Hermione Granger first discovers magic among the smells of sticky caramel and buckets of buttered popcorn and treats that sweeten and crowd the air, along with crowds of other five year olds and their mums and dads: her parents take her to a magician show as a child.
She notices the a-bit-too-concealing smoke and the mirrors immediately, but she is a five-year-old, and, like any other five-year-old, she doesn't know why they're there and what they're for, so she ignores them.
It is amazing and lovely and for real: women cut in half but put back together with no harm done, rabbits out of top hats, birds out of sleeves, volunteers from the crowd (usually unwilling adults; the magician never picks any of the children no matter how much they scream and raise their hands) who get hypnotized, and Hermione decides, as her mother once again rescues her bushy hair from the caramel, that when she grows up, she will be a magician. And perhaps a dentist on the side, to please her mum and dad.
Three days later Hermione's cousin and aunt and uncle visit, and Hermione tells Nigel, who is ten and all grown up, in more sophisticated words than most five-year-olds would know, all about the magician and the amazing events and how it was all real and she wanted to do it too,
Nigel is not impressed. In fact, he snorts derisively and smirks. Surely there is something wrong—Hermione knows there is. Surely one should be impressed by the magician she told him about?
"It's not amazing, you arse," Nigel says, sniggering. (Hermione notes that he has used a naughty word—she resolves to tell Aunt Abby about that later, because she knows Nigel isn't allowed to say things like that.) "It's fake. It's stupid."
"What? No, it isn't!" Hermione says, her hair bobbing up and down as she jumps up and down in indignance. She wrinkles her nose and narrows her eyes, glaring at Nigel.
He rolls his eyes, and brushes a few stray hairs (bushy brown, like Hermione's) from his face. "Yes, it is," he repeats.
"Tell me how it's fake, then," Hermione says, giving a small, haughty sniff, for she is curious even at that age about any kind of knowledge, and the knowledge of how the magician does magic qualifies.
So Nigel bends down and he tells her about the "volunteers" ("Plants in the audience who already know what do do," he says as Hermione's eyes widen) and the smoke and confetti and fancy ribbons—they conceal for a reason—and the mirrors that attract your attention to the wrong thing and reflect and distort, and so on and on and on.
By the time he's done (Hermione's suspicious questions slowed him), Aunt Abby and Uncle John are leaving, so Nigel does too, leaving Hermione to think about these revelations.
She's never quite the same about magic and fantasy and fairytales and Father Christmas after that.
--
Hermione knows it's no use believing. She'll find out it's fake, behind all the flamboyance and excitement. She hates magicians and card tricks and legends and fairytales (they're obviously made up) and any books involving magic of any sort, and they are possibly the only books she doesn't read.
There's smoke and mirrors in every single one somewhere, concealing and distorting. And if her mum and dad try to persuade her it's fun, it's nice, it's what she should like, well, why should she believe them? They didn't tell her the magician was fake, did they?
Hermione is an unusually sensible and logical little girl. Magic is not sensible and logical, so why should she be sensible and logical in her rejections of it?
(Sometimes she fancies the twigs she founds in the grass outside her house as wands. Sometimes, when her mum and dad are out, she stuffs a stuffed rabbit inside a bowler—her dad owns no top hats. Shortly after, she will lecture herself on her shameful, childish behavior, even when sometimes she pulls the rabbit out when she swore she never put it in to begin with—of course she did; that's just silly.)
--
When the letter comes, Hermione thinks it's a prank from Nigel and throws it away, while her dad goes into another one of his rants about junk mail.
When Professor McGonagall comes a few days later on what she says is the visit all muggleborns receive to explain, Hermione accepts the concept.
She is an unusually sensible and logical little girl, but she knows when to make exceptions.
(There are also no traces of smoke or mirrors in sight.)
--
There is only one addition to the wizarding world: magic. Therefore, everything else will be as sensible and logical as the muggle world.
It also means that there will still be smoke and mirrors—not actual smoke and mirrors, of course. But they'll be there.
Hermione is an unusually sensible and logical little girl, and she knows when not to make exceptions: most of the time.
A line I wanted to include but couldn't fit in: "Hermione hates Professor Trelawney on sight. She is gaudy and flamboyant and exactly like the magician, and smoke and crystal balls just like mirrors fill the room."
First time writing a really major character. I feel like the essential idea of this isn't original at all, but oh well. I kind of like this.
Alternate titles: Smoke and Mirrors (since it was inspired by the Neil Gaiman book of the same name), Smoke Distortions
I wrote this in late February and promptly forgot about it, then rediscovered it while going through my fanfiction folder.