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

again: he had forgotten the inert figures he had left behind.
    ‘Ginny, who else is dead?’
    ‘Don’t worry, none of us.’
    ‘But the Dark Mark – Malfoy said he stepped over a body –’
    ‘He stepped over Bill, but it’s all right, he’s alive.’
    There was something in her voice, however, that Harry knew boded ill.
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Of course I’m sure … he’s a – a bit of a mess, that’s all. Greyback attacked him. Madam Pomfrey says he won’t – won’t look the same any more …’ Ginny’s voice trembled a little. ‘We don’t really know what the after-effects will be – I mean, Greyback being a werewolf, but not transformed at the time.’
    ‘But the others … there were other bodies on the ground …’
    ‘Neville’s in the hospital wing, but Madam Pomfrey thinks he’ll make a full recovery, and Professor Flitwick was knocked out, but he’s all right, just a bit shaky. He insisted on going off to look after the Ravenclaws. And a Death Eater’s dead, he got hit by a Killing Curse the huge blond one was firing off everywhere – Harry, if we hadn’t had your Felix potion, I think we’d all have been killed, but everything seemed to just miss us –’
    They had reached the hospital wing: pushing open the doors, Harry saw Neville lying, apparently asleep, in a bed near the door. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Tonks and Lupin were gathered around another bed near the far end of the ward. At the sound of the doors opening, they all looked up. Hermione ran to Harry and hugged him; Lupin moved forwards too, looking anxious.
    ‘Are you all right, Harry?’
    ‘I’m fine … how’s Bill?’
    Nobody answered. Harry looked over Hermione’s shoulder and saw an unrecognisable face lying on Bill’s pillow, so badly slashed and ripped that he looked grotesque. Madam Pomfrey was dabbing at his wounds with some harsh-smelling green ointment. Harry remembered how Snape had mended Malfoy’s Sectumsempra wounds so easily with his wand.
    ‘Can’t you fix them with a charm or something?’ he asked the matron.
    ‘No charm will work on these,’ said Madam Pomfrey. ‘I’ve tried everything I know, but there is no cure for werewolf bites.’
    ‘But he wasn’t bitten at the full moon,’ said Ron, who was gazing down into his brother’s face as though he could somehow force him to mend just by staring. ‘Greyback hadn’t transformed, so surely Bill won’t be a – a real –?’
    He looked uncertainly at Lupin.
    ‘No, I don’t think that Bill will be a true werewolf,’ said Lupin, ‘but that does not mean that there won’t be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely ever to heal fully, and – and Bill might have some wolfish characteristics from now on.’
    ‘Dumbledore might know something that’d work, though,’ Ron said. ‘Where is he? Bill fought those maniacs on Dumbledore’s orders, Dumbledore owes him, he can’t leave him in this state –’
    ‘Ron – Dumbledore’s dead,’ said Ginny.
    ‘No!’ Lupin looked wildly from Ginny to Harry, as though hoping the latter might contradict her, but when Harry did not, Lupin collapsed into a chair beside Bill’s bed, his hands over his face. Harry had never seen Lupin lose control before; he felt as though he was intruding upon something private, indecent; he turned away and caught Ron’s eye instead, exchanging in silence a look that confirmed what Ginny had said.
    ‘How did he die?’ whispered Tonks. ‘How did it happen?’
    ‘Snape killed him,’ said Harry. ‘I was there, I saw it. We arrived back on the Astronomy Tower because that’s where the Mark was … Dumbledore was ill, he was weak, but I think he realised it was a trap when we heard footsteps running up the stairs. He immobilised me, I couldn’t do anything, I was under the Invisibility Cloak – and then Malfoy came through the door and Disarmed him –’
    Hermione clapped her hands to her mouth, and Ron groaned. Luna’s mouth trembled.
    ‘– more Death Eaters arrived – and then Snape – and Snape did it. The Avada Kedavra.’ Harry couldn’t go on.
    Madam Pomfrey burst into tears. Nobody paid her any attention except Ginny, who whispered, ‘Shh! Listen!’
    Gulping, Madam Pomfrey pressed her fingers to her mouth, her eyes wide. Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that