Train Stations

Train Stations

Hermione felt as though it was some sort of perverse nightmare, more insane than anything she'd ever dreamt. None of it seemed real, or even possible. It was as though she'd been flown, blindfolded, to some alien planet in a faraway galaxy that didn't obey any of the known and familiar rules of her world. At least she was not alone, she remembered thinking while being herded into Hogsmeade station where the Hogwarts Express was waiting for them on the tracks. She would come to regret that thought when the car she'd been rammed into became more crowded than was bearable.

They had changed the train a great deal; that thought seemed to bother her more than any other during the journey. Later she decided she'd probably clung to it to avoid dwelling on everything else, as the packed car began to smell heavily of human sweat. The engine was no longer a pleasant cherry-red but pitch black, and the Dark Mark had been painted upon each car, seemingly alive with eyes of glinting steel and a wriggling verdant snake-tongue. The compartments had been demolished and the passengers -- if they could be called such -- were packed in as tightly as possible, body to body, like animals in a cattle train.

It seemed forever before the train began to slow down, then came to a full stop, and longer still before the doors were flung open and the captives allowed to stagger out into, if not freedom, then at least fresh air. Hermione bit back her rash thoughts more than ever; as she was stepping down onto the platform she looked back very quickly and saw a handful of those who had fallen to the floor during the long journey, unable to stand the cramped, airless quarters for so long. She thought she recognized Dean among the bodies, but she didn't have time to get a proper look.

Cloaked and masked figures stood at intervals on either side of the dirt road they walked on, from the platform to the compound that had been their destination all along. Still more faceless guards lined the enclosure's walls, wands out and ready. Hermione felt naked without her own wand, and knew she would feel worse very soon. Somehow her mind refused to accept that fact and turned instead to wonder where Ron and Harry were, and what the Order was up to. Later she would wonder if they were in a camp like this, somewhere; one designated for Muggle-lovers. At that time, though, she couldn't wrap her mind around the nature of her situation.

The guards made them enter the walled compound in a long row, but the queue was not even, so she caught a glimpse of those who were ahead of her. Several people seemed to be standing at the gate, surveying those who entered. When she was closer she saw that one of them was a tall man with dark curly hair and glasses who was so familiar he had to be Theodore Nott's father. She recognized the man who stood before him; he was coughing so hard that Hermione felt an ache rise in her chest, the memory of pneumonia from when she was only seven. Nott examined Filch quite calmly before murmuring something to one of the hooded henchmen, who pointed at Filch and then to his left. Filch went where he was directed, still coughing piteously. The boy who followed him, who Hermione didn't recognize, went to the right. So did most of the others.

When it came her turn to pass before Nott, she, too, was sent to the right. The beaten path passed some coarsely built wooden buildings and a single stone structure before turning to bring into her view rows and rows of barracks, set close together. To one side was the building the row of prisoners filed into, but to the other lay big, multi-colored piles. She looked and saw robes of all colors heaped together in masses, and various wands, confiscated and stacked. She couldn't see what else was hiding in those piles as she was pulled and shoved into the building where her own belongings were taken and sorted into those massive stacks. She and the others were stripped bare and helpless, sprayed with some foul concoction and hosed off, then cast identical, carelessly made garments that vaguely resembled robes but were too short, too baggy and without proper sleeves.

Later, when she spoke to those who had been there before her, she found out it was not the disinfectant potion or the issued robes that were the main purpose of the stripping room. Every prisoner's arm was stamped with a seal that left no mark but pinched slightly. It was the tag that recorded their presence in the camp, making escape almost entirely futile. Arabella Figg related this important information to her in a toneless voice that startled Hermione. She did not expect such numbness from someone who used to be one of the Order's most active members, at the time.

