A Bad Year for Slytherins

Chapter 3 -- Hermetic Dragons

Beth's mother was nearly half an hour putting everything right. It took five Cheering Charms to calm Aunt Eudoxia down, during which time she kept trying to grab Beth's mother's wand. In the meantime, the bed had caught fire, and Beth's mother put out the flames and restored the bed and its covers, as Aunt Eudoxia sat by the shattered widow and occasionally gave a shrill giggle. The snow had come back, and there was a cold wind blowing heaps of it into the room. Beth and Gregory retreated to the far corner. Gregory had taken most of the impact of the shattering window. His robes were covered in rents, and several angry red lines crisscrossed his face.

"Are you all right?" Beth said.

"'M fine," said Gregory, scrubbing his hand across his face, which did not improve his appearance any. "Why does she have to go and do that every time?"

Beth shrugged. "Well, she's barmy, isn't she?" she said. "I guess you remind her of her first husband."

"Yeah," said Gregory. But he already sounded less gloomy. The worst was over, and the room was beginning to warm up, with the window fixed and the snow cleared away.

Beth's mother was straightening Aunt Eudoxia's shawl, and saying, "Goodbye, Aunt Eudoxia, and keep well. I'll come to see you next month." Then she crossed the room to collect her children. "Gregory, dear . . ." she began, then trailed off, clearly torn between scolding and commiserating with him. She settled for tapping him on the head with her wand, whereupon the fabric of his robes wove itself back together, and the cuts on his face closed and faded to pink. "Let's go," she said. "There's chocolate sundaes waiting at Fortescue's."

But chocolate sundaes were not foremost on Beth's mind. "Mum," she said, as they all ducked their heads and made their way to the door of the Barmy Old Codgers Ward, "what did you mean when you said--"

"Oh, for heaven's sake," said Beth's mother. They had come out, not in the endless corridor, but in a marble-floored rotunda, with seven arched passageways, including the one they'd just come from, leading off in seven different directions. Soft light drifted down from the copula above, and a sort of tinkling music filled the air. "You two stay right here. I'm going to go find a matron."

Gregory leaned against the wall, took his wand out of his pocket, and began to pass it from one hand to the other, whistling tunelessly. Beth craned her neck to examine the carved figures on the copula, which seemed to be moving in time to the music. Suddenly there was a flash of light.

"What was that?" Beth said.

"Who cares?" said Gregory.

"I'm going to find out what it was," said Beth.

"Probably this room just does it, every once in a while," said Gregory. "Anyway, Mum said stay here."

"I'm not going anywhere," said Beth. "I just want to see what that light was. It came from one passageway over."

"Suit yourself," said Gregory, and began whistling again.

The source of the light proved easy to determine: Standing in the next passageway was a small boy with a very large camera and three legs. One of them was longer and thinner than the other two, and sticking out of his side. It was obviously giving him some trouble in getting around, because he was leaning on a pair of crutches, but it did not seem to dampen his mood any. He looked up at Beth with a huge grin as she approached. "Isn't it amazing?" he said. "It's a whole hospital full of wizards! I'm Colin Creevey," he added as an afterthought.

"Beth Goyle," Beth replied automatically. She wondered, though, whether the boy had addled brains as well as an extra leg. "Of course there's wizards. They wouldn't treat you in a hospital that was only for witches, or for . . . creatures, or something."

"I didn't even know there were wizards until I got that letter from Hogwarts," said Colin.

"Oh, are you starting at Hogwarts next year, too?" said Beth. Then what Colin was saying caught up with her. "Wait, you're not -- your parents aren't Muggles, are they? How awful for you!"

The grin disappeared from Colin's face; instead, he looked surprised and hurt. "No, it's not!" he said.

"Only don't they hate you for being able to do magic?" said Beth. "Or lock you in a room and try to make you turn straw into gold? Muggles in books are always doing that stuff."

"Not my parents," said Colin.

"Well . . . good," Beth said lamely. "Um . . . how'd you get the extra leg?"

