Hermione as Stategist (was: Harry as Leader (was: What has Harry learned?)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 127444


>>sherry:
>do you truly see hermione as a brilliant planner and strategist? i 
have never thought of her in that way, and i would love to hear your 
thoughts on that.<
<snip>

Betsy:
When Hermione sets herself to a task, she usually gets it done, and in 
a rather efficient fashion.  There's the Polyjuice scheme in CoS, 
where she figures out the goal, the components, and the method while 
Ron and Harry are still throwing out random theories.  She does a 
similar thing at the end of PoA with the time turner.  IIRC, Hermione 
figures out most of Dumbledore's hints, and generally directs her and 
Harry's path. (Could be some movie contamination sneaking in there.)  
And of course there's the Rita Skeeter fun in GoF.

OotP is where Hermione's particular skills shine.  She comes up with 
the DA (a perfect way to take on Umbridge), and figures out how to 
keep the group neatly under the radar.  She comes up with a plan, 
totally on the fly, to get Harry out of Umbridge's clutches, and does 
a pretty good job of trying to stall Harry until some sense kicks in.  
Her treatment of Umbridge was coldly ruthless - but efficiency and 
ruthlessness often go hand in hand (at least in the books I read 
*eg*), and Hermione was working under a pretty intense time crunch.

Even more impressively, Hermione recognizes the signs of Voldemort's 
plan.  I think, because she's got a similar strategic way of thinking 
she can tell that something's not quite right about Harry's dream.  
She knows what *she'd* do if she was Voldemort, and so she gets 
suspicious.

What Hermione is *not* very good at is getting people to listen to 
her.  When she's dealing with Ron and Harry they tend to go along with 
her, because they trust her brilliance.  (And even with them it took a 
while, and some fairly extreme circumstances, for Hermione to win them 
over.)  Though, there are several occasions were Ron and Harry are 
visibly humoring Hermione.  They went through the polyjuice scheme 
expecting each step to fail.  I think they were quite surprised when 
it worked.  

SPEW is another perfect example.  Hermione's plan is a good one.  
Create awareness with Hogwarts students, desseminating her ideas 
throughout the British WW; free the Hogwarts' house-elves, creating an 
army of rights demanding rebels; and, I imagine, start bringing 
pressure to bare on the Ministry with the support of like-minded 
witches and wizards and newly empowered house-elves.  Big problem is, 
no one listens to her.  Not even fellow Muggle-borns, who should be 
expected to have at least a small amount of similar revulsion at the 
idea of an enslaved race, join SPEW.  Hermione can throw a great 
party, but she can't get anyone to come.

Betsy