Arabella had been captured and carted to this enclosure almost a full month before Hermione, and had learned a great deal about it. It was she who'd told them that they were the largest shipment to date, and that the camp's location was not known to the Order and even its existence was disputed right up to the highest ranks. Justin was furious when she said that, but Hermione thought she could understand. She'd have had a hard time believing such a place existed, too, if she hadn't seen it for herself. Something about the camp was far too surreal to be acceptable, to a reasonable mind. She knew that Dumbledore had a reasonable mind, though, so she felt sure that he would doubt any wild rumors as much as her hypothetical, non-imprisoned self did.

It actually took some weeks' residence in the guarded compound before she could bring herself to believe that it was real. Hermione was surprised at herself; normally, she had a very good grasp of reality, but then these were hardly normal times. The food was rare, but somehow the moldiness of the bread was what bothered her, and the rottenness of any fruit or vegetable that sometimes surfaced at feeding time. Arabella scolded her without heart for only eating the watery substance they called soup, telling her that she needed what food she could get and that she was being spoiled. She felt that there was nothing spoiled or unreasonable about refusing to eat rotten food, at first.

Then there were the things that were almost worse than the food, definitely worse than the flea-bitten blankets on the three-story bunks in the barrack buildings. There was little water, and you weren't allowed to wash; the guards didn't enforce this law, but the other captives did. Enough water for one to wash even a little bit would also be enough for two or three others to have a small drink; nothing lavish, just enough to keep them from dying of thirst. Feeling selfish for wanting to be clean was soon worse than feeling filthy, which she started to after a few days, and it only got worse. The lack of any reflective surface was hardly a blessing; Hermione could sense the muck and grime taking over her body when she couldn't scour off the dirt of the unpaved ground and the sweat of her body, as spring waned to summer. When her shorn head began to grow hair again, it felt gummy and the hairs clung together in dirty coils.

Somewhere inside her was a vague thought that she should be worrying about more important things than grooming, but as time passed it diminished, overridden by the squalid, inhuman feeling that permeated every pore of her skin. When she got her first period since incarceration, the feeling overwhelmed her. Penelope tried to help her through it, rationing off a little water each day for her to wash; she'd gotten her first period a week earlier. She would never again dispute Ginny when she said that misery loves company.

Recognizing people she knew among the other prisoners made her stomach weigh down with a horrible sorrow, but being sad was immensely preferable to brooding over her eroding dignity. For the first few weeks she spent what time she could scouting the population, gathering a list of everyone she knew. A few were members of the Order, and many were students. She would never forget the first time she saw the Creevey brothers unsmiling, no matter how she might try. She'd already found Arabella, she knew Dean was dead, and Penelope and Justin had arrived on the same train as her. New people arrived sometimes, and once she spotted Lavender in the queue for the stripping room.

Hermione saw horror when she first met Lavender's eyes, and she didn't know which of the two of them she was horrified at. They saw each other almost as soon as Lavender arrived at the barracks, wearing the camp's gray robes but still clean, still plump and willowy. By then Hermione could trace most of her skeleton; sometimes when she couldn't sleep she would count the bones of her wrist with her fingers, over and over, instead of counting sheep. She looked at Lavender and tried to understand her shocked expression, to recall. She'd been in the camp for barely four months, but the memories were just facts in her mind, not associated to any particular emotion. Though she remembered seeing Arabella's gauntness for the first time, and Dean's corpse in the train car, and Filch being taken away by the Death Eaters with a handful of other ill prisoners, she did not remember how those sights had made her feel.

Probably it was for the best, she decided, drawing Lavender by the arm into the building in which she slept. Her shock, too, would wear off, and she would resign herself to surviving the situation and not try to understand it. She settled Lavender close to her; it was a compulsion to keep familiar people at hand, people who reminded her of the wizarding world as she knew it. Also, Lavender would need her help through the transition time, until she got used to things a little more.

