Author's Note: This story is about Hermione forgetting about magic completely and Harry trying to make her remember. It was inspired by the song Don't Stop Believing by Journey
A Wizard's Train
Perhaps it wasn't just the dismalness that smelt worse than Crookshanks' canned tuna that caused her to get on that train. Perhaps, or maybe not, it was the day, the people, and the place. The soft August gusts of wind rolling across her long hand-knitted scarlet scarf and the scent of caramel popcorn about the small town that was so tangible, she swore that she'd touched it, and the golden coins jangling in her pocket making her feel as though she were the Queen of England herself, despite the fact that it was all Wizard's money. The town's people went about differently to her, as though they were waiting for something big besides the harvest that coming October.
She watched silently as people wearing everything from torn overalls to million dollar smiles boarded and exited the trains that came and went. She was expected to go back to school on that train. That train would rattle it's way all the way over to King's Cross Station where, for the now sixth time, she would break through the dusty brick wall to Platform 9¾ and board the Hogwarts Express.
"Hogwarts," she mumbled, "My life." Hermione sighed inwardly.
If you could consider six years of intense studying and watching others live their lives a life, it really was. She picked up a stray can that had been crumpled and whipped by the elements and smiled, a thought occurring to her.
Hermione casually walked over to the ticket booth, can in hand and jumper becoming wet from the rain that seeped through the train station's broken canvas covering. The man in the booth looked inwardly lost, his withered brown eyes played his tragedy of life as he leaned back against the window, his back to her. Hermione could smell the smoke from his cigar, this giving her the last ounce of courage she needed to bang her fist against the glass, causing the man to stir.
"What's it to ya?" he asked her, somewhat annoyed with the abruptness, as the cigar now twirled about in his fingers.
She stood up a little straighter. "I need a train ticket."
His eyes narrowed. Then, eyes softening as quickly as they'd become sour, he chuckled. "Yeah, don't we all." She nodded. "Where you headed, kid?"
"I…" Hermione began, but was lost for words. She had planned on taking the next train that rolled by. "I need a ticket to the next train that comes by."
He began to shuffle through a small chest of slips of paper on his desk. "4 o'clock to Hampton Station." His brows furrowed. "What's a little lady like you doing going so far off?" For the first time, his fingers ran through his whitening blonde hair and he looked her over, taking note to her facial features. "Granger? You're the dentists' kid, aren't you?"
Hermione nodded. She longingly stared down at the forgotten ticket on the desk, reading over the words again and again. What was she doing?
"They not treating you right?" He was well used to seeing many her age hop off on the first train they saw and never come back.
She shook her head franticly. "Oh no!" she said instantly, "They're… They're wonderful." A small lump began to form in Hermione's throat and she sheepishly bowed her head, bushy brown hair falling over her face.
He proceeded to the ticket having had his fill of information as though he didn't notice the lonely little girl caught in her sixteen-year-old cinnamon brown eyes. "Right then!" he called to attention, "That will be about twenty two quids and fifty pees. It'd be less, but that Hampton…" He shook his head, making a clicking noise with his tongue. "Awfully far to get to. And it's in one of them fancy trains that don't roll by these parts so often."
Hermione dove into her bag in search of the leather wallet full of her money, letting the can fall in its neatness. She was wary of the man's eyes as she tried to surreptitiously shuffle through 10 and 50 pound notes. Unfortunately, Hermione let one of her fingers slip out of place and he got a good look at three £50 note.
He let a slow whistle escape his lips. "Well I never… Got yourself a pretty little penny, don't ya?"
Hermione slapped the money down on the cold steal and, with an even icier glare of defeat, briskly walked towards the platform full of people in umbrellas and slickers waiting for the train forgetting to grab her three dollars in change.
Siruius Black shook his head. "That boy's going to have himself a real fight with her," he mumbled to himself dejectedly, throwing his cap on the floor and coughing from the cigar's smoke. His foot smashed upon it as he wheezed. "Damn tabs."
The rain became all the more fervent as she waited without an umbrella. Her hair sagged and quickly lost its bounce while she was seemingly alone in the sea of people on the platform. She could hardly manage to hold the cotton bag that had absorbed so much water. Hermione wished she could use that wand in her pocket, but she knew under aged magic wasn't permitted.
