Hermione: Major Character or Not

[pippin_999 <foxmoth@qnet.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50252

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Penny Linsenmayer 
<pennylin at s...> wrote:
 -- [Hermione]'s on the outs with the boys from pages 173-215 
(US paperback).  That's 42 pages ... 13% of the total page-time.  
<snip>
> Hermione has played a major and decisive role in each of the 
4 books, IMHO.  I think people consistently overestimate her 
petrified time period and the time period during which she was 
on the outs with the boys.  The math shows it's not as significant 
as some have argued.
> 

It depends whether you count calendar time or page time. For 
CoS, the amount of time and the amount of pages are about the 
same by my reckoning: 20% as you said. But Hermione is 
quarreling with the boys (according to Hagrid, neither of them 
were speaking to her) in PoA  almost continuously from 
Christmas until around Easter. That's three to four months or 
approximately a third of the school year. And yet  it doesn't have 
nearly the impact on Harry's life that his much briefer spat with 
Ron does in GoF.

Hermione's importance to Harry and to the story can't be 
doubted. What I don't see is that her overshadowing of Ron in 
GoF is some kind of trend.

Pippin