[HPforGrownups] Hermione and power (touches on SHIPping)

[Jenett]

No: HPFGUIDX 29854

At 6:46 PM +0000 11/24/01, Hella wrote:
>This topic comes at a good time, just after a fresh batch of shipping
>debates. I was explaining to a friend the different 'shipping'
>positions concerning Hermione, and she agreed with H/H, saying that
>Hermione likes Harry. She thinks that Hermione has a 'thing' for
>power. Her evidence is Hermione's crush on Lockhart as he was
>a 'powerful' professor, at least in the duration of CoS (I poo-poohed
>this but she was adamant). What does this tell us about her
>relationship with Lupin?

I'd suggest something slightly different. Hermione is a clever young 
woman - and she's certainly learned a lot more social skills and 
gained friends over the years - but she has nothing like the easy 
sociability/charisma of Harry or Ron.

I think that *part* of her interest partly just comes from seeing 
something that she can't do, and wanting to try and figure out how it 
works - seeing that kind of friendly charisma in action, and wanting 
some of that for herself. Unfortunately, it's not exactly the sort of 
thing that's easily learned. The other part of this, of course, is 
that people *are* attracted to people who have natural charisma and 
who are loyal friends - that's part of what having charisma means, 
after all.

Lockhart, I'd put down more to a quite understandable crush on a 
professor who seems learned, experienced, and glamorous. She goes off 
him pretty quickly once she realises he's a fraud. I've known enough 
people with similar crushes in my teenage years to not find anything 
at all odd in it, or anything remotely sinister, honestly. The fact 
that she didn't see through him sooner doesn't really surprise me, 
given her relative lack of experience and her age. It takes a fair 
bit of data to start to think that a teacher might be actively lying, 
not just to you, the student, but to the other faculty as well. (It's 
a bit easier when there are apparent sinister things going on, f'rex 
Snape, but you don't get that with Lockhart, just more and more 
obvious signs of complete incompetence.)

Krum is a bit trickier - but after all, he did express interest in 
her, and she obviously found that interest quite flattering, even if 
she wasn't quite sure how to deal with it. At 14, I'd probably have 
done the same thing, just for the novelty of the experience, in a 
relatively safe setting (agreeing to go to one ball is, after all, a 
pretty safe thing to say yes to, particularly when you can quite 
easily avoid the person in question after, if you want.) If she were 
really interested in power, I think she'd have done more to exploit 
that particular situation (or any number of other situations) rather 
than basically letting it drop.

Honestly, I'd say more of her motivation comes from a quest for 
knowledge, including the kinds that can't be learned from books. That 
might just be bias on my part (I work that same way...) but I think 
it's an equally viable argument.

Jenett (new around here. Hi, y'all.)

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