What is Hermione afraid of?

[Kirstini]

No: HPFGUIDX 80374

First of all, in response to Emily's post on this thread- Emily, I 
wasn't trying to say that the "deeply personal thing" that Hermione 
cared about was her grades. It's what the grades represent, which is 
failure (and McGonagall representing the subsequent lack of respect 
which she presumes comes with this failure) that I belive is the 
greatest psychological insult we've had into her personality yet. I 
was trying to intiate a discussion into whether or not Hermione's 
desire to achieve, and to achieve highly at everything, will be 
significant later on in the series. What I *wasn't* trying to do  was 
start a flame war on whether or not Hermione cares for Harry/ and or 
is a selfish, conniving cow. So before I enter the one that the Great 
Elder One so obliging started for me anyway, I would like to point 
out that Hermione is my favourite of JKR's characters, and that I 
like JKR's characters because they are on the whole realistically 
depicted. And realistic characters are selfish at times, because 
ultimately, we all are a bit. And this in no way diminishes our 
capacity to care for others. 
Anyway, <sigh> to work.

Great Elder One:
>>I think you missed the whole point of the boggart. The boggart 
brings out your most primal and deepest fears in kids. It basically 
brings out the fears that you think is laying under your bed when you 
are asleep at night and what you think is going to kill you and I for 
one certainly don't buy McGonagall telling Hermione that she failed 
as Hermione's biggest fear at that time.>> 

Really? The Boggart brings out my deepest fear in kids, does it? 
Cripes. And here was me thinking it produced a representation of the 
person (regardless of age)nearest to its greatest fear. I've never 
been near a Boggart, but I really pity those kids I'm displacing onto 
having to suffer an endless sea of misplaced apostrophies. Cripes. I 
did miss the point, didn't I? ;P
Not everyone's most primal fear is something coming to kill them. 
(Although you may be inadvertantly right about the primal instinct 
which drives us to protect the self above the other.) Harry's fear, 
as Lupin tells us, is "fear itself", a far more abstract concept. I 
also take issue with your endy bit "at that time". The time, the 
setting of the Boggart incident is one of the very things that makes 
me trust Hermione's version. She was slap bang in the middle of an 
exam, and shows throughout the series how susceptible she is to exam 
pressure. I would imagine it entirely plausible that her greatest 
fear at that moment is failure, and less so that such a focussed 
character would be worried about Harry dying "at that (very 
particular)time". Oh, god, you're going to tell me that Hermione 
isn't just a ruthless exam machine now, aren't you? Let me just 
preempt you by saying "I know". So, that about concludes the 
argument....oh, bugger, no it doesn't...

GEO:
>>Hermione certainly lied by omission about the time turner and she 
is the most mysterious of the trio characterwise since we have a 
window into Harry's thoughts through the books and Ron can be 
generally taken at face valuse while that is not true for Hermione.>>

Sweeping statement there. I wouldn't be surprised if Ron surprised 
you one of these days. And I would contend the Hermione bit by saying 
that we know enough about *her*


I wrote:
>>>Lupin fears the danger he may put others in at the full moon, 
fears losing his self-control>>>
To which GEO replied: 
>>Or he may just fear the full moon since it was on a full moon that 
he encountered a werewolf that scarred him both physically and 
mentally.>>

Very true, but I think my argument, as a variant, has a great deal 
more subtlety, and gives JKR credit for being a better writer. He 
does *turn into* a werewolf at *every* full moon, you know. And if he 
met someone he *would* kill them. At this point in your reply, I have 
to confess that I began to wonder if you weren't just determined to 
take my post apart in every possible way. 

GEO:
>>Or perhaps his boggart isn't a moon at all as others have 
suggested.>>

Lupin says: "Did you work out that the Boggart turned into a full 
moon when it got to me?" Does this have any relevance to the point 
under discussion?  

