AN: Remember people, things are gonna start speeding up fast here, this story is mainly about Mia and most of the characters like Sirius and Lupin and her someday love aren't here yet, so I'm grazing over much of what happens in the books to bring it around to the good stuff. We all know Harry's story anyways and I doubt I could make Rowling's plot any better :)

A big thank you to my Beta Mira!

And a big shout out to all my reviewers, I love you! But not in a weird way.

I don't own this world where my story takes place!

6/18/16

Ch 12

After Christmas life in the castle quickly returned to the normal rhythm of classes and school work. Now that Mia had all of the ingredients for her potion and realized how hard they had been to collect, she decided the best thing to do would be to study the process for making the potion and prepare it on paper a hundred times before ever putting a caldron to the flame.

The first way Mia was doing this was by going back to her faithful book, 'Every Potions Ingredient Known and How to Use it: at least the ones the Ministry lets you know about', and listing out the ingredients' properties and the best way to handle it.

As she walked up to the table she heard the last few words of Hermione's sentence "-maybe then we can find Flamel." They stopped their whispers as Mia sat down and all of them looked at her strangely.

"What? Is there something on my face?" They had been doing this a lot lately, flipping through books and whispering with heads together. Mia didn't mind being kept out of the loop, but if they were looking for something shouldn't they ask her? She had been poring over almost every book in the library for months now.

"Oh sorry Mia, we just weren't expecting you." Mia ignored this last statement and opened the giant book about potions ingredients she was carrying and started reading. She acted unfazed by their hushed behavior.

"You know if it's Nicolas Flamel you're looking for, you should look in the Alchemy section. I think he was pretty famous a few hundred years ago." Mia said this in an off handed way.

Alchemy was a branch of Transfiguration and Mia had come across his name a time or two in her search. But as the words left her mouth Hermione squeaked and Ron and Harry looked at her with shock. "What? Was that not the Flamel you were looking for?" Without another word Hermione disappeared to the Alchemy section and started pulling down books and Ron and Harry went over to help.

Mia ignored them and started searching the book for goosegrass and started copying the special characteristics the ingredient had and how to prepare it.

Mia was working on copying the properties of saltpertr when she grew distracted. Harry, Ron and Hermione had rushed out of the library a while ago with looks of excitement on their faces, and Mia was lonely. She had grown used to being by herself, but that didn't mean she liked it.

Most of the students in the castle were at least civil to her, but no one other than Harry, Ron and Hermione made any kind of effort to talk to her. But the trio seemed to be in their own little secret world. Mia was fine being out of the loop, she hadn't told them about her Animagus research so she didn't expect them to be forthcoming with their secrets, but she still wished she was a part of whatever mischief they were doing.

She was just so bored with school work and research. She wasn't going to brew her potion until summer when the castle was empty so until then, there was nothing challenging or exiting left to do after she had gone into the forest.

Just then a rare sight met Mia's eyes. The Weasley twins entered the library. This was a rare thing because the red haired twins usually never studied. Mia, who spent much of her time in the library, had only ever seen the boys enter once or twice, and each time they snuck over to different sections of the library and spoke in whispers before checking out a few books and leaving.

Mia knew this definitely wasn't studying. Honestly Mia didn't know what they were doing, but they always did it in secret. This visit was exactly like the rest, Mia in her extreme boredom watched the twins every move like it was the most interesting thing she had ever seen.

Mia had never spoken to the two older boys, but she knew them well as they were known as the school's biggest pranksters. So if they were in the library doing research, Mia was sure it was for a prank of some kind. This intrigued Mia endlessly. They were over by the section on potion ingredients and properties, frantically flipping through books and whispering harshly. The first twin (Mia had no idea with one he was) grabbed a few books and shoved them into his brother's hands whispering something importantly and then promptly started walking towards the front desk.

Mia noticed he was wearing mittens on his hands and kept itching at them. He looked frustrated. The remaining twin was fumbling over the large books he had been handed and managed to balance them with a few crammed under an arm and one thin one in his teeth and he carefully walked over to his brother.

Half way across the room one of the books slipped and he scrambled to catch it with his elbow but as he moved, a piece of folded parchment fell from his robs pocket and he didn't notice. The insubordinate side of Mia pretended not to notice the dropped property until the twins had checked out all the books and escaped out the door.

After they had left, Mia walked over to one of the isles as if getting a book, and bent down and retrieved the parchment. Once back at her desk, Mia unfolded the worn parchment and was shocked at what she saw. This was a recipe for a potion that it looked like the twins were trying to invent.