Colin brightened immediately at the change of subject. "Oh, that was really cool!" he said. "I was fighting with my brother Dennis, because he wanted to borrow my bicycle, only he's too small, and I also wanted to ride it. So Dennis is yelling at me, and I got on the bicycle, only before I could go anywhere, I had this extra leg dragging behind me! D'you reckon that means Dennis is a wizard, too?"

"Probably," said Beth. She actually had no idea, but she didn't like to think about the alternative. Imagine if Gregory weren't a wizard!

"And then the third leg got tangled in the bicycle, and I started waving my arms around to keep my balance, and this bus appears out of nowhere! Bang! And it had chairs and coffee tables, and it went really fast, and it took me to this hospital! And then he wanted eleven Sickles, only I didn't know what Sickles were! So I gave him a bag of jelly babies, luckily he's really fond of them! And the Healer told me it'll take a week to get rid of my leg, and then I wanted to see the rest of the hospital, and now I'm lost!"

Beth had not understood everything in Colin's breathless narration, but she had got the last part. "That's because you wandered too close to the Barmy Old Codgers Ward," she said.

"What's that?" said Colin.

"Well . . ." said Beth, trying to remember how her mother had explained it to her the first time she'd come. "A wizard or witch's magic is like their nose or their ears; it never stops growing. So really old wizards are often really powerful. But they also get a bit, well, barmy. They can't remember where they are, or when it is, or who anybody else is."

"Yeah," said Colin. His grin was gone again. "That happens to Muggles, too."

"Oh," said Beth. "I didn't know." She seemed doomed to keep saying the wrong thing to him. But she took a breath and forged on with her explanation regardless. "But with wizards, when they get confused because what they see around them isn't what they think it should be, well, they try to change it back. And because they're very powerful, it often works. That's why they have to keep the codgers in their own ward, away from the rest of the hospital. Otherwise you'd never be able to find your way anywhere. But the nurses and matrons who work in the Barmy Old Codgers ward get really good at navigating through it. My mother's gone to fetch one; she'll get us out of here. There they are now."

But it was only Gregory. "Beth, who are you talking to back there?" he said. "Get back here quick, it's changing."

It was, too; the ceiling was getting lower, and the archway they were standing in more squarish. "Come on, Colin!" said Beth. "Hurry!"

But Colin, trying to juggle his camera and crutches, and negotiate his three legs, could not hurry. Meanwhile, Gregory was pulling on Beth's arm, saying, "Get out of there; what are you hanging around for?"

Then the change finished; the archway grew a door, which banged shut with Colin on the far side. Gregory and Beth were standing in what looked like some sort of covered market, with a wide tiled hallway and the shopfronts all crowded together. Neither of them was very happy about it.

"Look what you've done!" said Beth. "We've lost Colin!"

"Who cares?" said Gregory. "We've lost us; that's what I'm worried about."

"No we haven't; we're just where Mum left us," said Beth. She pointed to the shopfront behind them. The sign over it read "Boots," although the windows were displaying an odd assortment of potions, rather than footwear. "The barmy old codgers are through there."

Gregory frowned. "I don't think so," he said.

"Of course they are, look," said Beth, pushing the door open, as Gregory hovered anxiously behind her. And then, " . . . Oh."

The room behind the door was as unlike anything in the Barmy Old Codgers Ward as a room could be. It was white and orderly and gleaming, and practically smelled of purpose. There was a row of shiny metal tables, set at intervals with sinks, and another with inset silver cauldrons and portable fires. Yet another table held an array of neatly arranged instruments, and behind it was a set of pigeonholes containing parchment. One wall was entirely occupied by the largest abacus Beth had ever seen, clicking away furiously. Along the opposite wall were racks and racks, containing jars of various sizes. Inside the jars -- the smallest no bigger than Beth's fist, and the biggest the size of a kitten -- were dragons.

"Brilliant; the market's gone now," Gregory said. "I told you we were lost."

