Lily smiled as she let her gaze sweep over Hermione's naked body, "You have very nice taste."
Harry wasn't quite sure how he was supposed to take his mother hitting on his girlfriend, "Thanks?"
Hermione felt a little uncomfortable and strangely enough a little turned on by the pretty witch's attention. "Clothes?"
"If you insist." Lily walked over to her closet filled with various dresses both long and short. She looked through the various dresses until she found something that she thought would look cute on Hermione. She pulled out a short black dress and held it out to Hermione, "Try this."
Hermione walked over, accepted the dress and quickly pulled it over her head.
Harry smiled as he watched Hermione adjust the short black silk dress that only came down to her upper thighs. "You look good."
Hermione frowned as she tugged on the bottom part of the dress trying to get it to go lower. "It's a little short."
Harry said, "You'll be fine as long as you don't spin around or bend over to pick something up."
Lily said, "She's got a cute behind."
Hermione blushed as she realized that Harry's mother was enough of a pervert that she wasn't going to offer a longer dress, "Moving on, do we have a plan?"
Harry said, "I was thinking about trying to spend some time with my family tonight then hitting the books tomorrow to see what's different between the worlds. As far as I know my world didn't have language candies so there are probably some other differences besides the ministry selling people as slaves."
Lily looked at Hermione and said, "You're welcome to look through the family library if you want."
Hermione said, "Thank you."
Lily said, "It's downstairs."
Beth looked at Hermione as the group came down the stairs, "I'll do the dishes for a month if I can see her naked."
Hermione almost missed the last step as she tried to wrap her mind around what Harry's sister said, "What?"
Beth said, "You're cute and I want to see you naked."
Hermione shook her head, "Even if I was going to show off by body, you'd have to do way better than that."
Beth grinned as she patted Ginny on the behind, "I'll let you shag Ginny."
Ginny giggled, "Yes please."
Harry laughed at the surprised look on Hermione's face, "You might try offering her books."
Beth asked, "What type of books?"
Hermione blushed as she briefly considered letting Harry's sister see her naked in exchange for books.
"The library is this way." Lily chuckled as she walked down the hall toward the library.
Hermione said, "Good idea."
Beth pouted, "No fair."
Harry watched Hermione and Lily walk off then turned to look at Beth and Ginny, "Moving on..."
Beth said, "Do you want to trade stories while we play with Ginny?"
Harry said, "Sure." before he brain caught up with what his sister had said.
Beth stuck her index finger in her mouth and licked it then pulled it out and moved behind Ginny. She pressed her crotch against Ginny's behind and used her left hand to hug Ginny to her. "What was your Hogwarts like?"
Harry's gaze ran over Ginny's naked body then jumped back to Beth's finger as she licked it again then used it to play with Ginny's naughty bits. He tried pulling his gaze back up to her eyes but his traitorous eyes weren't responding as Beth slipped her finger inside of Ginny and slowly moved it in and out. He managed to pull his gaze up to Ginny's smiling face before his gaze dropped back down to watch what his sister was doing with her hand. He said, "It was a death trap every year but it was better than my aunt and uncle's house."
Beth grinned, "Death trap? Tell me about it, Dad and Mum have told me about Hogwarts but I'm curious about your version of Hogwarts."
Harry forced himself to look at Beth's eyes rather than Ginny's naked and squirming body or Beth's hand as he tried to answer her question, "My first defense teacher turned out to be possessed by Voldemort. My second year teacher was a horrible fake that couldn't cast his way out of a paper bag. Third year was Professor Lupin which was great, the fourth year had a disguised Death Eater for a teacher. Fifth year was a horrible toad of a woman the ministry stuck us with, sixth year was Snape, I never made it back for seventh year."
Beth blinked in surprise, "Severus Snape? You mean he didn't get tossed through the Veil of Death for being a Death Eater and a greasy piece of shit?"
