Ha! That's what she thought.

Smug lean. She has earned pets now, yes? Yes.

Yes! So many pets for the best owl. And the last bit of corned beef out of the sandwich. 

"Blimey, Bruce. Your owl is scary," Ron says admiringly.

"Her name's Curie! Hagrid got her for me for my birthday! She's great." Who's the best little spiky predator? It's you! Yes you are!

Oooooh delicious meats. She has made good and correct choices.

Snuggle snuggle and then back to nap.

In the wake of the commotion, the girl from earlier shows up again. "Have you been fighting," she says, very disapprovingly.

"Not really. Draco Malfoy was in here being a prat, drew his wand on me, we drew ours back, then he got scared of the owl and ran off." He says this as if being scared of the owl is an act of laughable cowardice he would never have committed himself.

"Curie's nice really. She wouldn't hurt anyone unless they started it. Did you say your name earlier because if you did I forgot, sorry."

Hm. ...Probably it is not against the rules to have your owl exist intimidatingly nearby? She'll have to check.

" - oh! No, I didn't actually. Hi, I'm Hermione Granger, who are you?"

What a reasonable question he nonetheless expects nothing good from answering. "Bruce Potter. Hi. It's nice to meet you."

"Oh my goodness, are you really! I've heard all about you, you know - I only just found out about magic when I got my letter, ever so exciting, isn't it - so I got a few extra books, for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century."

Hiding under the seat will not solve any of his problems so he won't.

"I--haven't read any history stuff. I mostly got magic theory books. I don't know what they'd even write; I didn't do anything interesting. I didn't know about magic until I got my letter either, and it's really amazing!" Maybe they can talk about magic being awesome and not someone deciding to mention him in a book, what even.

Hermione was indeed about three seconds away from emitting a verbal ten-paragraph essay on exactly what the history books have to say, but she is fully derailed by the tantalizing phrase magic theory.

"Well, I think saving the world is very interesting even if you didn't do it on purpose but yeah. What books did you get? I didn't realize until I read my textbooks that they're not very comprehensive really and my parents said it was too long a trip to go back to Diagon Alley again and besides probably they'll be in the Hogwarts library," she says this last phrase with the sort of anticipatory glee that another eleven-year-old might say disney world, "but Waffling keeps putting references in his footnotes and I can't look any of them up and it's been driving me mad since October!"

"Oh wow you had your books since October? I only got mine a month ago. I got On the Nature of Charms and On the Nature of Transfiguration, and Fundamental Spell Structures which is the one Waffling is usually talking about when he cites Henbane, and Principles of Spell Development but that one assumes I've read a bunch of stuff I haven't and also that I know trigonometry so I haven't got very far with it. And some others but those are the theory-centric ones."

"Oh, yes, my birthday is in September and I must say I think I've never been so happy about that as right this very second. Last month, oh no, how have you had time to read hardly anything. Well I've brought my GCSE maths book, you're welcome to borrow it later especially if you'll let me see the spell structures book, I was so curious about the bit in chapter seven where Waffling mentions in passing that there's a fourth fundamental kind of structure after charms and transfigurations and hex - " She goes to plop herself excitedly next to Bruce while she's talking, and nearly trips over Ron. 

"Oi! I'm still here," says Ron as he pulls in his legs. "So are you two just going to recite books at each other all the way to Hogwarts?"

"Um. Yes? If that's okay? Hermione, I will definitely share the spell structures book and I'd love to borrow the maths book, I didn't bring any muggle books and that was probably a mistake."

"You really don't need to study any muggle maths, it's only useful for arithmancy and first years can't even take that."

"Sorry," she says, not sounding enormously sorry, and sits down, narrowly avoiding the pile of candy. "What do you mean only, arithmancy would be plenty of reason, we've got to be prepared in advance obviously. Oh and don't be silly, Bruce, if you had brought more non-magic books we would have strictly fewer unique books to read between us, wouldn't we." She glances back at Ron. "... who are you?"

"Ron Weasley. Hey, how do kids who grew up with muggles get to Diagon Alley anyway? My parents took me but yours wouldn't be able to get there. Do they send a teacher?"

"Supposedly they'll be able to get in fine with me next year now I've got a wand and can do the wall in the Leaky Cauldron. But yes, I met this lady called Professor Sprout, it was just bewildering having her turn up at our house out of the blue with her pointy hat and all but she made Dad's whole garden bloom in the most fantastic colors, it was marvelous. She wasn't much help picking out books but she was very nice. She said some of the professors volunteer for the job and they divide up the Muggle-borns every year to take school shopping, apparently there's not very many of us. Six this year, she told me. Which teacher'd you get, Bruce?"

"I got Hagrid. He was very nice and helpful and got me Curie." 

"Sprout's the herbology teacher, right? Hagrid's not a teacher but he takes care of the grounds and the building and stops people from going in the Forbidden Forest and stuff." Ron has mostly heard of him in the context of 'Fred and George complaining about how hard he is to sneak past'.

"I'm so excited for herbology. Magic plants sound awesome!"