I didn't think about the advice Charlie gave me and George two years ago. He was gone, off to Romania to work with dragons! How cool was that?! Georgie and I thought that was the coolest thing that he could have possibly done, he beat out Bill who was a curse breaker. Although, last time we saw Bill he had a fang in his ear…

We got ourselves settled onto the Hogwarts Express with Lee, with plans to sleep the whole ride there. George and I, we had plans that first night back. We did have a record too break, after all. But the plan meant that we were going to be up all night, so we wanted to sleep while we could. I found a comfortable spot laid back on the bench with my feet propped up on George's lap. I knew they were safe there, because whilst I prefer to lay down, my twin has absolutely no problems falling asleep sitting up. I closed my eyes and let the rocking motion and the chaotic sounds of the train full of teenagers lull me to sleep.

Bangbangbang, bang, bang bang!

I started to wake up before my lower half was thrown roughly to the floor. The upper half of me followed, jolting me awake and leaving me in a pile of limbs on the floor. George looked down at me, brown eyes apologetic. He did laugh at me though, his shoulders shaking with his chuckles as he reached down to pull me up. As we got halfway there, the door shuddered as somebody knocked on it, quite hard. George turned his head to look at the door, ignoring me for the shortest moment. We overbalanced, and I fell back to the ground with a groan. George fell as well, pulled rather abruptly by my loss of balance and ended up sprawled with his legs somehow pinning my chest while his torso fell on Lee. Rather than try to get up again, I decided to give up and just laid my head back on the surprisingly plush carpet and managed to wheeze out a "come in!" at the same time as George and Lee. The door opened to show a girl, an ickle firstie by the looks of her!

She looked at us all, cocking her head one way, then the next, her brown riotous hair poofing out around her face, her whiskey-colored eyes twinkling with laughter. Her brow creased and she pursed her lips, looking like she both wanted to laugh at us and scold us all at once. She reached out a hand to help George up, bracing herself to do so as he was quite a bit larger than her. She managed to heave the clumsy sod off me, and he sat down on the bench we had previously occupied. She laughed and then reached out to pull me up as well. I allowed her to pull me to my feet, then joined George, studying her.

"Look Forge! We have an icle firstie!" I nodded to him in agreement, excited to meet someone new. I knew that he was looking at me, so I decided to do the observing. That meant that I was watching watching as her face fell.

Uh oh. We had upset her somehow. What had we done? "Just because I'm a first year does not mean that you can call me names!" She really was upset. We didn't like making people upset, we liked making people laugh. Her eyes shone at that moment like she was about to start crying, and I swear that her hair, which was already the biggest I had ever seen, got even bigger.

I decided to cut in before George could say something. George and I knew that we pushed people's limits sometimes, but George was usually the one that decided to pull me back if I said something stupid or hurtful. We enjoy taking the mickey, but like I just said, we don't like hurting people. Unless they deserve it. Which this girl did not, at least not yet. "We don't mean to call you names, it's just what our older brothers always called first years. Our brother is a first year this year too!" George looked at me, his eyes widening and his left eyebrow quirking up just the slightest bit. He looked back at the girl, who hadn't introduced herself, and realized that she looked upset.

"Yeah, sit down and we'll tell you what we did!" George added inviting the girl to sit. He stood abruptly, towering over the tiny girl. Were we that small two years ago? I jumped up to join him, in front of the girl, but on either side so that she had to step back toward the door so that she could take us both in. I bowed theatrically, knowing that my other half was acting as my mirror. "Introducing-" he started.

"-the marvelous-" we straightened up to our full height.

"-most brilliant-" we gestured toward each other with a flourish, both hands extended toward the other, which meant that we whacked each other in the arms a few times. The compartment was far too small for this.

"-pranksters extraordinaire-" at this point, she was giggling, her eyes twinkling, and her hair settled slightly back down to where it was before.

"Weasley Twins! George-"

"-and Fred Weasley-"

"-at your service!" we bowed once more, before taking our seats. George, deciding to not forget our best friend, added "and that git over there is Lee, our partner in crime."

She clapped at our introduction, before taking the invitation to sit next to Lee, close to the door of the compartment. "Pleasure to meet you three. I'm Hermione Granger." She looked at our bright red hair, which had to be thoroughly rumpled due to both our naps and our tumble to the ground earlier. "You said you have a first-year brother?" We nodded twice in unison. "Does he have a rat?"

George wiped a pretend tear from his eye. "That he does! Silly little ickle Ronnie, we taught him a spell earlier to turn his rat yellow!"

"Yeah, but it's a fake, don't tell him." I winked, hoping she would laugh again. It worked, she did. She had a nice laugh. "So Ms. Hermione Granger, what house do you want to be in?"

She looked apprehensively at us, biting her lower lip and blushing. "Well, I think I might be in Ravenclaw, but Gryffindor sounds by far the best, I hope I get in!"

Lee chimed in, he takes far longer than we do to wake up. When George and I bet against each other, the punishment for losing is waking him up if he doesn't wake up in time for breakfast. "Gryffindor is the best. That's our house!"

