The school had finally ended. Hermione walked home, the lingering ghost of her headache a dull, distant throb behind her eyes. It was almost gone, but its memory was a stark reminder of her limits.
She found her sanctuary in her room, sliding to the floor with her back against the bed, pulling the enormous stuffed koala into her lap. She nuzzled into its soft, synthetic fur, the simple comfort grounding her. The mundane reality of her day—the boring lessons, the playground noise, the need to act her age—faded away.
Here, in the quiet, she could be herself. Well, as much as I could possibly be with the mask. She thought with a weary sigh.
She held up a hand, and without any real effort, called tothe power within. The familiar, cold fog of indigo and violet swirled intoexistence, its internal lightning pulsing softly. She wasn't testing it, notthis time. She was just… watching it. The sheer, unbelievable reality of it.This power, torn from the pages of fantasy, was hers.
And it made her ask the question that had been hovering inthe background all day. What do I want to do with this? With this power? With this life? What do I do with this second chance?
The first, most obvious answer was the power itself. Itwasn't intoxicating in the way novels depicted, a force that drove men tomadness. It was… empowering. It felt good. The power to alter reality itself onher whims. And she wanted more of it, not for domination, but the potential itrepresented.
She considered the common trope, the risk of corruption. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A human saying, born fromhuman weakness. She dismissed it with casual arrogance.
Corruption was a product of emotional vulnerability—greed,fear, lust for dominance. When one's emotions are a distant, muted echo, likehers were, you operate on different pathways. Logic. Consideration. The pursuitof power wasn't a moral temptation; it was a rational objective.
And beyond that, she realised, that power was the ultimateguarantor of one thing she craved above all else: freedom.
Freedom from threats. Freedom from dependency. Freedom fromthe will of others. Freedom to explore, to research, to simply bewithout constraint. To never again be a victim of circumstance. It was the lifeshe had been denied before, and she would not settle for less this time.
As she realised what she wanted from life, her mind began toformulate the strategic objectives required to achieve it.
First, there was the looming shadow of Hogwarts and the war.She wanted no part of the conflict with that maniac, Voldemort. The weary soulin her wanted no part in another war. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
But the logical mind knew that was a naive position. A worldunder Voldemort's thumb was a cage, not a laboratory. Furthermore, she knew theoriginal timeline. Harry Potter, the lynchpin of the entire conflict, wasdestined to be a brave, reckless, and mediocre boy who would almost certainlyfail without her intervention. He may be magically above average than peers hisage, but he wasn't about to apply himself on his own. His upbringing in anabusive household had made sure off that. And his failure meant her world woulddescend into chaos.
But that didn't mean she would be front-line soldier in thiswar against him. She would be a strategist in her own. She would have to ensureto remove him from the board completely, before he could come back and be athreat. She knew where all the horcruxes were. And while one or two might hersome difficulty, it won't be a big issue for her, once she had absolute powerto crush every resistance in her path.
Still, she was wary. Wary of the prophecy. She didn't knowif it would hinder her efforts to eliminate Voldemort or not.
A direct attempt to remove Voldemort from the board mightnot be possible if the prophecy was a real thing, able to exert tangible forceupon the physical realm she lived in. She frowned as the thought crossedher mind.
Or it may be that the prophecy was nothing, but an interpretationof a possible future seen by Trelawney. And it maybe nothing more than a pieceof self-fulfilling prophecy due to Voldemort's own actions.
Whatever, I'll deal with it whatever happens.
Another thing was the promise she made to herself. Thejourney back home. To see her family once again, to make sure they are fine.And maybe even get some answers from that mysterious man. She had an inkling ofan idea of who he was. His actions, his words, pointed towards what shethought, but all she could do was wonder about his reasons behind all of this.But she didn't want to make it her life's purpose. It was long-term,high-difficulty quest. A loose thread that needed to be seen to before shecould be completely, truly free from her past.
And once she was? Once the threats were gone and the pastwas reconciled? What would she do with her freedom?
The answer came in two parts, two powerful currents from hertwo lives merging into a single, unstoppable river.
First, there was the magic. The thrill she felt wasn't justin understanding it, but in what she could do with it. She had alreadycreated light and form from nothing. That was a breathtaking start, but it wasjust an application. What other applications were possible? Could shemanipulate matter on an atomic level? Could she bend space and time? The "spells"she would learn at Hogwarts would be like children's building blocks comparedto the true potential she felt humming beneath her skin. Her ambition wasn'tjust to be a powerful witch; it was to be the ultimate magical practioner, tomaster the practical application of this fundamental force of the universe.
Then, there was her old dream. The one that had driven herthrough years of study in her past life: quantum research. The desire to lookpast the surface of the world and understand it at the very core – the dance ofparticles and waves that governed all of reality. She had thought that dreamwas lost forever.
But as she sat there, the swirling indigo fog of her magicstill in her palm, she realized it wasn't lost at all. Her two ambitions werethe same.
Why struggle with the clumsy tools of her old world, tryingto glimpse the nature of reality with particle accelerators and complexmathematics, when she now possessed the ultimate instrument? Magic was a forcethat operated at the most fundamental level. To master its applications was toconduct experiments that the greatest minds of her previous world could onlydream of.
And that led to the grandest application of all. If shecould master the manipulation of matter, energy, and space, then the barrierbetween worlds wasn't an immutable wall. It was just another scientificproblem, another system waiting to be understood, engineered, and ultimately,bypassed.
Her final ambition solidified, a perfect synthesis of theman she had been and the girl she now was. She would use the limitlessapplications of magic to pursue the ultimate research project: the multiverse.She didn't need to confirm if it existed or not. Her existence was the veryproof of multiverse's existence.
She would master the applications of magic required to crossthe boundaries between realities. She would travel there, not as an escape, butas the ultimate exploration – the ultimate expression of a soul that refused tobe constrained by laws.
To be truly, absolutely free.