Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [6]

⚡️ Chapter 17 ⚡️

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,"