On Hermione

Several months ago(just before Halloween) I went on a hike with my brother and his friends. On this hike, as I often do when with my brother and his friends, I adopted what I like to call "the cool older brother act". This act was working like a charm and the kids obviously felt comfortable talking to me. One of the kids(who, ironically, reminded me strongly of myself when I was younger) asked me who my favorite character in Harry Potter was. Now, for those of you who do not know, I am a huge huge harry potter fan. I replied that I liked various characters including Ginny and Hermione.

Now this simple statement sparked a fierce debate among the kids as to whether or not Hermione is annoying. One said that he liked her because she was a bookworm like he is and another said she was a know-it-all.

Now flash forward to the present. I am going through my re-reading(or rather re-listening) to the Harry Potter books, like I do every few months. And I am currently listening to the 1st one for the first time in a long long while. And I realized something very important about Hermione. Her know-it-allness is just cover for her social awkwardness.

I am of the belief that almost everyone has a cover for their social awkwardness. Some people stay quiet, other people(like me) use humor. Hermione uses her intelligence.

Let's look at it from her perspective: She is born into a muggle family and, to the best of our knowledge, an only child. She is sent away to a boarding school and will be one of the only people to not really know anything She doesn't want to look foolish so she memorizes all the books. She then takes every opportunity to spout off the facts she memorized.

Something else that is never really addressed is her family life. There are three main characters in Harry Potter. Harry Ron and Hermione(my brother disagrees with me about this but he is wrong!). We see Ron's family a great deal and we talk about Harry's family. What about Hermione? In the entire series she sends one owl to her parents, she rarely spends Christmas vacation with them, and rarely spends the entire summer vacation with them. How do her parents feel about her being a witch? In the final book she puts a memory charm on her parents so that they can't remember who she is. This seems, to me at least, rather extreme.

Do her parents know about the war going on? Do they know about her friends? And if so then why do they need a memory charm put on them? If they do not know, then why not? Why did Hermione not tell them? Does she have any siblings? We can assume that there are no younger siblings, but what about older? Why does she never tell us?

How do her parents feel about her running off to be with her friends ever vacation? They only get to see her at those times and she wants to run off. How does that make them feel? Why does she do this? What is the reason? You only see the Grangers in one scene(that I recall) and that is in the 2nd book. They are standing off in the distance looking awkward. Does Hermione introduce her friends to them? No.

I think that, from these facts, it can be safely concluded that Hermione and her parents do not have the greatest relationship. I will go a step further. I think that Hermione finds it hard to mesh her magic life with her muggle life. She finds it hard to be around her parents as they have nothing in common. Imagine if the main thing in your life was something that none of your relatives could possibly understand. And what if Hermione does have siblings, we've seen what happens to muggle siblings of wizards(Petunia Dursley).

Maybe her need for control and the constant displays of intelligence are attempts to show that she belongs in the magical world and not the muggle. Maybe she is trying to prove to herself that she has worth. Maybe she has very low self esteem and compensates with what other people see as arrogance.

In the 6th book she gets very angry at Harry because he is better at something then she is. Maybe her parents always expected her to be the best in the class and she is afraid that they will be disappointed in her. Maybe it is the other way round. Maybe she wants her parents approval and thus strives to be the best at everything.

Whatever the reason there is something deeper in Hermione and I think that it is connected to her parents. If I were chosen tomorrow for an elite boarding school I would still correspond regularly with my sibling and parents. Thermionic doesn't and that surprises me.

I welcome you comments and your theories.