This thread is plotted in this thread and follows this letter to these Muggles. The happenings concurrently occur with the Second Task to provide a little extra disruption.

All healers, obliviators particularly invited, and extra Ministry as suitable. Open thread, break off questioning, St Mungo's threads as suitable so we don't get too swamped.

---

The wizarding wireless from home was propped on the filing cabinets opposite Edwin's desk in his office. It was Saturday, and ordinarily he would be out and about somewhere well away from this room within the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, but he'd taken the afternoon off the previous day and had promised himself an hour or so in the quiet on Saturday to finish a few staff evaluations.

It was handy to also have the Tetrawizard tournament on the radio - everyone would be glued to it or up at Hogwarts, and less chance of being disturbed. The Department was generally well staffed apart from on Sundays where they statistically had noticed less people tended to cause magical accidents, apart from in certain areas of the country where Sunday boredom seemed to increase it in isolated pockets. Thankfully the Lovegood family had now been fined sufficiently to deter them until midweek when more staff were available to dispose of matters.

There was a sudden klaxon-like noise in the main office. It masked the noise from the wireless and Edwin's heart leapt a little - not out of fright, but in anticipation. Something was happening. He counted to ten sat at his desk, hearing his staff come to attention and the wireless next door be turned down. Then, he rose from his desk and stepped into the doorway silently, listening and observing.

"Pleaseman saw them sail ten foot - someone thought it was a car accident looks like." A voice read out, figure studying a long, continuous roll of parchment beneath a bewitched quill. "Quote - I don't know what's happening but I just got thrown off my feet by my own sneeze, I don't know whether to ask you for an ambulance or an exorcist - unquote."

There was a pause, a few eyes had turned and spotted Edwin.
"Well, better go and investigate." He shrugged nonchalantly. "If you find anything, send word to St Mungo's and have them send a team down. Muggles don't bounce when they fly ten feet."

There were few things Aisling disliked as much as an alarm going off on the sort of day where she had just stopped by to deal with a small matter. In this case, it was retrieving a few notes which she had accidentally left there the evening before. She had just sorted a pile of paperwork into an acceptable-looking stack when the alarm started.

The stack was soon back on the desk as she made her way out to the main office. Just in time to hear Edwin's orders.

She shot him resigned glance, then looked down over her clothes[1] quickly. The black pants and matching blazer would, at least, be functional for dealing with Muggles. And at least the shoes were comfortable. That would make this easier.

"I'm presuming I'll be from the Health Protection Agency today, then." She accompanied the words with a slight twitch to her usual calm expression. The last time she'd used that had led to her studying far, far too much on contagious Muggle diseases.

1.

This set

Much as he'd like to stay in his warm office, Edwin felt that prickling of excitement, and reached for his wool coat. Much of the department knew not to wear ornate wizarding robes due to the increased need to forget they were there dressed in what appeared to be an oversized nightdress.

"Come along then!" Edwin called to his scrambling Department, and shot Aisling an youthful grin before instilling the location in his mind, and turning on the spot to vanish.

Arriving in the street, Edwin took a moment to orientate himself as several other cracks around him sounded. There were an abundance of Muggles, one sailed straight over his head within seconds, and others had raised strange little plastic boxes which contained tiny cameras, and could, Edwin knew, transmit images very quickly and easily. The good news was, their arrival with their magic and spells would soon disrupt these items and make them malfunction or switch off, thus disabling the mass posting of people sneezing so hard they flew across the street, to the internet, or as his less Muggle-wise employees called it the spiderweb.

"Contain the situation, quickly, quickly." He raised his handkerchief to his nose a moment, wondering if they would also react in the same way. "Something foreign in this street..." He uttered an incantation and turned on the spot, but his quick search came up with nothing too unusual, what with the distractions of the Muggles bouncing around and squawking.

The presence of sneezing, flying muggles at the site was confirmed for Aisling no more than a few seconds after she reappeared near Edwin. One young, and fortunately for her, slim, muggle flew into her with enough force to knock her back into a nearby wall. The likely bruise from such was enough for her to entertain the though of being too old for this for a moment before turning her attention to the muggle whose impact she had just cushioned.

He pulled away and shot her an apologetic look. "I...umm...sorry Miss?"

Aisling summoned her most reassuring smile and looked down at him. "No, I don't know. I'm here to look into it. Have you seen anything odd about? Possibly airborne." From the looks of things, it wouldn't be long until he began sneezing again. And she didn't need a collection of bruises.

Files from October had spilled into November, and Casper’s area of the Department was backed up. There were always pranksters out to get a few jollies off by scaring the local muggles, but adding that on top of the higher profile shenanigans that flew over London, and paperwork could have been coming out of his ears.

