Hermione Granger was what many would call a clever girl. Others would call her too smart for her own good. Not many adults appreciated her inquisitiveness. Other children her age especially didn't like her, because sometimes she was a bossy know-it-all. Usually because she did know it all.
So when she went to the Leaky Cauldron to get her magic supplies (and her excitement over a subject she had no knowledge of was great) she was very surprised to see someone doing something relatively normal.
And that the person was roughly her age, wearing goggles. He had long black hair and his forehead was covered with the specs. His ears were pierced, not that it was obvious. They were covered with some black material that extended to his face.
Bright green eyes stared back at her.
"Sorry. Got caught up in repairing a minor error. Can I help you?"
"I didn't mean to stare," protested Hermione. She was intrigued over his tools. They looked very specialized...and expensive.
"It's alright. I needed a break anyway. My name is Ether. What's yours?"
"Hermione. Have I seen you somewhere before?"
Ether winced. He was fairly popular around girls, despite his attitude. Where Chaud was cool to everyone, Ether was very polite but firm about his intentions.
And it didn't help that he was a famous net battler. Somehow, some way his picture always ended up on the net for his fan club.
Her eyes widened in realization.
"Are you by any chance Ether Hikari, son of the famous Dr. Hikari?"
He nodded.
She held back a squeal of joy. She had always been fascinated by Dr. Hikari's work on combining human DNA and net navi programing. There had been a picture of him with his sons a few years back.
Ether watched her warily. There was never any telling what a fangirl would do.
"I love your father's work!"
He relaxed. She wasn't a net navi fangirl like he feared. She was a science otaku. He could work with those. They tended to be very intelligent and scientifically oriented. Or at least knew what he was saying half the time.
It wasn't long before Hermione had finished shopping and asked her parents to let Ether come stay at their house until the term started.
They were more than happy to let him stay, because he was the first friend Hermione had made that was her own age. And the only person in her age group that could keep up with her.
Ether and Hermione made a formidable team. She turned out to be more sensible than he expected. Once she got over the fact that yes, he was the Ether Hikari, they got along perfectly. She had been ecstatic when he asked to see her net navi. It was a basic program for females. None of the ones she had seen in the store had been to her liking at all.
He looked at it and figured he could help her out. She turned out to be a well of untapped ideas. And he had helped his father program Fukurou.
He had Hermione pick details that she liked (hair, face, eye color...) and helped configure her PET to run better in magical areas.
Hermione had a difficult time finding a suitable name for her new net navi.
It was a female, with long crimson hair and blue eyes. Her outfit was stylish and easy to move in. Her main attack was a sword that could emit blue flames. The sword could be changed depending on Hermione's mood. Her arsenal including a Japanese Katana, an Scottish broadsword, an English long sword and an Arabic saber. He even added a bayonet for fun. She would probably find it the next time she reorganized her battlechip folder. (He loved to leave little surprises for people he liked.)
She looked irritated that she couldn't find a good name.
"What are the kind of things do you like the most?"
"Books. Science. Magic. Intelligent conversations. Mythology. Astrophysics."
"Hmm. Which language do you prefer? Japanese, English, Latin, German, Bulgarian..."
"Latin?" she raised an eyebrow.
"I get bored and learn a language. You have no idea how many times people come to SciLab from a country and no one knows what they're saying but me."
"How many do you know?" she asked, curious.
"Twenty...not including three lost dialects and two dead languages."
"Latin is a dead language," she pointed out.
"Not dead, per se, as disused. English is a bastard form of Latin after all."
She conceded his point. After all, most of the spells they would be using were in Latin.
"Latin then."
He ran by a series of words. And mentioned offhand that his own Net Navi was named "Owl."
She raised an eyebrow at that when he said "I like owls."
Eventually they narrowed the names down to two. Magica and Stella.
"We could always use both," suggested Ether, when they couldn't come up with anything either of them liked.
"What would you suggest?"
"Stella Magica. Star Magic."
She gave him a look.
"I can easily add stars to her attacks or as accessories."
"Can you do both?"
He grinned.
By morning Stella Magica was ready to activate. She was roughly the size of Glide, Yai's net navi. Her hair was held up by a headband made of stars. And her long distance attack was a star shower.
By morning her program would be ready to go. Ether quite enjoyed being with the Granger family. All of them were quite intelligent and accepted him as one of their own. Ether felt at home there.
Stella Magica slowly woke up. Her master, Hermione Granger, was still asleep. Her creator was wide awake making adjustments in the spare guest room.
