To say it all happened fast would've been a lie. In fact, the entire situation had happened painfully slow with excruciating pauses between the beginning and the end. Of course, she knew how everything had started…Emmy's father had told her during the deepest night when no one was left in the hospital to spy and report back to the Union. No one was supposed to know anymore. But he did. Her father had been there first-hand.
Everyone had known precisely what was coming from the black clouds in the East, but instead of provoking riots and chaos, the world remained silent. The silence had been, if anything, worse than when the hammer finally dropped on London. After the final battles in the back alleys of England, it had all been over. The Ministry had done nothing. There were no newspapers that month, nothing to warn the Londoners of the storm so readily approaching their city, their homes, their children. The Ministry…almost all of them vanished overnight. The officials that hadn't escaped on the last few ferries to America had simply been lost to the dark streets of London. Emmy hoped it was shame that drove them out into the gutters.
For a man who had never served in any army, Grindelwald was well aware of how to take complete control of a large city. Emmy's father had said it was called blitzkrieg, a German word for "lightning strategy." Move fast and wipe them out before they even had been aware of an attack. Emmy's father had always known during those lifeless nights before the raids of what was coming their way. He had prepared while others wept in fear, managing the hospital and sneaking out patients. Shuttling them to the nearby port and sending the muggleborns away from England. England, the land with a black sky. Emmy had spent long days doing her father's wishes, hiding and helping those in desperate need. They'd smuggle them out under the cover of darkness to waiting ships, praying to the gods that that night wouldn't be the night for Grindelwald and the Union's final move.
When Tess had come to live with them and hid away in Emmy's room, like a dirty secret that one shoves under their bed to mingle with dust bunnies and old socks, it had spelled trouble. Emmy hadn't wanted her to stay with them; her presence connected Emmy, Penny, and their father with their past crimes. Tess was a link to slavery and death, something Emmy wanted no part of. It had been selfish. Then again, the desire to survive often was. After a fellow Healer at the hospital had been tortured for housing a muggleborn in his house, he talked. They always talked. He had even told them things they didn't ask him such as other railroads and what persons had them, when all they had been interested in knowing was where he was sending them off to. After the name Healer Clearwater was screamed from the wizard's cracked lips, Emmy and her family were marked.
The ride into slavery had not been a pleasant one. The last moments of her father's welling eyes as they hauled her and her sister out of the room would remain forever burned into the side of her skull, directly behind her eyes so that she was forced to stare at the horrible image for the rest of her days. She hadn't even been allowed to hug him goodbye. From the smell and the thick layers of orange and black rust lining the walls, the small compartment on the train had been well used by what appeared to be an old farm. Emmy could only hear the creaks of the railroad under her feet and the light sobs of others around her. She had been lucky to have been able to find a corner for herself and Penny, giving her two walls to lean against as they rode farther into hell. It would've been insane to attempt to sit down on the floor, what with the number of bodies pressed against each other. She would've been crushed to death under their feet. Emmy had remained dead and empty for the duration of the two hour trip, with only the sounds of the engine room behind them and the light squeals of a rape somewhere deeper in the train car to keep her mind there and awake.
When the car gave a last jerk and the steam whistle screeched its final breath, Emmy's eyes finally lifted to the ceiling before blinking blankly. Had she been asleep the entire train ride, or just too numb to remember all that had happened? Emmy had followed the long line of people into the bleak building, where a large circular room seemed to present itself with an air of stiff disapproval. The emptiness bothered Emmy. Soon after they were all herded together like cattle into the middle of the room, two men entered and began barking orders, lining them up and sending them to the left or the right. It only took one single moment for them to decide their fate, a flash of their hungry eyes and you were either looking at a mass grave or a trip to the washroom to prepare for examination and show. Emmy was sent down the right hallway and, when the hallway seemed to never end, worried that she had been chosen for death.
The relief had been bittersweet when she noticed the showerheads hanging loosely off broken gray pipes above their heads. Emmy had been handed a faded gray jumper, the tag reading off her numbers along her breast. Her index finger ran over the 3224 as if testing reality, making sure that she was really now a number. Everything she was could now be described involving the words "three," "two," and "four". The jumper had been made for a child, the fabric hugging every curve in her frame, making her chest bulge slightly. Although it made her chest cave in, cutting off air from filling her lungs, she hadn't unbuttoned the second button on her chest to release the pressure. She wouldn't give them that satisfaction willingly.
Standing in line had taken a great deal of time. Emmy kept her hands busy with tugging at the fabric and attempting to keep her rounded hips more slender, her rear less apparent. She would tug the gray cloth away only to have it suck back to her flesh, rebelling against her, laughing at her every time. When it was finally time to go on through the large door into another unknown, Emmy was stopped by the guard at the door. With a quick flick of his wrist, the wand was against her chest and the second button had disappeared. It was a silly thought to grieve for a button, but it had been so much more then that. It had been Emmy's final hope of making her own choice. She had wanted the button there, and it had been taken away. That was when it all sank in – she had no choice anymore. Her stomach finally gave a lurch as she entered through the door into the hot spotlight.