Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [6]

⚡️ Chapter 46 ⚡️

The balmy days slid gently through May, and as Vega saw, Ron seemed to be there at Harry's shoulder every time he saw Ginny. Harry, on the other and, confessed to Vega that – at this point in time – he was only longing for a stroke of luck that would somehow cause Ron to realise that nothing would make him happier than his best friend and his sister falling for each other and to leave them alone together for longer than a few seconds.

There seemed no chance of either while the final Quidditch game of the season was looming; Ron wanted to talk tactics with Harry all the time and had little thought for anything else. Vega couldn't entirely blame Ron as he wasn't the only one keen at this.

Interest in the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw game was running extremely high throughout the school, for the match would decide the Championship, which was still wide open. If Gryffindor beat Ravenclaw by a margin of three hundred points then they would win the Championship. If they won by less than three hundred points, they would come second to Ravenclaw.

If they lost by a hundred points, they would be third behind Hufflepuff and if they lost by more than a hundred, they would be in fourth place out of the four houses.

The run-up to this crucial match had all the usual features: members of rival Houses attempting to intimidate opposing teams in the corridors.

Unpleasant chants about individual players being rehearsed loudly as they passed; the team members themselves either swaggering around enjoying all the attention or else dashing into bathrooms between classes to throw up.

In the midst of all his preoccupations, Harry had not forgotten his other ambition: finding out what Malfoy was up to in the Room of Requirement. He was still checking the Marauder's Map, and as he was unable to locate Malfoy on it, deduced that Malfoy was still spending plenty of time within the room even after Harry had scared his goons.

"I don't think you will ever get to go into the Room of Requirement after Malfoy," Vega told him. "The Room doesn't exactly have owners, does it?"

It was a few days before the match against Ravenclaw, and Vega and Harry were walking down to dinner from the common room on their own, Ron having rushed off into a nearby bathroom to throw up yet again, and Hermione having dashed off to see Professor Vector about a mistake she thought she might have made in her last Arithmancy essay.

"Didn't you say you had a letter to send?" Harry asked as they made their – or Harry's – detour along the seventh-floor corridor, checking the Marauder's Map as he went.

"Oh, yes, it'll take me a moment," Vega replied, extracting the letter from her pocket. "Wait for me, will you? I'll just drop it off with Aquila and be back in a second,"

With that, Vega headed into the Owlery while Harry waited in the corridor, and once she had located Aquila, she marked the letter properly before allowing her owl to take it off with himself. She watched him for a few moments to make sure he'll be okay before leaving. But as Vega returned to the corridor, she could find the sign of Harry anywhere.

"Harry?" Vega called out, confused and concerned as she looked around but it seemed like he had simply left – or something had happened as a suit of armour lay undone. She pulled out her wand to locate his footsteps. "Appare Vestigium,"

Sweeping her wand around as it expelled the swirl of gold dust, Vega immediately caught sight of Harry as he would've been moments ago, running off to the direction of the marble staircase and she rushed off after the brief vision, concerned.

It was silent and deserted all over the castle and Vega knew that everyone was off to have their dinner in the Great Hall. Yet she could not find Harry until –