"If your whole life turns out to be a lie, what will you do then?"
"If everything you knew turns out to be a hoax, what will you do then?"
Graciana Duerre Weasley, twin sister of Ron Weasley, is a troublemaker. Mischievous but a little introvert, bo...
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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. Grace, 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.
"This isn't how we imagined handing over our present," said George grimly, putting down a large wrapped gift on Ron's bedside cabinet and sitting beside Grace.
"Yeah, when we pictured the scene, he was conscious," said Fred.
"There we were in Hogsmeade, waiting to surprise him —" said George.
"You were in Hogsmeade?" asked Ginny, looking up.
"We were thinking of buying Zonko's," said Fred gloomily. "A Hogsmeade branch, you know, but a fat lot of good it'll do us if you lot aren't allowed out at weekends to buy our stuff anymore. . . . But never mind that now."
He drew up a chair beside Harry and looked at Ron's pale face.
"How exactly did it happen, Harry?"
Harry retold the story he had already recounted, it felt like a hundred times to Dumbledore, to McGonagall, to Madam Pomfrey, to Hermione, and to Ginny. Grace on the other hand was silent all the time, her eyes only on Ron. The moment she had realised that Ron was poisoned, a terrific terror had struck her. She couldn't believe she was so close to losing another important person to her and she couldn't shake the feeling off.
". . . and then Grace got the bezoar down his throat and his breathing eased up a bit, 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 of a bezoar," said George in a low voice.
"Lucky there was one in the room," said Harry.
Grace kept turning cold at the thought of what would have happened if Harry had not been able to lay hands on the little stone.
Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up to Grace and Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened, she had taken almost no part in Grace, Harry and Ginny's obsessive discussion about how Ron had been poisoned, but merely stood beside them, clench-jawed and frightened-looking, until at last they had been allowed in to see him.
