The 1,000 Faces of Hermione Granger

With the Harry Potter series a new form of fan participation came up: “fan fictions”. The term describes a process where readers become writers using the setting or the characters of an original work and uploading them on the internet. FanFiction.net alone hosts over 650,000 Harry Potter fan fictions. This makes the publishing of stories related to the Harry Potter series part of “Pottermania”, the world wide famous term to describe the hype around the Harry Potter series. Since reading is a transactional process between readers and text, meaning is constructed each time readers read. When the readers start to become writers this definition gets even more fundamental, because now meaning is not only constructed but also reflected and visible. Through examining fan fictions, culture can be examined. One of the characters with the greatest echo in fan fictions is Hermione Granger. She is the hero’s best female friend, the main female character in the series and one of the most – if not the most – taken up characters to develop further in fan fictions. Her character here will be used to have a closer look on the perception and development of a modern female character.