Lily snorted as she walked into the room, "You've been listening to your dad's stories again haven't you? Also I can and will wash your mouth out with soap young lady."
Harry blushed as his gaze jumped from Ginny's body to Lily. His protests that he wasn't doing anything died as he realized that Beth playing with Ginny wasn't a secret, forbidden or even unusual judging from his Mum being more upset about his sister swearing than the fact that she was finger fucking Ginny in the living room while they watched. He was also fairly sure that his mother liked watching judging by the slightly smile on her face as she watched Beth and Ginny. 'Now I know where Beth gets it.'
Beth smiled at her mother as she continued to finger fuck Ginny, "Maybe and sorry Mum I was just quoting Dad."
Lily sighed, "He wasn't that bad before he made the wrong friends in school, things sort of spiraled from there. Other than Remus, it doesn't sound like you had that great of defense teachers, we're going to have to fix that."
Harry decided that he might as well just enjoy the crazy while he was in crazy land. "Fourth year wasn't that bad, the Death Eater was pretending to be Mad Eye."
Lily laughed, "It's sad when a Death Eater is your second best teacher in six years."
"It really is. As for other crazy events, Dumbledore hid a philosopher's stone in the school in my first year. That was a fun adventure that nearly got us killed by an evil defense teacher. Second year it was a cursed diary that Malfoy slipped into Ginny's school supplies that caused her to get possessed by Voldemort. She opened the chamber of secrets and let a huge fifty foot long basilisk out that almost killed a couple of people."
Ginny shivered as she thought about being possessed by a dark wizard, "That's horrible."
Beth pulled her finger out of Ginny and brought it to Ginny's lips. "How did they kill it?"
"I killed it with a sword and some help from a phoenix."
Ginny said, "Awesome." then sucked on Beth's finger.
"That's..." Harry trailed off as he watched what Ginny was doing.
Lily asked, "You killed a basilisk with a sword?"
Harry pulled his attention back to Lily, "With Gryffindor's sword, it fell out of the Sorting Hat that Fawkes brought."
"We should have probably asked a couple more questions earlier."
Harry laughed, "Maybe. I spent most of my third year worrying about my supposedly deranged godfather who had broken out of Azkaban Prison. It was a bit of a relief to find out that he wasn't actually trying to kill me."
Lily laughed, "I bet."
Beth asked, "What happened in fourth year?"
"The tri-wizard tournament."
Beth said, "That thing is supposed to be really dangerous."
"Yep, Dumbledore protested the event but various people in the ministry figured it was a good idea. He put an age line up and no one that was under seventeen should have been able to get past the line to put their name in the Goblet of Fire. That said, my name ended up in the Goblet under a fourth school and the rest of the school turned on me because they thought I was trying to steal glory from the real Hogwart's champion."
"Did you?" Beth smirked.
Harry shook his head, "Of course not."
Lily asked, "Why didn't Dumbledore make you swear a magical oath or give you a truth potion? That would have proved to the rest of the students that you didn't stick your name in the goblet or ask someone else to do it."
Harry scowled, "Because that would have been the sane thing to do? I don't know, either he didn't understand students enough to realize that it was going to be a problem or he wanted me to participate in the tournament."
Beth said, "That sucks..."
"It gets worse, the cup at the end of the tournament was a portkey that took me to a cemetery where Voldemort got his body back thanks to Peter. I managed to escape and tell people. Minister Fudge went ballistic about how I must be lying."
Beth asked, "Why?"
"Volemort was this unbeatable monster in my world until he died trying to kill me."
Lily said, "He inspired a lot of fear."
Harry shrugged, "Rather than have me swear or take a truth potion or show people the memory they decided to tar my reputation in the newspaper."
Beth scowled, "Your world doesn't sound very fun."
"It gets worse. My fifth year I got hauled into court because I defended my cousin against a Dementor with a patronis not that far from my Aunt's house. They claimed not to believe me that there was a dementor loose."
Lily scowled, "Filthy things."
