Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [5]

⚡️ Chapter 12 ⚡️

For the next few days at the 12 Grimmauld Place, Mrs. Weasley kept them all working very hard with the cleaning. The drawing room took them a total of three days to decontaminate. Finally, the only undesirable things left in it were the tapestry of the Black Family Tree, which resisted all of their attempts to remove it from the wall, and the rattling writing desk that sat in the corner.

Moody had not dropped by headquarters yet, so they could not be sure what was inside it. Vega was certain that Sirius was right – it was a Boggart. Still, Vega didn't want to face it right now. She was sure that she wouldn't want to see anyone hurt, even in imagery. Hopefully, it would be gone soon.

Although they had cleaned the entire place up to down, Vega still didn't really like the drawing room. It wasn't as bad as before but there was still the nauseous feeling whenever she entered.

But there wasn't any reason for it.

Following the drawing room, they moved down to the dining room on the ground floor where they found spiders quite as large as saucers lurking in the dresser. Ron, upon seeing this, left the room hurriedly to make a cup of tea down in the kitchen and did not return for an hour and half.

These spiders were worse than those in the drawing room, and Vega couldn't blame Ron for going away. She wasn't that big of a fan of large spiders anymore – not after getting her leg injured by that Acromantula during the Third Task. Her leg tingled slightly in remembrance of that night.

All the china, which bore the Black crest and motto, was thrown unceremoniously into a sack by Sirius, and the same fate met a set of old photographs in tarnished silver frames, all of whose occupants squealed shrilly as the glass covering them smashed.

Snape might refer to their work as 'cleaning,' but it felt as if they were really waging war on the house, which was putting up a very good fight, aided and abetted by Kreacher.

The house-elf kept appearing wherever they were congregated, his muttering becoming more and more offensive as he attempted to remove anything that he could from the rubbish sacks. Sirius went as far as to threaten him with clothes, but Kreacher fixed him with a watery stare and said,

"Master must do as Master wishes," He would say before turning away and muttering very loudly, "But Master will not turn Kreacher away, no, because Kreacher knows what they are up to, oh yes, he is plotting against the Dark Lord, yes, with these Mudbloods and traitors and scum..."

At which Sirius, ignoring Hermione's protests, seized Kreacher by the back of his loincloth and threw him bodily from the room. Vega was so upset with the constant fighting that she shot forward in a flash to tear them apart from each other, pushing Sirius away from the house-elf.

"Don't do it, Sirius!" Vega said loudly, glancing at him with similar eyes, and then she turned to look at Kreacher, her arms crossed over her chest. "Go down to the kitchen and don't come up here,"

Kreacher wasn't a fan of Vega ever since he had found her political leanings but she was still on the Black Family Tree and she still resembled 'Miss Bella' – and thus, he muttered some choice words for her and left the dining room. And fortunately, he did not return back upstairs.

But even with Kreacher gone, their troubles weren't over. The doorbell rang several times a day, which was the cue for Sirius's mother to start shrieking again, and for the kids to attempt and eavesdrop on the visitor. Vega wasn't interested, so she just let them all do it on their own.

In all honesty, Vega felt like she shouldn't mind their behaviour. It would make things worse if she expected them all to turn all serious and stern all of a sudden – like her. Yet still, she always felt agitated when she saw them take everything so easy, like they don't remember what had happened that night at the graveyard –