Why, hellooooo, there!
Thanks to my the immense people who reviewed: Sam, Bug-Eyes-Blue and the Anon.
Disclaimer: Mia is mine. No one else is.
So… this chapter takes place around the beginning of October…
Chapter 5: Dirty Butterbeer Bottles
"Hey! Hey! OI!" Ginny came running up behind Mia.
"Yeah?" Mia asked, turning around.
"I just got told by Hermione that next Hogsmeade weekend, we should all go to a pub called the Hog's Head."
"…where's the Hog's head?"
"Erm…" Ginny said, "I think she said it was at the very end of the village…"
"Right… and she happen to mention why?"
"Erm… nope… she just said to meet her there… oh! And to tell Fred and George…"
"O…k…" Mia replied. Ginny smiled and Mia headed off to Herbology with her brow furrowed.
That Saturday, Mia, Fred and George traipsed down the long road in Hogsmeade village, wind whipping around their faces. Mia had pulled her hair back in a plait to keep it off her face.
"So where's this… Hog's Head place?" Fred asked, looking around.
"Ginny said it was at the end of the village… here!" Mia pointed to a rather small, dingy looking building with severed boars head sign swinging in the wind.
"Looks cheery!" Fred said as Mia peered through the door
"It's packed!" she exclaimed. Fred pushed her back and she rolled her eyes, stepping into the pub.
"Hi," said Fred, as he pushed through the crowd and got to the bar, where an old man was standing stock-still. He quickly counted everyone, then said, "could we have twenty-five Butterbeers, please?"
The old man just stared some more, and slammed the dirty cloth he was using down on the bar and started to deal out bottles of Butterbeer. Mia took hers and looked over the bottle carefully… it was a very dusty bottle.
"Cheers," said Fred, "Cough up, everyone, I haven't got enough gold for all of these," Mia handed over a couple of coins.
Within minutes, everyone had sat down around Harry, Ron and Hermione. There was a girl with dirty blonde hair sitting in a chair next to Mia, who was staring at nothing in particular, and George sat on her other side.
"Hi, Harry," she heard Neville Longbottom say from the front of the group. For a second, everyone was silent, then Hermione spoke.
"Er… well… er… hi." Mia looked over at her with the rest of the group, casually trying to clean the top of her Butterbeer bottle with the sleeve of her jumper.
"Well… erm… well, you know why you're here. Erm… well, Harry here had the idea - I mean, I had the idea… that it might be good if people who wanted to study Defence Against the Dark Arts… and I mean, really study it, you know, not the rubbish that Umbridge is doing with us, because nobody could call that Defence Against the Dark Arts –"
"Hear, hear," said a Ravenclaw in front of Mia, and Hermione smiled a bit.
"Well, I thought it would be good if we, well, took matters into our own hands. And by that I mean learning how to defend ourselves properly, not just in theory but doing the real spells –"
"You want to pass your Defence Against the Dark Arts OWL too, though, I bet?" a boy asked.
"Of course I do!" Hermione replied, "But more than that, I want to be properly trained in defence because… because… because Lord Voldemort is back."
People all around the room suddenly made odd sounds or movements, and Mia's eyebrows shot up as she stopped trying to clean the grime from her bottle. It was the first time she'd ever heard Hermione say that.
"Well, that's the plan, anyway" Hermione continued, "If you want to join us, we need to decide how we're going to –"
"Where's the proof You-Know-Who's back?" said a Hufflepuff boy, and Mia glanced over to him.
"Well, Dumbledore believes it-"
"You mean, Dumbledore believes him," the boy jerked his head at Harry.
"Who are you?" Ron suddenly said, glaring at the boy.
"Zacharias Smith. And I think we've got the right to know exactly what makes him say You-Know-Who's back."
"Look," Hermione said sternly "that's really not what this meeting was supposed to be about- "
'It's OK, Hermione,' Harry said suddenly. Everybody in the room looked at him. "What makes me say You-Know-Who's back? I saw him. But Dumbledore told the whole school what happened last year, and if you didn't believe him, you won't believe me, and I'm not wasting an afternoon trying to convince anyone."
