Chapter 5 1/2

AN wrote 4k words, so I'll be splitting it into 2 chapters. Last chapter before Hogwarts officially starts, but I wanted to show some other things Alex has been up to. But I didn't want Alex monologuing, so it's a different POV again, and through convos.

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- POV Change -

Hermione Granger was excited to say the least. Yes she had enjoyed the weeks of vacation with her parents, but she could finally go back to Hogwarts and continue to learn magic. She loved Magic! Who wouldn't, and she loved Hogwarts as well, especially the Library. Even after the events of last year, with the troll and the third floor debacle, she couldn't wait to get on the train to Hogwarts.

"Bye mum! Bye dad! I see Ron and Harry getting on the train, I'm going to go join them" she waved to her parents, and started rushing to the two.

(A/N - they got to the station early because of Ginny's improved friendship with Luna and Alex, so dobby didn't have a chance to separate and lock Harry and Ron out of the station.)

"Hey Harry, hey Ron. How are you two? Aren't you excited for another year of Hogwarts? I hear Gilderoy Lockhart will be teaching DADA this year. I can't wait to meet him"

"We know hermione, we were there when he decided to pull Harry into a photoshoot and announced it in front of the papers"

"Yeah, I've never felt more awkward than that in my entire life! I didn't even know the guy. Anyway let's go find a compartment"

"Actually Harry, let's go find Ginny first. Mum wanted me to check up on her"

"Can't you do that on your own Ron? Me and Harry can go look for an empty compartment whilst you do that"

"umm the thing is, well, uh Alex will probably be there and I don't want to be there alone. Why don't you two come with me, you'll love her too hermione, she's a nerd just like you"

"Who's Alex?"

"It's one of Ginny's friends. I met her whilst shopping the other day, and Ron seems to be terrified of her. You still haven't told me why mate?"

"After what she did to Fred and George, she's a monster. You'll have to ask them, even they're terrified of her and won't even think of pranking her" Ron said, slightly shivering.

Harry and Hermione shared a look and then shrugged, "Fine let's go you big baby. We saw a cerberus last year, how scary could a first year be?" Hermione said walking past the two.

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"Oh for Merlin's sake Ron, just open the door" Hermione said, Ron had been staring at the door for the last minute. They'd finally tracked the trio down, after asking around the whole first year carriage.

Harry too seems to have had enough, and just pushed past Ron and opened the door. Hermione didn't know what to expect with how terrified Ron seemed to be of her, but in hindsight it should've been obvious that all they'd see are 3 first year girls.

One one side was Ginny Wesley, that she had met briefly, and even she hadn't the tell-tale ginger hair of the Weasleys made it who it was. Opposite her sat a cute blond, with silver-blue eyes, slightly leaning on another girl with red hair. Distinctly different from the Weasleys orange, and stripes of blue highlights peeking out. She too had bluish eyes, but as opposed to the blond she had sky blue eyes. Hermione wasn't sure which one was Alex, and who the other girl was.

"Hello, I'm Hermione Granger, second year. Ron and Harry's friend! Ron's mum wanted him to check up on Ginny before we found our own compartment"

"Hermione, you didn't have to tell them that"

*Chuckles*"Hey Hermione, I'm Alex. This is Luna Lovegood and you probably already know Ginny. All first years"

Well she doesn't seem too bad, Hermione thought. "Are you looking forward to Hogwarts? What house do you think you'll be, and what subjects are you looking forward to?"

"I really don't care about the houses, but the subjects? Charms, transfiguration, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes and Potions if Snape is agreeable"

"Ummm, I'm pretty sure two of them you can't do until third year" Harry replied to her

"Like that'll stop Alex" Ginny replied

"Yeah, if she wants something she'd get it. But she's more interested in talking with the professors and melting their brains, than what they normally teach. She's probably already read through the course material"

'She's read up to at least third year? But does she understand it or what?' Hermione thought.

"If you've already read ahead, why do you want to talk with professors then?"

"Well the professors can teach me things not in the books. Books are great for recording information and passing it on, but if you want innovation and new ideas - then that happens in a person's mind. And I need as much innovation as they can spare"

"Why's that then?"

Alex smiles and looks at golden trio, and replies "To destroy magic"

'WHAT!? IS SHE CRAZY? Why would you want to destroy magic, its magic!' Hermione thinks, having an internal panic attack. She looks at her other two friends, and yes she isn't the only one who heard that. They both have confused and panicked faces as well. Ginny on the other hand just has a look that says 'I expected something as ridiculous as that'. Meanwhile Luna seems like she can barely hold in a laugh at all their faces.

"Oh your faces! Don't worry Alex doesn't mean that. What she means is she wants to create her own magic system, she finds the current one too restrictive. Said something about using mundane computers to assist her in real-time. I don't know how she'll do that though, from what she's told me they're big and bulky, and really slow"

"I told you Luna, I'm going to have to make my own that also works with magic. If I can make it fast and small enough, then I can make spells to do whatever I want, whenever I want"

Hermione was flabbergasted, a first year talking about reinventing magic as they know it, and using muggle technology to do so. Hermione decided she needed to find out more about this girl 'I doubt she'd be willing to share much, I barely know her, and Ron won't be any help'

"Well it's been nice meeting you, but we have to go find our own compartment"

She could see the relief on Ron's face when she said that, shaking her head she turns and leaves after a flurry of goodbyes from all in the compartment.