"Really? What about the sorting? What happens?" She looked so worried, that I just had to take pity on her.

"Well, we told Ron that it would be a test. That it would be painful." I started, and Hermione's eyes got wider and she started to worry her lower lip with her teeth. I nudged George, hoping that he would get the hint and help me make her feel better.

"But it really isn't. There's a hat you see, and it decides where to put you." George added, thankfully getting the hint. The three of us leaned closer conspiratorially, Hermione leaning in to us after a second's hesitation.

"And don't worry, it takes your preferences into account when it picks for you." George and Lee looked at me, shocked. "It almost tried to put me into Ravenclaw or Slytherin, saying that I could fit equally into any of those three houses, but I knew Georgie and I needed to be in Gryffindor, and it let me go there. George's decision was shorter than mine, even the Sorting Hat knew not to separate us." While I whispered this to her, Lee looked at me in confusion, and George flushed, then paled at my words. His jaw dropped wide open and his eyes got wide. Oops. I hadn't meant to tell her that, nobody knew that except me and him, not even Lee. Well, I guess Lee knows now. I looked back at him, sure that I had just done something wrong, but not knowing why.

"Don't tell anyone that bit, nobody outside this compartment knows that." George added in a whisper, still staring at me. The color was starting to return to his face though.

Hermione looked at us, her cheeks flushed, and did an odd sort of motion. She held her hand up in front of her face, as if she was holding something, drew her thumb and forefinger across her mouth before twisting her wrist and then tossing her hand back over her shoulder. Having practiced being in unison our whole lives, I knew that George had cocked his head in confusion at the same time as me, while his left eyebrow twitched up and my right eyebrow did. Lee, while not as practiced as us, had still been our partner in crime for two years now and had a similar expression on his dark face.

"What in the-" he started, knowing that we would finish in our "twin-speak" as Ginny liked to call it.

"-name of Merlin-" I added next.

"-was that?" George finished, gesturing towards her with both hands, though she looked at us with confusion.

"What was what?" she looked at us with confusion, seemingly getting more settled into the compartment with us. She finally relaxed into her seat, choosing to lean more on the wall of the compartment than on the back of the bench so that she could look at all of us.

George took the lead, and tried to copy her gesture. He did it wrong, but I couldn't quite tell what he did that didn't make it work the same way it did for her. She giggled, then showed us slower. "It means zipping your lips," she exaggerated the zipping motion, "locking up the secret," she turned the key, "and throwing away the key so that nobody will ever find out the secret. Have you never seen that before?"

"Nope! Where are you from?" Lee cut in, moving to check on his small box in the corner. They heard a commotion from the hallway, loud laughter followed by a knock on their compartment's door. "Enter at your own risk!" chorused me and the other boys. The door opened, and another small one entered cautiously. This one was a boy firstie, and looked vaguely familiar.

"Oh Neville! I'm so sorry I got distracted! Fred, George, Lee, this is Neville, and he's looking for his toad. Have you seen one?" She sounded so distressed about forgetting, but still remembered to introduce us all, gesturing at each of us in turn when she said our names. She actually got it right with George and I, so we made a note of that. Not an easy feat. That was why he looked familiar, haven't seen Neville Longbottom in years! Poor boy. But alas, none of us had seen the toad. "Well it was nice to meet you lot, hope I join you in Gryffindor! If you find Trevor, that's the toad, grab him please!" And with that, Hermione Granger had gone off with Neville.

I looked at George, then the door and stared after her, even though she was gone and the door was closed. George turned on me and threw his arms out to the side, using his hands to talk just as much as he used his voice. It's a habit both of us have gesticulating wildly, especially when we get excited. George tends to do it when he is upset, he tries to loom over whoever he is mad at. "What, Freddie boy, was that! Spilling our secrets during a first conversation! With a firstie! What if she ends up in Slytherin Fred?!" I leaned back from the ire of my twin, surprised by the vehemence of his argument and that he seemed…angry with me.

I tried to communicate with George with a look, but he just continued to look at me expectantly. "Can I tell you later Georgie? Please?" I nodded twitched my eyes to Lee, knowing that only George would see. But Lee, understanding what I needed, stood up and made an excuse to leave, saying that he was going to go see the girls. Once he was gone and the door was closed, I turned back to my twin, my other half. He was still looking at me in frustrated confusion and worry. I was so not going to get away with that.

I sighed, then started. "Remember before we left first year? With Charlie?" He nodded, but didn't say anything. "Remember what he said about girls?" I got a blank stare and a single nod. Apparently, I was losing my twin with my thought process, something that had never happened before. "Did you see it Gred?" The blank stare continued. "That girl. Hermione Granger. Isn't she… Didn't you see it?"

"See what Forge? A bushy haired girl that we don't know that you just spilled secrets to? We've never seen her before! I stand by what I said, she could be put in Slytherin for all we know." I had never disagreed with him more.

