22 chapter

Fred fell into a doze, his head sagging sideways onto his shoulder.
Ginny was curled like a cat on her chair, but her eyes were open;
Harry could see them reflecting the firelight. Ron was sitting with his
head in his hands, whether awake or asleep it was impossible to tell.
And he and Sirius looked at each other every so often, intruders upon
the family grief, waiting . . . waiting . . .
And then, at ten past five in the morning by Ron’s watch, the
kitchen door swung open and Mrs. Weasley entered the kitchen. She
was extremely pale, but when they all turned to look at her, Fred, Ron,
and Harry half-rising from their chairs, she gave a wan smile.
“He’s going to be all right,” she said, her voice weak with tiredness.
“He’s sleeping. We can all go and see him later. Bill’s sitting with him
now, he’s going to take the morning off work.”
Fred fell back into his chair with his hands over his face. George
and Ginny got up, walked swiftly over to their mother, and hugged
her. Ron gave a very shaky laugh and downed the rest of his butterbeer
in one.
“Breakfast!” said Sirius loudly and joyfully, jumping to his feet.
“Where’s that accursed house-elf? Kreacher! KREACHER!”
But Kreacher did not answer the summons.
“Oh, forget it, then,” muttered Sirius, counting the people in front
of him. “So it’s breakfast for — let’s see — seven . . . Bacon and eggs,
I think, and some tea, and toast —”
Harry hurried over to the stove to help. He did not want to intrude
upon the Weasleys’ happiness, and he dreaded the moment when
Mrs. Weasley would ask him to recount his vision. However, he had
barely taken plates from the dresser when Mrs. Weasley lifted them
out of his hands and pulled him into a hug.
“I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t been for you,
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Harry,” she said in a muffled voice. “They might not have found
Arthur for hours, and then it would have been too late, but thanks to
you he’s alive and Dumbledore’s been able to think up a good cover
story for Arthur being where he was, you’ve no idea what trouble he
would have been in otherwise, look at poor Sturgis. . . .”
Harry could hardly stand her gratitude, but fortunately she soon
released him to turn to Sirius and thank him for looking after her children
through the night. Sirius said that he was very pleased to have
been able to help, and hoped they would all stay with him as long as
Mr. Weasley was in hospital.
“Oh, Sirius, I’m so grateful. . . . They think he’ll be there a little
while and it would be wonderful to be nearer . . . Of course, that
might mean we’re here for Christmas. . . .”
“The more the merrier!” said Sirius with such obvious sincerity that
Mrs. Weasley beamed at him, threw on an apron, and began to help
with breakfast.
“Sirius,” Harry muttered, unable to stand it a moment longer.
“Can I have a quick word? Er — now?”
He walked into the dark pantry and Sirius followed. Without preamble
Harry told his godfather every detail of the vision he had had,
including the fact that he himself had been the snake who had attacked
Mr. Weasley.
When he paused for breath, Sirius said, “Did you tell Dumbledore
this?”
“Yes,” said Harry impatiently, “but he didn’t tell me what it meant.
Well, he doesn’t tell me anything anymore. . . .”
“I’m sure he would have told you if it was anything to worry
about,” said Sirius steadily.
“But that’s not all,” said Harry in a voice only a little above a whisper.
“Sirius, I . . . I think I’m going mad. . . . Back in Dumbledore’s
office, just before we took the Portkey . . . for a couple of seconds
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there I thought I was a snake, I felt like one — my scar really hurt
when I was looking at Dumbledore — Sirius, I wanted to attack
him —”
He could only see a sliver of Sirius’s face; the rest was in darkness.
“It must have been the aftermath of the vision, that’s all,” said Sirius.
“You were still thinking of the dream or whatever it was and —”
“It wasn’t that,” said Harry, shaking his head. “It was like something
rose up inside me, like there’s a snake inside me —”
“You need to sleep,” said Sirius firmly. “You’re going to have breakfast
and then go upstairs to bed, and then you can go and see Arthur
after lunch with the others. You’re in shock, Harry; you’re blaming
yourself for something you only witnessed, and it’s lucky you did witness
it or Arthur might have died. Just stop worrying. . . .”
He clapped Harry on the shoulder and left the pantry, leaving
Harry standing alone in the dark.
Everyone but Harry spent the rest of the morning sleeping. He went
up to the bedroom he had shared with Ron over the summer, but while
Ron crawled into bed and was asleep within minutes, Harry sat fully
clothed, hunched against the cold metal bars of the bedstead, keeping
himself deliberately uncomfortable, determined not to fall into a doze,
terrified that he might become the serpent again in his sleep and awake
to find that he had attacked Ron, or else slithered through the house
after one of the others. . . .