Beth asked, "Claimed?"
Harry snorted, "The minister's undersecretary Umbridge had actually sent the dementors to kill me so she knew I wasn't lying about it."
Ginny rubbed her bottom against Beth's crotch.
Beth pulled her finger out of Ginny's mouth and started playing with Ginny's tits by making little circles around them with her fingers, "Hopefully something bad happened to her."
"Not really, she lost her job at the end of fifth year but by seventh year she had signed up with Voldemort's puppet ministry running the muggleborn registration act."
Lily said, "That sounds ghastly."
"Yeah, basically muggleborns were accused of stealing magic from proper wizards and witches. Bad stuff all around."
Beth wasn't sure she wanted to know but asked anyways, "Sixth year?"
"I learned about why Voldemort hadn't died, picked up some secrets from Snape's old potion books and tried to prevent Draco Malfoy from leading an army of Death Eaters into the school. That didn't work out so well, Dumbledore ended up dying to Snape in the battle. After that I got sent home to the Dursleys. Bad things happened trying to leave before my birthday in some stupid convoluted plot. My owl died, Mad Eye died and George Weasley lost an ear to a dark curse."
Ginny said, "That's horrible."
Harry said, "Hopefully things don't go that badly this time around."
Lily said, "Some of the players are already dead so that should help. Snape got tossed through the Veil of Death when a Death Eater 'safe house' was raided. That particular raid cost Voldemort a third of his inner circle. A fair number of Death Eaters died during the war or after. The ministry made a fair number of deals with Death Eaters to rat out their fellows."
"Great..."
"The deal cost Crouch any remaining chance he had at being minister."
"Good."
"It wasn't the deal that people objected to, it was the fact that after they grabbed all of the people that the turncoats named he had the turncoats tossed through the Veil as well. He got fired over the scandal. Shortly after that he was found hung in his bedroom."
Harry snorted, "Sounds like some of the Death Eaters that survived got even."
Lily shrugged, "Or various people in the ministry that didn't approve."
Harry said, "You mentioned Malfoy earlier, how did he escape?"
"There was never any direct evidence that tied him to Voldemort or at least nothing the ministry goons taking his bribes were willing to use. They were too busy extorting him for money. He was able to buy his way out of the one trespassing charge that the aurors could tie to him."
Harry asked, "What about his Dark Mark?"
James said as he walked into the living room, "The dark marks are only visible after the wizard or witch in question is dead. Sadly, my request to kill him and check was denied."
Harry turned to look at his father. Other than his wild black hair and wand holster on his wrist that could pass as a simple thick leather bracelet he looked like any early twenties muggle that you might see on the street. His black muggle jeans wouldn't be out of place most places nor would his simple black t-shirt. "That's a change, it's visible in my world."
James snorted, "That would have made things a lot easier. It would have been bloody stupid though."
Lily shrugged, "They had plenty of circumstantial evidence on a few 'upstanding' purebloods but a 'fire' in the ministry records room took care of that."
James said, "We're fairly sure that Malfoy arranged it because around the same time there were a suspicious number of deaths in the ministry of corrupt people. Things sort of settled down after that and Malfoy has been working on rebuilding his fortunes for the last several years."
Lily looked at Ginny and Beth, "You two should get to bed, it's getting late."
Beth pouted, "I want to hear more stories."
"There will be plenty of time for that during the rest of the summer."
James looked at Harry, "While I'm not going to send you to bed it might not be a bad idea to get some sleep because I want a full accounting of your skills tomorrow which means a lot of testing."
Harry sighed, "This is going to hurt isn't it?"
"From what you told us you've had six years of spotty instruction in Defense, six years of decent instruction in transfiguration, a horrible potions teacher for five years and a slimy piece of shit that shouldn't be allowed around children for your last year." He glanced at Lily, "Even if he is a fair potions instructor he's a snake that likes to use people." He looked back at Harry, "You mentioned History of Magic being taught by Binns correct?"
