Someone knocks on the door of his compartment [No Abilities]

Harry woke from his sleep to a knock on the door of his train compartment. The compartment itself was largely similar to when he had fallen asleep, but a glance out of the window revealed that the platform was now crowded with figures that were hard to make out because he had taken his glasses off to take a nap and the shade was still down.

The knock on the door repeated itself, neither harder nor more insistent than the first one had been. Harry picked his glasses up from the table where he had set them down and put them back on before getting up from his seat and walking over to the compartment door. Unlocking it and sliding it open, he was met with a girl who looked to be about his age resting her arms on one end of her trunk.

"Hey! Would you mind if I sat in this compartment for the train ride? I've tried a few other ones in this car but they're all full or too noisy."

Harry nodded almost without thinking. "Sure, I wasn't planning on doing much on the ride. It's my first time on a train, so it would be nice to have some company."

He stepped back to let her into the car and offered to help put her trunk in the overhead storage. She was maybe a head shorter than him, and after removing a few books from her luggage she gratefully took him up on the offer. While she was getting her books out (Hogwarts: A History, Transfiguration Fundamentals, and Basics of Potion-Making), Harry took a moment to look at her. She had long brown hair and brown eyes, and she seemed to be almost vibrating with emotion, although Harry couldn't guess which one. Curiosity? Anxiety? Excitement?

His observations were cut short as she finished re-packing her trunk and pushed it across the table in the middle of the compartment for him to put overhead. Once it was put away, he asked a question that he realized that he probably should have asked a little earlier. "By the way, I don't think I caught your name. I'm Harry, Harry Potter."

She started at the question, possibly realizing the same thing that he just had. Her expression tuned to a smile and she reached her hand across the table. "I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Hermione Granger, and it's nice to meet you."

Harry met her offered hand with his own and shook it. "It's nice to meet you as well. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions? I'm new to this whole magic thing, and I haven't gotten a chance to ask anybody about it."

Hermione's smile turned bashful as she replied. "Actually, I might not be the best person to ask. My family is non-magical, and we only found out that I was a witch on my eighteenth birthday a few months ago. I've only been to Diagon Alley once for school supplies, and though I've done a bit of reading up on the magical world I don't have much real experience with it."

He waved his hand. "That's more than I have. One of the teachers visited my grandparents and I a few days after I turned eighteen, but it seemed like they were trying to keep me a secret more than anything. We went through a fireplace into the wandmaker's shop and she left to do the rest of my shopping. When I got my wand, she took me back to my grandparent's house through the same fireplace. She was nice enough, but she didn't really talk too much. What was Diagon Alley like?"

With that question, Hermione's eyes lit up with a familiar spark. It was the same one that he had in his own eyes when Hagard came to his grandparents' house and told him that he was a wizard. It was wonder, awe, excitement, and curiosity twisted together into a desire to fully experience a new world.

Harry found himself getting lost in conversation with her as she did her best to describe every part of the magical world that she had experienced. Tales of a bank run by goblins, an apothecary of potion ingredients straight out of a fantasy book, and so much more filled the train compartment as they made their way through the English countryside.

As Hermione reached the end of her family's trip to Diagon Alley, however, she frowned and her voice became uncertain. "Honestly, I'm glad that I saw you. For a while I was worried that the magical world would be all girls, and I don't think I would have enjoyed that very much. Secondary school was... well, let's say I was glad I could find an escape from the drama most of the time."

"All girls?" Harry asked, curious about why she would have thought that. "How did you get that impression?"

"Harry, my dad stuck out like a sore thumb when we went to get school supplies at Diagon Alley." Hermione replied. "I swear there were maybe ten other men in the entire place, and all of them were about as old as my dad or way older. I thought it felt like a cult at first, but the fact that the magic is actually real and neither of my parents could use it convinced me otherwise."

Harry wasn't sure how to process that. Too many thoughts were running through his mind, all of them seemingly going in different directions with this new piece of information. At some level, it rationalized why Hagard had been so keen on keeping him out of the public view. If boys were as rare as Hermione made it out to be, then he would have stood out far more than anyone her dad's or his grandpa's age. Part of him was grateful to the giant woman for that, because he wasn't sure what his reaction would have been.

Another part of him was mourning the loss of the potential friendships he could have had. Don't get him wrong, he had quite a few female friends back in secondary school, but most of his close relationships had been with other boys his age through sports or shared interests. Knowing that he wouldn't have that same potential at Hogwarts almost hurt.

A very vocal part of his mind that he was trying to push back was over the moon about it, thinking about how there would be basically no competition for romantic relationships and how great it would be. He knew it was wrong to think like that, short-sighted and reductionist, but he couldn't stop it.

Hermione, unaware of his inner turmoil, kept on talking. "Honestly, I think that if Mom and I weren't there with him some of the older witches would have come up to him and asked him out. He didn't notice, but at one point Mom had to physically stop one of them until her friends stepped in and took her away."

To add to the burden that her words were bringing him, her story was interrupted by a knock on the door of their compartment.