filled the cell again, broken only by the wind battering the narrow window.
Minute after minute passed before Grindelwald spoke once more, his voice cold and direct.
"Who are you?"
Snape had never expected to deceive him, not when it came to two people bound by such profound emotion.
"Mr. Grindelwald," he said quietly, "I have come on behalf of Professor Dumbledore, seeking your help. Professor Dumbledore faces an unprecedented crisis, "
"Heh..."
Grindelwald's short, derisive laugh cut him off.
The faded blue of his eyes flickered faintly, full of contempt and weariness. Clearly, he had no interest in talk of "crisis," nor did he believe the face before him.
Snape hesitated no longer.
Slowly, he raised his hand toward the inner pocket of his robe. When it emerged, it no longer held the wand used for light.
Instead, it held a wand of peculiar design, its shaft marked by distinct joints.
The instant the Elder Wand came into view, a terrifying light ignited in Grindelwald's eyes.
Like a lion roused from slumber, he sprang up from the cot, his movements far too swift for an old man.
He stared fixedly at the wand, his body trembling uncontrollably. His cracked lips parted soundlessly, as if confronted with the impossible.
"The Elder Wand... How can it be here?! In the hands of this impostor?! Albus, has Albus...?"
But in the very next second, when his gaze shifted from the wand of fate to Snape's flawless "Dumbledore" face, the storm of emotion ebbed as quickly as it had risen.
"No... no. If he can impersonate Albus this perfectly, it must be the Polyjuice Potion... which means Albus still lives..."
Grindelwald sank back onto the cot, his movements slow again, but his eyes grew sharper, locking onto Snape's face with deadly focus.
Then, those strange eyes began to change. The faint remnant of blue in his left iris faded like ink dissolving in water, until both eyes gleamed with the same eerie, depthless gray-white that seemed to swallow light itself.
A cold, immense pressure filled the cell.
His lips moved, and he spoke in a voice like something rising from the depths, rhythmic and otherworldly:
"I didn't see where you come and I couldn't see where you go."
Snape felt a chill. Grindelwald seemed to have invoked the gift of foresight, trying to pierce his past and future, yet had failed.
"Then where is Albus Dumbledore?" Grindelwald's voice now held a trace of fatigue, the kind that comes from peering into fate, and an undercurrent of puzzled frustration. "Who are you, truly?"
Snape drew a small vial from his pocket and drank the antidote to the Polyjuice Potion.
With faint cracks and ripples, his borrowed features dissolved. The serene face of Albus Dumbledore faded away, revealing Severus Snape, pale, sharp-nosed, dark-eyed, young, and solemn.
Meeting Grindelwald's ghostly gray-white gaze, he answered evenly:
"I am Severus Snape, Professor Dumbledore's most favored student, and I have come to seek help from the one who cared for him most."
Grindelwald's eyes lingered on the young man's face for a moment, then drifted downward, settling once again on the Elder Wand in Snape's hand.
His voice was low, carrying a complex emotion that Snape could not decipher, as he asked an unexpected question:
"Then what is it that makes Albus Dumbledore so fond of you?"
"I really couldn't say," Snape replied honestly, a familiar trace of sardonic amusement crossing his face.
That answer seemed to amuse Grindelwald. The corners of his deeply lined mouth twitched upward, forming an expression so faint and distorted it could scarcely be called a smile.
"Ha..." He let out a low, rasping chuckle, like the wheeze of an old bellows. "So, he told you everything?"
"Perhaps." Snape met his gaze, giving only a faint shrug, offering neither denial nor confirmation.
The flicker of amusement vanished from Grindelwald's face.
He studied Snape in silence for a long time, his eyes seeming to see beyond him, through the cold walls, into the blizzard outside, and far beyond that still.
Finally, he spoke again, his tone solemn.
"So... things have grown that dire?"