King's Cross was bustling, and Hermione was glad that her parents had come to see her off.
"I will miss you so much!" Hermione told them, hugging her father tightly. "I'll get good marks, and I promise I'll write!"
"You had better," her father teased, ruffling her hair. "I want to hear all about your latest dangerous dungeon adventures, you hear?"
"Richard!" her mother admonished, but her father just laughed.
"I'll write all the time," Hermione told them, moving to hug her mother good-bye. "I'll be okay. I promise. I'll make you proud."
"Oh, Hermione," her mother sighed, smiling at her. She brushed back an errant curl behind Hermione's ear. "You are turning into a wonderful young woman, but you'll always be my little girl. I'll always be proud of you."
Hermione squeezed her mother tight, tearing herself away, taking deep breath.
"You ready?" her father asked, and Hermione nodded, once.
"It's still very odd, walking through a wall," her mother mused, looking at the wall separating Platform 9 and Platform 10. "Though I don't suppose I could think of anything better."
"You'd better go, Hermione, or we'll have to say good-bye all over again," her father advised, teasing. "Your mother and I will create a distraction."
"We will?" Hermione's mother looked skeptical.
Her father grinned. "Of course."
He tugged her mother into the middle of the platform, before bending her backwards and kissing her deeply. It was very dramatic, and someone whistled. Hermione laughed, and she could see her mother's face turning red, even as she kissed him back. Hermione used the opportunity to slip through the barrier, the hoots and hollers changing into the familiar noises of a steam engine running, owls hooting, cats yowling, and far too many parents chatting and crowding around to see their children off.
She smiled, taking a deep breath before settling herself.
She was going back to Hogwarts.
Hermione lugged her trunk through the platform onto the train, casting a discrete levitation charm on it to help. It was heavy. Hermione had shrunk her all her books to fit them all into her trunk, but the sheer amount of them made the trunk staggeringly overweight anyway.
"Hermione! Over here!"
Hermione turned to see Neville waving at her, pushing through the crowd, and she grinned at him as he helped her lug her trunk onto the train.
"This seems familiar," she teased him, and he laughed.
"At least I haven't lost Trevor this time," Neville said, patting his pocket. "I learned from last year."
Hermione wasn't sure if keeping his toad in his pocket was really the best way to make sure Trevor didn't get lost, but she just grinned back.
Neville headed off, looking for Harry, and Hermione made her way through the train, looking for an empty compartment. She glanced into a compartment full of older Hufflepuffs before turning directly into someone, falling backwards.
"Ah- sorry!"
"It's alright. My fault."
Hermione looked up to see Blaise looking at her, smirking.
"I've got a compartment two up," he told her. "Join me?"
Hermione hadn't planned ahead of who she wanted to sit with, so she amicably tagged along, gladly accepting Blaise's help in shoving her trunk onto the luggage racks. Tracey and Millicent joined them in the compartment, and they settled in, excitedly chatting. Tracey had gotten her hair cut quite short, and she was still excited about it.
"It's so much lighter!" she exclaimed, turning her head quickly from side to side, her hair swishing about. "It's so much easier to take care of, too."
"That's because there's so much less," Millie commented, and Tracey huffed at her.
"That's not the point. The point is it's nice."
"Are you giving me a hint?" Hermione said dryly. "That my hair is riotous and terrible, and you think I should cut it all off?"
Tracey looked abruptly guilty and uneasy, and Blaise and Millie laughed.
"Hermione can't cut her hair off," Blaise said. "That's be like shaving a lion's mane off. It wouldn't be a lion anymore."
"I'm not a Gryffindor," Hermione objected.
"Yeah, but your hair looks kind of like a mane," Blaise said, giving her a smirk. "It's a simile. Just go with it. A lion doesn't look like a lion without a mane; Hermione wouldn't look like Hermione without her hair."
Hermione self-consciously patted her hair down. She didn't think it was that bad.
"Oh, Hermione, your hair is fine," Tracey said. "I just know you fight with it a lot. A haircut might help you out."