It came in a slow rumbling nose that made the girl look down at her stomach. Hmmmm, hmmmm. Hermione thought the hunger in it was apparent. Then, she was able to pick out the monotonous sound of a spin. The spinning of round objects banging and clanking against the wood and metal of the train tracks. An uneven sound made even more disheveled by the rain's persist in jabbing the stone platform at haphazard intervals.
The sound continues to evolve into a constant motion of the large axels of the wheels jerking this was and that while the circles continued to spin. Chugga, chugga, chugga, chuagga. The whistle burnt in her ears and made her brain fizz, giving her chocolate brown eyes a dazed and lost look to them. Freeeewwww, freeww, freeeewwww. She snapped to attention as the train halted in front of her.
It was a large old-fashioned transport train with several different carts for several different purposes. Her ticket said that the ride was about twelve hours long so she was not surprised by it's many amenities and great volume. It most certainly made the grand old Hogwarts Express seem like a dinky child's toy with its beautiful velvet curtains and lavishly decorated interior.
She'd entered into a train car full of comfy booths. It was apparent by the ajar velvet curtain of one of the tables revealing two men deeply engaged in a game of chess with pieces she was almost certain moved on their own like a wizard's chess set would, that this was not the dinning car. Either way, she had no intention of seating herself amongst those gossiping loudly and playing card games of Euchre.
It took her a short wait in a few queues, but by the time the train had steadied itself to a constant pace of its spinning wheels, Hermione Granger had reached the dinning cart. It was rather large, with a beautiful ceiling, she noted, illuminated by blue light and graced with a mural of birds. It looked to be hand painted.
Suddenly, however, her eyes grew wide as she watched a small blue bird in one of the beautifully painted nests fly off to another nest before a flock of red birds began to swirl about the painting in gorgeous shapes, their wings flapping, making the colour of their bodies liven and reflect on her own glossy eyes. It was also then that she noticed that the blue light wasn't anything out of the ordinary. It glowed with a permanent haze that seemed to give a chill to the room, not like normal light, which according to the laws of physics would have made the room hotter and her hair fritz up some.
Hermione knew she must have looked awful at that moment, in the middle of a dinning cart staring up at what she thought was a painted ceiling full of birds that flew in elegant patters across a mural that was illuminated by things that could not be any ordinary light, gaping at it all, her hair a skew and still wet from the rain that darkened the sky outside. The scarf around her neck had succeeded in snaring onto just about anything all the way there and looked stretched and worn, as did her mud filled sneakers. Oh how a cleaning charm would have been like haven at that moment.
It was at the site of another did she not feel so awful and out of place, as something, rather, someone, a waitress who had just approached her, looked at least a dozen times worse than she. The elderly women had cracked and crinkled skin, with bags under her eyes and a stick sticking out of her uniform's pocket, her white-as-snow blond hair a mess.
"Could it be…?" she mumbled, hurting her eyes in spite of herself to try and see if this was just an ordinary stick in the waitress' pocket.
This women's entire figure brightened as she smiled a smile that looked like a giant crack in her face. "Of course my dear," she said calmly, reaching a shaky hand into her pocket and pulling out the object of Hermione's interest. "What else would it be besides a wand?"
Hermione's brows lifted almost instantly at the statement and she looked around abruptly as if some muggle were listening in on them at that very moment. The aged women chuckled. "No worries, darling. They're all the same as you and I."
"But, how can they…?" she said somewhat suspiciously.
The waitress finished her sentence, "…all be wizards?" Hermione nodded. "Simple!" the women came to her, so that her silvery gray eyes met Hermione's own. "It's a wiazrd's train, you know," she whispered. The cinnamon-eyed girl looked back at her incredulously. The women laughed, her petit body rattling.
"I didn't believe it my first time aboard either." Her eyes grew dazed and Hermione thought she'd slipped out of consciousness for a moment.
Then, the women's eyes seemed to liven up and it was just like she hadn't said anything prier to Hermione and they were seeing each other for the first time again. "There certainly are a lot of you young lot on today, now aren't there?" She briskly grabbed Hermione's hand and began to lead her to a table in the back. "Best put you with some your own age."
