Muggle-borns getting to Hogwarts, Muggles in Diagon Alley and the Grangers

[Anne]

No: HPFGUIDX 54331

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, jazmyn <jazmyn at p...> wrote:
> 
> 
> "what412name " wrote:
> > 
> > Hi, this is my first post and I was curious about the following, 
as I
> > could not find the answers in the FAQ or lexicon.
> > 
> > Questions on muggle-born wizards/witches like Hermione:
> > 2) How do they get to Diagon Alley or Platform 9 &3/4 (1st year)?
> 
> Likely a rep from the school or some wizard is put in charge or 
asked to
> look for these students and help out.
> Harry had Hagrid to help him, after all. I'm sure Hermione had help 
as
> well in her first time after getting her 'letter'.
>

Anne U:
Sorry to bring back this question from *3 months* ago (Christmas, to 
be exact) but I'm re-reading CoS to my daughter and she and I both 
got to wondering about this. I can easily understand Hagrid mentoring 
Harry on getting ready to attend Hogwarts; Hagrid brought Harry from 
Godric's Hollow to Privet Drive as a baby, and then rescued him from 
the Dursleys on his 11th birthday. However, nobody *official* from 
Hogwarts showed Harry how to get onto Platform 9 3/4 at the start of 
first year; Hagrid had already disappeared (or disapparated) by then, 
so Harry was really quite lucky to see the Weasleys rushing the 
gateway (of course that "chance encounter" was the start of Harry & 
Ron's friendship). Now I'm wondering who would have been Hermione's 
mentor (Professor McGonagall?) or Seamus Finnegan's (to give two 
immediate examples). I'm also wondering how Hermione's parents got 
into Diagon Alley with her to go to Gringotts and to buy books at 
Flourish and Blotts, and how Hermione's parents might have felt, 
standing there in F&B in the midst of all these wizards (especially 
with Lucius "Mr. Pureblood" Malfoy and Arthur "Mugglelover" Weasley 
tussling right under their noses). 

We know a lot about Harry's childhood and his "de facto parents," the 
Dursleys, and how Harry grew up, and a reasonable amount about Molly 
and Arthur Weasley - at least enough to have an idea of how Ron grew 
up, but we still know next to nothing about how Hermione got to be 
Hermione and what her family thinks about all this Wizarding stuff. I 
truly hope that JKR will tell us much more about Hermione's family in 
OoP. To me that's a gap that really needs to be filled.

Anne U
(Hermione fan obsessing about weird details yet again)