When Ron woke up, Harry pretended to have enjoyed a refreshing
nap too. Their trunks arrived from Hogwarts while they were eating
lunch, so that they could dress as Muggles for the trip to St. Mungo’s.
Everybody except Harry was riotously happy and talkative as they
changed out of their robes into jeans and sweatshirts, and they greeted
Tonks and Mad-Eye, who had turned up to escort them across London,
gleefully laughing at the bowler hat Mad-Eye was wearing at an
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angle to conceal his magical eye and assuring him, truthfully, that
Tonks, whose hair was short and bright pink again, would attract far
less attention on the underground.
Tonks was very interested in Harry’s vision of the attack on Mr.
Weasley, something he was not remotely interested in discussing.
“There isn’t any Seer blood in your family, is there?” she inquired
curiously, as they sat side by side on a train rattling toward the heart
of the city.
“No,” said Harry, thinking of Professor Trelawney and feeling
insulted.
“No,” said Tonks musingly, “no, I suppose it’s not really prophecy
you’re doing, is it? I mean, you’re not seeing the future, you’re seeing
the present. . . . It’s odd, isn’t it? Useful, though . . .”
Harry did not answer; fortunately they got out at the next stop, a
station in the very heart of London, and in the bustle of leaving the
train he was able to allow Fred and George to get between himself and
Tonks, who was leading the way. They all followed her up the escalator,
Moody clunking along at the back of the group, his bowler tilted
low and one gnarled hand stuck in between the buttons of his coat,
clutching his wand. Harry thought he sensed the concealed eye staring
hard at him; trying to deflect more questions about his dream he
asked Mad-Eye where St. Mungo’s was hidden.
“Not far from here,” grunted Moody as they stepped out into the
wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers.
He pushed Harry a little ahead of him and stumped along just
behind; Harry knew the eye was rolling in all directions under the
tilted hat. “Wasn’t easy to find a good location for a hospital. Nowhere
in Diagon Alley was big enough and we couldn’t have it underground
like the Ministry — unhealthy. In the end they managed to get hold of
a building up here. Theory was sick wizards could come and go and
just blend in with the crowd. . . .”
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He seized Harry’s shoulder to prevent them being separated by a
gaggle of shoppers plainly intent on nothing but making it into a
nearby shop full of electrical gadgets.
“Here we go,” said Moody a moment later.
They had arrived outside a large, old-fashioned, red brick department
store called Purge and Dowse Ltd. The place had a shabby, miserable
air; the window displays consisted of a few chipped dummies
with their wigs askew, standing at random and modeling fashions at
least ten years out of date. Large signs on all the dusty doors read
closed for refurbishment. Harry distinctly heard a large woman
laden with plastic shopping bags say to her friend as they passed, “It’s
never open, that place. . . .”
“Right,” said Tonks, beckoning them forward to a window displaying
nothing but a particularly ugly female dummy whose false eyelashes
were hanging off and who was modeling a green nylon pinafore
dress. “Everybody ready?”
They nodded, clustering around her; Moody gave Harry another
shove between the shoulder blades to urge him forward and Tonks
leaned close to the glass, looking up at the very ugly dummy and said,
her breath steaming up the glass, “Wotcher . . . We’re here to see
Arthur Weasley.”
For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect
the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of
glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the
racket of a street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies
could not hear anyway. Next second his mouth opened in shock
as the dummy gave a tiny nod, beckoned its jointed finger, and Tonks
had seized Ginny and Mrs. Weasley by the elbows, stepped right
through the glass and vanished.
Fred, George, and Ron stepped after them; Harry glanced around
at the jostling crowd; not one of them seemed to have a glance to spare
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for window displays as ugly as Purge and Dowse Ltd.’s, nor did any of
them seem to have noticed that six people had just melted into thin
air in front of them.
“C’mon,” growled Moody, giving Harry yet another poke in the
back and together they stepped forward through what felt like a sheet
of cool water, emerging quite warm and dry on the other side.
There was no sign of the ugly dummy or the space where she had
stood. They had arrived in what seemed to be a crowded reception
area where rows of witches and wizards sat upon rickety wooden
chairs, some looking perfectly normal and perusing out-of-date copies
of Witch Weekly, others sporting gruesome disfigurements such as elephant
trunks or extra hands sticking out of their chests. The room was
scarcely less quiet than the street outside, for many of the patients were
making very peculiar noises. A sweaty-faced witch in the center of the
front row, who was fanning herself vigorously with a copy of the Daily
Prophet, kept letting off a high-pitched whistle as steam came pouring
out of her mouth, and a grubby-looking warlock in the corner clanged
like a bell every time he moved, and with each clang his head vibrated
horribly, so that he had to seize himself by the ears and hold it steady.
