What Jo says about...
Hermione Granger

Please note: unless you see quotemarks, these are summaries, and not JKR's words themselves. Please see the linked article for the actual text.

• Hermione is pronounced "Her-MY-oh-knee." [Read the exact quote from Barnes & Noble chat #2, 1999]
• Hermione is a name from Shakespeare chosen because Hermione needed an unusual name. [Read the exact quote from WBUR interview, 1999]
• Hermione is a "caricature of what I was when I was 11." [Read the exact quote from WBUR interview, 1999]
• "Harry is someone is forced for such a young person to make his own choices. [nice description of how Harry, Hermione and Ron all complement each other]. [Read the exact quote from WBUR interview, 1999]
• Hermione’s name is from Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, but "my Hermione bears very little relation to *that* Hermione, but it just seemed the sort of name that a pair of professional dentists, who liked to prove how clever they were ... do you know what I mean ... gave their daughter a nice, unusual name that no-one could pronounce!" Hermione needed an unusual name because she was so swotty and annoying. [Read the exact quote from National Press Club, 1999]
• Harry & Hermione are platonic friends, "but I won't answer for anyone else, nudge, nudge, wink, wink." [Read the exact quote from National Press Club, 1999]
• Most people don’t care much about Hermione – in the sense that they think she is too clever and will get through it somehow. [Read the exact quote from the Diane Rehm Show interview, 1999]
• Harry is particularly talented in Defence against the Dark Arts, the one area (well, besides Quidditch) where he is better than Hermione. [Read the exact quote from the South West News Service interview, 2000]
• About S.P.E.W.: Hermione thinks helping people is easy, but "she blunders towards the very people she's trying to help." Jo and her sister went through a stage like this. [Read the exact quote from CBC Hot Type, 2000]
• JKR: "Mostly they [kids] 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... 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." [Read the exact quote from Time Magazine, 2000]
• In GoF, Harry, Ron and Hermione have specific issues they need to work through. "For Harry that's facing up to his fame, really facing up to it for the first time because he's been put into this situation where he will, for the first time, really 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 his year and that's not easy, it's not easy to be in that situation. And Hermione gets a political conscience." [Read the exact quote from the cBBC Newsround interview, 2000]
• Hermione will lighten up after book 4. [Read the exact quote from the cBBC Newsround interview, 2000]
• JKR: "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." [Read the exact quote from Pottermania in Vancouver, 2000]
• Harry & Hermione are platonic friends, "but I won't answer for anyone else, nudge, nudge, wink, wink." [Read the exact quote from National Press Club, 1999]
• Hermione’s birthday is the 19th of September. [Read the exact quote from the AOL chat, 2000]
• Was something going on between Ron and Hermione during the last half of GOF? JKR: "Yes, something's 'going on' ... but Ron doesn't realise it yet ... typical boy" [Read the exact quote from the Yahooligans! chat, 2001]
• If JKR needs to tell the readers something, she lets Hermione or Dumbledore say it. [Read the exact quote from the Chamber of Secrets DVD, 2003]
• JKR "always planned that Hermione would have a younger sister but she's never made an appearance and somehow it feels like it might be too late now." [Read the exact quote from World Book Day, 2004]
• Hermione’s middle name is Jane. [Read the exact quote from World Book Day, 2004]
• JKR gave Hermione her idea [ideal?] animagus [for her patronus, we think she means]. [Read the exact quote from World Book Day, 2004]
• Does Hermione love Ron or Harry? JKR: "I can't believe that some of you haven't worked this one out yet"[Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• Hermione's original surname was "Puckle", but it didn't suit her. [Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• The very, very earliest drafts of Book1 had the Potters living on a remote island, and Hermione's dad seeing an explosion out at sea. He sailed out and found their bodies in the ruins of their house.[Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• JKR has deliberately kept Hermione's family "in the background." They are very ordinary. The younger sister would have been a muggle if she had been in the books. [Read the exact quote from the Edinburgh Book Festival, 2004]
• Harry/Hermione shippers "need to go back and reread." [Read the whole quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• JK loves writing dialogue, especially between Harry, Ron and Hermione. [Read the whole quote from ITV, 2005]
• Hermione would see the trio “alive and unscathed and Voldemort finished” in the Mirror of Erised. She may also see herself in a romantic embrace. [Read the whole quote from RCMH1, 2006]