The insult 'mudblood'
Well, sigh,... It was a long time ago I saw the older Harry Potter movies. Yesterday the 2nd one was on TV, and as always I got so ennoyed by this scene.
In the film, Hermione is the one that explains 'mudblood' means dirty blood.
But in the book, she is just as clueless as Harry.
And how would she know? Okay, so she has read a lot of books on the wizarding world before she enters it. But even the books that are not related to the classes would hardly have the word 'mudblood' in it. Can you imagine trying to explore a foreign culture by books only and finding insulting names in one?
So, that's where the fanfiction starts bothering me to. In Dramione fics it happens a lot that Hermione is on the verge of tears because Draco called her a mudblood. (I guess I can't deny it anymore, I got hooked on Dramione, blame drcjsnider for it, and a couple of my other friends.)
But I would think she can't really get insulted by that. See, when people have to explain why a word is insulting, it loses some of it's power. (or the other way around; we call my dad a disrespectful word, that he learned us when we were little. When I hear someone say that word, I am hardly bothered by it. For us, it's an endearment.)
And it's not that disturbing to be insulted by someone you really don't like either. (for example, when my friend says something insulting to me, it would be a lot harder to take then when a certain person at work ^$ù=µù$^ù says something. My friend has the power to hurt me, my ^$µµù^collegue can say all he wants, I'll just return the favor.)
Of course, it is still an insult, and a damn good reason to get mad over. But it doesn't seem to me that Hermione would cry over it. They have arguments with Malfoy all the time, and he can be rather personal, but the one time she loses her temper is when she hits him, because of Buckbeak, and not because he says something about HER.
But then again, I can be wrong also, she did cry in the first year, when she overheard Ron and Harry talk.