‘It must have been the aftermath of the vision,

‘It must have been the aftermath of the vision, that's all,’ said Sirius. ‘You were still thinking of the dream or whatever it was and—’

‘It wasn't that,’ said Harry, shaking his head, ‘it was like something rose up inside me, like there's a snake inside me.’

‘You need to sleep,’ said Sirius firmly. ‘You're going to have breakfast, then go upstairs to bed, and after lunch you can go and see Arthur with the others. You're in shock, Harry; you're blaming yourself for something you only

witnessed, and it's lucky you did witness it or Arthur might have died. Just stop worrying.’

He clapped Harry on the shoulder and left the pantry, leaving Harry standing alone in the dark.

Everyone but Harry spent the rest of the morning sleeping. He went up to the bedroom he and Ron had shared over the last few weeks of summer, but while Ron crawled into bed and was asleep within minutes, Harry sat fully

clothed, hunched against the cold metal bars of the bedstead, keeping himself deliberately uncomfortable, determined not to fall into a doze, terrified that he might become the serpent again in his sleep and wake to find that

he had attacked Ron, or else slithered through the house after one of the others ...

When Ron woke up, Harry pretended to have enjoyed a refreshing nap too. Their trunks arrived from Hogwarts while they were eating lunch, so they could dress as Muggles for the trip to St. Mungo's. Everybody except Harry

was riotously happy and talkative as they changed out of their robes into jeans and sweatshirts. When Tonks and Mad-Eye turned up to escort them across London, they greeted them 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 Harry's vision of the attack on Mr. Weasley, something Harry was not remotely interested in discussing.

‘There isn't any Seer blood in your family, is there?’ she enquired curiously, as they sat side by side on a train rattling towards the heart of the city.

‘No,’ said Harry thinking of Professor Trelawney and feeling insulted.

‘No,’ said Tonks musingly, ‘no, I suppose it's not really prophecy you're doing, is it? I mean, you're not seeing the future, you're seeing the present ... it's odd, isn't it? Useful, though ...’

Harry didn't 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 he was able to allow Fred and George to get between himself 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. Harry thought he

sensed the concealed eye staring hard at him. Trying to avoid any more questions about his dream, he asked Mad-Eye where St. Mungo's was hidden.

‘Not far from here,’ grunted Moody as they stepped out into the wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers. He pushed Harry a little ahead of him and stumped along just behind; Harry knew the

eye was rolling in all directions under the tilted hat. ‘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—wouldn't be healthy. In the

end they managed to get hold of a building up here. Theory was, sick wizards could come and go and just blend in with the crowd.’

He seized Harry's shoulder to prevent them being separated by a gaggle of shoppers plainly intent on nothing but making it into a nearby shop full of electrical gadgets.

‘Here we go,’ said Moody a moment later.

They had arrived outside a large, old-fashioned, red-brick department store called Purge & 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 modelling fashions at least ten years out of date. Large signs on all the dusty doors read: ‘Closed for Refurbishment'. Harry 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 towards a window displaying nothing but a particularly ugly female dummy. Its false eyelashes were hanging off and it was modelling 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, her breath steaming up the

glass. ‘Wotcher,’ she said, ‘we're here to see Arthur Weasley.’

Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking so quietly through a sheet of glass, with buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of a street full of shoppers. Then he reminded

himself that dummies couldn't hear anyway. Next second, his mouth opened in shock as the dummy gave a tiny nod and beckoned with its jointed finger, and Tonks had seized Ginny and Mrs. Weasley by the elbows, stepped

right through the glass and vanished.

Fred, George and Ron stepped after them. Harry glanced around at the jostling crowd; not one of them seemed to have a glance to spare for window displays as ugly as those of Purge & Dowse Ltd; nor did any of them seem

to have noticed that six people had just melted into thin air in front of them.

‘C'mon,’ growled Moody, giving Harry yet another poke in the back, and together they stepped forward through what felt like a sheet of cool water, emerging quite warm and dry on the other side.

There was no sign of the ugly dummy or the space where she had stood. They were in what seemed to be 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 centre 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 to 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. Harry noticed the emblem embroidered on their chests: a wand and bone,

crossed.

‘Are they doctors?’ he asked Ron quietly.

‘Doctors?’ said Ron, looking startled. ‘Those Muggle nutters that cut people up? Nah, they're Healers.’

‘Over here!’ called Mrs. Weasley, above 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 Enquiries.The wall behind her was

covered in notices and posters saying things like: A CLEAN CAULDRON KEEPS POTIONS FROM BECOMING POISONS and ANTIDOTES ARE ANTI-DON'TS UNLESS APPROVED BY A QUALIFIED HEALER. There was also a

large portrait of a witch with long silver ringlets which was labelled:

Dilys Derwent

St. Mungo's Healer 1722-1741

Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

1741-1768

Dilys was eyeing the Weasley party closely as though counting them; when Harry caught her eye she gave a tiny wink, walked sideways out of her portrait and vanished.

Meanwhile, at the front of the queue, a young wizard was performing an odd on-the-spot jig and trying, in between yelps of pain, to explain his predicament to the witch behind the desk.

‘It's these— ouch—shoes my brother gave me—ow—they re eating my—OUCH—feet—look at them, there must be some kind of—AARGH—jinx on them and I can't— AAAAARGH—get them off.’ He hopped from one foot to

the other as though dancing on hot coals.
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