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Let’s assume the Dursleys couldn’t wait to get eleven year old Harry out of the door that first day when he was supposed to go to Hogwarts. Let’s assume Vernon dropped the boy off with more than an hour to spare and left, chuckling under his mustache. Harry takes his too heavy trunk and too heavy owl cage and slowly makes his way towards where he thinks the platform should be and then he’s stuck, not knowing where to go. But let’s assume someone else - not the Weasleys, no, they’re always running late, with no second to spare - was there at the same time, an overly excited bushy-haired girl and her excited parents,
“Are you lost, sweetie?”
Harry looks up at the kind lady who asks, looks at her husband and daughter, and at the trunk the girl has on a trolley.
“A bit, ma'am,” he admits. “You see, I don’t know how to get onto the platform…”
“But it was in the pamphlet!” says the little girl, frowning. “You didn’t get one?”
Harry shakes his head and the Grangers usher him through the barrier, exchanging glances over his head when Hermione chatters away. They don’t learn his name until their daughter writes her first letter and sends it with his owl. Then, having read the books and the pamphlets and knowing this name well, they worry a bit more.
When the train leaves the station Hermione tells him all about the houses and Harry asks where she would prefer to end up.
“I’m not sure, honestly,” she says, staring on the outskirts of London passing by. “It would be nice to make some friends, you know? I don’t…”
Harry grabs her hand and squeezes reassuringly.
“Hey, I can be your friend, right? So that we have at least one friend at Hogwarts.”
Hermione smiles, shaking off the memories of schoolyard bullies and names whispered as she walked by.
“Deal! So which one sounds best to you then?”
“I don’t know, I mean… Hufflepuff sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?”
Hermione thinks about Ravenclaw and the promise of intellectual growth, and lets it go. I’m going to be brilliant without an entire house of people who like to study , she decides. I could use some friends, though .
“Hufflepuff it is, then.”
Somewhere else Ron Weasley sits with his older brothers and doesn’t even know how much his destiny has changed. In some corridor Draco Malfoy is the little bully we know him to be, Neville Longbottom realizes he’s lost his toad and befriends the Patil twins who help him look for Trevor. Harry marvels at animated chocolate treats and laughs when Hermione learns about “all flavours” the hard way.
Nobody pays it any mind when bushy-haired Hermione Granger goes to Hufflepuff and shows another first year student in the crowd a thumbs up. It gets everybody’s attention when Harry Potter joins her a few minutes later.
“Do you think it will ever stop?” sighs Harry when they enter the Great Hall to get some breakfast and the whispers start even weeks after the beginning of the term. Hermione reaches out to squeeze his arm in silent support, and Cedric Diggory makes a mental note to show the kid where the kitchens are so he may get some food in peace.
Hufflepuffs treat their first year duo with a mix of fondness and amazement. Harry is obvious, hero to all, legate of Gryffindor parents, a literal living legend who hates confined spaces and will move around the common room like a house cat, always in the spot of sunshine warming his too-frail bones. Cedric knows that sixth year students made a game out of casting small, helpful charms on Harry’s clothes, like mending torn stitches and polishing his shoes. He also knows that their token Ravenclaw had a small talk with Professor Sprout about Harry’s Muggle aunt and uncle.
Speaking of their bushy-haired girl wonder, Cedric smiles slightly and whispers to her.
“You know that Ravenclaws have the best library in the castle, yes?”
The first year eyes him suspiciously, slowly chewing her toast with jam.
“It’s in their common room,” she informs him, eyebrows drawn together. Diggory pats her head.
“They don’t have a password so if you’re smart enough, you can enter.”
He leaves, noting with self-satisfaction the unholy glee on the girl’s face and sincerely wishes all the best to the poor Ravenclaw idiot who stands between Granger and heavy shelves of the Aviary.
Yeah, so what if Diggory secretly has a mean streak, did you really think Hufflepuffs can’t play dirty?
There is a troll in the dungeon and Hermione keeps a steady grip on Harry’s hand as they follow their prefects to the common room - in this world Ron is still the rude boy, the sixth son, the mouthy Gryffindor but there is no hiding in the girls bathroom because Harry punches him before Weasley gets to finish the sentence. In this world Hermione writes long letters to her parents about her too thin friend in obviously second hand clothes and Emma Granger in turn phones the Dursleys about having Harry over for Christmas. Petunia is suspicious, of course, but the Grangers are smart people and they play nice and promise discounts at their practice, so Harry opens his first ever presents under a real tree. There is no quidditch this year but Snape is still a pain in the neck, Quirrel is still raising some red flags, Hagrid still sputters out some secrets he shouldn’t have.
“You do know we’re walking into a trap, right?” sighs Hermione that night when they go for the Stone. “Just making sure.”
“If we get caught, we can always say we were sure this was a special assignment to earn more house points,” mutters Harry as they reach the third floor. “Like an easter egg hunt or something?”
“It could work, I suppose,” she says and gets her wand out. “You ready?”