"No George. That girl will be a Gryffindor. She's going to join us. Charlie said that a girl was beautiful because she was right. That girl is going to be right." George didn't say anything else about it, he just nodded, and moved on to discussing our plans for the night, and when Lee joined us, we finalized our plans for that evening.

That was the first time I saw Hermione Granger, and that was the first time I knew that she was beautiful.

I watched her a lot that year, as she seemed so lonely. Ron was a git, we all knew that, but he was just so awful to her in particular. I tried to ensure that she smiled, dragging George into hare-brained schemes (as usual) to make her laugh.

Then there was a troll on Halloween. There was a whirlwind at dinner, what with us sitting at the table, talking quidditch with Angelina, Alicia, and Katie, and then Quirrel came in, screaming about a troll and then fainting. Turban face was quite…melodramatic. Whose decision had it been to hire him?

We made our way with the girls up to the common room, making sure that we stood to the sides of them. We knew that they didn't actually need protecting, but our personal studies have taught us some more advanced spells and whatnot. Plus, mum would have our heads if she found out that we did anything less than be gentlemen.

We waited up in the common room, aware that Ron and Potter were missing, but also Hermione. Eventually, Ron, Potter, and Hermione returned, all looking rather disheveled, though Hermione was filthy.

They came in together, which was a shock since Ron had said some not-so-nice things about the girl according to rumors. Hermione went up to the girl's dormitory to clean up, and Ron shared what happened. We settled down to listen to the ridiculous tale in the comfy couch closest to the fire, sitting across from Ron and Potter, who quickly claimed the squishy armchairs. Somehow, our baby brother had managed to get involved in more hijinks than we had this year!

Hermione came back down, freshly washed hair barely contained in a braid, which looked like it had soaked through her overly-large shirt. She looked comfy, adorably so. By this point, Ron had told us that she had taken the blame for looking for the troll to prevent them from getting into more trouble, so George and I scooted over to allow for a space between us on the couch. She blushed before settling in.

Inevitably, the conversation turned away from the troll excitement and onto Quidditch. Harry seemed to still be learning, though he was the 'youngest seeker in a century.' He had no idea about the teams in the Quidditch League, and Ron was wholeheartedly professing that the Cannons would make it this year. George and I let ourselves settle into the conversation, but I noticed Hermione was not participating.

"Hey." I nudged her side and whispered to her conspiratorially. Being a big brother, I knew that sometimes people just need to be asked how they are.

"Hey." She muttered back, turning her face toward me, wiping the look of boredom off her face.

"How are you really? You look comfy, but uncomfortable at the same time." It was true. Even though she was wearing what appeared to be her coziest clothes, a purple tee so large it could have fit Charlie and a pair of sweatpants, she seemed to be sitting stiff as a board. She seemed to relax into the conversation, while also making sure to not truly participate.

"Well, I am. I'm wearing what I always wore at home after a stressful day, and I braided my hair. While I don't really like talking about quidditch that much, I am enjoying being included." She was playing with the ends of the braid now, which was beginning to protest its capture in the large braid. I watched her as two rather large chunks popped out, and she sighed as she tried to tuck them back in. "I am so not good at that. My mum used to braid my hair for me."

I patted the ground between my knees. "Luckily for you, mum always made me braid Ginny's hair. She made me and George learn how, I think she was trying to keep us out of trouble by giving us stuff to do." She hesitated, looking like she wasn't going to trust me not to tie her hair into knots. Which, really, she shouldn't with our track record. But I was being sincere. "You'll meet her next year, she's a year younger than you all. I promise to do nothing weird. I really have been braiding Ginny's hair for years with no complaints." She looked up, glancing toward the Quidditch conversation going on next to us.

Ron and George both looked at her and nodded without breaking up their conversation—well argument about the Cannons chances. At their agreement, she slid down off the couch, hoping that he would be able to tame her hair.

"How did your mom do it?" I asked, taking out her hair tie.

"She used to do 2 French braids, but inside out. She pulled it really tight so that it wouldn't pop out overnight. It was the only time that my hair was tame." I nodded at this, and it seemed like she was going to trust me with this.

I started to separate and gently tug at her hair. It was surprisingly relaxing, reminding me of home and Ginny. Ginny is our favorite sister. Well, she's our only sister, but if we had more she would still be our favorite. I started talking again, quietly telling Hermione how we sent Ginny a toilet seat during our first week and then about the toilet we blew up.

She won us the cup. I know that Dumbledore did it so that Neville's 10 points—bogus, he deserved more than that—tipped the scales, but really, we all know that none of it would have happened without her. I watched as she flushed at the attention, then continued to watch her as we celebrated. She glowed in the excitement, and she hugged everyone within her reach. When I got my hug, I squeezed her back before picking her up and tossing her to George for his hug. She laughed, and looked like she was going to scold me with that big smile and her hair all huge. I was going to miss her this summer.

A/N: Thank you all for reading! I don't have much written, so I really have no idea how long it will be between posts. But I thought of this story and just had to write it, so that should mean something. Loved the fact that some of you liked this enough to review or follow, just based on the prologue! That made my heart happy!