Albus Potter, Classmates and Elves

Ch 28 The International Confederation of Witches and Wizards

I want to thank my beta readers Deb and Diane again.

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Harry hated the pomp of the Opening Ceremony, but at least he did not have to wear the formal dress of the party the night before. There were the usual formalities to cover, and then Dr. Albert Salk, one of the chief healers of the Magi, was going to speak.

After he was introduced, Dr. Salk started. "Thank you Regent Potter for your words of introduction. We have a large number of things to cover today.

"First, I want to continue to encourage all Magi to receive their full series of vaccinations. I want to remind you that although we do not normally become as sick as non-magical people from contagious diseases, we do get sick, and we can transmit the diseases. In the report given to you I have listed several tragic if uncommon results of people not getting vaccinated, including two birth defects from Rubella resulting in the death of one Magi infant and the birth of one handicapped Magi infant.

"I also want to remind you that transmitting contagious diseases could be interpreted as causing harm to our non-magical neighbors, something that is finally against the law.

"Please drink your pumpkin juice. The juice and the magical spice we make it with is one of the reasons our bodies are somewhat immune to the effects of normal infectious diseases.

"We have some good news. After many decades of frustrating trials, we finally have a vaccine against dragon pox that is not worse than the disease. It has taken work with the magical genome to finally construct a vaccine that works, but this vaccine has at worst only moderate side effects. In most cases it will just be painful or cause some mild discomfort for a day or two. Please read the report you have been given to learn how and where we are rolling out the vaccination. We hope to have almost all Magi vaccinated within the year."

Harry then stood up and addressed the assembly. "Thank you Dr. Salk. Dr. Salk and a team of healers will be available if you have any questions about the Dragon Pox Vaccine or any other topic related to healing.

"The rest of this day and all of the next two days are going to be devoted to the problems we are having hiding from the modern world. With the proliferation of recording devices, with mobile devices that record their location using Global Positioning Satellites, and other No-Maj technology, it is becoming harder to hide. It is also costing more money, No-Maj money as well as Galleons, and we are having to dedicate more people to the effort. We now have Magi stationed around the world working twenty-four hours a day keeping the Satellite Global Positioning systems from spotting hidden Magi facilities. Keeping this valley hidden is an especially difficult job.

"As records are becoming more electronic, and duplicated in more places, it has become orders of magnitude more difficult to change records to hide us. Too many Magi are confident that we can fix any mistakes or lapses in the Statute of Secrecy. We know that there is evidence of us in No-Maj records that we cannot find and fix.

"I have a couple of examples from Great Britain. For years Magi have come to a train station in London to board a magical train to travel to our school in Scotland. No-Maj, what we call Muggles in Great Britain, figured out something was going on September first, and started watching the station. We now insist that almost all of our students and parents use either our Floo network or the newer Closet network to go to the train station. The few parents and students who do go to the train station enter through a couple of offices we have set up, and do not just disappear through a wall. There are too many recording devices now to do that.

"We are strongly discouraging people from living in No-Maj areas and finding so called hidden areas to Apparate. You have to figure that except for very rural areas, nothing is secret or hidden unless it is inside a building that has been magically protected. We have been buying up property around magical structures to better shield them from No-Maj eyes, sometimes at considerable cost."