While Hermione privately agreed with her – having less hair would make it a lot easier – she didn't want to cut her hair. Very few witches had short hair, and Hermione didn't want to do anything to make her look less like she belonged.
Once the train was happily chugging away, they started swapping stories from the summer. Blaise told them all about the pranks he'd played on Draco over the summer, sending them all into giggles, and Tracey told them about her trip to Spain. Millicent had gone to Ireland for a holiday as well, and her mother had tried to find a leprechaun to catch. Hermione told the story of rescuing Harry from his horrible relatives, and her friends listened with horrified interest.
"They locked him up?" Tracey was shocked. "That's awful."
Millie was giving Hermione a measuring look.
"You went to the Weasleys for help?" she asked. "Why?"
"Honestly, my first impulse was to get the Ministry involved," Hermione told them. "And I know Mr. Weasley works in the Ministry."
"Yeah, in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office," Blaise scoffed. "Most useless department ever. He wouldn't have been able to help you."
"No, but he probably could have gotten me in contact with someone who could," Hermione pointed out. "Besides, it didn't matter anyway; Ron and the twins helped me get Harry out."
"I'm surprised you were okay working with Ronald," Millie commented. "Especially after his remarks at the end of last year."
Hermione shrugged, uneasy. "It was for Harry. I didn't have a whole lot of options available."
"I can believe it," Tracey said suddenly. They all looked at her, and she looked defensive. "What? I can. I don't feel so angry at him, anymore, like I did. I think the summer helped all that fade."
Blaise considered carefully. "I… Hmm. I still find him contemptuous and repulsive, but I'm not sure I still feel the urge to cause his ruin anymore." He leaned back in his seat and sighed, folding his arms behind his head. "I'm sure that'll change as soon as he opens his dumb mouth."
Hermione cocked her head and considered. Had it been the summer, giving them all distance? Or had it been something else?
"I should probably go check on Harry as it is," Hermione said. "I should make sure Weasley hasn't driven him crazy."
"Or completely corrupted him," Blaise said, deadpan. Tracey laughed, and Hermione winced.
"Or that," she admitted, and her friends were laughing as she closed the door behind her.
Hermione started searching the train, looking for Harry. She found Neville sitting with Seamus and Dean and a couple other Gryffindors, recognizable by their red ties. Neville hadn't seen Harry either, so Hermione carried on. She glanced in on Draco and Theo, who seemed to be arguing fiercely over something while Vincent and Crabbe were thumb wrestling behind them. The more of the train Hermione covered, the more worried she got. Had Harry missed the train somehow?
Hermione covered the entire train, to no avail.
She went through the train again, peering into each room, her eyes rapidly scanning for Harry's familiar green eyes and mop of black hair. Compartment after compartment held no Harry, and Hermione felt concern start to gnaw inside of her.
"Neville?" Hermione said, poking her head into the Gryffindor boys' compartment. "Have you seen Harry?"
"Err…" Neville scratched his head. "I haven't, really. Can you not find him?"
"I don't think he's on the train," Hermione admitted. "I wanted to double-check."
To her astonishment, the other two Gryffindor boys seemed to think this was incredibly cool.
"Ron's missing too," Seamus said. "D'you think Harry and him got kidnapped?"
"Kidnapped?" Hermione said, incredulous. "No. I think they missed the train."
"Yeah, but what if they got kidnapped by Death Eaters bent on revenge?" Dean piped up. "King's Cross is so busy, no one would ever realize until it was too late!"
"They could end up trapped into some old manor and have to fight their way out," Seamus added. "Or we'd need to get the rest of Gryffindor together to hunt them down and break them out!"
Hermione watched in astonishment as they began plotting their daring escape plan to rescue Harry and Ron, regardless of the fact that they knew none of the necessary details they'd need in order to actually carry out any sort of successful plan, if their nightmare scenario were what was actually happening. So far, their plan consisted of dressing up like wraiths or ghosts to sneak into the Death Eater manor unnoticed. Even Neville was chiming in occasionally, mentioning that they'd need to be careful of certain plants old pureblood families liked to plant around their manors for protection.
Was elaborate hypothetical rescue mission plotting just some sort of hobby, in Gryffindor? Was this normal?
