Hermione Granger, the girl who studied

Remember when Hermione was useless? Never. That’s when. Hermione “the cleverest witch of her age” Granger is essential to the Harry Potter tracking down Voldemort. Honestly, Harry and Ron would have been strangled to death by Devil’s Snare and Voldemort would still be running around killing muggles if it wasn’t for her. Here are a few of her greatest accomplishments from all the books.
*All insights are from the books not the movies, because details are everything and the movies aren’t able to cover it all.*

1.) Hermione Granger pays attention in class.

A couple crucial things Hermione does in the first book includes teaching Ron how to use magic (because he didn’t pay attention in class), scaring away the Devil’s snare (because Harry and Ron didn’t pay attention in class) and using logic to defeat Snape’s challenge (because most witches/wizards didn’t pay attention in class). Hermione notes most witches and wizards “haven’t got an ounce of logic,” because they rely too much on magic.

2.) Hermione Granger and the Basalisk

In her second year, she makes polyjuice potion so the gang can easily determine if Malfoy is petrifying everyone, although she turns into a cat. A twelve year old, brewing poly juice from a book in the restricted section of the library; might as well ask her take 10 subjects. Oh wait, she does that on her own in the next book. In the end, she figures everything out including what the monster is and how it’s moving about the castle, #nailedit. Admittedly Harry does slay the Basilisk, but how would he have slain it if Hermione didn’t tell him what it was?

3.) Hermione Granger and the time turner

The third book Hermione acquires time travel not to manipulate the future or past or anything, but just to learn. Props to her. She ends up taking about 9 subjects. Way to make good use of your time. Also it should be noted that she is able to effectively and safely use the time turner the whole year. As she notes, “awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time.” But then she also uses the time turner to save Sirius and Buckbeak, thus starting the relationship Sirius and Harry forge throughout the next two books.

4.) Hermione Granger and defending human rights

So technically elves and goblins aren’t humans, but they’re still on the same, if not higher, intelligence level as humans. During this book, it doesn’t seem like her fighting for human rights is that essential to the plot. That’s because it’s not in this book. However, her influence and opinion on house elves is highly important in the coming books, especially regarding Kreacher. She pretty much spends the whole year telling Ron off, who is a huge bigot by the way, for his prejudice (see pages 139, 374, 224, 434, 525) and running off to the library to research and work on Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.

5.) Hermione Granger rebels against the law

So when Hermione realizes what is happening with the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts (“Preserving what ought to be preserved, perfecting what needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited.” (214)) and attending Umbridge’s classes for about a month (reading for the lesson), she comes up with this really brilliant idea: Dumbledore’s Army. It plays a heavy influence in Harry becoming more confident in his Defense Against the Dark Arts skills, and also helps many others such as Ginny, Luna and Neville (and those who fight in critical battles at the end of the 5-7th books) develop their skills and learn essential spells.

6.) Hermione Granger realizes how stupid Ron (and often Harry) is.
Hermione is absent for a lot of this book due to Ron’s repulsiveness. A lot of this book is learning about Lord Voldemort, but there’s no actual task for the three of them to solve. Most of the book consists of Harry relaying the information he learns from Dumbledore to Ron and Hermione and owing to the fact that Hermione isn’t around as often, she is less effective at doing Harry and Ron’s work. To be fair, she did miss all the red lights indicating Malfoy was up to no good, but she was very busy being bullied and taken for granted by the other two. In essence, she doesn’t do anything super big in this book. Harry has to do some things…

7.) Hermione Granger and the importance of preparation

So Hermione does an awful lot of preparation for the camping trip that includes wiping her parents memory so the Death Eaters can’t find them; researching protective spells (like the ones the professors put around Hogwarts) so Death Eaters can’t find them; breaking the law so Death Eaters can’t find them; and finally, using an undetectable extension charm so they can eat and move around so Death Eaters can’t find them. Basically she’s the main reason the trio managed to keep looking for Horcruxes the whole book. Harry slayed Voldemort in the end but there’s no way he would have been there without her. No way.