The parchment had lots of notes in the margin and things scribbled out and rewritten, but Mia could understand it and it actually looked promising. From what Mia could tell this recipe was made to be an additive to a topical product and when applied to the skin and mixed with water it was supposed to change the pigment of the person's skin. The Weasley Twins were trying to dye someone purple by using their body wash!

This was genius! But they hadn't finished it yet. From the notes at the bottom it looked like their current product was just causing blisters that oozed purple and green puss. It made sense why the twin was wearing gloves, they probably were testing the product on themselves.

Mia read through the ingredients and the process they had developed, trying to figure out what they had done wrong. The bonding ingredient in the base was crushed flobberworms, and they added leech spleen to fuse the color of the powley leaves which were the purple color they wanted.

Then she saw it.

They were using powdered lionfish spine to make the color brighten when someone tried to scrub it off. Then it fades instantly after a week of bright color. This really was an ingenious mix, but Mia found their flaw. Flobberworms mixed with the lionfish spine cause extreme irritation. If they used puffer fish skin instead of the flobberworms for the base, it would remove the bad reaction and act as an enhancer to the color of the powley.

Mia shoved the parchment into her pocket and packed up all of her research materiel and headed back to Gryffindor tower. When she entered the portrait hole she was saddened to see that the red haired duo was not in the room. Ron and Harry were sitting in a few chairs by the fire so Mia went over to Ron and asked if he had seen his brothers.

"Yeah, they are up stairs in their room with Lee, but why do you care?" Ron looked at Mia accusingly.

"They dropped something in the library and I wanted to give it back to them." Ron looked at her like he still didn't believe her.

"Fine, why don't you just hand it to me and I can give it to them next time I see them?" Mia hated that Ron refused to trust her. He was obviously quick to judge and wasn't easily trusting, but Hermione and Harry trusted her, wasn't that enough?

"Look Weasley, it's really none of your business, so you can either help me and get your brothers or you can shove off, your choice." Ok so maybe Ron and Mia didn't click because they both had explosive tempers. Ron opened his mouth to fight back but Harry kicked him in the leg. After exchanging a sharp glance, Ron turned and disappeared up the stairs towards the boy's dorm.

"You know you don't make it easy on him to like you." Harry always seemed to be the voice of reason. Mia flopped into the chair Ron had just left.

"I know but he's just so easy to get riled up. I just can't help myself." Mia gave a wicked grin to Harry as the three Weasley boys came back down the stairs. Mia jumped out of Ron's chair and beckoned him to sit down. Ron just glared at her and sat. The Weasley twins came up to Mia with arms crossed looking at her curiously.

"As much as we love seeing ickle Ronnikins all riled up like this," The first twin spoke.

"We do still have to ask," Then the next one spoke.

"What is it the dreaded daughter of Sirius Black want with us?" And back to the first twin. The boys kept switching talkers in the middle of their sentence, and as this would usually be a bit confusing, they seemed to pull it off and it made perfect sense to Mia.

Usually a comment about her heritage would have made her mad, but the twins said it with a smile on their face and in an obviously joking way. "Well I just saw you drop this earlier, and I thought you might need it seeing as how it's not finished." Mia pulled the parchment out of her pocket with a smirk and the four identical eyes grew large in shock.

The first twin still wearing his gloves, grabbed the note and hit his brother in the head with it. "I told you! You dropped it!" Realizing there were many prying eyes on them listening into the strange conversation, the second twin grabbed his brother and made to pull him up to his dorm.

"Wait!" Mia couldn't help herself. "Would you like to know how to fix it?" The twins just gave her a look like they were sizing her up, then they looked knowingly at each other and then all at once, they each grabbed an arm and pulled Mia into the boys stair case and pulled her up the stairs. They stopped on the landing with a door with a little gold 3 on it and pushed it open. Mia was shocked with how messy the room was. These where 13 year old boys, but did they have to live like this?

The room was a mess. There were old robes lying on the floor, quidditch supplies covered in mud heaped in a corner, and books and paper lying in crooked stacks on all of the desks. There were 4 four poster beds in the room and not one of them was made. There were even empty bottles and candy rappers lying about and the whole room had a faint smell of corn chips.

In the corner of the room there was a desk with a cauldron and a bunch of potions ingredients thrown around. Lee Jordan was standing at this desk routing through the trash as if looking for something when Mia and the twins came in.

