Chương 310: Ch300- Plague

Cassian paced along the front row, wand tapping against his palm.

"Right," he said.

"Magical plagues. Enlighten me. What do you lot already know?" A few hands crept up. Cassian pointed at Theo.

"Magical plagues," Theo started, "are diseases that strike magical populations disproportionately or exclusively. They don't behave like Muggle illnesses because their spread isn't limited to biological means." He folded his arms lightly, thinking.

"Some ride ambient magic. Some attach to spellwork. Some, like the Pale Gaspi only activate when a witch or wizard performs certain charms. Others, like the Crimson Mire outbreak in 1431, infected anyone who handled tainted potion ingredients." A hum went through the class. Theo continued, "They cause structural damage to magic itself. Not just the body. Breaking magic, corrupt intent. That's why they're so dangerous. They don't need a wound to get inside you." Cassian tilted his head.

"Not bad. Look at you turning into someone's grandfather's worst nightmare at dinner." Theo sat again, smiling. Cassian turned to others.

"Good start. Technical without sending us all to sleep. Anyone want to build on it? Preferably without mentioning bodily fluids. Lunch's right after this." Hands rose again. He pointed at Susan Bones. She adjusted her quill behind her ear.

"Magical plagues often target a gap in magical immunity," she said.

"A weakness people don't realise they have. The Wending Sickness spread through wand fumes. The Laughing Rot targeted practitioners of joy magic, court jesters, charmwrights, even some Healers. People who never considered themselves at risk." A few students shuddered at the name Laughing Rot. Cassian nodded.

"Exactly. Plagues don't care how cheerful you are. If they did, most of you would be immune." Neville lifted a hand. Cassian motioned him on.

"The Mordred Bloom started as a plant-based plague," Neville said.

"Spores that latched onto Magicks. If you were strong, it grew faster. The stronger you were, the quicker it drained you." Seamus muttered, "At least I'd survive that one," and Parvati elbowed him. Cassian continued pacing.

"So you've got the gist. Magical plagues don't spread because someone sneezed on a doorknob. They spread because magic interacts with the wrong thing at the wrong time, or because someone engineered something stupid and unleashed it on the world." He stopped at the front, leaned against the edge of the desk.

"Right. Someone define the difference between a curse outbreak and a magical plague. Zabini?" Blaise sat up.

"A curse outbreak is local. Traceable. Usually tied to a single caster, object, or event. Magical plague doesn't need a caster. It maintains itself once loose. No central point to cut away." Hermione chimed in without waiting for recognition, "And plagues evolve. Hexes don't." Cassian pointed at him then her.

"Correct, Zabini. And thank you for the enthusiasm, Miss Granger." He turned back to the board and scribbled... PLAGUE OUTBREAK CURSE"Three terms," he said.

"And don't mix them up unless you want every Healer in St Mungo's sending you rude holiday cards." He tapped plague.

"This thing overwhelms populations. You contain it or you bury cities." He tapped outbreak.

"Smaller, but still vicious." He tapped curse.

"Personal. Targeted. Sometimes spreads if the original caster was an idiot, but not naturally." He swept the room with a glance.

"We're going to look at the messy ones. Proper historical catastrophes. The times entire regions said, 'Right, that's enough magic for today,' and set themselves on fire trying to fix it." Parvati raised a hand.

"Are we covering the Ashfal Purge?" Cassian's eyebrows shot up.

"We'll touch on it," he said.

"Later. When we've established you lot aren't going to sprint face-first into something ancient because you're curious." A few Ravenclaws looked away knowingly. Cassian clapped.

"Right. Before we start the actual history, one more question." He pointed at the class at large.

"Give me the reason magical plagues hit Magicks harder than Muggles. And don't say because we're dramatic, though that is a factor." Hermione, Susan, Padma, and half the Ravenclaw row shot their hands up. Cassian pointed at Padma.

"Go on." Padma sat straighter.

"Magic amplifies both cause and effect. Anything that interacts with magic, enchantments, or environmental magic gets multiplied. One spark becomes ten. One contaminated charm becomes a village collapse. Magic magnifies it. Doesn't dampen contagion." Cassian snapped his fingers.

