First, thoughts from my fellow rankers:

Khajiit-ify: Hermione checks off every box of a good character. Her strengths are obvious, her flaws are well known, and her personality shines every time she shows up on the page. She is one of the most relatable characters in the series, and that’s not a fault with her character - in fact, it is one of her greatest strengths. JKR did an amazing job writing her character.

Marx0r:

I love Hermione if for no other reason than her nearly sociopathic devotion to results. She abducts, imprisons, and blackmails a reporter that was harassing her friends. She permanently scars a teenager for betraying her. She will do anything she needs to do in order to accomplish what she believes is right. There’s a classic argument about whether Hermione should’ve been in Ravenclaw, but fuck that. She’s the best example of true Slytherin traits that we see.

pizzabangle:

I can’t imagine the Harry Potter series without Hermione. As the most rational member of the trio, her personality balances out Harry’s passionate embrace of tinfoil-like theories and Ron’s teaspoon-sized emotional range. She also plays a huge role in moving the plot forward by asking critical questions and planning for things that JK clearly doesn’t want to spend time having Harry do. We see her grow from a pushy know-it-all to a motivated, fierce young woman. I love that we get to see Hermione a bit broken as well as triumphant. Her sense of justice is an aspect of her character I find particularly interesting. From S.P.E.W. to Skeeter-napping, Hermione’s strong moral convictions drive her actions.

theduqoffrat:

Look at what Larixon said. That. I’m rereading the series over again and I fall in love with Hermione more and more each time I read it. Think of the smart, bad ass kid you went to high school or college with. That’s Hermione. There is nothing she can’t do. She’s loyal. She’s brave. She’s loving. Hell, she’s best friends with her biggest bullies because she can see past the surface level of Harry and Ron and see into their brain. How they really tick.

...and now on to the cut.

Hermione Granger. Mudblood. Greatest witch of her generation. Bossy know-it-all. Devoted friend and underdog supporter. Ruthless and cunning. Incredibly bright and talented. Narrow-minded. Feminist icon.

Whichever way you split her, there are so many layers to Hermione it’s impossible not to feel that this, though not my preferred spot (she’ll always be number one to me), is a good spot for her to end up in. She is, to me, the best female character in the series (even outranking Umbridge) because of how deeply layered and complex she is. Hermione isn’t just a sidekick, she’s not just there to be the brains of the Trio -- Hermione is the heroine of her own story and outside of the immediate narrative, she leads a life separate from that of Ron and Harry. If Ron is the consummate sidekick, with all the issues that entails (and I would urge everyone to read through /u/ETIwillsaveusall’s cut because it is a genuine thing of beauty), Hermione refuses to be boxed into that experience. She carves out something different from the others and blazes a trail of her very own.

’Has anyone seen a toad? Neville’s lost one,’ she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth.

From the first meeting on the train to Hogwarts, Hermione is established as almost a caricature of the nerdy, bossy girl (with Rowling herself admitting that she is supposed to be an exaggeration of herself): she barges into the compartment, dragging poor Neville in tow, and then asks about his toad. She proceeds to immediately tell Ron and Harry just how much she’s already read about Hogwarts, setting the tone for all of those early book experiences of Hermione’s character: she is fierce and bossy and she is armed with knowledge. She immediately seems to know more about Harry than he does himself and she wastes no time in imparting this knowledge. Later on, she also imparts her first tidbit of knowledge from what would become her favourite book, whispering that the ceiling is bewitched to look like the sky above. She sets the scene well and asserts herself, even if the immediate reaction is very much one of cringe (there is such a thing as being too eager). But really, who is Hermione?

Hermione: A History

Derived from the Greek messenger god Hermes (the god of science, trade and eloquence), Hermione’s name itself is one of power and history. She is first immortalised in ancient literature, in the play Andromache, where she comes across as a vengeful woman, but one who is determined to achieve her purpose. In a lot of ways, she paves the way for the Hermiones to come, from Shakespeare’s character in The Winter’s Tale (a woman who dies of a broken heart at being accused of unfaithfulness by her husband - and Rowling’s inspiration for Ms Granger) to D.H. Lawrence’s Hermione in Women in Love (where she is a young woman who wants to know everything and control it - words that could well apply to Hermione later on).

