A/N: So, As I promised, here is the first outtake of Barriers. I wanted to include this shortly after Mr. Granger's comment about preparing Hermione for 'the real world,' but decided it just broke up whatever small semblance of flow the story had.

I'm going to say now, it may not make sense. I did a quick proofread, but there are most-likely unfinished or unexplored thoughts along with some good ole subject-verb confusion and a family of other things that I would probably like to edit out, had I decided to hop on this thought-plot train.

So, this is a small part of Barriers—it originally followed a longer tirade about the concept of the real world. No, I'm not talking about that crap TV show. Although I could do another tirade just on that... Honestly though. I think 'til you're forty, people will be calling you kid and telling you about the Real World. I am not yet at the wise young age of forty, so maybe someone can help me out with this, but the way I see it, people always live in the Real World. (Unless you're delusional like me and attempt to escape it by living in a created world where good always wins and life comes out like you planned.) :coughcough: I mean, I pay my own bills & whatnot, but I don't think the world is more real to me now than it was when I was six and buying plastic fruit and cups of goldfish from the make-believe store. Anyway, tirade over.

Building Barriers: The Real World

The Real World. The Real World. The words chanted endlessly in her head.

Hermione's inner voice scoffed neatly. I mean, who made this up?

Sure, she reasoned, while you are under their care, parents pay for you & generally attempt to "shelter" you from all evil. Alas, my argument is that this doesn't work, because we are always living in the real world. Example 1: A toddler doesn't pay bills, but his toys are stolen by a playmate. The toddler retaliates and is punished while the playmate is rewarded with a toy...

Sounds like the real world to me.

Hermione spotted herself in her small oval mirror and was startled to find that she'd begun talking aloud. She turned away, disgusted and excited to see her flushed face and stand-on-end hair. She only wished she would have spoken this all aloud-in front of her father.

Her face fell.

I'm a coward.

And she wondered how she could have ever gotten into Gryffindor.

But there's no going back. It was too late. As much as she wanted to cross over the wall, it was too high. How?

And she found her mother's "Unfaltering" support nauseating. She didn't want it. She felt sick with her body. Sick of everything. And all thought left her mind, leaving it barren and empty. She was in uncharted waters now. And she was drowning, with no one around to hear her cries for help. The people on the other side remained completely oblivious to them. They had absolutely no idea. NO IDEA. NO IDEA

Her mother assumed just because she liked it, that Hermione did too. Hermione had being a witch to save her from becoming a dentist, but the little things—they were still there. Freud said that girls grew up and became their mothers, and they sought out mates who remind them of their fathers, but Hermione would rather die.

Maybe this was somewhat extreme, but she thought Freud made up the majority of his "findings" anyway. He wasn't even a psychologist, only a psychoanalyst—a crock made up for the rich to lament about their "terrible" lives. She would not become her mother.

She had to admit, she found her father's love of order reassuring, but at the same time, it bothered her. Why, she could not say. Four years ago, nothing made her happier. She carried that order into her own life. But then, four years ago, thingshappened. Things that made order irrelevant. Things that, in fact, challenged the concept of order. And now, with the return of Voldemort, chaos would surely ensue in the world, especially the Wizarding world—her world.

She wished Voldemort would have died thirteen years ago. Then things would be wonderful. But she knew that it was no use. It was impossible. And yet somehow she knew now was the way things must be. How Hermione knew, she could not say, but some small, hidden part of her knew, and the part of the world—the Muggle world—the world of her parents—that remained orderly and 'normal' felt fake and stifling.