Still, not bad for a Saturday. It kept the few that were there for the weekend busy, or less distracted by the Wizarding Wireless than they normally would be. The muggy weather outside didn’t help with the over all quietness to the office, interrupted by quill scratching and pops in the wireless. It was supposed to rain... but wasn’t it usually?

The warning noise startled the quill in Casper’s hand to jump up from the parchment. His chair pushed back against the floor, allowing him to multitask as he stood. Casper finished his coffee as he stood, hand reaching out as the cup tipped back against his mouth to grasp on to his scarf. Once the cup was set down on the desk, the scarf was all ready being wrapped one handed around his neck.

With Edwin Glass in the office, Casper glanced to the man on occasion while continuing to put layers on. It wasn’t freezing outside, per say, but if one stood outside long enough... the cold had a way of penetrating through any layer that stood in its way.

An eyebrow rose at the quote; he tried to keep a smirk off his face. He quickly let it slip back off when he felt Edwin’s eyes pass him. A quick nod escaped him, and he motioned to a fellow next to his desk. “Let’s go then, Muffet.” The joke had long been used up about the man sitting on Tuffets and what he preferred to eat. Nursery rhymes aside, he was decent at his job.

Once the queasiness of apparation had subsided, Casper slipped the wand away like a well practiced magician. The flash of a camera blinded him momentarily. “Oiy! Bloody hell, mate, just tryin’ to get down the street!” That the bulb exploded was little concern to him. It was time to fit into his role of concerned citizen and round up as many of them as he could.

“Contain the situation, quickly, quickly.”

A frown settled over his features before Casper walked into the crowd. His wand may have been disrupting the cameras, but he just hoped they had gotten there before any major news outlets had been informed. Once he felt blended in, he started to nudge and prod a few towards a bus stop. “None of us are sneezin’ yet, let’s keep it that way!” Together, Mr. Muffet and Casper had a sizable group of worried muggles. When they were in such a state, it was easier to start ‘containing.’

He left it in Muffet’s hands, jogging down the length of the street. Once he decided on the containment, temporary anti-muggle charms went up. Keep them in, and keep others out.

---

[let me know if it needs less or could be tweaked or what have you!]

Well, so much for an attempt at sharing dreams with Drea. Beverly thought that might help the girl remember some things but being updated from pen pal to dream rescuer on the 'Imaginary Friend' scale didn't amount to a hill of things amassed in a hill. So Beverly had taken a break from lurking about the wizard school castle, unable to do anything, coming instead to observe...

Drea's mother Patricia of all people. Beverly remembered a bit about Drea's mother. Easy to fool and she'd been the one to put the notion in Drea's head that Beverly was only imaginary. So if the pooka could mess with her just enough to convince Drea...

Both an unbridled horse and even a rabbit would be too conspicuous in the city, so tonight like many other days and nights observing Patricia Beverly was a moth. A large (for an insect) black fuzzy one. And Beverly was decidedly not flapping about street lights like the other moths. Standards, after all.

Patricia had an irritatingly consistent routine, the same routes to work, the same places to eat. At nights she started to take walking for a bit of exercise, though timidly looking about people in the neighborhood as if they were going to mug her.

And tonight, both the muggle woman and the moth stalking her were surprised. It started with the first person sneezing and being blown off their feet. Pandemonium as the number grew. Beverly flittered about in place, watching folk leap into the air with sneezes.

"Ah-ah-ah..."

And then Drea's mother caught the sneeze too, launching her down the sidewalk as Beverly was left fighting the torret of air from her wake. When Beverly recovered to fly upright once again, she felt something significant had changed in the area. A ripple of magic. Where a crowd was gathering, cameras flashing all about the place, a cluster of people that were appearing out of nowhere and they had magic sticks. Bigjob magical folk. Whatever story they had in their method to cover things up, Beverly wasn't fooled.

Acting on this sudden inspiration, as she knew Drea's mother knew about magic and would get the connection, Beverly flew down to where the woman was convulsing trying to stifle another sneeze. Irritate her nose right here at this orientation...Beverly brushed her face and triggered another sneeze from the woman, causing her to sail over to the knot of wizards.

Beverly flew overhead in time to see Patricia recover from being knocked into one of the people with a wand. The pooka could hear the gears grind in her head as she noticed the wand while getting to her feet. Figuratively.

"You're magic, aren't you?" Patricia said weakly. "Is this like my daughter--please--it's magic, isn't it? Ah-ah-ah-ahhh..."

"Excellent, excellent," Edwin praised his staff, thoroughly enjoying being in the thick of it. One of the Muggles sneezed and bumped off the anti-muggle wards Bagman and colleagues had thrown up. Beyond them, Muggles were turning away, apparently forgetting what they were doing there, and returning to their lives, oblivious of what was contained.

