We never knew it would get this bad.

We kept to ourselves, following the Statute of Secrecy. Even those countries that had a more integrated society – muggle and magicals, of course – there were things that we didn't consider. Sure, there were things that didn't affect us that muggles had to suffer through. The common cold wasn't so common among wizardkind, as there were differences in our physiology. Mutations, if you will, if you want to think about various comic book characters or whatever the muggles called them. Our lungs were just a bit different, our hearts, too. Our blood vessels generated in the womb with a natural threading running throughout that made an already strong and supple tubing that much stronger and more supple. Blood is a natural magical conduit, too, and thanks to that strong tubing we call blood vessels, we're able to handle more things. It was capable of more than a muggle's blood can for the same volume.

That was one reason a magical-turned-vampire was so feared. That's beside the point, though.

Those 'mutations,' or whatever you want to call it. Not all of us are comfortable with the word, but they made for things that muggle sicknesses and such couldn't get a foothold as easily as someone who never knew magic. It didn't mean that we couldn't get sick from them, it just meant that we had a much greater resistance to the things that plagued the larger population of non-magic users. This went on for centuries, maybe millennia. We just went about our business and lived our lives. It wasn't that important to us, because they weren't.

When the muggleborn and halfblood children came into our world with the knowledge that their 'sciences' taught them over the centuries, we dismissed them as mere affectations at best and stupid at worse. Surely there was nothing that Magic hadn't already discovered that this 'science' couldn't cover. Such things were but a child's pastime, to be engaged in for the moment and discarded while the next toy was found.

Granted, there was some things that we unbent enough to see the facts as we were willing to accept. The Healers saw that there were research matters on similar subjects in the muggle world. That research approached some of the things that stumped them in new ways and made new discoveries. They took the information that their muggle counterparts had winkled out and adapted them to their own use. None of the Healers discussed the fact that a muggle or group of muggles had the idea first. Well, not without knowing who they were talking to first, of course. Many of the older ones had blinders on, and that didn't help.

It was the same for the Aurors, although not in the same level of professional saturation. Some things were brought over by halfbloods that had a family history with that career. 'Law Enforcement,' the muggles call it but it was confusing enough to those of us that didn't have the training the Aurors did. A lot of us still don't understand what a dog can do in that kind of work.

They've tried to explain, with examples and in some cases the dogs themselves, but it didn't make a lot of sense to many of us. We can grasp the concept of training a dog to do something, but why this when a wand can do it easier?

Educators from the muggle world had some of the things we didn't know we were missing. Now that was a Kneazle among the owls, let me tell you. It was obvious that the people that came from that field and had spent what would a few short decades to us learning their craft. And the diversity! One came with a neatly bound book that she called a 'college catalog,' which listed the many fields of study and the different classes that the school she represented offered for its students.

We didn't want to admit to each other that we felt ignorant after just a few pages, and that was before she mentioned that those were prerequisite classes to bring a prospective student up to snuff before getting into their chosen field of study! There were no apprentices or journeymen, much less recognizable Masters, at least there in that specific school. No, they used a different method that seemed to work well enough for them. The terms were confusing, though.

Things like that kept the more arrogant of us willfully ignorant. That usually meant the purebloods with long family lines. They felt that the sheer ages of their families meant that there was plenty of safety for their bloodlines, and this 'knowledge' amounted to nothing more than birds scratching in the dirt for insects.

How wrong we were. How so very, very wrong.

There were things with names that we could pronounce and couldn't pronounce, things that made no sense even with explanation. Oh, the muggleborn among us tried and halfbloods that had the ability to grasp what the muggleborn tried to tell us seemed worried enough that we vacillated for a moment. The high and mighty among us wondered during the quiet hours of early morning reflection if these new things really were causes for concern? They seemed fanciful enough, if not outright ludicrous.

Who knew that birds got the flu? That didn't make sense. Oh, we knew about anthrax. From before the times of the Romans, there was enough of the knowledge of that affliction from those who raised our meat animals. It didn't affect us as badly as it did a muggle, but it didn't mean we dealt with it with joy and dancing. It was terrible enough and really took a hit on our magical cores to burn it out. Sometimes, wizards just weren't the same after a bad bout of it. If they died of it, which was rare but not unheard of, it was a painful death.

