Vega joined Harry, Ron and Hermione as they headed down to Great Hall to have their dinner – all of her friends were free after dinner but Vega had Ghoul Studies and Magical Law classes (both of which were only half an hour long each) and then the night free until Astronomy at midnight. She was already very hungry since she had skipped on lunch.
And while Vega was serving herself a mountain of food, Harry started to tell them how exactly he managed to make the potion so well – and that he hadn't, in fact, copied Vega's work while standing next to her. Hermione's face became stonier with every word he uttered.
"I suppose you still think I cheated?" Harry finished, aggravated by her expression. "I have never copied Vega in the class before – you know she works too fast,"
"I'm very sure that Harry did not copy anything from me," Vega vouched for him, opening her book and setting it in front of her to do some reading for the Potions homework while she ate.
"See?" Harry asked, throwing up his hands.
"Well, it wasn't exactly your own work, was it?" Hermione said stiffly.
"He only followed different instructions to ours," Ron said. "Vega's always doing it – could've been a catastrophe, couldn't it? But he took a risk and it paid off," He heaved a sigh. "Slughorn could've handed me that book, but no, I get the one no one's ever written on. Puked on, by the look of page fifty-two, but –"
"Hang on,"
The four of them looked up and Vega saw that it was Ginny who had interrupted her brother, and she joined them promptly, and looking rather cross with what they were talking about. Vega stopped reading and lowered her spoon.
"Did I hear right?" Ginny asked, sounding positively alarmed and angry as she looked toward Harry. "You've been taking orders from something someone wrote in a book, Harry?"
"It's nothing," Harry responded reassuringly, lowering his voice. "It's not like, you know, Riddle's diary. It's just an old textbook someone's scribbled on,"
"But you're doing what it says?" Ginny asked.
"I just tried a few of the tips written in the margins," Harry told her in quick response. "Honestly, Ginny, there's nothing funny –"
"Ginny's got a point," Hermione said, perking up at once. "We ought to check that there's nothing odd about it. I mean, all these funny instructions, who knows?"
"Hey!" Harry exclaimed indignantly, as Hermione pulled his copy of Advanced Potion-Making out of his bag and raised her wand directly at it.
"Specialis Revelio!" Hermione said anyhow, rapping it smartly on the front cover.
Nothing whatsoever happened – the book simply lay there, looking old and dirty and dog-eared. Vega, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny all stared at it, and the silence was broken when Vega returned to eating her dinner as per usual.
"Finished?" Harry asked his brunette friend rather irritably. "Or d'you want to wait and see if it does a few backflips?"
"It seems all right," Hermione replied, still staring at the book suspiciously. "I mean, it really does seem to be... just a textbook,"
"Let's be fair, this book must belong to someone who was really interested in Potions," Vega said once she had swallowed her food. "And they must like to experimen t – if they wrote instructions in their book, they must have tried and tested it to be correct... and wrote them in so they had a record whenever they were in class. They must've memorised it by now – but doesn't mean you should be trying everything in that book, Harry, it can be dangerous,"
The rest of the night and the week went by in a swift blur.
With how many classes she had, Vega had a mountain of homework every day and spent most of her time studying so she would have her weekends more open – especially since she had promised Hagrid that she would go down to the Acromantula lair with him on the morning of Saturday before breakfast started so they could avoid attention.
It was a cold morning and Vega had dressed thickly to join Hagrid as they head into the dark Forbidden Forest that Saturday. Unlike her thirteen-year-old self, this time she was equipped with stronger spells and the ability to hide her human scent.
This journey was just as nerve-wrecking for the girl as had the numerous ones before it – and Vega wasn't sure what they would do if Aragog was already dead.
And as soon as they reached the lair, and seen the unmoving body of Aragog in the middle of it, she had been sure that he was head – and that they would need to flee before they could be devoured as second-helpings by his descendants.
But as Hagrid called out to his old friend, the spider's blind eyes moved and Vega moved forward to get a check on the spider, hesitantly taking the eighteen-foot Acromantula's temperature and spit, very clearly feeling the endless eyes that were on her back from the endless spiders hanging above the colony. Vega moved back quickly.
