Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [4]

⚡️ Chapter 66 ⚡️

Vega looked down at the shallow stone basin that laid in front of them. It had odd carvings around the edges – runes and symbols that Vega faintly recognised. There was a silvery light coming from the basin's contents, unlike she had ever seen before. It was hard to say if the substance was liquid or gas – she just couldn't say what it was and she didn't want to attempt anything but looking at it.

The substance in the basin was bright and a whitish silver, and it was moving ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind – and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid – or like wind made solid – Vega couldn't say for sure.

"I don't think we should be touching something like this," Vega said when she saw the look on Harry's face. "Let's leave it here – what are you doing, Harry?"

As Harry had pulled out his wand from the inside of his robes and reached in to prod the substance.

"You can't touch stuff blindly, Harry, or you're going to become like Bertha Jorkins," Vega warned him. "In the wizarding world, too much curiosity can cause you a lot of problems –"

The surface of the silvery stuff inside the basin began to swirl very fast. Harry bent closer to have a look, his head was inside the cabinet. Vega stared at the object – the silvery substance had become transparent; it looked like glass. She could see an enormous room below the surface of the mysterious substance, a room into which she seemed to be looking through a circular window in the ceiling.

And that room was dimly lit – Vega thought it might even be underground, for there were no windows, merely torches in brackets such as the ones that illuminated the walls of Hogwarts.

Vega was still distracted when she suddenly noticed that Harry had lowered his face even further inside. She could see that around his head, there were rows and rows of witches and wizards, all of them seated around every wall – on what seemed to be benches rising in levels. It was familiar.

An empty chair sitting in the very centre of the room. Vega tried to focus on that chair around Harry's head, and she saw that chains were encircled the arms of it, as though its occupants were u usually tied to it. She frowned to herself, feeling like this was not something to fool around with.

From here, Vega could only see the tops of the hats of the people present – all of their faces seemed to be pointing in one direction, and none of them were talking to one another.

The basin being circular, and the room he was observing square, Vega could not make out what was going on in the corners of it. Not to mention, Harry's head was obstructing her view more than ever.

"Okay, Harry, I think this is enough," Vega said as she reached to pull him out of the cabinet before he could dunk his head straight into the basin and. "Let's –"

Words were lost in the air as Dumbledore's office gave an almighty lurch – Vega felt herself and Harry being thrown forward, pitching headfirst into the substance inside the basin. They were falling through something black and cool – it was like being sucked into a very dark whirlpool.

And suddenly, Vega found herself drop into one of the benches at the end of the room inside the bench. She was sitting in a bench that was raised high above the others and quite prominent.

"Where are we?" Vega asked in a hush voice. "Are we... in some sort of memory? Or vision?"

Vega looked around and saw that not one of the witches and wizards in the room – and there were at least two hundred of them – was looking at them. She jumped as Harry, from next to her, let out a loud cry of surprise that reverberated around the silent room. She turned around to see that they were sitting next to Dumbledore, and that it was sight of him that had caused Harry so much shock.