Chapter 3 - The Train Ride

Hermione woke early on the first of September. As she rose, Chomper woke up. He had taken to sleeping in bed with his trainer, and the disturbance she caused by getting off of the bed was enough to rouse him.

"Sorry, Chomper." Hermione apologized to her partner. Since she had acquired him, they had been practically inseparable. They did everything together.

To prepare for her classes, they read through her course books and took detailed notes. They had read and taken notes for all of her course books in a couple of weeks. They had then moved on to her self study books. They had had to go back to the bookstore to get more books for the last month spent at home. Luckily, this time the books lasted through the necessary time. They had finished them the day before.

They also spent some time every day on training and preparing on practicals. First they practiced setting up camp. It took them several days of trial and error to figure out how to set up a tent. It took them over a month to get making and breaking up a camp down.

After that, they moved on to battling. There wasn't much that they could do just the two of them, so they decided to work on one aspect of battle. They chose to focus on dodging.

They did this by using Hermione's parents' old tennis ball shooter. They set it to one shot per ten seconds and loaded it with ten tennis balls. Hermione would stand to the side and mark if Chomper got hit or not. After he successfully avoided getting hit for one whole round, they upped the speed to one per five seconds. Chomper could only avoid around three-fourths of the balls at that speed.

The duo quickly ran through their newly established morning ritual. They made sure that they had everything packed and ready for traveling to the school. They left the house really early, as to get Hermione and Chomper good seats on the Hogwarts Express.

Once they arrived at the Kings Cross train station, the duo said a quick goodbye to Hermione's parents and boarded the train. Hermione's father carried her trunk to the compartment that she decided to sit in. Hermione gave her parents one last goodbye hug before they left to open their dental practice for the day.

Hermione pulled out a book and began to read to Chomper. Hours later, soon after the train left the station, a chubby boy came into their cabin. "H-h-hello, have you s-s-seen a-a Froakie?"

Looking up from her book, Hermione took pity upon the shy boy and said, "No, I haven't seen a Froakie, but I'll help you look. I'm Hermione by the was."

"Thank you," he replied, seemingly gaining some confidence. "My name is Neville."

As she put her book down, Neville gasped. "Is that a Gible?" He asked in amazement. Misunderstanding, she wrapped a protective arm around her partner. Seeing her response to his question, he quickly backtracked. "I mean, they are really rare and I've never seen one before. It's pretty cool."

Relaxing, Hermione blushed in embarrassment. "Oh, and his name is Chomper." The trio walked out of the cabin. They stopped at each cabin and asked if the occupants had seen the Froakie. Some of the people were nice, others were just plain rude. They got to see all kinds of Pokemon as they searched the train. Unfortunately, they didn't find the Froakie. They gave up as the train pulled into the station.