Mia Potter was the other Potter. Looking almost identical to her mother, she was a force to be reckoned with. But there was only one person who could reckon with her, and his name was Draco Malfoy.
In which the youngest Potter twin finds herself fa...
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"How did you do it?"
The second Mia walked into the Gryffindor Common Room, she was met with an annoyed-looking Ron and a worried Harry and Hermione.
"What?" Mia asked.
"Never mind. Doesn't matter," Ron said bitterly, "you could have let your best friends know though."
"Do you seriously think I entered?" she asked, "I didn't ask for this to happen. I don't want to be in a tournament where I could die!" She sighed in frustration. "You're being stupid."
"Yeah that's me, Ron Weasley," Ron said as Mia looked at him, "Mia Potter's stupid friend." Mia sighed.
"I didn't put my name in that fucking cup," she snapped, "I don't want eternal glory, I just want a normal fucking school year."
"Piss off," Ron snapped as Mia sighed.
"And you?" she asked Hermione and Harry, "you believe him?" Neither of them answered as she nodded. "Fine. Stay the fuck away from me. All of you."
And with that, she walked past the three of them, past the three people she had been sure would believe her.
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"What a charismatic quartet. Hello!"
Mia waved the smoke away from her face as she rolled her eyes.
Rita Skeeter was dressed in magenta robes as she grinned at the children. Her hair was set in elaborate and curiously rigid curls that contrasted oddly with her heavy-jawed face. She wore jewelled spectacles. The thick fingers clutching her crocodile-skin handbag ended in two-inch nails, painted crimson.
"I'm Rita Skeeter, I write for the daily prophet," she said, shaking everyones hands, "but of course you know that don't you. It's you we don't know, you're the news."
She walked to Fleur and grabbed her cheek.
"What quirks lurk beneath those rosy cheeks?" She gently slapped Fleur's cheek and walked past her.
"What mysteries do the muscles mask?" She asked Krum, "does courage lie beneath those curls?"
She ruffled Cedric's hair and walked past Mia.
"What secrets hide behind those bright blue eyes?" she asked as Mia raised an eyebrow. "In short, what makes a champion tick? Me, myself and I want to know, not to mention my rabid readers. So, who's feeling up to sharing? Mmm?" Nobody said anything as they all avoided eye contact. "Shall we start with the youngest?" Before anyone could answer, she grabbed Mia's arm. "Lovely."
Her scarlet-taloned fingers had Mia's upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and she was steering him out of the room again and opening a nearby door.
"This is cosy," she said as Mia rolled her eyes.
"It's a fucking boom cupboard," she said.
"You should feel right at home then," she said. She perched herself precariously upon an upturned bucket, pushing Mia down onto a cardboard box. "Don't mind if I use the quill do you?"
"Go ahead," she said, already fed up.
"So Mia, here you sit, a mere girl of twelve," Rita began as Mia furrowed her eyebrows.
"I'm fourteen," she said. Rita sent her a subtle glare before carrying on speaking.
". . . .about to compete against three students. Not only vastly more emotionally mature than yourself but have mastered spells that you wouldn't attempt in your dizziest daydreams. Concerned?"
"I dunno," Mia said.
"Course you're not just any ordinary girl of twelve are you?"
"Fourteen," Mia said, slightly annoyed.
"The story's legend. Do you think it was the trauma of your past that made you so keen to enter such a dangerous tournament?" Mia scoffed.
"I didn't enter," she said as Rita sent her a smile that was obvious that she didn't believe her.
"Course you didn't. Everyone loves a rebel Mia," she said with a sly grin as Mia rolled her eyes. She turned to the quill. "Scratch that last." She turned back to Mia. "Speaking of your parents, were they alive, how do you think they'd feel? Proud? Or concerned that your attitude shows at best a pathological need for attention, at worst a psychotic death-wish."
Mia was feeling really annoyed now. How on earth was she to know how her parents would feel if they were alive? She could feel Rita Skeeter watching him very intently. Frowning, she avoided her gaze and hooked down at words the quill had just written and looked back at Rita Skeeter annoyed,
"My eyes aren't glistening with the ghosts of my past or whatever the fuck that means," she said, "stop making up bullshit."
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The prospect of talking face-to-face with Lupin was all that sustained Mia over the next fortnight, the only bright spot on a horizon that had never looked darker. The shock of finding herself school champion had worn off slightly now, and the fear of what was facing her had started to sink in.
The first task was drawing steadily nearer. She felt as though it were crouching ahead of him hike some horrific monster, barring his path. She had never suffered nerves like these, they were way beyond anything she had experienced before a Quidditch match, not even her last one against Slytherin, which had decided who would win the Quidditch Cup. Mia was finding it hard to think about the future at all. She felt as though her whole life had been heading up to, and would finish with, the first task.
Admittedly, she didn't see how Lupin was going to make her feel any better about having to perform an unknown piece of difficult and dangerous magic in front of hundreds of people, but the mere sight of a friendly face would be something at the moment. Mia wrote back to Lupin saying that she would be beside the common room fire at the time he had suggested.
In the meantime, life became even worse for Mia within the confines of the castle, for Rita Skeeter had published her piece about the Triwizard Tournament, and it had turned out to be not so much a report on the tournament as a highly coloured life story of Mia.
Much of the front page had been given over to a picture of Mia. The article (continuing on pages two, six, and seven) had been all about Mia, the names of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions (misspelled) had been squashed into the last line of the article, and Cedric hadn't been mentioned at all.
The article had appeared ten days ago, and Mia still got a sick, burning feeling of shame in her stomach every time she thought about it. Rita Skeeter had reported her saying an awful lot of things that she couldn't remember ever saying in her life, let alone in that broom cupboard.
I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I know they'd be very proud of me if they could see me now. Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they're watching over me.
But Rita Skeeter had gone even further than transforming her "er's" into long, sickly sentences: She had interviewed other people about her too.
Euphemia has at last found love at Hogwarts. Her close friend, Colin Creevey, says that there is obvious tension between her and Slytherin's Draco Malfoy who, like Mia, is one of the top students in the school. Their love is a forbidden one, yet they cannot deny the attraction.
From the moment the article had appeared, Mia had had to endure people quoting it at her as she passed and making sneering comments. What surprised Mia the most was Draco wasn't responding to the article.
