Saturday morning cartoons - Hermione Grainger

In 2001, I was introduced to a new world of magic and wizards through the film “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. I thought the film was good and it spawned a passing interest in the series. The second film came out and was a little better and by then the phenomenon was starting to catch up with me. There was a delay between the second and third films to give the actors a chance to breathe before restarting again. During this time, the fifth book came out to bookstores. The publicity was in full swing and with promise of a major death in the series; I really wanted to know what was going to happen. I didn’t want to be spoiled though through the internet or pop culture so I decided to read the book. I couldn’t start with book 5 though since I had gotten the sense that it was a series that built upon itself incredibly well so to get the full experience of reading one book, one did have to start at the beginning. So I bought the first four books in a box set and then the fifth one and dived in.

When I resurfaced, I was in awe of the story that J. K. Rowling was weaving and the world that she had populated. My favorite character though was Hermione Grainger. She was brave, loyal, smart, well-read, and awkward (especially early on) in her dealings with her peers. Harry Potter is the chosen one and Ron Weasley is from a long line of wizards. Hermione isn’t either one of those things. She is just the daughter of dentists who is given a talent for magic that she puts all of her focus into. When we meet her, she is actually better at magic than Ron even though he was born into it. She’s driven to be her best. It makes her a little annoying early on because she feels like she has to prove to everyone that is smart and that she does belong there. (She does stop doing it eventually.) But I liked that in her character; so many times the characters in fiction have destinies they are born to or some other advantage. Hermione is just someone who is the best in her class at magic because she studies and works her butt off to get it right.