Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [5]

⚡️ Chapter 34 ⚡️

While Vega, Harry, Ron and Hermione were busy arguing over their situation, the barman sidled toward them out of a back room. He was a grumpy-looking old man with a great deal of long grey hair and beard. He was tall and thin and looked vaguely familiar to Vega. But she didn't look at him for long as that could often offend potential Dark Wizards.

"What?" grunted the barman finally.

"Four butterbeers, thank you," Vega replied. The man reached beneath the counter and pulled up four very dusty, very dirty bottles, which he slammed on the bar, still eying them.

"Eight Sickles," responded the barman.

"I'll get them," Harry spoke up quickly, passing over the silver.

The barman's eyes travelled from eying Vega's appearance to Harry, resting for a fraction of a second on his scar. Then he turned away and deposited Harry's money in an ancient wooden till whose drawer slid open automatically to receive it.

Vega, Harry, Ron, and Hermione retreated to the farthest table from the bar and sat down, looking around, while the man in the dirty grey bandages rapped the counter with his knuckles and received another smoking drink from the barman.

"You know what?" Ron murmured, looking over at the bar with enthusiasm. "We could order anything we liked in here, I bet that bloke would sell us anything, he wouldn't care. I've always wanted to try firewhisky –"

"You – are – a – prefect," Hermione snarled.

"Oh," Ron said, the smile fading from his face. "Yeah..." He bent over his bottle of butterbeer as both him and Harry struggled to open them and take a swing each.

"Let's not argue," Vega told them as she tapped the rusty top of her butterbeer bottle with her wand and it popped open. "So, uh, Hermione... who did you say is supposed to be meeting us?"

"Just a couple of people," Hermione repeated, checking her watch and then looking anxiously toward the door. "I told them to be here about now and I'm sure they all know where it is – Oh look, this might be them now –"

Right at that moment, the door of the pub had opened, and a thick band of dusty sunlight split the room in two for a moment and then vanished, blocked by the incoming rush of a crowd of people. Vega stared at them as they walked inside.

First came Neville with Dean and Lavender, who were closely followed by twins Parvati and Padma Patil with Cho and one of her usually giggling girlfriends named Marietta Edgecomb, then, on her own and looking so dreamy that she might have walked in by accident, Luna Lovegood.

Then Katie Bell, Alicia Spinnet, and Angelina Johnson, brothers Colin and Dennis Creevey, Ernie Macmillan, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hannah Abbott, and a Hufflepuff girl with a long plait down her back named Susan Bones; three Ravenclaw boys Vega was pretty sure were called Anthony Goldstein, Michael Corner, and Terry Boot.

Ginny, followed by a tall skinny blond boy with an upturned nose whom Vega recognised quickly as being a member of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team named Zacharias Smith, and bringing up the rear, Fred and George Weasley with their friend Lee Jordan, all three of whom were carrying large paper bags crammed with Zonko's merchandise.

"A couple of people?" Harry said hoarsely to Hermione while Vega was too busy taking in the people to see if there was someone suspicious amongst them. "A couple of people?"

"Yes, well, the idea seemed quite popular," Hermione answered happily. "Ron, do you want to pull up some more chairs?"

The barman had frozen in the act of wiping out a glass with a rag so filthy it looked as though it had never been washed. Possibly he had never seen his pub so full. Or maybe he couldn't believe the nerve of kids filling up his bar so much so early.