It’s important to realise that naming is a huge part of the Harry Potter universe and lore. In the late, great Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, a name is a very powerful thing indeed. By naming something, you give it life (and with it meaning). Ursula K. le Guin’s Earthsea novels follow this same pattern: in The Tombs of Atuan, the wizard Ged rescues the priestess Tenar, who is now a Nameless One, devoted to her god. Later on, she renames herself as Tehanu, carving her own space in the world, much as Hermione does. Names have power and they have meaning and in Hermione’s case, it’s clear that Rowling is borrowing from a long, illustrious line of Hermiones in naming her character and chief among them is the god Hermes. Hermione becomes the embodiment of the messenger god, particularly in those early books, when she rattles off information as needed.

At the end of the first book, the Trio work together, to their strengths, to defeat the challenges before the Stone: Harry’s flying skills and ability to hone in on a small thing, Ron’s strategising (a theme that pops up later on in the books) and Hermione’s logical, cool thinking. Before this, however, we do see her flounder and flail, with the Devil’s Snare, when she does lose her head and actually forgets that she can do magic. It’s a chink in her armour, it humanises her (she is, after all, only eleven).

’Me!’ said Hermione. Books! And cleverness! There are more important things - friendship and bravery and - oh Harry - be careful!’

Oh, Hermione. How she puts herself down, how she immediately reaches out to Harry, to encourage him, to give him strength in the battle ahead. In such a short time, she’s changed from being the student who thought the worst possible thing was expulsion. I was always intrigued by that, until I realised that for her, death would be more bearable - her quest for knowledge echoing that of D.H. Lawrence’s character.

Intransigence and character flaws

The aspect of Hermione’s character that I really want to touch upon ties in with her ‘god of science’ persona: she is inflexible in her thinking. If I were to create a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet, this would be Hermione’s character flaw: she is incredibly rigid in her approaches to magic (and everything that pertains to it) and even in some of her interactions with other characters, most notably Luna. She shows an exceptional lack of tact in dealing with Lavender in Prisoner of Azkaban after the death of her pet rabbit, arguing that logically Trelawney couldn’t have predicted the death; she immediately reaches for the logical, cold explanation rather than the emotional one, the first of many such instances. In a lot of ways, I think there is a reason that she and Ron work so well together: as in the Trio he is heart, so he brings that emotional component to the relationship. This isn’t to say that Hermione cannot love - she does, and fiercely - but when it comes to problem-solving, her immediate response is to fix, rather than to understand or empathise. Even in later books, despite growing in other areas of her character, Hermione still struggles to empathise at times - she is brutal in her takedown of Luna’s beliefs, because she herself doesn’t believe in them. It explains why she has such a crush on Percy in that first book: she thrives under guidance and strict rules, places where she understands how things stand; contrast that to the scenes in Half-Blood Prince, when Harry (using young!Snape’s notes) starts to do better than her in Potions. She’s angry and she’s put off and she looks ‘manic’, because all of a sudden, the rules don’t make sense.

Even her relationship with Ron falls into this pattern, particularly from Goblet of Fire onwards. She is scathing in her criticism of him, his ‘realisation’ that she is a girl and her immediate dismissal of him as having the emotional range of a teaspoon. Because Hermione has figured out that she would like Ron to ask her, but he doesn’t, so instead of waiting and hoping, she takes charge: when Krum asks her out, she accepts and even spends time on her personal appearance. Interestingly, Hermione doesn’t particularly care for traditionally feminine pursuits, but she doesn’t really put others down for it anyway; her one vain ‘fault’ if you can call it that, is that she uses magic to fix her teeth to slightly better than what they were like before, but in the final book she admits that it was too much hassle to maintain for too long.

I find Hermione and Ron’s relationship in that fraught sixth year to be at its most interesting. It really showcases the lengths to which she’d go for petty revenge: conjuring canaries and setting them on Ron, going to Slughorn’s Christmas party to McLaggen (and regretting it after ending up together under the mistletoe), ignoring Ron with a pointed stubbornness that is such a hallmark of her character - but she won’t completely destroy Ron’s confidence about the Quidditch Keeper tryouts. There are lows that Hermione will never stoop to, but there is something to be said about the fact that it’s because Ron’s her friend that she has this relationship with him. Whenever someone threatens her friends, Hermione retaliates and she retaliates hard. Remember, she lied to McGonagall in her first year, to protect Harry and Ron. In her fifth year, she placed such a powerful hex on the DA parchment that she cursed Marietta Edgecombe with scarring acne.

