Fred and George still had their meeting in Hogsmeade to attend, so Emma went on to the Hospital wing with Molly and Arthur, who were suitably distressed by what had happened.

"How do things like this happen at a school?" Molly squeaked as they looked down at Ron's prone figure.

Emma merely wondered how things like this kept happening to Ron. After all, he wasn't Harry, but he seemed to end up nearly-dead just as often. And the love potion he had accidently ingested had been meant for Harry. The poison, though, that hadn't been. That had been meant for someone else.

"Mr. and Mrs. Weasley?" Madam Pomfrey said gently, and Emma clenched her fists so that her nails dug into her palms. "The headmaster wishes to speak with you now, if you're ready."

Molly seemed incapable of answering, blowing her nose loudly as Arthur said that yes, they were ready. After all, Ron was stable and would eventually make a full recovery, thanks to Harry's quick thinking.

"You go on," Emma said, watching Ron. "I think I'll stay here a bit longer."

She wasn't alone for long once the Weasleys were led to Albus's office by Madam Pomfrey. As she half-expected, Severus Snape stalked in not ten minutes later, his face unreadable as he unstoppered a potion and poured it down Ron's throat. Emma wanted to ask what it was, but that would seem untrusting rather than merely curious.

"No doubt his brothers will feel guilty," Snape said without any way of greeting, "given that their potion caused the chain of events in question."

Emma frowned.

"No doubt," she said slowly. Indeed, Fred and George felt immensely guilty. But it wasn't exactly their fault. She'd made them take all reasonable precautions about the very potion that caused all of the hullabaloo. They had no way to foresee a result like this. "Still," she continued, looking up at him as he set the vial back down, "he was very lucky. Perhaps the intended recipient would not have been so."

His lips curled into a cruel sneer and he said, "The intended recipient would never have received the bottle. You are not acquainted with Horace Slughorn, but he has a tendency of keeping the finer things that end up in his hands, regardless of any initial thoughts of magnanimity."

Well, that had told her nothing about what was really going on with all these near-deaths. But with this new bit of information, it seemed that this was as poorly a planned attempt as the one that still had Katie in St. Mungo's.

"You didn't come here to tend your sickly student," she said, raising an eyebrow.

"You will be required in the near future," he said simply. She continued to look at him expectantly and he said, "Per your intelligence, I will need an excuse for some of my necessary behaviors, and thus I need to be seen with someone who cannot be explicitly tied to the Order."

It boggled Emma's mind that she still qualified as that, but then, she was a forgettable person.

"And the nature of this…need?" she said, raising her eyebrows. "What sort of an alibi am I meant to be giving you?"

If his expression hadn't been one of mild disgust she would have been horrified by the next words out of his mouth.

"You will pretend to be my lover." Her jaw must have dropped, because his sneer returned and he said, "Tastefully, of course. Subtlety. Unless you feel you are incapable of such an act."

"Why me?"

"I told you why, you stupid girl," he growled. "You are not explicitly connected to the Order and you are not of interest to the Dark Lord."

Emma tilted her head, sitting back a little.

"Why do you call him that? Even I call him Voldemort now. And I know you're not afraid of the name."

His stare was unblinking, unchanging, completely without any clues as to what was going on behind those black eyes. Finally, he said, "Do you know how to tell a lie, Miss Norwick?" She narrowed her eyes. What sort of answer was this? He leaned forward slightly, lowering his already low voice. "You live it. Every moment of every day you tell that lie to everyone, including yourself. You have one person you share the truth with, living or dead – I find at this point that it hardly makes a difference – and then at all other times that lie is the truth. This is the only way to keep your stories straight without losing your mind."

Emma nodded, understanding. Extreme, perhaps, but far more effective than her own methods. And he would have to be, with the lies he had to tell, the people he had to lie to. If she had no one to love, no one to come home to every day like Fred and George and Tien, she might have done the same. Emma recognized, though, that he was not giving her advice. He was simply answering a question in the only way he could.

"Where and when?" she asked softly.

"I will inform you in the usual manner," he drawled, leaning away again. "And this is one thing that I absolutely insist you tell…no one."

No one. Not Fred, not anyone at all. She nodded again, glancing at Ron, seeing that he was beginning to stir. Whatever the potion was, it was something to make certain that even in his unconscious state, he would not hear them.

Emma had a few things she wanted to ask, but she got the sense that with Ron stirring a little, even though he would not become conscious, it would not be safe to ask. The clock struck eight as Snape swept out of the room, and on her way back in, Madam Pomfrey led in a trailing group of students. Namely, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny, who immediately sat around the bed.

"How is he?" Hermione asked Emma softly.

"Unchanged," Emma said. "Stable, but not alert."

The four of them stared at Ron in silence until about ten past, when Fred and George finally showed up. They were each holding presents, looking uneasy. Fred set his down, taking Emma's hand as George crossed the infirmary.

"So," Fred said, "all in all, not one of Ron's better birthdays?"

