Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

celebrate Mr Weasley’s birthday? Nothing like a fine spirit to chase away the pangs of disappointed love …’
    He chortled again and Harry joined in. This was the first time he had found himself almost alone with Slughorn since his disastrous first attempt to extract the true memory from him. Perhaps, if he could just keep Slughorn in a good mood … perhaps if they got through enough of the oak-matured mead …
    ‘There you are, then,’ said Slughorn, handing Harry and Ron a glass of mead each, before raising his own. ‘Well, a very happy birthday, Ralph –’
    ‘– Ron –’ whispered Harry.
    But Ron, who did not appear to be listening to the toast, had already thrown the mead into his mouth and swallowed it.
    There was one second, hardly more than a heartbeat, in which Harry knew there was something terribly wrong and Slughorn, it seemed, did not.
    ‘– and may you have many more –’
    ‘Ron!’
    Ron had dropped his glass; he half-rose from his chair and then crumpled, his extremities jerking uncontrollably. Foam was dribbling from his mouth and his eyes were bulging from their sockets.
    ‘Professor!’ Harry bellowed. ‘Do something!’
    But Slughorn seemed paralysed by shock. Ron twitched and choked: his skin was turning blue.
    ‘What – but –’ spluttered Slughorn.
    Harry leapt over a low table and sprinted towards Slughorn’s open potion kit, pulling out jars and pouches, while the terrible sound of Ron’s gargling breath filled the room. Then he found it – the shrivelled kidney-like stone Slughorn had taken from him in Potions.
    He hurtled back to Ron’s side, wrenched open his jaw and thrust the bezoar into his mouth. Ron gave a great shudder, a rattling gasp and his body became limp and still.

 
     
— CHAPTER NINETEEN —
     
Elf Tails
    ‘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. 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 Ginny.
    ‘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 any more … 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 what felt like a hundred times to Dumbledore, to McGonagall, to Madam Pomfrey, to Hermione and to Ginny.
    ‘… and then I 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, who kept turning cold at the thought of what would have happened if he 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 Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened, she had taken almost no part in 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.
    ‘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 …’
    There was a pause while they all watched Ron mumble a little in his sleep.
    ‘So the poison was in the drink?’ said Fred quietly.
    ‘Yes,’ said Harry at once; he could think of nothing else and was glad for