Hermione acting out-of-character

[totorivers]

No: HPFGUIDX 111295

Jekatiska:
> It's not out of character, though. Remember what she said about
> Firenze being the new divination teacher: "I don't really like 
> horses" and "he still has four legs". Hermione doesn't understand 
> centaurs - or even house-elves for that matter. She's brilliant 
> when it comes to human behaviour, spells, and book knowledge. But
> - maybe because of her muggle background - she doesn't understand 
> other magical creatures. <snip>
> 
> Hermione's blunder is actually quite revealing. It shows her 
> Spew-idealist character in quite a different light. She sees
> house-elves as something to be helped, but doesn't understand the 
> way they think, and goes on helping them completely the wrong way. 
<snip>
> She fails to understand their way of thinking because it's in 
> conflict with her own. So she hears what they say - both the 
> house-elves and the centaurs - but doesn't understand what they 
> really mean.


  I think you may have something there, but you are also missing a 
few important details. First, Hermione identifies herself with the 
centaur and the house elf, so she naturally think their common 
points are more important than in reality. She identifies herself 
with them as a result of being muggle-born: like Ron doesn't try to 
feel for magical being, whether they are house elf or something else, 
Ron or other wizards, even "nice one", do not understand her, and 
ridicule her, which may be a drive for her so-called perfectionism 
and "bossiness". So Hermione may have convinced herself that she was 
naturally the centaur's allies, and that they would have understood 
her, while the centaur put all the wizard in the same bag.

 Second, Hermione is under severe stress. She just had her best 
friend being menaced with the cruicatus curse, and maybe more. I 
don't think she was really thinking at that point, and this stress 
may have come out as being short and unconsiderate. The same happens 
with spew in a way, she is *angry* at wizards when she does that, 
and it is almost as much against pure blood than for house elf...I 
think. Plus, she didn't have the time to really think things 
through, and her emotions in the matter were not helping.

"totorivers"