24 KiB
[RT][FF]Hermione Granger and the Perfectly Reasonable Explanation - Interlude: Tempus Torqueri (parts 1 & 2)
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Author: u/RobinDrew Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE)*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5axnos/rtffhermione_granger_and_the_perfectly_reasonable/
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Score: 44
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Created: 2016-11-03T16:19:30
Post:
Well. In the end, this bit came in at just over 16k words, so I split it in two at a reasonably appropriate point near the middle just for manageability. I'm still posting them simultaneously because a few people are plotzing about "cliffhangers" as it is. :)
Comments:
u/thecommexokid [+9] (3 hours later)
Wow. At the start of the lnterlude, when I first realized what you were up to, I didn't think it seemed a very good idea. But you really surprised me with how well you did these 2 chapters. Very powerfully done.
I don't really buy OH's reasons for not telling Dumbledore everything any more than I did YH's back when she considered the same, but I grudgingly accept that these justifications are necessary for the story you want to tell.
Now I want to read through the whole story again to compare YH and OH's accounts of events! With the amount of time between chapters due to the serialized format—plus all the Obliviations that have taken place in the story—it was hard to remember all the details without a reread.
u/RobinDrew [+3] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (2 days later)
Thanks. :)
OH's justification for not info-dumping on Dumbledore the instant she arrived is actually better than YH's - she was forced in the direction of "protecting capital-H-History" by the specific details of what happened to her, even to the point of acting irrationally. Her excuses about backlashes and Time reasserting itself are rationalizations for a decision made for completely different reasons.
I tried to illustrate that through her thought processes in the Interlude, but it wasn't as steady and explicit a decline as I might have shown had I been formally writing the Interlude in parallel with the rest of the story, as opposed to just jotting down short notes as I went and then connecting the dots afterward, which is what actually happened. Of course, that's probably for the best - if I'd done it the other way, the interlude might have come in closer to 60k than 16k, and I'd still be on chapter 14 right now. :)
u/daydev [+4] (3 days later)
she was forced in the direction of "protecting capital-H-History" by the specific details of what happened to her, even to the point of acting irrationally. Her excuses about backlashes and Time reasserting itself are rationalizations for a decision made for completely different reasons.
See, I missed this. I though OH's concern for timeline integrity was legit, but later it got muddled and confused with the book's concern to preserve a record of history. Maybe that's just my problem, but I think a part of the problem (if a problem exist) may be from the fact that all of the time lore is external (we don't have a preexisting notion from canon how the time works), and YH's independent research seems to confirm the "do not mess with time" sentiment. So there's no reason to suspect foul play when OH is very concerned about it, at most there's perception that the original timeline is already lost (maybe even before OH's arrival), so her plan to do nothing and hope for the best seems stupid.
u/thecommexokid [+3] (2 days later)
Update: I reread the whole story on my laptop with the Interlude open on my phone so I could read all the relevant passages in their proper place. In retrospect I think this would have been necessary even if I had just read the whole thing for the first time in a single sitting, rather than over the course of months. On the one hand, it was very cool to see the sentence-by-sentence specificity with which the Interlude made sense of the main story and vice versa. On the other hand, I don't think it's feasible to have a book where you are essentially required to go back and reread it from the beginning when you hit chapter 18. Since I am not myself Hermione, and don't automatically memorize everything I read, sentences like
Defence class definitely raised some concern, as Quirrell was obviously distracted in a way that suggested he was thinking about the murder.
or
Even as Hermione began to panic in earnest, the girl called to Madam Wainscott, and then, quietly, taunted her.
(2 of many possible examples) lose much of their effectiveness if you aren't reading them directly alongside YH's account of the same events.
I don't have a suggestion here; this Interlude was great and obviously necessary and I don't know how you could possibly avoid this problem, but it is nonetheless a problem.
u/RobinDrew [+1] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (2 days later)
I follow what you mean, and I agree in both senses. I tried a bit of it with full details for context - you can see that in the memory of Ollivanders YH picked up from OH in the Library in Chapter 12, it reads sort of like a "director's commentary" track. Fine for a short bit, but recapping the entire story that way I suspect would've been unbearable for me and most readers. If I were doing it over completely, I might've arranged things so OH's periods of lucidity were shorter, less frequent, and more widely spaced, so a direct rehash would've been less onerous?
As it was, I had hoped that the references were general enough that most readers would at least vaguely recognize the context for most events, and even if they didn't it wouldn't matter too much. But it's obviously impossible for me to judge that accurately, since I wrote everything, and I've re-read the entire story many times for purposes of keeping continuity straight.
u/AugSphere [+4] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 days later)
As it was, I had hoped that the references were general enough that most readers would at least vaguely recognize the context for most events, and even if they didn't it wouldn't matter too much. But it's obviously impossible for me to judge that accurately, since I wrote everything, and I've re-read the entire story many times for purposes of keeping continuity straight.
