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A Magical Epidemic
- by Margaret Groust
Meet Paige O’Connor, clerk at Madam Malkin’s in Diagon Alley, member of the HPPA (Hogwarts Parent and Professor Association), and mother of three. She’s just signed up for a trial of experiments soon to be conducted at St. Mungo’s. The experiments will focus on a new illness that appeared sometime in October, when there were only few victims. In just over a month, the numbers have steadily increased and the disease doesn’t show any sign of abating.
What is it? The Healers haven’t seen anything like it before. The mysterious illness affects a person’s magic in startling ways.
Miss O’Connor describes the symptoms. “It started gradually at first. I noticed my magic was getting weaker and more sluggish. I thought I might be stressed or that I was just having an off week, but then it got worse, and many of my spells stopped working completely. Now I can barely cast Lumos, and even magical locations look hazier to me. When I’m heading to work, I have to pass through the Leaky Cauldron, and there are times when it just won’t appear! I’m standing in front of the brick wall and the bricks won’t move! I tap my wand and nothing happens! It’s terrifying. I feel like my magic, my identity, is being stripped away from me.”
Some other unlucky witches and wizards have experienced the opposite problem. Instead of losing their magic, their spells are stronger, more explosive, unpredictable. And dangerous. One early morning on November 9th, when Mr. Crumbletush tried to play a prank on one of his neighbors, the simple swish and flick he used to levitate a bucket of tomato juice over his neighbor's head backfired in a big way. The gesture set fire to the side of his house and his neighbor’s fence!
No one was seriously injured, but his neighbor had this to say: “I’ll never let my dog crap on his precious lawn again, I swear!”
Mr. Crumbletush, outraged, calls out for justice. “Those Healers have got to get off their batookises and figure this out! I’ve spent my whole retirement making that grass green and rooting out the garden gnomes, and now my lawn has scorch marks! Scorch marks! Never mind the side of my house. This is ridiculous! I can’t even pick up my wand without blowing something to smithereens!”
Healers believe that these two magical impediments may be related. How? No one knows yet. It’s not caused by a creature bite, a spell gone wrong, a potion, or any of the usual culprits, as far as the Healers can tell. The disease doesn’t make anyone physically ill, or affect their appearance or state of mind.
This is what makes the disease so terrifying. None of the victims suffer from horns, boils, or dragon pox. No one can tell, just by looking at someone, who has it and who doesn’t. But it makes us lose control over what many witches and wizards take for granted, what comes as naturally to us as breathing: our magic.
The theories surrounding this illness are as wild as they are varied:
“The muggles are at fault! The muggles have found us out and are stealing our magic with their refriger-gators and air-coptors! This is why the Ministry needs to pay better attention to who’s spilling secrets, yeah? There’s a statute of secrecy for a reason, damn it!” ~Mr. Crumbletush
“It’s the werewolves, obviously. How many attacks have we had in the past few months? These problems started at around the same time. Give those beasts an inch and they’ll take over, terrorizing innocent people!” ~Sweatpea Todd
“The Ministry is behind it, of course. We all know the Department of Mysteries is working on something big, but it leaked, and this is the result. Of course they’re going to deny it. They don’t want us civilians to know what they’re really up to, and Merlin forbid they own up to their mistakes!” ~Anonymous
“Someone, some group is trying to scare us by showing what they can do, by making us desperate. Eventually, when things get really bad, they’ll come forward and offer a cure, but only if we give them what they want. Power, the Ministry, Gringotts? It could all be theirs. Mark my words, this ‘illness’ was planned.” ~Penelope Pixieswish
One of the St. Mungo’s Healers, Cecily Antonopoulos, offered these reassurances: “There’s no reason to panic. We’re working as fast as we can to discover the exact cause and to contain the disease. Testing will begin as early as next week, so if you are experiencing magical difficulties and wish to be a part of the group, please contact the St. Mungo’s Head Healer, Tulpin Creedish, right away.”
If anyone has any information on the disease, contact St. Mungo’s immediately!
(For more information on this plot, please read this thread. If anyone would like to add a quote to this article, please PM me at Fauna Blake).
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[November 17] A Magical Epidemic