"Yes."
James was just glad that they had moved Binns to a goblin wars elective that almost no one actually took years ago. "Which means that you also had five years of extremely useless history classes. A fraud for a divination teacher for two years. From what you said your Herbology class seems solid enough. Did I miss anything?"
Harry said, "Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures."
"I imagine that you have a decent grounding in some of the extremely dangerous creatures but less overall understanding than you really should. Does that about sum it up?"
Harry sighed, "He tried."
James chuckled, "I'm sure he did but he's got a warped view on how dangerous certain critters are thanks to being a half giant with extremely durable skin."
Lily said, "You also forgot about the mostly useless astronomy classes in the middle of the night that screw up everyone's sleep cycle."
Beth asked, "Our Hogwarts isn't that bad is it?"
James shook his head, "No, they have an extremely competent potions teacher, an excellent history teacher, a crazy but fun muggle science teacher to replace the joke of a science class that Harry had to take and a bunch of first year electives like art and auto shop."
"That sounds a lot better."
"I should hope so." James looked over at Beth and Ginny, "Off to bed you two."
Beth sighed, "Let's go."
Ginny said, "Night."
Harry watched Beth and Ginny head up the stairs. "I should probably check on Hermione before I crash."
Lily pointed, "Down the hall, you can't miss it."
"Thanks." Harry headed down the hall.
Lily waited until Harry was gone then said, "Even with spotty teachers he's still going to break records."
James grinned, "That's half the fun. We've got two and a half months to bring him up to a respectable level before he starts school."
Lily mock glared at James, "I'm going to be rather cross if he doesn't get to have some fun this summer."
James held up his hands with a smile, "I'm not going to work him to death but I want to help him become an excellent duelist. The other me didn't have a chance to teach him the family spells or how to ride a broom or any of the things he should have. I plan to fix that. Maybe he isn't our son strictly speaking but at worst he's our nephew."
Lily said, "Either way he's family."
"Exactly which means we have a responsibility to make sure that he's properly trained."
Harry frowned slightly as a smiling and bright eyed Hermione entered the kitchen the next morning, "Did you even sleep?"
"Nope!" She smirked.
"You're not even the least bit tired are you?"
She shook her head, "Or hungry."
Lily looked at Hermione, "Do you feel up to going with me to Diagon Alley to show some children around and get you a wand while James runs Harry through some tests?"
Hermione looked at Harry, "Do you mind?"
Harry shook his head, "Nope."
"Thanks."
Lily said, "Let's get going, I'm supposed to meet the first student in fifteen minutes."
Hermione asked, "I'm guessing changing into something else is out of the question?"
Lily grinned as she walked over to the fireplace and grabbed some floo powder, "You look fine and it's perfectly decent as long as you don't run or jump around."
"Right, let's go before I change my mind." She walked over to stand by Lily.
Harry went back to eating his breakfast. He had a feeling that he was going to need all of the energy he could get by the time James was done testing his knowledge.
Beth clapped excitedly as her brother finish casting the collection of spells that James had assigned. "Cool."
Harry smiled as he bowed to his sister and Ginny, "Thank you." While he liked them without clothes he had to admit that their matching short red dresses were rather cute.
Ginny smirked as she slipped her hand under the back of Beth's short dress, "I think we need to practice more so that we don't embarrass ourselves next year."
Beth frowned, "You're probably right. I know we can't top that but we can get close." She looked at Sirius, "If we can find someone to lend us a wand so that we can practice."
Sirius laughed, "We'll see." Truth be told he had no problems buying the girls a pair of wands so that they could get an extra year of training in.
James looked at Harry, "Considering how bad your teachers were, I'm decently impressed. Nowhere near where you should be but we can work on that." He was just glad that Harry didn't need to unlearn too many bad habits when it came to magic.
Harry put his wand back in his holster, "Thank you, I think."
