Hermione is one of my favourite characters from the Harry Potter universe, probably because she reminds me so much of myself. This is the case with my Potter fans I know - including JK Rowling herself who admits to consciously basing clever bookworm Hermione on herself. She is probably the reason why Hermione seems so life-like and real to us; she is easy to relate to and we can see the wonderful goodness in her despite her sometimes haughty and annoying exterior.

We first meet Hermione in Bk1 on the Hogwarts Express, when she is described as having "a rather bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth." On Harry's first encounter he sees Hermione's lofty shell that she hides behind, and Ron immediately takes dislike to her when she starts bragging about how she can already do magic and has learnt the set books off by heart. Her advanced intellect distances her from the other students; I imagine the other children were either annoyed or intimidated by her, or a combination of both. It takes a terrifying encounter with a mountain troll in the girls' bathrooms to gain the companionship of her soon to be best friends, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. As JK Rowling puts it,

"... from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them."

They learn to appreciate that despite Hermione's extraordinary intelligence, she is just an ordinary eleven-year-old too.

Hermione reluctantly is dragged into the adventures of Harry Potter. After a frightening encounter with three-headed dog Fluffy, she remarks,

"I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled."

However her cool knowledge and reasoning comes in handy when the three of them are plunged into the gauntlet to reach the Philosopher's Stone. It is thanks to her that herself, Harry and Ron escape the deadly entrapment of the Devil's Snare, and her logic that allows harry to pass through Snape's potions challenge. In Bk2 she solved the mystery of the horror within the Chamber of Secrets, only to be Petrified by the beast itself to leave harry and Ron to retrace her detective work.

At the end of her second year, Hermione had to decide the subjects she would study until her fifth year. Unable to choose, she simply circled every option. As she had become Professor McGonagall's favourite student, the Professor arranged for her to have a Time Turner, which means she can time travel to attend all lessons and get all of her homework done. However Hermione realises over her third year that she's not superhuman; she's drained by all her extra work and she finds a subject she can't excel in - Divination.

By fourth year, Hermione has matured in many ways. She now has a political conscience - she battles for the rights of the downtrodden House Elves by setting up the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. Her intentions may have been good, but she fails to notice that the majority of the elves don't need or want her help. Despite all this, she declines to be deterred from her cause. Her interests swerve slightly when she learns of Viktor Krum's affection for her. Krum, the famous Seeker of the Bulgarian national team and current Hogwarts heart throb, chose her over he dozens of giggling school girls with their eye on her. I imagine Hermione felt very flattered and found it very sweet that Viktor hung around in the library to catch glimpses of her, and (in my opinion anyway) she overrode her own feelings for Ron to be his date for the Yule Ball. I imagine she must have adored going against everyone's expectations and being a kind of Cinderella on Christmas night with her Prince Charming. I expect JK Rowling particularly had fun writing this chapter, probably reminiscing about how she would have loved that to have happened to her at that age and living that dream through Hermione.

What followed is one of my favourite exchanges in all the books, at the very end of Chapter Twenty-Three.

" ' Well if you don't like it, you know what the solution is, don't you?!' yelled Hermione; her hair coming down out of its elegant bun now, and her face was screwed up in anger.

'Oh yeah?' Ron yelled back. 'What's that?'

'Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!'

Ron mouthed soundlessly like a goldfish out of water as Hermione turned on her heel and stormed up the girl's staircase to bed. Ron turned to look at Harry.

'Well,' he spluttered, looking thunderstruck, ' well - that just proves -completely missed the point -' "

This is JK Rowling's strongest hint yet of feelings stronger than friendship are in the air between those two. I think it's pretty certain that they will get together at some point, but we may have a Krum-Hermione-Ron love triangle on our hands in Bk5 which could prove an extremely engaging read... **hint hint JK Rowling if you're listening!**

As for Hermione's future... it's looking bleak since the rising of Voldemort again for all of the characters. She could be in some pretty hairy danger when You-Know-Who hunts down Harry, but until then she has a summer in Bulgaria to look forward to, if she accepts Viktor's invitation.

As for the long-term future, Hermione is bound to be successful in whatever career path she opts for. I predict quite a panic for her when it comes to choosing time, but something tells me she will select something to do with books - quite possibly an author, just like her creator. After all, she is based on JK Rowling.