Gloves, Toaster and Toilets

Arthur kept reading until there was a considerable amount of noise outside his door. He looked over the top of the paper to see what was going on. Just then Molly, George, Fred, Ron, Ginny and Harry came in. Arthur threw the paper aside and cheerily greeted them.

"Hello!" he called. "Bill just left, Molly, had to get back to work, but he says he'll drop in on you later."

Molly bent down to kiss his cheek and looked anxiously at him. "How are you Arthur? You're still looking a bit peaky -"

Arthur didn't want his wife to worry so he said, brightly, "I feel absolutely fine. If only they could take off the bandages off, I'd be fit to go home." He gave Ginny a one armed hug.

"Why can't they take the bandages off, Dad?" asked Fred

"Well, I start bleeding like mad every time they try." Arthur had absolutely no problem saying this. He conjured six chairs for them to sit in. He explained that the venom has something inside it that keeps the wounds open and that they're doing everything they can to find an antidote. He also pointed out the guy who had been bitten by a werewolf.

Molly looked quite alarmed "A werewolf? Is he safe in a public ward? Shouldn't he be in a private room?"

Arthur tried to calm his wife. "It's two weeks until full moon. They've been talking to him this morning, the Healers, you know, trying to persuade him he'll be able to lead an almost normal life. I said to him -- didn't mention names, of course -- but I said I knew a werewolf personally, very nice man, who finds the condition quite easy to manage."

"What did he say?" asked George.

Arthur sadly told them. "Said he'd give me another bite if I didn't shut up. And that woman over there," he pointed out the woman with the chunk missing from her leg, " won't tell the healers what bit her, which makes us all think it must have been something she was handling illegally. Whatever it was took a real chunk out of her leg, very nasty smell when you take off the dressings."

Fred pulled his chair closer to Arthur's bed and asked "So, you going to tell us what happened, Dad?"

Looking pointedly at Harry, Arthur answered. "Well, you already know, don't you? It's simple -- I'd had a very long day, dozed off, got sneaked up on and bitten."

Fred still had more questions. He pointed at the Daily Prophet. "Is it in the Prophet, you being attacked?"

"No, of course not, the Ministry wouldn't want everyone to know a great dirty serpent got --"

"Arthur!" Molly had barely stopped me from saying it.

"-- got -- er -- me."

"So where were you when it happened, Dad?" Those twins are so full of questions.

"That's my business." Arthur had to keep away from that subject with the kids around. He saw the Daily Prophet and his opportunity. He started talking about Willy Widdershins and what he had read about him but, Fred interrupted him yet again.

"When you say you were 'on duty' what were you doing?"

This time, Molly saved his skin. "You heard your father, we are not discussing this here. Go on about Willy Widdershins, Arthur --"

Arthur tried to continue but, this time George interrupted him.

"You were guarding it, weren't you? The weapon? The thing You-Know-Who's after?

Molly was really starting to lose her temper. "George, be quiet" she snapped.

Arthur continued about the biting doorknobs and even got to the point that there were supposedly Muggles in St. Mungo's before he was interrupted.

This time it was Fred. When he asked his question he looked at Arthur for a reaction. "Didn't you say You-Know-Who's got a snake, Harry? A massive one? You saw it the night he returned, didn't you?"

"That's enough," said Molly crossly she directed her next comment at her husband. "Mad-Eye and Tonks are outside, Arthur, they want to come and see you. And you lot can stay outside." She added to the kids. "You can come and say good-bye afterward. Go on."

Then Tonks and Mad-Eye came in. They grouped closed together and talked quietly.

The first thing that Arthur asked was if they had found the snake. It was Tonks who answered him.

"No, they searched the whole are but they couldn't find the snake anywhere, it just seems to have vanished after it attacked you, Arthur." She hesitated a bit. "But You-Know-Who can't have expected a snake to get in, can he?"

Mad-Eye seemed to have an answer to this. "I reckon he sent it as a lookout, 'cause he's not had any luck so far, has he? No, I reckon he's trying to get a clearer picture of what he's facing and if Arthur hadn't been there the beast would have had much more time to look around." He started again on a different track. "So, Potter says he saw it all happen."

This was an uneasy topic for Molly. "Yes," she answered "You know, Dumbledore seems almost to have been waiting for Harry to see something like this...." She let her sentence hang unfinished.

"Yeah, well there's something funny about the Potter kid, we all know that," Mad-Eye said this reluctantly.

"Dumbledore seemed worried about Harry when I spoke to him this morning." Molly seemed worried as she said this.

Mad-Eye seemed to be the only one willing to continue this conversation. "'Course he's worried. The boy's seeing things from inside You-Know-Who's snake. Obviously Potter doesn't realize what that means, but if You-Know-Who's possessing him, than Oclumency the best thing for him. However much he doesn't want to do it, he's going to have to teach that boy Oclumency." The conversation dragged on like this for quite a while.

When it was over, Arthur was glad but, he worried about what he had found out. He wondered how they were going to be able to guard it any longer and how Severus would teach Harry with his grudge against James.