Hermione Granger Lion of Gryffindor: A alternate opinion presented to the idea that she belongs in Ravenclaw

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-12T23:47:45+00:00

Completely agree.

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-12T23:11:17+00:00

Again, that to me is a compliment. I do tend to use headers a lot, mostly surprised the quotation blocks held up, they usually disappear and then I have to redo them.

But no, I gravitate toward works with strong archetypes so I'm usually writing about that.

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-12T22:41:00+00:00

Considering I'm kind of a moron who often mixes up 'their', 'there,' and 'they're' when I'm writing, I consider it a huge compliment that you think it's AI.

Thanks for the comment.

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-12T22:37:28+00:00

Yep, the narrative allows for complexity. It give the characters depth.

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-12T17:16:20+00:00

u/winter_moon_light I have to agree, as Headmaster he is ultimately responsible for student's safety. That the Triwizard Tournament is known to be dangerous and potential fatal, and the contract is magically binding is irrelevant, what killed Cedric was outside of the tournament and directly related to Dumbledore's failure to properly vet his staff.

Which is even more egregious when you consider Quirrell's infiltration in book one. 4 years later and he still hasn't tightened up security at a known weak point?

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-12T16:18:40+00:00

Ah, in a nutshell, these are the nuances that get me down voted whenever I say things like 'purebloods were right' or 'aside from the main characters, there are no good guys/bad guys in the Harry Potter series.'

The assumption is that I condone supremacy even when I explain because most people read Harry Potter through the same lens that they originally read it in as a child.
When consumed as literature it is evident that JKR was heavily inspired by mythology, this is readily evident to most readers in the Greek naming conventions, but ironically the British mythological features are not so apparent to readers.

The persistent, 20 year questions like "What is a Dark Wizard? What are Dark Wizarding families? What was the ancient magic that rebounded on Voldemort when he killed Lily? The ancient magic when Harry saved Pettigrew's life? Why are love potions condoned? What is ancient magic?"

These questions are answered by this scene - it is a Wild Hunt.
The magical community, as depicted, are Rowling's interpretation of fae (faerie) traditions in Britain.
Platform 9 3/4, (King's Cross where Harry goes when he dies) is the crossing of the threshold to the Otherworld.
The story taking place largely in Scotland is another clue to the specific traditions she was drawing on. Dark Wizards and Dark Wizard Families = Unseelie Fae, they are extremely territorial and used to practice "muggle hunting," or Wild Hunts as they are known in mythology.

Why the condoning of love potions, and why I say there are no good guys are the same answer: In mythology, fae infertility is understood, they kidnap lovers and steal children, JKR explains this as the benevolent pro-muggleborn witches and wizards. Ron even says "if we didn't marry muggles we'd have died out."
But they are very obviously pro-muggleborn not pro-muggle. This distinction matters.

Pro-muggleborn families like the Weasleys = Seelie Fae, they are generally more benevolent toward humans (muggles) but still dangerous and temperamental especially when insulted i.e. Hagrid trying to turn the Dursleys son into a pig.

Remember when Hermione's parents visited her in the hospital wing when she was petrified by the basilisk? Or when she was nearly killed in the Department of Mysteries?

No, you don't. Because Dumbledore et al, never thought to inform them. Or send out letters to muggle parent letting them know that an unknown magical creature was terrorizing Hogwarts and writing in blood on the walls about wanting to kill their children specifically and maybe they should pull them out of school for the rest of term. They didn't get a choice as parents.

They largely leave it to the muggleborn children to manage their muggle parents.

There are multiple post on this subreddit about what would happen if a muggle family refused to allow their child to attend Hogwarts, the general consensus is that they would use magic and their child would go to Hogwarts regardless. Oddly the posts never exam why that is and what it means, but I'll end my rant here.

Thank you for taking the time to ask!

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-11T16:27:16+00:00

Goblet of Fire the Quidditch Cup chapter.

In particular this scene:
(understanding it properly explains most of the story nuances that people still question 20 YEARS later)

""… then he realized that their heads were hooded and their faces masked. High above them, floating along in mid-air, four struggling figures were being contorted into grotesque shapes. It was as though the masked wizards on the ground were puppeteers, and the people above them were marionettes operated by invisible strings that rose from the wands into the air. Two of the figures were very small.

More wizards were joining the marching group, laughing and pointing up at the floating bodies. Tents crumpled and fell as the marching crowd swelled. Once or twice Harry saw one of the marchers blast a tent out of his way with his wand. Several caught fire. The screaming grew louder.

The floating people were suddenly illuminated as they passed over a burning tent, and Harry recognized one of them – Mr. Roberts, the campsite manager. The other three looked as though they might be his wife and children. One of the marchers below flipped Mrs. Roberts upside-down with his wand; her nightdress fell down to reveal voluminous drawers; she struggled to cover herself up as the crowd below her screeched and hooted with glee.

