It warmed to professor's heart to see the boy interacting with other magical children his own age. Harry was a bit shy and shocked at their excitement to meet him, but Minerva thought he handled it well.
What she was not prepared for was the huge crowd that had formed outside the shop. She guessed someone in the shop heard Mr Potter's name and slipped outside to announce it. She was thankful Filius had accompanied her as the rest of the trip had them dealing with the crowd of people that followed them. Fortunately, only a stop at Ollivander's was really required. It was unfortunate the boy would not be able to explore the Alley a bit but such was life.
They were approaching the Apparition point when Minerva drew tired of the crowd trailing them. In a fit of pique she rounded on them and proceeded to inform them exactly what she thought of their behaviour. She was moderately pleased at how the crowd, many of them former students, recoiled from her remonstration and left the area.
Feeling pleased, she turned back to Mr Potter and Filius. Filius looked impressed with her ability to chase off the crowd. Mr Potter seemed to have enjoyed it also as he was smiling as he put his glasses back on. They must have gotten dirty and he took the pause as a chance to clean them.
"Very well, let's get you home, Mr Potter."
Hogwarts
1 September 1991
To say Hermione Granger was excited to be heading off to her new school would be something of an understatement. Like saying Bill Gates had some money or calling the wreck of the Titanic a minor bump. She would finally have a place to belong; where she wasn't the odd ball that had weird things happen to her.
Since receiving her acceptance letter, she had worked to ensure she was completely prepared to succeed in her new environment. Every text book had been read cover to cover at least once (although she did have some concern that it wasn't enough) as well as the additional material she had purchased on Wizarding history and culture.
Hermione had arrived very early as her parents had appointments later in the morning. That was fine. It gave her time to find a compartment and review her Transfiguration text. The inquisitive witch did spend some time questioning the engineer on the magical operation of the Hogwarts Express. To her disappointment, while the man knew how to operate the train his knowledge of the magical theory behind it was sorely lacking.
Shortly before the train left the station, she was joined by a slightly chubby boy with brown hair. When she attempted to introduce herself he just mumbled out "Neville Longbottom". He seemed rather shy so she just went back to her book.
The train was about halfway to Hogwarts (based on her questioning of the engineer) when Neville suddenly let out a yelp and started searching about frantically.
"Did you lose something, Neville?" Hermione asked.
"Trevor. I've lost Trevor. Gram is going to be so angry." The boy was actually trembling.
"Nonsense," Hermione responded. "I will help you look. Now, what does your toad look like?" She had not noticed an owl or cat in the compartment. That meant the animal in question must be a toad.
Neville looked at her oddly. "He's a toad. He's green with warts."
Hermione huffed at the boy's lack of detail. "Oh, very well. There cannot be too many toads running about free, after all. You continue to check in here and I shall check the rest of this car."
The young witch received several no's with varying levels of politeness from the other students. Most of them were older students that didn't want to be bothered by a 'kid'. But it was at the compartment three down from hers that she received her strangest welcome.
An explosion
"What was that?" she asked in an indignant voice.
"Sorry about that," a boy's voice answered while she tried to clear her eyes. "I didn't expect anyone to open the door just then."
Her eyes clear, Hermione looked into the compartment with indignation written all over her face. Inside the car, two boys and two girls were sitting on the floor facing each other with a deck of cards spread out in front of them. Hermione absently noted the girls on the floor were twins. Another boy and girl were sitting on one of the bench seats. Both the boys on the floor were dark-haired while the one on the bench had brilliant red hair. The girl sitting on the bench with him had long blonde hair but a rather serious expression.
"I am sorry," a boy on the floor repeated. "I knew the card was about to go and I didn't want to be holding it."
Hermione noticed the boy had bright green eyes behind an old pair of glasses and very messy hair. She resisted the urge to go find a hair brush and a grooming kit.
"And what were you doing that caused that explosion?" she demanded.
One of the twins held up a card. "We were showing Harry and Tony how to play Exploding Snap."
"Exploding Snap? I've read about it but have not seen it before." Honestly, Hermione couldn't see the point of wasting time on such a thing when there was so much that they needed to learn.
The boy named Tony smiled up at her. "Are you Muggle-born like me or just raised in the Muggle world like Harry here?"
"My parents are dentists. I did not know about magic until Professor McGonagall called on us with my acceptance letter," Hermione answered. "But I've tried some spells since I purchased my wand and books. So far everything has worked for me rather well."
The girl on the bench grinned at that. "You do realize that after we start school we won't be allowed to use our wands outside of school until we turn seventeen, right? The only reason you didn't get into trouble this summer was the charm wasn't on it yet."
.....
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