Chapter 2, King's Cross

"You're going to suffocate!"

"It's a risk that I feel quite willing to take. As soon as I get on the train I'll change into my robes, I promise."

Hermione staggered into King's Cross station, breathing heavily and trying to think about penguins and icebergs. At this rate, letting people see her deformed body seemed like a rapidly shrinking problem. She felt very grateful for her parents; her father pushed the heavy trolley with her bags while her mother remained at Hermione's side, prepared to catch her daughter should she faint.

The autumn warmth outside and the collected body heat of all the people inside the train station came at the young woman in a merciless onslaught, laughing at her attempt to maintain her dignity. Five layers of clothes had really, really not been a good idea.

And for every step on the way towards platform 9 ¾, dread filled her throat with an intensifying taste of bile. Already Hermione could see Harry's stunned look and hear Ron curse one moment before they both demanded an explanation that she would not be able to give them.

Hopefully she would be able to hide herself in a car on the train, to keep from being seen by too many people. Even these clothes, and later the robes, could not completely hide the fact that something was highly awry.

She gritted her teeth at the mental image of wide-eyed, giggling and shocked students – and especially smirking Slytherins. They would simply adore this.

'I'm going to kill Fred and George!' she snarled in her own silent mind.

'Provided it was them,' she reminded herself a moment later.

Oh, this was just heading downhill, and fast.

She looked up and squinted ahead, trying to clear her mind. It worked like a charm. Kind of.

About twenty yards away, she spotted a young man with pale blond hair and a rat-like face.

Ooh no…

It seemed as if the crowd parted just to offer her this, to add to the list of "bad start of the year".

And Draco was currently turning her way, too.

Hermione clenched her jaw, trying to prepare a few quips to shoot back at Malfoy's soon-to-be-incoming attacks – in her current physical state, he would surely find loads of fresh verbal arrows. But she would not allow him an easy match. Never had, never would.

But her mouth was so dry and her head feeling heavy, it was hard to think…

"Oi! Mr. and Mrs. Granger!"

Ron's voice had never sounded sweeter to her ears.

The redheaded Weasley cavalierly of six plowed through the parting crowd, forcing it shut again in the last moment. Ron led the attack, waving his left arm in a frantic greeting while he with the right dragged the trolley bulging under the weight of his baggage. The senior Grangers nervously raised their hands to wave back, and tried to glue smiles onto their lips.

"Where's Hermi- bloody hell!"

Bingo.

Hermione closed her eyes with a sigh, and her now much longer eyelashes unpleasantly tickled her cheek.

The crash made her look up.

Ron's surprise had caused him to stop dead, which led to Ginny crashing into him. Fred, George and their parents followed, and all six of them ended up in a heap of arms, legs and bags. Ron and Ginny's trolleys drifted into the nearest people of the crowd, whom moved aside with surprised and irritated grumbles.

In her haste to dive onto her knees to lend a hand, Hermione forgot about her breasts. She overbalanced but managed to catch herself on her hands in the last moment.

Ron stared up at her reddish, sweaty face and spoke.

"Hermione, you're… what the hell happened, you're… fat!"

For a moment, the world seemed to come to a halt.

The full reality of what he had just said surfaced in Ron's brain surprisingly quickly considering his confused state. Still looking up at Hermione, who did not seem to give off an overheated image any longer, he gulped.

The silence seemed loud enough to deafen the poor, misguided boy.

"Really now."

Hermione stood up without giving Ron a second glance. She brushed the dust off her knees and turned to the rest of the Weasleyan heap.

"Fred, George," she said, "have the two of you possibly been experimenting with something for changing the shape of a person's body?"

"The shape…" said one twin.

"…of the body?" the other finished.

They exchanged glances above their father's wildly jerking arm.

"Nope, just body parts," they finally chorused, looking back up at Hermione.

"Facial ones, mainly," the second one said.

He might have been Fred.

"One blown up ear or the nose, for example," a possible George said.

"The whole body is no real trick to ballonify, after all," Fred said, grinning, "look at what Harry did when he was just a wee third-year."

Hermione let out a deep breath to calm herself. All the things that had happened since the morning, combined with the heat, were beginning to give her a severe case of frustration.

"It is not just a part of my body," she said, keeping her voice as neutral as she could, "several things have changed."

Ron finally managed to make it out of the heap, and stood up for a closer inspection of his friend. With the knowledge that he had managed to butcher the opening line of today's meeting, he made an attempt to make a more intelligent statement.