The second twin pulled a blanket strait on one of the beds and twin number one pushed her to sit down next to the stack of library books they had just gotten. Lee came over from the caldron in the corner and stood with the two red heads, arms crossed, and all of them looked down on her intimidating like.

"Ok"

"Spill."

Mia looked around at the mess. "So is your other roommate really ok living in here while you three brew toxic potions?"

"It's not toxic!" This was Lee Jordan.

"Well that's where you're wrong. Well at least one of the pieces you're wrong." Mia gestured to twin number one's gloved hands. "The combination of the flobberworms and the lionfish spine create a mild toxic formula that created those boils."

The second twin elbowed his brother. "I told you it wasn't the caterpillar guts."

"So how do you know all this." Twin number one.

"First off, can you guys tell me your names? This is getting confusing in my head."

The twin with the gloved hands spoke first. "I'm Fred, he's George," Fred pointed to his twin. "And he's Lee." He pointed to the taller black boy.

Lee spoke up. "But don't even try to keep them straight; they like to switch on people sometimes just to keep us on our toes."

"George smiled. "Now tell us Miss Black, how you, a first year, can help us three men with our potion."

"Well I'm not even going to mention the fact that I'm probably smarter than the three of you boys put together, but let's just say, I'm the best in my potions class, and I've spent quite a bit of time researching the subject."

"Ok so if you're so smart, what should we do to neutralize the reaction of the flobberworms and the lionfish spine?"

Lee spoke up, "What if we added porcupine quills, like in the boils cure potion?" The twins looked at him like he was a genius.

"Are you kidding me?" Mia was shocked these were third years. "The quills will react with the flitterbloom, and it will explode." The boys looked puzzled by this.

"How do you know all this? Did you memorize the potion we made or something?" Fred scratched at his boil covered hands as he spoke.

"I just read a lot." Mia didn't like admitting she didn't have a life. "Look if you want to make it work, you can exchange the flobberworms for puffer fish skin. It would remove the bad reaction and it would also make the color brighter. And speaking of witch, did you break the stems off of the powley before you added it in?"

The boys just gave her a dumbfounded look.

"I didn't think so. That's why there was the added green in the boils. If you don't take off the entire green stem you will get splotches of green on whomever you are planning on dying."

At this the three boys got defensive. "Now what would make you think we would ever use something like this on a fellow student?"

"Really, it's like you think we're animals."

"Wait! You're a girl? Should you even be in the boy's dorm?"

"You should leave before you get us in trouble!"

"Seriously! We can't be caught breaking rules! It would ruin our perfect record!"

Mia just laughed at their words as she stood up and brushed the filth off of her robes. "You know you guys should really clean in here." And with that she left the dorm and went up to her own room to read.

The next few months seemed to blur by in a wave of school work and studying. Mia made sure to sneak down to the forest once in awhile after classes and spend time with her Pack. They loved to tell her stories about fights they had and games they played. Mia especially loved to play with the pups.

There were three that had been born that season, and they hadn't developed personalities enough yet to earn names in the pack. The little white and gray one was Mia's favorite. He loved to climb up high and jump down on her when she wasn't expecting it. Mia named him Pouncer and Fleetfoot approved the name. Mia loved her new wolf family. If she ever did become an Animagus, Mia hoped she became a wolf.

One day, Mia woke up early and was reading in the common room. There were only a few people down there, Fred, George and Lee all came down the stairs, dressed and ready for class way earlier than Mia had ever seen them up before. She knew something must have been up as they all sat in chairs with a good view of the stair case.

"What are you three up to?" The boys just gave Mia a look of evil and turned back to whispering and glancing at the stair case. Mia shrugged and went back to her reading. Not even two minutes later a high piercing scream came from the boy's dorm staircase and the three trouble makers all looked at each other. What came out of the staircase next made Mia fall over in a fit of laughter.

A red haired purple boy in a white bathrobe came down the stairs in a fit of anger. Percy Weasley marched across the common room, completely purple faced (literally) and stopped dead before his brothers. All of the common room lost it laughing except for Fred and George who stayed straight faced with innocent eyes.

"What the BLOODY HELL have you done to me!" Percy was dripping wet and steaming with anger.

Fred held a completely composed face and spoke clearly. "Now brother dearest, what would make you ever think it was us?

