Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [7]

⚡️ Chapter 39 ⚡️

Vega waited for Harry, whose head was still turned in the direction of Ginny, and she looked away toward the Forbidden Forest ahead, waiting on Harry. And with a huge effort Harry forced himself on and Vega matched his pace quickly. She thought she saw Ginny look around as they passed, and wondered whether Ginny had sensed someone walking nearby, but neither Vega nor Harry spoke, and neither of them dared to look back any more than that.

Hagrid's hut loomed out of the darkness. There were no lights, no sound of Fang scrabbling at the door, his bark booming in welcome. All those visits to Hagrid, and the gleam of the copper kettle on the fire, and rock cakes and giant grubs, and his great bearded face, and Ron vomiting slugs, and Hermione helping him save Norbert... Vega missed them.

Vega moved on, and now she and Harry reached the edge of the forest, and they stopped. A swarm of dementors was gliding amongst the trees; Vega could feel their chill, and she was not sure she would be able to pass safely through it. She had not strength left for a Patronus.

Harry could no longer control his own trembling but Vega could not blame him as she herself was having a hard time staying upright. It was not, after all, so easy to die.

Every second Vega breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on her face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and she was clinging to each second. At the same time, she thought that she would not be able to go on.

"The Snitch," Harry whispered.

And as Vega turned to look at him, Harry's nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out. I open at the close.

Breathing fast and hard, Harry stared down at it.

"I wonder if you have to speak to it?" Vega whispered.

Harry looked at her and then down at the Snitch. He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, "We are about to die,"

The metal shell broke open. Harry lowered his shaking hand and Vega raised her wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured, "Lumos,"

Sitting inside was the black stone with its jagged crack running down the centre sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still discernible. And again, both Vega and Harry understood without having to think.

It did not matter about bringing them back, for the two of them were about to join them. The two of them were not really fetching them: They were fetching the two of them.

Harry looked at Vega before closing his eyes and turned the stone over his hand three times.

Vega knew it had happened, because she heard slight movements around them that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthy, twig-strewn ground that marked the outer edge of the forest. She raised her eyes to look around them.

They were neither ghost nor truly flesh, Vega could see that.

Instead, they resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, and he had been memory made nearly solid. Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they moved toward Vega and Harry.

And on each face, there was the same loving smile. James Potter was exactly the same height as Harry, barely an inch taller than Vega. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley's.

Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Vega had seen him in life. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face. Lupin was younger too, and much less shabby, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back in this familiar place, scene of so many adolescent wanderings.