GEO:
>> Or perhaps Molly is an adult and has a better grasp on her fears 
while the trio and their fellows were kids when they faced the 
boggart and were just afraid of monsters and bogeymen that lurked 
around the corner.>>

Harry fears FEAR. Not a bogeyman. He picks on the Dementor as a 
representation of fear. Hermione fears either ___dying, as you appear 
to be contending, or failure, as I am arguing. Again, not a bogeyman. 
Ron fears the giant spider that had tried to kill him the year 
before, but his greatest fear has always been spiders because of 
psychological repercussions from a childhood incident. In fact, I 
would say that Ron and Harry, both of whom manage the Riddikulus 
spell, have a better grasp on their fears than Molly, who doesn't, 
and allows the Boggart to affect her emotionally.  

I wrote:
>>>Hermione's number one priority is Hermione, not Harry. Again, not 
a criticism. She has to be fairly selfish to sustain the level of 
focus required to gain her high marks>>>

GEO: 
>>I certainly disagree.>>
You shock me. Go on:
>>She set aside considerable amounts of time in GoF to help Harry in 
the Tournaments, <did lots of stuff> all for Harry's sake in CoS. 
Furthermore in Ootp, she went along with Harry into Umbridge's office 
and then proceded to take Umbridge into the forest when she was about 
to put an illegal curse on Harry. Furthermore she also set up the 
whole interview with Rita to try and clear Harry's name.>>

Please note, that I didn't say "Hermione is a nasty witch who has 
never ever given any time up for any of her friends." I 
said "Hermione's number one priority is Hermione." And it is. 
Hermione is an intelligent, self-aware young woman. She's not another 
sacrificial Lily. Her function in the *narrative* might be to help 
Harry, but as a character she has been developed beyond this. She's 
focussed. She organises her own time and then proceeds to tell 
everyone else how too organise theirs, because ultimately she 
believes that she knows better. (I could go really far out on a limb 
here and say that she helps Harry because it makes her feel useful, 
and validated as a caring person. She's kinky. She gets a kick out of 
it. Is there any such thing as a non-selfish act? Woohoo! Why doesn't 
everyone flame me?) 
Harry's number one priority is Harry, as the irritatingly solipistic 
narrative focalisation in OoP showed us. He might be off saving 
people, but his focus is constantly on himself. And Ron's number one 
priority is Ron, because he can be incredibly selfish at times. And 
Dumbledore's number one priority is...oh, no-one really knows. But 
that's a whole different thread. I'm trying to point out that it is 
perfectly natural for people to be primarily motivated by self-
interest and yet still be good. likeable, sympathetic people (yet 
another reason why I shouldn't have included Dumbledore in there 
then... ;P)
Anyway, back to *my* number one priority...

>>>Ambition requires selfishness, and Hermione has ambition in 
droves. As we've seen ("perhaps if I could take SPEW further..."), 
she doesn't intend to use it to do anything as obvious as climb a    
particular career ladder, but she wants to employ her talents to    
the best of her abilities. She's ambitious to be true to herself.>>>

Oh, hello there, GEO. Have you an opinion on this one too? Why, I 
believe you do.

>>And how exactly is SPEW selfish? Pushing to free the elves from 
enslavement by the wizards, a very unpopular thing especially with 
the fact that she is a mudblood, is extremely unselfish of her.>>

Again, please note my wording. At*no* point does it say "and another 
thing that selfish bitch wants to do is free house elves from a 
lifetime of slavery. How self-centred can you get, eh?" The SPEW 
refernce in the quote above refers to the fact that Hermione's 
ambition doesn't take the traditional form that we are familiar with 
from the traditional stereotype of the ambitious woman. I offered 
that as an example of her push to further herself. Also, perhaps you 
should note that SPEW's unpopularity, and Hermione's unpopularity 
because of her mixed blood are completely unrelated entities, and 
probably shouldn't be put together n the same sentence. She's not 
unpopular with Harry, Ron, the twins, Hagrid, or her various victims 
in the Gryffindor common room -  the people with whom she discusses 
SPEW, because she's Muggle born. She's not unpopular with Draco and 
his Slytherin minions because she wants to free house-elves (although 
I'm sure it wouldn't help her case if they knew about it). But hey. I 
could just be looking for any excuse to pull your post apart on the 
grounds that you had once offended me, and that wouldn't be very in-
keeping with the spirit of this discussion group.

Kirstini, who would still quite like to have that discussion on 
Hermione and hubris if anyone fancies it.