Witches and wizards in lime-green robes were walking up and
down the rows, asking questions and making notes on clipboards like
Umbridge’s. Harry noticed the emblem embroidered on their chests:
a wand and bone, crossed.
“Are they doctors?” he asked Ron quietly.
“Doctors?” said Ron, looking startled. “Those Muggle nutters that
cut people up? Nah, they’re Healers.”
“Over here!” called Mrs. Weasley over the renewed clanging of the
warlock in the corner, and they followed her to the queue in front of a
plump blonde witch seated at a desk marked inquiries. The wall behind
her was covered in notices and posters saying things like a clean
cauldron keeps potions from becoming poisons and antidotes
are anti-don’ts unless approved by a qualified healer.
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There was also a large portrait of a witch with long silver ringlets
that was labelled

Dilys was eyeing the Weasley party as though counting them; when
Harry caught her eye she gave a tiny wink, walked sideways out of her
portrait, and vanished.
Meanwhile, at the front of the queue, a young wizard was performing
an odd on-the-spot jig and trying, in between yelps of pain, to
explain his predicament to the witch behind the desk.
“It’s these — ouch — shoes my brother gave me — ow — they’re
eating my — OUCH — feet — look at them, there must be some
kind of — AARGH — jinx on them and I can’t — AAAAARGH —
get them off —”
He hopped from one foot to the other as though dancing on hot
coals.
“The shoes don’t prevent you reading, do they?” said the blonde
witch irritably, pointing at a large sign to the left of her desk. “You
want Spell Damage, fourth floor. Just like it says on the floor guide.
Next!”
The wizard hobbled and pranced sideways out of the way, the
Weasley party moved forward a few steps and Harry read the floor
guide:
ARTIFACT ACCIDENTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ground Floor
(Cauldron explosion, wand backfiring, broom crashes, etc.)
CREATURE-INDUCED INJURIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . First Floor
(Bites, stings, burns, embedded spines, etc.)
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MAGICAL BUGS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Second Floor
(Contagious maladies, e.g., dragon pox, vanishing sickness,
scrofungulus)
POTION AND PLANT POISONING. . . . . . . . . . . . .Third Floor
(Rashes, regurgitation, uncontrollable giggling, etc.)
SPELL DAMAGE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fourth Floor
(Unliftable jinxes, hexes, and incorrectly applied charms, etc.)
VISITORS’ TEAROOM AND HOSPITAL SHOP. . . . .Fifth Floor
If you are unsure where to go, incapable, of normal speech, or
unable to remember why you are here, our Welcome Witch will
be pleased to help.
A very old, stooped wizard with a hearing trumpet had shuffled to
the front of the queue now.
“I’m here to see Broderick Bode!” he wheezed.
“Ward forty-nine, but I’m afraid you’re wasting your time,” said the
witch dismissively “He’s completely addled, you know, still thinks he’s
a teapot. . . . Next!”
A harassed-looking wizard was holding his small daughter tightly
by the ankle while she flapped around his head using the immensely
large, feathery wings that had sprouted right out the back of her
romper suit.
“Fourth floor,” said the witch in a bored voice, without asking, and
the man disappeared through the double doors beside the desk, holding
his daughter like an oddly shaped balloon. “Next!”
Mrs. Weasley moved forward to the desk.
“Hello,” she said. “My husband, Arthur Weasley, was supposed to
be moved to a different ward this morning, could you tell us — ?”
“Arthur Weasley?” said the witch, running her finger down a long
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list in front of her. “Yes, first floor, second door on the right, Dai
Llewellyn ward.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Weasley. “Come on, you lot.”
They followed through the double doors and along the narrow corridor
beyond, which was lined with more portraits of famous Healers
and lit by crystal bubbles full of candles that floated up on the ceiling,
looking like giant soapsuds. More witches and wizards in lime-green
robes walked in and out of the doors they passed; a foul-smelling yellow
gas wafted into the passageway as they passed one door, and every
now and then they heard distant wailing. They climbed a flight of
stairs and entered the “Creature-Induced Injuries” corridor, where the
second door on the right bore the words “dangerous” dai llewellyn
ward: serious bites. Underneath this was a card in a brass holder on
which had been handwritten Healer-in-Charge: Hippocrates Smethwyck,
Trainee Healer: Augustus Pye.
