1906 [h.s.]

eight

I spent the whole night sitting on the bed hugging my knees in the almost complete darkness, listening to the occasional cries of the woman under the other bed. I wondered if that was really how asylums were in the past. Well... are. Did it really help people to be in the dark, alternating moments of a silence so deep that you could've heard your own heart beating, with cries and moans coming from nobody knows were? I felt like I was already losing my mind, how could that be helpful? Wouldn't it just have worked in the complete opposite way? I already knew the answer.

At some point I must'd fallen asleep, because I woke up to a faint light coming from the little window. I hesitantly stood up and went to look outside of the door. The corridor was completely empty, and dimly enlightened. Weren't some people supposed to be around? Where was everyone? My hand automatically went to the handle of the door and I tried to open it, with no success. It was locked.

I returned to the bed, resuming my position. What was I supposed to do? Did I have to find a way to escape? Harry hadn't said anything about that, and even though I somewhat knew how to go back to the Male Ward, how was I supposed to escape from that room? It was locked, and I had nothing to unlock it with. Besides, if I had done that, one of the nurses would've just brought me back. I didn't know the place, and I didn't know how to escape. I was trapped, and the worst thing was that I didn't even know if I was supposed to wait for something to happen or just run away.

The door clicked open, and I turned my head fast towards it. A nurse had opened it, and was now staring down at me.

"Let's go" she said walking into the room and grasping my arm to help me stand on my feet.

I complied, remaining completely silent. I knew that, in order to avoid mistakes that would've put me in an unfortunate position, I shouldn't have talked. I was in a world that I didn't know, and to which I didn't belong, and potentially everything that would've come out of my mouth could've been the wrong thing.

"We're going to have breakfast now, alright? Remember the rules, no sitting next to the boys. If you do that, you'll have to be taken to the isolation room as punishment, and we don't want it to happen, do we?" She strictly said while we were walking towards the hall.

I side-glanced at her, but all I could see was her dark hair, that was up in a tight bun, with a wooden hairpin to keep it from falling.

We reached the hall and she sat me at a table alone, before going to the other side of the room to talk with another nurse, who was watching us from afar.

I looked up from the table and glanced around the room. What I hadn't noticed the night before, since everything was dark, and before that, since all the tables had been clearly been messed up with when the asylum had been left, was that the room was divided by an imaginary line right in the middle. There were a lot of tables on both sides, but in the middle of the room there was a clear path, a few feet wide. Was it to show the patients where not to sit - on the other side of the room?

I wasn't alone, the hall was crowded, and there were a lot of nurses and doctors all around, probably to make sure that the situation would've not got out of hand. The patients were sitting on small groups, not more than three of four on each table, some huskily talking to each other, others just saying nothing at all, staring at each other, as if a look was worth more than a thousand words. Others, were silently playing games I didn't bother to know the name of. Just a few dared to look up from the table, and that's why my gaze almost automatically locked with the one of someone else who was looking around.

He was sitting alone at a table in the corner of the room, next to a door that wasn't guarded by anyone. The bathrooms, maybe? I had no clue. I didn't know if he had been caught or not, but something in the fierce gaze he sent to me told me that he hadn't. I wondered how he had come there in first place, and how he would've left without being caught. His eyes moved to something on my right, and I looked in that direction. A nurse was coming in my direction.

"Hello sweetheart, are you not hungry?" She asked, and I recognised her as the one of the night before. "Here" she said, pushing a dish with something that looked like corn in it, before going away again.

I followed her with my gaze until I saw her disappear into the corridor that took to the entrance of the asylum, before glancing at Harry again.

He gave me an enigmatic stare, not moving an inch. I tilted my head, not really understanding what he expected me to do. He glanced around to see if someone was looking in our direction. Nobody seemed to be, but he decided not to risk it, and simply looked at me again.

Noticing that we had been looking at each other for quite some time, and that it could've raised some suspicions, I looked back at my table. I hesitated a bit before eating what was on the dish, realising that I probably wouldn't have eaten again for quite some time.

"Are you finished?" The nurse with the dark hair said after having reached the table.

I nodded and stood up, and she grasped my arm again, ready to take me away again. Before leaving the hall, I looked at the table where I had seen him sitting just a few minutes before, but he wasn't there anymore.

We entered the Female Ward again, and she brought me back to the same room she had put me in the previous night. A guard that was standing in the corridor took out a key and opened it, and the nurse took me inside again.

I sat on the bed and I looked under the one at the bottom of the room, the woman was still cuddled up under there.

"Do not worry about her, she never gets out" the nameless nurse said, before shutting the door and allowing it to get locked again.