Vega did not dislike spiders but she did not have any good experience with the Acromantulas from the Forbidden Forest – in Second-Year and Fourth-Year.
Hagrid had brought some maggots along with himself and threw them over to Aragog to eat before taking Vega along quickly away from the spider lair.
"Wait," Vega muttered as she pulled out her wand swiftly as she heard them being followed. "They don't like light – Expecto Patronum!"
The Thunderbird Patronus circled over Vega and Hagrid, keeping the Acromantula at a bay until the two of them had managed to get out of the forest and were greeted by Fang by Hagrid's hut. Vega dropped into an open chair and patted him on the head.
"We were quick, eh?" Hagrid asked. "Yeh can go for breakfast in a bit – I'll make some dandelion juice for yeh," Vega nodded and he bustled off.
"I wrote some letters to the Magical Creatures Department," Vega informed Hagrid, eagerly. "And I'll send them out today... hopefully, we'll get to see Erumpents and Hippocampus... and even an Occamy, can you imagine that?"
After having a good conversation with Hagrid over some juice, Vega trudged up to the castle for breakfast, reaching her ring up to greet her boyfriend morning and go to join the Gryffindor table as her friends would be arriving down any moment.
Things had been rather tense between Harry, Ron and Hermione ever since Harry had acquired that Potions book, especially since he had continued to follow the book's instructions wherever they deviated from Libatius Borage's.
And the result of it was that by their fourth lesson, Slughorn was raving about Harry's abilities quite as much as about Vega, and said he had rarely ever taught any one, much less two, students in one class. Neither Ron nor Hermione was delighted by this.
Although Harry had offered to share his book with both of them, Ron had more difficulty deciphering the handwriting than Harry did, and could not keep asking Harry to read aloud or it might look suspicious. Hermione, meanwhile, was resolutely ploughing on with what she called the 'official' instructions, but becoming increasingly bad-tempered as they yielded poorer results than the Prince's.
"Or herself," Hermione said irritably, overhearing Harry pointing out to Ron how the Prince wasn't always talking about potion-making in the common room that Saturday evening. "It might have been a girl. I think the handwriting looks more like a girl's than a boy's,"
"The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," Harry said. "How many girls have been Princes?"
Hermione seemed to have no answer to this. She merely scowled and twitched her essay on The Principles of Rematerialisation away from Ron, who was trying to read it upside down. Vega had finished her homework a while ago and had been reading through a book about Acromantula's so she could find something to help Aragog out.
"You do realise that you shouldn't use new spells in close quarters?" Vega asked as she closed her book and looked toward Harry. "Especially if you have no idea what it is supposed to do – you can end up hurting someone or yourself,"
Before Harry could start arguing with her over it, Vega put her stuff into her bookbag and tapped it with her wand to send it back to her dormitory.
"Anyway," Vega spoke up, straightening out her skirt and glancing at her watch. "It is ten to eight – and if we don't hurry now, we'll be late for Dumbledore's lesson,"
Harry jumped and hurriedly put the old copy of Advanced Potion-Making back into his bag, and Vega waited patiently for him, fixing herself up to not look ruffled from the long day she had spent on revision on her first-week long of classwork.
"Ooooh!" gasped Hermione, looking up at once and letting go of the argument. "Good luck! We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you two!"
"Hope it goes okay," Ron said, and the two of them waited and watched Vega and Harry leave through the portrait hole.
Vega led Harry through the shortcuts and they proceeded through the deserted corridors quietly and Vega was quite surprised when Harry suddenly pulled her behind a statue. When she looked back up, she saw that it was due to... Professor Trelawney.
Professor Trelawney had appeared around a corner, muttering to herself as she shuffled a pack of dirty-looking playing cards, reading them as she walked. Vega stared at her as she passed the location where they were crouched, hidden.
"Two of spades: conflict. Seven of spades: an ill omen. Ten of spades: violence.
Knave of spades: a dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner –"
And then, suddenly, Professor Trelawney stopped dead, right on the other side of their statue, muttered, "Well, that can't be right," She sounded annoyed, and Vega heard her reshuffling vigorously as she set off again, leaving nothing but a whiff of cooking sherry behind her. Vega glanced over her shoulder until she was far away.
