Work Text:
Life is not set in stone.
Life is subject to change.
Life is something uncontrolled and unpredictable.
Life is something you control.
Hermione had learned that mantra at a young age. It was in every action she took, though she could never really explain what she was thinking of when she made her choices. No, she knew what and why she was doing something, but she couldn't explain to someone why it mattered so much for her to make her own choices, for her to carve her own path.
“If I do this the outcome will change to this.”
“If I learn how to do this it will help when we face this.”
And so on and so forth if you asked Hermione Granger. If you prepared for something, when you faced it, you changed fate. You took control of your life. And what else in life is there to do rather than make your own choices, make your own mistakes, and learn from them and change the outcome of your life.
Hermione was a firm believer in nurture, not nature.
Anything could be changed if one did not like it. Destiny, fate, end-game results. All of them rested in the hands of humanity. And she would do her best to make her life and those of her friends the best they could be.
It was why she hated Divination. Why hand over control to a couple of wet tea leaves? There weren't really shapes in the cup, it as simply the human mind searching for patterns. Pareidolia. Why hand over decisions to the way Mercury sat between the sun and Venus? The planets followed certain courses, dictated by science and physics and the laws of matter. Astronomy not astrology. Why allow fogginess in a crystal ball to fog your mind and show you a general future? It was simply what one expected to see. Self-fulfilled prophecies.
Hermione despised Divination and how it encouraged people to give up control, to let what was coming come and forget all the paths and choices that had lead up to it. Life was about choice and change and the ability to carve your own path. There was nothing like chance involved, or the words of some fraud who thought they could control the path someone walked on simply by saying certain words in certain orders.
Everyone had a choice to make. And that's when she first wrote out her mantra:
Life is not set in stone.
Life is subject to change.
Life is something uncontrolled and unpredictable.
Life is something you control.
In her fifth year she was rattled, again. Everything she had taught herself, had trained herself to believe as true, was rattled to the core.
There was a room in the Department of Mysteries where Unspeakables studied time. They studied the effects on the body, how time could be manipulated. And she understood that. She understood the desire to understand the force that controlled life, really. The force that forced them all to march forward instead of clawing back at the past, desperate to change what had already happened. And she understood that, while it could be manipulated, it could not be changed from the present. The past was the product of choice and decision. The past was not something that could be changed.
Just like the future could not be controlled. It simply went forward, changing as a person changed their mind's, but never controlled. Never dictated. Never forced on to a certain path.
Except, these people of the mind, of the wise choices, didn't seem to see things the same way she did. They had a room dedicated to prophecies, to these foolish people who thought that life, and future, and choice, could be controlled by a few false visions and words spoken in a particular order.
And her friends seemed to fall into this trap. This believe that everything was planned out for them and that no matter what choices they made, the outcome would always be the same. And she struggled, even as she fought Death Eaters and fought for her life and lives of her friends, she struggled against this knowledge that humanity had a desire to simply give up their right to choose, and let this nameless, ridiculous, false force called destiny take over.
And in the end, she still refused to believe that they never had any choice in the ending of their stories. She refused to think there hadn't been another way for Harry to defeat Voldemort, refused to think that there hadn't been a million variables that just happened to line up to work for the prophecy that had dictated her best friend's life for so many years.
Some days she'll sit in her office at the ministry and stare down at the map of Level Nine. She'll outline that paths they took, and she'll outline a room with a thousand shelves. And she'll write over it, in stark letters. Lies. And it'll make her feel a bit better, before she tears up the paper and throws it in the fire, refusing to let anyone see her irrational fear.
The fear that all the choices she had made were for nothing.
The fear that in the end she had no control.
Because Hermione Granger believed in only one thing when it came to the future.
The Future is not set in stone.
The Future is subject to change.
The Future is something uncontrolled and unpredictable.
The Future is something you control.