Albus Potter, Classmates and Elves

Ch 46 Hogwarts Quarantined

Monday, March twenty-third, Albus noticed a great deal of talking among the professors at the head table at breakfast. He mentally tried to contact Cleo, and she indicated that she was listening to him.

'Do you notice the commotion at the head table?' Albus thought.

'Yes, but I cannot sense what is happening,' Cleo thought back. Al and Cleo broke contact, but continued to observe the unusual level of activity at the head table.

At the end of the meal Professor McGonagall stood up. "Classes and meals will all be delayed an hour today. Your professors and others have an emergency meeting right now. You will receive more information later."

Albus noticed his Aunt Hermione walking in, wearing a medical mask, as breakfast was ending. "I wonder if this has anything to do with that Covid-19 illness we have been reading about?" Albus pondered, looking at Scorpius.

It seemed like everyone at each of the tables was trying to find out if anyone knew what was going on. No one did, but gossip was rampant.

*

There was a modest sized room next to the Great Hall. It was the room the first year students were led into before the sorting, and it was used for meetings occasionally. Minerva McGonagall led Hermione and the staff into the room and closed the door.

Minerva looked over at Hermione, who stood up to speak. "We have a real problem with Covid-19, a new Muggle illness."

"Why?" Cinnamon Appleleaf wondered. "I thought Magi didn't get Muggle illnesses, or at least did not get very sick if they did catch them."

"That is only partly true," Willie Nutting, the old history teacher, jumped in with. "I am one-hundred thirty-eight years old. My first husband died of what was called Spanish Flu over a hundred years ago. He was a Muggle, as was my second husband. I saw all the deaths and damage that what they called childhood illnesses did before vaccines, mostly to Muggles but also to some magical families. A Muggle niece of my first husband died of Pertussis, what we called Whooping Cough. One of my children caught it, and it was horrible. She was in St. Mungo's for two weeks, and for two days of that there were healers at her bedside all day and night with spells and potions to keep her breathing.

"You look carefully enough at us really old Magi and you will see some of us have scars from Smallpox or Measles. I know a wizard who is hard of hearing because of Measles. If he had been a Muggle, he probably would be deaf, but the healers did save some of his hearing."

"The healers are scared," Hermione let the Hogwarts staff know. "There are a few older Magi who have died of it in Italy. In the New York area of North America, where many Magi live, Covid-19 is more prevalent than people think. The deaths are just starting, but the Magi have their own test, a European Muggle test, and there are far more cases than people think and the trend is ominous. People can get this illness and never show any symptoms, so it is not going to be easy to contain it. Most of the deaths have been old people or people who have other problems, but not all.

"How isolated is Hogwarts? Who has contact with people outside of Hogwarts?"

"I spend almost half of my nights with Hanna at our quarters at The Leaky Cauldron," Neville volunteered shyly. "She occasionally spends the night with me here as well."

Hermione put her hands up to her face and shook her head. It had never occurred to her that professors might be spending nights with a spouse somewhere other than Hogwarts. "Anyone else?" she asked.

"I go back to my house most weekends," Horace Slughorn replied. "I'm only here part time, working with a few of the older Potion students, mostly the ones here for advance study after their seventh year."