B.Q Book Four: The Black Queen's War

Chapter 6: The Little Engine That Could

For all that it was only early August, Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters was packed to the brim with people and overflowing with their assorted noise. Adults either looking around in amazement or speaking softly in small groups about just what the 'strongly recommended' escape from their homes meant about the safety of the world they were about to enter for the first real time. Little kids who did not understand the significance of their hasty flight running around and having fun like they were about to go on a vacation. Older students keeping wary eyes on their families and talking amongst themselves while at the same time keeping their parents from realizing they were just as worried as the adults. Throw in all the Muggle clothing rather than robes she had first seen here when she was eleven years old on top of the dour atmosphere, and all the, well, magic of this little corner of the world was drained away.

Would Hogwarts remain as it had always been or succumb to the same changes? Was it really the situation that made everything look wrong or the people? She had no way to know for sure even as she worried about what those kinds of thoughts meant coming from someone like her.

Her mother huffed and crossed her arms. "Are you listening to me, Hermione?"

"Yes, Mum." In all honesty, 'listen' was probably a bit strong, not that she would ever say that to the woman in front of her. Nor would she reveal to her already irate parents that she almost regretted not biting the bullet and going through with her initial plan to keep them safe, namely Memory Charming them into believing they were Australians and sending them on their merry way 'home'. It certainly would have taken them out of the Death Eater's reach, but every book she could find on the subject mentioned or at least implied a time limit of somewhere around a week before the effects of the spell were more or less permanent. There were ways around that, secret messages and locks that could be made part of the spell and would allow her and only her to remove it even a year or two after the casting, but those were one and all extremely delicate, and the potential consequences of messing up were dire. She still might have quashed her understandable hesitance to risk effectively killing the people her parents were now and maybe even drive them mad, but then she had heard that Marchbanks and Hogwarts were offering shelter to anyone who wanted it. Pureblood, Halfblood, Muggleborn, Muggle with connections to their world; it did not matter in the slightest. All were welcome.

Protection through obscurity might work just fine, but protection through going somewhere with actual defenses was much better.

Her parents had not seen it that way. Rather than focus on what the Granger family needed to do next, they were still hung up on the fact that Hermione had significantly whitewashed the various dangers she, Ron, and… and Danny had gotten into over the years. Her explanation had been perfectly reasonable in her mind – namely that by the time she was in a position to tell them, the dangers were already over, and she did not want her parents pulling her away from the few friends she had ever made out of blind hysteria – but they refused to acknowledge the validity of her opinions.

And once that debacle had been settled, there was the fight about how they were not going to drag her away from this war that dried up only after a reminder that she was already an adult in the magical world and could do as she pleased. Did they really think she was going to run away and hide under the bed in another country after her best friend had been kidnapped and was likely being tortured even now? There was no way that was going to happen! The Order was looking for him – at least that was what Ron and Neville had relayed to her over the last two months – but they all knew the truth of the matter. It was going to come down to them to save him, just like it had been up to them to get anything done as early as first year when they were the only ones who could protect the Philosopher's Stone from Quirrell and You-Know-Who.