Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [7]

⚡️ Chapter 22 ⚡️

Harry had wanted to set out for Godric's Hollow the following day, but both Vega and Hermione convinced that they had other ideas. It mostly to do with Vega's endless precautions, and Harry wasn't quite sure why she was so very much certain that there was something going to go wrong. He wasn't a twitchy person so Harry valued her opinion and concern regarding their visit but it was still rather strange to see that the she was this concerned.

"We need to make sure that we have every precaution under our belts," Vega said to Harry and Hermione. "Although we must make this journey, I fear that Tom Riddle suspects that we will visit... because it is a place where Harry destroyed his physical body, he must thing we would go there for more answers..."

It took them a full week to get this plan in structure. Vega had fetched Harry and Hermione hairs from innocent Muggles who were Christmas shopping, and then they had practiced Apparating and Disapparating while underneath the Invisibility Cloak together.

They were to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness, so it was late afternoon when they finally swallowed Polyjuice Potion, Harry transforming into a balding, middle-aged Muggle man, Hermione into his small and rather mousy wife.

Vega adapted her own appearance to resemble these people, and she hoped that she would resemble their daughter, although she did not increase her age too much.

The handbag containing all of their possessions, apart from the Horcrux, which Vega was currently wearing around her neck, was in Vega's possession. Harry lowered the Invisibility Cloak over them, then they turned into the suffocating darkness once again.

Heart thumping against her ribs, Vega opened her eyes.

Now, they were standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky, in which the night's first stars were already glimmering feebly. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a glow of golden streetlights indicated the centre of the village.

"All this snow!" Hermione whispered beneath the cloak. "Why didn't we think of snow? After all our precautions, we'll leave prints! We'll just have to get rid of them – you go in front, I'll do it –"

"Let's take off the Cloak," Harry said, and when Hermione looked frightened, "Oh, come on, we don't look like us and there's no one around,"

Vega took Harry's Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it away under her coat as well.

Finally, they made their way forward unhampered, the icy air stinging their faces as they passed more cottages. Any one of them might have been the one in which James and Lily had once lived or where Bathilda lived now.

Then the little lane along which they were walking curved to the left and the heart of the village, a small square, was revealed to them. Strung all around with coloured lights, there was what looked like a war memorial in the middle, partly obscured by a windblown Christmas tree.

There were several shops, a post office, a pub, and a little church whose stained-glass windows were glowing jewel-bright across the square. The snow here had become impacted: It was hard and slippery where people had trodden on it all day.

Villagers were crisscrossing in front of them, their figures briefly illuminated by streetlamps. They heard a snatch of laughter and pop music as the pub door opened and closed; then they heard a carol start up inside the little church.

"Vega, Harry, I think it's Christmas Eve!" Hermione exclaimed in a hushed whisper.

"Is it?" Vega asked as her hand went straight up to her neck, not for the Slytherin locket, but where her ring was hanging. She had lost track of the date; they had not seen a newspaper for weeks. "I didn't realise... it's already Christmas Eve?"