The knowledge gained by the muggle scientists that researched this 'bird flu' was quickly taken to the Department of Mysteries, who did seem to have a more open mind than more of the population. They were able to make use of it, although how is beyond the ken of most of us. All we cared about was that it worked and didn't affect us and the schemes that we had.

Schemes. We were all caught up in the things that we tried to do to gain power and influence over each other, even years after the final fall of the Dark Lord Voldemort. Things that we did to bring each other to heel, like an attentive Krup watching for the whip. Some of us used money, in varying currencies. Some used speculation on things, to varying degrees of success. Some used intimidation, although that worked for some better than others. Not many of us bothered with the things that the muggle world had to offer. Those that did were seen as diseased or sell-outs.

A lot of things that we didn't consider, however. We didn't consider that using magic for all those things that we took for granted meant that there was a weakening of ourselves in ways we'd never expected. We got so used to wand flicks and spell speech for practically everything that our bodies got used to the ease, as well. Many of the purebloods among us sneered at the muggleborn habits of exercise that filtered into a good percentage of the halfbloods. We forgot one basic thing.

Magic demanded a price for its use.

Magic gave us the gift of itself and expected it to be used in the service and betterment of our fellow magical. Many, if not most of the pureblood took that idea to mean, "The betterment of us." So many of us 'bettered' ourselves at the cost of those we saw as beneath us, that Magic decided enough was enough.

After a short period of reflection, it latched onto those muggle diseases of indeterminate origin and changed them. The bird flu was first. It was changed into something almost like dragon flu, but more insidious. It crept up on someone on feathered wings, with our daily newspapers and the letters that we tied to our owls' legs. It took years before someone made the connection, and it was only long after overhearing a worried conversation between a muggleborn and his halfblood wife in St. Mungo's.

The couple had just been informed that a daughter was deathly ill with this new illness, so new that no one had a term for it. Well, the muggles did, and it was the realization that colored the tones of the husband as he cried in his wife's arms. The daughter had always been sickly, thanks to a blood curse levied at her birth by a former wannabe suitor of the wife.

Her prognosis was grim, and six days after the onset of the symptoms, she was gone. She had lapsed into a magical coma two days after admittance and never woke up.

The Healers had seen death before, of course. It was part of their job. It didn't make it any easier to deal with, especially with a little girl not even of the age to attend Hogwarts. They consulted with each other in worried whispers and compared notes, as this was something new. They didn't want to see something like this out in public to cause more death, which is what Healers (the good ones

The eavesdropper had wondered what this 'bird flu' was, but considered it a fanciful thing that the lesser parts of society did. Birds didn't get flu, they just died and another bird took its place in the natural order. It wasn't like there wasn't plenty of them to go around.

Well, there were plenty that went around. Every day, every hour, for distances short and far. Not just by owl, but by robin, wren, sparrows, crows, ravens, hawks… you get the idea. Those that were infected slowly infected others like water slowly dripping onto stone, just to wear it down. Some were reinforced in their infection, too.

The second thing was this thing called a coronavirus. The second punch of that one took many with it. Aurors were everywhere trying to get people to submit to Healer interventions without a lot of luck. They did this for years, not knowing until it was too late that they were exposing themselves and others to a deadliness that lay in wait.

Potter was one of the first ones to go. The Boy-Who-Lived, who we couldn't really stop calling him that even after putting down Voldemort for the last time, didn't live through this. He had been everywhere for months, working tirelessly to get people to get screened and watch their health. The last family he visited wanted to find him later to thank him for coming to visit them and warn them, only to find out that he'd returned to his desk to fill out a shift report and never got up. His quill was still in his hand, resting on the last letter in 'Potter."

He never showed any symptoms.

There was a bit of a panic after that, especially when the truth about his early life came out. The Healers wondered if his body was too beaten up, figuratively and literally, to handle fighting the sickness he didn't even know he had. Even the prodigious magical strength he'd possessed had apparently been no help. People waited and worried, wondering if they would be next to stare into the approach of that unknown and if they would get any bit of warning, no matter how slight.

When it came out that this virus was jumping from person to person to person, without regard for magical ability, people started to lose their minds a bit. It didn't help that Italy, Spain, and France soon reported case after case, among others. The horrified viewing of those red and black dots spreading like waves onto beach shores stuck with everyone that saw them. It made an impact, even as muggle newspapers began running stories about what was happening. The accompanying pictures, even though they didn't move like wizarding pictures, was far worse.

