Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [4]

⚡️ Chapter 11⚡️

Vega continued to stare at the ghost of the spell, the thick grey smoke forming the shape of the green skull right above their heads. Her mind was swirling with shock and suspicion, wondering when and who took away from Harry. She was very, very sure that Winky wouldn't have done it.

Unless she was ordered to do so.
But that still doesn't make her guilty.

"Deletrius!" Mr. Diggory shouted, and the smoky skull vanished in a wisp of smoke. Then, he turned to look down at Winky, who was still shaking convulsively, with a kind of savage triumph. "So,"

"I is not doing it!" Winky squealed, her eyes rolling in terror. "I is not, I is not, I is not knowing how! I is a good elf, I isn't using wands, I isn't knowing how!"

"You've been caught red-handed, elf!" Mr. Diggory roared and Vega stared at him when she heard his harsh tone. "Caught with the guilty wand in your hand!"

"Amos," Mr. Weasley interjected loudly. "Think about it... Precious few wizards know how to do that spell... Where would she have learned it?"

"Perhaps Amos is suggesting," Mr. Crouch said, cold anger in every syllable as he turned on Mr. Diggory next. "That I routinely teach my servants to conjure the Dark Mark?"

There was a deeply unpleasant silence. Amos Diggory looked horrified.

"Mr. Crouch... not... not at all," Mr. Diggory stammered.

"You have now come very close to accusing the two people in this clearing who are least likely to conjure that Mark!" Mr. Crouch barked. "Harry Potter – and myself. I suppose you are familiar with the boy's story, Amos?"

"Of course – everyone knows –" Mr. Diggory muttered, looking highly discomforted.

"And I trust you remember the many proofs I have given, over a long career, that I despise and detest the Dark Arts and those who practice them?" Mr. Crouch shouted, his eyes bulging again.

"Mr. Crouch, I – I never suggested you had anything to do with it!" Amos Diggory muttered again, now reddening behind his scrubby brown beard.

"If you accuse my elf, you accuse me, Diggory!" Mr. Crouch shouted, sounding much like a crazed man. "Where else would she have learned to conjure it?"

"She – she might've picked it up anywhere –" Mr. Diggory said, stumbling over his words.

"Precisely, Amos," Mr. Weasley said. "She might have picked it up anywhere... Winky?" he said kindly, turning to the elf, but she flinched as though he too was shouting at her. "Where exactly did you find Harry's wand?"

Winky was twisting the hem of her tea towel so violently that it was fraying beneath her fingers.

"I – I is finding it... finding it there, sir..." Winky whispered. "There... In the trees, sir,"

"You see, Amos?" Mr. Weasley said. "Whoever conjured the Mark could have Disapparated right after they'd done it, leaving Harry's wand behind. A clever thing to do, not using their own wand, which could have betrayed them. And Winky here had the misfortune to come across the wand moments later and pick it up,"

"But then, she'd have been only a few feet away from the real culprit!" Mr. Diggory said impatiently. "Elf? Did you see anyone?"

Winky began to tremble worse than ever. Her giant eyes flickered from Mr. Diggory, to Ludo Bagman, and onto Mr. Crouch. Then she gulped and said, "I is seeing no one, sir... no one..."

Vega frowned and cast an apprehensive look at those three men.

"Amos," Mr. Crouch said curtly. "I am fully aware that, in the ordinary course of events, you would want to take Winky into your department for questioning. I ask you, however, to allow me to deal with her,"