Marooned - Fred Weasley

Chapter 54: Glitch

"What do we know?" asked Sarah, sat down in the Meeting Room at St Mungo's.

Every Healer and Trainee in the hospital had been summoned by request of the High Healer and he was standing imposingly at the top of the table, no one had dared to utter a word ever since they'd entered.

"There have been some cases of a variant of the Dragon Pox, without any explanation," he spoke sternly. "We have quarantined them, but I have reason to believe the virus was planted. We might lose more than one life today, I need you all to work on the cure."

"I'm sorry, planted?" asked Hippocrates, scribbling some words on his notepad.

"Yes, I'm afraid. I've alerted the authorities. Please wear your masks and gloves around them. We do not need any spreading," he said sternly and went about his schedule. "I'll ask you to stay until midnight, we need all hands on deck. And please pass by decontamination after treating the patients."

"Do we think it was You-Know-Who's doing?" asked Augustus in a hushed voice. Sarah took a deep breath, something wasn't right about this. The papers had treated the explosion of the Auror Training facility as an accident, but no one was there except for her and Selena, and they didn't see the obvious black smoke spiraling around the ruins. It wasn't an accident, far from it.

"I don't know. Would he resort to biohazards? He's too magic dependent for that," she said, a breathy voice. Augustus shrugged and returned his attention to the High Healer.

"How many patients do we have?" asked another Healer opposite to Sarah and Hippocrates.

"A group of six adults, but they were not in the same area, nor did they have any contact, direct or through the same people. And another one-" that man was stone cold, Sarah had never seen him blink, but now he sighed and looked down, "A child."

Sarah gasped, "A child? How old?"

"Ten."

He passed the table and distributed the files of each patient to a different Healer and when he passed her Healer in Charge, he leaned down and whispered, "I'm asking you to take charge of the child. I promised his parents to do everything I can, you're the best I have, Hippocrates."

With a long sigh, Hippocrates nodded, took a hold of the file and gestured for Augustus and Sarah to follow. She and Augustus exchanged a sickly look, knowing the effects of the illness on children. His chances of survival were close to nil.

_

"Call after Margaret!" shouted Hippocrates, Augustus ran out of the room.

"What do I do?" said Sarah panicking, her wand out. The little boy was seizing and there was nothing they could do.

"Hold him to the side, he'll start vomiting soon," he ordered and she did exactly that. The little boy was green-faced, now puking blood and crying. Margaret ran in then, the expert on contagious diseases. They had never seen anything like it, and only managed to stop his vomiting with a powder she sprinkled on his face.

Some of his boils erupted and he yelled out in pain, he started bleeding again.

"Bandage them!" she shouted but Sarah had already taken out the rolls before she did, started rolling them around the little boys arms and neck.

Augustus, Hippocrates and a whole team were inside the room, now, Margaret was shouting out orders for everyone. They locked the door and closed the blinds.

Margaret ordered Sarah to hold the little boy as tightly as she could, got out her wand and shot ice cold water inside his nose, thus easing the pain and his crying stopped.