Those We Left Behind

Disclaimer – This world is not mine and any part of the story you recognise belongs to JK Rowling. All other characters are figments of my imagination and are meant to bear no relation to real people.

I thought I knew what real, true terror and fear was, but I was much mistaken. I had become more and more jumpy ever since the Minister for Magic "resigned" very suddenly for "family reasons". Did the new administration think we were all idiots? Everyone was well aware that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had taken over the Ministry and he was fooling no one by keeping up the pretence and making Thicknesse Minister. Unfortunately for me my blood status was not what was expected by the new government due to by muggle parents. I had never felt that much discrimination at Hogwarts when I was a student shortly after the end of the last war and I have always tried my hardest to protect my children from the darker side of our society. Luckily for them their father is a pure-blood wizard so they should be as safe from the new regime as anyone could possibly be. I left them and went on the run as soon as possible because I didn't want to cause them any more trouble than necessary. They didn't need to be put in even more danger by my "dirty blood".

At the time being on the run seemed like the hardest experience of my life. I found a few other muggle-borns and we stuck together because we all knew that none of us wanted to be alone at that point. But all of us also felt a certain inevitability about our situation. There was no way we would be able to avoid the combined might of the Ministry of Magic, the Death Eaters and random groups of Snatchers forever and it turned out we were right. It happened really suddenly one morning when we were trekking through the country side near Winchester and just wondered into the path of a group of Snatchers. They seemed to be in the middle of a Firewhiskey bender and couldn't resist the temptation to beat us up a bit the muggle way before they transported us to the Ministry to appear before the Muggle Born Registration Committee for trial, as all muggle-borns were accused of stealing the magic of pureblood and half-blood wizards.

I hoped that we would get a speedy trial, although we all knew it would just be a farce to maintain a façade of respectability, so that the Ministry could just get the hell on with whatever they had planned for us. By this point I had been on the run for around three months, although you do lose track of time when you have little point of reference. During that time we occasionally ran into other groups of run-aways and rumours about the fate that awaited those who got captured were rife. The optimistic among us hoped that the ministry would give us a quick death, not wanting to have people like us on their hands for too long. Sadly though, the more sceptical and frankly realistic amongst us thought that the Ministry would never grant our kind the mercy of a quick and painless death. The propaganda we had seen plastered throughout Wizarding areas when we dared to travel through them shocked us to our cores. Plastered amongst pictures of Undesirable number one were countless posters that proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the government thought we were worth less than the shit they scrape of the bottom their shoes. I dreaded to think what lies they were trying to indoctrinate my children with at Hogwarts and wished they had the common sense to do what they needed to do keep themselves safe. Although a more detached, less maternal part of mind wanted my children to stand up for what they knew to be true; taking the right path and not the easy one. When we reached the Ministry any hopes we had of a speedy trial were dashed as it soon became apparent that there had been some kind of security breach a month or so ago, which resulted in the escape of several muggle-borns and the Ministry was still working through the backlog of cases. Until we could be processed, put on trial and moved to a detainment centre we were kept in a holding cell deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic. God only know how many of us were all shoved into one small cell containing only the basic necessities. Dementors flew around periodically and made our already hopeless situation seem even more dire. The bars on the cell were charmed to only open at the touch of a wand and the ministry had been far too efficient to leave any of us with our "stolen goods". Unfortunately this meant we had no hope of escape and no way casting a patronus to ward of the dementors. Some people were driven mad by the dementors presence forcing them to relive their darkest moments over and over again. I was plagued by the image of my father screaming at me in anguish while cradling my mother's dead body, wondering why my magic couldn't solve this problem.

I'm sure you're wondering exactly how I'm writing down my experiences if things were as I describe them, which I assure you they were. I do not need to exaggerate our situation to make it seem more shocking. After just a few hours we took to relieving our boredom and comforting the children who were also stuck in this hellhole by describing our lives before everything went wrong. We deliberately focused on the happier moments to try and find some hope. While I was explaining that I used to be a writer the old man, who up until now had sat silent and motionless in the corner, revealed that he still had some parchment and a self-inking quill. He told me that I should write down what was happening to us and make a record of it, because one day good would triumph over evil and the world should know what had happened to us. He was firmly of the opinion that you needed to learn from the past in order to move on from it and not be destined to repeat past generation's mistakes. I didn't really understand this man until he told us his story, warning us that while he could just tell us a happy story he was going to tell us a cautionary tale. Hank had been born in Germany in 1929 to muggle Jewish parents and had experienced prejudice and discrimination first hand when the Nazis took power in 1933. His parents had managed to get him and his younger sister out through the Kindertransport in 1939, while they and an older sibling were left to face their fate in Germany. Hank found out a year later that he was a wizard and he was welcomed into the magical community, although it was threatened by Grindelwald and his reign of terror on the continent. Hank told us that evil happened when people stood by and let it happen, something that we had all come to realise. He argued that that was why the world would one day need to know what had happened to us.

