*Gasp* There is life beyond Hermione!? Oh well, this page is dedicated to the real people behind Harry Potter.
Barnes&Noble.com - March 19th, 1999
Q - What were you like as a little girl, Ms. Rowling? I am sure you had a great imagination. Did you believe in fairies and magic?
A - I don't believe in magic in the sense that I write about it, but I do believe that extraordinary things can happen in the world for which we don't yet have an explanation. I was a little bit like Hermione in the book when I was young. I wasn't as clever, and I really hope I wasn't as annoying. I did consciously base her on me when I was about 11.
Q -You said earlier that Harry is the only character who is not based on someone you have known. Did you have friends like Ron and Hermione when you were growing up?
A - As I said, Hermione is a caricature of me. Now Ron, that is interesting. I didn't mean to base him on anyone, but after I had been writing a bit, I realized he was a lot like a childhood friend of mine from school.
Q - Hi, Ms. Rowling. How does a Muggle-born like Hermione develop magical abilities?
A - Nobody knows where magic comes from. It is like any other talent. Sometimes it seems to be inherited, but others are the only ones.
Barnes&Noble.com - September 8th, 1999
Q - This is probably a very American question, but how do you pronounce "Hermione"?
A - It's pronounced: Her-my-oh-nee.
Q - Dear Ms. Rowling, I'd like to ask if there would be a lot of romances between the characters in the upcoming books?
A - Good question. I'm having so much fun writing Book 4 because for the first time Harry, Ron, and Hermione are starting to recognize boys and girls as boys and girls. Everyone is in love with the wrong people. Let no one say my books lack realism.
Scholastic.com - February 3rd, 2000
Q - How do students at Hogwarts get educated in Muggle subjects? Do they even need to know other things besides magic?
A - They can choose to study Muggle subjects. In the third book, Hermione takes the class Muggles Studies, and that's where they learn about Muggles in school.
Q - Is Harry Potter ever going to fall in love with Hermione or is he going to fall in love with Ginny Weasley?
A - In Book IV Harry does decide he likes a girl, but it's not Hermione or Ginny. However, he's only 14, so there's plenty of time for him to change his mind. ;-)
Q - Are any of your female characters, like Hermione, modeled after your own daughter?
A - No, if Hermione was based on anyone, she was based on me when I was younger. But my daughter is turning out to be a bit like me, so she is a bit like Hermione. :-)
Q - Who is your favorite character?
A - I love, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and Professor Lupin.
CBC Newsworld - July 18th, 2000
Q - Some people say good characters are boring and evil characters are always the more interesting. There's the famous line about Milton and Paradise Lost: God is a bore and the devil is interesting.
A - Well, Harry is good. I personally do not find Harry boring at all. He has his faults. Ron and Hermione are very good characters... but no, I'm not bored by goodness.
Q - Civil rights becomes a theme in Goblet of Fire. It shows up in Hermione [in relation to] the rights of elves.
A - Yeah.
Q - This is a real issue.
A - Yeah, that was fairly autobiographical. My sister and I were that kind of teenager. We thought, I'm the only one who really feels these injustices. No one else understands the way I feel. I think a lot of teenagers go through that.
Q - In Britain they call it Right On or something.
A - Exactly. Well, it's fun to write, because Hermione with the best of intentions becomes quite self-righteous. My heart is entirely with her as she goes through this. She develops her political conscience. My heart is completely with her. But my brain tells me, which is a growing-up thing, that in fact she blunders towards the very people she's trying to help. She offends them.
Q - She's somewhat condescending to the elves who don't have rights.
A - She thinks it's so easy. It's part of what I was saying before about the growing process, of realizing you don't have quite as much power as you think you might have and having to accept that. Then you learn that it's hard work to change things and that it doesn't happen overnight. Hermione thinks she's going to lead them to glorious rebellion in one afternoon and then finds out the reality is quite different, but that was fun to write.
Q - These issues concerning race relations and civil rights for you as a person are obviously crucial.
A - I think children are interested in those things.
Q - If Harry had a magic duel with Hermione, who would win?
A - Very good question! Because until about halfway through Azkaban, Hermione would have won. But Harry -without anyone really noticing it - is becoming exceptionally good at Defense Against the Dark Arts. So that's the one area in which, almost instinctively, he is particularly talented. Apart from Quidditch.
BBC - Fall 2000
Q - Why was it important to show some of the strained friendships developing in this book?
A - Well in Book Four for me, Harry, Ron and Hermione are all starting to find their own identities - that means, in their various ways, facing up to what their parents have imposed on them, or the school. For Harry, that's facing up to fame, really facing up to it for the first time. He's been put into a situation where for the first time he'll get the weight of outside interest. So that's scary. Ron has to deal with his jealousy. He's made friends with the most famous boy in the year and that's not easy. And Hermione gets a political conscience. Yeah!