"Yeah, it looks like you need to wash your hair," he said.

Fred and George bowed their heads and groaned, while Ginny hissed in anger and Molly made an attempt to lounge at her youngest son and press a hand to his mouth before he managed to get himself killed. Arthur, meanwhile, still was too busy trying to extract himself to notice such details as his own flesh and blood making a complete fool out of himself.

Hermione did not even grace Ron's staggering efforts with a reply. Instead, she cleared her throat and turned to hug her parents.

This turned out to be a complicated business as well.

"Good bye, mum- ow!"

"Oh no, so sorry, dear!"

"Bye da-"

"Careful with that, Hermione…"

They all had to try an reach a disturbing lot longer than usual to hug each other good bye.

"I'll write you as soon as this thing has been mended," the daughter promised, fighting not to show her irritation.

"We'll be expecting relieving news, of course," her father said with an encouraging smile.

"Don't worry, I'm sure Madame Pomfrey can take care of it," Hermione said, smiling back.

She turned to take over the trolley from her father, but as she pulled at it a passerby stumbled into the pen on wheels and caused two bags and Crookshank's cage to fall off. With a gasp Hermione flung out her arms and despite a panicked second when her breasts got in the way again, she managed to save her pet from the crash. The clumsy passerby stammered an excuse, but it was almost drowned by Crookshank's furious hissing. The man quickly disappeared into the crowd.

Sighing both with relief and irritation Hermione began picking up her bags, when a bigger hand came into view and snatched one of the heaviest ones right under her nose. Hermione looked up to see a blushing Ron, with his lips tightly pursed, heave the bag onto his own trolley. Before she could stop him, the other fallen one followed. This despite the fact that the wagon already seemed overloaded.

"It's going to fall," Hermione protested, reaching out to take her luggage back.

"Over my dead body," Ron growled through his teeth.

Without looking around, he began pushing the trolley towards the waiting pillar. Hermione was about to hunt him down to talk sense into him, when a hand touched her shoulder. She turned around, looking straight into that special, motherly smile that only Molly Weasley could produce.

"Let him do as he pleases, dear," the married woman kindly said, "it's his way of trying to apologize."

Hermione hesitated for a moment, but arguing with that smile was simply an impossible task even for one of Hogwart's finest students. In the end she gave up and nodded, forcing her own lips to stretch a little. She hoped that she gave a brave impression.

It seemed as if Molly felt satisfied with the result, at least. She turned to hug Ginny goodbye, taking over her daughter from Fred and George's combined bear hug. Hermione turned to Crookshank's cage, still in her left hand, and tried to whisper a few soothing words to the exasperated animal.

"This isn't caused by those 'miracle diet products' the muggles talk about on their big pictures, though?" a man's voice thoughtfully said.

Not even the heat and her frustrating situation could keep a real little smile to creep onto Hermione's face at Arthur Weasley's curiosity. She looked up at him and shook her head.

"No," she said, "I'm afraid not. However I'm certain that the people making those products wish they did. It cannot be done without magic, though."

"Of course, of course…"

Arthur nodded, staring off into space for a moment as he pondered.

"It was just a thought," he eventually added.

"I'm very grateful for the concern," Hermione assured, "I'll go see Madame Pomfrey about it as soon as there is a free moment at Hogwarts."

"You do that," Arthur said with another nod, watching her with mild worry, "and go straight to St Mungos if you need special care, you hear?"

The thought of her affliction being so complicated that the school nurse would be unable to help her, dropped a sinking feeling straight into the depths of Hermione's stomach. Knowing she needed to remain calm she nodded, clearing her throat in an attempt to hide the new discomfort from the man who had caused it.

"I will," she pressed out, avoiding eye contact by placing Crookshank's cage on her trolley again, "but for now I better get going."

She grabbed the handle of the trolley and headed off, waving over her shoulder to her parents and the Weasleys. However she had not gone far before the sharp groaning of another trolley's wheels announced the arrival of Ginny.

"I'm sorry about Ron," the little sister said through her gritted teeth.

Hermione glanced at Ginny, noting the faint blush on her cheeks. The youngest Weasley had reached that special age when she felt like she had to be embarrassed for all the shortcomings of her family.

"It's not your fault," Hermione said, trying to smile a little again.

They had to stop the dialogue there, because the pillar leading to platform 9 ¾ stretched up before them. Ginny motioned at her friend to go first, and in her already exhausted state Hermione felt no inclination to decline. She checked the crowd around them and rushed through, to her other world.