Beth, however, was barely paying attention as she walked slowly into the laboratory. She did not want to disturb anything, and the room was so painfully clean that she felt breathing in it would disturb it, but she wanted very much to get a closer look at those dragons. They looked more like the pictures Beth had seen of Welsh green dragons -- only much smaller -- than either three-headed ostriches or blowfish, but she had no doubt what they were. "Gregory, look," she said softly. "Hermetic dragons. Like in the book."

Perhaps deciding that they couldn't get any more lost than they already were, Gregory followed her into the lab. "You think?" he said. "They don't look like the picture."

"Don't be silly; what other kind of dragons would they keep in jars?" said Beth, touching one of the jars with her fingertips. The dragon inside looked up and bared its tiny teeth. "Oh, they're adorable!"

"They're deadly poison," Gregory pointed out. "Unless you bite yourself first, or something."

Just then the opposite door swung open and a tall young wizard in white work robes came in, strode over to the abacus, and began to make notes on his clipboard. Beth jumped guiltily away from the dragons. The labwizard looked up, and scowled. "What are you kids doing here?" he said.

Gregory, in his imperceptible way, had drifted to stand behind Beth. He clearly felt that she had gotten them into this, and it was up to her to get them out.

"We were just . . ." said Beth. "We were visiting the Barmy Old Codgers Ward, and we got lost . . ."

"Obviously," said the labwizard. "Does this look like the Barmy Old Codgers Ward to you?"

Beth shook her head.

"Why they stuck the research wing next to the Barmy Old Codgers, I don't know," grumbled the labwizard, jotting a few more notes on his clipboard before putting away his quill. "'We can't very well put you near the regular hospital,' they said. 'Your experiments might interfere with the patients,' they said. Well?" he added, holding the door open. "You'd better come along with me. I expect your Mum's looking for you. You didn't touch anything?"

"No," said Beth, surreptitiously wiping her hand on her robes, as if that would erase her fingerprints from the dragon's jar.

"Good," said the labwizard. He led them along a long white corridor filled with identical white doors, each set with a small window near the top. Occasionally a labwizard or -witch, also in white, would come out of one of the doors, and hurry down the corridor to another one. "Here we are," the labwizard said eventually, as they came to a door just like ten others they'd just passed.

The room past it, however, was not at all like the laboratory they'd left. It was smaller, and crowded with furniture and people. Three labwitches stood in the far corner, holding chipped mugs and talking animatedly. There were more mugs, a great silver samovar, and a biscuit tin with a few lonely crumbs on the bottom on a table up against one wall. Along the other was a squashy sofa, where two labwizards sat and discussed a Quidditch match, small silver figures shooting out of their wands and re-enacting plays as they argued. Nearer to, a short witch with greying hair cut severely around her ears was talking to a tall, blond wizard in elegant green robes -- the only one in the room, besides Gregory and Beth, who wasn't wearing white work robes. "Madam Macmillan, I found a couple of strays in the --" said their labwizard to the older witch, and then stopped short when he saw who she was talking to. "Oh, Mr. Malfoy, I'm very sorry, I didn't see you."

The tall blond wizard turned around. It was, in fact, Lucius Malfoy. Beth dug her nails into her palms. "That's quite all right . . . Stephens, is it?" he said. The labwizard nodded. "I do like to drop by sometimes and see how things are going in the lab now and then. Annoying, I know, but one must put up with donors, mustn't one? The Supervisor was just about to give me a tour." Then his eyes lighted on Gregory. "I know you," he said. "You're one of Draco's school friends, aren't you? Caleb Goyle's son."

"That's right, Mr. Malfoy," said Gregory. "This is my sister, Beth."

Beth pressed her lips together and nodded.

"Charming," said Mr. Malfoy. "And how is the rest of your family?"

"We're fine," said Beth defiantly.

"I'm so glad," said Mr. Malfoy. "But I mustn't keep Madam Macmillan waiting. Do give my best to your parents, won't you, ah . . . Gregory?" Then he swept out, with Madam Macmillan hurrying to stay in front of him.