She still had nightmares, sometimes, even though she'd thought she was used to things already. Screaming was ill advised, but she awoke some nights damp with sweat, stifling her panting in her palm. Once she'd dreamt that she was back at the Burrow, sitting on the roof with Ron, and he was holding her hand so she wouldn't fall. When, almost inevitably, he let go of her hand and she fell, she looked up at him and saw him laughing at her. Another time Penelope told her she'd been crying in her sleep, and she recalled belatedly dreaming that she had slit her own throat with a pair of scissors. She dreamt often of cockroaches swarming to cover her body, and it was always a struggle not to cry out when those dreams returned.

It was the indignity of it all that had broken her, she decided, years after the fact. That was the worst of it. Of course, as the months waned people came and went, and that was bad. Hermione hated those who came even more than those who left, because of the looks of shock and revolt on their faces. She didn't need reminding of her disgusting condition. Not that she needed reminding that she could die at any time, and was in fact very likely to. Still, she could imagine that those who were carted out of the barracks during morning roll call were at peace. At the very least they were going out rather than coming in, and she didn't have to tell them that their suffering was only just beginning. Still, their numbers swelled until every bunk was taken, and some doubled up. Hermione had never known how many Muggle-born witches and wizards there were.

Winter brought a waning in new arrivals, which ought to have been a relief. But Hermione suspected that maybe they'd just run out of new people to bring in; maybe there were no more of their kind still free, at least not in Britain. There was no snow, but the wind became bitterly cold and their robes and flea-bitten blankets did little to block it. Sleet began to fall regularly, and sometimes there was frost. The barracks began to empty again as chilly corpses were brought out, daily. Touching anything metallic became trial by ice and resulted in chapped or bleeding hands, which was unfortunate since the barracks had many metal fittings, including the doorknobs. Dennis Creevey snorted one morning in December after receiving a particularly bad frost burn; he said his grandmother always sent him mittens for Christmas, and Hermione had no idea why he found the thought so hilarious.

She'd remained convinced that they would all somehow survive the winter until she woke up one morning and found that Arabella's body was quite stiff. Rushing to make roll call, she stripped off all her clothes and balled them up with her chilly blanket, hiding the package away to retrieve it later. The hooded guard who dragged Arabella onto his cart made no comment of her nakedness; this was common practice in the camp since the early frosts. That night she huddled with her two blankets, closer to warm than she'd been in months.

Months later she still didn't regret it, not even when the gates of the enclosure were blasted open and the wooden parts of the wall began to burn. For several long minutes she watched impassively as the black-masked guards were lined up and bound to await judgement, as the doors to Nott's laboratories were trampled down and he was dragged out, screaming and hexing at anything that moved until a well-placed Stunner subdued him. Then something snapped inside of her and she stood, shivering, even under the warming spring sun. She thought that maybe it was Colin who pushed and pulled and dragged her to greet their rescuers. Even faced with them she shivered, and was ashamed more of her putrid, corpse-like body than of anything else, though she had lived and others, many others, had died with her considering them fortunate.

Familiar faces mobbed her but she refused to recognize for fear of being recognized in return. She met no eyes and limply allowed for whatever was done to her. The men and women were separated and Healers saw each captive separately. When the Healer drew a curtain around them for her privacy, Hermione broke into tears, begging to leave. They had brought in food and water, clothes and blankets, and she knew that meant that she was captive in this camp still, only under different hands.

They spoke of contagious illnesses, of the deteriorated health of the prisoners, of rehabilitation and counseling. They mentioned Nott and his experiments several times. Hermione let their words fly over her head. A dam had shattered inside her when she saw the camp's gates explode. She needed only to leave this place, to go somewhere of her own choosing, maybe see if her parents were still alive. Her health was the least of her concerns; it seemed trivial, not to say ridiculous. She was not to get her wish for a month, though, while the enclosure and its occupants were being decontaminated and the guards tried, convicted, sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban.

When the gates were finally flung open and the path to the train's platform made visible, the thought of returning to Hogsmeade by the same means that she came almost made Hermione vomit. She only just restrained herself. She would never allow herself to ride a train again.