The stairs are too tiring, and I'm hungry, so lets just do this thing here

Breakfast in the Great Hall was generally a very noisy, very social sort of thing. Children shouted across to each other, knives and forks clattered and scraped across plates, cups went flying, were bashed down on tables and just in general there was bedlam.

So why was it so quiet?

There were very few heads sticking up this morning, or the morning before, or the week before for that matter... all the students seemed to have their heads resting on the table, or were slumped down in their chairs, and almost no one was talking.

Of course, Jess knew the answer. It was the same reason his classes were dead silent, the same reason why students arrived late, and didn't hear the bell when it went off.

Everyone. Absolutely everybody, was sick, in some way shape or form.

"Goddamnit," he muttered quietly to himself, before rising from his chair and gesturing for the rest of the staff to join him behind the staff table

It made Jake sad to see that the Great Hall was not lively at all. The students seemed to be almost dead, like there was no life in them. Breakfast was usually the loudest time besides supper in the castle. This was where the students interact with their friends, they ate, talked, threw things at each other and right now everything was just so quiet, that it was eerie.

He didn't like it.

This sickness was the cause of everything and he just wanted it to be over. He didn't like seeing all the students this way, he was used to having them be all lively and excited. Though it had often annoyed him when he was a student but now he just really missed all that noise that they caused.

He gave a small, slightly uncomfortable cough and he looked at Jess. He stood up and sighed softly, rubbing his eyes gently.

It was quieter then usual though Mariana did not mind silence too much as she was listening to her increasing number of patients lament for the symptoms of the increasing illness. Some of them were already shipped off to the hospital, some of them were still in the hospital wing. One thing was for sure, long nights lied ahead.

The fork in her hands was moving without a concious command, he thoughts were not here, but elsewhere.

Jess's voice snapped her from that thought. She looked a little confused, but stood up to join them. First cough, second cough then it was gone again for the moment. "Are you alright?" she asked quiet enough so only the two of them could hear her.

James Manson was doing his early walk as he didn't like sleeping. He was the Gameskeeper for a reason and he loved to work with the animals in the Forest. He couldn't think what would happen if the animals were being slaughtered or anything. Anyway he could use some breakfast as he slowly walked inside the Hogwarts Castle. It was so quiet these days as he really didn't like that. It was something strange. Something that could explain what would happen. He knew about the sickness spreading like Rabbits that do it, but this was strange even for the School. He opened the Great Hall doors, as he slowly looked at the few students at the Great Hall.

Students getting here less and less.James thought as he walked to the staff table looking to Jake Collins, Mariana Diggory and Jess Potter. "Morning Jess, Jake, Mariana."James said as he took his seat next to Jess knowing that he wanted to discuss the matter of the Sickness around Hogwarts. "Less students are at the Grounds, but more in the Hospital wing, am I right?"He asked whispering it so only the staff could hear it.

Eating in public places was always awkward for Amelia, who preferred to take her meals outside when it was warmer, in her dormitory when she had been a student, and in her office now that she was a member of the staff. But since becoming headmistress, she could no longer get away with so many of her hermit tendencies; she needed to be the face of the school, which meant eating in the Great Hall, among many other inconveniences.

In reality, Amelia was only pretending to eat as she sat behind the staff table in the Great Hall. She was picking at her food, moving it around her plate to give the impression that it was disappearing, but her appetite had all but disappeared since she caught whatever bug it was that was going around the school. She hadn’t eating anything more substantial than crackers and water in the past week, and she had been feeling weaker and weaker because of it. Naturally skinny, Amelia hadn’t been able to afford losing what little bulk she had, but because she couldn’t seem to stomach anything, her bones had been growing more and more protrubent as he skin shrunk around them, and she had been wearing her clothing looser to hide the fact that she was losing weight.

Being headmistress turned out to be a real exercise in how much Amelia could hide: her terror at being in charge, the nasty rash that accompanied this illness, her fear over what would happen to the school if the students and staff continued to suffer from the symptoms. So far, the former Ravenclaw had been holding up, barely, but sooner or later she would need to face that which she was hiding from.

And as it turned out, Jess was going to be making that decision for her. At least her keen sense of observation hadn’t been destroyed by the virus that was wracking her body of pretty much everything else, so she noticed when he gestured for she and a few of the other staff to join him standing behind the table. The grave look on his face and that of another young professor, Jake Collins, told Amelia that she wasn’t going to like having to have this conversation, but she also knew her duties as headmistress wouldn’t just vanish. She needed to face them eventually, so she rose from her seat to join the others behind the table.

“Good morning, Jess, Jake,” Amelia said stuffily, "Marianna, James," inclining her head to each staff member in turn, “I hope you find yourselves in better health than I am, though with the way things have been going lately, I don’t hold out much hope for that.”

That’s Amelia. Always the optimist.

Marcus was green. GREEN! So were a lot of people so he wasn't the only one looking like an alien. He was unsually quiet and so were the rest of the Great Hall. After a few minutes he heard Jess mutter something under his breat and gestured for the staff to join him in the back. Marcus groaned and tirdely got up, with his mug of course, to go see what Jess wanted.

He rubbed his eyes and coughed gently, also enduring the pain of his body aches and the relentless itch of his green rash, which was now over his body.

