Word count: 372

Written for:

Musical Chairs Competition - Prompt: muggle!Hermione AU: must focus on the magical world without her presence, not what she is doing as a muggle.

Outside Looking In

Hermione Granger threw her paperback across the room, making a sickening smacking sound as it landed. The spine threatened to tear in two - not a surprising event, considering the hundreds of times she'd read it and her resistance to taping it up. She hesitated, then clambered over the mound of books on her carpet to pick it up.

Her act of terrorism towards an innocent book perfectly expressed how the world seemed to be treating itself. Watching the news with her parents, Hermione had seen for herself how London was going to hell.

Wizards, by definition, were impossible. A brief Google search had led her to the definition that proved her point:

n. One who practices magic; a sorcerer or magician.
n. A skilled or clever person: a wizard at math.
n. Archaic A sage.

She could eliminate the second option - that was purely colloquial - but the third proved that the idea of wizards was beyond out-of-date, and the first confirmed what she already knew: wizards were supposed to have magic. Well, if there was somehow magic floating around for the taking, why hadn't the government used it to get rid of this Voldemort guy?

She had grown up with the knowledge that someone, or something, was out there. Some force was waiting, lurking, preparing for the right time to strike. She just assumed it was natural superstition.

And then, that morning, she had been greeted with the truth: a boy named Harry Potter - a wizard - was dead, because he had dared to challenge the man Voldemort. He was studying alchemy, leading the tabloids to scream about 'one man's quest for immortal life...'

Hermione was detached from the idea of magic, of magicians, but for the first time in her life she wanted to be a part of it. There was nothing a mousy, bossy eleven-year old girl could do to save the world on a normal day. But if she was special like the maybe-real wizards, she could.

Maybe, Hermione fantasized, it was the absence of her in the magical world that caused this disaster.

Then she saw her reflection in the mirror, and remembered that she was just one in billions, nothing special or important.

Maybe the world just sucked.