Emma knew that the tightness in his voice was a bit of guilt. She blinked into the candlelight, wondering what they would say to each other once they left the hospital wing.

"This isn't how we imagined handing over our presents," George said solemnly, setting the other parcel down on top of the rest. He sat down by Ginny, closest to the door.

"Yeah," Fred said darkly, "when we pictured the scene, he was conscious."

"There we were, getting ready to go to Hogsmeade, thinking of surprising him-"

"You were in Hogsmeade?" Ginny asked, looking up at them with mild surprise.

"There was a plan to buy Zonko's," Emma said, shuffling her feet a little against the stone floor. "I dunno, they went to the meeting anyway, but I can't imagine it'll do you any good, Fred, if they're going to keep barring students from shopping weekends."

He nodded slowly, and the group fell into silence again as Fred pulled a chair over so that he could sit between Harry and Emma as they all watched Ron's too-pale face. His freckles looked eerily dark in the candlelight.

"How exactly did it happen, Harry?" Fred asked.

Harry had probably told the story a hundred times, and Emma raised her eyebrows sympathetically as he began to relate to them how he'd taken Ron to see Professor Slughorn in order to get an antidote for the love potion he'd accidentally ingested. Then Slughorn proposed a toast, and Ron drank first. The reaction was quick and debilitating.

"Slughorn was pretty useless," Harry said sadly, "but I remembered something I'd read in my textbook and I went through some of the ingredients he'd had out for the antidote and I found a bezoar. Holding Ron still while he was frothing about was a bit tricky, but I pinned him still enough and then I got the bezoar down his throat and his breathing eased up a bit, Slughorn ran for help, McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey turned up, and they brought Ron up here. They reckon he'll be all right. Madam Pomfrey says he'll have to stay here a week or so…keep taking essence of rue…"

"Blimey," George said softly, "it was lucky you thought of a bezoar."

"Lucky there was one in the room," Harry said with a modest shrug. But Emma knew what was going through his head.

If he hadn't been able to find one, Ron would have been dead.

Hermione seemed to have this idea as well because she sniffed softly, her eyes bright-red and swollen.

"Mum and Dad?" Fred asked Ginny.

"You missed them," Emma said softly. "We got here about an hour ago, right, and they left maybe twenty minutes ago for Dumbledore's office. I expect they'll be back soon, just talking over formalities."

The room fell into silence again as Ron began to mutter complete incoherencies in his unconscious state.

"So the poison was in the drink?" Fred clarified, obviously uncomfortable with the sort of silence they were in.

"Yes," Harry said quickly. "Slughorn poured it out-"

"Would he have been able to slip something into Ron's glass without you seeing?"

"Probably, but why would Slughorn want to poison Ron."

"I don't know the man personally," Emma said, raising her eyebrows once more, "but I can't imagine that he would. Maybe he didn't get whoever he intended?"

This was pushing into dangerous territory, and she wondered exactly had happened as much as the others, but while she couldn't lead them too far down the right direction for the sake of the Order, she also couldn't just sit there like it wasn't being discussed around her. And she certainly couldn't let them believe that Slughorn would want to poison Ron.

"Why would Slughorn want to poison Harry?" Ginny asked, obviously missing the point of what Emma had said, but Fred picked that up.

"I dunno," he said thoughtfully, "but there must be loads of people who'd like to poison Harry, mustn't there? 'The Chosen One' and all that?"

Ginny leaned forward slightly.

"So you think Slughorn's a Death Eater."

"Anything's possible."

"Remember what happened with Katie," Emma said softly. "Imperius Curse."

Ginny quirked an eyebrow.

"Or he could be innocent," Ginny argued. "The poison could have been in the bottle, in which case it was probably meant for Slughorn himself."

Emma's stomach turned. This was getting too close to the truth now, she just knew it.

"Who'd want to kill Slughorn?" George asked, bewildered.

"Dumbledore reckons Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his side," Harry said quickly. "Slughorn was in hiding for a year before he came to Hogwarts. And…" He paused, a guilty expression passing over his face for a faction of a second. "And maybe Voldemort wants him out of the way, maybe he thinks he could be valuable to Dumbledore."

Ginny, too sharp for her own good, decided to poke holes in this as well, and she said, "But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas. So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore."

Dumbledore. Emma could hear Snape's words echoing in her head.

The intended recipient would never have received the bottle.

Perhaps it was sloppy, but if Dumbledore was the intended recipient, that meant that whoever was doing this, they were gunning for Dumbledore. But based on his words to Emma, the headmaster already knew this. She shivered slightly.

"Then the poisoner didn't know Slughorn very well," Hermione said, her voice tight and nasally. "Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known that there was a good chance he'd keep something that tasty for himself."

"Er-my-nee," Ron muttered in his sleep suddenly, more clear than anything else he'd said in their presence. This shocked the room into silence once more, and they all stared at him, wondering if he'd wake.