"Exactly. Our magic is brilliant for floating teacups and ruining carpets. Terrible at stopping things that hitch a ride on it." He lifted his wand and images appeared in the air. First the Dragon Pox, then shifting shapes for other plagues that had made entire regions rethink their life choices. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Some plagues turn up on their own," Cassian said.

"Dragon Pox, for example. First appeared centuries ago, devastating huge swathes of Europe, now it's mostly a mild nuisance unless you've the constitution of a damp sponge." A few students scribbled quick notes.

"But others," he went on, "are Magick-made. Designed for evil. Vicious because someone wanted them vicious. A handful were brewed for profit, but most were crafted because the caster wanted a particular group of people gone." More than one person gulped. Tracey raised her hand.

"People really create plagues for profit?" Cassian let out a quiet sigh.

"Don't underestimate greed, Miss Davis. Poisoning the well didn't become a saying by accident." The illusion shifted. Grass vanished. Smoke rolled through the room. Rows of tents flickered into view, battered banners, muddy trenches, lanterns swaying in the wind. A war camp. Cassian walked through it.

"This," he said, "is the Siege of Calderford. Eight hundred years ago. Two kingdoms at each other's throats for a border no one remembers anymore." The camp split into two mirrored halves, each with their own colours. Fires burned low. Witches and wizards moved like shadows.

"The fighting stalled," Cassian said.

"Neither side could push through. Supplies dwindled, tempers frayed, and both armies camped a mile apart. That's when a third group stepped in." A new set of cloaked figures appeared between the two camps, faces hidden, water gourds hanging off their belts.

"They called themselves the Mirehands. Mercenaries. Traders. Healers when it suited them. They wandered between camps selling salves, water, trinkets, whatever kept them welcome." The illusions zoomed on the gourds. A faint reddish film clung to the insides.

"They laced the wells," Cassian said.

"Both sides. Same plague. Same dose. No one noticed." Figures filled buckets. Soldiers drank. One wiped red foam from his beard and laughed it off as bad wine. Messengers rode off with barrels to nearby villages, carrying the plague with them.

"Every troop movement spread it further. Every stop along the way contaminated another well. By the time either kingdom realised what was happening, half their border towns were already coughing up scarlet foam." Hannah Abbott's hand flew to her mouth. Cassian went on.

"While both sides keeled over, the Mirehands stepped in with 'cures.' Expensive ones. They sold antidotes to whoever could pay." The illusion shifted again. Slaves. Chains. People forced into labour lines.

"When they sold enough, they started to trade 'soldiers' for kingdoms." Silence swept the room.

"They sold bodies to both sides," Cassian said.

"Sold cures. Sold information. They let the war drag on while they made a fortune off the suffering they manufactured." Hermione's quill hovered mid-air. Harry stared straight ahead. Draco's mouth had tightened.

"So yes," Cassian said lightly, "people absolutely create plagues for profit. Human history is full of bright ideas like this." Neville swallowed.

"What happened to the Mirehands?" Cassian folded his arms.

"The plague burned itself out. The kingdoms didn't. They joined forces for the first and last time, tracked the Mirehands across half a continent, and shut down every base they'd built."

"Shut down?" Ron echoed. Cassian gave him a look.

"You're old enough to translate that." Ron paled. A few students shifted nervously. Cassian added, "Relax. I'm not testing you with samples. Probably." Half the class stiffened. Cassian grinned.

"I'm kidding." He paused.

"Mostly." He swept his wand through the air. The illusion split apart into scattered scenes. Alchemists bent over steaming cauldrons, kings in war tents, merchants with suspiciously full purses, back-alley brewers carrying crates that glowed the wrong colour.

"Across history," he said, "you'll find a cheerful trend. People with too much ambition and not enough supervision made plagues for all sorts of reasons. Control a kingdom, topple a rival, line their pockets, ruin someone's decade... take your pick. And most of the ones we still talk about today weren't made for strategy or profit." The images darkened. A cauldron cracked. A village flickered out like a candle.

