A Choice I Made For Very Personal Reasons
In my recent post about reconsidering JK Rowling's writing of romance in the Harry Potter series in light of the additional information from her later works, I declared myself puzzled by the following words of Rowling's:
What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment.
I wrote:
And it is not quite clear ( Read more... )
What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment.
I wrote:
And it is not quite clear ( Read more... )
-Hermione first showed that she is terrified of failure in that first monologue in PS when the trio first met on the train when she said “I’ve learnt all our set books off by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough”. This idea is reinforced later on as well, such as the fact her Boggart is failure, how upset she was when she thought she made a mistake on the Ancient Runes OWL exam or how freaked out she was before she received her OWL results.
-When Harry couldn’t use the HBP textbook to produce an antidote to poison, Hermione was seen as smirking because “she loathed being outperformed in every Potions class”. This is on top of her frustration at Harry’s potion success earlier in the books.
-There was an exchange between Ron and Hermione when they were discussing the Half Blood Prince’s spells. Ron told Hermione that she didn’t like the Prince because “he’s better than you at Potions” then Hermione blushed before saying using spells not Ministry-approved was irresponsible. Then I remembered in OotP Hermione didn’t mind using a jinx that scarred Marietta for life after she betrayed the DA so I don’t think Hermione really was against using unorthodox spells.
-Then there was also the remark Ron made to Hermione in PoA that she didn’t like Divination because she wasn’t good at the subject which caused quite a disproportionately strong reaction from her.
-In HBP when she shouted to Harry “The truth is that you don’t think a girl would have been clever enough” after an argument about whether the Prince was a boy or girl. As Harry said nothing of the sorts in the argument, it’s likely she was revealing the fear that herself is not clever enough.
Finally, we can’t forget that Hermione does not like to be proven wrong or admit she made a mistake which will not help with her happiness if she married someone cleverer than her.
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(although I disagree slightly over her not liking someone who does better than her- After all she never shown to have any issues with Harry definitely being Better than her in DADA, and even says that Harry IS better than her in it. )
one other thing- The scars on Marietta weren' 'permanent'. JKR said in an interview that they would fade over time.
(people think so because Hermione cursed Marrietta in 5th year and she still had the scars in 6th year they think = permanent.
but I calculated that Hermione cursed marietta around april/may 1996- and then harry sees her september 1996- so that's only 6 months)
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Yes, I know that Hermione seemed fine with Harry being better than her in DADA but are there any scenes that showed she was actually happy about it? The scene in OotP where they discussed it after Harry came back from one of Umbridge’s detentions gave me the impression that Hermione was just stating a fact just like how she told Harry matter-of-factly that he has never been more “fanciable” in HBP. I forgot to add how Hermione didn’t seem pleased by her OWL results because she got an E in DADA and Harry got an O. Furthermore there are all those times when she felt flattered after someone else like Ron or Harry praised her intelligence or when she was really eager to answer teachers’ questions and looked disappointed if they didn’t pick her.
Therefore this single incident doesn’t negate her constant desire to show she is really smart. What other reasons could there be for her dislike of the half-blood prince textbook to the point that she would dismiss the fact it helped Harry to save Ron’s life (not everyone can remember what Snape said 5 years ago like she does)?
Of course she couldn’t stop her friends from being better than her in some areas like how Ron is better than her at flying and chess. My point here is that if Hermione married another genius as a lot of her “fans” want her to do she will be frustrated and annoyed whenever he is better than her at something academically, so in some ways she is the opposite to Dumbledore who loved having Grindelwald around until he showed his true colours.
As for the scars, I was referring to the scars that were left on Marietta’s face after the pimples that spelt the word “SNEAK” faded rather than the pimples themselves. Yes, the pimples eventually faded (even though it was still there in HBP) but it was confirmed by JKR the scars were left on her face permanently.
The relevant section of the interview is given below:
Q: Did Marietta's pimply formation ever fade?
JK Rowling: Eventually, but it left a few scars. I loathe a traitor!
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