Chapter Text
Hermione stood with her hands over her ears on the platform, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She was really going to Hogwarts. Magic was real and she was a witch and she was going to a magic school. The scarlet train in front of her proved that.
“Mione,” her father said gently, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. The pressure of his hand flooded through her body and she relaxed a bit. “You're going to do great.” Hermione nodded. She knew she was.
After a teary goodbye from her mother and a tight hug from her father, Hermione boarded the train. She found an empty compartment and sat down, feeling the upholstery on the seats with her fingertips. The texture left her fingers tingling and she quickly rubbed them on her jumper to erase the feeling. Mental note: don’t touch the train seats with bare skin.
While grateful for the quiet that the empty compartment provided (the platform had been torture), Hermione found herself uncomfortable. Rocking absentmindedly, she wondered if everyone else on the train was sitting alone like she was. Were they nervous like her? They must be. Would anyone at school like her? She hoped so. Hoping to distract her brain from the questions floating around inside it, Hermione began to hum at a low frequency matching the buzz of the train beneath her. Oddly enough, the sound of the train didn’t bother her. She wondered if that was some sort of magic.
Some time passed and no one joined her in her compartment, so Hermione closed the door and pulled a book from her bag: Hogwarts: A History. She had already read it three times since buying it in Diagon Alley but she just kept wanting more. Learning and reviewing the information about her new school and its founders made her bounce and squeal with excitement. She couldn’t wait to discuss it with her peers once they got to school. Maybe she could even teach other Muggle-borns like herself the things she had learned, provided they hadn’t already studied up themselves.
As soon as Hermione opened her book, however, she heard a timid knock on the door to her compartment. Startle by the noise and frustrated at being interrupted, she scrunched her face up and began to shake her hands. After taking a deep breath, she turned to the door. She was surprised to see the boy standing on the other side of the glass shaking his hands just as she had been.
Hermione rose from her seat cautiously and opened the door, staring determinedly at the boy’s nose bridge. First impressions were important, so she needed to at least look like she was making eye contact. “I’ve lost my toad,” the boy said without waiting for Hermione to speak. “My name’s Neville,” he introduced himself as an afterthought. Unlike Hermione, Neville was making no attempt at eye contact, his eyes darting around the compartment behind her.
“Okay,” Hermione replied simply. Timidly, she raised her hands and shook them in time with Neville. She knew she was supposed to say more. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she added.
“Will you help me find him?” Neville asked, eyes now locked on Hermione’s hands.
Hermione looked over her shoulder at her book, which was sitting open on the seat. She thought about saying no and closing the door. She would enjoy rocking and reading in solitude. But she had learned that helping people often made them like you and could help make friends. It was for this reason that Hermione nodded and found herself walking around from compartment to compartment.
“Has anyone seen a toad? A boy named Neville’s lost one,” she asked each group of students, rehearsing the question in her head between each one. Each group said no, but she continued on. She paid close attention to the people she spoke to, noticing how the groups sitting together often wore the same colors, those representing their Hogwarts house. She noticed that many older boys sat with their arms draped around girls’ shoulders and some even sat with girls on their laps. She noticed that the people wearing yellow smiled at her and said they would ask others about the toad while the people wearing green made odd faces at her, like the face Hermione made when she smelled something bad. She noticed that the two boys in the compartment she was approaching were surrounded by entirely too much candy, an amount that her parents promised would ruin her teeth.
“Has anyone seen a toad? A boy named Neville’s lost one,” Hermione asked the boys, realizing only after she had spoken that she had interrupted something the redheaded boy was saying. She noticed his wand in his hand and excitement rushed through her. “Are you doing magic?” she asked hopefully. “Let’s see, then!” The boy looked at her, then at the rat in his lap.
“Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow!” the boy chanted, and Hermione watched unblinking. Nothing happened. Why did nothing happen? Should something have happened? What was the boy trying to do? Real spells were supposed to work as long as one did them right.
“Are you sure that’s a real spell?” Hermione asked, concerned. The boy didn’t respond, so she figured it must be. “Well, it’s not a very good one is it,” she attempted to joke. She knew that people sometimes liked to put the blame on objects other than themselves when things went wrong, like when her mother insisted the vacuum was angry at her when it didn’t pick up all of the cat hair. Again, the boy did not respond to her. He was looking at her face, though, trying to look in her eyes. Hermione forced herself to try for a moment before her skin began to crawl and she looked away.
“I’ve only tried a few simple spells myself, but they’ve all worked for me,” she went on, eager to show the boys what she had learned and find out if they also knew the spell. Her excitement grew when she saw the black-haired boy’s broken glasses. Another person to help! “For example,” she said, aiming her wand at the glasses. “Oculus reparo!” There was a crack, a pleasing sound to Hermione’s ears, and the boy’s glasses fixed themselves. She was about to bounce in her seat with glee when she noticed the scar on the boy’s head for the first time. “Holy cricket!” she exclaimed. “You’re Harry Potter!”
Hermione thought being friends with Harry Potter, the boy she had read so much about, would be the best thing to ever happen to her. “I’m Hermione Granger,” she introduced herself quickly, eyes fixated on the lightning bolt scar above the glasses she had just repaired. She saw Harry Potter’s eyes move and remembered the red-haired boy beside him. In her eagerness to befriend the Boy Who Lived, she almost forgot. “And you are?” she asked.
“Ron Weasley,” the boy said, his mouth full of candy. The smacking sounds his lips made put Hermione on edge.
“Pleasure,” she said through a grimace, hoping Harry Potter and Ron Weasley weren’t paying attention to her facial expressions. She could never control them well, but she knew other people always thought they meant something.
“You two should change into your robes,” Hermione said, deciding she had better leave the compartment and continue her search for Neville’s toad. “I expect we’ll be arriving soon.” She turned to walk away but something caught her eye. “You have dirt on your nose, did you know?” she asked Ron, thinking she would like someone to tell her if she had dirt on her nose. She pointed to the same spot on her nose. “Just there.”
With that, she walked away from the boys, wiggling her fingers at her sides. She had a feeling they were all going to be great friends.