"They were made because someone wanted suffering to spread faster than sense." A few students shifted. Even Pansy stopped twirling her quill. Cassian pointed his wand again, and the illusions stilled.

"The Zombie Virus." Half the room perked up. The other half recoiled. Cassian held up a hand.

"The one so catastrophic it nearly cleared the human race off the board. Every culture on Earth has zombie stories. Every single one. Doesn't matter the continent, doesn't matter the climate, doesn't matter the century. Even Muggles, who couldn't magic their way out of a paper bag, still tell those stories. Why? Because fear that old doesn't fade. It buries itself so deep in the collective memory that you inherit it from people who lived long before your great-great-great-grandparents existed."

The scene turned into silhouettes, figures stumbling through an ancient valley, bodies hollowed out by something that looked more hunger than disease. Wrongness wearing the shape of people.

"This was pre-Founders," Cassian said.

"It wasn't anything close to what we'd call civilisation. When magic was wild and temperamental and most spellwork involved shouting at the sky until something happened." A few uneasy laughs rustled through the class.

"This plague didn't spread by bites alone," Cassian continued.

"That's the part Muggles know. Every time someone cast even the smallest charm, everyone around them was affected. It rode intent. It latched onto life the way frost takes glass. And once it took root, it hollowed you from the inside out until nothing left behind could rest." The silhouettes twitched. Heads turning at odd angles. Hermione's quill slipped from her fingers. She didn't pick it up. Cassian kept going.

"This wasn't a natural phenomenon. No whim of weather or stray cauldron accident. Someone made it. Crafted it. A magical plague designed with one goal in mind... wipe life from the earth. And they nearly managed it. Population crashed, wasn't a slow dwindle either, no. Magical lines snapped like twigs. Entire regions went mute." He pointed his wand at the figures.

"And the worst part? Even after the Founders, even after the Statute of Secrecy, even after centuries of stabilising magic, the memory lingered. Muggles don't remember what it was, but they remember the fear. That's why their stories repeat the pattern even when they've no reason to know it. Something in their bones remembers a time when the world nearly ended because a magician with too much power and absolutely no sense designed a plague that couldn't die properly." Dean swallowed hard.

Parvati whispered, "How did anything survive?" Cassian let the illusions settle into faint outlines before dismissing them entirely.

"Barely," he said.

"And only because a handful of early practitioners worked out how to burn the magic itself out of infected bodies. Couldn't cure. Just scorch the magic so thoroughly that the plague had nothing left to cling to. It was a brutal fix, but it worked." Hermione rubbed her palms down her robes.

"And the creator?" Cassian gave her a rueful look.

"History disagrees. Some say a warlord. Some say a cult. Some say a scholar who thought they could 'improve' humanity. My personal theory? Someone who should've been banned from using a magic before they learned to walk." A few students laughed, mostly to disperse the awkwardness. Cassian tapped the desk with his wand.

"The point is, magical plagues don't come from nowhere. They come from evil. From anger, desperation, greed, or a level of curiosity that should've been shoved off a cliff. And once released, they don't vanish easily. They persist in stories, nightmares, cautionary tales, even when the world forgets why." He leaned back on the desk, hands braced either side, giving the room a slow look-over.

"Right, children," he said, with a big smile.

"Before I send you off, a final public service announcement. In the grand tapestry of life, your biggest battle's against evil. Shocking, I know. Now, when you're older, grumpier, and have a small herd of your own... teach them well. Love them. Kindness, ethics, basic empathy. Because one badly raised child can ruin the entire world." The class erupted in a collective groan. Cassian grinned.

"Oh hush. If I can suffer adulthood, so can you." He waved them toward the door.

"Off you go. No homework." Chaos broke instantly, chairs scraping, quills vanishing, cheers bouncing. Some students bolted, some lingered in clusters still arguing about plagues, and Seamus left muttering something about implosions as if fate hadn't heard enough already. Cassian watched them spill out.

"Right," he murmured once the last of them disappeared.

"Next class will definitely set something on fire."