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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
✴ ✴ ✴ ✴
"Finish that off for Mummy. Good boy, Rippy-pooh."
As Aunt Marge, Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley began to eat their dinner, Mia caught himself thinking almost longingly of life at number four without her. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia usually encouraged Mia and Harry to stay out of their way, which the twins were only too happy to do.
Aunt Marge, on the other hand, wanted Mia and Harry under her eye at all times, so that she could boom out suggestions for his improvement, especially during dinner where she delighted in comparing Mia and Harry with Dudley, and took huge pleasure in buying Dudley expensive presents while glaring at the twins, as though daring him to ask why he hadn't got a present too. She also kept throwing out dark hints about what made the twins such an unsatisfactory person.
"Can I tempt you, Marge?" Uncle Vernon asked, holding up a bottle of wine.
"Just a small one," she said, holding her glass. "Excellent nosh, Petunia." She turned to her brother who had stopped pouring the wine about a quarter of the way. "A bit more. Usually just a fry-up for me, what with dogs. Just a bit more." Uncle Vernon filled the glass to the brim as Mia and Harry exchanged looks from behind the counter. "That's a boy. You wanna try a little drop of brandy? A little drop of brandy-brandy-windy-wandy for Rippy-pippy-pooh?"
Mia raised an eyebrow as she watched Aunt Marge put her glass down for her dog to drink from. Aunt Marge looked up at Mia and frowned.
"What are you smirking at?" she demanded as Mia shrugged. "Where did you send the twins, Vernon?"
"St. Brutus'," Uncle Vernon lied, "it's a fine institution for hopeless cases." Aunt Marge turned to the twins.
"Do they use a cane at St. Brutus', twins?" Aunt Marge demanded. Mia glanced at her Uncle who sent her a look.
"Yep," said Mia, "we've been beaten loads of times. Even got the scar," she added, pointing to where the Basilisk pierced her a few months ago.
"Excellent."
The twins turned around, facing away from the Dursleys and towards the wall where they couldn't see the twins' face. She burped richly and patted her great tweed stomach.
"Pardon me. But I do like to see a healthy-sized boy," she went on, winking at Dudley. "You'll be a proper-sized man, Dudders, like your father. Yes, I'll have a spot more brandy, Vernon. Now, these two here. . . ."
She jerked her head at Mia and Harry, who felt their stomachs clench.
'The Handbook', she thought quickly.
"These two've got a mean, runty look about him. You get that with dogs. I had Colonel Fubster drown one last year. Ratty little thing it was. Weak. Underbred."
Mia was trying to remember page twelve of her book: A Charm to Cure Reluctant Reversers.
"It all comes down to blood, as I was saying the other day. Bad blood will out. Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, Petunia. . . ." she patted Aunt Petunia's bony hand with her shovel-like one, ". . . .but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us. And just by luck, the girl looks exactly like her mother. Probably just as rotten."
Mia was staring at the floor, a funny ringing in her ears.
Grasp your broom firmly by the tail', she thought. But he couldn't remember what came next. Aunt Marge's voice seemed to be boring into him like one of Uncle Vernon's drills.
"This Potter," said Aunt Marge loudly, seizing the brandy bottle and splashing more into her glass and over the tablecloth, "you never told me what he did?"
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were looking extremely tense. Dudley had even looked up from his pie to gape at his parents.
"He, didn't work," said Uncle Vernon, with half a glance at Mia and Harry. "Unemployed."
"As I expected!" said Aunt Marge, taking a huge swig of brandy and wiping her chin on her sleeve. "A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy scrounger who. . . ."
"He was not," said Mia and Harry suddenly. The table went very quiet. Mia was shaking all over as her eyes were quickly flashing between red and blue and red sparks were appearing at her fingertips.
"You, twins," he snarled at Mia and Harry. "Go to bed, go on. . . ."
"No, Vernon," hiccuped Aunt Marge, holding up a hand, her tiny bloodshot eyes fixed on Mia and Harry's. "Go on, twins, go on. Proud of your parents, are you? They go and get themselves killed in a car crash, drunk, I expect. . . ."
"They didn't die in a car crash!" said Harry.
"They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!" screamed Aunt Marge, swelling with fury. "You are an insolent, ungrateful little. . . ."
But Aunt Marge suddenly stopped speaking. For a moment, it looked as though words had failed her. She seemed to be swelling with inexpressible anger, but the swelling didn't stop. Her great red face started to expand, her tiny eyes bulged, and her mouth stretched too tightly for speech.
Next second, several buttons had just burst from her tweed jacket and pinged off the walls, she was inflating like a monstrous balloon, her stomach bursting free of her tweed waistband, each of her fingers blowing up like a salami. . . .
"MARGE!" yelled Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia together as Aunt Marge's whole body began to rise off her chair toward the ceiling. She was entirely round, now, like a vast life buoy with piggy eyes, and her hands and feet stuck out weirdly as she drifted up into the air, making apoplectic popping noises. Ripper came skidding into the room, barking madly.
"NOOOOOOO!"
Uncle Vernon seized one of Marge's feet and tried to pull her down again, but was almost lifted from the floor himself. A second later, Ripper leapt forward and sank his teeth into Uncle Vernon's leg.
The twins looked at each other and tore from the dining room before anyone could stop him, heading for the cupboard under the stairs. The cupboard door burst magically open as they reached it. In seconds, they had heaved their trunks to the front door. They sprinted upstairs and threw themselves under their beds, wrenching up the loose floorboard, and grabbed the pillowcase full of his books and birthday presents. Mia wriggled out, seized Prongs' empty cage, and dashed back downstairs to her trunk with Harry right behind her, just as Uncle Vernon burst out of the dining room, his trouser leg in bloody tatters.
"YOU BRING HER BACK!" Uncle Vernon roared at the twins, "YOU BRING HER BACK NOW! YOU PUT HER RIGHT!"
"Get the hell away from us!" Mia snapped, her ginger hair flying as her eyes flashed red and an energy ball appeared at her hand.
"She got what she deserved," Harry added, his wand pointing at Uncle Vernon.
"You can't use magic outside of school," Uncle Vernon said, looking scared.
"Yeah?" Mia asked, tilting her head to the left and the door behind them slammed open. "Watch me."
And in the next moment, the twins were out in the dark, quiet street, heaving their heavy trunks behind them, Prongs and Hedwig's cages under their arms.