George cut in. "Really Percival, it's like you don't trust us or something." Percy let out a banshee's scream in their face and went back up the stairs as if to go scrub off his skin. "Do you think we should tell him scrubbing only makes it brighter?"

"No dear brother, I think we should let him find out for himself." The twins both gave wicked grins to the other and then walked over to Mia.

"Miss Amelia, none of this would have been possible without you and your amazing brain."

"We are forever in your debt." And with that both twins bowed.

"Please, call me Mia. And seriously, any time you need help perfecting something, feel free to come to me. I really enjoyed figuring out how to fix it."

George nodded. "Will do."

Fred slapped George on the back. "Come brother, let's see if we can find a camera so that Percy can remember this week for the rest of his life." And with another evil grin they were gone.

Before Mia knew it final exams were quickly approaching and she put away her research on the Animagus potion to study. Most of the school was studying and cramming but Hermione seemed to be the most frantic. It was as if she was already studying for her NEWT's and was sure she would fail.

It was about a week before exams and Mia was lying in bed trying to go over every charm they had learned that year in her head. She noticed as it got later into the night, that Hermione still hadn't come to bed. She fell asleep well after midnight with the bushy haired girl still missing.

Mia awoke the next morning and saw Hermione finally in bed. Maybe she had fallen asleep in the common room studying again. Mia snuck down to get her breakfast before classes and she walked passed the giant hourglasses that told the house points and was shocked to see that the Gryffindor hourglass had lost almost all of its points putting Gryffindor in last place.

They had been in the lead after all of their won Quidditch games. Mia knew she was disliked by most of her class but she still had pride in her house.

As the next few days wore on, it came out it was because of Harry, Hermione and Neville that their house was loosing. Mia was suddenly aware that she was no longer the most hated student in the school. But she could tell it was a new feeling for Harry after being the most loved student and Quidditch hero for so long.

The student's in question had detention a few nights later and Mia tried to calm Hermione by telling her the Forbidden Forest really wasn't that bad. Hermione didn't believe her since as far as she was concerned Mia had never been in the forest before. Mia waited up for Hermione that night to make sure she was ok after her detention.

When asked how it had gone, Hermione had just shivered and climbed into bed. She told Mia about the dead unicorn and a part of Mia was frightened that it was the same unicorn that she had met.

Before she knew it Final Exams had come and passed. Mia thought she had done really well on all of them except for transfiguration which she once again only passed because the written portion outweighed the practical side. Mia was out on the grounds of Hogwarts enjoying the beauty of the day when she saw Harry, Ron and Hermione running to Hagrid's hut with panic in their eyes.

Mia didn't think much of it and went out to the Quidditch pitch to read through her Amimagus potion notes. Now that exams were over, Mia was back on track to making her potion. She would be staying at the castle over the summer since she had nowhere else to go, and Mia planned to use the deserted school as the perfect opportunity to finally brew her potion. That night Mia realized once again Hermione never came to bed, and Mia just prayed they didn't lose any more house points.

The next morning Mia rose before any of her housemates and took a book down to the common room. Mia saw someone passed out on the floor. Thinking it was someone who passed out after celebrating the end of exams, she went to wake the person up when she saw it was Neville. He had a full body bind placed on him and seemed to have spent the night silently crying. Mia muttered the counter spell and helped Neville sit up. "Neville! What happened to you?"

Neville whimpered. "Her-Hermione hexed me!"

"What!"

"Ron, H-Harry and Hermione were leaving and I didn't want Gr-Gryffindor to lose any more points so I tried to stop them and she hexed me!" He started whimpering in full force and was so distraught he didn't even seem to mind it was Mia who led him to the portrait hole.

"You did the right thing Neville, come on, let me help you to the hospital wing, then we can call for Professor McGonagall." Neville didn't seem hurt, but after being bound all night he was very stiff and emotionally unstable so Mia decided to let the school nurse handle it.

When they got to the hospital wing, Mia was surprised to see Professor McGonagall already there. And Professor Dumbledore, and half the other staff, with Hermione and Ron laying on beds frantically explaining something to them. Mia also saw Harry passed out on another cot a ways away. What had happened last night?

As they entered the room Professor McGonagall saw Mia carrying the limping Neville in. He had pulled a muscle on the way up to the wing. "Oh please not more hurt students! Miss Black, what happened here?"

"Professor, I woke up early and went down to the common room and found Neville on the ground with a full body bind placed on him. I lifted it but he seemed a little shaken up so I brought him up here." Neville was looking with horror at Hermione and didn't add anything to the story.

