Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived

Chapter 3: Choices

How the Other Side Lives

Hogwarts Express, (Dec. 16 th )...

A very excited Hermione Granger left the loo and started walking back towards her compartment. Her first semester at Hogwarts was over, but the school was more than she could have ever dreamed. The professors were knowledgeable, the magic incredible, the library was huge, and she had real friends for the first time in her life.

That wasn't to say that everything that had happened during the fall term was good. There were some low points. At first, most of her peers didn't like her. For the first two months of school they had made fun of her, calling her a bookworm or beaver. While the taunting was mean, it was something she had grown accustomed to in primary school. Coming face-to-face with a gigantic mountain troll, however, was not. Halloween was, without a doubt, both the most terrifying moment of her entire life, and, in retrospect, one of the best. It had led to her making friends.

As she passed several compartments, Hermione couldn't help but occasionally glance at the people inside. It was a compartment near the middle of the train that caused her to stop in her tracks. Sitting inside was... Nathan? She was about to open the door and ask what he was doing when she realized that Nathan would never slick his hair back or have his head buried in a book. It wasn't Nathan; it was Nathan's brother. But why was he sitting alone? Surely there were some Ravenclaws on the train that he could hang out with?

Truth be told, Hermione envied Harry Potter. She couldn't count the number of times she had felt alone in Gryffindor because no one understood her. She hated that she was surrounded by a bunch of people who just didn't appreciate the fact that she liked to learn new things. The Sorting Hat had wanted to put her into Ravenclaw; it was actually rather persistent that she would do well there, but Hermione had stubbornly said she wanted Gryffindor. In the end, she had found a place in Gryffindor and now had good friends, but she had been very lonely for some time.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, had gone into Ravenclaw. She frequently saw him in the library studying or talking to Madam Pince about a book. No one ever seemed to make fun of him for spending time there though, and they certainly never hinted that it was wrong or weird for him to want to learn magic. It was as if being a Ravenclaw gave him a free pass to spend as much time as he wanted learning. Not even the Slytherins teased him. They didn't call him a bookworm or a brainiac. They just shrugged their shoulders and let him be. Harry Potter was a Ravenclaw, and it was expected of him to spend a lot of time in the library.

Stepping away from Harry's compartment door, Hermione resumed her walk towards her own compartment where Nathan and Ron were most likely chatting about Quidditch. That sounded about as much fun to Hermione as getting her teeth checked by her parents. Pushing the thought of Ron mindlessly spouting off some useless piece of trivia about the Chudley Cannons, Hermione found herself thinking again about Harry Potter. Nathan didn't talk about his brother a lot, but when he did it was usually with a smile on his face and about some fun thing they had done growing up together. It was clear that Nathan cared about Harry.

After Harry had dragged Nathan out of the Great Hall following the mountain troll fiasco, Hermione was worried that Harry was going to hurt Nathan. Harry did not look happy when he came over to talk to them, and Hermione admitted to herself that she probably didn't make the situation any better by being snappish towards him. Before they had become friends, she had overheard Nathan telling Ron once that Harry knew a lot of spells and curses before they even stepped foot into Hogwarts, and, naturally, Hermione was concerned for her new friend.

She had followed the two boys out of the Great Hall from a distance and watched them enter a classroom. Hermione had tried to listen in on the conversation from outside the door, but she wasn't able to hear a single word that was spoken. Not even muffled noises were coming from the other side of the door. Realizing that she might be caught, Hermione had walked to the end of the hallway and waited. After a while, the door opened and Harry walked out shaking his head and looking less than pleased.