So I sit here now writing this but I am constantly distracted by the slow trickle of people being taken from our cell for "trial". They even take the children, some as young as thirteen, and their screams and cries for their parents echo down the long corridor as they our dragged away from relative safety to face their fate. We still have very little idea of what will happen to us once we leave this place, although I'm fairly certain our situation will get far, far worse. The Death Eaters like to try their hand at psychological as well as physical torture when they come to collect one of us and give us clues about what will happen after we leave here. Their stories differ hugely and we are finding it near impossible to separate the fact from the fiction, although in the end it makes very little difference. We are all plagued by nightmares and the strain of the situation is evident on all of us. No one was in the best of health when we were dragged down here and the lack of food and clean water combined with the casual torture and violence from the Death Eaters (or Ministry workers as I think they preferred to be known; makes them feel more official and respectable) is taking its toll on everyone, particularly the children. More and more people are dying before the Death Eaters have a chance to take them, although a part of me can't help but wonder if this isn't a better way to go. The Death Eaters think it's amusing to leave the dead bodies in here as if they need to remind us of the perils of our situation...

I have lost all track of time. It feels as if we have been imprisoned down here for an eternity, but I don't think it has been much more than a few weeks or a month at most. Our numbers are really dwindling now and I am trying to write as much down as I can as quickly as I can because I fear that it's only a matter of time before they take me. I don't know what will happen to me after that but I have sadly accepted the fact that I will most likely never see my family again. If you read this one day I am begging you not to think that this is me giving up on you, because I love you with all my heart and would give anything to see you again but I am trying to be realistic here. The thought of you has given me more hope and courage than you could ever believe and I pray to god that you all make it through this as unscathed as possible. You are all brave and determined and I know deep down that you will all do what is right. Goodbye, good luck and all of my love.

The writer of this testimony never signed their name, probably to protect their family in case this fell into the wrong hands. It was found by Aurors in the corner of one of the interrogation cells covered in dirt. We can only assume that it was put there for safekeeping before she was taken to appear before the Muggle Born Registration Committee. Through careful research and investigation of the records kept by the Ministry during the period we have come to the conclusion that this was written by Helen Jenkins aged 38, a muggle-born which from Penzance who was married to Robert Jenkins aged 39, a pureblood wizard from Godric's Hollow. They had been married for 12 years and had three children, two boys aged 16 and 12 and a daughter aged 14, who were all at Hogwarts during this period. The rest of the Jenkins family all managed to survive the war. Helen was the prominent author of important works of fiction such as 'Sky Dancer'. The records kept by the Ministry of Magic show that Helen was tried for stealing the magic of a pureblood on Wednesday 17th December 1997 having spent nearly a month in detention after being captured on Thursday 20th November 1997. She was immediately transported to Azkaban and deemed fit enough to work. She was put to work in the textile industry making cheap cloth for robes and other items of clothing by hand for long hours, in low light, surrounded constantly by dementors. Helen fell victim to one of the many epidemics that swept through the prison due the crowded living conditions and poor sanitation conditions. We are unable to determine exactly when Helen died but it is thought that she passed away because of typhoid sometime between Thursday 5th March 1998 and Saturday 14th March 1998.

A/N – This is just a brief one-shot I wrote looking at what conditions might have been like for muggle-borns who were captured by Death Eaters while Voldemort was in power. This impression was based on the Holocaust. The second part of this story (in italics) is intended to be like an author's note, as if this tale appeared in a collection of other stories about the experiences of muggle-borns or as an example of personal testimony in a history book written about events.

Thank you for reading this and if you have the time please review as it would mean the world to me and really help to improve my writing.