2.| ✮𝓛𝓸𝓿𝓮, 𝓑𝓲𝓵𝓵. ✮ {𝓑. 𝓦𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓵𝓮𝔂}

\𝓈ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓃𝓉ℯℯ𝓃\

~

The next hour or so was a blur. Eleanora and Bill accompanied Mrs. Weasley to St. Mungo's, leaving Sirius to wait for the students to get home and Lupin to work on investigating what exactly happened. It took forever for Bill, Mrs. Weasley, and Eleanora to finally convince the healers at St. Mungo's to let them in to see Mr. Weasley. "He's my husband!" Mrs. Weasley kept yelling at every healer who passed, practically in tears. Bill and Eleanora tried the front desk.

"Listen, my dad was attacked earlier tonight and we're not exactly sure how," Bill said in an even voice. "We would just like to know that he's okay."

"His name's Arthur Weasley," Eleanora chimed in. "He came in about an hour and a half ago." The lady at the desk stared at the couple with deadened eyes, and then flicked her wand at a log book. The pages rustled on their own and opened to a page near the back. The lady scanned it. The process seemed to take ages.

"Hmmmm, Arthur Weasley," the witch said, running her finger down the page. Bill's fingers tapped absentmindedly on the desk. He was staring down at the log book, reading upside-down. At last, the front desk witch found Arthur's name. "Yes... he's in operation right now."

"Operation?" Bill said, louder than he'd meant to. "What's happening? Is he okay?"

"Bill..." Eleanora placed a hand on his arm and turned back to the front desk witch. "Is there anything you can tell us about his condition?"

"Says he's in with severe bites. All I can tell you." The witch stared up at them, her face still emotionless. "Anything else?"

"Bites?" Bill said, his voice cracking. "Bites from what? What's happened to him?"

"No," Eleanora said to the witch. "Thank you. Come on, Bill."

She took him by the sleeve of the jacket and led him over to the waiting room. In the midst of all the chaos, she felt strangely calm. She scanned the room for Mrs. Weasley, found her harassing a very tired looking healer, and managed to get her over to where Bill was standing. "Listen," she said, looking back and forth between the two. As the only one not freaking out, she knew she had to take charge of the situation. "It'll probably take awhile for us to get any information, so we need to get a few things figured out. Lupin'll be back at some point to let us know what happened, so at least one of us should stay here-"

"We should all stay here!" said Mrs. Weasley. "We have to be here for Arthur!"

"Someone should check on Harry and everyone at Grimmauld Place. I know Sirius is there, but he knows even less than we do about the situation."

"You do that," Bill said, finally collecting himself. He knew visiting Grimmauld Place was the lesser of two evils. Staying with his panicked mother would be much worse, and he didn't want Eleanora to have to deal with that. "You've been wanting to see the twins and besides, you shouldn't be out and about anyways. I'll take care of things here."