Week 0: The crystal ball
The year is 1998 (?look this up). The place is Hogwarts Magical Academy (look up full name). The occasion is the first case of pigeon pox ever to hit Hogwarts. The unfortunate victim, Neville Longbottom of course, has been brought to the infirmary, where Nurse () is about to lay a good dose of magic on him, when in walks Professor Dumbledore, who has a new, typically bizarre sounding idea. Rather than magicking the measles out of Longbottom, it is proposed that they let the disease run its course, rather as the Americans have recently learned to let forest fires burn. After all, pigeon pox is annoying but rarely fatal, and having the disease does confer life-long immunity, so in the long run simply letting the schools population infect themselves and get over it might lessen the burden on the infirmary staff.
Nurse () caustically wants to know just how many of the students will suffer for Dumbledore’s little experiment, but Dumbledore just smiles in an absent-minded way and suggests that she asks Professor Trelawny, who, after all, is the one with several crystal balls at her disposal.
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