"Mr. Longbottom, who did this to you?" Madam Pomfrey had set him on an empty cot and was taking his pulse but all Neville could do was point, right at Hermione. "Miss GRANGER! You attacked a fellow student?"

Hermione and Ron noticed Neville for the first time, and a look of regret came over her face. "I'm so sorry Neville, but we had to! He tried to stop us and if we hadn't gotten there in time Professor Sna- I mean Quirrell would have stolen the stone and You-Know-Who would have won!" Snape glared at the foolish girl who seemed to want to accuse him, but Professor Dumbledore was the first to talk.

"Well now, it seems we do have a bit of a situation here, but the worst is over with. How about we all leave this conversation here and let the students rest?" The teachers followed Professor Dumbledore out of the hospital wing and left the students. After giving Neville a potion to calm him, Madam Pomfrey told Neville and Hermione they were free to go. Ron had to stay for the rest of the day, and Harry would be there until he woke up.

As soon as they were out of the room, Hermione turned to Neville and started apologizing profusely. Mia stopped her, and asked the question that was on both her and Neville's mind. "So what exactly happened last night?"

Hermione told them all about the Philosopher's Stone and how they discovered that You-Know-Who was using the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor to steal the stone so that he could regain his body. She told them all about the things guarding the stone and how they had gotten through. Then Hermione explained that Harry had gone on to face the teacher all alone and that they didn't know exactly what happened, but when Dumbledore arrived Professor Quirrell was dying and Harry was unconscious and holding the stone. Neville left after that and started spreading the story. It wasn't long before the whole school knew. Hermione and Mia were worried for Harry. Ron would be fine after he got patched up, but no one knew if Harry would ever wake up.

Three days later Harry woke up. It had been a bit of a shock when he found out that the fight was all over and they had won. There had been a Quidditch match played and lost by the rest of Harry's team in his absence and the whole of Gryffindor was in mourning over the lost game.

The next two weeks before the end of the school year were completely different from the previous two weeks of students cramming for exams. Most students spent the long days outside in the warm early summer air, lounging under trees or playing pickup games of Quidditch. A few days after Harry woke up from the hospital wing the test results came in from all the final exams for the students not taking their OWL's or NEWT's who would have to wait a few more weeks. Mia was delighted to see that she got O's in all of her classes except one.

Even Professor Snape couldn't deny the fact that Mia had done fantastic. The only class Mia had gotten lower in was of course Transfiguration where Mia had gotten an A for acceptable. Mia really needed to figure out the practical side of transfiguration. She didn't like doing so badly in her class. If it wasn't for her perfect score on the written side of the test Mia could have easily failed. Even Neville seemed to do better than her in transfiguration spell work. It was as if she just couldn't wrap her head around making her wand cooperate.

Finally the last day of term was upon the castle and all the students were in the great hall for the end of term feast. Three fourths of the castle where eating their meal in gloom as the Slytherins were celebrating their victory. After the meal Professor Dumbledore stood up and announced he had a few last minute points to award before they announced the house cup. Everyone was shocked and excited as Professor Dumbledore awarded house points to The Gryffindor heroes. 50 to Ron, 50 to Hermione, 60 to Harry and now they were tied.

Then after a dramatic pause Professor Dumbledore awarded 10 points to Neville for standing up to his classmates, and with that they had won. Three fourths of the room started cheering and Professor Dumbledore changed the decorations to scarlet and gold. Mia was so happy. Her house had won!

The next morning all of the students were making their way out to the entrance hall to leave for the Hogwarts Express. Hermione pulled Mia down to the common room to say her goodbyes. Harry and Ron were both waiting there to see her. Mia was shocked at the gesture but just smiled at them.

"We just wanted to say thank you for your help with beating Voldemort." Harry spoke the name with confidence and Mia was surprised to hear it. Hermione and Ron both flinched.

"We never would have done it without your tip on Flamel. Thank you." Hermione smiled at her and nudged Ron in the side.

Ron seemed to agree and stuck his hand out in a 'truce' sort of way. Mia smiled and took the hand. "Friends?"

"Friends. Have a good summer holiday." Mia tried to look happy for them all going off to their own homes.

"What are you going to do here all summer?"

"Oh don't worry, I have plans." Mia smiled a devilish grin and walked up to the common room as the other students all left. Now all she needed was to find a place to brew her potion.

AN: So Mia is alone in the castle all summer, I wonder what she will be doing…

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