A/N: Hope you like this short story!
Before you start reading, and you get confused, this is a world where the muggles triumph over the wizards and witches. It's similiar to the Nazis and the Jewish, but for this story, the muggles fear the magical people. Don't ask how they win against them. Because I don't know :D
It's a story which hopefully would make you think.
The little girl walked past them every day.
They were always standing; there were no seats. The Watchers made sure that they stood with their backs straight, their heads up and their chins forward. But the little girl could tell that inside, they were crippled, with their heads and hearts so heavy that they dared not to look forward.
She would walk past the chain-linked fence, a simple shiny silver fence that stood a mere two metres high. It hummed a strange but soothing sound. She loved listening to it. She would always stop and listen, hum a few bars of the song and move forward-never looking through the gap between the links on the fence, she was taught not to. But she sneaked a look every now and then, she thought that they didn't look very much different from her, but the adults said they were. Their side of the fence was no doubt rusty and mangled, the little girl's parents whispered to her. Everything on the other side was different.
They would line up by the fence when midday came, when the sun was up and shining. It made their shadows nice and small, and the light shined on their faces. But they never dared to look up into the light, it was too bright.
This was a routine which she followed, it was a routine that her mother followed in her school days, and continued to follow. They walked past this fence, listened to the humming song everyday to and from school and work. Everybody in London followed this routine. It was in the books.
At School they learned about them, the terrible things they've done, the horrible lies they told and worse- the secrets they listened to, secrets that no criminal should ever hear.
The books said that the Wizards and Witches were criminals. They've tried and tried to prevent them from existing, but they bred like rats. Dirty sewer rats, Hannah said, germ-spreading, dirty little sewer rats, that's what they were. The little girl listened and understood, but did not comment. Hannah knew best, she was the teacher, and the teacher followed the book.
There was a small boy on the other side. A scrawny boy with knobby knees, jet black hair and brilliant green eyes. His grandfather was on the other side of the line, with the oldies, but the little girl noticed right away the resemblance between them. They had to be family.
She wondered why they stood so far apart. Her grandfather sat down beside her every chance he got. Perhaps the grandfather was afraid, she thought. His tall shadow and sightless eyes would cover and hide the boy away; he probably wanted the boy to look up into the sunlight without flinching- after all, sunlight in winter was rare, and today's weather was bright.
The girl, while stopping to listen to the hum of the fence, noticed that the fence was rusting. That wouldn't do. The fence looked nice when it was shiny-it would look better without the fence, but shiny was better than rusty. She took out her handkerchief and gently rubbed at the red-brown stain.
THAWK! The fence shivered and wobbled, but it did not break. The little girl was thrown from the fence. She landed among the flower bushes that surrounded the lush green meadow. The fence righted itself. It rejected her.
The Watchers saw the girl fly, but they stood still. Their job was to watch over Them. But that girl was hurt.
"Aren't you going to see if she's okay?" The little boy spoke up. He was one of the few who really stood straight and proudly had his chin up and eyes looking bravely forward.
His Watcher grabbed him and dragged him in front of the line. He beat the little boy, he punched and kicked and scratched in silence, but the little boy didn't see the fists and the legs, he saw the little girl lying in the bushes through the links in the fence, she landed between the dark green bushes and the lighter green bushes. He never knew the plants' name, but he found himself wondering whether they had the same parents-the two bushes were so similar after all. Different, but similar.
"Get the girl," A watcher ordered, "and get No. 1039 to the Infirmary, he'll be scrubbing the blood off the ground."
The gate opened, and the little boy finally saw the world outside fully. He saw the two bushes properly now, no small chain separated them in his view. It looked nice like that. He was marched away into the dark building, but everyone knew the sun was still shining in him. It always did for the young ones.
The little girl was brought in, while phone calls were made, she lay on one of the beds in the infirmary. Her eyes opened, and she saw the little boy wiping at a brown-red stain on the ground. She thought it odd that there was rust on a cold concrete ground, but this was the other side. The strange, mysterious, horrible other side.
"Is it hard?" She asked.
The little boy stopped, "Is what hard?"
"The scrubbing."
"Everything's hard." The boy replied. "Everything is hard to everybody. 'Cept to you guys on the other side, I expect. Then it's easy for you."
"No it is not!" The girl sprung out of the bed and crouched down beside the little boy. "We do hard things too. Like homework and remembering your tables."
"I suppose," the boy said, but he sounded unconvinced.
"Really," the girl insisted. "I bet it's easier than this."
The boy smiled challengingly. "Prove it."
The little girl plunged her new knitted sweater sleeve into the murky depths of the bucket. She found a rag at the bottom and pulled it out. "Fine."
They didn't say it aloud, but they both knew it was a race. Whoever removed the last bit of the stain was a winner.
The girl and the boy kneeled side-by side, the bucket between them. They scrubbed and giggled and switched rags and stories. The little boy's stories were fascinating to her, they were so real and touchable, and she understood them. The little girl's stories were a dream to him, but he understood too. The stories were both the same, they were both real.
Then his Watcher came in. He stopped at the sight. Without a word he grabbed the boy again and tied him to the foot of the bed, grabbing his bat and whacking him.
The girl screamed. "Stop!" She commanded, "he did nothing wrong! Why are you hitting him?"
The little boy shook his head. No matter how many times they scrubbed at the ground, the stain would always be there. For a short few moments though, the girl and him had managed to lighten the stain, but as the Watcher continued to beat him, the stain grew darker.
Another Watcher took the little girl by the waist and held her, taking her outside where the sun was still shining.
She left the Infirmary.
The boy looked down.
A few days later she walked past them again. She stopped and listened to the humming of the fence, but suddenly she hated it. The humming wasn't soothing, it was manipulative. It hid the real sounds of the fence. She listened closer, past the humming and finally heard the resounding cold clangs as the links pushed against each other as they marched to the steady rhythm. She heard the real song of the fence, the foreboding tune that was lyric-less, but needn't no words. The eerily high screeches as the wind tore around the fence, and the low groans could be heard if she listened really closely.
The rust she saw had spread. It was almost covering the whole fence now-it was brown red, just like that stain.
She knew that this was what the fence was like on the other side.
She saw the little boy again, bruised, beaten, shoulders slouched and head down-just like the rest of them.
He looked up just as her eyes fell on his face. His eyes were bright green, and hers was dark green.
Their eyes travelled to the two plant bushes that the girl had fallen into. Same, but different, they thought.
Two little children, separated by a rusting fence, looked at the fence.
She looked back at him. "It's just a fence," she said. "It's a stupid fence."
He nodded, but did not speak. His Watcher was nearing him.
She walked away, but her words echoed around him. She was right.
The sun was shining, the fence was rusting, the two plant bushes were flourishing.
He looked up.