"That was strange," Vega spoke, concerned. "Umm... anyway, come on, we cannot be late – you know I hate being late to anything,"
Once they were sure that Professor Trelawney had turned the corner away from them, the pair of Gryffindors finally reached the spot on the seventh-floor corridor where a single gargoyle stood against the wall, and Vega called out, "Acid Pops,"
The gargoyle leapt aside; the wall behind it slid apart, and a moving spiral stone staircase was revealed, onto which Vega and Harry stepped, so that they were carried in smooth circles up to the door with the brass knocker that led to Dumbledore's office. Vega shared a look with Harry and then turned around to knock on the door.
"Come in," Dumbledore's voice answered.
"Good evening, sir," Vega greeted as she stepped into the Headmaster's office behind Harry, and she closed the door after them.
"Ah, good evening," Dumbledore replied, smiling at the sight of them. "Sit down, I hope you both have had an enjoyable first week back at school?"
"Yes, thanks, sir," Harry said while Vega nodded in agreement along.
"You must have been busy, a detention under your belt already!" Dumbledore said, looking at Harry and Vega bit her lower lip as she turned her head to him, too.
"Er," Harry began awkwardly, but Dumbledore did not look too stern.
"I have arranged with Professor Snape that you will do your detention next Saturday instead," Dumbledore told the boy, and Harry nodded.
"Right," Harry said.
"And you must be very busy with your studies, Vega?" Dumbledore asked, and Vega nodded. "Certainly, it's not a lot of students who take up so many subjects – how do you find it?"
"I'm enjoying all the classes, actually," Vega admitted.
"So, Harry and Vega," Dumbledore said, in a business-like voice. "You both have been wondering, I am sure, what I have planned for you during these – for want of a better word – lessons?"
"Yes, sir," Vega answered.
"Well, I have decided that it is time," Dumbledore went on. "Now that you know what prompted Lord Voldemort to try and kill you both fifteen years ago, for you to be given certain information,"
There was a pause.
"You said, at the end of last term, you were going to tell us everything," Harry spoke up, and his voice was fairly accusingly. "Sir," He added afterward.
"And so I did," Dumbledore said placidly. "I told you both everything I know. From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork. From here on in, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron,"
"But you think you're right?" Harry asked.
"Naturally I do, but as I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man," Dumbledore told them. "In fact, being – forgive me – rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger,"
"Sir," Harry said tentatively. "Does what you're going to tell me have anything to do with the prophecy? Will it help me... survive?"
"It has a very great deal to do with the prophecy," Dumbledore said casually. "And I certainly hope that it will help the two of you to survive,"
Dumbledore got to his feet and walked around the desk, past Vega and Harry, who turned eagerly in their seats to watch Dumbledore bending over the cabinet beside the door. When Dumbledore straightened up, he was holding a familiar shallow stone basin etched with odd markings around its rim. He placed the Pensieve on the desk in front of them.
"You look worried," Dumbledore said. Harry had indeed been eyeing the Pensieve with some apprehension. Dumbledore smiled. "This time, you enter the Pensieve with me... and, even more unusually, with permission,"
"But where are we going, Professor?" Vega asked, intrigued.
"For a trip down Bob Ogden's memory lane," Dumbledore said, pulling from his pocket a crystal bottle containing a swirling silvery-white substance.
"Oh," Vega said. "And... who was Bob Ogden?"
"He was employed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement," Dumbledore said. "He died some time ago, but not before I had tracked him down and persuaded him to confide these recollections to me. We are about to accompany him on a visit he made in the course of his duties. If you will stand..."
But Dumbledore was having difficulty pulling out the stopper of the crystal bottle: his mysteriously injured hand seemed stiff and painful. Vega quickly moved to her feet and held her hands out to the Headmaster, "If I may help you with it?"
"No matter, Vega –" Dumbledore said as he pointed his wand at the bottle and the cork flew out while Vega shared a look with Harry.
"Sir – how did you injure your hand?" Harry asked again, looking at the blackened fingers with a mixture of revulsion and pity.