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"Hey Hermione, this is the second empty compartment we've walked past"

"We aren't going into an empty compartment Ron, we're going to find Fred and George. I want find out more about Alex, since clearly you won't tell us anything"

"Why would you want that? Harry tell her"

"I actually want to find out more as well, so let's go. And you're coming with us"

"Agh fine"

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"Hey Fred, George! Or is it George and Fred?" Harry says greeting the prankster duo

"Well if it isn't Harrykins,Ronnykins…"

".. and the smartest witch of the generation!"

"What can us two humble. "

".. pranksters do for the Golden Trio"

"Do you require.."

".. Our pranking services?"

"We don't charge much and..

".. and we have all the contraband you could want.. "

"...from Zonko's joke shop, or do you.. "

"..want something more custom?"

"Well we were hoping you could tell us more about Ginny's friend Alex and why Ron is so terrified of her?"

"Oh. I guess we can do that, let's go inside so we can talk in private, this is going to take long" Forge replies, and opens the door.

"There's lots we can tell you about her, where to start" Gred muses

"Why'd you two start talking normally?"

"Alex calls is a condition response, she doesn't like it when they talk in twin speech" Ron replies.

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"Well to start off with, you never underestimate Alex. Granger, I know everyone calls you the smartest witch of the generation but…"

"... But she's a genius like no other, and that is not an exaggeration. How her mind works is a mystery, but she can make some adult wizards look like they're just starting Hogwarts."

"Not to brag or anything, but we're probably some of the smartest students in Hogwarts, we need to be for all we get up to and to make new prank spells"

"What we think of, and take months to perfect and prepare? She can do that in an afternoon. She is scary smart. We could tell you so many stories of her"

"Why don't you start with why you both are terrified of her?" Hermione interrupts.

"OK, well to start with Alex and Luna are really close, Alex made friends with Luna in a muggle school. Ginny was Luna's friend from before, but Alex and Luna became friends really fast."

"Eventually Ginny and Alex were introduced, and they also developed a friendship. So the 3 would have play dates, or hang out at each other's houses etc. One of those times they were at the Burrow"

"This was Christmas Break of when we were in our second year I think" Forge muses at the trio "Any way, being the pranksters we are, we thought we would prank the 3"

"Now Ginny is used to us pranking her, and Alex doesn't really care she would normally laugh it off. But we made the mistake of pranking Luna. Can't remember what the prank was, but we knew we made a mistake"

"How so?" Harry asked

"We made Luna cry. Alex is really protective of Luna and let me tell you she was furious"

"What did she do?" Hermione interrupts.

"Well, she grabbed our prank box filled with dung bombs, fart potions and what not and"

"proceeded to use all of them on us. We tried running away, dodging but whatever we tried SHE. NEVER. MISSED ONCE."

"Yeah, we tried running in opposite directions but would just throw two at a time, and always hit us, no matter how far we were. We thought she was using some sort of reverse summoning charm or something"

"No, she was just physically throwing them. It continued for 30 minutes, and we were covered in all manner of prank potions and items"

"Well that doesn't sound bad" Hermione replies to the two, 'sure it's kind of impressive, but that can't be all'

"That's not the end of it. Alex then decided she wanted to see what we were learning at Hogwarts"

"Yep, she told us to take our wands out and fire spells at her. Since the Burrow is a magical household we could do it"

"But she would've what, 9? She wouldn't even have a wand" Hermione interrupted

"Yeah, we pointed it out to her, she'd never done any magic as far as we were aware

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"And?" Harry asked

"Well, she said she wouldn't be using magic and won't be needing it"

"What!?" Hermione exclaimed

"Yeah, so naturally we were reluctant. So we just fired some low powered stinging hexes at her. And she just moved out the way from all of them" Gred continued

"She decided we weren't serious enough, so she grabbed pebbles of the ground and started hitting us with them"

"We decided to start using faster and more powerful spells, even using prank spells the best we could"

"Sure we were only second years, but there were two of us and she was only nine without magic. We should've had an easier time"

"She just continued running circles around us and pelting us with pebbles. She actually hit both of us on our non-wand hand, twice at the same spot. Enough to hurt you know, she could've ended it whenever she wanted but she wanted to extend our...um..lesson"

"And to add insult to injury, she managed to somehow get us to hit each other with stinging hexes."

"Why is that an insult?" Hermione asked with a look of confusion, that was mirrored by Harry

"Because we're magic twins. We have a bond, we know to an extent what the other is thinking. That's why we can do twin speech, and why we're such good quidditch players-we know what the other is going to do and coordinate in an instance without communication.

"It's the same for a duel, we know what spells the other is going to use, when it's going to be used and where its being shot"

"And she managed to trick us into hitting each other with stinging hexes multiple times, and ONLY stinging hexes. So she knew what she was doing, and could've made us hit each other with more powerful spells that could take someone out, but she didn't"

"And then she stopped. Told us that's enough and that we'd strain our magical cores because it was rock bottom if we continued"

"and she was right, we passed out soon after. We didn't even notice our magic running low, and here she was keeping track of it for us somehow. And she was just standing there unfazed, like she didn't just spend half an hour sprinting around."

"Wow, but that still doesn't tell us why she is a genius?" Harry said, 'it is impressive though, I remember trying to run away from Dudley, and I would always get tired and I barely ran for 10 minutes. I probably wouldn't be able to match her stamina now'

"Tell her about the Quidditch, then maybe he'll understand" Ron spoke up "He's a seeker, tell him how unmatched he would be"