Hermione felt herself go uneasy as the women stopped in front of a table of four teens, two male and one female, of whom which looked strangely familiar, but made her almost sure she'd never…
Her eyes grew wide. "Neville?" she asked as though the site of him there were the equivalent to water on the sun.
He looked over, expression in mock surprise of her own, and smiled. "Hi Hermione! Fancy seeing you here, eh?"
The waitress stepped away to attend a man who was waving her over by wriggling his wand about while talking to a fairly pretty young lady across from him. Hermione watched as she left, but knew she had no choice but to sit there.
She would have liked to sit next to Neville, whom had almost always been her partner on all of the partner projects at Hogwarts., but the seat was already taken by an astonishingly familiar dirty blonde haired girl with dreamy, silvery-gray eyes that were set in an expression of perpetual surprise by their almost invisible eyebrows. Hermione thought she was rather pretty and envied her momentarily before noticing the magazine she was reading upside down.
"What are you reading?" Hermione asked curiously.
The girl looked up at her as though she were caught in a déjà vu. Neville too seemed to catch his breathe at this. "The Quibbler. My father is its editor." She spoke in a dreamy far off voice, as though her mind was in the train cart over.
Hermione would have liked to have sputter out the words, "That rubbish?" but refrained because she thought she might hurt the girl's feelings.
"Why don't you go and take a seat next to Harry?" Neville asked in an attempt to break the silence.
Hermione's head immediately snapped so her gaze caught the boy slumped against the window, staring out at the flashes of lightning about the fields of barley with a terribly blank expression on his face, all except the eyes. It would take her a million years to pierce those eyes; brilliant pools of a green serendipity she never imagined to come across. The only thing keeping those pools of emerald from consuming her in whole were the pair of perfectly round ebony spectacles with a bit of tape in the middle he had on. She timidly took a seat still gazing at him.
Finally he spoke. "You two know each other?" It didn't come out right; the statement was unsure and cautious.
Hermione nodded before taking another look at his glasses. "I could give you a spell to fix those. I would do it on you myself, but I'm not allowed to do under aged magic."
"On here you are!" the blonde chimed in. "It's a wizard's train, you know. The Ministry's alright with us doing it on here, just so long as we don't decide to cause an mischief."
Hermione gave a quick nod and dropped her bag on the table. It's contents spilled all at once, most of which were cans and bottle caps. Luna, the dreamy eyed girl, instantly reached for an empty and cracked can of coca cola.
"What was in it?" she asked curiously, scrutinizing it as though it were the Hope diamond. Hermione felt sheepish at this. She knew why most people collected cans, but she was only doing it to give to the homeless women at the end of the street, despite her mother's warnings not to talk to her.
Harry looked at the cans as well. "They're things muggles use to parcel food and drinks, Luna. That there is a fizzy can."
Luna shook it. "But there's nothing in here."
"Sometimes muggles collect the empty ones on the street to get money." He looked over at Hermione who's faced flushed slightly at his statement. Harry put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. I'll pay for whatever you eat."
Hermione instantly shook her head. "No! No, I could never ask something like that from, I mean, I barely even know any of you," Neville frowned, "except Neville, of course." She seemed to stumble over her words, something she didn't usually do. "I can pay for everyone." She blurted out, beginning to throw everything back in her bag besides her wand.
"They'll only take gallions here," Neville said knowingly.
Her lips pressed together in faint, "Oh," and she seemed even more flushed. Without much reason she sat up a little straighter and held out her hand to Harry. "I'm Hermione Granger."
He hesitated before replying with the words, "Harry Potter," and moved his free hand to his gorgeously messy raven's black hair to lift it some and reveal a lightning bolt shaped scar. Hermione stared back blankly at it.
"Nice… scar?" was all she could manage, as she didn't quite know why Harry was showing her his scar. Something in her mind insisted she was fortunate to go out and see this scar, but she could not fathom why. In fact, her eyes became sober at the thought of that scar and some sort of pain this boy must endured.
There was a deathly silence between the four, only interrupted by Luna swinging her feet under the table.