The three of them settled into their snacks and conversation, the countryside sliding past outside the window in shades of green and grey.
Ron did most of the talking, which suited Kevin fine. Pure-blood families grew up breathing this world — the names, the history, the casual background knowledge that Harry and Kevin were both missing in their own ways. Kevin knew the broad shape of the plot. Ron knew what Flobberworms ate and which Quidditch team had won the league in 1987, and right now the latter was more useful.
Kevin was listening, thinking about nothing in particular, when a fat grey rat burst out of Ron's pocket and landed on the seat between them.
"That's Scabbers!" Ron said, with the particular pride of someone who knew his pet wasn't impressive but had decided to be enthusiastic about it anyway. "My rat. He's brilliant."
Kevin looked at Scabbers.
Scabbers looked back at Kevin with small, dark, nervous eyes.
Peter Pettigrew, Kevin thought. In the flesh. Or technically, in the fur.
One of Voldemort's most devoted followers, currently masquerading as a pudgy rodent and living in a twelve-year-old's pocket. The man had been hiding in plain sight for over a decade. He'd be unmasked by Sirius Black and Remus Lupin in third year, and until then there was nothing Kevin could usefully do about it except make sure the rat didn't have a reason to bolt.
"Can I hold him?" Kevin asked.
"Sure, go ahead," Ron said.
Kevin picked Scabbers up and turned him over in his hands with apparent curiosity. He examined the paws — and there it was, on one of the front toes, the telltale missing digit, the absence that would one day prove everything. Kevin filed it away without expression.
Then, because Peter Pettigrew had spent twelve years hiding from consequences, and because Kevin felt that some small accounting was warranted even if it couldn't be the real one yet — he flicked, with two fingers, at Scabbers's underside.
The shriek that came out of the rat was genuinely impressive.
"What did you do?" Ron yelped.
Harry jerked back against the window. Scabbers thrashed in Kevin's grip, all four legs going, absolutely determined to be somewhere else.
Kevin was laughing. He couldn't help it. "Sorry, sorry — I don't know what came over me."
He handed the rat back to Ron, still grinning. Scabbers immediately burrowed into the front of Ron's robes and stayed there, shaking.
"Your rat is extremely healthy," Kevin said, composing himself. "Very lively. Good constitution. You should let him out more often."
Ron, somewhat mollified by the word healthy, nodded. "Yeah, all right."
Harry was looking at Kevin with an expression that suggested he wasn't entirely sure what he'd just witnessed. Kevin shrugged, and the conversation moved on.
They'd been going for perhaps another twenty minutes when the compartment door slid open.
A girl stood in the gap — brown hair that escaped in every direction despite what had clearly been an attempt to manage it, an expression of focused competence, a toad cupped in both hands that she was apparently already returning to someone.
"Has anyone in here lost a toad? One of the other first-years."
"No," said Harry.
"Not us," said Ron.
Kevin looked at her. Hermione Granger. Younger than he'd pictured, somehow, despite knowing exactly how old she was. She had the slightly formal bearing of someone who'd spent more time around adults and books than other children, and the particular brand of confidence that comes from being genuinely the most prepared person in any given room.
She was also, he noted, looking at the three of them the way she looked at most things — with assessment running quietly behind her eyes.
"I haven't seen one," Kevin said. "But magical pets have a way of turning up. I wouldn't worry too much." He glanced at Harry and Ron. "Right?"
She caught her cue without missing a beat — this was someone who processed information quickly — and her eyes moved to Harry.
Then stopped.
"Are you Harry Potter?"
Harry, by this point, had developed the resigned familiarity of a person who had heard this question many times in the past month. He swept his fringe aside to show the lightning bolt scar.
Hermione's expression shifted. Not starstruck exactly — more the look of someone updating a mental file with new confirmed data. She sat down without being invited, which seemed entirely natural to her.
"I'm Hermione Granger. I'm Muggle-born." She said it directly, chin up, as though preemptively defying anyone to make something of it. No one did. "I've read all the course books already, obviously. Some of the supplementary ones too. Have you done much reading, Harry?"
Harry admitted he hadn't.
"I've done some," Kevin said, which was technically accurate and dramatically understated.
Hermione turned to him, something sharpening in her expression. "Which ones?"
"Most of them. Plus whatever I could find on wizarding history and general magical theory. I grew up in a Muggle household — I wanted to understand the world I was coming into."
That landed well. She leaned forward slightly. "That's exactly the right approach. Most Muggle-borns don't think to do that." A pause. "What did you make of A History of Magic? I found Bathilda Bagshot's treatment of the goblin rebellions rather superficial, personally."
"I thought the same thing," Kevin said, which was true — he'd read it and found it frustratingly thin on detail. "She glosses over the economic causes entirely."
Hermione blinked at him. Then smiled — the real kind, not the polite kind. "Yes. Exactly."
Harry and Ron were watching this exchange with nearly identical expressions of vague bewilderment.
"Do you know Reparo?" Kevin asked. "I saw it listed in the basic spellbook but I couldn't find anyone to demonstrate it."
"Of course." She pulled out her wand without hesitation, pointed it at a small crack in the compartment windowsill, and said clearly: "Reparo."
The crack closed. Seamless.
"That's brilliant," Kevin said, with complete sincerity. He'd seen it coming and it was still satisfying to watch.
She glowed. "It's not complicated once you understand the underlying principle. I could teach you, if you'd like. We'll have time at Hogwarts."
"I'd like that very much."
She seemed genuinely pleased — the particular pleasure of someone whose expertise has been both recognised and taken seriously. She gave Harry and Ron a slightly more measured look, reminded everyone that they should probably change into their robes before long, and stood to leave.
"I'll find you both at Hogwarts," she said — to Kevin and Harry specifically. Then she was gone.
Ron looked at Kevin. Harry looked at Kevin.
Kevin spread his hands. "I'm an orphan. No one taught me any of this. I just try to learn where I can."
That closed the topic. Harry and Ron both nodded, dropping it with the instinctive tact of people who understood, on some level, that this wasn't an invitation to push further.
They changed into their robes as the sky outside deepened toward dusk. The train slowed. Through the window, dark hills were resolving into something larger, something that caught what little light remained and threw it back in warm points of gold.
Kevin pulled on his robes, straightened the collar, and looked out at it.
Nearly there.