Aisling was talking to one of the Muggles already, hopefully trying to ascertain some details on the cause or the start of the symptoms. Edwin drew his wand and began casting body-binds on the Muggles as they landed, hoping that the sneezing would be suppressed by the action, while they worked out the cause.

"Sneezing - something airborne?" He consulted with his colleagues. Together they cast their eyes around, ducking the remaining flying Muggles, seeking unseasonable blooms and other unusual things in the street.

"Rude git, cover your mouth!" 

Andy had been the first to sneeze.  Pete had ridiculed.  Danny, as usual, followed on the coattails of Pete's ridicule, laughing and clapping Pete on the back.  Jacoba had been volunteering with the teen shelter since shortly after returning to London and the group of them were on their way back when the sneezing had started.  Teenage boys would be teenage boys and there were certain battles that could be won and others that were best left to play themselves out.  And, the stereotypical mocking that arose from a strong, stray sneeze was just not one of those battles worth fighting. 

The tone had started to change when Andy's second sneeze sent the young man flying off his feet.  A quick glance around confirmed he wasn't the only one.  Pete hurried over to where Andy had landed, still laughing as he started to, in blunt terms, verbally recreate Andy's flight. 

Danny was no longer sharing in Pete's amusement.  The youngest of the three boys, Danny was looking around, watching the people sneezing and flying, a growing expression of panic on the lad's face. 

Jacoba was already suspicious about the not-so-mundane nature of the sneezing fits when she turned to try to calm Danny, but recognizing the tell-tale crack of apparition confirmed it.  "Look.  It'll figure itself out.  Just-"  But, the lad's eyes had widened just before he sneezed. 

Danny sneezed, again, this time flying backwards towards the street.  But, a flash of light later and the boy was lying rigid on the pavement. 

Jacoba looked up and around, recognized several of the witches and wizards before taking stock of the other two teens.  Andy, it seemed, had been immobilized as well.  Pete was looking around at the scene, his expression stuck somewhere between uncertainty, disbelief and still lingering amusement.  "Woah," the boy breathed.  "It's like Men in Black."

A wizard in a cafe adjusted the little magical radio set, leaning in close to hear the coverage.  But his listening was interrupted when a police officer flew into the window, his head inside his head making a loud noise against the glass.  The  young wizard clutched at his radio and froze on the spot.  What was that about?

Meanwhile, outside, things continued to be strange.  Quite strange.  Remarkably strange.  And worse than that, the number of concussions in the square mile area were also on the rise as the muggles did what most people did when knocked back by a giant, magically-induced sneeze.  They bumped their noggins.

The police officer, a muggle of about forty-two, recovered admirably and came to staggering to his feet.  He'd just been assisting a woman and her friend who'd been knocked into the road by yet another gent who'd fallen into them.  He wiped his nose on his sleeve and radio'd in for back-up.

"I've got a 10-52[1] at Ballards and Hervey.  Assistance required."  The radio squawked back and he answered.  "Eh, can't really say, to be honest.  Multiple injuries.  People are... sneezing themselves into AISHOOO!"

The poor man sneezed again and fell into a pair of smartly dressed people, who he would never have guessed were from the Health Protection Agency...

1.	Ambulance Needed

The muggle next to her was just about to speak, and Aisling thought she had caught a snatch of more voices nearby just at the policeman slammed into her. This impact, rather than just bumping her against the wall again, knocked her down, and she felt her head hit something hard this time.

"You alright?" The young muggle offered his hand to help Aisling to her feet, then motioned off in a direction. "There..umm...was a bit of a breeze from there not long back."

Aisling nodded, wavering a little. Her skull had started to hurt, her ears were ringing, and everything seemed suddenly just a bit fuzzy. "Thanks." Some sort of airborne allergen, maybe?

A step towards Edwin, which was quite enough to make her think better of moving much further. The muggles were sniffling again, so she threw quick body-binds on them, something which required a little extra focus in her dazed state. "Edwin, try looking over...." She stared in the direction which the muggle had pointed for a moment, and, failing to remember which it was, just motioned that way in turn. "Over there."

"Yes - you alright - you took a bit of a blow to the head there?" Edwin knew only from the week before how much that could result in some rather unfortunate results.[1]

He put his hand to her arm to check she was steady before he set off at a jog across the road, drawing his wand and uttering incantations to seek for magic, charms and curses. The pavement, litter, flowerbeds, gardens and cars each shone a moment as if they were in the dark and his wand were a torch picking them out of pitch black. Nothing, nothing, hang on...

He ran a few paces forward, crouched by a front garden.