It worked just fine for me, for what it's worth.
u/AugSphere [+9] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 hours later)
Now there are two point of view characters constantly losing TT_TT. Although, I suppose after this chapter it's really only the one. Still immensely enjoyable in spite of the protagonist losing streak.
Also, congrats to /u/Sailor_Vulcan for correctly predicting OH tanking the spell in the last thread.
u/turbinicarpus [+6] (19 hours later)
I think that we might have reached a turning point, though: as far as I can tell, Pettigrew's Memory Charm ended OH but left YH intact, but not before OH neutered --- and possibly killed --- OTD with a Memory Charm of her own. This means that there are no more long-range time-travelers left in the story, and YH no longer has a passenger taking over when she is asleep or influencing her actions.
If my interpretation is correct, the story so far can be viewed as the exposition, setting up the setting and the characters and their relationships, and the body of the story only begins now or in the next few chapters: the rational!protagonist finally has agency and can reason, plan, and, in fact, win.
u/None [+3] (3 days later)
[deleted]
u/turbinicarpus [+2] (3 days later)
Old Tracey Davis.
u/daydev [+4] (14 hours later)
Such an appropriate choice of . And such a tragic spin on Hermione's canon fixation.
u/RobinDrew [+4] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (23 hours later)
Thanks. :)
I think one of the major impediments to Canon Hermione achieving true greatness was always her lack of ambition. Hermione's story has been bittersweet the entire time, but that's largely because it was really Harry's story.
u/turbinicarpus [+3] (a day later)
There are different kinds of ambition. When we speak of personal ambition and "greatness", we generally speak of what one might term "Slytherin-ambition", the pursuit of recognition, status, power, or just pleasure, stability, and creature comforts for oneself and one's own, while being fairly indifferent to everyone else's well-being. But, one can also speak of "Gryffindor-ambition" to make the world a better place, often whether the world wants it or not. One should not discount its power or dangerousness: we don't know whether Voldemort in his youth was planning to take over the world, but we do know that Dumbledore in his youth was.
Canon Hermione had some Slytherin-ambition --- since she does like to be recognized for her intellect and skills, both by her teachers and by her peers --- but most of hers is Gryffindor-ambition, and she pulls out all the stops to pursue that. However, her pre-DH and challenges, such as they were, were generally not ones where being (even) better at magic would have helped that much in a way that could have been foreseen when decisions how to invest her time were being made. Being better at magic (within reason^1) would not have helped solve the Philosopher's Stone or Chamber of Secrets mysteries, exonerate Buckbeak, improve the house-elves' lot, help Harry prepare for the Triwizard, etc.. If becoming a proverbial magical powerhouse were conducive to her goals, she would have probably invested more effort into that, though it's very open to interpretation how far she'd get.^2
Now, in this fic, her immediate "challenges" include not being murdered by Pettigrew (if he gets away) or anyone who might come after her if Nott spills his blackmail material, and generally survive what is to come, and if she can make the world a better place in process --- great. "Become a magical powerhouse" is very conducive to those goals.
^1 Any problem can be solved with sufficient application of magic. A hypothetical uber!Hermione could have used Legilimency to interrogate second-year Draco, defeated Ginnymort+Basilisk, mind-controlled Draco into backing off on the Buckbeak front, and invented a spell that simply snapped the bonds between house-elves and their masters, for example.
^2 This is rather ironic, considering how much of the fandom pretty much takes it for granted that what Hermione achieved is equal to what she had the potential to achieve (because she always worked so hard), while Harry slacked off, so could be oh-so-much-more-powerful if only he applied himself; when, in actuality, Harry did, in fact, apply himself in the area of Defense because his immediate challenges were often ones that could be addressed by getting better at it (e.g., Quiddich -> general awareness and dexterity, Dementors -> Patronus, Triwizard -> all combat magic), while Hermione spent more time helping others get better at magic than getting better at it herself (which probably did help her master those areas where she helped others, but nothing beyond that).
u/RobinDrew [+3] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (2 days later)
When I speak of ambition here, I'm talking about over-reaching goals that motivate someone to achieve instrumental goals they wouldn't have otherwise. Even in the Gryffindor version, it doesn't have to be about becoming magically powerful (though as you say, that invariably helps), there it's about producing changes to the world that actually move the needle. Since she was naturally inclined towards study, becoming academically successful is not an ambitious goal for her - it's readily achievable, and she's doing it for no better reason than she enjoys it, plus it's school and she's supposed to. That's not a bad thing, but it's not ambitious in the way I mean.
