Two Boys Who Need.
As the platform quiets and the train sets in motion, Hermione reminds herself that she is used to being alone. Besides, if she is placed where she thinks she will be, she’ll need to be used to being alone.
Even after Draco joins his friends and boards the train, Lucius and Narcissa stand and smile after him.
Hermione looks away when the door to her compartment opens.
“Hello,” a voice greets.
It takes everything in her not to disappear.
“Hello,” she greets the boy instead.
He has shaggy brown hair and pained eyes.
She wonders if he is perhaps her brother. She recognizes so much of herself in his expression.
“Could I join you?” He asks, his voice shaky.
She tries to remember if she had seen him with his family.
When she can’t she nods, wanting a peek inside his mind.
“Thank you,” he steps in fully, settling onto the bench across from her.
Hermione holds her hand out, just as she has witnessed Draco and Lucius do so often.
The boy looks a tad bit surprised but takes the offering.
Hermione falls into a pit. She hasn’t met many wizards with the sort of darkness this boy has in his mind.
It isn’t evil. No, this dark is more a blanket of protection.
She watches a memory swirl in his mind. An angry face fills the frame and she drops his hand, no longer needing to see into his mind.
“Theodore Nott,” he introduces himself.
Nott. Pureblood. A likely Slytherin. One of the people she is probably supposed to avoid.
“Hermione, Sir” she replies.
It is a reflex. Something that was ingrained in her after dozens of parties at the manor. Shame burns through her.
“My father is Lord Nott. He’s the one you’d call Sir.” He says it kindly enough, but it nettles her.
She’d met his father. Done him favours.
Hermione doesn’t have a response. It had been so ingrained in her that every pureblood was her superior.
Theodore grins, apparently not bothered by her lack of an answer.
“Are you excited? To be attending Hogwarts?” He changes topics.
He is a very polite little boy. Nothing like Draco and his friends.
“Of course. It is the very best magical school in the world.”
“I’m a bit nervous myself.”
Hermione doesn’t admit that she feels the same way.
Theodore and she don’t say anything else as the train sets in motion and they are both sure that no one else will be sitting in their compartment.
“You know legilimency,” Theodore states, distracting Hermione from the book she hadn’t really been reading.
“What? No, I don’t.”
“I appreciate you not staying to watch, but I felt it. And I don’t appreciate liars.”
She closes her book and stares at him, not sure how to handle it. Most people can’t feel her. It was probably the haste with which she had withdrawn.
“I apologise,” she relents.
He grins once more and she feels as though he has shed some weight since the train pulled out of the station.
“Who taught you?”
“No one.”
Theodore hums and she hopes he doesn’t press any further.
“Are you muggleborn?” He changes gears too quickly.
“Yes.”
Lucius had told her not to disclose her place in his household. Nott Sr. probably hadn’t told his son about the mudblood who had helped him ruin his business rival.
“Were you surprised when you found out?” He asks.
He is referring to magic.
She’s known magic her entire life.
“Not really. I’ve always known I was different.” It isn’t exactly a lie.
“How are your parents handling it?”
Her parents are dead.
Theodore doesn’t appreciate liars.
“They aren’t handling it,” she shrugs.
He nods as though her words make perfect sense.
“I could imagine walking through a brick wall might throw a muggle off a bit,” he says.
She just nods.
“You don’t like to talk very much, do you?” He asks.
“No.”
He reaches into his own bag and pulls out a book of his own.
She watches as he opens it and starts reading.
For the first time since he’d appeared in the doorway, she relaxes.
Just then, the door to the compartment slides open and a boy with dark hair and green eyes peers in.
He looks even more nervous than Theo had.
“Do you mind if I sit with you?” The boy looks between Hermione and Theo.
Someone must have chased him away from where he had started the ride.
“Sure,” Theo answers for both of them.
“I’m Harry. Harry Potter,” the boy introduces himself.
Hermione very nearly disapparates then and there.
There he is. The Boy Who Lived, standing just three feet away. Hermione isn’t sure how to handle this. She isn’t supposed to speak to him. Isn’t supposed to reveal anything about herself to the Boy Who Lived and vanquished the Dark Lord.
“I’m Theo and this is Hermione,” Theo says, apparently having found his confidence.
“Hello. Thanks, I was a bit overwhelmed,” Harry says, as though confessing.
Once her heartbeat slows, she takes in Harry and everything that is so telling about him. His clothes are at least two sizes too big and his glasses are taped in the middle. Worse is the faint bruise on his arm, barely hidden under his sleeves.
“A pleasure,” Hermione says, offering her hand.
Fortunately, Theo doesn’t stop Harry from shaking her hand. Perhaps it is because he is just as curious about the famous Harry Potter.
When he takes her hand, she is better prepared for the darkness she finds in his mind. Much like Theo, Harry is hiding a terrible secret.
Hermione only wades through his mind for a few seconds before she decides that Lucius will just have to accept that she is friends with Harry Potter.
“Why were you overwhelmed? Did someone bother you?” She asks, letting go of his hand, and glancing at Theo.
He is watching her as though he too can see people’s thoughts and memories.
“Well I-,” Harry shrugs, clearly trying to weigh if he should tell them. “I suppose I’m just not very good at being famous.” His brow crinkles and he wrings his hands in his lap.
“Are you famous?” Theo asks, though it is clear to everyone that he is poking fun.
Harry smiles and Hermione tries to think of how to add to the levity while also making sure he is alright.
“You can’t be famous. Not with glasses like that,” she points out, pulling her wand from her robes.
Harry’s eyes go wide and Theo has to assure him that she won’t hurt him, but he does allow her to fix his glasses.
“Oculus Reparo,” she casts, pleased that her wandwork is just as effective as her wandless magic.
“Whoa, thanks,” Harry says. He has this sort of easy smile that is ever so inviting.
“Not a problem,” Hermione tries to smile in return but she’s fairly sure it doesn’t look so natural.
“So, um, what did I interrupt?” he asks.
“You didn’t interrupt anything, Harry. Theo did.”
“Hermione was reading when I found her. I told her I had a book I could read but she insisted she get to know everything about me,” Theo says. Hermione is surprised at his capacity for teasing.
“Oh, well you can both read. It won’t bother me,” Harry assures them.
Hermione reaches into her robes and grabs her backup book.
Who’s strange now, Draco?
“Here, if you like to read, I’ve brought an extra.”
Harry takes it and shoots her another wondrous smile. She finds that she quite likes how happy he is.
“Thanks. All I have on me is a handful of galleons.”
“A handful?” Theo asks, incredulous. “What were you planning to buy, the whole trolley?”
Harry gives him a confused look and asks, “What trolley?”
Theo begins to inform Harry of the sweets cart and Hermione opens her book, barely absorbing the words.
Harry Potter had found himself in her compartment. Not only that, but he’d thanked her, twice, just for being kind.
And he needed kindness. Perhaps more than her. Perhaps more than Theo.
Glancing up at the two chatting boys, Hermione knows that things will be different from what Lucius had ordered. She was going to protect them both, no matter what she had to do.
No one deserved to feel so alone at eleven. And now, they wouldn’t be.
She was going to hold them close, no matter where they were sorted.
The three first years settle into their compartment, reading in comfortable silence until the trolley woman comes and Harry does indeed buy one of everything off the cart.
Hermione is grateful for the sugar quill he offers her, and Theo explains the beauty of a chocolate frog.
Once they are all properly sugared up, they can’t help but spend the rest of the ride to the castle talking about everything they hope to learn and everything they are terrified to do.