"Flowers, in November?" He asked himself. Not entirely unusual - but these didn't look like hardy autumnal blooms, and rather like something reminiscent of his Hogwarts days in the greenhouse unless he was mistaken.

"I think we might have something here - anyone recognise these?" He called to his team, "Pollen perhaps, Merlin knows how they got into a garden here though!"

1.	Scatterbrain

This about flapped her wings.

Well, Beverly kept having to flap her wings to remain airborne.

Typical bigjob wizards. Never showing anything a second glance if it didn't carry a magical stick. She watched Drea's mother get magicked with a spell that caused her to hitch up all tight and fetal, left on the ground to wobble whenever another sneeze tried to work it's way out. Beverly thought the woman had explained herself as best as she could between outbursts. Maybe the key phrase to utter was 'magic school.' What would the wizards with sticks be doing had a victim been magical, someone like Drea?

With a rather displaced huff that sounded like a horse's whinny, Beverly flew over to where she suspected the problem might be coming from. Aha! Plants you didn't find around the cityfolk all that often. Landing on the other edge of the garden, Beverly turned into a rabbit behind a shrubbery.

"I think we might have something here - anyone recognize these? Pollen perhaps, Merlin knows how they got into a garden here though!" Ol' hex and discard from earlier when Patricia was added to his incapacitation count. Sounded like the guy in charge. Beverly primed herself by thumping one foot before lopping over to him...

And before you could say 'rabbit pellets' left a bunch of little pea-shaped wastes on his shoe.

In very short order, the scene around them was getting increasingly confusing and convoluted.  Both Danny and Andy were immobilized, obviously by magical means. Pete, however, continued to watch the scene, his reaction wavering somewhere between wanting to run and wanting to continue rubbernecking in dumbfounded fascination. 

Even without any idea what was going on, running seemed the least desirable option.  The sneezing appeared contagious and Pete running back to the residence and spreading gossip and rumors would only create a bigger mess. 

"Bloody hell!" Pete remarked, pointing across the street where the police officer had just sneezed himself into two recognizable figures. 

"Bit strange, no?" Jacoba remarked, looking back towards Pete, trying to give the impression of nonchalant calm.  She wasn't thrilled about leaving the other two lying there, immobilized, but it wasn't like standing there watching them was all that useful, either.  Pete seemed reluctant, as well, but followed as Jacoba lead the way across the street towards the garden gate. 

"Is there anything I can do?" Jacoba offered.  Greetings seemed superfluous, given the circumstances. 

"Catch that!" Edwin exclaimed, pointing at Beverly - a rabbit wasn't normally what was seen in a street - and they certainly didn't take a crap on your shoe unless in an enclosed space. This one had shot out of the flowers in a hurry, choosing to use his shoe as a toilet.

Another of the body bind spells shot out from a member of the team, this time in the rabbit's direction - not wanting to disobey the Department Head. Edwin didn't turn to see if it had been successful, but blinked and squinted at Jacoba in surprise.

"Fate is a strange thing, isn't it Jacoba!" He exclaimed in a hushed voice. "Are you with Muggles?" He asked in a similarly quiet voice, "Got a bit of a situation here - pollen, just seems to be affecting the Mu-." He looked at her in alarm and clapped his handkerchief to her face, grasping her hand firmly to her face. "Don't want you flying across the street too!"

"Those are puffapods, Sir."

Thank Merlin for someone in the team paying attention in Herbology.

"Puffapods!" Edwin exclaimed, "Good man. Get in touch with St Mungo's let them know. Aisling - puffapods!"

In all the commotion, there were more pops in the air, this time mediwitches and wizards from St Mungos, the equivalent of paramedics. Here to take away the Muggles in body binds to St Mungo's.

They'd have to check if the house belonged to a known wizarding family, come up with a reason, but first of all, they had to contain the affects as far as possible. This might be messy - pollen blowing everywhere.

Aisling was still reeling a bit from the impact, and kept herself to a slower pace as she followed. Which meant that she arrived just in time to hear Edwin's exclamation to her. "Yes, most certainly puffapods." Her herbology lessons might have been quite far back, but she had paid attention to them. And her recent bouts of gardening had brought a bit of those memories to the surface.

That Jacoba hadn't begun sneezing yet seemed a bit odd, but there were more pressing concerns. And the sounds of the St. Mungo's team sent a fresh shot of pain through Aisling's skull, which she pushed back as best she could. She could deal with it later.

With one of the wizards moving off to inform the newly arrivals from St. Mungo's, she turned her focus to the plants. "It should be manageable to round these up. If we can find a few plastic bags it will make the cleanup much simpler." Bagging up and removing unacceptable plants from such a location could raise precisely the right eyebrows. "Would you like me to speak to the residents?" Speaking to muggles was something she was quite comfortable with, after all.