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Hermione watched the Weasley family bustle around King's Cross Station, a perfect, chaotic storm of red hair and secondhand robes. She had to give Lucius Malfoy credit, she mused. His petty, short-sighted act of revenge—slipping a sliver of his master's soul into a poor pure-blood girl's cauldron—was, in the grand, cosmic scheme of things, an act of sheer, unintentional genius. It was a move so catastrophically stupid that it would ultimately expose the secret of Voldemort's immortality and put Dumbledore on the path to destroying the Horcruxes, ensuring the Dark Lord's final defeat. Lucius, in his arrogant attempt to settle a score, was accidentally saving the world. The irony was exquisite.
She and Ginny made it through the barrier to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters with ease, securing an empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express. They waited. And waited. The train gave a final, shuddering lurch and began to pull away from the station. Still no Harry or Ron.
"Sister Hermione," Ginny asked, her voice small and worried as she peered out the window at the receding platform. "Where are Harry and my brother?"
Hermione looked at the empty platform, then at the rapidly accelerating train, and put the pieces together. "It appears the magical gateway had a temporary operational failure," she said calmly. "Don't worry. I'm sure they'll find a logical, well-reasoned, and entirely safe alternative mode of transport."
Ginny, however, still looked terrified.
Meanwhile, on the Muggle side of the station, Harry and Ron were experiencing a very real operational failure. They had run, full tilt, at the solid brick pillar, only to crash into it with a sickening, bone-jarring thud that sent their luggage trolleys flying. They were locked out.
"The gateway's sealed!" Ron panicked, his face pale. "We've missed the train!"
Harry's mind was a whirlwind of terror. The thought of having to explain this to the Dursleys, of being trapped in that house for another year… it was unthinkable. It was in this moment of pure, twelve-year-old desperation that a truly terrible, truly brilliant idea was born.
"The car," Harry breathed, a wild, manic gleam in his eyes.
High above the English countryside, Hermione was trying to explain the basic principles of alchemy to a wide-eyed Ginny when a familiar, beat-up, turquoise Ford Anglia appeared outside their window, flying at a rather alarming, wobbly altitude.
"Is that…?" Ginny began.
"Your father's illegally enchanted Muggle vehicle? Yes, it appears so," Hermione finished, a long-suffering sigh escaping her lips.
They watched, mesmerized, as the flying car attempted to keep pace with the speeding train. Then, the car's invisibility booster, a notoriously faulty piece of Weasley engineering, shorted out. The car lurched violently to the side, and the passenger door flew open. Harry Potter, who had been leaning against it, tumbled out into the empty air, saved only by his desperate, white-knuckled grip on the door handle.
He was dangling, hundreds of feet above the ground, his legs kicking wildly, the wind whipping at his robes.
"Hold on, Harry!" Ron screamed from the driver's seat, his own face a mask of pure terror as he tried to control the swerving car with one hand and reach for his friend with the other. "Grab my hand!"
Inside the train, Ginny screamed, her hands flying to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. "Sister Hermione, do something! Please!"
Hermione, however, was just watching the scene with a look of detached, academic curiosity. She handed the panicking Ginny a piece of chocolate. "Don't worry," she said calmly, thinking of the chaotic aerial ballet playing out before them. "Let's turn this into a learning opportunity. The train is traveling at eighty miles per hour. The car is traveling at sixty. Assuming a starting distance of twenty meters and accounting for wind resistance and terminal velocity… at what point, precisely, does Harry become a small, red smear on the landscape?"
Ginny just stared at her, tears welling in her horrified eyes. "???"
Her morbid joke was cut short as Ron, distracted by her appearance in the window, lost his own precarious balance. He tumbled out of the car, his flailing body crashing into Harry. The two boys, now locked in a tangled, screaming embrace, fell away from the car and began to plummet toward the earth below.
Ginny let out a final, piercing shriek and covered her eyes.
Hermione sighed. Swallowing the last of her chocolate, she stood up. "Honestly," she grumbled. "I'm surrounded by amateurs."
CRACK.
The sound was a violent, physical violation of the air inside the carriage. Hermione vanished.
For Harry and Ron, the world was a screaming vortex of wind and rushing ground. This was it. This was the end. And then, suddenly, she was just… there. Floating in the empty air beside them, her expression one of deep, profound annoyance. She grabbed each of them by the collar of their robes with a surprisingly strong grip, arresting their fall instantly. With her other hand, she flicked her wand at Harry's birdcage, which was still tumbling through the air, and the door flew open. Hedwig shot out with an indignant hoot.
With another deafening CRACK, the world twisted, and they were no longer falling, but standing, safe and sound, on the floor of the train compartment.
Ginny stared, her eyes wide with disbelief. Harry and Ron just stood there, swaying, their minds still trying to process the fact that they were not, in fact, dead.
"We're… we're safe?" Harry finally managed to stammer.
"If it weren't for Sister Hermione Apparating to save you, you'd be a pair of grease-stains on the tracks right now!" Ginny shouted, her fear turning into a wave of angry relief. "You should thank her!"
"Thank you," the two boys mumbled in unison. Then, the real implication of what had just happened hit them. Their heads snapped up, their eyes wide.
"You can Apparate?!" they shouted together.
"Learned it last year," Hermione said with a casual shrug.
The two boys just gasped, a new, even deeper level of awe and terror dawning in their minds.
"Oh no! The car!" Ron suddenly cried, looking out the window. They watched in despair as the flying Ford Anglia, now pilotless, plunged headfirst into the dense, dark canopy of the Forbidden Forest. "Dad's going to kill me." He then let out another cry of despair. "And Scabbers! He was in the car!"
Hermione just patted his shoulder. The traitorous rat, she was sure, would be just fine.
They arrived at Hogwarts, shaken but on time, and successfully made it to the Sorting Ceremony. Hermione watched with mild interest as the new first-years were sorted. A dreamy-looking girl with long, dirty-blonde hair named Luna Lovegood was sorted into Ravenclaw. And then, Ginny Weasley was sorted into Gryffindor, to the loud, proud cheers of her brothers.
At the end of the feast, Dumbledore stood up, his eyes twinkling. "A few last-minute announcements," he began. "Mr. Harry Potter and Mr. Ronald Weasley, would you please report to Professor Snape's office immediately."
A wave of pitying groans went through the Gryffindor table. The sight of the flying car had, apparently, been witnessed by several students.
Harry and Ron looked as though they were being marched to their own execution.
"And Miss Granger," Dumbledore continued, his gaze finding her, "would you please come to my office."
"Of course, Headmaster," she replied with a calm nod. She knew exactly what this was about. Unlicensed Apparition, especially in front of Muggles on the motorway below, was a serious offense.
As she stood, a wave of excited, awed whispers went through the new first-year students.
"That's her… that's Granger…" "Wow, she's even prettier in person…"
Even Luna Lovegood, with her strange, protuberant eyes, turned to look at her, an expression of dreamy, unreadable curiosity on her face.
Ignoring the two boys, who were giving her desperate, pleading looks, Hermione turned and walked with a calm, unhurried stride toward the Headmaster's office.
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