When she figures out Rita Skeeter’s secret, Hermione doesn’t just blackmail. She actually kidnaps and imprisons a journalist in a jar for a year, because when Hermione is scorned, when her friends and those she cares about are attacked, she will fight back viciously and without remorse. She could have appealed to authority, she could have turned Rita in for being an unregistered Animagus, but Hermione saw an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. She made a decision and stuck by it. In Order of the Phoenix, when she, Harry and Luna meet with Rita for the interview, I find her unflappability to be admirable. Rita holds no sway over her now and Hermione has all the cards. Yes, her methods were questionable at best, but to her, the end justified the means.

This same thing happens to Umbridge. Hermione respects rules and authority, yes, but they need to respect her back. She is devoted to McGonagall and Dumbledore, but she sees right through Umbridge’s power-hungry exterior. She doesn’t have the recklessness that Harry does, to challenge that authority in class, so instead she does it in an underhanded way. Later on, when she leads Umbridge to the Forbidden Forest and the centaurs, I did wonder what her intentions were. To use Grawp to frighten Umbridge? To find the centaurs and delay Umbridge? What exactly was she banking on? I never subscribed to the idea that she sent Umbridge in the Forest to be raped, but I do think she wanted to frighten her (and things got out of hand when she underestimated Umbridge’s racist tendencies). But she took a gamble and she lead a teacher (a figure of authority!) into a situation she couldn’t 100% control.

There is something within Hermione, a core of her, that will break before it bends.

Hermione Granger and the greater narrative

One of the things that Hermione does so well, that sets her apart from other characters, is that she has a distinct storyline that diverges from the Trio. She is, in essence, the heroine of her own story here. There are early signs of this, as far back as Philosopher’s Stone, with Hermione pre-Trio, friendless and trying to fit in. She fails (and she fails hard), but there are moments where she exists outside of the major story, in a way that Ron never does. This is particularly visible during Prisoner of Azkaban, where we learn that Hermione spent much of her time helping Hagrid prepare for his Ministry hearing. When she and Ron have a spat, Hermione’s life doesn’t seem to end; I would contrast this with the time in Goblet of Fire, when Ron and Harry aren’t on speaking terms: Harry finds that all of a sudden, his homework actually gets done on time, but he doesn’t have that same easy friendship that he has with Ron. That unbreakable core of Hermione’s, that stubbornness? That applies to her friendships as well.

Remember that Hermione is given a Time Turner. This thirteen year old girl is trusted with a highly complex piece of magic and it’s amazing how she rises to the challenge. Yes, she eventually accepts that there are limits even to her own learning, that she cannot reasonably attend every class ever and she adjusts to a more suitable timetable. This is a huge step for her own personal growth; you must remember that knowledge and learning are key pillars of Hermione’s perception of herself and the world around her. To accept that even she has a limit, that despite magic that can allow her to be in two places at once, she physically cannot cope, is a huge thing for her and her character. Hermione does have a limit and truthfully, she never seems to really regret not using the Time Turner for the remainder of her studies at Hogwarts. That on top of this she finds the time to help Hagrid speaks volumes about the kind of person Hermione really is.

In Goblet of Fire, when she creates and runs S.P.E.W (more on that later), she lives a life outside of her interactions with Harry and Ron, she researches elvish welfare and she tries to improve the lot of elves, despite Ron’s assertions that they’re happier in slavery, despite the fact that even the elves find her methods over the top and unnecessarily aggressive. She dates Krum (and suffers deeply for it, including in what is one of Molly’s worst character moments) and she’s not ashamed of it; indeed, she never seems to slut shame other female characters for dating, she provides Ginny with advice and support and I always got the feeling that Hermione resented being judged that way, going through what she went through, just because Krum happened to take a fancy to her.

