[close] Hermione is a muggle-born Gryffindor student and the best friend of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. The daughter of two dentists, she is an overachiever who shows considerable academic progress when compared to her friends and classmates, and she is described by Rowling as a "very logical, upright and good" character. Her parents are a bit bemused by their odd daughter, but quite proud of her all the same. Though Rowling has described the character of Luna Lovegood as the "anti-Hermione" because they hold the exact opposite ideologies, Hermione's foil at Hogwarts is Pansy Parkinson, a female bully based on the real-life girls who teased the author during her school days.

Rowling claims the character of Hermione carries several autobiographical influences. Jo states, "I did not set out to make Hermione like me but she is...she is an exaggeration of how I was when I was younger." She recalled being called a "little know-it-all" in her youth. However, she states that not unlike herself, "there is a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure" beneath Hermione's swottiness.

Hermione's name is derived from William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale; Rowling claimed that she wanted it to be unusual since if fewer girls shared her name, fewer girls would get teased for it. Her original last name was "Puckle", but Rowling felt the name "did not suit her at all," and so the less frivolous Granger made it into the books. [close]