Stephens seemed less than pleased with his failure to make Gregory and Beth someone else's problem. "I suppose I'd better take you back to the main hospital," he said. "Only I've got to check the mercury levels . . . stay here; I will be right back. Oi, Harper!" he added. "Keep an eye on these kids and make sure they don't wander off, eh?"

One of the labwizards on the couch gave a wave. "Cheers," he said, and went back to discussing Quidditch with his friend, not even noticing the glare that Gregory was directing at him.

"How could you be polite to him?" Beth hissed.

"Who?" said Gregory.

"Mr. Malfoy," said Beth. "He sent the Ministry to our house!"

"Yeah, but they wouldn't have found anything if it hadn't been for me," said Gregory. "Anyway, there's no point in getting angry with Mr. Malfoy. D'you think he cares that you were rude to him? He thought it was funny."

"I'll show him funny," said Beth, through clenched teeth.

"Nah, you won't," said Gregory. "Because he's a fully-trained wizard with piles of gold and friends at the Ministry, and you're an eleven-year-old girl who's never been to school and has more ancestors than Galleons."

Beth lifted her chin. "Mum says ancestors are better than Galleons," she said.

"Well, she would," said Gregory, "seeing as how she's got the one and not the other."

Beth did not have time to argue further, because at that point, Stephens came back. "There you are," he said, as if he had caught up with Gregory and Beth halfway to Scotland, and not exactly where he'd left them. "Well? Come along."

They followed Stephens from one white corridor to another, as he rattled off passwords, solved riddles, and at one point transfigured a flower on a climbing plant into a doorknob to get them into the corridor beyond. Beth had had no previous idea St. Mungo's had any research wing at all, but now they seemed to have gone miles, much further than they'd ever had to go to get to the Barmy Old Codgers Ward. Beth had to hurry to keep up with Stephens' determined stride, and it was her lack of breath more than his discouraging attitude that kept her from peppering him with questions. Gregory, although his legs were also considerably shorter than Stephens', did not seem to hurry at all, but neither was he talkative. And so they made their long way through the research wing in relative silence -- except when Stephens had to talk to doors, or to their guardians -- and it came as that much more of a shock when an alarm started blaring.

"Pyewackett!" Stephens' voice rose above the din of what sounded like iron bells. The word, Beth realized as she came puffing up behind him, was addressed to a portrait of Og the Definitely-Not-Mad, which resolutely blocked their way. "Pyewackett, I said! Damn it, let us through!"

"Can't be done," Og the Definitely-Not-Mad shouted cheerfully. "There's been a containment failure in room 328. Everything stays closed until it's fixed."

"Room . . ." Beth panted, " . . . 328? What's in there?"

Stephens ignored her and continued to address Og the Definitely-Not-Mad. "Containment failure?" he said, in an appalled tone that was almost lost in the clangor of the bells.

"Flitted, every last one of 'em!" cackled Og the Definitely-Not-Mad.

Stephens wheeled on Beth. "You said you didn't touch anything!" he yelled.

So that was room 328. "We didn't!" Beth shouted back. "At least, Gregory didn't -- and I only touched one of the jars. That can't have let all the dragons loose! Weren't they still there when you went to check the mercury?"

"All I know is, you kids turn up in room 328 where you don't belong, and the next thing you know, the dragons are loose!" shouted Stephens. "And while Lucius Malfoy is visiting!"

"Bother Lucius Malfoy!" Beth screamed. It echoed oddly in the suddenly silent corridor.

"Og!" said Stephens. "Is the emergency over? Pyewackett," he added as an afterthought.

"Nope!" said Og the Definitely-Not-Mad. "It's just the bells stop ringing constantly after the first minute."

"Wonderful," said Stephens.

It looked as if they were in for a wait. Gregory shoved his hands into his pockets and settled against the wall. Beth, after a short hesitation, sat on the floor -- she had been walking quickly, and she was tired. Stephens alternated between standing still and pacing jerkily the length of Og's portrait. At intervals, a bell rang out, to remind them the emergency was still in progress.

