Chapter 6.21 (A cursed love)

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"So, all in all, not one of Ron's better birthdays?" Said Fred.

It was evening. The hospital wing was quiet, the windows curtained, the lamps lit.

Ron's was the only occupied bed.

Aurora, Harry, Hermione and Ginny were sitting around him. They had spent all day waiting outside the double doors, trying to see inside whenever somebody went in or out. Madam Pomfrey had only let them enter at eight o'clock. Fred and George had arrived at ten past.

"How exactly did it happen?" Said George, sitting down next to Aurora.

She had been quiet all day. Madam Pomfrey had given her and Harry a blanket for the shock but she was still not quite over it. What happened today had scared her.

Harry retold the story he had already recounted a hundred times to Dumbledore, to McGonagall, to Madam Pomfrey, to Hermione and to Ginny.

"...and then I go the bezoar down his throat and his breathing eased up a bit, Aurora then stabilised him while Slughorn ran for help, McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey turned up, and they brought Ron up here. They reckon he'll be all right. Madam Pomfrey says he'll have to stay here a week or so...keep taking Essence of Rue..."

"Blimey, it was lucky you thought if a bezoar," said George in a low voice.

"Lucky there was one in the room," said Harry, pulling the blanket tighter around him.

Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced up to Aurora and Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened, she had taken almost no part in Harry and Ginny's obsessive discussion about how Ron had been poisoned, but merely sat beside Aurora on the floor, clench-jawed and frightened-looking, until at last they had been allowed in to see him.

"Do mum and dad know?" Fred asked Ginny.

"They've already seen him, they arrived an hour ago - they're in Dumbledore's office now, but they'll be back soon..."

There was a pause while they all watched Ron mumble a little in his sleep.

"So the poison was in the drink?" Said Fred quietly.

"Yes," said Harry at once. "Slughorn poured it out-"

"Would have been able to slip something into Ron's glass without you seeing?"

"No," said Aurora, her voice cracking, "I would've noticed. I poured Ron's glass and gave it to him. Slughorn never touched his glass. Besides, I'm sure the poison was not in the glass but in the bottle."

"In which case it was probably meant for Slughorn himself," said Ginny.

"Who'd want to kill Slughorn?"

"Dumbledore reckons Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his side," said Harry. "Slughorn was in hiding for a year before he came to Hogwarts. And...and maybe Voldemort wants him out if the way, maybe he thinks he could be valuable to Dumbledore."

"But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas," Ginny reminded him. "So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore."

"Then the poisoner did not know Slughorn very well," said Hermione, speaking for the first time in hours and sounding as though she had a bad head-cold. "Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he'd keep something that tasty for himself."

"Er-my-nee," croaked Ron unexpectedly from between them.

They all fell silent, watching him anxiously, but after muttering incomprehensibly for a moment he merely started snoring.

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