Instead, he began to snore. Emma hoped that this would allow them to talk about something else, but before she could think of a suitable change of topic, the doors burst open violently and Hagrid rushed in, wet and muddy. She knew Filch would be very upset by the mess, but Hagrid didn't seem to think about anything but Ron.

"Bin in the forest all day!" he wailed. "Aragog's worse, I bin readin' to him – didn' get up ter dinner till jus' now an' then Professor Sprout told me abou' Ron! How is he?"

"He's going to be okay," Emma said gently.

Just then, Madam Pomfrey stuck her nose out from her office, clearly upset and she snapped, "No more than seven visitors at a time!"

They looked around at each other, counting, and George finally said, "Hagrid makes seven."

"Oh…yes…" she said hazily, and in order to cover for the fact that she'd not been paying very close attention, she quickly began to clear the mud that Hagrid had trailed in, which was probably best for everyone.

"I don' believe this," Hagrid croaked, looking down at Ron sadly. "Jus' don' believe it…. Look at him lyin' there…. Who'd want ter hurt him, eh?"

"That's what we were just discussing," Harry said. "We don't know."

"Someone couldn' have a grudge against the Gryffindor Quidditch team, could they? Firs' Katie, now Ron…"

Emme pursed her lips, trying to think of a way to steer the conversation back away from this, but it seemed a hopeless cause.

"I can't see anyone trying to bump off a Quidditch team," George said.

Emma snorted.

"You've been out of school too long," she said, trying not to smile. "You know perfectly well that Oliver Wood would have killed the Slytherins one by one if he'd been able to do it without getting caught."

George, Fred, and Harry all nodded that this was plausible.

"Well, I don't think it's Quidditch," Hermione said, "but I think there's a connection between the attacks."

Damn Hermione and her keen mind. Emma decided that she'd liked the girl better when she'd been silently sniffling in the corner.

"How d'you work that out?" Fred asked.

"Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren't, although that was pure luck. And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course," she muttered, "that makes the person behind this even more dangerous, in a way, because they don't seem to care how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim."

Desperation, inexperience, dozens of things that were clues to who the killer was. It was one thing not to care who got hurt in between. Bellatrix Lestrange was that insane, but Emma thought that Bellatrix was clever enough to recognize that such sloppy attempts increased the likelihood of being caught out before reaching the victim in question.

But whoever it was, Snape and Dumbledore must have already known, or they wouldn't be interfering with the investigation. So…why hadn't they done something about it?

Her thought was interrupted by the entrance of Molly and Arthur, who rushed in toward Ron's bed. Molly immediately pulled Harry into a hug, which startled the boy and knocked his glasses slightly off kilter.

"Dumbledore's told us how you saved him with the bezoar," she sniffed into his shoulder. "Oh, Harry, what can we say? You saved Ginny…you saved Arthur…now you've saved Ron…"

"Don't be…I didn't…"

"Half our family does seem to owe you their lives, now I stop and think about it," Arthur said, his voice strangely tight and dry. "Well, all I can say is that it was a lucky day for the Weasleys when Ron decided to sit in your compartment on the Hogwarts Express, Harry."

Or unlucky, Emma thought darkly, depending on how one thought about it. After all, Ron's incident at the very least was because of Harry being his friend, and for all Emma knew the near-deaths of Ginny and Arthur would also have been avoided had Harry befriended someone else on the train. That was a bit of an uncomfortable thought.

She didn't have to dwell on it long, however, because Madam Pomfrey swooped in again to remind them of the guest limit, and Hermione, Harry, and Hagrid left Ron to be alone with his family.

Emma crossed over to a window overlooking the lake and she shifted on her feet. Sitting with the Weasleys around Ron's hospital bed felt wrong, especially as Molly blew her nose. Fred came over a few minutes later and brushed a bit of Emma's hair over her left shoulder.

"Sickle for your thoughts," he whispered.

"I don't belong over there," she breathed back. "That's all."

Fred frowned. She knew he didn't agree with this, but he said softly into her ear, "We could tell her now, you know, if it would make it feel better."

"No," Emma hissed firmly. "We are not telling your mother about it while Ron is still unconscious from nearly dying."

"Hmm. Well, when you say it like that. You know, it might be good for her, give her some good news to help her feel better."

Emma just glared at Fred and he nodding his capitulation. She looked back down at the lights from the castle shimmering gold on the Black Lake, with the silver of the moon down the water a ways. The wind blew ripples across the surface of the water, and Emma felt a deep chill inside as she wondered how many more lives would tally up as collateral damage in this battle that felt more and more every day like a private war between Harry and Voldemort. She turned and looked at the hospital wing and she wondered, realistically, how could a family so big not have someone die when those close to Harry were the highest on the target list?

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to regular reader and reviewer, SiobhanPhelps, who has remained a loyal reader after my inexcusable absence from this story. Thank you so much for your continued support, and I hope you continue to enjoy as we move toward the end of book six and into book seven! All the dynamics will change, and I think we're already seeing glimpses of that.

-C