Sirius laughed, "Relax, we're planning on showing you all of our tricks, we just needed to know what you already know."
Remus said, "Just think of it as combat training that your Dumbledore should have given you."
Harry sighed, "Speaking of, I should mention that I might know where a couple of Voldemort's horcruxes are."
Sirius said, "We already know about some of them. My brother destroyed the locket and the Hufflepuff cup was destroyed by the goblins when they did a dark arts sweep before I inherited the contents of Bellatrix's vault."
Harry asked, "Why would you inherit rather than Narcissa?"
"She tried to kill me, it falls under the old inheritance laws."
"Weird but useful in this case."
James said, "The diary might be with Malfoy or it might be someplace else if it exists at all."
Remus said, "The ring might be in the same place though."
James said, "We should probably go deal with that before Lily gets back."
Sirius laughed, "I'd rather wait until she gets back rather than give her a reason to be angry at us."
Harry sighed, "I'd rather not subject anyone to the curse if I can help it. Dumbledore had his hand basically mummified by the curse."
James snorted, "Albus might be one of the most skilled wizards around but he's not the sneakiest."
Remus said, "Regardless we've got a few hours to kill before Lily and Hermione get back so I think we should show Harry a couple of spells that he really should know for sneaking around then we can take a break and get some lunch."
Lily asked, "Knut for your thoughts?"
Hermione looked away from the bookstore and back over at Lily, "I'm trying to wrap my head around the differences between the two worlds."
"Anything in particular?"
Hermione whispered, "Slaves..."
Lily glanced around the street they were on to make sure that no one was close enough to hear then whispered, "It started with the purebloods a couple of hundred years ago, several of them didn't want to have to pay a dowry for their female children so they came up with a way to make money off them rather than have to pay money for them. They drafted laws that said the head of the family could sell children as they pleased."
"That's nuts..."
"It was created in a time when children had very few rights in England. It was used for a few years before it fell out of favor and was mostly forgotten about until the dementor revolt."
"What do dementors have to do with slaves?"
"I'm getting there. In the last war, the dementors joined Voldemort. Laws were passed that banned them from being used. Taskforces were assigned to drive them into areas where they could be contained and starved."
"That sounds like a good thing."
"It was for the most part. The downside was the cost of the prisons increased by a staggering amount thanks to nepotism, corruption and having to pay their labor force in coin rather than souls. Rather than hire qualified people they hired purebloods without the skills to do it correctly."
Hermione whispered, "That can't end well."
"The ministry had either forgotten or didn't care that without the dementors the wizards and witches wouldn't be malnourished people with little to no magic. You had a fair number of criminals with dark arts training being watched by a pack of idiots in most cases. Eventually it led to a mass breakout thanks to someone taking a bribe to tamper with the wards. Luckily most of the people were recovered but that still left the ministry with a growing problem. They couldn't just bring back the dementors because the people wouldn't have it which meant they needed another solution. They couldn't afford to lock wizards up and throw away the key like they had been doing and the people realized it. Without the threat of Azkaban people paid less attention to the ministry. Something that the ministry didn't want and couldn't afford. Thus in their infinite stupidity they decided to push back."
"That sounds messy."
"Messy is a good word for it. Rather than lock people up in a prison where they were going to have to pay to keep them, the old minister decided that fining people into the poorhouse was a much more profitable option."
"How did he get that past the Wizengamot?"
"He had them structure the law so that a percentage of the fines went into their pockets."
Hermione muttered, "Bloody greedy bastards. I'm guessing that things got rather nasty after that."
"Not as bad as you might think, several households went bankrupt during this time but they couldn't take their land because of old laws protecting a wizard's land. The Wizengamots members might be old and greedy but they weren't stupid enough to repeal that law considering most of their wealth was in land and they didn't want the ministry to come after them."
Hermione snorted, "Figures."
"Eventually the ministry wanted to make more money so they had a bean counter investigate things. One of them found the old laws that allowed the sale of children. They used this to 'prove' that children had a value which meant that they could confiscate people's children to pay off fines."
