Three children meet at a bus stop. They have never met before but they immediately see each other for exactly who they are.
Brilliant.
The eldest, the one with the black hair who defiantly isn't Ronald raises a mental eyebrow, he hasn't perfected the physical equivalent of the action yet and isn't willing to attempt it publicly until he has it down. The child with the dirty blond hair, certainly not the youngest but defiantly younger than not-Ronald, sends assessing looks over the other two. He is not-Harry. The third, a girl with red hair in a neat bob, the youngest, sends a cursory glance over her two companions, loosely defined. She no longer wishes to be Hermione.
So, they meet.
And history is made.
History is made every day, but this history is different. This is HISTORY, all in capital letters. This isn’t just one event after another. From this moment the world changes. At this moment three game-changers are born. The thing is; they don’t intend to be great, don’t intend to change the world, they don’t intend to topple chessboards that have taken generations to set up. They just are, and they just do.
Let us start with the youngest. She was born Hermione Jean Granger to middle-class parents with jobs as dentists and a moderate income. They never disliked her. They also never wanted a child. She was passed off to a series of nannies and governesses from almost the moment she was born. In the first four years of her life, she had exhausted the children's library. By the time she was six, she had read nearly everything in the adult’s section. Her parents did not see her genius. They very rarely noticed that they had a daughter in the house at all. This might have suited her perfectly except that her school noticed. They wanted to move her up. Hermione very much doubted there was anything more they could teach her. So, she left to study. At the moment she was studying. She was studying what she was good at. The science of deduction.
Now, the dirty blond. He was named Harry James Potter. At the age of three months, his parents died and he was left on the doorstep of his mother’s sister. This sister had a husband and a son. In their eyes, their nephew was a freak. They had never met him before that but immediately he was a burden despite the extra money he brought in that enabled them to dote excessively upon their own son. What made it worse was that he was brilliant. He saw everything about everyone. His aunt loved to gossip about the neighbours, this time it was the man who moved in across the street with his sister. His aunt believed that they were a couple, she was incorrect (They hold familial affection towards each other, not romantic affection. The sister is two years younger than him but he was always ill, she took care of him when they were young and still does, even if it isn’t necessary. He is a retired businessman turned bookseller.). His aunt didn’t like it when he corrected her, especially when he was right. But sometimes he had to. Sometimes she was so amazingly wrong he couldn’t keep it in. Sometimes he had to correct her. That is why he was a freak. Because he was brilliant. And he couldn’t keep it to himself. He knew he wouldn’t bloom on Privet Drive. Besides, cupboards, malnutrition, and undernutrition weren’t very useful for young children who wished to be especially tall. He knew genetically he had a chance of being tall. So he left at the age of nine. He left to be right. He left to be brilliant. He left to bloom.
Finally, the eldest. Born Ronald Billius Weasley. The sixth son in a family that only really needed three. Two of his older brothers might have turned out like him except that they were twins and, thus, special. He was nothing special. He was only another mouth to feed. Always overlooked. When he was three years old he won his fifteenth chess game against his father. He deduced at a glance. His brother was dating that girl, Clearwater. He extracted his first piece of blackmail. He wasn’t important. He was just too powerful to be content with staying in a place he could do nothing interesting. So when he was eleven he left. He left because he was bored. He left because he was a little too brilliant to be ordinary. He left because he was extraordinary.
Three children eye each other at a bus stop. They see each other's brilliance.
And.
Maybe.
They don’t have to be alone.