Q - Is this your idea of Hermione lightening up as you've said before. She didn't seem that light to me.
A - No, she will! She's a good girl. I agree with you - she's not that light in this book. But people made the mistake of assuming that my answers referred to Book Four. There are another three books to go. But in some ways - she's more of a rule breaker now. Where her convictions are concerned, she's prepared to do stuff that she's really not supposed to do. But she will lighten up. I promise you. I did.
Entertainment Weekly - September 7th, 2000
Q - What's it been like, dealing with Hollywood?
A - The person I was most nervous about meeting by far was Steve Kloves, who's writing the screenplay. I was really ready to hate [him]. This was the man who was gonna butcher my baby. The first time I met him, he said, "You know who my favorite character is?" And I thought, "You're gonna say Ron." It's real easy to love Ron -- but so obvious. But he said "Hermione." I just kind of melted.
Scholastic.com - October 16th, 2000
Q - If you could be a wizard, who would you be?
A - If I were a character in the book, I'd probably be Hermione. She's a lot like me when I was younger. (I wasn't that clever but I was definitely that annoying at times!)
Q - In the second book, Harry and Ron went to the girls' toilet and met McGonagall. They told her that they were going to visit Hermione, and she started crying. Why?
A - She found it very touching that Harry and Ron were missing Hermione so badly (or so she thought). Under that gruff exterior, Professor McGonagall is a bit of an old softy, really.
America Online - October 19th, 2000
Q - When is Hermione's birthday?
A - Hermione's birthday is September 19th.
Q- Did you consider having a girl be the main character?
A - Well, I didn't -- purely because Harry came to me as a boy. And after I'd been writing about him for a few months, he was too real to me to change. However, Hermione is such a good friend too, that I don't feel I have short-changed girls!
Q - Ron and Hermione give Harry gifts... does he ever give them birthday presents?
A - Yes, Harry does buy presents back! But I've never focused on their birthdays yet --there hasn't been room!
Q - Ms. Rowling, which character besides Harry is your favorite, and why?
A - I think that would have to be Hagrid -- but I love Ron and Hermione too, and I also love writing characters like Gilderoy Lockhart, Snape, the Dursleys... it's such fun doing horrible things to them.
Barnes&Noble.com - October 20th, 2000
Q - Hey Jo! I love your books! Ever since I encouraged people to read Harry Potter, people have been calling me Hermione! :-) Well, what inspired you to become a writer, and what sort of advice would you give to someone that wants to follow in your footsteps?
A - Thank you very much! I've wanted to be a writer as far back as I can remember. I couldn't think of anything I'd like to do more, and still can't. I think aspiring writers should firstly read a lot and resign themselves to the fact that they will waste a lot of trees before they produce anything they're happy with!
Q - Who is your favorite character in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?
A - Harry himself, of course, but also Ron, Hermione and Hagrid... then there's Dumbledore.... I love all of them, to be honest, even Dudley.
Q - Is it just me, or was something going on between Ron and Hermione during the last half of Goblet of Fire? I love your books, by the way, and two of them I've read straight through cover to cover in under 24 hours.
A - Well done on the reading speed! Yes, something's "going on," but Ron doesn't realize it yet. Typical boy.
Larry King Live - October 20th, 2000
Q - I'd like to know if any of your characters of the "Harry Potter" series are like any real-life characters you've ever met.
A - Right. Yes, a few people were inspired by living people. I have to be careful what I say here because some of my characters aren't too pleasant, but Hermione, who is one of Harry's best friends, she was most consciously based on a real person, and that person was me. She's a caricature of me when I was younger. Ron, who is Harry's other best friend, he's a lot like my oldest friend, who is a man called Sean. I was at school with him and the second book is dedicated to Sean.
Q - Why not then a heroin? Why isn't this Helene Potter?
A - Very good question. I was -- this is weird -- I writing the books for six months, before I stopped and thought: Well, he's a boy. How did that happen? Why is he a boy? Why isn't it Harriet? And number one, it was too late. Harry was too real by then for me to try to put him in a dress. That wasn't going to work. And then there was Hermione -- and Hermione is an indispensable part of the books and how the adventures happen. And she so much me that I felt no guilt about keeping the hero who had walked into my head. You know, it was uncontrived. It wasn't conscious. That's how he happened. So I kept him that way.