Hermione asked, "How did that piece of shit get past the Wizengamot?"
"The Wizengamot are old, the average age is eighty something which means that most of them don't have small children anymore. Add in some bribes, general corruption and some protection for the heirs of noble families and they were happy to sell the rest of the population down the river."
Hermione asked, "How does that affect muggleborns?"
"Amusingly enough they're basically untouchable because Hogwarts isn't subject to ministry authority and muggles are subject to the Crown rather than the Ministry of Magic."
"Crown?"
"Sure, King James, he's been the king of Scotland, Ireland and England since 1603 and the king of Scotland before that."
Hermione blinked as her mind tried to process what Lily had just said, "Did you say 1903?"
Lily said, "Nope, 1603. The normal world thinks that he's a long lived mutant or something. His children don't have the same longevity though a couple of them have lived to be a hundred and thirty and age remarkably well."
"Magical?"
"If he is than he hasn't publicly shown any magical abilities outside of being long lived though he's supposed to be immune to legitimacy and obliviate. Not many people have tested that in recent years because it's punishable by death to cast any spell that affects the mind on the royal family without permission. They're very serious about that particular rule."
Hermione said, "I have a feeling that I'm going to need to look at a history book at some point soon."
Lily shrugged, "I'm guessing your England doesn't have a king then?"
"It has a queen but she's more of a figurehead and she's not immortal."
"Weird."
Hermione asked, "There is a statute of secrecy right?"
"More or less, it gets a bit complicated in Britain, the king never signed the statute of secrecy which means breaking it isn't a crime in Britain as far as he's concerned. The international wizards council still expects the ministry to hide the existence of magic. The ministry ignores the fact that the muggle government informs the chief of police in every district about the existence of magic and the muggle government doesn't shoot and kill the ministry obliviators while they're doing their jobs even though they legally have every right to according to British law."
"That sounds messy."
"It's one of the reasons the ministry like to ignore the King as much as they can." Lily looked at her watch, "We should probably head back and pick up our next muggleborn to show them around."
"I'm fine with that."
"Good, after that we can check on the boys."
Sirius blasted the Gaunt shed apart with his wand. "Your turn."
James flicked his wand at the ground and animated a dirt golem that ran toward the remains of the shed. "It shouldn't take more than a minute."
Lily pointed her wand at a small bush and transfigured it into a person that looked a lot like a younger Snape dressed in a pair of faded blue shorts. "There."
Harry said, "I thought you couldn't transfigure things into people?"
"You can't. You can however transfigure things into humans."
"What's the difference?"
Remus said, "The difference is that people have memories and personalities."
"My creation has none of those but it is technically alive so the curse should discharge. I might have to make a couple of them before the curse is drained enough to dispel."
Harry asked, "What's the chances of that actually working?"
Lily shrugged, "I'm going to test it on a created human a couple of dozen times before I wrap the ring in lead and haul it to a professional curse breaker."
The earth golem opened the box then put the ring on and promptly turned to blackened ash and fell apart.
James frowned, "Make that at least a couple of dozen times before we take it to a goblin curse breaker and yeah there is certainly a curse on the ring that makes people and apparently creatures want to put it on." He levitated the fake human over and moved its finger close to the ring. He wasn't all that surprised when the ring jumped the last couple of inches, slipped onto the man's finger and turned his hand into a blackened piece of char almost before he could flick his wand and sever the fake human's arm. He flicked his wand and flipped the fake Snape over so that his other hand was near the ring only for the same thing to happen.
Harry felt a bit ill as James systematically and maybe a little gleefully cut apart the Snape look-alike after letting the curse destroy each limb the ring touched. It only took two Snape copies and six limbs before the magic powering the curse seemed to run out. "Seven?"
Remus said, "Curses generally either have certain number of people they'll work on or they take a certain amount of time to recharge. We should probably take the ring to a curse breaker while it's weak."