"How can you be keeping dragons, anyway?" said Beth. "Isn't it illegal?"

Stephens stopped short and scowled down at her. "We're an accredited research institution," he said. "Anyway, they're hermetic dragons -- small enough to keep inside and hidden from Muggles, and their natural environment is an alchemist's lab. We'll see if we keep our Dragon Research License after today, though.."

"If you don't . . ." said Beth, and hesitated. The alarm bell sounded, making them all start. "Will you still have a job?" she finished.

Stephens shrugged, and began pacing again.

"Oh," said Beth. She had not thought that a day that began with a visit to Aunt Eudoxia could get any worse, but this was miserable. And unfair, as well: There was no possible way that the dragons' escape was Beth's fault, and anyway Stephens had been so unpleasant to her that it served him right if he got sacked. Also her back was beginning to ache. The robes she was wearing had only small, decorative pockets, with no room for a book, so her choices to occupy herself were thinking unhappy thoughts or counting alarm bells. She had reached thirty-eight, and was thinking that perhaps the next one was past due, when she heard footsteps in the corridor. The owners of the footsteps soon came into sight: Madam Macmillan, Mr. Malfoy, and a trio of harried-looking labwitches.

". . .so sorry," Madam Macmillan was saying. "You mustn't judge our security by this unfortunate incident --"

"Not at all," said Mr. Malfoy. "Accidents can happen to anyone. In fact, they do happen to everyone. What matters is how one deals with them, and what I've seen of your emergency procedures is first-rate. I'll be sure to mention that when I make my recommendation to Mr. Jerrell that you be granted an extension of your Dragon Research License."

"Oh, will you?" said Madam Macmillan.

"Certainly," said Mr. Malfoy. "There are those in the Ministry who would like nothing better than to stifle useful research, but Mr. Jerrell isn't one of them, and I happen to feel -- Oh, it's Stephens again, who works with the dragons. I've been visiting your lab, Mr. Stephens. It's quite impressive."

"That's kind of you to say, Mr. Malfoy," said Stephens. "I wish you'd seen it in a better state."

"Nonsense," said Mr. Malfoy. "As I was just saying to Madam Macmillan, a crisis is the best time to see how a group of people operates. You're doing fine work. Madam Macmillan, I believe you were going to show me that fascinating project that your Musical Research Group was working on."

Stephens watched them go, all signs of irritation gone. He shook his head. "Great man, Mr. Malfoy," he said. And Beth couldn't argue; that was the worst part.

But at least Og the Definitely-Not-Mad swung open to let them through at Stephens' next "Pyewackett." A few turns later and they were back in the main hospital. The oak door to the Barmy Old Codgers ward was at the other end of the room, and Beth's mother was waiting at the Welcomewitch's desk close by.

By the time they reached her, the relieved look on her face had been replaced by a scolding one. Luckily for Beth and Gregory, however, Stephens chose that moment to speak.

"Are these your children, Madam?" he said. "I found them wandering in the research wing. You really ought to keep a closer eye on them in the Barmy Old Codgers ward."

Beth's mother's scolding look was instantly transferred to Stephens. "Listen to me, young man," she began. She went on to suggest that someone who was barely out of school himself had no business telling other people how to raise their children, and that furthermore she did not know what the research wing was doing hiring such callow youngsters, especially as it (the research wing) was a danger to life and limb and a menace to the health of law-abiding witches and wizards everywhere. She could say a few choice words about the administration of St. Mungo's hospital, too, for allowing such goings-on. And so she did. After a minute or so of trying to get a word in edgewise, Stephens was forced to flee. Beth and Gregory exchanged grins behind their mother's back, secure in the knowledge that their sundaes at Fortescue's were safe after all.

As they were leaving, the door to the Barmy Old Codgers ward swung open, and Colin Creevey came out, in the tow of a matron with a very long-suffering look. He spared a few seconds from his excited speech to wave to Beth. She was glad to see he'd made it out all right, too, although she doubted he'd been involved in anything half so exciting as a dragon escape.