Raised By Wolfstar: Slytherin Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

Chapter Twenty-Three: St. Mungo's Hospital For Magical Maladies and Injuries

Harry was so relieved that someone was taking him seriously that he did not hesitate, but jumped out of bed at once, pulled on his school robe on top of his pyjamas, and pushed his glasses back onto his nose.

'I'm coming to,' said Theodore, who was also quickly putting some clothes on.

'No, Nott,' Snape sneered, 'this does not concern you.'

'Harry is my brother, it damn well concerns me.'

Realizing every second mattered, Snape did not press the matter any further, and the three of them passed the now silent figures of Malfoy, Blaise, Crabbe, and Goyle. They went out of the dormitory, down the spiral stairs into the common room, through the enchanted wall, and off along the dungeon corridors. Harry felt as though the panic inside him might spill over at any moment; he wanted to run, to yell for Dumbledore. Mr Weasley was bleeding as they walked along so sedately, and what if those fangs (Harry tried hard not to think "my fangs") had been poisonous? They passed Mrs Norris, who turned her lamplike eyes upon them and hissed faintly, but Professor Snape paid her no mind and she slunk away into the shadows, and in a few minutes they had reached the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance to Dumbledore's office.

'Fizzing Whizbee,' said Professor Snape.

The gargoyle sprang to life and leapt aside; the wall behind it split in two to reveal a stone staircase that was moving continuously upward like a spiral escalator. The three of them stepped onto the moving stairs; the wall closed behind them with a thud, and they were moving upward in tight circles until they reached the highly polished oak door with the brass knocker shaped like a griffin.

Though it was now well past midnight, there were voices coming from inside the room, a positive babble of them. It sounded as though Dumbledore was entertaining at least a dozen people.

Professor Snape rapped three times with the griffin knocker, and the voices ceased abruptly as though someone had switched them all off. The door opened of its own accord and Professor Snape strode inside followed by Harry and Theodore.

The room was in half darkness; the strange silver instruments standing on tables were silent and still rather than whirring and emitting puffs of smoke as they usually did. The portraits of old headmasters and headmistresses covering the walls were all snoozing in their frames. Behind the door, a magnificent red-and-gold bird the size of a swan dozed on its perch with its head under its wing.

'Oh, it's you, Professor Snape...and...ah.'

Dumbledore was sitting in a high-backed chair behind his desk; he leaned forward into the pool of candlelight illuminating the papers laid out before him. He was wearing a magnificently embroidered purple-and-gold dressing gown over a snowy-white nightshirt, but seemed wide awake, his penetrating light-blue eyes fixed intently upon Professor Snape.

'Professor Dumbledore, Potter has just informed me of a troubling nightmare,' said Professor McGonagall. 'He claims...'

'It wasn't a nightmare,' said Harry quickly.

Professor Snape looked around at Harry, scowling. 'Fine Potter, you inform the headmaster about what you saw.'

'I...well, I was asleep...' said Harry and even in his terror and his desperation to make Dumbledore understand he felt slightly irritated that the headmaster was not looking at him, but examining his own interlocked fingers. 'But it wasn't an ordinary dream...it was real...I saw it happen...' He took a deep breath, 'Mr Weasley has been attacked by a giant snake.'

The words seemed to reverberate in the air after he had said them, slightly ridiculous, even comic. There was a pause in which Dumbledore leaned back and stared meditatively at the ceiling. Theodore looked from Harry to Dumbledore, white-faced and shocked.