Once the sun filled the room, Hermione woke up. And her eyes immediately zoned in on her new, improved PET.
"Morning Miss Hermione."
She held back a squeal of delight.
"Good morning Stella!"
Ether knocked on the door. Hermione opened it.
"Morning Hermione. How's Stella working out?"
"Stella, can you do a system scan? Check for anything that doesn't belong?"
Stella disappeared into the PET. Five minutes later, she reappeared.
"Systems all green, Miss Hermione."
Hermione gave Ether a look.
"She should stop with the Miss within a few weeks, give or take. It took Fukurou a month before he quite calling me master," said Ether.
They went down to breakfast and prepared for their ride into London. They would have to hurry to King's Cross.
Hermione went first. Ether followed her calmly. The place was chaos. Owls, cats, and children. Ether winced. He hated noise, unless it was music.
The two boarded the train, and managed to get their trunks up on the rack. Then Hermione waved to her parents. Ether wished he had that luxury.
His mother and father couldn't join him. His dad was too busy to come, and his mother couldn't speak English very well. Besides, someone had to watch Lan.
Since they had nothing to do while they waited, Ether brought out Fukurou.
"Shall we test Stella's battle capabilities?"
"No wireless signal here, remember? Magic blocks it out."
Ether grinned.
"Every model comes with a jack for battling through the PET virtual world. It's designed so you can battle with or without wires. Besides, the newer ones only have that as an extra."
"I don't have a cord. No one wanted to battle with me before. I do have the basic net battling package that comes with every PET..." she said sadly.
Ether pulled out a medium sized case that was waterproof. (It was also bullet proof, but he wasn't going to tell her that.) Inside it was a ton of battle chips. Most of them were uncommon or semi rare.
(All his really rare or specialized chips were either in his folder or inside another case. They were also rigged with viruses in case someone stole them that didn't have the correct passcode.)
Hermione had fun updating her folder. Since Ether really didn't care whether she kept the chips or not, she took her time. When the train started moving, she had managed to make a decent battle chip folder with tips from Ether.
It wasn't long before she learned her own style of battling. She liked up close and personal attacks. Her star shower wasn't really that effective until she learned to aim properly.
Fukurou took it all in stride. While they chatted on the different ways to battle, Fukurou and Stella discussed the various viruses on the net.
It was a rather pleasant way to kill time.
The door opened off and on for the past thirty minutes. It was rather irritating. And it didn't help that Ether was a semi-celebrity, at least among the muggleborn students.
Fortunately he had a way of deflecting that attention.
He offered to battle them for autographs. Most students had forgotten their PETs at home, or were told they weren't allowed to bring them.
They were very surprised to find out that not only were they allowed to bring their PETs, but that the company who made them was planning on bringing a magically run version that was compatible with the new systems.
Within the first five visits he had a lot of people willing to test them when they came out.
Considering the ratio of half bloods and muggleborns to pure bloods was five to one, he had plenty of product testers on hand. That was always a good thing, considering there weren't nearly that many places where the magic was so densely concentrated a watch wouldn't work.
It was a good relationship. Ether promised to let them know when the new PETs were ready to be field tested.
Finally the only people who came in to bug him were a pair of red-haired twins. Ether somehow knew they would get along great.
"I'm Fred," said the left hand one.
"I'm George," said the one on the right.
"And we hear there's someone who can get people willing to test things for him," they finished in unison.
"What's the product and what do you need?" Ether said, cutting to the chase. It wasn't too hard to figure out what they were after.
"We make and test pranks," started Fred.
"Nothing too flashy, things like minor fireworks, potions," said George.
"But our consumer base is relatively low. We need to expand," said Fred.
"Let me see some of your products, and I'll see what I can do," said Ether.
The two flashed him twin grins and left. Ether sighed.
"I hate crowds."
"I prefer libraries myself," said Hermione.
"So about your homepage..."
The door came open, and an cranky blond came in.
"I've been hearing up and done the train that Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts."
Ether flashed him an irritated look.
"No one by the name of Harry is in this compartment. There is someone named Hermione, but I'm afraid you have to look elsewhere."
The boy flashed him an annoyed look, and left.
"What does this Harry look like anyway?"
Hermione turned into her informant mode.
"Harry James Potter, son of Lily and James Potter. Only known survivor of the Killing Curse at age one. Current whereabouts unknown. He's also known as the Boy-who-lived. His most distinguishing characteristic is a lighting scar on his forehead. His birthday is July 31st."
"Weird. Same day as mine. So the reason he's famous is surviving a curse? That's not very..."