"Now is not the moment for that story, Harry," Dumbledore replied as he tipped the silvery contents of the bottle into the Pensieve, where they swirled and shimmered, neither liquid nor gas. "Not yet. We have an appointment with Bob Ogden – after you,"
Vega bit her lower lip and when she saw that Harry was rather hesitant, she decided to step forward before him. She took a breath and plunged her head into the silvery substance in the Pensieve – her feet left the floor below her and she found herself falling through the whirling darkness and then, quite suddenly, she was blinking in dazzling sunlight.
Before Vega's eyes had adjusted to her surroundings, Harry and Dumbledore landed beside her.
The three of them were standing in a country lane bordered by high, tangled hedgerows, beneath a summer sky as bright and blue as a forget-me-not.
Some ten feet in front of them stood a short, plump man wearing enormously thick glasses that reduced his eyes to mole-like specks. He was reading a wooden signpost that was sticking out of the brambles on the left-hand side of the road.
Without a doubt, it must be Ogden.
Ogden was the only person in sight, and he was also wearing the strange assortment of clothes so often chosen by inexperienced wizards trying to look like Muggles: in this case, a frock coat and spats over a striped one-piece bathing costume.
Suddenly, Ogden had set off at a brisk walk down the lane. Vega, Harry and Dumbledore followed. As they passed the wooden sign, Vega looked up at its two arms. The one pointing back the way they had come read: Great Hangleton, 5 miles.
The arm pointing after Ogden said Little Hangleton, 1 mile.
This made Vega almost stop, realising that they were by Hangleton, the same place whose graveyard she and Harry and Cedric had visited... she shared an uncertain look with Harry as she hurried to walk in pace with Dumbledore.
They walked a short way with nothing to see but the hedgerows, the wide blue sky overhead and the swishing, frock-coated figure ahead. Then the lane curved to the left and fell away, sloping steeply down a hillside, so that they had a sudden, unexpected view of a whole valley laid out in front of them.
By now, Vega could see a village, undoubtedly Little Hangleton, nestled between two steep hills, its church and graveyard clearly visible and enough to make her feel slightly uncomfortable. Across the valley, set on the opposite hillside, was a handsome manor house surrounded by a wide expanse of velvety green lawn.
Ogden had broken into a reluctant trot due to the steep downward slope. Dumbledore lengthened his stride, and Vega and Harry hurried to keep up.
Initially, it seemed like that Little Hangleton must be their final destination but then, the lane curved to the right and when they rounded the corner, it was to see the very edge of Ogden's frock coat vanishing through a gap in the hedge.
Vega, Harry and Dumbledore followed him onto a narrow dirt track bordered by higher and wilder hedgerows than those they had left behind.
The path was crooked, rocky, and potholed, sloping down-hill like the last one, and it seemed to be heading for a patch of dark trees a little below them. Sure enough, the track soon opened up at the copse, and Vega, Harry and Dumbledore all came to a halt behind Ogden, who had stopped and drawn his wand.
Despite the cloudless sky, the old trees ahead cast deep, dark, cool shadows, and it was a few seconds before Vega's eyes discerned the building half-hidden amongst the tangle of trunks. It seemed to her a very strange location to choose for a house, or else an odd decision to leave the trees growing nearby, blocking all light and the view of the valley below.
And from here, to Vega, she wondered whether it was even inhabited; its walls were mossy and so many tiles had fallen off the roof that the rafters were visible in places. Nettles grew all around it, their tips reaching the windows, which were tiny and thick with grime.
Suddenly, almost to answer Vega's soundless question, one of the windows was thrown open with a clatter, and a thin trickle of steam or smoke issued from it, as though somebody was cooking, and Vega frowned in disbelief that someone lived here.
With that, Ogden moved forward quietly and, it seemed to Vega, rather cautiously.
As the dark shadows of the trees slid over him, Ogden stopped again, staring at the front door, to which somebody had nailed a dead snake. Then there was a rustle and a crack, and a man in rags dropped from the nearest tree, landing on his feet right in front of Ogden, who leapt backward so fast he stood on the tails of his frock coat and stumbled.
"You're not welcome,"
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