Harry Potter 05 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

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