Albus Potter, Friends and Foes

Ch 5 Finally Better

Christy wondered, "Have you talked to Percival Frobisher about it, about kissing and touching and the like?"

"I like it that I have a dance partner, and someone to go to dances with, but I don't want to KISS him," Rose insisted. Rose had a disgusted look on her face. "I don't want to fall in love with HIM?"

"What about Scorpius?" Christy persisted.

"He has a girlfriend, and I really like Scorpius but his family hates me and, we can talk about almost everything but not about THAT. Can you fall in love with your best friend and still be a friend a talk about everything and not lose the talking and thinking? Can you decide that trying to fall in love would be the logical thing to do? That would be weird. I mean, decide to be in love instead of falling in love. Is that possible?"

*

Albus came into his dormitory room, saw Scorpius, and said, "The healers say we are healed enough we don't have to spend weekends in the hospital. I'm going to miss sleeping next to Cleo, but it is probably better if we don't. We are too young for ..."

"So you didn't?" Scorpius kidded.

"Of course not!" Albus exclaimed. "We always had clothes on, plus the healers who were taking care of us were in the same room, and we may have hugged but we didn't go any further than that.

"We can do this strange inhabiting each other's bodies thing, but we have to both agree and work at it. I did something like that when I rescued Cleo, not the same but something like it. It stopped when we were back at Hogwarts. I'm not sure what was happening when we were asleep or recovering, but it wasn't that physical or emotional or joining that we can sometimes do. It was just better being close."

*

It was the beginning of December, 2020, and healer Dr. Kearney was making a presentation to a large group of Magi the Ministry of Magic, including Kingsley, Hermione, Arthur Weasley and Harry. They were in a large conference room, and the doctor stood on a stage with a display behind him.

"Once in a while you are lucky," He started out. "The immune system of Magi has given us several advantages, and the Pfizer vaccine, the first one approved in Great Britain, seems to work for all Magi.

"We started out testing the vaccine from their standard vials, and quickly found out that we could double the number of doses by duplicating the vials. It doesn't work if you try to duplicate them again, though. It also doesn't take a very large dose to induce an excellent reaction in Magi. Twenty percent of the normal amount of vaccine induces an excellent reaction, that seems to last. We get twenty-five doses per vial, and often more. We Magi only seem to need one dose, as well."

The healer/Doctor put up a display on the board.

Muggle, 1 vial = 5 doses, it takes 2 doses, 2 ½ Muggles protected per vial.

Magi 1 vial x 2 = 2 vials x 25 doses per vial = 50 doses = 50 magi protected per vial.

"With what we as Magi are doing to tweak the amount of vaccine being made, we can easily justify taking 5,000 to 10,000 vials per week, protecting 250,000 to 500,000 Magi per week. Most of the few Magi deaths are in Magi that are over one hundred years old, and early in 2021 most of them, especially the ones at risk, should be vaccinated. By the spring or summer of 2021 we should have almost every Magi in the world protected from getting sick, and almost as importantly from catching this illness and not getting sick but spreading it to others.

"Most of the healers can administer the vaccines. Keeping the vaccine cold is a problem, but Magi can transport the vaccines using Dry Ice, frozen CO2."