“We got Potter! We got Potter!”

Harry raised his arms and cheered like he’d just won the election for Prime Minister, and half the Gryffindors rose and cheered with him.

He rushed to the Gryffindor table then, shaking hands and shooting finger guns at people, smiling all the while, and despite herself, Hermione found her lips curling into a smile at the silliness of it all.

Finally, after almost half a minute of goofing off, Harry sat, slotting himself into the space beside her on the bench, before bumping her shoulder with his. “Didn’t think I’d let you get rid of me that easily, did you?” He asked, and Hermione simply opted for her now go-to response when dealing with Harry and rolled her eyes.

After another half-minute of Prof. McGonagall calming the crowd, the sorting continued. Without anymore fanfare thankfully.

With the last student, a boy named Zabini, sorted into Slytherin, Prof. McGonagall took Nilrem away, and Headmaster Dumbledore rose for a speech.

“To the new students, welcome. And to the old, welcome back. Before we fill our bellies, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Oddment! Blubber! Tweak! Thank you.” And he sat back down.

“And you thought I was mad,” Harry said, as more food than Hermione had ever seen in any one place appeared on the tables.

*****

“You’re all brothers?” Hermione asked Ron, almost regretting the act when he began to answer around a mouth full of food.

“Uh-huh. Fred and George there are in third year; don’t eat anything they give you.”

“Oh, little Ronniekins—”

“—you wound us. Truly.”

The twins said from where they sat on the other side of the table some small distance away.

“Besides, we know better than to prank Harry Potter’s girlfriend.”

Hermione choked.

“What!?” She squeaked at the twins, both of whom were acting far too innocent.

Ron, on the other hand, just looked confused. “What do you mean she’s Harry’s girlfriend?”

“Well, Ronniekins—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“—when a boy asks the hat to put him in a house simply because a certain girl is there—”

“—that usually means that she’s his girlfriend.”

That made no sense whatsoever!

Ron clearly agreed with her thoughts, because he said, “but Harry obviously just wanted to get into Gryffindor because it’s the best house there is.”

Well, no, Harry obviously came to Gryffindor just to frustrate her, but Hermione much preferred Ron’s reason than the twins’.

Fred and George gave Ron a sad, condescending smile. “Oh, Ronniekins—”

“I said stop calling me that!”

“—you sweet summer child.”

The expressions of students close to them caught Hermione’s eye then, and she noted with mounting horror that they were beginning to buy into the twins’ hogwash.

Wait a minute! Why wasn’t Harry saying anything?

She turned to see the boy in question quietly cutting ham into small pieces for Hedwig.

“Harry!” She nudged him. “Tell them we’re not... you know.”

Without even looking up from his plate, Harry said, “come on, Hermione, even I know better than to bother with things like this. Anything you say can and will be used against you in this court of law. They don’t play fair.”

“No, we do not,” one of the twins said.

“But you have to say something!” Hermione pressed.

“Hermione, what part of can and will be used against you did you not get?” Harry queried.

“Well, try!”

“Aww,” the twins gushed. “They’re already fighting like an old, married couple.”

“No, we’re not!”

“More importantly, I think you guys need a better model of what an old, married couple is actually like,” Harry said. “Anyway, I’ve been hearing a lot about this quidditch game. What’s it actually like?”

And the conversation quickly switched to the all-time favorite Wizarding sport.

It wouldn’t be until much later, that Hermione would realise that Harry had deliberately changed the subject.

*****

After dinner and an announcement by the Headmaster (which included informing them of two places in the school they shouldn’t go unless they wanted to meet a quick and painful death [she’d hoped he was joking until Harry looked at her and shook his head with complete seriousness]), Hermione and the other first years were given a minor tour of the Hogwarts castle by Ron’s older brother, Prefect Percy.

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The tour didn’t cover much, mostly just taking them to the major hallways and pointing them in the right direction to go to access different parts of the castle.

As the tour carried on, Prefect Percy talked about the rules and regulations of Hogwarts, and other such things.

Currently, he was on the topic of the house cup.

“—and at the end of the year, the Headmaster awards the cup to the house with the most points. Therefore you must be on your best behaviour at all times; Gryffindor has lost the cup to Slytherin six years in a row now so I won’t have any of you costing us any points,” Prefect Percy said seriously, and Hermione nodded, determined to do her part to ensure that her house won this year.

Harry raised a hand.

Prefect Percy spotted it after a moment and asked, “you have a question, Potter?”

“Uh, yeah, I do. What do we get if we win the cup?”

Hermione almost rolled her eyes. What a silly question.

“Excuse me?” Prefect Percy asked.

“I mean, is there an actual reward for winning the cup? Like do we get later curfews? Extra desserts at dinner? Maybe even access to the restricted section of the library? Is there an actual reward for this, or is it just about bragging rights? Wait, do we even get to keep the cup?”

Prefect Percy stuttered for a few moments, before finally pulling himself together. “Well, of course, winning the house cup is a reward in itself—”

“So bragging rights,” Harry interrupted, “got ya. Carry on, please. Sorry for interrupting.”

Prefect Percy shot Harry, then her (why?) a sour look then turned around and resumed walking. “Come along, everyone. We’re almost at Gryffindor Tower.”

“Must you antagonize everyone?” Hermione whispered harshly at Harry.

“I wasn’t,” Harry denied. “And I don’t antagonize everybody. Besides, doesn’t it bother you that we’re being asked to compete for something pointless?”

“It’s not pointless, Harry. It’s meant to motivate students to obey school rules and try harder in their academics. It’s quite ingenious actually.”

“It also creates animosity between the four houses, not to mention puts anyone who loses points at risk of being ostracized by their housemates.”

