The muggles began to wonder why.
It started small. Why that grizzled shop hadn't been torn down. That place has been around for ages, you think with the location they'd find someone to fill it. Why the platforms were packed and then emptied like a rolling wave on the same September morning each year. Why they reached a destination they were previously sure of and suddenly forgot something they were equally sure they'd brought with them.
But then the lands grew dark like their questions. Why their bridges collapsed. Why there were so many murders. Why fog coated their lands.
Their minister's hair faded, as all politicians' do. Their girls went missing, as girls do. Their families were found dead in their beds, their faces pulled and waxen, like they were as surprised that they died as the one's reading the story in the morning paper.
It's easier not to wonder. For years they didn't. Centuries. Entire generations swelling and dying, like crowds on a platform, and never once did they question it, not really.
Until one day their waning-haired politician spoke to them, freely and honestly, and that was the biggest indicator that they should have known something was wrong. That something was very, very wrong.
A veil lifted, like the sun that had returned, and suddenly it was all clear. All much, much too clear.
The minister cleared his thin throat. "I have questioned whether I'm leading the country down the right path here. I have spent many a sleepless night. My wife will attest. But, I feel there's one thing I owe this nation that I haven't been able to give it. There's one thing I owe the citizens of this country that have been so brutalized by an enemy we didn't even know we were fighting."
The minister of the muggles shuffled his pages. The muggles across the country turned up their sets. Bars fell silent, no bells rang from churches, an unnatural hush across the country.
"It came to my attention, in the early days spent in this great office, that there are people who live among us. People who are not like you or I. People who would do us harm. People we couldn't even begin to fight."
The silence dampened. A mother held her breath. A man gripped his chair even tighter. Immigrants. Those boats full of monsters. Students let their beers warm.
"Until now. I have not been a perfect Prime Minister. Many of you have wondered what I have been doing these long years, have wondered why I have sat back while dark times stalked our country."
The minister of the muggles put down his papers and spoke to the lens, through the grainy film. "I assure you. I have not. At the risk of leaving my legacy soiled, of surely being thrown in the Psych Ward, or of being subjected to the vitriol The Sun will no doubt print in tomorrow's run, I have chosen to let this country know what we are facing and who exactly we are dealing with."
The minister of the muggles took a breath. Perhaps he was steadying himself. Perhaps he was having doubts. Perhaps there was something greater he was fighting, like an invisible hand around his throat. He cleared it again and felt the fingers loosen.
"There live, as surely as you or I, among us a race who is responsible for our suffering. Their borders can be found on no map. Their country can be found represented at no United Nations council. Their minister at no state dinner. Their borders are our borders. Their faces are our faces. But they are not like us. There is something cursed in their blood, something that they have been using against us for years. They have been enslaving this great nation. They have entangled us in their wars. They have thrown our children at their causes for their sport. They have warned each Prime Minister before me of their existence and nothing has been done until today. For today…"
And suddenly the picture changed. A muggle in a black suit entered, grasping the upper arm of a man with a black hood over his head. The minister of the muggles stood and the camera followed his movement, swift, like water.
The minister of the muggles latched his grip tight to the masked man and, with something greater than triumph, pulled it off.
"We have one."
The man, tall and pale with shocking red hair lank around his grime-coated face, sunk to his knees. His chin hit the desk and the minister of the muggles tightened his grip around the man's neck.
"Wizards."
It's easier not to wonder. When you are the deaf, dumb one, when your face is crushed under the boot, when your lips are curled around the curb. It's just easiest not to ask. You will waste your last moments, something so precious, on that question, something so pointless. Unless you know where the ankle is weakest. Unless you know how to turn it, bend it, and hear the snap. If you know how to wait. If you know how to bide your time. Then why is a very useful question indeed.
Do onto others as you would have them do unto you. No one dared to flip that around and ask what it really could mean. What it meant when the boots changed hands. What it could really allow someone to do once they finally got to lace them up.