No, they’re not ready for this, they’re eleven and no kid should go through a deadly obstacle course because a senile headmaster decided to use them to lure out Voldemort and the plan backfired. But they do it anyway.
When they go through the barrier after their first year, the Grangers and the Dursleys are all there, chatting amicably. Hermione sends her best friend a smile that promises everything’s going to be fine - or, at least, not all that terrible.
They’re back two months later and they can’t go through to the platform, but it’s fine. There is no flying car this time around but they have Hermione’s parents which is so much better.
“Don’t worry,” Emma says with a smile and buys them both a hot chocolate when her husband contacts the emergency phone number they found in that pamphlet from first year (Harry never learns that Hagrid forgot to give him one). “Someone will come for you.”
Professor Sprout appears out of the thin air less than an hour later. Harry and Hermione learn two things: that wizards have some really fast means of travel, and that portkeys are absolutely horrible.
“But Hermione…”
“Honestly, Harry, a duelling club? Whatever can go wrong. Sit down and do your Potions homework, you can’t afford to get another T.”
“Just thought it might be fun.”
Hermione rolls her eyes and counts to ten. Really! Boys!
“I’ll tell you what, if people come back and tell us that it was fun we’ll go next time.”
When Cedric tells them with a worried frown that Justin got bitten by a snake, Hermione doesn’t even have to say anything.
Later, much later when the basilisk is done and over with, and when Ginny Weasley got saved, and Hermione is once again herself, they sit on the soft green grass by the Lake and stay silent.
“It was really scary this year, wasn’t it?” Harry says finally when the sun sets. With a soft sigh Hermione rests her head against his arm.
“I think we should get used to that, you know.”
“Yeah.”
Harry goes back to school with a Hogsmeade form signed (because Dursleys shipped Harry off to the welcoming harbor of Grangers’ home the second Marge confirmed her visit, and allowed him to stay for the rest of the summer. Emma signed both forms and magic is about intent, about a guardian letting their kid go and have fun and Emma Granger feels more like a guardian to Harry than anyone from his living relatives ever will). Hermione watches him with worried eyes - she read everything there was to read about the first war with He Who Must Not Be Named, of course she knows about Black’s connection to the Potters’ deaths. It’s going to be another horrible year, she thinks sometime mid-October, when Harry plays in their house quidditch team (fastest Chaser on the field, his father would be so proud). Dementors all around the place, their Dark Arts teacher is a werewolf, and a serial killer on the loose.
“I knew it was going to be bad,” Hermione mutters when they huddle on the Great Hall’s floor and wait for the adults to check if the castle is safe. It isn’t because how could it? Hasn’t anyone paid attention lately?
“Guess it would feel weird if everything was fine,” comments Harry from the warm cocoon of his sleeping bag, voice already muffled and slightly dreamy. Hermione watches the charmed ceiling the entire night, too tired to go to sleep.
Crookshanks still gets accused of eating a rat, which results in a showdown in the Great Hall during one dinner, and Hermione almost spells the hell out of Ronald Weasley. Almost. Instead, she catches the twins and pays them ten galleons to extract her vengeance.
“It’s called delegating,” she says with a smug smile when Harry bows to her genius. “I don’t have time for rats.”
They still go to Hagrid’s on the night of the execution and still find a rat, and so they go to find Ron and give him Scabbers - so it’s still just the three of them and a dog who turns out to be serial killer who turns out to be innocent, and a werewolf, an the actual mass murderer.
“Honestly, I think I miss ghosts and basilisks,” Hermione mutters between knocking out a teacher and running for their lives (again, and again, and again).
“That doesn’t make us friends,” Ron tells them at the end of the year. Harry and Hermione exchange looks because they never assumed it did.
Year four… Hermione would give a lot to forget that year of suffocating feeling of an oncoming storm, of danger that surrounds them wherever they go.
“Is it just me,” starts Harry with a dejected look on his face as the Hufflepuffs are celebrating having not one but two Champions, “or are my chances of making it to graduation slimmer and slimmer?”
“We’ll survive,” Hermione answers and makes it sound like she’s sure even though she would like nothing more than to be a little girl again and cry on her mother’s shoulder. “We’re getting pretty good at it, Harry.”
Miss Granger clenches her jaw and gives the Time Turner back, and resigns from at least three electives because keeping her friends alive is more important than her academic career. Having two of them train with each other makes it a little bit better, though Hermione wishes selfishly she could just watch from the stands and not feel like every breath burns her lungs. She still goes to the Yule Ball with Viktor because she would be insane not to, but the night ends with Cedric, Harry and her sitting in the Come and Go Room (another little secret Cedric decided to divulge) and planning for the worst.
Hermione doesn’t really remember the second task. Harry does and he wakes up screaming from dreams in which he doesn’t make it in time and the riddle is literal.
Hermione will never forget Cedric’s eyes, dead and wide open, staring at the dark, mournful sky. She gives herself five minutes to mourn, not more, not less. She falls apart on the ground behind the Owlery, she sobs her despair and protests out into the thick cloth of her robes, and then Hermione dries her tears and goes to find Harry because the living are more important than the dead.
