Breakfast

At ten past five in the morning by Ron's watch, the door swung open and Mrs. Weasley entered the kitchen. She was extremely pale, but when they all turned to look at her, Fred, Ron, and Harry half-rising from their chairs, she gave a wan smile.

"He's going to be all right," she said, her voice weak with tiredness. "He's sleeping. We can all go and see him later. Bill's sitting with him now, he's going to take the morning off work."

Fred fell back into his chair with his hands over his face. George and Ginny got up, walked swiftly over to their mother, and hugged her. Ron gave a very shaky laugh and downed the rest of his butterbeer in one.

"That's good, Molly," Aurelia said without any kind of expression but her voice was soft.

"Thank you for taking care of my children, Aurelia. . ." Mrs Weasley grasped Aurelia's both hands.

"It's alright Molly," Aurelia replied. "Now, have some breakfast then take some rest."

"Kreacher can do breakfast. Krea —" said Sirius.

"Oh Sirius, don't," Aurelia sighed. "He will come, swear and throw insults — it's really tiresome to watch. Let him be."

"It's alright, I will —" Mrs Weasley began.

"Spend time with your kids, Molly," said Aurelia. "They need you, I will manage."

"I will help you," Chris said getting up. "How does tea, toast, bacon and eggs sound?"

"Wonderful!" Sirius said loudly, and joyfully, then he hurried over to the stove.

Aurelia and Chris followed. Harry tried to follow them too but Mrs. Weasley stopped him.

"I don't know what would have happened if it hadn't been for you, Harry," she said in a muffled voice, hugging him tightly. "They might not have found Arthur for hours, and then it would have been too late, but thanks to you he's alive and Dumbledore's been able to think up a good cover story for Arthur being where he was, you've no idea what trouble he would have been in otherwise. . ."

Harry nodded and hurried after Chris to take out the plates from the dresser, while Mrs. Weasley joined Sirius and Aurelia.

"You okay?" Chris asked as she handed him the plates.

"Huh?" Harry didn't look up. "Yeah, sure."

"Harry, is there something you haven't told them?" Chris whispered.

"What? How did you —" Harry almost dropped the plates but Chris caught them.

"Harry?" Chris looked at him, clearly surprised. "What's wrong?"

"I need to talk to Sirius," Harry said abruptly and walked towards Sirius, who was asking Mrs Weasley to stay at Grimmauld Place as long as Mr. Weasley was in the hospital.

"Everything alright?" Aurelia appeared in front of Chris, who was staring at Harry and Sirius's retreating figures.

"Umm. . . Yeah," Chris replied looking back at Aurelia.

"You did a good job there," Aurelia said resuming her work.

"Where?" 

"You convinced the twins," Aurelia said. "I was worried about how am I going to stop them. You see, I'm not that good with being nice and all "

"It's nothing," Chris smiled. "It's just Fred and George and I have a kind of a siblings bond. I think that's why they didn't argue."

"That's actually very sweet," Aurelia slightly smiled. "You are a nice girl. I was never this much nice and sweet. Maybe that's why —"

Aurelia abruptly stopped talking, her face again became serious. Chris didn't say anything for a while. They worked in silence for a few minutes.

"So you were in a mission too last few days?" Chris asked after some time.

"Yes," Aurelia said. "Everyone is in missions nowadays."

"Yeah, Sirius said he was going to be in one," Chris said.

"Of course he did," Aurelia said looking annoyed. "So did he say anything else about our work?"

"Nope," Chris smiled.

"That's good then, I guess."

Their trunks arrived from Hogwarts while they were eating lunch so that they could dress as Muggles for the trip to St. Mungo's. They changed out of their robes into jeans and sweatshirts, then Mad-Eye arrived and all of them set out to St. Mungo's.

They took the train first, after three stations they stepped out into a wintry air on a broad store-lined street packed with Christmas shoppers. Tonks grabbed Chris and Ginny's hands to prevent them from getting separated as they made their way through the crowd.

"Here we go," said Moody a moment later, as they stopped outside a large, old-fashioned, red brick department store called Purge and 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 modeling fashions at least ten years out of date. Large signs on all the dusty doors read CLOSED FOR REFURBISHMENT.

"Right," said Tonks, beckoning them forward to a window displaying nothing but a particularly ugly female dummy whose false eyelashes were hanging off and who was modeling a green nylon pinafore dress. "Everybody ready?"

They nodded, clustering around her; Tonks leaned close to the glass, looking up at the very ugly dummy and said, her breath steaming up the glass, "Wotcher . . . We're here to see Arthur Weasley."

Chris curiously watched as the dummy gave a tiny nod, beckoned its jointed finger, and Tonks seized Ginny and Chris by the elbows, stepped right through the glass what felt like a sheet of cool water, emerging quite warm and dry on the other side.

They had arrived in what seemed to be a crowded reception area where rows of witches and wizards sat upon rickety wooden chairs, some looking perfectly normal and perusing out-of-date copies of Witch Weekly, others sporting gruesome disfigurements such as elephant trunks or extra hands sticking out of their chests. The room was scarcely less quiet than the street outside, for many of the patients were making very peculiar noises. A sweaty-faced witch in the center of the front row, who was fanning herself vigorously with a copy of the Daily Prophet, kept letting off a high-pitched whistle as steam came pouring out of her mouth, and a grubby-looking warlock in the corner clanged like a bell every time he moved, and with each clang his head vibrated horribly, so that he had to seize himself by the ears and hold it steady.

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To be continued. . .