“We’ll wait outside, Molly,” Tonks said. “Arthur won’t want too
many visitors at once. . . . It ought to be just the family first.”
Mad-Eye growled his approval of this idea and set himself with his
back against the corridor wall, his magical eye spinning in all directions.
Harry drew back too, but Mrs. Weasley reached out a hand and
pushed him through the door, saying, “Don’t be silly, Harry, Arthur
wants to thank you. . . .”
The ward was small and rather dingy as the only window was narrow
and set high in the wall facing the door. Most of the light came from
more shining crystal bubbles clustered in the middle of the ceiling. The
walls were of panelled oak and there was a portrait of a rather viciouslooking
wizard on the wall, captioned urquhart rackharrow, 1612–
1697, inventor of the entrail-expelling curse.
There were only three patients. Mr. Weasley was occupying the bed
at the far end of the ward beside the tiny window. Harry was pleased and
relieved to see that he was propped up on several pillows and reading the
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Daily Prophet by the solitary ray of sunlight falling onto his bed. He
looked around as they walked toward him and, seeing whom it was,
beamed.
“Hello!” he called, throwing the Prophet aside. “Bill just left, Molly,
had to get back to work, but he says he’ll drop in on you later. . . .”
“How are you, Arthur?” asked Mrs. Weasley, bending down to kiss
his cheek and looking anxiously into his face. “You’re still looking a bit
peaky. . . .”
“I feel absolutely fine,” said Mr. Weasley brightly, holding out his
good arm to give Ginny a hug. “If they could only take the bandages
off, I’d be fit to go home.”
“Why can’t they take them off, Dad?” asked Fred.
“Well, I start bleeding like mad every time they try,” said Mr.
Weasley cheerfully, reaching across for his wand, which lay on his bedside
cabinet, and waving it so that six extra chairs appeared at his bedside
to seat them all. “It seems there was some rather unusual kind of
poison in that snake’s fangs that keeps wounds open. . . . They’re sure
they’ll find an antidote, though, they say they’ve had much worse
cases than mine, and in the meantime I just have to keep taking a
Blood-Replenishing Potion every hour. But that fellow over there,” he
said, dropping his voice and nodding toward the bed opposite in
which a man lay looking green and sickly and staring at the ceiling.
“Bitten by a werewolf, poor chap. No cure at all.”
“A werewolf?” whispered Mrs. Weasley, looking alarmed. “Is he
safe in a public ward? Shouldn’t he be in a private room?”
“It’s two weeks till full moon,” Mr. Weasley reminded her quietly.
“They’ve been talking to him this morning, the Healers, you know,
trying to persuade him he’ll be able to lead an almost normal life. I
said to him — didn’t mention names, of course — but I said I knew a
werewolf personally, very nice man, who finds the condition quite
easy to manage. . . .”
“What did he say?” asked George.
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“Said he’d give me another bite if I didn’t shut up,” said Mr. Weasley
sadly. “And that woman over there,” he indicated the only other occupied
bed, which was right beside the door, “won’t tell the Healers what
bit her, which makes us all think it must have been something she was
handling illegally. Whatever it was took a real chunk out of her leg,
very nasty smell when they take off the dressings.”
“So, you going to tell us what happened, Dad?” asked Fred, pulling
his chair closer to the bed.
“Well, you already know, don’t you?” said Mr. Weasley, with a significant
smile at Harry. “It’s very simple — I’d had a very long day,
dozed off, got sneaked up on, and bitten.”
“Is it in the Prophet, you being attacked?” asked Fred, indicating the
newspaper Mr. Weasley had cast aside.
“No, of course not,” said Mr. Weasley, with a slightly bitter smile,
“the Ministry wouldn’t want everyone to know a dirty great serpent
got —”
“Arthur!” said Mrs. Weasley warningly.
“— got — er — me,” Mr. Weasley said hastily, though Harry was
quite sure that was not what he had meant to say.
“So where were you when it happened, Dad?” asked George.
“That’s my business,” said Mr. Weasley, though with a small smile.
He snatched up the Daily Prophet, shook it open again and said, “I
was just reading about Willy Widdershins’s arrest when you arrived.
You know Willy turned out to be behind those regurgitating toilets
last summer? One of his jinxes backfired, the toilet exploded, and they
found him lying unconscious in the wreckage covered from head to
foot in —”
“When you say you were ‘on duty,’ ” Fred interrupted in a low
voice, “what were you doing?”
