The clock sat on the floor, scattered items of clothing strewn around it.
Despite Mrs Weasley's obsessive watch over it, it had been left in the hurried dash from the Burrow to safety at Muriel's. A thin film of dust had developed over it; a spider had anchored an edge of its web to a corner, but the magic within kept it humming, kept its nine hands pointing at mortal peril. The ghoul moaned mournfully somewhere upstairs and dropped a chain.
The hands twitched and slowly, one by one, moved to travelling. They moved in succession to 'school' and then back to rest on mortal peril once more. Moments, hours even went past without another movement – but what was time to a clock that didn't measure it?
A mouse paused in its scurrying to sniff the clock, long whiskers snuffling, hoping, perhaps, that this strange object contained something it could eat. The clock gave a little hum, and then, for the first time in over seventeen years, began to chime – a deep, ringing sound that reverberated through the very bones of the Burrow. The mouse leapt into the air and scampered away under the couch, the clock still gonging, deeply, chillingly.
Twenty-four times, the bell tolled, all the hands whizzing around at immense speed, and then, one by one, they stopped back at mortal peril.
All except one. It continued to spin, long after the chiming had stopped, until it fell off. The dull thud it made when it hit the ground seemed the fill the whole house in mourning, because Fred's name shone metallically amongst the dust.