Zacharias Smith did not seem to think this was a suitable answer. "All Dumbledore told us last year was that Cedric Diggory got killed by You-Know-Who and that you brought Diggory's body back to Hogwarts. He didn't give us details, he didn't tell us exactly how Diggory got murdered, I think we'd all like to know-"
"If you've come to hear exactly what it looks like when Voldemort murders someone I can't help you," Harry said, "I don't want to talk about Cedric Diggory, all right? So if that's what you're here for, you might as well clear out."
Mia smirked as Zacharias Smith's eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything more. She went to lift her bottle to her lips, then remembered that it wasn't actually open, and went back to scratching the dirt form it.
"So," Hermione said, in a high voice, "So… like I was saying… if you want to learn some defence, then we need to work out how we're going to do it, how often we're going to meet and where we're going to-"
"Is it true," said a girl suddenly, "that you can produce a Patronus?" a few people in the group muttered.
"Yeah" said Harry, with a defensive tone in his voice.
"A corporeal Patronus?" the girl asked.
"Er- you don't know Madam Bones, do you?" Harry asked.
"She's my auntie," said the girl, smiling, "I'm Susan Bones. She told me about your hearing. So- is it really true? You make a stag Patronus?"
"Yes," Harry replied. Again, people around the room muttered, looking impressed.
"Mum told Ron not to spread it around," said Fred as he grinned, "She said you got enough attention as it was."
"She's not wrong," Harry muttered, and a couple of people laughed.
"And did you kill a Basilisk with that sword in Dumbledore's office?" someone asked, "That's what one of the portraits on the wall told me when I was in there last year!"
"Er- yeah, I did, yeah," said Harry. Someone whistled.
"And in our first year," Neville said with an air of awe, "he saved that Philological Stone-"
"Philosopher's," Hermione hissed.
"Yes, that, from You-Know-Who!"
"And that's not to mention," Cho Chang said, "the tasks he had to get through in the Triwizard Tournament last year- getting past dragons and merpeople and Acromantula and things."
As people around them muttered, Mia saw Harry's face go slightly red, and she bit back a smirk.
"Look," he said once his face had returned to normal colour. "I… I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be modest or anything, but… I had a lot of help with all that stuff-"
"Not with the dragon, you didn't," someone cut in, "That was a seriously cool bit of flying."
"Yeah, well-"
"And nobody helped you get rid of those Dementors this summer," said Susan Bones.
"No-" said Harry.
"Or with that Basilisk," Mia cut him off.
"Ok!" Harry said loudly, "I know I did bits without help, but the point I'm trying to make is-"
"Are you trying to weasel out of showing us any of this stuff?" said Zacharias Smith cut him off.
"Here's an idea" Ron told him rudely, "why don't you shut your mouth?"
"Well," Zacharias said, "We've all turned up to learn from him and now he's telling us he can't really do any of it," he said. Mia looked at him with a kind of ferocity in her eyes.
"That's not what he said," Fred sneered.
"Would you like us to clean out your ears for you?" George asked as he took something long and metal out of a Zonko's bag.
"Or any part of your body, really," Fred said, "we're not fussy where we stick this." Zacharias Smith looked at the three of them glowering at him and pressed his lips together.
"Yes, well," Hermione said quickly, "moving on… the point is, are we agreed we want to take lessons from Harry?" people around the room murmured, "Right, well, then, the next question is how often we do it. I really don't think there's any point in meeting less than once a week-"
"Hang on," Angelina said suddenly, "we need to make sure this doesn't clash with our Quidditch practice."
"No, nor with ours," Cho Chang said.
"Nor ours," Zacharias said, with a rather moody undertone.
"I'm sure we can find a night that suits everyone," Hermione replied, slightly exasperated, "but you know, this is rather important, we're talking about learning to defend ourselves against V-Voldemort's Death Eaters-"
"Well said!" exclaimed a boy in Hufflepuff, "Personally, I think this is really important, possibly more important than anything else we'll do this year, even with our OWLs coming up!" the boy had a rather posh voice. When no one spoke, he carried on, "I, personally, am at a loss to see why the Ministry has foisted such a useless teacher on us at this critical period. Obviously, they are in denial about the return of You-Know-Who, but to give us a teacher who is trying to actively prevent us from using defensive spells-"
"We think the reason Umbridge doesn't want us trained in Defence Against the Dark Arts," said Hermione, "is that she's got some mad idea that Dumbledore could use the students in the school as a kind of private army. She thinks he'd mobilise us against the Ministry." Everyone in the room stared at her.
