by Lisa Asanuma

Created on: April 18, 2008

Arriving on the scene as a bossy, buck-toothed, frizzy-haired little know-it-all, it's hard at first glance to admire a character like Hermione Granger, but J.K. Rowling's characters are rarely meant to be taken at face-value, and Miss Granger is no exception to that rule.

So far as plot go, Hermione serves a simple purpose. She's what a professor of mine once referred to as an "extrapolation monkey," in that because she's a bookworm and good student, she can fill the audience in about the mythology of Rowling's world, as she fills in her friends Ron and Harry, who are by comparison not always quite as thorough in their knowledge. It's quite a simple plan, really. Whenever there's an answer that Ron and Harry don't know but need to, Hermione will have read about it in some book or other, or remembered it from a long-ago class that the boys have both forgotten. She's even a way to get them through classes that they couldn't possibly pass on their own, as she is always allowing them to copy notes, or willing to help them with things they're having particular trouble with. In a trio of friends where Ron Weasley is the heart and Harry Potter the might, Hermione is the mind. That's the basic purpose for Hermione's character, but she really is so much more than that.

The Harry Potter books are, of course, seen through the point of view of Harry himself, who learns of his wizarding heritage at the age of eleven. Hermione at the same time is also new to the wizarding world, as her parents are "Muggles," or non-magical people like you and me. How can she be the one with all the answers then? Well Hermione, especially at the beginning of the series, is again, somewhat of a know-it-all. She's also very eager for praise, and as we learn through her Boggart in the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, desperately afraid of failure. Therefore, before we meet her in the first book, she has learned all she can about the new world she is entering into, with what has been suggested at as a fear that she's already impossibly behind.

Of course in truth she's not behind by much at all. To her benefit, she is indeed just as clever as she is praised (and also teased) for being. To her detriment, this makes her fairly insufferable. Hermione's saving grace, then, is that her heart is always in the right place, and when push comes to shove, she is more than willing to throw her usually precious rule-book out the window and do what she believes is right. She is, after all, in Gryffindor, Hogwarts

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