OOM: Heavy HBP Spoilers abound!
“There you are then,” said Slughorn, handing Harry and Ron a glass of mead before raising his own. “Well, a very happy birthday, Ralph -- ”
“Ron --” whispered Harry.
But Ron, who did not appear to be listening to the toast, had already thrown the mead into his mouth and swallowed it.
There was one second, hardly more than a heartbeat, in which Harry knew there was something terribly wrong and Slughorn, it seemed, did not.
“ -- and may you have many more --”
“Ron!”
Ron had dropped his glass; he half-rose from his chair and then crumpled, his extremities jerking uncontrollably. Foam was dribbling from his mouth, and his eyes were bulging from their sockets.
“Professor!” Harry bellowed. “Do something!”
But Slughorn seemed paralyzed by shock. Ron twitched and choked: His skin was turning blue.
“What -- but -- ” spluttered Slughorn.
Harry leapt over a low table and sprinted towards Slughorn’s open potion kit, pulling out jars and pouches, while the terrible sound of Ron’s gargling breath filled the room. Then he found it -- the shriveled kidney-like stone Slughorn had taken from him in Potions.
He hurtled back to Ron’s side, wrenched open his jaw, and thrust the bezoar into his mouth. Ron gave a great shudder, a rattling gasp, and his body became limp and still.
"What-- how?" Slughorn spluttered, still in shock. "Is he--?"
“I dunno,” Harry muttered, growing more alarmed by Ron’s increasingly worsening condition. “We need Madam Pomfrey,” he commanded.
Slughorn just stared.
“Go get Madam Pomfrey already!” he said, raising his voice.
Slughorn nodded. "I'll just--oh my --" He ran out of the room, or rather waddled rather quickly, the door slamming behind him.
Where he lay on the floor, Ron gasped, and croaked out, "Dun wanna...dun..mum said you'll be in trouble...it's in...in the forbidden corridor..." Then he went into a coughing fit and seemed to have trouble getting enough air. His lips were still tinged with blue.
Harry did the first thing he could think of. He rushed over and pushed Ron onto his side so that hopefully he could breathe better. “Stay, Ron,” he pleaded, wishing that Slughorn would hurry up with Pomfrey.
After a few terrifying minutes, the coughing fit stopped, he seemed to catch his breath as best as he was able, and he started muttering incoherently again, his voice croaking and ragged, "M'sorry...shouldn't have...lake...wanted to die. Afraid...Sorry. Let Harry down. The water's cold. Even though there's fire. Yellow fire."
Harry shuddered at Ron’s words. “Ron, they’re coming. They’ll save you,” he said aloud, knowing that his best friend couldn’t understand a word he was saying right now. “You’re going to be fine. Just hang on.”
Ron only gurgled and clenched his hands into fists, the freckled skin of his hands, stark-white.
The bezoar was supposed to fix him, wasn’t it? Why wasn’t he getting better?
“Where are you?” he grumbled over at the door, wishing he could just summon the matron. He was glad that he stayed though--there had been so much that Ron had been through that he hadn’t been able to be there for.
It seemed ages that he sat there, a hand on his shoulder, watching him breath rattling breaths, in and out, in and out, watching carefully, his heart feeling like a cold fist was squeezing it every time Ron took just a little too long to inhale or exhale.
The door suddenly burst open and Madam Pomfrey whisked in, her skirts held in her hands, followed by Professor McGonagall, whose hat was slightly askew.
"Potter, is he -- "
"Still breathing, thank goodness," Madam Pomfrey, said, after checking his pulse. "Potter, please tell me what Professor Slughorn saw you shove into his mouth was a bezoar?"
Harry nodded “I rummaged in his kit until I found a bezoar I hand him in class earlier,” he explained. “Will he be okay?” he asked Pomfrey, worriedly.
Madam Pomfrey sighed in relief, and that seemed to be all the answer she was willing to give for the moment. She immediately conjured a stretcher out of thin air and levitated Ron onto it, then levitated Ron out of the room. McGonagall gestured for Harry to follow, and quickly, and she said briskly, as they all nearly jogged towards the Hospital Wing, "What in the world happened, Potter? Even Professor Slughorn isn't sure."
"It was just a bit of mead, I don't understand--" he was muttering, seemingly very alarmed.
Harry explained to both Pomfrey and McGonagall what he saw happen. “That was all I could think of to do, grab a bezoar, because I didn’t have a clue what was in that mead,” he explained, casting worried glances at Ron every so often, and suspicious ones towards Slughorn.
By the time they'd finished the explanation, they were at the Hospital Wing. "Some essence of rue should do it," Madam Pomfrey said. She'd been monitoring his life signs all the while. "He should be on his feet again in a week or so--but it was close. If that bezoar had been ingested a few seconds later..."
"I'm the knight...I'm the knight, Merlin. Chess...s'bout sacrifice."
Her lips pressed together and trembling slightly, no doubt because this was the second of her wards injured horribly under her watch, McGonagall patted Harry consolingly on the shoulder. "Thank heavens for your quick thinking, Potter. You may very well have saved his life."
“We’ll see,” Harry said darkly, not liking the look of Ron at all.
"You're going to have to wait out here, Potter. I'll let you in as soon as his family's here to see him," Madam Pomfrey said, opening the door to the ward. "--And I'll have no complaints, Potter. No visitors."
"I'll send an owl to his parents, and then Professor Slughorn, I'll need you to come with me to report this to the Headmaster--and also explain why you were giving students alcohol, especially when one is not yet of legal age."
McGonagall turned back to Harry. "Mr. Potter, I'll inform Ginny Weasley and Ms. Granger. You won't have long to wait alone."
Harry listened to the conversation, beginning to protest about not going in with Ron, only to get a disapproving look from Madam Pomfrey. He finally conceded to sit on the floor and wait by the door until McGonagall had notified Hermione and Ginny.
He sat on the floor for what seemed like hours, worrying himself into an anxious pile of nerves about Ron. Suddenly, he felt almost guilty for taking him to Slughorn when the professor had nearly gotten his best friend killed. If only he’d thrown those stupid chocolate cauldrons out when he’d first gotten them...
Had Slughorn meant to poison Ron?
It was more likely that he had meant to poison him, Harry.
If he’d meant to poison anyone. He had looked horribly surprised when Ron had keeled over, and it wasn’t as if he’d had time to slip anything into one of their goblets, so unless he’d been planning to drink last...
Then, he wondered idly, what if it wasn’t Slughorn at all? What if Malfoy’d had some harebrained scheme to get to another Gryffindor? Or maybe someone was after Slughorn himself? Harry stared off into space as he thought, glad that he had been there to (he hoped desperately) save his best friend, doing something that no one else had thought of. He had saved Ron for once, guiltily remembering the many times where he hadn’t been there to help.
If I did help. Please, please let it have been enough.
He heard pounding feet, and he saw Hermione hurtling towards him, white-faced and anxious, her hair looking wild and unkempt.
Before she was anywhere near him, she was already asking, “What happened? Harry, what happened? Is he alright? Please tell me he’s alright!”
Harry stood up to meet her.
“He’s alive. I don’t know how bad it is, but I think he’ll be OK.”
“Oh, thank goodness!”
Harry opened his mouth to explain further, when there were sounds of another pair of pounding feet, and a familiar, long-haired red-head came sprinting around the corner, looking terrified.
He took a deep breath, ready to try and explain what had happened, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what had.
[[The first bit of text is from HBP American edition.]]