Time Magazine- October 30th, 2000 - Vol. 156 - no. 18
It's great to hear feedback from the kids. Mostly they are really worried about Ron. As if I'm going to kill Harry's best friend. What I find interesting is only once has anyone said to me, "Don't kill Hermione," and that was after a reading when I said no one's ever worried about her. Another kid said, "Yeah, well, she's bound to get through O.K." They see her as someone who is not vulnerable, but I see her as someone who does have quite a lot of vulnerability in her personality. Hermione is me, near enough. A caricature of me when I was younger. I wasn't that clever. But I was that annoying on occasion. Girls are very tolerant of her because she is not an uncommon female type -- the little girl who feels plain and hugely compensates by working very hard and wanting to get everything just so.
Fandom.com - Vancouver - November 16, 2000
Journalists at the conference were obviously very keen about learning more details about upcoming books. Rowling happily supplied some answers. "I know exactly what happens to most of the characters in their past and their future. I know far more, really, than the reader needs to know, but that just makes me comfortable to know that there are no surprises for me. I know exactly what is going on."
However, invented characters can sometimes take a life of their own and surprise their masters. "Hermione gave me a lot of trouble!" laughed Rowling. "She was really misbehaving. She developed this big political conscience about the House elves. Well, she wanted to go her own way, and for two chapters, she just went wandering off. I just let her do it and then I scrapped two chapters and kept a few bits. That I liked. That�s the most trouble anyone�s ever given me, but it was fun so I gave her her head."
BBC Red Nose Day Chat - March 12th, 2001
Q - When is Ron's Birthday?
A - First of March, in case you're thinking of sending him a card, and Hermione is the nineteenth of September..
Q - Does Hermione like Ron as more than a friend?
A - The answer to that is in Goblet of Fire!
Raincoast Books Interview - March 2001
Q - When you write about Harry, is he based on any boy you know?
A - No he's not, Harry is entirely imaginary. He just came out of a part of me. Ron was never supposed to be based on anyone but the longer I wrote Ron the more I realized that he was a lot like one of my oldest friends, a man named Sean. The longer I wrote Ron the more I realized he was a bit Sean-ish. Hermione is most consciously based on someone and that person is me when I was younger. She's a bit of an exaggeration of me but that's where she came from.
Interview with Steve Kloves and J.K. Rowling on the COS DVD - April 2003
Q - In this movie we've seen the kids develop from the first film, can you tell us about the relationship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione and how that is developing film by film?
A - JKR: Well I think it is developing in the films as it does in the books, which is to say that they are, they�re much stronger together than apart. They're much more aware, in the second film, of their particular strengths. So they're more effective, the children are able to do more complex things, for example the Polyjuice Potion. And also Chris in the second film has kind of foreshadowed what I don�t do until the fourth book, which is that you get hints of certain feelings between the three of them, that belong to a sort of slightly more mature person.
Steve: Yeah, I think you're seeing in Chamber the magic's becoming a bit second nature to them. At least simple magic is. And that basically it's, you know, a little bit of knowledge will get you into a lot of trouble. And I think that's what we're seeing in the second one: is that they're getting more mature but, it's a dangerous kind of knowledge.
Q - Steve, Hermione is a character that you have said is one of your favorites. Has that made her easier to write?
A - Steve: Yeah, I mean, I like writing all three, but I've always loved writing Hermione. Because, I just, one, she's a tremendous character for a lot of reasons for a writer, which also is she can carry exposition in a wonderful way because you just assume she read it in a book. If I need to tell the audience something -
JKR: Absolutely right, I find that all the time in the book, if you need to tell your readers something just put it in her. There are only two characters that you can put it convincingly into their dialogue. One is Hermione, the other is Dumbledore. In both cases you accept, it's plausible that they have, well Dumbledore knows pretty much everything anyway, but that Hermione has read it somewhere. So, she�s handy.
Steve: Yeah, she's really handy. And she's also just, I think, just tremendously entertaining. There's something about her fierce intellect coupled with a complete lack of understanding of how she affects people sometimes that I just find charming and irresistible to write.
Ok. So it's so extremly obvious that Ron likes our wonderful Hermione (*loud cheer from all of the Ron/Hermione shippers*). However (glares at R/H shippers), Hermione shows no interest in Ron................... Ok so she does but I just really don't think they should be together. It's too obvious!! The one thing I want everyone to look at are the lines I made in bold. Those are the two simple things I am placing all of my hope upon.
This part is dedicated to Emma Watson, the talented girl who plays Hermione on screen. She is 13 years old, 5'4", and has done nothing famously-like besides play Hermione. However she has been in several school plays and won 1st place in a poetry contest. Her b-day is April 15, 1990. She has an 8 year old brother named Alex and really likes cats and Brad Pitt. If you like Emma you can put these dolls on your site.