Look behind the main narrative and Hermione is always there, performing the emotional labour necessary to keep everything going: she has the answers that Ron and Harry need, she saves a student’s life with her quick thinking (Penelope Clearwater in Chamber of Secrets), she researches Horcuxes and she prepares her Bag of Holding with the things they may need in their great camping adventure. She figures out the protective spells to cast around them, she sorts out food, she gets them to swap around the Horcrux locket. Hermione does all this and more without acclaim, without asking for thanks, she pushes for nothing more than justice and fairness and she enables Harry to Hero himself into history. While the Trio is always stronger than the sum of its parts (greatly exemplified by those moments when Ron leaves in Deathly Hallows and Hermione and Harry seem to spin their wheels a little bit), Hermione brings the smarts and the hard work and planning, she makes sure that things are always thought through logically. Without Hermione, how much would Ron and Harry have achieved? It should also be said that they both keep her grounded (Ron moreso), they ensure that she is challenged and she rises to that challenge admirably.

Hermione is not the heroine of the story, but she is the heroine of her own story. She shows young women that they don’t need to wait around for someone else to notice them and make things happen. In a sense, she is very much like Ginny here: she leads a life outside the Trio and her relationship with Ron only truly blossoms when he starts seeing her as an equal, when he tones down the mocking, joking persona and actually realises that not only is she a girl, she is a very competent one at that. But Hermione doesn’t wait around for Ron to notice that; she continues her relentless pursuit of knowledge, she continues her hard work in trying to bring about a fairer society and she shows all young readers that you don’t need to be a hero and save the world to have a positive impact on people.

I think she does suffer, at times, from not being appreciated enough. In that, she echoes the experience of millions of young women who toil ceaselessly to smoothe things over, to be nice, to have the right answer, to support and nurture those around her (especially those boys and men around her), often at the cost of her own happiness. How many times does Hermione break down and cry? What hidden well of loneliness is there within her, for all those times that Harry wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t try harder (the Tasks in Goblet of Fire, the Horcrux hunt in Deathly Hallows), for all those times that Ron reacts emotionally and they argue? How much did Hermione suffer in Prisoner of Azkaban from her friendship with Ron breaking down because of Scabbers and Crookshanks? That entire mini-arc is their relationship, played out as the animosity between a cat and a rat: Hermione is right (and she is proven right at the end of the book), but beforehand she needs to suffer her friend’s cold shoulder (not to mention her ever-mounting schoolwork). She still finds time to help Hagrid prepare his defence of Buckbeak and it speaks volumes about her character that, when Ron is dragged into the Shack and Sirius reveals himself, Hermione stands with her friends, all animosity forgotten.

Hermione does tend to cry, quite a bit: when she overhears Ron in Philosopher’s Stone, telling everyone how she doesn’t have any friends, when she’s turned into a cat in Chamber of Secrets, during all her spats with Ron in the third book. She cries herself to sleep in Deathly Hallows after Ron leaves and I’ve always found her to be at her most vulnerable during these times. When Hermione is hurt, she can lash out, in cruel and terrible ways, but I think that stems, in part, from the intensity of her feelings. She can have quite a thin skin at times, but what she really wishes she had was understanding. On the one hand, these two boys can’t quite understand her at times and one the other, she can’t understand why they don’t get her, why they don’t just listen. I identify with that a lot, because I have been Hermione.

Knowing you are right and convincing others that you are, are two different things.

Hermione Granger and the fight for justice

Voldemort chose Harry as his opposite, the only one who could bring him down, and that says a lot about Voldemort’s character. But in terms of ideals and vision, it is Hermione who stands in stark contrast.

Blood purity is Rowling’s shorthand for class and race in the wizarding world. We don’t see Lee Jordan or Angelina or Parvati receive any racial abuse. Instead, we see Muggleborns (chief among them Hermione) be derided for something they have zero control over: their heritage. From that first ‘Mudblood’ in Chamber of Secrets to the last page of the book, we see Hermione weathering abuse, we see how she becomes a lightning rod for everything from scathing press editorials to Voldemort’s worst legislation. She comes to Hogwarts determined to do well, determined to embrace this side of her (probably much to the bemusement of her parents); at the age of thirteen, she pushes herself to her absolute breaking point in order to grasp, with both hands, this opportunity that has been given to her. Why is expulsion so terrifying for her? Why did her Dementor turn into the personification of a terrible grade from a beloved teacher? Because knowledge is Hermione’s weapon and she works ceaselessly, tirelessly, to improve on what she knows.

