Percy Jackson and the Department of Mysteries

119) Doctors Use Lighter Fluid

The room was small, just like every other hospital room unless you were a politician. Then you get the nice room that has filtered water and bedsheets that aren't yellowed from use. The only window was narrow and set too high in the wall to offer any sort of view.

At least there weren't many patients in the room — three including Mr. Weasley. I'd found myself in hospital rooms this size with twenty plus patients in it.

Mr. Weasley beamed from his spot propped up on pillows once he saw us, tossing aside his copy of the Daily Prophet, "Hello! 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 kisses his cheek and looked worriedly at his face. "You're still looking a bit peaky..."

"I feel absolutely fine," Mr. Weasley smiled brightly, holding out his good arm to give Ginny a hug. "If they could only take the bandages off, I'd be fit to go home."

"Why can't they take them off?" I asked.

"Well, I start bleeding every time they try," Mr. Weasley said cheerfully, grabbing his wand and waving it, making several chairs appear around his bed. "It seems that there was some rather unusual kind of poison in that snake's fangs that keep wounds open.... They're sure they'll find an antidote, though, they said they've had much worse cases than mine, and in the meantime I just have to keep taking a Blood-Replenishing potion every hour."

"Just cauterize the wounds," I said, everyone turning to look at me. "What? We do it all the time. Thalia did it for me once after a mishap with a giant pig. Seamus had to cauterize his own side during that whole incident with the mechanical bull — or maybe the bull cauterized it for him, I can't remember. Oh, and Draco had to get his spleen cauterized once, but that was before I ever met him. Emergency during capture the flag where some Ares kid tried to get between a fight with him and Clarisse. They never try to actually kill each other, but the newbie didn't know that, took Draco by surprise."

"I cauterized his arm after that whole thing with Kelli and the arena," Ron offered, looking the least phased by this. "He said I did a bad job and that I nearly made him lose his arm, but he seemed fine to me when he started stabbing things."

"It was a bad job," I shrugged. "He's got a scar the length of his forearm for a cut that should've been simple enough."

"I didn't expect for flesh the burn like that!"

"You poured lighter fluid on his arm!"

"It's not my fault it was expired!"

"Lighter fluid doesn't even expire, idiot!"

"So, you going to tell us what happened, Dad?" Fred questioned, having made the mistake on listening in to this argument before.

"Well, you already know, don't you?" Mr. Weasley smiled at Harry. "It's very simple — I'd had a very long day, dozed off, got sneaked up on, and bitten."

"Is it in the Prophet, you being attacked?" Fred motioned to the paper that had been tossed aside.

"No, of course not," Mr. Weasley shook his head, a bitter smile replacing the happy one, "the Ministry wouldn't want everyone to know a great dirty serpent got —"

"Arthur!" Mrs. Weasley raised her eyebrows warningly.

"— got — er — me," Mr. Weasley said quickly, definitely having said something other than what he was going to say.

"So where were you when it happened, Dad?" George asked.

"That's my business," Mr. Weasley said with a small smile. He grabbed his copy of the paper and shook it open. "I was just reading about Willy Widdershin'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 head to foot in —"