The Harry Potter series didn’t just see Harry, Ron, and Hermione take on the Dark Lord and win… it also saw them grow and change. From their first year at school (at the age of eleven, which is the first year of wizarding school) through their teenage years, and even beyond, in a flash-forward to adulthood, this series quite literally saw them grow up.
And while some of the characters stayed pretty much the same throughout their years at Hogwarts, Hermione definitely went through some major changes. The composed, powerful witch who helped Harry at the Battle of Hogwarts was a completely different person to the insecure know it all of first year – and that’s not the only way that she changed.
She Learned To Stand Up For Herself
![Harry Potter: 10 Biggest Ways Hermione Changed From Philosopher’s Stone To Deathly Hallows](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Harry-Potter-and-the-Prisoner-of-Azkaban-Hermione-Punches-Draco.jpg)
In her first year at Hogwarts, even Hermione knew that few of the other students actually liked her. They didn’t exactly try and hide the fact, after all. But at this point in time, she was too insecure to actually call them out on it, and instead, when she was upset by someone she would run away to hide and cry. As she got older, though, she learned to stand up for herself – who could forget her first telling Malfoy off? And it just got better from there.
She Learned To Pace Herself
![Hermione Wrong Time Turner](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Hermione-Wrong-Time-Turner-e1538243916319.jpg)
There’s no doubt that Hermione was driven, and that she wanted to learn more than anything (who wouldn’t, she was learning magic!). However, as she grew up she did learn how to pace herself, and stop biting off more than she could chew.
Throughout the early books, Hermione was often found getting incredibly stressed about the amount of homework she wanted to do, but after her adventures with the Time Turner, she realized that there is definitely such a thing as trying to take on too much!
She Learned To Listen To The People She Wants To Help
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From the start, Hermione has been well-intentioned and always wanted to help people… but as her adventures with SPEW proved, she didn’t always know how to listen to the people she was trying to help. Unfortunately, her good intentions could turn into a bit of a savior complex – whether that was assuming that Harry and Ron would literally die without her to assuming that the House Elves just didn’t know what the were talking about when they said that they were happy with their lives. Eventually, she manages to tone down her savior-need and actually start to listen to people.
She Fixed Her Teeth
![Hermione with Crookshanks in Harry Potter](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Harry-Potter-Hermione-with-Crookshanks.jpg)
This is quite a small thing, in many ways, but is still a notable change for Hermione. In the first book, she was teased mercilessly for her large teeth (not just by her classmates, either, Snape made a dig about her appearance too).
Then, when she was jinxed with growing teeth, they were brought back down to size by Mrs Pomfrey… and she let her shrink them a little more than was technically necessary. It’s a little thing, but it was also a little bit of a power move, disobeying her parents, lying to the nurse, and using the jinx to her own advantage.
She Priotizied Things Above School
![Hermione looking suspicious in Sorcerer's Stone](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Emma-Watson-as-Hermione-Granger.jpg)
In her early years, there was nothing more important to Hermione than school and getting good grades. She even said that getting expelled would be worse than getting killed! (And we feel like she really meant it…) As Ron put it, she had got to get her priorities straight, and by the end of the series, she really did. She started lying to support her friends (when it made sense to), she started sneaking around and breaking rules for the greater good, and eventually left school to go hunting horcruxes.
She Learned To Work With Her Hair
![Hermione Granger at the Winter Ball](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/hermione-granger-winter-ball.jpg)
This may also seem like a very superficial change, but like her teeth, there’s more to it than vanity. When Hermione first came to Hogwarts, her hair was completely frizzy and out of control – but, like many young witches, she discovered that there was a magical way to smooth it! She wore it like this for the Ball, but soon came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth it to go that far, and figured out instead how to calm things down and still look like herself. In short, Hermione grew into her natural looks, and ended up feeling good about them without magical smoothing lotions.
She Fell In Love
![Ron and Hermione hug in Harry Potter.](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ron-hermione.jpg)
Admittedly, this change may be largely about her age – at eleven, she was hardly going to be madly in love (although perhaps she may have thought she was…). However, as she grows up and gets more confident, Hermione starts dating, and eventually falls in love – with Ron, of all people.
Of course, in the flash-forward we see that Hermione and Ron are married and have kids, and whether you like them as a pair or not, it’s nice to see that Hermione opened herself up to love and family, not just books.
She Learned Some Tact
![Hermione Granger in Harry Potter](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Hermione-Granger.jpg)
One of the most annoying things about Hermione at the start was her total lack of tact – even though she understood how hurtful words could be, she seemed to have no filter with hers, and was quick to tell people when she thought they were wrong. By the end, though, she had gained some real tact and maturity – from how she dealt with Hagrid as a teacher (and her careful compliments) to how she advised Harry on Cho and her tears, to just generally being able to bit her tongue for the sake of being kind.
She Made Friends
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We don’t just mean that she became friends with Ron and Harry, of course, but that Hermione learned how to talk to people in school, how to approach people, and how to build a social circle. She may still not have been winning any major Hogwarts popularity contests at the end, but she definitely went from a total loner to someone who had a social circle, and that’s a big deal. Of course, a lot of this comes from the other changes – learning to be tactful and to prioritize some things ahead of good grades, but it seems worth an entry all on its own.
She Learned Humility
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Probably the biggest change of all is that the know-it-all has turned into someone who is quick to praise others and slow to correct them. Over the years, Hermione learned that her talent and actions would speak for themselves, and learned how to praise her friends instead of telling them how to do it better. It didn’t come easy, of course, and she struggled with Harry having the Half-Blood Prince’s textbook and being able to easily surpass her in Potions, as well as learning from the reactions of her friends when she was insufferable at the start. But by the Battle of Hogwarts, she was quick to praise Ron and make sure he got all the credit for the Basilisk fang idea – something that eleven-year-old Hermione would never have done.