Time blurred for Hermione as she filled each day with more exercise than she had ever wanted, more learning than she could ever hope for, and more food than she could ever eat. All to soon, Fall arrived, and her quite sanctuary, her room, began filling up with girls.
Her actual roommate was a sweet girl from Germany, with a winsome smile and constantly rosy cheeks.
"Good afternoon," the girl said cheerfully upon her arrival, "my name is Leisl. These are my parents, Heirr und Frau Hoffmann."
Hermione smiled shyly and replied, "'ello. My name is Hermione. I guess we're roommates?"
Leisl nodded, the gesture making her dishwater blond curls bounce about her face. "That is what the lady- Rona?- told me downstairs. I am hoping we have," she paused, searching for a word, "we have wonderful year together."
Hermione smiled again, more openly now. "I hope so too." The diminutive brunette turned to Leisl's parents to include them in the conversation.
"Would you like some help bringing her things up?" she asked.
The Hoffmanns smiled and nodded appreciatively.
Between the two ten year olds, the Hoffmann adults, and several slayer supervisors, Leisl Hoffman was unpacked just in time for the other suite mates to start drifting in.
Two of the witch girls roomed in the far right bedrooms, and two watchers in the left, thus flanking the designated slayer bedroom. The witches were their age, luckily, but the watcher girls were older, middling teens.
As more and more girls trickled into the dorms, the cacophony of sound drowned out any memory of comforting silence for Hermione. Even with sweet Leisl by her side, she felt overwhelmed.
One of the watchers from her suite, Jessica, noticed the little bushy headed slayer tense. She unobtrusively made her way through the throng of people to her dormitory's living room door. "Hermione, is everything quite alright? You seem a bit peaky."
Hermione looked up, startled, then relaxed slightly, seeing it was one of her new aquaintences. "Oh, I think so. There are just so many people. It's... a bit scary."
Jessica smiled a little, just the tiniest upturning of her mouth. It was almost like being home with her younger sister. "Not many folk in your suburb coming and going? Well, don't you worry. We'll slip right on through and get down to the mess. I'm famished. Let's round up all the girls, and get in line before the crowd, yeah? I hear you're already on friendly terms with the cooks."
Hermione hesitantly nodded, and the six girls and ten adults braved the jungle of suitcases, boxes, slayers, witches, watchers in training, and parents. Once safely out of the dorm building, they ambled along the path to the mess hall.
Nine year old Harry James Potter sat on his aunt's and uncle's front porch, sunburned and feeling more than a little alone. He had not managed to weed the garden as fast or as neatly as his Aunt Petunia would have liked. Therefor, he was being punished. No supper for Harry, no sirree.
A small, nearly gaunt hand pushed messy black tufts of hair from bespectacled green eyes.
He just... didn't know what he had done wrong. He couldn't have weeded the garden faster, not with having to wait for Dudley to finish lunch before cleaning the kitchen, and mowing the lawn. Sometimes, Harry felt like his family hated him just because, and they deliberately made things too difficult to finish so they would have reason to punish him.
At least Aunt Petunia hadn't tried to cut his hair again. The last time had been a disaster the family was forbidden to speak of, involving istrange things/i.
Harry knew that his family did not like strange things of any sort. They were very proud of being, what they considered, perfectly normal. Harry didn't see how having an uncle and cousin the size of baby whales and an aunt so gaunt she looked like a horse was necessarily normal, but he figured that it was normal for him.
He heard raucous laughter from inside, and then a temper tantrum from Dudley, signifying dessert had probably been finished, and he would soon be called in to clean up the mess.
He was right.
As the sun dipped behind the rows of boringly similar houses and trees, his aunt, with her face pinched and puckered as though she'd sucked on a lemon, opened the door and briskly ushered him inside.
"Remember, you, you don't eat anything while you clean. No scraps! I have my eye on you!"
With that, Harry sighed and began first taking all the whole dishes to the kitchen sink, ran water with soap to soak them, and returned to the dining area to clean the pie and broken dessert plate from the carpet and the wall.