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Hermione flew through the written portion of the Charms examination. She had firmly limited herself to answering the questions that were asked, without the great deal of superfluous information she'd added during her O.W.L. examinations simply to demonstrate what she knew. That did not mean she hadn't included any unasked for information. On the contrary, Hermione Granger had faced her biggest fear that morning by including relevant suppositions of her own that might even be wrong. Not that she thought they were, but the theories were, as far as she knew, completely her own. They made sense to her and her own experiments seemed to bear it out. Even so, Hermione knew she was taking a risk including information that suggested modification or a better variation on the textbook method.
One of the hardest lessons Hermione had learned during the time they spent on their hunt for the Horcruxes was that everything important about magic was not written in books. That had been on top of the already hard lesson learned in her Sixth Year that their textbooks, despite having Ministry approved spells and methods, did not always tell them best way to brew a potion or cast a spell. Hermione kept to herself how disappointed she was in herself for not understanding what Snape had been trying to teach her all long with his snide, but accurate, comments about her reciting textbook answers. He'd been trying to force her out of the books and into thinking for herself. If she'd been less defensive and sensitive to criticism from her teachers and more open to taking what was said constructively, she'd have been a much bigger help to Harry when he was counting on her.
Hermione Granger loathed being wrong. More than almost anything else in the world, she hated being wrong. She hated making mistakes. She could not stomach failing. The first boggart she'd ever encountered had attacked her fear of failure through her grades. She had a pretty good idea that her boggart would have evolved shape in the past two years, but failure was still an obstacle and fear.
Teaching herself not to fear her own failures and to open herself up to the possibilities of being wrong in order to become, not just a better person, but a better witch, was incredibly difficult. Hermione Granger knew a great deal. She knew spells and she knew theory. She could still recite from memory and she was still a voracious reader, gobbling up books on magic like they were so many Bertie Bott's. What she was trying to do now, was teach herself to let go of the surety of what she knew, and use it to decide for herself what was worth knowing. Hermione was trying to teach herself how to analyze what she learned and find ways to do it better on her own. She had always been creative in finding solutions in books. Now, she was attempting to be creative in using what she knew to find her own unique solutions and create her own magic.
She wondered briefly if a lack of creativity in magic might not be the true weakness of the Muggle-borns, but Hermione had swiftly come to the conclusion that it was only her own weakness. Even before Hogwarts, Hermione had been reluctant to experiment, preferring to follow directions and do a thing properly, which naturally meant in the officially proscribed manner. She had seen her perfectionism as a great strength. It was a hard lesson to learn that perfection was not the same as excellence. Perfectionism was as much a weakness as a strength. It held her back. It kept her tied to what was already known instead of allowing her to journey through the portals of discovery to find new ways of working magic and new ways of seeing things.
Hermione rounded the corner into the corridor where she'd first caught sight of him after returning to Hogwarts to complete her education. She hadn't even really considered where she'd been heading until she heard the familiar drawl ask, "Well, Miss Granger?"
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is the illusion of knowledge, Sir." Hermione nodded respectfully to the most challenging professor she had ever had. She'd apologized during that first meeting between student and roaming portrait for not understanding sooner what he had tried to impart. He waved her off telling her that he did not need apologies and if she wished to atone for her stupidity, she should simply make the most of the lesson, and suggested she start by refraining from parroting back answers instead of seeking her own.
"Perhaps you may, with more practice, become something less of a dunderhead after all, Miss Granger."