“You heard your father,” whispered Mrs. Weasley, “we are not discussing
this here! Go on about Willy Widdershins, Arthur —”
“Well, don’t ask me how, but he actually got off on the toilet
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charge,” said Mr. Weasley grimly. “I can only suppose gold changed
hands —”
“You were guarding it, weren’t you?” said George quietly. “The
weapon? The thing You-Know-Who’s after?”
“George, be quiet!” snapped Mrs. Weasley.
“Anyway,” said Mr. Weasley in a raised voice, “this time Willy’s
been caught selling biting doorknobs to Muggles, and I don’t think
he’ll be able to worm his way out of it because according to this article,
two Muggles have lost fingers and are now in St. Mungo’s for
emergency bone regrowth and memory modification. Just think of it,
Muggles in St. Mungo’s! I wonder which ward they’re in?”
And he looked eagerly around as though hoping to see a signpost.
“Didn’t you say You-Know-Who’s got a snake, Harry?” asked Fred,
looking at his father for a reaction. “A massive one? You saw it the
night he returned, didn’t you?”
“That’s enough,” said Mrs. Weasley crossly. “Mad-Eye and Tonks
are outside, Arthur, they want to come and see you. And you lot can
wait outside,” she added to her children and Harry. “You can come
and say good-bye afterward. Go on. . . .”
They trooped back into the corridor. Mad-Eye and Tonks went in
and closed the door of the ward behind them. Fred raised his eyebrows.
“Fine,” he said coolly, rummaging in his pockets, “be like that.
Don’t tell us anything.”
“Looking for these?” said George, holding out what looked like a
tangle of flesh-colored string.
“You read my mind,” said Fred, grinning. “Let’s see if St. Mungo’s
puts Imperturbable Charms on its ward doors, shall we?”
He and George disentangled the string and separated five Extendable
Ears from each other. Fred and George handed them around.
Harry hesitated to take one.
“Go on, Harry, take it! You saved Dad’s life, if anyone’s got the right
to eavesdrop on him it’s you. . . .”
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Grinning in spite of himself, Harry took the end of the string and
inserted it into his ear as the twins had done.
“Okay, go!” Fred whispered.
The flesh-colored strings wriggled like long skinny worms, then
snaked under the door. For a few seconds Harry could hear nothing,
then he heard Tonks whispering as clearly as though she were standing
right beside him.
“. . . they searched the whole area but they couldn’t find the snake
anywhere, it just seems to have vanished after it attacked you, Arthur.
. . . But You-Know-Who can’t have expected a snake to get in, can
he?”
“I reckon he sent it as a lookout,” growled Moody, “ ’cause he’s not
had any luck so far, has he? No, I reckon he’s trying to get a clearer picture
of what he’s facing and if Arthur hadn’t been there the beast
would’ve had much more time to look around. So Potter says he saw
it all happen?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Weasley. She sounded rather uneasy. “You know,
Dumbledore seems almost to have been waiting for Harry to see
something like this. . . .”
“Yeah, well,” said Moody, “there’s something funny about the
Potter kid, we all know that.”
“Dumbledore seemed worried about Harry when I spoke to him
this morning,” whispered Mrs. Weasley.
“ ’Course he’s worried,” growled Moody. “The boy’s seeing things
from inside You-Know-Who’s snake. . . . Obviously, Potter doesn’t realize
what that means, but if You-Know-Who’s possessing him —”
Harry pulled the Extendable Ear out of his own, his heart hammering
very fast and heat rushing up his face. He looked around at the
others. They were all staring at him, the strings still trailing from their
ears, looking suddenly fearful.

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CHRISTMAS ON THE
CLOSED WARD
as this why Dumbledore would no longer meet Harry’s
eyes? Did he expect to see Voldemort staring out of them,
afraid, perhaps, that their vivid green might turn suddenly to scarlet,
with catlike slits for pupils? Harry remembered how the snakelike face
of Voldemort had once forced itself out of the back of Professor Quirrell’s
head, and he ran his hand over the back of his own, wondering
what it would feel like if Voldemort burst out of his skull. . . .
He felt dirty, contaminated, as though he were carrying some
deadly germ, unworthy to sit on the underground train back from the
hospital with innocent, clean people whose minds and bodies were
free of the taint of Voldemort. . . . He had not merely seen the snake,
he had been the snake, he knew it now. . . .
And then a truly terrible thought occurred to him, a memory bobbing
to the surface of his mind, one that made his insides writhe and
squirm like serpents. . . .
“What’s he after apart from followers?”
“Stuff he can only get by stealth . . . like a weapon. Something he didn’t
have last time.”
W
CH

as time grow on