"Well, that makes sense," the blonde girl next to Mia had just spoken, "After all; Cornelius Fudge has got his own private army…" Mia gawked at her for a second.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Yes, he's got an army of Heliopaths," the blonde girl said in a grave voice.
"No, he hasn't," Hermione told her harshly.
"Yes, he has," the girl replied.
"What are Heliopaths?" asked Neville. Mia had a feeling she was not the only person in the room who was about to ask the exact same question.
"They're spirits of fire," the girl breathed, looking off into space with an awed expression, "great, tall, flaming creatures that gallop across the ground burning everything in front of-"
"They don't exist, Neville," Hermione snapped
"Oh, yes, they do!" the girl snapped back.
"I'm sorry, but where's the proof of that?"
"There are plenty of eye-witness accounts. Just because you're so narrow-minded you need to have everything shoved under your nose before you –"
"Hem, hem," Mia jumped, along with everyone else in the room, and snapped her head around, relieved to find it was Ginny, and not Umbridge. "Weren't we trying to decide how often we're going to meet and have defence lessons?"
"Yes, yes, we were, you're right, Ginny," Hermione said.
"Once a week seems good enough," Mia said, still trying to scrape the dirt off her bottle.
"As long as-"
"Yes, yes, we know about the Quidditch," Hermione told Angelina, "Well, the other thing to decide is where we're going to meet." Nobody seemed to be able to think of an answer to this.
"Library?" Katie proposed.
"I can't see Madam Pince being too chuffed with us doing jinxes in the library," said Harry glumly.
"Maybe an unused classroom?" Dean Thomas provided.
"Yeah," Ron said excitedly, "McGonagall might let us have hers; she did when Harry was practising for the Triwizard!"
"Even if McGonagall did let us use a classroom, do you really think we'd all fit?" Mia said, "With all of us throwing jinxes and spells everywhere?"
"Right, well, we'll try to find somewhere. We'll send a message round to everybody when we've got a time and a place for the first meeting," Hermione said, and then she pulled a piece of parchment and a quill out of her bag. "I… I think everybody should write their name down, just so we know who was here. But I also think… that we all ought to agree not to shout about what we're doing. So if you sign, you're agreeing not to tell Umbridge or anybody else what we're up to."
Fred instantly took the list and scratched his name down.
"Er…" said Zacharias as Mia wrote down her name and passed it George, who wrote down his, then tried to give it to Zacharias. "Well… I'm sure Ernie will tell me when the meeting is…" the Hufflepuff boy with the posh voice was eyeing the parchment suspiciously too, so Mia guessed this was Ernie.
"I… well, we are prefects!" he said, "And if this list was found… well, I mean to say… you said yourself, if Umbridge finds out-"
"You just said this group was the most important thing you'd do this year," Harry said, with a slightly angry tone.
"I… yes, yes, I do believe that, it's just-"
"Ernie," Hermione said, popping her hip out, "do you really think I'd leave that list lying around?" she nodded at the parchment.
"No. No, of course not. I- yes, of course I'll sign," Ernie took the parchment and wrote his name.
Finally, the list made its way back to Hermione and she scanned it with her eyes, checking that everybody really had signed, and then put it back in her bag.
"Right… anything else?" Mia asked.
"No," Hermione said.
"Good. Lets go, boys." She stood up and made her way towards the door. When she got outside, she peered at her still un-opened Butterbeer bottle. She did not seem to have moved even a single speck of dirt.
"Well, this is useless," she muttered. When she, Fred and George got back to the normal part of the village, she shoved it into some random third year's hands and said, "Here! Don't drink it."
So… yes, I understand that most of this chapter is copied from the book… but you gotta admit, it is a pretty important chapter, weather in the actual book, Fanfiction, or anything else… it just has to be put in!
So... please review!