Hermione had taken a train into London on the pretext of buying schoolbooks. Her parents had relaxed their stern watchfulness when Hermione pretended tearful apology and assured them that they were completely right and that she'd find a good respectable Muggle boarding school to go to; she'd never actually needed to lie to her parents before and was a little bit horrified at how easy it turned out to be. A week after her summary removal from Hogwarts, she had convinced them to take her to Diagon Alley "to change back our wizarding money, since we won't need it anymore", and tested her theory that she could use magic in Diagon Alley because there was so much magic there already. This had turned out to be, as far as she could tell, true.