Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [6]

⚡️ Chapter 41 ⚡️

Vega stayed up late in her bed, thinking back to what Dobby had said about Malfoy using the Room of Requirement and she tried to recreate the room on a piece of parchment with the same spells that the Marauders had used but she could not translate the Room of Requirement onto a piece of paper – however, the Chamber of Secrets could be.

The question was – if she was able to follow Malfoy into the Room of Requirement, what would she come across? Would it be a meeting place, or would it be a hideout? Could it just be a storeroom or some sort of workshop regarding what he wanted to fix?

Could the Slytherins be working on an army, too?
No, they're not that united, and Malfoy's a soloist.

When she woke up early the following morning, Vega made a detour to the Room of Requirement and looked around to see if she could find any clue as to what was going on but there was absolutely nothing to greet her, and there was no one there.

By the time that Vega made her way to the Great Hall, she found that while was Ron still drowsy, Harry was full of anticipation and energy. And she didn't have to ask him to get to the bottom of that – he had a free period before Defence Against the Dark Arts and was determined to spend it trying to get into the Room of Requirement.

Just as expected, both Vega and Hermione were rather ostentatiously showing no interest in his whispered plans for forcing entry into the room, which irritated Harry, because he thought they might be a lot of help if they wanted to.

Owls arrived soon after and Hermione had just removed her mail from a post owl when Harry leaned forward and place his hand on the Daily Prophet to stop her from opening it and vanishing behind it so the two girls could listen to him.

"Look," Harry said quietly. "I haven't forgotten about Slughorn, but I haven't got a clue how to get that memory off him, neither do you, Vega, and until we get a brain wave why shouldn't I find out what Malfoy's doing?"

"I've told you this before but I want to focus on persuading Slughorn," Vega told him. "It's no longer a question of tricking him or bewitching him – if that had been so then Dumbledore could have done it in a second and gotten us that memory,"

"And instead of messing around outside the Room of Requirement –" Hermione interjected as she jerked the Prophet out from under Harry's hand and unfolded it to look at the front page. "– you should go and find Slughorn and start appealing to his better nature,"

"Anyone we know –?" Ron asked, as Hermione scanned the headlines.

"Yes!" Hermione said, causing Vega, Harry and Ron to gag on their breakfast. "But it's all right, he's not dead – it's Mundungus, he's been arrested and sent to Azkaban! Something to do with impersonating an Inferius during an attempted burglary... and someone called Octavius Pepper has vanished... oh, and how horrible, a nine-year-old boy has been arrested for trying to kill his grandparents, they think he was under the Imperius Curse..."

They finished their breakfast in silence. Vega and Hermione set off immediately for Ancient Runes; Ron for the common room, where he still had to finish his conclusion on Snape's dementor essay, and Harry for the corridor on the seventh floor and the stretch of wall opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls to do ballet.

When Vega sat down with Hermione in Snape's Defence Against the Dark Arts gloomy classroom, lit only by candles, she noticed that while Ron had arrived, Harry was still missing.

Vega sighed and placed her stuff onto the table – her textbook and wand. She glanced over her shoulder toward the classroom door but there was no sign of Harry. And she started to wonder if he had gone to check out the Room of Requirement and had gotten himself in trouble in one way or the other by getting around to Malfoy or threatening it.