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If you’re someone who loves Harry Potter (ie: everyone, hello), then you probably love the secret tidbits the author, J.K. Rowling, is still dropping years after the conclusion of the original series.
And this one is super fun: she says that originally, Hermione wasn’t meant to be an only child – she was supposed to have a sister.
This sort of brings a tear to my eye, because man, Hermione would have killed the big sister game. KILLED.
What happened, you ask? Well, read on.
When we meet Hermione, she tells Ron and Harry that her parents are Muggles, and that “nobody in my family is magic at all.” But Rowling explained in a BBC interview that she had always planned it to be that Hermione wasn’t the only magical Granger – just the first.
“I always planned that Hermione would have a younger sister, but she’s never made an appearance and somehow it feels like it might be too late now.”
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She went on to say that her plan had been to have the younger Granger lady arrive during Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but she never did, and by the time Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was published, she felt as though she’d missed her chance.
The character faded away, never to be written. It’s not as if Hermione doesn’t work great as an only child (she does), but it would have been interesting to see what a sister would have been like.
Would she have challenged Hermione’s spot as the smartest witch of her age? Would she have been the total opposite – not good at school and a bit of a rebel? A Slytherin? Boy crazy?
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The writer in me could spend hours imagining all of the ways she could have both buoyed and challenged Hermione and her character development, and agonizing over how much more she would have had to lose by the end with a magical sister involved in the fight (for surely they would have been on the same side, eventually).
We’re definitely not losing anything without a younger Granger, but now we’re always going to be left wondering what we might have gained had she been written into existence after all.
