Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [1]

⚡️ Chapter 14 ⚡️

Then, there were dreams that Vega could not explain. She found herself stuck in a dark place where she could not hear or see anything – only feel the mucilaginous walls around her as she tried to escape it. She, somehow, always knew that she would find light outside of those walls but she could never get out of it, no matter how much she tried.

For the remainder of the Christmas holidays, Vega spent her time trying to look for Nicolas Flamel in all the French books she could find, even using Harry's Invisibility Cloak to go back to the Restricted Section. Yet it seemed like they were looking in all the wrong places.

Admittedly, Vega had gotten distracted by other books in there, especially those about the art of duelling and Transfiguration. They happened to be her favourite.

Harry, on the other hand, seemed to be getting strange dreams as well, something he happened to share with Vega, Ron and Hermione.

"You see, Dumbledore was right, that mirror could drive you mad," Ron said, and Vega nodded in agreement. She wasn't sure why she was having nightmares, though.

Hermione, who came back the day before term started, took a different view of things. She was torn between horror at the idea of Vega and Harry being out of bed, roaming the school three nights in a row and disappointment that they hadn't at least found out who Nicolas Flamel was.

"I tried to look for him in all of the French books, trust me," Vega told Hermione, showing her the list of books she had ticked off. "I can only check about fifty of them in such a short while, you know,"

They had almost given up hope of ever finding Flamel in a library book, even though Harry was still sure he'd read the name somewhere. Vega, who usually remembered things well, wasn't sure what he meant when he said it was talked amongst them. Clearly, the stress of starting school and meeting people had fogged her head.

Once term had started, they were back to skimming through books for ten minutes during their breaks. Vega and Harry had even less time than the other two, because Quidditch practice had started again. Wood was working the team harder than ever.

Even the endless rain that had replaced the snow couldn't dampen his spirits. The Weasleys complained that Wood was becoming a fanatic, but Vega found herself on Wood's side.

If they won their next match, against Hufflepuff, they would overtake Slytherin in the House Championship for the first time in seven years. She would love to do that. Mainly not wanting Malfoy to rub it in their faces.

Quite apart from wanting to win, Vega found that she had fewer nightmares when she was absolutely exhausted out after training.

Then, during one particularly wet and muddy practice session, Wood gave the team a bit of bad news. He'd just got very angry with the Weasleys twins, who kept dive-bombing each other and pretending to fall off their brooms.

"Will you stop messing around!" Wood yelled. "That's exactly the sort of thing that'll lose us the match! Snape's refereeing this time, and he'll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Gryffindor!"

George Weasley really did fall off his broom at these words.

"Snape's refereeing?" George spluttered through a mouthful of mud. "When's he ever refereed a Quidditch match? He's not going to be fair if we might overtake Slytherin,"

Vega and Harry shared a dark look between the two of them as the rest of the team landed next to George to complain, too.

"It's not my fault," Wood replied. "We've just got to make sure we play a clean game, so Snape hasn't got an excuse to pick on us,"