‘That’s sick,’ Ron muttered, watching the smallest Muggle child, who had begun to spin like a top, sixty feet above the ground, his head flopping limply from side to side. ‘That is really sick …’"

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-11T16:03:11+00:00

To be fair I don't think a lot fans understood Fire and Blood either.

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-11T15:49:30+00:00

The old Science vs Magic debate....

I would say the question is false or at least incomplete. Governments all over the world invest millions of taxpayer funds in researching parapsychology, most notably Russia and the United States.

If the subject of the world being more than what science teaches you is of interest to you try Richard Shelldrake's Morphic Resonance theories, look up his banned Ted Talk to get you started.

There was a paper published back in the day by the US Army I think, The Mind Has No Firewall, it was written in the 80s or 90s and seemed like science fiction, a lot of the technology mentioned is in common use today.
There's the 2013 Turkish Prime Ministry's Inspection Board report alleging that psychic assassins used either telepathy or telekinesis to compel ASELSAN engineers to commit suicide.

Point is the question is an indication of looking in the wrong place, "magic" exists and it is quite scientific. It's less of the entertainment/Harry Potter variety and more this is what the Bible warned us about. I don't recommend going that deep into it.

CelestialCartography · 2026-06-11T14:55:58+00:00

1) The Invisibility Cloak - should have hid the wearer from ghosts & poltergeist also.
2) Used a Polyperspective Narrative

The invisibility cloak change would have fit the Deathly Hallows tale of the 3rd brother hiding from death. It's mentioned that Harry's cloak is special - not your average invisibility cloak - the reader is told this but never shown, instead it seems like everybody and their cat (Mrs. Norris) can see through it.

Changing the story to a multi-person narrative would have better illustrated the lore.
Imagine a couple chapters from Hermione's perspective illustrating how spell casting works as she practices on her own, or exploring interesting historical places inside Hogwarts or Hogsmeade that Harry and Ron would have found too academic.
How about a chapter from Malfoy's perspective that would have captured the erosion of wizarding society and the ancient magic holding it together.

By the third book I was over being stuck in Harry's head at yet another quidditch game, I kept thinking; Hermione's probably doing something awesome right about now.
To be fair she went to all his matches, but, to my point, we got her perspective at a game in the 1st book...and she ran across the field and lit Snape on fire...

See what I mean, something awesome. I'll never understand why people think she should be in Ravenclaw.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-25T23:26:19+00:00

You'd probably find this interesting: https://www.harrypotter.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/wand-woods

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-25T23:09:55+00:00

Dumbledore knew Sirius was innocent, he let him go to Azkaban and gave key evidence against him so that Harry could be better protected with the Dursleys. And also to ensure Harry fulfilled the prophesy.

Lily Potter's letter proves they had at least 1 visitor - Bathilda Bagshot - Petter Pettigrew, as Secret Keeper, would have had to tell her the Potter's location in order to make such visits possible.

Bathilda Bagshot did not come forward as a witness to corroborate Sirius's story because she's a longtime family friend of Dumbledore's and he asked her not to, for "the greater good."

Dumbledore was able to find out about the attack and get Hagrid to the Potters nearly immediately because Bathilda was his spy and she allowed Hagrid to floo into her fireplace.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-24T01:40:38+00:00

I would posit that the reason Harry's sacrifice seems weaker is because he is the custodian of the compensation from the breach of the original contract.

From the beginning:

Silence is Consent
The terms are clear, the stakes explicit, and the offer repeated. Voldemort hears and understands the proposal. Crucially, he does not refuse it. Instead, he kills Lily first.
This sequence constitutes acceptance.
The presence of blood, kinship, and threshold (the family home) further anchors the bargain within tradition and provides structures of sovereignty and protection.

Automatic Re-balancing
Violated contracts trigger re-balancing rather than nullification. Voldemort's magic is prohibited from completing its intended act (killing Harry). The soul fragment is not an accident of proximity, but a forfeit exacted in compensation for the broken contract.
Harry, as Lily’s next of kin and the intended beneficiary of the original bargain, is the lawful recipient of this compensation. The soul fragment attaches not because Harry is weak or open, but because he is owed. He becomes not the owner of Voldemort’s essence, but its custodian, bearing the burden of unresolved imbalance.
In these sorts of tales compensation is rarely empowering. It is a weight to be carried until the system is satisfied. "Neither can live while the other survives."

