Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [7]

⚡️ Chapter 41 ⚡️

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Expelliarmus!"

The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead centre of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Vega saw Voldemort's green jet meet her and Harry's own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last.

Vega reached her hand out gently into the air caught the wand in her free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward.

Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snake-like face vacant and unknowing.

Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Vega and Harry stood, the latter with two wands in her hand, both staring down at their enemy's shell.

One shivering second of silence, the shock of the moment suspended: and then the tumult broke around Vega and Harry as the screams and the cheers and the roars of the watchers rent the air.

The fierce new sun dazzled the windows as they thundered toward Vega and Harry, and the first to reach the two of them were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around them, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened them.

Then Ginny, Neville, and Luna were there, and then all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and Professors McGonagall and Flitwick and Sprout, and Vega could not hear a word that anyone was shouting, not tell whose hands were seizing her, pulling her, trying to hug some part of her, hundreds of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy and Girl Who Lived, the reason it was over at last –

Sun rose steadily over Hogwarts, and the Great Hall blazed with life and light. Vega and Harry were an indispensable part of the mingled outpourings of jubilation and mourning, of grief and celebration.

They wanted Vega and Harry there with them, their leaders and symbols, their saviours and their guides, and that the two of them had not slept, that the two of them craved the company of only a few of them, seemed to occur to no one.

Vega and Harry must speak to the bereaved, clasp their hands, witness their tears, receive their thanks, hear the news now creeping in from every quarter as the morning drew on; that the Imperiused up and down the country had come back to themselves, that Death Eaters were fleeing or else being captured, that the innocent of Azkaban were being released at that very moment, and that Kingsley Shacklebolt had been named temporary Minister of Magic.

They moved Voldemort's body and laid it in a chamber off the Hall, away from the bodies of Dora, Lupin, Colin Creevey, and fifty others who had died fighting him.

McGonagall had replaced the House tables, not nobody was sitting according to House anymore: All were jumbled together, teachers and pupils, ghosts and parents, centaurs and house-elves, and Firenze lay recovering in the corner, and Grawp peered in through a smashed window, and people were throwing food into his laughing mouth.

Finally, Vega was allowed a moment of peace next to her cousin Dora, and she sat down next to her, reaching out to touch her face. Her hair had returned to the normal caramel colour, and she looked like she was sleeping. The touch of her cheek was still warm, or maybe it was the sunlight showering down upon them. Vega tried not to think about what would be waiting for her at home – if poor Andromeda knew... and if Teddy knew that his parents were gone.