AN: I don't own Harry Potter. Any passages that seem familiar have been lifted directly from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Chapter 2
She promises to keep up her scripture studies every day. (Promises are serious business in her family, not merely words toss away and forget about.) Her promise, along with the suggestion that perhaps magic is a divine force and she was actually a special chosen one rather than on a one-way trip to eternal damnation, is enough to sway her parents' decision. Although this just means that she doesn't have to sneak out and disappear for eight months, it makes her life a lot easier.
"Just for the first month," says her mother. "You will write to us. If it isn't good for you, you come home."
If Hogwarts isn't "good for her" and she comes home, she knows that she will be in for a bad time when her parents try to bleed the stain of the sin from her body; she wouldn't come home early if someone paid her. But she nods and thanks her parents appropriately.
Her parents still refuses to give her a ride to the station, on the grounds that this was her journey to undertake (she was fairly certain they were just scared of tainting themselves, still too skeptical about the line between God-given power and unnatural sorcery), so she boards the tube again with her shrunken trunk and her backpack, which she doesn't go anywhere without. She won it as part of a school spelling bee and is inexplicably attached to it.
Once she arrives at King's Cross Station, she realizes that none of her books told her how to get to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. She's been loitering with increasing nervousness for nearly fifteen minutes when a voice comes from over her shoulder: "Hey."
She jumps out of her skin, whirling around with her hands balled into fists and her feet prepared to flee. When she sees the messy-haired, bespectacled boy in front of her, she relaxes. He gives her a sheepish look. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Hermione Granger, right?"
"That's right," she says. She doesn't want to point out the obvious fact of his identity again, and she doesn't know what else to say, so she falls silent.
"Er, you wouldn't happen to know how to get onto the platform, would you?" asks Harry Potter. "I-"
But her attention is caught by a family of red-heads. One of them has an owl. "Look," she hisses, nodding her head towards the family. They exchange looks and cautiously approach the group.
Four boys and a girl are accompanied by an older woman who is presumably their mother. The girl holds her mother's hand and says plaintively, "Mum, can't I go…"
"You're not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet," the woman hushes her. "All right, Percy, you go first."
They watch as what looks like the oldest boy marches towards platforms nine and ten. Just as he reaches the divide between the platforms, a large crowd of tourists comes swarming in front of them, and by the time they clear away, the boy is gone.
"Fred, you next."
"I'm not Fred, I'm George. Honestly, woman, call yourself our mother? Can't you tell I'm George?"
"Sorry, George, dear."
"Only joking. I am Fred."
The second boy goes off, too, calling to his twin to hurry up. A second later, both of them vanished, too.
After the third brother has disappeared, Hermione walks up to the woman and says, "Excuse me."
The woman turns and smiles at them. "Oh, hello, dears. First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too." She points at the last and youngest of her son's. He was tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose.
"Yes," says Hermione. "But we don't know how to-"
"How to get onto the platform?" the woman guesses, and they both nod. She proceeds to explain that all they have to do was walk through the barrier between platforms nine and ten. "Best to do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous. Go now, go now before Ron."
It's Harry who decides to take the plunge first. He pushes his trolley around and stares at the barrier. If he's thinking the same thing Hermione is, then he is thinking that the barrier looks very solid. But he does as instructed, leaning into his trolley and breaking into a run, and a moment later, he too, disappears.
The woman turns to her. "Do you not have a trunk, dear?" she asks, maternal concern colouring her expression.
"I paid extra for an automatic shrinking charm," Hermione explains, gesturing to the rucksack slung over her shoulders.
The woman nods. "Good for you, dear. That'll come in handy. Go ahead, then."
The barrier really does look awfully solid. She presses her lips together and takes a deep breath, hands clasping the straps of her bag. She fights the urge to squeeze her eyes shut as she sprinted towards the wall. At the very least, it would mess up her balance and she would fall, and in the worst case scenario, she doesn't want to die with her eyes closed.
Despite having seen the others vanish into thin air, she is amazed when she stops, panting slightly, and sees the scarlet steam engine waiting for its passengers to board. A sign overhead says Hogwarts Express, 11 o'clock. She glances behind her and sees a wrought-iron archway where the ticket box should have been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it. She grins. She did it.
She scans the crowd. Some of the carriages are already full of students. She doesn't see Harry anywhere, and she wonders if he's been mobbed or is hiding from being mobbed.
She's just making her way off the platform, looking for an empty seat, when she hears someone say, "Gran, I've lost my toad again."
"Oh, Neville."
It's the condescension in that short statement that drives her to look for the speakers, who turn out to be a round-faced, slightly chubby boy and an older woman in a hideous floral print dress and vulture hat.
"Excuse me," she says to the woman, "I couldn't help but overhear. I can help look for the toad."
The woman narrows her eyes. She's clearly sizing Hermione up, but Hermione holds her ground.
"And you are?" asks the woman, still looking suspicious and disapproving. The patronizing tone and judgemental air reminds Hermione of her parents.
"Hermione Granger," she says pleasantly, although she doesn't offer her hand. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance."
There is another pause, and then the woman relents. "Well," she says, turning to the boy at her side, "unlike you, this young lady seems to have her head on straight. Perhaps she can make sure you actually remember to get on the train."
The boy's face flushes with shame, and Hermione feels a flare of righteous anger.
"I'm Augusta Longbottom, and this is my grandson Neville," says the woman. She doesn''t offer her hand either. Addressing her grandson again, she adds, "I will be off now. Behave yourself at Hogwarts, Neville." She gives Hermione a curt nod before departing.
Neville has his eyes glued to the ground. She didn't know a face could get that red.
"Come on, let's go find your toad," she says.
He looks up and gives her a weak smile. "Thanks for helping me," he says. "You should know I'll probably just lose him again before we even get to Hogwarts, though. I'm always losing things."
They board the train and began trailing through the compartments.
"Is your grandmother always so"—she pauses. She shouldn't insult the woman to her own grandson—"assertive?"
"Yeah," says Neville. "She comes off strong. Always has."
"I thought she was quite harsh with you…"
"No, she was right. My head isn't screwed on right half the time. I'm useless. I forget everything and I'm just so clumsy."
She stops walking. Neville looks so utterly dejected that she has the urge to hug him or squeeze his hand or something, but she doesn't want to startle him, and her parents instilled a fear in her of tainting other people. (She works hard to ignore it, but there are multiple reasons she's not usually one for physical touch, and the association with being beaten is only one of them.)
"Your grandmother is wrong," she declares, but still, Neville shakes his head.
"She's right, you just don't know me yet," he insists.
There's no way she's going to persuade him otherwise within the next ten minutes, so she lets the matter go; but she will return to the subject. Neville strikes her as a quiet soul and not much inclined to the kind of rage that gets her through her own life, the kind of rage that fuels hatred and determination to never see herself as weak or a victim. Perhaps he'd be a bit happier if he were. Perhaps she can share some of her anger with him. She has plenty to spare.
She likes having projects, and she thinks she's just found a new one.