A picture is supposedly worth a thousand words.

Some of the more enterprising and less moral of purebloods found a way to get 'vaccinated.' They reported horror stories of smiling women with sharp instruments gleaming in their hands. People lined up with suspicion in their eyes and some desperation. Large, open areas where people were herded like so many cattle, sheep, and goats. Even with the stories that stayed in the minds of magicals everywhere and kept alive by the more sensationalist papers in various countries, others took advantage of the surreptitious ways to get 'stuck.'

It became a badge of honor to wave around the little cards detailing the times and dates of each injection. People took to putting impervious charms on them and wearing them like jewelry, attached to fine link chains. It became de rigueur to offer the cards as proof of entrance to any gathering, from the small tea socials to the full Wizengamot meetings. Soon practically everyone was seen with a small white card on chains, fluttering in the breeze. Those who didn't have them were ostracized – some killed. There were never any witnesses, of course.

It was a badge of honor, until it became a harbinger of death.

Magic took the vaccines that were added by stages and further changed them. They waited to be activated, linking with the earlier bird flu variants and their antibodies. The vaccines for those worked only for appearances sake, but no one realized that either. Over time the vaccines denoted on those little cards built up in the populations of the world, person by person, town by town, city, state, country, continent.

Everyone started to breath a sign of relief tempered by the sadness of all the losses. What we didn't know was that the vaccines activated a secondary purpose with the last one.

The last thing was a monkeypox, and if there was a more stupid name for something we didn't know what it is. It didn't help that monkeys were not the favored animals for some. There was an explanation for the name choice, but it was shuffled off as unimportant. By now the Healers in St. Mungo's and other hospitals and clinics were on the ragged edge of collapse, their numbers depleted as well. As with the coronavirus and Potter, the symptoms didn't always manifest. Sure, there were pus-filled blisters that itched in the ones that showed symptoms. The ones that didn't often keeled over without warning.

What we didn't know was that Magic had maliciously formed those three illnesses to link together. The muggle variants had been changed and given the ability to grow into the hosts of the others without notice or detection of any kind. If someone had two, then they were soon to look like the washed-out versions of Inferi, but with all the reasoning and knowledge of a healthy magical.

Addition of the third created hemorrhagic bleeding that could not be stopped by any means, thirteen days after exposure. The only warning was mild aches easily mistaken for aging aches and pains, overwork, or overexertion. The students mistook the aches as sitting in classrooms or the library too much without being outside, since Quidditch and large gatherings had been banned for safety reasons.

We didn't know that it was far, far too late.

Magicals died in increasing numbers. We had already been reduced in population terribly, thanks to the Blood Wars. Now it was simply frightening. The old lines were vanished into the ether: Potter, Longbottom, Bones, Malfoy, Black, and so many more. Even the Weasleys were decimated. So many were gone, lost forever.

Five days ago, there was a booming voice that could be heard by every remaining magical. It made every wand and magical focus heat up to nearly combusting, but everyone could hear it castigating the actions and foolishness of the past. It had no tenderness to give and a lot of retribution for the affronts given it.

There was a long, long list and it took four days for the list to stop. There was an hour's silence, then the voice said when it returned that it was going to sit in judgment of the remaining magicals in the world. It didn't sound happy or even positive. It sounded final.

We don't know what's going to happen. We're standing at distances from each other, shouting between each other to discuss this worrisome event. Privacy is long gone. We all have this on our minds. The sicknesses are still in full force and more than one loud conversation has been halted by the sudden death of one of the speakers.

The owls are all gone.

The businesses are closed.

The house elves have been suffering some of the same effects, and have been defying their bonds to escape. Many have not survived.

The Ministry no longer operates but for a sputter here and there, and we're a breath away from anarchy.

We don't – wait… what's that? What? Oh, no.

No.

The voice has returned.

We're doomed.

The End

Author's Note:

I found the press release about the WHO declaring the monkeypox outbreak as a "global health emergency," as they did with COVID-19 before it became a pandemic. Naturally, this sparked a thought the moment my eyes fell upon various Stephen King novels on my bookshelf. Inspiration, yes, hopefully not real life.