"It's not just the curse. He survived an attack from the Dark Lord. He-who-must-be-named was rather famous until Harry Potter took him down."
"So let me get this straight. A baby manages to take down an evil magic user, and everyone hails him as a hero. Then someone was stupid enough to paint a target on the boy by telling everyone something distinctive like an unusual scar? Doesn't that seem a little odd to you?"
Hermione's mouth opened and closed, and then she realized he had a point. It did seem odd. Especially since He-who-must-not-be-named had a LOT of followers who were probably angry at the kid.
So when another boy came in looking for Harry Potter, Ether was very annoyed.
"There is no Harry Potter in here! Only Hermione and I are in here!" he growled. Then he looked at the boy and asked "Are you by any chance related to those two twins?"
The boy winced, and fled.
Fifteen minutes later, a nervous boy came in.
"Has anyone seen a toad?"
Ether looked up from his book.
"You lost your toad? What's it's name?"
"Trevor."
Ether walked outside and took his wand.
"Accio Trevor the Toad!"
Something big and green colored flew by his head. He grabbed it before it flew off. It was slimy.
"Is this your toad?" asked Ether.
The boy's face lit up.
"Trevor!"
"You want to sit with us?"
The boy nodded. He was a very nervous kid. Someone Ether took pains to help.
"My n-n-name is Neville. Neville Longbottom."
"Hermione Granger," said Hermione, holding out her hand.
"Ether Hikari."
Seeing no recognition in his eyes at the name, Ether knew Neville had to be a pure blood at least.
"So Neville, what do you know about Personal Terminals?" asked Ether calmly.
"What?"
Ether showed Neville Fukurou and his PET. The boy seemed very interested in it.
So Ether lent him a prototype to play with. It had the basic magical program that allowed it to work with mages. And a generic net navi. No special functions, no battlechip folder.
Neville was fascinated with it. Ether's mood improved as he showed Neville how to work the PET. It was a rather outdated model, but it would work.
Neville put the PET in his pocket. They exited the compartment calmly and went to the one calling for the first years.
He was enormous.
"I think that's Hagrid," whispered Neville.
"Hagrid?" asked Ether.
"Keeper of the grounds. He also patrols the Forbidden Forest."
"Good to know," said Ether.
They boarded the boats and glided across the lake. It was a rather nice place to look at. The castle looked over a scenic backdrop in the mountains. The lake was pretty enough, but a quick dip of his hand proved it was almost below freezing in temperature.
Ether was moderately impressed with the interior. Though he had a bad feeling that it was going to get very cold come winter.
McGonagall read out the usual rules and introduction. Ether felt he had to comment when she left.
"So they let the second years come in and let the firsties freeze their bums off in the main hall? That sounds...fair," said Ether.
Hermione and Neville snickered. Twenty minutes later she returned. And lead the first years into the hall.
Ether whistled when he saw the ceiling.
"I want to know the spell that did that. Could be an interesting addition to my room."
Hermione took the implied challenge. Her answering grin was all he needed to see.
"I hope I make Gryffindor," whispered Neville.
"Why there? From what I hear it's full of jocks and the like. I heard Hufflepuff was good though," said Ether.
Neville looked at him with hope.
"Either way, you're always welcome to join our study group Nev," said Ether. He liked the timid boy.
Neville gave him a small smile. Ether was not only nice to him, he was also kind.
McGonagall started to call the names. Hermione went up first.
"Granger, Hermione!"
The hat sat on her head for a minute before yelling "Ravenclaw!"
"Hikari, Ether Net!"
Ether groaned. He had hoped she wouldn't call his full name.
It took the hat ten minutes to yell "Ravenclaw!"
Ether sat next to Hermione. She was trying not to laugh.
"Ether Net?" she giggled.
He groaned.
"Don't. I had enough of that during grade school. Lan gets the same bad jokes too."
"Your parents seriously named you Ether Net? As in an ether net cable? And Lan? Like local area network?"
"Our dad is a computer geek. We used to have a brother named Hub," said Ether with the patience of someone who has heard the same joke too many times.
Neville went up, and the hat yelled "Hufflepuff!"
He was so nervous he almost took the hat with him! Ether was the only one who didn't laugh at Neville.
Soon they were eating the food. Ether was the only person who didn't yelp when the ghosts started appearing. He got back at Hermione though. He started making jokes about ghosts...and she punched him, hard.
He was still grinning though.
Ether was delighted to find out that the password was a math question.
He was very, very good at math.
Once they got the rules out of the way, Ether grabbed the first bed he liked. And went to sleep immediately.