"Yes?"

Mariana barely knew James, but she only assumed he adressed her for politeness and did not mind at all. Everything was still new to her, or at least a lot of people, school was very much the same from two years ago when she left it thinking of never coming back, but life seemed to have other plans. "Hello James, Amelia, Marcus.." she replied nodding to each of them. Marcus she was familiar with from the order meetings and she didn't know Amelia much though they went to school together and she only tried to like her because Arthur had a thing for her though she wasn't sure if he was ever going to appear again.

"Yes which is more work for me and less for you..." she whispered back to James so the rest of them could hear. "But it's useless to worry for something we cannot change even if we keep doing so. I have a couple of ideas which i will let Robert know tonight, I have another two students to ship-off to him tonight. And hopefully we will never use one of those ideas." she added quickly and silently. Watching people die and not being able to save them made her mind more drastic.

Jess smirked and shook his head as most of the staff rose to join him, including the headmistress. "So I'm not the only one, huh," he said, pulling at his sleeves to reveal the green tinge spreading down his arm. At first the illness had scared the living daylights out of him - he was convinced he was gonna die - but even now he was simply tired of it, tired from it, more like.

"I don't know, sorry Amelia if I'm stepping on your toes here... but I'm just getting a bit freaked out here. Tell me if I'm overreacting wont you?" He asked, looking directly at the Headmistress for a moment. "We're the highest concentration of magical beings in Britain, as far as I'm concerned, and we know that this disease only affects the magical people.." he told them, rubbing his eyes for a moment and flinching a little as the movement irritated one of the rashes on his elbow. "Is there anything we can do? Just going to classes and sitting here doesn't feel like enough to me" he told them, a note of helplessness entering his voice for a second

The arriving staff members only served to confirm Amelia’s fears that the staff as well as the student body were being infected by the culprit responsible for this disease. Marcus and Jess were both sporting the green rash that Amelia was both covering with long sleeves and treating with the salve she had gotten from the healers. But between the weight loss and the bags under her eyes from lack of sleep, Amelia wasn’t really fooling anyone; she looked just as sick as everyone else, even without the green colouring.

Jess began the conversation, for which Amelia was grateful. Although she now socialized on a much more regular basis – being headmistress involved even more public events than being the daughter of a socialite – Amelia was still just as conversationally awkward as ever. Besides, Jess was the one that had summoned everyone to this location behind the table, so it only made sense that he say his piece first.

Much of what he said echoed Amelia’s own feelings, right down to the helplessness in his tone as he finished and looked to her for a response. She wanted to reassure him – actually, she more wanted to reassure herself – but as she tried to think of the words, she came up empty. It wasn’t because she didn’t have the social graces, either. It was because she really didn’t know what to do about this illness, this panic, any of this.

I’m too young for this… Amelia thought for the millionth time as her staff turned to look at her, searching for guidance and hoping for wisdom that exceeded Amelia’s years.

“You’re not overreacting,” the young headmistress began cautiously after taking some time to formulate her words. She had chosen the easiest thing to reply to first, “Clearly we cannot continue to hope that this will just go away on its own. From what we’ve all seen and experienced, this is a problem that only grows with time, so we ought to be figuring out how we’re going to deal with it until a cure can be discovered.”

“As far as actual methods...” Amelia continued, even more hesitant now that she didn’t have a set idea of what to say next, “I think it is important that students continue to attend class for as long as possible. I think it’s pretty clear that everyone who is going to catch this has already gotten it, so I’m not worried about quarantining anyone. Going to lessons gives at least some semblance of normalcy to the school, despite the abnormality brought on by our present… situation,” Amelia finished, for lack of a better word.

Wow. That almost sounded… like leadership, Amelia’s subconscious teased, though legitimately impressed by the fact that Amelia had managed to pull together that many coherent sentences in a row.

“Beyond that… I’m open to suggestions,” the redhead said, looking to her colleagues, “Marianna – do you know any more about what the healers have been able to find out about what is going on? Haven’t they developed further treatment by now?” Amelia asked, her last sentence coming across more impatient than she had intended as she reached to scratch the rash on her lower back, hidden by an over-sized shirt.

Quick! Backpedal before you are forever branded as a woman who couldn’t hold her tongue!

“I mean… well, what I meant was… the sooner we find a cure, the better, for us and the students,” Amelia ended pitifully, blushing deeply at her social faux-paux.

I knew that earlier flash of brilliance was too good to be true…

Jess nodded as Amelia spoke, proving why she was in the position of Headmistress - why the governing board had seen fit to make the appointment. "Right, I suppose it really is too far gone for us to hope of quelling the spread of the disease, and all we know so far indicates that it's not person to person spread, so I suppose quarantine would achieve nothing," he agreed.

"It's just," he began, unsure of how to phrase what he had to said. "Well, I feel helpless, and it's horrible. Soon, I know in my class for example, there will be no point in having the lessons, as neither I, nor my class will be capable of actually performing the magical tasks I set them," he explained, frowning all the while.

"I... I've been working with the Ministry on trying to find a solution to this, and I was thinking that maybe we, the staff, and the students could be doing something as well? Else what we teach will be worth nothing in little more than a few weeks," he finished.