Harry Potter: Hermione Granger's 5 Worst Mistakes (& Her 5 Best Decisions)
Hermione Granger might not be the main protagonist of the Harry Potter series, but she is one of the most memorable and loved characters from that series. Hermione is intelligent, compassionate, and brave, but just like all interesting characters, she also has her flaws and makes mistakes.
While overall Hermione is a good person who tries her best to make good choices, there are instances in the series where she makes poor choices. Here are her best and worst decisions.
10 Worst: Confounding Cormac MgLaggen
While Hermione is the member of the trio who is least likely to break the rules, she does do so when she thinks it’s for the right reasons.
So, while normally she tries to only break rules when she’s trying to protect others or fight against Voldemort, the time she confounded Cormac wasn’t morally right. Cormac might not have been likable, but she did break the rules so Ron could get on the team.
9 Best: Caring about house-elves
Hermione is someone who often has her heart in the right place even if she doesn’t always go about things perfectly. Hermione cares about fairness and the suffering of others, and this is most apparent in her desire to help the house-elves.
While other people might look down on her or think she’s being ridiculous for this, it shows how caring she is.
8 Worst: Attacking Ron after he kissed Lavender
While Ron and Hermione might be the main canon couple from the series, they don’t always have a very good relationship even when they are just friends.
While Ron can be rather immature and rude, it still wasn’t alright for Hermione to send the attack spell on Ron. Even if she was upset, it wasn’t all right to attack him physically.
7 Best: Providing logical views to Harry
While Hermione could sometimes be too much of a naysayer, her more logical perspective was really good for Harry to hear. She provided a good balance for the trio in this way. There were many instances where Hermione’s common sense was necessary.
Just a few examples of this are when she is worried about Harry’s safety with the Firebolt, when she tells Harry to take Occlumency seriously, and when she warns him against the Half-Blood Prince book.
6 Worst: Using the time turner to take many classes
Hermione is very intelligent and also hardworking. She loves learning and also clearly gets a lot of her self-worth from being the smartest student.
So, while it makes sense that she might want to take as many classes as possible, using a time-turner to take a ridiculous course load wasn’t a good choice. It also didn’t make any sense for Dumbeldore and McGonagall to allow this.
5 Best: Protecting her parents by modifying their memories
One of the things that makes Hermione such a good person is that she is willing to make hard choices in order to do what’s right.
When she has to Obliviate her parents’ memory of her in order to protect their safety, it’s the right decision, but it’s also a difficult one for her to make. She is clearly upset about having to do this but knows it’s the only way to protect them.
4 Worst: Holding Rita Skeeter in a jar
Rita Skeeter is an awful person who seeks to ruin people’s lives with lies about them and telling things that aren’t hers to tell. So, Hermione keeping her from spreading horrible stories about people might not be a bad thing at all, but this doesn’t mean the way she went about it was right.
She basically kept Rita Skeeter in jail, and as a fourteen-year-old, this wasn’t her call to make. It’s amazing she didn’t end up going to Azkaban for this.
3 Best: Being really prepared for the Horcrux journey
Many have pointed out that Hermione is often the one who keeps the trio going and that she deserves a lot of credit. While Harry might decide to continue on his work with Dumbledore and destroy the Horcruxes, neither Harry Or Ron prepare for the realities of this journey.
It’s Hermione who gets supplies together and comes up with escape plans.
2 Worst: Making polyjuice potion in her second year
Hermione might be really smart, but she, as well as Harry and Ron, often overestimated their abilities. When Hermione decides to brew Polyjuice Potion in order to sneak into the Slytherin common room, it’s rather dangerous.
She’s lucky that the only real consequence was that she turned into a part cat for a time because she easily could have killed herself or her friends.
1 Best: Staying with Harry on the Horcrux Hunt
Another one of the most difficult but also good decisions that Hermione ever makes is when she stays with Harry even after Ron leaves.
When Ron abandons them and asks Hermione to come with him, it’s clear that Hermione is really upset about what to do. She doesn’t want to let Ron go, but she’s committed to helping Harry and destroying Voldemort.