The Fade

When such a child died, they called it fading, and textbooks described the slow, inevitable drain of strength and life that afflicted the infant. No book could describe the horror of standing by while a child died, however. Looking at her little sister, Harry was struck by how much she took for granted in her life. How many of the women at this gala had lost infants? How many were too afraid to try, paralyzed by the probability of tragedy. Were there others, even among her own friends, who might have had younger siblings?

**The Fade** is a condition affecting pureblood Wizarding families, especially in Britain. It results children, especially children born after the first one, being born weak and dying. It is a poorly understood yet unfortunately common phenomenon.

## 0verview

The Fade has occurred all over the world, but only affects a few places, such as Britain, at a high rate.

It is incurable, and the current way to deal with those families who have an affected child is to make the child comfortable and send them home to their family, while documenting the details of the case for those searching for a cure.

It is possible for a firstborn child to succumb to the Fade, but extremely uncommon; in those cases, both of the parents were from an extremely long line of purebloods. As well, children who only share one parent with an older sibling are less likely, especially if the shared parent is the father and not the mother.

## Research

There has been research into the Fade's cause over the past century. The current consensus is that the children die because don't have enough magic to sustain their life force.

Most of the research done into factors involving the Fade has dealt with ethnicity, nationality, and whether their magical affiliation is light or dark. Less research was done considering blood purity, considering the reluctance to fund or publish something controversial. However, Harry believes that inbreeding is a factor.

### Independent studies by Harry, Archie, and Hermione

When Hermione Granger heard about the phenomenon, she was understandably upset, and wanted to learn more, especially as a student who was studying perinatal-neonatal Healing. She didn't understand the difference between Squibs and children affected by the Fade. Rigel explained it as follows:

After Hermione proposed removing the child's magical core, to save the child at the cost of their magic, Rigel reminded her that this kind of operation would be highly taboo among the pureblooded families that are affected by the Fade.

Hermione was interested in investigating whether a sufficiently powerful mother could give some of her magic to the second child, based on previous cases of mothers' magic compensating for prenatal defects. She began to independently research the Fade.

After asking around, she came up with the following conclusions:

* 0% of cases occurred in a family where one parent was a Muggle or Muggleborn
* 70% of cases occurred in a family where both parents were pureblood for at least 4 generations
* 15% of cases occurred in a family where one parent was pureblood for at least 4 generations and one was pureblood for 3 or fewer
* 15% of cases occurred in a family where one parent was pureblood for at least 4 generations and one was a halfblood

After leaving Hogwarts, Hermione passed on her notes to Rigel to review. According to Rigel, it was so vast it was "like a roughly-drafted Mastery thesis."

Rigel later carried out an experiment with Blaise and Millicent involving Medi-Minis, attempting to discover if she could identify a Medi-Mini that held her own magic, and reabsorb the magic back into her core. She felt that figuring out if it was possible could be a stepping stone towards developing a theory as to why some people couldn't, which included the Fade, as well as those with Seifer's Syndrome and Squibs. Her experiment allowed her to move the Medi-Mini with her magic in it, but it exerted a great force on her, and she nearly stopped breathing. Blaise and Millicent were so troubled by the experiment that they did not want to be involved any further.

After discussing the matter with Dumbledore, she reached the conclusion that it could be possible to alter the child's core to accept the parent's magic, but doing such a thing would be as undesirable as removing the core, as it would stifle magical variation in the bloodline.

Meanwhile, Hermione developed a theory that, against common belief, magic was not created by a wizard's core "alone, from scratch". She wanted to meet up with Rigel to go over the theory further. She created an experiment, developing impermeable wards that block the flow of magic through the air, and tested various cases of wizards replenishing their core. She discovered that wizards naturally replenished their cores using ambient magic in the air, and could not do so in an environment where there was no magic in the air. This proved that wizards are entirely reliant on the magic around them, and that their cores are not creating magic on their own. She also suggested that the energy used when replenishing a core actually goes to shaping the magic towards a wizard's personal signature.

Using this, Hermione inferred that the true cause of the Fade wasn't that the child couldn't create magic, it was that they couldn't properly absorb the magic around them. She wanted to research the way that wizards alter wild magic in order to incorporate it into their core. She didn't know the reason that Muggleborn children don't experience this, but posited that it was because of a faulty gene expression; Archie suggested that it was caused by the initial donation of magic from the mother.

The three of them came up with the plan that Rigel would look into investigating cores personally, based on a suggestion Dumbledore had given her, Archie would look into Muggleborn magical development, and Hermione would look into the genetic side.

After this, Rigel became a wanted fugitive, and their project was put on hold. With Rigel gone, Harry suggested that Hermione could ask Lily, who was also knowledgeable on esoteric magic. Meanwhile, she decided to continue investigating and mail her findings to Hermione as "Rigel".

## Victims

* Younger sister of Alesana Selwyn
* Several children of Walburga Black (besides Regulus, see below)
* Sibling of Millicent Bulstrode
* Sibling of Ernie Macmillan
* Children of friends of Lily Potter

Regulus Black, the younger brother of Sirius Black, did not succumb to the Fade despite the fact that they were from a very pureblooded, inbred family. It is suggested that this was due to a Dark Arts ritual that affected Regulus, making him unable to have children of his own. Their mother regretted it afterwards, but was unable to reverse the process. The children who died of the Fade were born between Sirius and Regulus.

## Marriage law

One motivation of Tom Riddle's proposed marriage law was to help eradicate the Fade by encouraging purebloods to marry halfbloods.

It should be noted that the Fade still occurred in cases of marriage between purebloods and halfbloods (see above).

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Futile Facade: Chapter 7
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 The Futile Facade: Chapter 10
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 The Futile Facade: Chapter 9
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 The Futile Facade: Chapter 12
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 The Futile Facade: Chapter 13
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Malignant Masquerade: Chapter 2
7. ↑ The Ambiguous Artifice: Chapter 11
8. ↑ The Futile Facade: Chapter 1