The Other Black Book 5

Chapter 21 - St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

No one answered Aurora's questions, not even Harry, as they went through the portrait hole, and off along the Fat Lady's moonlit corridor. Aurora didn't know what to think, but she knew that something wasn't good. The sickening feeling Aurora had was only growing worse, followed along. They passed Mrs. Norris, who turned her lamplike eyes upon them and hissed faintly, but Professor McGonagall said, "Shoo!" Mrs. Norris 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 McGonagall.

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 McGonagall 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 McGonagall led Harry, Aurora, and Ron inside.

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 McGonagall . . . 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 McGonagall.

"Professor Dumbledore, Potter has had a . . . well, a nightmare," said Professor McGonagall. "He says . . ."

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

Aurora looked at him.

Professor McGonagall looked around at Harry, frowning slightly. "Very well, then, Potter, you tell the headmaster about it."

"I . . . well, I was asleep. . . ." said Harry. "But it wasn't an ordinary dream . . . it was real. . . . I saw it happen. . . ." He took a deep breath, "Ron's dad — Mr. Weasley — has been attacked by a giant snake."

The words seemed to reverberate in the air after he had said them. There was a pause in which Dumbledore leaned back and stared meditatively at the ceiling. Ron looked from Harry to Dumbledore, white-faced and shocked. Aurora thought silently that the story made sense.

"How did you see this?" Dumbledore asked quietly, still not looking at Harry.

"Well . . . I don't know," said Harry, rather angrily. "Inside my head, I suppose —"

"You misunderstand me," said Dumbledore, still in the same calm tone. "I mean . . . can you remember — er — where you were positioned as you watched this attack happen? Were you perhaps standing beside the victim, or else looking down on the scene from above?"

This was such a curious question that Harry gaped at Dumbledore; it was almost as though he knew something about Harry's dream. . .

"I was the snake," he said. "I saw it all from the snake's point of view. . . ."