“You know, I’m pretty used to the school year going to shit pretty fast,” whispers Harry into her ear during the Welcoming Feast in their fifth year as Umbridge drones on and on, “but this holds some kind of a record.”
Her hand finds Harry’s under the table and squeezes tightly, her mind already buzzing.
It seems to Hermione like she’s watching from someone else’s perspective, like she’s away from it all.
“Sir, I need a substance that would soothe and heal wounds made with a dark object.”
Snape looks at her for a long while, another class already gathering in the corridor outside, and she stands her ground because Hufflepuffs don’t take kindly to Umbridge spreading lies about Cedric and there’s a lot of people who need her help.
“What object.”
“A blood quill, sir.”
This is why Snape was the better choice, she thinks absently when he writes down a short list of instructions and hands it to her, wordlessly pointing at the door. She leaves without thanking him because she’s not sure if she’s grateful for the recipe or for not asking questions.
Hermione brews the balm one cauldron after the other in the common room, not even bothering to hide it. She hands little jars to students from Ravenclaw and sneaks a few to Fred Weasley’s bag with instructions on how to make it written down and masked as notes from arithmancy.
She watches Harry build a resistance movement and goes to research healing spells, bone mending potions, and shield charms she could weave into clothes.
“I’m not sure how much of this I can take,” Harry tells her one night, they’ve sequestered themselves in the Room of Requirement and made teaching plans, emergency plans, evacuation plans. Hermione ties a charmed ribbon around another scroll and looks up, her eyes red and shadowed.
“When the hell did we become the adults, Harry?”
He doesn’t reply because how can they be sure? Maybe it was when the green light hit Cedric’s chest, or when they ran for their lives because their professor had claws and teeth, or when…
Hermione reaches for another ribbon.
They bury an empty coffin in the old Black lot, just the two of them and Remus Lupin, Harry’s fingers clutching her hand so tightly she’s sure she will have bruises. She doesn’t mind. She’s holding on just as tightly.
“Draco Malfoy is a ridiculous boy, Harry” becomes the mantra of their sixth year - a weirdly peaceful one, with small exceptions of cursed objects and cryptic headmasters and the bloody Slug Club. She says it so many times Hermione’s thinking about just spelling it onto a t-shirt or something just to make it easier.
Hermione thinks later that she should have choked on her own words because Draco Malfoy allows Death Eaters into their home, he gets Dumbledore killed, he wins. And this, she cannot forget even through the fog of shock. Hermione watches the bright lights of their wands dispel the Dark Mark overhead, and allows tears to fall. This is the last moment of peace, she knows. A deep breath before the jump into the bottomless dark pit.
“I’m so sorry,” she hears herself say that night when they sit in Hufflepuff common room, tightly wrapped around each other, letting the memories of the last six years flow around them and soothe the pain of knowing they’re not coming back. “I’m so sorry, Harry.”
“Hush, Hermione. There’s nothing you can be sorry for.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hush…”
For a moment Harry thinks he will have to obliviate her parents and he panics because he’s not sure if he can do it. But then Hermione takes a shaky breath and whispers the spell, and he half-carries her out of the house because she’s weeping so damn much. But this, he can do. He grabs his backpack - spelled with the same set of charms as Hermione’s beaded bag - a little bit tighter and apparates them away.
“I’m fine,” Hermione finally says after three days of complete silence, and there’s a familiar look in her eyes. Harry nods, kisses her forehead and offers her a cookie from the pile of food prepared and stashed away under house-elf magic when they were still at school. Their hunt lasts for a year and then some because there is no Ron Weasley, so they need to get creative, so the call to arms ripples through the Order not in May but on the last day of October.
“It’s only fitting,” says Harry and Hermione sits on the dusty floor of the Chamber and kills horcruxes with lips set in a thin, white line. When she’s done and there’s only one - two - left, she gets up and throws her arms around him. They stay like this for a long moment.
“I have to go,” Harry whispers eventually. Her embrace tightens and then lets him go, and she’s blinking back tears.
“Go.”
He doesn’t thank her for keeping their deal and being his first - his best friend, or for the years spent together, or for the fact that spaces between his fingers have the shape of hers.
Harry leaves.
Harry dies and doesn’t meet Dumbledore, no, he meets his mother because everyone should have at least one memory of their mom hugging them and it would be unfair to refuse Harry this small kindness.
“I’m proud of you,” Lily whispers into his hair. “I love you so much, kid. But now you need to leave and don’t you dare come back until you’re at least hundred and fifty!”
On October 31st Harry dies and comes back with the sound of his mother’s laugh still ringing in his ears.
In the end - and there is an end, just not that fast and it’s really complicated - they sit on the soft green grass by the Lake and stay silent. They look at the solemn, single rock with names of all victims of the Battle shimmering in the last light of the sun. Somewhere above a phoenix sings and mourning feels less desperate, less of a goodbye and more of I’ll see you again .
Hermione looks up, yellow ribbon in her hair.