Sirius pulled a heavy lead box out of his expanded bag and floated it over toward the ring. A flick of his wand opened the box and another flick of his ring caused the box to flip over and grab the ring then close with the ring inside. He conjured a couple of iron bands around the box to keep it closed. "Let's get this to the goblins then we can relax."
Remus said, "Or get back to training."
Harry laughed, "I'm game if you are."
Lily said, "Only until dinner then I want to swap some more stories and let Harry have a chance to relax."
While Harry wasn't sure that watching Beth talk Hermione into stripping for copies of books could be counted as relaxing it was rather entertaining which meant that he had had a lot of chances to be entertained during the summer. By the same token watching her slow seduction by Beth, Lily and Tonks over the summer was amusing even if it was embarrassing because Beth and Lily were family. The evenings he spent swapping stories, playing video games and spending time with Hermione and his family were like a balm to his soul. While nothing was going to make up for having to put up with the Dursleys the summer with his perverted family came close.
Harry figured that James was probably the least perverted of the adults being that he only had eyes for Lily. Remus and Tonks had something going on but Tonks was still free to have fun with Lily and the girls. The less said about Sirius's dog form and his house elves the better. Harry was sort of hoping that was a joke on James's part though you could never really tell with Sirius. This Sirius was a heck of a lot less serious about most things than the Sirius that had spent twelve years in prison with a pack of dementors which was sort of scary when he remembered that Sirius hadn't really been all that responsible or serious even after spending over a decade in a soul stealing hellhole.
Hermione looked away from the Hogwarts Express's window and over at Harry. She was just glad that they had arrived early enough to find an empty compartment. "Knut for your thoughts?"
Harry smiled as he leaned back in his seat and looked at his best friend. "I'm just thinking about family and Hogwarts. It's weird having a family that you don't want to leave."
Hermione said, "It takes some getting used to."
"Mostly I'm thinking about Beth and Lily."
"Oh?"
"Beth is really hoping we can complete our animagus forms by Christmas for a bit of naughty fun and Lily promised to fuck me if my grades on the end of the term exams are high enough."
Hermione sighed, "She said the same to me. I can't believe you're considering it."
"I'm not..." He noticed Hermione's smirk, "Fine, maybe I'm thinking about it now that she suggested it but that doesn't mean I'd actually do it. What's your excuse?"
Hermione sighed, "She said that if I did well on the NEWTS she would trade sex for Ginny having the right to ask and receive her freedom."
Harry snickered, "Is it a bad thing that I want to watch?"
"Harry..." She trailed off as the compartment door slid open to show Puck standing in the hallway carrying a trunk and looking slightly depressed, "Hi."
Puck's frown turned into a hopeful look when she saw Harry. "Can I sit here?"
Hermione said, "Of course."
"Pick a spot." Harry smiled at Hermione's younger alternate, "It's good to see you again Puck." He pointed at Hermione, "This is Hermione Granger."
Puck blinked, "Really? I'm Puck Hermione Granger."
Hermione smiled at Puck, "Wicked. I'm Hermione Jean Granger."
Puck maneuvered her trunk through the door. "Thanks, most of the other compartments are full or have people that weren't interested in having a first year sitting with them."
Hermione pointed her wand at Puck's trunk and levitated it up on to the rack. "Their loss our gain."
Puck smiled as she took a seat next to Harry, "Thanks."
Hermione asked, "Have you read all of your books?"
Puck said, "A couple of times."
"Same." He really had read through his books a couple of times over the summer to see if anything was different and as a refresher course.
Hermione asked, "Any questions?"
Puck said, "Tons but I don't want to bore you."
Hermione laughed, "We've got a long train ride, I've got nowhere else I'd rather be." She wanted Puck to have a better introduction to the wizarding world than she did.
Harry relaxed as he listened to Puck ask Hermione a bunch of questions about the stuff she read over the summer.