Hermione groaned in frustration. “Must you be so difficult?”

“How am I being—” Harry started to say, then stopped. “You know what? Let’s just—let’s not fight about it. How about we just agree to disagree?”

Hermione didn’t want to agree to disagree, she wanted him to understand that she was right!

...

On the other hand though, while Harry was undeniably rude, and liked to antagonize people, and had caused her way more trouble in one day than she’d thought was humanly possible, he was sort of her friend. And he was offering an olive branch.

Would it be wrong of her to not accept it?

“Fine,” Hermione agreed grudgingly. “Let’s not fight about it.”

Harry smiled at her, and she saw no trace of mischief in his green eyes.

She smiled back. It was nice.

And as Hedwig somehow managed to ruffle the girl’s hair affectionately with her beak, Hermione admitted to herself that maybe this agreeing to disagree thing wasn’t so bad.

The entrance to Gryffindor Tower was covered by a huge painting of a fat woman.

A talking, singing, fat woman aptly named the Fat Lady.

Hermione had seen moving, magical pictures before, almost all of her books had them, and even some of the portraits they walked past on the way here had moved and said hello, but the Fat Lady was the first that she’d seen that talked and acted like a normal person, instead of just repeating the same actions in an endless loop.

Were the other portraits like this too? Could they too sing and pretend their voices could break glass like the Fat Lady was doing?

Wait, maybe the Fat Lady was on a loop too. Maybe this act was one of the numbers she could perform, and it only looked new to Hermione because she’d never seen it before.

So maybe if the pictures in her books could be likened in complexity to a telephone, then someone like the Fat Lady would be akin to a much more advanced machine like a mainframe.

Oh, magic was so very exciting!

“Caput Draconis,” Prefect Percy repeated more forcefully, and The Fat Lady swung open with a sulky “oh, all right then” to reveal the circular entrance into the Gryffindor common room.

As the other students entered, Harry told The Fat Lady “don’t mind him, I thought your singing was electric.”

“Why, thank you, Potter,” the woman said happily.

The Gryffindor common room was large, round, and homey. It was designed in Gryffindor colours, red and gold, and it had a fireplace that burned a merry orange.

There were some students lounging in the common room, mostly older ones, and their attention focused on the first years as they walked in.

Harry came in beside her. He looked around at the common room, then back at the entrance which had closed behind him and a thoughtful look came over his face.

“Only one exit,” he mused. “Huh. I wonder if anyone else has realised how much of a fire hazard that is.”

Hermione began to roll her eyes when she stopped and actually thought about it.

Harry actually wasn’t wrong.

All the same. “Harry, I’m quite certain Hogwarts castle has all sorts of magical protections against fire already.”

“And I’m quite certain you’d be surprised,” Harry said simply.

One of the sitting students, a girl with a prefect’s badge, stood up and walked over.

Prefect Percy introduced her. “Everyone, this is Loveth Hyperion, a fifth year prefect. She will be showing the girls to their dorms.”

“Come with me, firsties,” the girl, a tall, pencil-necked blonde, said, as she headed for one of the two spiraling staircases connected to the common room.

Hedwig flew off Hermione’s shoulder and perched on Harry’s head as his group walked up the other staircase. The boy eyed the bird quietly, then waved at Hermione. Hermione waved back, laughing lightly at their antics.

Two of the first-year girls walking beside her giggled.

They climbed the stairs until they got to the very top, then Prefect Loveth pushed open a door and led them all in.

The first-year girls’ dorm was round, had one big open window with a balcony, a door that led to the bathrooms, and five four-poster canopy beds with lovely wooden dressers beside them.

The dressers came complete with shelves and full-length mirrors, and, built into the walls, one to a bed, were rather large wardrobes.

The walls were painted a bright red, the curtains a dark red with gold trimmings, and on the floor in the middle of the room, laid a thick, soft carpet with the Gryffindor logo.

In all, the dorm was quite impressive, even if it did have an overabundance of Gryffindor colours.

No matter, Hermione supposed she would get used to it in time.

“Find the bed with your luggage next to it,” Prefect Loveth said, and as the girls moved to obey, added, “welcome to Hogwarts” and left.

Hermione found her singular trunk by the bed closest to the window, and went about arranging her things how she wanted them.

Something odd caught her eye in her mirror; her robe now had a Gryffindor badge on the left breast.

When had that happened? She didn’t think it was during the feast. Hermione fingered the badge and found it stuck fast.

Huh.

She surreptitiously peeked at the other girls, and found that their robes too were now spontaneously sporting Gryffindor badges that they didn’t seem to have noticed.

Curious, she opened the clothes section of her magical trunk, and found, with some surprise and much amazement, that her three spare uniform robes now also had Gryffindor badges.

This was amazing.

Amazing, and a little eerie.

As Hermione marveled over the wonders of magic, two of her new dormmates, the two who had giggled earlier walked over.

They looked relaxed in each other’s presence, like they’d been friends since long before Hogwarts.

“Hi,” the shorter one said, speaking for both. “I’m Lavender, this is my friend Parvati.”

Hermione stood straight and stretched out her hand. “I’m Hermione Granger.”

The girls giggled, and Hermione noticed the other two girls trying, and failing, to act like they weren’t listening.

Hermione started to worry a little bit, and she slowly put her hand back down.

“We know your name, silly,” Lavender said.

“Everybody does,” Parvati added.

Hermione’s worry was slightly eroded by confusion.

“They do?” She asked.

“Of course,” Lavender gushed. “You’re the talk of the school. Who would have thought that Harry Potter would have a girlfriend?”

...

Why her?