What is Hermione afraid of?

[Richard]

No: HPFGUIDX 80398

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "chicofan12000" 
<martiyoung at m...> wrote:
> Just a thought I had before and again recently while reading PoA:  
> After the boggart scene Lupin tells Harry he didn't allow him to 
try 
> the spell because he thought the boggart would become Voldemort.  
But 
> somehow Hermione doesn't try the spell either...

To which I (Richard) reply:

I think we have in Hermione's failure to deal with that bogart in the 
DADA final under Lupin a window into both Hermione's and JKR's 
souls.  JKR has, after all, stated that Hermione is in part based 
upon JKR herself, and that she was a bookish, studious, INSECURE 
child.  Hermione is sooooo bookish and diligent in her studies due to 
her personal insecurity.  She is driven by her inner demon of self-
doubt to go the extra TEN miles to things right ... completely, in 
depth and breadth, right, not just "good enough for government work."

She is, I think, exasperated by the casualness of others with regard 
to studies almost precisely because she is driven so, and cannot see 
that others are not, and will not be, so driven.  Thus, I don't see 
her attitude towards the short-comings of others, in the academic 
sense, as hubris (such as others see in her), but as her failure to 
understand the consequences of her insecurity.

She takes so many courses in PoA because she is driven, not because 
she is proud.  She cannot NOT take those additional courses because 
she is convinced that failing to take them will leave her in some 
sense vulnerable, lacking the one bit of information from some 
obscure subject that would be her downfall in some later crisis ... 
whether that "crisis" be an exam or a work task or a duel.  And being 
so personally insecure, this is her greatest fear, as shown by the 
bogart in the DADA final exam.


Richard