Hagrid cooks them both dinner that night, and most nights over the next month, though every so often he takes them both out to a wizarding restaurant in Diagon Alley, somewhere he likes or somewhere that caught her eye. August passes in relative peace, with smiles and sightseeing.
"Tomorrow's the big day," Hagrid says, the evening of 31 August after they've eaten. "Feeling okay?"
"I guess I wouldn't know what to say if someone asked me what wizards are like," Neville says. "But I've heard muggles like things to be a lot... tidier, and less flashy, than wizards. Do you think that's true?"
"Depends on where you live I guess? And maybe age... Muggle cities are flashier than muggle suburbs, the people in the suburbs all like looking the same and being neat and having perfect houses, and the people in the cities sometimes like being weird... Kid stuff is usually flashier than grown up stuff. And foreign stuff sometimes is really flashy, I think everyone else thinks the British are kinda boring..."
Neville giggles a little. "Grown-up wizard stuff is sometimes differently flashy than kid stuff but I don't think it's any less. Wizards like showing off, or that's what my Gran says anyway."
Grin. "Muggles like to show off, too. Just usually they're showing off money or stuff."
"I think gold is part of what wizards are showing off, when they show off," says Neville. "Sometimes they're showing off being able to do powerful magic, too. But either way they do it by being creative."
Nod. "Muggles also like to show off good taste... Maybe because the really colorful clothes are cheaper? All the expensive stuff's in boring colors."
He giggles again. "I think lots of wizards think of 'good taste' as a boring muggle thing."
She giggles too. "Bet wizards just call it something different." Then she imagines muggles and wizards looking down their noses at each other and giggles more.
She decides to try to explain what's so funny.
"I bet you could introduce a really snobby wizard and muggle to each other and they'd both complain about the other being an uncultured boor," she says between giggles.
Meanwhile:
"Do you know what House you're hoping for?" Hermione asks. "I've read about them all and I think I'd be happy with any of them, though of course I've only read about them, I don't think I have the full perspective on them I'd have if I'd grown up around wizards..."
He hums. "People disagree lots about which House is best, too - my dad's a Ravenclaw, and I guess I wanna be like him? He helps people a lot, and I want to help people. Mom was a Hufflepuff, though, and my birth dad was a Gryffindor... My older brothers are Gryffindors, too, and my sister's a Slytherin, though she's apprenticing with grandma so I don't see her a lot..." He frowns. "Most families have a kinda consistent House, but ours doesn't. Dad says all the Houses were meant to be equal."
"It does sound like the sort of thing of which there's not supposed to be a best," she says, with the knowledgeable tone of someone who has heard that sort of thing from grownups a great deal and has gradually picked up the pattern. "I think I'd like to be in Gryffindor, though, myself, that was the house Dumbledore was in and he sounds a terrific role model from what I've read of him. I think I could see myself in any of them, though."
"You've been striking me as very Ravenclaw. They have their own dorm library, you know."
"Ravenclaw also sounds nice," she says. "And I do like the idea of a dorm library..."
Along trundles the Hogwarts Express, winding through idyllic countryside; and in time it approaches Hogsmeade Station.
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