Black Rose (Draco Malfoy)

Poison

Chapter 51: Poison

We were not let into the hospital wing until eight. Fred and George arrived ten minutes later. Ron was lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Ginny, Hermione, and Harry sat around him. George pulled up a chair next to Ginny and Fred pulled one next to Harry. I took a seat in between the twins, next to Hermione.

"How exactly did it happen, Harry?" Fred asked.

Harry recounted the story again. I had already heard it more than once, but I still listened. I was not sure what I was supposed to feel. It was an accident, a terrible accident. And yet... this was not the first time something like this happened this year.

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

"Lucky there was one in the room," Harry said.

Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. Like me, she had been exceptionally quiet all day. Neither of us had taken much part in Harry and Ginny's obsessive discussion about how Ron had been poisoned until we had been allowed in to see him. I knew we had different reasons, though.

"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..." Ginny said.

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

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

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

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

"Probably," Harry said, "but why would Slughorn want to poison Ron?"

"No idea," Fred said, frowning. "You don't think he could have mixed up the glasses by mistake? Meaning to get you?"

"Why would Slughorn want to poison Harry?" Ginny asked.

"I dunno," Fred said, "but there must be loads of people who'd like to poison Harry, mustn't there? The 'Chosen One' and all that?"

"So you think Slughorn's a Death Eater?" Ginny said.

"Anything's possible," Fred said darkly.

"I doubt it," I said.

"He could be under the Imperius Curse," George said.

"Or he could be innocent," Ginny said. "The poison could have been in the bottle, in which case it was probably meant for Slughorn himself."

"Who'd want to kill Slughorn?"

"Dumbledore reckons Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his side," Harry said. "Slughorn was in hiding for a year before he came to Hogwarts. And..." He thought of the memory Dumbledore had not yet been able to extract from Slughorn. "And maybe Voldemort wants him out of 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 didn't know Slughorn very well," Hermione said, 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."