Canon Hermione occasionally had limited ambitions beyond that, but they were generally of the "solve the immediate problem" variety, almost uniformly shared by Harry, and invariably temporary. Even Dumbledore's Army can be read as much as working around a failure of her existing goal of academic success - since DADA was rubbish - than of preparing to fight Voldemort. Finding Horcruxes probably qualifies, but it's an open question if she would have taken up that quest on her own. Even after his return was ostensibly public, she never (that we were shown - admittedly we never had access to her internal monologue) committed herself to learning as much as she could because it would help her oppose Voldemort, she was just helpful for the latter incidentally.
Even helping others academically was never expressed as part of some elective philosophy (because I have been gifted with natural talents, it is my responsibility to help others), but simply the way she was, instinctively. Again, not bad, entirely commendable and admirable even, but not ambitious. Moving the needle in that category would've meant, say, trying to break the curse on the Defence position, lobbying against Snape's damaging teaching methods, trying to get Trelawney replaced with someone who could actually teach at all. Even if her ambition was simply to become Headmistress, to fix things - things that might improve Hogwarts and Magical Britain for decades, not just while she happened to be in the room with someone as a student - that would've been a compass to follow that would've informed her decision-making.
For me, "Greatness" necessarily includes a splash of exceeding one's potential, and Hermione was gifted with a great deal of potential. I suppose she met it in canon (even if Minister of Magic is never really presented as a particularly effective post). But if her ambition was really to make the world a better place, she went about it in a haphazard way that doesn't really befit her particular gifts. Of course in reality most people are like that, I'm certainly no different, particularly as a child - I squandered my own gifts hard. But I, and most people, are not great.
But again, it probably would've been difficult to write that for Hermione and still have it be Harry's story. Or indeed a children's story at all, let alone one remotely as popular. :)
u/turbinicarpus [+2] (2 days later)
The goals-within-goals definition of ambition seems to me to be a pretty contrived one, but even taking that as a premise, if Hermione's overarching ambition was to improve the well-being of the society's most vulnerable members, and the ways in which she wanted to do it were feasible within the system, then, consider the things she had actually done:
- Read Hogwarts, a History --- and as you say, what happens at Hogwarts drives the rest of the society for decades
- Avoid getting into unnecessary conflicts with others students
- Researched magical law
- Researched systems of oppression in the wizarding world
- Graduated from Hogwarts at the top of her class
- Went to work in the DRCMC, working her way up the ranks
- Even things like overwriting her essays could be viewed as getting in extra practice in research and argumentation.
Going above and beyond in, say, mastery of magic, would not have been a good use of time in pursuit of this goal. Perhaps she could have been more proactive developing her social skills and networking, but I wouldn't be surprised if she'd done more of that off-screen than Harry noticed, since she was able to gather quite a large and diverse group for DADA. What more could she have done?
Even if her ambition was simply to become Headmistress, to fix things - things that might improve Hogwarts and Magical Britain for decades, not just while she happened to be in the room with someone as a student - that would've been a compass to follow that would've informed her decision-making.
Minister of Magic (if we take Cursed Child as canon), trumps Headmaster of Hogwarts, especially one of lesser caliber than Dumbledore.
Even in the Gryffindor version, it doesn't have to be about becoming magically powerful (though as you say, that invariably helps),
I didn't quite say that; I said that sufficient application of magic would help, but less-than-sufficient can hurt. For example, suppose that we make Hermione a Dumbledore-grade prodigy who quickly gets noticed as such. Now, imagine that you are a "silent majority" pureblood who, while he or she generally agrees with Voldemort's goals, finds his methods uncouth and dangerous to everyone around. In fact, you had sat out the last insurrection in your vacation home in France, because you knew that time was on your side: that do-gooder Dumbledore is getting on in years, and once he kicks the bucket, things will go back to the way they used to (and ought to) be. You hear whispers of Voldemort's return, and your reaction is to send your house-elf to check that your French villa is in good repair and ready to receive you and your family, just in case. But then, you hear rumors from Hogwarts: the next Dumbledore has arrived, and she's a Muggleborn. All of a sudden, time is no longer on your side, and the very structure of your society is at stake...
Canon Hermione occasionally had limited ambitions beyond that, but they were generally of the "solve the immediate problem" variety, almost uniformly shared by Harry, and invariably temporary. Even Dumbledore's Army can be read as much as working around a failure of her existing goal of academic success - since DADA was rubbish - than of preparing to fight Voldemort.
