There are two wars.

Gittel is at Durmstrang when she hears. She’s in the corridor by the potion laboratories with Rozalija and Audra—the only other Lithuanian girls in her class—when her owl comes through the window and lands on her shoulder.

“Someone’s writing from home,” she tells them, unfolding the letter. “My brother, Elizer. He says—he says there are Germans in Šeduva, that they’re rounding up the Jewish families, forcing them to work—”

“Good,” Rozalija says. “My mother says the Jews are rotten. All they do is steal from us. It’s about time someone imposed some laws on them.”

“I am Jewish,” Gittel says, trying to keep her voice calm. “Or did you forget? When have I ever stolen from you?”

“Not you, specifically,” Audra says, a little embarrassed. “Your people.”

You must come home, Eliezer writes, you must use your magic to help us.

I have to stay at school, Gittel writes back.

There are two wars.

There are whispers in the corridors about Grindelwald and his followers torturing wix from non-magical families, and Gittel thinks of the look on her father’s face when an owl came to their window with a letter tied to its leg.

A boy grabs her arm as he walks past her, hisses in her ear. “Your blood is filthy.” Lets her go, pushes her against the wall.

She wonders how he knows. Maybe she is wearing her surprise on her sleeve, a star that lights up every time something magical turns her eye, every time something happens that she never knew was possible.

There’s a symbol scratched into the wall, a triangle with a circle inside it and a line through it. Gittel wonders why people need a picture for their cause.

There are two wars.

Another letter comes from Eliezer, his handwriting sprawled and urgent. Gittel has to squint to read it—she’s lost a little bit of her Yiddish with every year she spends away from home. He writes that in other towns, they’ve started herding the Jews out of the ghettos in trucks.

He does not know where they are taking them. He fears that Šeduva will be next.

Come home, Gittel.

Another boy grabs her arm in the corridor, but this one does not push her aside. He slips a piece of parchment in her pocket without a word. She doesn’t read it until she’s alone in her dormitory.

Δ ○ | Resist

“I cannot,” she tells herself. Her education is more important than fighting in a war.

There are two wars.

It’s a Friday morning when the school is called to assembly in the courtyard by the front gates. “What do you suppose is so important that we had to leave our hex class?” Rozalija asks.

The Headmaster conjures a platform and raises himself above the crowd. “A school ought not take sides in a war,” he says. “But we can no longer allow Muggle-born students to attend our school.”

They are told that they have a week to gather their belongings and make their way home. There is nothing more for them at Durmstrang.

“It was only a matter of time,” Audra says.

“Perhaps it will be better this way,” Rozalija says.

There are two wars.

The day before Gittel is due to leave Durmstrang and return home, one of the boys in the courtyard is reading a Muggle newspaper.

“Where did you get that?” Gittel asks him.

“I’m not telling you, mudblood,” he says.

She hides behind a tree as he reads it aloud to his friends.

“… and they have taken all the Jews in Šiauliai…”

Her home county. It seems too easy, too sudden, but now Gittel has no home to return to.

There are two wars.

“We’ll miss you!” Audra says. “Do you think we’ll see you again?”

“I don’t think so,” Gittel says. She doesn’t think they’ll miss her, either.

She takes a train away from Durmstrang with the other Muggle-born students. There are first years there, crying in fear, and older students holding their hands and telling them that everything will be alright.

The train pulls into its destination and the former students flood out, looking for their families. Gittel has not heard from Eliezer in weeks.

There are two wars, but both wars are fought over the false worship of one blood over another. Both wars are forcing Gittel from her home, and she wants to fight in both. But she finds the newspapers at the station, she reads the headlines, and she loses hope that she’ll ever see her family again. She still has magic, though. She still has her wand, and there’s one war that still needs fighters.

There are tears in her eyes, but there is still a piece of parchment in her pocket. Resist.

She sees the boy who gave it to her leaving the station and she runs after him.

“Wait!”

(submitted by memordes. This piece is a poignant and touching look at how these two wars - magical and muggle - could have intersected.)