Great Fictional Characters: Hermione Granger

Continuing with the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge 2015

On to H, and my second favourite teenage witch: Hermione Granger.

Hermione is annoyingly brilliant right from the start: one of those girls we all knew at school who made us feel stupid, but never on purpose. By the end of the books, Hermione's true brilliance is revealed: that everything she has, she shares. She completes the perfect triangle of Harry's courage and Ron's humour with her common-sense viewpoint.


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Although Harry is the main character in the novels, Hermione is the one I enjoy reading about the most. She has many talents: she's intelligent, an excellent witch and scholar,  uncompromisingly loyal, and brimming with justice and integrity, yet she also has flaws, as every good three dimensional character should. She drives her classmates and even her friends to distraction with her determination to follow the rules and succeed academically (though they're quick to take advantage of her book-smarts) and she has a tendency to be rather blunt. She also has a temper.

“Twitchy little ferret, aren’t you Malfoy?”

I like that, though. No one is perfect, no matter how hard they try to be and angry Hermione is a BAMF. In the later books in particular, when the boys are flagging and aimless, she whips them into shape and sends them off with a flea in their ears, because sitting around moping is not going to get the job done.

But she's not always so tough. Her friendship with Harry and Ron softens her and shows her there's more to life than "books and cleverness" and brings out in her a naughty and fun-loving side, even as she's dealing with unimaginable danger and tragedy. And deal with it she does, in spectacular fashion! The boys wouldn't have got very far without her problem-solving abilities and phenomenal memory for spells and random pieces of information (which always come in useful), not to mention how she can use her skills with confidence in tight situations. Through Harry and Ron's influence, she also develops a wicked sense of humour and her cutting put-downs are some of the best I've read.

 

“Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have.”

Although I was a grown-up (chronologically, if not emotionally) when I read the novels, Hermione still inspired me. I like to think that she is still inspiring young girls to embrace their natures and stand up for what they value. She's an anti-damsel, and all the more awesome for it.