Stories Featuring an Anti-Hermione Bias

• Published: 2019-06-22

Ultimately this one-shot falls down because it is a one-shot. Such a break would have massive ripples down across book seven, and we have no indication of how those fall out. How does Harry navigate a world in which Ron and Hermione have irrevocably parted ways as this suggests?

• Published: 2017-12-27

There is a tone shift between the end of Goblet of Fire and the beginning of Order of the Phoenix. In the Former, Sirius is an adult, someone that Hermione encourages Harry to confide in. By that summer, staying in Grimmauld Place, she will have taken on a more critical view, and will be the one adult that she does not seem to believe deserves real respect. This book explores three possibilities. One that Harry and Ginny become close during book four, rather than Ginny trying to find herself in other relationships. Second that Sirius was unwilling to stay out of Harry’s life, but insisted on being part of it. Third that Ron and Hermione, he out of jealousy and she out of her distrust of the relationship, can neither one be trusted with the secrets that Harry’s adventures have caused them to be hold.

• Published: 2019-06-04
• Updated: 2020-10-07
• Completed: N/A

The biggest flaw with this one is that it is unlikely that as late as year six the teachers would finally take notice of just about anything and act responsibly. On the other hand, year six is the year that Harry gets detention every week for mishandling the fight in the bathroom.¹ As this is also an attack on a pure-blood by someone of lesser standing, this might be seen in a similar light. I like the positive spin on Lavender, and the way Ginny realises that she’s taken bad advice. Some of the other side characters brought to prominence are also interesting. The redemption arc with Marietta is clearly very interesting to the author, and related in that Hermione also triggered Marietta’s situation, but I do not care for it. I suspect the author has been unable to finish the story because she included too many side threads, and that focusing on fewer othem would have allowed for greater clarity of execution.

• Published: 2010-03-31

This story is exceptionally unbelievable in that if the Unspeakables truly thought so little of Hermione, they would not have brought her in for an “interview” just to tell her, in fair detail, just how little they thought of her and why. It is however, an amusing summation of things that could have been done differently across the series if she were to really be the brilliant girl genius.

• Published: 2019-02-12

This attempts to illustrate just how devestating Hermione’s treatment of her parents in book seven would have been. The problem is that the Granger family was dysfunctional well before that book, and so the problems they experience almost feel like they were inevitable even without Hermione’s interferance.

• Published: 2015-07-13

This is a more realistic take on the same premise as Not the Smartest Witch. Here McGonagall is attempting to actually be head of house, almost moving this into the Responsible Adult category.

• Published: 2014-06-08

Unfortunately despite the promising premise, this is simply a rather poorly executed bashing story. The book goes alternate universe in that Harry is rather more widely curious than in canon, and so looks up the student files to follow up on suspicions he has about student performance. So far so good. The investigation shows some believable results:

• Hermione has mediocre magical strength - in canon we do not actually have a reliable comparison of the relative magical strength of the various students.
• Hermione knows the spells, but is too eagerly pushing on to new knowledge to fully explore the fine details of things already covered. She wants to impress with things not known by others, rather than spending time working on things she “already knows.” This is less in line with the canonical characterisation.
• Hermione gets penalised for her over-length essays. Honestly this should have happened in the books.
• Ron is a fairly stereotypical bashing representation, poor grammar, poor study habits, refusal to correct either. Sure the canonical Ron does have poor study habits, but he does pass most of his courses with “exceeds” scores.