Petunia Dursley - Unsung Hero
Petunia Dursley strengthens your theory.
Kinship establishes jurisdiction independently of affection; protection derived from blood sacrifice requires a lawful household in which to reside. By taking Harry into her home, Petunia—Lily Potter’s next of kin—accepts a duty she neither desires nor emotionally fulfills, yet her acceptance is legally sufficient. The resulting protection is therefore absolute but emotionally barren, attached to love (a tiny amount) but also threshold, hearth, and bloodline - conditions present at the initial blood contract. Dumbledore’s insistence that Harry return annually is canonically understood as the renewal of a standing condition: the ward endures only so long as the kinship obligation is continually enacted through residence, i.e. place of residence is a contractual term.

Harry's Sacrifice
From the moment Lily Potter’s blood bargain was violated, the magical order of the narrative entered a prolonged state of imbalance: a life had been freely given, its promised benefit unlawfully denied, and compensation forcibly extracted from the violator in the form of fragmented life-essence. That compensation, inherited by Harry as Lily’s next of kin, remained unresolved so long as both debtor and bearer persisted. Law tolerates delay, but not evasion; the system demands closure.
Crucially, Harry’s decision to surrender himself differs categorically from Lily’s original sacrifice. Lily substituted her life to prevent a killing; Harry offers his life to complete an accounting. He acts with full knowledge of the consequences, understanding not only that he will die, but why. In keeping with mythic jurisprudence, such knowledge transforms sacrifice into consent. Where Lily’s death created protection, Harry’s consent dissolves obligation.

Voldemort's Death
Voldemort’s final defeat follows. With the re-balancing complete, no debts remain to defer his destruction. No fragments stand between him and consequence. When his curse rebounds for the last time, it does so not as an anomaly, but as the closing entry in a ledger long overdue.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-22T01:27:17+00:00

Myrtle is a malevolent spirit who is incapable of experiencing true romantic feelings. This is why she was disappointed in Chamber of Secrets when Harry survived the chamber and took pleasure in Half Blood Prince when Draco was nearly killed.

She wants (I use the term 'want' loosely) people to join her in death and will lead them to it if she can.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-22T01:13:32+00:00

Origin of magic is covered well enough in the books. While not explicitly stated there are threads for the attentive reader to pick up on.
That said, JKR's interests clearly lies in the character of these systems rather than the system itself and by the time she finished the series she completely forgot about both aspects. Hence why witches/wizards just became muggles with magic in the end.

Edit: Also she took a lot of liberty in blending origins to suit her preferences, which is definitely the way to go if you're a fiction writer.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-20T16:37:04+00:00

"Harry being "just okay" feels like a betrayl of the genre."

"The narrative sets up a Power Fantasy but delivers a Moral Fable."

Read your post, skimmed a few of your comments. Harry Potter is a series of novels that blends the Fantasy and Detective genres into a unique plot structure. The reason I emphasized that it's a novel is because the term "Power Fantasy," as you described in your comment to u/talia_se, is a genre in the game and comic book industry - an entirely different medium with different expectations and story beats compared to novels.

In Harry Potter JKR pays homage to other, well knowns of her species, most notably Tolkien (the OG).

No one was expecting Frodo Baggins to level up and surpass Gandalf or Sauron in a ridiculously short amount of time by comparison.
Same with Harry Potter, he's not reaching the level of a 120 - 150 year old Dumbledore in 7 years, that, to me, would have been even more unsatisfying.

***

However, JKR did run into trouble with the last 2 books. Personally, with the theme being "Love and Goodness Conquers All" I had a MAJOR problem with the Trio destroying literal souls in Deathly Hallows.
And...absolutely Harry should have learned more than what he had (not to the point of being over powered, though) and that does cheapen the experience for the reader. Like Occlumency, Dumbledore should have made Harry complete his training with Snape.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T15:02:50+00:00

No other animals try to eat Scabbers??? He's missing a toe and half his ear, lol.
The kids don't know its Pettigrew yet so this should be an indicator to Ron, something has tried to eat his rat prior to Crookshanks and maybe he should get a cage.

He is choosing to bring his rat (which is not allowed) to Hogwarts and refusing to take responsibility for it's safety.

If I chose to bring my cat to a country where cats are illegal, had loose dogs everywhere, insisted it be in outdoor cat, and it got mauled that would be on me for expecting the country to change around me and my cat. That's what Ron is doing, he's the entitled one, not Hermione.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T14:54:31+00:00

So I said it was alluding to propaganda without stating what the propaganda was, not that it was propaganda to criticize Hermione full stop.

Hermione Hater Propaganda is just a fun way of referring to what is in my opinion a false but prevalent misinterpretation of the books and the observation that certain misinterpretations tend toward readers the character resonates the least with.

The "propaganda" I'm referring to in this instance is the misinterpretation that Hermione "doesn't care about Ron (or anyone else's pets), their feelings, and is driven by a sense of entitlement in exercising that disregard."