I think that it would be more accurate to say that she put some of her ambitions on hold in pursuit of the more immediate goals of not dying, not failing her OWLs, etc.. I'd also point out that if she just wanted to make sure she passed her DADA OWLs, she could have just asked to practice with Harry, rather than spending the time and risking the punishment organizing DA.
Finding Horcruxes probably qualifies, but it's an open question if she would have taken up that quest on her own. Even after his return was ostensibly public, she never (that we were shown - admittedly we never had access to her internal monologue) committed herself to learning as much as she could because it would help her oppose Voldemort, she was just helpful for the latter incidentally.
Yeah, she spent too much time pining for Ron and tracking down the identity of the Half-Blood Prince in that book. That, and making all the preparations in the background, like mastering the False Memory Charm, getting together camping supplies and making an undetectable container, and mastering myriad concealment and defense spells. Researching Horcruxes would have to wait until she actually had access to the books.
For me, "Greatness" necessarily includes a splash of exceeding one's potential, and Hermione was gifted with a great deal of potential. I suppose she met it in canon (even if Minister of Magic is never really presented as a particularly effective post).
More accurately, Fudge is never really presented as a particularly effective Minister.
But if her ambition was really to make the world a better place, she went about it in a haphazard way that doesn't really befit her particular gifts.
What do you view as her particular gifts in this respect?
But again, it probably would've been difficult to write that for Hermione and still have it be Harry's story.
It's hard to write smart characters, period. I've never quite forgiven Rowling for not providing enough information in PS to find a unique solution to the Potions Puzzle.
u/daydev [+3] (a day later)
Well, yeah, she got stuck with Ron in the end, that alone is plenty bitter :)
u/turbinicarpus [+2] (a day later)
She didn't "get stuck" with him. Since we're all super-rational here (as if it were "rational" to ignore the fact that she is, in fact, romantically attracted to him and vice versa), consider the purely political advantages of marrying Ron, in the context of canon!Hermione's goals of social reform via Ministry of Magic:
- Among the men close to her in age, the politically ambitious ones are either Slytherins (whose ambition is quite questionable in the first place) or Percy; so she doesn't really have anyone with whom to form a proverbial "power couple", so her husband will have to be someone who would work mainly as a prop.
- Ron is a pureblood, and she takes his name when they marry. That makes her less threatening to the proverbial old guard who, while no Voldemort supporters, likely harbor implicit anti-Muggleborn prejudice. (Think Slughorn.)
- Ron is a war hero, but not in a way that would overshadow her the way Harry would. No matter how illustrious her Ministry career, her achievements are unlikely to ever be as famous and popular as Voldemort's defeat, and Harry would get 80%+ of the credit for that.
- Ron is a known quantity, and we know that she finds him physically attractive. He is also a rather talented wizard, given that he does significantly above average^1 while putting in the least amount of work she lets him get away with; and his whole family is full highly capable and accomplished. I.e., good genes.
So, all things considered, if she wants to be the Minister of Magic in a few decades, Ron is not a bad choice.
^1 Recall that Ron's OWLs were equal to or better than Harry's in every subject area except for DADA.
u/daydev [+3] (a day later)
I'm not disputing your analysis of political advantage (although of course it's all external, there's not even a shade of that kind of thinking in the actual books). My point is, personalitywise Ron sucks. I personally would consider having my better judgment about someone being overridden by sexual attraction to be "getting stuck". And there's plenty of the "better judgment", Ron causing Hermione frustration, and other negativity. Obviously, by authorial fiat, it all worked out and they lived happily even after (or at least 19 years).
u/turbinicarpus [+3] (a day later)
Personalitywise, Hermione's no prize either. :P
u/NukeNoodles [+3] (a day later)
You mean Dearest Ronald???
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a day later)
;)
u/Chevron [+3] there is no antimemetics division (48 minutes later)
Is there any way to get a notification when the story finishes? I read up to wherever it was months ago and love it, but I don't really like reading serialized stories over super long periods of time, so I'd prefer to just get back to it when complete.
u/RobinDrew [+3] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (3 hours later)
u/Chevron [+3] there is no antimemetics division (22 hours later)
Thanks!
Really do like the story, and your writing style is a true pleasure to read.
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (23 hours later)
Thank you! I've been dabbling for years, but HGPRE is by far the largest single (and sole public) writing project I've undertaken - I'm essentially using it as training-wheels before I take the leap and finally try an original novel. :)
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (a minute later)
- Official Typo/Britpick Thread, if you are so inclined, helps if they're all in one place.