One of my favorite things about Hermione is how ruthlessly practical she is.  She’s scary because not only is she book smart; she can take in disparate pieces of information and triage the ever loving shit out of that.  Piece X and piece F go together so resolution M.  And her mind is quick enough that she makes those choices in seconds.  Well-informed choices that also combine instinct.   For as much as she’s a bookworm who overthinks things, it’s because she has too much time on her hands to overthink things.  Basically, Hermione is built for war.  She’s built for conflict and strategy.

Does she always make the “right” or the “good” choices?  No.  No, she doesn’t.  She pulls some truly horrific shit, but out of all of the kids, she’s got the ability to see the breadth that the others don’t.  That they shouldn’t.  And for all that she does have the ability to see the true size of the fuckery that is going on, she’s also still a child.  So she fucks up and learns.  And for as horrific as what she did to her parents is - because oh my god - this war is not one they could even comprehend let alone participate in.  And I do think it’s a discredit to Hermione to think that she doesn’t get how awful the thing she did is.  She knows and she did it anyway because above all else, she wanted them alive to a.) hate her or b.) never knew she existed.

Hermione is a General by the end of this.  And the most amazing and horrific thing about that is that she’ll have to deal with the consequences of the choices she made.  She was smart enough to know that, going in.  So the fact that she walked into this, eyes open, with a truly strong grasp of what actually was going to happen, rather than rose glasses, makes her all the more amazing to me.