Hermione Granger-Weasley
When he met her, Hermione Granger was a headstrong, frizzy-haired, and annoyingly intelligent little girl. Now, she is still headstrong and annoyingly intelligent, but she has learned how to do her hair (much thanks to Harry Potter’s grandfathers’ brand of hair potion).
Harry first saw Hermione on the Hogwarts Express the same day he met Ron Weasley. She burst into their cabin and began rambling on about toads and books. Let’s just say the connection between Harry and Hermione was not as instant as it was between him and Ron. However, over the course of their first year, Hermione became a vital member of what is now called ‘the Golden Trio’.
“Ron and I were kind of mean to Hermione when we first met. We thought she was a know-it-all. I didn’t know at the time that her cleverness would save my life on countless occasions,” Harry told me.
Now, ever since my dad and Hermione were kids, there have been several publications and reporters that have speculated about a romantic relationship between Hermione and my father. I am here to tell you once and for all that nothing ever happened between the pair.
“That always made us both so uncomfortable,” Harry says, “Hermione has always been like a sister to me.”
Sorry to break the Harmony shippers’ hearts, but it is simply the truth.
Despite there being no romantic connection between the pair, the platonic one was almost as strong as one can get.
“Hermione was muggleborn and understood what it was like to be thrust into this strange world. She, more than anyone else, understood what it was like to deal with Ron’s youthful stubbornness and fire. She knew what it was like to be under pressure to be exceptional. She understood what it was like to be desperately in love with a Weasley (trust me it’s not easy). She got me in so many ways that no one else did,” Harry says.
“I always knew how to read your dad,” Hermione told me, “He liked to bottle up his emotions and insist he didn’t need help, but I could tell when something was really bothering him.”
The first time Harry saw his parents’ graves was when he was seventeen on the horcrux hunt. He and Hermione went to Godric’s Hollow together and came upon the headstone. Hermione watched as he mourned the parents he never got a chance to know.
“There were no words, and I knew your dad well enough to know that words wouldn’t help. All I could do was be there. That’s what he needed. The world was against him, but I could be there” Hermione said.
Many don’t know that at this time, Hermione was also in deep distress about the fate of her own parents. As a precaution during the war, Hermione erased herself from her parents’ memories and sent them off to Australia to protect them. She had no idea what had become of them or if the death eaters managed to find them, despite her attempts. On that day at the gravestone, she thought of them. She thought of how lucky she was to have them, and she hoped that one day they’d be reunited (which luckily came to pass).
I am extremely close with my parents, so I cannot imagine going through what she went through, just as much as I cannot imagine never knowing my parents (as my dad). Hermione got over her emotions and put her parents first, even though it’s supposed to be the other way around.
Stories like this always make me think of how people only always talk about Minister Granger-Weasley’s intelligence, which of course deserves to be praised. Yet, I believe her empathy and her compassion deserve the same accolades. Why is it that women can only be one—clever or caring; a mother or a worker; a genius or a nurturer? Though society won’t admit it, they can be and frequently are both. And no one proves that more than my aunt.
As many of you know, one of my aunt’s greatest passions was fighting for equality in the wizarding world: House Elf freedom and suffrage, destigmatizing the prejudice surrounding muggleborns, working with the goblins to amend past mistakes, etc. She took on these causes not for political gain or because she casually cared about them. She took them on because they lived in her heart. Every day she didn’t take action towards them, they nagged at her, begging her to do something.
When she was running for Minister, I remember her popping by my house in tears. I remember being shocked at her sad demeanor. I had just heard minutes before on the wireless that she was leading in the polls by a large margin. Nonetheless, there she was, sniffling with tears on her cheek. Harry escorted her into his office, and they spoke for hours. They didn’t know I was eavesdropping, but at that point in my life they should have expected it.
“What if I can’t do it? What if I turn out just like Fudge or the corrupt people before him?” Hermione asked, “I mean, even Kingsley. I love him and he’s done great, but he’s different now, not like when we knew him in the Order.”
“Hermione, if you can’t do this job, no one can. No one cares more than you.” was Harry’s reply.
“I know I can’t fix everything, but I need to do something. I just…I don’t want to let the power get to my head. You know how I like to take initiative and leadership roles. Sometimes I get so in my own head, I forget I’m not always right all the time.” She said with great difficulty.
“The fact that you’re worrying about that lets me know that you’ll never be like Fudge. Hermione, I know you. You’ll make mistakes I’m sure, but you’ll fix them—you always do. You’ll probably end up fixing everyone else’s mistakes as well. And if you ever feel like you’re falling, that you’re becoming someone you’re not, Ron and I will be there to catch you. I promise,” Harry says.
Hermione left the office not long after that, eyes red from crying, and saw me sitting in the hallway wiping away tears of my own. I was nineteen years old and just visiting my parents for the weekend. I don’t know if she’d even noticed I was there when she first arrived. She sat down on the floor next to me and put her arm around me.
“Do you think I can do this, Flower?” She asked me.
“I know you can.” I responded, and I meant it.
I know it has been said many a time, but Hermione Granger-Weasley is truly the brightest witch (or wizard for that matter) of her age, maybe of any age. Her thirst for knowledge is unlike anything I have ever seen, and I spent a fair bit of time sneaking into the Ravenclaw common room at school.
“She’s just eternally curious. She once told me that she got anxious knowing there was so much knowledge in the world that she’d never learn. I told her she’d already learned three times the average person and she was only fourteen” Harry laughed as he remarked to me. “But seriously,” he continued, “I relied on her for everything knowledge-based during school. She’s the one who figured out what the monster in the Chamber of Secrets was; she’s the one who helped me practice my summoning charm for the Tri-Wizard tournament; she’s the one who researched the Horcruxes. I really was lucky she cared enough to stick by me because I know I didn’t always make it easy” Harry says.
I, like my aunt, have always been scholarly and hungry to learn. When I was home for holidays from Hogwarts, we used to stay up late trading theories and discussing topics that everyone else in our family deemed rubbish. Ron used to come down and ask her if she was ever coming to bed. We’d laugh and promise each other that our discussion wasn’t finished and that we would talk more the next day (which we always did). Dad told me that those conversations meant more to her than I could possibly know.
“Your aunt,” he’d say, “she’s the most stubborn person I know, more so than even Ron. She always thinks she knows best and that everyone else is wrong. It’s hard to shake her out of that mindset, but you, Lils, you challenge her. She needs that after watching me and Ron stumble our ways through life relying on her guidance.”
My dad truly and unequivocally loves Hermione Granger, though not in the way the media wants him too. She is not cheating on Ron; they are not in some weird three-way. They are just friends in a way the world struggles to comprehend. I hope that everyone in their life can find a bond like the one my dad, aunt, and uncle have, although I think it might be impossible to replicate.
“I’ve been through a lot of shit,” my dad said, “but I think one of the scariest moments of my life was when Ron and I saw that Hermione had been petrified in our second year. We both just looked at each other with this sense of helplessness. ‘How can we even be without her,’ I seemed to say to Ron with my eyes. ‘We can’t’ was his non-verbal response.”
Hermione Granger-Weasley was a trailblazer. She faced prejudice and hate-crimes simply for who her parents were. She grew up intertwined in a war that threatened her very existence. Despite it all, she persevered; she found love; she had kids; she had a career; she made meaningful change. She was the first muggleborn Minister for magic as well as the first female. She did a lot of wonderful things, but above all, she was loved. By her parents, by Ron, by her children, by her nieces and nephews, and by Harry Potter.