A ponderance...

[rurounihime]

Anybody ever wonder what happened to all of Hermione's Muggle friends after she went to Hogwarts? I mean, she's an 11-year-old girl. She's not just friendless until she meets the wonder-duo, is she?

Hmm.

Comments

[rurounihime.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and now it is time for my issues to show up. ^_^

Even if there were a lot of girls who banded together to tease her (and I am not arguing against this, because I went through it), unless she is ncredibly unlucky in her classmates, there are usually one or two other people in the same situation: ostracized for absolutely nothing. And that makes me wonder about Hermione's future, had she not gone on to Hogwarts. If she did not in fact have a minor pack of her own, the outcasts, for lack of a better term, then she might have been headed down a very, very bad path. I have a friend who did some research on school shootings and some of the things that instigate them, and learned that a group of kids being teased by a larger group... the kids in the small group are not the ones you have to worry about. It's the lone child who is ostracized and picked on that you need to approach. Not saying Hermione would have gone violent or anything. Just that I wonder about her state of mind if she was a true loner.

[ook.livejournal.com]

It's the lone child who is ostracized and picked on that you need to approach.

Sounds like Hermione is a lot like Snape was when he was a kid.

[rurounihime.livejournal.com]

They may have had similar experiences. Poor Severus. He may have been a pill in school, but he had it rough, what with James and Sirius.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

If she did not in fact have a minor pack of her own, the outcasts, for lack of a better term, then she might have been headed down a very, very bad path

I'm glad to know I seem to be headed to a very, very bad path. Too bad I live in a country where random shooting like that doesn't really happen.

(that was sarcasm in case you worry)

I have to agree with a_t_rain. I was a lot like Hermione (minus the amount of work she's willing to put up with to shine in class, that is) and I didn't have any friends until I was 15.
Not even the other outcasts of the school. I guess we did sometimes hang out together but... we didn't like each others. Which sorta preclude from being friends. And none of them were the kind of friendship that lasted beyond the circumstances that brought us to sorta hang out together.
So I'm really not shocked about Hermione not keeping track of them.

I think another thing you might underestimate is the difference of children dynamics in different culture. UK isn't the US.

(here from daily_snitch or another newsjournal, yadda yadda)

[rurounihime.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm not saying that all ostracized kids or even most of them are going to shoot up a school full of kids, or even that it happens all that often. I'm just saying there was a study my friend ran across. God knows I disagree with any study that takes the blame off the kids themselves and sticks it on the ones that teased them incessantly. Those kids that shot up Columbine had no excuse; that was an evil thing to do and they did it, and it was their fault, not the kids they blamed it on. They made the decision. They shot people. They killed people. I don't care how badly they were teased or tormented growing up, they made the decision to pick up a gun and shoot a lot of people. They should have been punished for it as was their due. And the whole argument about guns being way too available in the US only goes so far. 15, 16-and 17-year-olds have no excuse for behavior like that. None.

I guess we all just had different experiences in school and with friends and the dynamics thereof. It just makes me wonder about her childhood, you know?