Everyone but Celeste spent the rest of the morning sleeping. She went up to the bedroom she had sometimes shared with Ginny over the summer, but while Ginny crawled into bed and was asleep within minutes, Celeste sat fully clothed, hunched against the cold metal bars of the bedstead, keeping herself deliberately uncomfortable, determined not to fall into a doze, terrified that she might become the serpent again in her sleep and awake to find that she had attacked Ginny, or else slithered through the house after one of the others.
When Ginny woke up, Celeste pretended to have enjoyed a refreshing nap too. Their trunks and pets arrived from Hogwarts while they were eating lunch so that they could dress as Muggles for the trip to St. Mungos. Everybody except Celeste and Harry were riotously happy and talkative as they changed out of their robes into jeans and sweatshirts. 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 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 Celeste's vision of the attack on Mr. Weasley, something she 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.
"I have no idea," Celeste said, remembering that she still didn't know who her birth parents are -- or were. "I'm adopted. I don't know who my birth parents are."
"Really?" Tonks said musingly, "Dumbledore doesn't know either?"
Celeste 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, she was able to allow Fred and George to get between herself 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.
"Not far from here," grunted Moody as they stepped out into the wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers. "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. The theory was sick wizards could come and go and blend in with the crowd. ..."
"Here we go," Moody said 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. Celeste 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."
The next second, the dummy gave a tiny nod, beckoned its jointed finger, and Tonks had seized Ginny, Celeste, and Mrs. Weasley by the elbows, stepped right through the glass and vanished.
They had arrived in what was 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. 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.
"Are they doctors?" Harry asked Ron and Celeste quietly.
"Doctors?" Celeste said, looking startled. "Those Muggle nutters that cut people up? They're Healers. My Mum was one."
"Over here!" Mrs. Weasley called 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 ANTIDON'TS UNLESS APPROVED BY A QUALIFIED HEALER.
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 list in front of her. "Yes, first floor, second door on the right, Dai Llewellyn ward."
"Thank you," Mrs. Weasley said. "Come on, you lot."
They followed through the double doors and along the narrow corridor beyond, 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 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 Smethwick, 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 and Celeste drew back too, but Mrs. Weasley reached out a hand and pushed them through the door, saying, "Don't be silly, you two, Arthur wants to thank you. ..."
The ward was small and somewhat dingy as the only window was narrow and set high in the wall facing the door. Most of the light came from more brilliant crystal bubbles clustered in the middle of the ceiling. The walls were of paneled 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. Celeste 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 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?" Mrs. Weasley asked, bending down to kiss his cheek and looking anxiously into his face. "You're still looking a bit peaky. ..."
"I feel absolutely fine," Mr. Weasley said brightly, holding out his good arm to hug Ginny. "If they could only take the bandages off, I'd be fit to go home."
"Why can't they take them off, Dad?" Fred asked.
"Well, I start bleeding like mad every time they try," Mr. Weasley said cheerfully, reaching across for his wand, which lay on his bedside cabinet, and waving it so that seven 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 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?" Mrs. Weasley whispered, 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, a very nice man, who finds the condition quite easy to manage. ..."
"What did he say?" George asked.
"Said he'd give me another bite if I didn't shut up," Mr. Weasley said 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?" Fred asked, pulling his chair closer to the bed.
"Well, you already know, don't you?" Mr. Weasley said, with a significant smile at Harry and Celeste. "It's very simple — I'd had a very long day, dozed off, got sneaked upon, and bitten."
"Is it in the Prophet, you being attacked?" Fred asked, indicating the newspaper Mr. Weasley had cast aside.
"No, of course not," Mr. Weasley said, with a slightly bitter smile, "the Ministry wouldn't want everyone to know a dirty great serpent got —"
"Arthur!" Mrs. Weasley said warningly.
"— got — er — me," Mr. Weasley said hastily, though Celeste was quite sure that was not what he had meant to say.
"So, where were you when it happened, Dad?" George asked.
"That's my business," Mr. Weasley said, 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," Mrs. Weasley whispered, "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 charge," Mr. Weasley said grimly. "I can only suppose gold changed hands —"
"You were guarding it, weren't you?" George said quietly. "The weapon? The thing You-Know-Who's after?"
"George, be quiet!" Mrs. Weasley snapped. "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. Mungos for emergency bone regrowth and memory modification. Just think of it, Muggles in St. Mungos! 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?" Fred asked, looking at his father for a reaction. "A massive one? You saw it the night he returned, didn't you?"
"That's enough," Mrs. Weasley said 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, Celeste and Harry. "You can come and say goodbye 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?" George said, holding out what looked like a tangle of flesh-colored string. "
You read my mind," Fred said, 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 six Extendable Ears from each other. Fred and George handed them around. Celeste hesitated to take one.
"Go on, Harry and Celeste, take it! You saved Dad's life. If anyone's got the right to eavesdrop on him, it's you. ..."
Grinning in spite of herself, Celeste took the end of the string and inserted it into her 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, Celeste could hear nothing, then she heard Tonks whispering as clearly as though she were standing right beside her.
"... 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," Moody growled, " '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," Mrs. Weasley said. She sounded rather uneasy. "You know, Dumbledore seems almost to have been waiting for Harry to see something like this, and Celeste saw it as well. ..."
"Yeah, well," Moody said, "there's something funny about the Potter kid. We all know that."
"Dumbledore seemed worried about them when I spoke to him this morning," Mrs. Weasley whispered. "he said he expected it from Celeste and that it made sense, of course, he didn't elaborate."
" 'Course he's worried," Moody said. "They're 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. They were all looking at him, the strings still trailing from their ears, looking suddenly fearful.