Ghosts / Hermione & parents /

[serenadust]

No: HPFGUIDX 102382


>Dreadnought:

 Have we seen a single decent Muggle in any detail in any of
> the >books? Even Hermione's parents seem to be become estranged 
>from their
> daughter.


> Christina responded:

 Where do you get this from? They don't keep her from doing magic
> or from school. The few times we see them in the WW they are so 
out of their
> element I don't blame them for being a bit quiet, especially with 
Arthur
> Weasley questioning them about muggle money and electricity. I get 
the
> impression that Hermione is pretty close to her parents.


I don't share your impression.  I found it odd and somewhat 
disturbing that in the nearly 2 years from the middle of the summer 
at the beginning of GoF until the very end of OOP, Hermione spends 
only a week or two with her parents.  During this period, she goes 
from age 13 (if you accept the premise that she was born Sept. 19, 
1980) to age 15 3/4 with practically no personal contact with them, 
beyond owls.  I'm surprised that they even recognise her at the end 
of OOP!

She very rarely mentions them, at least in Harry's presence, she 
skips seeing them at Christmas in CoS, PoA, and then GoF (although 
the Yule Ball is really only Christmas night...why couldn't she have 
visited them for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day?), 
and then the next year (in OOP) bails out of their planned ski trip 
in order to spend the holiday at GP. Not to mention, that she lies 
about where she'll be, implying that she's staying at Hogwarts to 
study for her OWLS. Doesn't this seem very odd for a girl her age, 
who is by all appearances, an only child?  And what sort of parents 
would tolerate her opting out of spending the very short summer 
holidays with them in favor of the family of a boy she met at school?

In light of all this, I found her remark about wanting to tell them 
she had been made a prefect because "--I mean, prefect is something 
they can understand--", to be a little, well, cold.  Maybe not cold, 
but certainly condescending.  I just can't reconcile Hermione's very 
limited interaction with her parents with a "normal", loving, parent-
child relationship.

Jo Serenadust