May 1945
Margaret Watts paid little attention to the owls circling the great hall. As a sixth year, almost seventh year, despite being a muggle-born, she was quite used to the daily arrival of the post by owl. So it was with some surprise that she looked up from her book to find an owl holding a thick muggle envelope towards her, as it pecked at her hand.
"Thank you" she murmured untying the tying holding the envelope between to the owl's leg. The owl preened, and Margaret offered it a small piece of bacon, a very small piece, she still felt guilty about having bacon in such plentiful supply whilst her mother and siblings were on rations for everything. The owl gave her a contemptuous glance, but took the bacon nonetheless and flew off.
Margaret's eyes widened as she examined the envelope. It was from her brother Robert. The last letter she had personally received had been almost a year ago, though she received updates from her mother more regularly, it was not easy for him to send owl post from the front after all. Whatever he had to say must be important. Margaret closed her book, slit the envelope open with a knife and pulled out the letter.
The contents was blank.
"What've you got there?" Margaret's best friend and fellow Gryffindor Beryl Thompson inquired.
"It's a letter from my brother" Margret replied perplexed. "But it's blank"
"Maybe it's spelled." Beryl suggested, "could be classified information" she added excitedly.
"Of course," Margret replied, shaking her head. Why hadn't she thought of that. Beryl had picked up the apparently blank letter and the equally blank pile of papers bound with string that it had been folded around, and was examining them thoroughly.
"Here, look, there's raised sections on the back of this top page, invisible ink." She announced.
Margaret held her wand to the paper "revelio"
Words slowly appeared across the back. "What did mum call me when I was small?"
"Password protected" Beryl announced unnecessarily.
Margaret returned her wand point to the page, "Robbie-bear"
The small piece of paper filled with her brother's hurried script.
Maggie-May,
I shouldn't be sending you these, I had to confound the photographer just to make copies, but the night after we arrived in this hell on earth I had one of my dreams. I saw the future, a future where muggleborns like us were being rounded up and sent to Azkaban. Where many never came out alive. A future where a fascist leader was rising in power, and the Ministry either ignored it or helped him. The whole wizarding world is focused on Grindelwald, but it was not he who I saw in my dream. The vision of the future was interspersed with scenes from Hogwarts. I saw a boy in Slytherin green. He carried a diary, I'm not sure why but the diary is important. I saw him searching the castle, entering a bathroom, and speaking a strange language which caused a door to open by a sink. Later he was writing in the journal recording his joy that the poor Ravenclaw girl had been killed. I also saw him speaking to Slughorn, asking him about dark magic the boy had read about. He was twisting a ring on his left hand. This boy was the leader, this boy goes on to form an army of wizards in cloaks and masks who terrorize the wizarding world. But he is successful because his goal to "remove" the muggleborns is so popular amongst the old families, because so many in the Wizengamot and the ministry believe themselves to be superior, the wizarding Arians. These pictures show what lies ahead. I beg you to do whatever you can, nay whatever it takes, to prevent such atrocities from occurring. The boy is the key, the old families beliefs are the lock.
Robert.
p.s. where did mother and father meet?
Margaret finished the letter, and passed it silently to Beryl who had been reading over her shoulder. She picked up the package of blank photographs and tapped them with her wand whispering the answer to her brother's password then untying the string.
As she flipped through the images, Margaret's face grew pale, her hand coming up to cover her mouth a harrowed expression on her face. Upon reaching the fourth image there were tears streaming openly down her cheeks, "Oh dear lord" she whispered. At the fifth image her stomach rebelled, and overwhelmed she dropped the photos and ran from the hall.
-
Beryl Thompson quickly scooped up the pictures and letter, and raced after Margret.
She found her in the girl's bathroom her head bent over a latrine.
"Maggie?" she asked softly. "Are you ok?"
She clearly wasn't ok, she was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, and pales as a ghost. But clearly too preoccupied to speak.
Beryl sank to the floor outside the stall door and took a deep breath, steeling herself to look at the images that had caused her best friend such distress.
The first picture showed a group of men in baggy ragged clothes. They were so thin their bones were showing, and their cheeks hollow, giving them the appearance of walking skeletons. But that was by far the least shocking image. Children with dead eyes, and shaved heads, terrified. Piles of bodies in railcarts, and trenches, bodies lain out in row upon row all so thin they were barely more than a pile of rags. A building with a tall chimney, and a message scrawled on the back of the picture.
The survivors tell us the NAZI's would line them up to go into this building, no one ever came out. The officers say it's a gas chamber. This (Bergen-Belsen) is one of dozens of camps we have raided in the last week. Estimates of the death count in this camp alone are well in the thousands, and that's only the recent deaths.
Beryl dropped the images with a shudder and raced to join her friend in emptying the contents of her stomach.
The two girls sat unmoving on the floor of the bathroom for hours. Eventually Beryl spoke. "How are we going to stop it?"
"We need to find the boy once he's been identified we can make a plan for everything else"
"Robert's letter said something about a Ravenclaw girl dying."
The girls looked at each other, both coming to the same realisation in unison.
"Myrtle"