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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Mia had no idea how long a bath she would need to work out the secret of the golden egg, she decided to do it at night when she would be able to take as much time as she wanted. Reluctant though she was to accept more favours from Cedric, she also decided to use the prefects' bathroom. Far fewer people were allowed in there, so it was much less likely that she would be disturbed.
Mia planned her excursion carefully, because she had been caught out of bed and out-of-bounds by Filch the caretaker in the middle of the night once before, and had no desire to repeat the experience. The Invisibility Cloak would, of course, be essential, and as an added precaution, Mia thought she would take the Marauders Map, which, next to the cloak, was the most useful aid to rule-breaking Mia owned.
The map showed the whole of Hogwarts, including its many shortcuts and secret passageways and, most important of all, it revealed the people inside the castle as minuscule, labeled dots, moving around the corridors, so that Mia would be forewarned if somebody was approaching the bathroom.
On Thursday night, Mia sneaked up to bed, put on the cloak, changed into her white bikini, crept back downstairs, and waited for the portrait hole to open. Ron waited outside to give the Fat Lady the password ("banana fritters")
"Good luck," Ron muttered, climbing into the room as Mia crept out past him.
It was awkward moving under the cloak tonight, because Mia had the heavy egg under one arm and the map held in front of her nose with the other. However, the moonlit corridors were empty and silent, and by checking the map at strategic intervals, Mia was able to ensure that he wouldn't run into anyone she wanted to avoid. When she reached the statue of Boris the Bewildered, a lost-looking wizard with his gloves on the wrong hands, she located the right door, leaned close to it, and muttered the password, "Pine fresh," just as Cedric had told her.
The door creaked open. Mia slipped inside, bolted the door behind her, and pulled off the Invisibility Cloak, looking around.
Her immediate reaction was that it would be worth becoming a prefect just to be able to use this bathroom. It was softly lit by a splendid candle-filled chandelier, and everything was made of white marble, including what looked like an empty, rectangular swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor. About a hundred golden taps stood all around the pools edges, each with a differently coloured Jewel set into its handle. There was also a diving board. Long white linen curtains hung at the windows. A large pile of fluffy white towels sat in a corner, and there was a single golden-framed painting on the wall. It featured a blonde mermaid who was fast asleep on a rock, her long hair over her face. It fluttered every time she snored.
Mia moved forward, looking around, her footsteps echoing off the walls. Magnificent though the bathroom was, and quite keen though she was to try out a few of those tap, now she was here she couldn't quite suppress the feeling that Cedric might have been having her on. How on earth was this supposed to help solve the mystery of the egg? Nevertheless, she put one of the Huffy towels, the cloak, the map, and the egg at the side of the swimming-pool-sized bath, then knelt down and turned on a few of the taps.
She could tell at once that they carried different sorts of bubble bath mixed with the water, though it wasn't bubble bath as Mia had ever experienced it. One tap gushed pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs; another poured ice-white foam so thick that Mia thought it would have supported her weight if she'd cared to test it; a third sent heavily perfumed purple clouds hovering over the surface of the water.
Mia amused herself for awhile turning the taps on and off, particularly enjoying the effect of one whose jet bounced off the surface of the water in large arcs. Then, when the deep pool was full of hot water, foam, and bubbles, which took a very short time considering its size, Mia turned off all the taps, pulled off her pyjamas, slippers, and dressing gown, revealing her just in her bikini, and slid into the water.
It was so deep that her feet barely touched the bottom, and she actually did a couple of lengths before swimming back to the side and treading water, staring at the egg. Highly enjoyable though it was to swim in hot and foamy water with clouds of different-coloured steam wafting all around her.
Mia lowered the egg beneath the foamy surface and opened it, and this time, it did not wail. A gurgling song was coming out of it, a song whose words she couldn't distinguish through the water.
Mia took a great breath and slid under the surface, and now, sitting on the marble bottom of the bubble-filled bath, she heard a chorus of eerie voices singing to her from the open egg in her hands:
"Come seek us where our voices sound, We cannot sing above the ground, An hour long you'll have to look, To recover what we took."
Mia let herself float back upward and broke the bubbly surface, shaking her hair out of her eyes.
"What the fuck?" she mumbled. "We cannot sing above the ground."
Mia's eyes had fallen on the picture of the snoozing mermaid on the wall. Then it hit her. The second task was to go into the Black Lake to recover something.
She retrieved the egg from the bottom of the bath, climbed out, dried herself, and pulled on her pyjamas and dressing gown again. Out in the dark corridor, Mia examined the Marauders Map to check that the coast was still clear. Yes, the dots belonging to Filch and his cat, Mrs. Norris, were safely in their office.
She hurried back to the Gryffindor Common Room as quickly as possible to find Harry, Ron and Hermione waiting for her.
"The Black Lake," she said, removing the Invisibility cloak. "That's the second task. The egg sings underwater."
"What?" Hermione asked. "What does it say?"
"Come seek us where our voices sound, we cannot sing above the ground, an hour long you'll have to look, to recover what we took," Mia said, sitting down with them, the egg on her lap.
"So, how are you meant to breath underwater?" Harry asked as Mia hesitated.