Her mind went back to the conversation she'd had with Ron and the Weasley twins as she left the compartment.
They had fallen into plotting mode like it was second nature…
After going through the train a second time, Hermione found herself going to the front of the train and knocking on the prefect's compartment. A familiar Hufflepuff prefect opened it, and Hermione pushed in past her, coming to a stop in front of Jade, who looked at her with one eyebrow raised.
"Harry Potter isn't on the train," Hermione told her. "Neither is Ronald Weasley."
Jade froze, and the prefects began talking all around.
"Let's all calm down. Let's discuss this together."
Hermione turned around as Rebecca, the Hufflepuff prefect, moved past her to sit back down.
"There's no need to panic," Rebecca said, soothing. "It's likely they simply missed the train. There's no need to worry."
"Why would they miss the train, though?" Hermione objected. "All the other Weasleys made it onto the train. Harry was with them. Why are they here, and he's not?"
Rebecca looked uneasy.
"I'm sure there's a good reason," she said, but Jade scoffed.
"It's not our job to assume things," she said. "It's our job to solve the problems, not just hope for the best."
Jade strode past her and out of the compartment, and Hermione hurried after her.
"Thank you," she said, trotting to keep up. Jade was very tall.
"It's my job," Jade said, dismissive. She threw open another compartment, this one full of male prefects.
"Weasley," Jade said, sneering. "Your brother and Potter are missing. Were they with you this morning?"
Hermione watched as Percy Weasley stood up, brushing out his robes with dignity.
"Of course they were," he said. "What do you mean, they're missing?"
"They're not on the train," Hermione told him. "Nowhere. I've searched all the compartments."
Percy's face flickered with alarm, and Jade shifted her weight, folding her arms.
"If they were with you, they should have made it onto the train," Jade said. "It's not like they didn't make it in time because they were late."
"We did cut it rather close this morning," Percy admitted.
"Your brother is missing," Hermione told him. "Harry, too."
The prefects looked around at each other.
"I can send an owl to his Head of House," one of them, a Ravenclaw, said finally. "The owl can fly ahead and alert the teachers that they're missing from the train. If they're stuck on the platform, they can go and get them an Apparate them to Hogsmeade."
"Is there any spell you can use?" Hermione asked. "Like a locator spell?"
Percy frowned.
"Not without blood magic," he said severely, "which is highly illegal and restricted by the Ministry."
"Your mother has that clock that knows where everyone is, though," Hermione objected, and Percy's face relaxed.
"Oh. That's a customized clock," he told her. "She did put our blood on each hand, when she got it. But that clock is very different. A general locator spell for a person would be an incredible invasion of privacy."
Hermione supposed she agreed with him, but she felt herself wishing that she had done some sort of locator spell on Harry, somehow. She'd feel better if she knew where he was.
"Granger. Look. We'll handle it," Jade told her. "There's nothing you can do right now. You go sit down. It'll be okay."
Hermione bit her lip. "Alright."
She trudged back to her seat, leaving the prefects to discuss who was going to search the train as she went back. When she returned to the compartment, her friends took one look at her face and sat up, stiffening.
"Hermione, what's wrong?" Tracey asked. "You look pale."
"Harry's missing," Hermione said. "Ron, too."
They all exchanged glances.
"They're probably fine," Millie told her. "They were probably just late and missed the train."
"All the other Weasleys are here," Hermione said dully. "None of them missed it."
They all looked around at each other again.
"Potter's starting out early this time," Blaise commented. "The school year hasn't even started yet, and he's off having adventures."
A snorted laugh escaped Hermione against her will, and Blaise relaxed slightly, offering her a small smile.
"It'll be alright," he told her. "From what I hear, Potter's really hard to kill."
That was true, Hermione mused to herself, and Tracey and Millie resumed their conversation about leprechauns. If nothing else, Harry always seemed to end up okay.
Still, the Gryffindor boys' conversation about Harry being kidnapped lingered uneasily in her mind.
Were there really people out there who'd want to kidnap Harry...?
Hermione quietly resolved to herself to find out.