He did not need to finish the sentence. It sounded to Harry, too, as though Mr. Weasley was hovering somewhere between life and death. Still exceptionally pale, Ron stared at the back of his mother’s letter as though it might speak words of comfort to him. Fred pulled the parchment out of George’s hands and read it for himself, then looked up at Harry, who felt his hand shaking on his Butterbeer bottle again and clenched it more tightly to stop the trembling.

  If Harry had ever sat through a longer night than this one, he could not remember it. Sirius suggested once, without any real conviction, that they all go to bed, but the Weasleys’ looks of disgust were answer enough. They mostly sat in silence around the table, watching the candle wick sinking lower and lower into liquid wax, occasionally raising a bottle to their lips, speaking only to check the time, to wonder aloud what was happening, and to reassure each other that if there was bad news, they would know straightaway, for Mrs. Weasley must long since have arrived at St. Mungo’s.

  Fred fell into a doze, his head lolling sideways on to 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. Harry and Sirius looked at each other every so often, intruders upon the family grief, waiting… waiting…

  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 on 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, 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 bear 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 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 any more.”

  “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 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, then go upstairs to bed, and after lunch you can go and see Arthur 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 and Ron had shared over the last few weeks of 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 wake 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 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. When Tonks and Mad-Eye turned up to escort them across London, they greeted them gleefully, laughing at the bowler hat Mad-Eye was wearing at an 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 Harry was not remotely interested in discussing.

  “There isn’t any Seer blood in your family, is there?” she enquired curiously, as they sat side by side on a train rattling towards 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 didn’t 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 avoid any 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—wouldn’t be healthy. 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.”

  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 & 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 modelling 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 towards a window displaying nothing but a particularly ugly female dummy. Its false eyelashes were hanging off and it was modelling 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, her breath steaming up the glass. “Wotcher,” she said, “we’re here to see Arthur Weasley.”

  Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking so quietly through a sheet of glass, with buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of a street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies couldn’t hear anyway. Next second, his mouth opened in shock as the dummy gave a tiny nod and beckoned with 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 for window displays as ugly as those of Purge & Dowse Ltd; 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 were 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 centre 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; 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 to 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 above 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 Enquiries. 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. There was also a large portrait of a witch with long silver ringlets which was labelled:

  Dilys Derwent

  St. Mungo’s Healer 1722—1741

  Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry 1741—1768

  Dilys was eyeing the Weasley party closely 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!”

  As the wizard hobbled and pranced sideways out of the way, the Weasley party moved forward a few steps and Harry read the floor guide:

  ARTEFACT ACCIDENTS. . .Ground floor

  Cauldron explosion, wand backfiring, broom crashes, etc.

  CREATURE-INDUCED INJURIES. . .First floor

  Bites, stings, burns, embedded spines, etc.

  MAGICAL BUGS. . .Second floor

  Contagious maladies, e.g. dragon pox, vanishing sickness, scrojungulus, etc.

  POTION AND PLANT POISONING. . .Third floor

  Rashes, regurgitation, uncontrollable 2, etc.

  SPELL DAMAGE. . .Fourth floor

  Unliftable jinxes, hexes, incorrectly applied charms, etc.

  VISITORS’ TEAROOM / HOSPITAL SHOP. . .Fifth floor

  IF YOU ARE UNSURE WHERE TO GO, INCAPABLE OF NORMAL SPEECH OR UNABLE TO REMEMBER WHY YOU ARE HERE, OUR WELCOMEWITCH 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 through 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 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 her 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 vicious-looking 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 Daily Prophet by the solitary ray of sunlight falling on to his bed. He looked up as they walked towards him and, seeing who 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 towards 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?”