Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [7]

⚡️ Chapter 25 ⚡️

"Are – you – mental – Vega?"

Nothing but the shock of hearing that voice could have given Vega the strength to get up. Shaking violently, Vega staggered to her feet. There before her, next to Harry, stood Ron, both fully dressed but drenched to the skin, their hair plastered to their faces.

Ron was holding the sword of Gryffindor in one hand and the Horcrux dangling from its broken chain in the other. Vega continued to stare at him in shock, and Ron looked back at both her and Harry in equal amounts of disbelief at their actions.

"Why the hell," Ron panted, holding up the Horcrux, which swung backward and forward on its shortened chain in some parody of hypnosis. "Didn't you take the thing off before you dived, Vega? Are you that crazily desperate for death?" He turned to look at Harry. "Are you an idiot? Letting her go into the ice? Fred's going to skin us alive!"

"Y-You're back?" Vega asked, still trying to breath after her near-strangulation and finding her voice at the mention of her boyfriend. "When did... you come back...? I wasn't... I wasn't..."

It was then that it dawned upon the two boys that Vega was still standing soaking in the snow, and Harry quickly threw her jumped over her head, pulling it down to help her pull it on while Ron snatched her coat, wrapping it around her.

"Was that y-you earlier?" Harry asked, his own teeth chattering, and Vega watched as Ron looked at them confused. "Y-you cast that doe?"

"What?" Ron asked. "No, of course not! I thought it was one of you doing it!" He glanced at Vega's feet. "At least wear your socks on your own!"

"I'm going to," Vega muttered, reaching for her socks and shoes. "But... Harry's Patronus is a Stag, and mine's a Thunderbird. They're quite visibly different from a Doe... and Ron's a Terrier,"

"Oh yeah," Ron said as Harry reached to pick up Hermione's and Vega's wands from the ground, giving Vega hers to hold. " thought it looked different. No antlers or wings,"

"Thank you, Harry," Vega muttered, taking the wand before she looked at Ron again, now standing straight with her feet in her shoes. "How come you're here?"

Apparently, Ron had hoped that this point would come up later, if at all. He looked at the pair of them quite sheepishly, and he was stammering when he spoke, "Well, I've – you know – I've come back – If –" He cleared his throat. "You know. You still want me,"

There was a pause, in which the subject of Ron's departure seemed to rise like a wall between them. Yet he was here. He had returned. He had just saved Vega's. Ron looked down at his hands. He seemed momentarily surprised to see the things he was holding.

"Oh yeah, I got it out," Ron said, rather unnecessarily, holding up the sword for Vega and Harry's inspection. "That's why you jumped in, right?"

"Yes," Vega answered. "But I don't understand. How did you get here?" She was a bit unsettled if they were sitting out in the open. "How did you find us, Ron?"

"Long story," Ron replied. "I've been looking for you for hours, it's a big forest, isn't it? And I was just thinking I'd have to go kip under a tree and wait for morning when I saw that dear coming and you following,"

"You didn't see anyone else?" Vega asked.

"No," Ron said. "I –" But he hesitated, glancing at two trees growing close together some yards away. "I did think I saw something move over there, but I was running to the pool at the time, because you'd gone in, Vega, Harry went right after you and you two hadn't come up, so I wasn't going to make a detour to – hey!"