Time Travel? Really!

The end of what we knew

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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New Year's Eve was generally considered to be a muggle celebration, though many of the wizarding population thought the day to be uplifting at the very least, looking forward to the upcoming year and hoping for good blessings for their family. A time when hoping and wishing for the new year to be even better was commonplace, and people celebrated the new beginning.

New Year's Eve of nineteen ninety-one was not celebratory in the slightest.

Nobody had any idea how to react to the recent news plaguing the pages of every newspaper in the country. In the past week many prominent members of society, most notably pure-blood supremacists, had fallen ill with a mysterious disease that drained their magical core and left the people in a coma, which didn't even guarantee survival.

At least four victims of this illness had already died suddenly from it, and the best Healers at St Mungo's could only suggest that those with weaker cores had died first. The suggestion that the magically weaker were dying first was considered an insult to many families, but when shown proof that patients such as Lucius Malfoy and Walden Macnair – both known to be magically powerful – were not deteriorating as quickly, those complaining could do nothing but stop and pray for their own family.

From the evidence gathered by personal Healers of the victims and their family members, around the Yule period just before the school break began, those infected began to feel lethargic and dizzy, slowly losing energy and sleeping more often to compensate. For the first few days it was nothing major, but eventually as the week progressed the illness seemed to have spread and worsened until those infected were bedridden and sleeping constantly.

Some had died quite quickly while some managed to fight it for longer, but it was agreed that the cause behind the illness was a mystery, as was the method to treat it. Magic infusions, potions and spells had all been investigated as possible treatments but nobody responded to anything. At this rate it seemed as if the individuals would all die or lose their magic completely; perhaps if the magic drain could be stopped then the patients could survive with just a portion of their core permanently depleted, but at this point the options were simply become a squib or die.

The Healers were horrified at the sudden illness and their inability to cure it, and Amelia had been alarmed when she was initially called in, until she realised just who had been infected. All the Death Eaters that she'd been compiling cases against in the past few weeks had all been conveniently rounded up in one place and were suffering from an unknown affliction.

Snape's testimony had been enlightening to say the least, and she knew beyond a doubt that this was a result of Voldemort dying. Snape had been suspicious that a link existed between the Death Eaters and Voldemort, and between his ideas and Rose's panicked confession that she was responsible for the 'illness', Amelia knew that they were dying because Voldemort had linked his core to theirs with the Dark Mark.

Even if they didn't die she might be able to convict them if she found enough evidence against them. The fact that so many Ministry officials were seemingly dying was enough to make Fudge cower in fear, and she might as well use the opportunity to get clearance on searching their homes for 'possible causes of the illness'.

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People were becoming so morbidly complacent with the news that people were turning up ill, with some dying every so often, that you would think that one more person dying on New Year's Eve wouldn't cause that much of a stir, and usually that assumption would be correct.