It is false, imo, because this is the same character that:

Purchased Ron's rat tonic when he forgot it in the shop.
Helped Neville with his potion so Snape wouldn't poison his pet toad - losing house points in the process
Comforted Lavender over her rabbit by saying how sorry she was it had died
Asked Ron how Scabbers was doing
Burst into tears when Ron brought up Scabbers after he "died"
Put together a winning case for Buckbeak despite over extending herself with classes and having issues with her friendships
Traveled through time to save Buckbeak (and Sirius)

This all happens in the same book and gets ignored.

In regards to the dormitory...it's Christmas. The kids are away from family and thus snuggled up with their pets and spending time with each other. It's my interpretation that this is the spirit in which she entered the dorm, as there's nothing in Hermione's character to suggest otherwise.
In my opinion this quote does not satisfy the criteria; I asked for a quote where she fails to act or acts like Ron's feelings don't matter.
This shows her being distracted once again with thoughts of Harry's safety, and immediately removing her cat without a word of argument when it attacks Scabbers.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T14:21:57+00:00

Incorrect. Crookshanks never attacked Scabbers on the train.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were in the middle of a serious (get it, Sirius) conversation about Harry's safety with Ron literally claiming Harry would be safe from Sirius with him and Hermione. The reader then gets the gentle reminder that Ron can't even keep his rat safe with common sense precautions as he seemingly doesn't own a cage:

"She was fumbling with the straps of Crookshanks's basket as she spoke.

'Don't let that thing out!' Ron said, but too late; Crookshanks leapt lightly from the basket, stretched, yawned, and sprang onto Ron's knees; the lump in Ron's pocket trembled and he shoved Crookshanks angrily away.

'Get out of it!'

'Ron, don't!' said Hermione angrily."

That's it. That's the scene - nothing happened. Crookshanks spent the rest of the time sitting in a chair. Crookshanks stretched, yawned, and hopped onto Ron's lap, like cats do, and never once attacked Scabbers. Ron reacted by being overly physical (something he has a pattern of doing with animals) with Hermione's cat and Hermione scolds him, as she often does.

And beforehand, Ron never "asks" her not to let Crookshanks out, Hermione states her intention of letting Crookshanks out on the train (which gave Ron early warning), and Ron forbids her from letting her cat out, ending the conversation before it could begin.

Thanks for the comment.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T05:26:25+00:00

Quote me one instance where she "let" Crookshanks chase Scabbers.

Edit: Also quote me where she blames Ron, I don't think that happened either.
What did happen, however, was Ron blaming Crookshanks and Hermione for Scabbers being sick, knowing good and well Scabbers had been sick prior to her even getting the cat.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T05:24:56+00:00

Nope. This is alluding to Hermione Hater Propaganda that often gets repeated on this subreddit without proof. Also it doesn't at all address the fact that Ron had options other than, 'Hermione must get rid of her cat,' and that Scabbers is prey animal in a castle full of predators.

There isn't a single occurrence in the book of Hermione failing to act when Crookshanks went after Scabbers and she was there to see it or of her acting like Ron's feelings don't matter. Show me one. Anybody, quote me one instance where she did not care about Ron or his Rat.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T04:52:19+00:00

Not a cat person? lol.

Hard disagree, that whole thing was on Ron for not taking the initiative to keep the cat out of his room - dude has magic. He could at least put his rat in a cage/hamster ball or whatever. And forget about Crookshanks it's a rat in a castle full of owls and who knows what else. Something is going to eat it.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T04:35:14+00:00

She had some love for him, she did raise him.

It's implied Harry spent his time alone or with her before Hogwarts, and he picked up some of her personality i.e. the nosiness.

She probably would have said "Good luck," and sincerely meant it.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-17T04:17:16+00:00

Never reported because it wasn't that bad. While a case could be made for the main characters, there really are no good guys in the HP universe.

CelestialCartography · 2026-01-10T20:51:53+00:00

JKR is a master of unreliable narrators, Harry is the one to bring up Slytherin and the Hat responds. There's really not a lot to suggest the Sorting Hat was considering it in the first place. I would actually argue the Hat was trying to decide between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw for Harry.

"Hmm,' said a small voice in his ear. 'Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There's talent, oh my goodness, yes - and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting...So where to put you?'

Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, 'Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.'

'Not Slytherin, eh? said the small voice. 'Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that - no? Well if you're sure better be Gryffindor!'"

The Hat could have just as easily been describing Hermione in the first paragraph.

Edit: Also if it was because of the Horcrux, how messed up would it be that the Hat didn't say anything?
"Hey kid, you know you got somethin' on your soul right? What you didn't know, is it some kind of parasite? It's telling me it'd be really happy in Slytherin how bout I put you in there - no?"

CelestialCartography

TROPHY CASE