Ron is torn between sibling rivalry and sibling loyalty and ends up on "As long as you still come to watch the Quidditch games."

Hermione has, of course, seen the word 'Quidditch' before, having read several history books, and has been able to detect from context that it is a sport played on brooms, but this is where her current level of knowledge ends.

She does not care about sports. At all. But she should... probably... know this? For cultural context?

Resigned internal sigh.

" ... what exactly is Quidditch, anyway?"

Quidditch monologue take two, now with 150% more broom performance metrics! 

Bruce takes this opportunity to put away more candy (in both his face and his pockets) while Hermione is hopefully distracted. It's definitely rude to share with Ron and not with her, but he had mentally tagged this half of the food as His and therefore voluntarily giving up any of it is Inconceivable, so.

Fortunately, Hermione, due to who she is as a person, has not actually noticed the presence of candy.

(She is blissfully and completely unaware of both (1) the concept that food might not be trivially available when you remember to want it and (2) the fact that, like all wizards, her body automatically burns magic for sustenance when it runs out of calories.)

Aside from a few totally irresistable countermonologue tangents (did you know! according to Hogwarts, A History, the House teams were formed during the pre-Statute wars because the teachers noticed that sanctioned pickup games were reducing the rate at which students tried to murder each other, which apparently in the 1600s was really high! can you imagine!), Hermione does not stop Ron monologuing until she notices the sun going down and realizes that he, unlike her and Bruce, is not wearing his robes yet, and the sun is going down. "Hey, shouldn't you put your uniform on? We're almost there I think."

"Yeah, it shouldn't be long now." He starts pulling his robes on over his muggle clothes; they don't fit him as well as the others' do. "Are you excited for the Sorting? Fred and George said you have to wrestle a troll but they were totally making that up. Probably. I mean, there must be dozens of us, right, how many trolls could they even have."

Oh no. Crisis.

Hermione, you see, knows exactly what the Sorting actually is: Hogwarts, A History explains both the Sorting Hat and the tradition about not telling kids what it is before they get there (the authors, evidently, confidently expecting that no eleven-year-old would read it cover-to-cover before even arriving, which to be fair is an accurate expectation in nearly all non-Hermione-Granger circumstances). Obviously, she is not supposed to spill.

However, following the rule would require that she not volunteer that she knows the answer.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaa.

"Yes I am really excited!!!!" Hermione vibrates slightly in her seat and, possibly out of sheer inability to not volunteer any facts, adds, "Exactly forty of us this year which is three and a third dozens so definitely multiple dozens yes. ... They definitely made that up."

Bruce wonders if that's a smaller year than usual because of all the everything that was apparently going on the year they were born but no way is he bringing that up. 

"I think it would be cool if we all three ended up in the same house," he ventures.

"Yeah it would! My whole family's been Gryffindors and it's the best one."

"Oh, yes, by far," nodnod, "Headmaster Dumbledore was a Gryffindor too."

"Hagrid said my parents were both Gryffindors."

"Seems like it's settled then. Assuming it's something you can steer at all."

It doesn't take much longer after that for the train to come to a stop and blow a single long blast on its whistle. The sun is low in the sky and the trees around them are indistinct and gilded; there's no sign of a school building yet.

Bruce shuts the door of Curie's cage; she's too asleep to notice. "Are we supposed to bring our things someplace?" He peers out the window to see if there's a developing consensus on where to go next.

Oh good, that's not Traditionally A Secret. "We're supposed to leave them here, there's a spell that puts all our stuff in our dorms," volunteers Hermione. "Hogwarts, A History doesn't explain how it knows whose stuff is whose though, I can't wait to find out how that works."

As the students swarm off the train en masse, a familiar voice booms above the crowd: "FIRS' YEARS! FIRS' YEARS OVER HERE!"

"Thanks!" Bruce grins at Hermione, then exits the train to join the accumulating crowd and grin at Hagrid.

Onward! There's gonna be a castle and a feast and stuff! 

But first, there will be boats! 

As Hagrid leads the gaggle of first-years down the hill away from the open air Hogsmeade train platform and the rest of the student body, they come into view: little four-seat wooden things, devoid of oar or sail, bobbing like a flock of unusually chill geese at the edge of an enormous lake. In the moonlight, the water looks almost black.

Hagrid pauses briefly to beam back - "Alright there, Bruce!" - before chivvying them along, counting heads. "Here we are! Four to a boat, go on!" 

Ron grabs a boat and gestures to Bruce and Hermione to get in; they're joined a moment later by a round-faced boy who seems to have recognized Hermione.

Boat ride! It's pretty neat except for how it wobbles when any of the four of them move.

The boats carry them all - Hagrid takes up a whole one himself - across the water in uncanny silent synchrony, propelled by apparently nothing.

Soon, across the fields between the water and the next highland rise, they can soon see the looming shape of what can only be Hogwarts Castle, its great stone towers alight with the warm orange of torchfire. To the modern eye, it feels as though it is a structure displaced wildly out of its own time: It is not a palace but a fortress, of the kind history outgrew centuries ago - the design sensibilities of soldiers and blacksmiths ten centuries dead are stamped into every inch of its defensive stonework, it cannot be mistaken for anything but ancient - and yet it shines with the polished precision of something newly made, untouched and unworn by the passage of years. The sheer power of this master-craft, the work of the lifetimes together of more wizards than yet live today in England, hangs so warm and tangible around it that even a young wizard who knows nothing else yet of magic can, if they listen carefully to their senses, physically feel it in the air.

You get used to it, of course. Everyone does. But there is a reason that the boat ride is a tradition, too, and it is this: for a people that spends the whole rest of their lives hiding in the margins of a civilization that is not allowed to know they exist, this one place is sacred. You can only have it once, that very first touch on your skin of ancestral home and shared hearth. You are welcome here. You belong here. Elsewhere you must be careful always, but here, here you are safe, say the whisper of a thousand thousand first-footsteps on the shore. (War has come here, yes, but witch-hunts do not, and never have, and never will.)

It's amazing. It's just like they said it was going to be, except they were also right when they said no amount of excitement would make it disappointing. He's going to have an awesome time.