(minor corrections, January, 2014)
Disclaimer: I am not J K Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.
Note: The following is set in an alternate universe in which Trelawney's prophecy about the one with the power to defeat the Dark Lord shattered on Hallowe'en 1980 when Voldemort was 'killed' in the midst of a pitched battle at Godric's Hollow without having marked either Harry Potter or Neville Longbottom as his equal. Lily became known as 'The-Woman-Who-Lived' on account of having faced Voldemort and survived, but then disappeared from the wizarding world.
Further Note: This is a one-shot which ties with the 'shadow of three bolts' material I put out under a different penname on another website.
Hermione Jean Granger had had a bad day. Day one of 'operation Hogwarts' had been an almost complete disaster. She had researched the school's recommended reading material so carefully, and even insisted towards the end of the holidays that her parents take her on another trip to Diagon Alley to acquire additional texts. She had taken copious notes and finally, school things assembled and trunk packed, she had set out for platform nine and three quarters on the trail of The-Woman-Who-Lived, the mysterious Lily Potter: the only person recorded in the history books as having gone toe-to-toe with Voldemort and survived.
Her sources had been absolutely clear on the fact that Lily Potter's son, Harry, had been born in the summer of 1980, and therefore as far as Hermione could see if the boy had any hint of magical talent whatsoever it had seemed logical that he would attend Hogwarts this year. That had meant that he should have been on the platform this morning and, Hermione had reasoned, unless his mother had been busy with something else so important it was worth missing seeing her son off to school for the first time, Lily Potter should have been on the platform too.
Hermione had dutifully kissed goodbye to her parents, who had whispered something to one another, tears in their eyes, and promised to write to them regularly, then she had set off to search the platform for a woman matching the illustration in one of the books she'd bought, and come up completely blank. She'd noticed several other notables on the platform – the patriarch and matriarch of the notorious Weasley clan, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Lucius Malfoy amongst others – but not the woman she was looking for. Frustratingly, none of the books bothered much with information about Lily Potter's son, who was more of a footnote to the story of Voldemort's defeat, and he had in any case been only a baby the last time he had been seen in the magical world. All she had had to go on were the descriptions of Lily Potter.
Then the platform had cleared, and Hermione had had to board the train at the last moment, forcing her to fall back on the search for Harry Potter, for whom she had no description, during the long journey to Hogwarts. And halfway along the train had come the humiliation of the encounter with Neville Longbottom and Dudley Dursley. The books she had relied on had been completely wrong on some counts. She had sat there, cringing inwardly, trying not to show outward signs of her inner discomfort and desperately taking notes as she tried to repair the gaping holes in her plans and knowledge. Her books had betrayed her. They were supposed to be correct in all details, but it turned out that at least regarding events in 1980 they had been completely wrong – Neville Longbottom, a boy who had grown up in the magical world, had smashed to smouldering ruins the basis upon which Hermione had built her plans, doing it in a serious, trying-to-be-helpful tone of voice. And then to put the icing on the cake Neville had said he had thought that he had seen Lily Potter on the platform, only the basis of Neville's information for identifying her – a remembered old family photograph – had indicated she was a redhead.
If Hermione had known she was supposed to be looking for a redhead, everything would have gone differently, she was sure. Asides from Mrs. Weasley, she had been vaguely aware of a number of redheaded women on the platform, but of course since she had been searching for a tall blonde, probably crowned with lightning, she hadn't bothered to pay them any attention.
Oh yes, and then there was Dudley Dursley. Brought up in the muggle world, without a magical bone in his body, but he had heard via his father that Lily Potter lived in southern England – in Hampshire in fact.
And to cap it all, there had been the sorting. Hermione Granger had arrived at Hogwarts knowing that James and Lily Potter had both been in Gryffindor, and that in wizarding families Hogwarts houses tended to run in families. More to the point, their close friends and associates had all been in Gryffindor. Hermione had felt that there was an at least ninety percent chance that if Harry Potter attended Hogwarts this year that he would be placed in Gryffindor, and that even if he did not, it was the house to be in if she wanted to track down the families of friends or acquaintances who might know where Lily Potter could be found. But when Hermione had sat on the stool, trying to think brave thoughts and to convince the hat that it should put her into Gryffindor, it had ignored them, and told her she was better suited to Ravenclaw or – when she had tried to protest that – maybe even Slytherin.
Hermione Granger had shuddered at the thought of Slytherin, the ferocious rivals – so the books had said – of Gryffindor, and with a head of house, Horace Slughorn, who would probably know nothing whatsoever about Lily Potter. In the end she had had to settle for Ravenclaw. About the only silver lining she could see to the sorting was that the only two people she had bothered to hold any kinds of conversations with at all on the way to Hogwarts, Neville Longbottom and Dudley Dursley, had ended up in Ravenclaw too. It had belatedly occurred to her, midway through the feast which followed the sorting, that in a school full of people who could do magic allies or even friends might be strategically quite useful. She was pretty sure that pupils hiding her books in the toilets or calling her 'teacher's-pet-Granger' as had happened at her muggle school would be pretty tame by Hogwarts standards.
She had double-checked some genealogies in the Ravenclaw common room before retiring to bed and been relieved to discover that the Longbottoms were apparently a very old and very respected wizarding family. It was clear that she needed to stick to Neville Longbottom like superglue. He knew things about the wizarding world, and his background probably meant that he had some influence and respect. And if that meant putting up with Dudley Dursley, whom Neville apparently liked, then so be it.
Author Notes:
Yes, Hermione is somewhat caught up in hero(ine)-worship of Lily. The woman's a famous muggleborn witch who defeated a dark lord after all!
Harry Potter is in fact absent from the scene as Lily is keeping him at home to tutor privately this year, along with a few others... Lily and Dumbledore had a disagreement about a number of things (such as his obession with having to do everything his way, and Hogwarts' continuing turnover of defence against the dark arts teachers).
Dudley Dursley is a muggle still in this alternate universe. Basically, when Dumbledore discovered he couldn't get Harry as a pupil, he figured getting Harry's cousin was the next best thing as a way to try and manipulate Lily.