/u/Marx0r mentioned Hermione willing to do whatever it takes in order to achieve her goals. She is ambitious, wildly so, more so than Harry. Hermione thrives through her hard work and she is determined to prove any doubter, any nay-sayer wrong. But where others (like Voldemort) would achieve their goals with one foot on a house elf’s neck, Hermione strives for equality and justice. She strives to bring others up with her. She embodies feminist traits of wanting a better life for everyone, not just the privileged few. She stands by Harry, even when everyone thinks he’s crazy, or a liar. She never once doubts Harry’s word (unlike Ron) and she stands by him, breaking the rules in ever-increasing orders of magnitude. In Chamber of Secrets not only does she lie to authority (Lockhart and Madam Pince) to get a book out of the restricted section, but she actually raids Snape’s personal stocks to brew the Polyjuice Potion. When Dumbledore’s Army is set up, it is Hermione not Harry who spreads the word, who creates the parchment, the coins, who sets up the meetings. Yes, Harry imparts the knowledge, but Hermione goes against the word of authority and scorns Umbridge’s rules without any guilt. In Deathly Hallows, she gives up school to go hunting Horcruxes: sure, the chances of her being allowed back at Hogwarts were minimal, but this is something she has worked towards for six years; without a second thought, she gives that up, knowing she may never be able to return again.

The other side of this, of course, is that in her pursuit of justice, she can come across as quite tone deaf. When she sets up S.P.E.W. she does so out of a place of love and genuine concern. But she decides (unilaterally) that she should be the voice of the oppressed house elves, that she has the right to know better than them. Knitting clothes to leave around for them to ‘stumble’ upon is not cute and it’s not right. It erases any choices that house elves might have in their own determination and for someone who values agency so much, it’s clear that Hermione doesn’t really get it. This is an important lesson: even the best of intentions can come across as completely wrong; the way to help those below you is to listen before deciding how to act in their best interests.

I like that when Hermione fails, she can be blind to her own failures. That, again, is a valuable lesson: when someone tells you that an approach is wrong, it is worth re-evaluating that. Now, Hermione is vindicated, in a sense, when she says that maybe Sirius should have treated Kreacher better (it should be noted that Kreacher behaves deplorably towards her, but she remains undeterred here). The underlying principles of her beliefs, ones of compassion and empathy, are sometimes in stark contrast to her actual approaches. Ron is right that house elves shouldn’t be patronised towards, but so is Hermione that they are being oppressed. The ideal approach here would be one of dialogue, rather than one witch deciding that she knows what’s best. It reminds me, in a way, of Dumbledore’s youthful ideals of the ‘greater good’. After all, Hermione comes from a place of righteous anger: house elves are being mistreated and essentially seen as slave labour and that is not really something that the wizarding world ought to tolerate. But what would a Hermione who chooses a violent path look like? It reminds me of Galadriel’s speech in The Fellowship of the Ring:

And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!

What would a terrible queen Hermione have looked like? What power could she have yielded? I find that so fascinating and something I wish we had seen even a glimpse of. Hermione is good and she is pure of heart, but did she ever falter in that belief? Did she ever think, in her deepest thoughts, that maybe she could just be a benevolent dictator? That she might, for once, actually know better? What a story that would have turned out to be…

Overall, Hermione means a lot to me and many others like me. She is passionate and hard-working, she is intelligent and compassionate, she is everything I want to aspire to be. She is a role model and a feminist icon, one that works at all ages: from a bossy young girl to a competent young woman who lives through torture and a year on the run, Hermione Granger encompasses the traits of all the Hogwarts house: the bravery and daring of Gryffindor, the ambition of Slytherin, the wit and knowledge of Ravenclaw and the unfaltering loyalty and compassion of Hufflepuff. Hermione is a catalyst for change, a driver of the underdog and a passionate supporter of those who do not have a voice in society.

The best thing anyone could ever say about me is that I am like Hermione. I think that is the standard we should all strive for.

A final few comments on this rankdown. It’s been an amazing experience and I cannot thank /u/Moostronus, /u/k9centipede, /u/oomps62 and /u/hermionesteaspoon enough for the opportunity they’ve given me. To all my fellow rankers: thank you, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Some of you might be wrong (:P) but I would never hesitate to call you my friends. Thanks again <3