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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"This is a bad idea," Mia said as they turned up a side street at the top of which stood a small inn.
A battered wooden sign hung from a rusty bracket over the door, with a picture on it of a wild boar's-severed head, leaking blood onto the white cloth around it. The sign creaked in the wind as they approached. All four of them hesitated outside the door.
"Well, come on," said Hermione, slightly nervously.
Mia led the way inside.
It was not at all like the Three Broomsticks, whose large bar gave an impression of gleaming warmth and cleanliness. The Hog's Head bar comprised one small, dingy and very dirty room that smelled strongly of something that might have been goats. The bay windows were so encrusted with grime that very little daylight could permeate the room, which was lit instead with the stubs of candles sitting on rough wooden tables. The floor seemed at first glance to be compressed earth, though as Mia stepped onto it she realised that there was stone beneath what seemed to be the accumulated filth of centuries.
Mia remembered Hagrid mentioning this pub in her first year: 'Yeh get a lot of funny folk in the Hogs Head,' he had said, explaining how he had won a dragon's egg from a hooded stranger there.
At the time Mia had wondered why Hagrid had not found it odd that the stranger kept his face hidden throughout their encounter; now she saw that keeping your face hidden was something of a fashion in the Hog's Head. There was a man at the bar whose whole head was wrapped in dirty grey bandages, though he was still managing to gulp endless glasses of some smoking, fiery substance through a slit over his mouth; two figures shrouded in hoods sat at a table in one of the windows; Mia might have thought themDementors if they had not been talking in strong Yorkshire accents, and in a shadowy corner beside, the fireplace sat a witch with a thick, black veil that fell to her toes.
They could just see the tip of her nose because it caused the veil to protrude slightly.
"I don't know about this, Hermione," Mia muttered, as they crossed to the bar. She was looking particularly at the heavily veiled witch. "Has it occurred to you Umbridge might be under that?"
Hermione cast an appraising eye over the veiled figure.
"Umbridge is shorter than that woman," she said quietly. "And anyway, even if Umbridge does come in here there's nothing she can do to stop us, Harry, because I've double- and triple-checked the school rules. We're not out of bounds. I specifically asked Professor Flitwick whether students were allowed to come to the Hog's Head, and he said yes, but he advised me strongly to bring our glasses. And I've looked up everything I can think of about study groups and homework groups and they're allowed. I just don't think it's a good idea if we parade what we're doing."
"No," said Harry drily, "especially as it's not exactly a homework group you're planning, is it?"
The barman sidled towards them out of a back room. He was a grumpy-looking old man with a great deal of long grey hair and a beard. He was tall and thin and looked vaguely familiar to Mia.
