Disclaimer: [Insert witty comment here] Harry Potter doesn't belong to me
Written for the Awesome Ladies' ficathon on livejournal, to the prompt: Hermione Granger, gives them hell
The Magical World, Hermione Granger decides sometime in her third year, is a big, fat lie. Actually, she's known that since the first few months of her first year, but she can't admit it, not to herself.
It seduces you with its pretty little lies, all wrapped up in the idea of magic - that you're special and that there's this whole world out there just waiting to accept you.
Professer McGonagall never mentioned the prejudice. At first, she just thinks it's a few ignorant people, that she can overcome all that and flower and bloom in the new world she has joined.
She learns differently.
She doesn't really think about it until her third year, when she begins researching the law to help Hagrid and Buckbeak. Instead, she gets sidetracked when her eye catches some law about Muggleborns. It doesn't really matter what the law is about because it sends her on a research frenzy that takes her until her sixth year to understand fully. What she finds horrifies her.
Muggleborns have little rights in the Wizarding world. Maybe, if she's lucky and she marries well (but really, what noble Pureblood will want to marry a Muggleborn? James Potter was the exception, not the norm.), she'll be able to secure a decent job in the MInistry. But that's only if her husband will allow her to work.
Hermione hates the Wizarding world in that moment. Hates that her excitement at being told she's special because she has magic has caused her to all but abandon her Muggle parents. And for what? Pipe dreams and pretty little lies. The Wizarding world won't let her be what she wants.
She sits down and thinks after she discovers all this. Her fate is tied to Harry's, has been since he saved her from that troll their first year. The war that's been brewing since Harry returned to the Wizarding world erupted at the end of her fifth year; if Voldemort wins, at best she's dead. She doesn't want to think about what they might do to her before that. But if Harry wins...
Harry is the last of an Ancient house but Muggle-raised and without the prejudices most Wizards - even the Weasleys and Dumbeldore - have. If he wins, with her at his side, then maybe, just maybe they can change things.
And even if the Wizarding world doesn't want to acknowledge her just because of her birth, well... Hermione Granger's determined to show them just what a Muggleborn witch can do. She'll give them hell.